The Crucible of the Dragon God

canopy, the Dragon God rose over them.

'It's coming right at us!' Slowhand warned.

'There is nothing I can do,' Aldrededor confessed.

'I don't think it means us harm,' Kali said. 'It might even be coming to help…'

'Help?' Slowhand repeated.

'A-ha. Look.'

Slowhand and the others did, but not for long, as they were too busy ducking. Because despite Kali's assurance, they could not help but instinctively drop as the massive creature flew directly at the ship and then swooped overhead, so close that the downdraught from its wings beat the air around them. As they watched in amazement, the claws attached themselves to the Tharnak and pulled the entire craft up beneath it, towards its belly, as if for protection. As soon as the ship was secure the creature proceeded to fold its vast wings about the craft, pulling it in tight.

The very last thing they saw, before the creature entirely enfolded the craft, was the Dragonfire before them.

'Hold tight!' Kali shouted. 'It's taking us through!'

'What the hells do you mean, taking us through?' Slowhand screeched.

'Slowhand, sometimes you've just got to have a little faith!'

Faith and a pretty good sense of balance, Kali thought to herself. Because for the next few seconds — but what seemed like an eternity — she and the others found themselves being flung from one side of the deck to the other as the creature manoeuvred through the cave system. And then, suddenly, they were through.

The dragon's wings opened and the Tharnak was lowered by its claws, and they found themselves being flown high along the pass.

'My Gods!' Slowhand said.

'No,' Kali corrected. 'Their God.'

The archer, like the others, looked to the rails, and saw the yassan emerging from a hundred cave mouths along the pass. As the Dragon passed over them they fell to their knees and emitted a great roar of worship that resounded deafeningly through the mountains. And as it did, the dragon's long neck waved slowly from side to side, as if in acknowledgement.

'This is the moment that they — that their ancestors — have waited countless years for,' Kali said. 'In a strange way, in believing what they did, they were right all along.'

'I hate to spoil the moment,' Slowhand pointed out, looking somewhat less elated than Kali, 'but while they may have been right, something here is wrong.'

'What are you talking about?'

'Well, for one thing, our friend here isn't letting go.'

Kali looked up, and frowned. 'I'm sure it will soon.'

'No, bossa lady, it is more than that,' Dolorosa said. The ex-piratess had climbed up on a rail to examine the creature more closely and she, too, frowned. 'Look atta this,' she added, nodding at a scabrous wound that seemed to be spreading by the second all along its underside. 'Eet is injured.'

'Hardly surprising,' Aldrededor said. 'Our passage through the Dragonfire was a rough one.'

'Except only its outside hit the walls,' Kali pointed out.

Slowhand bit his lip. 'Hooper, are you saying — ?'

Kali nodded. 'Nothing except the k'nid can survive outside the valley.'

'Then we are in trouble, Kali Hooper,' Aldrededor piped in. 'Because as my wife would say, we 'havva another problem'.'

'What, Aldrededor?'

'Perhaps you and Mister Slowhand would care to take a look over the side.'

'Ohhhh, fark,' the archer said.

'You can say that again,' Kali answered.

'Ohhhh, fark.'

The curse was wholly appropriate. Whilst they had all been speaking, not only had the dragon flown them out of the pass and beyond the Drakengrat Mountains but it had also, for its own reasons, climbed. Features on the landscape below were now little more than dots, the dragon having gained at least a thousand metres in height.

A thousand metres.

And it was still climbing.

Chapter Seventeen

The dragon continued to climb, so high now that daylight began to give way to the azureness of night as the air around it and the ship thinned, and that azure glow in turn began to give way to an inky blackness that was neither night or day. Kali and the others had been unable to do anything to prevent their continued ascent and they could do nothing now except experience, in stunned silence, that which no one of their world had ever experienced before.

It was an hour after dawn.

And the stars were coming out.

'Hooper?' Slowhand said, his voice tinged with wonder.

'Oh Gods.' was all Kali could say in reply, as she stared out into the void.

That either of them could speak at all was a surprise. And not only because of what lay revealed before them. All four on board the ship had suffered near unconsciousness as they had been carried further and further from the now impossibly distant and patchwork ground, breathlessness giving way to burning lungs and then an inability to breathe at all. Thankfully, though, the effects of their rising altitude had not lasted, the ship forming a membrane around the deck that sealed them in while also generating fresh air for them to breathe. This was alongside another, far more peculiar and unexpected effect which was that, a few seconds later, she and the others seemed to be able to fly!

It was as if they weighed nothing at all, victims of some mischievous sorcery wielded by an invisible hand. The expressions on her companions faces reflected the same emotions Kali felt — that it was unbelievable and strange and incredible. And liberating. Too liberating in one case.

Slowhand's clothes were beginning to float off.

Fortunately they didn't get chance to float all the way.

The ship dropped suddenly, Kali and the others' weightless forms thrown into turmoil within, and as Kali scrambled to see through the membrane, paddling upside down across its surface, it was clear that the dragon had begun to struggle above them. The wound on its underside that Dolorosa had noticed earlier had become livid now, and the flesh around it was falling away, first in small flakes and then larger chunks, as if the creature were infected with a virulent leprosy. Whatever had possessed the dragon to bring them here, whatever had driven it on this suicidal climb, didn't matter for the moment, because it was clear that its journey was over — and with it their own. The ship dropped once more as the dragon's grip on it became weaker, but while it didn't let go, the creature itself began to turn, as if to dive back to the surface. The turn did not look deliberate to Kali, though — as if the creature were simply too weak now to remain aloft, listing rather than manoeuvring, merely suspended momentarily in this alien space. A second later, that proved to be the case.

Both the dragon and the ship began to plummet, and Kali and the others were propelled into the membrane. As it stretched Kali began to pray that it wouldn't break. She did not have to pray for long, though, as the dragon's rate of descent was so great that the weightlessness they had experienced soon dissipated. This resulted in all four of them being thrown about the craft like peas in a pod.

'Hooper, what in all the farking hells is going on!?' Slowhand shouted.

'Gravity, I think.'

'That isn't what I mean and you know it!'

Kali stared up at the dragon and her brow furrowed. The wound on its underside had spread, encompassing