Dragon Chameleon: Episodes 1-4

by Wilson, Sarah K. L.

  I do have to set down. I am too tired to go on. But those flames are far away and panicking about them won’t make things any easier for you.

  I scowled. I wasn’t panicking.

  What would you call those little breathing attacks?

  Realism.

  Get a grip. Zin is asleep. Zyla is holding her in the saddle. They need rest and so do I.

  I really wasn’t panicking.

  The moment Saboraak’s feet hit the ground, I loosened my straps and leapt off her back. The ground was rocky and uneven, and I nearly twisted an ankle.

  Remember when I told you to look before you leap?

  I rolled my eyes.

  But it’s good that you have lots of energy. You have an important job.

  I sure did. I needed something to eat and then a nice long sleep.

  No. I need to sleep so I can fly us again in a few hours. I’m going into a deep recovery sleep. It will heal my wounds and rest me enough to be able to carry four people again. That means it’s up to you to keep watch for enemies and to wake me if there’s trouble.

  What would she do if there was trouble?

  Bataar slowly dismounted as we were communicating, dragging the saddlebags down after him.

  Flame it, obviously.

  You didn’t flame the Magikas back there!

  I didn’t want to start a forest fire.

  Well, nice work. There’s one anyway.

  I was busy trying to fly with four people on my back!

  You could have bought us some time!

  “I’m not building a fire this time. I’m just going to curl up in a blanket and go to sleep,” Bataar said sleepily. “Don’t wake me unless we’re under attack.”

  “Can I get a hand here?” Zyla asked and I rushed to help her. She could twist an ankle if she got down too quickly. She needed to be careful. “Zin fell asleep. Here. Help me lift her down.”

  “There are only two blankets here,” Bataar said from where he was squatting over the saddlebags.

  “Well, excuse me for not anticipating the need to provide for you,” I said irritably.

  “Zin and I will share one,” Zyla said as I helped her carry her sister to a flat area near where Bataar had arranged the saddlebags.

  We laid her down and Zyla took the offered blanket, covering her sister and then snuggling in under the blanket with her. The ground was damp. No one was going to be very comfortable. I noticed Saboraak move a little closer to the girls, bringing the heat she gave off a little closer.

  “I get the other blanket,” Bataar said.

  My eyes narrowed. Maybe he should keep the blanket. We didn’t need to fly with four people. We could fly with three and go a lot farther. He could use the blanket to keep warm while he hiked through the mountains.

  Tor?

  I was surprised by how vulnerable my big dragon sounded. I spun to look at her. Was she okay?

  I have something to admit.

  Was that all? Girls! They were so dramatic.

  I don’t like killing people. That’s why I didn’t flame the Magikas back there. I ... I don’t like it.

  I frowned, but inside I felt a burst of affection for her. She was really too soft-hearted to be a dragon. Go to sleep, Saboraak.

  Goodnight.

  There were already snores from where Bataar was huddled under his blanket. Of course. He stole my blanket and now he was sleeping like a baby. The other blanket was still and motionless, too. I saw the tip of Zyla’s nose peeping out of the blanket. I sighed. and the nose twitched. I’d better stop sighing. I didn’t want to keep her awake.

  But now that everyone was quiet and motionless, exhaustion began to creep over me. I yawned, letting my eyes drift over the hillside we were camped on. The rocks were so large where they peeked out of the hillside – as large as dragons – that it would be nearly impossible to see if anyone was coming. I’d have to keep a close watch.

  I fished some bread out of the saddlebags and began to eat. Only to keep myself awake, of course. My stomach rumbled the moment I smelled the bread and it took everything I had just to eat slowly and prolong the moments. Minutes dragged like hours. The cold damp had crept into my bones, making them feel brittle and sore.

  I alternated between sitting and standing, stomping my feet to get them warm and looking often at the pendant Ephretti gave me. It seemed to catch the moonlight in a strange way, reflecting back on me. I even pulled out the small book Hubric had given me and flipped through it. I couldn’t make out the words by the light of the moon, but there seemed to be drawings, too. Sketches and maps. I would have to look at them better later. I tucked the book in an inner pocket of my trousers. I didn’t want to lose it any more than the pendant. I didn’t own much, so what I owned was precious.

  The cold bit at me, leaving my breath in wispy clouds and clinging to any exposed skin so that I huddled deeper and deeper into the cloak.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t slept in the cold before, though now I couldn’t sleep at all. That figured. Tor has to come up with the plans and do all the work, but then he doesn’t get to sleep. Oh no, Tor gets to stand out in the flaming cold and freeze.

  I circled the camp, letting those thoughts stew as I looked at the scraggly bushes surrounding us. The trees had petered out leaving hard, leafless bushes and scattered tufts of grass. This place was mostly made of loose stone and dirt. What a miserable land. No wonder it wasn’t part of the Dominion. We had proper dirt for growing things back home, and proper trees that could make a fire. I couldn’t even see enough trees to find firewood here.

  I kept watching for the forest fire, but it was still only a far-away glow on the horizon. It had better stay like that.

