Dragon Mage

by Andre Norton

“Yeah, she was with us.”

  Arshaka turned and dropped his gaze to the boy.

  As quickly as it had turned red, the color drained from Arshaka’s face. His jaw worked, but no words came out, and his eyes grew wide.

  “The hood, push it back. Do it.”

  One of the men holding Sigmund released one hand, brushed aside the hood, then regained the grip. The boy struggled a little, and so the man squeezed the caught arm tighter.

  “Hey, that’s not necessary!” Sigmund snapped. “I didn’t do nothin’ wrong, honest, and…”

  Arshaka coughed and wiped at his mouth with the cloth. “Sigmund?”

  “Yeah, my name’s Sigmund. What’s it to you, huh?” Sigmund tried to act tough, but his lips quivered, and he tried one more time to pull out of the men’s grips.

  Arshaka stared at the boy, holding the cloth in front of his mouth now.

  “What do I want done with them?” Arshaka mused aloud.

  He kept staring, as if he were looking into Sigmund and measuring him. The lantern nearly slipped from his fingers, the light jumping and sending him into action.

  He stepped close to Sigmund and brought his face within an inch of the boy’s. He held the lantern close, too, so that the light and the heat were bothersome.

  “Shilo, Sigmund. Where is she?”

  Sigmund blinked furiously and wrinkled his nose. “Don’t know,” he said after a moment. “Haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

  “You were talking about her, Sigmund. Calling to her maybe.”

  Nidintulugal watched the exchange, his hands forming fists and arm muscles working beneath the men’s grips. He liked the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar even less now. Again he thought about lashing out and trying to escape. He could return to the temple and relate the entire story to the elder priests, convince them to come here and help find the dragon’s eggs … but then Sigmund might be alone, unable to break free. And Nidintulugal could not leave the boy.

  “I said I haven’t seen her since yesterday. But, yeah, we were talking about her. She’s kind of cute, for a girl. Pushy, though. I think she left the city. Said something about going home.”

  “To Georgia?”

  Sigmund’s eyes grew impossibly wide. “H-h-how do you know about Georgia?”

  “And the good old U.S. of A.?”

  Sigmund nodded. “How do you…”

  “The girl, Sigmund. Where is she?”

  “You deaf?” Sigmund taunted. His tone was filled with false bravery. “I said I haven’t seen her.”

  Arshaka stepped back from the boy and turned to Nidintulugal. “How about you, priest?”

  Nidintulugal cocked his head, like he didn’t know what Arshaka referred to.

  “I heard you mention Shilo, too. Your voice is easy to distinguish. Where is she?”

  “I do not know.” It was the truth. Priests of Shamash only told the truth.

  Arshaka shook his head. “You really don’t know, do you?”

  “No, Hand of Nebuchadnezzar. I really do not know.”

  Arshaka’s eyes narrowed, and he used the cloth to again wipe his forehead. “When and where did you last see her, priest?” Arshaka smiled. “Ever truthful priest of Shamash.”

  Nidintulugal swallowed hard and met Arshaka’s gaze. “I last saw her yesterday, Hand of Nebuchadnezzar. In the courtyard before the Ishtar Gate. It was exactly as Sigmund says. She mentioned something about going home.”

  The priest felt his heart seize, and he struggled to keep from gasping and showing an outward sign of his lie. He’d never lied before—not that he could remember. Perhaps in his first years of life, before he’d been taken in by the Temple of Shamash. But not since then.

  Never since then.

  It was clear that the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar believed him. The Hand knew that priests of Shamash did not lie.

  And so Nidintulugal had kept Shilo safe. But he’d damned himself and just failed the greatest test Shamash had put before him.

  “It was before sunset,” Nidintulugal added, continuing the falsehood. “I’ve not seen her since.”

  “Pity,” Arshaka said. “I was looking forward to chatting with her.”

  26

  Deep Trouble

  “We’re in trouble, ain’t we?” Kim tugged on Shilo’s robe. “Deep trouble.”

  “Deep pucky,” Shilo said. It was an expression she’d remembered her father using. “Very deep pucky.”

  “Pucky,” Kim repeated.

