The Crucible of the Dragon God (33 page)

"This is the moment that they - that their ancestors - have waited countless years for," Kali said. "In a strange way, in believing what they did, they were right all along."

"I hate to spoil the moment," Slowhand pointed out, looking somewhat less elated than Kali, "but while they may have been right, something here is wrong."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, for one thing, our friend here isn't letting go."

Kali looked up, and frowned. "I'm sure it will soon."

"No, bossa lady, it is more than that," Dolorosa said. The ex-piratess had climbed up on a rail to examine the creature more closely and she, too, frowned. "Look atta this," she added, nodding at a scabrous wound that seemed to be spreading by the second all along its underside. "Eet is injured."

"Hardly surprising," Aldrededor said. "Our passage through the Dragonfire was a rough one."

"Except only its outside hit the walls," Kali pointed out.

Slowhand bit his lip. "Hooper, are you saying -?"

Kali nodded. "Nothing except the k'nid can survive outside the valley."

"Then we are in trouble, Kali Hooper," Aldrededor piped in. "Because as my wife would say, we 'havva another problem'."

"What, Aldrededor?"

"Perhaps you and Mister Slowhand would care to take a look over the side."

"Ohhhh, fark," the archer said.

"You can say that again," Kali answered.

"
Ohhhh, fark
."

The curse was wholly appropriate. Whilst they had all been speaking, not only had the dragon flown them out of the pass and beyond the Drakengrat Mountains but it had also, for its own reasons, climbed. Features on the landscape below were now little more than dots, the dragon having gained at least a thousand metres in height.

A thousand metres.

And it was still climbing.

Chapter Seventeen

The dragon continued to climb, so high now that daylight began to give way to the azureness of night as the air around it and the ship thinned, and that azure glow in turn began to give way to an inky blackness that was neither night or day. Kali and the others had been unable to do anything to prevent their continued ascent and they could do nothing now except experience, in stunned silence, that which no one of their world had ever experienced before.

It was an hour after dawn.

And the stars were coming out.

"Hooper?" Slowhand said, his voice tinged with wonder.

"Oh Gods." was all Kali could say in reply, as she stared out into the void.

That either of them could speak at all was a surprise. And not only because of what lay revealed before them. All four on board the ship had suffered near unconsciousness as they had been carried further and further from the now impossibly distant and patchwork ground, breathlessness giving way to burning lungs and then an inability to breathe at all. Thankfully, though, the effects of their rising altitude had not lasted, the ship forming a membrane around the deck that sealed them in while also generating fresh air for them to breathe. This was alongside another, far more peculiar and unexpected effect which was that, a few seconds later, she and the others seemed to be able to fly!

It was as if they weighed nothing at all, victims of some mischievous sorcery wielded by an invisible hand. The expressions on her companions faces reflected the same emotions Kali felt - that it was unbelievable and strange and incredible. And liberating.
Too
liberating in one case.

Slowhand's clothes were beginning to float off.

Fortunately they didn't get chance to float all the way.

The ship dropped suddenly, Kali and the others' weightless forms thrown into turmoil within, and as Kali scrambled to see through the membrane, paddling upside down across its surface, it was clear that the dragon had begun to struggle above them. The wound on its underside that Dolorosa had noticed earlier had become livid now, and the flesh around it was falling away, first in small flakes and then larger chunks, as if the creature were infected with a virulent leprosy. Whatever had possessed the dragon to bring them here, whatever had driven it on this suicidal climb, didn't matter for the moment, because it was clear that its journey was over - and with it their own. The ship dropped once more as the dragon's grip on it became weaker, but while it didn't let go, the creature itself began to turn, as if to dive back to the surface. The turn did not look deliberate to Kali, though - as if the creature were simply too weak now to remain aloft, listing rather than manoeuvring, merely suspended momentarily in this alien space. A second later, that proved to be the case.

