Dragon Rigger (4 page)

Windrush exhaled smoke. "I have come intending no harm. But I might say that it would not hurt you to learn some respect, rigger-spirit. I am many times your size and power."

Laughter echoed in a ring around the cavern. "You might be many times my size on the outside—but in here, all sizes are made equal, dragon. Take a good look around."

Windrush glanced warily out of the corner of his eye. Sizes made equal? Certainly the cavern dwarfed both of them. Several boulders stood nearby, and he realized that there was something unusual about them. They were streaked with large veins of malinor crystal—stunningly large veins. Unless those rocks weren't really the boulders they seemed. Windrush touched them with his undersense and felt something odd.

"Note the lumenis branch to your right," Hodakai said.

The dragon shifted his gaze. A large branch from a dead lumenis plant lay on the stone. An enormous branch . . . unless it was actually a twig, as the size of the desiccated blossom-nub at its tip seemed to indicate. Windrush recalled the entry spells that had brought him into this place—the crack on the outside, and the way that the inner passage had seemed much larger, but otherwise identical.

Suppose the passageway had
not
been made larger. Suppose
he
had been made
smaller.

The shadow-spirit crowed and made little cackling sounds, delighting in the dragon's discomfiture.

Windrush tugged with his undersense, hoping to unravel any remaining spells of illusion. Nothing changed that he could see: not his size, nor the size of the jar, nor the lumenis branch. How could this have happened, without his even noticing it? Had his wisdom fallen so far? The spell must have been left here by the departed guardians of this vault; and if so, its makers might return to discover whom they had ensnared. And if they were Tar-skel dragons, or drahls, or other beings sympathetic to the Enemy . . .

Windrush slowly scanned the area, trying not to betray his alarm. Was someone else watching him? The cavern walls were full of shadows, shifting in the light of the spirit jar. For an instant he thought he spied a moving gleam in a far corner, and he swung his head, flame hot in his throat. But he saw nothing.

"Feeling edgy, all of a sudden?" the spirit asked.

The dragon checked an urge to flame the jar. "Spirit-named-Hodakai, you play a dangerous game, toying with matters that you little understand."

"Oh. Tsk, tsk. Do you intend to stop me?"

"I have no need to stop you. But your life could perhaps be pleasanter if you chose your enemies more wisely—and your friends."

"Ah—you know so much of my life, then. Perhaps you would have me choose a
dragon
as a friend. You, perhaps?"

"I have no need of your friendship," Windrush answered coldly. "I merely remind you of the difference between choosing well and choosing poorly."

He shifted his gaze. There were clear signs of dragonwork here: faceted surfaces that spoke of artisan spells, and surfaces burnished by dragon fire or scarred by dragon claws. Everywhere was the rubble and dust of long neglect. Why had Hodakai's captors abandoned him here? Had they planned to return, and forgotten? Servants of the Enemy might well do such a thing.

"Perhaps indeed you were wronged," Windrush said offhandedly. "Tell me, what do you know of the Keepers of the Words? Were you imprisoned by their enemies?"

There was no answer.

The spirit's shadow was no longer visible in the jar. Windrush cocked his head, puzzled. It seemed unlikely that the spirit had escaped; more likely, it was busy sending a message out through the underrealm.

"Dragon!" he heard—a soft, whispery voice, not at all like Hodakai's. Where had that come from?

"Dragon!"

This time he glimpsed movement, in the gloom off to his left—just a shimmer in the air, like an iffling. But he did not feel any sense of the presence of an iffling. And yet
something
was nearby. Perhaps a simple cavern sprite.

"It is a stubborn one that you speak to, dragon," whispered a different voice. He glimpsed another shimmer. Yes—
sprites,
he thought. "There are others who seek to win him over, as well." There was high, tinkling laughter, then a third voice. "Of course,
they
won't give him what he wants, either."

Windrush asked softly: "Others?"

"Silence!" shouted Hodakai, his shadow-form reappearing in the spirit jar, expanding and contracting angrily. "You pests, you meddlers, you flies upon the earth!" He was answered by tiny peals of laughter, which made him angrier still.

