Dragon Rigger

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  "The better to show the Enemy who is stronger!" SearSky growled, from the left flank. "It's time we did some fighting!"

  His cry was echoed by the others, and Windrush nodded. He was not one to feel easy readiness for battle, but he knew that a fighting spirit was exactly what they needed now.

  As they flew eastward into the dark of night, Windrush tried, but could think of no specific target that would draw the Enemy to the Deep Caverns. Their past powers diminished, the caverns were now hauntingly empty, a place where even a dragon could feel an oppressive loneliness. Windrush had maintained their defense, but sparingly. He wondered now if he would regret that. If the caverns were so useless, why had the Enemy mustered the sorcery to attack them, all the way on the far side of the dragon-held land? Did Tar-skel know something about the Deep Caverns that the dragons should have known?

  "Who would have thought?" he heard Rocktooth mutter aloud. "Why the Deep Caverns and not the groves?"

  Windrush said nothing, but as he worked his wings tirelessly in the night, he thought of a certain demon named Hodakai to whom he intended to put some harsh questions. Defend the lumenis! said Hodakai, and Windrush had believed him. Not that defending the lumenis wasn't a prudent thing to do. But not a hint had Hodakai given him of the real target.

  Windrush smelled the air ahead, filled with scattered storm clouds, and he smelled the underweb stretching out toward their distant goal. He smelled the Enemy. He smelled destruction.

  * * *

  The Amethyst Cliffs emerged from darkness with starlight glimmering through them, so that they seemed insubstantial, a great ghostly wall in the night sky. The dragons approached the cliffs at their westernmost, and narrowest, point. From there the wall stretched eastward for a short distance, before bending to the northeast. The farther along the wall they flew, the greater its height; but at its base, it dropped away into nothingness. A pair of dragons appeared out of the darkness and met the seven. It was the sentry patrol, and the two urged Windrush and his companions to hurry.

  "I can fly faster, if the rest of you can," SearSky growled from behind Windrush's left wing.

  Windrush replied, "We will all fly faster now. Prepare to dive, brothers! Downward, to meet the Enemy!"

  The dragons behind him echoed his cry as one. In tight formation, they pitched over and dove, seeking the bottom of the Amethyst Cliffs.

  To many dragons, the Amethyst Cliffs marked the edge of the realm as they knew it—a place where the bottom dropped out of the world. And that was very nearly the truth. Windrush and his fellows were diving off the edge, into another world—into inky darkness, an abyss of emptiness like the night sky turned upside down. It was a long dive, an endless dive. In the near-darkness, it was hard not to fear that they had lost their way, and were falling into an emptiness from which they would never return.

  "Where are we?" murmured FlyForever, probably the youngest dragon among them. It was an understandable question: their only point of reference was the vertical cliff wall, which in the faint starlight seemed to recede from the eye, to vanish into the night.

  "Where are we?" SearSky laughed, spilling air from his wings to fall faster. "On our way to the darkest hole in the realm. Do you want to challenge drahls in the utterest darkness? This is the place to do it." Laughing again, he blew a tongue of fire downward into the abyss. Like a torch in the night, his flame vanished into darkness, but not before it momentarily illumined a small section of the wall. The fire was refracted back out of the faceted-gem surface, like a gleam of light in a dragon's eye. For the briefest instant, one could see how, in the morning sun, the cliffs might blaze with blue fire.

  When the flame went out, the dragons dropped in a darkness that seemed more enveloping than ever. "No more fire," Windrush warned, trying to steer a true course downward, parallel to the cliff wall. "Save it for the battle, SearSky. If any of the enemy were looking this way, you just announced our approach. Let's try to surprise them, and maybe we'll stay alive long enough to do some good."

  SearSky snorted. But from then on, the wind was the only sound as they dropped into the endless bottom of the night.

  * * *

  The first hint of the Deep Caverns was a feeling that the cliff was steadily curving from them, no matter how hard they tried to stay even with it. For a moment, Windrush feared that he was losing his orientation, leading the others into the great void beyond. Then he saw the first sprinkling of stars through an opening in the wall to his left.

