Alone

I wander unceasing

Infernal dirge moaning

Breath of ice

Calling

BY THE TIME SHE had recovered from the trauma – hers or his or both, she had no idea – Ashueli arrived with a rope sourced from above and trussed the soldier hand and foot with an air of competence rather at odds with an allegedly dutiful and decorative Princess of the realm.

‘Nice takedown,’ Ash muttered, sounding disbelieving, but the evidence kept moaning about the horrific assault he had suffered, which saved the agitated Faerie from having to explain anything.

Allory touched Hanzuk and sang over him to try to ease the pain. Her wings stuttered through a couple of aerial balletic twirls before the desire to dance drained out of her soles.

The Human’s mouth sagged like a yawning primate. “You –”

Ashueli gaped even more. “Suggids, did you do what … ancestors’ blood be burned! Sorry, Hanzuk, but I’m going to need to gag you now.”

“What is that blue beast? Vicious, I tell you,” he whined. Allory almost checked over her shoulder to see who he might be accusing of being a blue beast, before realising it was her. “What are you doing here, Princess?”

“Breaking in.”

“In … into a dungeon?”

She paused, wadding up something that looked suspiciously and smelled even more suspiciously like a soldier’s sock in her hand. “Where are you keeping the Felidragon? Tell me. Now.”

He offered a defiant glare.

In a Faeling of two summers’ age that might have been cute. Any sympathy Allory might have felt for him faded into faint disgust. Ew.

A minute later, the Fae observed, “Put a sock in it, eh? Is that standard Princess behaviour?”

Murder flashed into those green eyes once more. “I’m not known to be nice to suitors. Nor to bleating fools. This way, Allory Fae.”

Suggids, this one’s far more than she seems, isn’t she?

Taking private notes …

As she strode along a row of reasonably well-maintained cells, Ash added, “The Dragons are kept toward the end by design. Basically, these are deep pits where the beast will be chained at the base with magical, fireproof chains, out of reach of any possibility of burning or breaking the door down. Having a large, irritable Dragon break loose beneath one’s castle is a common Human nightmare.”

The Elf glanced at Allory in the deep gloom as if amused to find a winged companion flitting alongside at the level of her ear. Colourful jungle bird? Not quite. None that could be accused of burgling dungeons, anyways.

“I wouldn’t call them beasts,” Allory replied primly. “That alone could bring your castle down.”

“Eh … right. I guess I don’t have much experience with Dragons. Knives, plenty. Less so on the scalies.”

Wagging a finger sternly, she lectured, “Dragons are not beasts, scalies or furries, alright? Expunge said insults from your vocabulary this instant or I shall not be held responsible for the glorious reign of Princess Ashueli of Ahm-Shira ending in a shower of sparks and a loud explosion.”

Incredulous stare.

“I meant it. No bad words.”

The Elf sniffed, “For an endearing mite, you sure bite hard.”

Such a sense of lightness her teasing provoked. A Fae could hardly believe her lippiness should be returned so drily. She had never interacted with her siblings like this.

The wide stone tunnel grew gloomier now, as the sconces were less frequent. Allory yelped as a rat scuttled almost beneath Ashueli’s feet, but her companion did not flinch. Probably ate spiders and scorpions for breakfast, followed by a light luncheon of python skinned with her bare teeth. A pool of light ahead resolved into a smaller guardroom, furnished with hooks, chains and prods probably used for handling captive Dragons. Or, torture implements? That might be closer to the truth. Allory averted her eyes. Beyond, all was blackness. Inky blackness. No trouble picking out the next key. It was the curly brass one longer than she was tall and the heavy metal gate it unlocked stood ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide. The bars, three inches in diameter, certainly appeared designed to stop even a rampaging Dragon in his tracks.

The first cell door was every bit as large and heavy as she had expected, a metal monstrosity reinforced with bolts, bars and multiple locks that practically screamed, ‘danger inside!’ Ashueli made to pass by.

“Er, why didn’t you check that one?”

“His tracks go on – wet footprints, see? Do you have night sight?”

“I do.”

“Yours is probably sharper than mine. Faerie advantages. I’ll go get a torch. One second.”

That was the instant Allory flew straight into a huge cobweb. One humiliating shriek and a fit of panic later, she tore free. “Sorry. All fine.” She dusted off her clothing, clucking crossly. Yuck. Spiders. Plenty of them in the jungle, some growing as large as four times her size. Speaking of common nightmares, the one about a giant green adkorm tarantula sneaking into her cocoon was a favourite …

Ashueli lowered her swords. “Don’t scare me like that. It might end badly.”

The weapons twirled and lodged in their sheaths before Allory could blink. Grief. She was no warrior, but that move struck her as frighteningly professional.

