“You could not have,” said Dreqnir, reading her thoughts. “Do not blame yourself.”
The girl adjusted the glasses to their magnifying setting, allowing her to see things far more closely than before. She saw men walking between the balloon ships, carrying barrels and crates across narrow gangways, and she wondered how they seemed so sure of their steps so far above the ground. She saw a man and a woman appearing to argue over a purple cloak, the man pulling on one end and the woman on the other, until the man lost his grip and fell over backward. He rose, shaking his fist at the woman, and stomped away. She saw a man in a turban on a pedestal, standing next to a man in shackles and tattered clothes. A group of men and a few women stood in front of the podium; one would occasionally raise a hand, then another would do the same. Finally, one of them stepped forward and took custody of the shackled man, shoving him roughly forward in front of them.
She saw no sign of the Dragon Queen or King Nicholas.
Disappointed, Elizabeth decided to adjust the spectacles again, this time to the setting she had failed to use before: She wanted to see things as they truly were. Moving the lenses up and down until she found the right combination, and the resulting picture was very different than what she’d seen before. Each small figure aboard the floating ships was surrounded by a faint glow or aura, all in varied colors. Many of them were dark gray or even black, and this, she surmised, meant they were somehow of questionable character. Considering what Dreqnir had said about the place being a haven for thieves and unscrupulous merchants, this hardly seemed surprising. A few auras were red; a few were yellow, and one or two were blue. The red seemed fiery, and she could tell by the body language of those with such auras that they were angry. The yellow fluctuated, and individuals with this color seemed to have a spring in their step: They were happy. The blue auras surrounded people who seemed to be standing or sitting still: They were at peace.
Elizabeth didn’t think she was figuring this all out on her own. Somehow, it felt as if the spectacles were guiding her interpretations.
“Halt!”
The dragon jumped at the unexpected sound of a voice from behind them. So did the girl. They had both been so preoccupied with the scene across the valley, they hadn’t heard footfalls approach from their backside. They hadn’t noticed the stone stairway up the side of the mountain or the cave that led inside it. They were so intent on preserving the element of surprise, they even considered the possibility of being caught by surprise themselves.
“Halt!” the voice repeated.
“We’re not moving,” said the dragon.
Elizabeth opened the invisible bubble barrier over her sleigh and climbed out. The air here so high on the mountain was even colder, if possible, than it had been at the North Pole Village. But even as the chill air sought to burrow its way up inside her wool-and-velvet coat, her attention was consumed by the stout and sturdy figure before her, who held an impressive spear, tipped with a large obsidian point. That point was just a few inches from Elizabeth’s chest.
She backed up a step, and the spearpoint followed.
The girl studied the person on the other end. A gray-white parka, thick pants, heavy boots and a cream-colored wool scarf covered every bit of skin except the newcomer’s amber eyes. But perhaps most significant was the color of the aura that emanated from spear-wielder. figure. It was not black, like the aura around the cold-hearted thieves on the balloon ships; it was gray. She’d seen that color around some of the others, and she had thought it might mean the person was on the way to turning black. Perhaps that was so, she admitted, but there was something else, as well—something closer to the truth of it: There was sadness. She could see it behind her eyes. And this close, she could feel as well as see it. It felt like a waterfall of tears, held back by a dam of pure conviction. Without the spectacles, she would never have noticed it; with them, it was impossible to ignore.
“You are our prisoners,” the newcomer said, her voice cool and steely.
Yes, it was a “her.” Elizabeth had thought the voice was a woman’s when she first heard it, but she hadn’t been sure. Now she was, though.
“I would be careful where you point that thing, if I were you,” Dreqnir warned. His voice was just as cool, but with an undercurrent of warning. “You are one small human. I am one rather substantial dragon.” To illustrate his point, he reared his head back and sent a fountain of flame into the air. A few sparks came flickering and fluttering downward, fizzling as they hit the snowy ground.
“I would be careful if I were you,” the spear-wielder countered. “You are not our only prisoners. We hold your mother, as well. If I do not return, he will know why, and your queen will pay the price.”
“We? He?” Dreqnir snorted. “I see only you. You’re bluffing. I don’t think anyone else even knows you’re here.”
“He knows. He sees,” the woman said simply.
“She’s telling the truth,” said Elizabeth. She knew because the spectacles were telling her so. Not verbally; it was just a feeling. But it was as plain as the evernight sky was dark.
Dreqnir eyed her skeptically, then sighed.
Elizabeth looked back at the woman. “What is your name?” she asked.
“That is unimportant.”
“You are not unimportant,” Elizabeth countered. “I believe you are very, very important indeed.”
The woman said nothing.
“My name is Elizabeth.”
The woman moved her mouth slightly, forming syllables that were barely audible: “Illian.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Illian,” said Elizabeth. “Why are you sad?”
The spearpoint quivered slightly, because the woman’s hand shook. She was young, Elizabeth could tell, barely more than a child herself. “I am not sad,” she said as evenly as possible, but Elizabeth heard her voice quiver, ever so slightly, as well.
