Eleanor was relieved when they finally reached the flat terrain at the bottom of the cliff and made their way back to the foot of the waterfall. That relief vanished quickly, though, replaced by a gut-churning dread as she watched the water crash onto the rocks in the pool. It was just as it had been in her dream.
No, something is different… I can’t smell rotting dragon.
This realisation brought her some comfort, but Eleanor still shuddered as she looked up and saw the grassy ledge high above them that the dragon had always appeared from in her dreams. Will noticed her look, his eyes filling with sympathy and pity, and she shrugged and smiled in return.
“So where is the chalice?” Conlan asked.
“In a cave, behind the waterfall,” Will said, watching the pounding and crashing water thoughtfully.
“We’re going to get wet again,” Conlan said with an air of resignation.
Will shook his head. “Not necessarily.”
“Will, no!” Amelia said in horror. “That much water, are you insane?!”
“I’m not going to stop it, Amelia, I don’t think I could. I was just thinking I could divert it so we could get past easier,” Will said, frowning at the worry on Amelia’s face.
They left the horses in a small stand of trees, a short distance down the riverbank. Eleanor told Horse and Rand what they were doing, smiling when both of them gave her the impression that she should be careful. Moving slowly across the slippery, slimy rocks, they made their way towards the waterfall, getting as close as they could. The noise was too loud to allow conversation, so Conlan raised a questioning eyebrow at Will, who nodded and closed his eyes. Nothing happened. Will screwed his eyes tight, biting his bottom lip, his hands clenched in tight fists. A rippling shudder went through the solid wall of falling water in front of them and echoed in Will’s body. Slowly, the flow moved, as if a giant hand was pulling it aside like a curtain. The water splattered down onto the rocks and bank on the far side of the pool. With the water flowing out to the side, a large, black cave opened before them, and they stared into unblinking darkness. Eleanor shivered. Conlan led them forward, Eleanor and Amelia each taking one of Will’s arms so they could guide him forward so he did not have to break the effort he was giving to diverting the waterfall. Negotiating the rocks and ledge with Will was difficult, but they made it eventually. As he released the water slowly back into place, Will’s full weight collapsed into Amelia. She staggered, struggling to hold him up. Freddie moved to her side, supporting them both as Will sank to his knees, eyes glazed, taking slow deep breaths. With the water back in place, it was gloomy, cold and noisy. Eleanor knew Will and Amelia were talking in each other’s heads, although given the expression on Amelia’s face, maybe they were arguing. Conlan saw the same thing Eleanor did and frowned. Will forced himself back up and glared at Amelia as a look of hurt misery filled her eyes. He spun away from her and marched towards the cave’s forbidding void. A single tear ran slowly down Amelia’s face as she watched him; she saw Eleanor looking at her and brushed it away irritably. At the entrance to the tunnel, Freddie was fiddling with the flints he had brought with him, sparks flying. There was a blaze of orange light, which after the gloom left spots on Eleanor’s retinas when she closed her eyes. A pile of torches lay by the wall, so Freddie lit five and handed them out.
Where did these come from?
Eleanor used her energy to examine the wood; it had been cut within the last few years.
Apprehension gripped her – there was something wrong. She reached out for Freddie.
That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Will purposely hurt Amelia.
Freddie sounded uncomfortable, like his worldview had been shaken.
Freddie, something’s not right.
Yeah! Will and Amelia are arguing.
No! Don’t worry about Will and Amelia
–
they love each other, they’ll get over it. This is important. We have a problem.
What?
Look at the torch you’re carrying. That’s new wood, a few years old.
So?
So who put it here?
Silence.
We need to warn Conlan
,
Freddie said.
Then we need to get further into this cave, because he’s not going to hear anything we try to yell over this noise.
OK, what do you think they were arguing about?
Eleanor shook her head.
I don’t know.
The cave turned out to be a long tunnel which had been naturally carved by water at some point, making the floor uneven and difficult to walk on. While the blazing flames of the torches lit the way, they also left them feeling blind and disorientated if they looked at them. Eleanor held her torch high above her head, trying to get a balance so she could see where she was treading without losing sight.
If someone attacks, I’m going to need all the advantage I can get
,
she thought grimly as she ran her hand over Remic’s knife hanging at her waist, thankful she never let it out of her sight. She knew Will and Conlan had similar small knives concealed on their person. She assumed Freddie did too, as the man loved his weapons, so it would be Amelia who was unarmed, only wearing her sword when she had to. Amelia would have to shield herself while they dealt with the problem.
