“Oh, so who did?”
“The humans.”
That was when I felt her belly rumble, and out of her mouth came that maniacal laughter again. “You let the humans name you? I never realised cats had so little self-respect.”
“What does a name matter? All I need is a familiar word the humans can call so I know when I’m getting food.”
“It matters more than you can imagine,” Salanraja replied. “A well-chosen name will make you remembered to both your enemies and your friends. You don’t hear people saying, ‘Excuse me, which Salanraja was that’, do you?”
“To be honest, I’ve never heard anyone use the name Salanraja at all.”
“That will change. Once I strike my legacy into the hearts of men and dragons. It will become a name remembered throughout the history textbooks. One that all sentient creatures on this planet will utter in both fear and respect.”
I yawned. At least when Salanraja talked to me, she stopped those crazy flight manoeuvres. So, it seemed better to keep the conversation going.
“You really are full of yourself, aren’t you?” I said.
“I’m a dragon. The greatest creature in the lands. What do you expect?”
“A little modesty, perhaps. It would go a long way.”
“And what do you know about modesty?”
I licked my beautiful, silky fur. “Look. I know that you’re big and strong, and all that. But also, quite frankly, you’re ugly. Fair enough, you might scare people, but somehow I doubt you have the grace or intellect of a cat.”
“Grace?” Salanraja’s body rumbled from beneath my feet and she let out a massive roar once again. “I shall show you grace.”
Just when I thought I had my balance mastered, Salanraja’s body lurched once again. She threw me to the left, and then she spun me around and around as if I was trapped in a washing machine. I don’t know how long the dragon had me tumbling around in that corridor within her spikes. But, once she levelled out, I felt as if every bone had broken in my body. I also wanted to throw up.
“That’s not graceful,” I pointed out. “It’s no wonder none of the humans ever want to ride you if you keep behaving like that.”
The dragon turned her massive head back to me. Her leathery top lip had curved upwards in a snarl, displaying a long fang-like incisor that was yellowing a little at the top. “And you’re probably now going to show me what graceful is,” Salanraja said.
Whiskers! She would have to make such a request after beating me around so much. “I can show you graceful. If you promise not to drop me out of the sky.”
“Be my guest.”
I stretched out my limbs and back, feeling my bones creak as I did so. Then, I tested the spot in front of me on Salanraja’s back first, before climbing up her neck and onto her head. I perched myself there, half worried that the dragon would throw me off at any second, but instead she made a deep rumbling sound that almost sounded like a purr.
I looked down at the ground rolling by below, the fields arranged in uneven squares of green and yellow, trees dotted between them. A layer of fluffy clouds passed by overhead. I didn’t particularly want to be up here in the cold wind, and I tried not to pay attention to the ground whirling by below.
“You are sitting on my head,” she said.
“I don’t intend to stay up here,” I replied. “I just wanted to prove my point.”
“Which is?”
“That I made it up here without causing you any pain at all. Grace is all about being able to pass through an environment without disturbing it. That way, we can sneak past even the scariest of dogs undetected. It’s about elegance, not breaking every bone in your passenger’s body.”
“My flight might have felt ungraceful to you, but it would have looked spectacular to an observer on the ground.”
“And do you see any observers down there? I see a few sheep. But their eyes are for the grass they’re munching, and not you.”
Salanraja laughed again, but this time it came out as a low chuckle, probably because maniacal laughter would result in throwing me right off my perch. “You know, I never thought I’d meet someone suitable. But you’ve changed my mind. Get down from there,” she said. “I want to show you something.”
I scratched my head with my hind leg. “Tell me what it is first.”
“Would you rather I threw you off my head and caught you on my back? I’m not always the best catch, I might warn you.”
“No,” I said, and I stalked back down her neck, nestling myself in the corridor of her back. “Just don’t do any of that rough flying again. It’s not good for my spine, flexible as it is.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. “Hold on for now,” she said. “This is going to be a rough landing.”
“Hold on to what?”
“Anything you can find.”
Though the air was cold before, it now carried icy blasts and I felt like my fur was going to freeze. Ahead, the snow-capped mountain range I saw before was approaching, the sun glistening off the glazed tops of it, with eagles – and this time I mean birds and not dragons – wheeling over a blanket of mountain mist.
Salanraja roared up to the sky, and then she reeled backwards. She used the momentum to pull herself upwards, and the chill in the air intensified. Suddenly, she decelerated. I shrieked as I rolled down the corridor of spikes towards Salanraja’s head. Beneath that was a blanket of caked snow, coming at us faster and faster.
“Stop!” I said to her in my head.
“I said, hold on,” Salanraja replied.
I had no choice but to comply, because I almost tumbled off her neck. But I caught myself last minute. The spikes that ran up the back of her neck were made of a soft kind of ivory, and I managed to dig my claws into one, and hold myself there with all my strength, as I dangled above the snowfield. I thought for a moment that I would plummet with such a force I’d cause an avalanche.
Salanraja thudded into the ground with such impact, I got thrown off her neck into the snow. Luckily, of course, I landed on my feet. But once I felt the cold, powdery stuff against them, I shrieked and ran leaped right back up onto Salanraja’s back.
