But where was its fire, he wondered. And why did it hang back when a single sweep of its massive wings would crush him like a mouse?
Mortregis didn’t move, didn’t attack him with its formidable weapons, so, seizing his chance, Marcel went on the attack himself. There were no words, no particular spells in this, just the summoning of his will combined with the magic that had been born in him for whatever purpose. Perhaps for this very act. Mortregis was not just a dragon made of flesh and blood; it was the symbol and the spirit of war that brought death and misery to the Mortal Kingdoms wherever it spread those foul wings.
Marcel worked his arms, a paltry imitation of Mortregis’s wings. Drive down, destroy — this was the will of his magic, as powerful as any he had ever conjured, yet when he looked up the monster stood before him unharmed, glaring at him malevolently. It folded its wings back against its body, no longer needing to intimidate this tiny figure before it. Its snout rose, the jaws parted again and for the second time an ear-bursting roar filled the cavern.
Marcel couldn’t let his confidence be shaken by uncertainty. He would have to be more specific. He began to focus on the flames that would surely issue from Mortregis’s mouth any minute. Inside it there must be a seething well of heat generated by its evil. He would harness that to his own purpose. Drawing images of flame and fire into his mind, he thrust them outwards, this time backed up by the words of his most powerful spells. The raging flames would consume their creator, just as they had done three years ago, before the walls of Elstenwyck.
This time there was a response. Fire streamed from Mortregis’s mouth, shooting upwards to the higher reaches of the cavern and illuminating the rock above for the first time. The rich gold of the flames turned back on itself, falling towards the dragon until it swept over the beast’s dark hide in a waterfall of cascading yellow and red.
That’s it. That will be enough, Marcel told himself, relieved.
But the flames died away, the searing heat dispersed and still Mortregis stood blocking the way across the enormous cavern, watching him with its snout pulled back into an ugly grimace, which was as close as a dragon could come to a smile.
Marcel backed away, watching for signs of sudden fire in the dragon’s throat and at the same time crabbing sideways towards the lip of rock where the others remained in hiding. As soon as he joined them, he led them further away, deep into the second cavern where they weren’t quite so vulnerable if the dragon decided to attack after all.
‘What’s wrong?’ Fergus asked. ‘You seemed so sure you could kill Mortregis like before.’
‘I was sure, only now … I don’t know. There’s something happening here that I don’t understand.’
‘Maybe your magic’s not as strong as you think it is,’ Bea suggested, not unkindly.
Marcel considered her words as though they were a trinket he’d been offered in the marketplace, to be judged carefully for its worth and kept for himself if he wanted to pay the price.
‘No, that’s not it,’ he said sincerely. ‘There’s more to what’s going on here than magic. All the spells I learned in Noam, all the books I’ve read … there was nothing that can help me. I have to work it out.’
‘We have to work it out,’ Fergus corrected him.
‘Yes, all right. We,’ said Marcel, not wanting an argument. He let his eyes settle on Fergus, inviting him to have his say.
‘Why didn’t it try to kill you?’ Fergus began. ‘I was watching the whole time and Mortregis just stood there, showing itself off like it was some kind of living barrier, daring us to break through.’
‘Yes, exactly,’ Marcel agreed. ‘It was enough to stop Suskin, but it didn’t stop …’ His voice trailed away.
‘Who?’ Fergus demanded. ‘Who didn’t it stop?’
‘Lord Alwyn,’ said Bea, and after this there was no point in hoarding secrets.
‘Yes,’ Marcel said. ‘I didn’t read far enough into the green book, but he came this way long before Suskin and he must have gone beyond the dragon.’
‘How, though? His powers weren’t a match for yours, Marcel,’ asked Fergus.
Marcel took the pack from his back, untying the straps with fumbling fingers until the book lay open in his hands.
‘It seems a bit late to be learning new magic,’ Fergus commented with a humour as dry as the dust around them.
