Whimly grinned down at her, and she felt the warmth of his friendship cover her. “Thank you, Whimly; you saved my life.”
“The lady helped,” he said, nodding at Caritha. “I suppose she is part dragon too.”
Caritha collapsed, and Ombre picked her off the ground. She lay limp in his arms, her skin bone-white. “Caritha?” He shook her but she did not stir, and he looked to Oganna with fear in his eyes. “She is not responding.”
Oganna touched Caritha’s cheek. It was cold and growing colder, as if death were claiming her. Grasping Avenger, she touched its blade to the Warrioress’s sword arm. The blade pulsed red light and warmed the woman’s skin, for a moment forming an aura around the body. Caritha coughed, and set her feet on the ground as Ombre embraced her.
“What happened there?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I guess I don’t have the strength I used to.”
But that made no sense to Oganna. Why would her aunt suffer a reduction in the power of her dragon blood? While it was true that it took the combined power of all the Warrioresses to perform any great deed, this act should have been relatively simple for her. It was as if her power had diminished.
“Don’t have the strength?” Ombre held her at arm’s length, gazing into her eyes. “What are you talking about? Where would it go?”
“Please.” The Warrioress stood apart from him and gestured for Whimly to lead them onward. “I can see Oganna has questions too. But for now, treat me as you have before. I am able to cope with whatever situations arise on our journey. The rest is a secret I alone bear. And for now I have no desire to share it with either of you. Can you respect that?”
Ombre stared hard at her, but Oganna nodded. “Of course, Aunt Caritha. If that is what you wish.”
The Art’en, unaffected by the episode, picked up Caritha’s and Oganna’s packs and glided to another island.
Several vines of sufficient length and size hung close at hand, so Oganna grabbed hold of one, pulled back, and ran forward, swinging over the stream and landing on the island. Her companions landed beside her, and the viper coddled her neck. “Psst!”
She scratched its head and then looked to Whimly. He had his back turned and appeared to be listening for something. “Whimly?” But he stopped her with a sharp glance and raised his hand for silence as a dull thud sounded in the distance ahead of them.
Placing his hand over his left breast, Whimly gave her a meaningful gaze.
Heart? His heart? She watched him point ahead of them and frown before again touching his breast. “Heart?” she mouthed.
He nodded.
The heart of the Swamplands. We’ve reached it—but . . . “Why the silence?”
Spreading his arms wide, the Art’en pointed up and walked in a lumbering manner.
Ah, she had almost forgotten about the giants. She nodded to let him know she understood and checked on Ombre and Caritha. Their swords were drawn, and their eyes were darting in all directions. They knew.
They proceeded onward with Whimly leading the way. The islands grew larger, and the swamp turned shallower. The air here was less humid, and the lighting was not as dim. No crocodilian creatures were in sight, and the region was deathly quiet. Not a bird dared to muster a song for fear of discovery.
For a long while they continued in this fashion until, coming upon a gargantuan human footprint, they stopped to take stock of the area. Whimly pointed to a rise in the land ahead and folded his hands under his head to indicate that the giants were sleeping. They tiptoed up the rise, then peeked over.
There, filling a huge bed made of felled trees and covered with animal skins, was the largest woman she had ever seen. Even in her imagination Oganna had never dreamed that such a race of humanity existed. The giant wore fur breeches and a fur coat pieced together from a great many different animals. She couldn’t help wondering how long it must have taken to sew those garments.
Whimly interrupted her musings by leading her and her companions around the giant and into a stand of trees to the west. Another giant lumbered into the clearing behind them at that moment and caught sight of them. His eyes popped wide open, and in one swift move he grabbed the Art’en, Ombre, and Caritha and laughed as he brought them to his face.
Oganna had slipped behind a tree, and the giant appeared not to have seen her. She raced around the clearing, came up behind the giant, and stood by the head of his still-sleeping companion. She drew her sword and held the point to the female’s head. The sword arrayed her in the silver garment as the man spun around and cried out. Horror was written on his face.
