Zane slept at his Deathhouse, accepting the routine
services of his staff without noticing, then got to work early
next day. Since it seemed he couldn't do anything to help
Luna before the petition was considered, he tried to put
the matter from his mind by working harder.
As luck would have it, his case load was small at the
moment. He took two clients in rapid order, then found
himself with the maximum time of thirty minutes for the
third. It seemed pointless to go early, but he had to
distract himself some way, so he oriented and rode the
Deathhorse to the address.
This was an isolated spot in the western state of
Nevada, the least populated region of the United States,
because it was the least habitable. Zane's gems guided
him to one of the desert areas, a barren wasteland.
This was dragon country. The scenic Hot Smoke
Mountains - renamed in honor of the beasts - were
riddled with the warrens of the fierce reptiles. Pew plants
survived, but that hardly mattered to the dragons, who
were carnivorous, preying on tender virgins. Mostly the
creatures ranged aloft, questing for virginal animals, but
they had a gourmet appetite for the rare human variety
when it could be obtained. In fact -
In fact, he now remembered that this was the locale
of the Dragoons, a cult dedicated to the welfare of this
exotic species. The Dragoons had lobbied vigorously to
prevent the construction of resorts, irrigated farm sites, I
and missile silos in the region, pleading that the Hot Smoke
species of dragon had no other habitat and would, if not
left free, suffer the extinction that had almost claimed
them before their discovery. Fortunately, that discovery
had been made by a man interested in rare life forms,
who had used some elementary magic to track them down.
Had the original trappers and settlers in this region
discovered them, they would have been totally exterminated,
and no one would have believed they had ever existed.
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The Dragoons had won several legal suits, for the general
public was in a phase of environmental consciousness,
so the Hot Smokers remained largely unmolested.
But they still needed to eat, and virgins of any type were
in short supply. The Dragoons were constantly looking
for new sacrifices. Human sacrifices were generally illegal,
but it was difficult to keep constant watch, and the
state authorities were chronically short of personnel.
Sure enough, as Zane arrived at the site for his client,
he spied a lovely but terrified young woman, barely nubile,
in a cage. It was afternoon here, and men were setting
up a smudge pot, evidently planning to use the smoke to
summon a dragon. How the Dragoons had captured this
virgin, Zane did not know, but she was surely doomed.
He would have to collect her soul as the dragon consumed
her, twenty five minutes hence, unless he figured out a
way to rescue her.
He walked to the cage and spoke to the girl. "How did
they bring you here?" he inquired, suspecting that she
would turn out to have been drugged.
She paused in her weeping and looked up at him, not
recognizing him. That was odd, for his clients were
normally attuned to his presence. "By truck, sir."
"I mean, was it coercion? Did they kidnap you? If so - "
Her lip trembled. "No, sir. I come of my own fr - free will."
"Do you know what they plan for you?"
"To be gobbled by the dragon," she said, her eyes
brimming over again. "I can't even take a mind-zonk drug,
'cause that changes the taste for the monster."
So the dragons were sensitive even to the virginity of
the mind! This was a cruel denouement indeed. "But why
do you accede to your murder?"
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"My - my family - in debt - " Now she broke down
entirely and was unable to continue.
So it was legal after all, because it was technically
voluntary. She had sold herself to abate her family's debt.
Such contracts had legal status, provided there was no
deception. He understood that the Dragoons had an
excellent credit rating, so there was no reason to doubt they
had paid a fair price, redeeming this poor girl's family's
debts. There was nothing he could do.
At least he could get her out of the cage; that was
unnecessarily degrading. But as he started to use his
power on the lock, the maiden protested. "Sir, I am
confined to guarantee no one deflorates me before the -
the - "
The Dragoons had everything figured! Of course, that
would be a way to make her ineligible for the sacrifice,
so they made quite sure no such mercy would occur at
the last moment.
There was a shimmer. A cloaked figure appeared beside
the cage. "I will take your place, dear," the woman said.
Zane jumped. He knew that voice. "Luna!"
She turned to him. "Oh - I did not realize you would
attend this one."
"It's my job!" Zane said. "To harvest the soul of this
undeflowered girl when - " He cut that off. "You can't
take her place! You're not - "
Luna turned a level gaze on him. "Not what?"
"The Hot Smoke dragons are an endangered species
because they consume only virgins," he said, somewhat
lamely.
She smiled grimly. "I am a virgin, physically."
"But - "
"The demon had his will of my mind and soiled my
soul," she explained. "I would have suffered less had he
been able to ravage me physically instead, but he can not
do that until my soul enters his realm. I am damned, the
victim of psychic rape, but my body is chaste."
