How to Slay a Dragon (23 page)

“Sure. Sometimes Marvin brings me here, and we tease them to see how many we can get to come out of their tunnel.”

Nathan stepped up and placed a hand on Melvin’s shoulder. “I’d like to meet your brother some day.”

“How about today?” Greg barely managed to croak.

“I wish Marvin
was
here,” said Melvin. “I doubt even he knows there’s this many spirelings living with Ruuan.”

Captain Hawkins peered over Greg’s head into the valley below. “Right on schedule.”

Greg drew in a shaky breath. “We just shaved weeks off this trip. How can we be on schedule?”

Bart, too, peered somewhat nervously at the spirelings below. “You’re supposed to rescue the maiden on the night of the full moon. We, of course, thought it would be the next full moon, three weeks from now, but it is not the first time you have surprised us.”

Greg glanced at the sky. The sun still hovered above the horizon to the north, but the moon was already visible over the mountaintops to the east. It looked as big and full as could be. “Then it happens tonight.”

“No, tomorrow,” said Ryder, but then he looked at the moon himself and appeared less certain. “Full moon’s tomorrow night, right men?”

“Um, I think so,” came a host of replies, although no one seemed particularly certain.

Greg noticed two soldiers out of formation. They approached carrying something large between them.

“Agni!”

The soldiers laid the magician down as delicately as possible at Greg’s feet. Greg knelt at the man’s side and nearly shrieked when he saw Agni’s face.

The magician was conscious, but just barely. He peered at Greg from tired eyes sunken amidst the wrinkled, ashen face of an old man. “I did my part. Now you do yours.”

Greg swallowed hard. “I guess you’re not strong enough to send me the rest of the way?”

Agni struggled for breath. “I—I couldn’t anyway. I must be able to picture the place, and I have never been inside the spire.” His eyes closed then, and he went still.

At first Greg thought the worst. Then he observed the shallow rise and fall of the man’s chest.

“We better camp here,” Ryder said, taking one last look at the valley below. “My men need plenty of rest if they’re going to face that lot tomorrow.” He barked out a command that seemed to hang in the air forever, and as one, the men broke formation and began setting up camp.

That night there was no evening celebration. Instead, an air of impending doom settled over the camp as the soldiers sat in silence, contemplating their fates. After all, nothing in the prophecy defined which of them would live or die tomorrow, and Greg couldn’t understand how any could hope to survive when they were clearly outnumbered a thousand to one.

The moon shone nearly as bright as day, but even if it had been dark, Greg wouldn’t have stood a chance of sleeping. Rake wasn’t there to help either. The shadowcat must have felt the disquiet as much as Greg did, because it had faded into the shadows long ago and had not been back since.

Nathan crouched next to the boys’ bedrolls.
Please don’t try to console me
, Greg thought.

“You okay, Greghart?”

“Been better.”

“You’ll be fine. Just remember to use your head.”

Greg cringed. With his luck the soldiers were eavesdropping, and tomorrow they’d all be singing about how Greghart was going to
lose
his head.

“Here,” said Nathan, holding out his staff, “I want you to take this.”

“I have my own, thanks.”

“No, you should use mine. It’s . . . special.”

Greg didn’t stop to ask what Nathan meant. He grabbed the staff and hugged it tightly to his chest.

“One other thing,” said Nathan. “As with anything in life, a little preparation tonight could save you a lot of trouble in the end.”

“Okay . . .”

“The fireproofing spell Hazel gave you will not last indefinitely. You will want to finish your business in the spire and return as quickly as possible.”

“Believe me, I won’t stay up there one second longer than I need to.”

Nathan nodded. He reached out to the staff in Greg’s hand and moved it into sensen position. “Remember your center. Only from a position of peace can you achieve power. Now, sleep well, my young friend, for you will want to be well-rested when you meet the dragon.”

Before Greg could utter another word, Nathan rose and stalked off into the night. Greg’s heart pounded so hard he couldn’t think of sleeping now. What was Nathan trying to tell him? And why was he being so cryptic? Greg knew he would get no answers to these questions. He tried to push them from his mind, but they kept drifting back, demanding to be heard. Exhausted, yet wide-awake, he fell back on the one thing that had always given him solace. He pulled out his journal and pen and began to write.