  That was the opening to the Deep Caverns, and to the stars that shone through from their extreme opposite end. When they passed through that opening, they would pass beneath the realm, beneath the mountains, beneath the earth. And those were the stars of the sky beneath—similar in appearance to, but different from, the stars they knew above the realm.

  His heart pounding with excitement and fear, Windrush pulled out of his dive and led the other six in a long, curving flight through the opening to the caverns. It was difficult to make out the forms in the dark, but the cliffs were above him now, a ceiling rather than a wall. He knew that stalactites and columns extended down from that ceiling, and they had to fly with caution to avoid a collision.

  And where, in all of this darkness, was the enemy? And where were the dragons defending against them?

  The caverns were vast, and stretched out in many directions.Were there no remaining sentries who could lead them to the battle? The enemy could be almost anywhere. But they must have come in search of the power that had once emanated from the underrealm here. Windrush recalled a place in one of the caverns called the Flowing Springs—a focal point, long ago, for a great potential in the underrealm. It seemed as likely a place as any.

  He sniffed the underrealm as he flew, wishing that he could land to concentrate properly. But there was no place to land, and no time! The drahls might already have won their victory here. Windrush felt anger powering his wingstrokes, and flame building in the back of his throat.

  Behind him, SearSky grumbled, "Where are they? Have they done their filthy work and left this useless place?"

  "Don't be so sure the place is useless," Windrush answered. "The Enemy wouldn't waste his time here unless he thought he would find something of value."

  "Drahls!" SearSky muttered. "That's what I want to find! Drahls to kill!"

  Windrush spotted a faint nimbus of light, far off to his right. He banked that way. "You may get your chance." Now he saw a flicker of fire: dragon flames. "Battle ahead!" he called softly. "Be sharp! And stay quiet!"

  Cavern-shadows flowed past them as they picked up speed. Windrush scanned ahead, trying to discern the shapes of dragons, of drahls, of anything that moved. He saw several more flashes of flame, and then they sped through a great dark archway. A pale moon came into view beneath the inverted horizon, shining up into the caverns from below. Its ghostly illumination was enough to let Windrush make out the outlines of the ceiling and walls. He strained to pick out, at last, the shapes of the dragons and the enemy.

  * * *

  It was a chamber called the Cavern of Clouds Below, roofed above with vaulting stone ceilings and floored with sky—and far below, a layer of cottony white, ever-present cloud. Windrush knew this place a little. The clouds below were a place where dragons never went, but up here in the cavern, dragons had once gathered in great numbers, perching on hollowed-out ledges and crooks of stone. Beyond this cavern, on the far side, was the place called the Flowing Springs. Whether the enemy was there or not, Windrush couldn't tell—because the Cavern of Clouds Below was swarming with drahls, and with a much smaller number of dragons who were trying to drive them away. It was clear that the dragons were in desperate need of help!

  Guided by the flickering of fire—hot, yellow flames of dragons, and ice-blue flames of drahls—Windrush and the six arrowed straight for the center of the battle. Soon they could see the banking, climbing, diving shapes of the combatants, and they began to pick out dragons who most needed help. In the noise a
nd turbulence, no one seemed to have noticed their arrival. Windrush thundered out a battle cry: "DRAGON BROTHERS, HELP HAS ARRIVED!" The six behind him echoed the cry, and for an instant the battle seemed to pause while everyone registered their presence.

  The beleaguered dragons cried out, and hisses filled the chamber as the drahls realized that they faced fresh opponents. Windrush wasted no time: he dove upon the nearest drahl and blasted it until it tumbled, burning, toward the clouds. He turned instantly to climb again for a new target—and to avoid several drahls who were wheeling toward him. He heard the shrieks of several other drahls dying, and knew that his companions had joined him in taking advantage of their surprise.

