Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) (38 page)

Ilfedo scaled, with some difficulty, the wall next to the arch. And when he stood atop it, he viewed the city’s vastness set in a depression in the cavern floor. Lava swirled through the broad roads and pooled inside the buildings set lower in the ground. He looked to the structure wherein he had spied a bone, and there lay the skull of a Megatrath. In a nearby building, gazing down through its broken roof, he saw three other Megatrath skulls amid scattered bones.

Ilfedo stroked the Nuvitor’s chest, then threw it over the city. The bird glided out over the ruins. It shrieked as it veered out of sight behind a crumbling tower. Then it appeared on the other side, flying with all speed on a return vector. He frowned as the bird shot overhead toward the stairway leading out of the cavern.

“Run, Master! Flee this place now!”

The lava gurgled in the city’s center. It spat volcanic ash into the air. Sliding down the wall and landing in a crouch, Ilfedo raced across the vast stony plain. When he reached the steps in the cliff’s face, his faithful companion perched on his shoulder.

“Forgive me, Master, but there was something asleep in that city. It stirred in the lava as I flew behind a tower. It was larger even than the creature to whom you fed fish.”

“Larger?” Ilfedo shook his head. “Then it was a serpent?”

“Yes and no, I believe. For I saw wings like tree leaves along its sides and a head of great beauty and terrible—”

The explanation was cut off as something streaked above the city. It was long and aflame, moving so fast that he could not determine its size or shape. It whipped through the cavern. As a thunderbolt, it wove through the air, raining glowing embers on the city. It was a comet and a bolt of lightning simultaneously. It knifed into the heart of the city, erupting a geyser of lava and ash.

Fear seized Ilfedo, fear he could not quell. He stumbled up the steps into the dark recesses of the cavern far, far above.

Leave the dead be. He must find the living.

His hands must have hardened from his recent escapades, for the stairs steepened, and he effortlessly grabbed the higher steps to ascend the cliff. He glanced once over his shoulder. The city was far below and the warm glow of lava filled it. One would have thought nothing threatening could hide there. Yet surely a creature capable of sleeping in lava—if indeed it had been sleeping—must pose a threat. A man and a bird would be blades of grass it would study curiously in its fists. To break blades of grass, the creature would give it not a second thought.

The blade of grass swallowed and followed the stairs up the cliff face. The bird on his shoulder cooed, glancing behind. When at last Ilfedo reached the top of the cliff and looked down it, he could not help being overwhelmed by all that lay behind him. Ombre would never believe him, and Rose’el would likely play the skeptic.

The Megatrath graveyard was beneath him, and the largest creature he’d ever seen rested afar off near the technologically sophisticated metal structure mysteriously hidden underground.
Beyond that
. . . He clenched his fist. How could he reach out to his people in Dresdyn? Beyond the gold dragon, the city’s inhabitants had engaged in a battle for their survival.

He fell to his knees. The blood of the people ran in Dresdyn’s streets; he remembered it vividly in his mind. He could only hope that Brunster Thadius Oldwell had failed. But what happened to the faithful captain of the guard? Had the man he’d admired—Bromstead—been lost? He hung his head and remained there for some time; the Nuvitor cooed in his ear.

When he rose to leave, he turned his back to the cliff. Ahead of him the stony terrain was grooved. The grooves ran up a slope on the wide cliff, but the edges of the stone floor rose to form a tunnel twenty-five feet wide.

19

INTO THE VOLCANO MOUNTAIN

W
ary of what so large a man could do to her, Oganna waited for Whimly, Ombre, and Caritha to run into the forest before she relaxed her threat. She bowed before the giant, and then smiled. “Farewell, sir. I have no desire to harm you or your companion. If you will permit us to leave in safety, then we will part in peace.”

“Go—then. Take all—leave alone us. Me will not stop you.”

Not waiting to press her luck, she dashed into the forest and soon caught up to the breathless trio. “Let us get as far away from this place as possible.”

“Ugh!” Ombre wrapped his arms around himself. “I can still feel that sweaty beast’s hands strangling me. Lucky for us we had the granddaughter of a dragon in our midst.” He pinched her cheek as he sometimes used to when she was a child. “You are a magnet for the strange and troubling things in our world, my dear. I sometimes forget that the only world I knew before your birth was one of normal people living off the land. No talk of dragons, sorcerers, or beasts. Just home, trees, and food.”

She didn’t know if she could take that as a compliment, though she tried. She knew he meant well.

Ahead of her Whimly spread his brown wings to their full reach and craned his neck to stretch. The land before them sloped up, toward the volcano that was just becoming visible through the treetops. An occasional dull roar came from the crest. “Almost there. Just beyond the rise ahead are the cooled lava flows.”

A long low whistle from up ahead made them stop. Whimly’s feathers shivered; he crouched down. The lengthening shadows suggested that the hour was growing late. A growl sounded in his throat, and he followed it with a hiss, making a shiver run from the nape of Oganna’s neck to the end of her spine.

With a leap into the air, the Art’en flew into the trees, disappeared for a moment in the branches, and then plummeted to the ground, struggling with some kind of creature. He rolled with it, and then kicked away to stand between it and them.

