Still, we would have to find a way.
We swooped low over the treetops, following the pink torchlight that showed the way to the underground chamber. It wasn’t visible until you were nearly on top of it, so I felt the jolt as one of Shardas’s spears caught in a tree and he had to drag it free. All around us, spoiling our silent, menacing entrance, were the sounds of tails and spears snagging trees, and even the occasional murmured curse.
But then we were there, with the ring of pink torches lighting the clearing beneath us, and the rift in the ground plainly visible not only because of the torches and the moonlight, but also because of the orange glow from deep below.
“That’s it,” I said to Shardas, unnecessarily.
Clasping the spears tight, he arrowed down into the crevice. We were both blinded by the smoke, and I counted to five before calling for him to halt, not wanting to find myself plunged into the river of molten rock or smashed on the floor.
He backwinged, bringing us out of the smoke and to one side about two man-heights from the floor. Leontes, Niva, and Feniul came down after us, crowding the chamber despite its size. I calculated that about a dozen local dragons could fit inside it, but with four of my friends, there was not enough room to spread their wings. They all began to drop to the floor, careful of the river of lava, and of Velika, who lay on her rustic couch, shuddering.
“Velika!” I kicked at Shardas’s neck as though he were a horse, urging him toward her.
Something was wrong: her sides heaved and her tail beat an anxious tattoo on the rough stone floor. Her eyes were shut and her jaws clenched with pain.
“What’s happening?”
“The eggs!” Shardas’s voice was full of anguish. “Our eggs!”
Leontes leaped over the burning rift in the floor and rushed to Velika’s side, Hagen clinging white-faced to his neck. Niva was on his heels, after sending Feniul back to the surface to order the others to stand guard. She crouched at Velika’s head and began a soothing croon. Did dragons have midwives? If so, I couldn’t imagine a better pair than an alchemist and a no-nonsense female with a clutch of children of her own.
But Shardas did not go to his mate’s side. Shardas sagged there, on the wrong side of the burning river, and stared. The black glass spears clattered to the rock floor, and a terrible keening cry broke from him.
I swung down from his neck. “What’s wrong?”
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“We cannot move her now,” he moaned. “She, and the eggs, will have to stay here. ”
I looked at him, then at Velika, then at Luka, who had climbed down from Niva and come to stand beside me. I twisted the ends of my sash. We couldn’t leave her here; there had to be a way to get her to safety.
“A net?” My voice was a squeak. “You could carry her out in a net, couldn’t you?”
“Absolutely not,” Niva barked. “Leave the poor thing alone to have her clutch!” She looked daggers at Shardas. “And you: get over here and comfort her. Now. ”
When Niva used that tone of voice, you obeyed, whether you were the king of the dragons or not. Shardas lifted me over the rift, and then hopped over himself. He went to Velika’s head, stroking her brow and murmuring to her, and Niva took up position near the queen’s foreclaws, holding them tightly. Hagen, Luka, and I stood there, not certain what we should do.
“Well,” Luka said, clearing his throat. “Er. ”
“How long until she and the babies can be moved?” Hagen asked the most useful question. “And how long until they hatch, anyway?”
“Three months until they hatch,” said Leontes, and we humans groaned. “But they can be moved before then. In two weeks or so. ”
“Two weeks?” I frowned. “Why not now? What difference will two weeks make?”
“The eggs will not be hard when they come out,” Leontes said. “But in two weeks they will be like the thickest stoneware. ”
“Like stoneware? Hardly!” Darrym came out of the passage at the back of the chamber, the one that I had once again failed to watch. “Moving them would be murder at any stage! They are more delicate than birds’ eggs. ”
Leontes gave him an arch look. “It seems that you suffer from the brittle- egg sickness, as well as your other problems, then. ”
“Brittle- egg sickness?” Darrym’s strut faltered at that.
Leontes waved a claw at the noxious cloud of smoke. “I suspect that the gases from the volcanoes may be causing some of your difficulties. ”
“Her eggs will really be as hard as stoneware?” Darrym sounded almost wistful.
