Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon)

by Appleton, Scott

  He limped up the corridor, stabbing his sword into the floor and pulling himself up even as he grabbed the device he’d abandoned. He tucked it under his belt and applied all his strength to pulling himself out of the structure before it became his grave.

  Suddenly a scream tore through the structure, and the portion ahead of him fell away. He held on to the edge of the corridor, and the remaining portion plummeted down the cliff. The seven heads of the serpent-dragon raced in front of him, screaming together. He was within a few feet of their grotesque faces. The endless coils of serpent beat the walls of the cavern. Chunks of stone and metal rained from the walls.

  As he glanced at a nearby eye, the white peeled back as if it were only a film, revealing a gleaming yellow iris beneath it. He glanced back down the corridor, now a deadly slide into the structure’s heart. Seivar flew at the eye, opening his beak to attack. The head raised itself, and in a swift motion swallowed the bird in its mouth. A part of his heart began to melt in the creature’s mouth.

  “No!” Ilfedo blasted the Living Fire at the creature’s eye. It blinked and its heads screamed. The head slid away and another rose to blink at him. Sheathing his sword and thus plunging the cavern into darkness, Ilfedo reached blindly for the device and pointed its barrel at where the creature had been. He struck the barrel against a protrusion of metal, but the device did not fire.

  He felt something slimy wrap around his legs. He cried out as it dragged him out of the corridor and raised him into the cavern. His finger found a hold, just beneath the device’s barrel. He pulled, and the barrel transformed into bright light. A green bolt shot out and ricocheted off the serpent-dragon’s scales. But in the momentary flash he saw the creature’s eye and took aim, firing the weapon again.

  The creature screamed tenfold. A smoldering hole yawned at him from the creature’s socket. The weapon appeared to have disintegrated the eye.

  Three-pronged red tongues whipped toward him. One lashed around the device. He held on to it as the tongue jerked it first one direction and then another, ripping it from his grasp. The tongue unraveled, dropping the device down the cliff’s face. The other tongues lashed his arms to his sides.

  The creature corkscrewed up the cavern’s walls faster and faster until Ilfedo closed his eyes. He felt his body pressed against the serpent’s by centrifugal force. His pinned arms could not move, but he managed to grasp his sword handle. The weapon clothed him in light, and he could at last see what was happening, but it was strange. The serpent-dragon’s heads pumped forward, raising its long body through the cavern another few hundred feet. Atop the cliff, it coiled on a ledge of rock as vast as the fields of Burloi. Incredible stalactites hung from the ceiling. The creature set him on the ledge and twisted around him as it pulled more of its coils over the cliff.

  Screaming, the serpent-dragon spread its length around him in a sort of maze. One head regurgitated the Nuvitor into his lap. The bird shuddered and slogged to its feet as Ilfedo wiped slime from its back.

  “Are you all right, Seivar?” Ilfedo drew his sword and rested the point of its blade on the stone. It burned a small pillar of fire that the bird huddled up to. Soothing energy entered Ilfedo’s foot and ankle as well.

  As the Nuvitor preened its drying feathers, Ilfedo looked around him. The serpent had stilled, and its slimy body formed twelve-foot-high walls around him with only one exit. “I am so sorry,” he yelled to the serpent-dragon. “If only I knew that you meant us no harm. Forgive me. I would make amends, if you will let me.”

  The seven heads rose behind the body ahead of him. The creature was truly monstrous, yet he could now see the weary blinking of its yellow eyes and hear the growling of its stomachs. Surely something this size would have many stomachs. The heads bowed to him, and he could only guess they accepted his apology. Then the head whose eye sported a large smoldering hole leaned over him.

  Ilfedo stood, extending his arms with the sword dangling from one hand. “What may I do in return for your kindness?”

  The heads sank behind the serpent-dragon’s body. The body slid effortlessly over the ledge, rearranging its form. The serpent-dragon’s tail extended to a far corner of the cavern. The remainder of it looped around Ilfedo and formed a wall opposing its tail. Now there lay a path in the midst of its body.

