“What about the rest of the trapped dragons?” asked someone I didn’t recognize.
“As you all know, the Slayers and the dragons have called a truce of sorts over the past few weeks. That is largely thanks to Julianna. Julianna, where are you?”
I raised my hand. Hundreds of pairs of eyes fixed on me. I gave everyone a shy smile.
“Julianna not only brought our tribes together, but she is also the one who is responsible for freeing you. To free you she has had to draw her own blood time and time again. I will not ask her to do it another time and I don’t want anyone else asking her to either. We are going to have to come up with another plan to free our people.”
“We already have a plan, Spear,” said Morganna, standing up. “Julianna and I are going back up into the mountains. We are going to speak to the Goblins.”
“No!”
I had thought it would be my father or Ash that spoke up first, but it was Alpha. He’d not left Morganna’s side this whole journey. I could understand why he wouldn’t want her to go back to the Goblins alone. He’d wanted to take his men back to their village, but because of the dragons’ illness, had been unable to. I felt sorry for him because I could see the determination on Morganna’s face. He wouldn’t be able to stop her any more than Ash would be able to stop me. He gripped my hand tighter as though he knew what I was thinking.
“I’m going to go,” I whispered so that only he could hear.
“I know you are. I know that there is nothing I can say or do to stop you, and yet I don’t want you to go.”
I turned to look at him. “Morganna is the strongest person I know. Not one of the men here would beat her in a fight. I’m safer with her than with anyone else. Besides, I can take care of myself.”
Ash sighed in resignation. “I won’t stop you, but do me a favor. Wait a few days until you are fully healed. Your body has barely recovered.”
I nodded. It was only fair to honor this one request.
“You’re not going to let her go, surely?” my father asked Spear.
I stood up, letting go of Ash’s hand. “It’s not up to him, Father. I am my own person and I make the decisions for me. Morganna, I will go with you. I just need a couple more days to recuperate and then I should be strong enough to climb the mountain.”
Alpha and my father stood up. They both looked ready to fight
“Gentlemen,” Spear began, talking to the pair of them. “I am not their keeper any more than you are. They have both decided to go to the Goblins. It makes sense that it should be them. They are both Slayers and they are both fearless. The Goblins will either talk to them or no doubt they will be forced to talk to them.”
“You can’t get up the mountain,” my father said, suddenly thinking of it. “The only dragons that are in that form are too ill to fly, and the rest of them can’t turn into their dragon form because they’ll get ill.” He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows, smirking now that he had found a way to thwart me.
He had a point. The only way out would be to scale the sheer cliff, and I had neither the equipment nor the talent for such a thing.
“I’ll fly you up,” said Fiere, standing up. “I’ve already had the illness and recovered. I’ll shift, fly you up the mountain and then come home and quickly shift back.”
My father looked at him with daggers in his eyes, but there was nothing he could do.
Morganna and I were going back up the mountain.
Chapter Thirteen
Fiere flew us almost to the entrance, leaving us about a twenty-minute walk away. I expected him to drop us off then fly back. The longer he was in his dragon form, the more dangerous it was for him. None of us knew what would happen to him if he stayed too long in this form. He’d had the illness once and gotten over it, but there was nothing to stop him getting it again.
He didn’t fly off though. He rounded behind a tree and shifted into his human form. I threw him a shawl I’d packed, which he wrapped around his middle.
“Shouldn’t you be going home?” I shouted across to him.
He came over from the tree. “I just wanted to talk with you before I left you here.”
“Okay.”
He placed his hand on my shoulder. “I haven’t known you for a long time, but I’ve seen the way my son looks at you. I almost decided not to bring you this morning. I was worried you’d get hurt or worse, and it would break Ash’s heart.”
“What made you change your mind?” I asked.
He gave a small laugh. “It was Ash. He came to me early this morning. I told him that I was going to tell Spear that I wasn’t going to take you, but he told me that I should. He said that you were so stubborn that you’d only find another way if I didn’t. He asked me to look after you.”
“You can’t,” interjected Morganna. “The Goblins want us to come alone. I don’t know why they only want one tribe at a time—maybe they are afraid we’ll break into war right in the middle of their underground town—but we promised that we wouldn’t come with another group.”
“I understand that,” he replied, “but I owe it to Ash.”
“You’ve got no armor. You don’t even have any clothes,” reasoned Morganna. “How will you be able to protect us?”
It was true that Morganna and I had dressed for this. We were both kitted out in the best protective clothing that the dragons had to offer and most importantly, I still had my sword. Fiere only had the shawl I’d given him.
“I’m a dragon, remember? I don’t need clothes. I’ll follow you up the rest of the way and keep out of sight.”
“No,” I shook my head. “You’ve been ill once. The longer you are in your dragon form, the more likely you are to become ill again. I couldn’t bear it if you became ill because of me. Once we are done with the Goblins, we’ll head back down the mountain. I have a flare in my backpack. I’ll set it off once we get close to home so someone can fly up the cliff to get us.”
His face looked pale, his forehead clammy. “But...”
“But nothing, You’re already getting sick. I can see it. Now get back down the mountain before you become too ill to shift back.”
