The Hidden Fire (Book 2)

by James R. Sanford

  He presented them to Tebble. “Your new strap-men.”

  Tebble stared at Lerica a little too long. “I wish I had more strappers that looked like her.”

  “Don’t let the colonel hear you say that,” Ral said. “Not after this morning.”

  Guppy arrived with Rolirra in tow. Kyric had thought he would choose her over the other woman. She looked frightened and uncertain. She had never thought she would have to do this.

  The blotches on Tebble’s face had faded some, but he still looked flushed with anger all the time. That wasn’t far from the truth.

  “Get into your leathers,” he growled.

  In addition to a serrated knife, the cutters were given leather aprons, along with caps and long-sleeved gloves. The strap-men got aprons as well, but nothing else. At least he and Lerica had shirts and trousers, thought Kyric.

  Lerica gave him a significant look. She glanced at the knife in Rolirra’s hand, then at Tebble. He carried a machete in his sash, and so did the overseer at the other table. “I don’t see where it would get us,” he whispered to her.

  Tebble pointed with his chin. “See these mops and buckets we have here? They’re for swabbing your aprons. But if you get any angel juice on your skin, you mop it off as fast as you can. If, and only if the ray is secure. You drop the rope or put anyone else in danger and you will be food for the crocs. Understand?”

  While they got into their aprons, the pickers brought a ray and placed it on the other table for the crew that waited there. They were able to watch for a minute, to see how it was done, and then another team of pickers dragged a thrashing angel ray up their table and it was their turn.

  Placing the ray on the table was the most awkward part of the whole process. The pickers had to choke up on their poles, getting uncomfortably close to the struggling ray, in order to heave it onto the table. One of them had set his hook too close to the edge of the ray’s wing fin, and it tore through as he lifted. They had to set it on the ground and re-hook it, and all the time it oozed its poison.

  There were no actual straps, only lengths of ropes that tied to belaying pins fixed along the edge of the table, much like those on a ship. Kyric and Lerica each took a rope’s end and whipped it over the stinger and tied off. This kept it from flailing about, and now they could get a loop around it and tie it down hard.

  The pickers still held the ray to the table as Lerica tossed another length of rope over its back to Kyric. They pulled down hard and tied off. They did this two more times and signaled the pickers to unhook. The ray lay still for a moment, and with its fins spread like wings, it was a strangely beautiful creature. Its grey backside was graced with lime green tiger stripes. Kyric could imagine it gliding through the water, sleek and majestic.

  “Everyone stand back,” Tebble barked. He shoved Rolirra forward, and she nearly slipped in the mud. “Go do your job, old hag.”

  She stood facing the head of the ray, like the young woman at the other table had, raising the knife to cut in a back hand motion. The ray was much bigger than her; she looked small and frail standing next to it.

  “Be sure to get underneath the skin,” Tebble called to her. “That way we get all of the halo.”

  She began to cut. The creature jerked violently, a stream of venom spraying out sideways from behind its gills. Rolirra jumped back, dropping the knife.

  Tebble made a face. “Good Goddess! What are you doing?” he shouted at her. “Pick up the knife and get on with it.”

  Gripping the knife more firmly, she went in for another try. She cut hard and deep beneath the halo, sawing with the knife as the creature bucked. It was low, and difficult to hear, but the ray made an airy whistling sound as it thrashed.

  Kyric had to look away for a moment. Everyone knew that taking the halo killed the rays, and that they died in agony, but it was different to have to watch it up close, smelling the venom, hearing its soft cry.

  Rolirra pulled back. She was weeping. ‘Must I make it suffer so greatly?’ she said-signed.

  “It’s only a fish,” Lerica snapped at her, “and a nasty one at that.” She stepped in to take the knife away, signing, ‘Here. Let me do it.’

  “Don’t touch that knife,” Tebble warned. “It’s her job — she’s the one who has to do it.” Drawing the knotted rope from his sash, he shook it at Rolirra and said, “Get back in there and get that halo before I tan your hide, old woman.”

