I didn’t know where we were, but something told me this was more than real. As was the demented gleam in his eyes. A layer of sweat collected on his upper lip. He wore a jewelled ring on each of his fingers. While he spoke, his focus kept darting over to where some goblins were mining sapphires. I’d heard about treasure-sickness before, but I’d just chalked it up to pure greed.
“Take them to the smelting pot,” the Fae mage ordered. I tried to struggle against the clay golem, but my arms were plastered to my side. As we turned, I saw the mage thieves had reached the doorway to the armoury. They were about to step inside when the earth shook once more.
I braced myself for the psychic assault. This time it didn’t come. Instead, the cavern rocked like it was being battered from the outside. Cracks snaked up the side of the walls. Rocks the size of my fist rained down from the ceiling. The Fae mage sent columns of his magic skirting over the cavern. It melted the dragon glass in a futile attempt to keep the mountain intact.
Pandemonium ensued as the para-humans tried to avoid being struck. A golf-ball-sized rock smacked Andrei right in the nose.
The hit startled him into consciousness. When he opened his eyes, they were saturated in red. It was a good thing the clay golem had him immobilised. At the moment, it seemed he might have completely forgotten that he didn’t drink blood.
I heard Chanelle scream but my attention was glued to the mage team. The walkway they were trying to sneak across crumbled as the mountain trembled.
One of the mages lost his footing when the path disintegrated beneath his feet. His legs kicked out as his arms flailed. The other mage reached out for him, but the cavern shuddered. Both of them went tumbling over the side of the walkway. I winced and turned my head away, hoping that the elite guard had seen it and saved them.
Now if only somebody would save us.
47
The para-humans that had streamed out of the cavern came back in shouldering pieces of equipment. As the golems marched us to the smelting pot over the baby dragon, they frantically began to assemble some sort of machine. Whatever was outside bashed at the side of the mountain again. The baby dragon responded in kind.
The Fae mage turned towards the dragon, his features drawn tight. He raised his fists. The red of his magic swirled around his hands. Streaks of blue and silver interlaced with the red. “Cease your bellowing or I will silence you.”
The baby dragon tugged at its chains, trying to get as far away as possible. By now I’d pieced together that the mountain was being attacked by another dragon. Probably the baby’s parent. The para-humans had almost finished building what looked to be a set of long-range siege weapons. Some kind of heavy-duty bolt throwers.
It was amazing what all those hands could accomplish in minutes. Two cave trolls appeared from the direction of the armoury. They carried dozens of black arrows longer than I was tall. The tips of the arrows were made of dragon glass tinged blue. The Fae mage must have hexed them. How nice of the elite guard to drop us into a warzone.
The baby dragon seemed to sense that its cries had made things worse. It sat uncomfortably on shackled hindquarters. Doctor Thorne had told me that dragons were highly intelligent. They possessed their own form of telepathy.
All I saw when the baby dragon’s head lowered to the lip of the crater was misery. It blinked dark eyes at me.
The Fae mage waved his hands. A low rumble that had nothing to do with a dragon attack caused the ceiling to shift. I craned my neck to watch as two square pieces of the cave roof slid aside. A midnight sky appeared. It lit up at intervals with bursts of dragon fire.
The para-humans heaved the siege weapons into the right angle. The cave trolls notched it with arrows.
Through the holes in the ceiling, I caught an occasional glimpse of membranous wings in glittering gold and green. The next time a hint of dragon showed up in the sky, one of the cave trolls fired. The arrow whistled through the hole. Outside it flared in a bright blue that burned my eyes. A blanket of cold air descended on us. Again and again the para-humans reloaded and shot. With each arrow that exploded, the temperature dropped until I couldn’t feel my nose in front of my face. The gold in the smelting pot began to solidify.
The Fae mage had forgotten about us in the face of a more threatening foe. Sadly, the golems had not. Without the smelting pot to boil us alive in, the clay golem decided it was just going to crush us into dust instead.
I winced as the golem contracted its hand. Andrei gave a pissed-off snarl and pushed back. The crushing grip eased a little.
A shadow loomed over the opening in the ceiling. There was a second where it felt like the entire world stood perfectly still. A single malevolent thought ignited in my mind, but it didn’t belong to me. It came from the mind of a dragon so steeped in myth and power that I could barely stop from blacking out. It started as a tiny wave that rolled and boiled until it became a tsunami. So much rage and anguish saturated the wave that I felt my heart clench in my chest. I began to cry. The only thing that held my consciousness tethered was Michael’s seal. I latched on to it and the comforting hum of my magic behind it like a shield.
A dragon roared outside the cave and in my head. Flames spouted from the holes in the roof to heat the room once more. The ceiling began to break apart.
Andrei groaned and fell unconscious again.
