EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (200 page)

It would be nice to suggest that he felt guilty for what he’d done, but of the many things that troubled him, his conscience was not one. It wasn’t that he was an evil man. Evil requires passion, ambition, motivation. Drudder didn’t care enough to be evil. He didn’t care about right, he didn’t care about wrong. Right now, sacrificing the girl would solve every last problem he had. That was the only thing he cared about, and once he’d found something to care about, it was the only thing on his mind until it was done.

“Are you certain?” Delnick asked.

One does not become the man a village looks to for leadership by throwing children to monsters without good reason.

“Of course I’m certain! Listen, you heard what the priest said the note said. The man died from poison and there was a dragon. The dragon was the one that did it, it must have. Then the whole family dies in a fire. Dragons breathe fire. Now, when he couldn’t kill the girl, he brings this drought down on all of us. This is the answer, Delnick. This is what we have to do. We have to . . . to . . .
appease
the beast,” Drudder added, recalling the fancy-sounding word his mysterious adviser had used.

Delnick looked over the crowd. It was clear by the muttering and change in expressions that the thought of a quick and simple solution to their many problems appealed at least as much to them as it did to Drudder, with the added benefit that there would be no blood on
their
hands. On the surface, it is leaders who guide their people, but this is almost never true. A leader who takes his people where they don’t want to go seldom remains a leader for long, so leadership instead becomes the art of assuring obedience by ordering to be done what would have been done in the first place. He didn’t like it, but if the village felt that this was the only way, then he would see that it was so.

“Right. Kruck, when do these things come out to hunt?” Delnick asked.

“I had my run-in ‘round about dusk,” he replied.

“Then tomorrow, a bit before the sun sets, I want you to take the little girl to Teller’s Pit and . . . leave her there. Don’t tell her what she’s in for. The least we can do is give her this last day without fear,” Delnick decreed sadly.

With that, the frightened, unsure minds of the town left, set on the only desperate solution to present itself. Jade had her evening meal that night unaware that it would be her last, and woke the following morning to find that there would be no work that day. Instead, Drudder pulled her aside.

“You there . . . er, Jade. I want you to come with me. The boys will see to the field today,” he explained to her.

“Why? Where are we going?” she asked.

“To Teller’s Pit. We’re going to . . . try to find a way to get some water,” he said.

“And I get to come?” she said.

“Yeah, yeah. You get to come.”

Jade grinned ear to ear. This was the first time her caretaker had taken any sort of interest in her, and the first time in ages that she’d had a break from the daily routine. She didn’t need to know why.

“Thank you!” she said, throwing her arms around Drudder.

For just a moment the man felt a pang of conscience. For just a moment.

“What should I bring? What are we going to do?” she asked.

“It is just a little walk. You don’t need to bring anything. Just you, me, and a few of the other fellows from around town. We’ll take a nice walk, look around a bit, and then come back.”

“Okay!” she said cheerfully.

Drudder, Jade, and three of the more able-bodied men of the town set off just as the sun was beginning to droop. The little girl’s spirits were sky high. She was hungrier and thirstier than she’d been in weeks--but, for the first time since the loss of her parents, someone was treating her like she actually existed. The person she had been before the tragedy, long buried beneath impenetrable sadness, was beginning to show. After barely uttering a word for so long, she seemed to be making up for lost time. Questions were coming in a continuous stream, with little regard for the fact that there were no answers.

“Is Teller’s Pit far? Have we ever looked there for water before? We should do this more often . . .” she babbled as they continued along.

Just over an hour and just under two hundred questions later, the group reached their destination. Teller’s Pit was aptly named. Dry, brittle grass tapered off to a rocky lip that fell sharply off for a few dozen feet. At its bottom, a bed of gravel and debris took on a gentler slope as it led into a low-roofed tunnel. As the four men drew closer to it, they became visibly tense and nervous. Only the girl was oblivious to the danger that lurked within.

“W-o-o-ow,” Jade said, inching up to its edge and peering in. “Are we going to explore it?”

“No. But I want you to stay here while the rest of us look around a bit. Don’t move from this spot, no matter what, and keep a good eye on that cave. We’ll be back in a while,” Drudder said, eying the pit anxiously.