  Kyric took a step forward, not sure what he would do if Tebble tried to whip Rolirra. Tebble saw the look on his face and dropped the rope, drawing his machete and looking Kyric in the eye.

  “Were you going to say something?” he said in a taunting voice. “Please say something smart. I want you to.”

  Rolirra pulled herself together and finished cutting off the halo. The ray struggled for several minutes before it died.

  An extra slave wheeled the cart over to their table. He had a length of rope with a regular fish hook on the end. He used it to drag the ray off the table. When the cart was full he would dump the dead rays into the swamp.

  Kyric shook his head. The way this whole operation worked was lunacy. Men who fished for their living would never have set it up this way, especially not those backed by business financiers. And what about the ship that brought them here? It should have stayed as a base of support instead of leaving them on their own for three months. He wondered if the Baskillians that Thurlun dealt with were pulling something shady within their own empire.

  Suddenly his foot caught on something, and he fell headlong into the mud and gore, his face only inches from a puddle of ray venom. Tebble stood over him. He had tripped Kyric with his own leg chains.

  “You can’t go daydreaming around here,” he said. “You have to pay attention all the time or you or someone else will get killed real fast.”

  The heavy drizzle continued the rest of the afternoon. The pace at the nets slowed a little, which allowed them to work carefully at the tables. But there was one ray that gave a strange quivering shake while they were tying it down, and a splatter of venom fell on Lerica’s arms. Her shirt was soaking wet, and the greenish-white poison didn’t seem to bleed through the cloth.

  She dove for a bucket and swabbed her arms, finding a few specks of venom on one finger. By the end of the day she didn’t look very good.

  “Are you getting sick?” Kyric asked her. “Are you sure you washed it all off?”

  “It’s not so bad. It just feels like I ate something rotten.”

  When work was done, and they had swabbed the tables and poured buckets of water around them to wash away the venom, Kyric walked with Rolirra back to the drawbridge. He had hardly spoken to her in his waking life he realized — had hardly even looked at her. She was thin and moved a little stiffly, her skin wrinkled, her hair bristly. Only in her face did he see his Rolirra.

  What on Aerth is wrong with me? This was the real woman, not that image he saw in his dreams. This is the one who is a teacher and a leader to her people, his travelling companion on the other side, a woman he had begun to feel close to.

  He took her hand and helped her across the slick, rickety bridge. ‘You told me that the rains of the plateau were hard,’ he said-signed. ‘My memory of it is fading, but I don’t think it was that way.’

  She nodded. ‘There was no storm. No thunder or lightning. The — ‘ She searched for the proper sign but couldn’t find it. ‘The snake of the air must fly for this to be.’ She shook her head, frustrated with Cor’el. ‘We must return to the other side tonight. I can speak of it better when we are there.’

  CHAPTER 14: The Storm Dragon

  They lay in a bubble of warmth underneath the blanket of moss, entangled in one another’s arms and legs. Rolirra stirred sleepily. Kyric kissed her on the shoulder to ease her wakening. He kissed her again on the neck, and she responded with a sharp intake of breath, turning to face him. He met her lips with surprising hunger, pressing his bare chest against hers.

  “I had a
bad dream,” he whispered to her. “I dreamt we were enslaved in a terrible place.”

  She pulled away. “The storm dragon,” she said, throwing back the covering. “That is why the rain is so mild — the dragon’s flight brings the torrents and the deluge. It seems that he is silent or sleeping. We must climb to the dragon’s perch and awaken him.”

  “I don’t know anything about dragons,” Kyric said, “but I’ve the feeling that it’s unwise to wake a sleeping one.”

  Rolirra gave him a mischievous grin. “The more the anger, the more violent the storm.”

  They cut the blanket in two and fashioned cloaks from it. It wasn’t moss exactly — more like a furry flax that repelled water. They easily coaxed strands from it to use as ties. With the streaks of black in the grey, it looked like they had donned wolf skins.

