The conversation that followed left both men with unexpected hope. Collins came to understand that his companions had brought him from the castle to an area where dogs could not track him. Like the flowering tree where the group had hidden just before Korfius found them, the skunk odor that pervaded the quarters of Barakhai's downcaste garbage workers should hide their scent from second tier guardsmen.
After a meal and a bath, Collins felt more open to explanations. Alone in a straw-cushioned cavern with Zylas, he listened to the rat/man with an open mind. "You see, the less you knew, the safer you, we, and a pack of innocents remained."
"Maybe." It was a point Collins did not know if he could ever accept. "It might be the scientist in me, but I like to work with as much information as possible. The less my ignorance, the more I can figure out what to do to keep myself, you, and these innocents safe."
Zylas laced his fingers, dodging Collins' gaze. "I understand that now." He finally met the probing dark eyes. "But, at first, you didn't want to know that much."
"You mean when I thought I was going right home?"
"I guess so."
"But you knew I wasn't going right home. You should have told me that, too."
"I didn't know what the best thing was." Zylas threw up his hands. "It was supposed to be simple. Bring you here. Have you get the stone. Get you home."
Collins sat up straight, holding Zylas' attention now that he had finally seized it. "But you knew it wasn't that easy from the start. You brought others before me. Others who went mad. Others who died."
Zylas closed his eyes and nodded sadly. "But you were different. I chose you much more carefully."
The words startled Collins. "You did?"
Zylas' lids parted to reveal the familiar, pallid eyes. "I watched you for a long time. Made a well-researched, long-studied decision. Surprised?"
"Very," Collins admitted. "Why me?"
"None of us wanted more deaths, and you are our last hope."
"I was your last hope?" Collins forced himself to blink, still stunned. "How so? My world has about five billion people at last count. You could always grab another."
"No. You are our last hope." Zylas thrust his hand into a pocket, emerging with the translation stone. "Our last of these, my very own, this one a unique treasure because it allows communication even in animal form. I was supposed to give it to you, but I just couldn't let it go. I won't put Prinivere through that spell she cast on you again for any reason. She nearly died, and she's not getting any younger. She's still weakened from it."
The details did not fit. Collins tried to clear his head, to force order to the last vestiges of chaos. "Why didn't the people of Falima's town guess what I was, given that I wasn't the first?"
"To them you were."
"Oh?"
"You were the first to leave the ruins before I could switch to man form and explain."
"Why didn't you just talk to me as a rat? You had the stone."
"What do you think drove our first visitor mad?" Zylas blinked with slow deliberateness. "And what was your hurry to go tearing off into the unknown, anyway?"
Collins felt foolish. "I was hungry. Very very hungry."
"I left you food."
Collins ran a hand through dark brown hair that seemed to have grown an inch since his arrival, and it felt wonderfully clean. "I-I didn't see any food."
"You didn't look."
Collins felt a warm flush of defensiveness. "You should have put it in plain sight."
"If I made it too obvious, you would have worried you had stolen it from someone else. Or that someone had laid it out for you, poisoned."
Collins doubted either of those possibilities. "I was too hungry to worry about things like that." He thought it far more likely he would have passed up the stems, roots, and insects as some science experiment rather than food. Given how well-read I am, it took me stunningly long to realize I had entered another world. "And how do you know what I would have worried about any way?''
Zylas shrugged. "As you pointed out, I made mistakes in the past. But I want you to know this. You were the first one to leave the ruins prematurely and the only one who killed. The others kept searching for the way back home." The corners of his lips twitched, but he did not smile. "And I thought your need to find these might keep you there long enough." He drew Collins' glasses from another pocket.
Collins gasped, snatching the offering from Zylas' hand and planting them on his face. Instantly, the cavern leaped to bold relief. He had forgotten how sharp every crag could look. Each blade of straw became singular and distinct, its colors a gradual blend of yellow, white, and gold. He saw lines in Zylas' face he had never noticed before. "Thank you, you horrid little thief."
Zylas grinned to show he took no offense. "You're welcome, you big ugly murderer."
Though faced with a harsh joke, Collins forced a chuckle. He resisted the urge for a crueler one, though Zylas had given him the ammunition by opening his life's story. He did not want to discourage the albino rat/man from sticking with even the most difficult truths.
