The Shadow Companion - Laura Anne Gilman [48]
“I think—”
“We should—”
“Probably not bother him,” Ailis agreed. They turned to go down the right-hand tunnel when there was a heavy, unnerving noise. Gerard hesitated, and a huge, scaled foot with claws the size of daggers, only twice as thick—and sharp—came out of the darkness at them. It moved with astonishing quickness for something so large, flattening Gerard against the floor. Thankfully, the claws did not puncture anything more than the fabric of his tunic.
“Humans! Come!”
“Maybe…we should…stop by and pay our…respects,” Gerard suggested breathlessly, his face turned to avoid breathing in the dust from the stone floor. He sounded like one or more of his ribs might be broken.
“Or we could just leave you to explain,” Newt suggested. “Seeing as how you’re the one he got along with so well last time.
“All right, it was just an idea,” he said hastily, when Ailis and Gerard both glared at him.
The huge dragon’s paw started to pull back into the corridor, slowly but inevitably dragging Gerard back with it. Helpless to do anything else, Ailis and Newt followed.
As they walked, the corridor opened into a larger cavern—not the treasure-trove nesting room they had found the dragon in the first time, but it was still impressive for being deep inside a mountain. A red glow came from the tiny flamelets rising from the dragon’s nostrils, like torches in the night. Light came down through stone chimneys that must lead all the way up to the surface, carrying faint sunlight down into the depths.
The dragon had drawn Gerard to him the way a cat might a mouse, letting him go once all three were inside the cavern.
It was still magnificent, with its silvery blue scales, and the elongated, muscled body leading to a thick, arched neck and tapered, triangular head. Its eyes glared down at them with something beyond ire, and approaching madness.
“Sir Dragon, we—” Gerard began, rolling out of immediate reach and getting up onto his knees, crouching in a pose of nonaggressive readiness. “We did not—”
“Silence!”
Gerard shut up.
“You have returned.” The dragon’s voice softened to a cold rumble. It sniffed the air, steam and more firelets rising from his great nostrils as he did so. “You are a knight, now?”
“Not yet, no. I—”
“You lie! I was told that you would lie!” A dragon’s roar was bad enough when heard at a distance. In close quarters, in an echoing stone cavern, it was so terrible as to make the bones in your head vibrate.
“I do not lie!” Gerard protested, stung by the accusation.
Ailis, more practically, asked, “Who told you that he would lie?”
“You have reneged. You never planned to honor your bargain.”
“Sir Dragon, I had—have—no intention of reneging. If I had, why would I return now? Unready, yes, I am, but also honest. I am a human of my word. My good word.”
The dragon did not seem appeased. Nor did it answer Ailis’s question.
“You have returned. We will have our battle. Now.”
That had been the bargain they had made the last time: They wanted the piece of the talisman they needed, which the dragon possessed. The dragon had wanted fame and glory, of the sort which could come only from a great battle with a knight of reputation.
Gerard had promised to return when he was made a knight and give the dragon that battle to the death.
They had not anticipated that the dragon would not believe—or care—that Gerard was not yet a knight.
“Face me, human. Or die like a sheep, bleating in fear.”
The dragon, with its own sort of honor, was ignoring Newt and Ailis. She was frantically searching her memory for any kind of spell or magic that could get them out of this, but it was one thing to melt rocks, call a beast, or even force Merlin to come speak to her. It was another to try and affect such a huge, intelligent, powerful, angry creature—especially when it was well within claw-swipe distance. Even a halfhearted blow from that paw, and she would never work any magic ever again.
How in heaven’s name could Gerard muster anything against