“Can you shapeshift? Change to a man! To a cat! Change to a shrimp for all I care! Just get out from under this!”

Would he have enough strength left? Would he have enough conscious thought left to control the magic? He could shapeshift to a cat under Thunder’s body and be crushed before he knew what happened.

“Crucible!” she tried again. “Can you shapeshift to a cat? Right here? Where I can get you?”

She tugged at Thunder’s huge head. The blue’s dull, lifeless eye stared back her, but she thought she felt the head move slightly. She tried again and again until her vision swam and her arms trembled with fatigue. Crucible’s throat rattled. She dropped down by his head and felt for some sign of life.

“No, you don’t!” she yelled at the bronze. “You stay with me!”

Grasping his nose, she tugged at his head just enough to tilt it back. His nostrils twitched ever so slightly, and he took a gasp of air. It rattled down his throat into his starved lungs. All at once he began to glow with soft golden light. Linsha moved back but kept her hands ready to snatch him the moment he transformed. The spell took longer than usual, and his shape seemed to waver in the glimmering light-once long and human-like, then large, then small and four-legged. It finally settled on small and furry.

Thunder’s body settled deeper into the sand as Crucible’s large form disappeared and reappeared as a battered, bloody orange-striped cat pinned under Thunder’s head.

That was a shape Linsha could manage. She dug the sand out from under the cat and pulled him away from the dragon. Cradling him in her arms, she began the long walk back to daylight.

She returned to the passage that led to Iyesta’s treasure chamber not only because it was shorter, but she also wanted to satisfy her curiosity. Crucible had brought an egg with him into the labyrinth to enrage Thunder, and the only place she knew he had gone was the palace. For the sake of her oath to Iyesta, she tread a slow and wary path back through the darkness to the light of the stairway leading up to the treasure chamber.

She moved up the stairs until she could lift her head beyond the lintel and see into the room. The sight before her surprised her. The room was deserted, but something had left a terrible mess. Dragon skulls lay scattered across the floor-some smashed to bits, some cracked and broken. The piles and chests of treasure Iyesta had so carefully amassed over the years were ransacked, and most of it was gone. The thieves had taken the most valuable pieces-the weapons, the magic artifacts, and the chests of steel coins. They had left jewelry, gems, and piles of cheap coins scattered among the pieces of broken eyesockets, shattered jaws, and smashed brainpans. What she didn’t see were the eggs. There was no sign of them-no shards, no dead embryos. Nothing.

The eat squirmed in her arms and opened his eyes. Where are we?

“In the treasure room,” she whispered. She lifted him up so he could see.

He growled deep in his throat. They were here. The eggs were here. He had them stacked in his totem. Who took them?

Linsha felt her heart sink. Gods, she had tried so hard to save those eggs. Now they were gone again. She heard movement upstairs in the throne room and ducked back down into the tunnels. If the guards were returning or the thieves were still out there, she didn’t want to face them. She was not sure she could fight a four year old for his toy horse. The cat sagged back into her arms and fell asleep.

Still holding the warm shape of the cat, she made her way back to the hidden entrance in the palace ruins. Late afternoon sun peeked through the vines shielding the doorway when she and Crucible came to the exit. Linsha staggered out and collapsed on the grassy patch near the door. She hoped no one was nearby, for she did not think she could walk another step. She curled her body around the cat and let her awareness sink.

Her rest lasted long enough for her eyelids to fall shut and her muscles to relax. She was drifting on the tide, gently slipping into the darkness of sleep when hoofbeats trotted through the undergrowth. She woke to dappled sunlight and the distant rumble of thunder.

Varia’s voice called, “There she is!”

She looked up through bleary eyes to see the stubbled, dirty face of Sir Hugh and the young, whiskery face of Leonidas looking down at her in obvious relief.

“Lady Linsha, thank Paladine!” said Sir Hugh from his horse. “I hate to be waking you, but there are guests coming you don’t want to meet.”

She rolled to a sitting position and tried to focus, tried to swim back against the tide.

Varia flew down and landed on her bent knee. “Please hurry, Linsha. The Brutes ransacked the palace during the battle, and the mercenaries are furious. They’re searching the entire grounds.”

“Where is Azurale?” Leonidas said. “I thought he was with you.”

Linsha looked at his face and noticed how much he had aged in just a short week. The boyish immaturity of his features was gone, replaced by harder, more tempered lines wrought by stress, fear, and loss. Her eyes glimmered with tears, knowing she was about to add to his grief.

“Azurale was killed by Thunder.”

The centaur’s expression sagged with sadness. “Phoulos is dead, too. Do you know that makes me the last of my company? The newest and the last.” He turned away, too proud to show his tears.

Sir Hugh dismounted and helped Linsha to her feet. She lifted the sleeping cat and held him in her arms. It was amazing, she thought. All that size and power concentrated into a small, furry animal. The injuries were there, too: the bloody, torn neck, the broken wing bone disguised somewhere in his ribcage, the wounded foreleg, the burned gash across his back leg. Dragons were truly a marvel.

“Look who I found,” Sir Hugh said. He tugged on the reins of his horse to move him closer, and for the first time Linsha took a closer look. It was Sandhawk. The Knight grinned. “I found him in a pen with other horses the mercenaries stole.” He cocked his head to listen as another rumble of thunder growled somewhere to the west. “Time to get moving. You can tell us what happened while we ride.”

He jumped into the saddle. He would have offered Linsha a hand onto Sandhawk’s back behind him if Leonidas had not lifted her in his strong arms and placed her on his back, cat and all. Varia flew to her shoulder.

Linsha looked at the cat, the owl, the centaur, and the Knight and felt oddly comforted. She was surrounded by friends who cared for her, who looked after her, who thought enough of her to risk their own lives to help her. In spite of what might happen in the coming months, she would at least have that.

They rode westward through the gardens and toward the open plains. They evaded several mercenary patrols and slipped through a gap in the incomplete city wall that had been abandoned when the defenders fled. The mercenaries had not bothered to put up guards, and the Brutes were still consolidating their hold in the city proper. The two Knights and the centaur, cat and owl in tow, were able to escape without difficulty.

The overgrown gardens fell behind, and the small party circled their way north through the edge of the decaying ruins and out into the hills of the open plains. The centaur and the horse broke into a canter.

Linsha leaned back and gazed up at the huge sky. To the west a thunderstorm drew dark clouds and veils of rain over the grasslands, but it was a normal storm with steel blue clouds and lightning that flickered without malice. Overhead the sky was still blue, and the wind that kicked up toward the storm was cool with moisture from the ocean. She drew a deep breath of clean, salty air and told her companions about the deaths of Azurale, the unhatched brass dragonet, and Thunder.