“I know you are,” said Elizabeth. “I can tell. You are alone.”
“I am not,” the spearmaiden protested, louder and more emphatically. “He is always with me. He sees me. He knows me.”
“And that makes you feel more alone,” Dreqnir said.
The girl did not answer.
“Who is this ‘he’?”
“Father Time,” Illian said.
“Nigel,” Dreqnir snorted. “I should have known.”
“It is not your place to speak his name!” Illian nearly shouted.
Elizabeth took another step backward.
She shouldn’t have.
She didn’t know she was standing near the edge of the stone outcropping, which was the only thing separating her feet from the valley far below. As one of her feet met with air, she stumbled and tried to right herself, but she was so badly off-balance she couldn’t keep herself from starting to fall. Pebbles dislodged from the outcropping skittered and fell toward the ground thousands of feet beneath her. She felt everything give way, and in the same instant, she saw Illian thrust the spearpoint forward.
Instinctively, the girl reached out with flailing arms, her fingers finding the wooden spear and wrapping themselves around it.
Holding on.
Desperately.
She felt herself being pulled back up until her knees sank into the snow that blanketed the outcropping: solid ground.
She let go of the spear and bent forward, head in hands.
And began to weep.
“I just... want to... go home,” she cried, tears running down her face from behind her magical glasses between sobs. The spectacles themselves were fogging up so that she couldn’t see anything but the white of the snow and the black of the sky. “I... can’t do this anymore.”
She felt a gloved hand grasp hers and pull her to her feet.
“Yes, you can.” Illian’s voice was soft but determined. “If I can, you can, too.”
Elizabeth took off the spectacles and wiped her eyes with her own gloved hand, meeting Illian’s eyes. There was something more than sadness there n
ow. There was sympathy. She knew that in a flash it would be gone, and the spear would be pointed at her once again, so she asked:
“How? How do you do it? Stay strong?”
Illian stood up straighter. “By knowing two things: That I am living today, and that tomorrow might be better.”
“Yes.” Elizabeth sniffed and nodded. “Just that.”
“But we must not forget our yesterdays,” said Dreqnir.
Illian nodded but did not answer him directly. “This way,” she said.
Elizabeth noticed she did not raise her spear again, but instead walked ahead of them, trusting them to follow. They were no longer her prisoners, though she did not admit as much directly. If Lord Nigel truly had the means to watch them, Elizabeth understood why.
Illian led them down a few steps and into the cave they had missed seeing before. A passage led them downward through a narrow passage in a kind of crooked spiral—narrow, at least, for a dragon of Dreqnir’s size. He had to slither along like a snake on his belly to make it through some of the closer quarters. Lanterns lit the way at regular intervals, casting shadows against the gray stone rock. It was warmer here than on the outside, and Elizabeth was glad to be beyond the reach of the chill, high Nordic wind. She wondered if they were being led into a trap, but the spectacles hadn’t alerted her of any danger and, when she glanced at the compass, it showed they were going in the right direction: toward where the Dragon Queen was being held. What the compass couldn’t tell her was how close—or far away—she was.
“Where are we?” Elizabeth asked.
“Underfall,” Illian said, without further explanation. Elizabeth wondered why it might be called that, but she didn’t ask. She sensed that Illian only had patience for a few questions, and she wanted to make sure the ones she posed were important.
As she was thinking this, one popped into her head that she sensed was important.
“Where is your family?”
“Dead,” said Illian, her voice cold.
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know. When he brought me here, he told me his brother, Nicholas, took them away because I had been bad. He said he would make Nicholas pay for taking them away, and if I was good and did what he told me, he might be able to find them.”
“Liar!” Dreqnir roared, rearing up and bumping his head on the roof of the tunnel. They had come to a wider less-cramped section of the tunnel, but the ceiling was still low enough that he had to crouch down slightly for it to accommodate his massive frame.
“Ouch,” he said.
Elizabeth stopped and grabbed hold of Illian’s hand, forcing her to stop, too. “It doesn’t work like that,” she said. “Dreqnir’s right. Nigel has been lying to you.”
Illian tried to pull away from Elizabeth and opened her mouth to protest—but said nothing. The girl held her hand fast. “I’m not going to let you go,” Elizabeth said. “I know you have a good heart.”
Illian stopped struggling. “How do you know?” she said finally.
Elizabeth was tempted to tell her about the spectacles, but decided it was best that she keep that to herself for now.
“You could have let me fall over that cliff, but you didn’t. You saved me.”
“Hmmph,” said Illian. “Reflexes.”
Elizabeth smiled a half-smile and waited for the more important question.
At last it came: “And how do you know Father Time is lying to me?”
“Because he doesn’t care about you, or anyone, being away from their family. If he did, he wouldn’t have taken Dreqnir’s mother from her.”
The dragon bowed his head and half-closed his eyes.
“And he would not have taken Nicholas from his wife. She is so worried now because she does not know where he is. All she wants is for him to be back home with her.”
Illian’s eyes narrowed. “He deserved to be taken because of what he did to my parents!”
