Cautiously, Zylas prodded Ialin, worried the hummingbird might become stuck on an untenable solution. “Try something different, my friend.”
Ialin gave no reply but a tiny, bird grunt of assent.
Zylas’ gaze swept the visible section of the room for the thousandth time. He could not see the trapdoor through which Carriequinton could descend at any moment. He only knew the scene in front of him: a wall thick with grime, including brown stains that could represent old blood as easily as dirt, the huge mirror the woman stared into obsessively, showing her as she used to look. Prinivere’s illusion spell had fallen. With the return of Quinton’s scars had come a grotesque anger she vented with taunts. She had spoken of destroying Zylas’ friends, his family, everything he held dear. She described in detail the fate that awaited him, the shattering of his bones into shards that would tear his insides like swallowed knives, the mangling of every body part, the puddle of blood his compacted body would leave on the floor. Zylas had become resigned to the likelihood of his death, and the cruel agony of its execution, yet he preferred to avoid it. He had dedicated his life to a worthy cause and wished to see it through. At least, he knew others now believed in it as strongly as he did. His death would not end the quest to lift the Curse hanging so long over Barakhai. So many others had become as serious in their devotion as he. So close. So damned close. He shut his eyes. If only I could have seen it through.
The sounds of Ialin’s beak ceased. “Hole back,” he said at length.
Zylas froze, knowing the broken speech meant Ialin was becoming too birdlike to communicate effectively much longer. “What?”
“Hole back. Hole back!”
Vernon scurried to the lock. “There’s a keyhole on the back.”
“On the back?” Zylas’ lids flicked open. “I’ll hunch as much as possible. Get out of your way. See what you can do, Ialin.”
To Zylas’ relief, Ialin still understood enough to shift his attention to the new discovery. The lacy little wings beat wildly, stirring a gentle wind through Zylas’ fur. The warmth of impending change swirled through his blood. By the reckoning of Collins’ world, he had fifteen minutes. Zylas did not bother to warn his friends. They all measured in switch times, and reminding the hummingbird of his friend’s looming death would only add to the plethora of nervous energy that assailed him at all times. Vernon’s frequent trips to the storage room for honey and sugar had kept Ialin alive so far; but the more upset he got, the more energy the little bird/man expended. And Vernon would know about the coming change because he was also feeling those stirrings.
That last realization mobilized Zylas. Before he could emit a warning, however, Vernon squeaked first. “She’s coming. Carriequinton’s coming.”
It’s over. Zylas refused to dwell on his own approaching fate. “Vernon, run!”
“No!”
“Run, damn it! Get out of here.” Worried the mouse’s loyalty would serve no useful purpose, Zylas preyed on it. “Do it for me, Vernon, as my last wish. The cause can’t survive without both of us, and the lady needs to know what happened here.”
With clear reluctance, Vernon turned tail and scurried back the way he had come. He had barely enough time till his change to get beyond the castle walls. Once there, he was safe. A royal patrol might find him, but only if they stumbled upon him before one of the hundreds of forest creatures in his employ did. Even then, the king’s guards would have no right or reason to capture him.
Footsteps clomped on the stairs, Quinton’s eternally angry tread. Beneath the noise, a close soft click touched Zylas’ sensitive rat ears.
The lock? That reminded Zylas of his companion. “Ialin, fly!”
Too birdlike to reply in words, Ialin continued to tug at the lock.
“Fly! Fly!” Zylas squeaked frantically.
Quinton shouted, “Hey! Hey, you!” She charged toward the cage. “Get away from there, you damned bird.” Her footsteps quickened as she raced toward them.
Ialin surged into the air in a sudden flurry of wings and feathers. He zipped forward.
Quinton made a leap for the hummingbird, tripped over something Zylas could not see, and tumbled to the floor amid a clatter of falling objects.
Go, Ialin! Go!
Ialin appeared suddenly in Zylas’ vision, zipping at full speed toward the mirror.
What’s he doing? With abrupt terror, Zylas understood. Nearly devoid of overlap, Ialin had mistaken the reflection for another room. Zylas had heard of young birds killing themselves by slamming into well-polished metal. If Ialin hit the mirror at his current speed, he would smash his skull and die before he was even aware of the impact. “Ialin, no! Swerve! Damn you, swerve!”
