He reached the end well before Stone. In the dark, all he could feel was dirt all around him, crumbling and soft.
“Here,” Stone panted, tapping his foot with something. Leaf reached back and felt him press a large spoon into his hand. “Dig up, and dig fast.”
Leaf did as he was told. He tried to remind himself that climbing the cliff over the dragon feast was worse than this; being held in dragon’s talons was worse than this. Sitting in a pit with his friends waiting to be eaten was worse than this. Earth rained down into his hair and he felt worms squirming around his hands as he dug the spoon in, again and again.
For a moment he thought they’d drown in the dirt before he broke through, but then he felt the spoon dislodge a chunk that came with a gust of cold air. He dug faster, widening the hole, until there was enough of a space for him to wiggle out into the open.
He was on the side of a hill, just above the tree line. He could see the forest stretching out below him, toward the mountains, lit by the silvery moons.
Stone grunted behind him, and Leaf turned back to make the hole bigger. After a few minutes of digging, he was able to reach down and pull the older man through into the air.
“Thank you,” Leaf said, clasping Stone’s hands.
“Bah,” Stone said, shaking him off. “I was saving my own skin, too. First they come for the strangers, next they come for anyone else Heath feels threatened by. I’ve been digging that tunnel since I got back to Valor a year ago.” He jerked his thumb at the hole behind them. “Figured I might need it eventually, although I hoped I wouldn’t.” He kicked as much loose dirt into the tunnel as he could, blocking it up again, and then started down the hill toward the trees.
“You made that in case you needed to escape the Dragonslayer?” Leaf asked, confused. He jumped from boulder to boulder, keeping up. “Your own brother?”
“He’s been paranoid ever since we stole the treasure,” Stone said. “Always thinking someone would try to steal it from him. Looking for enemies in every corner. He built his power on the story of how great and brave and special he is. It stands to reason he’d eventually have to take out the one person who might tell everyone he’s a fraud.”
“You?” Leaf said. “Why, what would you tell everyone?”
Stone sighed and paused for a long moment. Finally he said, “I could admit that I’m the one who really killed that dragon. I realized it years later. It was my spear in her eye.” He rubbed the back of his neck as Leaf stared at him, disbelieving. “And I’d tell them all about Rose. Some of them already know, but many of them don’t. Heath just wrote her out of the story, over and over again.”
“Rose,” Leaf said, remembering his father’s voice again. “Is she … the one who got left behind?”
“You do know something,” Stone said in surprise. “Yes, our sister. Long dead. Braver and better than either of us.” He fell silent, and Leaf got the distinct feeling that he shouldn’t ask any more questions for a little while.
They traveled quickly through the forest, keeping one eye on the sky and one ear out for any sounds from Valor.
“Where are we going?” Leaf asked finally. There was an odd smell in the air, like woodfires and burned applesauce.
“The old village,” Stone answered. “Rumor has it that’s the place to go if you need help after the Dragonslayer banishes you.”
Leaf remembered Ivy saying something about banishment, too. He thought about that, the idea of the Dragonslayer sending villagers who disobeyed him out into the world, unprotected. It was the opposite of everything Leaf had always thought the Dragonslayer would be. The whole point of slaying dragons was to help people — to save them — to be the one standing in front of the fire and the teeth, making sure nobody else got hurt.
That was how he’d always thought of it, at least.
“Why did you all go fight the dragons?” Leaf asked slowly. “You, Heath, and Rose?”
“Heath’s idea,” Stone said. “For the treasure, of course. The plan was to get in and out without seeing any dragons.”
The Dragonslayer is not a hero after all. Leaf’s whole understanding of the world shuffled around like a deck of trick cards in Cranberry’s hands. He wasn’t protecting anyone. He’s just like the dragonmancers and everyone else — a lying, treasure-grubbing thief.
Who, let’s not forget, arrests random strangers on made-up charges, Wren piped up cheerfully in his head. And scared his own brother into building an escape tunnel. Hey, I think he might be terrible! Have you thought about that? That he might be terrible?
