“We can’t outrun him. We’d better look for a place to hide.”
They found an area with a few skewed blocks of stone surrounded by thick trees. They crouched under a smooth overhang of rock. Bryl held his two Stones with sweaty hands, whispering to the gems as if praying.
“Are the Stones going to help?” Delrael asked.
“Not likely.” He sighed.
“The Water Stone belonged to my father,” Tareah said. “He used it to try and save me.” Tareah closed her eyes and mumbled a lesson her father had told her many times. “But the old Sorcerers created dragons to resist magic, so that they could attack and leave the enemy helpless.”
Bryl stared at her, thinking. His eyes were red and watery. “It makes the most sense for me to keep the Stones—if I hold both, then I get a spell bonus. After I’ve used up my five spells, then I’ll give you both Stones and you get the same bonus—that way we’ll have ten spells between us instead of eight. It’s a loophole in the Rules.”
“My father let me use the Water Stone.” Tareah did not take her eyes from the blue facets of the six-sided sapphire . “Once. “
Her answer did not much comfort Delrael.
After only a few minutes of hushed waiting, they heard the coming of the dragon. Tryos rained fire down on indiscriminate patches of the forest as he bellowed roars of rage and challenge.
Bryl rolled the Air Stone on the ground and closed his eyes. “There, we’re invisible now,” he whispered. “Tryos will be able to see through the illusion if he makes the effort and if he knows where to look. But he might pass us by and never know it.”
The wings sounded like the heartbeat of an immense giant, pounding the air. Tryos skimmed over the ground, sharpening his anger against the human characters who had tricked him and stolen his treasure.
Delrael held Tareah, staring up at the night sky in utter silence, too frightened to breathe. Tryos casually belched out a river of fire near them, then flew on into the darkness.
“He passed us by!” Delrael said.
“Maybe . . .” Bryl whispered.
A moment later, when the dragon realized he had lost their scent, he bellowed and wheeled around, backtracking. They heard him returning seconds before he soared back into view.
“Now we’re doomed for sure,” Bryl said. He stared at the blue Stone and the white Stone in his hands.
Tryos backflapped his wings, thundering the air. He hissed at the three crouched under the shelter of the overhang. “Now I sssee you! You tricked me! Ssstole my treasure!”
Bryl winced and tossed the Water Stone at his feet. He rolled a “2”.
The dragon let loose a missile of fire.
The half-Sorcerer used the spell to hurl up a wall of water as a shield, feeding it with his own powers. Steam boiled from the surface of the water wall. The dragon flame struck, spattered outward, and continued to bombard the shield.
Bryl’s protection held until Tryos stopped his assault to draw another breath. The half-Sorcerer sank to his knees. “If I miss a single roll, we’re dead.”
Another gout of dragon fire struck at them, and Bryl barely had time to roll again and get the water wall up before the flames could incinerate them. A puff of super heated air squeezed in, and Delrael felt his eyebrows singe. The water wall strengthened, but Bryl looked drained when the dragon finally backed off again.
“I’ve only got two more spells left—then it’s all up to Tareah.” He panted with exhaustion. “I don’t know if Tryos has any limitations with his fire.”
“Then it’s time for us to take the offensive,” Tareah said. She looked at Delrael and raised her eyebrows. Her color was returning, and vigor had appeared behind her eyes, a quick-thinking intelligence forced upon her now that she had to fight. She had studied so many battles, so many legends. Now she could put it into practice. She plucked the Water Stone from Bryl’s hand and stepped out from the overhang of rock.
The dragon reared back, recognizing his treasure. Delrael wanted to yank her back into the shelter, afraid the dragon might blast her for coming between him and his intended victims. But Tareah did not wait long enough for the dragon to overcome his own surprise. She held the sapphire Water Stone in front of her like an elemental talisman, then she rolled a “6”.
She looked like a powerful Sorcerer queen of ancient days, swelled with magic. Balls of blue static danced in her hair as she summoned the Sorcery her forefathers had left inside the gem.
