The dragons flew ahead of her and at first the ceiling was high enough that they could come flaming back and make loops that illuminated the river ahead. Eventually though, the river grew narrower, so that there was no path beside it at all and the ceiling descended until it barely cleared her head. Hearing the rescuers invade the cave behind them, Verity and the dragons swam, until the underground river cascaded down the mountain, splashing them into yet more river that tumbled them far downstream.
Toby to the Rescue
Flying a balloon without Taz wasn’t as simple as Toby had imagined. He’d been a little overconfident, maybe, since his boss at the balloon shop always flew without dragons as a source of hot air. But this trip had proved to him that Taz, if not all dragons, provided other benefits. She subtly steered the craft in the right direction, and helped achieve and maintain altitude, even though her wings had been immature the last time they’d flown.
He had not actually had time to do a test flight using the dragonless system.
Then too, he didn’t want to give the saboteur, Briciu Sieke, as he now knew him to be, a ride or in any way make this mission easier for him, even though Briciu had paid for it. He didn’t remember Toby, but Toby knew very well who he was and had figured out that the maiden they were supposed to rescue from the dragon was Miss Verity. That villain meant her no more good now than he had when he engineered the murder of her father. The last thing Toby intended to do was help him.
So while the other members of the party were talking to the herder about the torturous path up the mountain by which, after every spring thaw, the herders took beasts for the dragon’s delectation, he readied the balloon.
The Dragon Vitia’s lair was perfect from a dragon’s viewpoint and he hoped Taz had found herself a crater to call her own as well, maybe even some respectful people to bring her livestock when she didn’t feel like hunting.
If only she were with him now, he felt sure she could reason with the other dragon and get her to release Miss Verity, removing the excuse the rescue party had for invading the mountain.
The balloon was in readiness, but Toby waited to release it until Briciu had busied himself directing the climbers, including, amazingly, the old lady.
He wasn’t afraid to be the first one to breach Vitia’s stronghold. He probably should have been, but he’d been around Taz most of his life and had more sympathy for dragons than he did most people.
With Briciu elsewhere, Toby untied the ropes binding the basket to the ground, and sailed straight up, pulling at the ropes to steer his craft over the crater.
The other men were already on the mountain, though not at the summit, by the time the balloon hovered over the deep blue lake.
Everything was going well.
Then suddenly, an enormous coppery beast burst in full flame from a hole in the side of the crater. Vitia, he thought, just before a spark from her inferno caught his silk and set the envelope ablaze.
Well, yes, combining dragons with ballooning had advantages, but then there were these little inconveniences, too.
The basket hit the water and bobbed frantically up and down with Toby knocking around inside trying clumsily to shut off the burner, until he realized that the initial plunge had doused both the singed silks and the burner.
From inside the basket, he began gathering the balloon to his chest and folding it in the prescribed manner, though it billowed and twisted away from him in the wind and water.
He felt rather than saw Taz when first she arrived. Her wings provided the better part of the wind that kept blowing his silks out of his grasp. Grateful as he felt to see her again, he signaled to her to leave, not wanting the rescue party to find her when they arrived. She seemed to think he was playing a new kind of game.
Finally he climbed out of the basket and dove into the lake, thinking if he disappeared she might fly off looking for him.
The water was much deeper than it appeared, and bitter cold. The deeper he went, the more he was pulled by a strong current that caught him and wouldn’t let him go until it sucked him into a deep hole. The hole was narrow and he was stuck with the weight of the lake trying to flow through him and down the hole. He swallowed water, choking, and squirming. Just as he was about to pass out, one of his gyrations contorted his body into the right shape to pass through the tube and out into—fresh air!—he barely had time to gasp in as he slid down the side of a deep dimly lit cavern into a swift underground river.
Everything was dark and he knew nothing until suddenly he was in sunlight again and once more shooting down the side of a sheer rock face and into another river. He cried out as he plunged, and struck his head on a stone.
The Winding Wurm River
Verity, Loveday, and Copperwise had tumbled and floated perhaps five miles from the foot of the falls by the time the current slowed enough to allow Verity to get her bearings. The river broadened, but became shallower so she could stand knee deep in the middle of it.
The twins made hooting sounds through mouths too wet to flame and splashed each other and her with their wings.
They didn’t hear the splash when the boy’s body fell into the water, or realize he had joined them until his body bumped against Loveday.
The young dragon opened her mouth, which now boasted sizable pointed teeth, as if to bite him.
Verity cried, “No! Bad dragon!” But Loveday sniffed and crooned, and picked him up by the back of the neck and carried him to shore, Copperwise swimming after her as confidently as a crocodile. The twins were discovering talents neither she nor they knew they possessed.
She crawled onto the bank to examine Loveday’s new prey, turning him on his back.
She recognized Toby at once since in her clearest memory of him, he had also been water-logged, having just fetched her out of the bay. What was he doing here?
At least, from the reaction of the dragon sisters, his rapport with the creatures extended beyond Taz. Far from trying to eat him, both dragons nuzzled him and tried to warm him. He didn’t burst into flame from their attempts, but did steam quite a lot.
