The Third Dragon

 

by

 

Laer Carroll

 

 

 

       When she encountered the hole into another world Major Alessa Lee was flying a Marine fighter jet over the Atlantic to Europe and she was angry.  One of her former students had been shot down over the Mediterranean and paraded through the streets of Arab cities.  Then his guards had been stupid and gutless enough to let an angry mob kill him!  Matt, with his rare smile, self-deprecating wit, and utter professionalism.

       Alessa gritted her teeth.  If only she had been flying his plane instead...!  He had been good, but she was extraordinary.  But a long-standing patchwork of laws and regulations kept women from combat roles.  So in her thirteen years as a Marine she had been aerial chauffeur, teacher, aeronautical engineer, and test pilot.  Now she led a flight of Harriers being ferried to Sardinia, off the coast of Italy, where she would head a retraining program for Marine pilots, the closest she would ever get to actual fighting.

       The four aircraft in her flight were armed for aerial combat as a matter of policy, but lightly because of the distance they had to fly.  Also, their route would not bring them close to hostiles—she would not have been allowed to fly it otherwise.

       But if she accidentally strayed south...  Her jet had only a sixth of a tank of fuel left, making it lighter and more maneuverable, perfectly suited to the savagely unorthodox aerobatics that had earned her the handle Dragon Lady....

       Wishful thinking vanished instantly as that part of her which never slept jerked her fully alert.  The air in front of her was rippling as if shaken by heat waves.  Then the shimmer was gone and ahead of her was a wall stretching from infinity above to infinity below.  A wave of nausea swept through her and suddenly she knew forward was down.

       She pulled back on the joystick and saw a brick-red aircraft expand before her.  She was overtaking it rapidly, the Harrier trembling as it approached transonic speeds—they were going to collide!

       Alessa rolled, flashing past the aircraft with the Harrier's wings pointing toward sky and earth, her path curving away from the other's.  Gray-green land spun over her and then under her again as she completed the roll.  Her 40,000 foot height had somehow become less than 5000.  The blue sky was gone, replaced by gray clouds.

       Bright flame stabbed across her sight, passing so close to her aircraft that it left an afterimage, and Alessa knew the other aircraft had launched a missile at her and missed.

       Instantly she rolled again, toward the direction of the miss, knowing her attacker was even now correcting for his failure by steering away from his last aiming point—which made that the safest place to be.  Turning her roll into a dive, she raced away at top speed, feeling the Harrier tremble again as she briefly went supersonic.

       Alessa keyed her microphone, glancing around her to find her companions, and called them.  There was no answer.  They  must not have come through the...hole...in the sky with her.

       The smart thing to do might be to continue running away, but for all its good qualities the Harrier was slower in a straight run than most other fighters.  More important, it was dangerous to turn her back on an unknown enemy, especially in this weird situation, and she was as angry at the unprovoked attack as she ever let herself to be in a fight.

       At full power she looped back up and over, a tight curve shaped by the very edge of her physical limits, a grey tunnel forming around her vision as acceleration forces pulled the blood toward her back, her breathing hoarse with the centrifugally multiplied weight of her body.  Leveling off she saw her target, barely visible as a red dot below and about two miles in front of her.

       Keying her targeting system, she got a radar lock on the aircraft and launched a rocket of her own.  Its guidance system failed and it corkscrewed away into the distance, trailing faint gray exhaust.  The enemy must be using electronic countermeasures.

       Closing rapidly, she fired a second missile, a heat-seeker that would not be bothered by anti-radar.  It also failed.

       Instantly she lined up on the other aircraft and triggered her machine gun aiming gear.  Coming into range she began firing half-second bursts, the guns audible as a faint zipping sound.  The red aircraft rolled to evade.  Its wings bent and flexed like rubber, surprising her but not keeping her from spinning the Harrier around to remain on target, which expanded quickly in her sights.

       Suddenly her opponent warped its wings to claw at the air, seeking to drop behind her, but Alessa swivelled her jets forward.  They seemed to stop the Harrier in mid-air, brutally jerking her forward in her seat against her safety harness.  This did not keep her from pressing the machine gun trigger as her enemy crossed her sights.  Her bullets struck it and a copper fluid sprayed away into its slipstream.  It writhed like a snake, tore open to trail animal-like entrails, belched fire from its mouth, and dropped away, its bat wings fluttering behind it.

       Alessa gaped, the shock she felt at the sight as much physical as mental.  Her belly hurt as if she had been punched there; her arms jerked and trembled, causing the Harrier to wobble in its path.  The danger if she lost control jerked her back to the urgency of her situation.

       Quickly Alessa glanced at the sky overhead and swung her head from side to side to check for enemies nearby, then glanced at the radar screen to see if it revealed any company further away.  There was none.

        She was safe, at least for now, and her fuel must last long enough to find a landing site.  This did not have to be very large, since the Harrier could land vertically, but it did have to be reasonably flat and clear of obstacles.  She throttled down to a fuel-saving "loiter" speed.

       Alessa stared at the mottled grass- and forest-land that rolled away into the distance on every hand.  There was not a single glimpse of water anywhere, and at this height and with the clear air under the overcast she could see almost fifty miles.  Her flight had been about two hundred miles from the coast of Spain when she had come through the hole.  So she and the kilotons of aircraft had been transported at least 250 miles in an instant.

       Only she guessed she had come much further than that.  She was quite sure Earth had nothing like her recent enemy.  If she was not crazy she had just killed a dragon.

       Alessa quickly looked around, above, backward, down at the radar screen, a reflex as automatic and regular as breathing when she was in a combat situation.  A faint glow swirling like fog on the skin of her craft caught her attention, its pattern and colors reminding her of mother-of-pearl.  Then she noticed a darkening at the wingtips where the glow seemed to be...evaporating.  Looking backward, she saw the rear of the plane darkening as well.

       A shudder shook the craft.  She looked at her instruments to see if they signaled damage, but saw random flickering of indicator lights and numbers instead.  The anti-electronic effects she had experienced during battle had either been renewed by someone else or it was a natural phenomenon.

       Whichever, the evaporating glow—or encroaching darkness—strongly suggested that it was closing in.  When it reached her escape circuitry she would be sealed in what, without its electronic nerves, would be a plunging metal coffin.

       Drawing several deep breaths to better oxygenate her blood, she armed and fired the ejection bolts, launching herself into what felt like an Arctic hurricane.  She tumbled for a few seconds until the tiny guide parachute stabilized her feet down.  Moments later her regular parachute popped open and her seat fell away, leaving the survival kit that had been tucked underneath the seat bumping against the backs of her thighs.  Swinging like a pendulum, Alessa Lee floated toward the new world below her.

       She flipped up the frosted-over visor, then unlatched her oxygen mask and let it hang from the side of her helmet.  The mildly hilly terrain she could see was equally divided between forest and grassy field dotted with scrub brush.  What could be the remains of an old road or dry river bed wound through the country.  That looked like the safest place to land and she guided the parachute toward it, beginning to look around now that the question of where to land was settled.  Periodically she lifted herself by pulling on the harness and flexed her legs to ease the constriction of the straps under her.

       On one horizon she saw a dark-green band that appeared to be a much taller and denser forest than what she saw below.  The gray overcast was lightened in that direction by the sun.  That would be west—assuming the sun was going down, as it had been when she came through the hole.  In the opposite (eastward?) direction she saw larger hills that rose to mountains so distant that they blended almost invisibly into the sky.  The road, if that was what it was, seemed headed in that direction.

       Closer at hand, several miles toward the dense forest, she could see smoke from the wreck of her plane.  She felt a pang of loss at that; aircraft were as much a part of her as her hands or feet.

       It should not be that way, she told herself.  Airplanes should be more like shoes, expendable.  That thought suddenly struck her as very funny, and she started giggling, then stopped herself when the laughter seemed to be getting out of control.  Anyway, it was not funny; without her tough flying boots she might very well die in the harsh land she saw coming up.

       That land was pretty close now.  Alessa drew her knees up a bit and readied herself, pulling loose the remaining snaps holding on her oxygen mask.  It dropped away, giving her one less distraction.

