Wizard of the Grove (22 page)

She perched on the edge of a rock and mopped her forehead with the edge of her tunic. The dust covering both became a muddy smear. The sun beat down mercilessly and she looked longingly at the cool black shadow of a small cave.

A cave.

Dwarves lived in caves. Granted they were carved and built into caverns of great beauty, but they were still caves.

Crystal dropped to her knees and peered into the darkness. After the bright sunlight, it took her eyes a moment to adjust, but she was certain that the cave extended back quite far and eventually opened up. Carefully, she slid forward onto her stomach and began to inch her way into the darkness, pulling herself along by her elbows and toes. Her body quickly blocked any light coming from the entrance and the darkness became so thick it could almost be touched. A sharp rock dug into her elbow, drawing blood and a string of curses that would have horrified Tayer could she have heard them.

Inch by torturous inch, Crystal squirmed down the tunnel, wondering why she had been so sure it would open up ahead. If anything, it became more confining and began to slope quite distinctly down. Then, just as her eyes were beginning to adjust and she was able to distinguish between the denser black of the rock and the grayish black of the air, her elbows found no purchase and, scrambling for something to grab, she tumbled over the edge of a precipice.

A small one, fortunately. She lay on her back, breathing heavily, more frightened by her instinctive urge to break her fall with power
than by the fall itself. She had just realized that, unable to use her powers, she could die in a great many ridiculous ways . . . and this time there would be no Riven to pull her out.

The sudden flaring of a lantern almost blinded her, but her hamadryad eyes welcomed the light, absorbed it, and soon she could see again.

She had never seen an uglier man. He was short, bandy-legged, barrel-chested, and had the arms and shoulders of a man twice his height. The grizzled red beard did nothing to improve the scarred and scowling face. Red fires burned in the depths of his eyes. Around his waist, over a patched brown tunic, he wore a belt made of gold leaves that was so beautifully crafted and so detailed Crystal was sure she heard a breeze move through the leaves. He had to be a dwarf.

“Name's Doan,” he growled at last. “I expect you've come for the dragon.”

Crystal opened and closed her mouth a few times, but words just wouldn't come.

“Well, you look like her,” Doan said, holding out a hand to help her up. To Crystal's surprise, he appeared to be smiling. “But you sure haven't got her way with words. Coming?”

“Where?” Crystal managed at last.

Doan held the lantern up and she saw they were in a small, circular cave. Tucked up against the ceiling was the tunnel she had fallen from and opposite it, at floor level, was an arched doorway. Doan headed for the door and she followed.

She had to duck to get under the arch, but the rest of the corridor—such a work of art could not be thought of as a mere tunnel—was high enough for her to walk erect. The dwarf moved quickly for all his squatness and she hurried to keep up. There was no time to study the carvings on the walls, although she was sure they told a story as so many images kept repeating, there was barely time to notice the inlay work and the beauty it brought to the stone.

“Doan,” she said, before the silence became oppressive and reminded her that they were walking under almost a mile of solid rock, “who is it you think I look like?”

Doan snorted. “You're the image of the Lady. And you know it. Even her sisters remarked on the resemblance.”

“But we all look alike.”

Doan snorted again, a rude noise he seemed fond of. “The Lady had more life in her than all those sticks of wood combined. So do you.”

“Did you know her?”

“I'd hardly know you looked like her if I didn't, now would I.” His harsh voice softened slightly and though he looked no less ugly, he was, for a moment, less frightening. “Aye, I knew her. She'd done me a favor, thousands of years ago by mortal time, so I watched them for her—her man and her boy—and I watched her die.” He looked up at Crystal; the red fire blazed in his eyes and his voice was stone.

“Kraydak and Death could have the whole mortal lot of them if it was up to me.” Then he sighed and the fires died. He waved her on ahead. “But it isn't, so there you are . . .”

Crystal stepped out into a cavern where the rock had been worked on and improved by hundreds of dwarves for thousands of years. And the cavern had been beautiful to start with. Gold and silver danced across the walls and diamonds refracted the light into countless tiny rainbows.

But the room was only a frame for the dragon.

More lovely than anything Crystal had ever seen, he lay sleeping, wrapped around a stone column that had been carved to resemble a giant tree. His scales were gold and shone with an almost iridescent light. He was grace and power and a terrible beauty. The mighty head lay pillowed on a curve of foreleg, and his golden lacelike wings were folded across his back. From his nostrils came two thin streams of pure white smoke and from his mouth . . .

Crystal turned to Doan in disbelief.

“He snores?”

Doan nodded. “And he stinks when he gets too hot. He's a bit whiff now.”

A slightly unpleasant, musky odor was noticeable and it grew
stronger as Crystal moved closer. She winced as her footsteps echoed, sounding unnaturally loud.

“Don't worry about the noise,” Doan said, stomping along beside her. “We carved this cavern out around him, and if that noise didn't wake him up there's no sound loud enough to disturb him.”

