The Dragon of Avalon (22 page)

Now the windtaker began to roll and twist, clearly in anguish from this inner tempest. The more violent the winds in its belly, the more its body contorted. Basil could sense somehow that it was flying, soaring above its realm, even as it suffered from the swelling pressures down inside. Yet its mouth never opened in a roar. It kept the fingerlike jaws clamped tight, for if it opened merely a crack, its prey might escape.

The storm gained intensity. Suddenly, though, it shifted. Instead of whipping frantically around the confined space, the winds abruptly turned all their force outward. Basil was hurled face-first into a slimy wall, but instead of being instantly blown to another spot, he stayed there, legs splayed, unable to move a muscle. He couldn't budge his wings, lift his tail, or turn his ears with all the weight of the winds pressing down on him.

That weight kept growing. Soon he found it hard to breathe, with such force pushing against his back. While the slime underneath him provided some cushion, keeping him from being totally flattened, he felt swelling pain all through his body—his face, his eyes, his chest all ached. He wanted to cry out, but couldn't get enough air. The pressure grew. He couldn't breathe at all. His head started to spin; a silent scream filled his mind.

Something's gone wrong! But can't . . . do anything . . .

Darkness filled his mind. Except for the constant pain, he sensed less and less, He couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't feel. Only vaguely did he sense the surface beneath him start to vibrate, shaking faster and faster. And then, just before he finally lost consciousness, he heard a distant
crack.

It wasn't his ribs breaking. Nor any of his bones. No, it was the windtaker itself: Its body was beginning to buckle.

All at once, the beast—who had swallowed so many wind sisters during its life, who had considered Aylah and the tiny speck of a lizard she carried to be just another meal—burst apart. Exploding high above the clouds of Airroot, the windtaker shrieked in agony. Shards of bone and fetid slime from its ruptured belly rained down upon the clouds. Its dying shriek soon faded, carried away by the rushing winds.

Basil, alas, knew none of this. For his unconscious body had been hurled into the air by the explosion. Now he plummeted, spinning helplessly, toward whatever lay below.

24:
F
REE
F
ALL

Air is substance, the bearer of wings. Air is life, the essence of breath. And air is freedom, the habitat of hope.

Basil awoke to the sensation of breathing, a feeling he'd thought would never come again. Air, cool and misty, poured into his body and reawakened his mind. He sucked in more of the vaporous elixir.

Have we somehow escaped?
That hope swelled inside him, filling his thoughts even as air filled his lungs.

Harp strings! In the distance, he heard a lilting, triumphant plucking. And yet . . . something was wrong.

He opened his eyes. Falling! He was spinning downward through shredded clouds. Wind rushed past his face, flapping his round ears. But it wasn't Aylah's wind. She was nowhere near, he could tell—both from the lack of any cinnamon smell and the lack of something deeper, something he sensed not with his nose or ears or eyes, but with his heart.

Instinctively, he started to open his wings, to turn his free fall into a glide. But no! A sharp pain shot through his right shoulder.
My wing . . . broken.

He continued to fall, dropping like a lifeless shard of b
one
. I'm going to die, that's certain. But Aylah . . . she will—

"Survive," said a breathy voice nearby. "Oh yes, little hhhwanderer, I hhhwill survive. And so hhhwill you."

"Aylah!" he shouted, as warmer air flowed around him, arresting his fall. The familiar scent of cinnamon tickled his nostrils. Soon he was hovering in the air, borne by the wind.

"My wing," he said with a wince. "Broken, I think. Can you still carry me?"

"I can carry you, my friend." The wind rushed around him, an airy embrace. "Hhhwherever you may hhhwant to go, I can carry you."

"The windtaker?" he asked.

"Dead, hhhwithout doubt."

"And your sisters?"

"Free, little hhhwanderer. Brought back to life. By a hhhwondrous miracle . . . in the form of a small green creature." Warm air encircled Basil. "You have given us all a gift—a gift as boundless as the hhhwind."

Despite the aching of his wing, he smiled. "I'm glad for your sisters. But I'm even more glad for you."

Even as the air buoyed him, tossing him gently, it bubbled with laughter. "You are a loyal friend, little hhhwanderer."

"It's good to have a friend like you," he replied.

"And something more," Aylah went on. "You are brave, as hhhwell—brave as a dragon."

