She nodded, producing thread and tying the vial to the tip of one of her swords, then lightly creeping toward the pool. She stopped only twice as her steps sunk into the brittle crust of earth, then reached the edge and dipped in the vial. A puff of steam or smoke exhaled from the pool, and a moment later, she was holding the vial in a fold of her cloak. The vial fell away from the sword, the sizzling threads falling to the earth. She just managed to stopper the vial before the water of the pool burned through her cloak. She caught it with another fold of the cloak, drying it off thoroughly. That edge of the cloak also burned, and she caught it up with a third patch of cloak. At last the vial was safe, though still hot.
“If we are done risking our necks for souvenirs…,” Xaeland began.
“Quite,” she said, barely acknowledging the man’s biting tone.
“Then let us go on,” declared Stuart, intervening.
Xaeland and Caelhuin continued in the front, the dark man’s hand on the shoulder of his huge companion, the two proceeding slowly and sometimes even stopping as the path circled too close to the edge between two pools. Heao heard Xaeland consulting with Stuart then, pointing out the path. As he passed, he saw it, too: the footprint of a youth not much smaller than his own.
A thrill went through him. Could it be? But of course: with Stuart and Xaeland tracking him, how could he have thought him to be lost? He looked around for other signs in the soft and treacherous ground…but there were none.
Deeper and deeper they wandered through the noxious mist over the treacherous ground, no sign of the sun the entire time and no further sign of their goal. Once, Haleth sank into the ground to his knee, but was saved from boiling mud by his thick boots. Once again, one of the pools erupted in a jet of steam and acid water that splattered the path and pulled a tiny avalanche of soil into its maw.
It was then approaching high noon, though the sun was no more than a brighter spot in the thick vapors of the basin. Heao felt delirious: wave after wave, stronger and stronger of this putrescent air. He felt Jevan’s hand rest on his arm to support him, but soon the delirium returned even stronger. The vapors—so rancid, so corrosive, he thought: and I am so small. The ground seemed to sway around him…or perhaps it actually did.
A few minutes later, he came to. All the group was gathered around him: Jevan, Rigel, Stuart, Haleth, Jenna (next to Haleth on the ground), Xaeland and Caelhuin, Sianna and Piachras. He realized he must have passed out. “I saw…I saw us falling,” he said.
Xaeland glanced around in alarm. “There, there,” calmed Jevan.
“Can you walk?” asked Rigel.
“Yes,” he said. He found that he could. It seemed no trace of the light-headedness remained. He rose.
“Let’s make double-time,” said Xaeland as Haleth took up Jenna again. As if to underscore this advice, the ground rumbled.
“Let us go! Everyone, hurry, but stay together!” ordered Stuart. Quickly, they complied.
Almost at the first step, however, Caelhuin sunk into the ground, and Xaeland just managed to grab hold of him before the way between the two steaming pools collapsed completely and filled in with burning water. Xaeland scanned the scene and pointed: “To the rocks!”
Piachras bounded ahead in the direction indicated, a rocky incline slightly to the north of their path, with a tall outcropping of granite protruding from its lips. Sianna followed with Stuart; then Haleth and Jenna, Jevan and Heao and Rigel, and Xaeland and Caelhuin pulling up behind. Piachras sighted a somewhat more solid and stable-looking path and ran for it. The ground shook violently then with a bang…then another bang, then a third, echoing bang. Rigel stumbled and Heao went back, but Xaeland was already pulling the old general to his feet.
“It’s…no good,” Rigel groaned. Another bang from below: the pillars of the earth being blow out beneath them.
“Come on,” Xaeland muttered, hauling him with one arm and helping Caelhuin with the other. His words were obliterated by a sudden rush of steam. The ground dipped and slabs of rock began to whistle past them up into the fog. Piachras gained the first foot of the small ridge of rocks amid a hail of stones and gravel. He turned and hopped back down to help Sianna and Stuart.
The ridge behind him collapsed and the ground all around him was overturned. Large stones rolled down the ridge around him, and in the midst of it, Piachras lost his footing and fell with Stuart and Sianna. Everything was sliding downwards. For a while one or another of the three elves could be seen swimming upward through the sliding stone—then nothing at all could be seen.
