Ember's End

by S D Smith

  Heather felt panic rising but fought to swallow it down. “We are glad to be alive. That’s all we need for now.”

  “How you have risen up, I cannot tell. But enough talk. The keeper will leave you now and come again tomorrow,” he said. “Mossdraft and rest, little rabbits.”

  “Thank you, Keeper,” Smalls said.

  The dragon nodded, then turned, and disappeared into the shadows.

  They were quiet for a long time, holding hands in the silence.

  Finally, Heather leaned on Smalls’ shoulder and turned her face to bury it in his embrace. She felt tremendous affection for him, but this tenderness was so she could whisper close to his ear.

  “He is listening, you know. He heard all my story catching you up. I’m afraid he must know who you are.” His squeeze told her he understood and agreed. She whispered on. “We will have to be careful. I don’t trust him, even if he did keep you alive. There’s something dishonest at the heart of all his honesty.” A hesitation, then another squeeze. “Do you disagree?”

  He dipped his head so that it rested next to hers. “No,” he whispered. “I can’t see all you see, but I trust your understanding. So, when I can’t see it all, I trust your sight.”

  She squeezed him in return.

  They broke apart, and Smalls went again to the mossdraft pool. She noticed his movements, calm and unhurried, though with soldierly awareness of everything. Dim by the distant pool, she saw him bend and dip the bowl, then stand and walk back her way.

  “The keeper is kind to us,” he said, extending the bowl for her.

  She received it with gratitude, said, “Yes, very kind,” and drank.

  A dim rattle in the distance sounded, followed by an extended silence. Smalls returned to the pool and filled the bowl again. Then, a rumbling rattle began in the depths of the cavern and ended in a ground-shaking noise of crashing rock. Smalls tilted, dropped the bowl, then ran back to Heather, knees bent, hand steadying on the ground as he reached her. The rumbling stopped, and an eerie silence followed, interrupted only by the occasional small knocks of settling rock.

  They embraced again. Heather whispered, “We have to get out of here.”

  Then they both looked up as the faint light from the gate, impossibly high above, went out entirely.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  EYES TO SEE

  Heather sat in darkness, alongside Smalls, and tried to ignore the dread welling within.

  “We should sleep while we can,” Smalls said.

  “Yes, of course.”

  She lay down on the soft moss and tried to imagine she was safe at home. Past or future home—it didn’t matter. She tried to relax her mind and fill it with the happy thoughts of loved ones. But something wasn’t right, and she couldn’t sleep. Then, when her heart had sunk low, she heard singing. It was Smalls, and his voice filled the cavern, ringing clear in the hollow space. Warm and sweetly he sang, and her anxious heart calmed.

  “I am not made of stone or steel,

  but I know my way,

  I am only flesh and fur,

  But so too were Flint and Fay.

  “So, I’ll say yes to my call,

  Though my heart’s afraid.

  I will go down this, my road,

  Until my part is played.

  “I go, I go, and I may die,

  But I go, I go, for I must try.

  I cannot now stay but must find a way,

  So, I go, I go, to leap, to sail, and fly.”

  Heather reached across and took Smalls’ hand. Sleep came.

  She did not dream.

  * * *

  Heather woke with a start as the ground shook and the noise of smashing rock thundered through the cavern. Smalls was by her in a moment, standing, arms spread wide behind him. Light from the distant gate aloft made the cavern feel almost bright in comparison with last night’s total darkness. She found that her eyes quickly adjusted, and she could see the dim cavern almost well. Some rocks dropped from the arched roof of the cavern, a few plopping in the mossdraft pool, and a wispy puff of dust wafted across shafts of light high above.

  “The Immovable Mountain shakes,” she said, as the rumbling subsided and silence ensued.

  “But I’m afraid if it shakes more,” Smalls replied, “we won’t see standing stones to Blue Moss Hills but be crushed, buried, and beyond hope.”

  “Don’t forget drowned.”

  “Right. I had forgotten. We’re underwater here inside Forbidden Island, and if this place goes, we can add drowning to the list of grim endings. Thank you, Heather.”