Dreqnir raised his head again. “Or what Nigel did himself and blamed on Nicholas,” the dragon said. “You only blame Nicholas because of something Nigel told you. Did he show you any proof?”
“No...” Illian admitted slowly. “But he took me in. He has been nothing but kind to me.”
“As kind as your parents were?” the dragon pressed her.
“I don’t remember,” she said coldly. “He told me to forget about them.”
“I thought he told you he would try to find them for you,” Elizabeth said.
“He did.” Illian looked confused. “I don’t know.”
What else had he told her? Elizabeth remembered something she had said earlier: that Nigel somehow magically knew what Illian was doing. Elizabeth had seen what Nigel could do and had accepted it at face value. More important, the spectacles had told her that Illian was telling the truth when she’d said he was watching her every move. But what if she only thought she was telling the truth? What if she believed it was the truth, but it wasn’t? The spectacles might not be able to tell the difference.
“You said he knows you’re here,” Elizabeth said. “You said he’s always with you and can see what you’re doing. How do you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, how do you know?” Elizabeth repeated.
“Because he told me.”
Dreqnir’s eyes widened slightly, and he seemed suddenly more alert. “Another lie,” he said as the realization dawned on him. “He does not know we’re here. If he did, he would have heard what we’ve been saying—and sent his guards to stop us.”
Illian stiffened, tightening her grip on the spear. “Are you saying he does not trust me to keep you in my custody?”
“He trusted you to trick us into going with you, and he trusted us to fall for it,” Dreqnir said. “It almost worked. Almost.”
He nodded toward Elizabeth. “I believe we still have the element of surprise on our side.”
His tail whipped around in an instant and knocked the spear from Illian’s grip. It went rattling over the floor of the tunnel and off into a darkened corner.
Illian lunged for it, but a giant dragon paw slammed down on the floor between her and the weapon.
She shouted in rage.
“Wait!” cried Elizabeth.
The two both stopped and looked at her.
“I think we should let her have it,” the girl said.
“What?” The dragon was bewildered.
“I think we should have it,” Elizabeth repeated. “I trust her.”
“But why...?”
“You said it yourself. She really thought Nigel could see everything she was doing, but she helped us anyway.”
Dreqnir nodded begrudgingly.
“She trusted Nigel, but something inside her told her she shouldn’t. That’s why she helped us. But she doesn’t trust us, either. Why should she? She doesn’t know us at all!”
The dragon nodded. He could see what she was thinking.
“So, if we trust her, we give her a reason to trust us,” he said.
Elizabeth jumped excitedly and clapped. “Yes!” she said, clambering up and across the dragon’s paw and retrieving the spear. After laying hold of it, she clambered back the other way and strode up to Illian.
She handed her the spear. “This is yours,” she said.
Illian looked even more confused than before, but she finally said simply, “Thank you.”
As Elizabeth watched, she saw the spearmaiden’s aura change from gray to yellow-gold.
...
Chapter Sixteen
Piping Up
The sound of the flute’s music filled the Minute-Hour’s prison. The lilting melody was hypnotic and seemed to draw all those within the sound of it closer.
Ruffus stopped sniffing around the edges of the enclosure.
Alex stepped back toward the table, as well.
Isis purred and jumped down from his shoulder, padding silently across the floor toward Asterion, her eyes opening and closing sleepily.
<
br /> “What is that tune?” the feline asked.
Asterion didn’t answer her; he just kept playing.
And his three guests kept moving toward him in a stupor, even as something inside of Alex tugged at the back of his mind, trying to warn him.
A flute.
A flute.
Where had he heard about a flute?
Had it not been for the music, he would have known immediately. But the tune was crowding everything else out of his mind, leaving room for it alone. There was something magical about it that kept all other thoughts at bay. Absently, he reached into his pocket, and his hand found the Lou Gehrig baseball card. It was a reminder that, no matter what, he had to keep trying. No matter how long it took. If Lou Gehrig could play in more than 2,100 consecutive baseball games, he—Alex—could play this magical game to its conclusion. As these thoughts entered his head, they shattered the music’s spell over him, and he remembered: The Flute of Pan’s Third Daughter! It was the talisman he’d been looking for, and now, fortuitously, he’d stumbled upon it.
Of course, there was the problem of being stuck here at the center of the maze, but having the talisman was better than not having it... if he could get it away from the Minute-Hour.
That was a big “if.”
He realized Asterion was using the flute to draw him forward, most likely so he could catch and eat him. He also realized that, if the Minute-Hour thought he was still under the music’s spell...
The boy kept moving forward at a slow and steady pace, maintaining the same placid expression on his face and glazed look in his eyes. Asterion’s attention was focused on the flute, his bull head bobbing slightly as his fingers danced over the holes in the instrument. Alex knew he would have to time things perfectly; the Minute-Hour was larger—much larger—than he was, and his plan would only work if he was quicker. He would have to make his move before Asterion raised his eyes.
The Talismans of Time (Academy of the Lost Labyrinth Book 1) Page 14