“What is to be done?” Connla wanted to know.
“We will create a special sorcery just for you, to enable you to go to the ocean floor and the lair of the dragon. You will confront it with all your human bravery as well as the magical battle skills you have learned here, from us. You will not be able to slay the dragon, for it is truly immortal. But if you are very clever and very quick, you may cripple it for a while, and hold back disaster for many generations.
“Disaster not only for us, but for the lands of mortal men,” Finvarra added.
“But you have many able warriors.”
“None who will fight as hard as you will, Connla. None who could be as frightened as you will be.”
“Do I have any choice?” the young man asked.
Finvarra nodded. “You are not yet one of us, so you do still have a choice. You can refuse. If you do, we who have no choice must wait for whatever comes, even if it is the destruction of the Isles of the Blest.”
Connla turned to Blathine. Her face was pale and composed. “If I do this thing, can I really be killed?” he asked her.
“You can.”
“Would you weep for me, Blathine?”
She stared at him. He—almost—thought he glimpsed an unfamiliar sparkle of moisture in the corner of her eye. Then she shook her head. “I do not weep,” she told him.
“Do you love?”
Again she stared at him. But before she could answer, the chamber darkened significantly, as if all light had been bled from the outside world.
“The dragon is stirring!” Finvarra said. “Hurry, Connla, you must decide before it is too late to act.”
He looked at Blathine again, trying to puzzle it all out and understand. This was not like the tests he had undergone during their journey to the Isles of the Blest; he could see now how simple those tests had been, though he still did not know what they had proven. But the threat of the dragon was terrifying and all-embracing; even Blathine was menaced by it. And his own people too, perhaps. The people he still remembered, the people he had been unwilling to forget.
“Tell me what you want me to do, Finvarra.”
A look of relief spread over the face of the king of the Sidhe. He clapped his hands together three times and a flock of servants, twittering like birds, ran into the hall. They carried armor of a strange blue-white metal, which they buckled onto Connla’s body and covered again with his coppery cloak. On his head they placed a plumed helmet that fitted his skull as neatly as if it had been poured over it. His feet they shod with boots so heavy he could hardly bend his knees, and through his belt they thrust an assortment of knives and darts and leather slings.
When the young warrior was fully equipped, Finvarra got up and circled him slowly, examining him from every angle. Then the king raised his hands over Connla’s head and closed his own eyes. In a voice like thunder he chanted a ritual in an unknown tongue, a ritual so powerful, Connla could feel the weight of it descend upon his flaming hair and press him to the ground.
No time passed, yet the king’s voice went on and on, weaving spells of sorcery.
At last there was silence.
Connla lay at full length on the floor, cushioned by the carpet of flowers. For the first time since coming to the Isles of the Blest he felt weary in every bone and sinew. When Finvarra extended a hand to help him rise to his feet, it cost the young man a great effort to do so. But once he was standing he began to feel better.
“I thought I was being crushed,” he said.
“I heaped so much magic upon you it would have crushed a lesser man,” Finvarra told him. “It only remains to be seen whether this is enough to protect you. We will not know until you face the dragon.”
“When will that be?”
The room was so dark Connla could hardly see the king’s face as Finvarra replied, “Now.”
Eleven
THE FLOOR OF the fairy palace seemed to dissolve beneath Connla’s feet. He felt himself sinking down through it, dragged lower and lower by the weight of his boots. Looking up, he could see Finvarra and Blathine above him as his eyes sank below the level of their feet. Then his vision of them was obscured by the carpet of flowers and by the coral floor itself, closing up behind him as he passed through it.
Still he sank down.
He moved through a dark, moist warmth, like a tunnel in the earth. His speed never varied, though he could not judge exactly how fast it was. But he spent what must have been a score of heartbeats or more in the darkness, before that too was left behind and he found himself in an environment of limpid aquamarine light.
Fish drifted past him, goggling at him curiously. Giant ferns waved at him as he passed by. He was in water; under water, falling down through water. Yet he had no sensation of drowning; he was able to breathe normally, as if encased in an envelope of air.
Finvarra’s magic, Connla thought gratefully.
The water became darker. He sensed that it was growing very cold, though the air surrounding him remained warm enough to keep him comfortable. The fishes he saw were of unfamiliar shapes now, and startlingly large sizes. Some were very flat, as if the pressure of the water had rolled them out like dough.
Monstrous formations of stone became faintly visible through the gloom. They rose like giant canyons around him as he still went down and down and down.
The darkness became stifling. He could see nothing; he only occasionally felt something brush past him, some deep-sea creature whose size and shape he could only guess. Each touch left him shuddering with horror.
Down and down and down.
Then the dark faded again, though not as the result of any light from the sea’s surface. Looking down, Connla could make out a long, sinuous form directly below him, stretched out on the pale and sandy sea bottom. The light seemed to come from this shape, pulsing with sullen and sinister hues of dull red and sulfurous yellow.
The thing was huge, running along the bottom of the sea like a giant fissure in the very fabric of the world. Just seeing it was enough to make Connla’s soul go cold, in spite of the fairy warmth encircling him.