“What’s the matter?” Salanraja asked.
I shuddered. “I hate snow,” I said. “I hate it more than I hate rain.”
Salanraja barked out a laugh into the icy wind. “Don’t be such a wimp. You have that thick fur coat. What about me? What do I have to keep me warm?”
“Dragon fire?”
“True that,” Salanraja replied. “Well, we’re here.” She lifted up a claw and pointed to a cave mouth tall enough to accommodate nine stacked elephants.
“And where is here, exactly?” I asked.
“This is the source of our world’s magic. It’s a place where all dreams are first born before they travel through the ley lines of the land into the minds of mindful beings. Here dragons first get their fire, and dragon riders first get their gifts. This is only one of thousands of entrances in a place we guard against the warlocks and dark creatures that wish to use it for ill.”
I yawned widely and scratched my neck with my hind paw. “Okay, okay, it’s special. I’ve got that. But what is it? Get to the point, will you?”
Salanraja shook her head. But this time, she decided not to complain about my rudeness. “It’s the Versta Caverns of the Crystal Mountains, and here you shall learn of your destiny. Because I don’t know why, but my gut is telling me to choose you as my next rider. I think we are destined for great things together, Bengie, and legends say that we dragons can foretell the future.”
6
Made of Clay
The Versta Caverns were perhaps the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. I used to think birds were fascinating to watch. But these caverns, which seemed a massive passageway into the bowels of the earth, contained gems as large as houses and which shone out in every single imaginable colour. Within them, the swirling patterns of light seemed to depict images so surreal they might
as well be dreams. If I stared at one long enough, I imagined I was seeing myself in a familiar world that I’d seen in the Land of Nod.
In one of them, I saw myself from a distance, running through long grass, chasing dragonflies like I had been only days ago. I caught one in my paw until it bit me, and then I yelped out in pain. But after that, I was soon out there chasing another dragonfly, and this time I caught it and examined it, and it didn’t seem to be a dragonfly at all, but a small red dragon. The dream zoomed in, to make the dragon bigger, until I could see myself flying on that dragon’s back. The corridor of spikes had gone now, and I looked as comfortable there as I would on a garden fence.
I saw an enemy down below, something skeletal, with hollow ribs. I pointed downwards at it with my paw, and a column of fire came down from the sky, charring both creature and earth beneath.
“Dragons aren’t the only entities that can foretell the future,” Salanraja told me, clearly realising what I was staring at. “Sometimes these crystals display a creature’s dreams. Sometimes they display premonitions. Sometimes, they show the past. And sometimes, rumour has it, they can even see across dimensions.”
I sat on her back, as she stalked carefully through the cavern, as if with reverence for the crystals that lay within. Though the passage was wide enough for her to walk through, the ceiling came down too low for Salanraja to take off into the air and fly through the passageway, although I didn’t discount the possibility there might be taller chambers as we ventured further through the caverns.
There was no snow in here, so I probably could have continued on foot. But I had reached the point where I, admittedly, was quite enjoying the ride. There was no snow on the red-packed earth that supported the crystals, and I could taste the clay in the air.
“You can sit on my head if you want a better view.” Salanraja said.
“But won’t it get hot up there if you decide to breathe fire?” I replied.
“Oh, you won’t have to worry about that here. The crystals prevent me from using my magic.”
I mewled, and ran up Salanraja’s neck onto her head. Now, I could see everything in panorama. We’d already passed quite a way into the caverns and the entrance was getting increasingly smaller behind us. The crystals seemed to not just emanate life, but a glow that warmed me from the bones out. There was something about this place that I liked, and I didn’t want to leave.
But then, Salanraja jerked to a halt. She wasn’t going fast to begin with, but she was so massive that her sudden motion sent me tumbling forwards. Fortunately, I caught myself, so I didn’t end up hanging off one of her nostrils. I didn’t want to end up swinging right into her mouth.
“Don’t make a sound,” Salanraja said. “Not even a purr
How she could ever expect me to stop purring, I don’t know. It was like asking a dog to stop wagging its tail. “What is it?”
“There’s something there, just around the corner…”
I craned my head over Salanraja’s top mounted horn to get a better look. But I couldn’t see what she was fussing about.
“Wait until it comes into the light of the crystals,” Salanraja continued. “It’s camouflaged against the earth.”
It didn’t take me long to notice something out of place. On the draught came a whiff of rotten vegetable juice, as if someone had painted it over the clay.
I zoned in on the smell. Then I detected motion. True enough, something was slithering around down there, almost concealed. It moved in the shadows the crystal cast against the rocks in front of it, sliding over the ground, without making a footstep. It seemed as if it was part of the earth itself, growing out of it to move forward, and then shrinking back into the ground. It turned toward us and then I saw its two eyes. They were glowing, just like the crystals.
“A golem,” Salanraja said. “Made of clay.”
“A what?”
“Do you know nothing of magical creatures?”
“I knew nothing of this thing you called magic until today, and I still don’t know exactly what it’s meant to do.”
Salanraja lowered her head to the ground, very slowly. “A golem is a creation of man, a part of the earth given life through a magical crystal. It’s probably here to mine crystals for a warlock’s dark plans.”
