“Clout!” Lady Bruze shouted. “Stop foolin’ aroun’! Bash sal’mander!”
“Somebody do somethin’!” Gandy quavered.
When he reached the pile of people, Clout had recovered his bashing tool, and heard his wife’s orders. “Yes, dear,” he called, and turned, raising the two-foot stick in both hands.
The salamander’s mouth opened wide, and Lidda-high on the opposite wall, decided the Grand Notioner was right. Somebody really should do something. She still had the hinge-pin in her hand, and on impulse she leaned out of the murder hole, reaching down as far as she could, toward the brass shield below-the next plaque down, in the circle. She could barely reach the top of it, but she got her hinge-pin under its catch and twisted.
The plaque banged open and something long, dark and deadly shot from the hole behind it, whistling.
In an instant, the missile had crossed the hall of This Place. It flashed past Clout, missing him by an inch, and into the gaping mouth of the salamander, deflecting upward from the thing’s lower jaw to erupt from the top of its flat, ugly head. Clout’s determined swing of his bashing tool missed its mark as the salamander was thrown backward, away from him.
An angry hiss filled the cavern as the salamander twitched and lay still.
But the hiss went on. Wide, terrified eyes staring at the dead monster turned slowly, looking for the source of the sound, growing even wider when they found it.
The Highbulp’s throne was no longer a throne. Instead, it was a sagging, shredded thing, partially collapsed amid pools and runnels of green liquid. And something was emerging from it, hissing with an anger that became a shrill howl.
A few among them had seen a dragon. Some remembered the green dragon that had carried Glitch the Most and led the rest of his tribe to This Place. This dragon, freshly-hatched, was not nearly as big as that one had been, but it was definitely a dragon. Within seconds, there wasn’t a gully dwarf in sight anywhere in This Place, except the chubby Tote. He had been at the bottom of the gully dwarf pileup, and was just getting to his feet, gaping around in total confusion.
He stood, blinked at the dead salamander in the big tunnel, brushed himself down, turned … and froze in place. Directly over him, towering more than twice his height, cruel, intelligent eyes opened in a scaled, crested green face, and looked down at him.
A taloned “hand” reached for him, then suddenly recoiled as though it had been swatted away. The crested head descended toward him, dripping fangs agleam, and stopped inches from his face. The hiss that came from that dragon’s mouth almost stopped his heart, and the breath of it whipped his beard and smelled of chlorine. The thing stared at him, hating him, then turned away.
The dreams had been right, and now they had come true. Aching with frustrated anger, Verden Leafglow turned from the pathetic creature, unable to harm it even though that was what she craved to do. It was as though a wall stood between her and the little creature, a wall that she could not penetrate, and that punished her when she tried.
Licking and cleaning herself, she looked around slowly as the knowledge of hatching wove itself together in her mind. She knew who she was now. She knew where she was, and knew the awful reality that had befallen her. There was no recourse from the will of a vengeful god. Her fate had been promised, and now it was real.
The Aghar before her hadn’t moved, hadn’t so much as blinked since he first saw her. He stood as though frozen, his mouth agape and his eyes bulging, not even seeming to breathe. And there were others, as well, all around her, peering from cracks and holes, their fear a tangible thing in the still air of the cavernous chamber. Did they think she couldn’t see them? Did they think she couldn’t sense exactly where they hid? There were dozens of them in this chamber, and dozens more not far away, running and hiding from her.
And there wasn’t a thing that she could do about them. The Dark Queen had made her powerless against them. The keening roar of her anger and anguish echoed from the stone walls of the place, making things rattle and grate, causing little showers of ancient dust to fall from above.
Powerless!
But only against
Chapter 5
Freshly-hatched and ravenous, the dragon ripped and tore at the salamander’s flesh. Her frenzy filled the great chamber with the hideous slashing and slathering sounds of a dragon feeding.
The cold flesh of the cave beast was revolting to her, especially with so much warm meat so near at hand, but each time she thought of scooping up a handful of gully dwarves and munching on them the way a human might munch on roast chestnuts, the geas in her mind sent spasms of pain through her. She could almost hear the goddess laughing. She willed herself not to think of the Aghar. What was done was done, for now. She needed food, and she needed sleep, and she could think about what to do next when her immediate needs were met.
She paused and raised her dripping face. A sound had interrupted her. Somewhere behind her, metal rasped on metal. She turned barely in time to dodge a spring-thrown iron skewer that was longer than she was. The big spear thudded into the mangled corpse of the salamander, and Verden looked across the chamber for its source. There, high on the far wall, a tiny, ashen-faced female gully dwarf clung to stone carvings beside a rebounding hinged portal of tarnished silver.
Annoyed, Verden pointed a taloned finger at the little figure. “Stop that! Don’t do that again!” she hissed.
For a moment there was total, stunned silence in the great chamber. Then dozens of muted, whispering voices began to babble: “Thing talk!” “Hear that? Thing tell Lidda cut it out.” “What kin’ thing look like that, an’ talk?” “That a dragon, Dink! Hush!” “Dragon? Real dragon? Like Highbulp’s dragon?” “No, that was big dragon. This jus’ a little dragon.” “Look pretty big to me!” “Somebody gonna make dragon go ’way? This no fun at all.”
The voices were an irritant to Verden Leafglow, a din to her ears. “All of you shut up!” she demanded. “Quiet!”
In the ensuing silence, she ate some more salamander, then curled up beside the still-immobile Tote and went to sleep.
Even in sleep, though, she was aware of them-gully dwarves everywhere, slipping from hidey-holes, creeping closer to gawk at her in wide-eyed wonder, whispering and pointing, chattering among themselves. A few of them, braver (or stupider) than the rest, even crept near enough to snatch up the immobilized Aghar beside her and whisk him away.
“Where Highbulp go?” one among them whined in an old, wheezy voice that she recognized from a past time, from a past life. “Somebody better fetch Highbulp. He allus braggin’ ’bout tamin’ dragon. Tell him time for put up or shut up, ’Cause we got dragon right here.”
Verden twitched her tail and opened one eye, just a slit, remembering.
The Highbulp! This Highbulp couldn’t possibly be that same obnoxious, arrogant little twit who had brought her to this fate … could it?
Dreams clung about her, and she could almost hear the evil, mocking laughter of a vengeful goddess. And she knew, even in sleep, that it could. The soundless whimper of outrage that formed in her mind was very like the calling resonance that another Verden Leafglow, in another life, had been given to communicate with certain other agents of the Dark Queen.
Somewhere beyond Xak Tsaroth, beyond the broken lands fronting Newsea, beyond the mountains to the southwest, in a still, dark place, something huge moved. As though startled by a silent sound, Flame Searclaw opened dozing eyes and raised his great, spike-crested head. He turned, this way and that, searching. Green snake?