He became aware of the immensity of the sea, and his own tininess. What was he doing, a mortal, on such a mission? He had only his wits and his skills and his fear to match against some preternatural monster whose nature he could not ever hope to understand. Separated from the surface and the green land by so much distance, the fate of those above seemed less important to him. The Isles of the Blest, the Hill of Usna—they were far away. Only the dragon was here. Waiting for him.
The dragon raised its head and looked up, watching him descend.
Connla tried to get a good look at it. If he must fight the creature, he at least wanted to know what he was fighting. But his first glimpse of its eyes so shocked him that he made no attempt to examine the rest of its face. If it had a face.
The eyes were two green pools of undiluted malevolence.
Destruction was the dragon’s only purpose, Finvarra had said. Seeing those eyes, Connla believed him.
As he drew nearer to it, the dragon opened its great maw and roared.
The thin casing of air around Connla stank of sulfur, making him sneeze, turning his stomach.
With a lithe twist of its monstrous body, the dragon rolled to one side to wait for Connla, opening its mouth still wider to receive him. He saw that he was falling straight into that gaping cavern, lit from within by lurid fires. Huge black teeth like polished obsidian yawned on either side of the opening, waiting to crush his body as he passed through. A curious tongue, long and thin and forked, darted in and out of the dragon’s mouth as if already tasting Connla. The creature pulsed more brightly, celebrating its appetite.
Connla drew his knees up against his chest and twisted his body, then kicked out as hard as he could, propelling himself through the water at an angle so that he dropped onto the sand beside the dragon instead of into its waiting mouth.
The creature was slow, as all huge things are slow. C
onnla was already on his feet, with his sword balanced in his hand, before it realized its prey had not fallen into its mouth. The dragon rolled over again, roiling the water and stirring up a great mass of sand which temporarily blinded Connla. Arching its long neck, the monster looked around for the morsel of food it was anticipating.
In its hunger, it had left its mouth open and ready. Though the sight of that red light emanating from the beast’s interior frightened him more than anything else, Connla made himself approach the gaping jaws. If he did not attack successfully, the dragon would surely attack him and he would die. Of such knowledge was his courage born.
Taking a step forward with bent knee, he flung a succession of darts into the dragon’s mouth. Each one stabbed and stung the lining of that mouth, and tiny spurts of greenish blood stained the water.
The dragon shook its head with annoyance and closed its jaws. Once more it lifted its huge, muscular neck, and swung the heavy head around. This time it saw Connla on the sand, feet apart and braced, sword uplifted.
With a moan of delight, the dragon reached forward to swallow him.
But Connla was too quick. Using his small size to good advantage he flung himself beneath the outthrust head and wriggled into the sand. The dragon’s jaws snapped shut harmlessly above him.
The creature raised its head, rolling its tongue around in its mouth and trying to taste the man. But he was not there to be tasted.
This time the dragon’s roar was mixed with anger.
Half-buried in sand, Connla squirmed until he was lying on his back with the sword braced against his chest. Then he forced its point upward, until it was angled between his body and that of the dragon.
He knew his strength was not enough to drive the blade into the creature’s vast body. Its skin was some unfamiliar combination of leather and scales and stony flakes of overlapping material that looked impenetrable. But as Connla knew, the most stoutly armored being has a weak spot somewhere, and he hoped that in the case of the dragon that weak spot was its belly. So he held the sword pointing up at the monster and waited until it shifted its own massive weight downward. When it did, it would impale itself on the rippled blue blade.
If it did not—if it merely stayed as it was, crouched and waiting for him—he was trapped underneath it, in water and sand and terror.
The dragon was quiet.
Connla guessed it must be looking for him, rolling its fearsome eyes but wasting no energy in thrashing around until it spotted its prey. How long would it lie so? He had no way of knowing; he knew nothing about dragons or their habits. Perhaps, like the tiny lizards who were his homeland’s only reptiles, it could stay immobile for a day, if it was warm and comfortable.
Was it warm? Was it comfortable? Was it even a reptile?
Suddenly Connla realized just how very much he wanted to live. There were so many things still to learn, so many things he was curious about, so many things he had yet to experience! Fear of being destroyed with his life unlived swept over him. Despair was worse than the terror of the dragon.
Despair could destroy him even if the dragon did not.
He gritted his teeth. He tightened his shoulder muscles. He remembered the reeds, who had taught him that all living things have the ability to communicate.
Like a barbed dart he flung a thought at the mighty hulk above him. Rest, he thought. Rest. Sink deeper and wait.
Sink deeper.
Deeper.
Fear and grief for himself closed his throat, but his mind went on sending its message in one last, desperate effort.
Above Connla, the dragon stirred.
Shifting its vast bulk, it prepared to settle more deeply into the sea bottom and rest. Its dim brain perceived the need to rest, for soon it planned to surge upward to the surface, to leap into the sky, to make one of its rare and spectacular appearances on the surface of the world, bringing with it storm and tidal wave and destruction.