  Rolirra led him along a gentle rise through the thick alpine forest. It wasn’t long before they saw shadows flitting from tree to rock to tree ahead of them, and to either side. They were four-legged creatures, and slowly they closed a circle around the two of them. Suddenly a few of them charged from different directions. They were an impossible combination of mountain lion and bear, with long sabre teeth. Kyric and Rolirra stood back to back, sword and daggers in their hands, but the beasts veered away at the last moment, speeding back into concealment.

  Kyric waited for another charge, and when it didn’t come Rolirra took the lead again, moving cautiously, still holding her knives ready.

  A lone lion-bear sprang from a boulder, and when they turned to face it, another charged them from behind. Again when they stood back to back, the creatures broke off their attack and disappeared.

  A few minutes later it happened again. And again after that.

  “I wonder if they mean to harm us at all,” Rolirra said. “If they wanted to kill us, why wouldn’t the entire pack charge all at once?”

  “The bravest ones are testing us. We are unknown prey and we have teeth of our own.” He cut the air with his sword for emphasis.

  “No,” said Rolirra. “I think they know us very well. I say they are tricksters and this is not their true form. They are here to impede us, to make us lose our bearings, and they will only attack if we ignore them.”

  “What shall we do?”

  “We must find another way.”

  Kyric snorted. “How did I know you were going to say that?”

  They started forth again, moving quickly as they could. Yet another beast ran at them, but this time Kyric waited until the last moment to turn and slash at it. It dodged away at once and was gone, but two more came behind it and again they were force to stand back to back.

  “I see a house,” Rolirra said, pointing though the trees.

  It was a stone cottage. As soon as the creatures retreated again they ran for it, crossing the threshold and slamming the door behind them. The place was empty. A window stood in the middle of each wall — each paned with glass. Turning, Kyric found that the door was gone, replaced by a fourth window.

  Behind one window lay a hellish scene of flowing lava. Behind another, a quiet ocean. A third looked out on a sunny forest, and beyond the fourth window a mountain of weathered grey stone disappeared into an overcast sky.

  “That is the way to the dragon’s perch,” Rolirra said. “I am sure of it.”

  She drew a knife and jabbed at the window pane. It was hard as diamond. Slash as she might, she couldn’t even chip it.

  Kyric touched it lightly as he could. It softened beneath his fingertip, and he was able to push his hand further into it, meeting resistance when he pushed harder.

  “It will let you through as long as you don’t try too hard,” he told her.

  They slipped through the glass by the barest of efforts, to stand in the rain at the edge of the forest. The lower slopes of the mountain formed shoulders for an upper part that curved steeply to the near vertical before it thrust its head into the clouds.

  They scaled the shoulders easily, the way becoming slow and treacherous as they passed through the layer of overcast, and then they were above it, the sky clear and blue. The mountain narrowed to a sheer crag, a grey spike rising to a dizzying height. From its peak, branches of lightning fell like a waterfall into a formation of clear crystals, the only sound a gentle hum.

  “The dragon’s perch?” Kyric said. “The climb could take days.”

  “There might be a passage behind the lightning falls,” Rolirra said.

  They followed a ledge to the outcropping of quartz. The air tingled, and all the hairs on Kyric’s body stood straight up. Dozens of spiders the color of metal, no larger than her hand, skittered among the strands of lightning. There was no hidden way.

  In the distance, a huge thunderhead grew from the layer of clouds. It began to take a form — a human shape, with a great beard framing vengeful eyes and a cruel mouth. In one hand, it wielded a long icicle like a spear.

  Kyric couldn’t take his eyes from it. At last he managed to say to Rolirra, “What am I seeing?”

  “A creature of frost and mist. Ice giant. Cloud ogre. Name it as you will.”

  It came at them in the posture of a sprinter, but flowing slowly like a cloud. The massive head turned, looking down on them with hate.

  “We cannot stay in this place,” Rolirra said.

  Suddenly Kyric felt unsure of himself, and it made him afraid.

  “What are we doing?” he said. “Why are we even here? Let’s go home.”

  Rolirra took his hand and looked him in the eye. “You do not have a home.”