       Suddenly the ground was rushing at her.  She hit with a jolt as if dropped from a second-story window, let herself fall the way she had learned in survival school and Judo practice, and rolled to her feet.  Grabbing the parachute cords, she spilled the air from the 'chute canopy as it floated down beside her, its alternating orange and white panels fluorescently bright against the drab sky and land.

       Alessa unsnapped her helmet and dropped it to the ground so she could better see and hear.  Glancing around every few moments for danger, she quickly folded and tied the thin but tough nylon. The wind was not strong but veered and gusted erratically, making her battle to secure the cloth.  But she did it; the 'chute could be made into many things and might be the difference between surviving or not.

       Then she unzipped the extra survival kit she wore underneath an arm instead of the usual pistol and took out a folding crossbow.  She snapped it open, strung it, loaded and cocked it, then set it ready to hand.  It had cost her almost $700 but was worth every penny of it in a situation like this.  It was light, tough, rust-proofed, had an adjustable sight and a cranking lever that could be calibrated for distance.  Best of all, unlike a gun, it was almost silent and you could make its ammunition if you ran out of the darts that came with it.

       Anyway, if she met enemies with guns and needed a gun, she would kill them and take their's.

       From a matching kit under her other arm she took out a belt with an attached pouch of darts and a sheathed survival knife and strapped it around her waist.  The eight-inch long knife blade was almost razor sharp along six inches of one edge and the first two inches of the opposite one.  Closer to the guard the remainder of the blade had teeth which could act like a saw or bind against an enemy blade.  Its weight was distributed so that could be used as a hatchet as well as a hunting knife—or as a combat knife, though she would much rather put the distance of a sword blade between herself and an enemy.

       The knife would have been heavy and clumsy in most people's hands, but not hers.  Like every pilot of high-performance aircraft she had developed very strong neck, arms, and hands.  This strength had won her any number of bets.  Of course, it helped that she appeared weak.  She was short and appeared softly overweight.  From her Mexican mother she had inherited eyes that were large and beautiful and seemed as timid as a deer's; from the Chinese side of the family had come bone-structure and skin that made her seem at least ten years younger.

       She glanced through the survival kit, took a disposable lighter and put it in a pocket—not that she would throw it away if it ran out of fuel; its flint and wheel would continue to be useful for months if not years.  She distributed several other things in various pockets, stuffed the 'chute and straps into the kit, and attached it to her flotation vest to make a back pack.  Lastly, she looped the chin strap of her helmet through a slot in the vest and snapped the strap so that the helmet hung out of her way.  It was positioned so that it could be quickly put on if something wanted to use her head for a target.

       The wind was picking up and becoming colder.  She stood looking around.  The light spot in the clouds which hid the sun was closer to the horizon, where the tall forest was, and her compass agreed that that direction was west.  She had to make camp soon.

       Still, she would like to go at least a little way in the direction of civilization—assuming there was any on this world.  Hell, she did not even know if there were humans here.  For all she knew the dragon had been a peaceful mail carrier who thought it had been attacked by a strange "dog."  Perhaps she was even now being hunted by dragon animal-control officers.

       Well, she would just not assume that flying things were search-and-rescue aircraft.  In fact, even if she met humans it would be best to keep out of sight until she knew what to expect from them.

       She was still uncertain whether she had landed on a road or a shallow river bed.  It could be both.  Packed sand extended for yards to each side, mostly bare but with patches of grass covering parts of it.  If it was a road, it had not been traveled recently enough to leave any evidence behind.

       In survival school she had been told that rivers and roads ran downhill to larger and larger tributaries and cities, but downhill was west toward the unbroken forest she had seen from the air.  She felt very uneasy about that for some reason, strange images and wisps of terror assaulting her when she thought about it.  On the other hand, when she looked eastward toward the distant mountains she imagined castle towers with gay pennants flapping in the breeze.

       She shook herself, annoyed that childhood stories and dreams should intrude on her in daylight.  Rationally she should take her survival instructors' advice and go west.  But...she had always found her intuition to be right more often than not....

       Well, Hell.  A command decision that was right but too late was always wrong; she could freeze to death figuring it out.  So, MARCH, troops! she told herself, cradled the crossbow in her arms, and stalked off toward the east.

§

       Just before sundown she came across a small stream which wound obliquely across her road/riverbed into a heavily wooded patch of forest.

         Following it under the trees was a bit scary; with the cloudy sky sundown was like dusk and the trees made it practically night.  However, she wanted to go far enough for a fire to be invisible from what she was beginning to think of as the road.

       She came across a place where the stream had cut into the hill and brought down enough of it to form an irregular wall beside the stream.  After questing about for dry wood, she got a fire started between the hill and the stream, then chopped down several small saplings to make a pup tent with the parachute forming the sides of the tent.  It was very crude, the material held down with several large stones; in the days to come she would make a more conventional tent.

       Using the rest of the 'chute as a floor and bed, she sat down tiredly to boil a cup of water into which she sprinkled instant tea.  Then Alessa opened a can of Spam.  She had never liked it, but now somehow the tea, meat, and a small packet of crackers became a feast.

       Afterwards she rested a bit.  The fact that she needed to worried her; she had always had stamina that ran other people into the ground.  Alessa wondered if she had caught some alien illness.  Or maybe she was laboring under emotions stronger than she realized; nervous tension could fatigue.  She shook off the thoughts and scrounged enough wood to last the night, setting it close to hand, and went drowsily to bed.

       Then, paradoxically, she could not sleep.  She lay wondering what had happened to her and listening to the night noises.  Not that there was much to hear; she had not seen or heard a bird or animal all day, nor even an insect.  Was this an all-plant world?  The thought made her so lonely that it was an actual physical pain, a deep chest-squeezing ache.

       No, it had at least one dragon in it—or had HAD one, past tense.  And she vaguely recalled that though plants produced oxygen there was a complex symbiosis with animals; so there had to be some wildlife.  But where?  Had the dragon scared them all off in this area?  And another thing—none of the plants she had seen looked unusual.  She even recognized some of them; overhead was a perfectly ordinary oak....

§

       During the next few days her loneliness was eased.  She began to see animals and birds, but they seemed awfully wary.  Maybe that had something to do with the dragon; she certainly would not want to meet one without an arsenal of weapons.  The squirrels and the fox seemed normal but the rabbits she snared had short ears.  One of the birds seemed to have a very peculiar head but she only saw it flitting overhead and could not decide what the peculiarity was.  For all she knew a bird watcher would have recognized it as a common type.

       But some definitely strange animals were around, too.  One she saw shocked her when she came across it at a watering place.  It looked like a small bear but had no fur.  Instead it had scales the size and color of fingernails over its tan-colored flesh, except around the eyes and mouth.  There the scales were a light pink and grew progressively smaller and redder the closer they came to skin that needed flexibility.

       Fortunately, it backed off growling, then lumbered away; she was not at all sure her crossbow bolts would have penetrated its main body parts.  She would have had to try for a difficult shot at the eyes or the vulnerable pink areas.

       Her worry about her health lessened too.  She continued to tire easily by her standards but less so each day.  It seemed that her body was adapting to this world, maybe a little too much for her peace of mind.  Her fingernails and toenails were growing out much thicker and had acquired a slight point almost like a claw.  She wondered if more subtle changes were taking place also, or invisible ones inside her.  And when would they stop?

       The fourth day the clouds broke up and Alessa rejoiced in the sunlight, the blue sky, and the greenness of foliage in the bright light.  Also, the sand contained something like tiny flakes of mica that sparkled when the light struck it just right.

       As she walked her joy seemed to spread out around her and melt into the land, lessening in intensity but growing into a deep contentment.  It relaxed her muscles completely until they flexed with precisely gauged power to move her across the land, pluck berries from a bush, force her empty canteen under the chill water from a tiny, swiftly flowing stream almost invisible in an equally tiny gully packed with bushes.

       Standing, Alessa took a single swallow from the canteen, savoring the chill water in a day turned almost hot.  A faint wet-rope smell spread from the damp cloth covering the sides of the canteen.  She could taste the faint chalkiness of minerals from the stream bed.  The dusty odor of earth filled her nose and she breathed deeply of the hay-smell of grass.

