Dragon Spear (20 page)
A shout, to everyone’s surprise, came from Ullalal.
She stood below Shardas, shaking her head vehemently. With a long finger she pointed to the south.
“No, there is nothing there,” Darrym told her, but there was a strange edge to his voice.
Ullalal let loose with a string of words in her own language, all the while pointing to the south.
“Get back in the temple,” Darrym snarled when she was through.
“Amacarin,” Shardas said before Ullalal could respond, “take her south and see what the terrain is like there.”
“At once.” The blue-gray dragon dropped down from his perch and settled beside Ullalal. He extended one foreclaw to help her mount, and she stared at him. “You may ride on my back,” he told her kindly.
Gingerly, she clambered over his shoulder and settled just in front of his wings. He took off smoothly, keeping her balanced as best he could. Such solicitous behavior from Amacarin was still new to me, and I marveled afresh at the civilizing influence Gala had had on him.
But my attention was dragged away once again by Darrym. He was breathing like a blacksmith’s bellows, and smoke came out of his nostrils. “You. Have. No. Right.”
“I have every right,” Shardas said, his voice like a blade.
“Not for long,” Darrym said, and more smoke escaped from his mouth with the words.
“What is that?” Now Shardas’s chest expanded, and we all gripped tight. Luka turned his face toward me, bracing for the wash of heat that would come if Shardas let loose his flame. “Do you threaten me?”
“No,” Darrym said. “I
challenge
you.”
D
arrym has lost his mind,” Hagen said with authority. “Shardas is twice his size, at the very least.”
We were in the ring on the floor of the temple once more, telling Velika what was happening.
“And Shardas has already won a challenge against a much larger dragon,” Luka added. “More than once, in fact.”
I winced, thinking of those challenges. Shardas’s own brother, Krashath, had objected to his kingship. In their first fight, long before my great-great-great-grandmother’s time, Krashath had been wounded and presumed dead. When he returned, just last year, Shardas had defeated him once and for all.
That fight had been a horrible thing to see, and as much as I loathed Darrym, I wasn’t looking forward to seeing it repeated. The smaller dragon was vastly outmatched: it would be a slaughter.
I fussed with the blanket that covered one of the eggs, waiting for Velika to speak up, to stop the fight. But she didn’t. I finally looked at her, and saw that she was gazing at the carving on the wall just outside the ring.
“We knew we would have to fight,” she said softly. “To make our point, to get our eggs out of here. I just never thought it would be a duel, and not with someone we had once considered a friend.”
“You don’t really mean to let them do this?” I gave her a pleading look.
“Creel, we have no choice,” Velika said. “We all wanted this to end without a conflict, and it will. It just won’t end without bloodshed.”
She had a point. And, moreover, if Shardas had to fight anyone, I preferred it to be Darrym over anyone else. He was a traitor, after all, and I could not believe that I, too, had once considered him a friend.
“Shardas! I am ready!”
We could see Darrym framed in the entrance of the temple. With the sun behind him, it was hard to make out his features, but he seemed to have grown several large spinal ridges quite suddenly.
“What are those?” Luka squinted at the dragon.
“Spears,” Shardas said, his voice flat.
“Your spears?” My voice was a squeak.
“It appears that way,” Shardas said quietly.
“I challenge you, Shardas,” Darrym shouted again.
Murmurs and cries were coming now from the dragons within the temple, and the humans as well. They stared at Shardas, some fearful, some angry, but others with hope or approval. He nodded to them all.
“Darrym has challenged me,” Shardas announced. “I go to face him. Let there be witnesses.”
Every dragon in the temple scrambled about, gathering up humans and then rushing to the entry. There was very nearly a collision, and Darrym had to dive out of the way before he was stampeded by his own people. Then Velika called two of our friends back.
“Leontes, Niva, guard the eggs,” she ordered. “I will accompany my mate.”
“And so will we,” I said.
Taking Luka’s hand, I mounted Velika without asking permission or waiting for an invitation. Hagen was right on our heels, and I thought about convincing him to stay behind, but if I was old enough to see such things, so was he, and I knew that it would be maddening to be trapped inside, listening and waiting for the outcome.