But first, a little rest. A gathering of strength.
The dragon settled down.
Its weight came to rest on the point of Connla’s sword, paused, then sank deeper. Whatever its tough surface was composed of resisted the magical blue metal for a moment, then yielded, and the sword sank into the dragon’s body.
A great gush of foul-smelling greenish fluid poured from the pierced body cavity. Hot as fire, it swept like a tide around Connla, washing him, and the sand beneath the monster, to one side. He could see nothing but the thick ichor of the creature and a swirl of sand, yet he sensed he was no longer under the dragon and took a great, relieved gulp of air from the protective layer around him. His throat opened again with the possibility of life.
The dragon writhed. The water around it boiled. A sense of pain, of invasion, reached the dragon’s awareness, summoning fury. Once again it roared and the whole sea bed shook with the force of its voice. Vibrations moving through the water propelled Connla upward. He began kicking his legs as hard as he could, swimming toward the surface.
Below him the dragon convulsed in pain.
The ocean heaved.
The dragon could not be slain, Finvarra had said, but it could be wounded. Though Connla’s sword was tiny by comparison to the dragon’s immeasurable size, it had pierced a vulnerable portion of the monster and allowed the blue ice of Sidhe magic to pour into the fiery furnace of the creature’s heart. The result was an interior chaos from which the dragon would be a long time recovering.
In its throes, however, it did much damage. Struggling not to be swept completely away by the turbulence around him, Connla wondered if the convulsions within the sea were being reflected on land.
Land!
The Isles of the Blest!
The Hill of Usna!
The young man clawed his way upward through the wild water. He had left the sword buried in the dragon, to continue doing whatever damage it could, so his hands were free. Instinct taught him to use them like paddles, pushing the water away from him. His muscular legs churned it into a froth as he kicked, and he knew he was making progress, for he gradually perceived a dim light overhead; the light of the upper world.
He was no longer alone. All around him appeared the denizens of the deep, fish and sea mammals and strange creatures somewhere between plant and animal, all struggling to escape the mighty roaring and the rending of the ocean. In their fear, even the predators of the sea did not attack their natural prey, but all rushed for the surface together, Connla in their midst.
Up and up and up.
Light now, and a change in the temperature of the water. He could sense it growing warmer and saw myriad bubbles dancing in it. One more tremendous kick and he shot upward. Then his head broke the surface and he found himself in a trough of waves.
One huge wave, grey-green and glossy, bent toward him, ready to thunder down upon him. The struggles of the dragon under the sea were already being reflected on the ocean’s surface. Only when he had taken his first lungful of open air did Connla realize how exhausted he was, and wonder where land might lie ... and if he could hope to reach it.
On the Hill of Usna, the druid circle had been formed again. Coran the chief druid, now partially restored to Hundred Battles’ favor, summoned the group at every sunrise to call out to Fiery Hair and try to reach him again. They danced in a pattern that had begun to seem very natural, almost inevitable, and as they danced they chanted.
The pattern they formed was like the scallop of a shell or the wave of the sea, and the chant they repeated was as deep and rolling as the ocean’s roar.
Swimming desperately, Connla felt something clamp on his tiring body. At first he thought it must surely be the dragon, risen to the surface to take its revenge. But no teeth pierced him; no jaws closed over him. Instead he felt as if a big fist closed ever so gently on him and carried him forward, and mixed with the wind and the waves and the roaring in his ears was a sound like human voices. There was a note in them so familiar that tears sprang to his eyes.
“I am c
oming,” he managed to call out, though as soon as he opened his mouth a wash of sea water burned his tongue with salt. “I am coming!”
He was hurled through the water, and then he found himself—all at once—cushioned by foam. The roar behind him faded, the hiss of a gentle surf filled his ears. His feet grated on stone and sharp shells and he stood up, knee-deep in the incoming tide.
Staggering, grinning, unable to believe he was still alive and had reached land, Connla found himself on a glittering white beach and saw the host of the Sidhe awaiting him.
Finvarra was in the lead. The stern expression had vanished from the face of the fairy king. His smile was like the sun breaking through clouds; the hands he extended to welcome Connla met behind the young man’s back to form a bone-crushing hug.
“You have wounded the dragon!” Finvarra cried, laughter bubbling through his voice. “The storm that it meant to savage the world with has abated. Look! The sky is light again!”
Turning his head in the king’s embrace, Connla saw that the sky was as blue and tranquil as it had always been above the Isles of the Blest. The sea still heaved, however; evidence of the struggle going on in its depths.
“There will be high waves everywhere and some damage done to shores not protected by magic,” Finvarra said. “But the Isles of the Blest will not be swallowed by the sea, not this time, Fiery Hair. We are in your debt. Come, a great celebration is already being arranged in your honor.”
Looking past Finvarra, Connla saw Blathine smiling. Never had she been so radiant. Her skin was as luminous as a lily petal with the moon gleaming behind it. Her eyes were filled with promises that made Connla dizzy.
Or perhaps he was only still tired.
The Isles of the Blest Page 13