       A feeling grew in her of being connected with all the life about her, as if she bathed in a warm ocean and her body was dissolving into it.  Beneath the ocean was the coolness of the land, also part of her....

       Slowly the feeling faded, until she was back in her body.  She capped the canteen and slung it, hitched the backpack into a more comfortable position and set off again.

       Some of the connected feeling remained with her, as comforting though muted as the hum of bees among spring flowers.  Energy flowed into her from her surroundings—or from a body finally healed of a weakening sickness—and with it came a rush of pure joy that lifted her voice in wordless song.

       Her happiness surprised her.  She could remember feeling this good only rarely: when she won her first fencing tournament, got her pilot's wings, agreed to marry John.  Most amazing of all, thinking of John no longer brought the depression she had always felt to some extent during the year and a half since his death.  She could never forget him, but it seemed as if life before she came here was so decisively over that she could now put her mourning behind her.

       That night she saw the moon and the stars for the first time on this world.  They were the same as on Earth.  Of course she was not a dedicated stargazer, but all pilots knew the constellations.  So she must be in about the same latitude as when she flew through the hole....  However, she saw aurora borealis, too.  She knew those dancing rainbow veils well from her tour of duty in Alaska, but had never seen them so far south....  Still they were beautiful and she watched them till she fell asleep.

§

       Several nights later Alessa dreamed of being watched.  It was not with the curiosity or fear she had imagined or sensed coming from animals these last few days.  Nor was there the hunger which a few of the larger predators felt when they spied on her.  Instead, there was cruel anticipation.

       The strength of it brought her awake, but she lay still with her eyes slitted.  The fire was low; she and her camp were only dimly lit.  No threat could be seen but she was convinced something was out there.  If so they might have heard her snoring and be alerted by the lack of it when she awakened.

       Fear grew in her, a sensation like ice in her veins, but also burning as great cold sometime did.  She pretended to cough, shift position, and fall back to sleep with snores she hoped were gentle enough to be convincing yet loud enough to be heard.  Slowly, every sense alert, she reached in the shadow to where her loaded crossbow lay, pumped its cocking lever, and positioned it where she could grab it quickly.

       Minutes passed.  Nothing happened, but the being-watched feeling did not go away.

       A quarter hour or an eternity later the situation was the same.  She was going to have to do something before she tired and lost her edge.

       Alessa opened her eyes slowly, blinked them a few times, then yawned widely, sat up, yawned once more.  Under cover of the action she lifted her knife from beside the bed and tucked it in one sleeve.  The cold of the blade was a shock to her body that brought her even more awake. She scratched her head, leaned it against one side of the entrance to her tent as if still half asleep.  With her eyes almost closed and without moving her head Alessa looked around at the forest surrounding her camp clearing.  She hoped she looked suitably groggy.

       Intentionally fumbling as she reached for wood, she threw a couple of smaller sticks on the fire.  As it brightened she noticed a movement toward her right as something moved further behind a thick bush.

       After a few moments, she slowly stood and walked to where she had left her cup, lifted it and pretended to drink, her back toward the watcher in the bushes.  She hoped to entice them to close with her, hoped they would not just shoot her down.

       Suddenly a man-sized figure plummeted to earth before her.  Reflexively she stepped back, but the figure was already crouching low to cushion its impact, straightening to tower over her.  One clawed hand was poised before her face, obviously ready to claw her eyes out if she moved.  She stifled another reflex which would have brought up a forearm to block the threat; it would have done more harm than good.

       She froze, shocked that she—a pilot!—could have forgotten attack from above.  But the nearest large tree was ten or twenty feet away!  What was this thing?

       It looked like a tall man completely covered with short gray fur, its face vaguely catlike but essentially human.  It was wearing a breechclout and leather harness which supported a knife but no other weapon.

       It called out something and she heard answering calls from behind her, then voices coming closer.  Slowly turning her head she saw two men coming toward her, one short and blonde, the other tall and dark-haired, and both of them dressed like something out of Robin Hood.

       The taller one grabbed her wrists from behind, found the knife up her sleeve and yanked it out.  The short one felt over her body for other weapons, then took the knife from the tall man and stepped back beside the catlike man to look at the knife.

       He showed it to the others, saying something in surprised tones.  The others answered—the cat-man had small fangs, she noted—and she could understand a little of what they said.  At first the language sounded like German, of which she knew a little, but it was not.  In fact, it was quite different from German, yet when her attention went to something else—the tall man had dropped her arms and stepped to take the knife from Shorty—it again sounded like German.

       "Sharp as [glass/thorn]!  Look."  Tall Guy shaved some hair from one of his forearms with her knife.

       "Son of an [animal]!" said the short one.  "What have we got here?"  He lifted the pack she had made of her survival kit and spilled everything on the ground.  Anger washed over her, making her tremble, but she kept a fearful look on her face.  With a strange certainty she knew that Catman noted her trembling and mistook it for fear.  He was grinning at her and had dropped his hand to his side.

       For a while they rummaged through the contents of the pack.  Shorty—who, though youngest, seemed to be the leader—was the most active; Catman spent more time watching her.  At last they turned their attention to her, Shorty fingering her clothing and pointing to her face.  She caught the words "eyes" and "ears" and guessed they had never seen faces like hers, or they expected a different combination of features.

       Shorty was intent on lecturing the others, and so confident she was harmless that more than once he turned his back to her.  Tall Guy had other concerns, however, and interrupted Shorty.  "You talk; I'll do," he said, picking up a coil of nylon cord.

       He was going to tie her up!  If he did she would be completely helpless, and she was sure he meant to rape her, at the very least.

       Before her conscious mind knew what her body was doing Alessa drew saliva into her mouth and spat in Catman's eyes, pushed Shorty against Catman, and ran toward Tall Guy.  He froze for a half second then grabbed for his sword hilt.  Alessa lost sight of him for a moment as she stopped and spun on one foot away from him, at the same time leaning forward.

       To him it may have seemed she had decided to flee rather than attack him.  But her head turned faster than her body, her gaze locked on his belt buckle, and she brought her other leg whipping around in a spinning roundhouse kick to his belly just above the buckle.  He crumpled under the impact, fell full-length backward.  She jumped forward and snap-kicked his throat with the edge of a foot, crushing his windpipe, jumped sideways with awful fear, certain Catman was behind her.  She spun around to meet him, arms whirling in a circular maneuver that would have spun a knife or a clawed hand off to the side.

       She saw Catman holding Shorty by both shoulders while he chewed at Shorty's neck, growling furiously.  Shorty fell limp, one hand dropping away from a knife he had plunged into Catman, more than once judging by the pattern of the blood on Catman's fur.  Alessa dropped to one knee to pull Tall Guy's sword free of its scabbard, careful even in her haste to draw it precisely, without the blade binding in the scabbard or the guard catching on belt or clothing.

       Running forward she plunged the sword into Catman's side, missing his heart as he swatted the blade aside.  She heard and felt the blade grate against ribs, jerked it out with a leap backward.  Instantly he leaped forward, knocking the blade aside again and opening a red cut on his forearm.  His hand closed over the sword-guard, claws gashing her sword-hand. He jerked and Alessa released the sword to keep from being pulled off balance.  His claws drew longer gashes in her hand before losing hold of her and the sword, which must have cut deeply into his own hand.

       Letting her wounded right hand follow his as a counterbalance, she pivoted on her left foot and gave three sideward kicks to his exposed knee, each kick jackhammer quick and hard.  She heard a dry snap and he gave a kangaroo-hop back on his good leg.  She could feel surprise and fear coming from him, his fury ebbing.  A hiss burst from her mouth, peeling her lips back in a ghastly, tooth-bearing smile, a clear statement of her intent to rip him to pieces.

       Pride flared within him, strengthening his anger.  He hopped toward her, hands outstretched to grab her and bring them both down where he could get his fangs into her.  Warned by his burst of anger she was already moving sideways and toward him to pass under his arm, receiving a raking blow to her ribs from his claws despite her pantherish speed and grace.  Stooping, Alessa picked up the sword she had dropped and turned back toward him as he turned toward her.  Lifting the blade, she let their opposing motions push the point into his brain.