  The man holding the lantern stared at her, his gaze flitting from her right arm, where the nut dye was running, to her face, squinting and perhaps seeing more dye running. It was clear he didn’t know what to make of her, or the boy who poked his head out to better see what was going on.

  “Skin condition,” Shilo repeated. “I told you I’ve a problem. Uhm, I’m sick. So you don’t want to get too close to me. It could be contagious. Your skin could get all runny, too. Just show us the way out of here.” But I don’t want to get out of here, she thought. I need to find Nidin and Sigmund and Ulbanu’s eggs. She was desperately worried about Sigmund. But she didn’t know what else to say to the man.

  “Shilo, you stink at bluffing,” Kim whispered.

  The man stood indecisive one moment more, then reached out again with his free hand, not in the beckoning gesture he’d used before, but trying to grab her.

  Shilo jumped back, bumping into Kim and sending him to the floor. He cursed at her in a language she guessed was Chinese—she understood each word and was amazed an eleven-year-old would know such atrocious phrases. She nearly fell, too, but she caught herself on the wall, scraping her bare arm in the process.

  “Ouch. We don’t mean any trouble,” Shilo said. “Just show us how to get out of here. That’s all we need.” Just to get out. And then back in another way after dark.

  “I think I need to take you to Juvaii,” the man said. “He will know what to do. Come here.” He reached forward again, and this time Shilo darted under the sweep of his arm and spun around behind him.

  “Don’t touch me. I’m contagious,” she tried again.

  He turned, too, and the play of the light from the lantern in his hand sent shadows skittering across the floor and wall. The light struck the glazed images of animals, and it looked like some of them were moving. Shilo knew it was a trick of the light, but the man saw it, and it held his gaze for one moment too long.

  Shilo reached out with both hands and grabbed the lantern. She yanked hard and pulled it from his fingers. She ducked below the swing of his left arm. His fist was balled, and she heard the air whoosh around it. She knew that if it had connected it would have hurt. She crouched and set the lantern on the ground, then leapt up and to her right, again narrowly avoiding a swing.

  He lunged at her now, arms wide and intending to scoop her in, eyes flaring with anger. “You’re the one the Hand wants. I know it! I’ve heard the whispers about you.”

  He would have grabbed her, but she fell backward, unexpectedly pulled off her feet when Kim yanked on the back of her robe.

  She hit hard, the air rushing from her lungs, and a flash of pain racing up her spine.

  Kim slid past her and drove his hand into the man’s stomach, raised a leg and kicked at his knee.

  Keeping his leg up and bent, Kim kicked at the man again and again, Shilo hearing a snap and a groan of pain. Kim had broken the man’s leg. He fell, and Kim plastered himself against the wall. Shilo managed to skitter back just in time. The man sagged first to his knees, crying out when he landed on the broken one, then pitched forward and started groaning.

  Kim didn’t stop. The boy drove his heel into the man’s back and made a chopping motion twice to his neck. Then Kim grabbed the lantern with one hand and held his other out to Shilo. She shook her head and got up on her own.

  “Is he dead?” Shilo worried that Kim might have killed him. She couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

  “I don’t want to know.” The boy moved down the tunnel, tak
ing the light with him, clearly not wanting to learn the man’s condition.

  Shilo caught up and took the lantern. This was her expedition, and she’d not have her father’s eleven-year-old friend take over. “Stop. We can’t just let him sprawl there. Dead or alive, someone will find him.”

  Kim thrust out his lower lip. “Sure someone’ll find him—but we don’t have any place to stash him, do we?”

  She regarded him silently for a moment, troubled thoughts whirling in her head. This was all so wrong! They were supposed to sneak in at night, all of them staying together, find the eggs and get out. Now someone might be dead, and she was separated from her father and Nidintulugal.

  “Ulbanu, help me.” She’d not heard the dragon’s voice since the cave. When she was hearing the voice, she hadn’t wanted to. Now, she begged the dragon to reach in her head and communicate. “Open my mind,” she whispered. “Make it easy.”

  “Where should we go?” Kim tugged on her robe. “Down that way, I think. The guy came from there. Might be something interesting, huh?”

