Think Of.
Glitch glared at the three just getting to their feet. 'Gandy! What goin' on here?'
'Dunno,' Gandy grumbled. 'Ever'body pile up on me. How I know what goin' on? Couldn' see a thing.'
'Heard big noise,' the Highbulp pressed. 'You do that?'
'Not me,' Gandy shook his head. He pointed an accusing mop handle at Tagg. 'His fault. He do it.'
'Do what?'
'Snakebite.'
Feeling that he should explain, Tagg pointed up the corridor. 'Somethin' stickin' out over there. Like half a snake. Tasted it to see if it bitter.'
The Highbulp squinted at the twitching thing. 'Is it?'
The earlier roar had faded into echoes, leaving an angry, hissing sound that seemed to come from nowhere in particular.
'Is now, sounds like.' Tagg nodded.
Cautiously, the clans of Bulp gathered around the green thing protruding from the rubble. Glitch scrutinized it carefully, first from one side, then from the other, then beckoned. 'Clout, come here. Bring bashin' tool.'
A squat, broad-shouldered gully dwarf stepped forward uncertainly. On his shoulder he carried a heavy stick about three feet long.
Glitch pointed at the twitching thing. 'Clout, bash snake.'
Clout looked doubtful, but he did as he was told. Raising his stick over his head, he brought it down against the twitching thing with all his might. This time the roar that erupted, somewhere beyond the rockfall, was a shriek of sheer indignation. Stones trembled and grated, dust spewed from crevices, and the entire wall of fallen rock began to shift. The twitching green thing disappeared, withdrawn into the rubble, and massive movements beyond sent fragments flying from the rocks there. All around, the debris shifted and settled, closing crevices and escape tunnels.
As gully dwarves scampered back, falling and sprawling over one another, the entire wall of rubble parted, and in the settling dust a huge, scaled face glared out. Slitted green eyes as bright as emeralds shone with anger, and a mouth the size of a salt mine opened to reveal rows of dripping, glistening fangs. The scale crest atop the head flared forward, and the head was raised to strike. Then the emerald eyes widened slightly and the mouth closed to a grimace.
'Gully dwarves,' Verden Leafglow hissed, her voice laced with pain and contempt. 'Nothing but gully dwarves.'
For a time, she simply ignored them. Their pleas for mercy, the smell of their fear, the cowering huddles of them here and there in the shadows, were dimly pleasant to her, an undertone like music, soothing in its way.
A gaggle of gully dwarves. They could do her — a powerful green dragon — no harm. They could not get away — all the exits they might reach were sealed by rockfall — and at the moment, she decided, they were not worth the effort it would take to crush them. So she ignored them, concentrating instead on her wounds. The indignities of a bitten and thumped tail rankled her, but she could deal with the perpetrators later, when she was stronger. They were trapped here in the rubble with her. They had nowhere to go.
The saw-edged disk had ripped into her body, bringing her down in the rubble. In the darkness of the fallen castle, almost buried by debris, she had lain bleeding as the armies of the Dragon Queen passed by — passing, she thought bitterly, and leaving her behind. For that, she would not forgive Flame Searclaw. The huge, arrogant red dragon with his preoccupied human rider, had known she was there. In her mind, clearly, had been his dragon- voice, chiding and taunting her.
Her left wing hung useless beside her, her left foreclaw was terribly maimed and it had been all she could do — through spells and sheer concentration — to close the gaping slash at the base of her neck. That wound alone could have killed her, had her powers been less.
Still, the healing was slow, painful, and incomplete. In ripping through the armored scales at her breast, the disk had cut her potion flask — hidden beneath the scales — and carried away the precious self-stone concealed there. It was gone, somewhere among the rubble, and without it the powerful green dragon lacked the magic to reshape her maimed parts. The ultimate healing power was beyond her, without her self-stone.
Focusing all of her concentration upon the damaged parts of her, she drew what strength she had and applied it to healing. And when the effort tired her, she slept.
When their initial blind panic began to fade, replaced by simple dread and awe, the subjects of Glitch I — Highbulp by Persuasion and Lord Protector of This Place, Etc. — turned to their leader for advice. They had to find him first, though. At first sight of the apparition that had appeared in the shifting rubble, Glitch had darted through the first several ranks of his subjects, crawled over, around and under several more layers of panicked personnel, and finally wedged himself into a crack behind all of them. Getting him out was a task made more difficult by the fact that he did not want to come out.
Finally, though, he stood among them, gawking at the huge, green, sleeping head of the thing in the hole only a few feet away. 'Wha.. ' He choked, coughed and tried again. 'Wha… what that thing?'
Most of them looked at him blankly. Some shrugged and some shook their heads.
'That not snake,' Tagg informed his leader. 'Not stew stuff, either.'
Emboldened by the Highbulp's restored presence, old Gandy, the Grand Notioner, crept a step or two closer to the sleeping thing and raised his mop handle as though to prod it. He changed his mind, lowered his stick and leaned on it, squinting. 'Dragon?' he wondered. 'Might be. Anybody here ever see dragons?'
No one recalled ever seeing a dragon, and most were sure that they would remember, if they had.
Then Tagg had a bright idea. 'Dragons got wings,' he said, adding, doubtfully, 'don't they?'
'Right,' Gandy agreed. 'Dragons got wings. This thing got wings?'
Some of them crept about, trying to see around the huge head in the hole, to see what was beyond it. But the dim light filtering in from above did not reach into the hole. There was only darkness there. They couldn't see whether the creature had wings or not.
'Somebody bring candle,' Glitch I ordered. 'Highbulp find out.'
With glances of surprise and admiration at such unexpected courage, several of them produced stubby and broken candles, and someone managed to light one. He handed it to Glitch. The Highbulp held it high, stood on tiptoes and peered into the darkness of the hole. Then he shook his head and handed the candle to Tagg, who happened to be nearby. 'Can't see,' he said. 'Tagg go look.'
Taken by surprise, Tagg looked from the candle thrust into his hand to the fierce, sleeping features of the thing in the hole. He turned pale, gulped and started to shake his head, then saw Minna in the crowd. She was gazing at him with something in her eyes that might have been more than the candle's reflection.
Tagg gulped a shuddering breath, steeling himself. 'Rats,' he said. 'Okay.'
The huge, green head almost filled the hole in the wall of rubble. As Tagg eased alongside it, his back to the stones at one side, he could have reached out and touched the nearest nostril, the exposed dagger-points of the great fangs, the glistening eyelid. The spiked fan of the creature's graceful crest stood above him as he crept deeper, edging alongside a long, tapered neck that was nearly as wide as he was tall and seemed to go on and on, into the darkness.
'Tagg pretty brave,' Minna whispered as they watched him go. Instinctively, her hand went into her belt pouch and clutched the pretty bauble Tagg had found for her. Her fingers caressed it, and the great, sleeping creature stirred slightly, then relaxed again in sleep.
'Not brave,' Gandy corrected. 'Just dumb. Highbulp gonna get Tagg killed, sure.'
Tagg crept through sundered rubble, just inches away from the big green neck that almost filled the tunnel. Then he was past the rubble, and raised the candle. The place where he found himself was some kind of cavern, beneath a rise in the sundered hill above. It was dim and smelled musty, and was nearly filled by the huge body of the green creature.
Where the thing's neck joined an enormous, rising body, Tagg spotted ugly, gaping wounds in the scales. He stared at them in awe, then beyond them, and his eyes widened even more. The green thing was huge. Arms like scaly pillars rested below massive shoulders, and ended in taloned 'hands' as big as he was — or bigger. The nearest shoulder had another ugly wound, and the hand below it was mangled as though it had been sliced