"You weren't supposed to kill anyone, and you weren't supposed to get arrested."
Collins nodded, realizing a grimmer truth. At that point, Zylas Could have abandoned him for another champion as they had not yet met or spoken. Collins could not have given away any information anyway, since he would have been executed before he found a way to communicate. "How did you ever manage to get Falima in position?"
Zylas waved a dismissive hand, as if to proclaim the whole thing no bother. "We'd been working on her for years, carefully trying to sway her to our side. You can see the advantage to having a horse-guard as a spy."
"Yes." Collins wondered how much convincing it had taken to push her that final step knowing that it would involve turning herself into a wanted fugitive to help a man she considered a murderer and a cannibal. No wonder she acted so hostile toward me. He could understand why they had chosen Falima, a Random considered a lesser being than the other guards, at least according to her. He had to know, "You took a huge and unnecessary risk saving me."
"Unnecessary?" Zylas' brows rose with incredulity. "I had led you here. I couldn't just let you die."
It was not literal truth. Zylas could have let him die simply by doing nothing, though Collins knew he meant his morality would not have allowed it. "Ialin would disagree."
Zylas did not deny it. "As did Falima at one time. She came around. He will, too." From a pocket, he pulled out the folded, broad-brimmed hat he usually wore to shield his easily burned face and eyes from the sun. "Though I would spend my life for my cause, I don't expect others to do so." Anticipating some comment about those who came before Collins, he added swiftly, "usually. Besides, I had chosen you too carefully. We needed you." All humor left his features. "We still do."
Zylas looked so earnest, so pleading, Collins found it impossible to meet his gaze. He might have to refuse him. "What's so special about me?"
"You're smart and resourceful. You're willing to sacrifice for others, and you really do understand how they feel."
"Well." Collins felt his face grow hot, embarrassed by the praise he had elicited. "I try to be a good person."
"You are," Zylas said. "I knew it from watching you. Dogs obey all horse-guards and superiors, but they like people of good character."
Collins wondered if Korfius' loyalty sprang more from believing him royal, but he had to admit the boy seemed to have a deep affinity for him.
"And Prinivere supports you. That's the highest praise I know."
"Thank you," Collins said, though the previous lies left him wondering whether Zylas' tribute stemmed more from desire and need than truth. "So tell me. What, exactly, does the stone do?"
"What did the king tell you?"
Collins blinked. "Will that change what you tell me?"
"No," Zylas said firmly. "I just wonder…"
"He doesn't know."
Zylas grinned broadly. "Good."
"Nor do I," Collins reminded.
"Yes, you do." Zylas dipped his head with clear sincerity, wadding the hat in his hands. "It enhances magic, pure and simple. It would, hopefully, give our Prinivere enough power to help us. Maybe even enough to reverse this curse."
"Curse?"
Zylas stared, as if he found Collins' question the most absurd one ever uttered. "This whole spending half our lives as animals thing. You know."
Collins physically jerked backward. "You can… fix that?"
"Don't know yet. Prinivere needs to have the stone in hand-or should I say in claw-to analyze it."
"Wow."
"Yeah," Zylas agreed. "Now do you understand why we want it?"
"Yes," Collins said, though he shook his head. "But why don't you want the king to know? Stopping the switching helps everyone. Doesn't it?"
Zylas threw the question back to Collins. "Does it?"
Collins folded his legs and leaned against the cavern wall, considering. He wondered if his bland perspective made him miss something obvious to those whose lives cycled from human to animal on a daily basis. He supposed someone with perfect overlap might find some advantages over those who fully lost half or more of their rational time to becoming some lumbering, half-witted creature. People like Zylas. Collins shook his head. The very one he thought might have the least reason to change was the same one who daily risked his life for it. "All right, I give. Who would want to keep the curse going?"
"Don't you think there might be substantial power to remaining human full-time while those around you mark time for half of their existence? Hard to contemplate insurrection when you're awake and thinking a third of the day or less."
Collins suspected many of his fellow students managed to function on less. "Unless you have near-perfect overlap."
Zylas' hands stilled on the hat. "Now you know why I'm a wanted outlaw."
