by Joan Lennon
‘Because of what I did. After I picked it up.’
‘Explain, human.’
Bryn looked up into the King’s eyes and, almost pleadingly, tried to.
‘When I had it, the Crystal, in my hands, I felt completely different. I felt like I could do anything. I felt like a hero.’
Around him, great heads nodded in recognition. They’d felt it too.
‘Go on.’
‘I’d never felt like that before. It completely swept me away – and then, and then, I found myself with my hands round my sister’s throat.’
There was a stunned silence, and then a low moan from the Gallery.
‘What did you just say?’ whispered the King.
‘I tried to take the Crystal and I tried to kill my sister.’
‘WHAT!!’
The Hall erupted into hubbub, both above and below. Bryn staggered back from the force of shouted questions and exclamations.
‘Leave him alone! Don’t make him say it again!’ yelled Madlen, and when no one listened, she almost sobbed, ‘It’s not true anyway – not really…’
But there was something about the uproar that was strange. Instead of horror and outrage on the faces of the dragons in the Gallery about her, she was detecting excitement all around her, even joy. And on the floor of the Hall, there was confusion…
‘What’s happening?!’ she yelled at Dagrod, but before she could answer, the King bellowed for quiet.
‘Keeper?!’ he said as soon as it was still. He sounded incredulous. ‘What does this mean?’
The Keeper uncoiled herself slowly and deliberately. When she spoke, her voice was low-pitched and subdued.
‘The story of Nad and his sister, Randon, is taught to every dragon child. How he killed her, mistaking her for his enemy Arnd, because of an enchantment – who here does not know the tale of their tragedy?’
She paused, as if in thought, or perhaps to let something simmer and sink in. Then, looking about the chamber, she asked another question.
‘What is a Spaener,’ she asked, ‘but one who sees what is hidden? Has this human seen, without understanding, the ultimate end of our Path? Has this human, without volition, acted out the essence of the Crystal?’ She lowered her head submissively. ‘I am only the Keeper. What the Memory holds, I present. It is my lords’ decision, of course. But –’ and she looked from under her brows at the crowd below, about to make a final point, the glint of victory already in her eyes…
She got no further, interrupted by a young dragon lord who surged forward and roared his scorn at her and the others.
‘This is treason! An acknowledged thief as Spaener?! He was told to say these things – he has been schooled…’
The Keeper leaned far over the Gallery railing to bellow her denial. ‘That is not so! I had no knowledge of the human’s attempt on his sister…’
Other voices joined in the storm, some agreeing that it was shocking, degrading to even listen to a human, others urging that it could be true, an end could be coming. For some time, Lord Rad let the battle rage and then, when he judged the moment was right, he cut across them all with his words.
‘Is this where our honour has ended?’
There was a stunned silence and then, ‘I can answer that.’
A new voice had spoken, dark contralto, and it drew the attention of every being in the room. Unnoticed, the Queen had arrived at the entrance to the Great Hall. She did not attempt to enter – the throne beside the King had been empty since the Path of the Crystal was established. She just stood at the door, bent down – but not in submission. She was holding something with great care in her claws, shielding it with her body.
‘Sire.’ She looked up and spoke to the King, her voice carrying effortlessly the length of the hall. ‘Our child has hatched. We have waited a long time for a new life in the City and now she is here.’ The Queen took a breath. ‘She is here. And she holds the answer to Lord Rad’s question. This… is where our honour has ended.’ And the Queen straightened, and held the tiny dragon up for all to see.
The baby was beautiful, even to human eyes, but for the terrible withering of her leg and wing. Bryn looked from the child to the mother and saw how she was drowning in a storm of love and pain.
The King left his throne. He came to her and gently took the baby. There was a long moment of silence. Then, without turning back to the room, the King spoke.
‘Hear me. No dragon can go to the cave of Adagon’s Deed. The noise is too great to bear, and live. So this is my decision. The human is to be given the Crystal. I do not believe the cave’s defences will affect it. The Crystal is to be put back. What Adagon began, let the human finish. In this way the Path… is ended.’