He nodded. Just before he hid behind the tree again, he called out to me. “Shoot that flare if you’re in trouble. I’ll make sure someone comes and rescues you.”
“I will,” I promised, however I had no intention of needing to be rescued. I’d spent enough time having people look out for me. It was about time I did something by myself. Okay, not exactly by myself. I had Morganna, but I knew her well enough to know she wouldn’t overprotect me like the others would.
Fiere disappeared behind the tree. I heard the disgusting yet distinctive sound of his bones grinding and cracking as he changed back into a dragon. It was a sound I’d never get used to as long as I lived. His wings unfolded and he took off, leaving only my shawl behind. Morganna and I watched him fly away until he was only a speck.
“Do you think he’ll be okay?” I asked Morganna, turning around and looking back up the trail. Flying the pair of us up here had obviously taken it out of him.
“Hopefully he’ll be able to glide back down to the village and shift there. I think he’ll be alright. Come on, let’s get a move on. I don’t want to be out here all day.”
It was a calm day, but cold so high up in the mountains. I wrapped the shawl over my shoulders and began the hike to the Goblin city. It took us longer than the twenty minutes we had planned to walk. The combination of the cold weather and rocky ground beneath our feet slowed us down. It didn’t help that we’d landed lower than we planned to in the first place.
An hour and a half later I could finally see the door ahead of us. Once again, it looked abandoned, a trick of the Goblins to make people think that there wasn’t anyone there.
I sat on a boulder and pulled a bottle of water from my pack. We’d both traveled light, expecting to only be out for the day, and had only brought a couple of bottles of water each. I unscrewed the top and handed it
to Morganna. She took a swig and handed it back.
“Are you alright?” she asked as I gulped down the rest of the bottle.
The truth was, I’d felt better. I ached much more than I should for such a short walk, and even though I’d mostly healed from the burns, my skin was still delicate in some areas and was not being helped by the thick, protective leather clothing we were wearing.
Instead of admitting that, though, I took a deep breath and nodded my head. I didn’t want her to think I was weak.
“Come on.” I stood and packed the empty bottle back in my bag. Just then, a flash of red caught in the corner of my eye. I whipped my head around to see a red dragon circling above us.
“Ash!” I hissed. He couldn’t hear me as he was too high above us, but I couldn’t shout lest the Goblins hear me.
When he landed, he dropped something from his mouth which I recognized as his clothes, then quickly turned into his human form and pulling on his clothes. “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’ve just sent your father home and now you’re here. Don’t you trust me?” I felt angry with him. When I’d left, he’d been totally fine with me coming up the mountain. Well not fine exactly, but I didn’t expect him to follow me.
“As soon as you were out of sight, I panicked. I’m sorry. I do trust you and I know you can look after yourself, but I thought I’d come for back up.”
“What if you become sick, too?” I huffed. “Your father was looking ill.”
“I’m fine.”
“Ok, just stay here, then. Morganna and I will go up to the Goblin city. We’ll shout to you if we get in trouble. For goodness’ sake, stay out of sight.”
He nodded and sat down behind a boulder.
“He just cares about you, you know,” Morganna said to me once we were out of Ash’s earshot. “Don’t blame him. He loves you, that’s all.”
“Hmm,” I grumbled. “How would you feel if Alpha popped out from behind a bush right about now?”
“Oh, I’d kill him,” she replied with a sly grin. I snorted with laughter.
The door was still hanging from its hinges, so we stepped into the tunnel that would take us into the Goblin Kingdom.
It was quiet. Too quiet. It reeked of Goblin trickery.
“Krikor!” I shouted out down the tunnel. My voice echoed back to me.
The tunnel ended, opening into the large cavern I’d seen before. It was empty. There was not a Goblin in sight.
“Where are they?” I asked. The usually busy city was now silent except for our own footsteps. “Hello!” I called out. Again my voice echoed, but this time it was much louder, reverberating off the cavern walls.
“Check the buildings,” said Morganna, pointing at the holes in the wall of the cavern which I remembered to be rooms cut out from the rock.
I went one way as she went another. She took the small restaurant I’d eaten in the first time I’d been here. I climbed a long set of stairs that led me almost all the way to the roof of the cavern before coming to a balcony. I turned and looked out into the cavern. I could see the whole place from up here. The buildings cut from the rock and the exit to the left, the tunnel to the mines in front and below me, and the rest of the cavern disappearing into the darkness to the right. Behind me was an open doorway. I stepped through it into the darkness. Once my eyes adjusted to the lack of light, I saw a number of closed doors leading from the tunnel. I opened the first one to find a small room with a tiny bed. This was where the Goblins slept. I checked the next room. It was exactly the same.
I didn’t need to continue down the corridor to know that this was their sleeping quarters. I also didn’t need to search further to know it was deserted. The beds hadn’t been slept in for days and there were no personal effects. I opened a wardrobe door to confirm what I already knew. The wardrobe was empty. The Goblins were gone.
