Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold! (44 page)

It was nearing dusk when Ben tightened the last of the straps on the makeshift leather riding harness he had fashioned, ordered Strabo to kneel down and climbed aboard. He settled himself carefully in the seat that rested at the juncture of several clusters of bony spikes that ribbed the dragon’s spine, tested the cinch straps for slippage and fitted his boots into the iron stirrups.

At least he had the riding harness. He was lucky to have that. It was an unwieldy apparatus, constructed from traces, straps, buckles, and rings that had belonged to various field animals fallen victim to the dragon and brought to the Fire Springs for leisurely consumption. He had picked it out from among the bones and fastened it all together. It was bound about the dragon’s neck just above and behind the forelegs, the saddle on which he sat settled forward of the haunches. Reins ran to the neck just behind the crusted head. Ben didn’t think for a moment that he would be able to guide the dragon as he would a horse; the reins were just one more precaution to keep him from falling off.

“If you fall, you’re in trouble, Holiday,” the dragon had warned him earlier.

“Then you’d better make sure that I don’t,” Ben had replied. “You are
ordered
to make sure that I don’t.”

He wasn’t convinced, however, that Strabo could do that, Io Dust or no Io Dust. They were descending into the netherworld of Abaddon, and both lives would be at risk. Strabo would have difficulty keeping them safe under the best of circumstances—and the proposed rescue of his missing friends from the realm of the demons did not promise the best of anything.

He paused momentarily, seated atop the dragon, and gazed out across the wasteland. They had moved to the rim of the Fire Springs, clear of the burning craters and the thick undergrowth. The day was dying into evening; as the sun slipped down behind the distant mountains, mist and gloom settled over the valley. Landover was a murky gathering of shadows and vague shapes. Ben could almost watch the failing of the daylight from one moment to the next. It was as if the valley were disappearing before his eyes. He had the uneasy sensation that it was, the unpleasant feeling that he would never see it again.

He straightened himself in the stirrups, hardening his resolve against such thoughts. He forced a grim smile. Ben Holiday was about to sally forth, a knight atop his steed, off to the rescue. He almost laughed. Don Quixote, off to tilt with windmills—what a picture he could send home again if he had his camera! Damn, but he had never thought— never believed—that he would be doing anything like this with his life! All those years of living behind concrete and steel walls; all those stuffy courtrooms and musty law libraries; all those sterile pleadings and legal briefs; all those lawbooks and statutes and codes—how far removed from that he was now!

And he knew, with a certainty that surprised him, that he could never go back again to any of it.

“What are you doing up there, Holiday—admiring the view?” Strabo’s hiss of displeasure interrupted his thoughts. “Let’s be on our way!”

“All right,” Ben agreed softly. “Take me up.”

The dragon’s wings spread wide, and he lifted from the ground with a lurch. Ben held tightly to the reins and harness
straps, watching the land drop away quickly beneath him. He had a momentary glimpse of bramble, thicket, and dead-wood forests fading into trailers of mist and dusk’s lengthening shadows, and then there was only gloom. Fillip and Sot were down there somewhere, hidden from view. He had gone back to them long enough to let them know that he was riding Strabo down into Abaddon to rescue the others. He had dispatched them back again to Sterling Silver to await his return. They had been only too quick to go, their horror-stricken faces clearly reflecting their unspoken conviction that they had seen the last of him.

Maybe they had, he mused. Maybe he should have told them to go on home and forget about him. They probably wouldn’t have done that, though. They still took their pledge to him quite seriously.

He reflected momentarily on all the help they had given him—a pair of larcenous, grimy little cannibals. Who would have thought it? Silently, he wished them well.

Strabo flew into the coming night, passing from the eastern wasteland to the fringes of the Greensward and then west. The daylight failed completely, darkness descended, and Landover’s moons began to shine. They were all visible on this night—white, peach, washed-out mauve, burnt rose, sea green, beryl, turquoise, and jade—their colors unobstructed by the mists that shrouded the valley below. They were like giant balloons, Ben thought and wondered where the party was.