  “Anything to keep the mood cheerful,” she said, smiling over at him.

  He smiled back, then bent to hug her and whisper in her ear again. “You’re right, though. The only way out is up. No matter how far these caves stretch sideways, if they don’t lead upward anywhere, we’re stuck here.”

  She squeezed him, and they broke apart and both walked to the mossdraft pool. While Smalls dipped their bowl, she made as if to stretch and test her renewing strength, but all the while stealing glances around the edge of the cavern. This was the way the dragon keeper had come and disappeared. Whether or not it was possible to escape by finding the way he had gone, she wanted to know how to get out of the cavern.

  Bending low and seeming only to test her legs, she gazed along the dim walls, probing for any kind of break. But the cave walls were covered in moss, and the slick rock wall breaking through in patches seemed impenetrable. She continued to scrutinize the stone.

  “How do you feel?” Smalls asked, handing her the mossdraft bowl.

  She thanked him and drank deeply, returning the bowl as her eyes flitted back and forth from the pool to the wall. “I cannot imagine feeling any better than I do. And you?”

  “The same. I’m not sure if it’s that I’ve been hurt and on the verge of death for so long or if it’s true that I, in fact, feel better than ever.”

  “I think it must be true.” Heather smiled up at him.

  Smalls grinned back. “Let’s go for a walk.” He offered her his arm. She took it, and they walked away from the pool, making a slow circuit of the vast cavern. They avoided the smooth patches of dragon eggs but otherwise explored every section of the cave. Heather felt along the smooth wall, then studied the support beams set against some cracking sections of wall. Who put these here? The keeper?

  “The crashing we heard,” she said, nodding to the beams. “Are these intended to keep the cavern from collapsing in and crushing all the eggs?”

  Smalls frowned, running his hand along a wide crack in the wall. “It looks like it. Those noises of crashing rock must be other parts of the cavern crumbling in.”

  “Maybe it won’t be long till this all comes down.”

  “That must be why he’s so eager for his conference with the king.”

  She nodded, and they walked on.

  When they had reached the far side of the cavern, opposite the mossdraft pool and the place where the dragon keeper had disappeared, Smalls stopped.

  “I think we may speak more freely here.”

  She looked around and nodded. “I agree. But softly, my dear.”

  He smiled, then whispered, “How is your history, Heather?”

  She looked up, thinking. “Father was a historian and scholar, so we learned quite a bit. But I learned more at Cloud Mountain and Halfwind. We had missed much.”

  “Did you know about the dragons?”

  “Not really. The dragons seemed to belong to legend and not history, to me. I wasn’t sure they were real. I don’t think Father believed them real.”

  “I think that might have been intentional.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked quietly. “Did you know about them?”

  “I think most scholars doubt their existence. Wilfred told me that he thought they were real, but I had my doubts. I always got the sense that he believed many important connections to the past were cut off when my father was killed before I could ever
speak to him. He lamented the disconnection and felt inadequate, I think, to give me what I needed.”

  “Dear Uncle Wilfred. I’m sure he did.”

  “But Wilfred remembered old Lord Booker saying there was always something unusual about me, even as a baby. Father knew something too. He was so convinced that he gave me the Green Ember even before I was old enough to know my own name. Wilfred was there.”

  “What did he see in you?” Heather asked, but she thought she might somehow know. Or, if not really know in her mind, apprehend with her heart.

  “Wilfred couldn’t say,” Smalls said, stroking his chin absently. “Only that Father sometimes saw the way you sometimes see, Heather. Wilfred didn’t understand it. Like I don’t understand it or experience it myself. But I experience you experiencing it, if that makes sense. And I trust it.”

  “So, Uncle Wilfred trusted King Jupiter to know, even though he didn’t.”

  “Yes,” Smalls said. “It was the same with Lord Booker. It felt right to Wilfred to see me named Father’s heir, even though I was too young to know much or really be known.”

  “But your father knew you.”

  “Or maybe he knew he wouldn’t be around much longer. Garten was there as well. Wilfred said he didn’t know at the time, but, looking back, he thought the king had a premonition of his demise.”

