Kal Moonheart Trilogy: Dragon Killer, Roll the Bones & Sirensbane (15 page)

‘Gardening by the looks of it,’ she replied. ‘Unless dragons eat leaves and twigs. You tell me, Ben.’

‘I’m pretty sure that they’re carnivores,’ Ben said dryly as she rejoined him in the earthy hollow under the canopy of trees. ‘In the stories I tell, they are usually partial to human flesh. Cooked human flesh.’

Kalina sat down on a thick willow root opposite him. ‘Got any more ideas?’ she asked.

Ben shook his head. ‘The most recently-recorded dragon attack was when the West Wind Dragon attacked the city, and that was five hundred years ago. Feron Firehand killed that one … again, with a weapon of the gods. The very same weapon, as it happens, that
you
tossed in the river half a mile back.’

Kalina waved away Ben’s complaint. ‘I’m sorry, alright? But what’s done is done. You know what they say: you can’t put the milk back in the cow.’

She got up and paced around what was once the home of the forest god Mena, but was now their prison. ‘It’s a shame that Mena didn’t leave any weapons lying around for us to use. Just this big old mirror. Maybe we could try running outside holding it aloft.’ Kalina gave a harsh laugh. ‘If we’re lucky, the dragon will be scared off by its own reflection.’

Ben watched her as she fidgeted about. ‘You’re in a strange humour, Kal. What’s got into you?’

‘What’s got into me? Nothing, apart from the fact that almost everyone I know is dead, and here we are trapped by a dragon that’s hell-bent on revenge. If I don’t laugh about it then I’ll probably just break down and die.’

Ben shrugged. ‘Well, the mirror trick might do the job for all I know. I’ve got a thousand stupid stories and legends in my head, but it turns out that none of them are worth a damn in the real world. It’s probably just as well that the Godsword line of kings ends with me here, where nobody’s around to see and write or sing about it. If we escaped to Amaranthium then we’d probably just die with everyone else when the dragons, goblins and trolls finally take the city. Oh well, civilisation has had a good run. Nothing lasts forever, and two thousand years is more than long enough.’

‘I’m not giving up!’ Kalina hissed between gritted teeth.

There was a flapping of wings close by and they both flinched as something heavy crashed down on the roof of woven willow branches above them. It wasn’t the dragon this time; they could hear the monster hit the ground nearby. A minute later the willows bent again as more stuff crashed down on them.

‘It’s dropping logs and branches,’ Kalina realised. ‘It’s building a new nest right on top of us!’

She turned to Mena’s Mirror in desperation. It was said that the bestial forest god saw her inner beauty when she looked in it: the mirror was supposed to reveal the truth about everyone. But all Kalina could see in it was a frightened man and a dirty, wild-eyed girl. She lashed out with her fist and punched the glass, but the only thing that broke was the skin on her knuckles.

She sucked at the blood thoughtfully for a few minutes. Ben just sat with his head in his hands.

‘I’ve got a plan,’ she announced eventually.

* * *

They worked methodically on Kal’s plan for the rest of the afternoon. She gave Ben the easy and trivial jobs whenever she saw him dithering anxiously behind her. As they worked away, so too did the dragon, flying back and forth, piling trees and branches above and around them. Kal sent Ben down the entrance tunnel of spiralling branches several times to make sure that their exit was kept clear. As evening fell, and the light from the tunnel faded, she had him build a fire in a circle of stones.

‘Just be careful,’ she warned. ‘We don’t want to help the dragon and light this bonfire for it.’

Ben struck his flint against his steel, scraping off tiny glowing slivers of hot metal that rained down on the dry kindling. ‘I don’t think that it needs our help,’ he said. ‘The West Wind Dragon set half of downtown Amaranthium ablaze with just one breath, remember?’

‘I can’t quite recall what I was doing that day,’ Kal said sarcastically. ‘Come on, Ben; knowing what we know now, it was probably someone else who started the fire to lure the dragon, and not the other way round. I’ll believe a dragon can breathe fire the day I
see
a dragon breathe fire!’

‘Let’s just hope that it’s not today,’ Ben said gloomily as he went back to twisting the thinnest willow branches together to make strong inch-thick cables.