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Zane was not comforted by this clarification. "I put in
a petition to review your scheduled demise. It's a put-up
job; the Unnamed wants you out of the way. I'm sure the
review board will reverse it - but it will be ten days before
it meets. If you go into this now - "
Luna shook her head sadly. "My stones indicate that
my time falls within this day. So I decided at least to make
my passing useful to someone. I inquired at the Good
Deeds Exchange, and they sent me here. This poor,
innocent girl - " She glanced at the maiden in the cage, who
was taking all this in in wide-eyed silence. " - who has
offered her good life in sacrifice for the benefit of her
family - she should be sent to Heaven, but not yet. She
has too many people to make happy on Earth."
"She is hardly assured of Heaven," Zane said.
"Check her yourself. She's a good girl, I'm sure."
Zane oriented his soul-verification stones. The Sin-
stone remained dull, while the other glowed brightly.
"She's not burdened with sin!" he exclaimed. "But how,
then, could I have been summoned to collect her soul
personally?"
"Someone else must be going to die," Luna said with
a knowing quirk of her lips. "You assumed it was the
caged sacrifice, but - "
He looked at her with burgeoning horror. "You are
taking her place! You - "
"Don't be silly. I'm going to Hell in my own hand-
basket. It's sheer coincidence that you're here; my soul
will not need you. In fact, I had hoped to handle this
without your knowledge, quickly and cleanly."
Zane oriented the stones on Luna. The reading was,
of course, incomplete, but the Sinstone was brighter. She
was right; she could not be his client. But she was going to die.
Now the Dragoons approached. "The occasion is at
hand," a well-dressed older man announced. "Our radar
has located an approaching Smoker." He produced a key
and unlocked the cage, releasing the girl.
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"I will substitute," Luna said. "The Good Deeds
Exchange sent me. Let this girl go, her onus abated."
"How do we know you are eligible?" the man
demanded. "The dragons get very disturbed when offered
used goods."
"Your kind can sniff a virgin from ten meters away,"
Luna snapped. "You know I'm eligible."
The man sniffed. "Why, so you are, physically. You
have the aspect of one who has been savagely used,
but - " He shook his head, perplexed at his error. "Very
well. We shall release this girl as soon as the dragon is
satisfied."
"See that you do," Luna said. "My friend will be on
hand to verify it."
The man looked at Zane as if seeing him for the first
time. Zane looked back, knowing that, for this man, he
was phasing into the aspect of Death.
"Ah, yes," the man said uncomfortably. "I am certain
it will be all right. The dragons don't care how much
ravishment is within a person's mind as long as the mind
is presently devoid of drugs and the body is chaste." He
turned to his companion, who carried an ornate case. He
opened the case and lifted out a gleaming silver knife,
which he presented to Luna. "You are permitted to defend
yourself with this alone. No magic or firearms. If you can
fend off the dragon fairly, you will be freed, your onus abated."
"This apple-peeler is hardly sufficient to balk a firebreathing monster!" Luna said.
"True. It is a token gesture, required by the Fair
Employment Commission. Naturally we do not wish the
dragon to be hurt. But it is theoretically possible."
Luna shrugged. "I came here to die anyway. If the
Smoker doesn't take me, something else will." She took
the knife.
There was a speck on the horizon, over the Hot Smoke
mountain range. "Hark! It comes!" the man said, wonder
and awe on his face. He had surely seen many similar
dragons, but he was a reptile worshiper, and these were
the lords of the reptile kingdom. "Only the designated
virgin may remain, lest the dragon sheer away. They're
shy, you know, from the bad old days when sportsmen
hunted them with bazookas." He scowled at the foul memory.
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"Luna - " Zane said, unable to formulate a suitable
protest.
"Let me at least go in a manner of my choosing," she
told him gently. "I will not have another chance."
"But I love you!"
"I believe you do," she agreed. "Perhaps in time I
would have returned the favor without reservation, if not
distracted by grief. But it seems it was not to be. I think
my father meant me to love you, but did not foresee this."
She turned toward the dragon, who was now looming
larger. The other people had retreated to a shielded baffle
to watch the proceedings. There was even a television
camera crew, for Dragon vs. Maiden was popular
localcolor fare.
"But the termination of your life has been rigged!" Zane
cried. "The Nether One cheated! You were supposed to
live a full term, and to balk him politically, so he fixed
the schedule to eliminate you early! You shouldn't have
to die at all!"
