The salamander poked its head out from under Newt"s collar and looked over his shoulder, seemingly fascinated with what Ailis was doing.
"Help me," she whispered to it, and the creature crawled forward a bit more, its narrow tongue flicking out as though tasting the air-or the energy coming off Ailis.
"As I see it happening, let it happen. As I will it, so mote it be."
There was a shimmer in the air, and then a ring of fire appeared, etching into the stones where Ailis had traced the oval. The flames burned white, then blue, then a deep, watery sea green, filling in the oval until the stones were a sheet of fire. All three humans had to turn away, or risk damaging their eyesight. When they looked back, a door had been forced in the rock, just large enough for them to step through.
"Nice," Gerard said, and stepped forward without hesitation, his right hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword. Ailis was directly behind him. Newt followed a step more slowly, pausing to run a hand along the edge of the hole. The rocks were fused along the rim into a smooth whole, as though it had always been one piece.
"Very nice," he said, impressed despite himself, as he dropped into the cool darkness of the cave itself.
Inside, he found Ailis on her knees, Gerard trying to lift her up.
"What happened?"
"She just keeled over," Gerard said, clearly concerned. Ailis was sweating even more fiercely now, her skin pale and shining in the darkness.
"Was . . . too much, somehow. I don"t know why. I could feel the power . . . and then it just went away, all fast and sudden and . . ."
"And she fell over."
The salamander practically jumped off Newt"s neck in his hurry, wiggle-walking to get to Ailis. She automatically put out a hand to catch it.
"Hey . . ."
"No, it"s okay," she said. "I think . . . I got some of that from you, didn"t I? I was right about you being magic. But away from fire, you can"t do much, can you?"
"What?" Newt was confused.
"Ailis thinks . . . from the way it reacted-or didn"t react-to fire, it"s magical," Gerard explained.
Newt started to protest, then the events came back to him, and his shoulders slumped. "Yeah. Fine. If he helps you, you keep him, then."
The salamander made a squeaking noise, and Ailis shook her head. "He"s yours. He chose you. I don"t think he"d be interested in me at all, except when I"m using magic."
"If you"re sure . . ."
She managed to laugh. "He is," she said. Sure enough, once Constans had determined that Ailis wasn"t doing anything interesting, he seemed determined to crawl back onto Newt"s shoulder.
"All right." He reached out to scratch the creature under its wedge-shaped head. "But if you need him . . ."
"Friends, we"re supposed to be looking for something that will lead us to the shadow figure"s true name," Gerard reminded them, with his hand still under Ailis"s elbow.
She allowed him to help her up, leaning heavily on his shoulder with a mixture of grat.i.tude and annoyance. She didn"t try to stand on her own just yet, but they moved forward together, with Newt and Constans a single step behind.
"Yeah. I"ll be okay. Just . . . a little dizzy," she said as they walked down the wide cavern. The walls were as high and as pale as she remembered, though the footing did not seem quite as smooth.
"Too much magic," Newt said. "You"re not as strong as you thought you were."
"You always this sympathetic?" Ailis shot back in return, clearly irritated.
"Yes," Newt replied, pleased to hear the color returning to her voice. "You hadn"t noticed?"
"Funny." But she relaxed a little. He could see it in the way she moved.
"Humans!"
The bellow came out of the darkness ahead of them, where the cavern branched off into two smaller tunnels, and Ailis tensed up again immediately. To be fair, all four of them did, Constans included.
"Uh-oh," Ailis said. "Guess he"s still around."
"Dragon," Newt explained to the salamander, who dove down the back of his tunic at the sudden, booming noise. "Not like you, even if he does breathe fire. Big fellow, larger than the griffin. Nasty temper, too. And smart. Best stay low in case he eats smaller cousins as well as humans and goats and horses."
"He sounds angry," Ailis noted.
"Well, he wasn"t exactly friendly the last time," Gerard reminded them. "He wanted to eat us, remember?"
"He sounds angrier," Ailis said nervously.
"Humans!"
Gerard had to admit the truth of that. The dragon also sounded like he was getting closer. Fast.
A flare of light deep in the left-hand pa.s.sage and a blast of warm, foul-smelling air reached them.
