The Dark Shadow of Spring (3 page)

As if sensing Alex’s thoughts, which his sister seemed uncannily able to do, Nina asked, “So how much fire is there going to be when we wake the dragon?”

“A lot,” Ben said, his hands twitching with excitement. “More than a lot, I hope.”  As a dwarf, he had a hereditary inclination toward magics of earth and fire and, although he couldn’t control magical energy very well, he could gather far more from the land than anyone else in the Guild.

“Who said anything about fire?” Alex replied.

“He is a dragon,” Rafael said. “People tend to think of fire when they hear the word dragon.”

“No fire?” Ben grumbled. “What kind of dragon is this?”

“Well, it smells like fire,” Clark said from up ahead, sniffing the air. “Like toasted chocolate.”

“You can’t eat the dragon,” Rafael chided.

“Mmm, roast dragon,” Clark said, licking his lips loudly. “I bet it’d be good with garlic and potatoes.”

“He’ll probably think the same thing about you,” Daphne said. Clark grunted at the thought.

“So if there’s no fire, why are we waking the dragon?” Nina asked. “Just to make him mad? Remember the stories Dad always tells about Gall’Adon? He’s not a nice dragon.”

“Is there such a thing as a nice dragon?” Rafael asked to no one in particular.

“We’re waking the dragon to ask him a question,” Alex said.

“Boring,” Ben groused. “What kind of advice can you ask from a dragon?”

“How best to eat people?” Rafael suggested.

“Why in the name of Hecate’s hamster didn’t you tell us there wasn’t going to be any dragon fire?” Daphne asked with a frown. It was ironic that, as part tree nymph, Daphne had a very strong affinity with fire magic. And while she could gather less magical energy from the land than the others, she could control it with the most skill and dexterity.

“Because no one asked,” Alex said, beginning to wonder if keeping the real thrust of the adventure a secret had been such a good idea. His friends might not be as willing to follow his plans if this mission turned out to be a dud. He probably should have mentioned his real reasons for seeking out the dragon Gall’Adon’s lair, but he was, in all honesty, a little afraid to speak those reasons aloud. When he had brought up the idea of waking the dragon, it had sparked such a positive response and such a heated discussion of possible plans and potential glories that Alex hadn’t wanted to risk losing the Guild’s interest by revealing the actual motive for the mission.

“I was afraid you’d think I was silly,” Alex admitted.

“How often does that ever happen?” Daphne asked with a dainty snort.

“Well, there was that time…” Rafael began and paused. “Oh. That was a rhetorical question.”

“So what’s the real plan?” Nina asked.

“No fire,” Ben grumbled again. “There is a dragon, isn’t there?”

“Well, I definitely smell dragon,” Clark said, leaning with his nose forward as he gingerly stepped around a large outcropping of rocks.

“About two weeks ago, I was looking through some books in the restricted room of the town library,” Alex began.

“You got into the gorping restricted room of the library and you didn’t take me?” Daphne asked, indignantly poking her finger into the back of Alex’s head.

“It happened on the spur of the moment,” Alex said, rubbing the back of his head, his tone as apologetic as possible. “I was returning a book and Mrs. Yaaba had dozed off. The door to the restricted room was ajar, so I just slipped in while she snored.”

“What was it like?” Daphne asked, more breathless at the idea of seeing restricted books than from the climb up the mountain. Alex loved books and learning about lost and forgotten bits of magic, but Daphne was fanatical about them. For her, the restricted room at the library was what a trip to her mother’s bakeshop would be for Clark.

“Small,” Alex said, bringing to mind the tidy, windowless little room behind the librarian’s desk. “It was dark and I was afraid to conjure any light for fear of waking Mrs. Yaaba, so I couldn’t see that much. There are only a few hundred books on a couple of shelves.”

“A few hundred,” Daphne moaned.

“One book caught my eye,” Alex continued. “It was called
Dragons: Lore and Legend
. I couldn’t spend much time reading it, but one of the chapters said that, while dragons could sleep for a hundred years or more, if you wake one just a little, just enough to become part of its dreams, then you can ask it a question and it will give you an answer.”

“What kind of question?” Daphne asked.

“Gold,” Ben said, his eyes bright with renewed interest. “Will he tell us where his gold is?”

“That’s an old wives’ tale,” Rafael sniffed.

“So are dragons to Outsiders,” Ben retorted.

