Then Tagg had a bright idea. "Dragons got wings," he said, adding, doubtfully, "don't they?"
"Right," Gandy agreed. "Dragons got wings. This thing got wings?"
Some of them crept about, trying to see around the huge head in the hole, to see what was beyond it. But the dim light filtering in from above did not reach into the hole. There was only darkness there. They couldn't see whether the creature had wings or not.
"Somebody bring candle," Glitch I ordered. "Highbulp find out."
With glances of surprise and admiration at such unexpected courage, several of them produced stubby and broken candles, and someone managed to light one. He handed it to Glitch. The Highbulp held it high, stood on tiptoes and peered into the darkness of the hole. Then he shook his head and handed the candle to Tagg, who happened to be nearby. "Can't see," he said. "Tagg go look."
Taken by surprise, Tagg looked from the candle thrust into his hand to the fierce, sleeping features of the thing in the hole. He turned pale, gulped and started to shake his head, then saw Minna in the crowd. She was gazing at him with something in her eyes that might have been more than the candle's reflection.
Tagg gulped a shuddering breath, steeling himself. "Rats," he said. "Okay."
The huge, green head almost filled the hole in the wall of rubble. As Tagg eased alongside it, his back to the stones at one side, he could have reached out and touched the nearest nostril, the exposed dagger-points of the great fangs, the glistening eyelid. The spiked fan of the creature's graceful crest stood above him as he crept deeper, edging alongside a long, tapered neck that was nearly as wide as he was tall and seemed to go on and on, into the darkness.
"Tagg pretty brave," Minna whispered as they watched him go. Instinctively, her hand went into her belt pouch and clutched the pretty bauble Tagg had found for her. Her fingers caressed it, and the great, sleeping creature stirred slightly, then relaxed again in sleep.
"Not brave," Gandy corrected. "Just dumb. Highbulp gonna get Tagg killed, sure."
Tagg crept through sundered rubble, just inches away from the big green neck that almost filled the tunnel. Then he was past the rubble, and raised the candle. The place where he found himself was some kind of cavern, beneath a rise in the sundered hill above. It was dim and smelled musty, and was nearly filled by the huge body of the green creature.
Where the thing's neck joined an enormous, rising body, Tagg spotted ugly, gaping wounds in the scales. He stared at them in awe, then beyond them, and his eyes widened even more. The green thing was huge. Arms like scaly pillars rested below massive shoulders, and ended in taloned "hands" as big as he was — or bigger. The nearest shoulder had another ugly wound, and the hand below it was mangled as though it had been sliced apart.
He raised his eyes, squinting in the dim candlelight. Above the thing, on its far side, stood a great, folded wing. Nearer, a second wing sprawled back at an angle, exposing yet another gaping wound.
"This thing in bad shape," Tagg whispered to himself. "Pretty beat up."
The huge body towered over him and its crest was lost in shadows above. Farther along, the body widened abruptly, and he realized that what he was seeing was a leg — a huge leg, folded in rest. Beneath it was a toed foot with claws as long as his arms. Beyond, curled around from behind, was the tip of a long tail. He recognized that appendage now. It was what he had bitten, when he thought it might be half a snake. The recollection set his knees aquiver and he almost fell down.
Tagg's nerves had taken all they could stand. He had seen enough. He headed back.
Just as he was edging past it, the nearest eye opened an inch, and its slitted pupil looked at him. With a howl, Tagg erupted from the hole, bowling over a half-dozen curious gully dwarves in the process. Behind him, the great eyelid flickered contemptuously, and closed again.
As Tagg got to his feet, Glitch stepped forward. "Well?"
"Well, what?"
"Well…" Glitch hesitated in confusion, trying to recall what he had sent Tagg to do.
"That thing got wings?" Gandy rasped.
"It got wings, all right. Got claws an' tail an' gashes, too." Recovering his candle, Tagg handed it back to Glitch. "Highbulp want any more look, Highbulp go look. I" ve seen enough."
"Gashes?" Gandy blinked. "What kind gashes?"
"That dragon all sliced up," Tagg told him. "Somebody hurt it pretty bad."
Minna eased up beside him, gazing with sympathy at the hideous face of the green dragon asleep a few feet away. "Poor thing," she said.
As she spoke, the dragon's eyes opened to slits, then closed again. It shifted slightly, sighed, and seemed to relax, as though the pain of its wounds had somehow eased a bit.
For an hour, then, they searched for a way out of the rubble trap. They found nothing — at least, nothing they could reach without going past the dragon. The shifting of the beast in its lair had resettled the fallen stone, blocking every exit. One after another, the searchers gave up, shrugging and gathering into a tight little group as far from the dragon as they could get.
When it was obvious that they were truly trapped, Clout asked — of no one in particular — "So, now what?"
Gandy scratched his head and leaned on his mop handle. "Dunno," he said. "Better ask what's-'is- name."
"Who?"
"WHAT'S-'is-name. Th' Highbulp " He turned. "Highbulp, what we do now?" He peered around in the dimness. "Highbulp? Where th' Highbulp?"
It took a few minutes to find him. With nothing better to do. Glitch I had curled up beside a rock. He was sound asleep.
They were all asleep when Verden Leafglow awakened — gully dwarves everywhere, scattered in clumps and clusters about the dim recess, most of them snoring. At a glance, she counted more than sixty of the little creatures in plain sight, and knew there were more of them behind rocks, in the shadows, and beneath or beyond the sleeping heaps. One of them, she knew, had even crept past her into her lair, thinking that in sleep she might not notice. But it had only looked around and returned to the others.
Her first inclination was to simply exterminate them. But she had a better idea. They might be useful to her, if she kept them alive for a time — and if she could make them serve her.
Gully dwarves. Her contempt for them was even greater than the contempt most other races felt for the Aghar. As a dragon, she loathed ALL other races, and these were certainly the most contemptible of the contemptible. Even compared to the intelligence of humans, full dwarves, and others of the kind, the mentality of gully dwarves was so incredibly simple that it bordered on imbecility. And compared to dragon intelligence, it was nothing at all.
Still, the pathetic creatures had certain instincts that might be useful. They were excellent foragers, adept at getting into and searching out places that others might not even know existed. And they were good at finding things, provided they managed to concentrate their attention on the effort for any length of time.
Somewhere here, among the rubble of the destroyed city of Chaldis, was her self-stone. In her sleep she had sensed its presence. With her self-stone, she could heal herself completely. Properly motivated, the gully dwarves might find and deliver the self-stone.
Closing her eyes, she thought a spell, and her dragonsenses heard the beginnings of tiny movements among the rubble beyond the rock-fall cavern where the gully dwarves were trapped. Tiny, scurrying sounds, hints of movement carried more by vibration in the stones than by any real noise. She concentrated on the spell, and the hints of movement increased in number and volume. She added a dimension of difference to the spell, and other movements could be sensed; slithering, scuffing movements seeming to come from the soil above her lair.