by Rob May
Ben nodded nervously. ‘Are you sure that there’s nothing I can do?’
‘You would just be in my way,’ Kal said. ‘Besides, someone has to stay alive to tell our story. That’s what you’re best at, Ben. Make me look good, okay?’
They grasped each other’s wrists in farewell.
‘Let’s do it!’ Kal urged before they could change their mind. They both ran, side-by-side, down the natural corridor of branches and roots that had been shaped by a god’s hand centuries ago. Next, they passed the jumbled piles of new debris that the dragon had dropped around the grove. Finally, they made it out into the open, and Ben shot off to the left. Kal heard a splash as he hit the water.
She ran forward as far as she dared, then turned right and circled back to the entrance tunnel. It was enough: the dragon roused itself from the top of its mountain of branches and, with one powerful flap of its wings, dropped down to the ground just yards from Kal. She tripped and stumbled as she ran—what was once a field of grass was now littered with a layer of leaves and small twigs that had blown off the dragon’s pile. Kal rolled, sprang to her feet and got back under the cover of the tunnel entrance.
Then she turned to face the dragon. It had paused not thirty yards away, standing on its powerful legs, its wings spread wide: a black shadow against the deep blue night sky. Its neck dipped down and it brought its small bright eyes on a level with Kal. It cocked its head this way and that, as if suspicious somehow that she wasn’t running for her life.
Kal backed slowly into the tunnel, waving her arms in front of her. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘Come and get me!’
The dragon didn’t move, except to fold one massive wing in on itself, bringing its claw to its head as if to scratch an itch. Kal clenched her fists; her fingers were slick with sweat. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. No—it wasn’t sweat. It was more of that oily substance that she must have picked up when she rolled in the leaves. Kal noticed that all the nearby twigs, leaves and branches were covered in it too; a shiny film that glistened in the moonlight. What was it?
The Dragon was now scraping its bony claw over the carapace of scales that armoured its head. A quick rhythmic flicking motion; skkrrt, skkrrt, skkrrt. Was it trying to communicate something? Was it sending out some kind of signal? The dragon took a long deep breath. Was it—
Bone and scale—flint and steel! Kal threw herself to the ground as the first sparks showered from the dragon’s armour. The oiled leaves on the ground burst into flames almost instantly, and when the dragon exhaled, a wide cone of furious fire ignited the ground between it and Kal. She covered her head with her arms as her clothing was set alight.
The dragon advanced. The flames started to jump between all the trees and branches piled around.
The bonfire had been lit.
V.viii
Open Wounds
Darklaw lunged at Kal, but the cave floor buckled beneath him and he fell to his knees. The whole mouth of the cave collapsed in on itself, plunging them all into darkness and cutting off their escape into the swamp. The only thing that Kal could see was the faint red glow opposite from the tunnel that she had arrived up. In the near total darkness she leaped forward and climbed over Darklaw’s kneeling bulk to get past him. He grunted and flailed his arms as she placed her foot on his face and vaulted over his shoulder.
As she stumbled for the tunnel, Kal heard the ripping sounds of tearing wood as the galleys were crushed by the crumbling cave; she heard the screams and shouts of the hobgoblins, and the sickening sounds of hard heavy rocks landing on soft fleshy bodies. She made it to the tunnel and picked up her pace, running deeper into the convulsing mountain.
Prior to her attempt on Darklaw’s life, Kal had returned to the gold mine and closed, then crippled, all of the escape valves in the network of pipes. The pressurised super-heated vapour that, for centuries before Darklaw’s arrival, had been venting safely through the island’s crevices and fumaroles, was now trapped underground by the very machinery that was put in place to control it. As it drew up its power to break free again, it rocked the mountain by its very roots, like an angry behemoth shaking the bars of its cage.
As Kal ran, she saw the short goblin mine-workers running in all directions. Did they know of ways out, or were they panicking like doomed rats aboard a sinking ship? Should she follow them, or stick to her own risky escape plan? Kal decided to keep running.