She turned quickly, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him
on the lips. "It is kind of you to tell me that, Zane. You
press the case; maybe if you prove it, you can get my
soul freed from Hell. I could join my father in Purgatory.
That would be nice." Then she broke and walked
resolutely toward the approaching form that was the dragon.
Zane watched her go, helpless to prevent the disaster
that had been scheduled. She was right; Satan had won
this round, by whatever means. Luna had shed her tears
and accepted her fate, and now was doing a singularly
generous thing. She was a good woman, no matter what
the official record said! He did love her - and partly because
of that, he could not interfere. She had chosen her mode.
He looked at the Deathwatch. The countdown was now
at four minutes. Soon he would have to break away to
attend to his true client, whoever that was - but first he
would watch what happened here, though it destroy his
joy in life.
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He still had time to do something to prevent what he
least wanted to see. But he knew he would not. Luna had
selected the manner of her termination, and it was a worthy
manner. The kindest thing he could do for her, ironically,
was to let her be roasted and chewed to pieces by the dragon.
The dragon loomed much larger as it circled the field,
aligned itself, and swooped down for a landing. Hot Smokers
were not large dragons, as this class of reptile went,
but their fire-breathing made them formidable. This one
was a dragoness, a female, whose scales were shades of
gray. On her back, between her great leathery wings, was
a single armored egg.
There was an exclamation from the baffle, and Zane
saw the television cameraman mounting his zoom lens.
An egg meant a potential baby dragon, perpetuating the
species; of course the Dragoons were interested! They
would be doing their best to track that egg, and the draglet
who hatched from it. They might band it, so they could
trace its migration route by radio. Of course, some illegal
hunter would probably poach it long before it grew to
maturity; that was another reason this was an endangered
species. Zane would have had more sympathy for the
plight of the Smokers, had it not been Luna this dragoness
was about to feed on.
Luna came to a stop in the center of the desert valley,
nervously holding her knife. Zane saw that she wore no
jewelry, honoring the stricture against magic. There were
surely stones in her house that could vaporize a dragon!
But she was determined to fulfill her role properly. She
had removed her cloak and was garbed in a flowing white
dress, and her hair glowed coppery in the sunshine. She
seemed like the most lovely creature imaginable. But Zane
knew he was not objective; he loved her.
This was absolutely crazy! How could he watch the
dragon slaughter her and not even try to rescue her? He
knew why, objectively, but he could not accept it
emotionally. There had to be another way.
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Another way for what? If Luna did not die this way,
she would die some other way - probably a worse demise.
He realized, now, that Satan would never let the ten days
till the hearing go by unchallenged; he would pre-empt
the matter, presenting the hearing with a. fait accompli.
What else was to be expected from the Father of Lies?
Zane had never had a chance to settle this matter through
channels. So the termination date had been moved up,
probably because of Zane's appeal, and it had been up to
Luna to choose the manner of her demise on this
designated day. At least the dragons were not sadistic; they
killed and fed efficiently. They were natural creatures,
not given to waste,
Zane contemplated the dragoness. She was about six
meters long, with a wingspan the same amount, but her
torso was serpentine rather than stout. Mass was
sacrificed in the interest of flight. She had only one set of feet,
and her head was small; in fact, she was birdlike in her
fashion. But few birds were her size, or had teeth, or
leather wings, or metallic scales. Both birds and dragons
had evolved from the ancient reptiles, but the common
ancestor had been perhaps a hundred million years back.
Maybe seventy million years ago the birds, mammals, and
dragons had squeezed the dinosaurs into extinction. For
a long time, all three had prospered, but now the
mammals, mainly in the form of mankind, were dominant. All
too soon the dragons would be shoved into oblivion.
If the death of a single person was hard, Zane thought,
what, then, of the death of an entire species? He approved
of the Dragoons' campaign to save the Smokers. He wished
there were some other way to feed this dragoness.
The Smokeress rolled up her wings and folded them
back against her torso. She inhaled, then puffed out a
dense cloud of smoke. Zane realized that her burner was
just warming up. Adventure stories depicting a dragon
waking from a snooze and shooting instant flames were
nonsense. It took a lot of energy to shoot flame, so it was
never done carelessly. Dragons were cold-blooded, like
other reptiles, and generally hibernated in winter or
migrated south; their fires were strictly for fighting and feeding.
The Hot Smokers were more smoky than most, but
where there was dragonsmoke there was dragonfire.