Windrush blinked slowly. "So, Hodakai—what others do you speak to? Perhaps you are not so isolated here, after all! Is this some treachery of yours, to make me think otherwise?"

Hodakai hissed.

Windrush angled his head, searching for the sprites as he called out to them. "You say, creatures in the shadows, that there are others with whom I must contest?"

"Quiet! Silence!" shouted Hodakai, even more furiously than before.

Windrush heard more laughter, then silence. He glanced back at Hodakai. "Well now, it would seem that we both seek something. Are you so certain that you wish to oppose me? Would you not prefer civility between us?" He recalled that the last time he and a rigger had met, it had been the rigger who had proposed civility.

Hodakai didn't answer; but Windrush felt something shifting in the underrealm. He heard a rumbling sound and glimpsed flashes of light at the edges of his vision, just out of focus. Deep in the underweb, some tightly wound sorcery had just been released. Instinctively, he crouched in readiness; a shiver passed through his body.

Hodakai cackled.

Windrush spat fire at the demon, but his own hot breath washed back at him. The spirit jar was shrinking. He couldn't tell what was happening in the confused twistings of this new sorcery. But one thing was certain—another trap was springing. His muscles coiled for a leap.

He caught himself. The ceiling loomed low over his head, much lower than before. A leap would have sent him smashing into it.

Was the ceiling dropping?
No—he was growing!
He was about to be crushed against the rock. To his left, a visual distortion was unkinking, and he glimpsed a much larger space there. He lunged sideways, keeping his head low. His wing pinions scraped the ceiling, but then the floor dropped away and the ceiling vanished—and he leaped out into a vast open space. He landed with a roar and swung his head back and forth, shocked at the extent to which he had been deceived. Surely these spells were the work of the Enemy! He probed again at the underrealm, trying to shake free any further folds of illusion.

At the sound of laughter, he turned to face Hodakai.

The laughs came from a jar that was no larger than one of Windrush's foreclaws. It sat in a small alcove carved into the side of the cavern. It was in that space that the shrunken dragon had been standing—and nearly crushed—when the spell had been released. Hodakai's laughs sounded thin and reedy now, as Windrush peered in at the jar. "So! Your true stature is shown!" he muttered, wishing he could be more triumphant. "I grant you your skill in the use of the spells, spirit—even if you stole them."

"Stole them?" Hodakai squawked.

"Come, these spells are hardly your working."

The spirit responded wordlessly and angrily. The dragon felt a sudden draft in the underrealm, as though another opening spell had been triggered deep in the mountain. Was some new power coming into the cavern?

He glimpsed a movement in the shadows to his left and jerked his head, catching the smell of drahls. Fool! he thought. He should not have remained here so long, in a place where he was disadvantaged in a fight. Now it was too late to slip away.

Three drahls abruptly appeared—dragonlike shadows, above and to either side of him. Hot fire rose in his throat. He raised his head and blew flame at the drahl overhead, then swung side to side, breathing fire at the other two. The flames crackled and lit the cavern. The drahls vanished in the fire, but reappeared a moment later, farther away. They hissed in unison: "
You
are a trespasser here, and trespassers die!
"

Windrush breathed fire again. It passed through the drahls as they darted in and out of the shadows of the cavern. Smoke and dust billowed, clouding everything. The drahls were a deadly threat here, where he could not fly and fight properly.

The drahls flashed overhead, sputtering freezing fire. He snapped at them, but they were fast, and hard to follow. He felt a chill. Where were they now?

Craning his neck, he spotted them close to the ceiling, their cold fire flickering over the stone. That was puzzling; they seemed to have forgotten him. "Hodakai!" he hissed—but there was no answer from the spirit. Keeping a wary eye on the drahls, he extended half his awareness into the underrealm, trying urgently to understand the sorcery he was facing.

He heard a crack of splintering stone, and suddenly understood. A spell was unraveling: the spell that held the cavern intact! Could drahls have such power? He was in peril if they could destroy the cavern. It would be one thing if he knew the weaving that bound it together, to defend it. But he didn't, and there was no time now to explore it. The cracking sounds were growing louder.

