Dragon Secrets

by Christopher Golden

  Timothy could see Ivar’s nose twitching. The Asura had an acute sense of smell. In this place the boy did not envy his friend. The dark patterns on the Asura’s flesh grew more pronounced, angular and sharp, a sign that the warrior was preparing for the worst.

  “The scent here is wrong,” he said as he poked his head out of the sphere to investigate their surroundings. “There is much misery in this place.”

  Timothy emerged just behind his companion. “I’ll agree with you on that,” he said, looking around the docking bay. As Caiaphas had guessed, the prisoner transport had its own docking place, separate from where he and Leander had entered on their first visit. This room was much smaller and, luckily for them, unstaffed. There was no need to have any sentries on duty in this area, since no one could get in through the ocean-bottom entrance without the proper spell.

  No one but Timothy Cade.

  There wasn’t a moment to spare. Here was a perfect opportunity to penetrate the main facility unnoticed. Timothy ducked back into the craft to retrieve his work belt from its place behind his seat and fastened it about his waist. The belt was made up of various pouches, each containing items that he thought might be helpful to him.

  “Let’s go.” He jumped down to the stone dock. “The quicker we get this done, the quicker we can get out of here.”

  “Then let us use all our speed and wit. I do not like it here.” Ivar hurried after him, one hand hovering by the knife that hung in its sheath at his side.

  Abaddon made the Asura nervous, and Timothy could understand why. It was dark and oppressive, and it felt within that prison as though all the terrible weight of the sea were pressing in on the walls from outside, waiting to crush them and steal the air from their lungs. Ivar did not like enclosed spaces.

  Timothy darted to a door, Ivar at his heels, and pressed his ear to the cool surface, listening for activity on the other side. He heard nothing. “Let’s see where this takes us,” he whispered, placing his fingers in the crack between the door and frame.

  Immediately the nullifying effect of his touch dispersed the magic that kept the door locked. It swung open easily. Cautiously the two moved swiftly into an even larger bay area.

  “This looks familiar,” the boy said. “I think we docked over there on my first visit.” He pointed to an empty stall, its dark oily waters reflecting the faint light thrown from the ghostfire lamps adorning the walls. The spirit lights danced within their glass spheres.

  “And … we exited through here.”

  They stopped before another, larger door and listened before prying it open. This door was heavier than the first, and Timothy appreciated his friend’s assistance in sliding it aside.

  “The place is kind of like a maze, but I think I remember the layout. Come on.”

  They left the bay, pressing close to the wall and sticking to the shadows. Ivar moved so silently that Timothy had to glance back from time to time to assure himself that his friend was still there. As they slunk down the long corridor he looked back once more and saw that Ivar’s flesh was taking on the shade of the wall and the gloom around them. The Asura was blending into his environment. Timothy paused and stared, forcing his eyes to adjust so that he could see Ivar’s silhouette. He didn’t like not being able to hear or see his friend. It made him feel alone.

  The idea of being alone in Abaddon at the bottom of the ocean was not one he wanted to think about for an instant.

  “I find the lack of life in this place unnerving,” Ivar whispered as they stopped at yet another door. “Are there no guards?”

  “I think they’re just overconfident,” Timothy replied, even as his touch neutralized the door’s locking mechanism. “Given its location, and the incredibly powerful magic they used to build this place and to keep its prisoners captive, they’d never dream anyone would be able to break in. Come to think of it, I can’t imagine they’d believe anyone would ever try.”

  The pair continued on, weaving down seemingly endless hallways, and passing through countless doors.

  “Are you sure you know where we are going?” the Asura finally asked as they stepped through yet another doorway. “It all looks very much the same.”

  “I know exactly where we are.” Timothy fixed his gaze upon the door at the end of this latest corridor. He recognized the large glass orb set into the door frame, the one that reminded him of an insect’s eye. “That one will take us into—”

  A sudden clanging reverberated through the stone hallway as the door before them began to open. Timothy’s mind raced. There was no time to run for cover. A brief flash of an imagined future appeared in his head: Verlis in chains, and himself sharing a cell with the Wurm.

