by Gow, Kailin
“You know it was going to take days to reach the dragon?” Gem said. The others nodded. “Well, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that I think we’ve just been shown a short cut.”
“And the bad news?” Goolrick asked, brushing off his robes.
“There might be one or two zombies in the way.”
Sparks followed closely behind Gem. He didn’t know how she’d understood the shadow creatures, but if she knew a way of getting to the dragon quickly, he was willing to trust her…
Kat shuddered as she walked, picking at bits of shadow. Trust there to be something she was actually afraid of around…
Jack was busy looking at the rocks they passed. They were looking less like just rocks, and increasingly hand worked, the further they went. The style looked even older than Anachronia’s medieval feel, and he wondered what would be waiting for them…
Rio kept looking over his shoulder. He didn’t trust that the shadows wouldn’t come back. So far though, all he’d seen was the wizard, smiling to himself as he walked…
Goolrick couldn’t believe how well things were working out. Gem had responded perfectly to the extra charm he had placed on the ring, the one that meant she couldn’t resist any desires of his she saw. Though it would have been nice to think, Goolrick admitted to himself, that there was some part of her that had really wanted to kiss him…
Chapter 11
The way up the mountain was hard, but then what did Gem expect from a secret entrance? If it were easy to get to, everyone would know about it. As it was, it didn’t look like anyone had been this way in years, if not centuries. While the path had clearly been cut by human hands, fallen stones and worn away sections made the climb almost as hard in places as if it had been over rough rock.
There were statues here and there among the rocks. Jack seemed fascinated by them, stopping at each one until one of the others tugged him back into motion.
“What is it about them, Jack?” Gem asked after a while.
“W-well,” Jack began, and Gem winced. She had been hoping that his nervousness around her would abate given time, but there was still no sign of it, “all of these seem so old, and the style of dress is different. It’s more old-fashioned. These statues were built a long time ago.”
“Maybe we’ll see more further on,” Gem prompted. She didn’t really mind Jack’s wanderings away from the main point, but at the moment any digression was going to cost them time. Thankfully, her words were enough to get him moving again.
They didn’t have to go far before they ran into something that caught Jack’s interest again, but to be fair, the great entranceway before them had everyone there staring up at it. The intricate carving of the marble pillars and stone doors made even Anachronia’s castle look prosaic by comparison, and that was far from ordinary.
“Assuming what I saw is right,” Gem said, the way to the dragon is through here. Is everyone ready?”
The others nodded. Sparks and Rio pushed at the nearest of the doors. It ground open slowly to let the group slip inside one by one. Once inside, Gem paused to look the place over. There was certainly nothing frugal or thrifty about it. Gold leaf covered marble, and gems glinted in the shaft of light let in by the open door. Arches suggested spaces for tombs or something similar. Gem and Rio fetched the flashlights out of their satchels, and several of Goolrick’s men produced wooden torches that they lit, casting a flickering glow over the place. In the light, it seemed even more beautiful. Except for one thing…
“You know how you said there might be one or two zombies?” Kat said.
“Yes?”
“There are never just one or two zombies.”
Every archway held human sized figures, some little more than bleached bone, some mummified and wrapped in bandages, while a few looked perfectly preserved. Every figure wore armor of some sort. It was battered and rusted, but Gem was willing to bet that it would still work. So would the weapons, probably, and there were plenty of them.
“It’s all…wrong,” Jack said. “There’s dozens of different types of sword alone. None of it fits.”
Gem saw Goolrick draw his sword, looking over the massed hordes cautiously.
“Perhaps you could abstain from historical comment until we are safely through this?” he suggested.
“It might be a good idea to leave it alone for now, Jack,” Gem agreed, though she said it more gently. “It’s probably only a matter of time before those things start moving.”
“We don’t know that they will,” Sparks pointed out, edging forward. Gem noticed that he drew his sword anyway.
“They will.” Kat seemed certain of it. “Haven’t you ever seen any movies?”
