The Dragon of Despair (102 page)

Melina paused dramatically. Citrine folded her hands around the folds of the brilliant scarlet robe and waited, her heart pounding.

“Citrine,” Melina said, once again sinking down so she could meet Citrine’s gaze, “do you ever get tired of being just a baby? Do you ever wish you could grow up quickly?”

Citrine had never realized that this was what she wanted, but she realized so now. How much easier life would be if she were grown-up! Adults never had to worry about what anybody thought. Adults were in charge of things.

“Oh, yes!” Citrine answered almost surprised at the fervor in her own voice. “I’ve always wished I could grow up quickly!”

“Well,” Melina said, lowering her voice so that Citrine had to listen very carefully, “there’s a secret to the dragon, a secret most people don’t know, but I’ll share it with you.”

Citrine leaned closer.

“If you are in control of the dragon,” Melina said, “then you grow up faster.”

“Because you have to be grown-up to manage the dragon?” Citrine asked, trying to show that she understood.

“Something like that,” Melina replied with a gentle smile. “Now, I could control the dragon, but then you’d stay a little girl, but if you controlled the dragon for me, then you’d grow up faster. Why, by the end of a year, you’d be twelve.”

“Really?” Citrine gaped in wonder. “That’s almost as old as Ruby!”

“That’s right. You’d be almost a young lady, and you’d continue to grow up faster than usual. Do you know about Idalia?”

Citrine nodded, no longer at all hesitant about letting her mother know how much she had learned.

“She’s the lady who is mayor of your underground city, Mother.”

“That’s right,” Melina said, looking pleased. “Well, Citrine, when you were grown-up and controlling the dragon, I wouldn’t need Idalia anymore. You’d be my assistant in her place.”

One of Citrine’s voices, very faintly, tried to cry out that there was a problem hidden in the folds of this strange offer, but Citrine didn’t listen. Her mind was too full of wonderful images: of herself an elegant young lady in beautiful robes, of flying on the back of a dragon with Mother sitting close behind her, of being a princess at last, just like Sapphire.

“Mother, would you really let me do this?”

“I would,” Melina said. Her tone grew stern. “First you must promise me from your heart of hearts, cross the river and never come back, that you’ll never ever let the dragon do something unless I give you instructions first.”

“I promise, Mama!”

“Promise that you’ll go blind before you’ll disobey me?”

“I promise, Mother. May I go blind and deaf and dumb if I disobey you.”

“Good girl.”

The severity left Melina’s face and she lifted the red silk robe from Citrine’s hands.

“Take off your dirty clothes, and we’ll wash that dark stuff off your face and make you pretty again. While we get you ready, I’ll tell you just what you’ll need to do.”

Heart fluttering wildly, Citrine reached to undo the toggles fastening the neck of her robe. She noticed that Melina’s expression had turned dreamy.

“What are you thinking, Mama?” she asked shyly.

“I’m thinking that tonight, at long last, the Dragon of Despair will be mine!”

DERIAN PLACED HIMSELF LAST IN LINE
, Elise directly in front of him, Doc before her, and Edlin shadowing Grateful Peace as if he had made himself the older man’s protector for so long that it was unthinkable for him to do otherwise now. Firekeeper and Blind Seer, leading the way, were lost to Derian’s sight.

The stone ramp was slightly rough, providing steady enough footing, but Derian found he kept reaching out with his free hand to touch the wall. The weight of the stick thrust in his belt was little comfort, for the corridor down which they moved was narrow enough that he could not have swung it.

He found himself hoping that they were on the right course. The New Kelvinese were so weird and their Founders seemed to have liked underground nearly as much as they liked sky-pointing spires. It seemed all too likely that these chambers beneath Aswatano might have nothing to do with the dragon—no matter what Firekeeper said. She hadn’t been at all herself lately.

It was during one of those times he reached out to steady himself against the wall that Derian realized that the ramp had broadened. At almost the same instant, he knew from the sudden ache of calf muscles that no longer needed to tighten against the slope of the ramp that their course had leveled off.

Peace had reminded them against whispering, for the hissing sounds would carry farther than normal speech, so Derian asked in the softest voice he could manage:

“Are we in a room now?”

The sound of his own voice gave answer, echoing slightly against walls unpadded and unadorned but certainly wider set than the tunnel or the room above.

Peace’s voice spoke in reply.

“I’m going to turn up my lantern just a little.”

The pale beam Peace freed and turned back illuminated a small chamber, barren except for curling bits of what Derian knew was the older New Kelvinese script painted on the walls. An opening in one wall showed that their journey was not over, and Derian saw Firekeeper and Blind Seer cross to inspect it.

The painted inscription was well preserved and once Peace had confirmed they were alone and no traps awaited them, he motioned for them to wait while he brought his light over and directed it at the text.

“Any idea what it says?” Derian asked Elise, his lips nearly touching her ear.

“No,” she answered. “A few words here and there, but the old writing isn’t much like what they use these days.”

Edlin had followed Peace and to Derian’s surprise actually seemed to understand some of the characters. Then he remembered how Melina had forced her prisoners to systematically map the tunnels beneath Thendulla Lypella and thought he understood.

“Hot water again, what?” he could just hear Edlin say. “And the dragon. We’re on the right road.”