       He spasmed, blood gushing from the eye, some of it splattering her chest. Slowly he wilted, fell over backward, still glaring at her as consciousness failed.  Alessa chopped down twice more, releasing the rest of her anger and fear in great two-handed blows that nearly beheaded him.

       She stepped far away from the body, sword ready, eyes scanning around the forest's edge, ears straining while she tried to quietly catch her breath.  Slowly her heaving sides eased.

       The forest was silent.  Only then did she realize how much screaming and shouting they had done, scaring all animals within hearing.  Slowly, as her heartbeat and breathing returned to normal, the sound of frogs croaking began from the stream-fed pond a little way through the trees.  Crickets scraped and cicadas buzzed their strident symphony; several birds chirped conversationally in the distance.  Her awareness seemed to extend into the dark forest....  She sensed no threat....

       Minutes later pain in her wounds roused her.  Limping, the odor released by her attackers' dead sphincters and bowels awful in her nostrils, she caught up her canteen and ravaged first-aid kit, and went to her tent.  Stones and grass stubble had cut her feet in several places.  She washed, sterilized, and bandaged them, put on socks and boots, and treated her other wounds, the worst being a deep cut in her cheek she did not remember receiving and the gashes in her sword hand.

       By this time she was shivering from the breeze against her sweaty body and from reaction to the fight.  She dressed, her wounds burning like fire, broke camp and repacked her things.  She swore once at the damage they had done to various items, then remembered that they had paid for it.  That gave her a grim satisfaction, a warm glow deep inside.

       Lastly, she examined the belongings of the others, keeping from vomiting at the horrible remains only by tensing the muscles of her throat and belly so much they ached.

       She took little.  Shorty's sword and scabbard she put on, but the other weapons were too inferior to her own to bother with; Tall Guy's sword was in especially bad shape because it had bent from the force of her last two blows against Catman's neck and the ground beneath it.  The clothing and leatherwork were also crudely made and fouled by their lives and their deaths.  From the pouches they used for wallets she took squares of metal that might be money and an amulet on a leather thong.  It was made of a flat red gem clutched by a semblance of scaly copper claws.  There was a complex, twisted flaw within it but it still should be worth something.

       Had it been daylight she might have tried to backtrack them to their camp.  With the night only half over, however, it seemed wisest to put as much distance as possible from her campsite.  Her attackers might have reinforcements despite her feeling that there were none.  She left, following the road but trying to stay on the hardest, grass-covered surfaces to keep from leaving tracks.

       When day came she hid herself in a dense patch of brush and slept the day away.  Waking in the late afternoon, she ate a cold meal and remained hidden till dark, then traveled till at least midnight.  Late the next morning, having detected no pursuit, Alessa decided to resume traveling during the day.

       Carefully stripping off her blood-spotted wool socks and bloody bandages, she washed herself gently.  She felt no pain at all, and the skin showed no signs of infection—or injury.

       All her wounds had completely healed in less than two days.  There was not even the slightest trace of scars—even the scars she'd had for years.  Even the large scar from her knee operation.

       Goose bumps crawled over her arms and legs.  What was happening to her?

§

       In the following days the road/riverbed began to show signs of having been traveled, mostly hoof prints and wheel-ruts.  The signs seemed months or even years old, however.  She also found two dwellings beside the road, a day's travel apart.  Both had been burned, one completely, the other partly.

       In the first, completely burned one she found skeletons, apparently human and one child-sized.  Near the other she saw mounds of earth she guessed were graves.  Each had a "headstone" made of a flowering plant and a few sticks forming a trellis.  Two of the plants were roses held upright by twine; one was honeysuckle held up by its own twining about the trellis.  From the state of the plants she guessed at least a year had passed since the deaths.

       She wondered what kind of culture decreed such monuments for the dead.  She rather liked the idea of using plants rather than gravestones.  She also wondered what had attacked the homes.  Raiders like the ones she had met?  Or—she remembered the flames of the dragon she had killed—something even more dangerous?

       That night she dreamed of leaving the bachelors' officers quarters on the Marine base at Norfolk, Virginia, and driving into town in her lipstick-red Porsche.  She wore her black silk dress and high heels, an outfit that made her feel tall, slender, and elegant.  Her hair was long, as it had been in college, and she let it fly in the breeze.

       She parked at a MacDonald's and walked toward it without running a brush through her hair, feeling its wild midnight heaviness pull at her scalp and brush her back and bottom.  Several young men were seated outside.  She subtly accented her walk, arched her back to push her bare breasts against the fabric of her dress, and knew their gaze was on her.

       Waiting in line she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.  Turning, she saw John-before-they-married looking down at her, blond hair very short, skin very tan, merry blue eyes and reckless smile turning his homely face beautiful.  Love filled her with melting warmth and a surge of joy jerked her arms up to crush him to her, but he was melting, going through three years' losing battle with cancer—

       She woke from the dream.  An aching sorrow filled her.  She would never drive her wonderful car again, never again eat a hamburger, never again know the quiet contentment—which had so surprised her at first—when John and she together did even normally dull, routine activities.  She cried, hugging herself.  She sensed the life-sea around her and reached out to it.  It wrapped her in its warmth, as if with her mother's arms.  Slowly she became aware of rhythm within the warmth, her heartbeat or something deeper.  It rocked her gently to sleep.

§

       Late in the afternoon several days later Alessa was making tea from the minty-flavored roots of a plant she had recognized from childhood outings.  It was a bit early to be making camp, but she had found a small abandoned village that provided good shelter.  The fire burned in a raised fire pit in the middle of a brick-walled room, the smoke leaving through a hole in the ceiling protected from rain by a baffle on the roof.

       The conviction grew on her that she was being watched.  By this time she had enough experience to know such feelings were based on reality and not imagination, part of her empathic connection with the life about her.  She cast about in the invisible ocean for the origin of this feeling—it seemed curious rather than hostile—and placed it at a few yards ahead of her seat by the fire.

       Looking at the empty space at that spot she felt someone standing there, hidden somehow.

       At that the air wavered as if from heat-shimmer.  A blurred figure appeared, and her eyes began to pick out details: a wide leather belt, a pouch hanging from it, a staff on which the figure leaned.  She focused on a startled face within the cloak's hood and said, "Join me for tea?"

       "By [garble]!  You can see me!" he said.  He gaped at her, took a hasty step backward, stumbled over a loose tile.  At that all the shadowy translucence of his figure sharpened to solidity.  It was a young man with a great curly mane of red hair and beard, freckled hands clasped around a two-yard wooden staff which he had raised in a diagonal before him.  Under the cloak—its outside shimmering a bit before settling into a dull gray—he wore a dark rose tunic over dark green pants.  The pants legs were tucked into scuffed black boots.

       Alessa realized she had spoken in the not-German of her attackers of a couple of weeks ago.  And he had answered in what sounded like French.  But it was not!  She was fluent in French, and this language was totally different.  Yet when she tried to answer him in her Parisian academic's dialect it came out in that not-French that he spoke: "Of course I can see you.  Please sit down and have some tea.  It'll help you get your wind back."

       She poured tea from the pot into her collapsible cup, added one of her last packets of sugar to it, and took a sip.  She was quite pleased with herself and at the same time amused by her smug self-satisfaction.

       Having gotten him off guard she was not about to let him recover.  She extended the cup toward him, saying "Sorry I can't offer you your own cup.  I'm somewhat limited in what I brought with me."  When he continued to stare at her, she raised an eyebrow in imitation of an urbane Frenchwoman she had known.

       He slowly stepped forward, cautiously took the cup from her and squatted, the staff sliding through his other hand to rest against his shoulder.  She noticed with approval that his hands seemed strong but dexterous.  He let the steam rise into his face and she knew he was analyzing the scent.  He took a sip, holding the tea in his mouth long enough for tongue to agree with nose, swallowed.  He looked into her face, took a bigger sip, and handed the cup back.  Demurely she took a sip and set the cup between them.

       "I'm Magician Iliamber Kimet-Hoshos."  "Magician" had professorial overtones.  "Kimet" was his father's family name, "Hoshos" his mother's, she knew.  But how did she know all that?