‘I’m looking for the part where …’
His voice faded as he used every skerrick of concentration to decipher the hidden story within each page. Where was it? The task proved too much for his patience and he began to flick from page to page, none of them able to tell him what he desperately wanted to know. At last he found a few words about a dragon, but not about how Alwyn had managed to get past it. With eyes and mind becoming more exhausted with each word, Marcel read of purple and gold skin, of wings like a giant bat’s and horns sprouting from the head, the shoulders, even the knees.
‘This isn’t Mortregis,’ he said aloud. ‘Lord Alwyn must have come up against a different dragon.’
And Suskin’s words had painted another horror altogether, so were there three dragons? It didn’t seem possible.
In what Marcel had managed to glean from the green book in those feverish minutes, one word was repeated many times. ‘Illusion,’ he whispered. Alwyn had been quite adamant about it: Baden Dark was a realm of illusion. And who should know that better than another wizard? Hadn’t Marcel heard it a hundred times in Noam, and before that in everything he’d learned about magic? So much of it was based on illusion, on what you saw being a clever substitute for the truth beneath.
‘Illusion,’ he said again.
‘What are you thinking?’ Bea asked. ‘Can that book help us?’
‘A little. It’s given me an idea. Lord Alwyn was dead before Mortregis grew out of the evil in Starkey’s body.’
The pair gaped at him. ‘Yes, I suppose so. Why is that important?’ asked Fergus.
‘So he never saw our dragon.’
‘Our dragon! What are you getting at?’
‘He knew what dragons were though; like everyone else, he had an idea of what they looked like.’
‘There are plenty of pictures in books.’
‘Yes, and all of them drawn by people who’ve never seen a real dragon. So they had to imagine the talons, the wings and the horns.’
‘Horns? Mortregis doesn’t have any horns.’
‘No, and that’s just it. Lord Alwyn’s dragon did,’ he said, holding out the book in front of them. ‘And Suskin’s dragon had talons on the end of its tail, or the shadow that he was so frightened of did.’
‘Mortregis is real, though,’ said Bea. ‘It’s not a shadow, not a picture in a book. We can all see it through there.’ And in case he needed reminding, she pointed to the wide opening into the next cavern.
‘And it’s the same one we all saw three years ago. We have the same memory of it,’ said Marcel, hinting at the solution forming in his mind. ‘What colour are the scales on its belly,’ he asked.
‘Black,’ said Fergus.
‘Green,’ said Bea.
‘And the tongue?’
‘Red.’
‘Red, with purple underneath,’ Bea corrected Fergus.
‘It’s green,’ said Marcel.
They glared at him, still utterly confused.
‘It’s an illusion,’ he told them. ‘That dragon didn’t feel my magic because it’s not really there.’
‘That’s ridiculous,’ said Fergus hotly. ‘Of course it’s there. We all saw it.’
‘What each of us is seeing is the beast we remember, but we each remember it a little bit differently. That’s why Suskin saw a different dragon.’ And Lord Alwyn, as well, he told himself. ‘Each of us is seeing what our own mind creates. It’s only our belief that makes it real.’
‘Marcel, it’s as tall as the towers in Elstenwyck, it breathes fire! I could feel the heat singeing my skin,’ said Bea. ‘How could that come out of my own h
ead?’
Marcel had no easy answer, but he was certain now that he knew how to get past the dragon. ‘We have to convince ourselves that there’s nothing there at all. We have to unbelieve it.’
He led them back to the arched opening into the third cavern. Mortregis was waiting for him, aware of their vantage point now and happy to show it with a roar that matched its earlier thunder. Yes, it was challenging him more than it threatened, and he would meet that challenge, not with magic itself but his insight into how it worked.
Concentrate, he urged. The beast was an illusion created by his own mind and given solid flesh by a magic he didn’t understand. To make it disappear all he had to do was …
Mortregis sprayed a plume of fire carelessly into the air above its head, startling Marcel and killing off the steady control he’d been gaining over his mind.
