He made his way to where the cavern opened up into the actual dragon’s lair. It wasn’t easy. He had to climb over several odd shaped pieces of broken stone, and had to wiggle his way between others. He had to hold down his bile while climbing over a wet, matted tangle of hair, bone and gore.
Some of the skeletons he saw were alarmingly large. Others were undoubtedly human. One was still covered in rusted and crushed armor. A series of fist sized holes ran in a line across the breast plate. Teeth marks, Gerard thought, and then he shivered.
He spotted the eggs easily enough: three of them. They were in a shadowy nook at the back of the lair, nestled in a pile of animal hides that had been crudely thrown over a bowl-shaped pile of bones.
“I guess dragons don’t like to sit on their nests like hawklings do,” he said the thought out loud.
The sound of his voice was comforting. In the back of his mind, he repeated his mantra again.
Get in, lower the egg, climb down, and hurry.
On his way across the rank, musty lair to retrieve one of the eggs, he noticed something peculiar. The cavern bottom here wasn’t rough and rocky: it was level like a floor. After further examination, he found that it actually was a floor. It had to be. It was perfectly smooth. It even had a design carved into it. Most of the circular inscription was buried under bones and scree, but he could see its center. The dust filled grooves were a finger’s breath wide, and easily as deep. A circle, twice as big as a wagon-wheel, framed a strange symbol. Around it there were other, smaller symbols, like ancient writing. These went all the way around the inner-ring. There was another ring outside that. It reminded him of an archery target, only with a strange symbol for its Wizard’s Eye. Sure enough, a few feet farther across the floor, he saw yet another ring that shared the same center as the others. He found himself staring at the markings, as if he were momentarily hypnotized.
Get in, lower the egg, climb down, and hurry,
his mind screamed, snapping him out of his daze.
“Get the egg, lower it down, then get out,” he said the words aloud, and kept repeating them, as he moved to the nest.
The eggs were the size of summer melons, and when he hefted one into his arms, he realized that lowering this thing wasn’t going to be quick and easy. It weighed about as much as a full sack of grain.
“This is going to take some doing,” he mumbled under his breath.
He had to keep his mind on track. He kept feeling the urge to go back and stare at the strange markings carved into the floor, but his fear of the dragon, and of failing Shaella, kept him from it.
He carefully carried the egg out of the lair. It was no easy task, getting over and around the rough bottom of the wormhole, without the use of his hands and arms to steady himself. More than once, he stumbled and nearly let go of the egg. Absently, he wondered why a dragon would need a floor like that, and if it did, why hadn’t the floor of the whole place been leveled out? It sure would have made getting the egg over to the eastern cavern mouth a lot easier. He was nervous. He had assumed that it was going to be an in and out sort of thing. Now he wasn’t sure at all. He knew he had to hurry, he knew Shaella couldn’t keep the dragon occupied all day.
Gerard cradled the egg among the rocks near the opening and yanked off his pack. He hurriedly started pulling out the coils of rope.
Suddenly, he stopped himself. He couldn’t afford to get it tangled, so he took a deep breath and went about laying the coils out, so that they would hopefully unroll without snagging on anything. Once he began lowering the egg, he didn’t want to have to stop for any reason whatsoever. The sling for the egg was nothing more than a net sack, and once he had it slipped over the prize, he tied the rope to it securely. After that, he took one of the water flasks and drank.
He studied the opening. When he had come up with this part of the plan, he had figured that the egg would be a lot lighter. He had imagined himself lying on his belly with his head, arms, and shoulders hanging out of the opening. He had planned to pay out the rope while watching the egg go down. This egg was far too heavy for that. If he so much as jerked it while it was going down, it would probably yank him out of the cavern mouth. He found that he wouldn’t have been able to get his body into that position anyway. Two big formations, like jagged bottom teeth jutted up from the opening. He decided that he could use them to brace his feet on, and lower the egg from a sitting position. The only problem was that the place between the two rock teeth was rough, and might wear the rope apart as it slid over.