"His breath hasn"t improved," Newt said, gagging a little.
"Does it smell like he"s been . . . eating people recently?" Ailis wondered.
n.o.body asked her how they were supposed to know what a man-eater"s breath would smell like.
"We could just go the other way," Newt said.
"You mean avoid him?" Gerard asked.
"I mean run."
"We can"t." Ailis looked terrified, but was stubborn. Both boys recognized the stubborn part. "If what we"re looking for is here, the dragon might know about it."
"And you think he"ll tell us? We barely found something to trade with him the last time, remember?" The thing they traded was, in effect, Gerard-or at least a future version of himself. "And we don"t even have horses to offer this time, either."
Not that the dragon had been interested in horse-meat then.
The three friends looked at each other, then down the corridor, where the flickering red light was coming closer.
"I think-"
"We should-"
"Probably not bother him," Ailis agreed. They turned to go down the right-hand tunnel when there was a heavy, unnerving noise. Gerard hesitated, and a huge, scaled foot with claws the size of daggers, only twice as thick-and sharp-came out of the darkness at them. It moved with astonishing quickness for something so large, flattening Gerard against the floor. Thankfully, the claws did not puncture anything more than the fabric of his tunic.
"Humans! Come!"
"Maybe . . . we should . . . stop by and pay our . . . respects," Gerard suggested breathlessly, his face turned to avoid breathing in the dust from the stone floor. He sounded like one or more of his ribs might be broken.
"Or we could just leave you to explain," Newt suggested. "Seeing as how you"re the one he got along with so well last time.
"All right, it was just an idea," he said hastily, when Ailis and Gerard both glared at him.
The huge dragon"s paw started to pull back into the corridor, slowly but inevitably dragging Gerard back with it. Helpless to do anything else, Ailis and Newt followed.
As they walked, the corridor opened into a larger cavern-not the treasure-trove nesting room they had found the dragon in the first time, but it was still impressive for being deep inside a mountain. A red glow came from the tiny flamelets rising from the dragon"s nostrils, like torches in the night. Light came down through stone chimneys that must lead all the way up to the surface, carrying faint sunlight down into the depths.
The dragon had drawn Gerard to him the way a cat might a mouse, letting him go once all three were inside the cavern.
It was still magnificent, with its silvery blue scales, and the elongated, muscled body leading to a thick, arched neck and tapered, triangular head. Its eyes glared down at them with something beyond ire, and approaching madness.
"Sir Dragon, we-" Gerard began, rolling out of immediate reach and getting up onto his knees, crouching in a pose of nonaggressive readiness. "We did not-"
"Silence!"
Gerard shut up.
"You have returned." The dragon"s voice softened to a cold rumble. It sniffed the air, steam and more firelets rising from his great nostrils as he did so. "You are a knight, now?"
"Not yet, no. I-"
"You lie! I was told that you would lie!" A dragon"s roar was bad enough when heard at a distance. In close quarters, in an echoing stone cavern, it was so terrible as to make the bones in your head vibrate.
"I do not lie!" Gerard protested, stung by the accusation.
Ailis, more practically, asked, "Who told you that he would lie?"
"You have reneged. You never planned to honor your bargain."
"Sir Dragon, I had-have-no intention of reneging. If I had, why would I return now? Unready, yes, I am, but also honest. I am a human of my word. My good word."
The dragon did not seem appeased. Nor did it answer Ailis"s question.
"You have returned. We will have our battle. Now."
That had been the bargain they had made the last time: They wanted the piece of the talisman they needed, which the dragon possessed. The dragon had wanted fame and glory, of the sort which could come only from a great battle with a knight of reputation.
Gerard had promised to return when he was made a knight and give the dragon that battle to the death.
They had not antic.i.p.ated that the dragon would not believe-or care-that Gerard was not yet a knight.
"Face me, human. Or die like a sheep, bleating in fear."
The dragon, with its own sort of honor, was ignoring Newt and Ailis. She was frantically searching her memory for any kind of spell or magic that could get them out of this, but it was one thing to melt rocks, call a beast, or even force Merlin to come speak to her. It was another to try and affect such a huge, intelligent, powerful, angry creature-especially when it was well within claw-swipe distance. Even a halfhearted blow from that paw, and she would never work any magic ever again.
