How to Slay a Dragon - Bill Allen [72]
“Really?” said Greg. “We have a mountain range by the same name back home.”
“I thought you said you didn’t have dragons in your world,” Lucky said.
“We don’t.”
“Well, why are your mountains smoky?”
Greg quickly dropped the subject.
If the men behind noticed they had just been transported to a new location, not one said a word. Perhaps they thought this was just another of the many skills of the Mighty Greghart. Before long Agni approached from behind, looking more haggard than Greg remembered.
“You did it,” Greg told him.
“You have a keen sense of the obvious.”
“Why haven’t you done it again.”
Agni frowned. “It is not that simple. I must rest for a time before I can try again. Perhaps in the morning.”
Up until recently Greg hadn’t thought the trip could be more difficult, but the high altitude added even more bite to the air, and he found it hard enough to force himself toward the spire without having a steep incline dropped in his path.
He talked to a few soldiers along the way, hoping the company might ease his fears, but even the soldiers grew more uneasy the farther they hiked. Greg might have taken comfort knowing he was not the only one on edge, but it was hard not to dwell on the fact that, even when banded together in a group of five hundred armed men with a magician in their company, the others were afraid to get much closer to Ruuan.
Greg felt uneasy for another reason, too. Everyone viewed him as such a great hero. He wished he could tell all of Ryder’s men the truth, but he also remembered what the captain said about these men risking their lives, and about the dangers of doubting prophecies.
They entered a peculiar section of trail where the stones grunted when Greg stepped on them. Though just startling at first, the noise soon grew unbearably loud, what with five hundred soldiers following close behind. A short time later they passed through an even stranger area where the rocks all wobbled as if made of Jell-O. With each new oddity he passed, Greg missed Priscilla all the more. He knew if she were here she’d have plenty of stories about the history of these mountains, and probably even a few about how she had wrestled a harpy or single-handedly fought off an entire band of goblins deep in one of these narrow passes. Greg had an idea Priscilla’s imagination was nearly as active as his own, but make-believe or not, he would give anything to hear just one more of her stories.
They camped that evening on a plateau overlooking a row of jagged, snow-covered cliffs. But then Greg spotted the thousands of tiny dots circling the air above the mountain and knew it was not snow lining those cliff faces. These must be the dive-bombing birds of the White Cliffs of Darius Priscilla had told him about. If only she could be here to share the sight.
In the morning they set out again. They’d traveled only a short while before Greg once again saw the forest shimmer and transform into the face of a mountain so tall he could no longer see the Infinite Spire behind it. He slowed to a halt, and the five hundred men behind him were forced to do the same, though they did look rather uncomfortable about stopping without receiving a proper command.
Ryder came rushing to the front, accompanied by Bart, wanting to know why they had stopped.
“Had to,” Greg said. “The trail ends.”
Ryder laughed and patted Greg roughly on the back. “Sorry, son. I’ve been hearing songs about you for so long I forget you’re new to these parts.” He reached out and tapped the face of the mountain, and the rock pulled back with a grinding rumble, revealing a hidden staircase within a narrow crevasse rising steeply upward through the mountain.
“Whoa,” said Greg. “How’d you do that?”
“They call this Death’s Pass,” Ryder said.
Greg shuffled back and peered cautiously into the crack.
Bart chuckled and clasped Greg’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, it’s just a name. Remember the Ballad of Greghart? ‘From the House Pendegrass, past the trolls at Death’s Pass, he would rescue a lass from a dragon.’”
“Trolls?” Greg croaked, taking a