The King’s voice was hardly above a whisper, but his words reached every part of the chamber. Then the King and Queen passed on and the great double doors boomed to behind them.
In the shocked stillness, a growling noise, barely controlled, could be heard. It came from Lord Rad. He was shaking with fury and his eyes were slitted as if for battle.
‘Put it back?!’ he grated. ‘What Adagon did at the cost of his life, what we have built all these years of our lives upon, is to be undone!? And like this…!?!’ The words seemed to choke him.
An old dragon stepped towards him.
‘You must,’ he said. ‘It is the End of the Path. It is the King’s express command. Even if the Assembly would, it could not disagree.’
Around the room, great heads nodded in agreement and there was a low rumble of voices.
‘You must.’
‘The End of the Path.’
‘You must.’
Lord Rad finally bowed his head, as if to acknowledge defeat. There was a sigh of relief from the others and then, tactfully, they began to withdraw. Moving quietly despite their bulk, in a very little time they were all gone, until only Rad and Bryn remained.
The boy shrank into himself, trying to be invisible. He didn’t dare look up. There was only silence in the room now, but it was a silence that grew and grew – until it exploded into a shriek of rage. Bryn flung himself aside just as Rad slammed his tail up, over and down, directly on to the pillar of ice. It shattered into a million pieces that clattered across the marble floor, a glittering carpet of crystalline shapes, grabbing the light and scattering it about in countless sparks and flares.
And, somewhere in the midst of it all, was the Crystal.
Lord Rad was breathing heavily and his voice was hoarse and wild.
‘Let the human have it. Let the human have the Crystal, our Crystal, our honour – you can have it… if you can find it!’
Stunned, Bryn stared at the chaos strewn across the floor.
‘But… that’s impossible,’ he said.
‘Impossible?’ sneered Rad. ‘But aren’t you the Spaener? Aren’t you the one who sees? It won’t be a problem for you. Why don’t you just… look?!’
‘I can’t find the Crystal. I can’t,’ repeated Bryn in a voice that cracked partway through. ‘No one could – not even a dragon – not just by looking.’
‘But a dragon can do more than just look.’
Bryn jerked. It was Dagrod. It was a sign of the new times that she had come into the Great Hall, braved the Forbidden Place.
Lord Rad swung round to face her, at first not believing her audacity, then cold with scorn.
‘You?! What can you do? You’re just a child, a female, little more than a worm. You’re… nothing.’
‘I’m… I’ll… You…’ Bryn could see the fear taking over her, the courage oozing away – he understood it all so well – but then with a great effort she lifted her head and looked Rad in the face.
‘I may be nothing,’ she croaked, ‘but I can still do this!’
And, taking a deep breath, Dagrod flared.
Cam had been right – it was a totally amazing sight. Her flame was a rich umber edged with gold and the ice fragments on the floor vanished into a veil of mist, like dew beneat
h the sun.
Then, with a gentle breath, she blew the mist away and picked up the Crystal.
‘Here, Bryn,’ she said. ‘Put it back.’
And from the Gallery came the strange noise of dragons, unseen, clicking their applause.
42
Putting It Back
‘This is the route Adagon took, as far as we can work out. Mapping of the Under-Ice has been sporadic, but I have done my best to collate the findings…’
The Keeper handed Bryn a sheaf of overlapping transparencies made of paper-fine ice and showed him how each level was represented on a separate sheet. It was clever, just the sort of thing that would normally have intrigued him, but now he only nodded his thanks.
The tunnel leading into the maze under the City had been closed as a Forbidden Place. Willing claws had broken the seal and then hurried away. Not surprisingly, no one had been eager to hang around.
Now, Dagrod, the Keeper and the Questors were all that remained. There was an awkward silence.
‘I’ll be compiling a list of Mythic Quest Objects on your return,’ the Keeper said brightly.
Bryn nodded.
