Starlighter (23 page)

Every head had already turned her way. Arxad, now standing at the door, seemed frozen in place. With her fists clenched, Koren marched into their ranks, grabbed Natalla’s hand, and jerked her free. “I will take her back to her home now.”

Magnar bellowed, “What is the meaning of this?” With a wave of his wing, he gestured toward the dragon who was escorting Natalla. “Take her and tie her to the bars as well.”

As the dragon reached for Koren, Arxad shouted, “No! She is the Starlighter!” Flapping his wings, he scooted toward them, waving a foreleg. “You can see for yourself that she is wearing the vestment.”

Magnar waved a wing again, and the dragon guard backed away. “If the prince has allowed the Starlighter to roam freely,” Magnar said, “he must have deemed her to be suitably acquiescent. Why, then, is she opposing the execution? Certainly Zena would not have flinched at the death of an escaped slave.”

“Zena is not a Starlighter,” Arxad said. “She cannot see into the heart. Koren, on the other hand, has every gift of the prophetess that has been promised throughout the ages. If the prince has allowed her access to the Basilica, then her insight must be heard and heeded.”

Magnar scanned the onlooking dragons. He seemed concerned, perhaps anxious about how they would react to his response. “Heard, yes. Heeded, no. She has earned access to our ears, but not compliance from our hearts.” After a throaty laugh, Magnar turned to Koren and took on an amused tone. “What message do you have for us, Starlighter?”

Koren ignored the condescension and watched Arxad out of the corner of her eye. Should she try to use her gift? Would it work on so many dragons?

Giving her a firm nod, Arxad spoke sternly. “The chief of all dragons has asked for a message, Starlighter. Are you going to insult him with silence?”

Koren looked down at her cloak.
Vestment
, Arxad had called it. Longer than her old skirt and far more impressive, it would be perfect. She pulled the hood up over her head, and, gripping the sides of the cloak, she made it twirl. “I have a story to tell you,” she said, now spreading out her arms. “A story of courage, of heroism, of sacrificial love that bursts through the barriers of self-centered motivations.”

Every dragon trained its eyes on Koren, some mouths already gaping. Arxad kept glancing to the side, as if trying to avoid the hypnotic trance.

She began a slow sway, letting her cape toss back and forth, and she moved her arms in time with the rhythm. As she acted out her words, images of Jason came to mind, and the vision she had seen within the egg expanded, showing her the action as if she were standing at his side. “A human boy was searching for his lost friends, lost for time unknown, captured by a cruel enemy. Oh, how he loved his friends! He would do anything to save them.”

She splayed her hands, palms up. “He found a wall, a barrier that stood between him and his loved ones, and inserted his fingers into holes drilled through stone.”

A ghostly image of a young man appeared next to her. With his facial features blurred, Koren barely recognized Jason. Maybe masking his identity would be for the best.

Jason performed Koren’s story, giving her freedom to sway and twirl her cloak as she glided around him. “Ah!” she exclaimed, pointing at the oval glass in the wall. “It is the black egg! The prince! And this young man honors him by cradling the egg in his palms. Such care! Such devotion!”

Koren raised a hand to her lips and pointed at the floor. “But what is this? Water? A river is rising! What will happen to this brave hero?”

As she continued her dance, water rose to her ankles, and her feet splashed through it. Some of the dragons lifted and lowered their hind legs, but they had no effect on the mirage. Other dragons just stood and stared.

Koren tilted her head upward to address Jason. “Will you brave the waters, my hero? Will your heart of sacrifice be so
strong that you will risk drowning, because you believe that caring for the prince’s egg will lead you to your friends?”

She turned to Magnar and the nearby guard and dropped to her knees, splashing once again. With her hands clenched, she pleaded. “Oh, can you not see the nobility that this human possesses? Can you not see that he has a soul of great value? Not only is he risking danger to save his fellow humans, he cherishes our prince! Surely humans are more than beasts! Surely they have worth beyond cattle!”

The water rose past Jason’s neck. He lifted his chin and called in a spurt of bubbles, “Is she all right?”

“You see!” Koren cried, still on her knees as she looked back at Jason. “Even in his peril, he is asking about the welfare of another! Is there no one who can help this heroic stranger?”

“I will help him!” Arxad turned toward the entrance and spread out his wings. “Koren! Natalla! Climb on my back, and we will fly to this hero. Perhaps we can rescue him before it is too late.”

Koren raised her clenched hands again to Magnar. “I am bound by a promise to stay, but if you are truly the chief of all dragons, you have the authority to release me. Will you allow me to search for this young man?”

Blinking his glassy eyes, Magnar nodded. “You are released.”