A voice shouted from up the tunnel behind her: ‘Moonheart!’
She skidded to a halt and turned, if only just to make sure that Darklaw was too far away to catch her.
He was standing almost out of sight at a crossroads further up the tunnel. ‘Come with me!’ he urged. ‘I know the way out of here!’
Was he serious? ‘No!’ she replied, almost screaming over the noise of the earthquake. ‘Not with you! Never!’
‘You’ll die here if you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘You beat me, Moonheart! You won! Now let us leave together and I will come with you to the city and submit to their justice. I will save you now if you will speak in my favour. You promised that you would!’
‘You should have accepted my offer back then,’ Kal told him. ‘I don’t give second chances!’ She turned her back on his reply and ran on. Darklaw’s curses curses echoed off the tunnel walls, but he didn’t follow her any further.
When she reached the lower cavern it was hotter than ever, and the lava lake was bubbling and frothing like a saucepan brought to the boil. Kal had to jump and skip as she crossed the narrow stone bridge, the lava spitting and sloshing around her feet. Darklaw’s platinum-hulled sloop was still there, but the lava was now rising and spilling over the edge of the island: there was a six foot gap between Kal and her escape ticket. She didn’t think—she just ran as hard as she could and launched herself at the rail of the small boat. Her elbow hooked around it and her knees banged into the metal hull as she raised her legs to keep them above the level of the lava. Kal screamed in pain, and then screamed again in exertion as she forced her muscles to pull herself over the rail and out of danger.
The lava was rising rapidly. From where Kal lay in the bottom of the sloop, she could see the deadly stalactites in the cavern roof looming closer and closer. She scrabbled to her feet and grabbed the long platinum pole that Darklaw must have used for punting across the lake. She didn’t need it, though; the boat was caught in a current that had appeared from somewhere and had now created a lava flow from one side of the cavern to the other. Kal peered through the heat haze ahead of her and saw what was happening: as the lava level rose, it was spilling over the gate of a lock that must have been the means that Darklaw brought his boat in and out of his lair. Kal held on tight to the lip of the cabin hatch as the sloop plunged down a six-foot drop and entered a subterranean river where the hot lava was mixing with swamp water and creating foul-smelling, scalding clouds of steam.
She wrapped herself up in the sail that lay folded up next to the mast at the bottom of the boat. The heat was still almost too much to bear, she had no idea where the hell this ride was taking her, and she could hardly get any oxygen to her lungs—but at least she hadn’t been boiled alive yet.
When the pressure lifted, Kal threw back the damp sail. The boat had left the mountain and was passing through a deep and narrow canyon in the rock. The sides of the canyon were shaking, splitting and shifting, and the space between them was just ten feet wide; if the sloop wasn’t scraping along the left wall of the canyon, then it was scraping along the right. Still, she was still moving in the right direction as the water surged forward, pushed out of the mountain by a tide of lava. But when Kal glanced back, she saw that the lava was hot on her heels, rising ten feet above her, filling the canyon from side to side …
Kal closed her eyes. I almost made it!
Ten seconds later she opened them again. She was still alive. What was once a wave of red molten death was now a solid grey cliff of billowy undulating rock. The lava had cooled and hardened, apparently
satisfied with chasing her out of the caves. The sloop was free to slip easily out of the canyon and into the sea, where the current caught it and dragged it parallel to the coast. The mangroves and mountain came into view, and Kal was presented with a vista that was both silent and still; under a hot sun and a clear blue sky was a beautiful tropical scene that belied the turmoil taking place underground. Kal could just about make out the tiny shapes of the goblin workers spilling down the slopes, along with a handful of Darklaw’s soldiers. But as she watched, bursts of orange flame began flowering over the mountainside, starting at the base and spreading upwards.
Then with an ear-splitting boom, the top of the volcano exploded.
* * *
‘And did Mister Darklaw die in the volcano?’
Kal nodded and kissed the forehead of her child.
‘Yes, Darling. Bad Mister Darklaw died instantly when the mountain fell on top of him. It was a quick and painless end. He didn’t suffer. He didn’t feel a thing.’