  My circles grew larger and larger. Moving helped. It kept me warm and awake, though my mind wandered a bit from tiredness.

  It didn’t really matter, did it? As long as I kept the others in sight – or at least sort of in sight. They disappeared when I went around the larger rocks and then reappeared again when I made my way around the obstacles. That was what you did as a guard, right? You guarded things. And with these larger and larger circles, no one could sneak in and surprise us.

  My circling was closer to the camp when I was above it on the hillside. The slope was too steep there to climb far without resorting to hands and knees – which I was not going to do – but when my circle reached the point below the camp, I found it widening and widening.

  The rock formations and bushes were interesting, and I might even find a creek if I looked hard enough. It beat sitting around the camp listening to everyone else snoring or mumbling in their sleep – Zin did that, though her words were too muddled to be understood.

  It was on a particularly wide arc below the camp, that I stumbled across a narrow opening between two dragon-large rocks. The roots and deadfall above them were so tangled that I hadn’t been able to look down behind the rocks from above, but this crevice between the two rocks was almost like a door.

  I shouldn’t go in the crevice. Even with my brain this tired, I knew that. I shouldn’t even be this far away from camp. I was supposed to be guarding the others, and I was getting too far away from them.

  And yet ... there was something about that little hole in the rocks that longed to be investigated. Maybe, if I just lit a torch and held it in the crevice, it would be enough to satisfy my curiosity.

  I grabbed a likely looking bush, cursing when ripping it out of the ground tore my skin. Who would have known that the trunk of it was lined with talon-like thorns?

  It was dry as the inside of my mouth and twice as dusty. Maybe there would be a well or a spring in those rocks. I’d heard of water coming out of rocks in dry places.

  It was long minutes before I managed to really light the shrub. I had two others ready in my free hand. When this one burned down, I could light the next and then the next. I didn’t admit that I was planning to enter the rock crevice until I was jamming my body through and wishing I’d eaten less bread.


  Chapter Five

  I DIDN’T NEED TO LIGHT those torches.

  That was the first thing I thought when I squeezed my way through the crevice and into the space beyond. But anyone could have been forgiven for not expecting this.

  Someone, a long time ago, had been very clever.

  They had laid out a dais and then put a door? Arch? A something like a door at the top of it. And then, cleverly, they had laid mirrors out around the dais and they reflected the moonlight back and forth, amplifying it so that this little, hidden space was almost as bright as day.

  How did they get all this past that narrow crevice in the rock? And what kind of thing is so important that you would go to all this trouble to hide it after you built it?

  I yelped. Pain shot up my hand and I dropped the branch. I’d forgotten about the licking flames in my wonder at the cavern.

  How had this place come to be covered by deadfall? I squinted up at the roof. Was that a wide mesh net that covered the ceiling? It was hard to make out with all the light below, but I thought that perhaps whoever had put this dais here had covered it with that net.

  Those super clever people had a secret. And I just found it.

  Excitement filled me. After all, people only hid valuable things, right? They didn’t hide things they thought were worthless. This was going to turn out to be amazing! I just needed to follow their lead and find whatever treasure they had here.

  I took a step forward, cursing when I kicked a rock.

  “Skies and Stars!”

  It was a rock, alright, but more of a marker stone than a random rock. Something was written on it, but the writing was filled with moss and worn by time. Either that, or it never meant anything at all, and I was just imagining it as writing. No one hid treasure in rocks anyway.

  I shrugged and hurried to the stairs leading up the dais.

  No one had been here in a long time - or at least, that was the impression I was getting from the dust and woody debris that lined the stairs to the dais. Had people forgotten about this place? Maybe its creators had hidden it too well.

  Whoever had built it must love stairs. I was twenty stairs up and my legs were starting to ache before I reached the top of the dais. The crumbling rock of the floor was arranged in a mosaic pattern so that the floor looked like a rising sun. In the center of the sun, the strange empty doorway stood. It was large enough for a dragon to walk through – if a dragon ever wanted to walk through a door to nowhere.

  It was difficult to make out fine detail, despite the light from the mirrors, so I stepped in close, looking at the frame. It was shaped like an arch and the stones that formed the doorway fit together so tightly and were cut so precisely that it was hard to make out where one stone ended, and another began. On each stone, symbols were carved. I squinted, trying to make them out. One looked like a stylized sword, another like a tongue of fire, a third like a blowing wind.

  I circled the doorway, looking at it from all angles. It seemed normal enough. I could see through it to the other side, no matter what side I stood on. Why build a doorway to nowhere?

  I tilted my head to one side. I liked puzzles and I was bored. Maybe there was a way to make this door into more than just a door. Maybe it had to do with the symbols in the frame. I reached toward the nearest one, but a strange chill washed over me and I froze.

  What was that feeling? It felt as if every hair on my arms were standing up straight. I swallowed. Maybe I should take my time and choose my symbol more carefully.

  There were many to choose from - at least twenty. It made it hard to pick one, but as my eyes ran over them again and again, I kept being drawn back to one that looked like swirling smoke rising upward.

  Well, I could stand here all day, or I could do something. I reached for the smoke symbol, letting my hand trace over the carved surface of it. I felt icy chills run up my fingers and into the bones of my arm - but that was it.