Koren took Natalla’s hand, and the two dashed to Arxad. As the other dragons looked on, locked in a hypnotic spell, Koren helped Natalla climb Arxad’s spiny tail and settle on his back. When Koren took a seat behind her, she called out, “We are ready, good dragon. Let us fly immediately and save the hero!”

Arxad beat his wings and took to the air. Flying close to the floor, he passed through the wide doorway.

With her hood blown back and her hair flowing freely, Koren looked behind her. The dragons just stared at them wide-eyed and slack jawed. Natalla turned, wrapped her arms around Koren, and kissed her cheek. “Oh, thank you! Thank you for saving me!”

Arxad swung his head toward them. “You are not saved yet, little one. We still have the final dragon guard, Maximus, to deal with. He did not witness the sacrifice of the young hero, so if we are to fly to the rescue, we must get past him.”

As they swept through the corridor, Koren pondered Arxad’s words. Was he, too, hypnotized? Did he really believe there was a human hero to rescue? If so, why did he specifically call for both of them to go along? Maybe his desire to save Natalla blended with his hypnotic trance.

When they burst out into the open air, Maximus roared a challenge. “Where are you going with those humans?”

With a great flap of his wings, Arxad lifted past Maximus and rose into the sky, calling behind him, “Magnar himself has released this Starlighter and has given her a life-saving journey to undertake.”

Maximus shot after them, still roaring, “You carry the escapee. She is not a Starlighter.”

Arxad began an orbit around the Basilica, just above the belfry. “Magnar witnessed our departure. Go to the Separators’ stage and ask him yourself. I can delay no longer.”

“Then be on your way.” Maximus trailed Arxad, circling with him. “Since Magnar is inside and my shift relief is at hand, I can leave my post and follow you. We will see whose lives you seek to save, but the Starlighter best not think her spell will work on me again. One word out of her, and I will light her up like a torch.”

J
ason and Elyssa crossed the gateway and looked back. The chamber and river appeared to be an extension to the new room they had just entered, and Tibalt stood in the open with his fingers extended, as if he were cradling a pocket of air. On the floor between them, a line of crystalline pegs, no taller than tent pegs, stretched from one side wall to the other. At the middle, however, it seemed that one was missing.

Crouching, Jason grasped a peg and tried to pull it out, but it wouldn’t budge. As he rose, Elyssa nudged a peg with her shoe. “I suppose no one can steal them,” she said.

“True.” He pushed a hand into his pocket. “Now that we’re on this side, how do we—”

“Close the portal for twenty heartbeats, Tibber.” Elyssa said. “We need to see what it looks like over here so we can figure out how to signal you to open it later.”

Jason winked. “That’s what I was going to suggest.”

“Not exactly. You hadn’t thought about how long he should leave it closed before opening it again. I gave him something to count.”

“How did you guess that?”

“I just know you so well.”

Jason rolled his eyes, but smiled. “Keep it up. That skill is either going to save us or annoy me to death.”

“Here goes nothing,” Tibber called out as he withdrew his fingers.

Tibalt slowly faded, and the river behind him transformed into a smaller room with a series of three low corridors carved in stone at the rear, much like the network of hallways in the dungeon back home.

Jason knelt and studied the hard, claylike ground. Grooves marred the surface, some as deep as a fingertip and as wide as his hand, and others shallower and thinner. “Something heavy has been carried on wheels, but the ground’s too hard for footprints.”

Elyssa pointed at one of the deepest grooves. “I’ll see where this one goes.” Leaning over, she marched into the center corridor and suddenly vanished.

Where Elyssa had been walking, the river appeared, and in front of it, Tibalt and his gap-toothed grin. “This is the fastest mural painting in history. I can make you appear and disappear like magic.”

Jason clenched a fist. He couldn’t get to Elyssa now, and knowing her, she would track that wheel groove without worrying about safety. Trying to keep calm, he spoke in a low tone. “Maybe you’d better close the portal until Randall gets there.”

“Did you figure out how to signal me?”

“Not yet.” Jason glanced around. Could there be a way to get a message across the closed portal? If Tibber’s father had locked the portal, and dragons had not returned to capture more humans, that meant the dragons were no longer able to use it from their side. There was likely no way to send a signal.

“I have an idea,” Jason said. “How good are you at marking time?”

“Time is like the wind. I feel its effects, but I can’t see it and don’t care to. When you’ve been in the dungeon as long as I have, it’s all just one big breeze that passes by.”

“But can you guess when one hour expires?”

“That I can do. That’s how long it was between guard patrols. Me and Sammy across the hall used to play scalawags between patrols, and we knew exactly when to quit and wait for the guard to pass.”

“Scalawags?” Jason asked.

