‘Let’s get out of here before it recovers enough to fly.’ Kheda ran to the cliff edge and looked down at the Reteul. ‘The mages, they’re on the boat,’ he shouted back over his shoulder. He looked again and saw that the Reteul was rocking dangerously in its niche, no longer buttressed with magic. He winced as a slopping wave drove the vessel against the rocks with a grating noise. ‘Get us down there!’ he yelled urgently to Velindre.
She looked up at him, pale beneath her tan, tears smeared across her cheeks. ‘No, no magic. We can’t risk it. I’ll throw you a rope.’
Kheda stood, fuming, as she searched for one. ‘Dev! Show her the locker!’
The bald wizard was sitting on the deck, head hanging, hands pressed to his temples.
Risala came up beside Kheda. ‘Dev!’ The bald mage didn’t respond. ‘Here!’ Velindre had found a rope and slung a length awkwardly aloft. It barely reached half the distance between them before it fell back short
‘Throw the coil, not the end,’ yelled Kheda, frustrated. Velindre’s second attempt was better aimed and Risala grabbed the rope out of the air.
Kheda seized the Aldabreshin girl’s arm as she stepped perilously close to the broken edge of the cliff. ‘Let me have that. You go first.’ He took the rope out of her hands and slung it around his waist, setting his feet finnly on the dusty rock. ‘Slap some sense into Dev. We have to kill that beast before it recovers. I’ll cut its throat with my own sword if that’s what it takes.’
‘If you can.’ Risala didn’t look at him, concentrating on tying the rope securely around her thighs. Kheda braced himself as she began climbing down the ragged cliff. Several heavy jerks and one startled curse told him when hand—or foothold in the rotten rock betrayed her. Then the slackness in the rope announced her arrival on the Reteul’s deck. He moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down, just to make sure.
‘Is there anything you can tie the rope to?’ Risala looked up at him, face concerned.
Kheda judged the distance to the stubby remnants of the nut-palm trees and shook his head as he tossed the rope down to her. ‘I’ll just have to risk it.’ He knelt to study the split and pitted stone, absently scooping up dust to dry his palms.
Put everything else out of your mind. Concentrate on the task in hand. Distraction can kill you. Forget dragons and wizards and magical trials. Your world is this cliff and your only business is finding solid hand and footholds in the rock.
He moved slowly, testing every ledge and crack with toes and fingers. He could see where he was putting his hands but his feet were blind: the angle of the cliff made looking down too hazardous. The crash of the seas reverberated around the hollow, drowning out encouragement and advice from the deck below. Kheda closed his ears to all the voices, focusing his attention on testing each new step, each new handhold. Never lifting more than a single hand or foot from the rock at one time, he forced his body mercilessly against sharp edges chiselled by wind and wave.
A shout of warning sounded beneath him an instant after a slippery ledge crumbled beneath one foot. Kheda clung to the rock with sweating hands and did his best to drive the toes of his other foot into some inadequate crevice they had found. The beat of his heart in his ears sounded as if it were echoing back from the stone he had his face pressed against. Once he was sure he was secure, he tested the cliff with his free foot. A minuscule ledge resisted some pressure then broke away. He stretched and found a larger foothold but that also fell away to crash on to the Reteul’s deck, startling cries from below. Kheda carefully withdrew his unsupported leg and turned his head as far as he could, his chest against an uncomfortably prominent point of rock. The Reteul’s mast danced before him, ropes taut against the varnished wood. Warily, he tried to look down to judge the distance but found himself committed as he lost his grip. Half-jumping, half-falling, he dropped to his hands and knees on the Reteul’s deck with a bruising thud, falling forward and sideways.
‘Are you all right?’ Risala was at his side in an instant.
He stood up. ‘I’ll survive.’ His feet and the arm he had fallen on ached abominably. ‘We need to get this boat out of here.’ He looked expectantly at Velindre. ‘And where are my swords? Dev, can we finish the beast with steel?’
The magewoman was weeping silently, tears flowing down her frozen face. We can’t sail out of here with my magic’ Her voice was soft and low but steady enough. ‘The dragon would be on us in an instant.’
‘You won’t rid your domain of such magic by sticking a sword in that dragon.’ Dev looked up, voice loud and harsh. ‘I know what it’s been doing with those gems. I could feel it. It’s made itself real. It’s escaped the mage who made it—’
No mage made that creature,’ Velindre interrupted furiously. ‘That’s a true dragon. It was never a simulacrum.’
‘Your spell could never have beaten it? Then it’s won.’ Kheda spoke the dire realisation aloud. ‘It’s here to hunt and fly wherever it wants and all you can do is draw it down on us.’
‘Is there no way you can put an end to it?’ Risala demanded frantically.
‘I don’t know,’ shouted Dev furiously. He dragged himself to his feet and Kheda saw that the wizard’s hands and face were seared with shallow burns glistening in the sun. He gestured wildly in the direction of the unseen dragon. ‘Yes, it’s a true dragon and that’s one reason it brought down your pitiful beast, Velle. That dragon is used to fighting and using its magic for its own spells. You’ll have to come up with something a cursed sight more clever for it to stand a chance of coming off best.’ He turned his withering scorn on Kheda. ‘And it’ll be up and flying and burning us to a crisp before you could stick your sword in it, you fool!’
He winced and licked at a split in his lower lip. ‘All right, Velle, what do you make of this? It’s used the rubies from those caches of gems we fed it to focus elemental fire somewhere off to the south. I can feel that much, now that the beast’s wounded, now that it’s drawing its aura back into itself. That’s how it’s healing itself,’ he warned bitterly. ‘So what do we do now, Velle?’ He raised his blistered hands in helpless fury. Because that’s a true dragon which will soon be back at the height of its powers with enough gems cached to draw on all the elemental fire between here and the central domains. You were saying they were territorial? I’d say this is that creature’s territory now, my lord Chazen Kheda—’ The fire dragon’s chilling bellow drowned out the rest of his words. Its mighty wings ripped through the air and it soared above them, heedless of the insignificant boat in the hidden hollow. It looked magnificent once more, underbelly bright as polished metal, vast against the darkening sky.
‘Can you raise a stronger dragon?’ Kheda seized Velindre’s shoulder and shook her violently. ‘Something mighty enough to defeat that creature?’
‘I don’t know.’ She wiped fresh tears from her eyes, still looking after the rapidly vanishing fire dragon. ‘Perhaps.’
‘How?’ demanded Dev, scathing.
‘From an ocean tempest,’ she retorted.
‘If we had one to hand,’ mocked Dev. ‘And if we didn’t all drown while we were about it.’
‘Dev.’ Kheda snapped his fingers to get the bald mage’s attention. ‘What is this focusing of magic you’re talking about? Has the beast made something that it relies on, something we can destroy?’ You said killing the dragon would deprive this mage we believed had summoned it of his magic’ Risala was following Kheda’s reasoning intently. ‘Can we deprive the dragon of its magic if we scatter its hoard of gems?’
‘If that weakened it, could you summon a dragon that might truly kill it?’ Kheda demanded of Velindre once more.
‘If it was weakened and, more importantly, distracted,’ she said slowly. ‘If I had a truly enormous storm to draw on. But those don’t appear to order, and like Dev said, by the time one came down on us, we’d be too busy trying to stay alive to be working magic’