Nine Gates (50 page)

“Are you with me, Brenda?” Righteous Drum asked. There was urgency to his voice, and his swimming was rather lopsided, but he was managing. Brenda noticed that he was speaking—really speaking—even here completely surrounded by water. She was beginning to get serious Dragon-envy.

“I am,”
she reassured him.
“I was just trying not to distract you while you got used to this. Doing okay?”

“I am fine. I am pushing upwards, trying to find the roof of this cavern. Then we will seek the first intake. How is your vision?”

“Your spell is holding up. I can see about as well as I would in a light fog.”

“Good. Then while I concentrate on swimming, you see if you can locate an intake.”

Brenda wasn’t quite sure how to do this, but she thought that the disturbance might be visible. She peered about, sometimes catching a glimpse of the tip of her own nose and feeling distinctly startled. Water surrounded her, but breathing was so automatic that she quickly forgot it, just as you forget air unless the wind is blowing really hard.

It was her tail, that odd appendage that because of its very oddity she had trouble forgetting, that helped her find the first intake. She felt a drag there, as if something was pulling lightly on the bare skin.

“I think I’ve got one,”
she said.
“Go right and back. No, this direction.”

She leaned back and tapped with one paw, pressing hard against the yielding surface of a scale.

“That’s it. Good.”

“I believe I see it,” Righteous Drum said. “You must have excellent vision. I commend you.”

I’ve got a smart tail
, Brenda thought, but she didn’t vocalize that one.

They found the intake, and Righteous Drum pushed them up, so close to the ceiling that parts of his dorsal fin squashed against the stone. Brenda bit through the string that tied one of the amulets—they were identical, so she didn’t have to choose—and reared up on her haunches, feeling for the opening.

“Make certain it’s well in there,” Righteous Drum reminded her. “There are other currents, including the ones I am creating by swimming.”

I know. I know
, Brenda thought, but she could tell he was nervous, and didn’t say anything. Instead she concentrated on finding the opening, reaching up with the amulet held firmly by the string, making sure neither to let go, nor to bite through. She let her head and shoulders enter the opening and immediately felt the tug of the water.

Mingled with the swirling that was the water’s own current was a rhythmic pulse that made her heart beat faster. She knew without explanation that the pulse was the Leech, sucking then swallowing, then sucking again.

She opened her jaws and let the amulet go. As she did, she squeaked, “Release!” as she had been told. The folded paper opened, flowering above her, and a trail of green ink tinted the water before diluting into the upward flow.

Grabbing the line of her “seatbelt”—Brenda was thinking of it as a lifeline by now—Brenda kicked her back legs and worked her way down onto Righteous Drum’s back.

“One down,”
she said.
“Let’s find the next opening.”

Finding the second opening proved much easier. Righteous Drum had remembered that the Nine Yellow Springs were arrayed in an elongated circle around the gigantic magnolia tree. A few roots of the tree had penetrated even this deep, giving them a center point. He now calculated the
approximate arc, and swam where the second opening should be. Brenda felt the pull of the water before Righteous Drum labored them into position.

He’s going to get really tired
, Brenda thought.
I wonder if he’ll be able to get us out of here?

But she didn’t have attention to spare for even such a worrisome thought. Each intake tube was unique. The second had a nasty curve around which water flowed smoothly, but where the paper holding the spell caught. Brenda was pretty certain the spell would work even without the paper, but she wriggled up to push it free, just to make sure.

The third and fourth tubes went well, but by then Brenda was feeling very tired. Rats swam, but what she was doing here wasn’t quite swimming, but rather combined pushing and climbing with swimming. Then, too, Brenda wasn’t used to this shape, and although Deborah had told her she could tap something she referred to as “body memory,” that went only so far when asking a body to do unusual acts.

Brenda struggled with getting the fifth spell into the tube, and as she readied herself for the sixth, she was aware that Righteous Drum was also losing strength. Extra effort was needed to bring her close enough to the ceiling that she could insert the paper into the tube. Moreover, he sank down almost as soon as she pushed off.