Princess or assassin?

Quite the education in their short friendship already.

With a smoking torch in hand, they avoided further veils of cobwebs and a splatter of something that resembled a small mammal’s fresh entrails on the floor, tracking the damp footprints around a corner to the last set of five doors, larger still than anything that had come before, arranged around an alcove – a dead end. Ashueli replied to her question by noting that her father had a policy of clearing out his dungeons by engaging in regular prisoner exchanges. Why was that? Keeping creatures or people locked up was dishonourable. He preferred to kill them in open combat. Oh. Allory eyeballed the massive metal door, second from the right, which Hanzuk had identified by means of leaving a nice wet splodge on the stone.

Probably from his drippy Human snout. Gross.

Allory’s gaze dipped. “He threw meat beneath this one, judging by the bloodstains.” She called, “Yaarah? Yaarah, are you in there?”

“He’s probably been beaten up or interrogated,” Ashueli advised. “We’ve another problem. This type of door takes a different, secondary key. Someone up there might have it. I – wait. Can you fit through that crack beneath?”

“Sure …”

“Well, go on and find your boyfriend then.”

“He’s a Felidragon! Suggids, girl! Do you want to get both of us killed?”

“Sorry about the tongue-before-brain incident,” she grumbled. “Shoo. Be a nice little Faerie now and go burgle my daddy’s dungeon. Quickly, before those other dopes start waking up.”

“Do you always talk about your father’s trusted soldiers like that?”

“Adversarial relationship.”

Adversarial? Definitely a word for this Elven Princess.

With this thought, Allory wriggled beneath the door and found herself standing upon a short ledge perhaps four feet wide that led into a pit of even blacker blackness, if that made any sense at all. Some of the meat had not made it over the edge. The gristly heap with hairs and other unmentionables sticking out of it did not exactly resemble a carnivore’s prime cut. She inhaled deeply. Ah, the fresh whiff of unwashed Felidragon. She knew that pong from recent experience.

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“Allory?”

She called back, “It’s him for sure. I’ll go down and wake him up.”

Thinking that she sounded far more confident than she felt, Allory winged down into the pit, her dual wing-clusters working busily to stir the soupy air. A few things must have died down here recently. Foetid. It was as deep as Ashueli had promised, as much as a hundred and fifty feet. She squinted toward the bottom, wishing that a Scintillant Fae could actually scintillate with their own radiance on command, but that appeared to demand feats of magic the misfiring know-nothing could not replicate even if her life depended upon it. Nor could she shake the irrational fear of a monstrous spider waiting to ambush her here at the bottom of this pit. She glanced about nervously.

“Yaarah? Are you here, Yaarah?”

Nothing. Plus, he was a Golden Purrmaine. Where did one hide a living bar of gold, even in darkness such as this? Would other Felidragons consider his colouration handsome?

Focus on the job, Faerie!

Nothing could hide his scent from her nostrils. Following the clear olfactory trail despite that her sensitive nasal membranes had begun to burn from an overload of other putrid yuckiness about the place, she swooped uncertainly toward the wall at her left hand. Here was another scent, something like an abscess or festering wound, another smell she recognised from her own trouble with that wing-cluster wound. Aha! At least her healing magic had begun to work with some sort of reliable frequency.

Now was that a silvery glint, perhaps a length of heavy chain – the darkness surged!

“Got you!”

“Yaarah?” Allory yelped, bounced, yelped again, made an abortive attempt to escape, and found herself scrabbling at the inside of a set of very fine fangs. “Suggids!” Definitely on the wrong side of the fangs, a Fae jail every bit as effective as this dungeon was for a Felidragon. She kicked at a rough tongue pressing against her back and shrieked, “What’s the matter with you? Yaarah, stop it!”

“Good evening, snack,” purred a deep, feminine Felidragon voice, sounding as if it were pouring up her spine to assault the innards of her brain with waves of pure terror. No. Not Yaarah. Not by a gazillion miles. “How agreeable of you to settle upon my tongue, frrr-gurrr.”

“Let me go this instant, you mad beast!”

“Now, that’s just rude. I eat rude.”

“I – I’m sorry, but you can’t eat an intelligent creature. Besides, I’m here to –”

“How intelligent can you be if you’re the one sitting on my tongue? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t fill my lean belly with your meat, even if you’re barely a scrap. One reason.”

“I’m, uh … I’m here to … help you escape?”

“MRRR-HRRR! A miniature Faerie breaking a Felidragon out of the Durc’s deepest dungeon? You are a wit. For the amusement value alone, I shall permit you to continue with the entertainment. Go on.”

“Gnarr!” Allory tried, sounding a great deal more like an overstressed mosquito than a fearsome beast.

