Kane tapped his sword against mine, and its steel rang throughout the semi-lit chamber. 'So, even the best of shields is useless if it's lowered, eh?'
I nodded my head that this was so. 'Thank you for reminding me.'
'As you've reminded us,' he said, smiling fiercely. 'From the first, you've had more fire in you for finding the Lightstone than any of us, and we wouldn't have come this far without it.'
His deep eyes searched in mine for faith, and Master Juwain, Atara and the others looked at me in this way, too. They looked to me to find a way out of this seemingly endless labyrinth and see our way toward the Lightstone.
And suddenly I knew that there was a way out. In my connection to the dark corridors of Morjin's mind, I became aware of a twisted logic that ordered its turnings. It was the logic of his life and all the works of his hand, this labyrinth among them. For hours upon hours, I had wandered through part of it. Its curved passages and nodes were recorded inside me as if my blood were a liquid, living day. And now, as I gazed at the bright, silver crystal of my sword and my mind opened, in a flash of light, I saw the whole of the labyrinth from this chamber at its very center.
'Come,' I said, leading forth toward the doorway. 'We've only a little farther to go.'
We lined up as before, with Ymiru just behind me. He shuffled along the winding corridors, keeping his eyes fixed on my glowing sword. Of all my companions save Liljana, he was the only one unable to see Flick and thus was blinded to this strange being's dancing lights. But the others perceived him well enough, and marveled that he had now fallen into a steady, flaming spiral just above my head. His presence gave them to move with more confidence through the turnings of the labyrinth.
At last, after circling east and north and then abruptly reversing our direction through a black tube of rock, we came to a break in the curving wall that opened upon a new passage. As this led straight toward the south, I knew that we had finally found our way out of the labyrinth's south end.
'Are you sure this way be south?' Ymiru asked me. 'I admit I've been turned around for quite a while.'
'Val has a sense of direction,' Maram said from behind him. 'He never gets turned around.'
'Not never,' I thought remembering the disappearing moon of the Black Bog. But now, it seemed, I had led us true. For after a hundred yards, the tunnel suddenly gave out onto a set of stairs.
'Saved!' Maram cried out. 'These must be the stairs to the first level!'
'Quiet now!' Kane hissed back at him. 'We don't know what we'll find there!'
The stairs wound up through the rock, spiraling left, like those in my father's castle.
Ymiru had said that the distance between the levels of Argattha was five hundred feet. But Morjin had built his escape tunnel just beneath the first level, it seemed, and so we did not have to climb nearly so far. After a few minutes, the stairs gave out onto a short corridor that led through an open doorway into a huge hall.
I was the first to step into it, and I saw at once that it was dimly lit by the few ancient glowstones still set into its steeply rising walls. Great columns of rock, many now broken into the cracked wheels of basalt that littered the hall's hard floor, supported the curving ceiling three hundred feet above us. The sheer vastness of this place, carved from the heart of the mountain, struck me with awe. There was terror there, too - and not only mine. For just as Ymiru and the others joined me a few feet beyond the doorway, I saw that we were not alone. At the south end of the hall, off to the left, a small, ragged figure was struggling mightily against the chain and shackle locked around his ankle.
'Look!' Atara said to me. 'It's a child'
I started straight for him, but Kane suddenly laid his hand on my shoulder and said,
'Be careful - this might be a trap!'
The child, if that he really was, saw us almost immediately. And now he lunged against his chain as his eyes leaped with terror.
'It's all right,' I whispered, 'we won't hurt you!'
Again, I started across the rubble-strewn floor, fighting the child's scent of fear and the overpowering foulness of the air. This stank of cinnamon and sweat, of burning pitch and heated rock and evil as old as the mountain itself.
'Who are you?' I said to him, crossing the distance between us cautiously. 'Who chained you here?'
I saw that he was indeed a child, a boy, about nine years old. creasy rags barely covered his skinny body. His hair was black and hung about his dirty face in tangles.
He had the dark skin and almond eyes of the Sung - and yet he clearly belonged to Morjin. For upon his forehead was tattooed the sign of his slavery: a red dragon coiled as if burned deep into his flesh.
