Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon)

by Appleton, Scott

  It took at least an hour to navigate the gently winding tunnel. Rounding a bend, he stepped into another cavern, this one laced with rainbow-swathed ice. Each glowing swath contrasted with the pure white ice composing the walls. A frozen world of frolicking water skeels swept before him. Over a hundred of them lounged on the ice or slid headfirst into a number of deep-blue pools. Salt scented the air. The creatures warbled to one another, speeding their bulky bodies along the ice with agility and grace, cutting into the saltwater pools and disappearing into the deep underwater shadows.

  The ice beneath his feet rose ahead of him as a highway that branched in several directions, twisting around the edges and through the midst of the cavern. He leaned out of the tunnel, holding the ice wall with his new hand, and gazed over the highway’s edge, which curved downward a hundred feet to yet more ice. Large carven holes punctured the highway’s base, and slicks of bluish ice formed roads through the holes, traversing the belly of the cavern.

  A warm glow emanated from the far end of the cavern from beneath a shelf of ice, and he distinguished a deeper warble as it rose and fell . . . then rose again. The frolicking skeels skidded to a stop. One of them rose from a pool with a very large fish hanging from its teeth, but its green eyes pivoted in the direction of the ice shelf and froze there. The deep warble danced along the cavern walls, changing pitch to a piercing wail. He cringed and covered his ears with his free arm until it stopped.

  The skeel with the fish threw its catch on the ice. The skeel stabbed its head into the water, flipping into the depths with a splash. Another creature snared the fish in its teeth and shuffled onto the blue ice. Using its flippers, it pushed itself in a fast slide that sped it toward the shelf of ice. It warbled high and quick, disappearing around a highway wall.

  Specter walked along the ice highways, following them toward the distant shelf of ice. Something resided beyond, hidden beneath it, he felt certain.

  As he passed the largest saltwater pool, he hesitated long enough to gaze at it. Was this somehow connected to an ocean? The Sea of Serpents lay to the west, or was it southward? He shook his head. With all the twisting and turning about of the ice tunnels, he had no way of guessing.

  From the dark depths of the water, several water skeels rose with fish in their mouths. Yet they jerked their long necks around, gazed into the depths, and bolted for the water’s surface. They almost flew out of the pool, then slid along the ice at frantic speed as some enormous object rose in the pool. Specter knelt and strained to see through the watery shadows. It was a whale almost as large as the albino dragon, though not a live one. The creature’s body draped over something pushing it upward, and suddenly enormous green eyes blazed back at him.

  With a gasp he leaned hard on his scythe.

  The head of a water skeel pushed the whale out of the water, threw it on the ice, and the skeel’s neck followed. It warbled, and the now-little skeels slid into hiding. Dripping water from its smooth white face, the water skeel heaved itself into the cavern and spat water from the nasal holes above its face. Long tendrils hung from its chin, and the veins along its neck and fat body strained against its polished skin. Powerful muscles stretched along its back and up its neck, and each of its four flippers could have covered a house.

  Though Specter remained a hundred feet above the cavern floor on the highway, this creature’s head rose above him. At last he knew why the dragon would not venture here. Those first members he’d seen of this species were little more than children. But was this one of the adults, or the very skeel about which he’d been warned?

  As the water skeel’s flippers pulled it toward the ice shelf, it whipped its neck around, latching its teeth in the whale. It pulled the whale into the air and moved off. In its wake another skeel speared out of the pool; though smaller than the first, it was still larger than even the great white dragon. Soon another skeel followed, then another, and two more. The creatures warbled as they followed the larger one.

  When the adults were a long way off, the youngsters slid out of hiding, warbling to one another as they formed a circle around the pool. More youngsters raced out of the tunnels behind him. The creatures joined their companions, and when the ring had been filled, another massive head rose from the pool. The youngsters’ warbles softened, then faded into silence as the adult swiveled its head to gaze upon them all. Its many tendrils swung in a thick beard from its jutting chin. It smiled with an arsenal of needle teeth that could halve an elephant.