“Oh, do keep straining against my fangs. It tickles.”

“Allory? I’m coming, Allory!”

“Ah, and who’s this?” The unfamiliar accent vibrated up and down her spine. “More meat? Must be my lucky day, murrr-harrr-HARRR! Do wish your luckless friend a swift trip to the afterlife.”

Firelight flickered without as the Felidragon cracked open her jaw to grant her a perfect view through her white, fearfully sharp jail bars. Light orange light played from deep inside her throat, casting strong shadows around her jail – oh, suggids. Dragon fire! Not to put too fine a point on it, Allory panicked. Whipping out a dagger, she plunged it deep into the forked tongue pressing against the back of her knees.

GRRAAARRGGHH!!

She hurtled free from that maw, coming within inches of being fricasseed in a swingeing plume of blazing orange flame. Yaarah could spit fire. This female gushed fire as if she had a personal vendetta with the entire world.

From somewhere above, Ashueli hurled her flaming torch at the Dragoness. The Elf plunged down from some crazy height with a vengeful battle cry, spitting half a dozen blades – at least, as Allory saw it. The Felidragon coiled and dodged in a blur of sable, so dark in the dungeon space that her presence teased and tricked the eye, but the thick chain bolting her to a large U-shaped anchor in the floor pulled her up short.

For the longest breath of her life, everyone stared at everyone else. One hulking black Felidragon. One badly rattled Scintillant Fae. One Elf who landed with awe-inspiring grace, her wiry yet powerful legs splayed and swords raised in a martial pose plucked straight from a textbook no tiny wimp called Allory had ever read. A silver dagger handle winked from the sable Felidragon’s shoulder, embedded to the hilt. Then, the Dragoness curved her neck and licked the flaming torch lightly, somehow curling it up and drawing it into her mouth.

“How do you like the dark, friends?” she purred.

The jaw clamped shut.

Black slammed down over her vision, bringing a visceral terror. Suddenly, the Fae could not even remember which way was up, for every nightmare of her childhood attacked her at once. She hovered in place, paralysed with indecision.

“Wrong Felidragon, I presume?” Ashueli’s disembodied voice drawled.

GNARR-SNAP!!

“Missed, ha ha. Try again.”

GRRAA-BRROAARRGGHH!!

White-orange fire hosed right across to the opposite dungeon wall. Apparently, Dragon breath became hotter and whiter with increasing rage. In that literal flash, Allory realised that this Dragoness was larger than Yaarah and a warrior born, but that the Elf had somehow with a ventriloquist’s trick misdirected her attack. The firelight glinted off her fully flexed bow, the tendons on the back of her left hand rippling as she began to release a lethal shot …

“Don’t kill her!” Allory screamed.

The silver point quivered in place, not released. The Dragon fire played behind those lethal fangs but did not lash out again – not yet.

After a startled second, two voices queried, “Who, her?”

“Aye, her. Or me. Or anyone. Can we just … put down the weapons? And fangs? No violence needed. I – I mean, look here, Felidragon –”

“It’s too dark for that,” the Elf chuckled.

“Whatever! Seriously? Look, we happen to have the dungeon keys and we happen to be down here at the bottom of this infernal pit, so can we just let you loose and get out of here without having to go the extra distance of killing one another?”

Her squeaking echoed embarrassingly around the stone pit, returning to her ears in mocking repetitions of her meek yet irked tone.

“Logical,” Ash admitted, sounding as if she’d very much prefer to continue fighting.

“That depends, mrrr-grrr,” purred the Dragon.

“On what? Your predatory compulsion to trap helpless creatures behind your awesome fangs?” Allory stormed. Humiliation transformed to rage? Unfamiliar emotions boiled in her craw. “Look, we’re in quite a hurry, so if you can just tell me where my friend Yaarah is trapped … somewhere around here?”

Not in this dungeon, clearly.

“You’re looking for a Felidragon?”

“Aye! My – friend – Yaarah. A Felidragon. Can we get that straight? Not you. You were the last thing we expected to find down here. I don’t even like you, you’re a bullying nuisance, but I will consider setting you free because nothing and nobody deserves to be stuck down here in a pile of stinking faeces rotting for an eternity!”

“Mrrrwll!” spluttered the Felidragon, amused or outraged, she could not tell which.

Ashueli gasped loudly.

“Eep!” Allory clamped her mouth shut and fervently wished she was a thousand miles away in the deepest jungle in existence hiding under a leaf. Any leaf would do.

The Elf said, “We really must talk about that vengeful imagination of yours, little Fae. She babbles under stress.”