* * *
Kal struggled to get the sloop under sail as soon as possible. Behind her a three-hundred-foot fountain of lava spewed from the top of the volcano. Rivers of the stuff were running down into the swamp, sending up toxic clouds of greenish steam. Fist-sized projectiles were falling out of the sky and splashing all around the boat. Kal yelled as one hit her on the shoulder while she was concentrating on slotting the mainmast into its socket. She picked it up; it was a lightweight black rock that was pockmarked with air bubbles. She kicked it overboard.
More and more rocks were raining down on Kal when she finally caught some wind and started to move clear of the eruption. Tiny pieces of sharp volcanic glass were now showering her as well, forcing her into the cover of the sloop’s small cabin. But taking one last look back, she saw that she was not out of danger yet …
A great black winged shape was gliding above the lava flows and heading in her direction. So that was Darklaw’s escape plan, to ride to safety in his flying machine! As Kal watched, the wood and canvas dragon was hit by a barrage of hot rocks that ripped through its wings and set them on fire. Ha! Darklaw didn’t have Kal’s luck when it came to making an exit.
Her laugh stuck in her throat. The flaming dragon was falling out of the sky sure enough, but it was closing in on her position, getting closer and closer every second. The same wind that was filling the sails of the sloop was also bringing her enemy directly to her. She could now see Darklaw at the controls of the dragon, desperately working the levers that pulled the ropes that moved the wings. For one heart-stopping moment it looked as if he was intent on smashing the great machine into the boat, but then at the last moment Darklaw yanked the controls back and the dragon sailed overhead, missing the top of the sloop’s mast by only a couple of inches.
Kal watched the winged-contraption as it finally smacked down onto the water, ceasing to be a life-like monster, and becoming instead just a sinking mass of wood and material. She almost didn’t register the thunk as something heavy fell from the passing dragon and hit the deck behind her.
She threw herself to the deck just in time as Darklaw’s bastard sword sliced through the air above her head. As the giant advanced on her in a rage, Kal reached up and pushed the boom that held the mainsail in position; it swung around and knocked the sword out of Darklaw’s hand and sent it to the bottom of the sea. Kal scrabbled up on top of the roof of the cabin and tried to put the mainmast between herself and her foe. She had no weapon; she must have lost her second dagger during her escape. Darklaw didn’t let up his attack; he jumped up onto the cabin roof and advanced on Kal with his arms outstretched.
‘Stop! Please!’ Kal cried, almost in tears. She was exhausted and in no fit state to fight anyone, let alone the muscled beast that stood before her.
Darklaw was unheeding and implacable, though, his features twisting in anger and hatred. He wrapped both of his huge hands around Kal’s throat and lifted her off the deck by her neck. ‘Die!’ he roared. ‘Just die!’
Kal could feel the gold and silver necklace that Darklaw had given her pressing into her neck beneath his grip. His yellow eyes bore into hers as if he was determined to bear witness to her final moments. Kal knew that she had taken her last ever breath; she couldn’t move her tongue, swallow or even force her lips to speak.
But she could still think. And moments before her body gave up the will to live, she remembered …
She brought her right knee up and into Darklaw’s side, opening up the wound that Rafe had made with the Blade of Banos. Darklaw screamed in pain as the stitches split. He dropped to his knees, but still he didn’t loosen his grip on Kal’s neck. However, when she felt her feet hit the deck again, Kal put her hands on Darklaw’s wrists, returned his intense stare, then pushed with her thigh muscles and twisted her body to the side. It was enough—together they fell from the deck of the boat and into the hot sea.
They found themselves suspended in a silent blue world, locked together and sinking slowly to the sand below. A torrent of thick blood gushed from Darklaw’s side and hung in the water like a dark ribbon, but if he knew that he was finished then he was determined to take Kal down with him: his hands remained clamped to her neck. She sensed movement in the water around them, but her oxygen-starved brain was shutting down and her field of vision was shrinking to a narrow tunnel, down which Darklaw’s yellow eyes glared back at her. The only thing keeping her conscious was the sharp pain of the links of the necklace as they bit into her neck.