He drained the last of the water from the skin and tossed it to the side. Whatever he was going to do, he had to hurry. He stepped to the edge and looked down. He saw nothing but an endless expanse of green, spreading away from the black, murky water below him. The thought that, if just this tiny bit of rock beneath his feet crumbled he would be falling, made him pull back into the cavern. Never, in all his life, not once in all the hundreds of times he had looked down from the heights, had he felt such a dizzying and disorienting feeling. He knew why he had felt it too. It was because there was nothing there: nothing to cling to, no cliff, or rock face. It was just open air all the way down. No sooner had he mastered that fear, the sunken feeling that he had already taken too much time started to creep into his mind. He had to move. After a few deep breaths, he came up with an idea.
He darted back through the wormhole, covering the rocky, uneven floor with ease now that his hands and arms were free to help him stay balanced, and went to the nearest of the larger skeletons. It had been some monstrous winged thing. Probably a smaller dragon, which had come into this one’s territory, or some other kind of beast he had never heard of. There was no skull, so it was impossible to guess. After a few moments of grunted effort, he had what he wanted: a bone. It was roughly as big around as his forearm, and about as long as his whole leg. It was perfect for what he intended, and he thought, for the first time, that he just might get this thing done and get out of there before the dragon came home.
He got back into position, laid the bone across the base of the two teeth-like rocks, and then situated himself on his butt, with his feet against the teeth. With a grunt of effort, he lifted the egg up and over the gap between them, and let the rope slip a few feet down. The friction heated his hands quickly, but he didn’t let lose his grip. He had to be careful. He needed his hands to make the climb back down, and he couldn’t allow them to get rope-burned. He chided himself for not thinking to bring gloves with him. Greyber had suggested it, but since Gerard didn’t climb with gloves, he’d dismissed the idea. He hadn’t figured that the egg would weigh so much. It was a mistake that he wasn’t about to let himself forget.
The rope ran through Gerard’s hands, out over the rounded middle of the bone he had placed across the teeth, and then it disappeared down towards the marsh below. Where the rope would’ve been dragged, over coarse and abrasive stone, it now slid smoothly over the hard yellowed bone. Only the slightest edge of the rope even touched the rocky cavern’s mouth.
As if trying to pull a spear out of his sternum, Gerard paid out the rope hand over hand. He was tempted to use his boot to clamp the rope against the bone, and let the egg fall at a controlled speed, but he thought better of it. If he failed to stop it, or slow it down, it might splatter into the water below. If that happened he would have to pull the seemingly endless rope back up, and start again with another egg.
Already, his body was screaming at him, sending hot wires of tight, burning heat from his fingertips, up his arms, and over his shoulders into his back. A glance at the coil of rope that remained told him the egg was barely halfway to the bottom. The idea that his arms might get too sore for him to make the climb back down crossed his mind and added to the panic swirling in the back of his head. His shoulders and back were throbbing. His grip was getting looser and looser, and his palms were starting to feel raw, and slick with blood. He had to stop and rest, but how?
Cole shimmered into being on a tiny island, which was only large enough to hold the roots of a single drooping tree. A huge snapper had crept up alongside the canoe he had left there. It probably thought it was another of its kind, lazing in the sun. It was as startled by Cole’s sudden appearance, as Cole was by its unexpected presence. Cole stood stock still and let the bird that was flying loose in his chest settle, while the big beast slithered casually away into the water.
Once he had calmed himself enough to move again, Cole glanced up at the opening in the eastern side of the Dragon Spire. Nothing was there yet. He was glad he didn’t have to hurry. He found he was greatly troubled by appearing so close to a deadly predator. One could make plan after plan and be as cautious as possible, Cole thought grimly, and still one could end up the victim of pure chance and circumstance. The concept was eye opening to him. Until that moment, he had firmly believed in Pael’s theory that careful planning, and well-timed execution, could overcome anything. It was the first time he had ever come close to thinking against what his mentor had taught him.