“Please come back up here,”
she thought at him.
“There was a bit of water in my last breath.”

Righteous Drum didn’t say anything, but her breathing cleared.

After inserting the sixth spell, Brenda grabbed on to the lifeline to guide herself back. She’d worked out a hauling motion with both paws pressed together around the line. It didn’t quite make up for the lack of a thumb, but it helped. She was tugging hard, trying to get back to Righteous Drum so she could suggest he take a rest before they finished inserting the last three spells, when with a quickening of her heart she felt the line sag, then tighten.

“The line’s breaking…”
she managed to think, and then it broke.

The force of the water drew her upwards, into the smoothly polished interior of the intake tube. Brenda lashed out, trying to grab a hold on the wall.

Sun-polished
, she thought.
Of course it would be, with the sun setting in this pool once a day. I wonder if the waters boil?

But the thought was fleeting, gone before it was really shaped as she scrabbled and kicked. The pull of the stream dragged her up, and she had the sense to hold her breath, not trusting Righteous Drum’s magic to penetrate this far.

Her head pounded. Reddish lights thudded behind eyes she didn’t know she’d squeezed shut. Panic played a drum in her head: drowned rat, drowned rat, drowned rat…

Then almost simultaneously, two things happened. The current slowed, almost stopped, and something twined around her middle. It wrapped around her, squeezing hard, squishing her last hoarded breath from her lungs. She gasped, expected to breathe water, but met with air.

“Righteous Drum?”

“I have you,” he said, “and will pull you forth.”

He sounded exhausted, so she didn’t ask more. Instead she looked down at herself, wondering how the dragon had managed to grab her. To her astonishment, wrapped around her was one of the long tentacle-like whiskers that adorned the dragon’s nose. It looked bruised, and Brenda thought it probably wasn’t intended for such a task.

Righteous Drum drew her forth, more by sinking down and letting Brenda guide herself (and the whisker) out of the intake tube, than by any systematic planning. He reached a point in the waters where he could drift, and he did this for a time, regaining his strength.

“Thanks,”
Brenda thought shyly.

“What happened? You were there, then not.”

Brenda inspected the lifeline.
“I think the line may have
been nicked when I pulled myself out one of those times. I had to use my teeth a couple times—not having hands—and they’re pretty sharp.”

“Yes. That might do it.” There was no blame in the words, only assessment and fatigue. “Can you continue?”

Brenda was inspecting the line.
“Not with this. Can you hold me with your—uh—nose tentacle like you did before?”

“I can, but it might be better if I held on to your tail. Getting the tentacle into that intake tube was difficult. This way my protections will extend to you, and I can draw you out when you are finished.”

Hearing determination, but certainly no confidence in the words, Brenda asked hesitantly,
“Are you sure you’re up to it? Do we really need to finish? We’ve gotten six of the nine in. Surely that’s enough.”

“I believe I can. I have rested a little here, and feel much stronger.”

Brenda didn’t believe he felt all that much stronger, but she wasn’t about to argue. Maybe it was her imagination, maybe it was all this exertion, but she thought the water was getting a little warmer.

Their new technique worked rather well, although Brenda didn’t much like the feeling of the tentacle wrapped around her tail. She didn’t have the same freedom of movement, either, but at least she didn’t need to pull herself back.

The seventh amulet went into the tube, the eighth, then the ninth. Brenda watched the ink—golden yellow this time, so one of the spells Righteous Drum himself had written—vanish up the intake tube. She hadn’t felt the pulsing of the Leech’s sucking this last couple of times, and hoped that meant it was out of action.

Of course, it might simply have been taking a break, as it apparently had been doing shortly before their arrival.

Righteous Drum congratulated her, then sank down to that midpoint where he could rest with the water holding him in place. Brenda realized she was panting.

“Righteous Drum! The water’s getting warmer. I think the sun must be coming.”

No answer. Brenda realized that he must have fallen asleep. She stretched forward and bit him on one ear. He started.