Then Madlen spoke.
‘And we believe him, the King, when he said that about the cave not harming humans?’ she said abruptly.
After a moment, the Keeper nodded. ‘Most probably we do,’ she said.
And with that, they had to be content.
Bryn had asked for and been given a stout leather carry-sack, and the Crystal was now securely tied into it.
‘I’ll carry it, if you like,’ Cam said suddenly.
The Keeper started to speak, but Bryn interrupted.
‘You’re not coming,’ Bryn said abruptly.
‘Why not?’
Bryn and the Keeper spoke at the same time.
‘You can’t.’
‘There’s no symmetry in that.’ She spoke as if stating the obvious and, to the others’ surprise, Bryn was nodding in agreement.
‘I’m what’s needed, not you two,’ he said hoarsely. ‘If Adagon was the Hero, and he started the Path, it’s a coward that’s needed to end it.’
And he was gone, almost running in his eagerness to leave them behind.
The Keeper shook her head slowly.
‘That’s not the symmetry I had in mind,’ she said.
Dagrod looked confused. ‘What did he mean?’ she wailed, but no one tried to explain.
Cam sighed and settled down against a wall. The Keeper curled herself elaborately nearby. Madlen stood, staring after Bryn, making her horrible hum.
There was nothing more they could do. Theirs was the hard job of the ones left behind.
As he followed the map through the tunnels, Bryn kept hearing the words of the story in his mind. How Adagon had come the same way in search of his destiny, and then dragged himself back again, deafened by the great noise, bleeding and broken from his battle with the Guardian. What would that feel like? he wondered. To know you were dying, and going on anyway, back up all those tunnels of ice, clutching the Crystal – my Crystal…
He’d asked for the carry-sack to protect him from contact with it on the way, but now, without thinking, he reached for it in his pocket. Instantly, even through the tough leather, he could feel the cold electric buzz, the power rush. He pulled his hand away quickly and took a deep breath to steady himself.
It shouldn’t be long, he thought. Any minute now, I should start hearing the roaring noise they talked about. Not much further. It must be the way the tunnels keep swerving about – that must be why I’m still not hearing it…
And then, suddenly, he found he was there. He stuttered to a halt just inside the entrance to the cave, unable to believe that it was a chamber not of deafening clamour, but instead, one of an utter silence. He checked the map to make sure he hadn’t turned two sheets over by mistake, but no, this seemed to be it…
He flicked the switch of the device to be certain – and immediately dropped it on to the ground. The thing was vibrating too hard to hold and whining like an attack of wasps. Bryn left it where it lay and stepped further into the chamber.
The floor was stone – bedrock, the ancient body of the World. It was dark granite, rough and jagged, as the story had described. Towards the centre, it warped up into a vent, rising several metres into the air. And from the top of the vent, pulsing like a severed artery, was … something.
It was an energy, discernible through the distortion of the air, and the way his skin prickled, the way his blood throbbed in time to its rhythm. He knew that geysers of boiling water exploded out of the ground, but this geyser was icy cold. And where water will fall back to the earth it came from, this… kept going. In the eerie stillness, it fountained up to the ceiling and then seemed to just carry on, penetrating it, silently, unrelentingly. Bryn could sense it, pulsing up through all the metres of ice, into all the walls and rooms and passages of the City above, into all the living cells of all the living dragons…
It struck him just how far underground he was, and just how much tonnage of ice hung over him, waiting to collapse. He felt a kind of inverted vertigo and for a moment he couldn’t catch his breath. He staggered and pitched forward, crashing down on to his hands and knees –
– and screamed. The pain first flowered under his palm and then blossomed through his entire body. Looking down, he saw blood pooling dark on the rock. Shaking and sick, he saw how he’d sliced open his hand. A dragon’s obsidian claw, lost in battle, wedged into a crack, cutting edge up.