How in heaven"s name could Gerard muster anything against it? Yes, he had taken Morgain down, sword to sword, but she had chosen not to work magic, and to face him on his own terms. The dragon would have no such limitations.
"Go stand against the far wall," Gerard told them, getting to his feet.
"Ger, we can-"
"No." Gerard stopped whatever Newt was going to offer. "This is mine to do. You two-whatever happens, you still have to find what we"re here for. You can"t afford to fail."
He got to his feet, slowly and deliberately brushing himself off. He made sure that his sword belt was still secured, and that his weapons had taken no damage during his undignified entrance to the cavern.
Watching him, Ailis realized that he was imagining that he was Sir Lancelot. Not now, when he was known to be such a great and gallant fighter, the king"s best-loved knight, but back before, when he first came to Camelot and was mocked for being honest, for being awkward and homely. A great knight Lancelot might be, but he would never be handsome. But Sir Lancelot knew that, and cared not, so long as in battle he could be glorious. Gerard was handsome, or would be, but like Lancelot he cared more for his actions than his appearance.
Ailis was terrified for her oldest friend. But she was proud of him, too. So when he looked her way, briefly, she gave him a brave smile and a nod. You"ll do what needs to be done, she thought. And so will we. Don"t worry about us.
Then she took Newt"s hand, tugging at him until he moved away with her, giving the two, knight and dragon, room to face each other.
"If Gerard . . ."
"He won"t. And if he does . . . we take his sword back to Arthur, and tell him his man fought bravely, and well." Her words stuck in her throat. "But first we have to find what we came for."
They came upon a niche in the wall that was large enough for both of them to fit in, and made themselves as comfortable as possible. They might have gone on, leaving Gerard to his fate and made use of the time. But while they were willing to go on afterward, they would not leave him now.
"Sir Dragon," Gerard said, standing in the open s.p.a.ce before the dragon, looking up to the proud head, the long, sinuous neck, the great, scaled body. "I have returned, as promised, to give you what challenge this human form might offer-and to win."
Dragon laughter came out in smoke rings.
"Come then, human. Give me a challenge."
Back when he worked in the kennels, Newt used to wade into the middle of dogfights, breaking up even the most vicious-situation with a clout to the head or a swing of a stick. He didn"t think that there was anything that could unnerve him. But watching Gerard draw his sword-an ordinary, dark-edged length of metal, nothing flashy or enchanted- against the muscled, dangerous bulk of the dragon made him shiver.
"I can"t watch," he said, but yet was unable to turn his head away.
The dragon lunged, his long neck darting like a serpent, the great head coming in far too close to Gerard"s body. But the boy knew it for a feint, ignoring the snapping teeth in favor of the foreleg which also came in, claws outstretched. His sword hit against one claw, slid along the length of it, and sliced into the scaled pad underneath, causing thick purple blood to well up from the cut.
First blooding went to Gerard. The dragon didn"t seem at all bothered by it.
Then the battle began in earnest, and Newt could barely follow the action. Ailis"s occasional comments made him realize that she knew far more of battle techniques than he did. He could tell you how to train a horse to perform moves with a knight on horseback, and how to treat the wounds incurred in battle, but he had never bothered to watch the moves being performed. Ailis, with her time spent in Camelot proper, had seen more tournaments.
She had, in fact, lived through a real battle, the one in which she was orphaned. That thought made Newt"s arm around her shoulder tighten, to offer comfort, but she didn"t seem to even notice.
"Oh, good move, that was-no! Oh." A sigh of relief, as Gerard spun and escaped the claw, parrying with the flat of his blade. The noises filling the cavern were a mixture of heavy slapping thuds of feet, the clang of metal against claw, and the sound of Gerard"s breathing, which was becoming more and more labored. A bad blow with one paw had left his right arm at a painful-looking angle. He switched the sword to his left arm, and continued fighting.
"He can"t . . ." Newt started to say.
"He will," Ailis said fiercely, but without confidence.
He couldn"t, of course. Perhaps not even the best of knights could have, not against a full-grown dragon. After all, were they not so deadly, they would not be so feared.