       "I'm Alessa Lee," she said.  "I don't know the title for what I am.  I'm a soldier...."  She paused, struggling for the words.

       "Normally I command a score of...dragons," she said, "dragons" being the best translation for "planes" she could manage.  "But I'm also qualified to command ground troops."

       She gave herself a spot promotion to light colonel, rationalizing that this was legitimate since she was the only representative of American interests in this world.  Now she could truthfully lay claim to what she thought she could really handle, given the technical and social limits she guessed at in Iliamber's society.  No words came to her for battalions or regiments, so she fell back on numbers.

        "I can command around a thousand men."  Or so she had tried to say, but "men" twisted into a unisex word similar to "citizen."  Did that mean the culture and thus language was not sexist, or that her own values were affecting her speech?

       The raiders she had encountered certainly had not been feminists.  Once they had taken away her knife they had treated her like a harmless, idiot child—which had gotten them killed.  If they had been used to thinking of women as warriors she would probably be dead, even with all her martial arts.

       Suddenly it all came together—the different languages and guessed-at cultures of the magician and the raiders, the no-one's land she was passing through, the attack of the dragon.  There was a war on!  And war was her business.

       A fierce, hot joy flashed through her, building quickly to exultation.  This was as quickly followed by concern.  Since John's death she had been burdened with continuous depression leavened by occasional flashes of barely controllable rage.  Since coming to this world her depression had gone.  But obviously her anger remained.  It might be even stronger without apathy damping it.

       Her thoughts had been rapid but not instantaneous.  Iliamber was looking at her, waiting for her to go on.

       "I'm a stranger in your country," she said.  "Tell me a little about it?"

       He grinned, teeth very white against his freckled tan.  There was a slight gap between his upper teeth, giving him something of a bumpkin's look.  "There's a lot to tell.  What do you want to know?"

       "Oh—landshape."  Geography.  "How many people in your country, where your neighboring countries are....  Whatever you would want to know in my place."

       Iliamber settled himself and described Diamont.  She had to ask him to repeat things, and explain others.  The language came to her quickly, but ideas behind them were sometimes unfamiliar, or the idioms did not translate well.  Some of it she simply had to pass by and ask for clarification or more details in the days to come.

       Diamont, she discovered, was bounded on the east, the direction she was traveling, by a tremendous mountain range running roughly north and south but with fingers intruding well into Diamont.  The intrusions, together known as the Highlands, sloped gently enough to provide numerous sheltered valleys with rich farmlands and timberlands.  The mountains were also mined extensively.

       Alessa and Iliamber were in the middle of the Lowlands, on an old road leading to Diamont's capitol, Queens-hall.  The city was on the westernmost edge of the Highlands.

       The northern and southern parts of Diamont were plains country, the northern very fertile, the southern hotter and dryer.  North Riding and South Riding were inhabited by horse-borne nomads with similar lifestyles.  However there was some antagonism between them, due partly to their different racial backgrounds and because they were supported by different herd animals, cattle and sheep, which didn't mix well.

       "Is that why I saw signs of war around here?" she asked.

       "What?  No, they're separated enough by the land that their hostility doesn't amount to much.  Not anymore, anyway.  Mostly they just make scandalous jokes about each other.

       "Say, all this talking is making me thirsty, and I'm hungry as well.  Would you share a meal with me?"

       "Certainly," she answered, wondering if the sharing would ritually bind them to friendliness.  She thought it would, but she could not tell if this was just a guess (or hope) or if it was true knowledge gained from his mind.  Obviously her mysteriously acquired telepathy or empathy or whatever was very limited when it came to complex matters.

       She put some wood on the fire she had nearly let go out and began to fix food.  Iliamber brought out of his knapsack a loaf of hard, stale bread and a chunk of cheese.  Alessa opened the last can of Spam, which she had been saving for some special occasion, and put on some water to boil for more tea.  Iliamber was fascinated by the can and the way she opened it with the key soldered to its side.

       Afterwards he told her about the war.  The western part of Diamont, Seaplatt, was a rich farmland.  It bordered an ocean which supplied fish for numerous seaside villages.  For more than a century witches skilled in "farsight" had been stationed in every few seaside villages.  Raiders from the sea rarely were successful because they were usually met by forces who knew exactly where and when they would strike and the size of the attack.

       But a dozen years ago the raiders had found some way to avoid farsight.  They had successfully invaded Seaplatt, pushing inland in great numbers until stopped at a long wall caused long ago by a sinking of Seaplatt.

       By itself the Wall, only a dozen or two-dozen feet in most places, was not a great barrier.  In several places, in fact, the stone and earth had weathered or been worked into ramps.  But it gave a strategic advantage to Diamont's army during a battle a few years ago.  A great victory had been won—only to do Diamont no good in the long run.  Seaplatt was too full of invaders to subdue.

       The magician Miliaret had seen only one useful strategy: give up Seaplatt and close it off from the rest of Diamont.  After much arguing and agonizing, the order had been given to do it.  Miliaret cast a spell and all along the fault line of the Wall plants began to grow rapidly, changing as they grew.  Wild beasts came, hid in the tangled forest, and also changed.  In a single day Seaplatt had been blockaded by a strip forest choked with dense undergrowth beneath huge trees, inhabited by ferocious animals, and infected with a strong spell that dizzied the senses and filled one's heart with fear.

       God damn!  Magic really works here.  Unless he was spinning a tall tale.  But she believed him, partly because of the dragon.  It had flown at transonic speeds and breathed fire.  She just did not believe an organic creature could do that without unnatural aid.  She had also observed Iliamber shed invisibility, though that might be credited to "telepathic hypnosis" or some such quasi-scientific explanation.

       Most persuasive, however, were the emotional undertones she picked up when he spoke of magic: of forces and things completely outside the laws of matter, energy, and spacetime of which the universe was woven.  This was mixed with a feeling of using the paranatural as routinely as she used machines.

       Alessa thought of all the horrors that had ever assaulted her from movies and books and shivered at the idea that any of them might be real.

       She looked up quickly at Iliamber.  He had not noticed; intense curiosity glowed within him.  "Tell me about your home," he said.  She did so, talking long into the night, and succeeding nights.

       When they could not stay awake any longer this night they arranged their beds, with unspoken agreement, on opposite sides of the fire.

       "Sleep well," Iliamber said, standing up from arranging his bedding.  "My staff will protect us."  He closed his eyes briefly, whispered something, and walked to the fire, where he brought the staff down like a spear in the middle of the fire pit.

       Alessa watched with fascination as the apparently wooden staff passed through a piece of firewood as if the wood was as insubstantial as flame.  When he took his hand away from it, the staff stood embedded upright in the stone.  From it radiated feelings of alertness and utter cold, next to which a computer's mere neutrality was as loving as a puppy's.  Something in her said demon.

       "Good night," she said and laid herself down.  She had absolutely no doubt that they were safe, at least from threats from outside the room.  Uneasily she willed her unconscious sentinel to stay especially alert to threat from the demon, then went to sleep.

§

       The next day Iliamber came with her when she set off on the eastward fork of the road leaving the ruined village.  They passed several farms.  The first few were vacant.  Others were worked by people who kept a fearful eye on the sky.  Iliamber nodded when she asked if they were afraid of the dragon.

       "They don't know it's dead?" she asked.  Earlier that morning she had described how she had killed the dragon, but it had not been news to him.  A witch with farsight had been watching the dragon and seen the fight.

       "No, only the Queen and Council know.  I'm not sure how many the raiders conjured.  I've had a dream about a third dragon, beside yours"—he meant her aircraft—"and the one you killed, I mean."

       She sensed frustration underneath his words.  "But I don't know if it's a True Dream," he said, "and if so whether it showed the past or the future.  It's best everyone stays alert."

       He swung his staff at some thistles, sending tiny white parachutes flying.  Alessa thought that rather cavalier treatment of a demon—if that was what the staff was.  Or did he call a demon up and house it in the staff when he wanted one?