Bryn curled in on himself, moaning, cradling his hand in close to his chest. Only the pain was real and he had no defence against it. Every wall in his mind was flattened before it and all the hidden fears and held-in shame rose up to meet it. He whimpered. The sound echoed in the silence – and then it began to change. It began to morph into another sound, a sound that was not coming from him. Dull, rasping, hardly above a whisper, but growing all the time, it came from the rock around the vent.
With a huge effort, Bryn lifted his head. He stared in horror as the rock began to shift, separating and changing its shape into a huge head with a great snout and an enormous eye.
An eye that was slowly opening.
43
The Eye and the Claw
That dull, dead eye fixed him to the floor like a spike. There was a horrible gasping, panting sound which he half knew must be coming from him.
Stone grinding against stone, the Guardian lifted his head.
‘Thief! Fraud!’ it seemed to sneer. ‘Fight me, coward!’
Involuntarily, Bryn’s hands clenched. Blood pulsed out of his wound like the poison from the vent above, so that his eyes blurred and he staggered on the edge of consciousness. He cried out, shaking his head to try to clear his sight, but when he was able to focus again, he found that the dragon had gone.
Bryn gulped. It hadn’t gone – the shape was still there – but it was only stone.
He was going crazy – he felt guilty, and ashamed. The desire to get away, anywhere away, beat about his head, but he was so slowed by pain and the storm of emotions battering at him that he just lay there, crying.
In the end, it was exhaustion that helped him. He was used up, too tired to feel any more. He just wanted to go to bed.
But first he had to put the Crystal back.
Every movement was an effort. Panting, he managed to half sit up and drag the carry-sack out of his pocket. And then, it got worse – stupidly, unbelievably, worse.
He couldn’t untie the knot.
He tried to use his teeth, and his feet, but without two functioning hands, Bryn couldn’t get the Crystal out of the sack. He knew he had to – he couldn’t just stuff the bag into the vent. It was up to him to reunite the bare rock, the unveiled Crystal – he had to –
Then he remembered the claw. Obsidian – razor sharp. The pain pulsed up his arm. If it could hurt him like that, it should be able to help him.
He peered wearily about the cave floor. There it
was – still wedged into the crack, with his blood darkly wet on it. He anchored the sack with his foot and very, very carefully prised the claw free. The outer curve of it was smooth and safe to hold. Bryn gripped it with his good hand.
One slice… and the Crystal tumbled out on to the rock.
All he had to do now was pick it up, and climb to the vent, and use the Crystal to seal it. All he had to do was the easy part – it was nothing – but he was just so tired. His hand throbbed and his coat was soaked with blood where he’d been nursing it. When his mind wandered towards the thought of how much damage he’d done to himself, Bryn felt sick. My hand! My hand! he cried silently. Don’t go there, he answered himself. One thing at a time. What are you waiting for? Don’t screw up now…
Clumsily, Bryn shoved first the claw and then the Crystal into the front of his coat. He needed his good hand free. As he straightened up, his eyes blurred again and his tongue went dry. Don’t faint! he thought urgently, but luckily the giddiness passed.
He began to climb. Even in the icy air, he was sweating. This close, the fountain of energy throbbed dizzyingly and he could feel the power of it pulsing through his bones. Soon he was crawling. He slitted his eyes and dragged himself on to the top.
At last he leaned against the summit of the vent and, panting, reached into his coat.
The Crystal came out smeared in blood. It wasn’t beautiful any more. It was just a bit of stained rock. He’d wondered what it would do to him to touch it again. Would it make him feel like a hero? Would he be able to bear to give it away? But now that the time had come, he felt nothing. Just a great weariness, and a wish for it all to be over.
Bryn reached out his hand and dropped the Crystal into place.
The chamber shuddered gently, once, and then it was as if the light had gone out. Not that it darkened – but the pounding, blazing, icy fountain that had powered up with such deadly strength – it was as if that had never been.
Bryn looked about him for a moment. He didn’t notice that the device, on the floor by the entrance, was finally still. With a little sigh, he slipped back down the slope, loose-limbed, unconscious.