The minutes slipped rapidly past. Strabo’s massive body undulated rhythmically beneath Ben as the leathered wings beat against the night winds and carried them westward. Ben gripped the reins and harness and hung on for dear life. Air currents buffeted and chilled him. Landover was a vast bowl of steaming soup over which he hung suspended. He was exhilarated by the sensation of flying like this, but he was frightened, too. He hadn’t liked horseback riding and he didn’t like dragon riding any better. The dragon kept a steady pace and that helped, but Ben still distrusted the situation.
He knew the Io Dust could wear off at any time and that would be the end of him.

“This is a foolish venture!” Strabo called back to him moments later, as if reading his thoughts. The crusted, misshapen head swung about, eyes glinting. “All this for a handful of humans!”

“My friends!” Ben shouted in reply, the wind whipping the words back into his face.

“Your friends mean nothing to me!”

“Fair enough—you mean nothing to them! Except Questor Thews, I suppose—he thinks you special!”

“The wizard? Pah!”

“Just do what I told you to do!” Ben ordered.

“I hate you, Holiday!”

“Sorry—I don’t care!”

“You will! Sooner or later, I’ll get free of you and when I do you’ll be sorry you ever decided to use me this way!”

The head swung back again, the cold, mechanical voice dying into the rush of the wind. Ben said nothing. He gripped the reins and the harness straps tighter.

They flew deep into the Greensward toward the center of the valley. Ben did not know where they were going. He knew the dragon was taking him to Abaddon, but he had no idea where Abaddon was. Abaddon was the netherworld of Landover, but its gates were time passages of the sort that had brought him from his own world. They were not, however, the
same
time passages. They were not to be found within the mists that ringed the valley. They were hidden somewhere within the valley, Strabo had told him—somewhere only the demons and the dragon could reach …

Strabo slowed suddenly and began a long sweep back that became a widening circle. Ben looked down. The valley was a shroud of mist and gloom. Strabo’s wings spread wider, and the dragon began to bank sharply on the night winds.

“Hold tight to me, Holiday!” the dragon cried back to him.

Strabo dipped suddenly and started down. Wings flattened back and the long neck stretched forward. They began to
pick up speed as the dragon’s dive steepened. The wind rushed past Ben Holiday’s ears in a vicious roar that drowned out everything. The ground began to come into focus, a shapeless blur sharpening with the passing of each second they dropped. Ben was cold all the way through. They were going too fast! They were going to dive right into the middle of the Greensward!

Then abruptly the dragon fire exploded from Strabo’s throat, a huge, brilliant arc of crimson flame. The air seemed to melt before it, cellophane that wrinkled and expanded at its edges, leaving a jagged hole. Ben squinted against the rush of the wind and saw the blackness of the hole open out of the night. Dragon fire died away, but the hole remained. They were passing through it, flying into the empty dark. Landover disappeared; the misted Greensward was gone. There was a sucking noise as the hole closed behind them and then sudden stillness.

Strabo leveled off within the black. Ben lifted slightly from where he had crouched down against the dragon’s spine and stared about, awestruck. The world had undergone a radical change. Moon and stars were gone. There was a sky of inky black, canopied over a sprawling mass of jagged peaks and deep gorges. Flashes of lightning danced at the juncture of earth and sky, filling the fringes of the horizon with a bizarre light show. Volcanos growled in the distance, their reddish fires glimmering from out of mountainous cones of rock; streams of lava flowed in long red trailers like blood. The earth shook and grumbled with the eruptions, and geysers of flame and molten rock exploded skyward against the blackness.

“Abaddon!” Strabo advised, his voice a slow hiss.

He dropped downward with sickening speed, and Ben felt the pit of his stomach lurch. Mountain peaks rushed past, and the fire from the volcanos burst skyward all about. Ben was terrified. Abaddon was the realization of his worst nightmare. He had never seen anything so inhospitable. Nothing could survive in such a world.

A shadow rocketed past, winged and elusive. Strabo
hissed in warning. Another shadow slipped past, then another. There were sharp hisses and flashes of teeth. Dragon fire burst suddenly from Strabo’s maw, and one of the shadows screamed and dropped earthward. Ben flattened himself within the nest of spikes that protected the dragon’s spine. The fire burst forth again and again. Another of the shadows exploded into ash and fell. Strabo was weaving evasively as more of the shadows appeared. He stretched out his massive body and increased his speed. The black things fell behind and were gone.