Tareah called forth a storm, blasting Tryos with gale winds, buffeting his wings and bending them back so that they almost snapped like firewood. The dragon roared, and the force whipped at his sinewy neck, twisting shut his windpipe. He tried to blast fire, but the flames came back in his face. Outraged words were torn from his mouth.
Tareah summoned lightning bolts to skitter over the dragon’s scaled hide, leaving blackened intaglios on his armor. Tryos strained his wings and made a small headway against the hurricane winds. Sardun’s daughter exhausted her reserves of strength. She had been sustaining herself with magic for too long. The storm started to weaken.
Delrael stepped out of the rock shelter and shot three arrows at the dragon, but they proved useless against the reptilian armor.
“Bryl, what about the Air Stone?” he said.
The half-Sorcerer shouted over the howling winds. “What can I do? Tryos will see through any illusion I can make to hide us. Wait!”
Just as Tareah dropped her storm and collapsed, Delrael caught her. He pulled her back to the rock outcropping. Bryl snatched up the sapphire Stone from the ground.
Tryos hovered in the air, stunned at the ferocity of her attack, but then he surged forward with renewed anger.
Suddenly, an illusion Rognoth appeared in the air—fat, with stubby wings, flying clumsily but looking terrified of his vengeful brother. Rognoth spurted past Tryos’s face, and the large dragon’s eyes nearly bugged out of their sockets. “Rognos! You, too!”
Rognoth flapped his little wings and buzzed away. The larger dragon plunged after him, forgetting his other victims.
“Come on, we’ve got to get out of here!” Bryl said.
Tareah seemed groggy and drained from summoning the storm, but she soon regained her strength. Delrael looked at the rock overhang sheltering them. It was bubbly and molten from the dragon fire.
They ran as fast as they could into the forest.
Above them, the sky looked bruised and clotted, choked with the smoke and steam and fragments of Tareah’s storm. Bryl left the weather to repair itself and focused on the ground around them. Taking back the Water Stone, Bryl drew a deep breath and rolled again. “This is my last spell for another full day.”
“Luck, Bryl,” Delrael said.
Thick fog swirled up from the forest floor, seeping out of the earth and blanketing them from view. The vapors rose upward, dank and foul. “Now he can’t see us, or follow our scent.”
Tareah no longer needed to lean on Delrael’s side, but she remained close to him anyway. Her face was ruddy from excitement, fear, and exertion.
“The illusion of Rognoth won’t fool him for long. He’ll see through it once he starts to think.”
Above them they could hear the dragon as he returned for the kill. “Not real Rognos!” Tryos said. “Another trick! Tricksss! Kill you for tricksss!”
Delrael could not see the dragon overhead through the fog. Tryos would be looking down on a cottony bank of mist, a real mist created by the Water Stone, not an illusion.
But the dragon would find them again before long. Tryos jetted flame on the mist, leaving a burning and blasted landscape behind him. He methodically swept over sections of the fog, spewing fire on the mist, searching for them.
Exhausted, scraped, and bruised, Vailret and Paenar pulled themselves to the towering lip of the volcanic cone. Paenar slipped the knotted rope from his shoulders, and they balanced the battered Dragon Siren on the rough ground.
The top of the volcano commanded an incredible view of the
entire island. Starlight reflected off the hexes of seawater that hid the wreckage of the Nautilus. Volcanic debris lay all around them where lava had oozed out centuries ago, hardening and crumbling into hexagons of desolate terrain. Tendrils of smoke curled up from the simmering lake of fire; splashes of orange light danced around the interior of the cone, illuminating the opposite rim.
Paenar stood up, scanning the distance. A brisk wind blew the smoke away from his face. “I see a disturbance over there.” He pointed toward the central forests of the island, and then sighed in annoyance. “My sight is gone again. Please look and see. Maybe it was only a mirage through the oils.” His voice was flat and clipped, but quivering with anticipation.
Vailret withdrew the small optick-tube he had taken from the Nautilus’s equipment bunker and turned the magnifying lens to sight on the distant flashes of fire. The telescope still baffled him, but he quelled his dizzy sensations and lined up his field of view. Tryos sprang in front of his eyes, blasting flames.
