How is it that Estella liked the dragon, but not Reason? Maybe dragons prefer silly coquettes.
“Oh, my darling,” she petted him.
“You sound as if you were singing a lullaby to him. He’s a monster, not a baby.”
“He’s so nice and cute.”
“When he shoots sparks at you, you’ll change your mind.”
But the dragon was slow to fire at Estella. Apparently dragons don’t hurt princesses. Not without reason, even the prim Gisela loved tales of love between beautiful girls and dragons. Estella felt almost in love when the dragon encouraged her affectionate touch. She had finally found the friend she had never had in her life. And Reason had managed to pierce the bottom of the barrel with his claws and was now greedily drinking ale straight from the puddle on the floor.
“It was delicious!” He said. “If I’d been locked in a cellar with hops and groceries, I’d rather be in there than with you.”
Estella wasn’t even offended by him. After all, the dragon had made a choice in her favor.
“Don’t be fooled! He liked your jewelry, not you. Dragons love rings and necklaces and things like that.”
“So do you!” She remembered hiding place beneath the throne.
“But I would not pity a maiden merely because she stroked me with her hand in precious rings.”
“You mean you’ve hurt girls?”
“I have even killed…” Reason paused. “Why should you want to know about my past? Think of the dragon. You’re lucky you found fun. Mind your own business.”
Her Reason’s past is no one else’s business, is it? Estella frowned. That doesn’t make sense. Considering, of course, that her Reason had been taken from her by magic, and she’d been trapped in it, anything could have happened to her that she didn’t know about. If the situation is extraordinary, it must be handled differently. It is better not to ask Reason what he himself does not want to tell. He was already ranting about the dragon’s past mischief.
“Last time, the dragon ate a brewer and then wondered why no one else made beer. He even crawled into the kitchen to burn everyone there. Anyway, acted like a serviceable worker who stopped being fed for no reason.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Of course, you weren’t there yet.”
“Were you?”
It seems strange that her mind was born before hers. Maybe that’s why it got lost in the beginning. Reason chuckled slyly.
“You know too much, you’ll grow old early.”
Estella immediately wanted to look in the mirror. No wrinkles? Mind chuckled something very snidely. She didn’t have a mirror with her; she must have left it on the dressing table in her bedroom. But if she rubbed her dragon scales with her sleeve, they were just as reflective as a mirror. Her face looked fine. There was no sign of aging yet. And she was too young. She wasn’t even twenty. The dragon really liked her. And as everyone knows, dragons only like the youngest and most beautiful girls. An aging lady would not have been to his liking.
As luck would have it, just as she was about toВ make nice with aВ dragon, aВ sentry snuck into the dungeon.
“So long since anyone’s been down here,” Reason muttered as he heard the clatter of his armor, “your song is what got the sentries going. You ought to keep your voice down.”
“So the dragon wouldn’t have heard me! He wouldn’t have woken up.”
The watcher’s helmet was already gleaming in the passage. The dragon moved only the tip of its mighty tail to send the sentry tumbling to his feet. The armor thundered loudly. The halberd flew aside and nearly decapitated Reason. Thankfully, Reason was very agile and bounced off the blade in time.
“It’s like war at home!” He complained, while the dragon had already clawed at the guard and was about to unleash a blast of fire on the unfortunate man.
“No, it is not here! It would set the whole castle on fire! Not, Emerald!” Estella whispered, but the dragon could not hear her. But it was impossible not to hear Reason howling at the top of his lungs. He was waving his clawed paws vigorously, leaping onto the pile of barrels in front of the dragon, and shouting:
“Stop it! You’ll burn another brewer. Who’s going to make you beer?”
The dragon scratched at the back ofВ his head with his claw. Drunkenness was not aВ hindrance toВ his quick wits. But he had let the sentry go for nothing. He was no brewer, so he began toВ panic.
“We must fly away while your guards run about the castle looking for the dragon, and when the clamor dies down we’ll be back.”
Reason was right. Estella herself was terrified of the conflagration that could break out as soon as an armed detachment burst into the dragon’s dungeons. She tried to climb onto the dragon’s back, clinging to the spikes. She did not succeed. She herself only slid down the dragon’s fur. If the dragon hadn’t have held her up by his wingtip, she would have never made it onto his backbone. But there, between the big green spines and the ridge that extended from her head to her back, she sat down comfortably in the saddle.
“Let’s fly! Take me for a ride!” Estella asked, but the dragon did not respond.
