DemonWars Saga Volume 2: Mortalis - Ascendance - Transcendence - Immortalis (The DemonWars Saga) (197 page)

That notion stopped him momentarily, struck him with a surprising realization. Had he come to like Agradeleous the dragon?

Juraviel shook the notions away and cleared his throat, then took up his tale, running about the mounds and the various ledges of the room to accentuate the action scenes, taking up a sword at one point to replay the battles that had faced Nightbird and Pony around and within the Barbacan. Again he embellished, adding great detail—and often taking artistic license—because he did not wish to finish quickly.

At one point, telling of the run from the giants at the Barbacan ring, Juraviel ran up the side of a mound of coins and dove over, sliding down the back slope, out of sight of his audience of two. He waited a long while out of their sight.

“Where are you, little one?” Agradeleous boomed, the tone showing suspicion and growing anger.

Belli’mar Juraviel burst out of the coin pile, sword flashing in the air. “So yelled the giants!” he cried dramatically, leaping forward, sword slashing the air about him. “Where are you? And out leaped Nightbird, Tempest’s storm flashing about him, driving back the mighty beasts, cutting them and felling them.”

The elf danced a ferocious and wild routine as he embellished the story, to the delight of both Cazzira and Agradeleous.

He finished and turned to face the pair, then planted the sword, tip-down to the floor, and leaned on it heavily. “And so ends my tale for this day,” he announced.

To Juraviel’s surprise, Cazzira voiced her outrage before Agradeleous had the chance. But Juraviel remained adamant. “In bits and pieces,” he explained, tossing the sword to the nearest pile of treasure. “Let your minds linger on that which I have told you this day, that tomorrow’s tale might be stronger still.”

Agradeleous roared with laughter and jumped up and down, shaking the whole of the chamber and rattling coins.

“Go to your sleep,” the dragon bade, and he gathered up Cazzira, and then Juraviel, and carried them back to the pit.

The next day was much the same, as was the next, and in both plays, Juraviel found at least one moment where he could slip away from the others for an extended period of time.

After the third such ploy, Cazzira caught on.

“You are leaving,” she said to him much later on, when they heard Agradeleous
snoring in the room above them. “That is why you keep running out of sight.”

Juraviel put his finger over her lips to silence her. “I am bound by my word and by my duty,” he explained.

“And bound not at all by your time with me?”

“More than you can understand,” Belli’mar Juraviel replied, and he moved near to her suddenly and unexpectedly, kissing her gently on the lips. Cazzira started to talk again, but Juraviel cut her short with another kiss, and then another, pressing her closer each time, and finding, to his delight, that she was not pushing him back.

They made love that night, in a barren pit in the lair of a dragon, and to Belli’mar Juraviel, it was more beautiful a place than under the stars of the night sky in Andur’Blough Inninness.

Much later on, when Cazzira awoke, she found Juraviel lying beside her, propped on one elbow so that he was looking down at her.

“I am bound to you more than you can know,” he said softly, running his hand from her chin, up the side of her face, and along her silken hair. “I am bound by love to exclude you from my desperate plan. I will not lead you to death, Cazzira, though I fear that death will catch up to me in the halls outside of Agradeleous’ lair.”

“She is only human,” Cazzira reminded.

“She is a ranger, and I am bound to aid her, and so I must try.”

“And when you are done?”

Juraviel looked away, considering the question honestly, then looked back to her, staring her in the eye, showing her his sincerity. “When I am done, I will return to finish my tale to Agradeleous. If Cazzira is here, then I will remain. If you are not, if you have found your escape, then I will return to Tymwyvenne to be beside you again.”

The Doc’alfar smiled and reached up to stroke Juraviel’s face. “If you do not, I will lead my people to war against Caer’alfar,” she promised. “Battle has been joined for less a reason than this!”

Juraviel bent low and kissed her again, gently, but Cazzira grabbed him tightly and pulled him right over, coming to rest atop him and kissing him with urgency.

A long while later, Belli’mar Juraviel called to Agradeleous to begin what he considered his final performance.

C
azzira watched the dragon leaning forward, every inch of Agradeleous’ sinewy, muscular, scaled frame tensed as the dragon awaited Belli’mar Juraviel’s reappearance from behind the mound of coins at the back of the large mound. The elf had been reenacting Nightbird and Pony’s escape from Mount Aida atop the mighty stallion Symphony. He had buried himself in the coins, thrusting his arm, holding a sword, skyward to represent the mummified arm of Brother Avelyn.

And then he had rushed off to the back of the huge chamber, scrambling over the furthest mound of coins.

The moments continued to slip away.

Cazzira sat back and relaxed, reflecting on the loss. She was surprised at the size of the hole in her heart, the sense of profound loneliness. She knew that Juraviel had acted in what he believed to be her best interest; they didn’t expect that Agradeleous would hurt her, after all, though Juraviel had just certainly placed himself in dire jeopardy.

Still, had she realized how painful this separation would be, Cazzira would have found a way to get out with him, to make that desperate run to the south.

She watched as Agradeleous’ expression went from intense eagerness to confusion to suspicion, to the mounting anger that only a dragon could exhibit. “Where are you, little one?” the dragon growled.

Agradeleous looked to Cazzira, who shrugged and tried to look as surprised as he. “Soon,” she assured the beast.

Agradeleous stood up and narrowed his eyes, peering all about the chamber, issuing a low growl all the while. He took a step forward, turning slowly, and began to sniff loudly. “Little one?” he asked again, the volume of his growl rising.

Cazzira started toward him, but backed away, noted that his iron-corded, scaly arms were trembling with explosive power.

“Little one?”

Several more moments slipped past.

