“Hold still,” the anchorite said, “and relax.” She held the section of brown, woody vine close to Cayce’s head. The braid twitched and slithered from Kula’s hand to Cayce’s scalp, encircling the girl’s forehead like a crown. When its ends met on the far side of her head, the wood tightened, pulling Cayce’s long white hair away from her face and pinning it tightly to her skull.
A tingling sensation spread out from the wooden band. Cayce could feel it sizzling through her skull and down her spine. It radiated out toward her damaged hand and her swollen knee. Her crushed fingers straightened with cracking sounds that were even louder in Cayce’s ears than the original breaks. The knee popped violently back into place, and the swelling deflated like a punctured bladder of air.
The pain of Kula’s healing magic was also more intense than the original injuries, but when the searing agony faded Cayce found herself with two good legs and ten working digits. She resisted the urge to flex them, as Kula was clearly waiting for her to do so.
“Consider that a gesture of good will,” Kula said. The giantess’s face darkened. “And a friendly warning: Don’t betray us again.” Kula raised and lowered her thick eyebrows, and a rich green glow shone behind her eyes. In response, Cayce’s new headband contracted painfully around her skull but quickly eased off to leave a dull throbbing ache.
Overwhelmed and almost numb, Cayce shook her head. Kula had made her point: Cayce was now thoroughly obliged to help them reach the dragon. Master Rus had been correct in his dislike of military and religious fanatics. As clients they were like pixies—best avoided.
“If I do this for you,” Cayce said. “If I lead you there and you get in position before he comes back… will you let me go?”
“That’s a big ‘if.’ And even if, I wouldn’t count on it if I were you.”
“But it’s possible?”
“Anything is possible,” Kula said.
Cayce sighed. It wasn’t much, but it was the only option she had. “Let’s go, then.”
With Vaan hovering close behind, Cayce took the lead and began marching up the ridge. Never work with pixies, she thought, or fanatics. Not following his own good advice had cost Rus his life, but Cayce was determined it would not cost her hers as well.
Vaan stopped her just before she reached the top of the ridge to give the others time to gather behind them. As planned, the dour pixie then soared up and over the ridge to make sure the way was clear.
Huddled on the rock between a soldier and Kula, Cayce felt a rush of confidence that had nothing to do with her fellow party members. She had seen how high the dragon had flown after killing Rus, how fast and how far he went without so much as a glance back for his mountain home. Cayce was sure Vaan would find nothing—right now, this was where the dragon definitely wasn’t, and that was always the safest place to be. Whatever was going to happen to her, to them all, wasn’t going to happen here.
Indeed, Vaan’s “all clear” signal came whistling over the ridge in a matter of moments. Hask ordered two of his soldiers to stand watch over Cayce, then he, Kula, Boom, and the other soldiers went over the ridge. They were silent as they moved, quickly surging across the rocky ground. Boom fell behind, and one of the soldiers eased up to keep pace, but the others moved straight to the pile of rubble the dragon’s exit had created. Cayce watched as they climbed to the smoking crater halfway up.
Kula dived into the crater with her fists clenched straight out in front of her. Hask quickly pushed his soldier clear just as a massive boulder flew out of the pit. Kula whooped triumphantly from the rocky mound’s interior. Soon more great stones and more loud whoops flew from the hole as Boom and the other soldier finally rejoined their comrades.
Hask stood and peered down into the hole. Nodding, he turned and signaled the men guarding Cayce. Without hesitation they each took hold of her and hoisted her into the air. Vaan’s strong arms hooked under hers, and Cayce was borne up toward the mound, her feet barely skimming the tops of broken stones as she went.
Without pausing at the lip, Vaan carried Cayce through the hole and into the darkened interior of the mound. The dragon’s body and Kula’s magic-enhanced might had cleared a wide path through the pile of rocks that led straight back to the original tunnel. Marching feet followed Cayce as she soared along, but they fell far behind as Vaan took her back into the intact section of the tunnel.
