recognized the man; he'd traveled with his sister, Zeeky. It was the old man who'd claimed he was Bitterwood. But Bitterwood and Zeeky were dead, killed by the demons in the mines. Did this mean that Zeeky was also alive?
'I'm taking the boy,' Bitterwood said. 'We're leaving Dragon Forge. He won't spread the disease further.'
'You can't leave,' Frost said. 'There's a blockade of dragons.'
'They didn't see me come in,' said Bitterwood. 'They won't see me go.' He looked down at Jeremiah. 'Stand up. We're leaving.'
Frost snarled. 'Who are you to come here and start issuing demands?'
Bitterwood held his hand down to meet Jeremiah's outstretched grasp and help him to his feet.
'My name isn't important,' said Bitterwood. 'If you're going to order your men to stop me, do so. Their blood will be on your hands.'
Frost glared at his assailant, studying his face. Bitterwood met his gaze with an icy stare. At last, Frost looked away.
'Let him go,' Frost said to the men who'd gathered between Bitterwood and the door.
Bitterwood tugged at the rope in the rafter. The pink cord snaked down, shrinking as it fell into his gloved hand. He turned, prodding Jeremiah with a nudge between his shoulder blades. Jeremiah scuffled forward. When they reached the street, Bitterwood slung his bow over his shoulder then picked up Jeremiah. Jeremiah draped his arms around the old man's neck and was carried toward the city gates. He rested his head on Bitterwood's shoulder.
'Is Zeeky here?' he whispered.
'She's near,' said Bitterwood. 'Poocher, too.'
'Will she catch yellow-mouth from me?'
'Don't know,' answered Bitterwood.
'That man said I was going to die.'
Bitterwood continued to walk, without saying another word.
SHAY'S FEET WERE sore. He'd lost track of how many days they'd been walking underground. He had no idea how many miles they'd covered. Since this morning when he'd confessed his attraction to Jandra, they'd walked without conversation. He followed behind her has she led the way. Lizard scrambled along like a faithful dog at her heels. The little dragon had a strange walk. He was bipedal, but he didn't really stand erect like a human. His torso leaned forward as his tail jutted out beside him. He bounced along in a gait resembling some flightless bird.
From time to time, Lizard would look over his shoulder, glaring at Shay with what seemed to be a newfound hostility. Did Lizard understand the conversation he and Jandra had shared earlier? Was the small beast jealous? Or did his muted hostility somehow reflect Jandra's own reaction? She certainly had been anxious to change the subject. Was she looking for a way to let him down gently? He'd been a fool to say anything. He'd never mention it again.
Or was he being a coward now? When he'd praised Jandra for her bravery, it had been a subtle confession of his own lack of courage. He'd run to escape from Chapelion while his master was away. A braver man might have waited for Chapelion's return and killed him. The biologian certainly wouldn't have anticipated it. No doubt, Shay would have been killed in the aftermath, but as a tactical move, killing the head of the College of Spires would have been a serious blow to the morale of all sky-dragons. But was courage only measured as a willingness to kill or be killed? Wasn't it also a type of courage to steal books and run so that he could teach others to read?
He'd read a thousand books on the subject of courage, and been offered a thousand different answers. The same was true of love. He'd read countless poems and essays on the matter, studied numerous plays, and could recite from memory a hundred lines where a man summed up his feelings and offered them to a woman like some gilded rose. And now that his moment of romantic confession had come and gone, what had he summoned up? Something like hunger? Nothing like hunger? A lifetime of working with words had left him with these inanities. Perhaps, in the end, Bitterwood was right. Books had never done the world any good.
He was pulled from his thoughts as the smell of the mines started to change. The damp, egg-scented air took on a saltier, more marine smell, as if they were nearing the ocean. It was like saltwater at low tide, a sort of soggy, methane-rich rot.
Jandra halted as she studied the tunnel ahead. The passage widened. The mine shaft led to a cliff, and beyond this he couldn't see anything. Jandra reached up and took off her visor. She turned, nodded her head toward the end of the tunnel, and said, 'Light.'
He removed the visor. He blinked in the darkness that swallowed him. Yet the darkness wasn't complete. The open end of the tunnel had a dull glow, like dawn just over the horizon. Jandra was a dark silhouette against this faint light.
'Something's changed,' said Jandra. 'When we left, the place had fallen into total darkness.'
'We're here? This is the kingdom of the goddess?'
'Yes,' said Jandra, walking forward at a rapid pace. 'It's a world within a world. I only saw a small part of it when I was here with Bitterwood and Hex, but it stretches out for over a hundred square miles.'
Shay hurried to keep up. They halted at the mouth of the tunnel, on a ledge overlooking a large underground lake studded with islands. The stench of rot was extreme. The light came from thousands of small bright pin points scattered across the roof of the endless cavern.
'To have been built by someone who loved nature, this has to be one of the least natural places on earth,' Jandra said. 'After the human age ended, Jazz withdrew to this underground world. She took her self-appointed title of goddess a bit too seriously perhaps, and began to populate it with life of her own design. She was fascinated by the limits evolutionary history had imposed on organisms. She wondered if she could create species that were more intelligently designed to fill niches left in the earth's ecology by the mass extinctions brought about by civilization.'
'She thought the world needed long-wyrms?'
'And talking cats, and amphibious sharks, and zebra-striped winged monkeys,' said Jandra. 'She thinks of herself as an artist. She has the freedom to work on a canvas that no artist has ever truly been able to master: life itself. Some of her art is serious; some is whimsical. And, from the looks of things, some of it might still be alive.'
Shay wrinkled his nose. 'It doesn't smell like much is alive down there.'
'Something or someone turned on the lights,' said Jandra. 'The other long-wyrm riders, perhaps? And… wow. Look at the walls.' She pointed to the stone behind them. He turned and found that almost every surface was studded with pale yellow mushrooms. There was also something moving over his head. It was the size of a squirrel, but furless, slimy, like a long, pink frog with a tail. It crept along the rock face using sucker-toes, pausing to munch on mushrooms.
'I've never seen one of those before,' said Shay.
'I haven't either,' said Jandra. 'But somehow I know that if you lick the hide, you experience psychedelic visions.'
'My first instinct wouldn't be to lick it,' said Shay.
'When you're immortal, even with all of creation as your plaything, there are times when you get a little bored,' said Jandra. She looked back out over the saltwater lake. 'Luckily, that big island a few miles away is where we need to go. That's where we buried the goddess's heart. It was a genie… the same sort of device I used. Vendevorex said his was designed to unlock upon his death so that anyone could use it. I'm gambling that hers acts the same, if it still works at all. We buried it with a flaming sword stuck through it. I'm not certain any technology, no matter how advanced, is going to survive that.'
'How are we going to get over there?'
'That's an excellent question,' she said. 'Swimming is a bad idea if the ichthyosaurs are still alive. They were the apex predator of the lake and could survive quite a while by hunting one another. Any that are left are likely to be hungry.'
'So what options do we have?'
Jandra pointed toward a stony path leading down the cliff side toward a black beach below. The beach ran along the outer perimeter of the cavern. About a half mile away, a waterfall spilled down over the rocks, crashing into an elevated pool before it spilled into the lake. A few sad trees stood beyond it, their leaves gone.
'Maybe we can build a raft?' she said. 'I'll think about it some more in a little while. More immediately, I want to take a bath. There aren't any ichthyosaurs in that pool. I'll feel better and be able to think clearer once I get the