He cried out in surprise. “Tryos is attacking someone—I think it’s Del and Bryl! I can’t make out the details.”
Vailret turned the dish of the Siren toward the distant dragon. Moving desperately, he reached for the toggle switch that would allow him to call on Tryos in a thunderous voice.
Paenar placed his thin hand on Vailret’s arm, stopping him. The blind mans’ sinews stood out on his wrist, and his bony knuckles were white. “We need to settle this first. You know I must be the one. It makes the most sense. I want to do it.”
“You’ll be killed.”
“So would you, if you took my place. That’s no excuse.” The businesslike, rigid voice melted to a more personal tone. Paenar clasped his hands together, as if to stop himself from begging.
“You must allow me to atone for what I have not done, for allowing the bad things to grow unhindered. It’s the only way my conscience can survive, even if I do not.”
Vailret did not know how to counter the other man’s defense. Normally, he would have argued, stalled for time, but Tryos was attacking his friends. “I won’t let you sacrifice yourself just to show off. Think of how much more you could do in the fight against the Outsiders.”
“Think of how much more I could do? Oh? Even my mechanical eyes have failed. Going blind may be cruel, but less cruel than having sight dangled in front of me, tantalizing, and then snatched away. Twice! The only way I could regain my vision now would be to remain in Sitnalta for the rest of my life. That would help no one. I’d rather die here, fighting. You taught me how to do it. It is my right.” He crossed his arms over his chest.
“Can you think of any other way? No—I have been trying ever since we left the Nautilus. There is no other way.” He stamped his foot with finality.
“Now summon the dragon, before he destroys your friends as well.”
Feeling sick and defeated, Vailret bent to the switch and flicked it. He switched it on and off three times before the probabilities finally made it work. Vailret spoke, sending his voice out in thundering waves across the island.
Tareah could run no farther. Bryl’s eyes brimmed with tears of fear, despair, and shreds of leftover defiance. Delrael stood beside Sardun’s daughter, trying to look brave and strong. He ran a fingertip along his silver belt. “Maybe someone will remember our adventures.”
They huddled together like captured rats, listening to the dragon’s torch sweep nearer, then drift away, then come back closer still. Bryl handed her both the Water Stone and the Air Stone. “You’ve got four spells left. That’s all we have now.”
Tareah looked as if she had no more strength to give. But she pressed her lips together and took the gems.
For lack of anything else that offered hope, Delrael withdrew his bow. He wondered if he might be able to injure the soft inside of Tryos’s mouth . . . but then he realized that if it could withstand furnace fire pouring out, the mouth would certainly be tough enough to deflect an arrow.
He thought of Vailret and blind Paenar back in Sitnalta, sorry that he could not have a chance to say good-bye.
It would be only a matter of time before Tryos stumbled upon them in his methodical search. Bryl could not maintain the fog much longer. Tryos would be able to see them soon.
See them! Delrael clenched his knuckles on his bow. The memory of Paenar had sparked an idea in his head. Maybe the dragon’s eyes would be vulnerable to arrows. He hesitated. The idea made him uneasy.
But they had no other chance.
Just as Delrael nocked an arrow against the bowstring, Tryos burned away the sheltering fog. Bryl’s spell dissipated, leaving them exposed.
Tryos backflapped his wings and leered down at them. His fangs glistened in the reflected light of scattered fires in the brush. He curled his serpentine neck and drew a deep breath, stoking his internal fires.
Delrael let loose an arrow. He closed his eyes, but the lightheaded feeling told him he had found his mark. Tryos reared back, seeing the shaft approach. His yellow green eyes widened in surprise—and the arrow sank all the way to the feather into his wet pupil. Steaming black blood poured out. The wooden shaft burst into flames.
Shrieking in agony, Tryos vomited fire down at the ground. But Delrael’s success had galvanized Tareah into finding her own strength. She rolled the sapphire die, and the shielding wall of water leaped up around them. Steam boiled away, and the air became thick under the cramped dome.
The dragon’s attack seemed to last forever. Tryos choked on his pain. Tareah let the water wall splash back to the smoking earth. Delrael took his bow again, firing once, then a second time as the dragon filled his lungs.