  The advantage did not last long. The dragons who had been defending this place were tired, and hurt, and reduced in numbers. They had lasted this long by darting in and out from sheltered places in the upper reaches of the cavern, but a look revealed that many of those shelters had been blasted away by the attacking drahls. These dragons would not have survived much longer. Windrush did not want to think how many the realm had lost already tonight. They were still outnumbered, but with the addition of his seven, they could certainly fight back. "TURN THE TIDE!" he called out. "TURN THE TIDE!"

  He felt the chill of drahl fire on his right wing, and dropped and twisted sharply, glimpsing a drahl over his shoulder. He turned beneath the enemy. It could not follow quickly enough, and Windrush climbed steeply and twisted again to come back upon it. He saw a flame and heard a scream, and the drahl was falling, incinerated by SearSky. The other dragon's eyes gleamed as he passed close to Windrush.

  There was no time for thanks or gloating. Three more drahls were upon them, and the two dragons blew flame and beat the air, and moments later were separated again. Windrush caught one of the drahls and raked it with his claws, and felt it shudder as it tumbled away from his grasp, out of the battle. He had no time to follow it for the kill. Another flew across his path, trying to evade the pursuit of FlyForever. Windrush blew flame and killed the drahl—but a flame from another direction caught FlyForever at the same moment, following his movement. Windrush came about hard, and cursed at the sight of FlyForever burning, spinning in agony—burned, not by a drahl, but by another dragon! The Tar-skel dragon, eyes afire, was diving away—toward Rocktooth, who was just shaking loose a pair of drahls.

  "Rocktooth! Enemy dragon!" Windrush bellowed.

  Rocktooth veered again and blew a breath of flame, but missed the Tar-skel dragon. Windrush shot a last, agonized glance at FlyForever, now falling out of reach, out of the cavern—and dove in pursuit of the enemy. He wouldn't have caught it, except that FlyForever's friend Hardscale thundered in from the right to join the pursuit and drove the enemy dragon upward and left, giving Windrush the chance to cut it off. "You murder your brothers, traitor!" he shouted, blasting a tongue of flame that caught the dragon on the left wing. The dragon spun around, eyes flashing with hatred, and belched fire at Windrush as it seemed to hang in the air, before falling tailfirst.

  The blast hit Windrush in the face and neck, but he passed through it quickly. The enemy dragon had evaded him momentarily, but it was more badly hurt. Windrush banked over to come at the dragon again. But Hardscale was already upon the traitor, enveloping him in a withering flame, bellowing, "FlyForever! This is for you!"

  Windrush felt sick rather than triumphant, as he watched the Tar-skel dragon fall to its death. An enemy gone, but one that never should have been an enemy. And a good warrior, FlyForever, gone before he'd fairly had a chance to fight.

  "Windrush, dive!" he heard. He obeyed instantly, and saw a drahl shoot past. Rocktooth had shouted the warning, and it was a good message: Don't think! Just fly and fight! He turned back for another target.

  The battle continued in the moonlit darkness for what seemed an eternity. The loyal dragons were still outnumbered, and were steadily being worn down. The fight was beginning to seem hopeless . . . until a new battle cry pierced the night. A dozen new dragons flew into the fray, sent by Farsight from the main encampment. Windrush greeted them with a grateful blast. The original dragon-defenders were exhausted, and several had fallen since Windrush's arrival.

  "Burn the ones we saved for you!" SearSky trumpeted, cartwheeling across the vast cavern in pursuit of a frantically dodging drahl. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself. Windrush followed SearSky with his eyes, stunned by the dragon's fierce joy in the pursuit and the kill. He would not have wanted SearSky fighting against him; nevertheless, he shuddered at the bloodlust that burned in that dragon.

  He had no time to think about SearSky, though. With the arrival of help, he realized that they might have a chance of clearing the drahls from this place. But even so, they were only fighting a rearguard action, in one cavern among many. What mischief was Tar-skel working, while the dragons and drahls battled endlessly here in the Cavern of Clouds Below?

