The Camelot Spell - Laura Anne Gilman [58]
“What now?” Ailis wondered. “Get out the map, Gerard.”
“Shhhh.” He waved her down, and only then did she realize that she could see them both as dim shadows in the dark. Either their eyes had adjusted or it was somehow lighter back here. “Do you hear that?”
“No,” Newt said quickly. “Let’s go the other way.”
“Newt!” Ailis was laughing again, even though the noise scared her into a cold sweat, too. It was low, like the sound of waves pulsing at night, and soft, like snow falling, and sharp, like the crackle of dry wood set aflame. And, somehow…alive.
“That way,” Gerard said without consulting the map.
Ailis wanted to argue—that was the direction the noise was coming from—but he was right. She could feel it, weirdly, in her bones, like the way she knew it was Merlin when he spoke to her. She reached out and took Gerard’s hand in her free one. His palm was sweating but his grasp was firm, and they walked three abreast into the left-hand cavern.
The sound grew even louder, rising and falling with the pounding of their hearts until Ailis began to think that she had been born hearing the noise and would die with it in her ears.
Then the cavern ceiling rose dramatically, and they stopped dead.
“Oh, dear God,” Gerard said on a prayerful breath, his voice cracking on the last word. The crystal chips embedded in the walls here glinted even more brightly, picking up the soft golden glow of a treasure hoard piled high and deep on the smooth stone floor. It was larger than anything the three had ever seen before, a kingdom’s ransom in precious jewels and metals; coins, swords, armor, even a great silver-chased chair laying on its side and draped with a Romanesque surcoat that shimmered with a faint green light. Newt stared at it, then looked away, his eyes suddenly hard and shadowed.
But all that glittering, glowing treasure was dwarfed by the creature that lay curled atop the hoard.
“Oooohhhhhhh…” That was all Ailis could manage. Her heart, which had stopped on the first sight of the beast, resumed its frantic beating. Even in her panic she could feel a grin of wonder stretching across her face. From the elongated, muscled tail that draped down off the hoard and curled around it on the floor; to the tightly folded wings that hid most of the body; to the thick, arched neck; to the tapered, triangular head that only looked delicate compared to the rest of its body; the beast exuded two distinct messages: magic and extreme danger.
“That’s a—” Newt found his voice, only to lose it again.
“Dragon. Yes. I thought they were all dead.”
“Our worse luck they’re not,” Gerard said. They were all speaking in the smallest whispers they could manage, terrified that the beast would wake.
The dragon’s silver-blue scales flickered like will-o’-the-wisps, shimmering first here, then there, until it made you dizzy to look at it. The creature’s head shifted, and they held their breath, but the great eyes remained closed. The noise they had been hearing was the great beast’s snores.
“The talisman’s here?” When Gerard nodded yes, Newt let escape a swear word so pungent that Ailis felt her skin turn pink, and Gerard looked impressed. “Come on, then. Let’s get this done with.”
They tiptoed around the chamber, trying to spot something in the priceless heap that glowed the same way the first two talismans had.
“There!”
“Where?”
“Up there!”
Newt pointed, and the other two let their gazes follow. One of the dragon’s scales up on the side of its head was glowing.
“I’m going to kill Merlin. If we get out of this alive, I swear, I am going to kill him. I don’t care if I have to do it as a rat.” Newt clenched his hand more tightly around his dagger, well aware that it would be completely useless.
“I’ll help you do it,” Gerard vowed. Ailis just stared.
“We’re supposed to take a scale off a dragon?” Newt continued, almost too angry to be afraid. “Off a dragon? Ailis, you talk to Merlin. Do it now. Tell him he’s even more insane than I thought before.”
“It’s not a scale,” she said. “It’s a ring.”
It was. The dragon wore a single