of her belly.'
Ymiru had his purple gelstei in hand as he listened to Master Juwain tell us this, and he slowly nodded his great head.
But Maram remained horrified by what we were about to do. He shot me a quick look and said, 'But what of the dragon's fire? Are you so eager to he burnt again?'
'What of your own fire?' I countered, looking at Maram's red crystal.
'Ah, what of it? There's no sun in this accursed city to light it.'
'But didn't you once tell me that you thought the firestone might be able to hold the sun's light and not just focus it?'
'Ah, perhaps, one bolt of flame, no more – if only I could find it.'
'Find it, then,' I said, smiling at him. Kane, standing below me on the stairs, caught my glance and said, 'This red jelly that bursts into flame – it's very much like the relb, eh?' I remembered the story of Morjin, posing as Kadar the Wise, painting the Long Wall with relb and watching as the rising sun set it aflame and melted a breach in the stone for Tulumar's armies to ravage Alonia. 'And the relb,' Kane went on, gripping his black stone, 'was a forerunner of the firestones, was it not?'
'That it was,' I said, smiling at him as well. The brightness of his black eyes gave me hope that we really might win the coming battle.
Atara, holding her gelstei in her hands, looked up from her stone as her haunted eyes found mine. Her face was white as she said, 'I see one terrible chance, Val.' I smiled at her, too, although it tore my heart open to do so. And said, 'Then one chance will have to be enough.'
I turned to take council with the others. And there, in the dim, curving confines of the stairwell, smelling of sweat and fear and the burning reek of relb, we decided that if we weren't to abandon the quest, we would have to fight the dragon.
'But what about the boy?' Maram asked, looking at Daj. 'We can't take him with us, can we?'
Of course we couldn't. But we couldn't not take him, either. I might lead him back through the labyrinth to the cave we had opened into the mountain. But what then?
Should he simply wait there for our return? And what if we didn't return? Then he would have to flee into the valley beyond Skartaru, where he would simply be captured all over again -either that or wander about Sakai facing starvation and death.
In the end, it was Daj who decided the question for us. Despite his words to Maram earlier, he was still only a boy. He gripped onto Liljana's tunic, pressing himself into her soft body. Then he said, 'Don't leave me here!'
Either we left him here, I thought, or we must abandon the quest to take him back to our homelands. Or else we must take him with us to the upper levels of Argattha.
'Please,' he pleaded, 'let me go with you!'
I sensed that his fear of Morjin and reentering the inhabited parts of the city was less than his dread of being left alone. There was terrible risk for him, it seemed, no matter what path we chose.
Unless, I thought, we do flee back to Mesh.
But this, I knew, we couldn't do, not even to save this poor child. How many more children, I wondered, would Morjin enslave and murder if he weren't defeated? And how would anyone ever accomplish this miracle so long as the Lightstone remained in Argattha?
'His fate is tied to ours now,' Atara said to me softly. 'The moment you turned the key in the lock, it was so.'
'Have you seen this?' I asked her.
'Yes, Val,' she said, squeezing her crystal sphere, 'I have.'
'All right,' I said, bowing my head to Daj, 'you can come with us, then. But you must be brave, as we know you can be. Very, very brave.'
And with that, I turned to lead the way into the corridor. Very quietly, we walked in file through it to the doorway of the hall. As I had feared, the dragon remained coiled around her skulls, watching us – watching us break into a run as we made for the portal across the hall. She sprang up from the skulls with a frightening speed. She bounded straight toward us, clearly intending to cut us off. Her great hind claws tore at the floor as she thundered closer. So quick were her bunching, explosive motions that I knew we had no hope of outrunning her.
Her first fire fell upon my shield just as Ymiru broke from our formation to grab up a great slab of fallen rock. He used this as a shield of his own, holding the immense weight in front of him in order to work in close to the dragon. The dragon turned her fire upon him. The flaming relb blasted against the slab and began burning the stone into lava. And then Atara pulled back the string of her bow and loosed an arrow at the dragon's eye.
