The Seven Songs (26 page)

Beneath his scaled belly, treasures gleamed and sparkled. Crowns and necklaces, swords and shields, trumpets and flutes—all crafted of gold or silver, all studded with jewels. Rubies, amethysts, jades, emeralds, sapphires, and huge pearls lay strewn everywhere. Never in my life had I imagined that such a vast hoard existed. Yet I felt no desire whatsoever to comb through it, for scattered throughout were skulls of all sizes and shapes, some gleaming white, others scorched by fire.

I crept deeper into the hollow, with Rhia and Bumbelwy just behind. We cringed as one at the slow, roaring rhythm of the dragon’s breathing. His enormous eyes were closed, though not completely, revealing slits of smoldering yellow. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this beast was as much awake as asleep.

At that instant, the dragon’s jaws opened a crack. A thin tongue of flame shot out, scorching the black rocks and some stray skulls. Bumbelwy jumped backward, dropping his bell-draped hat out of his cloak. It hit the rocks at his feet with a jarring clang.

The dragon suddenly snorted and shifted his gargantuan bulk. His eyelids quivered, opening a sliver more. Bumbelwy gasped in fright. His legs wobbled. Seeing that he looked about to faint, Rhia grabbed his arm.

Then, with gruesome slowness, the dragon raised the claw wearing the giant skull. Like someone about to eat a rare delicacy, he brought it to his nostrils, savoring its aroma. His eyelids trembled, but did not open, as he released a searing blast of flames. At last, the roasting completed, the dragon’s purple lips grasped the skull and tore it from the claw. A loud crunching echoed in the hollow, the sound of enormous teeth reducing the morsel to splinters. With an immense puff of smoke, the dragon resumed snoring.

The three of us shuddered in unison. Glancing grimly at Rhia, I handed her my staff. At the same time, I lay my right hand on the silver hilt of my sword. Slowly, ever so slowly, I drew it from the scabbard. As it emerged, the blade rang faintly, like a distant chime. The sleeping dragon suddenly growled, releasing a puff of thick smoke from his nostrils. His pointed ears pricked forward, listening to the ringing sound. Meanwhile, his dream seemed to alter. He growled viciously, bared his teeth, and slashed at the air with his claws.

I stood as rigid as a statue. My arm began to ache from holding the heavy sword above my head, but I dared not lower it for fear it would make another sound. After several minutes, the dragon seemed to relax a little. The growling subsided, and the claws fell still.

Cautiously, I crept forward on the rocks, taking one small step at a time. The dragon towered over me, each of his scales as big as my entire body. Perspiration stung my eyes.
If I have only one blow, where to strike?
Those armored scales covered his chest, legs, back, tail, and even his orange ears. Perhaps, if I ran the sword through one of the closed eyes, that might do it.

Closer and closer I edged. The smoky air made me want to cough, but I did all I could to resist. My hand squeezed the hilt.

All at once, the tail lashed out like a monstrous whip. I had no time even to move, let alone to run. As the tail exploded to its full length, one of the barbs at the end coiled tightly around my chest, squeezing the air out of my lungs. In the same instant, the other barb wound around my arm holding the sword, preventing me from moving it at all.

I was totally helpless.

Rhia released a muffled shriek. I felt the dragon tense again, squeezing me all the harder. Yet the yellow slits of his eyes opened no wider. He seemed to be still asleep, or half asleep. And, judging from the curl of his lips, he seemed to be about to enjoy a thoroughly realistic dream about swallowing a boy with a sword.

At the edge of my second sight, I watched Rhia fall to her knees. Bumbelwy knelt awkwardly beside her. His head hung low on his paunchy chins. Then, unaccountably, he started to sing. It was, I soon realized, a funeral dirge, sung in low, moaning tones. As much as I squirmed in the dragon’s grip, I squirmed still more at his words:

A dragon savors all he eats
But values best the living treats
Who squirm and squeal before they die,
The filling of a dragon’s pie.

O dragon, ‘tis my friend you eat!
Alas, how sweet the dragon’s meat.

The dragon loves the crunch of bones
And all the dying cries and groans
Of people gone without a trace,
Into deep digestive space.

O dragon, ‘tis my friend you eat!
Alas, how sweet the dragon’s meat.

My friend, in dragon’s mouth interred,
Was even robbed his final word.
For down he went into that hole,
His parting sentence swallowed whole.

