Longfang (16 page)

‘No, Elian,’ Pell replied, his voice laced with ice. ‘The Oracle hasn’t been honest with us from the start. It’s time that changed.’ He faced the towering
smoke creature and met its burning gaze. ‘Tell us the location of the dusk orb,’ he ordered. ‘In plain language.’

‘That is not permitted.’
The Oracle’s denial echoed around the chamber, the rumbling repetitions emphasising the statement. Elian’s heart raced as the
creature’s eyes burned with anger. Was Pell crazy? How could he stand to look into those burning eyes without feeling fear? As far as Elian could see, the only emotion in Pell’s eyes
was defiance.

‘Not permitted by whom?’ Pell asked. ‘It seems to me that
you
make the rules for this game. Change the rules. Tell us where the dusk orb is.’

The Oracle fell silent. Its gaze never left the orb in Pell’s raised hands. The silence brewed, seeming to thicken with intensity as Elian tried to count his rapid heartbeats.

‘I do not make the rules, Pell,’
it said suddenly
. ‘And even if I were to reveal the location, thou wouldst gain nothing from the knowledge. It is not thy place to
retrieve the third orb. Only Kira and Longfang may complete this phase of the quest.’

‘If we do not benefit from your telling us, then you have no reason not to do it,’ Pell reasoned, raising the orb of death still higher.

The Oracle considered again for a moment.
‘This is true,’
it conceded.
‘Thou hast been separated from those whose task it is to find the third orb. They cannot gain
from the knowledge unless thou canst find them. Very well. It is not the normal way, but I will do it this once. Throw the orb into my well and I will reveal the location of the
next.’

Elian was astonished. Pell had done it. He had backed the Oracle into a corner and won. Why then was he hesitating? Elian could see him wavering, indecision clear on his face. ‘Do
it!’ he urged through gritted teeth.

‘I’m no longer sure we can trust the Oracle,’ Pell said, shifting his focus briefly to glance at Elian. ‘None of our dealings with it so far have been straightforward.
Why should I trust it to keep its word? Once it has the orb we have nothing left to bargain with. I don’t know which I dislike more – this twisted creature with its riddles, its
ulterior motives and its deceptions, or Segun. At least Segun is open with his intentions, even if his heart is as black as the devil’s armpit.’

The enormous dragon’s head leaned forwards on its vaporous neck until its nostrils were no more than a couple of fingers’ widths in front of Pell. Its eyes burned bright with red
anger.

‘Thou treadst on dangerous ground, youngling. Do not test my patience any further. Give me the orb, or destroy it and watch thy future die with me. I have said I will reveal where the
third orb awaits. Think what thou wilt, I do not lie.’

With a suddenness that was shocking, Pell brought his arms downwards as if to hurl the orb at the rock in front of his feet. Elian sucked in a sharp intake of breath that hissed through his
teeth and he felt the two dragons behind him surge forwards in an instinctive effort to prevent the orb from being smashed. Had Pell let go of the orb, neither would have reached it in time. But he
did not. Instead he hung onto the black crystal globe and rather than smashing it, he reversed the momentum and tossed it upwards in a gentle arc that carried it over the low wall in front of him
to drop into the bottomless blackness that was the Oracle’s pit.

For a moment Elian’s knees wobbled as he fought to stay upright. His stomach felt as if it had climbed his throat and his heart was hammering so hard that he thought it might bruise itself
on his ribs.

‘Ahh!’
the Oracle breathed, its smoky form shifting and then solidifying again.
‘Thank you. The second orb brings a bittersweet flavour. It will take time for me to
absorb its energy. I must rest.’

‘The location you promised?’ Pell persisted, anger punching out the key syllables.

‘The Castle of Shadows.’
The answer came in a whisper, as the towering form collapsed inwards on itself.
‘Seek the Castle of Shadows.’

The last wisp of smoke sucked down into the darkness, leaving the vast chamber dim and echoing with the final flowing rush of the Oracle’s departure. Elian turned and staggered across to
Aurora. He leaned against her foreleg, his entire body shaking with the aftershock of emotion he felt from the encounter. The Castle of Shadows? he thought, his mind sounding out the name
carefully. Even its title bears an uncomfortable chill.