They ate a final meal of old bread and bacon. Ben had mixed up a mushy paste of herbs to garnish it, but they still found themselves having to swallow hard to force it all down. As they sat and ate in silence, something dripped from the roof of branches and landed on Kal’s arm. It was a clear amber liquid. She licked it; it was sticky, sweet and oily. She summoned up some saliva and spat the taste away.

‘Now I know what dragon pee tastes like,’ she said.

After they had eaten, Kal was making some last minute checks when Ben broached a subject that he had evidently been dwelling on all day.

‘The tomb …’ he began.

‘What?’

‘The resting place of Banos … you said you knew where it was. If you don’t tell me now, Kal, then I might never know.’

Kal laughed. ‘You
know
the answer, Ben. You’ve just never put two and two together.’

Ben shrugged and spread his hands.

‘You know
everything
about the gods, Ben. Come on, where is Whalo buried?’

‘In Brightfish Bay, with his wife, Vuda. What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘And Lumatore?’

‘They built a mausoleum at the bottom of the Canyon of Bones. She lies there with Draxos, her husband. I can see what you’re getting at, Kal, but Banos never spent longer than a night with a girl, let alone ever got around to marrying one! He spent his whole life in the saddle, riding from battle to battle with Arcus, getting mixed-up in whatever conflict they came across, and stirring up trouble when there was none to be found. Arcus was just as bad; he never married either—’

Kal raised an eyebrow. Ben’s face lit up as the realisation hit him.

‘Oh! Of course! It’s so obvious really. I guess they were too busy having fun to stop and marry each other.’

‘Find Arcus,’ Kal confirmed, ‘and that’s where you’ll find Banos, too.’

‘You’re right,’ Ben said. ‘And no one ever figured it out because nobody has actually
seen
Arcus’s tomb; he was buried deep under the rock of the hill where he fought his final battle against
the Dragon
. But my ancestors must have found the tomb and buried Banos alongside him! Kal, we have to get to Amaranthium! We have to go to Arcus Hill and find the
Forgotten Tomb
!’

Kal was pleased to see Ben in a better mood, but he seemed to have forgotten their current predicament. ‘Let’s worry about that later,’ she said as she dragged a long, twisted willow root into a new position. ‘We have a dragon to deal with first.’

* * *

By midnight they were as ready as they ever would be. Kal could hear the dragon shuffling around on top of the nest above them. She put her hand on Ben’s shoulder as they prepared to leave the safety of the willow grove. ‘Just don’t look back, okay? Run to the river and stay underwater as long as you can as you go downstream. Hopefully, the dragon won’t chase you if it’s after me.’

Ben nodded nervously. ‘Are you sure that there’s nothing I can do?’

‘You would just be in my way,’ Kal said. ‘Besides, someone has to stay alive to tell our story. That’s what you’re best at, Ben. Make me look good, okay?’

They grasped each other’s wrists in farewell.

‘Let’s do it!’ Kal urged before they could change their mind. They both ran, side-by-side, down the natural corridor of branches and roots that had been shaped by a god’s hand centuries ago. Next, they passed the jumbled piles of new debris that the dragon had dropped around the grove. Finally, they made it out into the open, and Ben shot off to the left. Kal heard a splash as he hit the water.

She ran forward as far as she dared, then turned right and circled back to the entrance tunnel. It was enough: the dragon roused itself from the top of its mountain of branches and, with one powerful flap of its wings, dropped down to the ground just yards from Kal. She tripped and stumbled as she ran—what was once a field of grass was now littered with a layer of leaves and small twigs that had blown off the dragon’s pile. Kal rolled, sprang to her feet and got back under the cover of the tunnel entrance.

Then she turned to face the dragon. It had paused not thirty yards away, standing on its powerful legs, its wings spread wide: a black shadow against the deep blue night sky. Its neck dipped down and it brought its small bright eyes on a level with Kal. It cocked its head this way and that, as if suspicious somehow that she wasn’t running for her life.

Kal backed slowly into the tunnel, waving her arms in front of her. ‘Come on!’ she shouted. ‘Come and get me!’

The dragon didn’t move, except to fold one massive wing in on itself, bringing its claw to its head as if to scratch an itch. Kal clenched her fists; her fingers were slick with sweat. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. No—it wasn’t sweat. It was more of that oily substance that she must have picked up when she rolled in the leaves. Kal noticed that all the nearby twigs, leaves and branches were covered in it too; a shiny film that glistened in the moonlight.
What was it?