  The door swung open, and a guard draped in a red uniform stepped into the hall even as Ivar grabbed Timothy firmly by the shoulder and yanked him backward, dragging him along the corridor to a bend in the wall. It was darker there, pooled in shadow, but certainly not enough to conceal them. Ivar shoved him flat against the cool, stone wall and then covered Timothy’s body with his own. The boy was confused at first, but then realized what his friend was doing as he watched the surface of the Asura’s flesh begin to change, blending with the shadows and the drab color of the wall.

  This will never work! Timothy thought, fighting the panic surging up inside him. His heart hammered so loudly in his chest that he thought for certain it would give them away. He trembled. His throat went dry as he held his breath, willing himself thinner, flatter, as he listened fearfully to the guard’s approaching footfalls.

  The guard let loose a mournful howl, and Timothy was about to shout and try to attack, when he realized that the mage was yawning. He was tired, probably coming off a long, nighttime shift, Timothy thought. Hoped. Timothy closed his eyes tightly and felt Ivar’s muscular body shielding him, conforming to him to block any view of him. The Asura was not breathing.

  Then the guard was there, right next to them. Timothy could feel his presence. Again the man yawned, the soles of his boots clopping loudly on the stone floor. There was a moment that seemed to last for years, and then he was past them, stepping through a side door. And they were alone again.

  Without a word, Ivar began to breathe again and stepped forward to allow Timothy to move away from the wall. It took the boy a few seconds before he dared to take a breath. Then the air rushed into his lungs, and he shook his head in awe.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, putting a firm hand atop Ivar’s shoulder. “That was amazing. Now let’s go get Verlis before we have any more surprises.”

  Ivar grunted in agreement as they continued along the corridor until they reached the door with the glass orb. This was not spell-glass, but the handmade variety. Most mages looked down upon anything crafted by hand rather than by magic, but not all of them felt that way. The Legion Nocturne, for instance, were powerful mages, but also worked with their hands. They lived in wilderness, hunted by hand, and were known as craftsmen. But Timothy had no idea whether there were mages who specialized in blown glass.

  “I’m going to need help with this, I think,” he whispered as he braced his feet and tried to slide the heavy metal door open. Then he paused and glanced back at Ivar. “I should warn you that what’s behind this door is very disturbing.”

  Ivar obliged, the door resisting at first, but soon succumbing to their combined efforts. Quickly they stepped into the room, closing the door behind them, and found themselves in a vast chamber, hundreds of feet wide and equally deep. They stood on a catwalk, the air above and below them filled with honey-yellow spheres of magic, and within each one of them was a prisoner of Abaddon. A criminal. The worst of the worst.

  But were they all? Timothy wondered about that. If Verlis was here only because Parliament felt threatened by him, how many others were in Abaddon because they had enemies in Parliament, or because their opinions were just a little too radical for their more conservative peers? It was a terrible thought, and once it entered his mind it was impossible for him to dis
miss it.

  “This is … terrible,” the Asura warrior said, his eyes moving from one floating, petrified shape to the next. “I would rather be put to death than to suffer like this.”

  Timothy only nodded. He did not have words for the dreadful way this place made him feel.

  “C’mon,” he said, tearing his attention away from the prisoners of Abaddon, tugging on Ivar’s arm. “Verlis is just beyond this door.”

  Timothy turned to the last obstruction and ran his hand along the smooth surface of the door. He could not imagine being a mage and trying to get in here without authorization. No door would have opened for him. And yet, as the un-magician, there wasn’t a door that could keep him out. Even as he touched it, he could feel a flux in the air as the spell keeping the door closed was shattered. The boy grabbed the door handle and tried to slide it open.

  It would not budge.

  He frowned. Just a moment ago he had been thinking about how no door could keep him out. Now he felt foolish. What was this? Timothy studied it, wondering if there was some trick here, some trap, but no. It seemed this door was only heavier, sturdier than the others, as if they had wanted to take extra care to keep the prisoner within.

