The creature roared out of three dozen throats at once, and out of its mouth spilled the dancers costumed in the colors of flame. The slope of the hill they moved on was nearly invisible in the darkness, and the illusion of a three-dimensional dragon taking form before their audience’s eyes was stunningly complete. The movements of the dancers were so perfectly synchronized that it was impossible to see them as separate people instead of one massive, deadly beast. So much so that when the dancers scattered and coalesced again, in a new place, as if the dragon had taken wing and flown to the opposite edge of the cleared space, the audience members closest to them screamed and leapt back.

Gwen’s heart was pounding, her muscles demanding action. Some instinct from deep within her wanted to reach for a weapon, even as the rest of her mind tried frantically to remind her that what she was witnessing was a dance, a celebration, a mere echo of ages long past. That there were no dragons, not anymore.

The dragon veered sharply toward them, and the flame dancers shot out in a riot of reds and yellows. Isobelle, laughing, leapt back, but Gwen couldn’t move. One of the dancers caught her eye and grinned knowingly—then she tugged lightly at the edge of Gwen’s skirt, as if to say, See? Now you’re dead. And then she skipped off to rejoin the rest of the dragon.

A new instrument joined the musicians at the high end of the hill: the bright, brassy glare of a trumpet. From the side of the square came a lone dancer, not a part of the living, breathing creature the others had become. This one wore a suit of armor—or, at least, silver-threaded leggings and flowing drapes that suggested the overlapping panels of a suit of armor—and a helmet.

The knight.

He came wearing a sword at his belt and with a long, gleaming lance tucked under one arm. He charged the dragon, which scattered and coalesced again on the other side of the clearing. The dragon roared at the knight, spitting flames that reached out toward him with grasping arms—but he leapt and dodged, landing and rolling easily back to his feet.

For a long stretch of heartbeats, they were perfectly matched. The knight could not charge fast enough to strike the dragon before it fled, and the dragon could not get an angle good enough on the knight to roast him alive.

Gwen’s head spun. Distantly, she realized she’d forgotten to breathe.

Then the dragon twisted the other way during one of the knight’s charges, and it caught the lance in a sweeping blow with one of its arms. The sound it made as it shattered was a screech of strings and the deep thump of an ominous drum.