Emily Rodda - Dragon's Nest

Filli began chattering frantically. He had had quite enough of dragons.

Lindal felt for her spears, remembered they were gone, and lurched forward, her eyes desperately searching the ground.

‘My spears!’ she mumbled. ‘I must find—’

Barda took her arm and gently drew her back. ‘Be still, Lindal,’ he said. ‘We will explain everything later. Just be still now, and wait.’

They backed against the nearest rock. There was nowhere else to go.

A huge shadow swept over them. They bent beneath the wind of mighty wings. And then the wind abruptly ceased and they looked up.

The dragon had landed at the edge of the Nest. It was watching them calmly.

Speak to it, Lief told himself. It is waiting.

But his mouth was dry, and he felt as though his back had become part of the rock. He summoned up his courage and forced himself to step forward.

The ruby dragon looked down at him and seemed to smile.

‘So!’ it said, its voice soft and whispering. ‘So you have come, king of Deltora, wearing the great ruby of my territory. It is just as Doran promised.’

‘Yes,’ Lief said. ‘I searched for you, and at last I found you.’

‘Or I found you ,’ said the dragon. Its eyes flashed, and its forked tail twitched.

‘There is evil here,’ it said. ‘Evil and poison. You allowed an intruder to enter my land, while I slept.’

Lief felt a chill of fear, but forced himself to hold the dragon’s blood red gaze.

‘Not I,’ he said. ‘It happened long, long ago. Can you destroy the evil? As you have destroyed its guardian?’

He glanced at the limp form of Rolf, lying on the stones.

‘We will see,’ said the ruby dragon. ‘Come closer. You alone.’

Lief did as he was bid, though his knees were trembling so that he could hardly stand.

‘And closer still,’ the dragon said.

Lief moved so close that if he had stretched out his hand he could have touched the glittering red scales of the beast’s neck. The scent of the dragon filled his nose. It was like the smell of hot metal mixed with burning leaves.

The ruby on the Belt of Deltora blazed like fire.

The dragon spread its wings and closed its eyes.

For a long moment it seemed to bask in the ruby’s radiance. And when its eyes opened once more, it seemed to Lief that they were deeper and darker than they had been before.

‘Now,’ the dragon said.

Its wings still spread, it plunged into the hollow called Dragon’s Nest. With its mighty claws it began to rake away the stones in the centre, scooping them out by the hundreds, by the thousands, flinging them up and away.

19 - The Sister of the East

Stones pelted the companions like giant hail. Covering their heads with their arms, they stumbled away from the edge of the Nest.

From a safe distance they stood and watched in awe as stones showered from the hollow to pile in great drifts around its rim. But gradually their excitement died, and a feeling of foreboding took its place.

As the dragon dug deeper into the pit, as the heaps of stones grew larger, the air was becoming thicker and harder to breathe. The light was dimming. And a strange, low ringing sound was growing louder.

Giant waves pounded on the shore, now sometimes foaming over the tops of the tall rocks and streaming down like a waterfall to run in rivulets between the stones.

But even the waves could not drown out the terrible song of the Sister of the East floating up from the hollow.

It was a song of barren despair, of ruin and misery, of dullness and death. One low note, haunting, penetrating, relentless.

And worst of all, strangely familiar.

Filli was whimpering beneath Jasmine’s collar. Jasmine herself was hunched and frowning as if in pain. Lindal sat slumped on the stones, her head bowed, her hands pressed to her ears.

‘I did not know,’ Barda murmured. Lief glanced at him. The big man’s face was gleaming with sweat.

‘I have been hearing this sound all my life,’ Barda muttered, his lips scarcely moving. ‘Not like this. Not so that I was aware of it. But now I realise that faintly it has always been there, like the sun on my face, or the air I breathed. I did not even think of it as sound. I thought it was the sound of silence.’

‘Yes,’ said Lief.

And then they both realised that the stones had stopped falling, and they could hear no movement inside the hollow.

‘Where are you? Come to me!’

Lief did not know if the dragon had called in his mind, or aloud.

It does not matter, he told himself slowly. All that matters is that I must go.

He forced himself to move forward, pushing through the dull, thick air, scrambling up a towering heap of stones. He crawled to the very edge of the heap, and peered down into Dragon’s Nest.

The broad, flat surface of the Nest had become a yawning pit at the base of a vast, stony funnel.

The dragon had dug down to the bare rock. Now it crouched on the rock, in the centre of the pit, staring at the thing it had uncovered.

The thing was like a glowing, pulsating egg. It was a poisonous, flaring yellow, so bright that it seemed to hurt the eyes.

Its low, continuous song drilled into Lief’s ears. And from it radiated evil so intense that his throat closed and his skin burned.

‘Come to me, or I am lost.’

The dragon’s voice was very faint. Lief saw with terror that the rich scarlet of its scales was slowly dimming.

Without hesitation, without a thought, not even hearing Barda’s shout of alarm, he flung himself over the edge.

Tumbling and gasping he slid down through the piled stones, down into the pit where the dragon crouched.

He landed heavily near the beast’s hind feet. A mass of stones came with him, beating on the dragon’s folded wings, half covering its tail.

The dragon did not speak, did not move. There was not a quiver of its skin, or a twitch of a claw. Its great body was utterly motionless.

Lief tried to stand, and found he could not. The sinister song of the Sister of the East filled his ears and his mind. Its evil power battered him, beat him to the ground.

He could not stand. He could not walk. But the dragon lay rigid, fading as he watched. And the Sister of the East sang on, spreading its terror and its poison.

Lief began to crawl, being careful not to touch the dragon’s body as he passed it.

His breath coming in sobbing gasps, he pushed himself towards the poisonous yellow thing that radiated horror and despair, knowing only that the thing must be destroyed—that if it could not be destroyed, all was lost.

But moment by moment, his strength was draining away. His arms and legs were trembling as if he was in the grip of a terrible fever, yet he was chilled to the bone. He feared that soon he would be unable to move at all.

Hardly knowing what he did, he pressed his hands to the great ruby in the Belt of Deltora.

Warmth stole through his fingers, rushed into his arms. And he became aware of a new sound mingling with the low song of the Sister.

It was a slow, heavy thumping sound, like the beating of a great drum. And slowly Lief realised that it was the dragon’s heart.

The Belt … We are linked by the power of the Belt, he thought dimly.

Words flashed into his mind. Doran’s words:

The king, wearing the Belt of Deltora, is Deltora’s only salvation now .

Following an impulse he did not understand, but did not question, Lief lifted one hand from the Belt and placed it on the dragon’s cool, dry skin.

Instantly his fingers tingled, and his own heart swelled in his chest as he felt power surge through him, rush through his body like a raging torrent from the great ruby to the beast.