Key of Living Fire (The Sword of the Dragon) (37 page)

When he stepped up to the dragon at the chamber’s end, its deteriorating scales and empty eye sockets revealed none of this structure’s mysteries. The dragon had a spiked tail; its spine stuck out of the rotting flesh along its back; and its neck was short. Unless the wings had rotted away eons ago, it had none. Behind the dragon lay another human skeleton, yet this one gripped a strange instrument in its hands.

Ilfedo sidestepped the dragon, held his breath, and uncovered his nose in order to pry the gold-and-gray device from the skeleton’s fingers. It was heavier than his sword but only half as long, and round, quite useless for cutting. But it must have been useful for something in its day. With the artifact in hand, he glanced one last time over the immense room. It thrummed again, and lights flickered on in random places along the wall panels and in the recessed chambers where the humans had died.

“It is time to get out of here, Seivar,” he said.

The Nuvitor screeched, flew off his shoulder, and shot ahead of him out the chamber and into the corridor. He followed as fast as he was able, though the device he carried slowed his pace. When he arrived at the divide in the floor panels, he attempted a flying leap to cross. This time, however, he miscalculated. He fell into the gap, twisting his foot between stone and a metal beam. The Nuvitor dove to his aid, pulling a sharp metal rod to the side. If the bird had not, the rod would have impaled Ilfedo through his stomach.

Ignoring his throbbing foot and cursing his foolishness, Ilfedo threw the artifact out of the hole. He no longer felt the need to keep it. The artifact struck the wall, and its barrel transformed into raw energy. A green bolt flamed out of the barrel and blasted a hole in the wall. The device tumbled to the floor in the lighted half of the structure’s corridor.

For a moment Ilfedo stood in the gap, staring at the hole blasted in the wall—a wall the sword of the dragon had been unable to penetrate. He shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he used the sword of the dragon to blast the stones around him. They crumbled into dust, and the metal chunks slid toward him, filling the space. He blasted flames at the space under his feet and was thrown against the corridor’s ceiling to fall hard on the floor. As he limped to his feet, the dark end of the corridor groaned and split down its length. An explosion tore a closed door from its hinges and twisted it against the wall. A torrent of flames rushed toward him, and the corridor in which he stood tipped steeply toward the gap.

He limped up the corridor, stabbing his sword into the floor and pulling himself up even as he grabbed the device he’d abandoned. He tucked it under his belt and applied all his strength to pulling himself out of the structure before it became his grave.

Suddenly a scream tore through the structure, and the portion ahead of him fell away. He held on to the edge of the corridor, and the remaining portion plummeted down the cliff. The seven heads of the serpent-dragon raced in front of him, screaming together. He was within a few feet of their grotesque faces. The endless coils of serpent beat the walls of the cavern. Chunks of stone and metal rained from the walls.

As he glanced at a nearby eye, the white peeled back as if it were only a film, revealing a gleaming yellow iris beneath it. He glanced back down the corridor, now a deadly slide into the structure’s heart. Seivar flew at the eye, opening his beak to attack. The head raised itself, and in a swift motion swallowed the bird in its mouth. A part of his heart began to melt in the creature’s mouth.

“No!” Ilfedo blasted the Living Fire at the creature’s eye. It blinked and its heads screamed. The head slid away and another rose to blink at him. Sheathing his sword and thus plunging the cavern into darkness, Ilfedo reached blindly for the device and pointed its barrel at where the creature had been. He struck the barrel against a protrusion of metal, but the device did not fire.

He felt something slimy wrap around his legs. He cried out as it dragged him out of the corridor and raised him into the cavern. His finger found a hold, just beneath the device’s barrel. He pulled, and the barrel transformed into bright light. A green bolt shot out and ricocheted off the serpent-dragon’s scales. But in the momentary flash he saw the creature’s eye and took aim, firing the weapon again.

The creature screamed tenfold. A smoldering hole yawned at him from the creature’s socket. The weapon appeared to have disintegrated the eye.

Three-pronged red tongues whipped toward him. One lashed around the device. He held on to it as the tongue jerked it first one direction and then another, ripping it from his grasp. The tongue unraveled, dropping the device down the cliff’s face. The other tongues lashed his arms to his sides.

The creature corkscrewed up the cavern’s walls faster and faster until Ilfedo closed his eyes. He felt his body pressed against the serpent’s by centrifugal force. His pinned arms could not move, but he managed to grasp his sword handle. The weapon clothed him in light, and he could at last see what was happening, but it was strange. The serpent-dragon’s heads pumped forward, raising its long body through the cavern another few hundred feet. Atop the cliff, it coiled on a ledge of rock as vast as the fields of Burloi. Incredible stalactites hung from the ceiling. The creature set him on the ledge and twisted around him as it pulled more of its coils over the cliff.

Screaming, the serpent-dragon spread its length around him in a sort of maze. One head regurgitated the Nuvitor into his lap. The bird shuddered and slogged to its feet as Ilfedo wiped slime from its back.

“Are you all right, Seivar?” Ilfedo drew his sword and rested the point of its blade on the stone. It burned a small pillar of fire that the bird huddled up to. Soothing energy entered Ilfedo’s foot and ankle as well.

As the Nuvitor preened its drying feathers, Ilfedo looked around him. The serpent had stilled, and its slimy body formed twelve-foot-high walls around him with only one exit. “I am so sorry,” he yelled to the serpent-dragon. “If only I knew that you meant us no harm. Forgive me. I would make amends, if you will let me.”

