Greatshadow (42 page)

Greatshadow rolled the tiny dragon between his talons, turning him to his back, taking a misshapen wing and snapping it once more. Relic screamed in agony as Greatshadow twisted the flesh back and forth, until a sharp bone punched through the surface.

“Little Brokenwing,” said Greatshadow, tossing him onto the platform so that he bounced near the mouth of the tunnel. “Let the pain you feel at this moment linger. You have cost me dearly today. Nowowon required four centuries of incantations to properly enslave as my watchdog. You took him from me. I’ve worn my original body for thirty centuries, but the damage done by the knight may yet rob me of it. I saw your cowardly ally in possession of the Jagged Heart. You would dare bring
her
weapon to my lair, knowing what you know of our history?”

“I dare any price!” Relic hissed through clenched teeth. “Beginning with the pygmies who came to butcher my corpse, I have left a trail of death and destruction in my wake. My hate for you is a fire that can never be quenched!”

Greatshadow’s mention of cowardly allies made me wonder where Zetetic had gone. Assuming he had the bone-handled knife, I felt for the familiar tug, and instantly found it. I flashed down the tunnel only a few yards. Zetetic was pressed to the wall, his face drained of all color; the red D tattooed on his forehead looked pink. He was shivering, and not just because he had both arms wrapped around the Jagged Heart, hugging it like he was a frightened toddler. He had the bone-handled knife clutched in his right hand and what looked like a shard of glass in his left. He stared toward the opening of the ledge where Greatshadow busied himself with tormenting his overly ambitious offspring.

Greatshadow’s blood seeped and bubbled across the stone like a dark river.

Setting his jaw, Zetetic leapt from the shadows, diving toward the stream of boiling ichor. He slapped the flat of the knife blade into the fluid. Instantly I was on my ass before him, meeting his frightened gaze. From the corner of my eye, I saw Greatshadow turning toward us, drawing a breath. The Jagged Heart had saved Zetetic before, but the dragon was so close that Zetetic’s long, frazzled ponytail fluttered as the beast inhaled. This blast was coming at point blank range.

With a voice squeaking with terror he gazed deeply into my eyes and announced, “I understand the interspatial geometry of the ancients!”

He snapped the gleaming glass in his left hand, which I now saw to be a mirror.

At that second, Greatshadow breathed, a great blinding gush of fire licking around me in all directions. Yet, I wasn’t burned. The flames danced behind me, swirled above me, spun before me, but I remained safe in a bubble of cool air.

The conflagration died away. It seemed to me that Greatshadow, in his weakened state, had lost much of the power of his flame. He looked odd as I stared at him, distorted and wavy. Then I realized I was seeing him through a wall of pure ice at least a yard thick.

The wall of ice had materialized from the tip of the Jagged Heart. The Jagged Heart was being held by a humanoid figure nine feet tall, broad across the shoulders, wearing a long black walrus-hide coat. I looked up and saw the mostly bald, blue-white scalp and the curve of ivory tusks. Never had I been so happy to see a woman whose last words to me had been a not so subtle threat of butchery.

Aurora looked down at me. As usual, her expression was one of utter coolness; she seemed unflustered that she’d just emerged from some unfathomable extra-dimensional prison to find herself face to face with a primal dragon. “I’ll ask later what you’re doing here,” she said, shifting the shaft of the harpoon from her right hand to the left. “Right now, it’s time for Greatshadow to meet someone who knows how to use this thing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

WORST NIGHTMARE

A
URORA LUNGED, THE
Jagged Heart held above her head, aiming for the gap between Greatshadow’s eyes. The dragon pulled away, pressing down on the stone ledge with his massive claw. The volcanic rock cracked beneath his weight, creating a deep pit a yard wide just where Aurora’s oversized boot should have landed. She fell as the ground between her and Greatshadow gave way.

Greatshadow plunged into the magma lake once more. I ran to the hole where Aurora had vanished. She’d dropped about twenty feet; her heels were balanced on a six inch lip of stone. Fresh lava bubbled below her, fiery red.

I pulled off my cloak and dropped to my chest, my arms dangling over the edge to allow the hem to reach her.

“Climb up!” I shouted.