He had to get out. He probed feverishly in the underweb, through the murk that the drahls had stirred up, searching out the entry and exit spells. The way he had come in was closed, but there had to be other ways out of this dragon stronghold!

Rocks were falling deafeningly around him; he tried to ignore them as he traced pathways through the fog of the underweb. He heard the drahls keening, preparing to attack, and he ignored even that. And then he found it: a fold in the underweb where an opening was concealed. It was all he needed. Finding the thread that would pull it open, he exclaimed, "
Gharkeei!
"
—
and opened his eyes, spread his wings, and leaped toward the fracturing ceiling, past the startled drahls.

The way was clear. But even as he passed into the spell-opening, he glimpsed another spell collapsing—and the drahls flickering out of sight. He heard raucous laughter. His last glimpse behind was of a completely intact cavern, with no sign of drahls at all.

Before he could react, dizziness hit him, then a blast of cold. His wings bit into a freezing nighttime air, and before he could even focus his eyes, he knew that he was high above the mountains in the dead of night. And he knew, too, that something had just gone shockingly wrong. The drahls had been works of illusion, smells and all, and so was the falling ceiling! Only his own exit spell had collapsed the image.

He had been tricked by Hodakai—tricked into leaving. Whether it was ancient dragon magic or the Enemy's sorcery that the spirit had commanded, he had used it diabolically well.

Windrush banked and turned, fuming. An angry fire burned deep in his throat, and he vented it at the mountain he had just left. The peak was a jagged, sullen presence in the night, and his flame an impotent protest. He could probably force his way back in, but for what? To take revenge for the humiliation? No, the demon wielded surprising powers, and it would be pointless to engage in a contest with it now. When Windrush returned to speak with Hodakai, it would be on his own terms.

His pride stinging, he climbed higher in the night air to find his bearings for the long journey home.

Hodakai laughed long and hard. He laughed until his laughter became hollow, his triumph cold and lifeless. He had humiliated the intruder with his trickery, but that dragon was the first real visitor he had had in a very long time. He hated dragons, to be sure. But that one seemed less arrogant than his captors, even if it had refused to free him. And now, it had fled to freedom while Hodakai remained trapped here in a demonic bath of light in the emptiness of the cavern. He knew perfectly well that the dragon had merely been caught off guard by a sophisticated illusion. If it returned bent on vengeance, there was little he could do to stop it.

Still, he knew something that the dragon wanted to know. He had glimpsed the need in its mind.
Dream
Mountain
. Hodakai didn't actually know the way to the place; but he knew how, or at least by whom, the way had been hidden. And that knowledge was his only possible weapon against the despised race of creatures who had imprisoned him.

But the trouble with savoring any feeling of victory here was that the feeling never lasted. The passage of time in this spirit-prison was something beyond his comprehension. Moments of pleasure were like birds on wing, rare and fleeting; but the rest of his hours clung to him like a smoky pall, broken only by flights of fantasy, and memories of rigging. Never until his capture by the dragons had he believed in an eternal life, but he was living one now. He envied his shipmate, who had died in the duel with the dragons.

Still, he was not totally alone here. He had company in the sprites that lived in the cavern, emerging from time to time to dance about and tease him. He didn't really understand them, or their purpose in the scheme of this world. They spoke intelligibly, but in other ways seemed more like pigeons in the rafters than meaningful companions. They seemed to have no real understanding of him, or of his pain. What did they know of the realm of the Flux, or the universe of humanity?

Come to that, what did Hodakai know of humanity anymore? For all he knew, centuries had passed in his absence, sweeping away all that he had once been a part of. Not that it mattered; he could never return. He would forever regret his folly in venturing into the dragon realm in the first place, but regrets could not change what had happened.

He blinked, and for a moment slipped back into memory . . . felt the streams of the galactic Flux moving past his fingers like golden rays of light as he piloted his ship in wondrous freedom . . .

The image collapsed quickly.
Mustn't
get
lost
in
that now,
he muttered to himself.
Too
much
to
think
about. Can't keep this to myself.