Yes, Wren, Leaf argued. I’m thinking about it NOW.
“Shh!” Stone said suddenly, grabbing Leaf’s arm. Leaf froze, hit with a sudden memory of Rowan doing the same thing during training, as they both tilted their heads to listen for dragons.
She may have lied to me, but she always took care of me, he thought.
“Someone’s coming.” Stone pulled Leaf down to the ground and they lay in the leaf mulch, small insects crawling past their noses. Soft footsteps were hurrying through the trees nearby. Someone in a hurry and trying not to be heard. Could it be more guards, coming after them?
A shape moved through one of the slivers of moonlight, and Leaf recognized the way she moved.
“It’s Ivy,” he whispered to Stone, standing up.
“Wait,” Stone said, trying to pull him back. “She’s Heath’s daughter — we don’t know if —”
But Ivy had already seen them. She skidded to a stop and came running over. Daffodil was right behind her. To Leaf’s surprise, Ivy threw her arms around him. He thought of Rowan again, and the one hug she’d ever given him.
Wait, there was another, he remembered. The night we found out about Wren. She found me outside when I couldn’t sleep, looking up at the stars, and she gave me a hug then.
Nobody else had, even that awful day; hugs were rare in his family. He put his arms around Ivy and breathed the peach-scented smell of her hair brushing over his arms. He felt safe, for once, and peaceful, like he could exist in this moment for a long time.
“What are you doing out here?” Ivy asked.
“Heath sent men to arrest him,” Stone said.
“You?” Ivy pulled back, looking into his eyes. “Why? I thought they were only arresting Wingwatchers.”
“Wingwatchers?” Stone said sharply. “What’s that about?”
“Some kind of conspiracy,” Daffodil offered. “I guess the one Violet’s been trying to find out about, because they took her, too.”
“I thought it was about the treasure,” Ivy said. “I thought maybe Dad realized the sapphire was missing. But he can’t possibly think you have it,” she said to Leaf. She was still holding his hands.
“Sapphire?” Leaf echoed.
“If he’s worried about a conspiracy, anyone could be under suspicion,” Stone said. “Even you, Ivy. And me.”
She glanced back toward Valor. “I’ll find out more when I go back,” she said. “First we have to hide the sapphire and you guys.”
“You can’t go back,” Leaf protested as they started to hurry through the woods again. “Stone just said you could be arrested, too.”
“Agreed, agreed, very much agreed,” Daffodil said. “You absolutely definitely cannot go back to Valor.”
“But how can we rescue Foxglove and Violet and the others without more information?” Ivy asked.
“Some way that doesn’t end up with us having to also rescue you,” Daffodil suggested.
They stepped suddenly onto a path that was clearly a path, between shapes that were not trees. Leaf had been thinking about the danger back in Valor; he was startled to discover that they were out of the woods, surrounded by the husks of burned-out buildings.
“Whoa,” he said, looking around. “What happened here? I mean, dragons, obviously. Sorry, stupid question.”
“No, it’s not,” Ivy said. She told him the whole story of what the dragons did after Heath and Stone rode back with the t
reasure. They walked through the ruins, and he imagined something like this happening to Talisman — the entire village in flames.
Would the dragons have done this to Talisman if he’d succeeded in killing one of them?
He felt cold all over. Why hadn’t anyone told him this part of the story? He’d always thought the dragon was the threat, and the slayer had gone after it to protect his village.
It changed the story quite a bit if you mentioned that the slayer went after the dragon first, and then the dragon’s relatives came for his village.
“I had no idea,” he said, stopping near the bell at the center of town. Daffodil and Stone had gone to find someone called Pine, who Daffodil said would help them hide.
“I could tell,” Ivy said. “When I heard the way you talked about my dad — I had a feeling you’d only gotten part of the story. Especially once you told me about your sister.”
