Modestly, he agreed, I know. You took your time, straw-head. That is a most striking outfit. Almost as fine as Dragon scales.
So typically Flicker! Lia said, Thank you, my friend.
A short swing and a quarter-hour scramble later, Flicker introduced her to a hole that Hualiama would never have guessed led beneath the Island. My friends widened the tunnel to accommodate you, he said.
She said, This is near the avalanche site, isn’t it?
Beneath it on the southern aspect.
And the Tourmaline Dragon’s alive?
Lia … he doesn’t sound friendly. He might be feral.
You didn’t go in, did you? Lia hissed. Fine, I’ll go talk to him. Look, the poor thing’s probably starving. Would you hunt and bring the Dragon a kill or two?
Flicker seemed all too eager to leave the dangerous work to her. Fine. Lia grumbled a little as she slithered beneath a large, flat boulder and dropped gingerly into the space beyond. A whiff of cool, stale air greeted her questing nostrils. Pausing to allow her eyes to adjust to the dimness, Lia took in a narrow tunnel–more a crack or shear between two rock faces–which at some point had been half-filled with a jumble of rocks and dirt fallen from above. The footing was treacherous. All too easy to snap an ankle, she thought, feeling her way forward with care.
A little light filtered down ahead, and beyond that, she saw another brighter patch. Encouraging. Slowly, sliding along on her haunches or creeping crablike over the rocks, listening intently, Lia moved deeper beneath Ha’athior Island.
The crack narrowed, eventually forcing her to turn her shoulders sideways to squeeze through the narrowest parts. She heard water dripping somewhere nearby. The roof lowered. Odd. The tunnel seemed to end a short ways ahead. Lia paused again, peering about at the oblong boulder she stood upon. If she was not mistaken, she stood above a yawning space, and the cleft ended just ten feet or so ahead in a pit of impenetrable darkness. Picking up a pebble, she tossed it ahead.
Clink. Clink. Nothing.
Whatever she stood above, it was deep. Only the boulder lay between her feet and an unknowable drop. Lia hoped it was wedged tight.
Force the lungs to draw in a breath. “Dragon?”
Silence. A silence in which menace lurked, listening.
“Dragon, are you there?”
Claws, scraping upon rock. A leathery rustle came to her ears, perhaps wings dragging across stone. Hualiama wondered briefly if this had been a mistake, if Amaryllion could somehow have been wrong about the Tourmaline Dragon. A low, throbbing sound echoed up from the depths now, accompanied by a thump-thump that shook dirt onto her head and shoulders. The creature was on the move. Lia’s heart made a bid to leap out of her throat as she realised the Dragon was rushing closer, up beneath where she stood.
GRRAAAAAGGGHHH!
Dragon-thunder paralysed the Human girl. With a rushing, whooshing sound, as though a storm had unexpectedly entered the tunnel and gusted toward her, a bright orange light raged upward.
Dragon fire!
Chapter 16: Baiting a Dragon
HUALIAMA THREW HERSELF into a headlong dive. Scramble! Claw with the fingers! There was no time. Instinct alone wedged her body between two boulders, head tucked into a foetal position, as fire stormed along the narrow passageway, first blasting upward, then following the curvature of the tunnel to wash over the exposed parts of her body.
She remembered screaming. There was pain riven through her right arm and thigh, her buttocks and feet. Lia swam up from the blackness whimpering, the sickly-sweet odour of burned flesh making her gag. She had to escape.
Below, the Dragon purred like a hundred-times-larger dragonet. Satisfied.
Stretching her wounds was agony. What now, Great Dragon? she moaned in distress. I obey, I hurt … I die?
What a fool she had been, sashaying gaily into a Dragon’s lair. Let this be a lesson. Those who did not want to be rescued could never be, even if they regained the freedom of the skies. She had only wanted to help. She had only obeyed a heart laid desolate by a Dragon’s fate.
Lia hauled her body back down the tunnel as if she were a blind worm scraping inside its burrow. At the sound of her movement, the Dragon’s engine-like purr rose to a crescendo. GRRR-RRR-RRR.
“Stupid, unthinking beast.” Lia used the sound of her anger as a counterpoint against the pain. “You have to … unnh–” the world faded through black “–escape. Come with me.”
Heave herself onto a boulder. Slide back in a tangle of limbs, soaked with sweat. She had