It didn’t take long to bring the book up to date, and then when he still couldn’t get to sleep, Greg kept on writing, making up his own adventure as he’d done so many times back on Earth. It was a crazy thing to do, really—jotting down the end to his tale before the outcome was known—but Greg had seen the dragon. The story would never be told if he didn’t do it now. After Greg’s incineration, everyone would be so disappointed, even Bart would stop singing his ghastly ballads.

One would have thought that writing about Ruuan’s long talons and serrated teeth couldn’t have been worse therapy, that dwelling on the dragon’s enormous, leathery wings and fiery breath would have made Greg feel all the more uneasy about his fate. But the Greg Hart of his story cared little for such trivialities, and somehow that made them less horrible in real life, too.

The storybook Greg thought nothing of shouldering his way through the spirelings below and storming into the cave at the base of the spire. He found the secret passageway in seconds and marched with fearless determination into Ruuan’s lair while the dragon lay sleeping. Quickly he untied the princess and very nearly escaped without even waking the beast.

But then Ruuan’s head rocketed upward and swiveled atop the dragon’s long, sinewy neck. His jaw dropped, and out rushed a jet of scorching steam. Boldly I pulled the princess to me and raised my shield. The air roared for an unbelievably long moment. Finally the danger was past.

I laughed in the dragon’s face. Ruuan punctuated the steam with a jet of fire that nearly knocked me over backward in spite of my shield.

Again I laughed.

Ruuan leveraged himself to his feet and lunged, but my superior speed and lightening quick reflexes kept me from harm. Like a hero from some old swashbuckler movie, I scrambled behind the dragon and up its back, using its scales like a set of steps.

Ruuan struggled to reach me, to clamp me in his jaws and crush me, but I slipped up his neck and behind his ears, where the beast could not reach. As Ruuan’s head jerked about, trying to dislodge me, I held fast with my knees, raised my sword high.

With all my might I drove my blade home and felt the dragon stiffen. Like a collapsing building, the beast fell. The trip down was more fun than any amusement park ride. I leapt off at the last instant and landed nimbly at Priscilla’s side.

“That was amazing!” she cried.

“Yes, well, I hope I’m not late.”

As Greg finished, his eyelids grew heavy, and he started having trouble holding his pen. The journal slipped from his lap and toppled to the ground. The next thing Greg knew, something sharp clamped down on his wrist. “Ow!”

Rake jumped away. The shadowcat had returned from hiding and apparently felt, if it was awake, Greg should be too. The air hummed with a droning rumble that sapped all of Greg’s strength and made him want more than anything to go back to sleep.

But Rake looked determined to keep him awake. Greg blinked and looked about the campsite, then jumped to his feet and stared at the valley below. “Lucky, wake up. You’ve got to see this.”

The Infinite Spire

Lucky was nearly impossible to wake. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Greg stuffed an acorn into each of Lucky’s ears. “Come on, I’m not kidding. Wake up and look around you.”

Lucky lifted his eyes and scowled. He pushed himself up on one elbow and surveyed the campsite. On one side, Nathan lay sleeping with Rake curled up next to his face. On the other, Bart and Melvin lay snoring, with Rake snuggled between them in a ball of blue-black fur.

“There’s two of them!”

“Not just two,” Greg said. “Look around.”

Lucky finally spotted the many shadowcats scattered about, one to every three or four men in the campsite. “What’s going on? Where did all these shadowcats come from?”

“Quiet. You’ll wake the others.”

“But what’s going on?” Lucky demanded.

“I don’t know,” Greg said. “But it’s not just up here. The spirelings are asleep too. There’s shadowcats all through the valley. I think it’s a sign.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I think this is how we’re supposed to get past the spirelings. Now, hurry up, get your things. Who knows how long this will last?”

He looked to the spire and hesitated. He’d hoped this moment would never come. He questioned whether it was really here now. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he should be dreaming. If he just took the acorns out of his ears he could fade into peaceful oblivion . . . and then maybe this whole dragon issue would go away.

But then he remembered Priscilla. He helped Lucky to his feet and picked up Nathan’s walking stick.

“What’s that?” Lucky asked, pointing to a rectangular object on the ground.

“My journal.” Greg scooped up the book and tucked it into his tunic. He started to pick up his drab cloak, too, but Lucky shook his head.