  It raised its fin out of the water, and a green mermaid thrashed thereon. Specter blinked. It could not be. Yes, he’d seen the wee mermaids of the Eiderveis River, but this was totally different. The mermaid raised her webbed hands as the skeel chomped its teeth. She gurgled, and a golden tear rolled down her cheek.

  And Specter closed his eyes as the skeel opened its mouth. I don’t need to see this. He hurried down the highway, striking his scythe on the ice every few steps in frustration. He could do nothing for that poor creature. If only he could—

  The highway snaked toward the far end of the cavern, descending beneath the ice shelf.

  The shelf of ice seemed more like a vast natural roof as Specter stepped off the slick path onto the moist, sticky ice around it. At last he walked without fear of losing his footing and cracking his head on some hard surface. Beneath the ice shelf gaped an oval chamber with mist rising from its floor and startlingly warm air. The warmth saturated his body. Though he knew the air still remained around the freezing point, the change from the frigid temperature in the ice tunnels was a welcome relief.

  He entered a strange world of green grass shoots so large he could have wrapped his arms around them, and so tall they might have passed for trees deprived of their branches. The shoots had grown through the misting ice. They did not populate the chamber as a forest; rather, they were few and far between, and a path curved through their midst over a rise in the ice.

  Mighty warbling echoed from the depths of the chamber as he ascended the rise to look beyond, and glowing diamond crystals dripped from the ceiling, shattering around him into ribbons of light and color. Standing atop the rise, he beheld the heart of the chamber. The path sloped away from him into thicker rolling mist that swirled between arches of ice. A transparent column rose from the center of the chamber all the way to the ceiling, and water fell through it in a sparkling fall. The sound of the waterfall muted the warbles of the water skeels.

  The large creatures moved from one ice arch to another and less imposing, shorter-necked skeels raised themselves to greet them with a fluting sound. At the far side of the chamber the largest skeel whipped its head into its companions, and they lowered their necks, spun around, and slid toward the exit. Specter hid behind a grass shoot. Somehow his cloak gave him little comfort in these beasts’ presence. But upon the creatures’ departure, he stood again atop the rise.

  The largest skeel rose before another ice arch, and a peach-skinned skeel raised its head from the mist. Entwining their necks, the mates cooed. Then, withdrawing itself a short distance, the large one waited. Two other peach skeels slid from beneath their arches to the large one’s mate and dug into the mist with their fore flippers.

  A tiny water skeel rose through the mist, cradled in their flippers. Its neck looked many times too long for its small body and its head too big. Yet the large skeel warbled with delight and slicked out its flat tongue to lick the tiny creature. Pulling up its head, it warbled in various tones as if instructing the peach ones as they lowered the little one back beneath the mist. The mate raised its head and entwined its neck with the large one’s. Then it pulled back into the mist out of sight.

  The water skeel spun and appeared to glide over the ice as it made its way out of the chamber. Specter stepped behind a grass shoot as the creature loomed out of the belly of the chamber. It rested on the hump. Its flippers twitched, and its green eyes glowed for an instant, then it slid in the direction of the exit. He tried to run after it, but it outdistanced him wit
h ease and disappeared around the corner.

  11

  THE DEWOBIN CAVERN

  Fully two days after Ilfedo’s departure, the tunnel in which he walked finally leveled out. For a brief moment he leaned forward, holding his knees and flexing his legs to repel the stiffness. “Well, Seivar, have we arrived in the Megatrath realm?” He glanced at the large frightened bird on his shoulder. It hadn’t said a word in almost a day.

  “Have courage, my companion. I think our destination is close now. Just look at the scratches on these walls. The tunnel is larger, too—large enough even for Vectra and her kind.” He scraped his blade along a slash in the arching tunnel’s stone. “This is a claw mark, and I dare say a Megatrath’s. We are getting close.”

