Breath of Dragons (A Pandoran Novel) (14 page)

I didn't know what I'd expected of Gesh, but it certainly wasn't this. It certainly wasn't anything so lush and so…
green
. It was as if green had gone tyrant and taken over everything, and once I sorted through the thousand shades of it, I realized we were walking through an enormous jungle. No, not just enormous—
colossal
.

It was as though we'd stumbled down the rabbit hole to Wonderland and drunk the entire contents of the "Drink Me" potion. This was a world built for giants. Here, the tree trunks ascended like skyscrapers with tops hidden in clouds of giant green leaves. Vines were the width of my body, festooning themselves from fat branches and coiling around them like snakes. Giant flowers of bright purple and red and orange freckled some of the vines, and a few tree trunks boasted staircases of shelf mushrooms large enough to climb.

Vera led us at a steady pace along a narrow trail—a barely discernable dark thread of earth that wove seamlessly through the tyrannous green. The air smelled wet and sweet, like honeysuckle, and thick rugs of moss carpeted the soil and the trees and the rocks like a green fur coat. A waterfall fell in the distance, hardly audible over the loud arthropodal symphony. It was beautiful—breathtaking—yet even so, there was something defiant about it. A mystery of sorts, veiled in beauty and protected by centuries of magic. I could feel it in the earth and the trees, and in the rustling of leaves. There was a magic here that was wild—savage, even. A magic that saturated the jungle more than the humidity in the air and the dew on the foliage.

A magic that was watching us.

I paused before some kind of plant with giant, broad leaves. The leaves were rich green and speckled all over with gold. It looked familiar, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out where I could have possibly seen something like it before. A stalk slowly twisted and rose from the mass of giant leaves, ending in a flower that had not yet bloomed. Even as I stood there watching, the bulb at the end of the stalk began to unfold. It was like watching one of those films on National Geographic, where they've lapsed time. But time hadn't lapsed. This bulb opened right before my eyes.

And it unfolded into something beautiful, blood red and mottled with deep purples and blues with a trumpet of orange in the very center. I was leaning forward to touch the huge, glossy petals when Alex pulled my hand back.

"Don't touch anything," he warned.

"It's just a flower," I said. A bright blue butterfly the size of my hand fluttered its wings and settled itself comfortably on the trumpet of the flower. No sooner had it landed than huge, spider-like pinchers jutted out of the trumpet and snapped around the butterfly, pulling it and its huge wings inside. The petals closed around it, and the butterfly was gone.

Alex flashed me his infamous when-are-you-going-to-start-listening-to-me look.

I grumbled. "Why do you always have to be right?"

"I don't always have to be right," he replied. "It just usually ends up that way."

I snorted and shook my head, and we kept walking.

Beautiful birds in the most vibrant shades I'd ever seen shot like bullets of color through the trees. Their chirping had a certain melodic quality to it that made me wonder if the birds were actually singing a song, harmonizing with one another. And sometimes a shower of warm rain would descend in a soft patter and we would duck beneath one of the countless umbrella-sized leaves. The showers never lasted very long, though, and within minutes we'd be back on our way.

Every so often, Alex would touch my shoulder and press more of his soothing energy into it. It helped a little, and the warmth of the jungle loosened my tight muscles, but what I really wanted was to lie down and go into hibernation for a few months.

Another lovely attribute of this colossal jungle was the bugs. They were
huge
. Giant black and hairy spiders hung from massive, thick webs, dangling in a cloud from treetops. At one point I made the mistake of kicking over a stone lying in the middle of the trail. Beneath it was a beetle the size of my foot. It hissed at me and I jumped back, hastily kicking the rock back on top of it. I hated bugs.

Alex chuckled behind me. "Honestly. You face gargons and unseen and giants, and you're afraid of a beetle."

"Alex, that wasn't just any beetle. That thing could've eaten my foot off. I don't trust things with that many legs, and I certainly don't trust creatures that wear their skeleton on the outside. It isn't natural."

"Speaking of not natural," he said, "care to explain how, exactly, you got us out of that prison?"

