Unbothered by her soaking clothes, Velindre studied the pewter-coloured rock pierced with an array of black caverns. ‘This is a curious place for a fire dragon to choose to lair.’
‘Want to lay a wager on which cave?’ Dev suggested with a hint of malice glistening on his wet face. ‘If you’re feeling confident enough to encroach on my element.’
‘The merest mageborn tied to water and overwhelmed by that waterfall would feel the fire being drawn to this place,’Velindre commented with interest, ‘antipathy in their affinity notwithstanding.’ She looked up at the wind-tossed trees craning over the edge of the gorge, the crease between her brows deepening as she considered this new puzzle.
‘Is the dragon in the cave?’ Risala asked apprehensively beside Kheda. The warlord put his hand on his sword hilt.
And just what use is a blade going to be?
No, but it can get here in the blink of an eye if it wants to.’ Dev grinned. ‘And it’ll want to, once I get my hands on its hoard. Grabbing any thing’s stones gets its attention.’ He laughed uproariously at his own joke.
Kheda took the opportunity to quench his thirst from a water skin he had slung over one shoulder and then offered it to Risala. ‘You’re feeling the dragon’s magic, are you, Dev? Like you did before?’
‘What?’ The bald mage looked a little bemused. No, not as such, now that you mention it.’
‘We can’t wait.’ As Velindre spoke, a crack of thunder split the dark clouds overhead. ‘Go on then, Dev. Go and start kicking its stones.’
‘How do we cross the gorge?’ Risala peered into the broken chasm. Mere moments in the open rain had plastered her black hair flat to her head.
Kheda looked downstream. ‘There’s a bridge.’
‘What?’ Velindre broke off from studying the clouds to look. ‘Why?’
‘Who cares?’ Dev was already moving cautiously towards it. ‘It’s what we need.’
Kheda hesitated before following him, ignoring the stinging, chilling rain. ‘These caves would be places for meditation and seeking portents. Velindre, where are you going to work your magic? Can you do it under cover?’
No,’ the magewoman replied shortly. ‘I’ll stay here.’ She stared up at the sky and her blonde, short-cropped hair bristled with faint blue light.
‘Will you stay with her?’ Kheda looked at Risala. ‘I don’t want you with us, if me and Dev bring down this dragon’s wrath on our heads by looting its hoard.’
Risala nodded jerkily. ‘I suppose it’s as safe as anywhere with her.’
Kheda stepped close and took her hand, kissing her softly on one cheek. ‘If the dragon turns on her, knock her out,’ he whispered into her ear. A tendril of her sodden hair was cold against his face. ‘If it has no magic to follow, it may not find her. Then leave her to whatever her own fate may be and save yourself. Someone has to take word back to Itrac if we are lost.’
‘You’ll tell her of your victory yourself.’ Risala twisted to kiss him full on the lips with brief, sweet longing.
‘How you saved Chazen.’
‘Come on!’ yelled Dev, now down at the flimsy bridge. ‘We’ve a lot to do before you two can start celebrating!’
‘Try to find some shelter.’ Kheda tore himself away and went after Dev as fast as he could across the wet and treacherous rocks.
The mage was already testing the narrow bridge, a swaying structure of ropes woven from hairy vines and floored with crudely sliced lengths of hakali bark. ‘Wait,’ Kheda shouted.
‘If I fall, I’ll fly.’ Dev shrugged. ‘We want to bring the dragon here anyway, don’t we?’
‘There are footprints.’ Kheda knelt where smudges in a patch of bare earth had caught his eyes. ‘I’m beginning to wonder who built this bridge. It doesn’t look like Daish work’
‘So it’s Chazen work,’ Dev called, irritated. ‘How would you know it? You’ve never been hunting in these forests, have you?’
The bald mage made his way cautiously across the vertiginous bridge to the narrow ledge of open ground between the gorge and the cliff face with its dark, blank caves.
‘Come on!’ He beckoned to Kheda, yelling above the fury of the storm. ‘If it holds me, it’ll hold you. Are we going to do this or not?’
Kheda hurried across the bridge, feeling it flex and swing beneath his feet. His speed carried him over before his balance deserted him and he staggered to a halt beside Dev. ‘Which cave is it?’
‘Here.’ But Dev was looking back over the chasm rather than at the rock face.
Kheda looked, too, to see Velindre bathed in a nimbus of dark-blue light, a point of blazing sapphire between her two hands. The clouds above swirled into a spiral storm, black and riven with lightning. The whirlwind extended its murderous claw down towards the mage-woman but her magic reached up and seized it, drawing all the might of the turbulent gale into a column of blue brilliance edged with rainbows. ‘She’s really getting the knack of that,’ Dev breathed, his tone a curious mixture of envy and admiration. ‘She better had show me the trick of it when we’re done here.’
‘Then let’s get done here,’ snapped Kheda. ‘Which cave?’
‘This one.’ Dev disappeared into a sloping angular entrance.
Kheda followed, and within fewer steps than he had anticipated, the sound and fury of the storm outside were a muted memory. The cave floor was dusty and hard underfoot, smudged with wet footprints. The walls of the tapering cleft disappeared over his head into a black crack that didn’t even offer the reassurance of solidity. He ducked instinctively. He could smell dry stone and damp cotton as his wet clothes seemed to press in on him like the enfolding walls.
Turning a corner into darkness, Dev raised a hand full of bright magelight and Kheda followed to see a cavern opening outwards on either hand. The walls were ancient ripples of water-carved rock, with rounded corners opening on to further passages that sank away into unseen depths. On one side a tunnel entrance raised up higher than Kheda’s head had broken through to throw down a shattered scree. The roof was a black mystery high above, strung with pale curtains of living rock painted with muted blues and browns. Spines rose up to meet them, trailing curious patterns across the undulating floor and casting impenetrable, sharp-edged shadows.
It wasn’t just Dev’s magelight showing them this scene. In the middle of the cavern, a fiery glow burned on a bed of sparkling jewels, drifts of sapphire, emerald, diamond and even amber, so rarely found in the Archipelago. Red-gold and radiant, a single rounded ruby of unimaginable size shone in the centre, lit from within with fiery magic and filling the cave with uncanny, brassy light. The air was warm, Kheda realised, and it would be warmer still close to the dragon’s creation.
How did the beast meld all those gems together into that?
Why did it do that?
‘That’s . . Kheda stumbled over the unfamiliar notion. ‘Is that what the dragon is using to focus its magic?’
‘Yes,’ Dev said softly. He stood, his hand upraised. The mageborn flame in his palm was lengthening, thinning, drawn through the air towards the great jewel until it narrowed to invisibility. ‘And guess what else?’ He laughed. ‘It’s an egg. Well I never. I wonder if Velindre knows this, or Azazir.’
‘What?’ Even as Kheda sought to deny the notion, he looked again and saw that Dev was right. The ruby sphere was unmistakably flattened and tapered as if some bird or lizard had laid it. The glow at its heart was the same living flame that burned in the fire dragon’s eyes. He even thought he could see a miniature dragon outlined within it. Then he blinked and the image was gone, only a memory smudged across his vision
‘Then we have to smash it before it hatches.’ His mind still reeling at the impossibility of all this, Kheda looked around the vast cave. There was no sign of daylight penetrating the surrounding darkness to indicate any other entrance. An odd thought occurred to him. ‘How did a dragon that size get in here?’ As he glanced back at the narrow passage to be quite sure it was too small for the beast, movement caught his eye. Dev!’