The warning came too late. At top speed, Ialin struck the mirror.
Zylas moaned out an unratlike noise, “No.” He cringed, waiting for the terrible sound of impact that never came. Ialin passed through the mirror as if through an open door. A portal! It’s a magical portal! As he stared, shaking his head, Zylas felt the prickle of the change passing in a wave through him. His time was running short, and the lock remained in place. Dismissing what he had just seen, he thrust his tail through the bars, wrapping it around the cold metal.
Quinton ran toward the mirror, swearing viciously. Her hair grew in strange patches amid the hectic swirl of scar tissue. As if in afterthought, she seized Zylas’ cage. Thrown suddenly against the bars, Zylas clamped his claws against them, seeking grounding in a world gone mad. The index finger of Quinton’s right hand came tantalizingly near his mouth, but it never occurred to him to bite. All of his concentration was directed at wrapping his tail around the padlock and desperately hoping he had not imagined the click.
Collins’ escort stopped in front of an ironbound wooden door, and the incongruity of that one man-made entity in the middle of natural caverns took inordinately long to register. “What’s this?” His voice emerged slurred, even to his own ears. Clearly, he had lost more blood than he had realized.
“It’s a door,” Margast said.
Does he think I’ve lost my mind? Pain and grinding fatigue made Collins irritable. “I can see it’s a fucking door. Where’s it go?”
The lioness whined.
The skinny girl shrugged. “We don’t know. No one’s managed to open it.”
“Locked?” Collins examined the deteriorating structure. It looked as if a solid kick would shatter the soggy wood, leaving only rusted bands of iron on sagging hinges.
“I don’t think so.” Margast’s blue gaze fell to the latch, where Collins saw no bolt or keyhole. “Touching it hurts, though, and it screams.”
The description sounded familiar to Collins. Warded. The only similar magic he knew of kept switchers from the royal quarters. He hoped this worked the same way. Raising his arm, he reached for the latch. His watch slid on his wrist. Since 11:45, he had deliberately avoided glancing at it, superstitiously convinced that if he could not see the time passing, it remained the same. Now, as he readjusted the band, he accidentally read the time. 11:57 A.M. Tears burned Collins’ eyes. Good-bye, Zylas.
Steeling for a ward that might work even against him, Collins reached for the latch. He would open that door no matter the difficulty, no matter the pain. But none came. The door swung open, its rusted hinges screaming, to reveal a room as craggy as the rest of the caverns. A padded wooden chair stood planted toward the middle, several feet from a huge dark pit in the center. Behind him, the animals and humans stared curiously. As Collins entered, Margast attempted to follow, then dropped back with a shrill cry of pain.
Suddenly, a flash of emerald zipped past, in the form of what appeared to be a large insect. Ialin? Before Collins could consider the possibility in more detail, Carrie Quinton charged into the cave, swinging her arms and swearing viciously, a small cage tucked beneath her right arm. A hairless, pink tail protruding through the bars worked frantically at a combination padlock that hung, unlatched, from the door. Before Collins’ eyes, the rat’s form
blurred. Zylas, it’s Zylas. Terror slammed him with a rush of adrenaline. I’m about to watch him implode. The idea galloped through his mind in half an instant. Faster than thought, he hurled himself across the room.
Quinton screamed, leaping from Collins’ path. He wrenched the cage from her grip, twisting off the lock as momentum skidded him into an outcropping. He ignored the pain that impact flared through his injured hip and thrust his hand into the cage. By now, Zylas had become an incomprehensible glow. Seizing an unidentified body part, Collins tore the changing creature from the cage.
For a terrifying instant, it resisted. Then, Zylas flew free, body arcing through the air to land hard on the rocks. As he assumed man form, he continued sliding, out of control, toward the pit.
“No!” Once again, Collins found himself lurching to his friend’s rescue.