Pael was wrong about this, he understood now. There was always the random chance that something out of your control would force you to improvise. Of course, that’s why Pael so adamantly studied the situations that he might find himself in. Cole chose to re-evaluate his ideas just a little bit. Unlike Pael, he didn’t have an endless supply of research material, and the quantified power of a master wizard. Had he only appeared a few feet closer to the snapper’s maw, the creature could have gotten a hold of him before he even knew what was happening. He decided that later he would think about ways to avoid such a predicament. That’s what Pael would tell him to do, but right now he had other things to attend to.
He stepped into the canoe and shoved off in one fluid motion. He didn’t have far to go to get into position. He had chosen the tiny island because it was impossible for him to appear in a drifting canoe. Unlike a larger craft, the canoe would spin and twist with the currents and the wind, even if it was anchored. As with the snapper, being just a few feet off could mean appearing over open water.
Once he had the egg, he would have to row back to the island before he could transport himself back to Shaella. It wouldn’t do to shimmer into existence in the middle of the body-strewn clearing while in a sitting position, with an egg in his lap. He would have to be ready for anything, and on his feet in case he had to duck and run, or otherwise flee the dragon when he appeared.
He looked up again, and was relieved to see the egg coming down. He had had his doubts about the mountain-clan boy’s plan, but hadn’t been able to doubt his confidence. The boy had been certain that his plan would work, and since Gerard had proven his loyalty back on the riverboat, Cole had given him the respect he deserved. He didn’t want to doubt him openly, or do anything that might take away from the boy’s confidence. And besides, the plan was a fairly good one.
In a small way, he was jealous. He was supposed to have been the one to get the egg for Shaella, but every time he attempted to teleport himself up to the dragon’s cavern, he had failed. Whether the place had wards against such comings and goings, or it was just too high from the surface of the earth for his magic to take him, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was because it was surrounded by water. He was sure that if he could shape-change, he could fly up into the cavern, but that level of spell casting was beyond his ability as of yet. He had once thought that Shaella was powerful enough to change forms, but now he wasn’t so sure. If she could’ve gotten the egg without risking Gerard, she would have.
Cole saw how much she had come to care about the young man, how protective of him she was. He knew it would soon be a problem. He only hoped that she would make the proper decisions when the time came. If she chose well, Cole was certain that she could have everything she was after, including Gerard; but too much was at stake to let love blind her. Far too much was at stake.
When Cole looked up again, he saw that the egg had been lowered a considerable distance. He stared up at it from the drifting canoe for a long time, before he realized that it had stopped coming down. It was just hanging there a few hundred feet above him, swinging slightly with the breeze.
Suddenly, Cole was alarmed. His mind raced through the myriad possibilities that could have forced Gerard to stop lowering it: injury, not enough rope, a tangle, or another creature might have been lurking up there. He was just about to panic, when the egg lurched down a few feet, causing his heart to jump up into his throat. As he tripped through possible spells that might help the situation, the egg started gliding down slowly and smoothly, as if it had never stopped.
Cole cursed his stupidity, not only for letting his brain run rampant with foolish fears, but for not telling Gerard that he could have dropped the egg once it was this far down. Cole had a number of spells that would slow its fall. He could even make it to drop right into his boat, or slowly levitate it down to the water so he could scoop it up on his way back to the island. He shook his bald head while he waited for the lowering egg.
So much for perfect planning
.
Gerard had never in all of his life felt as relieved as he did the moment the rope in his hands went slack. The brief reprieve he gained by looping the rope around one wrist for a short while, and then the other to rest his arms, had been probably the smartest thing he could have done. As it was, he would have to rest his upper body, and let the circulation begin flowing again in his legs, before he could start his climb back down. Even though there was a voice in the back of his head screaming that he was out of time, there was no choice in the matter. He wanted to start his descent, but he knew that his body wasn’t ready yet.
He ate the dried snake-meat he had packed, and sipped from the remaining water skin, all the while listening to his panicky subconscious warnings.
The dragon is coming back to roast you for your thievery! If you don’t leave now, the beast will catch you on the rock face, and char you to a crisp
!