“That’s not the way to ask,” Reason jabbed him with a claw, and the dragon sprang away. She barely had time to land on its back.
Reason slid onto the dragon’s ridge like a nimble black flea. There was a broad opening to the outside of the dungeon, but no one could see it because King Abraham’s cloaking spell had obscured it. If Reason hadn’t told her all this, Estella herself wouldn’t have known why they’d found themselves too quickly in the starry night beyond the castle.
The only unpleasant thing was the rattling of the guards’ weapons from behind and the shouting:
“The dragon has kidnapped the princess!”
“The whole henhouse is abuzz,” Reason grumbled grudgingly.
“It is the barracks, not the henhouse,” Estella corrected.
Reason chuckled.
“And I’ll prove to you that the keepers’ barracks is no better than the henhouse, where a cunning fox will wring everybody’s neck in the morning.”
“Do you want to etch a dragon on the soldiers, or do you want to claw them yourself?” For some reason Estella was more afraid of Reason’s claws than she was of dragon fire.
“No. What’s a castle without guards? The neighboring kings would laugh at us. I have a better idea. When we get back, I’ll go to the cellar and pour all the guards some wine that’ll knock out their memory. They’ll think they’ve only dreamt of the princess being kidnapped by a dragon. Besides, there was no kidnapping. You rode the dragon yourself. Did you know that in the old days, riding a dragon was considered a great art?”
“Emerald didn’t kidnap me,” she repeated dumbly, trying to shield her new friend. “But to deprive the Watchers of their memories is despicable. They might forget their families, their duties…”
“And above all, they would forget their pay and rations,” Reason summed up. “We’ll avoid any unnecessary expenditure in the future.”
“Forget wages, that’s all right, but rations…” She squeezed her eyes shut in the strong wind that came from her flight. “People die if you don’t feed them, don’t they?”
“But an army of zombies wouldn’t be as much trouble as it was today. The dead are more docile than the living. True, they rot quickly, but skeletons can serve and fight, too. Believe me!”
Estella was no longer listening to him, but was enjoying her flight. The towns and villages below became so small, as if they were toys. If you ride a flying dragon, it’s as if you are the queen of a toy kingdom. You can’t even see the people below. But the starry skies are very close. It seems as if you could reach up and touch the stars like a bed canopy.
“When we get home, I’m going to order myself a star-colored canopy to resemble the night sky.”
“We could not get back!”
“What do you mean?”
Reason chuckled. Clinging toВ the twisted horn on top ofВ the dragon, he clearly felt like aВ flight captain.
“When I fly, I feel like the king of the universe,” he declared. “I wish I had wings of my own.”
“Did you have wings?” Estella wondered. The only thing protruding from his skinny black back seemed to be hump-shaped growths.
Down below she glimpsed the roofs of fanciful castles and fortresses. She’d never seen such architectural marvels before.
“This is no longer Aluar!”
“That’s right! We are already abroad!”
“We’re abroad!”
“What did you want? Do you want to spend your whole life in your own country with a flying dragon?”
“I thought we’d be flying over the Aluar’s countryside and those woods where the Evil One supposedly dwells, but the fairies dance there at night.”
“You can’t even see the fairies from up there. They’re not flying close to the dragon’s mouth, and they’re not that stupid.”
“And I can see them!” Estella saw a bridge in the black clouds, shimmering like the moon. Winged, glowing silhouettes danced across it.
“They were moon fairies!” Reason instantly turned fierce. “They’d take you for their own kind if they saw you. Virgil, turn a little to the left!”
The dragon, oddly enough, obeyed Reason.
“And a little lower in flight! The princess wants to enjoy the view of foreign lands. From behind the clouds she can see little. She’s not as sharp as you.”
It was unclear whether the dragon was seeking toВ oblige the princess or Reason, but he was on his way down, almost touching the white stone tower ofВ the tall castle.
“Not so low!” Reason howled, but it was too late. Though the dragon had turned on command, it had already knocked down a few towers.
“Let’s move before they cannon fire on us!” Reason raked anxiously around. The towers were crumbling, falling like rocks. Cracks were appearing in the castle walls, and a dragon was flying Estella away.
After a few minutes, Reason managed to reach the right height and speed. He knew how to get his dragon to do what he wanted, though not without effort. It must be hard to control the flight! Reason was out of breath, tugging at the dragon’s horn and then the spike on his ridge.