Both the dragon and the ship began to plummet, and Kali and the others were propelled into the membrane. As it stretched Kali began to pray that it wouldn't break. She did not have to pray for long, though, as the dragon's rate of descent was so great that the weightlessness they had experienced soon dissipated. This resulted in all four of them being thrown about the craft like peas in a pod.

"Hooper, what in all the farking hells is going on!?" Slowhand shouted.

"Gravity, I think."

"That isn't what I mean and you know it!"

Kali stared up at the dragon and her brow furrowed. The wound on its underside had spread, encompassing now its sides and the beginnings of its wings. Cartilage and muscle and even bone were becoming visible beneath the flesh now and it was obvious to Kali what she was seeing. A reversal of the process that had formed the creature in the first place. This, then, was the fate of all those creations, bar the k'nid, who left the influence of the Crucible. The dragon was coming apart before her eyes.

And if it came apart at this height, then the ship would too.

Their dizzying fall continued and, as they dropped below a certain altitude, the membrane that had held them from the void disappeared, exposing all on the deck to the raw maelstrom of the wind. It was impossible to communicate with the others, words and even screams whipped away in the deafening roar, and it was almost as impossible to maintain their hold on the ship, winds ripping at them and making the flesh on their faces flap and ripple. Aldrededor, though, was fighting his way back to the controls, presumably in a desperate attempt to try and level them out. Even if he made it, the Sarcrean certainly had his work cut out for him, the decaying dragon having fallen now into a spiralling descent that span the world around them.

Kali willed the dragon to quite literally keep itself together for just a little longer, until they were at an altitude where Aldrededor might be able to safely regain some control. She had no doubt now that the same benign intelligence - perhaps all that was left of the dwelf - that had guided them through the Dragonfire was still at play here, because the dragon was clearly trying to raise and flex its wings and pull them out of their terminal dive. Even as great scaled and fleshy chunks of it were torn away by the tumultuous descent, the dragon, for whatever reason it had brought them here, was now trying to bring them safely home.

Kali pulled herself down the deck to Aldrededor's side, where the ex-pirate was linked to the ship once more but clearly straining to impose his will upon it. As he did, she stared at the dragon again, heart sinking as she saw its flesh had now all but been stripped away.

It was surely only a matter of minutes before there was nothing left of the creature at all. Still, as it fought, its wings, slowly, began to lift.

And as they did, the ship began to level out.

Kali looked down. Their angle of descent was still way too steep, way too fast. But it was a start. The dragon was trying, and they had to try too.

"Aldrededor, you have to pull us up!" Kali shouted. "You have to pull us up when I tell you!"

The ex-pirate's flowing moustache was plastered against his cheeks by the wind now. "I... will try... Kali Hooper."

Kali slapped him on the back. "I know you will!"

"Hooper, our friend is a goner," Slowhand shouted.

"Just a few moments more." Kali willed.

Again, she looked at the dragon and was staggered and awed as, quite deliberately, its head - actually more a cadaverous skull now - turned on its long neck and looked at her, as if acknowledging its complicitness in her plan. The creature knew what it was doing, all right, and it could
only
know if it did indeed carry the consciousness of the dwelf. Kali looked up as a beating that could be heard even above the roaring wind began and saw that at last the dragon had managed to fully flex what remained of its wings. As they slowly, majestically, swept at the air it began to pull the ship onto a more level keel.

But it would not be enough unless they did their bit.

Kali stared one last time at the dragon, swallowing as its saddened eyes began to dull, then turn grey, and then, like the rest of its form, began to discorporealise. The air around her filled with a dry, golden rain that coated her face and tasted bitter on her lips.

"Aldrededor, now," she said, a tear in her eye.

"Everybody hold on."

The Sarcrean's eyes shut, his jaw clenched and his temples throbbed with concentration. Above him, the dragon was now nothing but a skeletal afterthought and, even as he pulled back on the ship's controls, that too began to stream away into the wind.

Thank you and goodbye
, Kali thought sadly, wishing she had more time to mourn the passing of the ancient creature.