“I thought you said that we couldn’t use magic in here.”
“We can’t.”
“Then how can a magical creature survive here?” I asked.
“Because it would have been conjured outside. Those eyes are just one of a warlock’s ways of seeing. The warlock in question is unlikely to notice us unless we do something to alert him or her to our presence. But its very existence here means that there is a warlock nearby.”
“A warlock? Astravar…” The man had never told me his name, or if he had, I hadn’t understood his language at the time to register it. But he’d burnished it into my memories through some kind of magic. Now, I could see his long face and cruel grey eyes inside my mind each time I remembered his name.
“It could be Astravar,” Salanraja said, “or it could be any of the other six known warlocks to inhabit the Darklands.”
“And what does he want with us? We’re not doing him any harm…”
“Our kingdom of Illumine is at war with the warlocks whose souls have been consumed by dark magic. They strive for the destruction of all non-conjured life in this world. Humans, cats, and every other creature that you hunt and cherish would be annihilated if they had their way.”
I glanced around at the shining massive gems, trying hard not to be mesmerised by their beauty. He’d had one of these swinging above him as he worked, filling his tower with light. Others he’d used to summon demons from portals. Whiskers, he’d probably summoned me from a portal using one of the crystals
“There’s a crystal here for you, Bengie,” Salanraja said. “As soon as I decided to choose you as my dragon rider, one of the crystals here called me. Now, you must find the one that knows you well, and it will give it your ability.”
“My ability?”
“Of course. All dragon riders have a kind of magic about them, and as you grow as a dragon rider your crystal will grant you more abilities.”
“I—” I couldn’t believe my pointy ears. I hadn’t even learned of magic before today. Now this ‘dragon’ was telling me I could use it. “What abilities will it give me?”
“You will only gain one for now, and you won’t know what it is until you’ve gained it. Now, go and find your crystal, and do so silently, because we don’t want to attract the attention of that golem.”
I looked down at the morphing clay creature again, its form twisting from one wicked shape to the next. It kept moving forward in a direction, and its arm had moulded itself into the shaft of some tool. A metal blade had morphed out of the top of this, looking something like a pickaxe. The golem was shifting towards the crystal that I’d seen my dream in before. The one that seemed to know me well…
“I think I know which one’s mine,” I said.
“Oh?”
“The one with my dreams in it… It’s that purple crystal over there.”
“What?” Salanraja said, and her head tossed back all of a sudden, almost throwing me off it. “No! The golem!”
I could feel Salanraja was getting irate, and so I scrambled down her neck, so she didn’t throw me on to the cold floor in her rage. Then, I turned around to see what she was screaming at. The golem now had that pickaxe-like tool raised over the crystal, and it looked like it was about to bring it down in a wide arc.
It was about, in other words, to smash my crystal to pieces.
7
Sinking
Salanraja bellowed out a roar, and the golem turned in a broad circle. It bent over backwards, then let out an ear-piercing screech that sent my head spinning for a moment.
“You can’t let it destroy your crystal. You have to fight it,” Salanraja said.
“How? It’s bigger than a human, and it moves
funny.”
Salanraja lowered her head back to the floor. “Knock out its eyes – and you’ll destroy its magical energy.”
“Easy for you to say… Why don’t you just eat it?”
“I can’t, you fool. Just do it. We don’t have much time.”
Salanraja shook her head, like a dog shaking off water, sending me tumbling onto the floor. I landed right next to the golem, and I gazed up at it. The thing was massive, twice as large as a human perhaps, and twice as wide too. It stared down at me with its two crystal eyes – one red, one blue. It also had the pickaxe extension on its arm raised, which was swinging down towards me.
I screeched, and then I scrambled out of the way, as the pickaxe buried itself in the earth. It got stuck there for a moment, giving me time to recover myself. I tried scratching at the golem’s leg, but my claws just went right through its body, bringing off some sticky clay that I tried to shake off but couldn’t.
“Do something, Salanraja,” I said.
“Like what? My claws will just go right through it, and they’re much too large to dislodge his eyes. If I try eating it, it will just reform in my stomach and rip me apart from the inside.”
“If it’s made of clay, can’t you just breathe fire on it? It might harden the thing, securing it in place.”
“I can’t use magic in here, remember, and even if I could, it would be disrespectful to the crystals. This is your job, Bengie. Accept it.”
By the time Salanraja had finished explaining things, the golem had its pickaxe raised again, and was lifting it up into the air. Meanwhile, its other hand had grown into a scythe-like blade, also metallic. It swept this around in a low arc, and I leapt over it just in the nick of time and then stumbled over towards the wall.
“The eyes, Bengie. Go for the eyes,” Salanraja said.
I snarled up at her, then darted behind a tall column of stone. I used that spot as my cover as I arched my back and hissed at my opponent. But this didn’t stop it coming at me. It took a high swing with its scythe blade and cut right through the column. Then, the golem charged into the column with its shoulder, rocking it slightly, and then bringing it crashing down. I scampered out of the way to avoid getting flattened into the floor.
A Cat's Guide to Bonding with Dragons Page 3