“I am not little,” she sulked aloud, “but I was bullied a lot when I was smaller, which seems to be coming out in rather unexpected – smaller, ha ha, did you hear what I said? Oh dear!” A fit of the giggles ambushed her. “I know it’s hard to believe, but I was actually smaller once upon a time …”

“Mad,” the Elf noted.

“Delightfully so,” agreed the Felidragon, leaking fire from her muzzle to help everyone see better. “So, you have a Felidragon friend whom you’re trying to save, prrr-frrrt? I believe that makes us allies – if something could be done about this –” she shook her right hind paw, making the heavy chain clink “– I should be happy to help you to retrieve this … Yaarah, did you say? I’ve not heard that name before, although it rolls pleasingly off the tongue, Yaarrraahhh. What manner of Felidragon is he?”

“A Golden Purrmaine,” Allory said.

“How rare, I have never before met one of his kind – AHARRR!!”

Ashueli, who had been advancing with a keyring in hand to effect the necessary, dive-rolled sideways in a blink but slipped and landed rump-first in something nasty, judging by the damp squelch. She muttered a highly inappropriate word.

“Sorry, little Elf,” the Dragoness rumbled in amusement. “I know exactly where they will be keeping him, is all I meant. You can stop shaking now.”

“The only thing shaking is my head!” the Princess returned heatedly.

“You do?” Allory squealed.

“She also squeals at a pitch that hurts your ears,” the Elf added. “Where would that be?”

“Durc Durhelm’s treasury.”

Ashueli stared at the Felidragon, and then started laughing. “In my father’s treasury? Inside his treasury? With respect at least as wide as that canyon out there, why, o Dragoness, would you stick any gold-adoring feline Dragon inside a treasury? Some peculiar form of insanity? Death wish, perhaps?”

“You are Durc’s daughter?” she hissed.

“Oh lucky, lucky me,” she snapped, bending to the shackle clamped about the black Felidragon’s ankle. Grief, she was dark. Even with the light, most of her just appeared to be shadowier than shadow. Beautiful in ways that put the night into ‘nightmare,’ but equally disconcerting. Could she be one of the egg-stealers the Fire Raptor had complained about? Or know something about them?

The Felidragon’s reaction was telling. She had begun to round upon the royal with her mighty sabre fangs bared but pulled up with a surprised clack.

Saved by sarcasm?

Evidently keenly aware of the danger, the Elf said in flat, hostile tones, “Aye, I am Durc’s daughter by Zinueli Sylvanchild, Felidragon. You just happen to catch me running away with this Scintillant Fae, called Allory.”

“Scintillant?” the Felidragon purred.

“Shines in the dark. Obviously.” Over another growl, she added with an imperious flick of her hair, “I’m Ashueli. Ash to my friends. Which number exactly one. Her.”

Her slashing finger nearly removed Allory’s left ear.

“The Elf shortens her name when she’s stressed,” Allory advised, flicking her wings to assume a perkier-than-thou aerial posture slightly out of arm’s reach. Safer that way. “So, er – let’s start with, uh, what’s your name?”

“I am Sabline-shar-Maranjix Tashkarine Alvar, of unknown Dynasty, Sable Sabrefang Felidragon,” the Dragoness said formally. “I was once a warrior, mrrr-hrrr, but I am no longer.”

Allory bowed mid-air. “Welcome, Sabline. We need a warrior.”

Ashueli cleared her throat loudly.

Sabline glared at her. “What?”

“Two warriors!” the Fae stormed. “Look, can the pair of you … you equally lethal beasts stop trying to eat one another for dinner and just get on with the business of rescuing Yaarah already? On that note, why under Middlesun has he been stuck in the treasury? That’s ridiculous.”

“Not if you wish to interrogate him,” Sabline hissed, clearly narked by her tone. In fact, it was hard to tell what would not nark the Dragoness. Prickly as a jungle thornbush. “Thank you, Elf.”

“My pleasure, Felidragon.”

Stickier than a misplaced pot of glue, the pair of them. Allory scowled at the air. They’d be sharpening their respective sets of cutlery on each other’s skulls next, those two stiff-necked nitwits!

Stretching her hind limb as if it pained her in some fashion, the Felidragon said, “Our kind have a little-known weakness to the element of our colouration, frrr-ssst. Durc Durhelm is no fool. If Yaarah is a Golden Purrmaine, locking him inside a treasury full of gold for a few hours will thoroughly addle his wits – assuming he has a few to begin with.”

“It’s that bad?” Allory asked worriedly.

“Unfortunately, it is the perfect stratagem. Given long enough treatment, shrrr- gnarrr, he’d betray his own mother in a heartbeat.”

The Elf rapped, “I’ve heard enough. What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

More burglary? Once a thief …