  “What does this have to do with dragons?” she asked, again peering hard at the slick and mossy wall, looking for any hint of a cleft that might mean a passage.

  “It’s one of the things I missed. One of the things Father would have shared with me. I’m sure he was the last king to come to Lander’s dragon tomb. I think that me missing that part of my training, or my initiation to the throne, has meant that something broke down here. Something that would have been better left intact.”

  His words reverberated with truth inside her. “You’re right. And that explains why we can’t stay here. Do you remember anything else from Uncle Wilfred’s recollections?” She scanned the wall slowly, looking for some small sign of a break in the slick stone.

  “He told me what Father said when he gave me the Green Ember, and I have never forgotten it.”

  Heather stopped scanning the stone and turned to face Smalls. “What did he say?”

  Smalls reached inside his shirt and produced the gem. The emerald signifying his position as heir to the throne hung from the end of its gold chain. Smalls ran his fingers over the contours on its back and the smooth cut surface of its front. “May this be a key for you in dark places and dark times.”

  Heather’s heart swelled at these words, and she turned back to resume her scanning of the rock wall while she thought about what they might mean.

  Reptilian eyes stared out at her.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  SPLITTING

  Heather’s cry echoed around the cave as she leapt back. Smalls surged ahead, reaching for a sword at his side. There was nothing there, just an empty scabbard. Unarmed, he leapt forward, fists balled.

  Heather stepped forward again, reaching for him. “It was eyes,” she whispered. “Eyes in the wall.”

  Smalls nodded, and they stepped carefully back together. For a little while Heather searched the rock wall to see if she could find the eyes again, frightening though the sight had been. She could see nothing but hard slick stone and wet sagging moss. She began to fear that Smalls might think she hadn’t seen anything, that her agitated mind had imagined what was not really there. Is it possible I only saw a shape in the stone and, like a child frightened at night, made it into eyes?

  “I guess we are never alone here,” Smalls said with no hint of doubt. “The keeper watches.”

  “The keeper watches, indeed,” came the slick, guttural sound of the dragon. The two rabbits spun around to find the dragon keeper halfway across the cavern, head cocked sideways, gazing at them. “Have the rabbits had a fright? The keeper heard screaming.”

  Heather started to say it was nothing, but she paused, recalling the dragon’s cunning way of telling if something was true. “I was frightened. It’s all right now.”

  “All right?” the dragon asked. “The keeper hopes it is so.”

  Smalls pointed to the support beams. “Is this why we hear so much falling rock?”

  The dragon inclined his head.

  “We’re not safe here, are we?” Smalls asked.

  The dragon’s teeth showed a moment, then he looked down. His smooth, slick voice echoed in the open cavern. “Safe? If you are not as safe as the dragon eggs, then for what was the treaty?”

  Heather frowned, glancing at the eggs. She tried to make sense of his answer. “Is a cave-in likely?”

  “The keeper believes not. He has worked hard to protect against it.”

  “We can see that,” Smalls said. “It must be hard to do all that work by yourself.”

  The dragon nodded low, then looked away. He seemed to be thinking. After a moment he turned to face Smalls. “Would the rabbit buck like to see the last support made in the tunnels within? He might be able to help us make the tomb more secure. Protect his doe.”

  Smalls glanced at Heather. She wasn’t sure how to respond, so she nodded. He said, “Yes. I should like it very much.”

  “Come,” the keeper said, extending a scaly hand. Smalls walked forward, and Heather followed. The keeper shook his head. “Rabbit doe must stay. Not enough space for three to travel.”

  Heather frowned, stopping. Smalls looked back, concern on his face. She smiled at him. He crossed to embrace her. Arms around his neck, she found she was touching the golden chain from which hung the Green Ember. She unclasped the chain, and the emerald fell to the mossy ground. She looked over his shoulder to the dragon and, seeing his attention was diverted, stepped on the gem.

  “I’ll keep it safe,” she whispered.

  “Keep yourself safe,” he replied. “You are the treasure I care most about.”