Vitia’s Diversion
The balloon, loosed upon the water when Toby disappeared, confounded Taz’s attempts to find him. Where was he? Taz expected him to bob back up again like a duck. When he didn’t do it, Taz dove into the water, but though it was clear and pleasantly cold on her permanently feverish body, she found no trace of Toby. Where could he have gone? Poor thing couldn’t hunt for himself or warm himself or even defend himself very well. Taz could do all of those things now that she was away from that city and no longer eating the tasty kibble that was so easy to find but made her feel so dumb and drowsy. When she was small and stupid, Toby had looked after her and now that she was an adult, almost ready to be a mother, she was happy to practice taking care of living things by taking care of Toby, though she expected humans were a great deal more trouble than eggs or hatchlings.
She emerged, fringed with dripping water, beating her wings and rising in place until she was high above the crater.
Aha! That would be the lady of the lair, she thought when she saw the other dragon circling the forest and village, swooping wide, her wings pumping like the heart of the sky.
Taz was about to investigate when the first of the search party stepped into the crater. She dove over the top and, wings folded, plummeted down toward the cleft in the foothills on the western side of the slope.
“There it is!” the man cried. “Did you see it? The Dragon Vitia! She just flew away. Where’d she go? I don’t see her now.”
Taz preened at being mistaken for the great dragon, who was much larger than she was. She hunkered among boulders trying to be boulder-like herself until the men went away and she could search for the entrance to the dragon lair and find Toby, who must already be there.
While she lurked, the rescuers gained the summit and entered the crater. They pounded and shouted and prevented her from growing too comfortable.
Somewhat later, someo
ne cried in an excited voice, “There she is! I thought we’d lost her but—yiiiii, that was close. My hat is smoking!”
This was followed by more excited cries and then the explosive sneeze of a firearm.
“I think I got her! See there! She’s circling the woods and it looks as if I hit her wing.”
Curious, Taz flew up to just beneath the lip of the crater. She didn’t want the men to see and fire at her, as they were obviously getting dangerous. She still didn’t hear Toby.
Peering up over the ledge, she saw two men standing among the herd animals. One of them held a metal object that smoked.
Taz circled the crater below its rim until she was at the high end, peering down this time.
The men had been busy. A length of rope extended from spikes driven into the ground down into the lava tube. While the two above were excited about seeing the Dragon Vitia, those below exclaimed over other issues, the cavern acting as an echo chamber magnifying their remarks.
“Beads!” a whiny-voiced one complained. “What kind of a dragon has beads in her hoard?”
“Proper dragons, the wild ones, I mean, are supposed to have gold and gemstones,” another human male said. “Crowns and ropes of pearls and suchlike.”
“And there’s no sign of her young. She must have taken them with her, but from the shed scales on that ledge, there are at least two.”
“No sign of the girl, either,” said a third.
“Who cares?” four voices demanded in unison, their disdain reverberating so that Taz thought even the Dragon Vitia, now brokenly circling the forest, could hear them.
“I do,” a female voice said, climbing up the trail below Taz with far more agility than might be expected of a lady of her years and size.
Ephemera and Taz
“Hello, dear,” Ephemera said in impeccable dragon-ish.
The dragon looked down at her from below the lip of the crater, then perched on the ledge to study her.
“You look too small and too young to be the Dragon Vitia. Also your color is not as I’ve heard hers described, though it’s very fetching indeed and suits you very well. You are also too old to be a recent hatchling.”
The dragon replied, “I’m here for my boy. Have you seen him?”
“Which boy would that be?”
The dragon bent her head toward the lake now partially covered with a huge striped jellyfish of balloon. “That is his. He is mine.”
“Can you give me his name? My name is Ephemera, by the way.”
“Taz,” said the dragon. “I am Taz. The boy is Toby.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “You are the ones accused of killing my nephew. My great niece Verity seems to think that’s nonsense, however. I don’t suppose you’ve seen her?”
“No,” Taz said simply, and looked back down the mountain again.
“I don’t believe either of them is in the cave,” Ephemera told her. “Nobody is, except that useless search party.”
Taz whimpered.
“However, I always find it helpful when searching for lost people in unknown territory, and I’ve had to do it more often than you might think from looking at me, is to follow the water. There is a waterfall cascading down the western face of the mountain and a river beneath the waterfall. This lake is probably connected to it in some way. There’s bound to be egress from the mountain and I should imagine Verity took advantage of that, possibly to escape the dragon?”
Taz looked toward the woods where the other dragon amplified her distress with cries of apparent pain as she flew in huge wide loops above the trees.