“Indeedy. You get a handful of straw, and you stick the ends together with—”

“Never mind. Just close the portal and open it again after one hour. Maybe Randall will be back by then. Have him come over here and look around. If Elyssa and I aren’t nearby, then wait another hour. Got that?”

Grinning again, Tibalt gave him a wink. “Not a problem, finger boy.”

Jason glanced down at the litmus finger, now glowing violet under his skin. His top three buttons had come loose under the weight of his soaked shirt. He refastened the buttons and nodded. “Okay. Close the portal.”

Tibalt stepped back. He and the river vanished, revealing once again the triplet of corridors. Elyssa was nowhere in sight.

Lowering his head to keep from bumping into the low ceiling, Jason hurried into the middle tunnel, debating with himself as the light from the entrance dimmed. Should he call? If someone had accosted her, a stealthy approach would be best, and if she happened to be trapped somewhere, calling her name would make sense. But if she were caught, wouldn’t she be screaming for help?

As the tunnel dimmed further, Jason slowed to a crawl. “Elyssa?” he said in a whisper.

“Jason!” Elyssa’s whisper matched his. “Over here!”

Jason blew out a sigh. She sounded excited rather than frightened. That was a relief. With his hand on a wall, he tiptoed toward the voice. The tunnel curved slightly to the right, and as his eyes adjusted, he spotted Elyssa’s familiar form. “What did you find?” he asked.

“Tools.” She lifted something that looked like a pickaxe. “And a torch, but I don’t see a way to light it.”

Jason squinted at the unlit torch in her other hand. “Did you find it in a frame on the wall?”

She set the torch and pickaxe down and nodded. “About three steps back.”

“Dragons wouldn’t be able to fit in the cavern past the portal. If these humans are from Major Four, then they might use our customs. Flint stones might be near that frame. I had some, but I think I lost them in one of the rivers.”

“I suppose the original captives would have passed along their ways to the next generation.” Elyssa turned and disappeared in the shadows for a moment before returning with two small stones in her palm. “I found them.”

Jason held the torch while Elyssa lit the oily end. With a rush of flames, orange light burst through the corridor. The walls stood about a pace and a half apart and rose to Jason’s shoulders, forcing him to stay in a bent posture. Scratch marks and abrupt edges proved that the stone had clearly been chiseled out, and multicolored layers revealed sediments of red and orange—hardened clay that made tunneling easier than drilling through granite or other bedrock.

“Now we can see where this tunnel goes.” Jason led the way deeper into the shaft.

“The fuel on the torch was wet,” Elyssa said as she followed. “It’s been used recently.”

“So whoever put it here might be coming back. If we knew what time it was, maybe it would make sense to wait.”

After passing an empty bucket, a pair of old boots, and a hammer, Elyssa called out, “It’s early morning.”

Jason stopped and looked back. “How do you know?”

She rubbed her thumb against her fingers. “A feeling in the air. I can tell the time by sensations.”

“But this world might be different.”

“True enough.” She picked up a child-sized hat with a wide brim and felt the inside. “Damp salt.”

“From sweat?”

She nodded. “Humans have worked here recently. If it
is
morning, we might have visitors soon.”

“And that would be perfect. We could talk to them without dragon interference.”

“Perfect? Maybe. We have no way to prove our story.”

Jason touched his chest. “I have the litmus finger.”

“That would probably scare them.”

He nodded back toward the entrance. “Tibalt’s supposed to open the portal again in an hour. That will be all the proof we need.”

Jason continued his hunching march deeper into the tunnel. What would happen if the workers arrived just as Tibalt reopened the portal?
Imagine their surprise if they walked straight back into the human world. But then they’d have to get upstream safely
,
and if children were among the workers
,
that would be no easy task…

Suddenly, a breeze wafted by. The torch’s flame sparked green and made a snapping noise, like feet tramping on dry twigs.

Jason wrinkled his brow. “Extane?”

“Feels like it.” Elyssa rubbed her thumb and fingers again. “It’s oily.”

Before long, light shone ahead; a sunray streaming across their path. Jason stopped at the edge of the light. Above, a cylindrical channel had been cut to the surface, and below, a circular pit descended into the depths with two ladders leaning against the perimeter.

As a breeze sucked air from the pit and up into the chimneylike hole, the flame sparked again, this time more fervently. “More extane?” he asked.

She extended her hand into the flow. “A lot of it, but it’s escaping into the atmosphere. Maybe they don’t know how valuable it is.”

Jason looked down into the pit. The light from above illuminated several ladder rungs, but it was impossible to tell how deep they went. He checked the flint stones in his pocket, tamped out the torch, and set a foot on the top rung. “Let’s see what we can find.”

As he descended, he listened for any signs of life, but the scratching of Elyssa’s shoes on the rungs above him ruined any chance of hearing subtle noises. After about thirty steps, his foot landed on something more solid.

