“Then maybe we should all go inside?” Uldo suggested, although his provoked a look of alarm from Maddox.
Blake shook his head. “No. That would be a bad idea. We’d have no way of bringing the dragon under control. And I’m not going in there to try and kill it. That would be madness in such a confined space and in such poor visibility.”
“It’s madness anyway,” Uldo grumbled.
“It’s the only chance we have,” Blake countered. And, as if to signal that the matter had been settled, he dragged his rifle’s strap over his head and pushed the weapon into Uldo’s hands. “Here. You take this.”
“I prefer my axes,” the dwarf protested.
“You’ll need to lay down a constant stream of fire, remember? The object of the exercise is to keep it distracted. The Jag rifle will be better.”
Uldo looked down at the weapon and pulled a sour face.
“You have used one before, haven’t you?” Blake added.
“Of course!”
“Good.” Blake stepped back and, from the loop brace across his back, slid free his lance. Now, after all these years, the weapon felt slight and inconsequential in his hands: just a foot and a half of finely crafted dwarfish adamantine composite, with a wicked sliver of reenforced cold iron at the tip. Uldo was right too. Even at his most zealous, his most furious, Blake had never sought a dragon out in its lair. There were just too many potential dangers and too many variables that could have worked against him. But there was also part of him that simply could not bear to wait or walk away. It was in there. He was sure of it. And after so many years of searching, he needed to see. He needed to confront the manifestation of the nightmare that he had been torturing himself with since Kaylen’s death.
“Blake? Are you alright?”
It was Maddox who spoke. Blake lifted his eyes. They were hard and steady.
“Get yourself into position,” he told Maddox and Uldo. “Both of you on the west side of the canyon. Draw the dragon’s eye toward you and away from Cid. Distract it for as long as you can. In the meantime, I’ll keep my comm link open just in case, but maintain radio silence until I initiate any conversation, okay?”
“You really think this is going to work?” Uldo asked.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” Blake gripped the lance in his hands. “But with this I’ll have a chance.”
4
They followed Blake out from the behind the canyon wall until they parted ways, Uldo and Maddox heading to seek shelter behind a grouping of boulders a few feet from the lair. Blake continued to the beacon and switched it off. No sense in leaving the thing on, wailing through the rain, he thought. Then he briefly offered up a glance to where Cid was still crouched in position. Whether the golem was tuned in to the rest of the party’s communications frequency and overheard the new plan was not entirely clear. He simply watched as Blake picked himself up and carried on, arriving on the edge of creeping tendrils of noxious smoke that spread out from the entrance to the lair, before clenching his fist to active his force shield. An oval barrier crackled into life, throwing up an ethereal glow that would serve as his only light as he delved into the darkness. He just hoped it would be bright enough to guide his way.
5
The entrance was a black rent in the side of the canyon wall, long and shallow, although wider and taller now that Blake stood before it. Even through his respirator the biting tang of poisonous fumes dried out his throat and left a bitter taste on his tongue. He coughed, perhaps more out of a psychosomatic reaction than any real need to clear the toxins from his lungs, yet he was aware his eyes were stinging behind his goggles as he hesitated at the brink, the yellow, bubbling soup pooling around his feet no doubt already eating into the fabric of his boots. Blake tried to summon the fearlessness he had counted on so many times before only to find he felt weak and afraid. Maybe he would be like all the rest when the time came? Maybe his courage would fail him and—confronted with the awful majesty and terror of the dragon—he would turn tail and run?
“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Blake murmured to himself, and once he took a steadying breath, he forced himself onward, moving out of the rain and down a pitted slope into the shadow.