  Ilfedo placed the Nuvitor on his shoulder and walked for at least half a mile between the serpent’s coils. Up ahead its heads summoned him with plaintive chirps. They waved above him as he approached, then turned their enormous eyes upon a small tunnel in the cavern wall.

  He stepped into the tunnel and found nothing of significance for several hundred feet. It was a bare tunnel, too small for the creature, yet containing nothing it would need or want.

  He emerged in a far smaller cavern and gazed upon a swift-flowing river. Black fish crested the water’s surface. Hundreds of them swam downstream. He glanced over his shoulder at the tunnel. “Does that thing want me to feed it?”

  With a gentle cough, Seivar spread his wings and glided over the river. He dove, talons snaring a large fish. The Nuvitor flew low and dropped the fish at Ilfedo’s feet. “Master, it would take many, many, many of these to fill the beast.”

  “Yes, yes, that entered my mind.” Ilfedo stooped to examine the fish and then to glance around the oblong cavern. Cavern, cavern, tunnel, cavern . . . I would love to see someplace else for a change. From where he stood, a ledge continued around much of the cavern’s interior. He could skirt to the other side if he wished. The river had long ago punched a hole in one end of the cavern. It filled the cavern floor and gushed out the other.

  If he used the sword of the dragon, he might succeed in blasting apart enough of the cavern’s far wall to divert the river’s flow, sending it down the tunnel. The serpent-dragon could then take its pick of as many fish as it desired.

  Could it work? He stood and walked to the cavern’s far end. “I’m going to dam it up, Seivar. If this works, the river will fill this cavern and flow to the serpent. If it doesn’t—well, be prepared to fly.”

  Flames writhed in the sword’s blade. He watched as they roared out of the sword, storming to its tip, and gushed against the wall. Stones turned molten. The cavern wall fell apart. Red-hot stone crumbled into the river with a great hiss of steam. Ilfedo told the Nuvitor to flee as a cloud of steam rolled toward them.

  Racing through the tunnel, he looked into the serpent-dragon’s mighty eyes. The creature’s heads screamed. Its tongues caught both him and the Nuvitor, flinging them to roll on the other side of its enormous body. Though he could not see the river come through the tunnel, Ilfedo heard it. It gurgled and gushed forth. The serpent-dragon’s heads lashed at the water with tongues and teeth. It was a vicious creature when it wanted to be.

  “Master, would it be wise to—”

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered as the bird perched on his shoulder. “I have no desire to hang around our present companion. It is time to move on.”

  The serpent-dragon never seemed to notice their departure. But even an hour later, as he traversed the immense plain of stone beneath those magnificent stalactites, Ilfedo could glance back and hear the occasional screams of the creature’s heads.

  The world was lost to Ilfedo and his bird companion. He felt he had wandered far beyond the reach of man. He could lose his sanity in a world such as this. Stalactites hung from high, high above, their cream-white the only relief in a world of gray and black.

  Then at last his glowing aura shifted over a cactus in his path. A single oblong orange fruit hung from its branch. He plucked the fruit and continued on his way, breaking open the fruit and sharing its cream-colored meat with Seivar. He heard water trickling, and his thirst drove him to the source. A narrow stream ran across the plain. He sipped its water and spat the bitter stuff out. Yet his thirst was enough to drive him to try again. He drank as much as he could stomach, then walked on.

  A sheer cliff rose out of the darkness ahead of him. He groaned. “
I am not going to climb another one of these.” He walked to the right, seeking another means of ascending or traversing the obstacle. Then he saw it—stairs carved into the cliff’s face. The steps were blue marble and only a few feet broad. These had been hewn by human hands!

  He ascended the stairs, and though the climb was long, he reveled in the ease of his passage. The stairs took him up at least as high as the previous cliff had been. When he came to the top, he stepped into a forest of strange fruit trees and fruit-bearing cacti. The forest extended a short distance onto a gravely plateau. He parted the leaves of a couple trees ahead of him and stepped out of the forest.

