The Circle of Stone (Darkest Age) (25 page)

Coward!
Edmund berated himself, drawing his own sword. He ran to stand beside her. Cathbar was already there, and as the dragon swooped for a third time, all three stabbed upwards together.

They could not reach him. Flame poured all around them – Edmund could feel the scorching heat even through Eolande’s barrier – but his sword met no resistance.

‘I have to get higher!’ Elspeth shouted. ‘Help me climb up!’

‘No!’ Trymman protested, but she had already run to one of the smaller standing stones and was trying to scale it one-handed.

‘Let her,’ Eolande cried, her arms outstretched. ‘I’ll shield her!’ Cathbar lifted Elspeth on to his shoulders and helped her scramble to the top of the stone. She stood up, balancing precariously, as the thunder crashed and the sky darkened again. The great mouth swooped towards them – and she raised the sword high, not slashing now but holding it steady.

A whistling shriek rang through the after-echoes of the thunder, and the monster wheeled and shot straight upwards. His fiery tail thrashed on the ground, as broad as the stones themselves. Edmund darted over and cut at it; once, twice, feeling no resistance at all, before it writhed upwards and away – but next moment he yelled and threw the sword from him. The blade glowed red-hot, and his hand was blistering where he had held it. Fat drops of rain splashed around him, and sizzled and steamed on the fallen sword.

Someone grabbed him and pulled him violently backwards; it was Cluaran, his face tight with strain. ‘Stay inside the shield, you fool!’ he hissed, and turned back to his rain-making. Edmund’s face felt suddenly sore, as if sun-burned. He put up a hand to feel his cheek: the whole sleeve of his shirt was scorched and blackened.

Elspeth was still balanced on top of the stone, holding the sword aloft. The blade looked brighter now, and more defined, as if it had gained strength from the blow it had
struck. But the dragon had not dived again. He hovered above them, blocking out the sun. The great body looked almost black between the blazing, outstretched wings. His head tilted so that one eye looked directly down on Elspeth.

The malice in that long, flame-yellow eye called back a memory to Edmund: Loki, walking away from them through the burning wood, smiling:
She’ll come to me in the end
. He started forward, crying a warning, as the dragon sent out a jet of white-hot fire directly at his friend.

For an instant the fire enveloped Elspeth. She staggered and fell, sprawling across the top of the stone block. Edmund howled and ran to her – but she was not screaming, or burning, and as he reached her she pulled herself up with a groan. Eolande stood at the foot of the stone, pale with exhaustion: the charm had held. This time.

But the dragon was pulling his head back for a second attack. Trymman and Cathbar rushed to pull Elspeth safely down, and they huddled beneath the stone doorways as the flame poured around them.

‘How much longer can you hold the protection spell?’ Cluaran asked Eolande.

She was white and shaking, but she murmured, ‘A while longer. Elspeth wounded it . . . I can shield her for another attempt.’

‘I doubt it’ll give her the chance,’ Cathbar said grimly.

The dragon was coming no closer. He stayed just above the tallest stones now, circling above them; moving only to direct
his flame at them. The rain streamed around him, hissing off the ground till they stood surrounded by steam. No fire had spread within the stone circle, but the dragon himself seemed unaffected; his flame inexhaustible.

‘He hates the stones,’ Elspeth said suddenly, as another jet of fire streamed around them. ‘Did you notice? He tried to keep from touching them, even before I hit him.’

The monster soared over them again, turning just past the circle’s edge for another attack. He did avoid the stones, Edmund saw: as he wheeled, his tail lashed aside from the outer ring, with a crack of air. The circle was protecting them, as Eolande had promised. But for how long?

The dragon beat his wings to hover above them now, swaying his great reptilian head to look down with one burning eye, then the other. There was cunning in those eyes, Edmund thought – and it took all his strength not to duck as the head drew back. Instead, remembering his promise to Elspeth, he stepped in front of her father as the dragon struck.

The snake-like head whipped between them, spitting a lance of flame directly at Elspeth. Edmund and Trymman both flung themselves towards her, crying out with one voice as the fire burst through Eolande’s shield, furrowing the ground and scarring the rock where Elspeth had been standing.