  Shilo tried to shut him out, searching her head for Ulbanu’s voice. But the dragon wasn’t intruding. Maybe the dragon couldn’t, she thought after a moment. The dragon couldn’t determine just where under the Hanging Gardens her eggs were. Maybe something about the mountain blocked her magical senses.

  “Let’s go this way.” Kim was intent on retracing the man’s steps.

  Shilo thought it likely that Kim didn’t want to pass by the man he’d beaten up.

  “If you hadn’t attacked that man, Kim, he would have caught me … us. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d caught us. But I think it would have been ‘game over.’”

  He cocked his head.

  The expression was a few decades beyond him, she realized. Who will you grow up to be, Kim? Will you have a family like my father did? She shifted the lantern to her other hand, finding the leather strip rough and too wide to comfortably fit in her palm. But you won’t grow up to be anything if we don’t get back to the dragon. Again she fumed that Ulbanu had pulled two children from the future to help.

  Kim started down the tunnel. “Your skin is all smeared, Shilo. Hope mine doesn’t look that bad. Doesn’t look like no skin condition, no rash. Looks like paint running.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “I’m going this way, Shilo. I ain’t going back that way. No reason to go back that way.”

  Every reason to go back that way, she thought. My dad’s back there … somewhere. And Nidin’s there, too. Somewhere.

  “Sigmund’s there, Kim,” she said aloud. “We can’t leave him.” I won’t leave him. “We’re going this way instead.” She turned to prove her point and took a few steps, the lantern’s light reaching the man on the floor. She stared at his back. It wasn’t rising and falling, and his head was turned at a sickening angle. Kim had killed him, using some sort of martial art form.

  “C’mon, Kim. It’ll be easy to retrace our steps now that we have a light.” She wished she would have brought the last of the nuts with her so she could reapply the dye. But maybe she could find something else down here that would work. Maybe Nidintulugal had nuts with him.

  “C’mon, Kim. We have to find them.” She turned and saw that the way behind her was empty. Kim had disappeared again. “He promised.” Well, let him wander off that way … in the utter darkness, she thought. Shilo’s father came first, and Nidintulugal. Kim was little more than a stranger, an acquaintance the dragon selected.

  Her father’s friend.

  She knew where Kim was, or rather where he was going. But she couldn’t say the same for her father and Nidintulugal. Who knew where they were right now? Shifting the lamp again, she hurried after Kim, gritting her teeth in dismay that her sandals made slap-slapping sounds against the floor.

  The light made everything easier, yet at the same time more frightening. The animals on the bricks kept appearing to move in the play of the lantern. The darkness, though scary, had hidden the details of her surroundings—that the tunnel was so confining. She likened it to being swallowed by some big beast, slipping down its throat and heading toward the oblivion of its belly.

  She saw Kim just ahead. He’d been copying her, right hand along the wall and left hand in front, moving slow enough so it was easy for her to catch up. Once more she wanted to throttle him, wanted to grab him by the shoulders and spin him around, push him back the other way.

  Maybe they really should do just that, go back the way they’d come. But … ahead of Kim the tunnel forked, the right-hand side going up. There were steps, a way out.

  “Stop.” Shilo didn’t say it loudly, but her word had an edge to it. Kim stopped. He didn’t turn to face her, though, clearly not wanting to look her in the eye.

  She padded up to him, the lantern light dancing faintly. Touching the bricks near the ascending stairway, she settled on a lion and concentrated.

  “I can manipulate things,” she said. She was talking to herself. “I can mark our way.” This would be better than leaving a trail of bread crumbs. She felt the glazed brick soften, and she sculpted it like clay, turning the lion into an odd-looking creature. She wasn’t about to take the time to try to make it into something artful. She changed the image of a bull and another lion on nearby bricks, making their heads melt.

  “We can come back this way, get out of here later.”

  She melted a few more farther down. When she was finished, she stepped past Kim, not saying a word. She wanted to scold him; she had a string of venomous sentences running through her head. But she didn’t say a word.

  She walked at a steady pace, eyes trained on the tunnel ahead, ears straining to hear something other than the slap-slapping of her sandals.

