Margaret Weis - Fire Sea

“We can’t cross that!” said Alfred, staring at the gap in dismay. “Not up here we can’t.” Haplo measured it with his eye. “But we might down below. Even you could make that jump, Sartan.”

“But I’ll slip! Fall in! I—I. . . I’ll try.” Alfred gulped, lowering his eyes before Haplo’s narrow-eyed, angry glare.

“No choice. No choice. No choice,” Alfred chanted, instead of the runes. What magical resources he had left, he had to conserve. And, somehow, the litany seemed to help.

“You’re a fool,” Haplo said, overhearing him. The Patryn stood at the bottom of the vee, legs akimbo, balanced easily, catlike, on uneven strata of rock. He gripped Alfred’s thin arm, steadied the shaking man. “Jump for it.”

Alfred stared fearfully across what looked to him to be an immense stretch of flowing lava. “No!” He shrank back. “I can’t! I’ll never make it! I—”

“Jump!” Haplo roared.

Alfred bent his knees, and suddenly he was flying through the air, propelled by a strong boost from behind. Arms flailing, as if he might flap his way across, he landed heavily on the edge of a lip of rock about twenty feet above the lava sea. He was slipping. His hands scrabbled for purchase. Pebbles slid beneath his fingers. He was falling, sliding into the magma beneath him.

“Hold on!” Jonathan shouted frantically.

Alfred made a wild grab at a jutting piece of rock. His fingers curled around it, and he managed to stop his fall. His hands were wet with sweat, he started to lose his grip, but his foot found a toehold, and he stopped himself. Arms and legs aching with the strain, he hauled himself up over the lip and hunched there, shivering in reaction, not daring to let himself believe he was safe.

He didn’t have time to relax. Before he knew what was happening, Jonathan leapt across the gap, assisted from behind by Haplo’s tireless arms. The young duke landed easily and gracefully. Alfred caught hold of him, balanced him.

“There isn’t room for both of us. Go on up.” Alfred told him. “I’ll wait here.”

Jonathan started to protest.

Alfred pointed. The top edge of the column protruded outward, forming another shelf, this one overhead. It would take strong arms to hoist oneself over that ledge.

Jonathan saw, understood, and began climbing up to the top. Alfred watched him anxiously, for a moment, and was intensely startled to find that the cadaver of Prince Edmund was standing on the shelf beside him. How the corpse managed to cross was beyond Alfred’s ability to explain. He could suppose only that the phantasm had assisted its body.

The gleaming white shape was the cadaver’s glistening shadow, barely distinguishable from the mists curling around them. The phantasm seemed so independent. Why does it bother to drag the shell along with it?

“Stand clear, Sartan!” Haplo shouted. “Go on up with the others!”

“I’ll wait! Help you!”

“I don’t want your”—the next words were unclear, lost in the churning sound of the magma—“help!”

Alfred pretended he didn’t hear any of it, waited stolidly, back braced against the rock.

Haplo fumed on the shore, but there wasn’t time to argue. He checked the sword that he had thrust into his belt, made sure it was secure. Leg muscles bunched. He launched himself outward, hurtled through the air above the magma, and landed like a fly against a wall on the smooth-sided rock beneath Alfred. He began to slip. The dog, across the way, barked loudly.

Alfred reached down, caught hold of the Patryn’s rune-covered wrists, and pulled. Pain shot up his back, muscles gave way, feet scraped over the surface of the ledge on which he stood. He was losing his hold. He must let go or risk sliding over the edge.

Alfred refused to give up. He searched inside himself, found physical resources he never knew he possessed. He held on tightly and, with a last, desperate burst of energy, lunged backward. His feet slid out from beneath him, but not before he had pulled Haplo up onto the ledge.

The Patryn grabbed hold of rocks and Alfred and hung on until he caught his breath, then dragged himself the rest of the way over. Without warning, the dog sailed across in a graceful bound. Landing beside them, nearly crowding both off the ledge, the animal gazed at each of them with bright eyes, obviously enjoying itself immensely.

“More ships are crossing!” Jonathan reported from up above. “We’ve got to hurry!”

Alfred’s body ached, muscles burned. A pain in his side was like someone jabbing him with a knife. He was cut and bruised and wondered if he’d have the strength to walk, let alone climb over that shelf. And how many segments of this colossus remained left to cross? How many gaps, perhaps wider than this? He shut his eyes, then, drawing a breath that brought his burning lungs no relief, he wearily prepared to go on.

“I suppose I should thank you—” Haplo began in his usual sneering tone.

“Forget it! I don’t want your thanks!” Alfred yelled at him. It felt good to yell. Felt good to be angry and let his anger loose. “And don’t feel like you have to pay me back for saving your damn life, because you don’t! I did what I had to do. That’s all!”

Haplo stared at Alfred in blank astonishment. Then the Patryn’s lips started to twitch. He tried to control himself, but he, too, was tired. He began to laugh. He laughed until he was forced to lean against the rock wall to support himself, laughed until tears crept from beneath his eyelids. Dabbing at blood seeping from a cut forehead, Haplo grinned, shook his head.

“That’s the first time I ever heard you swear, Sar—” He paused.

“Alfred,” he amended.

They had made it safely across one gap but it was only the first of many. The steam-driven dragonships of the dead churned through the magma sea, black against fiery red. Alfred trudged over the broken column, tried not to look at the ships, tried not to look at or think about jumping over the next crevice. One foot after the other, over and over and over and—

“We’ll never reach the shore in—”

“Hush! Freeze! Stop!” Haplo hissed, cutting Jonathan off in mid-sentence.

Alfred jerked around, the alarm in the Patryn’s tense call tore through the lethargy of aching body and despairing mind. The runes on Haplo’s skin glowed, the normally blue color tinged purple in the red glare of the magma. The dog stood near its master, growling, ruff bristling, legs stiff. Frantically Alfred glanced behind, expecting to see hordes of dead following them across the colossus.

Nothing. Nothing was chasing them. Nothing blocked their path ahead. But something was wrong. The sea was moving, gathering itself together, rising up around them. A tidal wave? Of magma? He stared harder at the sea, attempting to convince himself it was an optical illusion.

Eyes! Eyes watching him. Eyes in the sea. Eyes of the sea. A fiery red head poked up from the depths of the magma, slid toward them. The unblinking eyes kept them under constant surveillance. The eyes were enormous. Alfred could have walked into the black slit of the pupils without ducking his head.

“A fire dragon,” Jonathan gasped.

“So this is how it ends,” said Haplo softly.

Alfred was too tired to care. His first thought, in fact, was one of relief. I won’t have to jump over another damn crack.

Smooth and sharp as a spear point, the dragon’s head thrust upward. Its neck was long, narrow, and graceful, topped by a spiky mane that resembled stalagmites. Scales glowed bright red when the body lifted from the sea. Contact with air cooled them instantly, turning them black, with a lingering red glow, like coals in a banked fire. Only the eyes remained vivid, flame red.

“I don’t have the strength to fight it,” said Haplo.