Xaeland groaned back into existence with a large, powerful hand shaking him vigorously by the shoulder. The darkness of the mist was like twilight. Grime filled his mouth and ears. Reports of pain throughout his body he ignored. Caelhuin’s sightless face approached to his. I am here, he thought to his friend. But something more urgent was troubling the man.
It came to him with a bang and a wash of gravel from somewhere up the slope. One, then another, then another. Heavy impacts: footfalls. Something very large. His mind immediately identified it, but he dared not even think it. He focused his mind. Slowly, he glanced around to find the others. Rigel was there just below him. Piachras, Stuart, Sianna, further down, deeper in the rockslide. There was Haleth with the Therian girl; there Arran Delossan near the boy Heao. There was his sword, waiting at his belt.
There, over the top of the crest, a massive, lean, scaly head snaked out into view. Red scales, darting head, the right eye, he knew, blind to sight: Chriufer the Red. He reached out and shook Haleth awake and put his hand over the blacksmith’s mouth, directing his attention (it was hardly necessary) up the hill. Haleth’s eyes widened as if to burst. A great clawed foot dug into the rocks at the top of the crest, thrusting the head and all the body of the dragon into plain view.
The monster seemed at once to struggle and to rule all its world. Its powerful arms were held out before it together in an awkward sort of way, its wings flattened across its back to one side. Then Xaeland saw it: clanking against the monster’s scales, a hot red chain around the arms and the wings pulled them together and dragged along behind him. Other chains swung free from the wings, apparently pulled up out of the ground, perhaps after the earthquake. Chriufer was chained! But who had…who could have…done such a thing?
But even as he wondered it, the terrible head swiveled toward him. “Uh, Sir, he’s seen us,” Haleth informed him.
“So he has,” Xaeland replied, standing to face the dragon. “Have you a wife or family, Haleth?”
“I am not afraid of dying with you,” declared Haleth, drawing his sword.
“Have you ever loved another from a pure heart!” demanded Xaeland.
The dragon inhaled and sparked. Xaeland tugged on Haleth’s sleeve and ducked behind the nearest boulder. Haleth ran for it, just managing to reach the rock as the fiery blast of the dragon’s fire roiled the air around them. “Purity of thought, purity of intention, purity of life!” Xaeland shouted over the crackling and the pounding of the massive claws climbing down the rocky slope. Was that panic in his voice? Haleth could not tell: his own heart was barely capable of anything but beating—fast, fast, fast!
Xaeland shot out, trying to stay beneath the line of the rocks though it was only as tall as his knees, leaving Haleth alone. A claw the size of his body crashed down on the crown of the boulder they had been hiding behind, close enough that Haleth could have touched it—but the boulder was giving way and beginning to slide down the hill, and all Haleth could do was jump out of the way, pushing off the boulder with both hands as it rolled and staggering away from an enormous snap of the jaws suddenly coming down for him as if out of nowhere. Teeth everywhere, and he found himself sliding down the hill on his back, his weapon lost somehow from his hand.
But at that moment the dragon’s head jerked away, and its tail thrashed at the rock behind it. Xaeland chose that moment to wheel out his own sword, which slid across the metal of the sheath with a deafening scream,
and plunge it at the dragon’s leg. The monster sword glinted red on the solid red scales of the dragon. The dragon turned and reached with its bound arms, almost pulling itself off balance. Xaeland pulled back the sword and struck again, and the scales beneath the blow fractured.
The dragon lashed back with its leg. Xaeland was only partially successful in dodging. The kick caught him in his sword arm and spun him to the ground, and the demon sword flew free and clattered in the rocks. Seeing this, Haleth scrambled for the sword, but the dragon’s jaws slashed back. “Don’t touch the sword!” Xaeland shouted, grasping his arm and trying to roll onto his feet. But it was no use: Haleth could see no way of even getting to the sword, let alone touching it.
The dragon spun around then, trying to lash out with its tail. Caelhuin, the blind giant, was clambering up the dragon’s tail and leaping onto its back. The dragon drew in a breath, and Caelhuin threw himself free to the ground just as the flames scoured the place he had been before. He landed catlike next to the demon sword, and with an uncanny smirk, kicked it to Xaeland.
