“When you recover the Skull of Zorellin you will find great danger with it. Be very careful.” Her image began to fade back into the cloudy whirl.
“Wait!” Hyden yelled, but his voice turned into a thick oily smudge that spread across the surface of his vision. The ripples it caused soon wavered into a pair of sparkling glimmers. They formed into great yellow orbs that were split by sharp sword-like pupils. The hot smell of brimstone and sulfur filled his nostrils. The eyes he was looking at blinked from the bottom up. They were dragon’s eyes, and they were familiar.
A deep voice that sounded like shattering boulders filled his ears.
“Hydensss,” the great red dragon Claret hissed to him. “Not all dragons are scapable of understandingss. Some dragons do nothing but hatesss. Do what you must. My tear will sprotect you, but you smust protectss your friends. Do you remember who your friendsss are Hydensss?”
“Always,” Hyden heard himself gulp the response.
Claret’s voice wavered. “Doos not hesitate Hydensss.” The vision began to fade. “Do what you mussst.”
“You must get up,” Phen was saying. Hyden woke with a start as Phen nudged him with his boot. “It’s almost midday Hyden. Even Oarly’s up and about.”
A sharp call came from somewhere above the tent. Talon’s crying shriek conveyed Hyden’s mood.
“All right,” Hyden managed, but the blanket of sleep that was still lingering over him was thick and heavy, so Phen shook him again.
“All right, all right,” Hyden forced himself up onto an elbow. Through the fabric of the tent it was clear that his young friend hadn’t been exaggerating. It was bright outside. Probably near midday. He noticed that Phen, as usual, seemed to be on the edge of bursting with excitement.
“I’m not leaving until you’re out of that bedroll,” said Phen. “On Oarly’s orders.”
“Aye, then,” Hyden huffed and rolled to his feet. Phen eased out of the tent while Hyden readied himself for the day.
Phen also had a dream, a revelation about the ring he found in the Serpent’s Eye. The discovery made clear why the elves were going to give it to the tyrant. Loak hadn’t been an emissary, he’d been an assassin. It wasn’t the ring he was going to give the King. He was going to use the gift to get close enough to kill the man. The ornate wooden box, the story of the gift, was all a charade to get Loak close enough to do the deed. King Chago, Phen finally remembered from a history lesson, had killed a pair of elves for nothing more than chasing an arrow-shot stag out of the Evermore into the kingdom lands. Once Phen remembered that, the rest fell into place. The question he had debated all morning, while the others slept, was how the ring would help Loak assassinate King Chago. Phen finally came to the conclusion that Loak would need no help killing the tyrant, but he might need help escaping after he did.
Phen, so excited that his promise to Hyden was forgotten, slipped the ring on his finger. He didn’t feel a change, but he knew he had guessed correctly. A quick trip around the camp, where he paused to make faces in front of the seamen and feigned a punch at Master Biggs’s face, with absolutely no response, not even a flinch, confirmed it. The ring made him invisible. To further test the ring’s limits, he loomed over a sleepy-eyed Oarly. The dwarf grunted and grimaced with pain as he worked to pull on the new boots Hyden had purchased in Salazar. Phen took a flaming brand from the fire and lifted it before the dwarf. He expected Oarly to see the branch he held, but all the dwarf saw was the fire hovering in the air by itself.
Phen had to laugh. Even now, almost two hours later, Oarly was trying to convince Brady that a fire nymph had come to him.
“…ball of flame as big as a melon, I tell you,” the dwarf was saying. “Lifted right out of yon fire and hovered before me. It’s a sign,” Oarly declared with wide eyes. “Burn the spiders out as soon as possible. I tell you it’s a sign.”
“What’s a sign?” Hyden asked as he came squinting out of his tent.
Phen wanted so badly to tell him of his great discovery, but he remembered his promise, and was ashamed since he had broken it.
Hyden noticed the wave of visible unease that passed across the boy’s face. “What gives, Phen?” Hyden asked, ignoring Oarly’s recounting of the fire nymph story.
Phen looked away from Hyden’s gaze and shrugged, feeling even worse now for not answering truthfully. “Oarly saw a fire nymph,” he said. “We’ve been waiting for you all morning.”
“It’s a sign, Sir Hyden Hawk,” the dwarf broke in. “We’ve got to get back down there and burn those feasters out.”
“If we don’t,” Brady chimed in with a wary glance at the stumpy-legged dwarf, “this fargin lump will never shut up. I think he took an injury to the skull yesterday.”
Hyden laughed and directed his attention from Phen to the others. “How do we go about it then? I’ve never burned out spiders before.”
Oarly’s plan was simple. Hyden agreed to it, and not long after, the four companions, along with Deck Master Biggs and one of his men, stood at the point where yesterday’s exploration had ended.
The two seamen carried buckets of water and extra torches. Hyden’s part was easy. All he had to do was fire arrows wrapped in oiled cloth into the spiders and be ready to assist the dwarf if he needed it. Oarly had the hard part. How the dwarf was up and about and so ready to take on the spiders with the pain of his fresh wounds, was beyond any of them. He supposed it was a testament to the potency of Master Biggs’s liquor. Nevertheless, Oarly insisted on being the one to douse the webs with lantern oil.
They counted three spiders. Oarly raced down toward the webs on his short stumpy legs calling out, “For Doon! For Doon!” as if he were charging headlong into a battle. He slung the highly flammable liquid onto the first web and its maker, and himself as well. Then he ran back and huddled behind a rock formation. Hyden lit an arrow and loosed it at the huge spider then readied another. Phen stood dutifully with the torch waiting on Hyden’s command.
The web went up in a great whoosh of flame. The spider wiggled and rolled crazily, but finally curled up into a charred ball. As soon as the smoke cleared, Oarly ran in and began dousing the second web. There were two spiders there, and one of them came after Oarly with surprising quickness.
“Light it,” Hyden said and Phen reached out touching the wrapped arrow tip with the torch. The arrow arced out over the cavern floor and came down just over Oarly’s shoulder. It missed the spider, but the sudden appearance of the flame startled the creature. No sooner had it returned to its web than Hyden’s second arrow ignited the lantern oil. Oarly darted away from the blaze with a wild grin on his face and started dancing a jig and howling. At least that’s what it looked like he was doing. In truth the dwarf’s arm had caught fire and he was wheeling around trying to put it out. Master Biggs started after the dwarf with one of his buckets and ordered his man to follow.
“But the other spider’s not dead,” the seaman said fearfully.
A glare from the Deck Master replenished the man’s courage, and a few moments later they were heaving their buckets at Oarly. Master Biggs finished the task by dousing the last spider with oil and tossing the dwarf’s torch at it.
After Oarly calmed down, they wandered cautiously into the cavern shaft. It narrowed considerably and seemed to end, but the light of Phen’s magical orb revealed another opening higher up in the rock.
It took all of a moment for Hyden to climb up and look. He stood there in awe for a long time. Golden statues from ages past grew like mushrooms out of piles of coins. A gleaming sword, and a half dozen chests bursting with gold and jewels littered the cave. A giant jeweled collar with a smaller collar dangling from its clasp leaned against a broken piece of ship’s mast that was laying under a half-eaten fish the size of a man.
A chill froze away Hyden’s amazement. He could see a pair of jade eyes peeking out of a busted chest. They
