by Lari Don
“Come on, Lee!” yelled Helen.
“I can’t take my eyes off this brute in case he charges, so I can’t judge when to jump,” he responded calmly.
“I’ll count, you jump after three!” Helen instructed, as Sapphire turned in the air.
The boar started to run, heavy and hurtling, at the faery.
The dragon flew below the ridge.
Helen shouted, “One, two, three, jump!” and grabbed Lee as he leapt backwards.
As Sapphire swerved up, then hovered above the summit, Helen and Lee could see Arthur’s enemies waving weapons, fists and tusks at them.
Then Ysbaddaden, wiping his filthy chin with his hairy knuckles, yelled, “We can’t reach the children. Let’s hunt for Arthur and his gang at the water.”
So Ysbaddaden led the scaly and bristly creatures, stomping and sliding, down the side of the Lucken Howe.
Helen said, “Let’s run back into the hill while they’re away, and see if Arthur left any clues about where he went next.”
Lee said, “But the biggest monsters couldn’t fit through the door, so they’re probably still in there.”
“I’m prepared to risk it, Lee. We have to find the scabbard. Sapphire, please fly us back down.”
But when the dragon angled towards the Lucken Howe, a crunching impact knocked her sideways. Helen and Lee clung to her spikes as Sapphire tumbled screaming out of the air. They slithered around on her back until she recovered control of her wings and flew upwards again.
Two huge flapping shapes followed them up. Sapphire was being attacked by two massive dragons.
“If those are the dragons from the cave,” Helen yelled, “then the cave might be empty! Sapphire, can you let us off and keep these dragons at bay while we run back in?”
But every time Sapphire flew towards the Lucken Howe, the two bigger dragons bashed and battered her, to force her away from the hill.
Helen was about to yell, “Why don’t you use fire?” when she realised how daft that would sound. The other dragons would be fireproof, just like her friend. So the three dragons fought with their weight, speed and spiked armour.
The attackers used their heavy heads, wide wings, long claws and spiked tails to prevent Sapphire getting back to the hill. As they fought in the air, Helen wondered if these two huge beasts were ancient relatives of the dragons killed by Lancelot and Tristan.
Sapphire, lighter and slimmer, tried to fly round them, but the two dragons worked together, blocking every route, crashing into her from both sides. She kept trying, her body shaking and juddering, her grunts of pain drowning out Helen and Lee’s shouts of shock each time they were nearly thrown off her back.
After half a dozen attacks, Helen screamed, “Sapphire, stop! There probably aren’t any clues anyway. Fly away before they hurt you again.”
But Sapphire roared and tried one more time. She stretched her neck out, drew her wings in and dived between the two enormous dragons. They both lashed out with their claws, and Sapphire screamed fire as her sides and tail were savagely clawed from left and right.
She dropped out of the air, falling toward the hills. One of the dragons flew under her and bashed his head against her stomach, stopping her fall, forcing her up, pushing her away.
Sapphire spread her wings, flapped jerkily and flew away from the Eildons.
The two dragons didn’t follow. They stayed high in the air above the Lucken Howe, circling like sharks, ready to attack if she approached again.
Helen called, “Sapphire, are you ok? Do you need to land?”
The dragon didn’t answer. She just glided slowly towards the ground.
Helen sighed. They’d escaped from the giants and the dragons. But they hadn’t found the scabbard.
Chapter 12
Sapphire almost fell into a hole, thumping down with a muffled moan.
Helen let go of the spikes, rolled over the dragon’s wing and landed on her feet. They were in an old quarry: a bowl-shaped hole hacked out of the ground, with man-made cliffs all around and loose rocks underfoot.
Helen ran to Sapphire’s head. “Thanks for coming to save us and for trying so hard to get us back in. Are you injured?”
Sapphire nodded slowly.
“Is it your belly, from those head-butts?”
The dragon shook her head gingerly.
“Your sides and your tail, from those claws?”
Sapphire nodded and moaned again.
