James fired the first shot near the centre of the line. For a moment nothing seemed to happen and then one of the leading dragons fell sideways with blood pouring from its head. They effect on the horsemen behind it was catastrophic as they charged into the great falling body. Several of them were thrown to the ground. Angus and Paul fired at either end of the line bringing down two more dragons and many more horsemen. The rest of the dragons were closing fast. Their huge teeth and scimitar like claws on their front legs reached forwards as they used their four other massive legs to charge forward in great bounds. Only a hundred yards away they closed ranks to fill the gaps left by the three who fell and then, quite suddenly numbers of them turned, causing chaos in the line.
Angus gave a great cheer. ‘The bonded ones have turned.’ He shouted.
As they turned to help their fallen human companions the dragons were completely oblivious of the damage they caused to the rest of the line of horsemen behind them and more fell.
20
Lynella awoke to the absolute darkness of a deep cave. She could smell the dragons all around her. Most of them were asleep, but some sent her thoughts of reassurance. She was told that soon she could light one of the lamps which they kept for the humans who were blind in the dark and needed them to move around the caves. The images were not exact, the dragons didn’t seem to know exactly what a lamp was. They didn’t even know why the humans needed the lamps, but she was able to work out the meaning. She longed for the light, so she could see to run away if one of them came too close. A single careless step by any one of them could crush her.
Words came to her mind. ‘You are safe. This is our home.’ Only Star could send words. Star was the young dragon who had been chosen to bond with her. She soon found that all of the words came first from her own mind. During the bonding process, she was teaching Star what they meant. With the other dragons, there were only the images which were often slow and difficult to understand.
The straw bed was hard, and the smell was overpowering. The heat was also intense this close to the core of the mountain. She thought of the clean comfortable beds in the house in the city; and wondered why she had come. In her half-awake state, she let these thoughts slip out through the mind shield that she was learning to use. She found herself smothered by wave after wave of simple reassuring thoughts which could not comprehend her images of the city; but conveyed with absolute certainty the message that she had been right to choose to come. Within this there was, however, the shadow of doubt. She had been a mage once, an enemy. But now she was with them and the past was forgotten.
She was not really aware of having made the choice. Her memory of the night when she had walked out of the tower was not clear, her mind seemed to have been taken over by something entirely alien for some of it. All she remembered clearly was riding on Star’s back through the forest, and into the mountain.
She waited and tried to stop the dragons from sensing her fears. They started to move but still she was not told where the lamp was. Perhaps they were looking for it. She should not worry. They could see her. They could smell her. They would not crush her.
Then she heard one coming towards her. It was getting closer. She could hear the massive footfalls and smell its breath. Suddenly she felt something touch her shoulder. She panicked. She was no longer learning to live with the dragons. She was a mage, jewel or no jewel. She threw her power outwards in all directions. Just as the older dragons began to feel pain she contacted a circuit and began to explore it. She found globes and suddenly the chamber was lit with a blinding light. She saw that she was in a great hall surrounded by long forgotten relics of mages who had built it. The furniture had been destroyed but she saw a glimpse of pictures on the walls, covered in cobwebs. Looming over her, she saw Star. The young dragon had moved up with great care and gentleness but now she lurched forward, falling, crushing Lynella’s shoulder.
Lynella saw hundreds of massive older dragons. Many were rearing up towards the high ornate ceiling. The sudden pain made her break her contact. The lights went out. Through her pain, she could sense their jumbled feelings of terror and anger. She tried to call out to them to say that she had not meant to hurt them, but their minds were closed. She heard them charging around the room and realised that after the flash of bright light they could not see. They were crashing into each other and the walls. She tried to move away but Star’s weight was pinning her to the floor. She tried to plead with Star, forming words to describe how easily she could be crushed. There was no response, so she formed images of her own body and tried to show her limbs broken and bleeding. The more she concentrated on it the more she became terrified by the pictures she was creating in her mind. She managed to send them out in short powerful bursts. She started to get a response, complete confusion. Star could not accept that her chosen partner could be one of the hated mages. She was terrified about what would happen to her and whether she would be hated too. But she was also terrified about what would happen to Lynella.
One of the large dragons crashed into Star but she held firm and stopped the blow from driving her down onto Lynella. Star stood up, slowly and carefully placing her feet on either side of the frail body below her. Another dragon rushed across the room, but she braced herself and again held firm.
Free to move, Lynella used her one good arm to push herself up onto her feet and ran. She sent one final image of warmth and thanks to Star as she felt her way along the wall searching for an opening. Just beside her she heard a fight as two dragons tore into each other. A powerful tail crashed into her back sending her flying forwards to land hard on the floor. She staggered to her feet and found the wall again. She had no idea how long it was, or where it went, but she moved on desperately along it.