       As they traveled they continued to trade information.  At first Diamont seemed to have a feudal setup, which matched the technological level she had seen so far, but it soon became clear that they had at least a rudimentary democracy.  He spoke of town, parish, and state councils.  The Queen came from a noble family and ruled for life, but she was selected from a standing pool of candidates.  Even more confusing, every third or fourth Queen was a man, but was still called "Queen."

       Well before noon they came to a village, somewhat bigger than the vacant one they had slept in but still housing a couple of hundred people—or normally it would have.  Judging from the state of the buildings at least half the people had left in the last year or so.

       The people dressed in pants, long shorts, or kilts without any pattern of sexual differentiation she could make out.  Except for that, the town and the people reminded her of those she had seen in backwaters of the American West, with about the same proportion of dark- and light-skinned people.  The inn at which they stopped, however, had a vaguely Continental air.  An outdoor café fronted the inn.

       The woman who came to greet them had an emotional undertone that convinced Alessa she was the proprietor.  She obviously knew Iliamber.  Without asking she brought them both good, dark beer and light, slightly sweet bread.  She and Iliamber gossiped briefly about mutual acquaintances.  Alessa drew some discreetly curious glances from her and the few customers but was left alone.

       In a short while a young woman, from dress and actions obviously a soldier, came up to them.  After introductions the woman took down a report from Iliamber, spreading her writing materials on a nearby table.  She wrote with a pencil on a stiff paper fan-folded like computer paper but only a half-dozen or so sheets long.

       In the middle of the street two male soldiers lounged, talking idly, looking in opposite directions with periodic skyward glances.  Both wore swords and a dark brown uniform matching the woman's but with a rougher appearance.  One had an unstrung bow attached to a quiver of arrows slung on his back.  The other carried a staff similar to Iliamber's but a third its length and more slender.  The quiver on his back contained two more staves like the one he carried.  The emotional undertones Alessa got from him suggested that these staves were powerful weapons.

       When Alessa finished her beer the proprietor, standing nearby in the doorway to the inn's interior, came forward with a porcelain pitcher and asked if she wanted a refill.  She gratefully accepted; Iliamber was picking up the tab.  She felt her smile trip a balance in the woman between politeness and intense curiosity.

       "Did you really kill the dragon, Ser?"

       Alessa considered her a moment.  Whether it was her empathic sense or clues in the woman's face and behavior, she got an impression of earnest maturity leavened by good humor.  Iliamber had not cautioned her about secrecy.  She saw no reason not to be honest.

       "Yes.  At least, I killed one dragon.  We think there may be another, so don't get your hopes up."

       The burst of happiness from the proprietor was reward enough.  She set the pitcher on the table, bowed to Alessa, and almost ran inside the inn.  Moments later a young boy burst from the doorway with a basket of the bread and set it on her table.  His eyes big as he looked at her, he backed toward the doorway.  She winked at him and smiled.  He ducked his head and vanished into the building.

       Around her she could feel the spread of the happy news through the village, a tinge of caution in it assuring her that both good and bad parts of her message were being transmitted.  The joy swelled and washed over her.  It felt good.

       I could get addicted to this hero business, she thought.

       At some point the emotion triggered another instance of sharp awareness in her of life spread across the land.  This time there was more detail.  She sensed life's shape, concentrations, and thin spots for miles around, its extent below and above the surface.  Then it faded back to near—but not quite—nothing.

       Looking out at the village and the first gently swelling hills beyond it, affection for this land washed over her, piercingly sweet and strongly protective.

       Alessa wondered at its source.  Had Iliamber bespelled her?  Was her empathic sense being swamped by emotions from the villagers?

       Neither idea felt right, however.  Now that she turned her attention to the feeling, she remembered that it had been slowly growing in the past few weeks.  She recalled happy times during her childhood in heavily forested Marin County just north of San Francisco, vacations in the Rocky Mountains during college.  She had even enjoyed survival training in deserts and swamps during her first few years as a Marine, something she had never told anyone but John for fear of ridicule.  Normal people should hate such experiences and macho Marines endure them, not like them.

       This feeling was a continuation of those old ones, feelings she had gradually lost as she became ever more immersed in the other world she loved, the machine world of aircraft and airbases, the stringent joys of flight at the edge of space.

       After finishing his report, Iliamber took her to buy additional supplies and then to a stable to look at horses.  There were none available, however, so after a lunch at the inn he set out on foot for Queens-hall.  Alessa went with him.  She was curious about the capitol and Iliamber seemed like a good entree into Diamont society.

       Not that she thought she was likely to lose his company.  She knew that his meeting her had been no accident; it was probably truer to say the he went with her.

       Iliamber was preoccupied and set a fast pace.  A couple of times he checked himself to walk more slowly, thinking he was pushing her.  She just grinned at him and speeded up.  Eventually he would learn that, despite his long legs and her short ones, he was the one who needed the coddling.

       They still managed to talk, especially after they settled into a cave in a hillside that night.  Iliamber was as fascinated by technology as she was by magic, which Diamont used to some of the same effect as technology.  For instance, the report he had given earlier was already in Queens-hall.  Its image had been sent by a "sightcaster," a sort of long-distance illusion that was then copied by hand.

       In other ways the analogy between technology and magic broke down.  This became clearer to her as he talked about the two kinds of magic.  Natural magic was usually wielded by women, guided by intuition, and came from Mother Earth, which (despite the name) was neither feminine nor a conscious entity—at least that was his opinion, one contrary to popular thought.  Supernatural magic, on the other hand, was usually done by men, came from "Chaos, outside the universe," and paradoxically (she thought) controlled via logical or mathematical means.

       Iliamber also talked about the other peoples and countries of this world.  He had traveled widely and was older than he looked.

       This was to be expected, she decided as she finally nestled into her bedding for the night, when at least marginally useful healing magic was inborn to most women and perhaps half the men.  Disease of any kind was quickly cured; terrible wounds took longer but eventually disappeared without scarring.  In this Diamont was far more advanced than her old home.  She dozed off wondering what other surprises this world had in store for her.

§

       As they finished their tea the next morning she brought up a concern she had: how to support herself.  Iliamber assured Alessa she would be welcome in Queens-hall.  Indeed, the Queen would give her an estate that would support her well for life.

       That was stretching hospitality to ridiculous limits.  She looked closely at him and tried to open her empathic sense all the way.

       He meant it.  He was also embarrassed and ashamed about something.  Something bad.

       She slowly stood up, cup forgotten in her hand.  "Why would the government be so generous?"

       "We owe it to you.  Without meaning to...we brought you here."  He was sure she would be angry at him.  He had wronged her terribly.

       She shifted her weight a bit forward and bent her knees slightly, poised to jump in any direction—maybe onto him.

       "We needed a dragon to fight the dragon that'd been preying on us.  But the spell misfired.  Instead I got you."  He was tense and a little fearful, but mostly he was ashamed.

       "You got me?"  She stared at him, angry but not as much as she might have been.  Was he dosing her with a magical tranquilizer?

       "Yes.  Since Miliaret died I've been the senior Magician.  Bridging the worlds is very tricky.  I've done it only twice before, and never for anything very big or important—or living."

       Maybe her anger was tempered with caution; that staff was obviously a potent weapon—though she felt that it was much less dangerous in his hands than acting autonomously as it had been last night.

       Something else puzzled her.  "Wouldn't you just have been trading one dragon for another if you killed theirs off that way?  And what made you think yours would win?"

       Iliamber relaxed somewhat.  "The spell was set to find a dragon that was more dangerous than the one already here.  That much worked right, obviously.  After the battle..."  He went on to explain a process that reminded Alessa, with a Master's in aeronautical engineering, of nothing more than a computer program.

       If Iliamber's first dragon failed, his spell would have repeatedly found and pulled in another dragon until one was successful.  This would have triggered a reversal of the adaptation spell....

       She had to stop him and make him explain further.  Like most experts he had a hard time realizing that what was obvious to him was not always obvious to everyone else.

       An adaptation spell changed objects and animals so they could exist and live in a hostile environment.  A very strong spell was needed when something came from another universe, where the laws were always at least a bit different.

       "So.  So victory triggers reversal of the adaptation spell," Alessa said.  "Then what?"