Tryos gave a moaning cry even before the arrows struck. The first arrow glanced off his horny lower eye lid, falling to the burning ground. But the second struck home in the other eye.
The dragon wailed in pain and dismay, blasting fire aimlessly, flying in circles as if uncertain whether to flee or to continue his attack.
Tareah looked distraught and could not watch the dragon’s flight. “We tricked Tryos. He had a perfect right to be angry with us.”
“We have to get out of here before he can find us again.” Delrael forced himself not to think about what Tareah had said.
But the dragon took less time to recover than they needed. Before they could cover much distance, Tryos swooped down, craning his neck and trying to locate them by their sound, by their scent. His flames were tinted blue, hot enough to melt rock on first contact.
“How much fire can he have, Bryl?” Delrael said, panting. “Don’t the Rules put limits on that?”
“I don’t know—ask Vailret! But you can bet he’s got more than we can withstand.” The half-Sorcerer clamped his mouth shut to absorb a cry of exhausted despair. Tareah whimpered as she tossed the Water Stone to the ground again.
A “1”. Her spell failed.
“Roll it again!” Delrael said.
She grabbed the sapphire and rolled it for the fourth time. The dome of water bloomed around them at the same moment Tryos struck. Bryl cried out. Tareah shuddered, concentrating on the Water Stone, flushed and sweating.
Under the constant barrage of fire, the ground turned a baking red, beginning to bubble. Inside the shelter the air was hot and depleted, filled with steam and empty of oxygen. Delrael had to suck in great mouthfuls of air just to keep his lungs from collapsing. His face felt raw. He clenched his bow in despair.
The ground under their feet grew unbearably hot. Tareah looked as if she would collapse in another moment.
The dragon’s blue fire kept pounding down.
“Tryos! Dragon! Come back to your mountain at once! I command it!”
The words came rippling across the night. Tryos turned away from the shrinking bubble that protected his enemies against even his most venomous fire. The dragon saw only darkness, felt only spears of pain that stabbed through his ruined eyes.
“Tryos, return to your home! Or I shall destroy your treasure!”
With a squeal of rage Tryos flapped about in anger and confusion, not knowing whose voice cut across the night. He could not leave now. His enemies, the characters who played horrible tricks on him, were trapped. His fire had dwindled, but they would be destroyed in moments. He could picture their blackening skin, their faces; his dragon fire would burn their lungs from the inside out as they drew a final breath to scream. They deserved it. They had tricked him.
But his treasure! The voice would destroy his treasure—unless he destroyed the voice first.
With another cry of outrage, Tryos whirled in the air and shot back toward the volcano, to Vailret.
Vailret licked his lips and swallowed, preparing to talk faster than he ever had before. Delrael was the fast talker. Delrael had the charisma score to convince characters to believe him. Not Vailret. But he would have to learn.
Vailret watched through the optick-tube as Tryos flapped across the island, pistoning his wings. The dragon sniffed and swept back and forth, somehow finding his way. Vailret tucked the tube in his pocket and stood next to Paenar, trying to look brave. His heart pounded, sending blood roaring through his head. He didn’t know what he would do if Tryos recognized the Siren from Sitnalta.
The dragon circled around the rim of the volcano, vanishing in the patchy smoke rising from the lava below. Tryos seemed to be searching, sniffing the air, though both men stood unhidden. Then the wind currents changed and Tryos snorted, homing in on their scent.
Seething, the dragon flapped his wings twice and landed on the crater edge. He extended his neck, snuffling. Two charred arrow shafts protruded from his cavernous sockets. Vailret drew back. Black blood smoked as it hardened over the wounds.
“Who are you?” Tryos demanded. “How will you get my treasure?” He breathed with a sound louder than purring Sitnaltan machinery, drowning all other night sounds. “You sssmell like humansss! Bad humansss! Play tricksss on Tryos!”
“Yes, we are humans. Both of us.” Vailret shuffled his feet. “But you will be interested in what we have to say.”
“No! No more tricksss! Humansss trick Tryos! All men bad!”
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