  As he walked, boulders jutted through the tunnel walls. Boulders of every size and shape loomed out of the shadows. His path widened between them, and the tunnel was higher and broader than before. The light of his sword seemed to push back the walls until they receded into utter darkness. When the walls were out of sight, Ilfedo stood still, feeling that he’d lost his way. He must have been standing in a large chamber, and the floor was flat in all directions.

  Guessing which direction to go, he proceeded another hundred yards and turned in a tight circle, playing his glowing aura over the stone path until he saw it drop into utter darkness.

  Seivar shivered.

  “No, this is good.” Ilfedo turned and lighted the other side of the path. It, too, dropped into oblivion. “Oganna said that Vectra took her along dangerously steep underground paths, and it looks like we’ve found one. Now as long as this continues in a straight line, we’ll head straight into the heart of Resgeria.”

  He strode into the enveloping darkness, and a cool fog rolled from the depths on either side of the path. The path widened and the fog billowed upward. But instead of enveloping him and obscuring his vision, it left the path ahead of him clear, and he proceeded, feeling all the while like some infinitesimal being entering a holy realm—or was it a sense of foreboding fiddling with his mind?

  He walked until his leg muscles burned, and he sat cross-legged on the path. Seivar hopped off his shoulder and stood on the stone, his silvery eyes combing the walls of fog. Ilfedo swung the pack off his back and untied it. Digging out some bread, he tore off a large chunk for himself and handed another to the Nuvitor.

  As he chewed it thoughtfully, he realized that the dragon ring no longer hurt. He held his hand up to the sword’s blade and by its light examined the white-gold dragon. The miniature beast purred as if in sleep and kept its eyes closed, resting its chin on its folded hands.

  He was heading in the right direction.

  He stood, then marched down the path with Seivar scurrying after him. He continued in this way for a long while until the fog bowed over the path some fifty feet ahead. Dead end.

  But when he walked the remaining distance, he discovered that the fog merely bent to the left and the path curved downward. It wasn’t steep but gradual, and he found the going easy. Seivar bounced onto his shoulder, and he petted the bird’s soft chest.

  The fog rolled away from the path and receded into the blackness. He pointed his glowing sword into the darkness and sidestepped several sharp stones projecting from the path. Soon the way leveled, and he stepped onto a broad shelf of silky smooth stone. Gazing upward, he could distinguish the path he’d followed. Great chisel marks glistened underneath its pillarlike stone supports, and the pillars dropped into the depths of the cavern around him.

  Stepping to its edge, he peered downward and rested the point of his sword on the floor. But a ripple of blue formed as the sword’s edge struck the stone. The floor shimmered, and the ripple expanded until it flashed out of existence at the far sides of the stone shelf. As if called from nonexistence, the cavern around him lit up with billions of pink bulbs no larger than bees. Far, far below, the light spread through the ruins of a wooden city, apparently human. The white spires of churches and the brown, red, and green houses flanked dirt streets that formed perfect squares. The moist, cool air fell away, and warmth filled the cavern.

  There seemed no way off his high vantage point. The stone shelf’s edges formed a sheer drop down a black cliff and to the city below.

  Sheathing his sword and dropping his pack, Ilfedo unwound the rope inside and let it over the cliff’s edge. Unfortunately its length fell far shy of the city. He held it over the edge for a long moment, then sighed and reeled it back in. As he returned the rope to the pack, a bell rang, then echoed through the city below. The pink lights that glowed all over the cavern fell away from the stone and floated in the air, clustering in bright swarms.

  He watched them, keeping his fingers on the smooth crystal that formed his sword’s pommel.

  The swarms exploded, peppering the air with their individual lights. A few floated within a dozen yards of him, and Seivar cocked his silvery eyes and squawked in curiosity. For the individual lights seemed to have feathered wings, and upon examining them closer, Ilfedo could see that each pink glow was a tiny bird. There were billions of them, all floating around in silence and providing the cavern’s only illumination.

  Ilfedo didn’t know how long the creatures mesmerized him. Their little wings flapped lazily, and the tips of their pink feathers glowed poker-white. In this world of darkness, their light held his attention with unsettling power.