Kal’s hands had lost their grip on Darklaw’s wrists. Her fingers were turning numb and her arms felt like they belonged to someone else. With one final supreme force of will, she concentrated on flexing her triceps and pivoting her arms at her shoulders. She reached back behind her neck, fingers fumbling at the clasp of the necklace.
When it came undone, it slipped from around her neck, and so did Darklaw’s grasp. His body was sinking suddenly away from her. The last thing that Kal saw before the darkness took her was Darklaw’s expression of furious anger turn to one of desperate terror as the circling sharpfins closed in on his bleeding body. Then he was lost amid the feeding frenzy as several dozen of the razor-toothed predators fought for their share of his flesh.
The ribbon of blood soon turned into a heavy all-enveloping cloud.
* * *
When Kal came to, she was lying on her back on the deck of the Swordfish. She felt someone’s lips on hers, and when she opened her eyes she saw her friend Lula smiling back at her. Dead Leg, the captain, was standing over her, too, a broad grin on his face.
‘Kal!’ a voice shouted from just off to one side. ‘You’re alive!’
Lula helped Kal sit up, and she turned to see another familiar face. ‘Ben!’ she gasped, coughing up seawater at the same time. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I left the city a few days after you did,’ he explained. ‘The Senate was looking for someone to take on the job of governor temporarily and, well, I fancied a holiday and the chance to keep an eye on my gold mine … so here I am!’
Kal laughed and gave Ben a wet hug. Far out to sea she could see a haze of smoke hanging over the island.
‘So?’ Ben asked as Kal rested her tired head on his shoulder. ‘Can I go and get my gold back now? Did you kill the dragon?’
‘Yeah,’ Kal sighed. ‘I got him.’
V.ix
Smoke and Mirrors
The Dragon roared and advanced on Kal; she could hear its feet thumping on the ground as it stomped towards her. She screwed her eyes shut and tried to block out the pain of the flames that ate at her back. What else could she do? She had attempted to roll out the fire, but the dragon’s flammable, sticky secretion was not just all over her body, but all over the leaves and branches on the ground, too.
The plan that she and Ben had spent most of the day working on had failed in an instant. The dragon had a better trick up its sleeve than Kal did. It had prepared its own trap and sprung it with a spark struck from its scales, and with on
e breath had ended Kal’s wild hopes of ever killing it.
Something heavy pressed down on her back. At least for a brief moment the pain let up as the flames that were ravaging her body were extinguished. Kal braced herself for the bite of the dragon’s jaws, but instead she heard a sharp voice at her ear—
‘Get up, Mooney. You’re no good to me dead!’
It was Ben. He had returned, soaking wet, from the river and flopped down on top of her. As the dragon bounded closer, they both rose and stumbled through the burning debris towards the heart of the willow grove. As they ran down the tunnel of twisted roots and branches, Kal tore away her smouldering, smoking clothes.
She could sense the dragon hot on their heels. The tunnel was just wide enough to allow its head in, and the dragon’s neck was just long enough for it to reach all the way down. Its advance down the tunnel was heralded by the sharp cracking of twigs and branches.
Kal and Ben made it to the open space that was the god Mena’s sanctuary, at the very centre of what was now the dragon’s nest. The domed ceiling of knotted willows was obscured by a haze of smoke that was filtering in from the nest’s burning extremities. Ben ran across the earthy bowl in the hope that the dragon wouldn’t be able to stretch as far as the other side, but Kal flung herself down in the very centre of the depression and turned to face her enemy.
It came at her relentlessly; its giant head emerged from the tunnel, and when it opened its jaws they filled almost the entire sacred space under the willows. The dragon's teeth were glistening like oiled swords, and its breath was hot and sweet. Kal sprawled in the dirt before it, half-naked and defenceless, a perfect offering to the creature that most men believed to be spawned from the dragon god himself.