The Dragon landed among the crags of Bald Mountain, high above him. The Dragon held so still that, as the evening descended, he seemed to melt into the rocks, a strange formation of stone. But his eyes were red.
For an age Lionheart crouched, and he and the Dragon watched each other. At last, though his knees shook so that they scarcely supported him, Lionheart pushed himself upright. If he was to die, he decided, he would make certain his last step was forward on his quest, not retreating in defeat. He started down the track.
The Dragon did not move.
All night, without pause, Lionheart made his way down the mountain. Though exhaustion threatened to fell him, he kept going, goaded on by the brands of the Dragon’s eyes. He did not dare look back to where the Dragon sat, but he felt those eyes watching him.
When morning came, Lionheart found himself stepping out onto the isthmus. The mountains were behind him, and Southlands. Only then did he turn back for a final look.
The Dragon was gone.
6
NO LIGHTS WINKED in the windows of the Eldest’s House, no life teemed behind its doors. It crouched like a rabbit in an open field, frozen in forlorn hope that the hawk would not strike, knowing that even then the talons were spread.
Its contours were the same: the familiar minarets rising like sentinels, the great iron gates, and the gardens spreading as far as the eye could see beyond. But all the colored stones were filmed over in black ash, and a great column of smoke rose from the courtyard as if a bonfire burned there.
A goat bleated at the back gate.
“Baaaah!” She rammed the gate with her hard little head until the iron rang like a bell. But it would not give. “I know you’re in there! Open to me at once. I command you!”
No answer.
The netherworld boasts many furies and frights, but in that moment, none could be considered half so fearsome as that one highly irate nanny. Her yellow eyes gleamed like a devil’s, her bearded chin quivered, and her cloven hooves pawed at the turf as if she were a bull preparing to charge. But the gate remained solid before her. The Dragon’s spells were strong indeed.
Beana backed up a few paces to better see through the bars into the yard beyond. This gate separated her from the inner gardens, where the queen and her ladies used to stroll. Flowerless rosebushes and a hundred other plants grew here. Only now they withered into themselves, like the House itself, under the Dragon’s poison.
The goat muttered, her jaw working. Then she spoke a word, or perhaps a series of words, in some language that only a goat’s tongue could pronounce. She waited expectantly.
Nothing happened.
“BAH!” The gate rang again with her ramming. “Don’t try these silly games with me!” she bellowed. “I’m not afraid of you.”
“I know you’re not,” said the Dragon.
He appeared with the suddenness of a shadow across the sun, standing on the far side of the gate. He bore the appearance of a man, standing upright on two legs. Hair hung about his face like a hood, black against his leprous-white skin.
The goat stared up at him as though she would like nothing more than to ram all her fury right into his knees. But the iron bars separating them would not give.
“What you have failed to consider,” said the Dragon with a hint of a smile, “is whether or not I am afraid of you.”
“You should be,” said the goat. “If you realized who I—”
“Oh, but I do know exactly who you are,” said he, stepping closer to the gate. His thin lips curled back, revealing long fangs. “I do not forget an offense such as yours so quickly, Lady of Aiven. Thief. Trespasser.”
The goat said nothing for a long moment. Then she spoke in a very different voice. “Let me in.”
“Never again.”
“You know your own doom. I spoke it myself all those centuries ago.”
“Like yesterday.”
“I’ll not touch you. It is not my destiny to accomplish the words given me on the shores of the Final Water.”
“Comforting as this may be,” said the Dragon, “it hardly convinces me that I want you back within the borders of my realm.”
Beana tensed, and her eyes flashed again. “This is not your realm.”
“Yet I am king.”
“Usurper! You dare not claim this land as your own. My Prince will not allow—”
The Dragon snarled, and flames dropped from his mouth, scattering about his feet. “What of your Prince, lady knight? This land is mine, and he has done nothing to stop me. Southlands and all this household are firmly in my grasp, and so shall be the heart of his Beloved. Do your worst, Lady of Aiven, you who abandoned your people, who stole from your own father! Pitiless woman, I will never allow you back within my boundaries.”
A knock rang across the courtyards, across the gardens, carrying to their ears all the way from the opposite side of the Eldest’s House. Incongruous and strange, like timid guests stopping in for tea.
The Dragon smiled then. “My company has arrived.”