The word surprised him so much he instinctively raised his wings—until a sharp pain made him stop. "Dragon?" he asked. "You're not serious! I'm no dragon, and never will be."

"I didn't say—"

"Good," he interrupted, "because there's no doubt about it. Even Dagda made that clear, though it wasn't necessary."

The wind swept around him, ruffling his ears. "I didn't say you hhhwere a dragon in body, little hhhwanderer, but in
spirit
. You see . . . there is more than one hhhway to be a dragon! You have all a dragon's courage and ferocity—just not its size."

Basil shook his snout. "I'm not convinced, but it doesn't matter. We're free, Aylah, that's what counts." His mouth curled in a grin. "And now . . . could I ask you a favor?"

"Hhhwhy, yes. Hhhwhat hhhwould you like?"

"To eat!" he exclaimed. "Something—anything. As long as it doesn't taste like slime." He swished his tail. "Then we've got to find Merlin! He could be anywhere in Avalon by now. As could Rhita Gawr."

"True," she said with a sigh. "Hhhwe hhhwill find him somehohhhw." Suddenly, currents jostled him as she swept around to the east. "But first, your meal. And I knohhhw just hhhwhat you need, little hhhwanderer. From hhhwhat I have heard, it is healing for both body and soul."

His thin tongue licked his lips. "I like the sound of that. Is it far from here?"

"Not if you ride the hhhwind! It lies just across the sea of mist, in the realm of fire."

"All right, then," he declared, "Time to fly."

The wind sister's speed increased. Air whistled all around. She blew with the force of a gale—flying through the gauzy clouds like someone who, after a long imprisonment, was finally free.

25:
O
NE OF A
K
IND

Personally, I'd rather keep things simple, but the plain fact is that life is full of paradox: We are all alike, while at the same time, we are all unique. That's utterly crazy, I know—but also utterly sane.

Aylah swept across the sky, banking graceful turns around billowing clouds, clearly savoring her newfound freedom. Although the tiny green-scaled creature she carried could no longer fly, he felt the same delight in soaring freely. With every sweeping turn, Basil leaned into the coursing wind, his round ears fluttering. He loved to feel the air rushing past, just as he loved to hear its endless serenade of whistles.

As they flew beyond the edge of Airroot and into the dark sea of mist that rolled between the realms, cold currents of air jostled them. One gust hit so abruptly it flipped Basil onto his back. His wounded wing, which he'd been holding tight against his side, blew wide open.

"Aaaggh!" he shouted in pain. Rolling back over, he folded his wing again. But it throbbed intensely.

"Do not hhhworry, little hhhwanderer," said the wind sister, raising her breathy voice enough to be heard above the gusts. "The very best person to mend your hhhwing is the same person we are searching for."

"Merlin?"

"Yes, my friend. Hhhwe seek him for Avalon's sake . . . and nohhhw also for yours."

"I hope we'll find him soon," Basil muttered.

With that, Aylah flew lower, losing altitude steadily. Soon the dark swirls of mist began to shred. Warmer air blew over Basil, smelling like rotten eggs. Hot dust particles burned his eyes. All at once, the remaining mist evaporated, revealing a new landscape below.

Charred ridges of red and black stone, many of them crested with flames, stretched into the distance. Volcanoes rose out of the ridges like huge, fiery snouts, belching clouds of sulfurous smoke while their slopes glowed with molten lava. Between the ridges flowed rust-colored rivers whose banks swirled with smoke, as if their very waters were aflame.

So this is Fireroot.
Gazing down on the blazing landscape, he shuddered. How could anything survive here? Yet he knew some creatures did—including the flamelons, known for their skillful metalwork . . . and also for their tempers that burned hotter than lava.

Aylah swept even lower. As they sailed across one wide valley, Basil saw a thick cluster of ironwood trees, whose fiber was so hard, he had heard, that it couldn't burn. Even so, he wasn't impressed.
Is that what passes for a forest here? Compared to Woodroot, it's just a bunch of dry grass.

Swooping down into the valley, Aylah dropped him gently onto a fire-blackened boulder. "Hhhwait here," she commanded. "I hhhwill make a quick search for Merlin. The fastest hhhway for me to do that is to spread myself to the absolute hhhwidest—hhhwhich hhhwill make me too thin to carry you."