There aren’t many women your size, are there? She knew that her assumption was correct, for the man set down her companions and whispered so as not to wake his mate. “You—please—you no hurt her! I let go—see? Free now. Go—will not—I not harm you.” He folded his enormous hands, and the largest tears she’d ever seen tumbled down his cheeks.
18
LOST DEPTHS OF THE WORLD
The sheer cliff rose before him like a hideous giant. Ilfedo shook his head and wiped his brow. It seemed like forever that he’d been searching for Vectra’s realm. He thought he’d entered it a long while back.
Apparently not, for even with telltale Megatrath claw marks in every tunnel and on every wall, not a sighting had he made and not a sound had he heard. He had found several underground rivers, and the various fruits and fish he’d found had sustained him. Still, he couldn’t go on forever. Part of him wondered if he had passed too deep through the tunnels. Perhaps he missed a turn and was now in unoccupied or abandoned territory.
The cavern in which he now stood was so large that the light of his sword did not reveal even the walls to his left and right. Though he had circled the cavern’s edge, he found, much to his discouragement, that there was no way out except an upward climb. Not even the Nuvitor could help. It could not see in total darkness and would therefore have to follow his lead.
The cliff was black and sparkling with moisture. There were abundant handholds on the rock’s face. The Megatraths had ensured that with their tremendous claws. How he wished he had six lizardian legs right now.
“Let us be done with this climb,” Ilfedo said as the Nuvitor flew over his head.
He stabbed his sword’s flaming blade into the cliff, hauled himself up, inserted his foot in a claw mark, and pulled out the sword. Again he stabbed, this time as high as he could reach. The blade pierced the stone with little effort, and he pulled himself up as a cold wind howled from high above. Wind from where? I’m still deep underground. It swept down his neck and goose bumps rose on his arms.
Time’s passage fell into the back of his mind as he methodically climbed. Out, out, he wanted out of this place. He wanted Yimshi’s light and the companionship of a friend, even if that friend was a six-legged reptilian Megatrath.
A long while later his aching arms cried out for a rest, and his lungs threatened to catch fire. Somewhere beyond his sight the wind blew again. Mixed in with the sound, a few stones crumbled from the cliff, crashing to the rocks far, far below. He pulled himself higher again and stones crumbled, though this time it sounded nearer. He paused, and Seivar landed on his shoulder. “Master, you should not stop. There is nowhere to go but up.”
Ilfedo shushed the Nuvitor and gazed at the swallowing darkness around and above him. He felt as if he’d again entered that haunted house in Dresdyn. He was so weary of darkness. He kept his ears tuned for anything that might indicate something else was in the cavern with him, yet the silence was his only company.
Holding on to the nearest claw indentation, he pulled his sword out of the stone, stretched to his full height, and stabbed it several feet higher in the cliff’s face. He watched his feet, carefully raising first one foot and then the next onto a slight ledge. Then he looked up to pull his sword out of the stone again—and froze. The Nuvitor shivered on his shoulder as a blank white eye as large as a barrel shone out of the darkness mere inches above the swor
d of the dragon. The eye rolled by and another eye appeared, rolled on by, and was followed by yet another. They were attached to a gray snake body, or so it appeared, for the monstrosity slipped through the sword’s glow on its journey around the cavern. It had several heads—he counted seven—but every eye was blind, and its mouths yawned, showing rows of rotting teeth.
So long as he remained where he was, or so it seemed, it would not realize he was there. Holding on to the cliff, he drew out his sword and pointed its blade up. He focused the weapon’s energy on maximizing the light output, and it revealed coil upon coil of sinewy serpent-dragon wound around the cavern walls. It had wound itself like a rope stuck to the inside of a tube. Round and round it moved, yet without proceeding up or down. Perhaps it waited in the manner of a spider, patiently anticipating unsuspecting prey. It opened and closed its mouths. The heads rose and fell from the rest of the serpent-dragon’s body. The thing smelled—of death. It had to be hundreds of feet in length, larger than anything he had imagined could exist. It could swallow a dragon, maybe several.