'Look!' Kane said to me as he came running up to my side. He pointed at the far end of the room toward the north. There, between two great pillars, stood a pyramid of skulls perhaps twenty feet high. Their curving bones and empty eye hollows gleamed a ghastly yellow in the glows tones' dim light.
'Oh, I don't like this place!' Maram said. 'Let's get out of here.'
He looked toward a great, open portal along the west wall opposite the stairs by which we had entered the hall. The doors of both of these openings, I saw, had long since been torn off their hinges. What use, I wondered, did Morjin now make of this foul chamber? A dungeon for the torture and execution of his enemies? But how could a child be anyone's enemy, even Morjin's?
'What is your name?' I said to the terrified boy, laying my hand on his head. 'Where is your mother? Your father?'
He jumped at my touch. He knocked my hand away and looked frantically toward the portal, where once a great iron gate had been.
'He's coming!' he said to me in a sweet voice made bitter by bondage. 'He's coming!'
'Who is coming?' I asked him.
I looked down at the boy's bare leg. So hard had he lunged against the shackle there that its iron had torn him bloody. There were bite marks about the ankle, as well. I did not want to admit what I knew to be true: that this poor boy, like a trapped animal, had tried to gnaw off his own leg.
'Who is it?' I asked him again.
He looked at me as if trying to decide who I might be. And then, with a deep courage pushing away some of his fear, he said, 'It's the Dragon.'
'Morjin, here?' Kane snarled, shaking his sword at the air.
The boy pulled to the limit of the chain attached to a bolt in the floor. He fell to his knee and crunched down upon some bones there. All about him, I saw, were piles of rat skulls and their skeletons. His torn tunic was stained with the guts and gore of rats, which it seemed he had eaten.
'It's the Dragon,' the boy said again. 'Can't you hear him?'
The vast hall rumbled with distant sounds of the other farts of the city. Water trickled and iron beat against stone; the stone itself seemed to beat like a great, black heart with rhythms as old as time.
'Listen, Rat Boy,' Maram said, coming up close to him. You've been here too long and must be hearing things that aren't-'
'No, it's the Dragon! We've got to get out of here!'
Now he stretched out his thin hand as if beckoning toward the rat leavings littered across the floor. And there, among these gnawed white bones, just beyond his reach, lay a black, iron key.
'Every abomination,' Kane muttered as I bent to pick up the key. 'Every degradation of the spirit.'
I turned to see if the key would indeed fit the locked shackle. And as I bent low, Atara stroked the boy's trembling head and asked him, 'Was it the Dragon who locked you here?'
'No, it was Morjin. Lord Morjin.'
'And you think he's coming back here?'
'No! I told you - it's the Dragon who's coming!'
Now Liljana and Master Juwain both drew out their gelstei. Liljana was fingering her blue whale, clearly contemplating entering the boy's mind to see where it had cracked. And Master Juwain wanted only to heal him of his delusions and terror.
I pushed the key through the hole in the lock. It slipped in with a loud click. The b
oy's heart was now beating eyen more rapidly than my own: doom, doom, doom.
'Quick!' the boy said to me, 'we've got to run!'
Now the smells of cinnamon and burning pitch suddenly grew overpowering as a blast of hot air blew into the room. From the dark corridor beyond the hall's open portal came a loud, rhythmic, thumping sound: Doom, Doom, Doom.
'Quick, Val!' Maram called to me. 'Back to the stairs! Something is coming.'
I turned the key, screeching metal against metal, right and then left. I jiggled it in the lock as the boy pulled with all his might against the chain. The sweaty cinnamon smell grew much stronger. And now the thunder of shaken stone filled the hall: DOOM! DOOM! DOOM!
The shackle's lock suddenly snapped open just as Atara sighted an arrow on the opening of the portal. And then there, in that dark, huge octangular space, a great shape appeared. It stood fifteen feet high and was perhaps thrice that long. Scales, red like rusted iron, covered the whole length of its long, sinuous body nearly down to the knotted tip of its tail. At the end of its great hind legs, claws as sharp as steel cut grooves into the rock of the floor. Its leathery wings were folded back along its sides like a cat's ears before a battle. Its great, golden eyes fixed on the boy with a malign intelligence. As I pulled the shackle from his leg they fixed on me.
