How to Slay a Dragon - Bill Allen [76]
“What are you talking about?”
“I think this is how we’re supposed to get past the spirelings. Now, hurry up, get your things. Who knows how long this will last?”
He looked to the spire and hesitated. He’d hoped this moment would never come. He questioned whether it was really here now. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he should be dreaming. If he just took the acorns out of his ears he could fade into peaceful oblivion . . . and then maybe this whole dragon issue would go away.
But then he remembered Priscilla. He helped Lucky to his feet and picked up Nathan’s walking stick.
“What’s that?” Lucky asked, pointing to a rectangular object on the ground.
“My journal.” Greg scooped up the book and tucked it into his tunic. He started to pick up his drab cloak, too, but Lucky shook his head.
“You won’t need that where we’re going.”
Greg nodded. As if in a dream, he felt himself tread over the ridge and down the slope into the valley. Everywhere he looked spirelings and shadowcats littered the ground. The spirelings’ teeth and claws looked even more horrifying up close, and Greg just knew that any moment one would snap awake and sound an alarm that could end only in his being torn to shreds by thousands of jagged teeth. But the spirelings did not wake.
Greg and Lucky wove their way through the maze of bodies, moving as quickly and as quietly as they could, until they reached a huge, cleared area in front of the cave mouth. (Apparently the spirelings didn’t want to rest too close to the opening, just in case the dragon decided to come out.)
At the edge of the camp stood a wagon full of food and supplies. Seeing it reminded Greg he was going to miss breakfast. Even a condemned man gets a last meal, he thought, but then so had he. Only, no one had bothered mentioning it was his last when he had eaten dinner earlier.
“What’s with the rails?” Lucky asked softly.
“What?” Greg reached up and took the acorns out of his ears. “What?” he repeated.
Only then did Greg notice the wagon had no wheels but rested on rails like a sleigh. At first he thought this odd, but then he saw the glassy floor of the cave, no doubt worn smooth by the passage of dragon scales for centuries on end. He felt this one fact alone bode poorly.
As Greg faced the open cave mouth, just steps from going inside, a sudden thought struck him. They’d come a long way to reach this point, faced numerous obstacles and dangers too frightening to contemplate, and now that they were here . . . well, Greg was far more terrified than ever. His breath came to him in ragged gasps. His hands shook so badly he could barely hold Nathan’s staff. It was the worst case of cold feet he’d ever experienced, maybe the worst case of cold feet anyone had ever experienced, and he knew then he’d been right all along. He was anything but a hero. After all, would a real hero weigh his chances of sprinting past the spirelings and all of Ryder’s men to reach the forest before anyone could tackle him?
Yet in spite of his fears, Greg thought of Priscilla. He didn’t know if it made him a hero, but there was no way he was leaving here without her. He edged up to the enormous cave mouth and surveyed it with a discriminating eye. In this case his eye was discriminating against anything so large as to require an opening fifty feet in diameter to crawl through.
“Sure is a large opening,” he mumbled to himself.
Lucky studied the entrance with a puzzled expression. “No larger than it has to be for Ruuan to squeeze in and out.”
Greg felt a trickle of sweat run down his back.
“Good thing he can fold his wings tightly to his body,” Lucky added.
“Yeah, good thing.”
“Well,” Lucky said glumly, “you really should get started. It’s a long climb to the dragon’s lair.”
“Me? Aren’t you coming?”
Lucky shrugged. “It’s not like you need my guidance anymore. Just follow the tunnel to Ruuan’s lair. You can’t miss it. It’s the only dragon’s lair up there.”
“I don’t think so,” said Greg.
“Sure it is. Dragons are very territorial.”
“I mean, I’m not going alone.”
“You want me to come