  “I need your help again, Ivar.” He grunted with exertion as he tried once more to open the door.

  His friend did not respond. Worried, Timothy spun around to find the Asura frozen in his tracks on the catwalk, still staring wide-eyed at the mystical cages hanging weightless in the air around him like stars in a hideous sky

  “Ivar?” he whispered, almost afraid to break the warrior’s intense focus.

  The Asura’s head whipped away from the nightmarish sight, and Timothy saw something in Ivar’s eyes that he had never seen before.

  Fear.

  It was like looking into the eyes of a cornered animal. Timothy did not know much about the Asura’s past, for the warrior did not talk of such things, but he remembered his father once mentioning that Ivar had been in captivity for some time before being brought to Patience. Is he remembering that right now? Timothy wondered. He sympathized, but they didn’t have time for this. Every moment they spent lingering in one place increased the risk of discovery twofold. They had to get to Verlis, free him, and get out of this awful place as quickly as possible.

  “Ivar, I need you,” Timothy said, attempting to cut through the panic he saw in the warrior’s eyes. “I need help.” He gestured toward the barrier before him. “Remember, the quicker we’re through here, the quicker we can get out. Please, Ivar.”

  With those words, the last of the Asura tribe took one final gaze at those hanging cages, and turned back to the boy, an eerie fire burning in his pitch-black eyes. “We must leave this place at once,” he growled, charging the door, practically pushing the boy out of the way. “Not even a Wurm deserves punishment this foul.” The patterns upon his flesh flowed and expanded across the muscular surface of his body as he exerted all his strength to slide the door open with a grinding rumble.

  Timothy didn’t waste any time, running past Ivar into the room, toward the platform upon which sat the metal, non-magical cage where the wardens of Abaddon had confined the Wurm.

  “Verlis?” Timothy whispered as he approached the bars of the cell. The Wurm was lying on his side, his wrists, snout, and wings still shackled. Verlis was so still that for a moment Timothy feared the worst.

  In utter silence, Ivar appeared at Timothy’s side.

  “He’s so still,” the boy noted. “Do you think he’s …?”

  “The Wurm lives,” Ivar said, scrutinizing the dragon’s prone form.

  Then there arose from within that cage a slow, soft rumbling growl that reminded Timothy of the approach of a summer thunderstorm.

  “We’ve come to get you out,” the boy said, moving to the cell’s door, studying the lock. This was no magical contraption, but a sturdy metal thing. He had never seen anything like it, and it occurred to him that devising it must have forced the magicians who designed it to think as they had never thought before.

  They would have had to think like Timothy.

  It would have been his pleasure to dismantle it, to take it apart and figure out how it worked. And he was confident he could have done it, given time. But there was none to be had.

  “We don’t have time for me to figure this out,” Timothy said aloud. “I need to get this open fast, so subtlety is out of the question.” He reached down to one of the pouches hanging from his belt and unhooked it, placing it carefully on the ground. He knelt on the floor and opened the satchel to reveal three teardrop-shaped pieces of fruit.

  “This is not the time to think about your stomach, Timothy,” Ivar said worriedly.

  “I wouldn’t want to eat these,” the boy said as he gently lifted one of the fruits from the satchel. “It’s just the hollowed-out shell of the Xiumi fruit.” The boy loved the bitter flavor of Xiumi fruit. It had been a pleasure scooping it out of these shells, because from there it had ended up in his mouth. But now the shells served a much more important purpose. Slowly he brought one Xiumi shell toward the lock on the cell door.

  “There’s enough Hakka powder and coal in here to blast open this door.”

  The Asura stared as Timothy wedged the Xiumi shell between the door and its frame. “The fruit will explode?”

  The boy laughed. “That’s the plan.” There was a strand of dry, woven tree vine that trailed from a small opening at the top of the shell. Timothy removed a pair of flint stones from another pouch on his work belt and rubbed them together near the end of that fuse. “When this burns, step back,” he said, and a spark leaped from the stones to ignite the dried vine.

