At least this time they weren’t trying to kill her.
That dragon, though, was crowding them.
It didn’t actually push anyone, but as they moved forward, it moved along with them, its talons scratching on the stone floor like fingernails on a blackboard, and it wouldn’t retreat-if they tried to turn back it stopped and stood there watching them, lashing its tail like an angry cat’s, or like a snake squirming, blocking them. If someone tried to go around it it would lunge, and scamper, and cut off whoever it was that had tried to escape.
Singer and Raven had tried to split up and go around both ends, which was when the party had learned that the dragon’s tail was prehensile, capable of tripping a man and then picking him up, and also when they had discovered that the dragon’s full, extended length was at least fifty feet-it could stretch itself across the entire width of the hall.
It was also amazingly fast.
Amy hadn’t tried to turn back; for one thing, that would mean abandoning Ted, who had vanished up the stairs. She trudged on.
At the foot of the steps, however, she stopped and stared upward, dismayed.
The climb had to be a hundred feet-a ten-story building and then some. That bar of light ran right through the center, though she couldn’t see any sort of projector. Someone was sitting at the top, with the ragged remains of a bandage on his head-Ted, waiting for them.
It looked as if he had to wait; the stairs seemed to end at a wall.
It didn’t make any sense; this was a completely stupid way to arrange a building, she thought. Why weren’t there any side-passages? Why did everyone have to go up these stairs? How did anyone get into the rest of the fortress?
It was absurd-but it was here, and very solid and real, and she didn’t seem to have much of a choice. She sighed, and started climbing.
* * * *
The dragon was asleep at the foot of the stairs, curled up like a gigantic cat; as Pel mounted the last few steps he looked down past the light-beam at it, bitterly certain that if any of them tried to go back down the creature would awaken instantly.
He wondered what had happened to Sawyer; had the slug-things gotten him, or had he found a way past, or was he still standing out there, waiting, slowly starving to death?
Of course, Pel felt as if he wasn’t all that far from starvation himself. Singer’s canteen and Raven’s waterbag, stolen three days before from a farmhouse on the road, kept thirst under control, but none of them had eaten a bite since their rather meager breakfast of assorted berries that morning.
Less than a day without food, that was nothing, he tried to tell himself, but his stomach disagreed.
You’d think, he told himself, that he’d be used to it by now. He hadn’t eaten properly for weeks. Back home he’d always taken food for granted-oh, let’s eat Chinese tonight, let’s grab a burger, what about a pizza.
He thought that right now he would be ready to strangle a man with his bare hands if it would get him a decent meal.
Maybe Shadow would feed them eventually-or maybe it would starve them all to death here atop the stairs.
Pel had no intention of starving-if that began to look like a real possibility, he’d go back down and let the dragon make a meal of him, or maybe jump into the light-beam-Valadrakul had warned them all, in his archaic phrasing and barbaric accent, that it would fry anyone who touched it, cook them instantly, that it was basically the same sort of magical zap that he had used against the monsters back at the spaceship, but, in the wizard’s phrase, writ large.
No one had cared to test the wizard’s claim; they had all stayed well clear as they passed it.
Being above the light made everything on this upper part of the climb look strange-faces were lit from below, so the nostrils stood out, as if they were all in a low-budget horror film. The stairs were shadowed, making it harder to climb if one looked down. And the space at the top of the stairs was almost dark.
Pel mounted the final step and stopped.
It wasn’t completely dark here, by any means; they could all see the wall, with its ornate door, just a few feet away, on the other side of the landing at the top.
The door wasn’t anything like the gate below, which was easily at least fifteen feet high and ten feet wide, but this door was still big-maybe ten feet high and five feet wide, Pel guessed. It was red decorated with gold, rather like decor in a Chinese restaurant-Pel wished he could stop associating things with food.
Ted was sitting cross-legged on the bare stone floor in front of the door, waiting; the others were standing along the top of the stair, or just now coming up. Poor Amy was the last; she was panting. This was nothing a woman in her condition should be doing, Pel thought angrily.
He was panting, too, he realized.
Tired, hungry, thirsty, virtually unarmed-they were in great shape to confront the all-powerful Shadow.
If, of course, they were going to. If they weren’t going to just sit here and starve. If they weren’t going to wander on through some interminable maze. If they weren’t all going to be killed instantly-after all, if Shadow could create that light-beam…
How had he ever got into this? Pel reached down to give Amy a hand up the last three steps, and tried to figure that out.
He hadn’t gone anywhere or done anything stupid. He’d just been down in his own basement, minding his own business, when this all began happening around him.
And now his wife was dead, his daughter was dead, Elani and Grummetty and Alella were dead, all those Imperials had died for nothing.
When this was over, they’d probably all be dead.
Why was he still going on? What good did it do? Why had he bothered to come this far?
Heroes did this sort of thing in the books he read and in the movies he watched, they fought on against impossible odds as their friends died around them, until at last they defeated evil and saved the world-but he was no hero. He wasn’t going to save any worlds. He was just going to die.
Well, everybody dies eventually. He might as well get it over with.
He turned to face the door just as it opened.
Chapter Twenty
Amy closed her eyes to catch her breath as she mounted the final step and let go of Pel’s hand. She wondered whether that light bar might be radioactive, whether it would do anything to her unborn baby-though even if it did, she really hoped that wouldn’t matter, that she’d be able to abort the thing soon.
Although right now it seemed more likely that she would die and take the baby with her.
Suddenly it seemed as if everyone was shouting, and reluctantly, wearily, she opened her eyes.
The doors were opening, and light was spilling out, bright moving multicolored lights that flashed and sparkled every which way-and which seemed to create shadows between them, as if the differing lights canceled each other out in places, creating darkness. The glare blazed in every color she had ever heard of and several she hadn’t, painfully bright; she closed her eyes again and raised a guarding hand. If the light bar wasn’t dangerous to be near, something here probably was-in all that chaos there had to be some kind of nasty radiation. If it wasn’t radioactivity maybe it was ultraviolet or lasers or something, and she’d get skin cancer or cataracts or her hair would fall out.
And there were sounds-rushings and rustlings, like storm winds, or like some sort of machinery warming up. The dead air of the landing stirred to life. She smelled the electric bristle of ozone, and other scents, metallic and harsh, that she couldn’t place.
“I’m not going in there,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.