A series of rugged peaks whipped past, and then the dragon slowed once more. “Gnats!” he growled contemptuously. “No match for me!”

Ben was drenched with sweat and could barely catch his breath. “How much farther?”

The dragon’s laugh was harsh. “A bit, Holiday. What seems to be the matter? Is this more than you bargained for?”

“I’ll be fine. You do what you were told to do and get to my friends!”

“Temper, Holiday.”

The dragon flew on through the fire-streaked blackness. The “gnats” came at them twice more, and twice more Strabo burned a handful of them before flying past. The world of Abaddon stretched on below, unchanging in its look, a world of rock and fire. White light danced frantically on the horizons all about, and lava flared within the craters of the mountain peaks, but in the valleys and gorges below all remained impenetrably black. If there was something living down there, it could not be seen from the air.

Ben began to experience a growing sense of futility. His friends had been trapped in this world for almost five days!

Strabo banked left between two monstrous volcanic peaks and started down. Wind rushed past, and trailers of fire laced the mountain rock on both sides. Ben peered down into the lava. Things were swimming in the fire! Things were playing there!

A monstrous black shadow heaved up from out of the
shadows on one peak, tentacled arms reaching. Strabo hissed and the dragon fire burned at the arms. The arms shuddered and drew back. The shadow disappeared.

Then they were through the mountains and within a valley ringed by jagged peaks. Strabo dove sharply and leveled off less than fifty feet above its floor. Pools of fiery lava bubbled at the fringes of the valley, throwing rocks and flame skyward in small bursts. Cracks and crevices split the barren floor, dropping away into blackness. Creatures scurried everywhere, small and misshapen in the crimson half-light, things barely human. Cries rose up at the sight of the dragon, shrieks that disappeared as quickly as they sounded in the distant roar of the volcanos. Ben heard the dragon screech in reply.

The “gnats” reappeared, dozens strong. Other things winged into view, larger and more fearsome-looking. Strabo leveled out and flew faster. Ben was hunched down so close to the dragon’s spine that he could feel the pulsing of his hide. Straps and cinches strained with the effort of the dragon’s flight. Ben could feel things beginning to loosen.

Then a monstrous pit of fire appeared before them, its throat thousands of feet deep. A tiny slab of rock hung suspended by chains across that throat—a disk of stone that measured no more than a dozen feet across. The slab of rock danced and bobbled unsteadily on its webbing of iron, and the fire licked up at it hungrily from far below.

Ben caught his breath sharply. There were a handful of tiny figures crouched on that slab of rock, fighting to keep their balance.

His friends!

Strabo dove for them, gnats and other flying demons in pursuit. Other demons still, hundreds strong, were gathered about the fire pit, throwing rocks at the figures crouched upon the slab and shaking the chains that secured it. All were yelling gleefully. It was a game they were playing, Ben realized in horror. The demons had trapped or placed his friends on that slab and were waiting now to see them fall into the fire!

The pit drew closer. The demons turned, seeing the dragon now, crying out. Hands reached for the pins that fastened the chains to the pit wall. The demons were trying to drop the slab and his friends into the fire before he could reach them!

Ben was frantic. Chains fell away quickly, one after another, and the slab of rock buckled and shook. Strabo breathed fire at the demons and burned dozens to ash, but the rest continued to work at the chains. Ben screamed in fury as he saw clearly now the faces of Questor Thews, Abernathy, the kobolds—and Willow! Strabo rocketed clear of the rim of the pit, past the demons working to release the chains that bound the rock slab. Too late, Ben thought. They were going to be too late!

There was an instant then in which time froze. There was no time and all the time in the world. Ben seemed to see everything that happened with a frightening detachment that held him suspended in the instant of its happening. The chains at one section fell away completely and the slab of rock buckled and sagged. His friends dropped to their hands and knees and began to slide toward the pit.

Strabo dove sharply, dragging Ben with him toward the fire. He reached the slab of rock as the people on it slipped away. Clawed feet snatched two out of midair. With a quick snap of his jaws, he caught another, and his great head twisted back to deposit a kobold in front of Ben. The second kobold flung himself at the harness and grasped the straps.