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The creature stalked Luna, who took an involuntary
step back. Dragons were so constituted that they had to
hunt and kill their own prey, so this was more than mere
ritual. Why that prey had to be virginal was a mystery
the experts had never fathomed, but there was no question
it was true. A Hot Smoke dragon would literally starve
to death before it would consume either prekilled or
non-virginal flesh. The most persuasive conjecture about the
origin of this restricted diet was that there had been a bad
epidemic of venereal disease a few million years back and
that dragons who had consumed infected prey were damaged
by the disease themselves, so it had become a matter
of survival to eat only guaranteed clean meat. Thus virgins,
very few of whom had contracted VD.
Now Zane saw that the dragoness was limping. One
foot was weak, though he could not tell whether this was
from physical or magical malaise. Sometimes cloddish
people hurled curses at wild creatures, considering it great
sport. It could take a curse months to wear off, and that
could be an inconvenience at best and a fatality at worst.
Other ciods dumped the refuse of toxic spells in the
wilderness, where innocent wildlife could stumble upon the
dump and get hurt. No wonder this dragon had come to
the feeding station; she could not forage effectively alone -
not while burdened by the egg and handicapped by the foot.
Zane caught himself up short. What was he thinking
of? It was Luna this beast intended to feed on! The more
handicapped the dragoness was, the better! Maybe Luna
could, after all, fend off the monster with the knife. If she
did that, if she escaped this fate legitimately -
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No. Fate could not so readily be cheated. Luna's death
would not be the fault of the dragoness. It would be the
fault of -
The dragoness pounced. Luna danced away, slashing
in the air with the knife. She might know death was
inevitable, but she was not resigned to it. She would fight
to live a few extra seconds, as a drowning person gasped
for air. She was not a trained knife fighter, though her
artistic hands might be more clever than most; in any
event, the dragonfire would negate her efforts. So this
was a largely automatic and futile exercise.
The dragoness pumped up her bellows and oriented on
the woman. The beast was hot now; she could send forth
a searing blast. That would be the end. Of course Luna
had no chance!
Zane could not help himself. He stepped in front of
the monster. The flame shot out, but bounced off the
Deathcloak without hurting him.
"No!" Luna cried. "Let me die this way, Zane! Don't
make me gamble on whatever else Satan has in store!"
To make her gamble on a different death - that concept
shook him, though he had thought of it earlier himself.
He had gambled compulsively, in past years, and dug
himself into a pit from which only Death had finally
extricated him. He had no wish to plunge back into that
morass! Why, then, should he gamble with Luna's manner
of dying?
The Smokeress was eying him, trying to determine why
he wasn't roasted. He stared back, and she blanched in
almost the manner of a human being, beginning to
perceive the nature of his office.
"Don't do it!" Luna cried.
Zane reluctantly moved aside. He knew he had no right
to interfere. The dragoness shook her head, as if clearing
it of the ashes of an unpleasant vision, and reoriented on
Luna. Zane no longer seemed to exist for either of them;
as Death, he tended to fade from the awareness of anyone
who was not his client.
Yet the dragoness hesitated, for the specter of Death
could not lightly be dismissed from the deepest
imagination of any creature who spied it. Even the briefest
vision of Death tended to make a person or creature
conscious of its own mortality, and that was disquieting. Most
creatures would go to some lengths to avoid or expunge
such awareness, and in this they were generally more
successful than was man. Man's great curse was to
perceive his death more clearly than did any other creatures;
he could see the end coming, so suffered longer.
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The dragoness, shaken, began to unfurl her wings, as
if about to depart. "Don't change your mind now!" Luna
cried. "If you don't eat me, the life of the poor girl I
replaced will be forfeit to the next dragon!"
Oops - that was correct! If Luna fought off the
dragoness, she and the girl were free. But if she never actually
encountered the monster-because some third party like
himself interfered - her gesture would go for nothing. Luna
might have argued the case, since the dragoness had fired
a blast at her, but she had chosen instead to seek an honest
death. Zane would have appreciated her determination
more if he had not loved her.
No, that wasn't right either! He loved her more because
of it. Luna was showing her integrity and mettle in
the most telling manner possible. He, Zane, had never
done that.
Still the dragoness paused. Zane had not realized that
the sight of the human personification of Death would
have such impact on an animal. The dragoness really
should not be afraid of him. Did she know something he
didn't?
Luna charged at the monster, brandishing her knife.
Now the Smokeress reacted properly. She pumped up,
swung her head about, and issued a jet of pure blue flame
that extended a good three meters, with very little smoke.
Maybe the dragoness had not been pausing from alarm,
but to work up a higher heat.
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