“Yes!” Shardas turned on him, blue eyes burning. “So when two weeks are over I will take my mate and our eggs far from here. ”
“We need the queen,” Darrym said flatly, recovering his arrogance.
“You had her!” Shardas roared. “We freed you from Krashath! You had a home with us on the Far Isles, and we counted you as a friend! Velika and I would have helped you all, if only you had asked!”
The queen stirred, moaning at Shardas’s enraged roar, but he didn’t stop. He stepped away from her, facing Darrym across the river of molten rock, and I could see trails of steam rising from his nostrils: his fire was burning high.
“We are the chosen people,” Darrym insisted. “We followed the true queen. ”
“Well, you betrayed her, too,” I snarled at him. Both Darrym and Shardas looked at me in surprise, and I wondered if they’d forgotten that there were even humans in the room. “She chose your ancestors to follow her, not her sister, and now you’re ‘settling’ for her sister’s great-great-granddaughter. You’ve betrayed your own beliefs, as well as betraying the dragons who rescued you when you were collared. ” Hagen’s influence clearly got to me at that point, because I spat at Darrym, something I hadn’t done since leaving Carlieff Town. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luka and Hagen exchange proud looks.
Whatever answer Darrym might have given to that was cut off by a tremendous groan from Velika. We all turned to comfort her as the first of her eggs arrived to the sound of Leontes and Niva humming in the floor-vibrating yet soothing dragon way.
It was large, bigger than my arms could embrace, and did look soft, like a hard-boiled hen’s egg that had been peeled. But it wasn’t white, it was golden and glistening and beautiful, and I could see a curled form very faintly within it, twitching as though startled by what had just happened. Leontes piled the more pliant, less prickly boughs around its base, so that the egg wouldn’t roll away.
Darrym, hooting with excitement, started to leap the rift to join us, but Luka picked up one of Shardas’s discarded spears. Bracing it against a dip in the rock, he squared off against the dull green and brown dragon. Hagen, too, lifted a spear as best he could, and set it. If Darrym jumped, he would be impaled.
“You may stay where you are,” Luka said firmly, “if you won’t leave them entirely in peace. But you have caused the king and queen enough grief, and will not interfere in this. ”
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I felt a glow of pride in my breast, seeing their fierce stance. Figuring that the boys could handle the situation with Darrym, I went to see if there was anything I could do to help. Velika’s eyes were open the merest slit, and I thought that I saw them lock on me. So I took up a position by her head, with Shardas, and gently rubbed one of her brow ridges.
“You have a beautiful egg,” I told her.
“Two!” The triumphant shout was from Leontes, and Shardas made a sound that was half cheer, half groan.
“Two,” Velika rasped faintly.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “We’re going to stay here and protect you, and when your eggs have hardened, we’re going to take you out of here. No more drugs. ” I raised my voice on this last sentence, hoping that Darrym would hear me.
The local dragons might outnumber us—I wasn’t really sure. And they did have countless humans at thei
r beck and call. But we surrounded Velika here in the chamber, as well as having dozens of dragons waiting above. We would care for her until she and her eggs could be moved, and then we would leave this horrible place.
Muttering all these things to Velika, I continued to stroke her brow through the birth of all eight eggs. Shardas looked as though he might faint, and Leontes was positively glowing with delight. Niva firmly declared it a successful clutching, and ordered Darrym to bring water and food for Velika. Immediately.
Darrym went, but he was rigid with anger at being sent to do Niva’s bidding. Leontes, once he had seen to all the eggs, flew up to the rift to make the grand announcement, and I thought the roaring that followed would bring the ceiling down on us.
When the traitor returned, bearing a charred piece of meat and a bucket of water, he had a strangely satisfied expression on his face. Niva noticed it when she leaped the burning river to take them from him, and gave a sharp look at the tunnel behind him.
“Where does that lead to?”
But Darrym didn’t answer.