It was then that Ilfedo noticed it. Chunks of stone had broken off of the cliff’s face, and beneath those sections lay rusty metal, not unlike iron in appearance, yet as smooth as steel. Ilfedo, warily keeping an eye on the serpent sliding so close to him, chipped at the stone with his sword. Using short bursts of Living Fire, he blasted a hole a foot wide and twice that deep. The next time he chipped at the stone, it clanged against metal. A chunk of the cliff fell away. He cringed, expecting the serpent to spring on him, but it maintained its blind circuit. Its heads rose and fell, noiselessly snapping their jaws.
The hole in the cliff was large and deep. Ilfedo stepped into it and exhaled with relief as his feet relaxed on solid footing. Ahead of him, the metal was smooth except for some dents and scrapes. Despite his weariness, he started chipping away at the stone. He determined that if this metal was linked to the sections he had seen above, whatever was hidden behind the cliff was rather huge. But what could place something metallic behind a cliff, and why down here?
He chipped away at the stone, and before long cleared a large section of metal. He stood back and examined it. Triangular plates of metal had been joined together with a copper ribbing. To one side the ribbing curved around the edge of something that rose out of the metal wall. He chipped away at that side and soon revealed a round hatch with no apparent hinge or latch.
Jabbing his blade against the metal, he called upon the Living Fire to penetrate the metal. But the blade would not pierce it. So he stood back and again chipped away at the stone until he uncovered what appeared to be an oval window. Surely it was made of glass, but it was so filthy he could see nothing through it. Yet when he clubbed the glass with the sword, the glass cracked. He struck again and it shattered, falling away from him into some sort of chamber.
“Are you feeling up to doing some exploring?” he whispered to Seivar as the bird cooed and nuzzled his neck. The Nuvitor said not a word, just huddled on his shoulder.
Glass crushed beneath Ilfedo’s boot as he stepped down into the chamber and held forth his glowing sword. The chamber floor sloped steeply away from him, and it was covered by a red carpet more plush than he had ever walked on before. Strange glass dials adorned one wall, and a glass plate stuck to another. The image of a blue-and-gold world in the midst of a field of stars, along with a strange heavily cratered moon, flashed on the glass plate. The planet turned slowly, and the moon orbited it, painting a shadow on the planet’s surface. He reached out to touch the unknown worlds. His fingers brushed only glass, and he withdrew his hand, astonished.
He walked through a doorway into a corridor entirely constructed of a gray-green metal. The corridor’s ceiling was about ten feet high and as broad. Beads of soft red lights set at shoulder level blinked on and off down the corridor’s length. He sheathed his sword, relieved to at last rest his arm from carrying it. As the Living Fire extinguished, the metal structure thrummed from somewhere deep underground, somewhere down the corridor. The walls creaked as if shifting in their rock prison.
Ilfedo leaned against the wall and went down the corridor. At each door he stopped and peered inside, marveling at gadgets and inventions truly beyond his understanding. Every chamber was square with high ceilings. He saw other glass screens, such as the one in the first chamber, yet none of them displayed any images.
At last the corridor turned to the right. But it opened up to an even longer stretch some two hundred feet long, albeit on more level footing and with recessed glowing panels in the ceiling. Three corridors opened off this main one, and doorways abounded. He ran down its length and slid to a stop, for ahead of him the floor twisted upward. Several metal beams stabbed out of the walls and rubber strings hung from multiple holes in the ceiling. Some of the strings’ ends were frayed, exposing metal wires inside of them. He stepped beneath a hanging string, and a metal protrusion at its end swung across his forehead. Lightning danced across the ceiling, and his body convulsed with shock as he fell to the floor.
Spurts of electricity cascaded around Ilfedo’s head. He blinked and rubbed his throbbing head. Every hair was standing on its end. Seivar shrieked and landed on his chest. “Master, what happened?”
“Perhaps you can better tell me. All I remember is—” He pointed at the rubber strings. “Did I touch those?” He raised himself on his elbows and shook his head, gazing around at the mess of metal beams and hanging string. The string of red lights blinked down the corridor’s length behind him. The glowing panels illuminated the structure’s interior so that he could see everything very well. He chuckled at his own mishap and stood. “We’ll avoid those strings from now on.”