  The two quickly retreated, watching as the sputtering flame burned the length of the vine, finally making its way inside the shell. At first Timothy thought his plan had failed, but even as his brain was moving on to his backup plan, he was suddenly, explosively, proven wrong. He felt the blast in the hollow of his chest, as though an invisible hand had just shoved him, and it thumped loudly in the room, echoing in his ears.

  Verlis’s cage stood open. The door had been blown off its hinges and now lay bent and twisted on the platform.

  “Maybe I used a little too much Hakka,” Timothy said as he waved a hand before his face to clear the air of smoke.

  Ivar had moved swiftly and was already inside the cage, squatting beside their ally. Timothy frowned, though, as a strange sound reached his ears. At first he thought it was just the fallout of the explosion, the strange ringing sound that filled his ears, but then realized it was something far more sinister.

  “It’s an alarm,” he said breathlessly, entering the cell. “They know we’re here.”

  Verlis’s eyes opened, but there was a strange film over them, and the Wurm seemed unable to focus. He looked sleepy or drunk. It took Timothy only a moment to realize that the wardens had kept him sedated. Tranquilized. There were drugs in his system. That was going to complicate matters even further.

  “Tim,” the Wurm rasped, barely able to mumble through the metal muzzle over his snout. He lifted his shackled hands. “You came back.”

  “I promised,” the boy said, as if that explained everything. And to him, it did.

  Again Verlis shook his manacled wrists, but Timothy shook his head. “I know, you want me to try to use the Hakka powder to break them. But it’s too dangerous. You’d probably lose your hands. We have to think of another way.”

  The alarm continued to echo ominously through the chamber.

  “It is as you say, my young friend,” Ivar said, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. “We have no time for subtlety.”

  The Asura was right. If they wanted any chance at all to escape, he needed to act at once. He went to the pouch and retrieved another of the explosive shells, removing the dried vine and emptying some of its powdered contents onto the floor. “Obviously, we’re going to want a lot less of this.”

  He threaded the vine back inside the shell and stuck it the
best he could between Verlis’s wrist and the unyielding, metal restraint. “I know your hide is tough, but this is still likely to hurt you,” he said, working the flint stones. “So I’ll apologize in advance.”

  The Wurm only nodded and stared at the explosive shell. On the third try, the fuse caught fire, and Timothy and Ivar turned their backs, shielding their heads against the smaller detonation.

  “Is he …?” Ivar began as they squinted through the swirling smoke.

  The sound of talons scraping metal echoed through the chamber. As the smoke cleared they saw that Verlis had risen to his feet and was tearing away the restraints that hindered his wings. Some of the scales at the Wurm’s wrist had been badly singed by the blast, but the damage had been kept to a minimum. Timothy smiled, his chest swelling with pride and joy at his friend’s release.

  Verlis stretched his wings to their fullest expanse and then beat the air, fanning away the still drifting smoke. He then tore away the muzzle that restrained his snout, tossing the twisted metal to the floor.

  “I am forever in your debt,” the Wurm said, looking down on him with dark eyes, swaying from side to side under the influence of the sedatives.

  “What are friends for?” Timothy asked, grinning, even as the clanging of Abaddon’s alarm spurred them to move. “You ready to move?”

  Verlis nodded, his monstrous face etched with grim determination. And then the Wurm pitched limply to one side, falling unconscious on the floor.

  The alarm grew louder and faster in its insistent pealing, as if to echo the drumming of Timothy’s heartbeat.

  “We’ll never be able to carry him to the diving sphere,” he said, kneeling down beside Verlis and running a concerned hand along the rough scale of the Wurm’s face.

  Ivar turned to gaze toward the entrance to the chamber. “No need for further worry about reaching the sphere,” the Asura said as the door slid open to admit a small cadre of Abaddon guards, their uniforms as red as blood. “I doubt that we will be leaving by those means.”