The pixie brought them up short, furiously beating his wings to hover just shy of Kula. The anchorite blocked most of the path just by standing in it, deep in meditation with her hands folded. She had smeared some sort of luminescent moss on the cave walls, which bathed the entire tunnel in a low, emerald-green light. Tendrils of the moss quickly spread along the tunnel walls, stretching deep into the labyrinthine depths of the mountain itself.
Cayce spoke. “What are—”
Vaan tightened his grip on her, and Kula grunted warningly. Annoyed, Cayce tried to shrug herself free and earned an angry hiss from the pixie.
“He is not here.” Kula opened her eyes and grinned. “Or perhaps his unnatural life is so alien that even I cannot sense him. It hardly matters which. We are going in.”
The soldiers’ feet were very close now. Vaan let Cayce go, and she stepped up to Kula.
“You don’t need me any more,” she said. “I want you to let me go.”
“Not yet. Not until we reach the dragon’s nest and you yourself have triggered any traps.”
“What? Why? I mean, why me?”
Kula closed her eyes again. “You still have an aura of secrets about you, my dear. You’re afraid, as are we all… but there’s something else in you, too.” The huge woman opened her eyes. “You smell like scheming to me.”
“Is that how Master Rus smelled before he put you all to sleep? How is it you didn’t smell that?”
Kula shrugged, unperturbed. “Your wretched master always smelled of trickery and deceit. It was hard to separate the lies he told us from those he continually told himself.”
“Look.” Cayce lowered her voice, rasping like a cauldron hag. “I smell like scheming because I am scheming. I’m scheming to get away from here alive. That’s all.”
Kula laughed, her deep voice musical and rich. “Now that I believe. There’s no lying in you when you say that.”
“Then why won’t you let me go?”
“Because you have secrets.” Kula’s tone was patient, implacable. “And my life—all our lives—might depend on what those secrets are, if and when they are revealed. It’s only right that you help reap their bounty. Ah, here’s Captain Hask.”
The officer and his squad came over the jagged rocks into the tunnel. The stones almost gave way under Boom’s weight but the golem was easily able to keep his balance and take his position among the soldiers.
Kula gestured at Cayce, and the apprentice’s headband squeezed her temples.
“After you,” the anchorite said. Vaan floated up, his white eyes wide and intense, and he hovered alongside Cayce.
Cayce screwed up her courage and faced the interior of the mountain. The tunnel looked very different with a green glow illuminating it, but the way was clear. There weren’t that many branches in the main path, and it was a simple matter to backtrack the dragon’s course. They truly did not need her to lead them anymore, and Cayce cursed the anchorite’s suspicion. No matter how well-founded it was, it was still going to get Cayce killed.
She also knew she was on the right track when she found the remains of Rus’s crystal skull. The caustic agent inside had definitely been released, but it had not affected the dragon. The skull in here and the black crystal outside: That made two of Rus’s best efforts utterly wasted and without effect. Was the dragon somehow proof against poisons in general?
The tunnel angled down sharply, and the temperature of the surrounding walls began to rise. The heat had affected Kula’s moss, causing much of it to wither and brown. The part that remained still emitted light, but the light had an angry reddish tint.
Though it was still a wide space and roomy enough for all of Hask’s troops to march side-by-side, Cayce felt uncomfortably closed in. She pressed on, dimly realizing that it wasn’t the feeling of an entire mountain bearing down on her that unnerved her. No, what got to Cayce was the very clear sensation of an enormous open space nearby, a hollow pocket in this otherwise unbroken wedge of solid stone. Was it an instinctual reaction to something that shouldn’t be there, she wondered? Or was it a rational reaction to the party’s arrival at their foolish destination?
The air grew cooler, and the glowing moss recovered its green-hued vigor. Vaan faltered behind her, hesitating just as Cayce stepped into the wide, open chamber. Thus she was the first to see the dragon’s nest, eerily green in the light of Kula’s magic.
She had seen treasure troves before, but none on this scale and none as cluttered and disorganized. Huge mounds of coins stamped from gold, watersilver, argentum, and other precious metals were all around the chamber, heaped against the walls or scattered into irregular piles. Precious gems were sprinkled among the coins without regard to color, size, or quality. There were hundreds of pieces of polished armor and thousands of fine weapons, all carelessly cast around a raised rectangular platform at the far end of the room. Expertly carved statues were piled roughly atop one another, each marred by cracks, scorch marks, or broken limbs.