He looked across a gap in the floor. The twisting of the structure had broken the floor so that the remainder of the corridor could only be accessed via a long jump over jagged pieces of metal and a bottomless crack in the stone beneath it. And the corridor beyond was dark.
Ilfedo took a flying leap over the hazardous divide, then rolled into the dark corridor beyond. He stood with a smile and drew his sword. By its glow he followed the corridor. Water dripped intermittently from the ceiling. He passed several doorways similar to those he’d seen in the previous corridor, but these were barred shut and would not open, even when he burned them with Living Fire.
He proceeded deeper into the structure. Copper pillars rose on either side of him and stood every ten feet along the walls. The head of each pillar was carved in the form of a dragon’s maw, and vibrant red and yellow flames had been painted on the ceiling. At the corridor’s end he stopped before an arched doorway. There was a chamber beyond, swathed in utter darkness, and a putrid odor ushered from inside.
Covering his nose with his sleeve, Ilfedo stepped inside and swung his sword to the right, illuminating a series of square control panels with buttons and knobs. The ceiling rose twice as high as the corridor. Slumped in the corner were three human skeletons. They wore metal clasps around their necks and wrists, and each wore a tan breastplate emblazoned with a seven-pointed star inside a circle. Turning away from these pitiable souls, Ilfedo stepped farther into the chamber. It was immense and frigid.
The floor thrummed violently, and every inch of the structure groaned. White and blue lights flared into existence, and a soft whirring sound came from somewhere ahead. Flickering blue lights shone overhead and in that moment revealed a dragon lying at the chamber’s far end. The lights died out, leaving only his sword to guide his way. He walked toward the dragon, and the floor on either side of him was replaced by depressions filled with human skeletons slumped over panels, switches, and glass screens.
When he stepped up to the dragon at the chamber’s end, its deteriorating scales and empty eye sockets revealed none of this structure’s mysteries. The dragon had a spiked tail; its spine stuck out of the rotting flesh along its back; and its neck was short. Unless the wings had rotted away eons ago, it had none. Behind the dragon lay another human skeleton, yet this one gripped
a strange instrument in its hands.
Ilfedo sidestepped the dragon, held his breath, and uncovered his nose in order to pry the gold-and-gray device from the skeleton’s fingers. It was heavier than his sword but only half as long, and round, quite useless for cutting. But it must have been useful for something in its day. With the artifact in hand, he glanced one last time over the immense room. It thrummed again, and lights flickered on in random places along the wall panels and in the recessed chambers where the humans had died.
“It is time to get out of here, Seivar,” he said.
The Nuvitor screeched, flew off his shoulder, and shot ahead of him out the chamber and into the corridor. He followed as fast as he was able, though the device he carried slowed his pace. When he arrived at the divide in the floor panels, he attempted a flying leap to cross. This time, however, he miscalculated. He fell into the gap, twisting his foot between stone and a metal beam. The Nuvitor dove to his aid, pulling a sharp metal rod to the side. If the bird had not, the rod would have impaled Ilfedo through his stomach.
Ignoring his throbbing foot and cursing his foolishness, Ilfedo threw the artifact out of the hole. He no longer felt the need to keep it. The artifact struck the wall, and its barrel transformed into raw energy. A green bolt flamed out of the barrel and blasted a hole in the wall. The device tumbled to the floor in the lighted half of the structure’s corridor.
For a moment Ilfedo stood in the gap, staring at the hole blasted in the wall—a wall the sword of the dragon had been unable to penetrate. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he used the sword of the dragon to blast the stones around him. They crumbled into dust, and the metal chunks slid toward him, filling the space. He blasted flames at the space under his feet and was thrown against the corridor’s ceiling to fall hard on the floor. As he limped to his feet, the dark end of the corridor groaned and split down its length. An explosion tore a closed door from its hinges and twisted it against the wall. A torrent of flames rushed toward him, and the corridor in which he stood tipped steeply toward the gap.
Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) Page 24