How to Slay a Dragon (22 page)

Ryder glanced down at Greg sternly. “No, I’m going to have to disagree with you there. The prophecy says you’re going to rescue her, and I don’t think it would qualify as much of a rescue if she was dead when you got there.”

Greg knew there was no point reasoning with crazy people. “Ryder, do you know how I’m supposed to defeat the dragon?”

The captain’s face took on a more compassionate expression. “Sorry. I wish I did, so I could put your mind at ease.”

Greg frowned. “I doubt you could say anything that would do that.”

“Listen, Greghart, I want to tell you something. I’ve lived side-by-side with fighting men all my life, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s a soldier. Look at you, green as a garter snake, and about as big as one too, and yet here you are, who knows how far from your own world, hiking through the heart of the Weird Weald on your way to single-handedly tackle the mightiest beast the world of Myrth has ever known.”

It occurred to Greg that Ryder wasn’t any better at putting someone at ease than Nathan was. “So?”

“So? If that doesn’t show how astonishingly brave you are, I don’t know what does.”

Greg said nothing. He didn’t have the heart to tell Ryder he was only here because the others had forced him to come.

“And I saw you practicing those moves last night with the Greatheart boy,” Ryder said. “You’re pretty good. Fast as lightning, too. Why, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could best a few of my own.”

Greg looked up at the captain doubtfully. “Yeah, well, they’re just men. How am I supposed to fight a dragon?”

“Ah, now see, that’s where you have a real advantage.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No sir. You may be smaller than Ruuan, but you’ve got intelligence in your favor.”

Greg tried to imagine how this could possibly help. “Aren’t dragons supposed to be really clever?”

“Oh—um—right. Well, try to get a dialog going with him. Then he’ll at least appreciate the fact that you’re clever too.”

“Ruuan can talk?”

“Of course. And you’ll want him to. Remember, the more you can keep Ruuan talking, the less he’ll be shooting flames at you.”

Greg let his gaze drop to the ground so Ryder wouldn’t see him cry. “Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better.”

“Good, Greghart. Now, I think we’d best get these men moving again. We have a long road ahead of us.”

“Yeah, too long,” Greg admitted. He spotted the magician Agni apart from the others, meditating with his back against a tree. “Hey, Ryder, can you wait just another minute.”

Ryder looked around the camp at his exhausted troops. “One, but no more.”

With a groan, Greg pried himself to his feet and crossed to Agni. The magician looked up at him with the same hateful expression he had used the day before.

“I need your help,” Greg told him.

“I’ll give you credit for boldness,” Agni told him. “Why should I help you?”

“It’s not just me you’d be helping. You do want to save the princess, don’t you?”

The look in Agni’s eyes caused Greg to take a cautious step backward. No magician should look that angry. “I thought we had already done that.”

“What are you talking about?”

Agni glanced around the campsite to see if anyone was listening, then spoke in a low voice, though to Greg it sounded more like a hiss. “Mordred and I worked very hard at producing an illusion of Priscilla waiting to be picked up by the dragon. The spell was a masterpiece. Not even Ruuan would have likely realized she was not real until he actually tried to eat her. It would have moved this whole affair out of the public eye and given us time to come up with a plan. Perhaps we could have sealed the dragon in its lair. Then you had to come along and ruin everything. You had no right coming to Myrth in the first place.”

Greg could hardly believe what he was hearing. “Well, don’t blame me. You’re the one who brought me here.”

“That was before Mordred told me of your true role in all of this.”

“Are you going to help me or not? Isn’t that why the queen sent you?”

Agni scoffed. “It is a fool’s errand. There is nothing a single magician can do to stand against a dragon.”

Greg’s stomach began to churn. If someone with a magician’s powers thought there was no hope, what chance did he have?

“And even if I could save her, I wouldn’t.”

Greg’s mouth dropped open. “Why not?”

“You don’t understand these people. Living by prophecy has defined their lives for longer than anyone can remember. They know no other way. There would be no gain in my stepping in to handle this for you. Their lives would be destroyed.”

“But that’s still going to happen,” Greg insisted. “When I fail, not only will the prophecy be broken, but Princess Priscilla will be dead.”

“I admit, I can see no way you can succeed, but you are all these people have. Princess or not, I shall not step one foot within that spire. It would be suicide.”

Ryder’s voice rang through the clearing. “Fall in!”

The men instantly jumped up and fell into formation.

