The Crucible of the Dragon God (23 page)

"Hold on just one farking minute," she said, and gestured at the pillar and chains and the hides that barely garbed her. "If you knew this was going to save me, why didn't you just slice me when I was paralyzed. Why all this pantomime?"

Slowhand coughed. "It was, erm, a tribal elder thing. Tradition. Yes, tradition."

"Really? And which ones are the tribal elders, then?"

"The elders... yes," Slowhand said, hesitantly. He moved his finger slowly round the cave and pointed at the yazan who stood near the entrance. "They would
beeeeeeeee...
that lot over there."

Kali folded her arms and tapped her foot. "I see. They don't look very
elderly
to me."

Slowhand paused. "Yes, well. They like their elders, er, young."

"It was you, wasn't it? The pillar, the chains, this
costume
. You said you wanted to do the sacrifice
your
way. Great Gods, you never miss a trick, do you? Hells, I'm surprised you didn't have me
oiled
."

"They only had yuk fat."

"You are a pervert, Killiam Slowhand."

"I know! I can't help it!"

"Well, I can't help this." Kali retorted. She booted him in the groin once more and, as the archer crumpled into a wheezing heap, turned and smiled at the yazan. "Sorry. Tradition."

The yazan accepting her as one of their own, now, Kali was permitted to leave the cave only to find herself in another, larger one. This appeared to be some gathering place for their people. Here, she found herself reunited with Aldrededor and Dolorosa who, despite their raised eyebrows at her garb, were, like the yazan themselves, comfortably seated around the fire whose glow she had seen from the pillar. She saw the reason for the shadowy altercations she had witnessed, too. The ex-pirates and the yazan were all gnawing heartily at chunks of roasted meat and, on occasion, some of the yazan tried to snatch Dolorosa's meat from her. The older woman was having none of it - as a rapidly unsheathed knife and a snarl proved - and, while Kali could appreciate her hunger after her ordeal, she found it quite
disturbing
how easily Dolorosa slipped into the tribal way of life. She smiled as the tall, thin woman winked at Slowhand as he hobbled in from the other cave, a greasy mass of dribble running down her chin.

Kali's smile faded, however, as she sat amongst the group, and it was replaced by a look of puzzlement. The yazan were different, all right. Human, yes, but sitting next to her was a man whose eyes were the colour of Long Night. Across from her, a woman whose skin was scaled as if her blood ran cold, and, next to her, another man whose skeleton, in places, grew outside his skin. She couldn't be sure but it looked as if one of them even had
gills
.

"Slowhand," she whispered as the archer, maskless now, settled beside her, "who are these people, what the hells is going on?"

"I don't know, but there are more like them, in caves all around here. Even some who are able to heal like you. Heal others, too. Believe me, I was in quite the mess when they brought me here."

Kali looked at him, concerned, but found herself staring instead at his
Endless Passion
tattoo. Was it, she wondered, anything to do with the younger female yazan who was blowing kisses at him from across the fire?

"Oh dear," she said, giving her a hard stare. "Still, you certainly seem to have
settled in
."

Slowhand harumphed, embarrassed. "Yes, that. Look, I told you, Hooper, they were thinking of offing
me
. I, er, had to
bond
with them."

"Bond with them? Right. And tell me, Killiam Slowhand, how many times, exactly, did you
bond
?"

"Hooper, it wasn't like that!" the archer protested, then reddened. "Besides, she's... different too."

"Pits, Slowhand, I leave you alone for a few weeks and suddenly you're setting up home with some tart with what, an extra orifi -? Oh, no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. I mean, it just occurred to me, even that chant of theirs - that
unka-chakka
- is the opening to that pitsing song I hate isn't it?
Isn't it
!"

"So ever since I've been in a stupor, because of that lass named Kali Hoooooper..." Slowhand sang, and smiled. "Truth is, Kal, I didn't feel much like coming down out of the mountains because what was the point? I thought you were dead."

There was something in Slowhand's tone that made Kali falter. "You're serious, aren't you?"

"Never more so."

"I thought you might be dead too."