There was no way of knowing how far the lair burrowed into the rock. If he had any inkling that he would have been taking a tour of the dragon’s lair, a sonographic mapping drone would have been useful. It would have given him an accurate measure of the twists and turns and potential killing spots he might have to confront on his way. Not that he needed a map to tell him how extensive the lair would be anyway. From experience, he knew it would have to be wide enough and deep enough to offer a creature as big as a dragon the space to move around inside with some comfort. And from the couple of lairs he had investigated in the past—mainly out of simple curiosity once he had slain a dragon—Blake recalled how all the cave systems were warm and dry, with the constant recycling of abrasive gases, enough to pit the walls around it. The dragons had nested at the very limits of the lair too, he remembered. Here they had been surrounded by charred and yellowed bones picked clean not only by the monster itself, but by the excretion of searing chemicals. And there had been no sign of any other living creature that lived alongside the beast; not the smallest or humblest tick or scavenger to feed off a carcass or remains the dragon had left. There had only been the beast alone. Isolated. Friendless. Which was why it had only served to reinforce Blake’s suspicion that there was something unnatural about these creatures, setting them apart in almost every way from the normality of the ecosystems they fed upon. Why the High King was so protective of such a horror seemed a perversity that even now Blake couldn’t understand. And as he stepped deeper into the darkness, so those old certainties began to return: a loathing he had long thought managed by drink and distance bubbled up inside him.
Blake came to a stop.
By now, he had gradually made his way out of the half-light and stood crowded by darkness, the glow of his force shield barely strong enough to light a path before him. Ahead, there was a bend in the cave, and he could see the glittering purple ribs along the walls where once—in another age—water would have hollowed out the lair. Those bones that had not crumbled to dust poked through the fumes lapping around his ankles. Skeletal hands and claws reached up to him as if in pain. Repellent enough, until something even more unnerving brought him to a halt.
The vibration was a rhythmic throb, like a gigantic, laboured heartbeat. Blake felt it through soles of his feet, as if it came from the depths. He recognised it at once. It was clearly the breathing of some gigantic living thing, expelling more poison into the air with each gasp. It was as he had predicted. The dragon was here, waiting somewhere in the dark.
Rygorath. The Red Death.
Blake looked back the way he had come. The seam of grey light that offered him his only escape now appeared very far away, almost out of reach. Then he turned back to the tunnel and concentrated on that slow, almost metronomic rumbling. He supposed it could mean the dragon was at rest. Perhaps it had been lulled by the storm? Even if that were the case, it would not take too much to stir the beast, and if it came for him, he doubted he could make it outside in one piece. Besides, the object of the exercise was to draw the monster out, wasn’t it? Not surprise it if it was in unlikely slumber.
He moved on again.
The lair went on for longer than Blake anticipated. Deeper and farther into lightless reaches the tunnel took him, the urgent throb echoing louder with each step, until he was suspended in nothing more than a cocoon of fidgeting light. The glow from his shield would probably alert the dragon long before he reached its nest. Even so, he moved as noiselessly as possible through the carpet of bones, finding himself wondering how long the dragon had been here. Nyara had said Rygorath had begun to harass the Southern Steppes and the Vallaron Lowlands six months ago, suggesting the dragon had appropriated this lair from another of its kind, now long dead. Dragons had far-reaching memories and
lived for thousands of years. A place such a this would have been remembered. At least, that’s what Blake hoped. Otherwise, the dragon had been rapacious.
Lifting his shield slightly, Blake angled it before him to try and spread out its glowing reach. He had been aware since he had rounded the corner that there was a trembling, hot breeze flurrying up to meet him. His movements had also begun to reverberate slightly, suggesting he was heading toward an opening ahead. And as he came to a tentative halt again, and reached out his force shield before him, his suspicions were confirmed. He had arrived at the brink of a chamber: a vaulted space carpeted in a thin layer of fumes and crowded by towering stalagmites, as thick as the trunks of briarwood trees and almost as tall. The area was huge. Bigger than any other lair he had seen before, while somewhere in its depths the slow, laboured rumbling continued to shudder up to meet him.
Blake realised his mouth had completely run dry and his heart was galloping so fast it was pulsing in his throat as he swept his eyes into the inky blackness. He tried to pick out any tell-tale movement that might inform him exactly how far the dragon was from where he stood. The darkness gave up no clues.
It must be able to see me though, Blake thought. It has to know I’m here.
He moved on regardless, swallowing down his fear, and crossing into the cavern. He forced himself to round one of the great, pitted stalagmites until he stepped down into a shallow hollow. Then he finally stopped. He could bring himself to go no farther.
The dark yawned out before him, the only sound the incessant, rhythm of the monster’s breathing, the world outside now long forgotten. And still the dragon remained unmoved. It was likely trying to draw him deeper into the cavern where his shield would only protect him for so long before he was consumed by dragon’s breath. Which meant, Blake realised, he had only one move left if there was any hope of provoking the beast to follow him out of its lair.
