As if he really believed what he had suggested, the mul planted a sharp kick in the sleeping king’s ribs.
Rkard woke, gagging on the rotten stench of sulfur fumes and faintly aware that the Dragon still held him. They had stopped flying. Borys stood on a broken hillock of basalt overlooking a vast valley of dust and fire. Before them lay a plain of loose cinders and black stone laced with yellow channels of molten rock. Scattered geysers spewed ash and fire high into the sky while cascades of lava poured from the steaming fissures of distant cliffs. A cloud of red ash boiled overhead, and the air tasted as hot as flame.
“Where are we?” Rkard croaked. “Inside the sun?”
“No, Rkard,” answered a familiar voice. “Borys has carried you into the heart of the Sea of Silt-his personal lands.”
Jo’orsh appeared at the Dragon’s side. As always, the banshee arrived instantaneously, as if he had emerged from the vacant air itself.
“Jo’orsh!” Rkard cried. He twisted around to face his friend, fighting against the Dragon’s incredibly tight grip. “You found me!”
“I never lost you,” replied the banshee. “Why haven’t you killed the Dragon yet?”
Feeling guilty that he had not, Rkard tried to pull his arms free. He was too weak. The Dragon had not allowed him any water in almost a whole day, and it had been three times that long since the boy had eaten. Still, the young mul did not think his thirst or hunger made much difference. Borys’s grip was as powerful as that of a giant.
Rkard lowered his gaze. “Borys is too strong,” he admitted. “I don’t know how to kill him.”
“That is for you to decide,” said Jo’orsh. “After all, it is your destiny.”
“His destiny?” scoffed Borys. He snorted in amusement, shooting wisps of red-glowing sand from his nostrils. “There is no such thing as destiny-except what a being chooses for himself.”
“And Rkard has chosen to slay you,” said Jo’orsh.
Rkard frowned. As he remembered it, he had been given no choice in the matter. The banshees had told him that he would kill the Dragon.
“Then perhaps I should kill the child now,” hissed the Dragon. “Before he makes good on his threat.”
Borys’s grip tightened, and Rkard heard a crack deep inside himself. A sharp pain shot through his flank, then he could not breathe.
Jo’orsh’s orange eyes grew cool and narrow. “Release the boy!”
“Give me the Dark Lens,” came the reply.
“If you wish,” replied the banshee.
Borys’s grip relaxed, and Rkard could breathe again. The effort filled his lungs with fire, confirming that his captor had broken a rib. Taking advantage of the Dragon’s preoccupation with the banshee, the young mul pulled his hand free and raised it toward the boiling sky. As he summoned the energy to heal himself, a spout of glowing red ash shot down to lick at his palm. The Dragon paid no more attention to the whirling jet than he had when Rkard had assailed him earlier with kicks and bites.
Borys kept his beady eyes fixed on Jo’orsh’s gnarled form. “After a thousand years, you’re going to give me the Dark Lens?”
“Let me have the boy,” Jo’orsh answered.
Borys held Rkard out.
Jo’orsh advanced to within a few paces of the Dragon. He glanced down at a patch of broken basalt in front of him, then stopped. From between the cracked stones shone the orange glow of a submerged lava channel, dappled here and there with flecks of green fire.
“Don’t come any closer, Jo’orsh,” Rkard said. He was almost ready to cast his healing spell, for his hand now glowed fiery red and smoked from the fingertips. “If you let Borys have the Dark Lens, what happens to me doesn’t matter.”
“Silence, child!” ordered Borys. His grip tightened around Rkard’s injured ribs.
The burning embers beneath Jo’orsh’s brow flared yellow, shooting a pair of fiery bolts straight into Borys’s beady eyes. In the same instant, he leaped the submerged lava channel and landed face-to-face with Rkard’s captor. The banshee drove the jagged nub of his bony arm into the Dragon’s wrist.
The claw opened, and Rkard fell free.
The young mul bounced off Borys’s leathery knee and tumbled to the ground. As his mother had taught him, Rkard tucked his chin against his chest and stretched out to his full length. He landed on his uninjured side, slapping his forearm against the rough basalt to help absorb the impact.
The maneuver did him little good. From his feet to his shoulders, Rkard’s body exploded into a stinging ache. He heard himself scream. The sound was choked off as pain filled his chest and the air rushed from his lungs. He could not rise, could not even shift his hand-still glowing red with the sun’s healing magic-down to his broken rib.
Far above, Borys jerked his wrist off Jo’orsh’s jagged stump, spraying an arc of hot, yellow blood over the ground. Though the Dragon’s snout and face were scorched, his dark eyes showed no hint of injury-only anger.
“Perhaps I can’t destroy you, but there are those who can,” Borys hissed. He stood so close to Jo’orsh that the yellow fumes of his breath swirled over the banshee as he spoke. “The Lens.”
“Destroy me or not,” said Jo’orsh. “The Dark Lens will remain hidden.”
“Not from my lords!” Borys’s hands shot up and pushed the banshee back toward the submerged lava channel. “Take him, my kaisharga!”
The basalt burst into shards around Jo’orsh’s feet. Six gaunt, withered corpses rose from the lava channel, runnels of molten rock pouring off their blackened hides. A little larger than humans, they had emaciated builds and white-hot talons instead of fingers. Their shriveled faces all looked alike, with gaping dark holes where their noses should have been and eyes of green fire. In spite of their other similarities, each had one feature that set him or her apart: lacy wings of fire, smoking horns, fingernails as long and sharp as needles, huge pulsing eyes, chitinous scales of armor. One even had a mouth shaped like a trumpet.
“Jo’orsh, go away!” Rkard yelled.
“Stay!” commanded Borys, his tiny eyes fixed on the banshee. “If you leave, my servants shall have the child in your place.”
Jo’orsh made no move to flee, and the dead lords began to close in around him.
“He’ll kill me anyway!” Rkard cried. He forgot about his own pain and struggled to his feet. “Disappear!”
Jo’orsh shook his gnarled head. “For better or worse, my long battle is at an end,” he said, keeping his orange eyes fixed on his foes. “I knew that when I freed you.”
All six of the dead lords leapt at the banshee’s gnarled shins and began climbing. The banshee swung his twisted arms at his attackers, knocking the armored ghouls away before they reached his knees. The remaining corpses tore at his legs, ripping away so much bone that the limbs buckled and pitched Jo’orsh backward into a sputtering stream of molten rock.
White flames began to dance over the banshee’s twisted bones. He flailed at his attackers, splashing great arcs of fiery rock into the air.
The corpse Jo’orsh had knocked away earlier dived into the fiery river, then all six of the dead lords began tearing his gnarled ribs away. The banshee’s eyes grew dimmer, and he sighed, expelling a cloud of golden mist.
Rkard’s hand still glowed with the energy he had summoned earlier. The boy stepped toward the fiery stream, intending to cast his sun-spell. He hoped that it would distract the lords long enough for Jo’orsh to escape.
“Rkard, no!” the banshee yelled. “The time has come for you to kill the Dragon-before his minions dispel my magic and learn where the Lens is.”
Rkard stopped. “How?” The heat of the liquid rock was so terrible that he had to shield his face behind his arm. “Tell me what to do.”
Borys stepped forward to straddle the young mul. “Yes,” said the Dragon. His wounded wrist dripped beads of fiery blood all around Rkard. “We’re both very curious.”