“Okay! I hope you find water,” she said cheerfully, as the men who had brought her retreated at a near run.

For a few minutes, Jade paced about the edge of the pit, pleased that she’d been given something important to do. As the minutes turned to hours, and the sky began to redden, boredom set in. She kicked a few stones, took off her shoes to give her feet some air, and tried not to think about how thirsty she was. With a sigh, she gathered up an armful of stones and began to throw them, one by one, into the pit.

One of them took an odd bounce and tumbled into the tunnel, clacking and echoing as it went. At the sound of the echoes, the mouth of the tunnel became her new target, with each stone echoing louder and bouncing further. She was listening to the final stone click along in the darkness when something suddenly felt wrong. The clicking was getting louder, not quieter. She stared curiously at the mouth of the cave. As she did, memories she’d thrust aside for the last few weeks began to work their way to the surface again. Finally, a creature emerged from the mouth of the cave, and Jade realized that she was seeing it for the second time.

She caught only the merest glimpse of it, but in half that time it had burned itself into her memory. Emerald green scales armored its back, its belly protected by yellow plates. At the end of a cruel, serpentine neck was a vicious reptilian head, set with piecing, yellow-gold eyes. Jade was already sprinting away, screaming at the top of her lungs, by the time it fully emerged from the shadows. At the sound of wings unfurling, she turned to see the monster launch from the mouth of the pit and into the air. Jade doubled her speed as the shadow swept across the ground, and when the earth shook with the creature’s landing, she doubled it again, moving with a speed only fear could allow.

At the midpoint between the pit and the town, Drudder waited. The others had wanted to return to the town, but he convinced them to remain. Maybe it was the fact that the fire had failed to kill her. Maybe it was the fact that he was only now realizing how tenuous his grip on the land that rightly belonged to her was. Whatever the reason, he wanted to be absolutely certain the job was done. And so he was dutifully watching the trail when the terrified girl, quite alive, came trudging through the trees. Upon seeing him, the girl found the strength to run to him for protection.

Rather than comfort her, Drudder took her firmly by the shoulders.

“Mr. Drudder, I was right, I did see a dragon! It was in the pit! It almost got me!” she sobbed.

“I know there was a dragon, how did you get away from it!?” he growled.

“I ran! Y-you knew there was a dragon?”

“Of course we knew there was a dragon! You can’t just
run away
from a dragon. What did you do!?” raved one of the others, a man called Mirren.

“I swear! I swear I just ran! I don’t understand what--”

“I’ll tell you how she did it. She’s a witch!” Drudder said in a tone more of realization than accusation, “She
must
be a witch. She survived that fire that killed her family. The only land that grows anything is the land
she
works. Now she escapes a dragon!? She’s got to be a witch!”

“What? No! No, I--” she objected tearfully.

Drudder quickly threw a hand over her mouth.

“I won’t have you speaking any spells, girl,” he said, with the desperation of a man who believes he may have killed the family of a girl who could turn him onto a toad. “Tie her up, and gag her. Quick!”

Ropes and rags were produced, brought along in case the girl were to realize her fate and try to escape. Her hands were bound behind her back, her feet bound together, and a rag tied across her mouth.

“What do we do now?” asked Mirren, nearly manic with anxiety.

“We take her back and we feed her to the dragon,” Drudder replied.

“What? No! She probably killed it with her magic!”

“We would have heard or seen it if someone killed something that size with magic.”

“Well, then that monster is still out there! It will kill us!”

“Would you rather die of thirst from the drought?”

“Yes! It takes longer! Besides, maybe it isn’t the dragon causing the drought. Maybe it’s the witch.”

“Then feeding the witch to the dragon will solve both problems, won’t it?”

“You’re on your own, Drudder. Me and . . .--hey, wait for me!” called Mirren after the others, who had already set off quickly back to town.

Drudder looked to the bound girl, then to the town, and finally toward Teller’s Pit. With a grit of his teeth, he stooped, clutched the girl under an arm, and set off toward the pit. As he walked, he ranted.

