Not Really the Prisoner of Zenda by Joel Rosenberg Read Free Book Online Page A

will have a fit.*
    Thomen smiled. You didn’t have to read minds to know that. “You just talked me into it.”
    A gout of flame roared skyward.*I thought that would do it. Dress warm; it’s cold up there.*
     

2
    H OMECOMING I
     
    The old saw says that the first time is an accident, the second time a coincidence, and the third time enemy action. As a matter of policy, I’m suspicious of accidents, and I don’t believe in coincidences.
    — Walter Slovotsky
     
    T HE WIND RUSHED by too fast, too hard, driving tears from his eyes back into his ears.
    Or whoever’s ears they really were.
    These ears sat too closely to his head, and where there should have been a ridge of scar tissue at the top of the left one, there was only smooth skin.
    The only way that they felt like his ears was that they felt wet.
    At least he had long since stopped throwing up — what little he had had of breakfast had been spread over three baronies, and even the dry retching had stopped.
    Had he known he would be riding on dragonback, he wouldn’t have had as much as a sip of water that morning. He had ridden on dragonback before, a few times, and those few times were far too many, as far as his stomach was concerned.
    *Fortunately for you, lots of people get airsick. There’s nothing distinctive — or revealing — in that.*The dragon’s mental voice was, for once, at least vaguely sympathetic instead of acidly sarcastic.
    *No, that’s only in your mind, Kethol — or should I be calling you Forinel?*
    He didn’t have a smart answer to that, and if he did, he wouldn’t have given it anyway — not to the dragon, of all creatures. Kethol had spent little time around the dragon — as little as possible — and being around Ellegon always made him nervous.
    *I do have that tendency, don’t I?*
    That was understandable. The dragon was a huge beast, its yellowed teeth the size of daggers, and its fiery breath could incinerate a man in moments — Kethol had seen it do just that — or send a man, or several men, flying through the air, broken like a child’s shattered toy, with one blow from a tree-trunk leg.
    The physical fear was bad enough for most, but it was different for Kethol.
    No, it wasn’t a matter of that kind of fear, not really. Kethol was perfectly capable of feeling fear — the bitter, metallic taste in his mouth, the pounding of his heart in his chest, the way that the palms of his hands tended to sweat so that he had to force himself not to grip the hilt of his sword or the shaft of his bow too tightly …
    Those were all familiar to him.
    But he was used to that. That was normal, natural; fear was simply part of the job. He had been a simple soldier since he was barely old enough to shave, and he’d been damn good at it — and damn lucky, as well — in order to have survived this long.
    No, he was used to danger, even though he would never have said that out loud, particularly in front of Leria, for fear of sounding boastful.
    *Well, yes, it would sound boastful — but I would say that it’s true enough, although not so unusual that you should sprain your arm patting yourself on the back over it. Many of your kind have courage. It’s a lot more common than, say, wisdom. As for me, I think wisdom is better.*
    But what he wasn’t used to was pretending to be something that he was not, and the dragon — and only a few others — knew just what a fraud he was.
    *Get used to it. Dragons aren’t much good at forgetting, either.*
    He would have to get used to it, just as he had to get used to looking at fingers that were a trifle shorter and slimmer than they ought to be, or at arms and legs and a chest that were almost devoid of the scars that they should have had, at a face in the mirror that frowned when he frowned, smiled when he smiled, winced when he cut himself, but he could not make himself believe was his.
    *You had better start.*
    That was easier for Ellegon to say than it was for Kethol to