He waited for Elyssa to join him, letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. The shaft far above still provided illumination, but much less than on the upper level.

They stood on a rocky ledge that encircled a larger pit that was so wide, the ledge on the far side of the pit was barely visible—maybe a full stone’s throw away. Using his foot, he nudged a shovel leaning against the outer wall next to a variety of picks and pails standing in a line. He knelt and touched a rope, anchored to an iron bolt. The fibrous line descended into the void, too dark to discern its depth.

He gave the rope a gentle tug. It compressed slightly, as if it were hollow. Could it be an air tube as well as a climbing rope? A weight, not very heavy, held it in place; maybe a tool attached to the end.

After letting the rope fall back in place, Jason smacked his lips. The familiar bitter taste of extane coated his tongue, thicker than in the dungeon. Maybe the slaves needed the breathing tubes while working down below where the gas was more concentrated. Although it wasn’t poisonous, it could displace oxygen, making the tubes necessary.

And what harm might long-term exposure to the gas cause? The dragons probably didn’t care. These slaves likely worked each day until it grew too dark and would return with the morning sun, unable to decide their hours or take days off because of concerns about their health.

As Jason brooded over the slaves’ lives, something thin and brown caught his attention, a wafer lying near the edge of the pit. He picked it up and examined it. Fibrous and light, it didn’t feel like stone at all, more like plant material.

Elyssa knelt with him. “What is that?”

“Not sure.” He lifted the wafer close to his nose and sniffed it. “Smells sort of like—”

“Manna bark?”

“Good guess again. The gas has to be extane, but they must be mining something else and releasing the gas along the way. If they were really digging for extane, they wouldn’t waste it by letting it leak into the outside air.”

With her hands on her thighs, she peered down. “I say we wait.”

“Wait? What do you mean?”

She looked at him, her green eyes still visible in the low light. “You were going to ask whether or not you should climb down. I think we should wait for the workers to show up. Better to learn from someone who’s been there. And since they’re slaves, they probably start early.”

“I
was
thinking that.”

She gave him a wink. “I know.”

“You figuring out what’s going on in my brain is starting to scare me.”

“Good. Now that we’re in the dragon world, a little healthy fear might be the best medicine.”

For the next few minutes, they sat and talked about what the people here could be mining. Gems? Gold? A mineral unknown in their world? Whatever it was, it had to be of great value to the dragons. Otherwise, why would they bother to keep humans captive and feed them? With
the arid breeze circulating, their clothes finally dried to a comfortable level, and, as more light poured in from the rising sun, their eyes fully adjusted.

At the opposite side of the pit, another hole to the upper level came into view. Something snapped, and a light flashed from the top of the hole, further illuminating the chamber. A male human descended a ladder and settled to the ledge with a thump. With his head and shoulders slumped low, his face stayed out of sight.

“If his ancestors came from our world,” Elyssa whispered, “he might know our language.”

“This is what we came for,” Jason said, rising to his feet.

Jason lifted his hands to show that he carried no weapon and called out, “Excuse me, sir. May I talk to you?”

The man jerked his head around and stared, saying nothing. A severe burn scarred the side of his face from his eye socket to the bottom of his jaw, so deep the wound may have nearly cost him his life.

Jason walked toward him, slowing his rate of speech. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

Nodding, the man edged back toward the ladder. His torn sleeves revealed muscular arms, but the fear in his face contradicted his strength. The breeze swept his curly brown locks back, revealing a receding hairline. With a trembling voice, he offered a weak, “Who are you?”

Jason stopped several paces away and gave the man a courtly bow. “I am Jason Masters. I have come from Major Four.”

Half closing one eye, the man mouthed the words
Major Four
, but said nothing.

Jason gestured toward Elyssa. She rose and joined him. “Elyssa and I are here to help you escape from the
dragons and return to our world…
your
world. It has taken us many years to find the gateway to this place, but we have finally arrived to rescue you.”

For a moment, the man scowled, but soon his tight lines loosened. A smile emerged, and he broke into a low chuckle. “A fine jest, indeed! For a moment, I thought you were serious, that one of the lowland humans had gone insane.” Still laughing, he mumbled, “Oh, a fine jest. Harlon will pay for this. Yes, he will.”

“A jest? What do you—”

“Who told you to play this prank? Was it Harlon?”

“Harlon? I have no idea who he—”

“Cassandra, then. She knew about my birthday and wanted to tease me. She promised you a berry pie, didn’t she? And she asked you to dress in those strange outfits, I’ll wager.” The man lowered his head, shaking it. “That little sprite. She is always playing tricks on me.” With a smile and a wag of his finger, he added, “You tell Cassandra for me that Uncle Allender will get her back.”