Try again. Ignore the beast’s presence, believe it’s not truly here. He closed his eyes, determined to unbelieve. There was no spell he could muster, no way to achieve this difficult goal but inside his mind. He must believe that he was right. He must unbelieve the presence of Mortregis.
He didn’t feel any change, didn’t hear any sound, didn’t sense a sudden blackness beneath his eyelids, but somehow he knew. He opened his eyes, expecting the massive chamber to be empty.
It wasn’t. Mortregis stood as solid as ever, blocking their path.
So what had happened moments earlier to make him think that … Wait, the monstrous tongue flicking in and out of that hideous mouth was red, not green as he’d told the others. The red tongue came from their memories. There had been a change. What he saw now grew out of another mind, not his own.
‘It works. I was right!’ he crowed, rushing back to his companions and dragging them both nearer. He told them about the tongue’s colour, his only proof. ‘Trust me! If you can unbelieve, there won’t be any flesh and blood dragon to see.’
He made them stand where he had stood, instructing them to concentrate as he had done. ‘Say it. There is no dragon here to stop us. Mortregis is an illusion that will disappear as soon as I unbelieve.’
Like him, they closed their eyes at the strain, then opened them, their faces alive with the same hope — that the dragon would be gone.
It was still there. Marcel didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know it for he could see the hated shape reflected in his companions’ eyes.
When he did turn around to face his frustration, he looked at the beast’s deadly weapons — its solid form, its fire, its teeth, its claws — then noticed its tongue: red with purple underneath. And the scales on the belly were green. Bea! She had described the monster this way; this was her vision of Mortregis. He focused his attention on her alone.
‘Listen to me. Fergus has managed to unbelieve. You’re the one who can’t quite do it. Hold my hand,’ he ordered, hoping the touch of their skins might help to release her fear. ‘Tell me you don’t believe that Mortregis is really here.’
‘No, I can’t do it. I just don’t …’ She turned away as though she couldn’t bear to have his eyes so focused upon her.
The dragon seemed to know she was the one who gave it flesh and blood. It lurched towards them, no longer content to roar and threaten.
‘Quickly, back into the other cavern,’ Marcel commanded.
They retreated to where he’d left the book in the dust, but this was no longer a refuge. The dragon’s snout appeared through the opening. The jaws opened wide, flame burst forth and only a timely sweep of Marcel’s hand deflected the terrible heat away from their bodies. Even then, smoke rose from the shoulder of Fergus’s jacket, and there was worse to discover yet.
‘Marcel, look!’ cried Fergus, pointing to a surge of flame only a few feet away. When Marcel peered closer, he saw what was making those flames.
‘The book! There’s so much of it I haven’t read!’
But as he lunged towards it, Mortregis showered them with its fiery breath a second time, forcing him to retreat within the protection of his own magic. By then, there was nothing of the green book but ash.
They ran deeper into the darkness while behind them Mortregis came on, squeezing its hideous shape through the archway and breaking away rocks that blocked its path.
Marcel grabbed Bea and made her face away from the approaching peril. ‘It’s you, Bea. Mortregis is only here because you remember. Whatever magic is conjuring it into life is using your memory. If you can believe the dragon isn’t here, then it will disappear.’
‘No, no, that can’t happen,’ she cried.
‘It can. It’s a form of magic. Not mine, but sorcery from somewhere.’
Every feature in Bea’s face grimaced in disbelief.
Mortregis had broken through the opening. Already it was gathering itself, filling its lungs to breathe death upon the three of them. If Marcel broke from Bea now to conjure another protective spell, she would surely turn to see the dragon and all chance of convincing her would be gone.
‘Bea, do you trust me?’ he asked at last. He wrapped his arms around her; she was so much bigger than when he had first met her, but tiny all the same compared with him.
‘Trust,’ she said, and hesitated. The moment seemed to stretch to the end of their lives. Then a murmur, the simplest of words: ‘Yes, I trust you, Marcel,’ and without a roar, or a shudder, or even a spout of flame, the dragon vanished from the cavern, leaving silence where only seconds before the rage of a horrible beast had filled their ears and raked their skins as harshly as talons.
