Rus beamed. “I’d be happy to, my apprentice. I assume you’ll want a pinch of clovermint to sniff as well?”
“A generous pinch, Master, if you please.”
“Done.” Rus clapped her lightly on the back. “I approve of this newfound boldness of yours, Tania Cayce. Great poisoners must be bold.”
Cayce nodded but said nothing, staring expectantly at her master.
Rus blinked, then bowed with an exaggerated flourish. “Great poisoners must also be alive, I’m told.” The stout man straightened up, dipped a hand into the pocket of his waist-coat, and dropped a clump of green clover into Cayce’s hand.
Rus tipped his hat. “I’ll get started on that fire.”
Twenty minutes later, Cayce stepped into the dark recesses of the dragon’s cave. She held a cluster of clovermint tight against her nose and lips. A clear gem in the center of her headdress glowed softly, casting enough light for her to see while leaving her hands free for the task at hand.
There was a faint stale breeze flowing out of the tunnel, so the waft from Rus’s fire was not penetrating far past the entrance. Cayce waved her empty pack in front of her as she walked to help make sure that anything inside the cave would meet Rus’s sleeping agent before it met her.
Not that she needed to go very far to collect the first part of her payload. Rus was correct, there were plenty of old scales here. The floor was littered with them and the outward flow of air had heaped them into piles along the lower lip of the cave entrance. Cayce forced herself to ignore the steady pounding of her pulse and crouched down on one knee. She placed the open pack on the cave floor with one hand while the other kept the clovermint filter over her face. Her eyes grew more and more accustomed to the dank interior as she carefully swept old dragon scales into her pack.
Many of the dried, brittle scales cracked and shattered as she touched them, crumbling to a fine powder that glinted in the low light. They seemed as if they could have been from the vivid blue-white dragon she had seen earlier, but only if they had been sloughed decades ago. There was a palpable sense of age about them, the kind of heady sensation she sometimes got from examining one of Master Rus’s most ancient scrolls.
She wondered exactly how old this monster was. It had begun marauding in Hask’s and Kula’s territories roughly one year ago, but it was clearly a full-grown adult. Why had it suddenly decided to expand its hunting ground? It had been happy to sit in its mountain and torment Vaan’s people for decades, according to the pixie’s story. It struck Cayce once more how dangerous it was that their client-guide would not or could not tell them everything he knew.
Something stirred deep within the mountain. Cayce felt it in the walls of the cave, in the gust of fetid air that blew past her, and in the cold terror-sweat that broke out along her spine. She quickly shoveled one more armload of scales into the pack, hoisted it onto her shoulder, went back to the entrance, and crawled out.
The sun had fully risen, and the rocky bowl was blindingly bright to Cayce. Squinting, she held the pack out straight in one hand and took several clumsy steps forward.
Someone grabbed her by the arm and hauled her down. Cayce struggled for a moment under the heavy weight of an unfamiliar body until Rus’s voice hissed, “Lie still, girl. I’ve come to relieve you of your burden.”
Cayce’s eyes adjusted to the light and she let go of the pack. As her vision cleared she saw Rus on his knees, rummaging through the mass of dried-up scales.
“Not the halest or healthiest specimens I’ve seen,” Rus said. “But perfectly adequate for my needs.” He looked up as if noticing Cayce for the first time. “Ready to go back in?”
“Something’s in there,” Cayce said. “I heard it moving, coming toward the entrance just before I came out.”
Rus tilted his hat back. “Well, it’s a good thing I gave you the ring and the skull, isn’t it? Back to work, my dear. You can’t quit with the job half-done.”
“Except when you’re working for pixies,” Cayce muttered.
“A-ha. Very funny and very true. Now…” Rus emptied the pack into a collapsible lock box he had retrieved from the gear Cayce had lugged up the mountain. “Go collect some of those oh-so-valuable teeth and claws.”
Rus withdrew from the mouth of the cave as Cayce prepared to go back in. She bit down on the clump of clovermint, freeing both hands, and cinched the pack around her waist. She reasoned she would be beyond the sleeping draft’s effect within ten or twenty paces of the entrance, but she still wanted to keep the antidote handy. She also wanted both hands empty to find and collect her treasure as quickly as possible.