  Spreading his wings, Seivar took flight. He glided among the miniature creatures, cooing to each of them as he passed. The pink balls gathered behind the Nuvitor, swarming behind him, shooting above and spiraling beneath him. As the creatures enveloped the Nuvitor, their light reflected off its white body and silvery eyes and talons. They formed a cloud above the city that flashed first pink and then white and silver as Seivar flitted in and out of formation.

  Ilfedo called to his bird, and the faithful creature shot back to him, perching on his arm.

  “They are friendly, Master!”

  “So I see. And you are confident of this?”

  The Nuvitor’s silvery eyes glinted pink as a miniature bird glided past. “They call themselves Dewobins. This cavern is their one and only home, and they warned me that there are creatures in the tunnels not far from here . . . Master, from their descriptions, I believe they were telling me of the Megatraths. But they talk of cruel black brutes that kill without moral consideration.”

  “They cannot mean the Megatraths.” Ilfedo frowned and glanced at the city far below. It looked serene and somehow drew him as if toward home. “The Megatraths are not black. Could the Dewobins have been mistaken? They give off a strangely colored light, and that alone could change their perspective on the color of a Megatrath’s hide.”

  “I think not, Master. They said a battle was fought here, not long ago, between the humans and the black brutes. Also, the city’s inhabitants live in fear, avoiding a dark corner of their city. The Dewobins are afraid of something down there. They call it a plague, Master. They said there is a creature in the city, also. Something the humans dread.”

  Ilfedo gazed upon the city again. Houses and other structures rose out of a land devoid of trees. As far as he could see, the terrain was harsh and barren. He shuddered to think people lived down there.

  Far below him, yellow light flickered out of a house, as if a door had been opened. He thought he discerned a scream, like that of a child. The scream cut off, and a wail pierced his ears.

  “Seivar, someone down there needs help. I am going down there!”

  “But how, Master? To climb down is too dangerous, and though I flew across the face of this cliff”—the bird raised its head—“there is no way down there.”

  Ilfedo leaned over the cliff’s face, considering the wet surface and impossibly steep descent. Standing, he threw Seivar into the air and pulled the pack onto his back again. He drew the sword of the dragon from its sheath and hung himself over the cliff’s face by one hand. Gritting his teeth, he sank the burning blade into the cliff, up to its hilt
, and grabbed the handle with both hands.

  Spitting sparks, the sword burned through the stone. He held on to it with all his strength, hoping seemingly against hope that his foolhardy plan would succeed. Like a hook buried in cheese, the sword cut through the cliff’s face, trailing sparks and a glowing line of molten rock. With a screeching sound, the sword plunged him toward the outskirts of the city below.

  Dewobins hummed by, spraying pink light on his arms and the cliff. But the sword of the dragon spouted flames from its pommel, and the birds scattered, though the Nuvitor dove through them and circled Ilfedo’s head.

  With his eyes half-closed, Ilfedo felt every jarring of his body as the sword caught in denser stone. But though a few times his hands slipped, he never broke his grip, and he descended rapidly.

  Ilfedo thudded to the floor of the cavern and turned. He pulled at the sword stuck in the rock face. It screeched as he drew its glorious blade out. With a smile, he sheathed the weapon and about-faced. Tongues of Living Fire licked his body as the armor of light vanished.

  He gazed down a long street, flanked on both sides by rotting wood buildings. Most were homes with short picket fences fronting them. There was, however, a lone church to his left. Darkness filled every window for half a mile, yet beyond that the houses in the heart of the city were filled with candle or lantern light.

  He caught his breath for a few moments, then stepped toward the rotting church at the city’s edge. The building’s roof had partly collapsed under one side of the steeple that now leaned precariously over the street. The heavy double doors had been chained shut, and the little cemetery next to it was covered in layers of dust and cobwebs.

  Across the street stood a row of five identical homes. Most of the windows had been shuttered, and across every door a beam had been nailed. Cobwebs laced the shutters and windows, and rust covered the wrought-iron fences that surrounded the homes’ dirt yards.