  “Sorry,” Kim offered. “I just thought—”

  She waved her free hand behind her, silencing him. She thought she heard something ahead, though it was soft and she couldn’t quite distinguish what it was. It might have been something dripping, maybe a trough leaking. She slowed and held the light low now.

  Maybe her father and Nidintulugal were in front of them. It was likely these tunnels connected … they had to connect. Whoever built this place had to have planned it. Better than we planned this rescue operation, she mused. The corridors had to make sense, like Disney World. Her father had a friend who worked there. And during their vacation, he’d taken them below the Magic Kingdom. It was like a city beneath the place, and workers scurried from one end of the park to another.

  They didn’t get to explore long, though, as her father’s friend didn’t want to get in trouble. Shilo hadn’t liked being down there anyway.

  The Hanging Gardens, though large and impressive, weren’t nearly as big as Disney World. So this particular corridor couldn’t go on forever.

  Shilo told herself she’d have just as good a chance of finding her father and Nidintulugal by going this way, perhaps a better chance, as the corridor curved back the way they’d come. The dripping sound got louder as she pressed on. She didn’t look back; she knew Kim was there, hearing the occasional squeak of his tennis shoes against the brick floor. She suspected he knew that he’d killed the man—a terrible burden for an eleven-year-old. If … when … they got out of here, she’d tell him again how he likely saved both of their lives. Maybe she’d tell him before they got out. But right now, she wanted quiet. She wanted to focus on the dripping sound, and any other sounds she might pick up.

  She desperately wanted to hear Sigmund and Nidintulugal talking, maybe calling for her. They had to be worried, had to know they’d gotten separated. They were probably searching for her, though without a light they’d be just stumbling around.

  “We have to find them.” She walked faster again, praying that she wouldn’t come across any other workers down here, but knowing that it was inevitable.

  After a few minutes they came to another fork in the tunnel, one curving farther toward where Shilo suspected her father might be. The other was narrower, at best two feet w
ide, and sloped down. The walls and floor were earth, not a single brick that she could see, and she could stick her fingers in the walls; they weren’t hard-packed by time.

  “That’s where we gotta go, ain’t it?” Kim brushed at one of the sides and watched the dirt fall away. “This’s all new, Shilo. Dug not long ago.”

  “Yes, I think this is where we need to go.” Shilo tipped her head, listening down the narrow tunnel. It was where the dripping sound came from.

  “Bet Sigmund ain’t down there, though.” Kim sniffed at the air. “Kinda stinky. Bet Nidin ain’t down there either.”

  Shilo took a deep whiff. It was a fusty smell that reminded her of some of the old things in the antique store’s attic. But there was a dampness to it, and a tinge of rottenness, like something had spoiled and had never been cleaned up.

  The dripping sound persisted.

  “I don’t like it,” Kim said.

  “Neither do I.”

  “But that’s the right way. I can feel it.” He squared his shoulders and thrust his chin forward. “It’ll just take a little bit of courage is all.”

  “There are three kinds of courage,” Shilo whispered.

  Kim looked up at her, mouth open. “How did you know that? Did you meet my dragon?”

  You told me about courage of the blood, she thought, in a dream more than two thousand years from now.

  “I don’t know how I knew that.” Shilo shrugged. “Sounded good,” she said. “Three kinds of courage.”

  “So what sounds good now, Shilo? Going down there, maybe, where we’re probably supposed to go? Or going after Sigmund?”

  My father, she thought. Going after my father sounds like the best thing to do.

  “Going down there, Kim.” To save dragonkind, and perhaps mankind, too.

  27

  Georgia on His Mind

  Arshaka spun away from Sigmund and Nidintulugal, raising his free hand and making a circling motion with his index fingers. “Bring them. Since Sigmund has joined us, I no longer require the girl. Sigmund will likely suit my needs better anyway.”

  Nidintulugal did not put up a struggle, though Arshaka’s men thought he would, tightening their grips so their fingernails dug painfully into the priest’s arms as they pushed him along. He no longer thought about escaping; he’d lied, committed a sin in the eyes of his god and his temple, and so decided to accept whatever punishment was in his future.