Basil swished his tail across the boulder, scraping off flecks of charcoal. "You'll come back soon, right?"

"Ohhh yes, and I hhhwill bring nehhhws of hhhwhatever I find—hhhwhether of our hhhwizard or a meat you hhhwill hhhwelcome."

As she flew away, leaving him behind, a fire plant suddenly flickered at the base of the boulder. Reaching out of the charred ground like a ghoulish hand of flame, its fiery fingers stroked the side of the rock, stretching up toward his tail. Quickly, he crawled away to the other end of the boulder. But with a spurt of fiery gases, another flaming hand erupted at that end.

They sense I'm here
, he realized.
Whatever they are! And they want to roast me for a meal.

Instantly, he scurried back to the center of the boulder. Safely out of the fire plants' reach, he could now survey his surroundings. Fire-blasted rocks lay all around. Curls of smoke hung in the air, spiraling through the needled branches of the ironwood trees. Flecks of dust, smoldering like ashes from a campfire, stung his nostrils. Vents opened in the ground every few seconds, spewing hot lava.

Then he noticed a narrow crevasse that split the nearby ground. Waves of heat rose from it, making the air above quiver constantly. It wasn't this motion, though, that caught his attention. No, there was a different sort of motion down
inside
the crevasse. The fissures along the edges seemed to be moving, slithering as if they were alive.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny orange lizards were moving in and out of the heated fissures. Salamanders! Basil had heard bards' tales of these little creatures, so well adapted to the extreme heat of Fireroot that they could actually sleep in molten lava and never get burned. Right now, as he watched, some of them were casually rolling around inside a fire plant at the rim of the crevasse. Though spurts of flame licked their bellies, the salamanders didn't even seem to notice.

A sudden, bizarre thought struck Basil.
Is there any possible way . . .
? He squinted his eyes, irritated from the dust, while he peered at the salamanders. They were just about his same size. Their heads were the same shape, though not their ears. They had small clubs at the ends of their tails, just as he did.

He swallowed with difficulty, as if fire had scorched his throat. Just then a smoldering fleck of dust landed on his ear. "Eeeeyaaah!" he cried in pain, leaping into the air. As he landed back on the boulder, the hot particle fell away.

Glumly, he shook his head, wincing from the burn on his ear.
Foolish fungus-brain! Just because you look a bit like them, you're not related—any more than you're related to eaglefolk just because they have wings.

Air gusted suddenly, whooshing so loud he could no longer hear the surrounding sputter and crackle of flames and lava vents. "I have returned, little hhhwanderer."

"Any sign of Merlin?"

"No," she said glumly. "He is nohhhwhere to be seen! Hhhwe must keep searching." Brightening a little, she added, "I did, hohhhwever, find your meal—not far from here."

Basil, still preoccupied, glanced again at the salamanders.

The wind sister spun closer, lifting him off the blackened boulder. So strong were the odors of sulfur and smoke, he could barely smell her cinnamon scent. "But I can tell that you are hhhworried. Hhhwhat troubles you?"

He drew a breath, shallow enough to avoid inhaling too much smoke. "Aylah, you've seen much of Avalon, haven't you?"

"Hhhwhy, yes. And other hhhworlds, as hhhwell."

"Can you tell me something, then? Have you ever seen someone else who is—" He paused to swallow. "Who is . . . like me?"

The wind sister whirled for a moment. Hovering in the air above the grove of ironwood trees, she replied, "No, little hhhwanderer. from all I have seen, in all the hhhworlds, there is no one else like you."

Grimly, he nodded. "Of course not. I should have guessed."

"That needn't hhhworry you, little hhhwanderer."

He gave a mirthless laugh, scoffing at her. "So it's good to be one of a kind?"

"Perhaps," she replied, whispering softly.

Flying lower, she carried him down to a lone flower that grew among the twisted roots of a tree. Its delicate orange petals quivered in the wind. "This flohhhwer, you could say, is one of a kind. Found only here in Rahnahhhwyn, it's called firebloom, and it looks unlike any other flohhhwer in any realm. Frail and small, it seems—yet it's surprisingly strong. After a fire, it's the very first living thing to grohhhw back. So in a hhhway, it's much like you: strange to look at, but more than it seems."

He shook his head. "But that's not the same, is it? There are lots of these flowers in this realm. Not just one."