“Infidel thinks you’re dead, you bastard!” Aurora said as she grabbed the thick velvet cloth. “Why the hell are you still alive? What on earth are you doing here? For that matter, what the hell am I doing here?”

Zetetic looked over the edge as Aurora began to climb up the cloak. My arms felt like they’d be pulled from their sockets. Zetetic said, “The pyramid trapped you in an interstitial realm where time doesn’t exist as a dimension. I freed you.”

“And while you’re pondering that, you should know I’m a ghost, but turn solid when dragon blood gets on my knife,” I explained, my voice strained as I struggled not to drop her. “I may dematerialize at any second, so hurry.”

Aurora furrowed her brow as she climbed. “I can’t decide which of you is making less sense. Let me talk to someone sane. Where’s Infidel?”

“The spirit realm,” said Zetetic.

“She’s dead?”

The Deceiver stroked his chin as he contemplated the question, then said, “I don’t believe a word has been invented that describes her condition. She’s been split into physically manifested dual aspects of her psyche then thrust bodily into a non-material realm of souls.”

“You are not allowed to answer any more of my questions,” Aurora grumbled as she grabbed the rocky ledge next to my shoulder with her sausage-sized fingers. My teeth chattered as she clambered over me back onto the relative safety of the ledge. “Where’d the damn dragon get off to?”

Relic crawled from the tunnel toward the bone-handled knife. He answered Aurora through teeth clenched with pain: “Greatshadow is bathing in magma to cauterize his wounds.”

Aurora tensed as she saw the small dragon. She raised the Jagged Heart, looking ready to put him out of his misery.

“Wait!” said Zetetic, grabbing her arm. “He’s a friend.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I said.

“He’s an enemy of our enemy,” said Zetetic.

Relic reached the knife and moved it from the vaporizing dark-brown pool it lay in, touching it to the sticky red blood coating his shoulder from his broken wing. The fresh fluid filled me with a surge of energy.

“So, can Greatshadow just wait us out?” I asked. “Could he stay under the magma forever?”

“Actually, no,” said Relic. “Despite the fact my father dwells in a volcano, the elemental force he’s merged with isn’t magma, it’s fire. His physical body and his internal flames both require air. He must surface soon.”

Zetetic looked around. “Soon may not be soon enough,” he said. “Tower’s armor is disappearing piece by piece.”

He was right. Tower’s chest plate was still there, along with various nuts, bolts, and gears, but the bulk of the armor had vanished. As I watched, the hip compartment that held the magic book flickered, then turned to smoke, leaving the leather-bound volume within sitting on the barren ground. Zetetic tore off a piece of his robes and fashioned them into impromptu mittens, lifting the book.

“Technically, I’m not touching it,” he said as he flipped through the book. He shook his head slowly as he studied the pages. “Not that having this will do me any good. Greatshadow is no doubt burning the monastery to the ground, killing everyone inside. When the last monk praying to keep my heart beating is slain I’ll be dead, permanently this time.”

“Greatshadow may have plucked that information from Stagger’s mind,” said Relic. “Perhaps he thinks if he waits long enough, he can face one less foe. Aurora is our best hope now. She can use the magic of the Jagged Heart to slay Greatshadow.”

“This still doesn’t make sense to me,” I said. “Fire melts ice. Why is an icy fragment of Hush more powerful than a whole dragon?”

“Hush isn’t the dragon of ice,” said Aurora. “She’s the dragon of cold.”

“So?”

“To understand the true nature of reality, you need only look into the night sky. Darkness is the permanent state of things; light is merely a fleeting local phenomenon. The same is true of heat and fire. Flames can rage brightly for but a moment. Just as darkness will always win out over light, cold is the eternal backdrop that existed before fire, and will endure after. Flame can never win any permanent victory against cold.”

“The true power of the weapon lies in more than simply its elemental chill,” said Relic. “Greatshadow is the dragon who broke Hush’s heart. Its frosty bitterness embodies the seething hatred Hush feels toward Greatshadow. It can, and will, slay him.”

“I know a lot of dragon history, but I’ve never heard that,” said Zetetic.