It was like that was a signal for it. It seemed utterly spontaneous, but then, the dead were probably pretty good at acting without thinking. As one, the ranks of dead warriors converged on them, and Gem found herself reaching for her bow. Her first arrow passed straight through an armored skeleton’s ribcage, but she adjusted her aim with the second, hitting it in the knee and bringing it down in a clatter of bone and metal. Jack had less luck with his shots, hitting only armor.
“Aim for the unprotected parts,” Gem told him, and his next shot was better, pinning one of the zombie-things to a wall while it struggled to work out what was happening. Gem brought down another skeleton.
Rio and Sparks battered undead creatures with blow after blow from their swords. The things were slow, but since it was hard to kill something that was already dead, they were hard to hurt, and there were a lot of them. Even with Goolrick’s men, the creatures had them well outnumbered.
It didn’t seem to bother Goolrick. While his men hacked and slashed around him, he fought coolly, aiming powerful blows at whichever opponent was nearest while parrying any slashes from ancient weapons that came close. Kat was currently near to him, though she didn’t stay there long. She wove her way though the dead, darting and dodging, too fast for any of them to catch up with her as she aimed the occasional stab low, to bring them down.
A zombie burst through the main line of fighting, shambling towards the spot where Gem and Jack stood. Without thinking, Gem put two arrows through it. Jack managed a third. A hacking blow from Sparks beheaded it, and it fell.
With space to think, Gem tried to work out where she could help the most. Sparks, Rio and Goolrick seemed to be doing well, but there were spots where the fighting was harder. It took Gem a second to realize that they were mostly around the bandaged figures of the mummies. She said as much to Jack.
“M-maybe the mummification process makes them tougher?”
“Whatever it does, we need to find a way to stop them. Keep them off me a moment.”
Jack did his best, shooting at anything that looked like it might break through. Gem used the time to fish through her satchel and dig out some bandages from the first aid kit, along with the plastic lighter. She wrapped strips of the bandages around arrows. Picking one up, she lit it.
“Instant flaming arrows,” she explained, then fired at one of the mummies.
It worked. Whatever else the mummification process did, it also made mummies extremely flammable. In seconds it was little more than a burning pillar of bandages. By that time, Gem had fired two more shots, hitting two more of the creatures.
While she was doing that, the others were making headway with the rest of the horde. It was almost a shock to see Rio and Sparks working as a team, with each boy parrying attacks aimed at the other. They hacked and slashed their way through a pair of skeletons as Gem watched, then turned their attentions to a zombie. Rio cut it down at the knee, while Sparks took its head off. Beside them, Goolrick shattered a skeleton with a mighty blow of his sword, while Kat achieved much the same effect simply by tripping one up as it tried to stab her.
One final skeleton tried to throw itself at Kat as she knelt there. Gem knocked an arrow and fired, smashing its skull to powder dry fragments.
“Thanks,” Kat called over, then l
ooked around at the mess left in the wake of the battle. “You know, I really hope we don’t have to clean up all this.”
Gem sort of hoped so too. Bits of bone covered the floor. A skull rolled forlornly off to one side. In the middle of things were three piles of ash with scraps of bandages in them, all that remained of the mummies she destroyed. She looked around, making sure that no one was badly hurt. A few of Goolrick’s men had minor injuries, but the others seemed unharmed. Goolrick cleaned his sword and sheathed it.
“It seems that the dead are no match for the fortitude of the living.”
“Undead nil, humans one,” Sparks echoed. In fact, the whole mood seemed a lot more jubilant. Rio actually high-fived Jack, who admittedly had to shake some feeling back into his hand afterwards. Kat was grinning like she had never thought the world could be such a happy place. Gem briefly found herself thinking that, if people generally reacted this well to fighting hordes of undead, maybe more people ought to try it. Then again, maybe not.
“From here, we go to face the dragon!” Goolrick announced, and his men let out a cheer. “All we have to do is find the way to its lair!”