“She’d be so mad,” he said. He looked down with a smile. “Wren hated incomplete stories. Sometimes I’d start telling her a story, and then stop before the end, just to drive her crazy. She didn’t like liars or smug people or grown-ups who acted like they knew everything either.”
Ivy laughed. “She sounds awesome. And a little intimidating.” She sat down on the tumbled pile of rocks around the burned-out bell and he sat next to her. It was almost morning; the sun was rising over the mountains.
“She was.” Leaf shoved his hands in his pockets. “I wonder what she’d want me to do next.” There was no answer from the Wren inside his head. He felt like his Destiny Plan B had been shredded into tiny pieces and scattered to the wind. The Dragonslayer was just a liar, a con man, and a thief. Nothing Leaf had believed in had turned out to be true.
“Maybe you could help us,” Ivy said. “We have a kind of sort of plan that we think will make the world a better place.”
“Really?”
“We were thinking there might be a way to get the dragons to stop attacking villages,” she said. “I mean. Maybe it’s impossible. But Violet and Daffodil and I thought, what if we gave the treasure back? Maybe the dragons need it for some reason. Maybe they’ll forgive us.”
Forgiveness, Leaf thought. From giant flying sharks. Really?
An image flashed in his mind of the brown dragon who had helped him.
“I know,” Ivy said. “It’s silly. They’ll eat us before we can even shout ‘HELLO PLEASE DON’T EAT US!’”
“Maybe not,” he said. “If we find the right dragon.” He told her about what had happened to him inside the mountain palace. By the time he was done, there was sunlight all around them.
“Wow,” Ivy breathed. She hadn’t said a word the whole time he talked. She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I can’t believe you’ve been there. Inside the dragon palace. I wonder if we could find that brown dragon again. He must live in the swamps, right? Maybe he could help us. Or at least, we could try to communicate with him. Can you imagine, communicating with dragons?”
“I don’t know if I’m quite ready for that yet,” Leaf said wryly. He hesitated. “Um. Do you know that your dad isn’t really a dragonslayer?”
Ivy tipped her head at him. “What do you mean?”
“He’s not the one who killed the dragon,” Leaf said. “It was Stone. He just told me.”
“My uncle?” Ivy blinked several times. “Stone killed the sand dragon queen?”
“Not on purpose,” Leaf said. “They were there for treasure, not to fight any dragons.”
“But then why does he let my dad tell everyone he’s the Dragonslayer?” Ivy demanded.
“I think he doesn’t want the attention … and Heath definitely does want it,” Leaf pointed out. “But you might want to ask him yourself.”
“I will,” Ivy said. “Moons above, that fits so much better with everything I know about my dad. I always wondered how he managed to do one brave, dangerous thing and then spend the rest of his life being the exact opposite of that person. If he didn’t even do that … it kind of all makes sense.” She rested her chin on her hands and her elbows on her knees. “So even the founding story of Valor is a lie. I guess that makes sense, too.”
Leaf saw Daffodil waving from one of the ruined buildings. “Daffodil’s summoning us.”
“Let’s go tell her your story,” Ivy said. “I have approximately a million questions. For you and also for Uncle Stone.”
As they climbed down the rocks, Leaf saw movement in the trees. He pulled Ivy behind a wall and they both crouched, peeking through the gaps.
A dragon stepped out of the forest.
Leaf felt Ivy shiver beside him, but when he reached to put his cloak around her, he realized that she wasn’t scared; she was suddenly radiating excitement.
“Oh, wow. I’ve never seen a dragon that color before,” she whispered to him. “This could be a whole new kind that isn’t even in the guide!” Her fingers twitched. “I wish I had something to draw with.”
He looked back at the dragon. It was small — smaller than the brown one who’d rescued him, but much bigger than the baby in the kitchen. It had golden-yellow scales and greenish eyes, and it was looking around with an open, curious expression.
“I think I saw one that color,” he said. “In a cage over the dragon feast in the palace.”
“Oh,” Ivy said. “In a cage? So they must be enemies with the mountain dragons.”