‘It is a dark place,’
Aurora confirmed.
‘Dragons do not go there any more.’

‘Really? Why not?’
Elian asked.

Aurora did not reply. This was not like her at all. The bond between their minds turned cold, as if a chill wind were blowing across the link. He pushed away from her leg and looked her in the
eye.

‘What is it, Ra? Why don’t dragons go there?’
he persisted.

Still she hesitated to respond. When finally she did, her voice resonated in his skull, slow and serious.

‘Because those who enter its gates never return,’
she said.

‘Hell and damnation!’ Jack swore, fighting the controls as the aircraft lost power and nosed down into a dive. ‘Not again!’

A thick plume of smoke erupted from his engine, coiled around the fuselage and trailed across the sky behind him like a gigantic black serpent. Hot oil ran in long black streaks from just aft of
the propellor.

Unless he landed quickly he was likely to be toasted. A fire in the engine would quickly spread through the wood and fabric. He had no parachute, so his only option was to crash land and get
away from the wreckage as quickly as he could.

To crash once and walk away was fortunate. A second time in less than a week would require little short of a miracle.

It was his own fault to think he could take on the Red Baron, but he had been hot-headed with thoughts of vengeance. The top German flying ace, Baron Manfred Von Richthofen, nicknamed the Red
Baron for his distinctive red tri-plane, together with his infamous ‘flying circus’ of talented pilots, had attacked from above. Jack had spotted them coming, but despite all his
efforts to warn his wingman by waggling his wings and pitching his aircraft up and down, the junior pilot had appeared unaware of the approaching danger.

Von Richthofen and his men had been almost on top of them before Jack’s sense of self-preservation forced him to turn away from his wingman and take the fight to the enemy. The poor lad,
fresh out of flying training, had stood no chance. Jack only hoped the boy had not suffered as he went down.

It was foolish to go after the German ace, but Jack’s anger had made him rash. Despite the sky being full of enemy machines, he had been in no mood to run. To his surprise, however, he had
only managed to get off a couple of ineffectual bursts in the general direction of the red tri-plane before the fight had turned against him.

Von Richthofen was good – really good. His machine twisted and turned so fast that it seemed almost to disappear and reappear on Jack’s tail. Having traded places from hunter to
hunted in less than a minute, Jack was horrified as a line of bullets ripped through his machine and his engine began to cough and splutter. Vibrations rippled through the cockpit. They were
intermittent to begin, but soon built in a crescendo that rattled his teeth and sent an icy finger of fear pressing deep into his stomach.

Jack did not see the arrival of the flight of allied aircraft. All his attention was on staying alive and trying to keep his ailing aircraft in the air. Had it not been for the newcomers
entering the fray, Von Richthofen would most likely have pursued him further and made sure of his kill. Instead, the Baron’s bright red Fokker tri-plane raced past him, sights set on a new
target. Jack’s emotions were a strange mix. He felt insignificant, yet lucky at the same time.

Everywhere he looked now, aircraft turned, dived and spat death at one another. It was one of the most intense dogfights he had ever seen.

‘Unbelievable!’ he thought. ‘One minute I have the Red Baron in my sights, the next he shoots me down!’

The sight of that red machine peeling away and latching onto the tail of another Allied aircraft ignited the blood in his veins still further. Anger burned, reinforcing his determination to
survive. He should have known better than to hang around when he saw that large formation: Von Richthofen always patrolled with a large wing of talented pilots around him. And now Jack knew the
deal he would propose to the dragonriders – if he could just live long enough to make the offer. The dragons did not want to commit to joining the war effort – fine. One mission would
be enough.

Manfred Von Richthofen had been a menace to Allied forces since long before Jack had joined his first squadron. Amongst the flying aces of the enemy, he held the reputation for being the
deadliest. What a blow it would be to the enemy’s morale if he could be killed, or better still – captured. The German Luftwaffe had dominated the air above the trenches for months. The
loss of no single man would turn the tide of the air war overnight. Jack was enough of a realist to see that. Immelmann, Boelke, Hawker, Ball . . . all had seemed like gods of the air in their day,
yet one by one they had fallen victim to chance, arrogance or a superior opponent. Von Richthofen had outlived them all – and still his tally mounted.