The Dragon was now scraping its bony claw over the carapace of scales that armoured its head. A quick rhythmic flicking motion;
skkrrt, skkrrt, skkrrt
. Was it trying to communicate something? Was it sending out some kind of signal? The dragon took a long deep breath. Was it—

Bone and scale—
flint and steel
! Kal threw herself to the ground as the first sparks showered from the dragon’s armour. The oiled leaves on the ground burst into flames almost instantly, and when the dragon exhaled, a wide cone of furious fire ignited the ground between it and Kal. She covered her head with her arms as her clothing was set alight.

The dragon advanced. The flames started to jump between all the trees and branches piled around.

The bonfire had been lit.

V.viii

Open Wounds

Darklaw lunged at Kal, but the cave floor buckled beneath him and he fell to his knees. The whole mouth of the cave collapsed in on itself, plunging them all into darkness and cutting off their escape into the swamp. The only thing that Kal could see was the faint red glow opposite from the tunnel that she had arrived up. In the near total darkness she leaped forward and climbed over Darklaw’s kneeling bulk to get past him. He grunted and flailed his arms as she placed her foot on his face and vaulted over his shoulder.

As she stumbled for the tunnel, Kal heard the ripping sounds of tearing wood as the galleys were crushed by the crumbling cave; she heard the screams and shouts of the hobgoblins, and the sickening sounds of hard heavy rocks landing on soft fleshy bodies. She made it to the tunnel and picked up her pace, running deeper into the convulsing mountain.

Prior to her attempt on Darklaw’s life, Kal had returned to the gold mine and closed, then crippled, all of the escape valves in the network of pipes. The pressurised super-heated vapour that, for centuries before Darklaw’s arrival, had been venting safely through the island’s crevices and fumaroles, was now trapped underground by the very machinery that was put in place to control it. As it drew up its power to break free again, it rocked the mountain by its very roots, like an angry behemoth shaking the bars of its cage.

As Kal ran, she saw the short goblin mine-workers running in all directions. Did they know of ways out, or were they panicking like doomed rats aboard a sinking ship? Should she follow them, or stick to her own risky escape plan? Kal decided to keep running.

A voice shouted from up the tunnel behind her: ‘Moonheart!’

She skidded to a halt and turned, if only just to make sure that Darklaw was too far away to catch her.

He was standing almost out of sight at a crossroads further up the tunnel. ‘Come with me!’ he urged. ‘I know the way out of here!’

Was he serious?
‘No!’ she replied, almost screaming over the noise of the earthquake. ‘Not with you! Never!’

‘You’ll die here if you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘You beat me, Moonheart! You won! Now let us leave together and I will come with you to the city and submit to their justice. I will save you now if you will speak in my favour. You promised that you would!’

‘You should have accepted my offer back then,’ Kal told him. ‘I don’t give second chances!’ She turned her back on his reply and ran on. Darklaw’s curses curses echoed off the tunnel walls, but he didn’t follow her any further.

When she reached the lower cavern it was hotter than ever, and the lava lake was bubbling and frothing like a saucepan brought to the boil. Kal had to jump and skip as she crossed the narrow stone bridge, the lava spitting and sloshing around her feet. Darklaw’s platinum-hulled sloop was still there, but the lava was now rising and spilling over the edge of the island: there was a six foot gap between Kal and her escape ticket. She didn’t think—she just ran as hard as she could and launched herself at the rail of the small boat. Her elbow hooked around it and her knees banged into the metal hull as she raised her legs to keep them above the level of the lava. Kal screamed in pain, and then screamed again in exertion as she forced her muscles to pull herself over the rail and out of danger.

The lava was rising rapidly. From where Kal lay in the bottom of the sloop, she could see the deadly stalactites in the cavern roof looming closer and closer. She scrabbled to her feet and grabbed the long platinum pole that Darklaw must have used for punting across the lake. She didn’t need it, though; the boat was caught in a current that had appeared from somewhere and had now created a lava flow from one side of the cavern to the other. Kal peered through the heat haze ahead of her and saw what was happening: as the lava level rose, it was spilling over the gate of a lock that must have been the means that Darklaw brought his boat in and out of his lair. Kal held on tight to the lip of the cabin hatch as the sloop plunged down a six-foot drop and entered a subterranean river where the hot lava was mixing with swamp water and creating foul-smelling, scalding clouds of steam.