The noise behind her subsided slightly. She could tell that the dragons’ eyes had readjusted to the dark and they were starting to band together again. Thoughts came through strongly now, thoughts of her, finding her, and killing her. She sensed a small amount of dissent, but it was overpowered by images of chasing her and tearing her apart.
Now she felt her way through a door into a corridor which was even darker than the room behind her. She ran, heedless of what she might run into, blindly hoping that she might run through an opening too small for the dragons. But the corridor was wide. She heard them behind her. She crashed into a wall that curved around in front of her. She fell onto her injured shoulder and tried not to cry out in pain. She lay for an instant of silence but knew that the dragons could smell her as they charged forward. She reached out with her power to anything she could find. She sensed a lock and drove her mind into it. The lock opened, and she used all of her remaining energy to push at the point in the wall where she knew that the door must be. It would not move. A dragon charged at her. She turned to blind it. It fell against the wall. Then she saw, the weight of its body had pushed the door slightly open. She rushed through the opening and slammed the door behind her. She heard a dragon crashing into it, but the lock held
She found herself in complete darkness. Through the door, she heard the dragons roaring in anger. More of them charged against the door. Metal scales crashed against it. She ran her hands across the smooth surface until she found a small opening panel. She slid it open and tried to communicate with them, sending an image of herself with Star outside in the sunshine. Seeing the small opening the dragons rushed against the door even harder. She could hear them come and then feel it shudder as they hit it. Their long sharp claws came right through as they tried to tear it out from its opening. Each time she tried harder to send her message and finally she had a response, but it was nothing but hatred and anger. She tried to send special images to Star, but even then, the response was hatred. Finally, Star sent an image of what she could see outside the door. In the near darkness, the dragons were still trying to break the door, but not so hard now, they knew it was hopeless. Most of them had gathered around the large mass in the middle of the corridor.
This was one o
f the oldest and most respected dragons. Lynella had killed it, instantly and almost casually, when closing the door. Now some of them moved away and soon they came back struggling under the weight of enormous boulders. The last attempts to open the door stopped as the first boulders were piled against it. There was just the slightest trace of pity in Stars last message before the link was broken by the growing pile of stone which would fill the entire corridor up to the ceiling where it passed the doorway.
Lynella sat in the darkness for minutes which became hours. She felt secure but betrayed. She had made the decision to form a bond with them and now they wanted to attack her. She thought back to the events which had brought her to the room. She thought about how she had walked out from the security of the tower to trust her life to the dragons. She had made a decision, the same decision that a group of mages had made hundreds of years before, a decision to reject their powers. She had been ready to accept the persuasive messages from the dragons because she admired Christian and his people for what they were. They were not as powerful as the mages, but they were at peace. The mages had destroyed themselves, wrecked the city, and almost killed everybody on the planet. Christian’s people had lived at peace through that time and remained at peace ever since. She longed for the security of Christian’s community, as much as she feared for her future as a mage.
But they had rejected her. They must have known that she was a mage when she went to them, and all she had done was to react like a mage. She tried to think why they had done it, why they had not thought about her and made allowances. Slowly she realised that she kept thinking about them in the same way she thought about Christian, as people, not animals. They were not people and did not react like people for the simple reason that, despite their powers of communication, they were nowhere near as intelligent as people. Because they lived for hundreds of years and had good memories, the dragons always seemed wise in the stories but, in reality, they were only making simple deductions from what they had seen or been told. The more she thought about it the more she came to despise them. She, as a full mage, would not be beaten by dragons who were scarcely more intelligent than dogs. She would never again reject her heritage.
She quickly lit the room and stood up. She knew immediately that she was looking at a part of the last and finest work of the mages on the planet. The dragons had not been able to get into the room and it was as tidy as when the mages had left it. It revealed the perfect detail of their work. Unlike the bare and functional rooms in the pylons it was elegantly furnished. Several armchairs were gathered around a low table and to one side a single upright chair faced a wooden desk with ornate metal inlay. There was a rug on the floor showing faded images of men on horses and pictures on the wall showed intense faces looking straight ahead through layers of dust. A first glance might have made her think that the room was a place for rest and relaxation, but it was circular, and the low table was at the exact centre so there could be little doubt that it had another use. Before exploring it, she sensed another door in the opposite wall and decided to investigate. She worked hard to convince herself that this was just mild curiosity and she was not worried that the dragons could trap her for long enough to be a problem.
The door opened onto a smaller room with a bed in it. This room had been well sealed and there was no dust so despite the passage of so much time the bed looked very comfortable and inviting. There was a small alcove and in it she found a metal basin with a gold tap above it. Turning the tap produced a good flow of cool clear water. While she surely would not need it, she was relieved to find a supply of drinking water. She felt tired and resolved that the simple tricks of the animals outside would not deprive her of the chance of a good rest to make up for her interrupted night in their cave. She carefully washed her cuts and bruises, opened the panel in the outer door to let in some fresh air, and lay down on the soft bed.