“Let me look.”
Helen walked along the bulk of her friend, shining the torch on her scales.
Lee walked with her, saying, “Where did those dragons come from? Were they the wrinkly dragons from the cave, or were they already waiting outside?”
Helen shrugged, looking at the shallow scrapes on her scaly friend’s left side.
Lee kept talking. “They were quite fast for dragons who’d been mouldering in a cave for centuries, weren’t they, Sapphire?”
Sapphire growled.
Helen said quietly, “You’re not helping, Lee. Hold the torch.” She stepped over the dragon’s tail to look at her right side, which was also grazed.
But when she returned to Sapphire’s tail, she found the really painful damage: three scrapes on the left side and two deep rips on the right side, four spikes up from the tip.
The scales were sliced open, a triangular flap of dragonskin was hanging loose, dark blood was welling out and the muscle underneath was glistening through.
Helen swung the rucksack off her back, cleaned her hands, then used swabs to wipe the largest wound.
“Lee, can you get the exotic animals textbook out of my rucksack?”
She wiped the smaller wounds, then took the book and flicked to the reptile section. She found pictures of snakeskin repaired with a complex mattress stitch, read a couple of paragraphs, then looked at pictures of dying lizards.
She walked back to her friend’s head. “I’m sorry, Sapphire, but the right side of your tail is ripped open and a big flap of skin is hanging off.”
Sapphire grunted. Lee translated, “She’s never been cut before. One of the few things that can cut dragon hide is dragon claw. But she’s confident you can heal her.”
Helen sighed. “I can’t sew the flap back on. I couldn’t force a needle through the layers of folded skin your scales are made from, and anyway your skin has started to curl up, so the edges won’t stay together. I’m also worried that the wound might get infected. Who knows what dirt and germs those old dragons had on their claws? And infection in a lizard’s tail can travel up the spinal cord, until it paralyses, then kills.”
Sapphire’s head sank to the ground.
“But if I act fast, I can take away the pain and the danger of infection. If you trust me.”
Sapphire looked at Helen, her silver eyes narrowed with questions.
“If dragons evolved from lizards, Sapphire, then you might have one very useful ability. Lizards can lose the end of their tails when their tail is grabbed by a predator, and their tails can grow back. If you’re descended from the same reptiles as iguanas and geckos, then I can amputate the end of your tail and do you no lasting damage at all.”
Sapphire roared and turned her head away. Helen didn’t need anyone to translate. “Really, my friend, it is the safest thing to do. You won’t get an infection and it will grow back. But I have to do it now, before the skin rips further and the damage gets worse.”
Lee muttered in her ear. “Helen, if you cut off her tail, and it’s bleeding and painful, how will she fly back to the moor? She can’t stay here, near farms and roads, once it’s daylight.”
Helen answered loudly, “If I’m right, Sapphire’s tail will be designed to snap between the vertebrae, and the nerves and blood vessels will shut off immediately. If I’m right, the tail will hurt less and bleed less once the end has been removed.”
“If you aren’t right?” Lee and Sapphire asked at the same time.
“If I’m wrong, the tail probably won’t c
ome off at all. We have to try, because you’re already in too much pain to fly straight. So, Sapphire, will you stay still while I take a tiny bit of your tail off, just the very tip?”
Sapphire growled.
“Trust me, Sapphire. I know what I’m doing.” The dragon stared silently at Helen, then nodded once.
As Helen walked back to the tail, Lee whispered, “Do you know what you’re doing?”
“I know what I’m trying to do, I just don’t know if it will work on a lizard this big.”
Helen picked up the end of the tail to see how much it weighed, then looked round. “I’m just moving your tail to the left, Sapphire.” Helen staggered over to a nearby boulder. Sapphire shifted her back legs to follow her tail.
Helen laid the tail over the rock, like the plank of a seesaw.
“Lee, hold it steady.”
“But that’s not just the tip!” he objected.