“You won’t need that where we’re going.”

Greg nodded. As if in a dream, he felt himself tread over the ridge and down the slope into the valley. Everywhere he looked spirelings and shadowcats littered the ground. The spirelings’ teeth and claws looked even more horrifying up close, and Greg just knew that any moment one would snap awake and sound an alarm that could end only in his being torn to shreds by thousands of jagged teeth. But the spirelings did not wake.

Greg and Lucky wove their way through the maze of bodies, moving as quickly and as quietly as they could, until they reached a huge, cleared area in front of the cave mouth. (Apparently the spirelings didn’t want to rest too close to the opening, just in case the dragon decided to come out.)

At the edge of the camp stood a wagon full of food and supplies. Seeing it reminded Greg he was going to miss breakfast. Even a condemned man gets a last meal, he thought, but then so had he. Only, no one had bothered mentioning it was his last when he had eaten dinner earlier.

“What’s with the rails?” Lucky asked softly.

“What?” Greg reached up and took the acorns out of his ears. “What?” he repeated.

Only then did Greg notice the wagon had no wheels but rested on rails like a sleigh. At first he thought this odd, but then he saw the glassy floor of the cave, no doubt worn smooth by the passage of dragon scales for centuries on end. He felt this one fact alone bode poorly.

As Greg faced the open cave mouth, just steps from going inside, a sudden thought struck him. They’d come a long way to reach this point, faced numerous obstacles and dangers too frightening to contemplate, and now that they were here . . . well, Greg was far more terrified than ever. His breath came to him in ragged gasps. His hands shook so badly he could barely hold Nathan’s staff. It was the worst case of cold feet he’d ever experienced, maybe the worst case of cold feet anyone had ever experienced, and he knew then he’d been right all along. He was anything but a hero. After all, would a real hero weigh his chances of sprinting past the spirelings and all of Ryder’s men to reach the forest before anyone could tackle him?

Yet in spite of his fears, Greg thought of Priscilla. He didn’t know if it made him a hero, but there was no way he was leaving here without her. He edged up to the enormous cave mouth and surveyed it with a discriminating eye. In this case his eye was discriminating against anything so large as to require an opening fifty feet in diameter to crawl through.

“Sure is a large opening,” he mumbled to himself.

Lucky studied the entrance with a puzzled expression. “No larger than it has to be for Ruuan to squeeze in and out.”

Greg felt a trickle of sweat run down his back.

“Good thing he can fold his wings tightly to his body,” Lucky added.

“Yeah, good thing.”

“Well,” Lucky said glumly, “you really should get started. It’s a long climb to the dragon’s lair.”

“Me? Aren’t you coming?”

Lucky shrugged. “It’s not like you need my guidance anymore. Just follow the tunnel to Ruuan’s lair. You can’t miss it. It’s the only dragon’s lair up there.”

“I don’t think so,” said Greg.

“Sure it is. Dragons are very territorial.”

“I mean, I’m not going alone.”

“You want me to come with you?” Lucky said, his expression brightening. “That would be great. I’ve never seen a live dragon up close before. When Ruuan took Priscilla, I couldn’t pick my face up out of the dirt.”

Greg frowned. “You
want
to go up there?”

“Well, sure. Don’t you?”

Greg shook his head, remembering what Nathan had said about Lucky’s good fortune one day running out.

The back wall of the cave stood no more than fifty feet away and veered sharply to the left, beginning a tunnel that wound its way up the inner circumference of the spire. Greg stepped closer and peered inside, only to be met by a blast of heat.

“Whoa, that’s hot!”

“No kidding, Greg,” said Lucky. “A fire-breathing dragon’s lived in there for centuries.”

“Yeah, I know, but—” He knew he would need a fireproofing spell at some point within the spire, but he never thought he’d have to use it to take his first step inside.

Quickly he removed the two vials Hazel had given him and pulled the stopper from the one she’d claimed was dragon spit. He had no reason to doubt her. It smelled putrid and decayed, exactly like Greg imagined the mouth of a dragon would. With very little enthusiasm, he and Lucky dripped the sticky substance over the soles of their boots and walked around experimentally. With each step his boot first stuck to the ground and then popped loose with a slight tug. It was an odd feeling, but one Greg got used to after a little practice.