But Elspeth was no longer there. As the dragon attacked she had darted forward, around his head, to aim a single stroke at his neck. The creature shrieked again, and shot upwards. The scorching wind from his wings nearly knocked Edmund
off his feet, but he stumbled to where Elspeth stood swaying; her clothes blackened, her hair on fire. Trymman had already reached her; he smothered the flames in her hair with his cloak, and the three of them staggered back to the shelter of the stone gateways.

Eolande was kneeling there, supported by Cluaran, who had his arms around her. She was white to the lips, but the shield seemed to be mended for now: the heat was less here, and no fires burned around them.

‘She can’t hold on much longer!’ There was something close to panic in Cluaran’s voice.

‘Just a little more,’ Eolande said faintly. ‘They’re coming.’ She could hardly lift her head, but she raised her eyes to the northern sky.

A wisp of cloud was blowing towards them: a wavering line of white against the remaining blue. It seemed to pulse with a steady rhythm, like the wings of a bird, or...

‘The ice dragon!’ Edmund breathed. ‘
Jokul-dreki
.’

He could make out her shape, now that he knew what he was seeing: the crested head and the sweeping wings curved back in flight. Beside her, something else flew, darting in furious zigzags: a blue-black speck in comparison, though it must be huge to appear at all at such a distance.

‘And Torment.’ Eolande’s voice was hardly more than a breath. ‘I summoned him as well – to help us, this time.’

Elspeth stared at her, the horror in her face echoing Edmund’s own. ‘Torment – help us? He’s Loki’s creature!’

‘No,’ Eolande whispered. ‘I rule him now.’

She cried out suddenly, as if in pain. The fire dragon had loosed another torrent of flame: it crackled all around them as a thousand tiny sparks breached the shield at once, and winked out a hand’s-span from their heads. Searing heat took the breath from Edmund’s throat. Eolande gasped and slumped against Cluaran, who turned his face to the sky above, his hands gesturing frantically. Rain poured down on all sides – but it turned to steam where the fire dragon hovered. Above them, the great jaws opened again.

There was a yell behind them, and the monster jolted in the air, his head whipping back. Trymman had produced a slingshot, and was bending over the rubble around a broken slab. ‘Hurt my girl, you brute?’ he shouted as he rummaged for another chunk of stone and let fly again.

With a roar, the dragon arched his body and flapped his wings to rise a dozen feet higher. Cathbar yelled soundlessly against the thunderclap, and ran for the pile of rubble to hurl a fist-sized lump of rock straight at the dragon’s jaws. The monster writhed his head away, bringing his wings down again – but one yellow eye still glared into the circle, filled with calculation. Edmund looked desperately northwards, but the advancing dragons were still a league away.
Hurry! We can’t keep Loki off with stones!

The glacier dragon was rushing towards them. He could feel her distress, looking through the haze of her vision at the black trail of destruction she followed. Ahead of her was the
group of rocks, ringed with fire; and above it, the creature that would burn her land. There was no need to urge her onwards: already she had left the smaller dragon far behind her. A north-wind caught her and sped her towards her goal. Edmund regained his eyes to see Cluaran standing behind him, pulling at the winds with his hands.

‘Come to us, come quickly!’ the minstrel whispered. As if in answer, the thunder sounded again, deeper and more rolling than before, and the wind of great wings blew about them – a snow-wind, cutting through the fierce heat.

The fire dragon had seen her. He wheeled high above them and shot a jet of flame that arched across the sky.
Jokul-dreki
met it with a breath: seemingly no more than the frosted cloud puffed out on a cold day, but when flame and cloud met there was a hissing and crackling as loud as the thunder, and the fire vanished in a smudge of black smoke which the glacier dragon shouldered aside in her flight. She was closer now; like a white cloud-bank, blotting out the northern horizon. The fire dragon bellowed in fury. This time the flame he spat was a flood that filled the air above them – and
Jokul-dreki
was there, as massive as the fire dragon himself, meeting the flood head-on.

It poured over her, hiding her from sight for a long instant. Then it cleared, and the ice dragon shook her wings with a great rush of chill air. A blizzard of tiny drops – water or hail – flew at her enemy.