"Well, I'm not," Slowhand grinned. "So... how you doing?"

"Oh, you know -
shit!
"

"Shit?"

"No, sorry, I..." Kali began and then trailed off.

Because, while Slowhand's
unka-chakka
had been nagging at her, something else had too. The name of the people they were with. The yazan, they called themselves. Despite her knowledge of ancient languages - elf, dwarf
and
human - she had never heard such a name before. There
was
, though, an elven word which was spelled differently but pronounced much the same. Only it wasn't a name, it was a description.

Yassan
.

It meant
changed
.

She couldn't help but think of her own past, of how she had been found as a babe by Merrit Moon in that long lost and sealed Old Race site - and how different she had found herself to be in the time since. Just like the yassan. Neither she or the old man had ever found out where she had come from but could she have come from here? Was she really
like
them?

She shared her thoughts with Slowhand.

"Doubt it," Slowhand said. "There's a reason these people have never left the mountains, a reason their culture remains stagnated. Thing is,
if
they leave the mountains, they die."

"What? That's ridiculous."

"Tell the yassan that. They have funerals
before
they die - their old ones simply walking down the pass until they turn to dust. Dust, Hooper. Literally. As if abandoned by their God."

A place in the clouds where the Old Races played at being Gods
. "It has to be something to do with the Crucible."

"Crucible? You mean the Crucible of the Dragon God?"

"The Crucible of the
Dragon
God?"

"That's what they call it."

"They worship a dragon God? Why in the hells would they do that when dragons have been extinct for thousands upon thousands of years, since before humans were around?"

"That is something I've been trying to work out."

"From what?"

"Their cave paintings."

"They have cave paintings?"

Slowhand smiled, as if he knew where he was going all along. He rose and offered her a hand up. "I know you love it when I talk dirty."

The archer took a flaming torch for each of them and escorted Kali through a series of caves heading upward, chatting as they walked as if simply out for a stroll.

"So, I guess the fact that you've turned up here means the world is ending again, right?"

"Pretty much."

"The k'nid?"

"The k'nid."

Slowhand nodded. "The yassan told me they've been pouring out of the mountains once every
seharn
- that's day to you. Met them myself. Lethal little bastards but I wouldn't quite have put them in the world-ending category."

Kali told him about Andon, and about the k'nid's ability to replicate.

"Hells. I shouldn't have been twiddling my thumbs up here. I could have done something to help."

"No, Slowhand, you couldn't. But you can now."

Slowhand stopped, smiled, swept back his hair. "Sidekick?"

"Sidekick."

"Gods, it's good to see you," the archer declared suddenly, and planted a smacker on her lips.

"
Iffgudderseyoodoo
..."

"What say that when we've saved the world we find a little cave somewhere, spread the furs and -"

Slowhand stopped as Kali froze in his arms then pushed him away, hard enough for him to collide with the wall. He raised his eyes as he realised where in the cave system they were, and what she must have seen behind him. The cave paintings.

The archer stood by her but Kali completely ignored him, already engrossed in what was depicted on the walls, running her fingers back and forth between the pictures as she concentrated on their meaning.

"Well?" he said. "They tell you anything?"

"Only the entire bloody history of the yassan. Gods, Slowhand, these people are descendants of Thunderlungs' and Mawnee's tribes, only they're not
true
descendants because the true blood line was interrupted. It's possible even that the original tribes died out long ago." Kali paused, and took an excited breath. "No, this relates
another
legend about how their people were
taken
- taken to a place beyond the mountains - where they were changed by the God who lived there. A Dragon God, Slowhand! It goes on -
look
- saying that, in return for their service to the dragon god, they would inherit the place beyond the mountains when the Dragon God ascended to... fark, that bit isn't clear. But the point,
the point is
, that this place beyond the mountains is described as a place in the clouds. A
place in the clouds
, Slowhand! It has to be what we're looking for. It has to be the Crucible!"

"So those jiggly lines are mountains?"

"The yassan - their Crucible - is it near?"

"Well, I don't know about the Crucible itself but the
way
to it certainly is."

"Where?"