21
With no daylight to guide her, Lynella had no idea how long she slept for. She woke feeling that her energy was restored and, although very stiff, even her shoulder felt better. She found clean clothes in a cupboard and washed again and drank from the tap. Dismissing slight pangs of hunger, she started a methodical search through the two rooms. There were no more doors. A search of the bedroom revealed nothing but more clothing and some jewellery which, while attractive, gave no response to her power. She put on a thick gold necklace and, feeling the weight of it on her chest and the fine heavy fabric of her borrowed dress, she felt true to her heritage as a mage.
She cleared the dust from the table, meticulously working at it until the entire surface was polished. Slowly revealing the patterns of circles and runes she relaxed, feeling certain that, even without a jewel, she could use the machines to take control of the entire complex. It pleased her to feel how easily she could use her power as she entered the first pathway, using the large gold ring on her side of the table. As if taking cautious steps into a darkened room full of fine ornaments, she made her way forwards. She felt her way around and soon found the links to the other rings set into the table. This device could link the power of mages in a way which was so simple and elegant that she carefully memorised its design, so she could make one for herself later. In this moment of hesitation, she lost her concentration. Now she was fighting the wolf of her own self-doubt. Staring at a table with nothing more than strange patterns on it. She felt for the jewellery she had put on, but it was cold and un-responding; she had nothing to help her. She realised that the wolf could kill her. Access to the network was her only chance of survival. The wolf sat glaring at her with unblinking yellow eyes. Then she realised that it could not attack. There was no crowd waiting for her. Nobody, except her, would know if it took her an hour to work the device. She stared back. It turned and ran.
Now she started to look for ways forward, along the pathway to take her into the main parts of the machine. The next portal was easy to find. She realised that she could have gone directly to it using the solitary ring in the centre of the table. Being alone, this would be the proper way to enter, so she moved her focus to the centre ring before moving on. Sensing some minor pathways to either side, she ignored them, and she progressed proudly towards the core. She felt sure that she would soon find the highway where she could communicate with the prophet and ask her God to help her. She was, after all, in the mountain where her God had told her to go. Suddenly, she sensed a blinding flash. It shot through her eyes to every part of her body. She convulsed in pain. In one final thought, she knew it was a trap.
She awoke in darkness. She knew that the room was warm but felt cold in every part of her. The trap had drained her energy. She was scarcely able to pull herself back up onto the chair. She felt hungry to the point of wondering if she could eat, even if she had any food. The walls seemed to loom out of the darkness, closing in on her.
In desperation, she worked the lock on the door, letting it swing inwards. A few small rocks rolled into the room and she fell to the floor again as one crashed into her chair. Once again, she struggled up, crawling to the opening, clambering onto the lowest rocks. Seeing a faint light, she felt a glimmer of hope, until she realised that she was looking through a tiny gap in a pile of rocks that extended far along the corridor. She pictured the dragons at the end of it, hearing the sound of her opening the door that she had used to stop them. They would be mocking her, however much she despised them, they would still mock her.
Fighting back feelings of self-pity, she struggled to her feet and managed to make a globe give a faint light. Painfully slowly she searched every inch of the walls of the two rooms, pausing only to drink from the tap as she checked the wall around it. She found nothing, no exit and no other pathways to communicate.
Finally, letting the room go dark again to conserve her last energy, she entered the pathway from the device on the table and moved slowly forwards towards the trap. She could see no sign of where it was ahead of her and knew that if she was caught by it again she would never recover. Still
she edged forwards. She noticed one of the paths that lead off to the side. She moved down it, only to find another room, similar to the one she was in, at the end of it. She found no sign of the highway and no machines or anything else to help her, just another abandoned room. The next side opening revealed the same, another simple link to let the mages talk to each other without entering the main machine. She tried to remember how many entrances she had passed before she reached the trap. She had never even counted them. Venturing forwards, she found another useless connection. She feared that she would be drawn on to look down these dead-end pathways until she was finally taken by the trap. She hesitated, but soon the fatalism of the mage took control and she went on. She had lost count of how many entrances she had looked at when she found one that seemed to have no room at the end of it. The pathway was long, faint and unclear but she managed to move through it not knowing if she was travelling towards the highway or away from it. In places, it was difficult to know which way to go, some routes seemed to go off to the side, but she went on forwards. Suddenly her body shuddered. A trap had gone off, but she realised that she was still conscious to know it. This trap must have been weakened by the passage of so much time, and it was so distant it had not hurt her.
The route grew clearer, new openings appeared to either side. Gradually she found that the area she was in seemed familiar. Wondering if she was dreaming she recognised the city. She drifted onwards and found herself at her house, but Paul was not there, she had no idea where he was, but she knew he would not have returned. She touched many of the mechanisms but, even if she had the energy, working them would not help her. In despair, she returned but, as she came back she sensed a faint presence.
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