In the stone circle below, cool air washed over them like a blessing. Elspeth had left the shelter of the archway to gaze up
in awe as the two monsters circled each other. They rose in the air, each seeking advantage, and the thunder of their wings mixed with the roar of the battle. Dark clouds, shot with lightning, rolled around them until both huge figures were hidden from view.

‘Is he weakening at all, can you see?’ Edmund demanded, peering up beside his friend.

Elspeth shook her head doubtfully. ‘I think . . . he may have wounded her . . .’ He could hardly hear her, but following her gaze through the smoke he saw the edge of one enormous white wing, ripped and jagged. With a roar, the fire dragon pressed his advantage, dousing
Jokul-dreki
in a wave of flame that cast its heat down to the watchers below. Edmund felt his hair crisping. The white dragon faltered in the air.

And, out of nowhere, Torment was there.

He appeared like a flung spear, heading straight at the fire dragon’s flank; tiny beside the blazing monster but sharp-edged as a stone. One eye was fractured and dark; one leg hung down, but as the blue-black dragon streaked over his head Edmund tasted nothing but rage, sharp as iron.

The fire dragon opened his jaws around another burst of flame – and Torment hurtled straight through his wing to cannon into his side. He shot away again, shrieking and covered in flame, but the fire dragon howled, a note that none of them had heard from him, and fell from the air. He almost hit the topmost stones before he pulled himself up, and by that time Torment had rounded: scorched, ragged, but with fury unabated.

The blue dragon launched himself again at the monster, and again; each time retreating in flames, and each time returning to do more damage. The fire-dragon hovered now, his head whipping from side to side as he tried to swat the little creature that dared to hurt him . . . And
Jokul-dreki
, rallying, drew back her enormous head for one more blast of ice.

White clouds billowed over the stone circle, dusting the highest slabs with frost. Both Torment and the fire dragon were lost inside, though in the depths the red flame still raged.
Jokul-dreki
breathed out once more, and within the cloud of ice the burning monster screamed. Lightning bolts shot from the cloud to earth themselves, spitting and cracking, all around the outer stones. Torment streaked out of it straight upwards, his scales crusted with white. And the cloud cleared to show the fire dragon still hovering, but strangely changed: red-black now, no longer blazing but gleaming like molten stone. He brought his wings down – and shattered, with a noise like worlds colliding.

Shards of black glass rained down around them, and Edmund yanked Elspeth back under a doorway that trembled in the din. And then there was nothing but wind and rain, and deafening echoes.

The fire dragon was gone – but Elspeth could not believe it was over.

Her ears still rang with the monster’s destruction. His fires had gone out, and the heated stones around the circle sizzled in the last of the rain. The ground around them was scorched and scarred by the dragon’s attacks and littered with the gleaming black fragments that had made up his body.

Eolande sat slumped against a column, while Cluaran bent over her. Cathbar was shaking Trymman’s hand.

‘Good work with the stones, man!’ he said.

‘It’s Elspeth you should praise,’ her father said, looking at her with pride. Elspeth shook her head.

I didn’t kill the dragon
, she wanted to say.
It was
Jokul-dreki,
and anyway...

Something was wrong. The crystal sword pulsed faintly in her hand, and she could hear Ioneth’s voice in her head:
Not dead . . . not yet...

The remaining dragons were leaving. Torment flew slow
and heavily now; his wings tattered; his lame leg trailing. All the fury seemed to have drained out of him, and Elspeth felt an unwilling stab of pity for the creature as he flapped away.

Jokul-dreki
hovered just above the circle’s edge, her long neck turned so that one vast green eye looked down at Edmund. He stood beneath her, calling out a farewell.

‘He’s gone; your land is safe. You can sleep now: I’ll never trouble you again.’

Elspeth wondered whether the ice dragon could understand him. But
Jokul-dreki
dipped her massive head as if in acknowledgement; then brought her frayed wings down with one final thunderclap to soar up and away from them.

‘Well,’ Cathbar said as the white shape vanished into the north, ‘so Loki is dead. I never thought we’d do it.’

And there it was again: the sense of wrongness. The stone circle lay quiet now; the rain had stopped and the wind had died. Even the grey clouds that Cluaran had summoned were thinning above them. And yet Elspeth could not shake off a sense of threat.