The seven heads rose behind the body ahead of him. The creature was truly monstrous, yet he could now see the weary blinking of its yellow eyes and hear the growling of its stomachs. Surely something this size would have many stomachs. The heads bowed to him, and he could only guess they accepted his apology. Then the head whose eye sported a large smoldering hole leaned over him.

Ilfedo stood, extending his arms with the sword dangling from one hand. “What may I do in return for your kindness?”

The heads sank behind the serpent-dragon’s body. The body slid effortlessly over the ledge, rearranging its form. The serpent-dragon’s tail extended to a far corner of the cavern. The remainder of it looped around Ilfedo and formed a wall opposing its tail. Now there lay a path in the midst of its body.

Ilfedo placed the Nuvitor on his shoulder and walked for at least half a mile between the serpent’s coils. Up ahead its heads summoned him with plaintive chirps. They waved above him as he approached, then turned their enormous eyes upon a small tunnel in the cavern wall.

He stepped into the tunnel and found nothing of significance for several hundred feet. It was a bare tunnel, too small for the creature, yet containing nothing it would need or want.

He emerged in a far smaller cavern and gazed upon a swift-flowing river. Black fish crested the water’s surface. Hundreds of them swam downstream. He glanced over his shoulder at the tunnel. “Does that thing want me to feed it?”

With a gentle cough, Seivar spread his wings and glided over the river. He dove, talons snaring a large fish. The Nuvitor flew low and dropped the fish at Ilfedo’s feet. “Master, it would take many, many, many of these to fill the beast.”

“Yes, yes, that entered my mind.” Ilfedo stooped to examine the fish and then to glance around the oblong cavern.
Cavern, cavern, tunnel, cavern . . . I would love to see someplace else for a change
. From where he stood, a ledge continued around much of the cavern’s interior. He could skirt to the other side if he wished. The river had long ago punched a hole in one end of the cavern. It filled the cavern floor and gushed out the other.

If he used the sword of the dragon, he might succeed in blasting apart enough of the cavern’s far wall to divert the river’s flow, sending it down the tunnel. The serpent-dragon could then take its pick of as many fish as it desired.

Could it work? He stood and walked to the cavern’s far end. “I’m going to dam it up, Seivar. If this works, the river will fill this cavern and flow to the serpent. If it doesn’t—well, be prepared to fly.”

Flames writhed in the sword’s blade. He watched as they roared out of the sword, storming to its tip, and gushed against the wall. Stones turned molten. The cavern wall fell apart. Red-hot stone crumbled into the river with a great hiss of steam. Ilfedo told the Nuvitor to flee as a cloud of steam rolled toward them.

Racing through the tunnel, he looked into the serpent-dragon’s mighty eyes. The creature’s heads screamed. Its tongues caught both him and the Nuvitor, flinging them to roll on the other side of its enormous body. Though he could not see the river come through the tunnel, Ilfedo heard it. It gurgled and gushed forth. The serpent-dragon’s heads lashed at the water with tongues and teeth. It was a vicious creature when it wanted to be.

“Master, would it be wise to—”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered as the bird perched on his shoulder. “I have no desire to hang around our present companion. It is time to move on.”

The serpent-dragon never seemed to notice their departure. But even an hour later, as he traversed the immense plain of stone beneath those magnificent stalactites, Ilfedo could glance back and hear the occasional screams of the creature’s heads.

The world was lost to Ilfedo and his bird companion. He felt he had wandered far beyond the reach of man. He could lose his sanity in a world such as this. Stalactites hung from high, high above, their cream-white the only relief in a world of gray and black.

Then at last his glowing aura shifted over a cactus in his path. A single oblong orange fruit hung from its branch. He plucked the fruit and continued on his way, breaking open the fruit and sharing its cream-colored meat with Seivar. He heard water trickling, and his thirst drove him to the source. A narrow stream ran across the plain. He sipped its water and spat the bitter stuff out. Yet his thirst was enough to drive him to try again. He drank as much as he could stomach, then walked on.

A sheer cliff rose out of the darkness ahead of him. He groaned. “I am not going to climb another one of these.” He walked to the right, seeking another means of ascending or traversing the obstacle. Then he saw it—stairs carved into the cliff’s face. The steps were blue marble and only a few feet broad. These had been hewn by human hands!

He ascended the stairs, and though the climb was long, he reveled in the ease of his passage. The stairs took him up at least as high as the previous cliff had been. When he came to the top, he stepped into a forest of strange fruit trees and fruit-bearing cacti. The forest extended a short distance onto a gravely plateau. He parted the leaves of a couple trees ahead of him and stepped out of the forest.

Before him lay the remnants of a city. Walls of tremendous stone surrounded it, broken by twin archways—one in front of him, and the other on the city’s opposite end. Beyond the city rose another cliff—and another staircase zigzagged up its face. Somehow he knew that, this time, Vectra and the Tomb of the Ancients were close. He walked toward it but stopped short of entering. Lava flowed through the streets, illuminating the cavern but denying him the chance to explore. Round buildings filled the city, though every roof was broken open, and many walls had only their foundations remaining. When he had entered the giants’ realm, the land of Burloi, he thought he’d found the most foreboding-sized structures, but here the doorways were fifteen feet high, at least.

Ilfedo gazed through the archway that towered above him. It was a strange thing to behold a city like this. What other marvels did this underground realm hold? What mystifying creatures had the intelligence and the strength to build something like this—only to abandon it? Then, in the door of one structure, the lava’s glow glistened on white bones.