And yet that frenzy had control. Khe'sha followed the underground electric cable from the shed to the cottage's foundation without damaging it. He left it hanging along the stone wall as he burrowed deeper, leaving mounds of loam and gravel and small rocks thrown back between his hind legs.
He exposed a wall, deeper than David's height, dark with clinging dirt but apparently of the same stone masonry as the whitewashed plane that showed above the grade. Pipes entered it and drained from it in several places, twisting away underground to unknown destinations.
There's a lot more to this simple Irish cottage than meets the eye. But that wasn't news. Smoke and mirrors, illusions and traps.
The dragon pulled back, his bulk crushing rosebushes and knocking a sundial spinning across the grass. The hedge retreated from his tail, a really weird sight that David's eyes almost refused to pass along to his brain.
{I smell Shen beyond that wall. I hear her thoughts. It would be best if you stood back.}
David blinked and retreated. If a dragon asks you to move, you move. Ask how far while you're already en-route.
Khe'sha cocked his head back and forth, weaving his neck like a snake. He nodded. {Her thoughts are strongest in that far corner.}
And then he struck, both forepaws with his weight and the coiled strength of his whole bulk behind them. Stones flew in a cloud of mortar dust, leaving a gap in the near corner of the foundation wall. The dragon struck again and again, blind frenzy if it hadn't been so focused. The ground shook, and a blaze of purple light blinded David. Khe'sha screamed.
David blinked the fire out of his eyes, stunned. He sat up. Smoke rose from the corner of the cottage, black rising out of wisps of white steam that hugged the bottom of the trench. Heavy. Looked like cryogenics, the liquid oxygen boiling off while NASA fueled a rocket launch. Something brownish mixed streaks through the white, looking noxious. He shook his head again, clearing it. He couldn't hear anything.
The dragon lay still. It looked like Fiona had her own version of a "Top Secret" stamp, a trap protecting whatever hid in that cellar. A trap powerful enough to kill a dragon in an instant -- David remembered the other one, thrashing and screaming and knocking him across the forest clearing and burying him in shattered trees.
But he saw a hole into darkness. Was the trap drained? He staggered to his feet. His sight blurred, tears for his fallen friend, but he owed Khe'sha. David had to try that hole, see if Shen survived.
{When this song is chanted, it will be told as a cautionary tale for hatchlings. "How Khe'sha lost his temper and two claws."} The dragon opened one great yellow eye, blinked several times as if he had to clear his head, and then lifted his right forepaw, displaying the seared gap where the title digits once had been.
David shuddered. "Thank God. I thought you were dead."
{I believe that I am larger than the enemies the witch expected. Or perhaps she dared not use a stronger spell, without destroying her whole house and whatever lairs under it.}
Khe'sha struggled to his feet, twitching and groggy. He sniffed at the vapors and the hole, and sneezed. {I smell death and poison inside. We must burn this place. Shen still lives.}
The hole was large enough for a man. The entire cellar wasn't large enough for the dragon. Dammit, you pass one test, they just throw another one at you. I don't want to go in there.
But he had no choice. That's what it always came down to. He'd followed Jo, he'd killed the other dragon, he'd done everything in this insane saga because he had no choice. Just like the forest had herded him and Khe'sha to this place. The chess-master moved his pieces without asking their permission.
No choice. He couldn't retreat, so he went forward.
He climbed down into the hole. He'd expected darkness in the cellar, but pale light glowed through the vapor, and his brain started building hoodoos of lurking witchcraft or hideous bioluminescent monsters or radioactive isotopes stolen from Los Alamos. Chill dampness touched him, and he shivered. It stank, that disinfectant he'd noticed in the kitchen and a whiff of rotting meat and the sharp tang of ozone from a lot of electronics. Smoke, curls of smoke from charred beams and the fried meat of Khe'sha's paw.
Apparently his hearing was coming back, because leaking pipes hissed gently from each side. The glow firmed and focused into emergency lights, simple battery units hanging on the walls, cutting beams of yellow through the shifting murk. He sighed with relief, then coughed as the air bit his throat. Dust, or poison? Move, dammit. You don't know what that vapor is.
He found a cage, surrounded by dead electronics and lab equipment. Black fury lunged across the metal, claws and teeth screeching on stainless steel bars.
{Shen hungry!}
His brain fuzzed. Even if that gas is nitrogen or CO2 or Freon, it can kill you. No air. Suffocate.
Cage, carrying cage, hatchling-sized, with guarded handles. How could he lure the dragon into it? Refrigerator. Cold steam boiling out, glass vials, nothing there. Another. Meat. Plastic-wrapped meat, still with the supermarket price labels and foam trays. Sirloin steaks, better than he'd eaten in years.
Feed her. That will slow her down. Was that his thought, or Khe'sha's?
He dropped the first package. Fumbled for a second, ripped it open with clumsy fingers. Brain going. How long can you hold your breath?
Knocked over a rolling cart, crashing glass. Baited the cage. Latched it to the larger cage. Blinked at a complicated double gate, interlocks, no way that little monster was going to get out by mistake.
This lever and that one, arm's length apart, can't release both at once without