Cayce slid back into the darkened cave and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light from her headdress. She breathed in clovermint through clenched teeth and felt her way past the drowsy scent of camphor until she could see rough outlines of rock formations and stalagmites. Then Cayce crouched and went on, trying to remain as silent and unnoticed as one of the discarded scales.
Fifty paces in she saw the last glimmer of sunlight disappear around a gentle bend to the right. Cayce reached out once more to the damp wall and used it to guide her forward. The darkness was somehow thicker here, heavier and more impenetrable. The light from the gem in her headdress seemed diminished, less bright and squeezed closer in around her.
One hundred paces in took her into a pocket of hot, still air. She no longer needed the clovermint to keep her awake, but it freshened the air she was breathing. Cayce almost swooned in the heat but kept her balance by leaning harder into the damp cave walls.
At one hundred fifty paces, Cayce felt a gust of cool, ozone-scented air. The entire tunnel rumbled around her, and her hand came off the wall as she lurched forward. Her empty pack became tangled on a cone of rock, and as she pulled it free she fell flat on her face with her arms stretched out over her head. The gem-light in her headdress cracked and flickered out, leaving Cayce in almost total darkness.
A low, dry chuckle rolled down the tunnel. It started somewhere ahead of Cayce and echoed past her, bouncing off the walls all the way back to the cave entrance. Cayce listened to that sound escape and envied it.
“Another unexpected guest gains entry to my home.” The voice was smooth, cultured, and confident. It seemed a pleasant, conversational tone, though it was so loud in Cayce’s ears she was sure she felt blood dribbling from them.
Cayce got her arms beneath her and lifted herself up onto her elbows. She was almost entirely unhurt, but she could not get to her feet. Her legs felt paralyzed, cold and beyond her ability to control.
The voice continued. “Am I so wretched a host? So unfriendly that no one thinks to solicit an invitation before dropping by, for fear of rejection? Are my manners so coarse, so vulgar that visitors feel they have to impose upon my hospitality in secret, rather than risk a formal introduction?”
Where Master Rus used elevated language and affected manners to mislead and disarm his clients, this voice came with an undeniably authentic pedigree. The speaker sounded as if he’d been living among scholars and poets all his life. As if a bit of easy, self-deprecating banter such as this was as natural for him as exhaling.
“Perhaps you did send word of your impending arrival,” the voice said, suddenly bright. “Perhaps you weren’t being presumptuous. Perhaps you are instead a victim of some courier’s indolence. Is that it, my new young friend? Did you send word that you’d be coming, only to precede the herald who would have announced you?”
Cayce willed her legs back to life. They twitched and smarted, but eventually they obeyed. She brought her knees up under her chest and rocked back onto the soles of her feet, still crouched with her palms on the ground. She kept her face turned toward the sound—toward the interior of the mountain—as she prepared to turn and bolt back up the tunnel.
“What is your name, child?” The voice lost its conversational timbre, smoothly becoming the voice of a lord who is not accustomed to waiting for a reply.
“Don’t answer.�
�� An unfamiliar voice came from directly behind her, but Cayce knew there was no one there. She stretched out her hand and waved it through the empty air, wondering if the dragon was toying with her. Kula said he could influence his victims’ minds. Maybe he was trying to confuse her, to spook her into running.
“Little girl.” The cultured voice sounded much closer now. “I asked you a question.”
Two flashes of blue light temporarily lit up the entire tunnel. Cayce’s eyes did not adjust quickly enough for her to, see anything in detail, and then she was blind in the dark once more, alone with disembodied voices and the smell of electric sparks.
“I am Tania Cayce,” she called loudly. Maybe if she were as polite as her host he would refrain from devouring her.
“No, no!” The second voice’s anguish helped Cayce recognize it. Vaan the glum pixie had shaken off Master Rus’s sleeping potion and followed her into the mountain. He seemed on the verge of panic now that his plan wasn’t being followed.
“Vaan,” the elegant voice said. “Is that you among my guests? Have you been plotting against me again?”