I'd almost forgotten the events of the past few hours, being so distracted by these new tropical reveries. After meeting Godzilla the Beetle, I felt a little more energized, so I recounted every single detail loudly enough for Vera to hear. When I glanced back at Alex during the explosive part of my story, he stopped and stared at me as if my hair had suddenly turned purple. He blinked, shook his head, and resumed walking, asking me to continue.

Once I finally finished, he said, "I can't decide if that was ingenious or incredibly stupid."

"Since we survived," I said, "let's go with ingenious."

"I'm going with incredibly stupid," Vera added from the front. "You're lucky Myez Rader didn't have you killed on the spot."

"He wouldn't hurt me, Vera," I said. "He had specific orders not to hurt me, which was why I knew it had to be me."

She snorted.

I decided not to mention that she was the one who had led us down there in the first place.

"But you don't really know where the box is," Alex asked. "Or do you?"

I shook my head. "No, I still don't, but I just needed to distract Myez long enough for me to blow up his stores of fire and ice and steal his keys."

"Which was exceedingly risky, I might add." Alex's tone was heavy with disapproval.

"I know, but it was the only thing I could think of. It was either that or be in Eris's hands…"

Or Thad's
.

I refused to let myself think about
him
right now.

Alex's eyes burned in my back.

"Vera." I decided to change the subject. "How do you think Mercedes will react to what happened with Myez Rader?"

Vera brushed past a large leaf drooping into the trail. "I don't know how she will respond, but it had to have been a singularly invaluable offer for Myez Rader to denounce decades of servitude. A person does not defy Mercedes Bellona of Gesh." She said this last part in a way that made me think she had personal experience with the consequences of such an act.

"Who is he, really?" I asked. "And how does Mercedes know him?"

Vera's boot sloshed through a small puddle. "I don't know
who
he is. He has always lived in Thieves, and every time I've seen him, it's because he's come to Gesh."

"Then how did you know where to find him?" I asked.

"I didn't. I knew the name of his business and looked only for that. I also knew from Mercedes where the room to the shortcut was supposed to be. What I didn't know was that his business was full of charmers."

"You mean the girls?" I asked for clarification.

"Those weren't 'girls,' princess," Vera said. "They're charmers. Their magic can sway even the strongest of men."

She smirked back between Alex and me before looking again at the trail. And when I glanced back, Alex did not look very happy.

"So why does Mercedes trust a man who owns a glorified brothel?" I asked.

Vera shrugged. "You'd have to ask her. She always has and no one questions her. No one ever questions her." She looked up at the trees.

I wanted to know what Eris could have possibly offered Myez Rader that would tempt him to spurn a relationship he'd had with Mercedes for years. In order to face one's enemies, one needed to understand them. Where they came from. What they wanted. Their hopes, their desires. And then I had another thought—a much different sort of question I hoped one of them could answer. "What was a dragon doing down there in the dungeons? I thought they were extinct." I'd read about dragons, back in the castle library. According to history, they'd existed on Gaia long ago, but after the Great War during the time of Galahad, they had apparently died off.

When I'd first come to this world, Alex had said gargons were dragons. This was both true and untrue. I realized more recently Alex had probably given me that simple answer so that I might be able to tie something recognizable to the term "gargon," because my readings informed me that gargons were only loosely related to dragons. Gargons were a distant breed, considerably smaller, and could be controlled with dark magic. There had even been speculation that gargons had been initially created by dark mages of old so that they might control something fearsome and powerful to frighten others into acquiescence.

Real dragons, however, were much more complicated beings. Physical superiority aside, they also could not be controlled. I didn't know why, exactly, but from my readings, it had something to do with them being tied to Gaia's spirit. There wasn't a mage powerful enough to hold dominion over the spirit of a dragon.

Neither Alex nor Vera answered me immediately.

"I have no idea, princess," Vera said at last. "I was surprised to see one, too."

"Do you think there could be more of them?" I asked.

"I didn't think there were
any
until today," Alex replied this time, sounding a little worried. "You'll need to inform Stefan as soon as we stop. He needs to know about this."