It was rumoured that Von Richthofen had a silver goblet made to commemorate each aircraft he shot down. The idea that Jack’s crash would give the German pilot cause to commission another
trophy today made him all the more determined to survive. The trick would be to keep the airspeed under control.

‘Concentrate,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t let it get away from you.’

The engine was no longer producing any power. He peered at the altimeter. It showed two-and-a-half thousand feet remaining. His airspeed was much too high and he was descending too fast. Smoke
poured from the front of the aircraft, swirling around the cockpit and making it difficult to see. The oily smoke set Jack coughing. The taste of it was foul, but even with his stomach heaving and
his chest in spasm he did not panic. With cool discipline he fought the controls, dragging the machine out of its steep spiral descent and into a controllable shallow dive.

As the airspeed reduced, so the cloud of smoke around Jack intensified. He couldn’t see anything. Droplets of hot oil were spattering across his goggles. Landing blind was impossible. He
had to stop the smoke from flowing directly back over the cockpit. The only way he knew to change the airflow drastically was to put the aircraft into a severe sideslip. He wasted no time. Forcing
the yolk to the left, he dipped the left wing whilst simultaneously kicking the rudder pedal to the right in opposition to the turn.

With the controls deliberately held in opposite directions the aircraft began sliding sideways at the ground. The rate of descent increased until it seemed the aircraft was almost falling
vertically out of the sky, but it had the desired effect. The smoke stream from the engine detached from the fuselage and poured over the right wing.

The ground was approaching rapidly, the aircraft slicing towards the earth at a lethal rate of descent. Although the air now flowing through the cockpit was clear, Jack hardly dared to breathe.
The final few seconds required perfect anticipation, or he would smash into the ground with such force that there would be no chance of his walking away.

An open field loomed ahead. It was far from flat, which was not ideal for a forced landing, but he had no choice. The airspeed was fluctuating wildly on the gauge, but this was not unusual when
sideslipping. The approach felt all wrong – the steep descent, the unstable airspeed, the fact that he was looking out of the front left side of the cockpit rather than over the nose –
everything. At the last possible moment he straightened the aircraft into normal flight and attempted to check the rate of descent. His anticipation was almost perfect –
almost.

The moment of impact was horrific. He had judged his final flare to perfection, but the aeroplane was not quite straight as it touched down. There was an almighty crack as the right main
undercarriage leg sheared away. The right wing caught the ground and for a moment the world appeared to spin and whirl in a totally incomprehensible fashion. Jack was flung from one side of the
cockpit to the other, bruising both shoulders, but amazingly sustaining no other injuries.

What was left of the aircraft came to a stop. For the briefest moment, Jack sat motionless, unable to believe he was still alive. A huge sheet of bright orange flame erupted from the engine in
front of him. A moment later Jack was looking back at the wreckage from about fifty yards up the gentle slope. How he had got there was a blank spot in his memory. He could only assume that his
survival instinct and a rush of adrenalin had ruled his brain for the intervening time.

The cockpit was engulfed in flame. The right wing had been totally torn off during the crash landing. The tattered remainder of it was some seventy yards back from the rest of the wreckage,
probably the only piece of the aircraft to remain once the fire had burned itself out. Jack sank down suddenly into the deep grass, as his legs seemed to turn to jelly. A wave of relief left him
weak and shaking uncontrollably. He glanced instinctively at the sky where the fight was still raging. Two further aircraft trailed black smoke: one in a dive from which there would be no lucky
escape, the other still manoeuvring hard. From this range he could not tell if they were friendly, or not.

Looking back at the flames leaping from the wreckage that had been his aeroplane just moments before, it seemed impossible that he had survived. ‘How in God’s holy name did I get
away with that?’ he breathed.

The engine chose that moment to explode and Jack fell back flat into the grass. Instinct made him wrap his arms across his face. It was only then that he noticed he was clutching something in
his right hand. It was his map. On the back of it were written the words of the Oracle’s rhyming verses. He did not remember grabbing it from the cockpit, but then he did not remember much of
the last few minutes at all. He was glad to have the written copy of the verses. Solving the riddles without that would have been impossible.