       He explained, annoyed at what he felt was willful obtuseness, that obviously she and her dragon would have snapped back into her universe.  But since her dragon—her aircraft—was much more alien than the spell was set for, the spell had exhausted the magic on the jet and herself before completing the adaptation.  Obviously it could not then reverse itself.  Thus her universe could not pull her back where she belonged.

       "So I'm stuck here?"

       His annoyance faded, replaced again by guilty embarrassment.  "Yes.  Your universe has adjusted to your absence now, so there's no longer a connection between it and you.  And your adaptation was so complete that in many ways you're now better suited to live here than we natives are.  So I can't identify the world you came from by 'reading' you.  Of course, I could send you to a world similar to yours, but you'd be a complete stranger there."

       That idea did not appeal to her at all, but she found very little disappointment about not going "home."  Maybe it was a side-effect of the adaptation spell.  On the other hand, she had already mourned her losses and put them behind her, and she had never quite fit anywhere, except with John and through him.  Here she had already carved a place by killing the dragon, though she was not naive enough to think it would be easy to take and hold that place.  And beyond Diamont there was a whole world to challenge her, a whole world to explore!

        She looked at Iliamber.  Were her emotions being orchestrated now?  She did not think so, but if she found out differently she would make sure he regretted it, pet demon or not.

       Suddenly a thought struck her.  "Iliamber, I think I know why your spell went wrong."  She giggled.  "My plane isn't really a dragon, it just looks a little like one.  Inside, and the way it runs, it's completely different.  My nickname is 'Dragon Lady.'  It was me your spell found."

       A blank look crossed his face.  He did not understand.  Then he did and his face twisted in annoyance.  That tickled her too.  She began to laugh.  He stomped over to his pack and began to throw things into it, which she found even funnier.  She sat down with her back against a wall, laughing so hard she felt weak.  He slung on his pack, stomped to the fire-pit, jerked his staff out of the stone, and walked out.

       Her laughter died away.  She sighed; now she had to apologize.  Still, as she packed she decided their relationship was not hurt all that much.  She had not sensed great annoyance on his part and she judged him a cheerful personality who got over anger quickly and rarely held a grudge.

       Just as she finished putting on her backpack Iliamber yelled something and she heard a brief clatter of rocks rolling.  It sounded as if he had fallen.

       Alessa grabbed up her crossbow and cocked it, then sprinted out of the cave to catch any ambushers by surprise, 'bow ready, herself ready to duck, dodge, or fire.

       Outside there was only Iliamber.  He lay about fifty feet down the trail, a boulder as big as his torso atop him.  To her amazement he was surrounded by a cocoon of faint blue light, brighter where sharp edges dug into him, or tried to.  The cocoon was a shield.  Its light dazzled her eyes, here on the hill side still shaded from the early-morning sun.

       Then she realized it was not a boulder atop him.  It was a claw.  Her eyes followed it to a leg and up it to a body.  Her bewildered eyesight momentarily rejected as nonsense something that seemed simultaneously boulders, a dinosaur, and a small passenger jet, something which had waited like a cat outside a mousehole and swatted its prey when it left the safety of the cave.  Something that to her empathic sense was first illusive and almost not there, then suddenly blatantly strange and very strong in her mind.

       A head as big as Alessa's body levitated on a dinosaur neck and Alessa stared a mere thirty feet into the dragon's face.  "Never look into a dragon's eyes."  From wherever the warning came, it came too late.

       The eyes were ovals the size of headlights, the long axis horizontal.  The sclera were a lovely rose, faintly luminous and totally at odds with the harsh reptilian face and body.  There were no pupils, unless they were the black X-shape that slashed across each eye, expanding and contracting with the beast's heartbeat—if it had a heart.  Each X seemed to spin despite doing nothing but pulse slightly.  She felt faintly dizzy and she could not move.

       Nor did she want to.  Apathy settled over her, then the leaden feeling of depression weighed her down.  Her body sagged and sleepiness dragged at her eyelids; they drooped but did not close.  The dizziness gave way to a floating sensation.  Her eyes stared straight ahead, at nothing, unfocussed, blind.  She was nothing, worthless, only good for food....

       That idea rasped her ego like flint against steel.  A spark of anger flared.  It fed on memories of being too short, too young, not dainty, not beautiful, not male, not white, not Chinese, not Chicana, not Academy, not Infantry....

       She fanned the fires of rage and used them to drive her mind and body to their limits, and to stretch those limits—as when she had competed for the Triathalon in her teens, for scholarships in college, for flight school in the Corps, for respect as a professional soldier.

       As she had countless times on playing fields and in cockpits all over the world, Alessa mastered her breathing and called energy from her body's stores for her muscles, senses, and brain.  She glared at the dragon, which was hunched over Iliamber's misty cocoon like a thief over a safe.  Her mind busily sought a way to kill it.

       In a pocket at her thigh a snowflake of fire began to burn next to her skin.  It was where she had placed the red-stone pendant taken from Shorty's body.  Instantly she understood: the claws about the stone, the flaw within—they symbolized a dragon.  No, somehow they were, at this moment, this dragon.  The pendant had let the raiders speak to their beasts, and it had led this dragon to her.

       The great head moved a bit closer to Alessa, slashed-rose eyes catching at her, pulling at her—to no avail.  Alessa stared into the dragon's eyes.  The dragon, challenged, exerted its will more strongly.  The rose of its eyes grew brighter.  Alessa saw a faint, rapid pulsing in them.  The motionless X-shapes spun hypnotically, the pulsing stroboscopically matching a rhythm in her own eyes or deeper within her.  The pressure on her will grew enormously, but Alessa remained as rooted in herself as the mountains in the Earth.

       Then, as a skilled sword fighter might change tactics in mid-stroke, the dragon stabbed at Alessa's mind through the pendant.

       A kaleidoscope of images flared in her mind, then melded into a single image: land and sky seen from a mile up, a sight that must be terrifying to any human the dragon had ever known.  The landscape tilted and began to grow as the dragon, in memory, dived.  Down, down, the land fleeing underneath dizzyingly fast, a wooden house and barn on the horizon and then much closer, a jet of flame from the dragon's mouth spearing each of them as it flashed over the buildings.

       The world tilted again as the dragon turned and swooped.  Alessa saw human figures running toward the burning farmhouse from the tilled field nearby, heard a hiss of triumph as the dragon bore down on the widely separated figures.  The scene tilted first one way then the other as the dragon flirted left then right to snatch a body in each claw.  Alessa heard and felt bones break under the impact....

       But Alessa was like no human the dragon had ever known.  She replied with a similar scene, with herself in a fighter aircraft strafing and raining bombs on a simulated missile-launch site.  She followed it with a replay of her fight with the dragon.  Before her ejection, however, she cross-faded to a training session where she flew a Harrier jet against the much newer, larger, and more powerful F16—and won, due to the difficulty of seeing her tiny jet with its smokeless fuel, to its unmatched agility, and her skill.

       The symbolism of the apparently helpless winning over much greater strength was not lost on the dragon.  Alessa felt its anger at the idea and guessed at the cause; tangling with a magician could painfully disillusion a dragon about the overwhelming advantages of size and strength.

       Next the dragon projected a memory of a mountain honeycombed with caves, inhabited by hundreds of dragons, crystalline walls and fabulous treasures shining gloriously in eldritch flame.  In answer Alessa showed the most impressive parts of New York viewed by day from helicopter and Paris by night from taxi.  She followed that with a replay of a NASA film, made with convincingly realistic animation, showing a spacecraft launch and flight and the building of a huge space habitat holding lakes and land as well as a city.

       Top that, God damn you!  Alessa sent over the link.

       The dragon could not.  Moreover, it was intelligent and its intelligence worked against it; it understood all too well the sophistication of a power that could travel space.  For a moment its arrogance faltered.

       Then it reacted as a human might.  It rejected humility and the ideas causing the feeling, closed the communication link, and sought to destroy her.  It reared its head and drew breath to flame Alessa to carbon.

       But Alessa felt its decision, even before it did.  She tore the shark repellent from its Velcro patch on her flotation vest and threw it at the dragon's mouth.  The wind of inhalation sucked it straight down the monster's throat.