O dragon, ‘tis my friend you eat!
Alas, how sweet the dragon’s meat.

Even before Bumbelwy had finished, the dragon’s jaws opened. I watched, aghast, as the rows of jagged teeth, charred by flames, revealed themselves. With all my strength, I struggled to escape. But the tail only squeezed harder. The jaws, meanwhile, opened wider.

Suddenly, out of the depths behind the open jaws came a gruff, hoarse sound that could be only one thing. A laugh. A deep, belching, hearty laugh. A billowing cloud of smoke came as well, blackening the air. The laugh continued, rolling right down the dragon’s serpentine form, shaking first his head, then his neck, then his gigantic belly, then finally his tail. Before long, the entire beast quaked in raucous laughter, swaying on his hoard of treasures.

The tail released me. I dropped to the ground, breathless, dazed, but alive. Quickly, I crawled through the black cloud, dragging my sword. A moment later, Rhia ran to my side and helped me to my feet.

Coughing from the smoke, we stumbled out of the hollow. Behind us, the dragon’s coarse laughter began to grow quieter. In a matter of seconds, his roaring snores had returned. I glanced back to see the thin slits of his eyes shining in the shadows. When at last we were well away from the dragon’s lair, we collapsed on a bench of black rock. Rhia threw her arms around my neck. So different from the embrace of the dragon!

I squeezed her in return. Then I turned to Bumbelwy. In a hoarse voice I declared, “You did it, you know. You made the dragon laugh.”

Bumbelwy’s head dropped. “I know. A terrible, terrible thing. I am humiliated. Devastated.”

“What do you mean?” I shook him by the shoulders. “You saved me!”

“Terrible,” repeated the dour jester. “Just terrible. Once again I botched the delivery! I was singing one of my saddest, most sorrowful hymns. One that should break anyone’s heart.” He bit his lip. “But what did it do instead? Tickled him. Entertained him. When I try to amuse, I sadden, and when I try to grieve, I amuse! Oh, I’m a failure. A miserable failure.”

He sighed morosely. “And to make matters worse, I’ve lost my hat. My jester’s hat! So on top of not sounding like a jester, now I don’t even look like one.”

Rhia and I traded amused glances. Then, without further delay, I pulled off one of my boots.

Bumbelwy watched me gloomily. “Injure your foot, did you?”

“No. I have a promise to keep.”

With that, I sunk my teeth into the leather tongue of the boot. I ripped a section loose and chewed vigorously. No amount of chewing could soften the leather, though it did fill my mouth with the flavors of dirt, grass, and perspiration. With great difficulty, I swallowed.

Bumbelwy suddenly caught his breath. He straightened his back slightly. His downturned chins lifted a notch. He was not smiling, nor even grinning. But, at least for a moment, he was no longer frowning.

As I began to take another bite, he laid his hand on my back. “Hold there. One bite is enough. You may need that boot for another purpose.” An odd, muffled sound, almost like a smothered giggle, erupted from his throat. “I really did make him laugh, didn’t I?”

“Indeed you did.”

The frowns returned. “I doubt I could do it again, though. Just a fluke.”

Slipping on my boot, I shook my head. “It was no fluke. You could do it again.”

Thrusting out his chest, Bumbelwy stood before me. “Then when you go back into that smoking oven to try to slay that beast, I will go with you.”

“As will I,” declared Rhia.

I looked at their loyal faces for a moment, then slid my sword back into the scabbard. “You won’t have to.” I leaned closer on the scorched rock. “You see, I’m not going to slay the dragon.”

Both of them stared at me. Raising the staff, Rhia asked, “You have to do it, don’t you? How else can you learn the first lesson of Eliminating?”

I reached for the gnarled shaft of hemlock, spinning it slowly in my hand. “I think, perhaps, I already have.”

“What?”

Fingering the staff’s knotty top, I glanced toward the shadowed lair. “Something happened to me when the dragon laughed.”

“Right,” agreed Bumbelwy. “You broke free of his tail.”

“No, I mean something else. Did you hear how full and hearty that laugh was? It made me feel that, well, as vicious and bloodthirsty as the dragon is, he couldn’t be completely evil. Or else . . . he couldn’t laugh like that.”

Bumbelwy looked at me as if I had lost my mind. “I’ll wager that dragon has laughed every time he has destroyed a village.”