Cayce peered closer and took an involuntary step backward. There was more than one kind of trophy in this hoard. The dragon’s chaotic expanse of wealth and treasure was also rich in the bodies of its victims—the nest-trove was salted and seeded with an uncountable number of humanoid bones.
Vaan joined her then, followed by Kula and the soldiers. Cayce did not look back but instead continued to scan the grisly fortune. There were more than people bones here. Some were big enough to belong to ogres, others small, numerous, and twisted enough to represent an entire goblin tribe. Oddest of all, there seemed to be an entire dragon skeleton nestled among the rotting wooden remnants of a merchant’s barge. In the dim green light, Cayce could make out a complete monster: spine, ribs, wings, limbs, and tail. The only thing missing was the skull.
“That standard.” Captain Hask was staring through red-rimmed eyes. He pointed up at a gleaming white stone statue of a two-headed eagle affixed to a polished birch pole. “That was bestowed upon my garrison by the king himself. Trooper Fost!”
The oldest of the soldiers snapped to attention. “Sir!”
“Retrieve the eagle standard at once.”
“Sir!”
But Vaan fluttered in front of Trooper Fost before the soldier could take a single step.
“We should stick to the plan, Captain.” Kula stepped smoothly in between Vaan and the officer. “The beast could come back at any moment. We want to be standing by and ready to strike when he returns, not reclaiming stolen property. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Hask glowered, but he nodded and ordered the soldier to stand down.
“Sir?” Trooper Fost asked. “Where do you want to position the golem?”
A low, dry chuckle rolled down from the upper reaches of the chamber. The sound was smooth, cultured, and confident.
Cayce’s body went cold. Nearby, Vaan’s apprehension seemed to physically weigh him down as he nervously descended to the tunnel floor.
“Better decide quick, Captain,” Cayce said.
The shadows high above were undiminished by Kula’s glowing moss and were as solid and as impenetrable as the mountain. The dragon’s voice rolled down, lush, warm, and playful. “Another unexpected guest gains entry to my home.”
Kula’s eyes grew wide, and her face twisted in raw anticipation. Beside her Hask loosened the sword on his back and began unwrapping the white linen shroud. With a few flicks of his eyes and jerks of his head, he sent the soldiers and Boom hustling across to the closest chamber wall.
The dragon spoke again. “Am I so wretched a host? So unfriendly that no one thinks to solicit an invitation before dropping by, for fear of rejection? Are my manners so coarse, so vulgar that visitors feel they have to impose upon my hospitality in secret, rather than risk a formal introduction?”
Cayce turned to the pixie, but Vaan only offered his customary helpless shrug.
“He’s repeating itself,” Cayce hissed to Kula. “That’s exactly what he said to me when I came in alone.”
“So what?” Kula did not take her eyes off the expanse of darkness above them.
“So it must mean something. Maybe something we can use.”
“Maybe.” The anchorite shrugged and her lids drifted closed. “Maybe not.”
“Perhaps you did send word of your impending arrival,” the dragon said, his voice precisely as bright and genial as it had been before when he said these words. The sound echoed off the walls of the broad chamber, and it proved impossible to fix on the eloquent beast’s location even as he bantered on.
“Perhaps you weren’t being presumptuous. Perhaps you are instead a victim of some courier’s indolence. Is that it, my new young friend? Did you send word that you’d be coming, only to precede the herald who would have announced you?”
For Cayce, there was no longer any doubt: note for note, these were the exact same words said the exact same way. She was unable to see what this information meant, however, or how she could use it to escape.
The hidden serpent skipped a line, but otherwise kept to his earlier script and said, “Vaan? Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”
Vaan whimpered at the sound of his name on his master’s lips. The pixie clapped his clenched fists over his ears and sank to his knees.
“Stop him,” he moaned. “Now, damn you, now!”