But the dragon struck back quickly. Caelhuin had put himself out in the open to get the sword, and now he had no time left to evade the dragon’s vengeance. The dragon slammed down its meaty foot on the giant man, who caught it and disappeared in an instant.
“No!” shouted Xaeland. He staggered to his feet and the demon sword scurried with its hand across the last few feet between them and jumped into his hands. The dragon turned on him, shooting him a sneer of complete contempt. And with that, Xaeland thrust the demon sword into the foot of the beast through the fractured scales. Blood spurted. The sword cackled maniacally. The dragon snapped at Xaeland with his jaws but missed as Xaeland rolled behind a boulder, leaving the sword still wedged between the dragon’s bones.
“Over here!” came a new voice: Stuart was up and running—but after only a few steps his foot gave way beneath him and he spilled across the rocks. Haleth charged in, wielding his sword into the plate scales of the dragon’s underbelly. The dragon, its arms chained, could not reach him where he was, but neither could Haleth’s powerful blows prevail upon the toughest part of the dragon’s armor. The dragon jogged backwards and tried to make a snap at the Therian, but Haleth ran along with it, keeping himself out of range and ignoring or not hearing Xaeland’s cries.
Sianna, awakening bruised and battered, looked for Stuart and found him struggling in the rocks above her. She tested herself and found herself uninjured, then ran to him. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “I think my foot was twisted in the rockfall, that’s all.” He looked up at the dragon raging after Haleth, and she followed his gaze. “Go on,” he said, “take my sword. There is no stronger or brighter from all the forges of Ristoria.”
“I shall take care of it,” she replied, taking the blade and exchanging for it a quick kiss before running after Haleth.
“Sianna!” she heard the voice of Piachras her dear friend from behind her.
“Catch up, slow-poke!” she cried back, and she heard his footsteps scrambling over the rocks behind her. He was never one to be outdone.
But Piachras paused for a moment when he saw Xaeland huddled over a pale, bloody and broken form amidst the rocks. “Caelhuin!” he exclaimed.
Xaeland shot him a look like death. “Go!” he shouted brokenly. “Protect the others!”
“I swear I shall bring back the dragon’s head!” Piachras averred.
“Not yet,” Xaeland managed. “Wait till it falls.”
Piachras was shocked, but ran off after Sianna. Next, Rigel picked himself up out of the debris and immediately drew his sword and shield. “Flames!” he growled, “try the strength of Torin!” And he brandished his arms and ran forward, crying out, “For Anthirion!”
The dragon, seeing the arrival of these fearless-seeming newcomers, paled. Well, it would see whether or not those steel claws would ever touch its scales! It drew in a breath and leveled a swathe of fire at the two elves.
Sianna, who was nearest, sped under the feet of the dragon, her cloak in flames. Rigel knelt and took cover behind his shield. Piachras was forced to leap behind a boulder to take cover. The fires licked around him and he found himself beating them out frantically.
Sianna, in the meantime, threw off her burning cloak, checked herself over, and dodged out of the way of the beast’s mashing feet pounding down all around her. “I cannot penetrate its scales,” Haleth shouted to her. She eyed the tough plates of the dragon’s armor unsurely. If he could do nothing to them…she darted a glance around and then threw herself for the chain on the dragon’s wing, caught it, and flipped onto the top of the wing. The dragon flashed her a murderous glare and instinctively tried to reach for her and flap its wings, both of which it could not manage due to the chain. With that, Sianna swung herself to the dragon’s neck and drew the sword of Ristoria. The dragon snapped at her but could not quite reach her, but she managed to nick its tongue with the tip of her sword. The dragon bellowed and hopped about madly.
Piachras took his opportunity to break cover and join Haleth and Rigel under the stamping legs of the monster. Brandishing his heavy glaive with all his might, he struck the breastplate of the beast, but it bounced off harmlessly. He reverberated with the shock of the blow. “What in the world is that made of?” he blazed, narrowing his eyes.
“It’s impenetrable!” shouted Haleth over the roar.
Undaunted, Piachras took his glaive to the legs, which were in any event crashing down all around him. Once for one leg, again for the other with all the strength he could muster, and he managed to crush a few scales on each. “Aha!” he shouted, “I have you now, dread fiend!”