Collins returned to the point. "So you think the royals wouldn't want the curse removed?"
Zylas heaved a deep sigh. "I think it's time you heard the whole story." He rose to his feet. "From one who was there."
There? Uncertain, Collins followed Zylas with his gaze. Before he could question further, Zylas disappeared through the entryway.
Collins rose also, though he did not attempt to follow. The musky odor had become familiar; it filled his nose and mouth like a persistent aftertaste. He took a few steps in the direction Zylas had gone, turned on his heel and started back the way he had come. The world seemed to have turned upside down, spun around three times, then whirled completely around again. He did not know for certain who to trust anymore. His sympathies intuitively went toward Zylas, though he could not guess whether this stemmed from truly believing the albino in the right or just because he had gotten to know the man first and better than the other side. It reminded him of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, where he could not help rooting for the criminals mostly because the story got told from their point of view. Only one thing seemed absolutely certain. He needed to get home to a world where science made sense and the studies that had taken all of his adult life and money had purpose. At the moment, he would consider selling his soul for a Big Mac, large fries, and a cup of fountain root beer.
Zylas returned shortly with a familiar old woman in tow. Prinivere seemed dangerously frail in human form, her skin a mass of paper thin wrinkles, her eyes deeply recessed, her hair thick but nearly transparent in color. She wore a light, shapeless gown that hung to her knees. She looked older than the last time Collins had seen her, only days ago.
Collins nodded and smiled in greeting. "Good afternoon, my lady."
Prinivere returned a feeble smile. "Forgive my appearance-" she started.
"You look lovely," Collins found himself saying, the words seeming foolish and yet, to his surprise, oddly true. Survival and great age had an almost inexplicable beauty all its own.
"She wore herself down healing-"
Prinivere interrupted Zylas. "No reason to talk about that, my dear."
Collins did not need the last word to realize what had happened. She had tended his wounds, which explained why he no longer suffered the pain of his falls. "Thank you, Lady Prinivere. I feel very well now, but you shouldn't exhaust yourself for my bumps and bruises."
Prinivere smiled, the wrinkles piling up at the edges of her lips. "Healing magic is not expensive." She did not give him the opportunity for a reply. They could argue the point all day and still remain at an impasse. "But I've come to tell you a story."
Collins lowered himself to the ground in front of Prinivere. He still had many questions and hoped the story would handle most of them. "Please."
With Zylas' hovering assistance, Prinivere also sank to the straw. The rat/man took a space beside her.
Without further preamble, Prinivere began. "A long, long time ago, when I was young, our world was much different. Humans and dragons had waged a war since long before my birth. It was not the type of war with many battles. Simply, the dragons raided the flocks of men when food grew scarce or they became too old and slow to catch the wilder creatures. And the humans found slaying a dragon a means to prove their courage or rescue their animals. More often than not, however, those clashes resulted in the death of the man."
Collins nodded, recalling how terrifying even a feeble, elderly female dragon had seemed, though he had known at the time she would not harm him.
"They had spears and swords to pit against our claws and teeth, armor to thwart our spikes and tails. But they had no way to counteract our magic."
Collins' mind conjured images of brave knights riding off to slay dragons, only to return as charred heaps of bone in the satchel of some bypasser. Feeling he should say something, Collins inserted, "You'd think the humans would sacrifice a few sheep and goats to keep the peace."
Zylas shivered, but Prinivere only bobbed her head knowingly. "Yes, you would think so. For you realize what our friend, here, could not. These animals were animals through and through. The humans themselves regularly ate their herds and flocks as well as harvested their eggs, milk, and wool."
"It sounds very much like the olden days of my own world," Collins said. "Except, of course, for the dragons." He savored a situation where, for the first time, he seemed more in tune than his companion. Suddenly, he had found an explanation for the antique hunt scene tapestry in the king's bedroom.
Prinivere continued, "There were fewer people then, and they all lived within and around a single city, ruled by a kind and intelligent king named Larashian Elrados. He made peace with the dragons. Men could no longer hunt us for sport, and the city would welcome our visits. In return, they donated a portion of their crops, hunts, and animals to the oldest and youngest of us. Favors became as common as conflicts once were. It was not unknown for a dragon to carry someone on his back or to heal an injured man. And the people would help us with thorns and burrs, with flotsam caught beneath our scales, and they educated us about the ways of their civilization. To seal the accord, the dragons presented the king with a powerful talisman, a stone that could amplify magic. Though the humans could not use its power, did not even understand it, the king recognized that it had momentous significance to the dragons and accepted it with great honor and ceremony."