Slowhand smiled in a way that suggested
he
now had the advantage, placed his hands on Kali shoulder's and turned her around.

"Oh!" was all that Kali could say.

Because, in her eagerness to examine the paintings, she hadn't even noticed that the part of the caves in which they stood were open on one side, a high snow-covered ledge looking out over a pass below. But it wasn't the pass that had left her lost for words. It was what lay across it.

Kali trudged onto the snowy ledge, exposed to a bitter night sky, hardly noticing the winds that buffeted her as she stared at a mountainside which, though some distance away, completely filled her field of vision. She was looking at one of the central peaks of the Drakengrats, heights almost as unscalable as those of the World's Ridge that should have had no way over them or through - except that this one did. Sort of.

The entire mountainside had been carved into the shape of an immense dragon's head, and beneath a pair of giant, brooding eyes and promontory sized snout, the dragon's roaring maw appeared to be some kind of tunnel. Appeared, that was, because the maw itself was exhaling a huge and constant, roiling mass of flame.

"They call it the Dragonfire," Slowhand said.

"Oh, we have
got
to find a way in there."

"Hooper,
finding
a way in might not be the problem. Chummy as we now are with them, I'm not sure how the yassan would react to us treading on their holy ground."

"Leave that to me," Kali said.

She turned swiftly away and retraced their steps through the caves, returning to the main gathering chamber and calling a meeting of the tribal elders - the
real
ones this time. Slowhand had to kick his heels as she conversed with them for an hour or more but, at last, she took up position on a raised part of the cave and addressed the yassan as a whole.

The archer wasn't to know how guilty she had felt manipulating the elders - telling them that she was obviously yassan but
special
yassan because she had lived beyond the mountains and survived - let alone breaking her own rules of hubris, because in the end the ploy seemed to work.

"Your elders have declared that I have been chosen!" Kali declared. "Chosen to calm the one you worship in this time of anger! Tomorrow myself and my followers depart for the Crucible of the Dragon God!"

For a moment the chamber was silent and then, increasing in volume as more and more voices joined in, echoed with a sound that despite the
followers
bit made the archer bow and preen.

"
UNKA-CHAKKA-UNKA-CHAKKA-OH-OH-OH!

UNKA-CHAKKA-UNKA-CHAKKA-OH-OH-OH!"

Chapter Thirteen

They started out at dawn, taking most of the morning to reach the Dragonfire, the colossal scale of the cliff sculpture and its preternatural centrepiece deceptive, making the phenomenon appear much closer than it was and turning a seemingly short hike into a long, arduous trek. There were six in the party, Kali, Slowhand and four of the yassan. One to act as guide through a tortuous series of hidden mountain paths, caves and ravines, and three to tend and give offering before the enormous Godhead as other members of their tribe had done for countless years. Kali had decided she had already risked the lives of Aldrededor and Dolorosa too much to bring them along and so, to their frustration, had told them to remain behind with the tribe. They would rendezvous with them when they were done. The decision had, naturally, not gone down well, though the Sarcreans seemed somewhat mollified after she had taken them aside and suggested a way to make themselves useful.

Her overall plan was, she thought, a sound one, though with one pitsing great hole in it - the 'when they were done' bit. The truth of the matter was, she didn't have a clue what
was
to be done, because she didn't have a clue what to expect when they got where they were going.

The party arrived at last at the base of the Dragonfire and, standing beneath it, a somewhat breathless Kali found she could not crane her neck back far enough to take it all in. That the Godhead was awe inspiring was beyond question and their proximity to it had the effect on the four yassan that she had anticipated. Their heads bowed and eyes lowered, they diligently cleared its base of detritus and arranged their offerings of mountain flowers and intricately woven fetishes in rock bowls, their manner reverent and vaguely fearful. It was clear they dared not look upon the
Dragonfire
itself, let alone climb higher and actually approach it, which was handy for she and Slowhand because they could slip away without much attention being paid to them. Kali wasn't particularly happy that she had been less than truthful with the yassan, but if on the way up the rockface she suffered any
unchosen
one
like falls, it was perhaps best they didn't see.