The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,217
was, and with the fever flowing back inch by inch, already beginning to cloud his thoughts again, he doubted that he would be much good in a fight.
At last, after what might have been hours, the sound of a great hunting horn reverberated from behind them, its urgent echoes multiplying even as the blast was repeated again and yet again. Quare knew then what the fox must feel.
‘Pity,’ Tiamat remarked. ‘I had hoped we might have a bit more time. I’m afraid it’s going to be a race now, Mr Quare.’
Yes, but a race to where?
He could not ask, could only follow as she picked up the pace, pulling him along. The horn continued to blow, further harrying them. Perhaps it was the exertion, or just the fading effects of Tiamat’s kiss, but Quare’s head was soon buzzing, and his stump was throbbing so painfully with each step that he could barely think at all … though he did wonder why it was that a dragon would be running from anything, and why Tiamat, who plainly possessed more than ordinary abilities, did not simply whisk them away through the Otherwhere as Longinus would surely have done.
After a while, Quare noticed a yellowish glow in front of them; it was hard to say just how far away it was, but it seemed to be growing brighter. Tiamat slowed, then halted. ‘Just a little farther, Mr Quare. Can you manage it?’
He nodded, though in fact he was anything but certain of how much longer he could stay on his feet.
‘You have suffered much,’ she said now, and he could feel her gaze upon him though shadows hid her features. ‘Much has been asked of you. Little has been offered in return. That is about to change.’
He heard her take a breath as if about to say more, but instead he felt the soft pressure of her lips on his own again. This time there was no cooling effect, no ebbing of his fever, but there was or anyway seemed to be magic of another sort, for his heart swelled with courage, and he felt himself ready to do anything she asked of him, and more. Though perhaps that was not magic at all. Or if it was, only magic of a most ordinary kind.
She pulled away. ‘They are behind us. We must hurry.’
Quare glanced back and, indeed, could see faint glimmers dancing in the dark.
‘Ahead lies an ancient structure,’ she informed him matter-of-factly. ‘As soon as you can, run to the centre of it.’
‘And what of you?’ he asked – for he found that her kiss had unlocked his tongue.
‘I will join you when I can.’
‘If there is fighting to be done—’
‘I will do it. You are not fit. Nor do you have a weapon. Trust me, Mr Quare.’
‘I do,’ he said and meant it.
She did not reply but was already pulling him onwards. Soon enough he could see that the light was coming from around a corner. Tiamat did not pause but broke into a loping run, leaving Quare to follow as best he could.
When he came around the corner, he stopped in astonishment. He stood at the entrance to a huge cavern – the largest by far that he had seen in his time underground. The floor and walls – and, as far as he could make out, the ceiling, too – were blanketed in mushrooms that emitted the yellowish glow he had noted earlier. A constant bright haze of incandescent spores drizzled down from the ceiling. It took him a moment to grow accustomed to it, as if he had emerged blinking into the light of day. But once his vision had adjusted, his gaze was drawn to the centre of the cavern, where stood a circle of dark stones such as were popularly believed to have been deposited upon the plains of England and Scotland by giants or fairies or druids in bygone days. One such site – the Nine Stones – was located on the outskirts of Dorchester, and as an apprentice Quare had sometimes ventured there to study his books and dream of clockworks and more than clockworks: of ages past, when magic had suffused the land, and of ages yet to come, when a science more wondrous would hold sway. But those had been small and stunted stones, lichen-covered, precariously tilted, two or three even toppled into the grass, so that the effect had been rather like a cemetery gone to seed. Not so here.