The creature shook its hairy head and looked up from a kneeling position. Pointed ears draped over its shoulders to its waist, and its humanlike face was covered in tan fur. It had two blue eyes, as reflective as mirrors, and a green hooded robe covered its body—though a long fury tail stuck out of the back and three-toed, black-clawed feet jutted out beneath. From the way it had poised itself, she guessed that it could be vicious if it wanted to be. Oganna had never seen or heard of anything like this, not even in myths told in the scrolls her father read to her when she was a child.

“What is it?”

“A hybrid of some sort that wanders the Swamplands,” Whimly said. “I think it is just out to cause trouble.”

“Can it talk?”

Whimly snarled as he eyed the hybrid. “Not so far as I have been able to tell.”

Taking a step toward the hybrid, Oganna reached out with her mind, searching for the mind of a beast.
Do not fear me.

Through the fog of minds around her, she heard a faint, calm response.
“Fear you? That is an absurd, albeit reasonable, assumption on thy part.”
The hybrid’s blue eyes danced as they looked back at her, and its tail flicked like a playful cat.

“What—what are you doing?” The Art’en crouched as if to spring on the hybrid, yet Oganna’s reassuring glance held him back.

She reached out her hand to the hybrid and smiled at it.
Do you have a name?

“Well done, Oganna!”

Startled, she drew back her hand. “How do you know my name?”

Her companions stiffened noticeably, and Ombre drew his sword. “What?”

“It knows your name?” Caritha pointed an accusing finger at the hybrid.

“How is that possible?” Whimly crept closer to the hybrid and narrowed his eyes.

But the hybrid crouched and sprang effortlessly into the branches of a nearby tree, then scurried out of sight. In her mind, she heard its last words as if spoken from a great distance:
“Continue with caution, descendant of the dragon.”

How do you know that? Come back!
There was no answer, and when she reavealed to her companions what the hybrid had said, they puzzled over what the creature had meant.

“Funny-looking thing,” Caritha remarked. “Not quite like anything I have ever seen before. Does it live in the Swamplands?”

Whimly, now standing relaxed and open to conversation, shrugged and looked up through the trees to the dimming sky. “I can’t say I know for certain that it lives here, though I have always assumed so. From time to time I’ve spotted it in different places, all throughout this region, and it has at times been”—he cocked his head to the side—“mystifying.”

“How so?”

“Well, it never seems to be doing anything—shall I say—worthwhile. Always playful, ever the rascal. Useless sort of creature; we are better off without it. But come now; the volcano is up ahead, and I don’t want you caught in the Swamplands after dark.”

They passed out of the Swamplands to traverse the twisted black formations of lava leading up to the volcano. It was not a great distance to the mountain’s base. When they reached it, Whimly directed them along a narrow path leading to a dank tunnel.

“It has been a pleasure meeting you all, and if you ever pass my way again, I hope you’ll stop in to see me. The Swamplands are, well, a bit lonely.”

“You are leaving us?”

He stretched out his wings and shook hands with everyone, lingering when he came to Oganna. “I hope that time will allow me to see you again, young one.”

“As do I.” She reached out and gave him a daughterly hug.

He stepped onto a large rock and flapped his wings, then turned and offered them some final advice. “If at all possible, do not sleep inside the mountain, for I have heard it said that travelers who do have disappeared without a trace. Stay together, and do not rest until you have passed through the tunnels and stand in the land beyond.” With a jump, he flattened out his wings against the air and glided back into the Swamplands.

With the cold, dank air of the tunnel seeming to press down on her, Oganna had no difficulty staying awake. The close walls bore the deep gouges of chisels used to carve the tunnel out of solid stone, and millions of arachnids skittered around, entering and leaving adjoining tunnels or disappearing into the dark recesses of the many chambers they passed.

Gleaming blood red, Avenger’s blade pierced the veil of darkness ahead of her as she held it at hip level. The silver robes, smooth as molten metal, created a circle of light around her feet, allowing her to avoid tripping over uneven ridges in the floor.

The hours passed, dull and monotonous. She could feel Caritha keeping very close to her left shoulder, while Ombre was practically breathing down her neck. Without her they had no light by which to see their way.

A gleam in the dark, reminding her of a flickering candle, disappeared around a corner in the tunnel ahead. Was it the eye of a creature? Maybe, but she doubted it. The light had been too bright, and she thought it had blinked with a light all its own, not some reflection caused by her sword’s glow. Whatever it was, it now was gone. Yet something else bothered her, and at first she couldn’t put her finger on it. It was that feeling of someone watching them. She tried to shake off the feeling, convincing herself that it was a figment of her imagination. “Did you see that?” she asked her companions, referring to the light.

“Did we see
what
?” Ombre strode ahead of her and yawned. “It’s been a long day of smelly swamp travel and ugly giants. Why not—” He yawned again. “We can rest here for the night. We can—continue in the morning. My word! Why do I feel so sleepy?”

Caritha yawned as well, and shook her head as if to wake herself.