“You bastard!” Quinton shouted. A heaved stone slammed into Collins’ shoulder with a raw agony that would have stopped him in his tracks, had he not already sent himself airborne. His wits were nearly scattered, and his arm felt broken. He watched, helpless, as Zylas’ pale form went over the edge of the pit, fingers scrabbling wildly at the edge.
That small attempt of Zylas’ to save himself gained Collins the seconds he needed. He managed to stop his own forward movement at the lip of the pit and grabbed blindly at his friend. By dumb luck, his fingers winched around one of Zylas’ naked forearms. They both stared downward, dislodged pebbles toppling thirty feet to rain down on two enormous dark shapes below them. The dragons!
Collins lay still, focusing all his strength into supporting his dangling friend. All the exhaustion, all the suffering of the last few hours crashed back upon him at once. He closed his eyes as dizziness washed over him, hoping only that he could hold on long enough to regain some semblance of strength, that, somehow, he would find a way to bring them both safely out of danger.
Abruptly, Collins sensed a nearby presence. He whipped open his lids to find Quinton towering over him, her face hideous with scars, her mouth an asymmetrical sneer. “So, you found them. You found them all. What good does it do you?”
Collins’ mind staggered through a tired coating of fuzz. He licked lips that had gone dry as sand. “Carrie. Help us.”
“Why?”
So simple a question deserved an answer Collins could not find in the desert of his fading thoughts. He tried to summon back the natural body chemicals that had given him the ability to act so quickly to save Zylas. “Because the fall alone might kill us. Because, no matter how much you hate us, you don’t want to become a murderer.” Collins’ arms ached, and his grip grew slippery on Zylas’ forearm.
Quinton laughed. “I’ve already crossed that line, with people I didn’t hate half so much as I do you.” She drew right up to where he lay, prone, on the rocks, clutching Zylas. “You see, Ben,” she spat out his name like a bite of bitter fruit, “dragons are natural carnivores. It didn’t take long to teach them to eat Barakhai’s undesirables, and King Terrin was glad to hand execution duties to me.” She grinned with an inhuman wickedness. “He thinks I got rid of the dragons, too. But watch this.” She called down into the darkness. “Dinnertime!”
The creatures in the pit surged like hungry crocodiles. It seemed to Collins that he could not catch a break. He wondered why none of this could have happened while at least one of the dragons held its human form.
Zylas was speaking quickly in a low voice that did not carry. It sounded to Collins like praying, an option that seemed like the only one left. But Collins still had one prospect—that Quinton had not fallen wholly into madness. “Carrie, please. Let’s talk this out like civilized human beings.”
“We’re not,” she hissed, “anymore.”
“I am,” Collins insisted. “And I believe, deep down, you are, too.”
Carrie drew back her foot.
Aware he could not block a kick, Collins continued talking. “I’ll do anything you want, Carrie. Anything. Just name it.”
Carrie barely hesitated. “Marry me.”
Collins despised the thought, but he would have promised more. “Done.”
Quinton’s boot crashed into the bandage on the back of Collins’ head. His thoughts exploded. His grip on Zylas faltered. “Do you think I’d marry a jackass like you? I’d rather watch you die.” She kicked him again.
Collins lay in a red fog of agony. He forced words through the pain. “Carrie, please. What . . . do . . . you . . . want?”
Quinton slammed the toe of her boot into Collins’ groin. Cramps tore through his abdomen. Every muscle went limp. His hold on Zylas failed, and he watched the white blur of his friend’s descent through eyes filled with tears. Quinton brought her face right up to Collins’ and whispered in his ear. “I want . . . you both . . . to die.” Then, she hammered both fists into the back of his claw-ravaged head.
Collins felt himself falling, twisted, and grabbed the only thing he could: Quinton’s leg. He felt it give way. Then air surged around him, and he realized they were both tumbling in savage circles into the pit. Screeching, she embraced him like a lover, all semblance of righteous vengeance lost. They spun wildly for a moment. She was on the bottom when they hit rock-solid ground with enough force to drive all the breath from his lungs, too. Pain stabbed his chest, and he heard bones snap, most of them Quinton’s. She lay still beneath him.
Suddenly, Collins felt hot breath puffing over him. Still gasping for air, he rolled to face a colossal mouth filled with dagger teeth. He only hoped he would die of suffocation before those massive canines skewered him.