Agradeleous spun suddenly on Cazzira, and with a quickness and power that mocked the Doc’alfar’s catlike reflexes, he scooped her up under one arm, took a couple of running steps, and leaped long and far, sailing into the pit. He dropped her unceremoniously to the floor and sprang away, his growl becoming a rock-shaking roar.

“Little one!” the dragon bellowed, plowing through the mounds of coins, sending treasure flying wildly about the chamber. Under one mound, he hit a rock, larger than his present bipedal form, and still his kick sent it skidding away. Not satisfied with that, Agradeleous reached down and lifted the boulder over his head, then hurled it the length of the room, where it smashed in half against the wall.

Behind the farthest mound, where Juraviel had disappeared, there loomed a small tunnel. Agradeleous started down, but stopped and sniffed the air.

The dragon backed away and looked up, to a second hole in the wall, a dozen feet off the floor, a hole that Juraviel, with his wings, could have reached.

Eyes narrowing again, Agradeleous sprang up into the hole, running along on all fours, his small wings curled up on his back, his short and thick tail straight out behind him.

J
uraviel ran flat out, but the tunnels outside the chamber were not nearly as well lit from the orange-glowing lava, and despite his keen eyesight, the elf stumbled many times. Even if he had not lost his footing, he realized that he could not simply outdistance Agradeleous. He had to hope that the tunnel forked and branched off, many times.

He heard the rumbling footfalls coming in fast pursuit soon after, and stumbled along in the low light, knowing that he would be caught quickly, unless …

The elf breathed a bit easier when he came to the first fork in the trail, one branch winding down and to the right, while the main tunnel continued on straight ahead. Juraviel instinctively went for the branch, but stopped and changed his mind, guessing that Agradeleous would expect him to head down the narrower branch.

He ran on, as fast as he could, hoping that the fork had bought him some time. But then the rumbling behind him stopped, and a moment later, Juraviel heard snuffling sounds. He cringed and ran on—what else could he do?

And then came the dragon’s thunderous pursuit.

Several intersections gave the elf a bit of a lead, for at each one, Agradeleous had to stop and locate Juraviel’s scent. At one such three-way break, Juraviel ran for many feet down one steeply sloping path, coming to a ledge that dropped off into the darkness. Then he backtracked, and when he turned the corner to enter another of the tunnels, he used his wings to get him up to the top of the large corridor and scrambled along, high up on the wall for a long way.

Again he heard Agradeleous stop and sniff, then nodded with some hope as the dragon’s footsteps receded, then ended altogether.

Still, less than an hour later, moving in complete darkness, Juraviel heard the wurm’s pursuit again, closing fast.

Those lamplight eyes
, he thought, and he knew that it wouldn’t take Agradeleous long to catch him, and likely devour him.

Around a bend, the corridor brightened again, and a short while later, Juraviel came to a wide chamber with an arching stone bridge, high above a river of flowing lava. Across the way, the tunnel continued out of the wide chamber. Quickly, he inspected the bridge, hoping that it was weak at some points and would not support the beast, but he understood soon enough that the powries had likely constructed this nonnatural bridge, and that it was quite secure.

Juraviel squinted in the orange glow, looking for some other choice. The air was thick with a sulphurous smell, so much so that he knew Agradeleous could not track him anywhere near here.

The elf had an idea. He looked to the side, to the distant wall, then looked down, gauging the distance against the height of the bridge.

Dragon thunder shook the ground, not so far away.

Juraviel sprinted sidelong across the bridge and leaped high and far, his diminutive wings beating furiously, catching the hot updrafts of the lava across the wide expanse. He hit the sidewall hard, but held on, crawling to an area shadowed by a jag in the warm stone. Then he ducked his head and tried to ball up as tightly as possible.

He heard Agradeleous enter the chamber, and then, hardly hesitating, rush across the bridge. He waited a bit longer, until the dragon’s heavy footsteps receded, then gradually came out of his curl, craning his neck to look back at the
now-empty stone bridge. If he could only get to it and double back along the corridor …

That bridge was a long way from him, though, and above him, and he knew that if he tried to leap from the wall and fly back, he would surely plummet into the lava.

So he crawled along the wall, using his wings to lighten his body and make the climbing easier. Inch by inch, Juraviel worked around toward the wall with the tunnel through which he had entered the large chamber, closer and closer to the arcing bridge. If he could get right beside and beneath the span, he believed that he could leap up and fly enough to scramble atop it.

Inch by inch.

He came to one particularly smooth and difficult expanse of wall and paused, gathering his strength. Then, ready to half fly and half scramble across, the elf set himself and took a deep breath.

“There you are!” came Agradeleous’ roar, from not so far away. The dragon’s voice seemed enhanced now, even more powerful than Juraviel had heard it a short while before. And the elf saw his own shadow on the wall before his face, as those terrible lamplight eyes cast their glowing beams over him.

He turned his head slowly, but stopped and just closed his eyes, noting the edge of one huge leathery wing, for the dragon was back in its true, monstrous form.

“Treachery!” Agradeleous roared, and the sheer volume shook Juraviel free of his tentative grasp. He scrambled and beat his wings furiously, but he could not find any solid holds. His fingers bloodied as he raked at the stone, and he kicked hard, trying to set his feet.

But he was falling, without the strength to stop or even slow his descent.

He thought of Tuntun, then, an elf maiden who had been his dearest friend of old, and he marveled at the savage irony that his ending would be so eerily similar to hers.

Chapter 20
 

“Y
OU MUST LET GO OF YOUR ANGER
,” P
AGONEL SAID TO
B
RYNN
.

The dark-haired woman looked at the mystic hard. “I saw Ashwarawu die.”

“I saw many die,” Pagonel replied. “I saw you almost die.”

“I saw my parents die,” Brynn countered, her lip curling in this dark game of one-upsmanship.

“You must let go of your anger.”

“How can I forget …”