The golden dragon took a few steps into the village, then lifted into the air and flew in a circle overhead, as though it was studying the ruins from the sky. Leaf pulled his cloak over both himself and Ivy and they flattened themselves against the wall, trying to look like an uninteresting pile of dirt.
After a while they heard the dragon land again, near the old bell. Ivy pushed down the cloak and leaned over to study the dragon some more. It was wandering around the village square, poking through the ashes and making little hmmm noises.
“It’s really cute,” she whispered to Leaf. “I’ve seen lots of amazing dragons, but none I’d call cute before this one.”
“Um, no. Chipmunks are cute,” he answered. “You are amazing, and a little bananas. Dragons are neither cute nor amazing; dragons are terrifying.”
She smiled, but she kept her eyes on the dragon until it finally flew away.
“A whole new species of dragon and a story about the inside of the mountain palace,” she said when it was gone. “Leaf, isn’t everything incredible?”
“Except the part about your dad arresting your friends,” he reminded her, and then felt terrible as her face fell. “Sorry.”
“Right,” she said. “But … that’s probably a misunderstanding. I can fix it. I’ll talk to him and fix it once he calms down, I’m sure.”
As they headed toward Daffodil in the bright morning sunlight, Leaf wondered if she was right. Was there any chance the Dragonslayer could be talked out of his paranoia? Could Ivy convince him to let everyone go?
Leaf was afraid the answer was no … and that they’d never see Violet or Foxglove or the inside of Valor ever again.
There were a few possible ways to kill a dragon. The classic approach, with all the stabbing and shouting and blood and gore, seemed a little too obvious and a lot too messy and complicated to Wren.
“I’d have to find a longer, better sword, I think,” she said. “Then wait till he’s sleeping and stab him in the eye. But he’d have time to wake up roaring, maybe kill both of us, and definitely alert the whole palace. There’s no way I’ll get to steal the key and sneak away with you if there are eighty dragons in here sliding around in his blood and shrieking about a human attack.”
“Especially after the last one,” Sky added helpfully. “A human killed the last SandWing queen, so they’re EXTRA super paranoid about you here.”
“Really?” Wren said. “How did she do that?”
“I’m not sure,” Sky admitted. “The stabby way, I think.”
“Huh.” Wren thought about that for a moment. That didn’t mesh with
her experience wandering around the palace. The two dragons who had caught a glimpse of her hadn’t reacted like she might be dangerous. They’d carried on as though it wasn’t weird at all to run into a human in their cupboards.
She also wondered why a human would go to the trouble of killing a dragon queen. Maybe the dragon had threatened her village. Wren didn’t think she would kill a dragon to save Talisman or any of the mean, horrible people who lived there. But there was a small part of her that hoped killing General Sandstorm would mean stopping the attack he was planning on the Indestructible City.
Not for Undauntable. Undauntable was stupid. But there were lots of other people in the Indestructible City or trying to get into it, and possibly one or two of them were not awful. The kids she’d stuffed into the hidey-hole with Undauntable during the last attack had seemed worth saving, she figured.
“If I want to do it quietly,” she said, “what are my options?”
“Drop the ceiling on his head?” Sky suggested.
Wren gave him a look. “How is that the QUIET option, Sky?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “One brick at a time?”
Wren laughed. “I wish you really had a snail army,” she said. “This would be an excellent time for an army of belligerent snails to help us out.”
She looked out the window to the desert beyond the wall, where Sandstorm was leading a squadron of soldiers in some aerial maneuvers.
“Maybe you could get some other dragons to help you!” Sky said. “Like the black dragon who flew you here. You could go say hello to some dragons around the palace and see if anyone would like to help you murder Sandstorm. Ooh, maybe the prince. He seemed less hostile than everyone else.”
“As fun as that plan sounds,” Wren said, “and although I’m quite sure there are many dragons who’d love to see Sandstorm dead, I think I’m unlikely to find another dragon as helpful as Murderbasket.”
Dragonslayer Page 27