“Good point,” Rafael conceded. “So we’re asking where his gold is?”

“No, no,” Alex said, a little exasperated. “You’re supposed to ask him questions about the future.”

“We’re going to wake Gall’Adon,” Nina said incredulously, “a dragon that’s been asleep for eighty years, a dragon that burnt down three farms the last time he was awake, and ask him about the future?”

“Great Zeus’s nose hairs!” Daphne added in agreement. “We could go to Old Batami the Soothsayer for that.”

“No,” Alex said, losing his balance momentarily as he feared he was losing control of the mission. At least they were still climbing. Still heading toward the dragon’s lair. Or, he thought so, until he stumbled into Clark’s backside. It was like walking into a boulder and had the same effect on Alex — knocking the wind out of him and landing him on his rump.

“Um, sorry, Alex,” Clark said, turning around and extending an arm to help Alex back up. Alex put his hand out and felt himself lifted as though by magic to his feet. Clark was always so careful about how he moved because of his size that it was easy to forget how strong he was.

“We have to keep going,” Alex said. “Waking the dragon is about more than asking him a question.”

“Ah, we can’t keep going,” Clark said, crinkling his nose.

“I agree with Alex,” Daphne said. “Now that he’s got us on this gorping adventure, we might as well see it through.”

“Maybe,” Ben added, a light returning to his face, “maybe there is gold after all.”

“I don’t think Clark is suggesting we abandon the mission,” Rafael said.

“Umm, why would I do that?” Clark asked in surprise.

“Then why did you stop?” Alex asked, craning his neck back to look up into Clark’s broad face and deep eyes.

“Well, because we’re here,” Clark said. “This is the entrance to the dragon’s lair.”

Startled, Alex looked around at their surroundings. He had been so engrossed in convincing his friends of the importance of his plan that he hadn’t been paying attention to where Clark was leading them. The forest mountain slope looked just the same as all the terrain they had covered in the past hour. Pine trees thrust up from the rocky ground, slanting upward toward the mountain top. Patches of late-melting ice clung to the base of trees here and there. But there was nothing that looked like the entrance to a dragon’s lair.

“Where?” Alex asked, looking back at Clark, feeling confused.

“Hmm, down there,” Clark said, pointing at the massive outcropping of gently rolling rock they all stood upon. “The dragon is down there.”

“Are you sure?” Alex asked, his voice cracking a bit as he considered the possible failure of his plan.

“Yep, smells stronger than ever,” Clark said with a sniff and lick of his lips.

“How in the name of Hades’ head lice do we get under the rock?” Daphne asked.

“We could try a shovel,” Rafael offered.

“Earth magic,” Ben said. “I could try to break it with Earth magic.”

“There’s a better question,” Alex said.

“How does the dragon get out?” Nina said, poking the slab of rock beneath her feet with a stick she had picked up.

“Exactly,” Alex said, knowing he was right. “This isn’t a real rock. It’s a door. Isn’t that right, Clark?”

“Mmm, smells like a magic door,” Clark said.

“How do we open the gorping thing?” Daphne asked.

“Well, I have no idea,” Clark said.

“I do,” Alex said.

“I should hope so,” Rafael said. “After dragging us all the way out here to ask the dragon to tell our futures.”

“The dragon can’t tell your future,” Alex said. “It tells your destiny.”

“What’s the difference?” Nina asked.

“Your destiny is fixed,” Daphne said, her voice suddenly thoughtful, “but your future can change on its way to your destiny.”

“Exactly,” Alex said, taking time to catch everyone’s eye. “We can make our own future, but we have a chance to find out what our destiny is.”

“Cool,” Nina said, her eyes lighting up at the thought of hearing her destiny.

“Super cool,” Ben said. “Why didn’t you tell us? Waking the dragon to hear our destiny is a great adventure.”

“I thought you might think I was stupid,” Alex confessed.

“Well, you are stupid,” Daphne said. “For not telling us. But waking the dragon to hear our destiny is a gorping great idea.”

“Unless,” Rafael said in a ponderous tone, “our destiny is to live a terrible life filled with unrequited love cut short in a tragic death.”

That thought held everyone in silence for a long moment.

“You are such a ray of sunshine, Rafa,” Daphne said, shaking her head.

“I do what I can,” Rafael said.

“Well, I still want to hear my destiny,” Alex said, trying to recapture the spirit of the moment just past. “Are you all with me?”