“Leontes!” Niva shouted for her mate at the same time that I shouted Shardas’s name.
“Block the entrances,” Shardas bellowed. He picked up a claw full of spears, jumped the river, and drove three glass spears into the rock floor in front of the tunnel opening, creating a gate.
Niva did the same with the larger hole above us, flying up with her claws full of black glass to barricade the main entrance. Leontes just had time to squeeze himself through, turning in midair to help his mate. Through the black bars, I could see Feniul’s anxious green face, calling out to ask what was going on.
“Who did you tell? What have you done?” Shardas snatched Darrym by the throat and heaved him off the ground.
Gasping, Darrym shook his head as best he could. Despite the fact that he was now trapped in a cave with four dragons who didn’t like him one whit, he refused to answer. Shardas stalked over to the river of molten rock and held Darrym above it, forcing the smaller dragon to lift his tail high, lest it be burned.
“You told your people? How many of them are there? How are your human . . . slaves . . . armed? Tell me. Now. ”
No answer.
“I dived into the Boiling Sea of Feravel to save Velika’s life,” Shardas said. “We nearly died. Hot as it was, however, it cannot hold a candle to the heat of actual volcanic lava. ”
“We number fifty,” Darrym blurted out. “And we have roughly a thousand humans. Bows and arrows, flint-tipped spears. I told our High Elder. He’ll be mustering everyone to fight you, right now. ”
“Very well. ” Shardas tossed Darrym aside and crossed back over to Velika. “We can defend this cave easily,” he told her. Now that she had eaten and drunk, she was looking more alert than I had yet seen her. Additionally, Leontes had given her a strengthening potion. “They will not dare to harm you and the eggs. ”
“Just leave us the eggs,” Darrym pleaded, crouched in the corner. “We need only the first-hatched female; we’ll send the others back to you. ”
“Darrym,” Shardas said, “one more word and I’ll dip you headfirst into the lava. ”
Taking Yourself Hostage
So, we’re inside a volcano?” I gave the heaving river of fire a dubious look. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“We’re some distance away, actually,” Leontes reassured me. “I believe that the conical mountain to the west of here is the actual volcano. This is a tributary of its lava flow. A great many of the poisonous gases normally associated with volcanoes have already been vented, as has some of the heat. ”
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“Not all of it,” Hagen said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.
It was true. Now that we were settled in, with nothing to do but wait, the heat was oppressive. Sweat ran freely down our faces and necks, and we had removed our boots and stockings. Even the dragons were starting to look uncomfortable, shifting about and rearranging the piles of branches and leaves unnecessarily.
I leaned back against Luka with a sigh. “Are you sure that you want to marry me?” I let my eyelids droop. “I keep leading you off on these dangerous missions, and I’m too backward to even know what lava looks like. ”
He settled an arm around me. “Well, you are very troublesome, but at least you’re concerned enough about your education to travel so far just to see lava in person,” he replied.
“If you two get all mushy, can I leave?” Hagen mimed being sick.
“Where exactly were you going to go?” I ignored the fake gagging.
“I thought I might go see where that tunnel leads,” he said. “The glass spears are far enough apart that a human could slip through. ”
I looked beyond my brother at the tunnel entrance. It was true; a human could squeeze between them. Which meant that we could go out . . . and a local person could come in.
Niva, listening idly to our conversation, seemed to come to the same conclusion. She snatched up more spears, and we all went over to the tunnel mouth. Without thinking, I turned sideways and slipped through, and Luka followed me.
“What are you doing?” Niva whispered as well as a dragon could. “You don’t know what is waiting at the other end. ”
“We’re armed,” Luka said, patting the hilt of his sword. I had only a belt knife, but I knew how to use it. “Come along, Hagen. ”
“What? No!” I tried to push my brother back through the gap.
Luka put a hand on my arm. “Creel, we need his help. ”
I squinched up my eyes for a moment and then nodded. “All right, but stay behind us. ”
“Yes, captain,” Hagen said, and saluted me.
