Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [98]
It was a dragon.
“What ho!” the dragon said genially, as Sasha froze. “Visitors? Oh good! Oh the Sea King, even better!”
As if one dragon hadn’t been enough, a second dragon’s head popped up over the back of the first. “The Sea King! Wonderful! Then we are finally going to be able to get on with the rescue!”
The word rescue resonated with another he had heard on the other side of this journey. Champions.
He stared. “You’re the Champions,” he said, making it a statement and not a question.
The first dragon, who was a sort of dark translucent grey, nodded. “Adamant and Gina, Champions of the Order of the Glass Mountain,” he said proudly. “We don’t really have a Chapter House.” He chuckled. “Really, how would we fit into one?” The second dragon, this one a dark seagreen also nodded.
“I didn’t know there were any dragon Champions.” Sasha felt rather dumbfounded. His mind was running in tiny circles of reasoning trying to fit “Dragon Champion” into what he knew of The Tradition and failing utterly. “Isn’t it usually Champions slaying dragons?”
“Oh now that was tactful,” the Sea King said sarcastically, emerging from the water onto the beach. Sasha noted absently that it was sadly obvious how much more practical the Sea King’s garb was for this than Sasha’s was. The Sea King’s sleeveless tunic and trews shed the water and were already dry. Sasha was still dripping.
Sasha flushed, as the second dragon sighed. “All the ugly old prejudices. As if we didn’t have enough problems with nasty sorcerers trying to force us into the Traditional Path of maiden-eating. Really sir, I could just as well have said, ‘Oh, a Seventh Son, so how dimwitted are you? Must I limit my conversation to monosyllables?’”
Sasha flushed. “I deserved that,” he acknowledged. “Let’s try again, shall we? My name is Sasha, Prince Alexsandr of Led Belarus to be precise, and yes, I am a Seventh Son. I didn’t know that it showed.”
“It does when you are by your nature magical,” the second dragon said. “And when you know what to look for. I’m Gina, and this is my mate Adamant.” She turned her head, and gazed fondly at the charcoal-colored dragon. “We were ambushed by a paper bird that gave us a message about captives in the castle of the Katschei. Not knowing what that was, we went looking for an explanation, found a Triton, and—” She shrugged. “The Sea King has good agents, and this Triton was one of them. The Triton suggested we come here and gave us a good grounding—when we got a full explanation, we decided to wait for His Majesty to see if he had anything more he could help us with. We are not from this part of the world, and we really need an expert on The Tradition hereabouts.”
Sasha made a self-deprecating face. “I don’t know about expert, but I know a bit. Katschei the Deathless used to live in a castle north of my land of Led Belarus, but I’m afraid he couldn’t live up to his name. It was rumored that he thought he would be clever and invade some land that didn’t have him as a Traditional evil, where no one would know what he was or be able to defeat him. Since most of the enchantments around his castle suddenly evaporated, we assume he came to a bad end. The castle has been vacant since.”
“Well it isn’t now.” The first dragon—Adamant—shook his massive head. “Can I assume that it was not originally in the center of a hot, sandy desert?”
Sasha blinked at both of them, dumbfounded. “Ah,” he managed to say. “No. Rather impenetrable forest, then a hedge maze, according to The Tradition.”
“Hmm. Then the desert must be the work of this ‘Jinn’ that the note refers to.” The green dragon gave the impression of a frown. “So far we