“Ah,” Ephemera said. With less huffing and puffing than was typical of humans, in Taz’s admittedly limited experience, the old woman had climbed the path high enough that she was almost at the spot where it angled down into the crater. “I see. The dragon has already left the mountain—well, that dragon, at least, so no need for Verity to escape her. The gentlemen reported signs inside there,” she indicated the opening to the lava tube, “of bones and more recent human habitation, Verity, no doubt, and also other, smaller dragons. The men don’t seem to be seeing Verity, however. The folk in the village have privately expressed doubts to me that the Dragon Vitia is the maiden muncher these men seem to believe, though I doubt the villagers would tell them that because it might discourage a burgeoning tourist trade. Whatever her reasons, my niece seems to have chosen to depart before her rescuers could arrive.”
Before she could say another word, and she seemed to say quite a lot of them, Taz flew up over her, and gently used her teeth to firmly grasp the neck of the old lady’s garment, without scorching either the garment or its occupant.
“Thank you for the lift, Taz dear,” Ephemera said, “but I think my gown might tear if you try to carry me by it—also the front of it is strangling me. There, I’ll hold on to your claw, how’s that?”
Chapter 26
Vitia’s Bait
Taz found she could carry the old woman with her feet, which she did not need for flight, spreading her toes to make a passenger seat. The Dragon Vitia continued looping the sky above the forest, and had now amplified her heartbroken cries. The mother dragon would be afraid the men she wasn’t luring from her lair would find her young.
Taz thought she should go tell Vitia that the hatchlings were out of the caverns, according to the old lady, but since she couldn’t say where they were, perhaps she’d just stay out of it for now.
First find Toby.
A man poked his head out of the hole in the crater and stepped out from the entrance. Vitia cried again, in case the men didn’t get her message, “Here I am, a helpless injured dragon, come and get me.” Taz admired her performance, but recognized it for the decoy that it was.
Making very loud noises of his own, the man ran back to the hole and called to the men below.
As he helped the other men climb out, Ephemera said, “Good,” in her impeccable Dragon-ish and Taz carried her across the crater to the western face, opposite Vitia’s circuit, and over the edge. “They’ll take her bait and if my guess is right, her children, your boy, and my niece should be making their escape in the opposite direction. Ah! There’s the waterfall, and there, you see, the river. Taz, dear, follow that stream!”
The Mewing Marshes
When Toby sat up, spitting water, the twins thought it was a game and ran back into the river to splash him and Verity.
Dragons did not mind the cold and failed to notice that fresh slushy snow had begun splatting down onto the bare ground and dirty piled drifts from the previous winter.
When Verity said, “Stop that!” perhaps more sharply than was necessary, the twins gave the dragonish equivalent of harrumph and flew away. Her cries of, “Wait! Can’t you light us a fire before you go?” went unheeded. Her bead pupils were growing in dignity as well as width and breadth, and she had offended them.
“We’d better keep moving,” Toby said, rising to his feet.
“But they’ll come back and find us gone,” she said.
“They’re dragons. They’ll cope. Trust me. My best friend is a dragon.”
“I suppose so, but they’ve spent their whole lives in that cavern.”
“Don’t fret. They’ll be hunting. Taz hunts now.”
“She does? They haven’t hunted for themselves before either, you know. They’ve eaten the livestock sacrifices the herdsmen leave for them and their mum, but I don’t think they know how…”
“They’ll figure it out. Taz had never eaten anything but that cursed kibble before and as soon as she got hungry, she learned.”
Although Verity didn’t ask, as they walked Toby explained to her why he had referred to the kibble as cursed.
“I had no idea,” she said. “I wonder if my parents did?”
“Probably,” he said. “Dragons are big business and that seems to be part of it. I was gobsmacked. I always thought the kibble was more nutritious and better for them than the meat. We were taught that eating kibble helped control t
heir blood lust and kept down the parasites and such.”
The riverbank eroded into puddles and marshes that sucked their wet boots and made walking feel like wading through cold molasses. Soon they were spending more time going around pools, puddles, and sunken bits than they were going forward, until they lost sight of the river altogether and, looking around, found they were among large trees encrusted with vines and burls. The branches wept in the manner of willows, dripping water, vines, and other far less wholesome things.
“No snow, at least,” Toby said.
“No. No sunlight, either,” she said, for they were in deep shadow.
“No bird song.”
“Oh wait, there’s one,” she said, hearing a mewling from high above them.
This was answered by another mewling and some of the thicker dripping vines began switching back and forth in an agitated fashion.
She recoiled, “Snakes!” she cried, until a low hanging one hit her jaw. It was soft, warm, and felt like velvet rope. Without thinking about what she was doing, she reached up to grab it.
“Ow! It bit me!” she cried, as blood seeped from her scalp wound and down into her eyes. Despite the feel, it did indeed seem to be a snake, and was now hissing worse than an over-heated teakettle. Bright golden eyes suddenly looked straight into hers, and fangs gleamed in the dim light. Curiously, the fangs were set into rows of small sharp teeth.
Suddenly the forest swarmed with golden eyes, snapping ropes, hissing, and uncanny yowls.
“What hellish place have we ventured into?” Toby cried, covering his head as another rope smacked into him.
“I don’t know. There’s something strange about these snakes, though.”
Fearfully, she reached out and touched another of the ropes. It was horizontally striped and felt—well, furry.
The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad Page 23