“Skander,” Ylith said, “I need help.”
“Just as I thought,” the dragon said. “What else would bring you out to this remote place? What is it you want, my dear? The old flames are still plenty hot. Want me to burn someone up for you?”
“I need eyes,” Ylith said, and explained about Azzie and Prince Charming and Princess Scarlet.
“Eyes,” Skander murmured, and his hide, normally a reddish brown, turned pasty white. There was a prophecy she had suddenly brought to mind.
“Why do you stay in this place?” Ylith asked.
“It’s the quest for fame, you see,” Skander said. “The people here are going to publicize me. I promised to put this place on the map. It hasn’t happened yet but it’s bound to come.”
“Where can I get some really good eyes?” Ylith asked.
“Eyes,” Skander mused. “Why, there are eyes everywhere. Why do you bother asking me?”
“You know where the best ones are. All dragons do.”
“Yes, of course,” Skander said. “But I’d really rather not discuss eyes, if you don’t mind.”
“You don’t want to discuss eyes?”
“Just superstitious, I guess. Sorry.”
“Care to tell me about it?”
“All right,” he said. “Long ago, in China, I saw that whenever the court artist painted dragons he always put in the eyes last. When I asked him of this, he told me that this act gave the painting a special sort of life, and it wouldn’t do to summon this life until everything else was done. A wise man had told him that the eyes of my kind are the focus of the spirit. They hold the life, they are the last things to go. I looked up that wise man then-an old Taoist monk-and he assured me that this was true. He also prophesied that a witch asking after eyes in my presence represented a total reversal of Yin and Yang.”
“What does that mean?”
“Rosebud . . .” he answered, and closed his eyes.
She waited, but he did not continue. After a time, she cleared her throat.
“Uh, Skander? What then?”
There was no reply.
“You asleep, Skander?”
Silence.
Finally, she moved forward and held her hand before his nostrils. She could feel no breath. Moving even nearer, she placed her hand between the scales of his breast. There was no heartbeat.
“Oh dear!” she said. “What now?”
But she already knew.
When she had done, she stroked the dead dragon’s nose, a thing it had loved feeling in life. Poor old dragon! she thought. So old and wise, yet reduced to this, a mound of cooling flesh in a mountain cave.
She knew that it would be evening soon, and that was not a good time to be about in a foreign country. Local demons were apt to be abroad, and they could cause some rare mischief if they were of a mind to. There was no love lost between European and Asiatic demons in those days, and the wars between the two still awaits their chronicler.
The eyes she wrapped in a small silk handkerchief, then placed in a casket of rosewood which she kept on hand for the transport of delicate and precious objects. Then she turned and departed the cave.
Ylith stood tall as the light of the falling sun bounced off the ice peaks of the highest mountains. She shook out her glorious black flag of hair, mounted her powerbroom, and soared away into the west, the land of the dragon dwindling beneath her.
Chapter 7
It was still daylight when Ylith arrived in Augsburg, for, with a favorable tail wind, she had managed to outrace the sun itself. She came down near the front door of Azzie’s mansion and banged hard with the big brass knocker. “Azzie! I’m back! I’ve got them!”
A cavernous silence followed. Although it was a summer afternoon, there was a chill in the air. Ylith felt faintly uneasy. Her witch’s sense warned her that something was amiss. She touched the protective amulet of amber she wore around her neck. She knocked again.
At last the door was opened. Frike stood there, meager face screwed into an expression of grief.
“Frike! What is the matter!”