“A regular demagogue, isn’t he?” Kat said. “A right rabble-rouser. And a handsome one too.”
“Kat,” Gem warned.
“What?” Kat continued a little more softly. “You’re the one who kissed him.”
Gem didn’t blush, because that wasn’t the sort of thing she generally did, but she knew the embarrassment would show on her face.
“Yes, but… well, I’m not sure… look, Kat, it’s complicated.”
“Of course it is. Anyway, he is handsome, if that older guy thing is what you like. One of my friends has a boyfriend in… I guess it’s what you’d call college, and-”
“Kat,” Gem interrupted, “shouldn’t we be trying to find a dragon about now?”
Kat walked off to help the search, but she was definitely smirking as she did it.
The search didn’t take long. It was Sparks who found the way through, noticing a crack in the stone wall at the far end of the catacombs, along with what looked like grooves worn into the stone floor by constant use. A little more looking revealed a series of chains and pulleys. Sparks pointed to one of them.
“I think they doors should open if we pull on this one.”
Gem raised an eyebrow.
“You’re sure?”
“I like to know how things work, remember?”
That was good enough for Gem, and apparently good enough for Goolrick, who had a couple of his men haul on the chain Sparks had indicated. With a harsh whine of stone on stone, the doors swung open, revealing a tunnel, rough hewn and unlit, barely wide enough to get down in single file. Sparks insisted on going first, but Gem got in behind him on the basis that she had one of the flashlights. The others followed in their turn.
The tunnel kept on for what seemed to be miles, but probably wasn’t that far in reality. It was just that it kept switching back on itself. Surprisingly for a tunnel, it was warm. From the little Gem knew about caving, she had thought that all caves were cold, and in a lot of cases damp too. The warm nature of this tunnel didn’t really make up for it being cramped and claustrophobic though.
No sooner had Gem thought it than the tunnel started to widen, quickly giving way to a much larger space, larger even than the hall they’d been in before. It looked like a natural cavern, open to the sky at one end, but it was bigger than any cave Gem had seen. She could see the litter of bones, both human and animal, that lay scattered across the cavern floor. Something iridescent shimmered on the far side. A few of Goolrick’s men came forward with their torches, and the iridescence brightened.
It took Gem a moment to really see it. Maybe that was because, no matter how many times someone tells you that you’re going to see a dragon, it’s still hard to picture the reality of a scaly form bigger than a bus, with huge bat wings spread around three sleeping heads like a blanket. Clawed feet larger than a human served as pillows for at least one of the heads.
“I think it might be sleeping,” Rio said. He stepped forward. Several of the others did the same. Sparks hurried to keep up with the other boy. Gem edged forward more cautiously.
They’d made it halfway to the beast before something went wrong. Gem didn’t know which of them stepped on the bone, but it cracked in a way that made the average dry twig look almost amateurish. Six eyelids lifted simultaneously, revealing six yellow, snakelike eyes. There was a still moment as everyone froze in place, half-hoping the thing would go back to sleep, then, with a rumble like a jet taking off, the dragon woke.
Sparks stared up at the dragon, but he didn’t step back. He’d spent his life living around creatures bigger than he was, and he knew that you couldn’t show them any fear. Instead, he hefted his sword, waiting for the battle that would surely come…
Rio steeled himself for the fight. The dragon was big, sure. It probably wouldn’t be easy. But after the time they’d just had against the zombies and skeletons, how much harder could it be?
Kat watched the dragon’s head weave back and forth, noting the rhythm of it. It would be so easy to dodge past that, she decided. Just like skating past someone. This wouldn’t be a problem at all…
Even Jack felt confident. After all, the stories people used to tell, even if they were made up ones, were all about people defeating dragons, not about being eaten by them…
Goolrick hung back with his men. Soon, the beast that had been plaguing his people would be slain…
Chapter 12
The five of them charged for the dragon at once. Maybe it was the success against the dead things, or maybe it was just that she didn’t feel like staying nicely in front of something that could breathe fire, but Gem didn’t even think of standing back and using her bow. Instead, she drew her dagger, thinking that the silver blade might find its way into some vital spot on the great beast.