“The water’s getting warmer,”
Brenda repeated.
“You’ve got to get us out of here!”

Righteous Drum moved his whiskered head from side to side. “Can’t. Too tired. No ch’i. Honey… I’m sorry, Honey…”

Incoherent as the speech was, Brenda suddenly understood several things she had not before. She’d envied the dragon’s varied abilities, but she hadn’t realized that all of them had used stored ch’i. Now that ch’i was depleted, and if they didn’t get out of this underwater prison soon, they were likely to drown.

Drown or be boiled. What a choice. I can’t count on him to get us out of here.

For a moment, Brenda considered abandoning Righteous Drum. If she let go her hold on his back, she could probably swim to the surface. There she might find air pockets, useless for something the size of a dragon, but adequate to sustain a rat.

I could do that
, she thought.
Then when I’m out of here, I could bring help. My leaving might even help him, because he’s probably using ch’i to make it possible for me to breathe.

But Brenda couldn’t fool herself. Who could get in here and retrieve the nearly comatose dragon?

If I had a rope, I could tie it around him and try and pull him out, but I don’t have a rope and I’m too small.
A thought teased at the edges of her mind, a thought she didn’t want to consider for some reason. Brenda made herself pin it down.
I don’t need to stay small. I can go back to being human. Then I can tow Righteous Drum out of here. As long as I’m holding on to him, the ability to breathe water should extend to me. If not, well, I’ll just have to hope to find an air pocket at the top.

Turning back into a human was easy—in many ways staying a rat had been harder. Brenda let herself slide off Righteous Drum’s back, and moved around to his front end. To her relief, ordinary swimming motions worked, although the surrounding water still felt a lot more like a breeze against her skin.

Brenda felt immense relief when she saw Righteous Drum’s eyes were heavily lidded, almost closed. She knew Righteous Drum currently was a dragon and that even when he was human he was older than her dad, but still she was already blushing all over at the thought of pulling this man behind her naked butt.

She didn’t see how she had many choices though. Even at its narrowest point, the dragon’s tail was fairly wide, and getting a grip on it would be complicated by the wide, flaring fin that fanned out from the tip. That left tugging Righteous Drum by his remaining arm or by his head.

Long ago, Brenda had learned a variety of lifesaving carries, and one—used for either an unconscious or unresisting victim—involved cupping one hand under the rescue’s chin and then swimming either sidestroke or in a modified backstroke. She tried this, and after adjusting her grip several times, she found one that worked.

Her legs were sore from days in the saddle, but she managed a fairly powerful scissor kick, reserving her arm to steer. There was no doubt as to the direction she should go—a distinctly warmer current showed where the Suns’ River dropped into this underground pool.

Brenda kicked harder. The dragon—its eyes completely shut now—came along smoothly, seeming impossibly light.

Maybe the dragon’s affinity with water is working with us
, Brenda thought.
Maybe he’s just aerodynamic, or whatever the word is for things that glide well underwater.

Brenda knew she was thinking nonsense, but anything was better than the panic that was rising despite her best efforts to keep it back. She resisted the temptation to count each stroke, to try and calculate how far each one carried
them. Instead she let song lyrics with a strong beat flow through her head, both last year’s hits and the classic rock her folks liked.

Anything but thinking about water so hot that it made stone melt smooth. Anything but thinking about how much she wanted to leave behind the inert form she was dragging behind her. Anything but thinking about what would happen if she failed.

About the time the water started growing painfully hot, Brenda became aware of a new sensation. It took her a moment to place, then her heart lifted as she recognized the vibrations of the waterfall. The current fizzed with air bubbles.

“We’re almost there!”
she cheered, but if Righteous Drum could hear her, there was no sign.

How am I going to get him up?
she thought.
What if everyone left? What if they think we’ve both drowned? What if the sun is too close and they’ve already retreated to someplace safer?

Brenda kicked harder, letting panic give force to muscles gone limp and rubbery. She swam, angling upward, upward, and finally her head broke the surface of the water.