The dragon, thrashing its head violently, suddenly slipped and hit the ground hard. The impact sent slides of rock slithering down the hill everywhere. Xaeland stood, his eyes gleaming, and faced the dragon. It scratched and scrambled to its feet, Sianna still hanging onto its neck, Haleth and Piachras invisible in the dust and rubble. It gave its head one more violent shake and threw Sianna like a skipping stone. Then it wavered and crashed back to the ground. It was time.
Xaeland strode toward the fallen monster, its red scales seemingly glowing beneath their coat of dust and grime. The dragon struggled back to its feet but could barely stand. “You have murdered your last soul,” Xaeland rasped at it. The dragon, Chriufer, attempted to look at him but shut its eyes and lowered its head. “Caelhuin the mighty, the dragon-fighter, knight of the Page Order, hero of the Brolethirian Revolution.” Xaeland pulled out the engorged sword, Grasp, from Chriufer’s leg, and blood trickled out behind it weakly. The blade throbbed, growling or purring, red with blood and beating like a heart.
The dragon’s head followed after Xaeland even though its eyes remained closed. Xaeland brought the demon sword face to face with the dragon. “Once upon a time you burned away his senses. Now he has returned, and he shall be avenged.” Upon that word the dark warrior swung back the glowing sword to strike. At once, the dragon’s eyes shot open and it lunged for Xaeland and his sword. The sword swept like a flame into the jaws of the dragon, slicing into its neck. Xaeland disappeared in blood and scales as the dragon’s head closed over him. Then, as suddenly as it had begun, all fell quiet.
The whirling mist floated about the dragon and the company. No one dared to move, even to collapse in exhaustion.
At last it was none of the warriors who broke the spell, but Heao. The boy climbed up to the dragon’s head, trembling so badly that he nearly fell, then leaned down and pulled Xaeland out of the dragon. Alive! Covered in blood, dragging his sword, but alive.
Piachras struggled out from under the body of the beast. He surveyed the dragon carefully, then smiled wanly and lifted the head of the beast off its body. “Dead,” he reported, dropping the head.
Rigel nodded. “Is Haleth there?” he asked. Piachras looked around and soon located the hair and sleeve of the blacksmith emerging from beneath the beast. Haleth
groaned in answer to Rigel, and Piachras hurried over to free him. Leaning into the body with all his strength, he could barely budge it. Jevan and Rigel came to help, and Stuart hopped over to pull Haleth free. Together they managed it, and breathing hard, they all collapsed around Haleth.
“Where is Sianna?” Stuart managed to ask.
“This way,” said Xaeland, who by this time had wrapped the gashes in his arm. Piachras winced and rose again, following Xaeland over the crest of the ridge. Soon the two re-emerged, Piachras carrying the limp body of his compatriot in arms.
“Sianna!” Stuart cried out, rising but quickly falling again on his twisted ankle.
“She’s alive,” Piachras reassured him. Alive, but that was all he said. She was unconscious and he felt at least two broken bones. He deposited her safely next to the others and then plopped down on a rock to breathe.
“Both of Master Haleth’s legs are broken,” observed Jevan, “the left, in more than one location.” His thoughts went to Jenna, the young Therian girl who also had broken legs—from the monstrous stone bird—whom Haleth had been carrying. He looked in her direction and saw her waiting there anxiously below, alone.
“Looks like it’s my turn to carry you,” Piachras laughed, slapping Haleth gently on the shoulder. Haleth wheezed a groan.
“Careful, there,” Jevan restrained him. “He also has some broken ribs.”
“We cannot go on,” Stuart moaned. “We have failed.” He had voiced what they were all no doubt thinking. “But,” he added, “no one can say we gave it any less than our all. We have crossed hundreds of miles, climbed to the heavens and been thrown back down, traveled the treacherous plains and been overthrown, braved man and nature, hardship and imprisonment, and even a dragon in the end.”
“We are very close,” remarked Xaeland…but he did not explain: indeed, he seemed hardly convinced himself.
The idea of failure did not come easily to Jevan. “We should find some water and set up camp,” he said. “If we don’t clean these wounds we may all be dead in a few weeks anyway. We can decide what we need to do after that.”
The Wizard's Heir Page 37