Her dagger clutched tightly in her right hand, Gem leapt for the dragon’s back. She landed lightly, gripping the edges of the dragon’s scales in an effort to gain purchased. A few feet ahead, she could see Sparks doing much the same thing.
“Must be like riding a horse for a ranch boy like you!” she called over.
“Horses mostly aren’t trying to kill you.”
Gem looked up then, and saw that the dragon’s three heads had curled round so that the thing stared at the spot they had landed like a cat trying to work out where a flea was. She saw Sparks draw his sword and bring it down in a mighty sweep of steel.
It bounced off.
Gem tried her own weapon, aiming for one of the gaps between the dragon’s scales. The dagger didn’t make so much as a dent. Below, she saw Kat dart beneath its belly with her sword stabbing upwards, Rio hacking at the thing’s clawed leg and Jack trying an in expert blow with a knife. None of it seemed to make any impact.
The dragon chose that moment to shake itself like the largest wet dog the world had ever seen. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake, and Gem saw Sparks shaken loose and flung across the cavern, landing awkwardly and not managing to stand. It was all Gem could do to cling on herself, and even then she had to drop her dagger and grab hold with both hands.
The moment the hand wearing Goolrick’s ring touched a scale, of course, Gem found herself flooded with the dragon’s wants, so that she had to fight almost as hard to concentrate as to stay on the thing’s back. Images came to Gem, of anger, and of destroying the intruders invading her home. Not her home, the dragon’s. Gem struggled to keep her thoughts separate as the dragon thrashed.
She saw something else then. The reason the dragon was so furious. It wasn’t just that humans were here to attack it, though that was bad enough. It was trying to protect something… an egg. Gem clearly saw an image of a pearl white egg, bigger than a paving slab. She felt a fierce, protective love for it. Gem also felt confusion, and the ache of loss. Something had been into her cave. Taken her egg. Something that smelled of feath
ers and blood. An image came to her of a wooded place. She’d fly there just as soon as she’d dealt with these tiny things…
Gem threw herself from the dragon in an effort to separate herself from the strength of its desires, managing to land better than Sparks had. She scrambled over to him and tried to drag him backwards from the fight, away from the dragon. Sparks made a pained sound.
“Some tough guy I am.”
“I don’t know,” Gem said, gasping with the effort of dragging the larger boy, “I think it’s kind of cute for a boy to have a vulnerable side.”
“This is more of a broken leg side. Convergence”
When Sparks used it, the ruler word seemed obvious, though Gem doubted she would have been able to risk using it on someone when she wasn’t sure what was wrong. Sparks bit back a scream as the bones in his leg knit, but then forced himself to his feet.
“I’ve got to get back to the fight,” he declared.
“Sparks, wait-”
“There’s no time.” He ran off before Gem could tell him what she had seen. She could understand his urgency. The dragon swished its tail, catching Kat before even she could dodge. It knocked her sprawling, and Rio had to pull her out of the way before a great claw could pin her to the rock. Jack barely dodged a jet of flame from one of the dragon’s heads. Gem heard him yell, “emulate”, and suddenly there were three of him. The trouble was, that just meant one for each of the dragon’s heads. They darted down at him, making Gem gasp as two of them plunged through versions of him. The third image, the real Jack, managed to avoid being bitten in half, but was still smashed aside by the middle head.
Goolrick and his men waded into the fray then, and again the wizard swung his sword in calm, thought out blows. They rang against the dragon’s skin like a particularly persistent door-to-door salesman hammering on a door, and to even less effect. Sparks and Rio joined him in a furious assault on the hide of the thing, but even with all of Goolrick’s men joining in, they couldn’t break through the dragon’s scales.