Prinivere fell silent, and her gaze rolled toward the ceiling. Zylas placed a comforting arm around the frail and sagging shoulders. Collins waited in patient silence for her to continue.
"The peace and friendship lasted throughout Larashian's long and just rule and into his grandson's. Telemar, too, seemed kind and competent. So, when he requested a closer bond between our families, it seemed reasonable to consider the request. Not all of our kind believed it wise, but our elders finally agreed to allow a dragon to take human form with magic for the purposes of breeding with the king's eldest daughter." Prinivere heaved a sigh filled with ancient pain.
"Why?" Collins found himself saying without thinking. Prinivere had explained the reasons, but they did not seem substantial enough. Kingdoms in his world had sealed accords with royal marriages and even exchanges of children; but he could not see any good coming of sexually comingling intelligent species.
"Why indeed." Prinivere's voice emerged in a puff of hoarse breath. "With centuries of hindsight, I believe the king wanted to implant magic into his own line. We had tried to teach them, but people lack something in their life substance that we naturally have."
"Or the reverse."
Wholly jarred from her story, Prinivere stared. "What?"
Under the full and intense scrutiny of both of his companions, Collins suddenly wished he had kept his thoughts to himself. Now did not seem the time for an extensive discussion of inheritance. Few enough species could interbreed, and all of those had common ancestors. Chimps shared about ninety-nine percent of their genetics with humans, yet that last one percent created so many differences. It seemed impossible to imagine that dragons and humans could cross-fertilize. Magic, he reminded himself. Magic. Still feeling the stares, he explained as simply as possible. "Perhaps humans have something dragons don't, something nature uses to protect them from using magic." Worried his words might sound supremacist, he added, "Because we can't handle it or something." Uncertain whether he had dug himself out or deeper, Collins changed the subject. "Why did the dragons want to do it?"
Prinivere ran with the question, to Collins' relief. "The dragons argued several reasons: that an important ally wanted it, that it would bring our peoples closer, that it would force all humans to see us less as animals. And one must not discount simple curiosity. They made sure the king understood the risks to his daughter. She was more than willing, especially once she saw the handsome, charming, mannered man our Ardinithil became. He stayed that way only long enough to get the job done, however, though she made it clear she would have liked to marry him."
"Dragons don't marry?" Collins guessed.
"We don't call it marriage." Prinivere's green eyes swiveled downward to meet Collins' directly. "But we do pair for life." She closed her eyes in a long blink. "We did pair for life. When more than one of us lived."
Three. Collins opened his mouth but glanced at Zylas before speaking. The rat/man shook his head ever so slightly and mouthed something Collins could not comprehend. He guessed Zylas had not yet discussed the two young dragons in the king's care and had some reason to keep him from doing so as well. It seemed unfair to withhold such important information from Prinivere, but he also knew Zylas always had his ancient ancestor's best interests in mind. When the right time came, he would tell her.
Apparently oblivious, Prinivere returned to her story. "Anyway, Ardinithil could have married her-human lives span so short a time, he would have become free to pair again still in his youth. But he had no wish to return to human form, as she surely would have wanted, so he refused. The king accepted this without obvious malice, and life continued much as it had. Until…" Prinivere trailed off, clearly lost in bygone thought.
Collins looked at Zylas, who shrugged. They sat for several moments in silence. Then Collins ventured a guess, "Until the birth of the baby?"
As if awaiting this cue, Prinivere returned to life. "Yes. The babies."
"Twins?"
"Dragons nearly always have twins. Occasionally singles. Rarely triplets. I once heard of four babies together, but only once in several centuries."
Collins suddenly realized why this particular interbreeding bothered him so much. "Dragons have live-born young?"
Prinivere turned her head toward Zylas, as if to get more coherent explanation for Collins' strange questions. Clearly equally befuddled, Zylas raised one shoulder and tipped his head without speaking. Prinivere returned her attention to Collins. "Don't all animals have live-born young?"