Blake looked down at the lance in his hand.
This was his last roll of the dice, he knew. For if the dragon had any sense of self-preservation at all, it would soon recognise what the weapon meant. That was because of the cold iron. Blake had seen dragons shrink from it, knowing instinctively it would do them harm. There was an almost primordial aversion to its power. He would have to rely upon it now.
All it took was an adjustment of his fingers to activate the power of the sun stones. Blake had tested the lance only once, all the way back on Miria, and at first the stones in the hilt shimmered fitfully. Now they slowly bloomed into life with familiar strength, emitting a faint, urgent hum. Along the lance’s length old dwarfish runes soaked into life one by one, glowing coldly along the lengthening hilt. Then a cold, black, icy smoke started to pour out from vents along the blade, crackling like a mini lightning storm, shedding a stuttering light to rival the shield. Blake eased the lance away from his hip, feeling its power tingle through his hand. It offered him a modicum of confidence. This was the weapon that had defeated many dragons before.
But it didn’t last long.
The dragon’s breathing had suddenly stopped.
Blake broke his head up sharply, the absence of sound as alarming as if the monster had roared. Then, from the depths of the cavern, a deep, warning growl rippled out to meet him, and a wave of sickly yellow smoke rolled out from the darkness. Blake instantly raised his lance, bringing his force shield up to his shoulder. Old muscles tightened instinctively. He narrowed his eyes, searching for some sign of movement. But none came. The dragon was spooked, Blake could tell, offering him a slight prickle of satisfaction. He even dared to advance a few small, careful steps despite every fibre of his being screaming protest. He rounded another pitted stalagmite and stepped down into a shallow hollow as another warning growl rolled out to meet him. Blake came to a hurried stop. His legs would carry him no farther. And now it felt like he was adrift in an ocean. There would be no chance to reach the safety of the tunnel before he was subject to an attack, either by dragon breath or crushing jaws. All he could do was steady the lance in his trembling hands and scan the shadows. There was nothing at first, just the sense that he was being watched intensely. And then, finally, he saw movement.
It was like the wall had come to life. Scales the size of serving dishes, scarred and solid and encrusted like rocks thick with gems, began to slither and rasp out of the dark, forcing Blake to instinctively stumble back, tripping over the lip of the hollow and into another depression. He let out a grunting oath of surprise and amazement, for never in all his days of dragon hunting had he seen something living that was so huge. Was that its long and sinuous neck or tail? Blake couldn’t be certain, until he saw the curving spinal horns, and the bristling knife-like barbs under the jaw. He followed their length toward an unfurling, gigantic head, acid dripping through teeth the length of his forearm. And a single, livid, golden eye slitted against the glare of Blake’s shield, even though it was still loitering on the edge of the pool of light.
So, this was it then, Blake thought in horror and awe. This was the beast; the monster that had killed his Kaylen. And it was beyond his most feverish imaginations: greater in size and more terrible in aspect than any of his nightmares. Even with the lance in his hand, Blake felt entirely inadequate to the challenge of the creature before him. This was a titan of its species, and he was just a man. How could he possibly hope to defeat it?
The dragon tilted its gigantic head as another snarl escaped its jaws, thundering through the cavern. Blake took another involuntary step back, his foot butting up against a rock, eliciting an even deeper, more menacing warning, acid slathering from between the dragon’s teeth, hissing and spitting on the ground like fried fat. Yet still the creature seemed hesitant, and Blake’s frown deepened. Why didn’t it attack? It felt as if the dragon was waiting for something. As if it was nervous. Which would have been ridiculous, had Blake not noticed the dragon’s cat-like eyes sweep down again to where he had set his feet, and he saw what it was looking at.
And only then did Blake finally understand his one, small, tenuous advantage.
THIRTY
1
“The slaying of the dragon is secondary in comparison to the big prize,” Maddox had said, lounging back into the deep cushions. The bar, Hanaway remembered, had been heaving with patrons even in the middle of the day, most of them sucking on bubbling hookahs, filling the shadows with curling rags of smoke. “Forget about teeth, scales, or horns, I’m talking about serious credits here. Life changing money. Credits you’d never be able to spend if you live as long as an elf.”
