David Zindell - The Lightstone

Oh, Lord!' Maram said, fumbling for his firestone. 'Oh, my Lord!' It was, as the boy had tried to tell us, a dragon – and a female at that. And she was clearly angry that we had just robbed her of her feast. 'Liljana! Master Juwain!' I shouted. Take the boy back to the stairs!' Liljana grabbed the boy's hand and started running toward the stairs with Master Juwain close behind him. And then, just as the dragon sprang forward, Atara loosed her arrow at one of the dragon's eyes. But the dragon turned her head just in time so that the arrow glanced off her scales along her great jaws.

These now opened to show sharp white teeth as long as knives. I sensed that the dragon longed to charge Atara and bite her in two. And so I stepped forward, pointing my sword at the dragon as I raised up my shield. It was good for me that I still had my father's shield.

'Val, the fire!' Maram called to me. I thought, for a moment, that he must be speaking of his gelstei. 'The fire, beware!'

Suddenly, as the dragon seemed to quiver and cough, all at once, a-great breath of flame shot from her mouth. It fell in an orange stream against my shield, burning the silver swan embossed there as black as the curving black steel around it. Some of the flame spilled over my shield's rim and scorched my face. I rushed forward then to strike the dragon dead before she could draw breath and summon her fire again.

As did Ymiru and Kane. Kane dosed in toward the dragon's side and thrust his sword at the dragon's belly. It struck sparks against the scales there, and glanced off her, as did the second arrow that Atara fired at the dragon's eyes. Ymiru had greater success swinging his borkor at the dragon's still-open mouth. With tremendous force, it cracked into the jaw, breaking off two huge teeth and shaking the dragon to her bones. But then the dragon used her great, knotty head like a club of her own, swinging it sideways into Ymiru's chest, cracking ribs and knocking him off his feet Her tail suddenly lashed out at Kane; if he hadn't been quick to duck beneath its terrible sweep, the mace-like spikes at the tip would have taken off his head.

The dragon having been distracted, I worked in dose to her huge, heaving body. I thrust my sword straight at her chest. But Alkaladur's gleaming silustria, which had split open even plate armor, foiled to pierce the dragon deeply. It drove between two of the thick scales to a distance of perhaps an inch. It was enough only to wound the dragon – as a bloodbird might peck at me. 'Val, she's too strong!' Atara called to me.

'Back to the stairs!' Maram wasted no time in heeding her call to retreat. Gripping his gelstei which had failed to produce the slightest spark, he turned to run back toward the narrow opening to the east. While Kane helped Ymiru regain his feet, I stood before them, covering them with my shield. The dragon, dripping blood from her battered mouth, rgarded Ymiru with wariness and hate. Then she suddenly opened her jaws again to burn us.

This time I saw that her breath was not really of fire. Rather, as she coughed and heaved, she spit straight at us a stream of a reddish and jellylike substance.. Upon touching the air, it burst into flame. It clung to my shield with all the stickiness of honey. It burned into the steel there, etching it as might a blazing acid.

'Retreat, Val!' Kane shouted at me.

He and Ymiru, following Atara, had already started toward the stairs. I backed away from the dragon as quickly as I could. Once more, the dragon aimed a fiery blast at us. I caught it again on my shield, and then turned to run back toward the stairs before the dragon could summon up more of this evil red liquid. I reached the doorway and bounded down the stairs just as another stream of fire poured through.

Some drops of the jelly stuck to my mail and burned into my back. But at least my friends and I were safe. There was no way the dragon could force her huge body through the narrow doorway.

But there was no way either that we could go forward. It seemed that we west trapped in the deeps of Argattha.

'That was close!' Maram gasped as we gathered in the winding stairwell just below the corridor leading to the dragon's hall. When I peeked over the top stair into the corridor, I could see the dragon's golden eyes looking back at me through the doorway. 'Are you all right, Val?'

I was not quite all right The dragon's fire had burned holes clean through my armor.

This I now removed so that Master Juwain could tend the seared flesh along my back.

'A dragon!' Maram marveled, not quite daring to look into the corridor. 'I never really believed the old stories.'

He and Atara stood just beneath me on the steps. And beneath them were Kane and Ymiru, and then Liljana, who had her arms wrapped around the boy that we had found.

As Master Juwain held his crystal above my back, I looked down the stairs at the boy and asked him, 'Do you have a name?'

This time he answered me, looking me straight in the eyes as he said, 'I'm called Daj.'

'Just "Daj"?' I asked him.

His eyes burned with old hurts as if he didn't want to tell me anything more about his name. And so I asked him what land he hailed from. But this, too, it seemed, touched upon terrible memories.

'Well, Daj, please tell us how you came to be chained up there.'

'Lord Morjin put me there,' he said.

'But why?'

'Because I wouldn't do what he wanted me to.'

'And what was that?'

But Daj didn't want to answer this question either. A deep loathing fell over him as his little body began to shudder.

'Are you a slave?' Atara asked him, looking at his tattooed fore-head.

'Yes,' he said, pressing back into Liljana's bosom. 'That is, I was. But I escaped.'

The story he now told us was a terrible one. A couple of years before, after watching his family slaughtered by Morjin's men and being enslaved in some distant land that he wouldn't name, he had been brought in chains to Argattha And there – in the city above us -Morjin had taken this handsome boy as his body servant. For a slave, it had been a relatively easy life, tending to Morjin's needs in the luxury of the private rooms of his palace. But Daj had hated it. Somehow he had found a way to displease his master. And so Morjin had consigned him to the mines far below Argattha's first level. There, in tunnels so narrow that only young boys slight of body could squeeze through, Daj was given a pick and told to hack away at the veins of goldish ore running through the earth. His life became one of bleeding hands and gashed knees, of whips and curses and the terror of despair. He had slept with the corpses of the many other boys who had died around him; some of the other starved boys, he said, had been forced to eat from these bodies. And somehow, the brave and clever Daj had contrived a way to escape from this living hell.

'I found a way from the mines up to the first level,' he told us, pointing up toward the top of the stairs. 'That's where the dragon is kept. And so no one usually goes there.'

For some months, he told us, he had survived by wandering the first level's abandoned streets and alleys; he had captured rats for food and ripped them apart with his hands and teeth. When the dragon drew near, he hid beyond the doorways of ancient apart-ments or in crumbling store rooms or even in cracks in the earth.

But finally, his dread of the dragon – and his hunger – had grown too great. And so he had tried to steal up into the second level of the city.

'They captured me there,' he said. Then he pointed at his forehead. 'The mark gave me away – that's why all the slaves are tattooed. Lord Morjin himself came to see me taken back down to the first level and chained in the great hall. He gave me to the dragon. Just like he's given all the others.'