  I'd been wrong about the symbols, I guessed. Oh, look! There was another smoke symbol. With my other hand, I reached out and touched it, too. I could reach them both at once but touching them both didn't do anything. Too bad. I'd hoped it would open a secret compartment or something. A freezing burn suddenly shot up both my arms. It swirled around them, filling them with icy pain.

  I pulled my fingers back and the pain subsided.

  Skies and stars! Was this some kind of torture device? If it was, then no thank you! No wonder they hid it down here! Someone should smash those mirrors so that no one ever found it.

  I should be getting back, anyway. I should be guarding the camp.

  I stepped forward, planning to walk through the gate and down the stairs, but as I stepped, my foot disappeared, and a wave of heat washed over me. It was as if the doorway had eaten it up. I pulled my foot back before I’d even completed the step, my heart racing and almost melted with relief when it came back whole and fine.

  I should try an arm. I plunged my arm through and watched it disappear with the same wave of heat, counted down from five and then drew it back. I had felt nothing strange except for that wave of heat. Strange. Was my arm okay?

  I rolled up my sleeve and gasped. A swirling symbol identical to the smoke symbol on the doorframe marked my arm in a silver pattern. I scrubbed at the skin, trying to smear or remove it. Was that from dipping my arm through the door? Nothing. It was as if the design was part of my skin now.

  Anxiously, I rolled up my other sleeve. My jaw dropped. My eyes widened so far that tears formed. The same silver design wrapped itself around that arm, too.

  I was marked.

  Not by going through the arch, but by touching the door. What would happen if I touched any other symbols? No, no, slow down, Tor! No more touching things that left permanent marks.

  I took a deep breath. Well, while I was here, I should do one more thing. I should stick my head through that door. Then I could see what was on the other side. But I had to be sure I could come back. What if I stepped all the way through and the door - or whatever it was - closed behind me?

  My mind filled with worse scenarios. What if I couldn't breathe on that side? What if nothing on that side existed and if I plunged my head through, I wouldn't have a brain to tell my body to pull back?

  I'd just have to risk it. If I didn't, then I'd spend the next days and months - maybe even years! - wondering what could have been behind this door. I swallowed and leaned forward, closing my eyes and my head slowly pushed through a fiery burst of heat. It was still burning around my neck when I opened my eyes. I gasped and nearly fell backward before I remembered that my feet were on solid ground, but my belly reeled, queasiness filling me.

  The other side of the arch opened on the side of a mountain and under the edge of the doorway was nothing but a sudden drop down the side of a snow-coated mountain into nothing at all.

  Chapter Six

  ONLY AN IDIOT WOULD jump off a cliff.

  I stumbled backward, falling to my backside and scrambling backward across the dusty dais until I could get my breathing under control. A few minutes later, I pulled myself to my feet.

  This had been a mistake.

  I would just go back to camp and finish guarding everyone and pretend this never happened. I could be dreaming, anyway. After all, I was very tired, and I hadn't slept.

  I scrambled up, dusting myself off, and carefully maneuvered around the door. The key thing was to stay as far away from that flaming door as possible. If I just watched my step and stayed far away, then ... that's right. Just like that!

  Only heroes messed with magical doorways, and I was no hero.

  I eased my way around the dais, almost sneaking as I carefully took each stair to the ground. I didn't breathe again until I had squeezed through the crack in the rock and back to the night beyond.

  I leaned against the rock, closing my eyes for a moment. No real harm done. My sleeves covered those silver markings, and who knew, maybe they would wash off later. Or maybe they were just my imagination or a tr
ick of the eyes.

  I started to climb back up the hill toward camp when a cracking sound arrested me.

  I froze.

  What was that?

  After a moment, when nothing else happened, I started to climb again.

  The moon hadn't moved, and the air was still cold. I couldn't have been gone from camp for long. I was just jumpy and nervous after my close brush with disaster.

  But now worry gnawed at me. I was supposed to be standing guard over my friends and I’d wandered off.

  But guard against what? There hadn't been anything there to worry about. The Magikas were far away and the fires - even if they had grown - would still be hours away.

  There was nothing to worry about.

  A scream pierced the night.

  Was that Zyla? I increased my pace, tripping over a log and catching myself at the last second. My dagger was in my belt – I was smarter this time about remembering to carry it. But what good did that do in the dark and so far from whatever was happening?

  A second scream made me leap forward, running up the hill now, ignoring the scratching and clawing of the rough bushes and shrubs. What was happening?

  Where are you?

  Saboraak! Uh oh. She was supposed to be sleeping.

  You were supposed to be standing watch!

  Well, I had been standing watch until I got too bored. What was happening up there?

  I rounded a rock and gasped.

  Small fires ringed my friends, as if someone had lit the nearby bushes into fiery torches. Saboraak squatted low on the ground, neck extended and at that moment, I noticed the dark shadows in the bushes. She flamed wildly, her head swaying back and forth as her fire surged toward the shadows. Beside her, Bataar crouched as if he was waiting to fight, too. Where were the girls?