had to shove his way through the mob to reach the center tunnel. The air was full of acrid, resinous smoke and grit. Lying on the ground were eight diggers, covered in dust and bleeding from gashes on their heads and backs.
Amero spotted Farun through the dirt and soot. He dropped to his knees and clasped Farun’s hand.
“What happened?” he demanded. “What went wrong?”
Coughing, Farun replied, “The roof fell. We had the black stone hot enough, and Mieda sent for water. I was in the first pair to dump water on the rock face — ” Another fit of coughing seized him and blood flecked his chin.
Amero ordered everyone back and called for travois to take the injured away. Eight men were removed from the center tunnel. The north tunnel had also collapsed. No one had managed to get out.
Amero looked around wildly at the sooty, coughing men and cried, “Who was in there? Does anyone know?”
Konza the tanner regarded him with a dull, shocked expression. “Mieda, Talek the mason, Halshi — ”
“Halshi was in there?” Amero exclaimed.
Konza nodded slowly. “So was my eldest son, Merenta,” he said. Tears trickled down his face, cutting tracks in the dust on his cheeks.
Amero tried to think of something comforting to say, but his tongue felt wooden and useless. He could only stare at the blocked tunnel. Halshi was in there, and Mieda, and so very many others.
Suddenly, a tall stranger appeared among the dazed crowd. Dressed in buckskin trews and a sleeveless hunting shirt, his long chestnut hair gathered in a thick knot at the back of his neck, the stranger ran by the grieving Konza and the paralyzed Amero to the pile of fallen stone blocking the tunnel mouth. With his bare hands he took hold of a large chunk of sandstone and rolled it aside. Several smaller rocks he tossed out of the way.
His industry freed Amero from the paralysis gripping him. He fell to his knees beside the stranger and started digging, too. The two men joined forces to dislodge a large, flat boulder. With much grunting and a few skinned knuckles, they got the slab out of the way. Others overcame their shock and horror and joined in the digging.
“Thank you,” Amero panted. He suddenly realized he had no idea who he was speaking to. “I don’t know your face. Who are you?”
“My name’s Pa’alu,” the man said.
“You’re a plainsman. Where did you come from?”
“I’m one of Karada’s band. The dragon, Duranix, guided me here.”
Amero seized the muscular newcomer by the shoulders. “Duranix! Where is he? We need him — he could tear down the whole mountain and free those buried!”
Firmly but gently, Pa’alu broke Amero’s grip. “Duranix isn’t here. He brought me to the valley and showed me the trail here, then he flew away.”
“But why?”
Pa’alu hesitated. Under the circumstances, how could he explain? Duranix owed him a debt, so he’d asked the dragon to flyback to the Thon-Thalas to look for Karada and the rest of his people.
He said simply, “He went to search for survivors of a great battle. Karada and my people fought the elves and lost.”
Amero looked away briefly, searching in vain for a glimpse of his friend, as Pa’alu turned and rejoined the rescue dig. Bare-handed progress was slow, but tools were brought and the furious work organized. The sun bore down on the scene as the men and women of Yala-tene toiled to free their trapped friends. Many of the rescuers worked until the pitiless heat wore them out. The exhausted were carried to the shade.
Besides being hot, the work was bedeviled by constant secondary landslides. Rocks ranging from fist-sized pebbles to veritable boulders rained down on the tunnel mouth. The entire face of the sandstone cliff was shattered, and the cracks ran all the way back to the collapsed center tunnel. Mieda’s technique had worked too well.
The sun had sunk behind the western peaks by the time they reached the buried diggers. One by one they were brought out — Mieda, Talek, Merenta, Halshi, and the rest. None were alive.
They were carried to the nearest open ground, below the cairn that had held the food offerings of the dragon. It had been a long time since Amero had lost someone he cared about, and gazing at the still faces of Mieda and Halshi left him feeling empty inside. Hollow. He didn’t understand why he felt so betrayed. There was no one to blame. Mieda hadn’t known the rock was fissured over the tunnels when he built the fires. He had died leading his diggers, an honorable death. No, the betrayal lay elsewhere.
A foul smell assaulted his nostrils.
“Get that rotten carcass out of here!” Amero shouted. A maggot-ridden ox haunch was dragged off the cairn. As family members gathered to claim the bodies of their loved ones, Amero’s aching emptiness grew larger. An idea formed to fill the void in his heart. He called for firewood — lots of it.
Farun, his head bandaged and his arm in a sling, limped up to Amero. “What do you intend?” he asked.
“Our lost friends were working to make the village a better place,” Amero said. “They died together. We should honor them together.” His head swam. He wiped cold sweat from his brow. “The mountain treacherously crushed them. We will free their spirits and send them to the sky, where the mountain cannot touch them.”
He ordered cords of pine and cedar laid atop the cairn. The eight victims were then laid on the stacked wood, and Amero called for a torch.
No one moved to comply. The villagers, like all plainsmen, believed burial was the proper way to treat the dead. They were paralyzed between loyalty to their young leader and anguish at his flaunting of one of their ancient traditions.
It was Pa’alu, the stranger, who brought Amero a blazing torch. He took it with a grateful nod and held it high above his head.
“Don’t be afraid!” Amero declared. “We have all lost friends we’ve loved. I give them the honor, the dignity of fire! Let their spirits remain ever more watching over us!”
He thrust the torch into the lowest course of logs. The dry pine caught fire rapidly. In minutes, the cairn was a lake of flame.
The people of Yala-tene stood silently around the pyre, watching the thick smoke rise to the stars above. Amero tossed the torch into the flames and stood back beside Pa’alu.
“Thank you,” he said.
“It’s nothing,” the hunter replied. “I hope someone does as much for me someday.”
Duranix, where are you? was Amero’s miserable thought. The words had barely formed in his head when the sky was shattered by the dragon’s terrible roar. Already overwrought by events, the crowd shifted and wavered. Some fell to their knees as the black shadow of the winged dragon passed overhead.
In a rare display of his true shape, Duranix alighted on the shore of the lake, some paces from the blazing cairn. He furled his leathery wings and approached the pyre, scales gleaming in the firelight. People scattered before him, many more dropping to their knees as the dragon’s flashing eyes swept over them. By the time he reached the cairn, only Amero and Pa’alu were standing.
“What is this?” asked Duranix, raising a claw to the fire.
Tersely, Amero told of the disaster, the rescue attempt, and his inspiration to honor the dead with a funeral pyre.
Duranix extended his long neck and put his head in the flames. A wave of horrified gasps flowed from the villagers and several of the women shrieked. Seeming not to notice their reactions, the dragon looked around in the fire for a moment, then withdrew his head. “Mieda,” he said with unusual emotion. “He’ll never see the northern seas again.”
“Where were you?” Amero demanded. Words caught in his throat like stones. “We needed you! You could’ve dug those people out of the mountain faster than the whole village, but you weren’t here!”
Duranix sat back on his haunches. His booming voice carried over the crackle of the fire. “I was scouting for enemies. I found a band of warrior nomads, led by the woman Karada. She’s fighting the elves for control of the eastern plain. Two days ago she lost a battle, and her people are scattered. This man,” he said, pointing to Pa’alu, “came with me to see Yala-tene. He’s one of Karada’s band.”
“Are we in any danger?” asked Amero, wiping tears from his face.
“Not from the elves. They’ve come no farther than the headwaters of the Thon-Thalas.”
“Any news of Karada?” asked Pa’alu anxiously.