Kula’s wide eyes slammed open. Her hair bulged outward, shattering the wooden braid that restrained it.
“Done,” the anchorite said. With a full-throated roar, Kula sprang up into the darkness and vanished from sight.
Something crashed loudly, and the dragon let out a startled half-roar. A flash of blue light flickered, revealing the monster’s position: He was clinging to the far side of the chamber ceiling, his long neck twisted around so that he was leering down at them from almost directly overhead. He was polished and perfect again, gleaming blue-white in the dank cavern air.
Kula’s leap had carried her within grappling distance of the sinewy coils, and she had wrapped herself around the dragon’s throat. Both arms and both legs were squeezing as hard as they could.
“Ho, vile machine!” she howled. “Unnatural beast! Let loose your lightning now and let’s see how you fare when it gets caught in your throat!” She squeezed harder still, compressing the dragon’s neck into less than half its normal size. “Fire, you coward, fire!”
Cayce was no anchorite, and she didn’t understand forest magic, but she knew a losing strategy when she saw it. Even if Kula could hold back the dragon’s blast by kinking his throat like a water hose, what would protect Kula? She was right on the site of the blockage. When this hose ruptured, she would take the brunt of the dragon’s white-hot blast full in the face.
Cayce’s scalp itched under the wooden braid. Without Kula, what would control the headband that was controlling Cayce? Maybe the anchorite sacrificing herself to kill the dragon wasn’t such a bad result for the poisoner’s apprentice.
But the dragon didn’t summon its fire. Instead, he curled his head back and rolled Kula up in his coils to smother the anchorite just as she choked him. Kula was freakishly strong, but she was dwarfed by the dragon’s body—she simply disappeared under a muscular column of blue-white scales.
“Deploy the golem,” Hask said. He gestured with his fist and said, “Battering ram, on my mark.” Boom came to life, fire and smoke belching from his mouth and eyes. Under Hask and the soldier’s direction, the heavy stone man lumbered to the far wall under Kula and the dragon. Boom planted his feet, pivoted at the waist, and slammed his right fist into the chamber wall.
The wall all
but disintegrated under the golem’s heavy fist. A long, thin crack raced up the wall, and the entire chamber shook. The crack slid under one of the dragon’s taloned feet, and that foot came away from the wall in a cloud of dust and broken rock.
This slight shift in the dragon’s weight gave Kula all the opening she needed. Howling afresh, she somehow managed to twist herself away from the ceiling. Without leverage, without comparable weight, Kula pulled herself out of the dragon’s coils even as she dragged him from his perch.
Screeching hideously, the beast resisted. He clung to the ceiling with his last few toes until Kula’s strength finally overcame him. Then dragon and anchorite both fell from that great height and crashed through the chamber floor. There, unseen, they continued to thrash among a cascade of rare coins, precious jewels, and old, broken bones that poured down on them from above.
More oily dust rose from the treasure and fell from the walls as tremors spread outward from the two titans in their pit. Kula whooped again and a dread, rhythmic pounding began, shaking bits of chamber wall free as Kula and the dragon exchanged blows.
Cayce kept her footing and covered her mouth against the thick cloud of dust. Vaan had been jostled onto his side, and she reached him just as the pixies wings were helping him right himself.
Cayce grabbed him by the wrist before he could rise out of reach. “Why is he repeating himself?” she shouted. Vaan only shook her loose and flitted off, darting between falling rocks toward the relative safety of the merchant’s barge. Cayce took one last look at the unseen pounding in the center of the chamber then dashed after the pixie. The ship’s broken beams wouldn’t provide perfect protection against a cave-in, but they were better than nothing.
Just as Cayce reached the tangle of shattered planks and broken decking, a powerful shockwave sent her hurtling through the air. Cayce covered her face with her arms as she crashed through the side of the merchant ship. If the bulkhead hadn’t been so old and flimsy, Cayce might have been smeared across it. Instead she burst through the rotten wooden wall almost without resistance. She landed on her back and skidded painfully across the cave floor, bruised instead of broken.
Dragons- Worlds Afire Page 17