Dragon Strike (Age of Fire #4)

Wistala felt her fringe rise. “Don’t speak of last chances to a dragonelle with jaw and limbs intact.”

He dragon-dashed forward.

She washed the wall in flame as she retreated. He broke through the wall of fire as though it were nothing but a winter mist.

“You think pain will deter me?” he asked. “I am a dragon. Pain only makes me more resolved.”

“I never doubted your dragonhood. But it’s well-singed.”

She edged back. She could make one last stand at the mouth of the tunnel to the library-cave. She would have good tunnel to defend and he would be contending with verticals. He’d be fighting her and his own weight.

Wistala wondered why he didn’t roar. Male dragons, in her limited experience, made a good deal of noise when they fought, especially when in pain. DharSii conserved his breath, struck, struck again. She’d never felt such power in a blow before. It reminded her of a mountain-troll, toughened by climbing. He struck, not biting, but stabbing forward with nose-tip and tail-point, and with each strike she heard her own scale breaking.

He battered her. He never closed, never came to grips in a manner that might allow her to claw or bite. She managed to latch on to his crest, but came away with a bloody sii and a torn-out claw when he recoiled.

“Yield!” he said, his voice oddly calm. “Cry settled! Cry, curse it all, cry!”

“Never!” she managed, wondering what in the six skies “cry settled” was supposed to mean.

His nose guard was cracked and sat askew, giving his snout the appearance of being bent a little. If she weren’t so battered and bruised, she might have laughed.

Her tail felt emptiness behind. She’d been driven right to the brink of the pit—

She batted one of the cauldrons filled with hot oil with her tail. It broke loose from its chains and sent a shower of oil toward him. The oil hissed as it struck on his flank and he scrambled to get out of the way.

Seeing a chance, she rushed forward, slipping as she passed over the spilled oil, hardly hot anymore after expending its burn in the first instant of striking the cool stone.

They reared up, grappling, biting and snapping. Wistala had always counted herself strong, and for a moment she bent him back—

But then her saa slid.

The oil might have cooled, but the footing was treacherous. DharSii lunged. She heard his hot panting in her ear, felt his breath beating at her neck as they strained, his griff locked in hers. Her tail sought purchase but found only empty air—

Then she was over.

She fell with a shriek. Just as she heard DharSii gasp something—it may have been “no”—her own frightened wail overwhelmed his word.

She tried to open her wings, a natural instinct, but while the chasm was wide it was not wide enough for that. She heard something snap, felt a shock, heard a flapping and realized one wing was broken, whipping wildly as she spun down—but the other was open, turning her fall into a crazy spin, like those spinning one-winged seeds those tall trees dropped in Hypatia’s northern forests.

She bounced off the wall, or a projection, and continued her fall, some instinct keeping that one wing open.

It was the most terrifying moment of her life.

Later she wondered how long she fell. It felt like an eternity, a day, but it couldn’t have been more than a few moments, for when she finally struck she could still see a circle of light above, not quite a star but far smaller than the moon.

Her eyes perceived a bump in the circle. Natural irregularity, one of the oil-pots, or DharSii?

She’d landed on something spongy. The soggy slap shocked her; she felt wet, clinging wet, all around.

Stunned for a moment, she could only lie there, looking up at that far-off circle of light, a wet, rotting smell like a barrel-full of last year’s swampwater, alternately revolting and comforting—the latter because a dying dragon would have more important things on her mind, one would think, than mouldering water.

Of all the dragons in the world to appear here—she couldn’t have been more distressed if she’d just fought AuRon. Of course, there weren’t many dragons left; she’d looked hard enough when she first uncased her wings. Would the hot oil scar him?

Then it struck her that her first thought upon landing, before judging her injuries to determine if they might be her last thoughts, was of the dragon she’d just fought.

She chuckled like Rainfall amused by one of old Stog’s mulish tantrums, a very undragonlike noise, but the laughter of elves infected all who heard it into imitation.

