Ruins of Camelot (31 page)

"Featherbolt," Gabriella called worriedly, her eyes wide, "I think we had better leave as quickly—"

There was a large noise behind her, a sort of prolonged rattling scrape.  It ended with a sound like air in a gigantic bellows, snuffling slightly as it diminished.  The chemical smell grew suddenly sharper.

Gabrie
lla froze
in place, eyes wide and heart trip-hammering.  Then, as the noise faded back to silence, she turned, careful to make no noise on the gravel-strewn floor.

There was a monstrous shape pressed up against the opposite wall of the cave.  It appeared to be a sort of lumpy, brown hill, carpeted with scales.  A row of jagged plates were planted into the hill like a fence, diminishing in size as they marched down a sort of bony ridge.  Where it neared the cave floor, the bony ridge separated from the shape and became a long, tapering tail lined with three rows of serrated spines.

As Gabriella watched, the lumpy hill expanded slightly, and the snuffling bellows sound came again.  There was no mistaking the shape, even though Gabriella had never seen such a thing before in her life.  She froze to the spot, petrified with fear.

Slowly, massively, the shape began to uncoil.  The tail slid backwards in its bed of gravel, making that crunching scrape again.  A pair of lumps near the top became shifting shoulder blades beneath scaly skin.  There was a thump as a gigantic, muscular leg hove into view, revealed from behind the slithering tail.  Sharp extrusions of bone marked the elbow and heel of the appendage.  Hooked claws scratched the cave floor.

Slowly, the dragon began to stand, its snuffling breath filling the cave and reeking of chemical.

Gabriella's paralysis finally broke as the snake-like neck began to heave into view.  She dropped her torch and scrambled backwards, terrified to turn away from the monster but desperate to find a hiding place.  With a frantic lunge, she threw herself behind the pile of rotting carcasses.  Featherbolt was still there, fearlessly perched on a massive ribcage.  The stench of death was nearly enough to make Gabriella sick, but she hunkered low and covered her mouth, resisting the lurch of her gorge.

She could still see the dragon through the forest of gristly bones.  It stood slowly, languidly, and raised its head in a luxurious stretch.  The vertebrae of its neck and back popped like pine knots in a fire, and the plates of its spine snapped visibly upright as their joints aligned.  The dragon was large enough that its bulk filled nearly a fifth of the cave.  Suddenly, with disconcerting litheness, the great beast turned its great, serpentine neck, sweeping its horned head low over the floor, its nostrils trailing ribbons of smoke.  It regarded its home suspiciously, its orange eyes flicking busily, as if it smelled something amiss.  It stopped, and Gabriella was sure that it had seen her.

A gurgling noise began to sound, and Gabriella realised with dismay that it was the dragon's stomach.  The dragon huffed, turning the gurgle into a flaming belch.  Gabriella swallowed past a lump in her throat and willed herself not to move.  Above her, Featherbolt preened himself on his ribcage perch.

The dragon coiled, narrowed its eyes, and lunged forwards.  Great, leathery wings unfurled from its back and caught the air like sails, lifting the beast from the ground as it pounced.  The jaws unhinged, and the head cocked sideways, snapping forwards on its long neck to strike.  There was no time for Gabriella to react.  She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her head in her hands as the shadow of the monstrous beast fell over her.

The dragon's four feet struck the ground with massive thumps, and the jaws snapped shut like a trap.  There was a horrible, wet crunch of breaking bone and tearing flesh, mingled with a seething grunt that was half roar, half growl.

Gabriella uncovered her head.  She was still in one piece, still lying amidst the pile of rotting carcasses.  She peered through the bones, faint with relief.

The dragon was directly in front of the pile of carcasses, violently dismembering the freshest of the lot.  The corpse in its jaws appeared to a chortha, like the ones Gabriella had confronted earlier in her journey.  Its blunt head and curved horns lolled as the dragon ripped one of its rear legs off, devouring it whole and crunching noisily on the bones.  The dragon was an exceptionally messy eater, snarling great, furious gusts around its food, cooking it with its flaming breath.  The air was fetid with the reek of burnt fur.

Suddenly, the dragon lunged backwards and violently whipped its head.  The carcass, still clamped in the dragon's jaws, ripped grotesquely in two.  The front half of the dead beast flew back towards the dragon's nest, trailing ropes of innards.  It struck the ground and rolled.  The dragon pounced upon it, snarling viciously, as if the pathetic half-corpse had been trying to escape.  The dragon's massive claws scraped and dug at the broken floor, spraying rocks in every direction.  Its tail rose towards the ceiling and then thumped down, shaking the ground and sending up a great cloud of grit.

Gabriella was terrified.  She glanced away from the rampaging dragon, saw the opening of the cave some thirty paces away, and scrambled desperately to her feet.  Feeling hopelessly slow and clumsy, she tumbled out of the strew of carcasses, nearly tripped on the loose rock of the cave floor, righted herself, and began to run.

Behind her, the dragon slammed and roared, its breath sending up gouts of blue fire, lighting the cave all around.  Rock and gravel kicked back from its scraping claws, pelting Gabriella from behind as she ran on, nearing the light of the cave's entrance.  Something heavy flew over her shoulder and landed with a wet thump on the stony floor in front of her.  It was the head of the dead chortha.  Its blunt muzzle was open and masked with blood.  Its eyes boggled in two different directions.  The head itself was nearly as big as Gabriella.

