"Pyrothraxus," Nalvarre whispered in awe.
As the dragon glided over the towers of Castle Isherwood, he began to drop. He descended upon the hilltop, the wind from his great wings ripping trees up by their roots and blasting them hundreds of feet into the valley. His tremendous bulk settled upon the fragile walls of the castle, crumbling them under his weight, and as he grasped two already ruined towers, his huge and powerful claws crushed them to dust. His tail toppled a third tower. Only the strongest tower remained, the one where Lady Jessica had her rooms.
"No!" she cried as she struggled to rise.
Nalvarre pinned her to the ground with his own body. "You mustn't," he said. "Be still. There is nothing you can do."
They heard horses screaming then, and looking they saw the dragon rip the roof from the stables and fling it aside. He reached inside the stable with two of his massive claws and plucked out a writhing, screaming horse. Tilting back his horned head, he dropped the poor animal into his open jaws, then returned to the stable for another, and then a third.
When all of the Knights' horses were devoured, the dragon turned his attention to the final tower. Again, Jessica began to struggle.
"Waterstone!" she cried.
"The dwarf!" Nalvarre gasped. "I'd forgotten about him."
The dragon's jaws gaped, his throat bulged, white hot liquid fire vomited forth, enveloping the tower. The ancient stones melted like wax, bubbling and popping so loudly that they could be heard even from across the valley. In moments, Jessica's home was little more than a pool of molten rock, the rest of the castle a scattering of stones. She wept, furiously struggling against Nalvarre, until finally she grew exhausted and lay still.
Apparently satisfied, the dragon raised its wings and leaped ponderously into the air. The great wings beat down once again, lifting the beast higher and higher as it swooped out across the valley. Jessica and Nalvarre suddenly became aware of their exposure as the dragon turned their way, but there was nowhere else to go. With nowhere to hide, they cowered together, while Valian and the gully dwarves tried to disappear behind their one, pitifully thin tree.
The dragon passed directly overhead no more than a few feet above treetop level. They felt the heat radiating from his body. A rank odor of sulfur and burning meat gagged them, and a sickly metallic tang of hot gold and steel filled the air.
The dragon banked and circled back toward to the north, the direction from which it had come. Nalvarre released Jessica, but she continued to lie on the cold hilltop, her tear-streaked face turned blankly to the heavens. Valian clambered up beside them.
"Do you think the dwarf…" he began.
Nalvarre raised a finger to his lips, glancing knowingly at Jessica. He nodded. The elf bowed his head, his white hair spilling down to hide his face. Below them, still cringing behind their tree, the gully dwarves whimpered pitifully.
"Dragons," Jessica whispered.
No one had the heart to look at her, to see the grief on her face.
"Dragons," she repeated in a husky whisper. Slowly, she rose to her feet.
"Look!" she cried. "Silver dragons!"
Like quicksilver arrows just loosed from a bow, three silver dragons shot up from the valley. Two from the left, one from the right, they rose unerringly toward the receding form of Pyrothraxus. At the last moment, Pyrothraxus saw them and swerved. They crossed just beneath him, screaming, long plumes of white frost arcing from their mouths to strike and freeze his wings. A gout of flame from his nostrils responded to the attack, but too late and much too slowly. The smaller, quickersilver dragons rose above him and met, hanging in the air for a moment, as though conferring, while Pyrothraxus laboriously increased the beat of his wings.
Jessica screamed with joy, a veritable battle cry that surprised the others. She drew her sword and swung it vigorously around and around as she performed some kind of mad dance. Nalvarre and even Valian drew away from her.
"Kill him!" she yelled fiercely to the silver dragons.
In response, the silvers dove as one at the red dragon's head. He pulled it back, and flying hunch-shouldered like an eagle pestered by magpies, made his ponderous way to the north. The silvers continued to dive and bomb his head until all four were out of sight. Jessica kept up her war dance until, with the dragons no longer visible in the darkening sky, she collapsed.
23
"Do you know where you are!" a voice asked suddenly from the darkness.
Uhoh nodded, rattling his chains, then remembered that they probably couldn't see him. "Yes," he said meekly.
"Do you know who I am?" the voice asked, echoing in the vast emptiness of the chamber where Uhoh lay.
He was chained to a low stone slab by his ankles, wrists, neck, and waist. Occasionally he felt things scurry across his legs, but the darkness prevented his seeing them. He'd been there for days and days, it seemed.
"Me know nothing," Uhoh replied.
A light flared into life, revealing a small balcony with a dark alcove behind it. A creature stood there, glaring down at Uhoh with one hideous red eye. It was a draconian, but one twisted and malformed by the magic that created it. One side of its face had eerie, semi-reptilian, semi-humanoid features, but the other side of the face was melted like candle wax. In some places, bare bone showed through the distorted flesh, while in others hideous growths of bone and horn protruded in fantastic shapes beneath the skin. The draconian looked like a nightmare brought to waking life.
"Me know nothing!" Uhoh screamed in terror. He averted his face and closed tight his eyes, as if that simple act could make the nightmare go away.
"They call me the Old Man," the draconian said. "They call me the Old Man because I am indeed the oldest. I am the firstborn, the first of my kind to crawl forth from the egg, in the days before the magic of our draconic transformation was perfected. The magic was flawed, and so I am flawed, but I survived where my brothers died hideously, their bodies twisted, their minds shattered by their deformity. I am also more perfect than any that have come after me. I am more powerful. I know all things. In fact, I know something about you, Uhoh Ragnap."
"Me not Uhoh Ragnap. You got wrong gully dwarf," Uhoh shouted.
"That's not true," the draconian laughed. "We both know it. Would you deny your own identity to save your miserable skin? But of course you would. You are a gully dwarf."
Uhoh tried to lower his voice and sound dour. "Me not gully dwarf. Me hill dwarf. You doorknob. You got wrong dwarf."
"Come, come. Enough of these foolish games," the draconian said with magnanimous patience. "You are a gully dwarf, and you are the gully dwarf whom my servants have chased halfway across Sancrist Isle. You have led them a merry chase and done me great service. I see they are in need of training."
A door banged open. Uhoh turned his head to see two draconians enter, one bearing a lit torch, the other rolling a cart.
"Not all my servants are hunters-assassins, as humans call them. Some have other skills. These baaz you see before you are quite talented in the arts of torture," he said.
Uhoh looked up. "Why you torture me?" he asked. "Me only a gully dwarf."
"Because, dear Uhoh, I want to know what Gunthar said to you before he died. We know he told you something, by the words from your own mouth," the draconian said. The balcony light dimmed. As the draconian continued to speak, the sound of his voice seemed to slowly float down the wall. While the baaz torturers busied themselves setting up their implements, Uhoh eyed these fearfully even though he didn't know their uses. "You were with Lord Gunthar when he died. I am quite certain, shameless thespian that he was, he saved some dire secret to import to you with his last, gargling breath."
"What?" Uhoh said, utterly baffled.