I nodded. “Perhaps so. But something about his laugh gave me the feeling that, somehow, he isn’t so completely different from you and me. That he has some worth. Even if we don’t comprehend it.”

Rhia almost smiled.

Bumbelwy, though, furrowed his brow. “I don’t understand what this has to do with Eliminating.”

Lifting my right hand, smudged with charcoal, I touched the lids of my sightless eyes. “You see these eyes? Useless. Scarred forever, like my cheeks. And do you know why? Because I tried to destroy another boy’s life! I don’t know whether or not he survived, but I doubt it. I tried to eliminate him.”

His brow wrinkled still more. “I still don’t understand.”

“The point is this. Eliminating is sometimes necessary. But it comes only at a price. It may be to your body. Or to your soul. But the price is always there. Because
every living thing is precious somehow.”

The shaft of my staff sizzled with a blast of blue light. Where bare wood had been before, there was now the image of a dragon’s tail.

“The sixth Song is done!” exclaimed Rhia. “Now you have only one left, the Song of Seeing.”

Tapping the top of the staff, I examined the dragon’s tail, etched not far from the glowing star within a circle. Shifting my gaze to the lifeless stretch of coastline, as blackened and burned as the inside of a fire pit, I viewed the deep blue channel and the distant peaks of Varigal beyond. “There may be only one Song left, but there are only a few days left, too.”

Bumbelwy slumped lower. “No more than three, judging from the moon last night.”

“And we need to get all the way to the Forgotten Island and back.”

“Impossible,” declared the jester. He shook his head for emphasis until he remembered that he no longer wore any bells. “Merlin, you have done well, impossibly well, to get this far. But you, like the rest of us, caught a glimpse of that place from the cliffs of the treelings. No one in living memory has ever gone to the Forgotten Island! How can you hope to find your way there and back in only three days?”

I tried to imagine the route we would need to travel—across water, over peaks, through forests, and past whatever barriers of enchantment shielded the Island. The entire breadth of Fincayra, full of untold dangers. Sadly, I turned to Rhia. “For once, I am afraid Bumbelwy’s right. This time, we don’t have the wind, or a giant, to help us.”

Rhia stomped her foot on the charred rock. “I’m not giving up. We’ve come too far! You have six of the seven Songs. And I even have the location of the Otherworld Well.”

I jumped to my feet. “You have
what
?”

“The location of the stairwell. Where Balor stands guard.” She ran a hand through her hair, twisting some curls in her fingers. “Gwri of the Golden Hair gave it to me—sent a vision of it right into my mind—when she told us the Otherworld Well wasn’t far from the dragon’s lair.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She told me not to! She thought you might be tempted to skip the Forgotten Island entirely.”

Slowly, I sat down again on the bench of black rock. Putting my nose almost to hers, I spoke softly but firmly. “That is exactly what we’re going to do.”

“You can’t!” she protested. “You’ll need to find the soul of Seeing before you stand any chance at all against Balor. Don’t you remember the words you found in Arbassa?

But lo! Do not attempt the Well
Until the Songs are done.
For dangers stalk your every step,
With Balor’s eye but one.

“You’ll die for sure if you try to fight Balor without all seven of the Songs.”

My stomach knotted as I recalled Tuatha’s own warning to me.
Heed well my words, young colt! Without all seven Songs, you shall lose more than your quest. You shall lose your very life.

I cleared my throat. “But Rhia, if I don’t drop the seventh Song, my mother will surely die! Don’t you see? It’s our only hope. Our only chance.”

Her eyes narrowed. “There’s something more, isn’t there? I can feel it.”

“No. You’re wrong.”

“I am not. You’re afraid of something, aren’t you?”

“Those instincts again!” My hands closed into fists. “Yes, I am afraid. Of the lesson on Seeing. It frightens me more than all the others combined. I don’t know why, Rhia.”

Shaking her head, she leaned back against the charred rock. “Then whatever awaits you on the Forgotten Island is important. You must go there, Merlin. For you as well as for Elen! And there’s another reason, too.”

“Another?”

“Gwri told me something else. She said that while you are on the Forgotten Island you must find a bough of mistletoe. Wear it, she said, when you enter the Otherworld Well. It will help you make your way safely to the realm of Dagda. Without it, your task will be much harder.”

“My task could not be any harder as it is! Please, Rhia. No bough of mistletoe is going to make enough difference to justify using up what little time is left. You must help me. Show me the way to the Otherworld Well.”