This will not go well for the pixie, Cayce thought. But she didn’t need him and had already worked out a plan to save herself.
“I am apprenticed to Potionmaster Donner Rus,” Cayce called. It wasn’t much to work with, but maybe if the dragon focused his rage on Vaan he would be more lenient with her. “He sent me here to request a simple boon. It is a small thing, something you would never miss. May I speak with you?”
“No.” The cultured voice lost its lilt and became as sharp as broken glass. “I think you have already told me enough.”
Blue light flashed again, and Cayce felt something hard and warm slam into her left shoulder. Childlike arms wrapped tightly around her waist and bore her off her feet. She dimly realized Vaan had tackled her.
The pixie’s momentum slammed her against the opposite wall. Cayce twisted as she hit to shunt some of the impact onto Vaan’s head, and they both grunted before dropping heavily onto the cave floor.
The mountain shook again, and Cayce heard a gurgling cough. The apprentice’s ears popped as a wave of pressure surged up the tunnel. Fast behind the pressure wave came a crackling ball of blue-white energy that charred and scarred the stone walls as it came.
Vaan threw his entire weight onto Cayce’s shoulders, forcing her head down behind a stalagmite. She struggled but stopped when she felt the burning heat from the energy ball wash over her. As the parts of her not covered by Vaan’s body tingled and burned, she quickly lost interest in casting him off.
She stayed motionless for a few seconds after the ball passed by, then started to gather her strength to wriggle free of the pixie. Vaan tightened his grip, however, and his small arms were like iron bars wrapped around her shoulders.
“Go limp,” Vaan said in her ear. “If you don’t I can’t save you.”
Cayce stopped struggling except to raise her clenched fist to display Rus’s red gem. “This ring,” she said.
“Won’t work,” Vaan said. “Whatever it’s supposed to do, it won’t work.” Cayce heard a strange buzzing sound as the pixies wings lifted them both off the floor.
For a delirious second she was nauseated and exhilarated by the sensation of weightlessness. Then Vaan pivoted in midair and shot up the tunnel. His grip was firm and confident, but he was only a small thing, and Cayce’s long legs flapped crazily behind them. With nothing to hang onto and no control over their momentum, all she could do was clench her teeth and try to stay calm.
It was no mean feat. All around them the tunnel shook and rained pieces of rock in their path. The dragon’s laughter had become a feral roar that somehow seemed to be right behind them but also gaining on them all the time. On several of the sharpest turns, Cayce saw glimpses of the dragon’s face, his teeth snapping and his long horns striking sparks from the rock. Though they were going out ten times faster than Cayce had gone in, to her the aerial trip took one hundred times as long.
Impulsively, Cayce drew Rus’s crystal skull and dropped it in their wake. If the fall wasn’t enough to crack it and release the caustic cloud, the dragon’s heavy body would certainly do the trick. As the beast slithered up the tunnel in pursuit, flashing jags of energy licked across the scales on his neck like bright, savage tongues.
Cayce stared hard as Vaan bore her on. She focused below the flashing teeth and sparking horns as they passed over the spot where she had dropped the skull. The head and neck came unerringly forward, and the sparking body followed behind, heedless and unaffected by Russ purple crystal.
Unaffected? Cayce peered back intently, shoving the distractions of their headlong flight to the back of her mind. The arcane glow around the dragon seemed to flicker, flaring from searing whiteness to a cool, muted blue. With each change in the light’s intensity, the monsters face rippled and rolled as if under water.
The forward edge of the dragon’s glow overtook them as they came around the final bend. Vaan navigated the long, gentle arc and sped up through the last straightaway that led to the way out. The pixie dipped and rolled wildly, and Cayce realized he was trying to anticipate or avoid the dragon’s next blast. She hoped he could do it without dropping her—or sacrificing too much momentum.
Vaan shot up to the ceiling and rolled onto his back. Cayce glanced down between her own feet, hoping to at least see her doom coming to catch her.
“Don’t look at him,” Vaan yelled.
Cayce looked anyway, sneering. There, across her relatively unobstructed line of sight, she got her first head-on look at the dragon, lit from behind by the ball of blue-white lightning forming in his chest.
