Meriwether refused to be drawn into the discussion. He had seen Sergeant Floyd, as well as Hall, Willard, and Collins, all in the native land of the dead. Were there truly different aspects of the afterlife? Or did each person see something akin to what he expected?
Sacagawea left the grass tent, and eventually Meriwether gathered his strength and stepped outside to look at the Shoshone camp. With Seaman by his side he wandered the camp in a daze, not quite believing that he’d come back from the place where everything was changeable shadows.
He saw Sacagawea with the women of the tribe, roasting large haunches of meat. As he wandered, Meriwether came upon her brother, who grasped both his hands and thanked him effusively for saving her. “Twice I lost my sister, and twice she was restored to me. But this time, if the legends are correct, it is a true miracle she came back. You, Captain Lewis, have achieved something even the ancient warriors never managed. If there is anything you wish from the Shoshone, forever, it is your right to ask.”
Still overwhelmed, Meriwether nodded, mumbled his gratitude, and walked away. It occurred to him he could have asked for help in storming the dragon wizard’s lair, but he was not ready for that battle yet.
Soon, he found York following him, and he let the big man catch up with him. York looked sheepish. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.
York smiled ruefully. “Captain Clark sent me to follow you. He was afraid you were not quite…not quite back from your adventures.”
Meriwether realized that Clark feared he might have been taken over by the mind of the enemy sorcerer. He also decided that he no longer felt ill or bereft, merely tired to the bone. “Such a journey takes a great deal out of you. Sojourning in the land of the dead leaches the life and energy, and you feel that you don’t have the strength or the interest to go on. I will recover, but it might take a while.”
York nodded grimly. “Well, Captain, you hear stories. I grew up amid slaves in Virginia, and my people brought their own stories from Africa, before the Sundering. Every land has legends of those who venture from the world of the living to the land of the dead, usually to bring back a loved one who died, although sometimes to steal a treasure that is otherwise lost. But often the people who come back from such an ordeal are not quite right in the head. They’re not actually themselves, or they are…broken. Something has gone wrong in them that cannot be fixed. They feel attracted to death from that point on, desperate to go back to that place. Many just wither away and die.”
“I assure you, Mr. York, that is not what ails me,” Meriwether said. “I am just very tired. And you can tell Captain Clark so.”
The big dark-skinned man inclined his head, but apparently he didn’t fully believe Meriwether, as he continued to follow him around the camp, sometimes clumsily pretending to other errands, but his intent was obvious. Even Seaman, deliriously happy to have his master back, followed his every step, pressing his warm, furry body against his legs and nearly toppling him sideways in his enthusiasm.
It took two days for the Catholic priest to arrive, and he was the oddest Catholic priest Meriwether had ever seen. The man looked as wild and of mixed blood as most of their interpreters. Dressed in Indian clothing, with long black hair peppered in gray, he appeared less like a priest than Meriwether did, and he spoke a wild patois of English, French, and native language. He introduced himself as Father Avenir.
Stopping outside the tent where they’d laid Charbonneau’s remains, Father Avenir prepared for his work. From a tattered shoulder bag, he extracted an equally tattered long black tunic, which he donned, making him look marginally more like a priest. He requested a bowl of water, which he blessed, and then he removed an aspergillum from the same bag, and proceeded to sprinkle his surroundings with the holy water: the tent, the curious Shoshones standing by, even Sacagawea and Meriwether, before he got around to sprinkling the corpse.
He mumbled in Latin while walking around the pale corpse. The dead man, infused with the dark magic, looked little worse than when Meriwether had left him behind to go find Sacagawea in the land of the dead. Toussaint Charbonneau seemed to have shrunk and dried in place, rather than bloating and putrefying in this warm weather.
With LaBiche helping to translate, the priest ordered the body to be carried out on a litter. With Sacagawea following, carrying Pompy, they took Charbonneau to a grave dug at the edge of the camp. Meriwether and Clark watched solemnly as the body was laid in the grave, and the priest spoke final words. Two of the men began shoveling dirt into the grave, covering the body, when they heard the loud, ominous laughter.
At first, Meriwether thought it was just thunder, a heavy rumbling over the horizon. But then he knew the voice, the angry adversary. Before he could react, he heard the loud beating of wings like giant rugs thumping in the air.
The dragon creature flew toward them from the open sky above the trees, very red and more enormous than during its previous attack in St. Louis. Seeing it, Father Avenir fell to the ground and dropped prostrate beside the open grave. The gravediggers from the expedition yelled and raised the shovels, their only weapons.
Inside Meriwether’s head, the laughter of the dragon was deafening, and he could smell his stink, a hot reptile smell, oily and thick. Seaman kept snarling and barking.
As the dragon flew low, the men futilely tried to strike at him with the shovels, but missed. The great dragon flew so close over Meriwether, its claws would have ripped off his head, had he not thrown himself aside.
As if toying with them, the dragon exhaled a stream of fire, and the grass-woven tent that had held Charbonneau’s body exploded into flames and belching smoke. As villagers ran screaming for shelter and Shoshone warriors scrambled for weapons to fight it, the dragon swooped in a circle around the camp, then returned, spewing more fire to engulf Sacagawea’s shelter.
Meriwether knew he had to stop the monster. If he allowed the dragon to continue, it would incinerate the entire camp, tent by tent, roast the warriors, the wives and children, the expedition members, even his dog Seaman. With targeted hatred, the enemy dragon wished to break Meriwether, to dissuade him from fighting back.
But the terrorization resulted in the opposite effect.
“Continue with the funeral, Father!” Meriwether bellowed. “Break the sorcerer’s hold on the body!” He heard his voice distorted because he’d already started his effort to project his spirit dragon out into the open, into the real world. The way Sacagawea had taught him to fight.
Like a birth, the process of summoning and transforming was natural and painful. But when the difficult block crumbled away in his mind, it seemed a great relief to allow his own dragon out. He pushed his other form out into the light of day.
His Welsh spirit dragon materialized in midflight, soaring free and powerful. He dipped a broad parchment-thin wing to bank and then flew hard to intercept the enemy as it returned to attack the camp.
His arrival took the dragon sorcerer by surprise, and the monster backflapped his wings to avoid colliding with his nemesis. Not even bothering to look down at where his human body had collapsed on the ground, Meriwether put on a burst of speed. He raked his outstretched claws against the enemy’s wing, feeling his talons snag and tear the supernatural flesh of his foe.
The enemy dragon screamed and tumbled out of the sky, but quickly recovered his balance. He turned and vomited a volley of flame at Meriwether’s spirit dragon. The fire caught the tip of Meriwether’s wing, which blazed in pain, but he managed to corkscrew and dodge, stroking his broad wings to fly high and gain altitude…to lure the enemy dragon away from the camp.