Derian felt strange relief that he was not the only one who had wondered, but Peace’s reply awoke a new uneasiness in him.

“We are,” the New Kelvinese replied, “and so was Melina. We must hurry.”

The Illuminator walked briskly toward the other opening. Derian, turning to take up his place in line once more, saw that Firekeeper and Blind Seer had already passed through.

Before Grateful Peace turned his lantern low, Derian glimpsed his expression. To the redhead’s consternation, the older man looked less annoyed—as Derian might have expected—than deeply worried, and a little bit frightened.

Peace’s expression stayed with Derian, illuminating his inner landscape as the minute glow shed by his lantern illuminated the area around his feet—and with similar consequences. Every time that small glow showed Derian a place where without light he might have twisted an ankle or worse on the increasingly rough surface of the descending ramp, Derian found himself watching his feet more carefully. All the while his internal eye strained after Firekeeper, trying to guess what had disturbed Grateful Peace’s usual urbane composure.

True light, when it came, seemed so unreal that Derian realized he had been seeing it for some time before he believed in its existence. It shone from ahead, a pale diffuse glow that silhouetted Elise’s slender grace moving in front of him and revealed Doc as a solid shadow holding up his hand to signal them to slow.

Even as Derian did so, he strained to see what was creating this elusive and welcome light, taking advantage of his greater height to look over the others’ heads, questing for the source. When he found it, the revelation was hardly welcome.

Their ramp had ended in a wide cavern that seemed natural in that no beams supported its walls, no tools marked its shaping, but was markedly unnatural in its very shape and in the evidence that something had rubbed the surface of the stone to such a high polish that the black rock gave back the light.

In form the cavern was like a moon almost half full, but not yet so far in her course that the horns at each end were lost. The ramp down which Derian’s group was still carefully picking its way was near the rightmost horn.

A steaming river flowed from the center of the crescent, its waters gathering against the curve of the farther wall, creating a pool nearly as long as the wall itself. Derian guessed that the waters must drain away, else the chamber would have completely flooded long ago.

The basalt walls of the chamber were highly polished along the moon’s curve, the polish diminishing and becoming irregular nearer to the horns. Viewing this odd and terrible cavern, Derian had a sudden vision of an enormous dragon sweeping down along where the central river course now ran, breathing fire in its fury, fire so hot that it melted the very rock that barred the dragon’s way, forcing solid stone to curve and polishing basalt’s roughness into glass wherever the fire licked.

It was such a stark and terrible vision that Derian did not doubt that reality had been forced into his mind. For the first time he pitied Firekeeper her nightmares.

Then pity, nightmares, and anything past was banished at the moment Derian caught his first glimpse of the present.

In front of the far wall, set close along the edge of the pool, were a series of braziers—the source of the light that had so confused Derian. All this while Firekeeper had been leading the group forward, keeping them to the densest shadows, which Derian realized would be nearly as good as a solid barrier in hiding them from the light-blinded eyes of those nearer to the braziers. Now, his view unrestricted by the ramp, Derian saw that the river was bridged a short distance from where it flowed out to create the pool. On this bridge stood twin figures, alike except for their height.

The taller, gaudy in crimson and gold, sparkling with gems that held every color the cold earth has ever pressed into stone, was Melina. The small one, Derian realized, must be—despite her ornate costume and stiff, unnatural posture—Citrine.

Derian saw Elise start as she realized the same thing, saw Doc rest his hand on her arm to warn her to silence. Ahead Edlin was raising an arm to point, the gesture as eloquent as one of his more usual vocal outbursts. Slightly ahead of Edlin, Grateful Peace remained watchful and calculating, but Firekeeper was drawing her Fang, angling the blade so it would not catch the light. Beside her, Blind Seer crouched, every line of his form eloquent of the desire to spring.

But Peace said something that held the wolves, and the slight gesture of his hand drew Derian’s attention away from the bridge and to the shore.

Only then did he realize that Melina was not alone. Standing near the braziers on either side of the bridge were less ornately clad figures. Each held something that glittered richly in the light. With the first sound other than the flowing of the subterranean river and the hiss and crackle of the braziers Melina’s voice sang out a few pure notes.

The scene shifted for Derian and he realized that they had arrived not at the inception of Melina’s ritual but in the middle—and if the rising of the chanting was any indication, that middle was moving toward an end.

SOUND REACHED GRATEFUL PEACE’S EAR
even as his eyes were realizing that not all the light was coming from the lantern in his hand. A few steps in front of him, Firekeeper paused, also listening.

“Melina,” the wolf-woman informed him softly, “but I not know what she say.”

Peace set his lantern to one side, seeking to free his one hand. Motioning for Edlin to remain back a few paces, he moved with silent skill to Firekeeper’s side. She then led the way forward, reaching out from time to time to guide him around some obstacle with such thoughtless thoughtfulness that Peace experienced a momentary insight into the workings of a wolf pack where nothing was lost in accepting the aid of others.

As they crept closer to the source of the sound, Peace could distinguish individual words set in the measured rise and fall of a chant. His hearing wrapped itself around an initial strangeness, becoming comfortable when he realized that what he was hearing was the old form of the language—a language old even in the Founders’ day and the traditional form used for magic.