“What ails him?” asked Pa’alu.
Amero considered speaking the truth, then said, “Who can say? Pay him no heed.” He put aside his newly made copper sheet and sat down on the anvil. “I’m glad to see you, Pa’alu. Where have you been? Many of your comrades have arrived during your absence, including a big man who says he’s your brother.”
“Pakito’s here! That is good news!” He clapped Amero on the shoulder. The well-intentioned blow was enough to knock Amero off his perch.
“Any word of Karada?” Pa’alu asked anxiously, lending the young man a hand.
“No word as yet.”
By this time Duranix had circled the cave and come back. “What kept you?” asked the dragon. “We worried you were lost in the mountains.” Amero was curious to hear Duranix express concern about a mere human.
“That’s what I came to tell you. I was waylaid in the mountains.” Pa’alu related his encounter with the monstrous Greengall — up to a point. He carefully avoided any mention of Vedvedsica. The dragon would not knowingly give up the nugget if he knew it would go to the elf priest.
“Describe this Greengall!” Duranix said grimly. “Leave nothing out!”
Pa’alu described the weird fellow: long legs, short arms, spidery fingers, hideously oversized head and mouth. When he began to describe Greengall’s clothing, Duranix folded his arms and lowered his head.
The dragon muttered, “I should have expected this. He’s been quiet too long.”
“Do you know this creature?” asked Amero.
“Sthenn.” The name was an evil hiss. Duranix locked eyes with Pa’alu. “You met the green dragon Sthenn and lived to tell about it. How did you manage that? You’re a stout fellow for a human, but you’re no match for a dragon of any hue. Why did Sthenn let you go?”
It was Pa’alu’s turn to fold his arms and look grave. “He spared me to be a messenger,” he said. “He sent me back to tell you he wants the nugget, the gold nugget you took from the elf priest.”
The dragon was speechless for a moment. Amero, who knew little of the unusual nugget Duranix had brought back from his travels, asked, “Why does he want a mere stone? What value is it to him?”
“It’s a cache of pure spirit-power,” interjected Duranix curtly. “Sthenn must have some idea of tapping it, though I don’t understand why. We dragons have our own sources of power. What is Sthenn planning? Does he think to offer such power to his followers?”
“What is he talking about?” Pa’alu asked Amero.
“Be still,” the dragon said. He put a thumb and forefinger into his mouth and took out the nugget. He placed it on Amero’s granite anvil. All three looked at it with new curiosity.
“There is a hierarchy in the universe,” Duranix explained. “Some of your people already know of the higher beings and worship them as gods. Below them in power are dragons, who exist midway between the pure spirits and the lower animals.” Amero didn’t have to be told who the “lower animals” were. Pa’alu still looked mystified.
The dragon continued, “With proper concentration and training, elves and even humans could release the power contained in this stone.”
“Could the yevi?” Amero said under his breath.
Pa’alu reached out to grasp the dull golden nugget. His hand froze just above it.
“Go ahead, pick it up,” said the dragon. “You’ll feel nothing from it.”
Pa’alu found the stone warm to the touch — no doubt from being in Duranix’s mouth all this time. The nugget was weighty for its size, but as the dragon had said, Pa’alu could feel nothing emanating from it.
“It’s just a stone,” he said, disappointed.
“Keep thinking that,” the dragon replied. “When humans start coveting spirit-power, the world is in for more grief than it can bear.”
Pa’alu carefully replaced the nugget on the granite block. He expected Duranix to reclaim it instantly, but the disguised dragon had wandered away, a hand to his head.
“Duranix?” Amero said.
The dragon’s steps faltered. He clutched his head in both hands and stumbled through the hearth. Ashes and charred wood went skittering across the floor. Amero hurried to him, leaving Pa’alu by the anvil.
“Duranix? Duranix, what is it?” Amero called, alarmed.
The dragon-man threw his arms wide suddenly and let loose a roar of — what? Agony? Fear? Amero couldn’t tell.
As he stood there, shaking, his screams reverberating off the hard walls of the cave, Duranix’s arms began to bleed blue-green blood. The skin along the back of his arms split open. Under the tearing human skin were the red- bronze scales of Duranix’s true flesh.
The dreadful sound of skin splitting was not quite drowned out by Duranix’s continuous roaring. He doubled over and, before their eyes, his human body burst apart. His true self stretched outward and upward. The roar increased to full dragon volume. Amero fell to the floor, covering his ears with his hands while Pa’alu, trembling in amazement, ducked behind the weighty anvil. Amero thought the ceiling would surely crack apart under the terrible noise.
Then, as suddenly as it began, the transformation was complete.
“It’s good to be full size again!” Duranix shouted, extending his wings. The dragon shivered with obvious pleasure. “How do you creatures live in such small bodies?”
“We manage,” Amero grunted, as he hauled himself out from under an outstretched wing. Coming up on the dragon’s left side, he reached out and gave the great creature an affectionate thump with his clenched fist.
“Are you all right? What happened?” Amero asked as Pa’alu came crawling out from his hiding place.
“It’s hard to describe. Pressure built inside me — I thought I was going to burst!” Duranix sniffed at the shreds of his human shell lying on the floor. “It appears that I did.”
“You don’t usually shed your skin when you transform,” Amero mused.
Dragon eye met human eye in a flash of shared thought, and they turned to Pa’alu. “The stone!” they cried in unison.
Pa’alu picked up the nugget and fingered it wonderingly. “This yellow rock kept you from shapeshifting?”
The dragon clomped forward, furling his wings. “That must be it!” he said. “The stone somehow kept me in the shape I was in.”
“Then we must get rid of it,” Amero said firmly.
“I’ll do it,” said Pa’alu quickly, closing his fingers around the stone.
“I must keep it out of Sthenn’s hands,” Duranix said. “Give it to me.”
Pa’alu walked slowly under the dragon’s arching neck. He held out the nugget to Duranix.
“Are you sure you want to handle it again? Who knows what ultimate effect it may have on you? Let me destroy it. I have no sensitivity to its power. To me, it’s just a lump of rock.”
Duranix had extended two claws to take the nugget off the plainsman’s palm. He suddenly thought better of it and withdrew.
“Very well, Pa’alu,” he agreed. “You have good instincts. They saved me some trouble with Vedvedsica not long ago. Take the stone. Put it some place neither elves nor dragons can easily find — a deep lake, a bottomless cave. Take it away, and tell no one where you leave it.”
Pa’alu tucked the nugget into the pouch on his belt. “Fear not,” he said confidently “You won’t see it again.”
The cave had grown steadily lighter. A gray dawn, filtered by clouds and the waterfall, had arrived. Weary from his labors, Amero went to the water basin and tried to awaken his numb face. Duranix, his serpentine grace restored, sprang to the upper cave exit and put his head out.
“I must stretch my wings,” he stated grandly. “I’ll look around for Sthenn while I’m at it.” A rumbling sound, like a distant avalanche, filled the cave. The dragon’s keen eyes fastened on movement farther down in the valley. The eyes narrowed, and he hissed a single word. “Prey!”
With a flip of his barbed tail, the dragon vaulted through the wall of water and disappeared. Pa’alu hauled the hoist into the cavern and threw a leg over the side of the basket.
“I’d best get rid of the stone now,” he said.
The sound of many loud voices penetrated the cave — a massed shouting. Pa’alu couldn’t see through the waterfall. Amero came to the opening. “That’s coming from the nomads’ camp,” he said with a pang of