  She squeezed him one last time.

  Smalls turned and followed the dragon past the mossdraft pool and into shadow.

  Then he was gone.

  Heather returned to the spot where she had first fallen and had first found Smalls. The thick, soft section of moss felt almost like a strange home in this dark, sullen place. This cavern had conflicting places in her heart. On one hand, she hated the dank darkness, the absence of clear air or sunshine, the presence of an unsettling dragon, and the impossibility of escape. But this was also where she had found Smalls. Where they had found each other. This was the place where she had recovered from near death and now felt better than she had ever felt before. She reached for her satchel and opened it. She retrieved the battered old purse and placed the Green Ember back within, drawing out the vial. Empty. Nothing at all left of the miraculous cure that had brought them back from the brink of death. She replaced the battered purse inside the satchel.

  Automatically, she began to organize the contents of the satchel as if on duty. She thought of Emma as she rolled bandage lengths, checked levels of tonics, and tucked every item, some from Halfwind and some from Akolan’s District Four clinic, into its optimum spot. Emma had trained her well, sparing her none of the intense prep she needed simply because they were friends. Emma took her seriously and demanded excellence. She had also helped her, patiently and repeatedly, as she learned.

  Oh, Emma dear. How are you getting on? I wish I was with you, that your brother and I were with you now.

  When her medical satchel was ready and in the kind of shape she thought Emma would approve of, Heather breathed deeply and gazed around the room. Then she looked back at the satchel’s contents and sighed. Taking everything out, she began the routine again, sorting and shifting, imagining the kinds of things that might happen here inside Forbidden Island and call for her healing arts. A cave-in? Forbid it! But if Smalls were hurt, trapped, or crushed by some falling rock, how would she help? What supplies would she need ready at hand?

  Finally, Heather had done all she could to read
y her supplies, and she set aside her satchel and stared past the mossdraft pool to where Smalls had gone. Somehow, she was afraid to walk over there and try to find her own way into the passage. She wasn’t sure why.

  Heather lay on the soft moss and, staring at the place where she expected him to reappear, waited.

  She must have dozed, for the light was nearly gone when she stirred, stretched, and gazed around the cavern. Smalls was there, asleep where she had first found him. She watched him sleep, happy in his presence. But a rivulet of worry sprang up to mingle with her river of joy, and she frowned.

  The faint light above faded, and all was darkness.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  DREAMS, MEMORIES, AND FEAR

  Heather slept. In the night, visions came and went. She could hardly tell what was real and what was not. Her father stood above a crowded cavern by a long lake filled with ships, his ancient pickaxe raised amid cheers, while he laid out the plan of escape conceived so long ago. Jacks wavered between the Wrongtreaders and the resistance, angrily arguing with Harmony about what was right and what might work. She saw, with eyes grown somehow accustomed to the dark, Smalls bent over her satchel, rooting through it. She saw Emma fretting, with Picket, horribly maimed, by her side. She saw Jacks picking the right side—picking the resistance—then running through the house knocking over everyone’s block towers while Heather ran alongside him, laughing. She saw much, and she slept long.

  Heather awoke to find Smalls gone once again. Panic quickly gave way to reason, and she assumed he had not wanted to wake her and that he had gone back to work on the support beam deep in the islands. Perhaps it was urgent, and of course he had no way to leave a note.

  She sprang up and stretched, readying herself for the day ahead. Even as concerns pricked the edges of her mind, she felt so unbelievably well that almost nothing could touch her sense of health. Her body, so regularly deprived and cruelly injured of late, was as hearty as one could imagine. The tonic. Dear old Aunt Jone. How long had she labored to find the right mixture, and what secrets had she inherited and protected, combining them with fresh insights from learned authorities building on generations of wisdom? Aunt Jone had always listened eagerly to discussions of new methods in healing that were effective, and she regularly sat in the back of classes—even novices’ classes—taking notes and sometimes uttering awkward exclamations. That was how Heather had first met her, sitting in on a lecture Doctor Zeiger gave on one of his visits to Halfwind.