‘You did it!’ cried Fergus triumphantly. ‘You convinced yourself. You beat the magic.’
He rushed to her and with Marcel swept in between them, making three bodies all crushed together, they hugged in sheer relief that they were still alive.
‘I thought we were finished, but you beat the magic,’ he said again.
‘Yes, but where did it come from?’ Marcel asked bluntly, looking away from them. ‘Something so powerful couldn’t just happen on its own. There was sorcery behind it, to make it grow out of our memories like that. Celebrate now if you like, but we’re going to face that sorcery sooner or later. You should go back now, both of you, while I’m still alive to open a breach for you.’
‘We’ve talked about that,’ complained Fergus. ‘We’re not having the whole argument over again.’
Bea seemed to have heard something else in Marcel’s voice. She had stopped smiling and was inspecting him with the cool glare of dismay. ‘Sounds to me like you expect to die, Marcel, like it’s not just a danger but a destiny.’ She let her words linger in the close air of Baden Dark before asking, ‘How will you destroy this place anyway?’
Marcel felt the sharp edge of her suspicion. He wasn’t afraid to answer, though. Perhaps this was what he needed to make Bea turn back. ‘Baden Dark is no ordinary place. I’ve tried to explain. If I can destroy it, I’ll have to do it from the inside.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Fergus, who sensed the change now as well.
‘Haven’t you worked it out? If this place is truly the source of evil that Noam’s sages spoke about, then it doesn’t matter what price I have to pay. It has to be defeated once and for all.’
‘What price?’
‘The magic. It will be greater than anything I’ve ever done. I can’t even imagine what it will do, except that there must be nothing left of Baden Dark when it’s finished, and nothing left of me, most likely. That’s the price and we have to pay it. Centuries after we’re gone, people will look back to the time when the Mortal Kingdoms were freed from war, from greed, from the darkness that infests the souls of men and women. This will be the time when everything changed.’
‘Is that why you’ve come back to Baden Dark?’ Bea asked coldly. ‘So there’ll be stories that remember your name forever.’
Marcel couldn’t read her face. He saw shock, yes, and something he wasn’t used to seeing. She moved towards him, still with that unreadable set to her features. As soon as she was
in range, she slapped him, hard, across the face.
‘You’re acting like a fool, Marcel, like that Suskin, except your magic is ten times greater than his and that makes you ten times the fool. You don’t know what Baden Dark really is any more than we do and, if you ask me, you’re too blind to find out. How will you be able to make that kind of judgement when you can’t even see what your magic has done to you?’
Marcel listened with his hand to his face, startled as much by who had slapped him as the pain itself.
‘But if I’m right about this place,’ he stammered lamely. ‘The good it will bring if I can —’
‘Yes, we know what you’re up to now, but are you doing this for the good of everyone who lives after you or because you want them to remember you in their songs? There’s a difference, Marcel, a big difference.’
Marcel’s face burned where Bea’s hand had stung his cheek, and the heat seeped deeper into his body. As he strode away, leading them once more into Baden Dark, he tried to empty his mind of everything but the steady slog of one foot in front of the other. It was no use though: his head was too full, too noisy. He felt the pain in places that he hadn’t known were part of him.
He found himself stealing glances towards Bea, only to find her staring ahead as he was pretending to do. But she’d stopped pretending that they were the friends they had once been when last they faced a dragon and the darkness of forces they didn’t understand. How strange it was that he had companions on a journey he had planned to make on his own and yet he felt more alone than if there was no one walking beside him. He’d never been separate and isolated like this. Against all his earlier foes, no matter what the odds against him, he had always had Nicola or Bea or Fergus at his side. Now two of them were with him, but ranged against him.
Doubt. That was what these two had brought with them. They had followed him down that dangerous chasm and into Baden Dark to bring him the one weakness he dreaded. Was he doing the right thing? Was he right about Baden Dark?
The Book from Baden Dark Page 16