“And you’re sure it’s there?” Hanaway had asked. “You’re positive?”
“If I weren’t, do you think I’d be asking for your help? Your cut is twenty five percent. I’ll have it placed in an account of your choice automatically when I reach landfall. But I’ll need assurances. I’ll need a guarantee you can get me onto the surface. I don’t need to know the details I just need to know it can be done.”
“It can be done. The question is: is it worth the risk? If I go down this route, there’s no going back for me. I’ll be on the first transport to Thirinal as soon as the money has cleared.”
“And you’ll live like a king in the south.”
“So long as I can get a new identity.”
“That can be arranged. Not that you’ll need it. Nobody gets extradited from Thirinal. They have very strict laws about that sort of thing. It’s a criminals paradise.”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“After this you will be. There’s no hiding from it, Hanaway my friend. And once you set off down this dark path, there’s no telling what you’ll be capable of. Take it from one who knows. Now, perhaps we should seal a deal with a drink, eh?”
The elevator shuddered and, instinctively, Hanaway grabbed at the rail. The motion jerked him back into the present, but he soon turned back to the memories of his dealings with Maddox. The oily little crook had been right. Ever since he had struck the deal, Hanaway had already resorted
to the kind of behaviour he had so often despised in the creatures he had spent his career tracking down. And like so many of them, he had now found himself desperate; trying to plug the holes in a sinking ship.
All because of Gemini Sohn, he thought bitterly.
Now he understood how so many of the perps that had ended on the wrong end of the Ranger Patrol found themselves in a stasis tank or in Icefall Prison. Because no matter how watertight a plan might seem, there were always cracks. And these cracks formed other ones, spidering out in every direction. Which was why he was wearing a space suit and riding an elevator up to the top of the Spire. Still, Hanaway was confident he could manage the situation. So long as Sohn was dead in a ditch somewhere, all he had to worry about was Janick and now this Border Guard Lito. Once she was taken care of, then Hanaway felt he had only to wait for Corvus to deliver the package.
Hanaway lifted his head, taking another gulp of sweet oxygen filtering through his helmet, and squinted against the bars of light crawling across his face. He was nearing the top of the Spire, a journey that had taken him almost five standard minutes, despite the speed at which the elevator was travelling. Now he could feel the mechanism slowing, his stomach roiling as if he had dropped over a steep rise. But it wasn’t just because gravity was taking hold. It had been a long time since he’d been forced to kill someone. He had hoped that it would’ve only been Janick and even then, he wouldn’t have had to get physically involved.
Well, needs must, he thought as he unclipped the holster of his pulse pistol. Then he lowered his head and waited for the elevator doors to open.
2
Lito stood against the balcony and studied a huge storm swirling over the Deep Forest on Terevell as it unfolded. It had been fascinating to watch it gather momentum over the last few hours, lightning flickering across the great maelstrom of cloud. Although it was odd to note that the storm didn’t appear to be moving off now. Once it had gathered farther north, it had slowly tracked southward until it seemed to close in on the mountains where it sat obdurately. For some reason, this seemed an unnatural occurrence to Lito. Not that she was there to study weather patterns. Rather, Janick had sent Lito up to the Spire to monitor communications traffic from the surface. A tedious detail that meant she had had to hook up a spur to the antenna for the last few hours. There were no anomalies. It seemed a massive waste of time. But Lito was used to taking orders without question. It was why she had been assigned to guarding the Thresholds back on Genek IV, considered to be one of the more prestigious details. Not that it had worked out that way. And thinking of Genek IV, Lito found herself gripping the edge of the balcony with her gloves tightly. Leaving Genek had been one of the hardest decisions of her life, but a necessary one. Most everyone in her unit had been suffering from mental fatigue in those last months, and some had even begun to experience unnerving dreams and hallucinations. Lito amongst them. There had always been odd stories about the Narinill Plains—most of which she hadn’t believed when she joined the Thresholds detail. But after a couple of years, she too began to have the sense she was never alone and was being watched. It was as if there were presences all around her; and sometimes she even thought she saw fleeting shadows on the edge of her vision.
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