Before Relic could provide us with a history lesson, Greatshadow burst from the surface of the bubbling magma, his neck rising up fifty feet, a hundred, as he drew a deep breath into his mighty lungs. He was wreathed in fresh flames, his skin aglow with his newly stoked energies. The ground beneath us trembled as the lava pool began to rise.

Relic shook his head, looking as if he might be about to cry. “He’s opened fresh lava vents beneath the surface! If the volcano erupts, we’ll all perish!”

Aurora craned her neck up, drawing the harpoon back. Greatshadow spread his enormous wings, beating them in a powerful downstroke. Globs of molten rock rained around us as a foundry wind nearly swept us from our feet.

“His head’s too far away!” Aurora shouted over the gale. “I can throw a harpoon a hundred yards on a good day, but not straight up!”

“You could if you were bigger!” Zetetic leapt in front of her. “Fortunately, I have the power to make you a giantess with an enchanted kiss!” He stood on his tip toes, grabbed her cheeks, and mashed his puckered lips between her tusks.

A wall of flame shot down toward us as Greatshadow exhaled once more. As before, the flame was thwarted by a shield of ice as Aurora grew rapidly, doubling to sixteen feet, then thirty, as Zetetic grabbed Relic by the tail and dragged him back toward the tunnel.

I lingered behind for half a second to watch as Aurora topped out close to ninety feet tall. The Jagged Heart had grown with her, taller than any tree. Her long black coat flapped as she leaned back to throw, the hem catching me like a sail, knocking me from my feet. Flat on my back, I watched as she let the harpoon fly, aiming toward Greatshadow’s open maw as the jet of flames died away.

The Jagged Heart flashed up like reverse lightning, trailing snow, entering the dragon’s cavernous jaws and punching into the roof of his mouth. His head tilted sideways as he shrieked in pain. The bright, crystalline tip of the harpoon jutted from the top of his skull. His eyes rolled up, as if trying to focus on it.

Finally, Greatshadow shuddered, his body wracked with a death spasm. Zetetic ran from the tunnel and grabbed my hand, dragging me back toward relative safety as the dragon began to fall. Magma splashed up in a raging tidal wave as his body collapsed. Aurora, no longer in possession of the Jagged Heart, dropped to her hands and knees and tried to squeeze her massive bulk into the tunnel.

She was too late. The molten wave fell upon her and she screamed as her giant shoulders slammed into the tunnel entrance, plugging it, saving Zetetic, Relic, and myself from the magma bath.

I ran to her as the magic that had transformed her drained away. She returned to her normal size, inside a large cave that was a perfect negative outline of her body. The lava had hardened into solid stone on touching her, but not before it had burned away much of her skin. Her face had been spared, at least, and she was still alive as I dropped to my knees in front of her. “Hang on!” I screamed. “Zetetic can fix you!”

Her words were nothing but a whisper as she answered, “Th-the Heart... i-it must b-be returned...” The last of her breath passed between her ivory tusks as her eyes closed.

I pursed my lips together, fighting to keep from crying. She’d never intended to fight Greatshadow when this all began. She’d never done a thing to deserve this fate.

Relic hobbled next to me, the bone-handled knife in his bleeding claw. “There is no time for mourning,” said the small dragon. “Greatshadow’s body is dead. We must act swiftly to kill his elemental spirit, before he can grow a new shell.”

Zetetic wandered around the cave left by Aurora, staring up at specks of light that dotted the ceiling. He climbed a wall and thrust his fingers into one of the lights, which proved to be a hole in a paper-thin sheet of rock. He flaked it away in big handfuls, and soon had a large enough gap to climb through.

“Follow me,” he said, as he wriggled out.

Relic leapt onto the wall and clambered after him. Despite his injuries and the obvious pain of every movement, the little dragon still seemed much stronger and faster than I was. I guess even a lamed dragon was a better physical specimen than an ordinary man. Or, at least in better shape than me. I was panting, my arms trembling, by the time I managed to drag myself through the hole. My legs were quivering as I walked out onto a freshly formed plain of soot-black rock still spiderwebbed with tendrils of bright red lava. The volcano seemed to have lost a great deal of its energy with Greatshadow gone. Still, I danced around, grateful I had boots. As long as I kept moving, the heat was merely blistering instead of crippling.