Oh, Lord!' Maram said, fumbling for his firestone. 'Oh, my Lord!' It was, as the boy had tried to tell us, a dragon - and a female at that. And she was clearly angry that we had just robbed her of her feast. 'Liljana! Master Juwain!' I shouted. Take the boy back to the stairs!' Liljana grabbed the boy's hand and started running toward the stairs with Master Juwain close behind him. And then, just as the dragon sprang forward, Atara loosed her arrow at one of the dragon's eyes. But the dragon turned her head just in time so that the arrow glanced off her scales along her great jaws.
These now opened to show sharp white teeth as long as knives. I sensed that the dragon longed to charge Atara and bite her in two. And so I stepped forward, pointing my sword at the dragon as I raised up my shield. It was good for me that I still had my father's shield.
'Val, the fire!' Maram called to me. I thought, for a moment, that he must be speaking of his gelstei. 'The fire, beware!'
Suddenly, as the dragon seemed to quiver and cough, all at once, a-great breath of flame shot from her mouth. It fell in an orange stream against my shield, burning the silver swan embossed there as black as the curving black steel around it. Some of the flame spilled over my shield's rim and scorched my face. I rushed forward then to strike the dragon dead before she could draw breath and summon her fire again.
As did Ymiru and Kane. Kane dosed in toward the dragon's side and thrust his sword at the dragon's belly. It struck sparks against the scales there, and glanced off her, as did the second arrow that Atara fired at the dragon's eyes. Ymiru had greater success swinging his borkor at the dragon's still-open mouth. With tremendous force, it cracked into the jaw, breaking off two huge teeth and shaking the dragon to her bones. But then the dragon used her great, knotty head like a club of her own, swinging it sideways into Ymiru's chest, cracking ribs and knocking him off his feet Her tail suddenly lashed out at Kane; if he hadn't been quick to duck beneath its terrible sweep, the mace-like spikes at the tip would have taken off his head.
The dragon having been distracted, I worked in dose to her huge, heaving body. I thrust my sword straight at her chest. But Alkaladur's gleaming silustria, which had split open even plate armor, foiled to pierce the dragon deeply. It drove between two of the thick scales to a distance of perhaps an inch. It was enough only to wound the dragon - as a bloodbird might peck at me. 'Val, she's too strong!' Atara called to me.
'Back to the stairs!' Maram wasted no time in heeding her call to retreat. Gripping his gelstei which had failed to produce the slightest spark, he turned to run back toward the narrow opening to the east. While Kane helped Ymiru regain his feet, I stood before them, covering them with my shield. The dragon, dripping blood from her battered mouth, rgarded Ymiru
with wariness and hate. Then she suddenly opened her jaws again to burn us.
This time I saw that her breath was not really of fire. Rather, as she coughed and heaved, she spit straight at us a stream of a reddish and jellylike substance.. Upon touching the air, it burst into flame. It clung to my shield with all the stickiness of honey. It burned into the steel there, etching it as might a blazing acid.
'Retreat, Val!' Kane shouted at me.
He and Ymiru, following Atara, had already started toward the stairs. I backed away from the dragon as quickly as I could. Once more, the dragon aimed a fiery blast at us. I caught it again on my shield, and then turned to run back toward the stairs before the dragon could summon up more of this evil red liquid. I reached the doorway and bounded down the stairs just as another stream of fire poured through.
Some drops of the jelly stuck to my mail and burned into my back. But at least my friends and I were safe. There was no way the dragon could force her huge body through the narrow doorway.
But there was no way either that we could go forward. It seemed that we west trapped in the deeps of Argattha.
Chapter 42
'That was close!' Maram gasped as we gathered in the winding stairwell just below the corridor leading to the dragon's hall. When I peeked over the top stair into the corridor, I could see the dragon's golden eyes looking back at me through the doorway. 'Are you all right, Val?'