“I said don’t look at him!”
“Stuff you,” Cayce muttered. The sight of the great beast in his entirety was awe-inspiring, even terrifying, but with most of his body concealed by the tunnel and the darkness, it was a far more manageable sight.
Cayce stared through tearing, squinting eyes. Was it fear or a trick of the light that made the great beast seem to flicker between two faces? One was the face she had seen delight in demolishing the farmers on the bridge: a majestic, alabaster-horned head ringed with exquisite ceramic scales.
The dragon’s other face was fleshless and black, corroded down to the bone. This shadow-image was adorned with brittle-edged scales that crumbled like rust as he came, leaving a faint reddish swirl in his wake.
She looked hard at the dragon, trying to gauge if Rus’s skull device had harmed the beast after all. If so, the damage was only cosmetic, for the dragon’s speed was undiminished.
So little of this made sense to her. Why had he put a geas on Vaan in the first place? What secrets did a lightning-spitting dragon have for a pixie slave to betray?
The dragon coughed and sent another pressure wave surging past them. They were almost at the crack in the mountain when he spat one last missile that filled the entire tunnel. Cayce fought the impulse to close her eyes.
Vaan carried her clear of the jagged opening just as the white-hot ball of energy blew the mountainside apart. Cayce was peppered by sharp rocks and grit but avoided serious injury; Vaan was not as lucky, taking a round rock to the back of his head.
The pixie grunted and sighed softly. His body went limp, his wings stopped beating, and they dropped onto the rocky ground. The poisoner’s apprentice felt two of her fingers break and a searing blast of pain rip through her knee when she landed, but she remained conscious.
Cayce hauled herself toward cover with her good hand and her good leg, inching ever farther from the cave entrance. The secret tunnel opening was no longer a secret and no longer an opening. As smoke and dust rose from the pile of boulders and debris that had been the mountainside, Cayce figured it probably wasn’t much of a tunnel anymore, either.
Cayce continued to drag herself away. She didn’t know where Vaan had landed but she wasn’t going to wait for him to ferry her the rest of the way down the mountain. She heard a familiar groan in the dist
ance behind her and to the left, but she paid it no mind and continued crawling away from the mountain.
“Cayce?” Rus sounded dazed but his voice was strong. He rose on unsteady legs one hundred yards from the smoking pile of rubble. His walking stick was gone, and his hat was torn almost in two. A thin slash across his scalp had pasted the stout man’s thinning brown hair to the sides of his skull. He was listing as he walked, his reactions slow and clumsy. He stopped for a moment to beat some dust from his cape, and almost fell. Instead, Rus regained his balance and wrapped the edge of his elegant cloak around his clenched fist to keep it from dragging. He called out again, staggering directly in front of the mound of shattered rock.
“Tania Cayce, attend your master!” His voice was loud but unfocused, as if he couldn’t control his own volume.
Deep within the pile of boulders and debris, the mountain began to tremble. Flashes of blue light leaped from the crevices between stones.
“Run,” Cayce tried to shout, but all that came out was a shallow-lunged wheeze. She coughed into her hand then her eyes widened at the spatter of red smeared across her fingers.
“Where are you, Cayce? Did you get the teeth?”
Cayce coughed again. “Good-bye, Master Rus.” Her voice was weak and strained, barely a whisper. She did not relish what came next… well, not too much… but she watched just the same. If nothing else, she owed Rus this one final observation in hope that it would create opportunity.
Rus lurched around to face the former south face of the mountain. His eyes goggled as he realized where he stood and what the recent explosion must precede. Rus turned and started to run, and even with his injuries, he was only slightly less graceful and quick than he had been on the way in.
Two large boulders separated and rolled down opposite ends of the mound. The dragon’s sharp head slowly rose above the rubble, dust and grit glittering as it poured down his scales. The ruined dark visage Cayce had seen in the tunnel was gone. The grand beast’s ceramic scales stood on end, and energy crackled between them. He shrugged and pushed up through the pile of rock, freeing his upper limbs and his wings.
Dragons- Worlds Afire Page 15