Ben shouted his assent, followed closely by Clark, Daphne, and Nina.

“It’s probably my destiny to ask about my destiny,” Rafael said.

“So how do we get in, big brother?” Nina asked, squinting up at him.

“Well, Clark was the first part of the plan,” Alex said. “It’d be nearly impossible to find the entrance to the dragon’s lair without his nose.”

“Mmm, it was easy,” Clark said, taking a big bite out of a slice of beef jerky he had slipped from his jacket pocket. Not for the first time, Alex marveled that Clark always seemed to have a snack handy, regardless of where he was.

“The next part of the plan is more difficult,” Alex said. “I’m betting dragons gain entrance to their lairs with fire.”

“Fire!” Ben said, bouncing on his toes. “I think I’m liking this adventure more already.”

“Oh, you’re going to like it a lot,” Alex said, his grin as wide as Ben’s. “We just have to make sure we don’t burn down the forest.”

Chapter 3: Waking the Dragon

“Burn the flaming forest down?” Daphne yelped in surprise. “You will do no such thing. I have relatives in these trees!”

Alex knew for a fact that most of Daphne’s tree spirit relatives lived in the White Forest, east of the Black Bone Mountain where they stood, but he also knew that her kinship with trees in general was very strong and he was more than familiar with the strident tone of her voice.

“You’re in charge of making sure that doesn’t happen,” Alex said.

“How so?” Daphne asked, squinting her eyes in cautious curiosity.

“Like I said,” Alex explained, “I’m guessing this slab of granite we’re standing on isn’t really a rock at all, but an enchanted door to the dragon’s lair. And like a key for a lock, fire will open the door.”

“That’s a lot of fire to use in the middle of a forest,” Daphne said, her tone skeptical.

“That’s right,” Ben added, shuffling his feet a little. “I can draw a lot of magical energy and create a huge flame, but everyone knows I can’t control it so well.”

“Yeah, I remember what happened at the Pashar farm,” Clark said with a chuckle as Ben blushed.

“And everyone knows that Daphne has more control over magic than the rest of us put together,” Alex replied, ignoring Clark and seeing both Daphne and Ben’s eyes sparkle with possibility.

“So I create the fire,” Ben said, rubbing his hands together excitedly, “and Daphne controls it.”

“Steaming Satyr Snot,” Daphne said, looking at Ben. “We’ve never practiced working magic together. What if something goes wrong?”

“That’s where the rest of us come in,” Alex said. “If the fire starts to get out of control, we’ll be ready to use magic to put out any flames that go astray.”

“Just like…What do the Outsiders call them?” Nina asked. “Blaze blotters? Flame squishers?  Something like that.”

“Firemen,” Rafael said. “We’ll be the firemen.” As the newest citizen of Runewood, Rafael was more familiar than most with the world outside the valley and the customs of the Outsiders, as non-magical folk were called.

“What do I do?” Ben asked. “Just make a ball of fire?”

“I think you probably need to make the fire take the form of a rune,” Alex said, stepping off the granite outcropping beneath their feet and onto the hard packed earth surrounding it.

“Like a password,” Daphne said. She and the others all moved back until they stood in a wide circle around what they hoped was a stone door in the ground.

“I know the rune for
open
,” Daphne said, picking up a stick from the ground and drawing the rune in the dirt. Alex looked down at the symbol Daphne had drawn. It looked familiar to the one he knew. Runes were the written equivalent of the ancient first magical language known as rune-tongue. In writing, it was similar to languages like Chinese and Egyptian in that there were thousands of characters, each having the meaning of a word, thing, place, or object. Unlike Outsider languages, it was much, much older. Most mages believed it to be a form of the original, primeval language and mastery of it was necessary for performing magic.

The runes and rune-words held no magic power in and of themselves, but when spoken by someone who could sense the magical energy of the land and use their mind to focus that energy, the words of rune-tongue transformed that energy into magical action. It was like a request between the earth and the mage, the rune-words making the appeal clear.

What complicated things for mages was the fact that rune-words and written runes could not be learned like English, they had to be soul-remembered, brought back to the conscious mind from the ether of the collective magical mind of the universe itself. What this meant for mages was that they did not necessarily remember rune-words or symbols the same way. Since the same rune-word spoken by two mages could sound different or be written differently, it took years to master any of the four primary magics. It also meant that mages did not often work magic together.