“Shhh!” Helen hissed, then called out, “Sapphire, you’re the bravest dragon in the world and I know you can do this. Just stay still.”
Helen jerked the tail down.
It hardly moved. Sapphire had flinched in the other direction as Helen put pressure on the tail, and the dragon’s tail muscles were much stronger than Helen’s arm muscles.
“I’ve seen this done with an iguana. I know it’s possible. I just need a little more force.”
She tried again. The tail didn’t snap, though there was now a pool of blood on the ground.
Lee grimaced. “Do you want me to do it? I could put more weight and strength into it.”
“No. If it takes more strength than I have, then it’s ripping her tail off, not allowing it to break naturally.”
She called along the dragon’s length. “Sapphire, you need to help me. Can you relax on the count of five?” There was a pained grunt from the front of the dragon.
“One, two, three…” Jerk!
And Helen was holding the end of the tail. Unattached. Snapped off. And wriggling in her hands.
She dropped it on the ground, then shone her torch on the tail’s new end.
She looked with interest at the white curve of bone, and the confusion of flesh and scales around it. There was no blood oozing out of the new wound. The claw rip had bled, but the tail-snapping wound had closed up instantly.
“Sapphire, how are you?”
Sapphire rumbled.
Lee said with a smile, “She says it’s stopped hurting. Now the tip just feels numb. She’ll let you try again. But don’t cheat this time, she says, don’t jerk until you reach five.”
Helen laughed croakily. “Sapphire, we did it. It’s already off.”
Helen and Lee had to leap out of the way, as the dragon whipped round in a circle, trying to see her own tail.
“No!” yelled Helen. “Don’t get dirt in the wound! You don’t want to get an infection.”
Sapphire roared and Lee shouted over her. “She’s saying that’s not just the tip! That’s about half of her tail! She doesn’t believe that will ever grow back.”
“I had to break that much off, because the damage went up that far. Now stay still!”
Sapphire lay down, with angry orange fire in her nostrils; Lee took the twitching tail-tip away to bury it; Helen cleaned the end of the tail and placed gauze over it.
“There. It will grow back, long and blue and spiky. Before midsummer, I’m sure you’ll have a perfect tail again.” Then Helen sighed. “There’s no real rush to get back to Cauldhame Moor, because we don’t have anything to show for our quest. So you don’t have to fly me and Lee back if you can’t carry us, Sapphire.”
In answer, the dragon flapped her wings vigorously, and raised her snout to the sky.
As Helen repacked her rucksack, Lee crouched down beside her, wiping his hands on a swab. He spoke softly, “I’m sorry, Helen. I’m sorry we both said such scary things to open that door, and we haven’t even saved Yann by doing it.”
“The truth isn’t always a good thing, is it?” Helen didn’t look at him. She closed the book and slid it into her rucksack. “I’m sure you did tell the truth, Lee, and I have a horrible feeling I did too. But if you’re really my friend, please don’t test it out by asking me. Please.”
He stood up and his cloak swirled round him. “I won’t ask you to bring your music to us this spring equinox. Right now, I’m here to help Yann. But I make no promises for after that.”
“Then I promise you,” Helen stood up too, “that I will try my hardest to find reasons to stay here. I’ll find people who value my music here.”
Lee smiled. “No one values music more than we do.”
Helen frowned. He was probably right. But she would fight to stay in her own world, even if what she was fighting was her own desire to play for the most appreciative audience.
Once Helen and Lee were on Sapphire’s back, the dragon struggled to rise into the air, then lurched from side to side, working out how to balance with a shorter tail.
When they were flying, slightly squint, away from the Eildons, with no sign of other dragons in the sky or giants on the ground, Helen called to Lee, “Should we warn someone about all those angry creatures loose around Melrose?”
Lee yelled, as Sapphire grumbled her way above the clouds, “They’ll be safely back in the hill before anyone wakes up. They’re too stupid to come up with another plan to attack Arthur. They’ll hide in that cave for centuries.”
