YAARAH CAME TO A full stop on his bed of coins. Shook his head. Blinked stupidly.
Allory blinked too, and hoped she did not look half as stupid as the scholar Felidragon. What was it with these visions and their ability to twist up her reality in more ways than a Scintillant’s tongue could fold itself? Back to the real world. Maybe. An absurd level of gratitude tingled in her antennae as she realised she was no longer stuck in a spider’s body. What a whacky-sap experience, yet it already faded as if the colours of memory faded with the advent of night, until her mind settled as if into a familiar die-cast mould.
Sabline bared her fangs to communicate a terrifying message no sane creature could have mistaken.
Looking her up and down in a way fit to make half the treasury blush, one imagined, Yaarah mewled, “I say, was that your best tickle?”
Definitely back to reality. One glaring issue.
Yaarah was clearly insane.
BRRROOOAARRGHH!! Sabline bellowed.
The very heavens of Centresky had no parallel for the paroxysm this proclamation discharged upon the male Felidragon’s cocoon. That ear-splitting bellow preceded the unleashing of an incendiary sable thunderbolt. One second, the Golden Purrmaine resembled a furry statue half-exploded by fright, his every hair standing to attention. Then, he bolted for the farthest jungles with a caterwaul of the utmost dread.
Only, a treasury was an enclosed space with none too many places to hide in.
Allory yelled at them, but she might as well have tried to stop a hurricane by holding out her hand. Thundering in a towering fury, Sabline chased the golden prankster all over the chamber, smashing down racks of golden armour, ripping through priceless works of art and demolishing an entire display of ornate porcelain and ceramic dishes – priceless, of that she had no doubt. Ashueli stood and caught flies in her open mouth, apparently stupefied by the majestic scale of destruction being unleashed upon her father’s treasury. Yaarah was just quick enough and clearly illogical enough that he could dodge the worst of her blows or throw off her violent charges. He ducked behind treasure chests and skidded beneath a solid marble table, dashing sideways around the vault’s exterior stone walls before toppling a statue of some forgotten ruler.
After a moment, the Elf glanced up at Allory. “Slightly impolite suggestion, I’d wager?”
“Maybe!”
No, Durc Durhelm had not been thinking when he locked a Dragon inside his treasury. Bad, bad idea. Locking up intelligent or now completely barmy creatures, for that matter … no. Never, ever beneath Middlesun.
Payback? For the first time in her life, a prickle of the most wicked satisfaction ran from her toes to the tips of her antennae. Suggids! This felt good. Scarily good.
Her head jerked as the Sabrefang pounced with another grating roar. The golden one rebounded off a tall silver-trimmed antique cupboard, ripping splinters out of its gorgeously hand-carved face as he scrabbled away in a fire-dribbling panic. Doubling back so sharply that Sabline missed her follow-up swipe by a whisker’s length, Yaarah surged for the chandelier.
Everyone in the chamber yelled, “No!”
The fixture swayed violently as he struck the heavy arrangement of crystal flutes, rings and droplets and clung on with all four paws, but it held … somehow.
Swinging upside down to the tune of a musical tinkling, Yaarah purred with great satisfaction, “Come to my palpitating bosom, my delicate muse, o luscious light of my life!”
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Ashueli shook her head. “Somebody stop him before I vomit.”
Sabline stalked toward him like a patch of ink flowing over the golden treasures, her powerful muscles rippling and ten-inch fangs bared. Allory understood the magnificent part. She also understood that Yaarah was about to be dismembered and his various parts scattered to the jungle winds.
“WHAT IS THIS?”
Whirling toward the entrance to the treasure chamber, Ashueli turned as pale as a sheet. Well, a bronzed sheet, but the colour change was marked indeed. There stood Durc Durhelm, flanked by at least two dozen of his crimson-robed soldiers – better trained than the dregs of soldiery they had ambushed below, even a Faerie girl could tell at a glance – slowly but definitively turning a shade of puce that screamed his displeasure louder even than a pair of rampaging Felidragons.