       She had gambled that a taste awful enough to spoil even a shark's ever-ravenous appetite would at least slow down a dragon.  The tactic worked better than she had hoped.  The dragon convulsed, straightened, and vomited.  At the same moment Alessa shot a steel-tipped dart into the eye closest to her.

       The dragon reared back on its hind legs, its great wings opening with a thunderclap of wind that almost blew Alessa off her feet, the brick-red of its wingtips glowing where they met sunlight above the hill's shadow, the rest of its body a dark silhouette against the blue sky.  It screamed.  The sound was as loud as a steam whistle; needles seemed to pierce Alessa's ear drums.

       Riding the storm of sound and pain as best she could, Alessa unsnapped the cover of her dart case on her belt and reloaded and cocked the crossbow.  Raising the 'bow to the ready in hopes of getting the other eye before it killed her—which it would surely do—she was astonished to see Iliamber swaying on his feet.  His staff was braced under his arm and aimed like a lance toward the dragon towering over him.  His face was strained by pain or concentration and his eyes were closed; he seemed to be chanting something.  His eyes opened as he shouted a final word which her deafened ears could not hear.

       From a point near the skyward end of the staff a needle-fine line of incandescent violet light winked into existence, so bright that Alessa clamped her eyes shut and jerked her head away.  An apparently faint thunder-clap punished her ears further.  Tears flooded her eyes and she blinked several times and wiped them away, then shielded her eyes with a hand and looked back.

       Where the light struck the dragon molten red spread and vapor and smoke spewed.  Above the dragon the line of light continued into the dawn sky, faintly visible in the vapor-smoke erupting from the upper side of the dragon.

       Still blinking her weeping eyes and trying to see around after-images of the light-lance, Alessa saw the red spot on the dragon move, first one way then the other, to slash a squashed sideways V across its breast.  It must have almost cut the dragon in two; the body seemed to fold in half as it began to fall.

       The light winked out and Alessa screamed at Iliamber to run.  Instead he tried to invoke the shield he had used earlier.  He managed only a brief, flickering blue glow before the huge body crashed down onto him.

       Alessa dropped her crossbow and scrambled down the trail and around the dragon.  She found Iliamber half-covered by a leathery wing.  He had been protected somewhat by the unevenness of the land but he was unconscious and bleeding from nose and mouth.

       Levering up the wing with her sword and propping large stones underneath, she managed to free his body and pull it from under the heavy wing.  She tried to do this as gently as possible and keep his body from flexing from its original position; she had no wish to inflict further trauma to internal injuries, and broken bones could cut like knives.  Still, she had to extract him because she could not work on him under the dragon.

       Her attentions were useless, however.  As she carefully felt his body for broken bones he began to snore loudly, blood forming bubbles at his nose and mouth, his body spasming.  His eyes opened and turned upward to stare at death.  In the hill-shadow the whites of his eyes faintly glistened.

       Alessa looked at him, her left hand fisted and gently pounding her leg.  A thought struck her.  She jumped up and got his staff from beneath the dragon, examined it from end to end.  She could neither see nor feel any detail that suggested it was anything other than plain wood polished smooth.  She tried her empathic sense on it but she could detect no trace of the demon personality she had sensed when he set the staff to protect their sleep.

       She sat down, slipped the staff under Iliamber's nearest hand, and focused her attention on the staff, holding his hand around the wood and keeping her own in contact with the wood.  Maybe she could repeat her linguistic feats with the raiders and Iliamber.

       "Wake up.  Your master needs you," she said urgently.  She repeated this several times in Iliamber's sort-of-French language, straining to communicate with any intelligence reachable in or through the staff.  Then she tried repeating it in her grandparents' Chinese and Spanish, then in English, then in German.

       They all came out in some analog form, presumably languages in this world.  The staff remained simple wood.

       Finally she gave up.  Slowly she released his hand and closed her eyes.  A great sorrow welled up in her, for Iliamber, for Matt, for John, and she did what she had not been able to do since childhood: she began to cry.  Great racking sobs tore her lungs and throat, but that pain was nothing compared to the agony in her soul.

       Instinctively she drew the life-force of the land about her for comfort, as she had several nights ago.  She grew warm and felt as if rocked in someone's arms.  The sensation was so strong this time she could almost hear someone speaking comforting nonsense to her.  From her breaking heart she replied, "Help him!  Help him!"

       And she was answered.  An impulse came to take his hand.  Tightly she grasped it in both her own.  Another urge came to her; closing her eyes, she sent the warmth surrounding her into him and, with it, her own perceptions.

       She seemed to be a river flowing into a vast building or cave system, housing structures of many sizes and purposes, each one decorated with frescoes which, touched properly, showed an animated diagram of the structure's working.  Her waters nudged broken timbers and walls back into place and cemented them together.  She soaked into dried mud and washed it away from the structures.  She became oil and fire and coaxed ease and power into the structures, setting them to operating like machines of more-than-modern sophistication.  At the center of the caves a great pump or player piano came to life and sent her whirling, swooping all through the caves and back again.  At some point she was joined by another river.  They danced around each other to the tune of a glorious, bone-shivering music that reminded her of a Viennese waltz.  That struck her as very funny.  Laughing, she withdrew into her own caves and opened her eyes to look down at Iliamber.  He was smiling.  She smiled back.

       "I died.  I know I died.  And you healed me," he said, wonder in his voice.  "Thank you," he said softly.

       Alessa quirked her eyebrows and smiled more broadly.  "Welcome back," she said.  She stood and offered him her hands to help him up.  He took them but came up with perfect ease, then cut a dance step, or something very like it, still holding her hands.  She laughed.

       "I owe you a great debt," he said.  Alessa sobered; she could feel him about to declare himself her slave forever or something equally bothersome.  She cut him off.

       "I feel the same way about you," she said.  "If you hadn't started cutting on the dragon that instant I'd be overdone hamburger."

Hah!  That got him.  Their debts were equal and canceled.  At least he agreed to that intellectually; emotionally he was not quite convinced.  Well, that was fine.  A little gratitude she could handle.

       Iliamber fidgeted, looking away from her.  His gaze passed over the dragon's body.

       "Well, now I know," he said.  "There were three dragons."

       Alessa glanced over at the huge body.  It looked even more like boulders now.  It had a strong acid smell that reminded her of long-ago chemistry courses.

       "It looks more like three and a half to me," she said.

       "No, not it.  You.  You're the third dragon in my dream."

       "What?!"

       He laughed.  She really liked his laugh.  Of course, for the moment she liked everything about him, as if she had created him on the spot—which, in a sense, she had.

       "I couldn't see much from my position, but I could tell you faced the dragon down, eye to eye.  And I could guess that you were fighting it mind to mind.  Only another dragon could do that.  So you see, my spell worked right after all!"

       "Well, I am called the Dragon Lady."

       "No, it's not the name, except perhaps that the name expresses a truth."  For a moment she felt him on the verge of launching into a lecture on magic, but he thought better of it.  "Come on.  Let's get on the road.  We'll be in Queens-hall this very day."

       By noon they came through the pass at the top of the low hills.  They were met by a gentle breeze and stood looking out across a green valley toward a higher set of hills climbing toward the mountain range to the east.  Sprawled in the center, on both sides of a winding river, was the city of Queens-hall.

       It was beautiful from this distance, buildings of pastel colors arranged in a regular pattern suggestive of long-ago city planning.  Near the far edge the palace that gave the city its name looked out over the city from atop a high mound surrounded by a wall.  There were pennants flying from every tower.

       The flags were matched by sails on small sailboats in the river.  Most sails were white, some of them accented with bright colors; a few were solid colors.  They reminded her of hot-air balloons, hang gliders, and sailplanes.  That set off another train of thought in her engineer’s mind, starting with the considerable effort Iliamber had to exert to resist the sharp recoil of his fire-lance, as if he held a rocket.  Visions of magic-heated jet engines danced through her head....

       Alessa grabbed Iliamber's hand and pulled at him.  "Come on!" she shouted.  She fled laughing down the hill.

       The Dragon Lady would fly again.