Greg watched them a moment and then turned back to Agni. “Queen Pauline sent you to help, so help. Can’t you at least get us there quicker?”

“You expect me to move an entire army halfway across the kingdom?”

“You moved me between worlds.”

“That was a mistake. Besides, it was different. You are just one person, and we had many magicians. Plus, we were bringing you to us. Now you are asking me not only to transport myself a great distance, but to bring all of you with me.”

“Are you saying you’re not powerful enough?”

Agni scowled. “You would do best not to challenge my power.”

“Can you do it or not?”

“Not in one jump, no. But perhaps partway, if I can picture a location well enough in my mind.”

Greg exhaled deeply. “No time like the present.”

Again Agni scowled. “Go lead your army. I will do what I can.”

Greg ran alongside the formation as Ryder shouted the order to move out, and joined Melvin and Lucky at the front. He felt as if they had been marching for only seconds before the scene ahead of him began to shimmer. The trees ahead seemed to meld together into one big blur, then suddenly he stood in a deep gully filled with fog.

“What just happened?” Lucky asked.

“Hopefully we just shaved a few days off this journey,” said Greg. “I wonder where we are.”

“We’re in the Smoky Mountains,” Melvin told him.

“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 further step backward.

Bart hesitated a moment and backed up as well.

“Don’t worry, you two.” Ryder laughed. “No troll is about to show itself in there today.”

“You sure?” Greg asked.

“Of course. They’re much too afraid of the goblins.”

Greg stammered incoherently until Ryder finally let him off the hook. “It’s okay, Greghart. We won’t see any goblins today either.”

“We won’t?”

“No, goblins are a cowardly lot. They run when they’re outnumbered, and there’s never more than a few thousand gathered at one time in this whole mountain range.”

“A few thousand? But there’s only five hundred of us . . . .”

“You and I know that,” said Ryder with a wink, “but it shouldn’t be a problem. Goblins aren’t very skilled at counting.”

Though the footing through the pass was treacherous, and Greg felt disturbingly claustrophobic the entire way, Ryder was right. They didn’t see a single goblin or troll. It took all day to reach the top. When they finally stepped out onto the rim of a huge canyon, Greg got his best view of the Infinite Spire so far, or worst, depending on how he looked at it.

“We’re here,” he said with a gasp.

“Nope,” argued Ryder. “Still over a week off, I’m afraid.”

If Agni hadn’t been wearing a black robe when he stepped up from behind, Greg would not have recognized him. His skin was a dull gray, and he looked ten years older.

“Are you okay?”

The magician looked like he wanted to speak but only nodded.

“I guess you couldn’t have placed us at the top of that climb.”

Agni rolled his eyes. “I told you I must be able to picture the location in my mind. The clearing at the base of the cliff face was as well as I could do.”

He broke into a fit of coughing then, and Greg felt guilty for his question. “I’m not complaining,” he told the magician. “You’ve been a huge help.”

Agni shook his head and spoke to no one in particular. “I’m helping him to a quicker death, and he thanks me.”

The army camped for a much-needed rest and then pressed on the next morning. They marched for nearly an entire day before Agni managed to complete another spell. This time, when the scenery cleared ahead, they found themselves atop a ridge where Greg could actually see the base of the spire jutting from an ominous black lake at the center of a shallow valley. The army came to a sudden halt. Order or not, plunging to their deaths didn’t seem a sensible thing to do.

Greg couldn’t stop staring. Witch Hazel had told him the spirelings guarded the magical passage within the spire so no one would try to raid Ruuan’s lair, but seeing the spire now made him wonder why they bothered. Just the sight of it was more than enough to keep Greg away.

He forced his gaze down to the angry waters of the lake. “How are we supposed to get across tha—”

Greg’s heart nearly stopped. The valley was not filled with water at all, but with men. No, not men either. Something . . . else. Short stocky creatures with huge, bulbous eyes and glowing teeth . . .

“Spirelings,” whispered Lucky, who had stepped up beside Greg.

Greg tried to speak, but his voice lodged in his throat. He kept thinking about what Witch Hazel had told him. “
Canarazas. Roughly translated it means ‘razor teeth.’”

As if they weren’t already threatening enough, each spireling carried a large, double-edged axe, and Greg found it terribly upsetting that not one thought it necessary to carry a shield.

Melvin stepped up to his other side and surveyed the spireling army. “Huh. A lot more than I thought.”

“You’ve seen spirelings before?” asked Lucky.