Yaarah dropped onto a stand draped in dozens of strings of emerald beads. He called cheerfully, “Durc, old bean pod! Good to see you again, crrr-pssst! Have you met Allory the Scintillant Fae?”
The Human leader’s eyes leaped to a person who would have loved anything under Middlesun just then other than to be singled out. “Aye, I’ve had the dubious pleasure. What of it?”
“Eep,” Allory croaked.
“Terrible troublemaker. She’s the one who unleashed a Dryad upon your city, you know.”
No! He didn’t just say that. Tell me he didn’t –
“Did she now?” Durc’s face turned an even more fantastical colour. “And you, daughter? Burgling my treasury in the company of traitorous Felidragons and marauding Faerie, clearly smuggled through my security systems by a traitor to the realm? What could you possibly have to say for yourself?”
For a second, Allory thought she might indeed throw up. Then, her chin lifted. “Actually, father, I’m off to … to join the war.”
“The war?”
“Aye, the war.”
“You would betray he to whom you owe your very life? I always suspected you were duplicitous, but this –”
“The Elven side, of course,” she said, smiling a brittle yet terrible smile. “Which makes us allies. And you can’t stop me.”
His throat bobbed, the only movement in the chamber. Durc’s knuckles whitened upon the hilt of his sword. After a second, the dark eyes glittered in calculation. Attack? Shut the doors and starve them out? What would he –
“GO-GO-GOOOOOAARGHH!” Sabline thundered.
One way to panic a Fae into a flutter!
Allory’s startled glance took in that the burly Dragoness had seized Yaarah in some kind of evil headlock, her muscles bulging as she secured him like an uncompromising Henzaroseflash making good on one of her favourite threats. Fear made him leap; the Dragoness’ uncompromising grip and strength kept him on track as they soared together toward the doorway like a double-Dragon. Startlingly effective.
“Stop them!” Durc bellowed at once.
Ashueli hesitated. Glancing back over her shoulder, Allory recognised the instant her expression changed, determination replacing fear, courage rising to the fore. She sprang nimbly after the flying Felidragons, running first up a tower of rich rolled-up tapestries, before bounding atop a huge cupboard. Two stutter-steps restored her balance before she launched into a leap worthy of any feline, covering no less than thirty-five feet through the air as she soared up toward the fleeing Fae. Durc began to raise his sword, but his daughter passed by far above as she somehow alighted up near the top of the first vertical column bracketing the stone door. Left side to right, then back again, she zigzagged between the doors, clinging as if by magic to sheer surfaces upon which an ant might have struggled to find purchase.
Durc lowered his blade as Allory whizzed by overhead at the velocity of unmitigated horror. No, she had never known how fast she could fly, but the motivation surely helped.
He bellowed, “Hold your fire! That’s my daughter!”
The mismatched group sprang and flew through the gap into the gloom of the corridor beyond, appearing to scatter soldiers in an invisible bow-wave as they tried to reverse course and ended up crashing into one another.
“AFTER THEM!”
Alright. Only outright murder was off the menu. How he might punish his daughter for this escapade did not bear thinking about. Or anyone else who happened to be caught abetting this little rebellion.
Another roar of fury chased the intrepid foursome along, as if they needed any incentive. Allory touched the Elf’s flying black hair as she sprinted along the wall, behaving as if gravity really was an occasional inconvenience for others. How was that even possible without the use of wings? Sabline hauled Yaarah along by main force, using her wings, claws and hind legs to scrag him like a puppy. What strength!
“Where to?” panted the Sabrefang.
“Back to the dungeons!” the Princess shouted. “This way!”
“I am not –”
“There’s a way out! Come on!”
“Bar the doors!” Durc bellowed, not far behind. “To arms, you fools! Seal the upper stairwell. We have them trapped down here – trapped like scheming rats!”
Judging by his incensed expression, retribution beckoned.