“It is the dragon causing the drought. People will die if it doesn’t rain. So we send you to appease the dragon, and you run? Do you
want
the drought to continue? Not me. No, this is the right thing to do. This is . . . this is for the greater good!” he muttered almost maniacally. “That’s why I’m doing it. It has to be done.”

It was the act of a man desperate to convince himself. His pace was brisk, practically a run, despite having to carry Jade. It had to be. He was feeding a little girl to a wild beast. It was a horrific act, even with the purest of intentions, and his were anything but pure. Drudder was in a race against his own conscience.

The edge of Teller’s Pit came into view. He stepped up to the rocky lip, girl over his shoulder. He gathered what little will he had left and took her into his arms. All he had to do was throw her down, and all of his problems would be over. He would inherit the land once and for all. He would not be suspected. The drought would end. It was all so simple, clean cut. It would all be over. He extended his arms. All he had to do was to let go . . .

The ground shook, a shadow slipping over Drudder. He turned. There were legs, scales, and shadows. He looked up . . . and up . . . and up . . .

The dragon’s head hung directly above his own. Quite without his permission, his arms lowered the girl. She fell to his feet.

“She . . . she’s yours! Take her!” He shuddered.

The dragon, eyes locked and teeth bared, circled to the side. Drudder bolted, a panicked run taking him madly back toward the town. The beast unleashed a bloodcurdling roar and followed. The footsteps retreated into the distance and, for a moment, Jade was alone. She struggled desperately, but the ropes around her hands and feet were far too tight and far too strong. The best she could manage was to dislodge the gag from her mouth and wail for help. She screamed as loud as she could, and for as long as she could, until a sound between cries rendered her silent. The footsteps were returning.

Jade shut her eyes tight and tried to stay silent as the monster stalked closer, hoping perhaps it would not notice her. Despite the warmth of the sun, she could not stop trembling. The dragon’s terrible claws clicked against the stone of the pit’s edge. The monster did not run, it did not pounce. It almost seemed cautious in its approach, turning what Jade had feared would be a sudden painful end into a torturous wait. Finally, the dragon stopped. Though she did not dare open her eyes, the little girl could feel it towering over her.

For a moment, the only sounds were the vast, hissing breaths of the monster and her own terrified whimpers. Then came the rumble, a sound felt as much as heard. It was a growl, deep and grating, more like pounding hammers or distant war drums than a sound a creature could make. Steadily, it grew stronger, until it shook the ground and rattled Jade’s bones.

There was a sudden, forceful nudge at her arm that flipped her onto her stomach. For an instant, she felt the dragon’s steaming breath on the back of her neck. She braced herself for the end. The growl grew louder and sharper in tone as it opened its mouth. Then came a firm tug at the nape of her shirt and she was wrenched into the air.

The terrified girl could stifle her screams no longer. She cried and wailed harder and harder as the beast leaped into the pit and plodded along, its latest morsel dangling from its teeth. Breath from its nostrils hissed in her ears as she swung by her tattered shirt, traveling deeper and deeper into the cave. The journey was a long one, exhaustion and a scoured throat reducing her cries to quiet whimpers long before it reached its end. Time dulled the edge of her fear enough to let her mind wander. Where could it be bringing her? Her thoughts drifted to spring, to mother birds bringing worms to their nests. Nests filled with gaping, hungry mouths . . . She found the strength to scream again.

When even the renewed terror was not enough to convince her to torture her parched throat any longer, she hesitantly opened her eyes. It did no good. The light from the mouth of the cave was long gone. Blackness surrounded her. Still, the dragon walked onward. Its growl had subsided, leaving only the clicking of claw on stone and the huff of hot breath to remind her of that which carried her. In time her aged shirt began to tear. The beast lowered her in the darkness, wrapping her instead with its tail and lifting her to continue the terrible journey.

After what seemed like hours, Jade’s red, tear-drenched eyes caught a glimpse of light on the walls around her as she was carried behind the beast. Were they heading back to the mouth of the cave? She twisted her neck and strained to see the approaching glow. It was certainly the sun, but it was not the craggy pit that she’d been carried into. As she was brought nearer, it was certain that the beast had hauled her to a second cave entrance.