We edged our way down the dark tunnel until it made a sharp bend. Peering around the corner, we could see a large opening, filled with light.
“I’m still all dyed dark,” I whispered. “I’ll go. ”
My tunic and skin were muddy brown and my hair was coal black. In the back of my mind, I was worried that it wouldn’t wash out in time for the wedding, and I would have to get married looking like a spun- sugar figurine that had gotten too close to a candle.
Back to the wall, I sidled along the passage until I came to the opening. Hiding behind a rough spur of rock, I peeped into the chamber beyond.
There were a number of humans kneeling in a circle around what looked like a pile of old furniture. And then I realized that it was quite simply the oldest dragon I had ever seen. His flesh hung off his bones and his scales were so dry they looked like dead leaves. His eyes were milky white: blind. His voice sounded like the hiss from a teakettle.
I wasn’t fluent in the dragon tongue, and this dragon’s voice was harder to understand than most. But one of the kneeling men had a map, and I could clearly see the rift over our heads marked on it. The man was moving pebbles around the map, apparently following the instructions of the dragon. There was a cluster of bluish pebbles with a ring of gray ones around them. The man moved the gray ring in closer to the bluish cluster.
It didn’t take a keen understanding of the language to translate that. Our friends on the surface were surrounded and about to be attacked.
I slithered back to Hagen and Luka. Pulling their hands, I led them quickly back down the tunnel and into the safety of our barricaded cave. Niva pounded more black spears into place, sealing the passage against human or dragon intrusion.
“I need you to fly me up to the main entrance,” I told her. “We’ve got to warn the others. The locals are coming; they have or are about to surround Feniul and the others and attack them. ”
Niva snatched me in her claws and we took off, coughing as we flew through the column of smoke. It clouded her vision enough that she hit her head on the spears blocking the entrance, and nearly tossed me right out through them with the sudden change in speed.
Feniul stared back through the bars at me as we regained our composure. �
��By the First Fires! Are you trying to kill yourselves? How are Velika and the eggs?”
“Feniul!” I flapped my hands at him, ignoring his questions. “You have to get out of here! Fly away, right now, all of you! The locals are massing all around, ready to fight. ”
“They are? Oh, my! I had better find Amacarin. ” He lashed his tail and clacked his foreclaws together nervously, then stopped and gave me an uncharacteristically steely look. “No, Creel. We won’t leave the queen undefended. ”
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“That’s very noble, Feniul,” Niva said in her dry way. “But I really think it best that you all go. Better to wait until you have the advantage, and then attack. You’re about to be ambushed, and I can’t see that it will do anyone any good. ”
“I will not leave Velika and Shardas,” he said.
“Fine, but at least give the others the option to leave, and quickly. ”
Feniul turned and began shouting that they were being surrounded, which made Niva and me wince. So much for secrecy and having the ambushers leap into an empty clearing.
And, of course, that is precisely when the ambush came: while our friends were milling around, debating whether they should go or stay. I screamed for them to stop. I even yelled that they could have an egg if they withdrew, but no one was listening to me. Niva and I could only watch as the battle unfolded above us.
A Compromise of Sorts
Being underneath a battle is just as terrifying as being in one, I soon found. Particularly if you are friends with some of the participants, and even more particularly if they are fighting over your fate.
Niva should have flown us down where we wouldn’t be accidentally burned or struck by a stray arrow, but she couldn’t look away and neither could I. After their shouts for information went unanswered, Leontes flew up with Hagen and Luka, and we all stared up in horror.
The noise was the worst part.
I had heard dragons roar in rage and in battle, so that was nothing. It was the humans that began to get to me. Making a screeching sound that went on and on as though they never needed to take a breath, the dragon-collected people of this land raced to and fro, screaming like birds of prey and shooting our dragons with frightening accuracy. Though their arrows were tipped only with stone heads, they pierced dragon scale when the aim was true and, added to that, the local dragons flamed and clawed with little care for the safety of the human fighters.
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