Behind her, sounding horribly near, the dragon let out a sustained roar.  The heat of its breath blew Gabriella's hair forwards, making it swat wildly around her cheeks.

She hurdled the severed chortha's head, using one of its twisted horns as leverage.  As she landed on the other side, she slid on the broken gravel and fell.

A wall of scaly muscle hurtled behind her, taking the chortha head with it.  A spray of blood misted over Gabriella.  She scrambled forwards, numb with terror, and launched herself towards the cave entrance.  Its light fell over her, blinding her, but she ran on, stumbling, sliding, leaping out into the freezing white.

She fell forwards.  Her face dashed into a mass of snow, and she found herself rolling head over heels down a steep hill.  Brilliant white surrounded her, making no distinction between earth and sky.  Finally, she landed on her back, skidded down the remaining slope into a mass of snow-crusted yellow grass, and scraped to a halt.

She scrambled quickly upright and looked back.  Behind and above her, the cave mouth was a black crevice surrounded by snow-covered boulders.  The dragon still raged from within, its roars echoing dimly, the ground trembling with its wild rampage.  Gabriella struggled to her feet, slipping on the cold ground, and retreated some distance further away from the cave.  She found a large boulder, ducked into its shadow, and collapsed with fear-induced exhaustion.

She was trembling, and the trembles were quickly turning to shivers in the frosty cold.  She hugged herself and tried to calm her thoughts.

After a while, the noise of the dragon diminished and faded away.  Silence fell over the snowy landscape.  At first, this was a relief.  Then Gabriella began to fear that the dragon had smelled her.  Perhaps it was stalking her, creeping along the frozen grass behind her.

Carefully, she rolled onto her knees and peered around the side of the boulder, forcing herself to look.

There was no sign of the dragon on the hillside.  The snow was broken only by the zigzagging tracks of her own feet.  Then she reminded herself that dragons could fly.  She peered up into the blinding white of the sky.

Something was indeed flying overhead, but it was far smaller than the dragon.  It was Featherbolt, and he seemed to be carrying something, labouring with the added weight.  He circled, seemed to spy her, and let out a distant screech.  Silently, he began to wheel down towards her, and she saw that he was carrying the driftwood torch in his talons.  The goblinfire streaked into the cold air, nearly invisible in the glaring whiteness.

Gabriella reached up and caught the torch as Featherbolt reached her.

"You must think yourself pretty brave," she commented gratefully, her teeth chattering in the cold.

He landed atop the boulder and shook himself, fluffing his feathers.  He screeched thinly and looked away out over the cold, white hills.  Gabriella followed his gaze.

They had indeed passed beyond the Cragrack Cliffs.  Here, the ground was broken into rolling hills, many peaked with black rocks and outcroppings of brush and trees.  Further north, standing like pale blue saw teeth against the white sky, was a range of mountains.  Largest of these was the centre peak, Mount Skelter.  In its shadow, Gabriella knew, she would find the unusual, round valley ringed with jagged foothills known as the Theatre of the Broken Crown.  She was only a few days away.  Her quest, hopeless as it might be, was near an end.

"Perhaps Coalroot was wrong," she said to herself, staring into the distance at that faint, uneven peak.  "Perhaps…"

But she did not believe it.  That was why the witch Helena had insisted that she, Gabriella, visit the volcano spirit.  "He will tell you
everything
you need to know," she had declared cryptically.  Now Gabriella knew exactly what she had intended.  Helena had meant to dissuade her, to show her the deadly foolishness of her errand.  It hadn't worked, of course.

Because Coalroot had not told her anything that she had not, in her deepest heart, already known.

After a short rest, warmed by the magical fire of her torch, Gabriella began the final leg of her journey.

T
hree men sat around a rough, wooden table lit by the afternoon light of a small window.

"There," the largest of the men said flatly, plinking a short stack of coins onto the table and pushing it next to two similar stacks.  He had a square, sunburnt face and meaty forearms.  He crossed them before his leather tack vest.  "The takings for one week.  Like I have already told you, this is far more than average.  It is the peak of the season after all."

Yazim nodded equably and bent to scribble a note on a piece of thick parchment.  Thomas frowned and looked around the low room.  Ther
e were four other tables
besides the bar, but only one patron was visible, and Thomas suspected that it was the proprietor's father.  The old man leant against the wall in his chair, hands folded over his thin chest, snoring faintly.

Yazim tapped the parchment with his quill.  "How many cattle and horses did you say you keep, sir?"

"Three and two," the proprietor answered without blinking.  "My best packhorse broke a leg last autumn, and we had to put her down.  It has been a true challenge without her, guv'nor, do not doubt it."

"I do not," Yazim replied sincerely.  "How long have you operated this establishment then, sir?"

"Four winters.  The first two were the hardest.  Barely made a copper, what with all the building and repair.  The place bore hardly a standing wall when we moved into it.  Almost starved, we did."

Yazim nodded.  His quill scritched on the parchment.  "And this is why you have not yet reported this establishment to the local tax authority?"

The proprietor nodded warily.  "I been meaning to, you understand.  Fair is fair.  Me and the missus, we always mean to do our part, small as it might be."

Thomas sighed and looked around.  "It must get dreadfully lonely out here once the peak season ends," he commented, raising an eyebrow, "if this is how it is when business is at its height.  Travel and livery must not be a particularly thriving industry this far off the main roads."

"Right you are, guv'nor," the proprietor agreed somewhat suspiciously.  "Why, we can go weeks at a stretch with nary a passer-by."