was. This was her chance to learn something, her best and perhaps only chance to ask for help.
Hualiama jogged up to the cave entrance, just as a Dragon descended four-pawed to the ledge outside, fifty feet from her position. The Dragon was the orange colour of a flame’s heart and yellow in the underparts, a vast, hoary adult male whose wingspan had to measure over a hundred feet, and whose shoulders topped four times her height. Her breath snagged in awe. Were Dragons truly so heart-arrestingly enormous? No wonder his grip had been overpowering.
When the Orange Dragon fixed his burning eye upon her, however, the Human girl realised her mistake. This was no friendly visitor. A scar twisted the left side of his muzzle into a permanent half-sneer. The power of the Dragon’s sallow gaze reminded her of none other than Ra’aba, the way his brow-ridge drew down and his lip peeled open, revealing a jaw stuffed with gleaming fangs, any one of which could have skewered Lia and served her up as a kebab without a second thought.
Did recognition writhe in her belly? Was this the spirit of Ra’aba, reincarnated in Dragon form?
“Ah, so the dragonets spoke truly,” rumbled the Dragon, swinging his muzzle toward her, flame licking around his huge, flaring nostrils. His voice was as dry as air simmering over the caldera, crackling with fires as though he concealed a bonfire in his throat. “Here’s how it works, Princess. Run. Scream, if you’d like. I’ll give you a count of three.”
Hualiama made a wordless squeak of dread.
“Run.” The Dragon made a shooing motion with his forepaw. “Go on. It’s more amusing for me.”
Terror exploded from her belly in slow motion, burning the pathways of her body. The sense of his evil was so palpable, she knew the Dragon saw her as nothing more than a loathsome insect to be crushed beneath his heel. It was possible to die from fright. She was the prey. The Orange Dragon was the predator, and nothing in the Island-World could protect her from such a creature. Doom stalked her upon wings the colour of molten lava.
“One.”
She jerked back.
“Two …”
Hualiama’s feet seemed possessed of wings of their own. She had never fled so fast, but the monster out there provided more than enough motivation. An agile left-right dance-step took her into their chamber. She sprinted flat out. Air hissed past her ears. The Orange Dragon’s monstrous challenge, the full-throated roar of an adult male on the hunt, shook the cavern.
“Three!”
The Orange Dragon pounced, his paws crashing down near the cave entrance, the shock conducted through sand and rock to her fleeing feet. The air sucked away from her lungs; Lia heard a rising thunder of fire, a crackling and sizzling sound as a wave of heat rolled over her back, as superheated as any volcanic eruption. Fire-reflections dazzled from the crystals embedded in the cavern walls. Lia dived headlong into the cool pool. The world flared orange. Rolling over underwater, she gazed up through the ripples at a torrent of Dragon fire, roiling and billowing above the pool with fatal brilliance, as though she stared into the heart of the twin suns.
Her body was too buoyant! Hualiama tried to pull herself back down as she floated toward the surface.
The fire expired upward, smoke curling hungrily over stone.
Now was the time for silence. No splashing. She must still her heart’s thrashing. Gripping a rock with her hands to provide a modicum of control, Lia delicately raised her face out of the water. She forced herself to ignore the burning in her lungs as she allowed overheated, smoke-filled air to trickle in.
She heard a groan from deeper in the cave. “Oh … burned …”
Flicker? He was imitating her?
“Ah, Princess. Not dead yet?”
The cavernous rumbling of the Dragon’s fire stomach warned her. Gulping half a breath, Lia ducked again as a sunburst of Dragon fire streamed into the cavern, a fiery breath so powerful and sustained that she saw the surface of her pool begin to boil. A dull reverberation conducted through the water to her ears, the thunder of his attack.
The fire lasted an unending time as Lia desperately schooled her lungs and limbs, denying the desire to breathe. She had to stay hidden. Had to! Even if she slowly boiled underwater …
* * * *
Flicker crept deeper into a crack between the rocks, away from the Human skeleton he had planted in the corridor at the Ancient One’s suggestion. He stilled his breath.