I was not quite all right The dragon's fire had burned holes clean through my armor.
This I now removed so that Master Juwain could tend the seared flesh along my back.
'A dragon!' Maram marveled, not quite daring to look into the corridor. 'I never really believed the old stories.'
He and Atara stood just beneath me on the steps. And beneath them were Kane and Ymiru, and then Liljana, who had her arms wrapped around the boy that we had found.
As Master Juwain held his crystal above my back, I looked down the stairs at the boy and asked him, 'Do you have a name?'
This time he answered me, looking me straight in the eyes as he said, 'I'm called Daj.'
'Just "Daj"?' I asked him.
His eyes burned with old hurts as if he didn't want to tell me anything more about his name. And so I asked him what land he hailed from. But this, too, it seemed, touched upon terrible memories.
'Well, Daj, please tell us how you came to be chained up there.'
'Lord Morjin put me there,' he said.
'But why?'
'Because I wouldn't do what he wanted me to.'
'And what was that?'
But Daj didn't want to answer this question either. A deep loathing fell over him as his little body began to shudder.
'Are you a slave?' Atara asked him, looking at his tattooed fore-head.
'Yes,' he said, pressing back into Liljana's bosom. 'That is, I was. But I escaped.'
The story he now told us was a terrible one. A couple of years before, after watching his family slaughtered by Morjin's men and being enslaved in some distant land that he wouldn't name, he had been brought in chains to Argattha And there - in the city above us -Morjin had taken this handsome boy as his body servant. For a slave, it had been a relatively easy life, tending to Morjin's needs in the luxury of the private rooms of his palace. But Daj had hated it. Somehow he had found a way to displease his master. And so Morjin had consigned him to the mines far below Argattha's first level. There, in tunnels so narrow that only young boys slight of body could squeeze through, Daj was given a pick and told to hack away at the veins of goldish ore running through the earth. His life became one of bleeding hands and gashed knees, of whips and curses and the terror of despair. He had slept with the corpses of the many other boys who had died around him; some of the other starved boys, he said, had been forced to eat from these bodies. And somehow, the brave and clever Daj had contrived a way to escape from this living hell.
'I found a way from the mines up to the first level,' he t
old us, pointing up toward the top of the stairs. 'That's where the dragon is kept. And so no one usually goes there.'
For some months, he told us, he had survived by wandering the first level's abandoned streets and alleys; he had captured rats for food and ripped them apart with his hands and teeth. When the dragon drew near, he hid beyond the doorways of ancient apart-ments or in crumbling store rooms or even in cracks in the earth.
But finally, his dread of the dragon - and his hunger - had grown too great. And so he had tried to steal up into the second level of the city.
'They captured me there,' he said. Then he pointed at his forehead. 'The mark gave me away - that's why all the slaves are tattooed. Lord Morjin himself came to see me taken back down to the first level and chained in the great hall. He gave me to the dragon. Just like he's given all the others.'
I thought of the pyramid of skulls in the hall above us and shud dered.
Maram, moved to great pity by Daj's story, began weeping uncon trollably. But he seemed to realize that his tears might only inflame the boy's grief. So instead he forced out a brave laughter as if trying to inspirit him. He said, 'Oh, you poor lad -
how old are you?'
'Older than you.'
Maram looked at him as if he had fallen mad. 'How can you say that?'
'You laugh and cry like a little boy, but I haven't laughed for years, and I don't cry anymore. So you tell me, who is older?'
None of us knew what to say to this. So I turned to Daj and asked him, 'How long were you chained there, then?'
'I don't know - a long time.'
'But why did the dragon take so long in coming?'
'She did come, all the time,' he said. 'She brought me rats to eat. I think she wanted to fatten me up before she ate me.'
After Master Juwain had finished with his crystal, he rubbed an ointment into my cooked skin, and then I put my armor back on with much wincing and pain. And then I looked down the dim stairwell at Daj and asked him, 'How is it that the Lord of Lies and his men could have chained you without the dragon adding their skulls to his stack? Have they enslaved it, too?'
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