“That’s a hell of a first time,” he concluded, glancing back at the tremendous pogrom. “Trial and error is our method! And we think we’re smart, too.”
“You’re the smart one, not me. You are the one who is responsible!”
“Actually, I warned you against getting too close to a dragon.”
That’s true. She couldn’t blame Reason for that. She insisted on going to the dragon’s dungeons herself.
“Whose castle did we destroy?”
“Someone’s,” Reason replied indifferently.
“You don’t know exactly.”
“There are many castles in the universe, and they all have their masters.”
“I must know who to apologize to.”
“Don’t be silly! Why denounce yourself to someone like a bully. Unless the owner of the castle was a wizard, like your dearest father, there’s no way he could have sniffed out who had caused the night’s pogrom. You can only use a crystal ball or a magic mirror to identify the culprits if you haven’t seen them in person.”
“If we are unmasked, then the new ruler will move on me with a war. And this time the guilty party is really me.”
“They should at least raise the castle from the ruins before summoning the military forces. Surely everyone there has already been stoned to death. If anyone survived, their thoughts wouldn’t be on war, but on rebuilding. I was once involved in building a castle. If the stones are not carried by the Finodirri, then you can’t build a castle in one night.”
“What are the Finodirri?”
“They are the most faithful and unselfish magical helpers. They don’t charge you anything, and they don’t ask for gratitude, but you must know a secret if you want to manage them. I do know one. I was once summoned by a king to rebuild his castle in a cursed place. No sooner had anyone laid a foundation than the ground turned to swamp. I whistled to the Finodirri. They did it in three days. They didn’t have to be paid, but the king didn’t treat me kindly. He chased me out of the council very quickly. He didn’t like the idea of ghosts screaming from the walls of the new castle and swamp creatures crawling out of cracks in the floor. So I took my revenge on him by summoning the Finodirri again. They beat the king and his regiment to death. And they destroyed the castle. Now the swamp creatures rule there again, but every moonlit night the castle rises from the swamp as a ghost. Do you want to go there and dance with the local ghosts? But, no, tonight is not a moonlit night! Some other time, I think.”
Estella listened to him half-heartedly. What she heard from Reason was like a fairy tale. But the intricate structures below were not a fairy tale. The dragon wasn’t too low, but it wasn’t too high either. She could see everything now. The stone structures below were gradually replaced by fanciful domes that looked like marshmallow slides. Here luxurious gardens stretched right over the rooftops and bridges spanning between the rooftops. And beyond that was a city of various towers connected by passages and bridges.
“This was Orelo, the city of the spirits! Don’t fly over it,” Reason urged the dragon to turn right.
Beyond the valleys and the rivers was aВ stretch ofВ heavily patterned wooden buildings, like lacework.
“Those are the mansions,” Reason explained. “They are all wooden. If Virgil dies on them once, the whole country of the mansions will be gone in a moment. Fire spreads very quickly through wooden buildings.”
“Is that what it’s called, Terem’s Land?” Estella wondered.
“It is only the part where the nobility live. The poor stay in the huts. And over there is Lukomorye,” Reason pointed a clawed finger forward. “There are not only people there, but also evil spirits.”
But Estella had already spotted people pouring out on the roof ofВ the largest mansions. The dragon had lowered too much. The rider on its back drew the attention ofВ aВ large crowd.
“It is a princess!” came the shouts from below.
Reason commanded the dragon toВ hasten its flight. Estella turned back, intrigued.
“Who were these people? Dressed like sorcerers!”
“They are the king’s boyars. It is customary for them to wear fur coats, even in summer.”
“They look like the robes of sorcerers.”
“Well, they can’t do magic like your father here. But the boyars are used to the fact that the most unusual brides come to the royal show. They’ve taken you for a candidate, too. We’d better get away, so they’ll forget about us. What on earth possessed you to fly a dragon! You should have stayed home. There’s so much to do in the country, and you’re just sitting around. Only a bad ruler would put her own pleasures above running the country.”
“I’m not a ruler yet. The coronation is not until the end of May.”
“I hope we don’t have a wedding sooner.”
“Why do you keep whining about the wedding? You chased the only groom away from me yourself.”
“Where you had to banish one, you will have to banish many,” concluded Reason. “Fiancés are like evil. You’ll have to chase them away for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, you do not worry! We’ll officially consider that I am the bride of dragon. The ministers would be frightened if I had a beau like that beside the throne.”