"Birds lay eggs. Reptiles and amphibians, too." Collins did not know if Barakhains categorized the same way as scientists, so he elaborated, "Turtles, alligators, snakes, frogs." He carefully omitted fish, not wishing to compare her to a creature they did not consider animal. Dinosaurs.
Zylas cringed, but Prinivere did not seem offended. "Dragons do not lay eggs."
"Oh." That now being obvious, Collins found nothing more to say.
"We have live-born young." Prinivere used Collins' terminology. "Like humans." She rubbed her hands together, looking uncomfortable. "Usually." She folded her fingers in an interlocking pattern, biting her lower lip. "We monitored the pregnancy with magic, and it soon became clear that the babies, both boys, were unhealthy. Usually, we magically ended such pregnancies for the good of our society, the well-being of the parents; but the king refused to give up on them. His attachment to the hybrids became an obsession that changed him, and he would allow nothing and no one to harm them.
"To our leaders' surprise, the unborn gradually regained their health; but they did so at the expense of their mother. Dragons don't sicken as humans do, which is why our healing magic works only on injuries, not diseases. It took our monitors many months to realize what was actually happening. Months passed, during which they sensed the babies growing stronger and the mother weaker before they realized the inherent and unconscious evil of the process. The babies were drawing their strength, the very essence of their survival, by draining the life of their mother."
Unlike most Barakhain science, this made sense to Collins. Undernourished women often became ill during pregnancy while the fetus, essentially a parasite, sucked whatever nutrients it could from her blood. No one he knew would consider that process evil, however.
"Once the dragons realized what was happening, they begged the king to allow them to destroy the unborn babies. He refused. For the last few months of the pregnancy, our requests went from wishful to desperate to angry. The king would hear none of it. Even risking the life of his daughter did not seem too high a price for the twins whose very existence he had facilitated for reasons that had once seemed pure and noble. We explained, we pleaded, we ranted, all to no avail. The twins whom nature intended to be stillborn thrived while the mother meant to lose them lost her own life instead."
Prinivere clambered to her feet, and Zylas scrambled to remain at her side. Her eyes seemed to blaze through their ever-present glaze of water. "The boys looked odd for humans, their eyes too long with oval-shaped pupils, their noses like…" She placed a hand over her own slitty nostrils. "… well, rather like mine in human form. They had points to their ears, and their skin looked more like dry scales. The humans feared them, and the dragons hated them. But their grandfather adored them. He smothered them with finery and servants, bad-mouthed those who shunned the boys, doted on them to the point of fulfilling their every whim. He demanded that the dragons train the boys in the ways of magic. The dragons, who could sense darkness in their hearts, still felt the boys should die. We refused, re-creating a rift between our societies. The boys grew up deeply spoiled and also deeply embittered."
Prinivere shook herself from head to toe, the movement strangely animal. "The firstborn, Shalas, wanted only to forget what he was, to live his life as a normal human. The second, Shamayas, resented what he should have become. He would watch us flying effortlessly overhead and desperately wished he could spend half his life in dragon form, as he felt he deserved. These desires became as focused and determined as the king's love for his hybrid grandsons, so much so that each developed a single magical ability even without our training. The boys' innate evil, the strong and covetous nature of their wishes, warped them to self-defeating talents. Shalas gained the ability to make others forget, but never himself. Shamayas could turn other's lives half-animal but not his own."
Collins grimaced at the horrible irony and wished his companions would sit. The story shivered through him like a horror movie, and having the two towering over him only intensified the discomfort. "So that's how the half-animal transformations came about?"
Prinivere held up a hand, curled like a claw. "Thinking they might find the significance of the dragon's stone, the king gave it to his grandsons. Their terrible powers mightily enhanced, the boys used them in a grander fashion. The first caused the populace to forget. The second inflicted hybrid lives on them, excepting only the king, his queen, and a few others of the royal line who struck their fancy. And, inadvertently, themselves, for they still could not affect what they truly wanted. Greatly desired magics fail on those with evil hearts. In this way, the king of humans achieved ultimate power. Inflicted with the curse, his enemies and subjects could not likely mass in rebellion. He and his direct descendants would rule forever."