  Before him lay the remnants of a city. Walls of tremendous stone surrounded it, broken by twin archways—one in front of him, and the other on the city’s opposite end. Beyond the city rose another cliff—and another staircase zigzagged up its face. Somehow he knew that, this time, Vectra and the Tomb of the Ancients were close. He walked toward it but stopped short of entering. Lava flowed through the streets, illuminating the cavern but denying him the chance to explore. Round buildings filled the city, though every roof was broken open, and many walls had only their foundations remaining. When he had entered the giants’ realm, the land of Burloi, he thought he’d found the most foreboding-sized structures, but here the doorways were fifteen feet high, at least.

  Ilfedo gazed through the archway that towered above him. It was a strange thing to behold a city like this. What other marvels did this underground realm hold? What mystifying creatures had the intelligence and the strength to build something like this—only to abandon it? Then, in the door of one structure, the lava’s glow glistened on white bones.

  Ilfedo scaled, with some difficulty, the wall next to the arch. And when he stood atop it, he viewed the city’s vastness set in a depression in the cavern floor. Lava swirled through the broad roads and pooled inside the buildings set lower in the ground. He looked to the structure wherein he had spied a bone, and there lay the skull of a Megatrath. In a nearby building, gazing down through its broken roof, he saw three other Megatrath skulls amid scattered bones.

  Ilfedo stroked the Nuvitor’s chest, then threw it over the city. The bird glided out over the ruins. It shrieked as it veered out of sight behind a crumbling tower. Then it appeared on the other side, flying with all speed on a return vector. He frowned as the bird shot overhead toward the stairway leading out of the cavern.

  “Run, Master! Flee this place now!”

  The lava gurgled in the city’s center. It spat volcanic ash into the air. Sliding down the wall and landing in a crouch, Ilfedo raced across the vast stony plain. When he reached the steps in the cliff’s face, his faithful companion perched on his shoulder.

  “Forgive me, Master, but there was something asleep in that city. It stirred in the lava as I flew behind a tower. It was larger even than the creature to whom you fed fish.”

  “Larger?” Ilfedo shook his head. “Then it was a serpent?”

  “Yes and no, I believe. For I saw wings like tree leaves along its sides and a head of great beauty and terrible—”

  The explanation was cut off as something streaked above the city. It was long and aflame, moving so fast that he could not determine its size or shape. It whipped through the cavern. As a thunderbolt, it wove through the air, raining glowing embers on the city. It was a comet and a bolt of lightning simultaneously. It knifed into the heart of the city, erupting a geyser of lava and ash.

  Fear seized Ilfedo, fear he could not quell. He stumbled up the steps into the dark recesses of the cavern far, far above.

  Leave the dead be. He must find the living.

  His hands must have hardened from his recent escapades, for the stairs steepened, and he effortlessly grabbed the higher steps to ascend the cliff. He glanced once over his shoulder. The city was far below and the warm glow of lava filled it. One would have thought nothing threatening could hide there. Yet surely a creature capable of sleeping in lava—if indeed it had been sleeping—must pose a threat. A man and a bird would be blades of grass it would study curiously in its fists. To break blades of grass, the creature would give it not a second thought.

  The blade of grass swallowed and followed the stairs up the cliff face. The bird on his shoulder cooed, glancing behind. When at last Ilfedo reached the top of the cliff and looked down it, he could not help being overwhelmed by all that lay behind him. Ombre would never believe him, and Rose’el would likely play the skeptic.

  The Megatrath graveyard was beneath him, and the largest creature he’d ever seen rested afar off near the technologically sophisticated metal structure mysteriously hidden underground. Beyond that . . . He clenched his fist. How could he reach out to his people in Dresdyn? Beyond the gold dragon, the city’s inhabitants had engaged in a battle for their survival.

  He fell to his knees. The blood of the people ran in Dresdyn’s streets; he remembered it vividly in his mind. He could only hope that Brunster Thadius Oldwell had failed. But what happened to the faithful captain of the guard? Had the man he’d admired—Bromstead—been lost? He hung his head and remained there for some time; the Nuvitor cooed in his ear.

  When he rose to leave, he turned his back to the cliff. Ahead of him the stony terrain was grooved. The grooves ran up a slope on the wide cliff, but the edges of the stone floor rose to form a tunnel twenty-five feet wide.