As before, however, she sensed her intention just as the bowstring twanged. She turned her head at the last instant, and the arrow skittered off her iron scales. I knew that she was ready to leap at us, to rend us with her great teeth and claws, to stomp us into a bloody pulp. But just then Liljana, holding her blue whale against her head, managed to engage the dragon's mind. I felt the light of her golden eyes burning into Liljana as she froze in her tracks.
And in that moment, I dashed forward. So did Ymiru, who cast down his rock shield. I ran straight in beneath the dragon's long, twisting neck, where her huge chest gave way to her belly. I saw the place on the curve of her heaving body where the scales darkened, even as Master Juwain had said. And there I thrust my sword.
This time it penetrated to a distance of perhaps two inches. The dragon roared out her pain and wrath, and kicked her claws into my shield, sending me flying. I hit the floor backward; the force of the fall bruised my back and knocked the breath from me. I lay there gasping for air, watching in puzzlement and horror as Ymiru worked in still closer to the dragon with his gelstei in hand.
'Ymiru – what are you doing?' Kane called to him.
As Atara fired off another arrow, to no effect, Ymiru brought his flaring purple crystal up to the place on the dragon's belly where I had stabbed her. The scale there seemed to darken to a pitted, reddish black. And then Liljana, still staring at the dragon, cried out in pain. I could almost feel her connection with the dragon's mind break like snapped wood. The dragon, finally and completely unbound, quickly turned about in a snarling, spitting rage and bit out at Ymiru. Her jaws closed about Ymiru's arm, and she tore it clean off, swallowing it whole. A fount of blood sprayed the air. Ymiru cried out as he gripped his gelstei in his remaining hand and tried to move backward, away from the dragon. But the dragon was too quick and Ymiru was in too much pain. Again the dragon's jaws opened. I was sure that she was about to rend Ymiru into meat or burn him. And then Atara shot off still another arrow.
This time it drove straight into the dragon's mouth. But not quite straight enough: the shaft stuck out from between two of the dragon's teeth like a long, feathered toothpick. The dragon, turning her attention from the quickly retreating Ymiru, shook her head furiously in futile effort to dislodge it. Blood as red as Ymiru's leaked from her wounded gums. And she gazed hatefully at Atara as she opened her jaws again to spit fire at her.
'Atara!' I cried as I sprang to my feet. 'Atara!'
I raced across the few feet separating us just in time to take the full blast of the dragon's fury upon my shield. It was a great gout of flaming relb that the dragon spewed at me. It melted huge holes in the steel of the shield and burned straight through to the leather straps covering my forearm. I had to take it off and cast it from me lest I lose an arm as had Ymiru. Once again – and for the last time – my father's shield had saved my life.
But now there was nothing except air between me and the dragon. She glared at me with her ancient glowing eyes in her promise to burn me. I had hoped that Kane might keep me from this fate. All this time, he had stood with his black gelstei in hand trying in vain to steal the dragon's fire. And so, to my astonishment, it was Maram who saved me – and Daj. Quick as a bounding rat, the agile boy broke from behind Liljana and dashed across the room. He scooped up a large stone and hurled it at the pyramid of skulls, knocking a couple of them from the top. This drew the dragon's attention and all her wrath toward him. And in that moment, Maram moved.
He suddenly stood away from the others and pointed his firestone at the dragon. A tremendous blast of flame, like a lightning bolt, leaped out from the crystal even as Maram let out a great cry of agony. I saw the firestone crack in his seared hands.
And the flame drove straight into the dragon's neck, wounding her terribly. She let out a great roar of anguish. In a few quick bounds, she sprang toward the part of the room where Daj had been chained. There she backed into the corner, roaring and stinking of burnt blood, dropping her huge head low to the floor as she shook and glowered and waited for me.
'Val, no!' Atara said, laying her hand upon my shoulder as I started forward. 'She'll burn you!'