At the end of the tunnel, they emerged into a voluminous cave. The roof was invisible in the darkness high above them and the far side was as equally hard to see.
“We need to be careful – someone else comes here,” Conlan said, his deep voice echoing through the cave.
Freddie and Eleanor looked at each other in surprise.
“How do you know?” Eleanor asked.
Conlan turned to look at her. “These torches are new, there are foot marks in the slime on the rocks outside and I can feel it.”
They fanned out across the cave, looking for… well, they had no idea, something out of place perhaps.
Deep in thought, Eleanor jumped a mile when Amelia screamed a sharp, shrill, terrified sound that echoed around the cave and made it hard to work out where it had come from. Turning around wildly, she moved as fast as she could in the direction she thought was right. She found Amelia sat on the ground in front of the cave wall, where she seemed to have collapsed, her torch lying at her side. Eleanor was the first one to reach her, skidding to a halt on the loose rocks. She dropped to her side.
“Amelia, what happened? Are you all right?”
Amelia said nothing, her grey eyes black with fear and staring in front of her in terror. Slowly, feeling fear run up and down her spine in stilettos, Eleanor turned her head to follow Amelia’s gaze. As the flickering light of the torches fell on the cave wall she froze at the monster in front of her. From high above the dragon stared down at her with hate-filled yellow eyes.
Conlan, Will and Freddie arrived shortly afterwards. Amelia and Eleanor were still staring in shock at the beast before them. It was the dragon, just as Eleanor remembered him, face frozen in an eternal snarl and claws extended. The cave wall was clear, see-through almost, like the dragon had been dipped in plastic or was the surprise in a child’s bar of soap. Still not able to form a coherent sentence, Eleanor pulled herself shakily to her feet and walked towards the wall, resting her hand against its smooth, cold, polished surface and pushing an energy string into it. It was crystal – the dragon had been encased in a solid tomb of crystal. This was how the Avatar of Earth had trapped his soul; it was stuck in the crystal’s lattice. The creature may be dead, but Eleanor could still feel its life force and snapped her energy free, not wanting to be dragged into the dragon’s mind again.
“That’s the dragon? The one that attacked you?” Amelia whispered. Eleanor turned and nodded. Amelia still looked horrified.
“It’s dead, Amelia, it can’t hurt you,” Eleanor said quietly, wanting to reassure her frightened friend.
“It managed to hurt you,” Freddie commented.
Eleanor gave him an irritated glance. “Yes, but I don’t think it wants to hurt anyone else.”
Amelia pulled herself to her feet. “Why does everybody assume that everything I think and say is motivated by fear?” Her loud, angry voice repeating itself across the cave.
“Because mostly it is,” Will said. Eleanor was shocked by the low, hard, angry tone.
Amelia glared at him. “Maybe if I wasn’t so dependent on you I wouldn’t be quite so terrified of losing you all the time,” Amelia spat back.
Eleanor was confused; their conversation was out of place, and how had they gone from the dragon to being dependent on Will? She decided that this must be a continuation of the argument they had started outside the cave.
“You don’t have to be dependent on me,” Will snapped. “Do what Eleanor did, learn to survive. Learn how to take care of yourself.”
Amelia stared at Will, her eyes betraying the hurt coursing through her body. “Is that what you want?”
“I want you to be happy, I want you to be able to relax, but mostly I want you to accept the truth,” Will said quietly, holding her angry gaze with one of his own.
“What truth?”
“That everybody dies, Amelia, even Avatars. You can’t stop it or hide from it. The only thing you can do is accept it and not let it ruin the joy that life can bring you in the meantime. I would rather have one day loving you, knowing it would end, than an eternity without you.”
Silence. Amelia stared at Will as heavy, slow tears slipped over and began to run down her face. Conlan and Freddie looked extremely uncomfortable, as if they were intruding on something far too private, but Will had wanted them to hear what he was saying and Eleanor wondered why.
“Erm… Can I interrupt?” Freddie asked, looking from Amelia to Will.
“What is it, Freddie?” Will asked, his eyes not leaving Amelia’s face as she worked to control her hurt.