The ability to do such a thing went so far beyond his experience, Collins found it as difficult to accept as he once had his entrance into a world of fantasy. "What exactly did the people forget."
"What came before." Prinivere sank back into her sitting position. Though Zylas remained standing, Collins found himself far more comfortable. "That they had prior lives, ones without the transformation curse. So stories of that time do not trickle down to those alive today. It takes someone like me, someone who was there, to tell it."
Collins realized what had to come next. "What happened to the dragons?"
"Our magic saved us from the effects of the first spell, but we could only temper the second. Suddenly, we found ourselves involuntarily human for part of every day, and that made us furious. A horde of dragons descended upon the castle. We killed the king and the half-breeds who should never have existed, but we could not reverse the evil they had inflicted without the magnifying crystal. We never found it. The crowned prince declared war against us, and the slaughter began."
Prinivere's eyes grew even more watery, and a tear dragged down her wrinkled cheek. "Armies and bounties-a man could become rich in a day simply by proving he had killed one of us. Our magic helped, but it has its limits. They wore us down and, one by one, they killed us." As she spoke, she sank lower and lower so that she had to glance up to meet Collins' eyes. Clearly, she believed herself finished, but he had to know one more thing.
"Some of you survived."
"One," Zylas said, his voice seeming out of place after his long silence. "Only one."
"They knew our exact number." Prinivere now sounded as feeble as she looked. "We had given them that, the means of our own extermination."
"How?" Collins asked hesitantly. He wanted to know, though it would surely force Prinivere to relive the worst of her memories. "How did you survive?"
"I-" She choked, and Collins closed his eyes, suffering stabbing pangs of guilt for even having asked. He would never have dared press Joel Goldbaum's grandfather for details of the concentration camp he had narrowly escaped.
Collins said hastily, "Never mind," but Prinivere seemed not to hear him.
' 'One day, my mate staggered to our cave, mortally wounded.'' The tears flowed freely now, thickening her voice. "All my magic couldn't save him; we both knew it. And they had trailed him to the cave. We said our good-byes. Quickly, I cleaned up those wounds that the people could see, gave him as much strength as I could, and he charged from the cave with all the vengeful agony of an aggrieved cave-mate. They killed him- twice. By the time they managed to climb to the cave, I had made myself appear dead as well. They mistook me for their first kill, crawled off to die, and him for the second. They claimed our tail tips, as the bounty required, and left us both for dead."
A heavy silence followed Prinivere's story. Collins could think of nothing better to say. "I'm sorry. Very very sorry."
Zylas crouched, forestalling the obvious question. "She dared not leave the cave often, barely kept herself alive. She waited until long after the old-age death of the crowned prince and his successor before showing even her human self. She found a good man who claimed he would love her no matter what her switch-form, but she never let him see it. She did bear him twins, then left him to raise them, checking in when she could in human form. Once they had safely grown, becoming acceptable animals at coming-of-age, she mostly disappeared from their lives, watching only from a distance."
Though it sounded harsh, Collins believed he understood the reason. "She aged much more slowly than they did, and she would soon look younger than her own children."
Zylas nodded, "And they might figure out what she was, endangering all of them. But she oversaw their descendants, including, distantly, me. My wife, too, carried Prinivere's bloodline, which explains why our daughter…" His tone became as strained as Prinivere's.
Collins lowered a head that felt heavy with the mass of details laid upon him by people he had alternately considered friends and betrayers. He had so much to contemplate: to consider, internalize, or discard.
Zylas studied Collins. As if reading his mind, the albino said softly, "I'm going to lay one more thing on you before we leave you to your thoughts."
Collins met the pale gaze and nodded soberly.
"The king's newest law states that Random unions can no longer occur. Couple that with the previous edicts forbidding certain creatures from breeding as Regulars, and many lines will end. Where you come from, it may not seem like such a bad thing to eliminate rats and mice, snakes and opossums, and other animals you consider vermin. But to us, it's… it's…"
Collins filled in the word, "Genocide." He sat up straight and tall. "It's genocide, pure and simple. And it's very, very wrong." He could not come up with words strong enough to fit the outrage now rushing through him.
Zylas gave him a weak smile. "I'm glad you see it our way."