Something lunged at me out of the dark tunnel ahead, launching from some ledge above. My sword met it, spearing it through the chest with its own momentum. Though I’d cleaved it cleanly through the heart, it continued to flail, swiping and scrabbling with its claws, fangs snapping. I stomped a booted foot on its lower jaw, shoving its head back, then cleaved the head from the body in one clean stroke.
I took a moment to listen, to survey the shadows ahead for movement, then checked Ami. She’d crouched behind a rock outcropping, but straightened when I nodded all clear. Gripping her knife, she held out the torch, studying the creature which still scrabbled about aimlessly, teeth snapping at nothing.
“That’s like those wolf things that attacked us,” she said.
“I thought so, too. Not exactly a wolf. Some kind of cross with a reptile. The fur is nearly like the armor plating of scales.”
“It’s not alive, is it?” she whispered.
“No. No more than any of Deyrr’s creatures are.” Its presence here explained some of the psychic stink.
“We have to burn it.”
“Easily enough done, down here.” I sheathed my sword and grabbed one of the flailing hind legs. “Watch my back, would you?”
“Always,” she replied as if it were a vow, with a smile that warmed my heart.
Kicking the slavering head ahead of me, I dragged the carcass back to a rent in the tunnel that opened onto a pit with a radiant pool of lava below. I kicked the head into it, watching it sink with some satisfaction, then pushed the carcass after it. I’d have liked to hurl it in there, but a one-armed man had to take what he could. If only I could destroy the demons of my past as easily.
“Ash!”
I pulled my sword and put Ami behind me. Two more of the creatures charged us. One took a stroke to the throat but kept coming, latching onto my leg. I cleaved the head off the other, then did the same to the one biting me.
“Foul creatures,” I swore. “Good thing they’re slow.”
“Slow? It bit you!”
“Not badly. Nothing like the one that got my arm. The leathers took most of the damage, so I’m glad you helped me get them on.” Ami didn’t smile back this time, looking furious and afraid.
“They’re slow,” I repeated, shoving the carcasses into the pit to follow their comrade. “That’s what Deyrr’s magic does. It animates them, but nothing like a self-willed creature has. They don’t have the intelligence to fight together. I noticed that when they attacked the sleighs.”
“Oh, you noticed that, did you?” She sounded coolly incredulous. Better annoyed than afraid though.
I tossed her a grin, wiping my hands off on my thighs. The bite wound oozed a little blood, but was solidly in the meat of the muscle. It hadn’t had time to chew down to the bone. “I don’t know how or why these creatures are here. They stink of Deyrr, but don’t have a clear mission.”
She gazed down the tunnel. “Except maybe to keep us away from the dragon.”
“Maybe that, yes.”
“Then how are we going to let it out?”
The dragon wasn’t much farther down, but I’d come close enough to learn all I needed to. It thrashed in nightmares, no closer to escaping them than I was to mine. Getting closer to it wouldn’t do any good and would only put Ami at risk. “I don’t think we can.”
“What do you mean? Dafne let the one at Nahanau out.”
“Yes—through the top of the volcano. Castle Windroven is in the way here. Like a cork in a bottle. I thought maybe if the dragon was awake enough, we could coax it out a side vent. But I can feel it in my head. It needs someone else to fully waken it, to show it the way.”
“How awful.” Ami’s gaze searched the passage behind me, glimmering with her natural compassion. A sensitive and generous heart in my Ami.
“I’ve sent it some healing energy, to soothe it.”
“I didn’t know you could do that.”
“Our secret.” I smiled at her wearily. That effort had taken the last of my remaining energy. I might heal faster than non-Tala, but not that fast. Especially not with what I’d given the dragon. I had to admit that I couldn’t fight off many more of the creatures.
“Then have you seen enough—can we go back?”
“Yes.” Shadows smudged the hollows under her cheekbones and around her eyes.
Ami led the way and I followed, sword drawn and walking backwards to keep an eye on any attackers from behind. “I’ll write to Andi and Ursula about it. Dafne, too,” she said. “Maybe they can send someone to help the dragon.”
“Good. In the meanwhile, I want to wake some of the men to close off access to these tunnels. We’ve been lucky so far, but I don’t want to risk it.”
“Agreed,” Ami said with some fervency. “I don’t want those creatures getting into the castle proper.”
I grunted agreement. Slow as they were, they could do considerable damage, especially to the children.
“I still have the building schematics Dafne found in the library here,” she said when we reached the kitchens. “We can use those to direct the men where to close everything off. I’ll get those while you rouse the men.”
“You should go to—”
“Not until you do,” she cut me off crisply. “And I’m queen here. This is my castle. I’ll oversee the work, see to your wounds, and then we will go to bed. If we’re lucky, we’ll sleep for an hour or two before Willy and Nilly start getting into trouble.”
15
Neither of us stayed to oversee the work. Graves persuaded us that he could follow the plans as well as anyone, and that it would be an insult to hover. He also really wanted his queen out of the lower tunnels as fast as he could move her along without giving offense. While I sympathized with the man’s difficulties, I figured he could handle her himself.
I’d proven I had no ability to do so.
Just as well, as I passed out while Ami was still cleaning my leg wound. I hadn’t lost that much blood, but—as she informed me—I’d lost plenty to begin with and hadn’t had the opportunity to make more.
At least it saved the argument about sleeping arrangements. Or rather, my losing consciousness so precipitously had resolved the argument in Ami’s favor. I awoke in her bed, feeling as if a sound had brought me alert. High above, a clear blue winter sky showed searingly bright through the clerestory windows. The storm had finally abated. No more howling wind. Even the sea had quieted to a muted, regular crashing of waves.
And somewhere beneath it all, the dragon slept.
So did Ami, curled up against my side, her back to me like a cat, only her bright hair showing on the pillow. I put a hand on her waist, finding her warm and naked. So was I, and my morning erection ached in a counterpoint with my healing arm and leg, all somehow equally painful. Along with my heart—or whatever facsimile remained of the shriveled, scarred thing.
Somehow revisiting those nightmares, making myself walk away from Ami over and over, all had conspired to rip the scar tissue off the oozing, pus-filled well of my psyche. I thought I’d healed. In those silent days of manual tasks and fervent prayer, I’d immersed myself in the routine of the White Monks. Glorianna’s light and love had filled me, chasing away the shadows.