Anza danced across the net. Jandra flinched as Anza's sword slashed out at her, again and again. Seconds later, the net fell away. Anza turned to free Shay.
Bitterwood dropped from the high window into the room. He looked at Jandra as Lizard climbed back onto her shoulder. "Is that an earth-dragon child? He can't come with us."
"He can and he will," said Jandra.
Bitterwood opened his mouth, but Jandra cut him off. "You always lose these arguments, so let's skip over the banter and get out of here."
Bitterwood glowered at her and nodded.
Shay shook free of the cut ropes that draped him as Anza stepped back. His voice was trembling as he walked toward the man who'd just saved them. "Did… did you… did you really set fire to the Grand Library?"
"Of course," Bitterwood answered in a matter-of-fact tone, as if Shay had asked something trivial.
"Monster!" Shay swung out his lanky right arm in a furious arc, planting his balled up fist directly into the teeth of the dragon-slayer.
Bitterwood's head snapped sideways, but he wasn't knocked off balance. He calmly wiped his lips with the back of his hand as he stared at Shay. Shay was trembling with rage, his fists clenched, raising his arms to strike again.
Bitterwood kneed Shay in the groin. Shay doubled over and Bitterwood brought both of his fists down onto the back of Shay's skull. The former slave slammed down onto the net, completely still.
Bitterwood looked down and spit. His saliva was pink with blood as it splashed onto Shay's neck. "He looks familiar," he said. "Did I save his life somewhere?"
"You can ask him after he wakes up," said Jandra, rushing over to her wardrobe and swinging its doors open. "Since you knocked him out, you'll be carrying him."
"Like hell I will," said Bitterwood. Jandra gave him a stern glance. Bitterwood shook his head in disgust as he leaned down and grabbed Shay's collar.
CHAPTER NINE:
A TORCH TO VANQUISH THE NIGHT
Shay coughed himself awake; smoke scoured his lungs. At least, he felt like he was awake, though the evidence of his eyes argued that he was trapped within a nightmare. He was a hundred feet in the air on the exterior of a stone tower, slung over a white saddle on the back of a fifty foot long, copper-colored serpent. He should be falling-the beast he rode was moving along the vertical wall of the tower, racing across it as easily as if it were flat ground, gripping the walls with dozens of sharp-clawed legs. Fortunately, the saddle felt as if it were coated with glue-his stomach was held firmly against it in defiance of gravity.
Craning his neck and squinting to see through the haze of smoke, he found that the copper serpent was studded with riders both familiar and strange. Jandra sat on the saddle in front of him with Lizard standing on her shoulder, hissing loudly as he shook his small fist at the flock of sky-dragons wheeling toward them. Behind him Anza crouched upon a white saddle, her fingers bristling with throwing knives. He felt a sense of vertigo… given the angle at which she was perched, she should be falling. Behind her, near the tail of the beast, a black and white pig wore a silver visor that hid his eyes. It sat upon the saddle serenely, oblivious to the swaying, lurching gait of the serpent as it undulated across the tower. Beyond the pig sat a little blonde girl, perhaps ten years old, thin even by Shay's scarecrowish standard. She, too, wore a metal visor that hid her eyes.
At the beast's head Bitterwood stood in his saddle, his bow drawn, firing arrow after arrow into the swarm of dragons that dove toward them. Shay stared at the legendary dragon-slayer. He was a good deal shorter than Shay, and not particularly heroic in his stance or gestures. He looked like one of the field slaves at middle age, weathered, wizened, and worn out. The deep wrinkles around his eyes twitched as they flickered from target to target. His hands moved with inhuman speed back and forth from quiver to bow. The bowstring sang with a musical rhythm, humming for a few seconds until an arrow was placed against it once more, zuum, zuum, zuum, zuum. The arrows, he noted, had the same bright green leaves fletching them as the arrows that had killed the slavecatchers by the river.
Shay tried to rise, if "rise" had any true meaning in this strange sideways world he'd woke in. As he moved, his center of gravity began to spin. He felt the ground below calling to him. He grabbed at the beast's scales, overlapping thin disks, metallic in their chill. He found himself slipping.
"Don't struggle," the blonde girl called out. "The saddle will hold you if you let it."
Shay struggled. His legs were now dangling straight down.
He was looking toward Anza, who rolled her eyes. She hurled her throwing knives heavenward and a sky-dragon suddenly tilted and fell, its wings limp. Anza pulled her long sword from the scabbard over her back. She raised it over her head, and swung the flat of the blade at Shay.
Thunder cracked somewhere near the base of his skull and the world went dark once more.
Shay woke to the slightly sweet stink of manure and hay. He was flat on his back on a large bale of straw, his head pounding with each heart beat. He raised his hand to discover a knot the size of walnut on the back of his scalp. He sat up, trying to remember where and why he'd gotten the injury. He was in a barn, with horses in stalls staring at him lazily. It was distantly familiar; he knew he'd been here before. This barn was attached to an inn on the edge of Richmond. It was where they had left their horses before going to the Dragon Palace.
He rose on trembling legs. There were voices outside, familiar ones. He stumbled toward the barn door. It hurt to walk. He remembered Bitterwood's ungentlemanly assault. Kicking someone in the balls wasn't behavior he would have expected from a legendary champion of humanity.
Shay pushed the barn door open and his eyes were instantly drawn toward the horizon. Flames shot into the air in a huge inferno that reached to the stars themselves. The Grand Library, housing a thousand years of history and literature, was now the world's largest bonfire. He dropped to his knees in the barnyard muck, feeling ill. Not more than ten feet away, sitting on the edge of a rain barrel, Jandra watched the flames as well. Squatting on the ground before her was the old man, Bitterwood.
Jandra was now wearing a calf-length coat that fit as if it had been tailored for her. The fabric was pale blue, the same color as a sky-dragon's wings. Shay had gotten used to seeing Jandra in the shapeless, drab, earth-dragon coat. She looked smaller now, yet at the same time more powerful, more like a sorceress than a refugee. She shook her head as she watched the flames. "Bant, it's not that I don't appreciate the rescue, but this was a pretty horrible thing to do."
"It got you out of the palace with minimal danger," said Bitterwood.
"Since when do you worry about danger? I'm amazed you let Chapelion live. You're normally not so merciful."
"Mercy had nothing to do with it," said Bitterwood. "I came here to save you, not kill Chapelion."
"You had him in your sights," she said.
"He wasn't the biggest threat. You were trapped by a net, surrounded by armed earth-dragons. I'm not positive I could have kept you alive if a battle had broken out."
"The one thing I'm not clear on is how, exactly, you knew I needed saving?"
"You understand it better than I, no doubt. Zeeky still hears whispers from the crystal ball the goddess gave her. The ghosts inside can see the future. They told Zeeky to save you. I wasn't in favor of dropping everything to chase you across the countryside, but I don't fare any better arguing with her than I do with you."
"Hmm," said Jandra. "Jazz said that if you were trapped in underspace, you could see the past and future with equal clarity. I know Zeeky's crystal ball contains a tiny sliver of underspace. Jazz said she kept her best secrets to herself… Underspace was one of those secrets. I have only a rough understanding of the science behind it. Apparently there are more dimensions to the world than the three we normally perceive. Alas, the practical science of traveling through these extra dimensions wasn't shared with me." In the distance, there was a horrible rumble. Sparks shot into the air like fireworks as a huge section of the upper tower crumbled and collapsed inward. "Shay's going to have a fit when he hears about this," Jandra said.