she equated with the beating of the beast's wings. With the blizzard raging all around her, though, the girl couldn't make out her surroundings, and the wind and ice simply hurt too much.
Lynaelle closed her eyes again in pain and despair as the white dragon carried her away from Silverymoon Pass.
She would not reach Silverymoon, would never enroll at the Lady's College. She would never deliver the book. A gift from her teacher for an old friend in the city, it would instead wind up in some lost place in the mountains, its pages rotting away alongside her bones.
That thought made Lynaelle sob and struggle desperately for a moment, but the effort was futile, and eventually she gave up, sagging in the dragon's grip.
For what seemed like forever, they flew, Lynaelle's fear dulled somewhat by the rhythmic pumping of the dragon's motion. As the initial shock of her capture faded, she began to consider her predicament, as well as the cryptic words the creature had uttered upon claiming her.
If it meant to eat me, the girl thought hopefully, it would simply have done so.
Unless it intends to save me for later, she added. But what did it mean by 'serve?'
The thought that perhaps the dragon intended to keep her as a prisoner crossed the girl's mind, and hope actually rose within her. Whatever awful circumstances would be thrust upon her as a dragon's slave, they were better than dying, and it meant Lynaelle might find a way of escaping. Perhaps she would even be able to put her magic to use.
The notion of inflicting any sort of harm on the wyrm with her limited ability was laughable to Lynaelle, but tricking it was not out of the question. If she got the chance.
The half-elfs thoughts were interrupted as she became aware that the brightness of daylight beyond her shut eyelids, weak though it had been, suddenly and sharply diminished. She also noted that, though she still felt the keen rush of icy air, she was no longer being pelted by flakes of snow.
Lynaelle opened her eyes and nearly screamed again.
The dragon was dropping like a stone through a great shaft of ice, a hole in a glacier that was nearly vertical and just large enough for the dragon to unfurl its wings. Overhead, the dim gray of the sky was a receding circle, while below, the shaft plunged into deeper and deeper darkness.
The great white beast fanned its wings out, drawing up sharply and slowing its descent. Lynaelle was jostled roughly as the beast beat its wings three or four times in rapid succession and settled onto a solid surface. As it dropped into a crouch, the dragon released the girl from its grasp, sending her tumbling across a floor of cracked and rent ice, covered by a dusting of snow. She wound up sprawled on her back, staring upward, the book pressing painfully into her from beneath.
Some light shone down through the shaft, and permeated the area with an eerie bluish glow. It was ample illumination for Lynaelle to see that she was in a large domed chamber, a hollow bubble in a great glacier of ice. The shaft through which she and the dragpn had descended opened through the ceiling of the chamber, near one side. The rounded walls of the domed room were slightly uneven, like a drawn curtain, though still smooth and solid like glass. There would be no climbing those surfaces, at least not without tools or magical aid. Only the floor seemed the least bit rough and uneven.
The chamber was an effective prison.
'You will serve me,' the dragon said, its harsh, crunching voice reverberating through the chamber.
Lynaelle's attention was drawn instantly back to the beast, which loomed over her, its wings folded in against its body for the moment. Unlike before, out in the weather, she could see the dragon clearly then. It peered down at the girl, its fang-filled jaws open slightly in an unsettling way as it regarded her. Muscles rippled along its chest and flanks, chorded and strong, yet shielded by plates that overlapped all along the surface of the beast. Its body must have stretched a good twenty feet, ending in a tail equally as long and segmented. It reminded Lynaelle of the tail of a beast called a crocodile, pictures of which Ambriel had once shown her.
Lynaelle realized she was shivering from her wind-blasted ride and from lying on the icy floor of the chamber, so she sat up and drew her cloak around herself more tightly, staring fearfully at the dragon.
'Serve you?' she asked, startled by the timidity of her voice.
Unlike the dragon's, which had echoed loudly in the domed room, her own speech was hollow and faint. In a way, the girl was surprised she could speak at all.
'Yes,' the dragon replied, settling on its haunches and craning its neck down so that its head hovered closer to its captive.
Lynaelle cringed involuntarily.
'I am Torixileos, Master of the Blizzard, Bringer of Icy Agony, and Lord of the Frozen Mountain,' the dragon said, his cold and pungent breath washing over Lynaelle and making her flinch away. 'You will help me, or I shall devour you!' he roared, making the floor rattle and causing Lynaelle to quake in terror and curl up into a ball. She brought her hands up over her head as she cowered, as though to placate or fend off the beast. Torixileos darted forward, bringing his head down close to Lynaelle and sniffing at her. 'You would make a sorry meal,' he said, his icicle-teeth mere inches from the girl's face, 'but perhaps you will cure nicely if I froze you.'
'No!' Lynaelle pleaded, flinching away and wrapping her arms more tightly around her head. 'Please don't! I will serve you!'
She could feel tears running down her face as she lost all composure.
I don't want to die, she thought desperately, miserably. Please, she silently begged. Ambriel, come find me.
The dragon laughed, a great, thundering roar that shook the whole icy cavern and made the floor beneath
Lynaelle rumble. She screamed and tried to scramble away. But in her panic she could get very little traction on the slippery surface and only succeeded in slipping and sliding a couple of feet.
'Very wise, little morsel,' Torixileos said, quieting. 'You may serve me well. And if you do, then I might free you.'
At such an offer of hope, Lynaelle stopped frantically trying to escape and turned back to face the dragon, abasing herself before it.
'Yes,' she said, ashamed of her own cowardice but unable to find any courage under the gaze of the terrible beast. 'I will do whatever you say. Tell me.'
She hated how eager she was to please the dragon, but Lynaelle knew she would do anything, anything at all, to convince him not to eat her.
'I am yours to command,' she added, shame making her voice waver.
'Then stand up,' Torixileos ordered.
When Lynaelle slowly, carefully managed to get to her feet, the dragon swung his head toward one wall of the domed chamber and said, 'Go through there.'
For the first time, Lynaelle noticed a tunnel set into the icy wall, though she could see why it had escaped her notice before. It was partially shielded from her view because of the way it opened into the room, angled away from her and behind a lip of ice that jutted out on the near side. She began to make her way toward the opening, taking short, tentative steps. Her whole body was weak with terror, and she feared losing her footing on the slick floor as well. As she walked carefully across the open room toward the exit, Torixileos followed her with his head, giving Lynaelle shivers down her spine. Then the dragon began to pad after her, each of his steps a tremendous thump upon the glacial floor.
Lynaelle had to use every ounce of her willpower to fight the urge to run.
The half-elf followed the passage out of the domed cavern. It sloped gently downward and bent around to the right, then back to the left. As a result, she could not see where it was leading, though the dim light filtering through the ice from outside was bright enough for her exceptional eyesight to view everything clearly enough.
Finally, Lynaelle rounded the last bend in the passageway and came upon another large chamber, though it was more irregularly shaped than the previous cavern. It was clear to the half-elf that the room was actually ice- rimed stone, a shallow cave chiseled out of the mountain itself. Only the area surrounding the passage in which she stood, as well as a smaller section opposite and to her right, consisted of massive sheets of ice, more of the great floe that covered the mountain. The condition of the second chamber was more uneven, with numerous small shelves and ledges along the periphery, and jagged stone and rubble strewn across the floor. A handful of other holes and openings pierced the walls and ceiling, varying in size, distance, and angle.