“I think I’ve found the chalice,” Freddie said quietly. He nodded to the bottom of the wall in which the dragon was entombed. Underneath the massive creature, a small alcove had been carved into the crystal – and within lay the chalice. Will finally took his eyes off Amelia’s face and walked to the wall, taking the chalice out and giving the dragon a wary glance as he did so.
“Well that was easier than I expected,” Conlan murmured.
Eleanor turned, intending to give him a mouthful for tempting fate, when she realised she was too late. Conlan saw her expression, or perhaps her hand’s instinctive move to her knife, and whipped round to see what she did. Figures. Twelve of them. They were some distance away but getting rapidly closer, and it took Eleanor a moment to realise why she could see them in the dark. They were glowing. The sickly green light radiated out of their skin, giving each a slight luminous corona.
“
What
are
they
?” Freddie whispered in surprise.
“I have no clue,” Conlan whispered back, sounding just as astonished.
The tall, skeletal figures stopped in front of them, fanning out in a semi-circle around the group. Eleanor stared. They were the oddest things she had ever seen. They had the basic look of humans –arms, legs, torso and head – but thereafter the similarity ended. Their skin looked like it had scales, not dragon scales but small, soft, translucent fish scales. They all had large, black, cold eyes, like those of a shark, and when they blinked the eyelids moved horizontally across their eyes like shutters. They had bumps where their faces should have had noses, but this clearly no longer served any biological function.
A genetic trait left over from a common heritage
, Eleanor thought, noticing the lack of ears, the gill-like slits in their necks and their webbed fingers. They had mouths framed with thin, hard-looking lips and Eleanor could see rows of short, vicious-looking, needle-like teeth. Their bald heads and bright flowing robes made Eleanor think of soaking wet Buddhist monks – an image totally ruined by the heavy, lethal-looking spears they all carried, sharp gold spearheads reflecting their green glow.
“Who are they?” Will asked quietly, coming up behind them, the chalice in one hand and a small dagger in the other. Eleanor noticed sharp blades had appeared in both of Freddie’s hands. Conlan had not drawn a weapon, so Eleanor followed his lead.
“I don’t know,” Conlan said, his voice low, he gave Will an odd look.
“What do we do?” Freddie whispered.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Conlan said.
Eleanor snorted. “Well that’s a first!” she spluttered, her loud, sarcastic voice echoing across the cave. The reaction in the beings in front of them was startling. They cringed back for a moment, then hissed deep in their throats, raised their spears and ran at them.
It all happened so quickly that they had no time to make a plan. The green beings were too close and moving too quickly to give Amelia time to shield or to give any of them time to use their energy without risking hurting each other, so all five of them reacted on instinct honed by hours and hours of Conlan’s combat training. They spread out as the green bodies flowed between them. Freddie moved to Amelia’s side, handing her one of his knives as he did so. Eleanor contemplated drawing her knife, but she knew she would fight better without it. If she had been carrying her sword it would have been a different matter. Two glowing green blurs bore down on her. She stepped lightly out of the way of the one on the right’s spear, punching it hard where its ribs should be as it moved past. It staggered, gasping. The being on the left stopped and whirled round, stabbing down at her, but she moved to the side at the last second, allowing the force the creature had given to the move to overbalance it, driving its spear into the cave floor. Eleanor gave the spear’s shaft a strong side-kick, splintering the wood. The creature pulled itself upright to find the spearhead still buried in the cave floor and just a wooden stick in its hand. The creature she had punched had recovered enough that it was coming at her again. It thrust towards her, but she twisted out of the way, feeling a sharp stinging pain as the spear’s razor-sharp head grazed her side.
Too close.
As she span around, she grabbed the spear’s shaft with both hands and whipped it out of the creature’s hands. Still turning, she brought it up and slammed the handle into the creature’s head with a bone-cracking thwack. She felt movement behind her, and glancing over her shoulder she pushed the spear back under her arm and into the stomach of the other creature as it used the spear’s shaft she had left it with to bludgeon her, a heavy crack across her back. White-hot pain flashed and black spots swam through her vision. The creature she had hit in the head toppled to the ground and lay still. With a yank, Eleanor tore the spear from the hissing creature behind her and twisted to face it, whipping the spear around in a relaxed, ready grip. The creature staggered, clutched its stomach and fell to its knees, green and light blue gloop oozing through its fingers. Eleanor raised the spear’s deadly point to its neck, intent on finishing it off.