  The metal spiders buzzed as they foraged in the bed of crystals. The falling branches of lightning didn’t simply strike and disappear. They danced in place for several moments then sent a reverse flash back up the strand to the top. One of the spiders leapt onto a branch, holding on with all eight legs, and when the flash returned the spider was gone in an instant, whisked away to the summit.

  “I wonder,” Rolirra said, stepping up to the lightning. She plucked a spider from the group and held it up to a new-fallen strand. The spider took hold and Rolirra tightened her grip. She disappeared in a flash, streaking to the dragon’s perch at an impossible speed.

  When Kyric repeated this, it happened so fast that there was little time for sensation. One moment he held the metal spider to the lightning, the next a blurry rush of wind and he stood with Rolirra above the roof of the world. They were far above the cloud creature now. The wind clawed at them. Overhead, islands of earth rushed past, carried by currents of air. It was like great patches had been torn from the surface of the world and cast into the sky.

  The summit overhung a flat spot, making a shallow cave, and there lay the storm dragon, imprisoned in a block of ice, not moving, not breathing, its eyes open in a fixed glare. They went closer and peered through the ice. The dragon was long and sinewy, more massive than a team of horses, its sleek scales streaked in cyan and black.

  “The cloud ogre did this,” Rolirra said. “He has the power to cast bolts of ice.”

  Kyric turned. The creature of frost and mist had broken away from the overcast, and now rose toward them, raising its icy spear.

  “Stand back,” said Rolirra, taking the last of the firestones from her pouch.

  She struck them together, and as they ignited, threw them at the wall of ice. They bore into it with a loud hiss, a hundred cracks running from them in a crazy pattern. Chunks of ice began to break away. From inside came a sound like thunder and it all fell away to splinters, revealing the dragon. Its claws sparked with lightning and a harsh light came into its yellow eyes.

  With something like the sound of laughter, it raised its wings and leapt from the perch, racing toward the cloud ogre. The giant moved to aim his spear at the dragon but was too slow. The storm dragon sailed past him, throwing chains of lightning from its talons. While the ogre appeared to made of the stuff of clouds, it had ice at its core. The lightning shattered it. A thousand icy shards hung still in the air for a moment, then t
urned to wisps that drifted away on the wind.

  The dragon soared and dove, roaring with a thunder that shook the earth. It skimmed the overcast, raising dark storm clouds where it passed. Lightning shot from cloud to cloud.

  “We should find a way down now,” Rolirra said.

  Kyric nodded. “What are those big wedges of land sailing past in the sky?”

  They rode in a river of wind made visible by the tiny snow flurries it carried with it. Cross-currents ran through the main stream, tearing chunks of earth from the islands, pushing them out of the flow of air where they would fall back through the clouds. Some of the islands looked like they had trees growing at their edges, others were slabs of solid rock.

  “I do not know,” she said.

  The lightning had flowed from another bed of crystals at the front of the cave, but when the storm dragon took flight it had ceased. There was no returning the way they had come. Behind the crystals lay the dragon’s hoard — not gold or jewels, but a scattering of tools and instruments: gearworks and metal coils, calipers and optical lenses, an astrolabe, a magnetic spoon, dividers, a clock with some kind of third hand, and a gadget with a turning crank whose purpose was not apparent.

  Rolirra picked her way through the assortment of tools. She found some jars of tincture and colored powders.

  “What are you doing?” Kyric said.

  “Every dragon’s hoard hides one thing to which the dragon is vulnerable. If we cannot find another way down, we may have to compel this dragon to help us.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  She reached down and came up with a tiny glass flute. Cautiously, she sounded one brief note, and the song of a flight of robins surrounded them. For a moment they stood in the light of a warm summer morning.

  She pulled her lips away and smiled. “I think this is it.”

  With a bellow of thunder, the dragon wheeled and plunged through the cloudbank, and a black storm broke across the rainlands. They caught glimpses of it as it leaped and plunged again like a flying fish. Lightning rained from its talons, and Kyric and Rolirra turned away, seeing spots before their eyes.