"I can't," I said. "The bindingbook burned to death in the fire. Unless we could send him a letter somehow…?"

Alex was quiet. "Perhaps we can write to him from Mosaque?"

Mosaque was the capitol of Gesh, and the question was meant for Vera, but Vera didn't answer.

"And what about that little boy?" I asked. "Did either of you see him down there? I think he loosed the dragon."

"That wasn't a little boy, princess. That was a creature from the Arborenne," Vera said like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"What do you mean,
creature
?" I asked.

"The Arborenne is home to many, uh, spirit-like creatures," Alex said. "They can take human form if they want, and usually choose to when wreaking havoc. It's their lure. Sort of like the water spirit you met at Lake Amadis a while ago."

Oh,
her
. That was the day Alex had accused me of spying on him while he had been bathing in a lake. "Then what was he doing in a place like Thieves?"

"What is anyone doing in Thieves?" Vera added.

"Some spirits just like to cause mischief," Alex said.

"I don't know," I said. "I think he was trying to help us."

"Or have us killed," Vera offered. "He loosed a dragon. That's as good as a death wish."

"But the dragon didn't attack us," I said. "It attacked them. But how would this…Arborenne boy know that, since dragons can't be controlled?" I glanced back at Alex.

Alex glanced briefly at me, then back at the trail. "No idea."

It wasn't long before we found ourselves at the base of a cliff that disappeared into thick fog. There was a ramp right alongside the cliff. It was built of wooden beams, cantilevered to the side like a narrow shelf, leading up the face of the rock wall and disappearing into the fog. There was no rail—merely a platform of three two-by-fours, and someone had had the sense to bolt a thick rope to the rock wall about waist height. Definitely not a path for the faint of heart, or someone with a mild concussion.

A warm breeze fluttered over my skin.

"Feeling up to it?" Alex asked me.

"She can always sleep down here with the sabres and pampas," Vera offered then started up the ramp.

"Sabres and pampas?" I asked.

Alex glared after her. "Indigenous carnivores."

"Well, that's thoughtful of her," I said.

"If it's too much," Alex continued, "we can search for something down here…"

"I'll be fine," I said to Alex. "I'll be slow, but I can keep going." If that plant was any indication of Gesh's hospitality, I'd rather take my chances with that ramp.

The ramp wasn't as precarious as it had appeared from the jungle floor. The wood was wet from rain and general humidity, but it was sturdy enough, and the rope along the wall was secure. Whoever had built this bridge (and I had no idea how they'd built it) had installed a good number of support beams beneath so that the ramp didn't wobble much while we ascended. Still, Alex kept right behind me, one hand gripping the rope and the other at my lower back with one of his fingers looped through my belt.

It wasn't long before the ground below transformed into a great chasm filled with clouds, like steam rising from a cauldron. One wrong step and I would be falling to my death. I wasn't really afraid of heights. Flying on the vox had inadvertently cured me of that minor ailment, but this inability to see the world around me was a little disconcerting.

And everything was so…
wet
. Water droplets clung to my clothes and face as we walked through the constant drizzle, and my hair stuck to my cheeks and forehead. I had to focus on my footsteps; the higher we walked, the slicker the wood, and gripping the rope was like gripping a wet noodle. But Vera marched steadily onward, her usual white-blonde hair soaked through and colored like straw.

Thunder rumbled. It seemed to come from everywhere, echoing off the rock wall and through the deep canyon below. Soft whispers of rain descended upon the trees, and birds cried amidst the chorus of chirping insects. Aside from our deadly plank, the world was peaceful and sounded like a Naturescape—the kind I'd listen to while trying to study back home. Just when I was about to ask Vera how much farther, the ramp ended between two enormous boulders and dumped us onto a small plot of dark, damp earth. It protruded like a shelf from the rocky face of the cliff, and the narrow pathway continued on the other side. There was a single tree growing out of the wall at an angle, which provided a lush, green canopy of protection from the clouds and rain. The tent-sized resting point was completely surrounded by a fence of wooden posts and rope strung through metal loops, like garland.