“Julianna!” I heard Morganna shouting. I dashed back to the balcony to see her standing below, just outside the restaurant. “The place is deserted,” she confirmed when I got back down to her. “We should have let Ash come with us after all. Do you think we should search the place?”
“What for? If they’ve gone, they’ve gone. They seem to have taken everything with them. Even the bedrooms are empty.”
“Hmm.” Morganna walked away from me slowly. She looked around her as if searching for something, but I couldn’t say what. I followed her to the entrance to the mines. I’d never been down there before; the thought of it unnerved me. The small bit of light that flooded into the cavern through holes in the ceiling didn’t quite reach down here, and once again I found myself walking in the dark. I followed the sound of Morganna’s footsteps in front of me, wishing I’d brought a torch with me.
As if reading my thoughts, Morganna clicked her fingers and the tunnel lit up.
“What just happened?” I asked, finally seeing down the tunnel.
“I got sick of walking in the dark and decided to use some of my magic. I have so little of it left and hate to waste it, but at the same time, I don’t want to break a leg by tripping over anything.”
The light flickered and went out. Morganna clicked her fingers again, illuminating the tunnel. Just as quickly, the light was extinguished again.
“That’s strange,” Morganna remarked.
“You’re out of magic?”
“No. I’ve got enough to last me a bit longer. This is something else. It’s as if magic isn’t working here.”
“Well, you’d better hurry up and get it working,” I said, gripping hold of the hilt of my sword, “because I can hear something and I think it’s coming this way.”
Chapter Fourteen
Gripping the hilt of my sword, I readied myself for a fight. I could hear Morganna’s steady breathing in front of me and beyond that, the noise of footsteps. They came closer. I listened as whoever it was ran up the tunnel toward us. The sound was faint but unmistakable. My breathing increased along with my heart rate as the footsteps were almost upon us.
Closer, closer, closer...
Morganna clicked her fingers and the tunnel lit up. There was no one there. I whipped my head around, looking up and down the tunnel, but apart from the two of us, it was empty.
“What happened? Where did they go?”
The footsteps had gone past us and were now getting fainter again. Morganna’s light went out.
“Follow me,” she said brusquely. “I think I know what’s going on and I think I know how to stop it.”
“Stop it?” Stop what?
I held onto her arm as she guided me slowly down the pitch-black tunnel. I heard another sound. Water. The tunnel finally ended and for the first time in over ten minutes, I could finally see. Small shafts of light illuminated another cavern. This one was almost as big as the first, but much colder and damper. The water I’d heard was a huge underground river roaring through the cavern. This had to be the beginning of the river we had floated down to get to the deserted village. I remembered the water as being warm, but here, further down the mountain, the cavern was cold. Stalactites dripped water into the already ferocious river and a seam of a silver-colored metal ran diagonally through the rock, sparkling in the pale light. A small bridge crossed the river from where we were to what looked like a mine at the other side. A small track ran the length of it with an abandoned mine cart flipped on its side. Pickaxes littered the floor, dropped, no doubt, when the Goblins left. There was no one there and yet I could hear the very faint tap, tap, tap of tools on rock over the sound of the river.
“There’s no one here,” Morganna announced loudly, “Let’s steal the tools.”
Why would she want to steal the pickaxes? We had no need for them. She began to cross the bridge, but some unseen force knocked her back. She fell on her butt just in front of me. A smile played on her lips.
“What’s happening?” I asked, taking her hand to help her up.
“None of this is real. The Goblins are playing a trick on us.”
“A tri
ck?”
“Yes. This place isn’t abandoned. I knew they’d try something like this. They are all here, we just can’t see them. Isn’t that right, Krikor?”
The sound of the tapping got louder. Images began to appear, at first indistinct before coming fully into focus. I opened my mouth as I took in the scene now. Whereas it had been desolate just moments before, now it was a busy working mine. Hundreds of Goblins were working, the abandoned pickaxes I’d seen now in their hands, being used to mine the metals they needed to make their magical weapons. The mining cart on its side disappeared and a fully working one zoomed down the track, filled with stones.
“I could have wasted more magic to erase the glamour they’d put on themselves, but I figured threatening to steal their stuff would do the trick.” Morganna grinned, sweeping the dirt from her clothes.
“Come this way!” An angry goblin appeared in front of us, a sword in his hand. It looked like one of the Slayer swords. “The king wants to see you.”
“Put it down, Shorty,” snapped Morganna. “We are here to see Krikor, anyway.”
He marched us back up the tunnel. It was now lit with what looked like fairylights, although they had to be run on magic. Krikor was back in the conference room where we had seen him the last time we were here, but unlike then, he was alone. The Goblin who had escorted us here bowed and left, closing the door behind him.
“Back so soon?” he asked, sounding resigned. “I can’t seem to keep you away, can I? Tell me, what is it that draws you to me like a moth to a flame? My good looks, perhaps?”
I stifled a snort. Never in a million years could anyone say that Krikor was good-looking. Even for a Goblin, who were an ugly bunch to begin with, he was unattractive.
“Don’t kid yourself, Krikor,” snapped Morganna. “You know exactly why we’re here. You sent us on a merry dance down to that village, knowing full well that there would be no one there.”
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