We were the last ones out of the temple, and Darrym was waiting. He stood in a large ring formed by the dragons on a relatively flat area of cooled lava. In his foreclaws he held the spears that Shardas had made so long ago. Or so it seemed, after all we had been through.
“You have the advantage of size,” Darrym said. “I thought I would even things out.”
“If you must,” Shardas said calmly.
Vannyn came forward. “Darrym, I beg of you, do not do this.”
“You cannot stop a challenge for the kingship,” Darrym screeched.
“But remember,” Velika said coldly, before Vannyn could answer, “remember that the queen must also accept the winner. And I find it hard to imagine a scenario where I would accept
you
.” Then she leaned closer, and almost whispered to Darrym, though still loudly enough for most of the gathered dragons to hear. “And if you kill the father of my children before they are even hatched,
I promise you will pay.
” She sat back, and we scrambled to arrange ourselves on her shoulders where we could see everything.
Vannyn looked about to object again, but Shardas caught his eye. The gold dragon shook his head emphatically.
“It was his decision,” Shardas said. “The challenge has been set, and he must fight or die.”
“I will win!”
Letting out a roar, Darrym lifted one of the spears and threw it at Shardas’s breast.
Shardas lunged to the side, and then batted at the spear with his tail before it could strike the watchers behind him. He picked it up in his own foreclaws, and moved aside again as Darrym threw another. This one nearly got Shardas’s head, but he ducked just in time. It clattered against the ridges of his spine and slid down his back. I saw that where it had struck it had pierced between two scales, but Shardas appeared not to notice and there was only the faintest streak of blood.
Now Shardas, tired of waiting for Darrym to throw his own spears against him, leaped into action. Holding the spear he had captured in one foreclaw, he attacked Darrym, stabbing at the other dragon and lashing him with his tail. He shot a jet of flame at Darrym, and all the watchers sensibly moved back several more dragon-lengths.
Darrym countered with his own fire, and with another spear that went wide as Shardas used his wings to carry himself to one side. Then Shardas moved forward in a rush, flaming as he went, and the fire caught Darrym’s face and neck along one side.
Screaming with rage and now blinded in one eye, Darrym still had a spear in each foreclaw, which he used to stab wildly at Shardas. A lucky hit caught in the thick plates that covered Shardas’s breast, and the dragon king gave a roar of pain. He tried to pull the spear free but it snapped off near one end, and the sharp point was still stuck fast in his chest as Shardas hurled the rest of the glass spear back at Darrym, hitting him hard just behind one shoulder. Where the scales hinged there, the spear sank deep, and Darrym fell.
“Do you submit to me?” Shardas’s breathing was ragged, but his voice was calm.
“Never,” Darrym hissed, and he threw his last spear.
Shardas deflected it easily, and then cast aside his own remaining weapon. I gave a little gasp, but Vannyn sent me a reassuring look. Shardas was moving close to Darrym, one foreclaw held up with the claws fully extended. There was something ritualistic in his movements, and I realized that this was likely the final blow, the one that would end Darrym’s life.
Then suddenly Darrym’s tail swept around, knocking Shardas off his feet. His wings extended as he tried to regain his balance, which gave Darrym the time he needed to get up again. He flew into the air, listing drunkenly to one side because of his wounded shoulder, and flamed at Shardas as he went.
The fire caught the gold dragon’s wings, which had been so badly burned two years ago, and Shardas screamed in pain. But he followed Darrym into the air, and they began to fight as dragons have since the beginning of the world: with four sets of claws, with tails and fire and teeth, spinning and tumbling through the air.
I could barely stand to watch, but forced myself to, knowing that I couldn’t truly bear to miss a single blow. It didn’t take long for the duel to end, though. Both dragons were injured, but Shardas had the advantage of years and experience, besides the more obvious superiority of size.
As Shardas’s golden claws raked Darrym’s throat, the small, brown dragon gave one last gurgling scream. He fell to the lava field with a thud, narrowly missing a group of humans who had scrambled out of the way at the last minute. Shardas soared down afterward, landing beside us.
