The Crucible of the Dragon God

'What? That's ridiculous.'

'Tell the yassan that. They have funerals before they die — their old ones simply walking down the pass until they turn to dust. Dust, Hooper. Literally. As if abandoned by their God.'

A place in the clouds where the Old Races played at being Gods. 'It has to be something to do with the Crucible.'

'Crucible? You mean the Crucible of the Dragon God?'

'The Crucible of the Dragon God?'

'That's what they call it.'

'They worship a dragon God? Why in the hells would they do that when dragons have been extinct for thousands upon thousands of years, since before humans were around?'

'That is something I've been trying to work out.'

'From what?'

'Their cave paintings.'

'They have cave paintings?'

Slowhand smiled, as if he knew where he was going all along. He rose and offered her a hand up. 'I know you love it when I talk dirty.'

The archer took a flaming torch for each of them and escorted Kali through a series of caves heading upward, chatting as they walked as if simply out for a stroll.

'So, I guess the fact that you've turned up here means the world is ending again, right?'

'Pretty much.'

'The k'nid?'

'The k'nid.'

Slowhand nodded. 'The yassan told me they've been pouring out of the mountains once every seharn — that's day to you. Met them myself. Lethal little bastards but I wouldn't quite have put them in the world-ending category.'

Kali told him about Andon, and about the k'nid's ability to replicate.

'Hells. I shouldn't have been twiddling my thumbs up here. I could have done something to help.'

'No, Slowhand, you couldn't. But you can now.'

Slowhand stopped, smiled, swept back his hair. 'Sidekick?'

'Sidekick.'

'Gods, it's good to see you,' the archer declared suddenly, and planted a smacker on her lips.

'Iffgudderseyoodoo…'

'What say that when we've saved the world we find a little cave somewhere, spread the furs and — '

Slowhand stopped as Kali froze in his arms then pushed him away, hard enough for him to collide with the wall. He raised his eyes as he realised where in the cave system they were, and what she must have seen behind him. The cave paintings.

The archer stood by her but Kali completely ignored him, already engrossed in what was depicted on the walls, running her fingers back and forth between the pictures as she concentrated on their meaning.

'Well?' he said. 'They tell you anything?'

'Only the entire bloody history of the yassan. Gods, Slowhand, these people are descendants of Thunderlungs' and Mawnee's tribes, only they're not true descendants because the true blood line was interrupted. It's possible even that the original tribes died out long ago.' Kali paused, and took an excited breath. 'No, this relates another legend about how their people were taken — taken to a place beyond the mountains — where they were changed by the God who lived there. A Dragon God, Slowhand! It goes on — look — saying that, in return for their service to the dragon god, they would inherit the place beyond the mountains when the Dragon God ascended to… fark, that bit isn't clear. But the point, the point is, that this place beyond the mountains is described as a place in the clouds. A place in the clouds, Slowhand! It has to be what we're looking for. It has to be the Crucible!'

'So those jiggly lines are mountains?'

'The yassan — their Crucible — is it near?'

'Well, I don't know about the Crucible itself but the way to it certainly is.'

'Where?'

Slowhand smiled in a way that suggested he now had the advantage, placed his hands on Kali shoulder's and turned her around.

'Oh!' was all that Kali could say.

Because, in her eagerness to examine the paintings, she hadn't even noticed that the part of the caves in which they stood were open on one side, a high snow-covered ledge looking out over a pass below. But it wasn't the pass that had left her lost for words. It was what lay across it.

Kali trudged onto the snowy ledge, exposed to a bitter night sky, hardly noticing the winds that buffeted her as she stared at a mountainside which, though some distance away, completely filled her field of vision. She was looking at one of the central peaks of the Drakengrats, heights almost as unscalable as those of the World's Ridge that should have had no way over them or through — except that this one did. Sort of.

The entire mountainside had been carved into the shape of an immense dragon's head, and beneath a pair of giant, brooding eyes and promontory sized snout, the dragon's roaring maw appeared to be some kind of tunnel. Appeared, that was, because the maw itself was exhaling a huge and constant, roiling mass of flame.

'They call it the Dragonfire,' Slowhand said.

'Oh, we have got to find a way in there.'

'Hooper, finding a way in might not be the problem. Chummy as we now are with them, I'm not sure how the yassan would react to us treading on their holy ground.'

'Leave that to me,' Kali said.

She turned swiftly away and retraced their steps through the caves, returning to the main gathering chamber and calling a meeting of the tribal elders — the real ones this time. Slowhand had to kick his heels as she conversed with them for an hour or more but, at last, she took up position on a raised part of the cave and addressed the yassan as a whole.

The archer wasn't to know how guilty she had felt manipulating the elders — telling them that she was obviously yassan but special yassan because she had lived beyond the mountains and survived — let alone breaking her own rules of hubris, because in the end the ploy seemed to work.

'Your elders have declared that I have been chosen!' Kali declared. 'Chosen to calm the one you worship in this time of anger! Tomorrow myself and my followers depart for the Crucible of the Dragon God!'

For a moment the chamber was silent and then, increasing in volume as more and more voices joined in, echoed with a sound that despite the followers bit made the archer bow and preen.

'UNKA-CHAKKA-UNKA-CHAKKA-OH-OH-OH!

UNKA-CHAKKA-UNKA-CHAKKA-OH-OH-OH!'

Chapter Thirteen

They started out at dawn, taking most of the morning to reach the Dragonfire, the colossal scale of the cliff sculpture and its preternatural centrepiece deceptive, making the phenomenon appear much closer than it was and turning a seemingly short hike into a long, arduous trek. There were six in the party, Kali, Slowhand and four of the yassan. One to act as guide through a tortuous series of hidden mountain paths, caves and ravines, and three to tend and give offering before the enormous Godhead as other members of their tribe had done for countless years. Kali had decided she had already risked the lives of Aldrededor and Dolorosa too much to bring them along and so, to their frustration, had told them to remain behind with the tribe. They would rendezvous with them when they were done. The decision had, naturally, not gone down well, though the Sarcreans seemed somewhat mollified after she had taken them aside and suggested a way to make themselves useful.

Her overall plan was, she thought, a sound one, though with one pitsing great hole in it — the 'when they