  "Two to fly with me!" he thundered, as soon as the new arrivals had joined the battle.

  "With you, Windrush!" called Rocktooth, rising to join him.

  "Where to, Windrush?" asked SearSky, cackling as he flew alongside. It wasn't clear if he was joining or taunting.

  "If we're to learn what the Enemy is doing here, we must fly now, while the tide is with us," Windrush said. "Yes or no. I have no time for foolishness."

  SearSky glanced around. "They need me here." The black dragon's teeth flashed, and his eyes glowed fiery red. "But you'll need me more, if you're thinking to fly deeper. Lead on."

  Windrush flew high, passing above the battle. None of the drahls seemed to notice their departure. Windrush aimed toward the distant moon, then banked right. Ahead now, growing quickly, was another great archway. They sped through it.

  Suddenly they had rock beneath them; they were flying through a half-enclosed tunnel, open on the right. A small shadow ahead grew, then turned away with a screech. It died in SearSky's flame before it could flee the way it had come. The dragons thundered past the drahl's body, falling to the floor of the tunnel.

  The formation opened out into a new chamber, this one with a partial floor of stone. It was open on the right side; but to the left, a wall curved up and arched overhead. Perhaps a third of the cavern was open to the stars, directly ahead and to the right. Drahls were wheeling in the air, some distance away. They seemed preoccupied and did not immediately notice the dragons. The wall on the left looked damaged—as though a part of it had split away, perhaps falling out of the cavern and away into infinity. A stream of water was cascading down the broken section of the wall. The water glistened in the moonlight—and in the light of something else, as well.

  "Halt here!" Windrush whispered urgently, braking to land. The other two complied, SearSky more slowly than Rocktooth. They muttered uneasily as they landed near him.

  There was a strong undersmell of sorcery, but Windrush didn't need his undersense to reveal the Enemy's work here. He gazed in dismay at a glowing pattern of fine, ghostly light that stretched across the open sky ahead and to the right. It was a web of light, exactly like the Enemy's web of power that he had seen in the lumenis vision. It took him a moment to focus and realize that several strands of the web actually narrowed and entered the cavern. They ended near the waterfall, hanging in midair, glimmering.

  Windrush's undersense was on fire. Power was flowing from that stream—he could not see it, but he could feel it—power such as had not flowed here in many generations of dragons.

  "I must go into the underrealm," he whispered. "I must discover what is happening here."

  "Those drahls will be upon us if we remain," SearSky said.

  "Then you must protect me," Windrush answered, wondering if he could trust SearSky to guard him.

  The black dragon shrugged his wings insolently. "Do what you must. But do it fast."

  Windrush nodded, fearing what he was going to find in the underrealm more than he feared those drahls. With a last glance around, he closed his eyes and sank his thoughts into the underwe
b.

  * * *

  At first sight, the shape of the underrealm was little different from that of the outer world. But it was charged with different hues of light, as though the moonlight illuminating the cavern had turned to an eerie blue-green. The spring that tumbled down the wall was backlit by the sepulchral glow, and the sky off to the right was hazy with a faint blue airglow. But shining out of that sky was the luminous green web of the Enemy, which here in the underrealm seemed to breathe and throb with energy.

  Windrush was flanked by two great, dark, still statues on his right and left—the two dragons guarding him. Their presence provided a silent reassurance. He knew they could do little to protect him against the greatest of the dangers here, but he hoped they could keep him safe from the other things casting their shadows in the underrealm, the shadows that were the drahls.

  The real danger, of course, was the power revealed in that light. It was not a dragon light, nor a Dream Mountain light. It was a light of sorcery, a work of the Enemy. And yet, there was more to it than that. There was a natural power here: he could feel it flowing in the spring of water. It was a bitter realization; Tar-skel had found the power the dragons had thought long vanished. Was his knowledge of the underrealm so much greater—or had he learned secrets from the captive draconae? And what was his purpose?