Then air wheezed into Collins’ lungs, bringing instinctive comfort even though it violated his wish.
Zylas spoke weakly, but his tone brooked no defiance. “Trinya, no! Bad girl! Bad girl!”
The massive teeth did not withdraw, but they did not impale Collins either. He willed himself to dodge but could not conjure up the strength even to save his own life. “Zylas,” he gasped. “Zylas, she’s listening.”
Zylas did not respond. “Trinya . . . remember . . . me. Come on, girl, remember. Tell . . . your friend . . . to get his claws . . . out of my ribs.”
Collins did not know how long the albino had tried to speak with his daughter, but now he guessed that the low talk he had heard had more to do with attempts to communicate with her, rather than with begging some god to save him. He cringed at Zylas’ plight. Dragon claws could stab all the way through a man. Collins remained silent. He had nothing to add to the situation, and the effort of speaking might steal what remained of his consciousness. Don’t give up, Zylas.
Then, a strange and hesitant voice touched Collins’ mind. *Papa?*
“That’s right, Trinya. It’s your Papa.”
*Papa?*
“I’ve never stopped loving you, Trinya. I’ve been searching, and now I’m so happy I’ve found you.”
*Papa?* The dragon seemed incapable of saying anything more. She retreated from Collins, to his vast relief.
The pit went silent, and Collins hoped Zylas had simply switched to mental communication. Cautiously, measuring each movement against vertigo, Collins slid off of Quinton. He winched his fist closed around a rock.
After a long silence, Zylas’ voice startled Collins. “Carriequinton! Watch our backs. Where is she?”
Collins studied the woman lying still on the rocks. Her tortured features had gone lax, peaceful for the first time since he had met her. What little sanity she had maintained at that time had vanished, leaving a cruel and soulless shell. If she survived, she would need intensive inpatient therapy and strong medications; she would surely refuse both. He could not allow her to cause more suffering to herself, to Barakhai’s innocents, to anyone else. He told his conscience that Quinton was already dead or, if not, she would never make it out of the pit. Then, without further thought, he slammed the stone down on her skull with all his remaining might.
Bone collapsed beneath the blow, and dark clotted blood barely oozed from the wound.
Collins’ gut pitched wildly, and he vomited. Wiping his mouth, he finally managed to speak, as if he had done nothing more than touch the pulse point at her neck. “She’s dead.”
Zylas loosed a relieved sigh. “Now,” he said with frightening weakness. “Trinya, Artoth, get us out of here.”
Though more worried about the dragons eating him than getting left behind, Benton Collins dragged himself up Trinya’s side to settle against the V of musculature between her left wing and neck. His left arm barely functioned. His head throbbed, his body ached, and unconsciousness hovered, promising a reprieve to which he dared not surrender. He doubted the young dragons had experience serving as living helicopters, or that they had the maturity to understand complex commands or situations. His grip and balance might be the only things between him and a deadly fall.
“Are you secured?” Zylas called tiredly through the darkness. Despite his own ordeal and injuries, Zylas had the presence of mind to remain focused and in control.
For once, Collins resisted cracking a joke. “Safe and sound.” He forced some courage of his own. “Don’t forget Ialin.”
“He’s with me.” Zylas paused.
Collins presumed the rat/man was communing with his daughter, so the next words surprised him.
“And he wants me to thank you for worrying over his welfare.” Zylas added in deliberate English, “Told you he’d come around.”
Collins mouthed a weary smile, though no one could see it. He had never truly believed Ialin would ever grow to like him, despite the albino’s reassurances. “So how do we get out of this prison? Surely the dragons can’t fly out of this pit, or they would have done so long ago. And how are we going to get them out of the caverns past the magical wards?”
“Just hold on tight, and don’t let anything surprise you.” Without further warning, Zylas disappeared beneath the slap of leathery wings against air. The dragon he had called Artoth rose from the pit, carrying the rat/man with him. A moment later, muscles shifted beneath Collins’ buttocks, and Trinya sprang into awkward flight behind the other dragon.
The Lost Dragons of Barakhai Page 24