“So where can we search for the scabbard now? I don’t know any other local Arthur legends.”
Lee replied, “He’s linked with lots of different hills, mostly in England and Wales. He probably left here after he was woken by that horse-trader. The Eildons weren’t secure after that. Perhaps anywhere there is a legend of him sleeping is somewhere he has already left. If Arthur doesn’t stay anywhere once he’s been seen, we can’t track him using stories. I hate to admit failure, Helen, but I don’t think we can find Arthur and his scabbard fast enough to save Yann.”
Helen shivered. “So we’d better hope someone else’s quest is more successful than ours.”
Chapter 13
Frass leant against the crumbling wall, watching his Master try to control the brawling uruisks.
“It’s a risk, Master,” he called out. “It’s been a risk all along, but now so many of the centaur’s friends are involved, they might discover that his injury was the real goal of the unicorn kidnap. Also, I’m not sure it’s wise to trust the Three.”
“Nonsense, you faint-hearted faun,” the Master bellowed as he strode barefoot across the black and white floor. “My plan is unfolding perfectly. I trust the Three to heal my phoenix scars, because they know that once I have my new power and can force the fabled beast tribes to bow down to me, I will cause many more injuries for them to enjoy. And to heal me, they need one of these tokens.”
Frass grunted. “But you could send me to get a token for you. I would do anything for the Master of the Maze. It is my inherited duty, my family honour, to serve the Master of the Maze, whoever that is.”
“Yes, Frass, thank you for reminding me that you serve my title rather than me.”
“Whatever my reasons for serving you, Master, I have served you well. You could send me to collect a healing token. You could even send those uncouth mountain goats, who serve you out of greed, rather than honour.”
The minotaur scowled, rubbing at the scar between his horns. “The uruisks will serve me whether I have the backing of the Maze or not. But you are a civil servant and you would bow just as low in front of my brother or nephews, if they were Master of the Maze. However, I couldn’t have used any of you to get the token. The healing tokens only give themselves to those with pure motives.”
“I serve you purely,” said Frass. “If you order me to do something, it doesn’t matter how dark your motive, my motive in obeying is pure. Because you are my Master.” Frass bowed, the stubby goat horns on his human forehead almost brushing the tiled floor.
The Master laug
hed. “The ‘I was only following orders’ defence is discredited these days, Frass. And if I sent you to get a token, you’d tarnish it with your stinking touch.”
Frass turned away, pretending to examine the upside-down painting on the dusty wall beside him, hoping the minotaur couldn’t see the expression on his face.
But the Master was still explaining his brilliant plan. “You may think it’s too complex, but I believe manipulating these talented, lucky and innocent youngsters, so that they collect the tokens to save their friend, is the best way to get the healing power for myself.”
“And do you plan to let them heal the centaur first?” Frass asked, quietly.
“The Three say the colt is a potential instrument of chaos, so they’d like him healed. But I don’t want anyone with his strength and courage opposing me. I’d rather get rid of him while he’s still young. So we let his naïve friends collect one of the tokens, we let them take it home, then we seize it before they can heal the horse-boy.
“And when I am healed, I will see clearly out of both eyes again and I will also see more than anyone has seen before.”
Frass bowed again, then frowned as the Master walked off towards the wild goats. The minotaur was already roaring encouragement at them, as one uruisk broke off another’s horn with an overhead kick.
Frass scratched his hairy left leg with his right hoof. He wasn’t sure this particular Master of the Maze was still following the labyrinth’s gradual global strategy. Perhaps it was time to send a message to the Maze.
*
Catesby watched the dragons leave: Crag, Cumulus and Bunsen returning to the Great Dragon after helping Lavender gather information for their quests; Nimbus carrying Rona and Tangaroa to the seven falls; Sapphire flying Lee to Helen’s house. Only the white dragon was left.
Lavender tapped Catesby on the wing. “I’ve given everyone else their instructions and I think I know where the paired cliffs are, so we’d better…”