She cleared her mind with a determined effort and shifted her weight, testing limb and tail. Pain in her injured right wing stabbed, a fast, deep, twisting spear that bored right up through her shoulder muscle and shut her eyes. Her wing was more than half closed and hung at a strange angle. It also hurt when she breathed on her left side, though whether that was related to her wing or not she couldn’t say. Rainfall had done some sketches of her muscles once, just for his own satisfaction, and commented that a dragon’s entire body pivoted on the wing nubs.

Strangely, the most painful wound was that arrow in her tail. Of course the punctured flesh had a chance to grow tender. Luckily both sides of the arrow were still visible. She broke off the feathered end, then extracted the head by pulling it forward.

Fierce new pain made her eyes water. She spat out the arrowhead. Good workmanship, and the metal was well shaped and wholesome-smelling. She swallowed it.

Tangles and angles, she had more important matters at snout. She blinked and tried to clear her head.

The blighters had said something or other about this being an old well. She wondered. Down here there were ancient stairs, not masonry but steps cut into the rock itself, wide steps, even so that a full-grown dragon might use them, spiraling up. They must end somewhere above, for she was sure they did not go all the way up to the blighter defenses at the top.

Rainfall’s laboriously taught logic told her that the stairs must have been built, then, by someone who didn’t particularly desire access to the surface.

The cave she’d fallen down widened at the bottom like a bell, and it was filled with mushroom-like growths. Water soaked the muck here. She sensed that it moved, so it must be coming from somewhere and going to somewhere. She stood up, rather shakily, and surveyed her surroundings. It seemed there was some sort of lip or ledge above.

She could reach it by rearing up on her hindquarters. She shifted her saa and heard an alarming snap, but on inspection she discovered she’d just broken a moldy rib cage with muck and growth clinging to it. She dredged up a skull with tail-point and perched it upon tail-tip and brought it up to her eye.

Blighter, it seemed, and judging from the heavy brow, jutting jaw, and oversized incisors it had probably been a big male. Fallen from above or killed somewhere else, dumped here where the odors would only bother dark and feed the mushrooms.

She sniffed the big mushrooms, especially the smashed caps that had cushioned her fall. A second leafy undergrowth covered the well-floor, oblong pads, big and spongy enough for a blighter to sleep upon. Both smelled wholesome enough to eat, if she was in the mood for vegetation. She also smelled slug-trails, and for a moment stood again in the egg-cave with Auron and Jizara, with Mother watching from the shelf. The memory relaxed her. She could do with a nap.

Mustn’t!

The moldiness of the mushroom patch overwhelmed her nose, but another faint scent drifted down from above, one she couldn’t quite identify further than determining it was animal. First she raised her neck, testing limbs and tail, then reared up and explored the lip above.

The stairs broke at the ledge, and she sensed a tunnel of some kind—there was airflow. After their brief interruption, the stairs continued up again.

If she was to regain the surface she would need her strength.

She found the origins of the water, a mostly blocked-up crack in the wall. She lapped and lapped again, her head clearing with every swallow. The water was pure and clean and cold, thankfully, and even had a faint soda-mineral taste that pleased her exceedingly. Real dragon-water, this. No wonder the mushrooms thrived on it.

She cautiously ascended the stairs to the ledge, poked her head in the tunnel. Still that faint odd animal smell.

“Gaaaa!”

She recognized the bray of a goat. What in the worlds was a goat doing down here? She stuck her head farther into the tunnel. It seemed a natural one, curving up and rising a little, thinning as it did so like a dragon-neck. The goat looked lame, dragging a broken rear leg. Had it tumbled down the shaft and survived a miraculous landing on one of the spongy pads?

Poor thing. She could make a quick end to its suffering, and get a meal besides. Just what she would need to get herself back up that shaft.

The goat fled as best it could, and she took two quick steps after it, opening—

Kzzzzzt!

Odd. Stunning sensation. Her senses fled for a moment. She felt suspended, nowhere in time and space, cognizant only of what felt like a strong blow somewhere on her back.

The ground struck her under the chin, hard. She sensed motion all around. She smelled ozone, as though fresh from a thunderstorm, and suddenly she was with Auron, who was comforting her against the terrifying flashes and noise by tempting her with the taste of rain-drops on her tongue.