  19

  INTO THE VOLCANO MOUNTAIN

  Wary of what so large a man could do to her, Oganna waited for Whimly, Ombre, and Caritha to run into the forest before she relaxed her threat. She bowed before the giant, and then smiled. “Farewell, sir. I have no desire to harm you or your companion. If you will permit us to leave in safety, then we will part in peace.”

  “Go—then. Take all—leave alone us. Me will not stop you.”

  Not waiting to press her luck, she dashed into the forest and soon caught up to the breathless trio. “Let us get as far away from this place as possible.”

  “Ugh!” Ombre wrapped his arms around himself. “I can still feel that sweaty beast’s hands strangling me. Lucky for us we had the granddaughter of a dragon in our midst.” He pinched her cheek as he sometimes used to when she was a child. “You are a magnet for the strange and troubling things in our world, my dear. I sometimes forget that the only world I knew before your birth was one of normal people living off the land. No talk of dragons, sorcerers, or beasts. Just home, trees, and food.”

  She didn’t know if she could take that as a compliment, though she tried. She knew he meant well.

  Ahead of her Whimly spread his brown wings to their full reach and craned his neck to stretch. The land before them sloped up, toward the volcano that was just becoming visible through the treetops. An occasional dull roar came from the crest. “Almost there. Just beyond the rise ahead are the cooled lava flows.”

  A long low whistle from up ahead made them stop. Whimly’s feathers shivered; he crouched down. The lengthening shadows suggested that the hour was growing late. A growl sounded in his throat, and he followed it with a hiss, making a shiver run from the nape of Oganna’s neck to the end of her spine.

  With a leap into the air, the Art’en flew into the trees, disappeared for a moment in the branches, and then plummeted to the ground, struggling with some kind of creature. He rolled with it, and then kicked away to stand between it and them.

  The creature shook its hairy head and looked up from a kneeling position. Pointed ears draped over its shoulders to its waist, and its humanlike face was covered in tan fur. It had two blue eyes, as reflective as mirrors, and a green hooded robe covered its body—though a long fury tail stuck out of the back and three-toed, black-clawed feet jutted out beneath. From the way it had poised itself, she guessed that it could be vicious if it wanted to be. Oganna had never seen or heard of anything like this, not even in myths told in the scrolls her father read to her when she was a child.

  “What is it?”

  “A hybrid of some sort that wanders t
he Swamplands,” Whimly said. “I think it is just out to cause trouble.”

  “Can it talk?”

  Whimly snarled as he eyed the hybrid. “Not so far as I have been able to tell.”

  Taking a step toward the hybrid, Oganna reached out with her mind, searching for the mind of a beast. Do not fear me.

  Through the fog of minds around her, she heard a faint, calm response. “Fear you? That is an absurd, albeit reasonable, assumption on thy part.” The hybrid’s blue eyes danced as they looked back at her, and its tail flicked like a playful cat.

  “What—what are you doing?” The Art’en crouched as if to spring on the hybrid, yet Oganna’s reassuring glance held him back.

  She reached out her hand to the hybrid and smiled at it. Do you have a name?

  “Well done, Oganna!”

  Startled, she drew back her hand. “How do you know my name?”

  Her companions stiffened noticeably, and Ombre drew his sword. “What?”

  “It knows your name?” Caritha pointed an accusing finger at the hybrid.

  “How is that possible?” Whimly crept closer to the hybrid and narrowed his eyes.

  But the hybrid crouched and sprang effortlessly into the branches of a nearby tree, then scurried out of sight. In her mind, she heard its last words as if spoken from a great distance: “Continue with caution, descendant of the dragon.”

  How do you know that? Come back! There was no answer, and when she reavealed to her companions what the hybrid had said, they puzzled over what the creature had meant.

  “Funny-looking thing,” Caritha remarked. “Not quite like anything I have ever seen before. Does it live in the Swamplands?”

  Whimly, now standing relaxed and open to conversation, shrugged and looked up through the trees to the dimming sky. “I can’t say I know for certain that it lives here, though I have always assumed so. From time to time I’ve spotted it in different places, all throughout this region, and it has at times been”—he cocked his head to the side—“mystifying.”