Free Dragon Princess by S. Andrew Swann Page B

contacts with my diminishing supply of funds, I began to develop an ugly suspicion that the ersatz Frank Blackthorne might have been captured by the Nâtlac groupies of Grünwald.
    I started hoping that my body would end up on the far side of Lendowyn, away from Grünwald. I admit that, in the abstract, there was some appeal to having the Grünwald court take out their frustrations on my body while I wasn’t resident. However, I doubted it would leave my body in a usable condition, and I wanted it back.
    Besides, Princess Lucille didn’t deserve that sort of treatment, even if she was royalty.
    I had been through the stories enough by now to know when I’d reached a dead end, so I was ready to leave one particular dark hole of a tavern, when one of the newer arrivals interjected a comment into a pause in the conversation.
    “Any you all hear of Ravensgate?”
    A chorus of “no,” rippled through the crowd around me. I certainly hadn’t heard about it. I made the mistake of holding out some hope that this newcomer’s story might be helpful to my mission in finding the displaced owner of my current body.
    No such luck.
    Not to say that his tale wasn’t dramatic. According to the story he’d heard, yesterday morning at around the time a trio of thugs were debating what to do with a tied-up princess they’d found in the woods, a giant black dragon had appeared in the middle of the border town of Ravensgate. Our storyteller gave a loving description of the carnage, paying such special attention to the immolation of the city watch that I was left with the impression that he had some particular issue with official law enforcement.
    Even if the story had been embellished, and Ravensgate hadn’t been left a smoldering crater, I still asked for clear directions as to where Ravensgate was on the Lendowyn border—specifically in order to help me avoid it. Elhared’s dragon seemed rightly pissed, and after the debacle with
Dracheslayer
I didn’t want to come within four leagues of it.
    Fortunately for me, the alleged massacre at Ravensgate was miles out of my way anyway, in the opposite direction from the capital from Doylen. More importantly, it was miles from the dragon’s lair—which meant I would be able to find it sans
dragon, and that made me feel immeasurably better. I would be free to search for signs of what had happened to Elhared’s evil tome without fear of immolation.
    After that, I could work on hunting down the princess and my body.

CHAPTER 9

    The next day I found the dragon’s lair right where I had left it. From the outside there was no sign of the wizardly apocalypse that had happened within. I loosely tied the skinny nag that the last of Diego’s gold had bought me so she could graze the clearing while I was occupied, then I pulled myself back up to the scene of the crime.
    Boobs aside, I practically flew up the side of the hillside in the princess’s body. She might not be blessed with great upper body strength, but in comparison to my old body, she was tiny and lightweight, so I found myself pulling her body upward with almost disturbing ease.
    That marked the high point of my expedition.
    I lit a makeshift torch and examined every inch of the cavern, and I came up with nothing. There was little sign of any hoard aside from a few items glittering forgotten, fallen into inaccessible crevasses, and an occasional goblet or necklace on the ground that looked shiny until closer examination showed base metal and glass rather than gold and jewels. Elhared had found a dragon more broke than the Lendowyn government.
    More prevalent than the remains of an ex-hoard were piles of bones from sheep, cattle, and a few wayward knights less lucky than I had been. Without the dragon’s presence it all seemed sort of sad, and much less intimidating than the last time I’d been here.
    Most importantly though, I found no malevolent book of wizardly nastiness. To all appearances it had been consumed in the misfire