He had several rents in his wings, a burn or two, and the point of a glass spear in his breast, but seemed steady enough on his feet. He looked around at the assembled dragons and humans gravely.
“Would anyone else care to challenge me?”
Mutters and head shakes.
“Would anyone else care to cast doubt upon the lineage of their queen?”
Mutters and head shakes, and even some loud declarations of “No!” and “Hail our queen!”
“We will prepare to move to the Far Isles tomorrow,” Shardas said. He spread his gold wings with a snap, and flew back into the temple.
“Now hold still,” I said to Shardas after he had gotten settled beside his eggs and his queen, and Niva and Leontes had been told what had happened. “And try not to burn me to ash, please.”
“What do you mean?”
Without answering, I put one foot on Shardas’s chest; Luka put his hands on my hips to brace me, and I grabbed hold of the end of the spear that stuck out of his breastplate. With a yank I pulled it free, and Shardas let out a roar that shook some rock dust down from the upper ledges.
“That will teach you to engage in duels like a hatchling.” Velika sniffed as Leontes rushed to pack an herb-infused moss into the wound.
“I suppose it will,” Shardas said between gritted teeth.
B
ut we could not leave without Amacarin, and he and Ullalal were investigating the south until late the next day. When they returned I saw that they had good news, for Ullalal’s eyes were sparkling and Amacarin looked very pleased with himself.
“There is a ravine, a rift that divides this continent,” he reported. “The lava did not cross it, nor did the fire.”
“And the other side is green?” Velika looked up from busily packing her eggs back in the net. She caught me fingering the silk that bound one of the joins, and gave me a sympathetic look.
“Greener than the forest before the eruption,” he confirmed. “And there are people there. People who do not belong to any dragons.”
“Runaways,” came the disdainful reply of my former master Rannym from where he stood near Mannyl’s husk. “Those who refused to serve us.”
“You mean, those who were too smart to let themselves be enslaved by you,” I snapped, not caring that he couldn’t understand me. Then I blushed, for I had come to think very highly of Ullalal.
“But,” Luka said, raising a cautionary hand, “what if these people don’t want to accept a flood of immigrants?” As a prince he knew a great deal about such matters.
“On the contrary,” Amacarin said. “That is what delayed us. First we had to make them understand that I was not there to enslave them.” He huffed at the very idea. “Then we asked if there was room for more humans in their lands.” He preened. “It was difficult: they do not speak our language, but I recognized their tongue as a form of Tonlulat and was eventually able to make myself understood. Once we got over that difficulty, they were quite willing to accept the refugees.”
“Tonlulat?” Luka looked mystified, and I was secretly glad that for once I wasn’t the only one whose knowledge was lacking.
“There is some delightful poetry in that language,” Amacarin said. “I have a fine collection of it. I had no idea it originated in such a place.”
“Tonlulat.” Smiling, Ullalal turned the word over in her mouth, her voice soft and almost musical.
“Yes,” Amacarin told her, head bobbing, before he turned back to Velika. “Once I recognized it, I began to understand this woman better as well. I think they are Tonlulan, or used to be.”
“Then you should stay here, with your own people,” Velika said to Ullalal. She raised her head, and announced to the temple at large: “The humans of this land should stay, and learn to live as they once did, free of dragon servitude.”
Immediately several dragons began to protest. I suspected they had meekly agreed to travel to the Far Isles only because they would still have their villages with them, and hoped to reestablish themselves as masters over the humans in some out-of-the-way place where Velika and Shardas would not notice.
It was interesting to see, as well, that no humans protested this. Many of them looked nervous, but mostly they seemed excited, whispering among themselves and hugging their children, as though already imagining their young ones growing up free.
“For this reason,” Shardas said, indicating the protests, “we will not take any humans with us to the Far Isles.” I jabbed him with my elbow. “Saving those three who came with us,” he amended. “If you are to put aside this abominable slavery of the humans, then you must have all temptation removed.”
“I agree with my consort,” Velika announced. “The Tonlulan people should feel free to remain here, in their ancestral lands. After the funeral for your elder, we shall take the humans south.”