As the dragon vanished on the wind, the Kerberos ship soared from its ashes, punching through its discorporealising remains into clear sky, pulling up from what had become a forty-five degree dive into a much gentler descent. Only the angle of the descent was gentle, however, the ship still hurtling through the air at previously unimaginable speed.

As Twilight rolled beneath it, Kali could not work out how high they still were because she could see no landmarks below. But then as the ship drew lower, penetrating a thin layer of cloud, she understood why - they were coming down over the sea.

Storm tossed waves roiled beneath them and lightning flashed. How far out they were, Kali didn't know, but she understood instantly why the Twilight Seas were considered so dangerous by those who sailed them. Here, beyond the Storm Wall, she could see that vast areas of the deeps were whorled by giant whirlpools. Waves clashed like opposing armies, the fallout of battle spreading for leagues and, in one place in particular, Kali saw a wall of water so high it was moving dizzying slowly, but seemingly with purpose, across the turbulent expanse.
What the hells was that?
Kali thought. It even seemed to have things riding the side of it,
something
on top of it.

Whatever it was, their passage was such that it was soon gone and at last, ahead of them, Kali began to make out the jagged edges of what looked like a large island. From its shape she recognised Allantia, and beyond that a much larger landmass that, by extension, had to be the northern coast of the peninsula. As the ship passed over Allantia, a dark mass flecked with both red and white rose ominously on the eastern horizon, bending southward for leagues after leagues - a mass that was without doubt the World's Ridge Mountains.

Kali felt a momentary stab of disappointment, that of missed opportunity, because if only they had come in the other way she might have been able to see what lay
beyond
. She shrugged the feeling aside in favour of a much more positive one, however, because Aldrededor had brought them almost exactly where they needed to be.

The ex-pirate brought the ship onto an almost level keel and Kali turned to congratulate him but, as she did, the ship shuddered violently beneath her. It sounded and felt as if it had taken far more of a battering than it could stand.

Kali looked to the east where the thick bow of the Sardenne Forest could now just be made out, wrapping the base of the World's Ridge Mountains. The problem was, she could feel the ship moving ever so slightly away from it, on a south-easterly course.

"Aldrededor, can you turn us towards the Spiral?"

The Sarcrean shook his head. "I fear not, Kali Hooper. Our manoeuvrability remains all but non-existant and many thread funnels are damaged. We are locked on this course unable to climb and, what is worse, unable to attempt a controlled descent."

"You mean we arra going to crash?" Dolorosa asked.

"Not so much crash as fly into the ground... eventually," Kali corrected. "Aldrededor, where will we come down?"

The ex-pirate closed his eyes, calculated. "With our rate of descent and crew complement we will impact several leagues outside Andon, to the east of the Anclas Territorial border."

The Anclas Territories
, Kali thought.
Dammit!

Because in other words, that meant right under the hawklike noses of the Vos military. She had never been partisan in her life, and she wasn't about to start being so now, but if that happened, even if the ship took damage, the dwelfen technology on board could unfairly tip the balance of power in Vos's favour for years to come. They
had
to get past them, bring the ship down elsewhere somehow.

But where? As Kali studied the ground flashing below, she asked herself not for the first time just where on the peninsula it would be safe from its burgeoning civilisation.

And the answer was nowhere.

Kali paused, a plan forming. A plan she was amazed she hadn't thought of before now.

"Aldrededor," she said suddenly. "You said with our
'
current crew complement.' So if our crew complement were fewer, namely one, would the ship avoid coming down near the territories, even overfly Andon?"

"By a narrow margin, Kali Hooper. But I do not understand - you are thinking of hiding the ship beyond Andon?"

Kali smiled. "Something like that, Mister Pirate."

Aldrededor frowned, not understanding but willing to comply nonetheless.

"Very well, Kali Hooper. But how do my wife, Mister Slowhand and yourself plan to leave the ship exactly?"

"
I
don't. It's you lot I need to walk the plank."

The ex-pirate 's eyebrows rose. "This ship needs a pilot, Kali Hooper."