Crystal stood and stared up at the dragon. Had its jaw been flat on the ground, she would have just barely been able to look it in the eye. Tentatively, she reached out and touched it on the nose. Beneath her hand, the skin was warm and surprisingly soft. There was no indication that the creature was aware of her at all. She prodded it gently with the toe of her boot. Nothing.

“It's funny,” said Doan, kicking the dragon and not gently, “that out of all the spells Kraydak threw at this creature to stop it, it was the simplest one that worked. Sleep, he said, and sleep it has.” The dwarf shrugged. “Even the earth sleeps, so I guess those made of it must as well.”

“But how do I wake it if I can't use my powers?”

Doan gazed at Crystal in astonishment, both brows raised nearly to his hairline. “Didn't the centaurs teach you anything?” he demanded.

“They taught me plenty,” Crystal snapped. She'd settled with that and didn't need it brought up again. “They never mentioned this, is all.”

“This
is what you were born for, and they never mentioned it?” Doan snarled in disgust. “You can't count on those blowhards for anything. Kiss him!”

“I beg your pardon.”

Doan sighed, “An enchanted sleep can be broken only by the kiss of a maiden both fair and pure.” Critically, he looked her up and down. “The Lady was the most beautiful woman ever to walk the earth and you're her image, I guess that should be fair enough. How's your love life?”

Crystal remembered Bryon lying blasted on the ground and started to laugh. Kraydak had outsmarted himself that time. Had Bryon been allowed to live she, no doubt, would have been unqualified to wake
anyone from an enchanted sleep by now. Kraydak would have the world to himself and . . . to her surprise she found herself cradled in Doan's powerful arms and weeping bitterly.

“Hush, child,” he whispered as she clung to him, sobs racking her slender body. “Tears won't bring him back.” He remembered another silver-haired maiden who'd wept in his arms, then dried her eyes, and walked away from her tree to her death. He cursed mortal men, individually and collectively, for the pain they caused.

Gradually Crystal calmed and pulled away. She felt surprisingly better. Was that all it took, then, to forget, to ease the pain, just a few tears? She checked her heart and found Bryon there as he always had been, but the cold fire surrounding the memory had been put out. Doan reached up and took the last tear off her cheek with the tip of his finger. It sparkled there for a moment then shimmered and changed; where the drop of water had been was a perfect blue opal.

“That's never happened before,” Crystal sniffed, wiping her nose on the tattered edge of her tunic.

“You've never cried on a dwarf before,” Doan told her, offering her the gem with an oddly gentle smile on his ugly face.

She managed a weak smile in return and tucked the stone in her belt. Then, with new resolve, she turned back to the dragon.

“Why me?” she asked. “Why a wizard? Wouldn't any beautiful virgin do?”

Doan snorted. “What would any beautiful virgin do with the dragon once she woke it? Hopefully, it'll listen to a wizard.”

One silver eyebrow went up. “Hopefully?”

“That's the theory.” Doan shrugged. “We won't know until you try.”

“On the lips?”

“I don't think it has lips.”

“Oh.” Crystal squared her shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed the dragon on the exact center of his golden nose. Then she stepped back beside the dwarf and they waited.

The snoring, which had been a rumbling background noise from the moment they had entered the cavern, stopped. The dragon
twitched, rubbed at his nose with the curve of a talon, and opened his eyes. They were the brilliant blue of a summer's sky and faceted into a thousand gleaming parts. Six feet of forked tongue snaked out and gently touched Crystal's face.

“Wizzzard.” Its teeth were very large.

“Not your wizard,” Crystal protested, as the tongue touched her again.

“Young,” said the dragon. “Different. Tassste like treesss. Ssstill, wizzzard.” In a blur of gold and blue, he reared back, opened his mouth, and shot forth one large but not very hot puff of smoke.

Doan almost collapsed, he was laughing so hard at the puzzled expression on the dragon's face.

Crystal, who had dived out of the path of what she expected to be a killing blast of flame, was not as amused.

“Well, what else did you expect?” she said, limping back to meet the dragon face to face. “You've been asleep for thousands of years.”

“Thousssandsss?” For the first time he looked around and realized where he was. “Kraydak!” The softly sibilant voice grew to a roar that shook the roof. Crystal and Doan scrambled for cover as he surged to his hind feet and, talons extended, ripped and shredded the air. He fell back to the floor with a crash and began maneuvering his bulk around so he could get out the only tunnel large enough for him.

“Hold it!” Crystal grabbed a dragging wingtip and dug in her heels. She couldn't let this lizard and Kraydak destroy everything people had worked for over the last thousand years; the scars of their last conflict were barely healed. “Where do you think you're going?”

“Releassse, wizzzard,” snarled the dragon, appearing very willing to take care of her first. “There isss job left undone.”

“And it'll stay undone unless you listen to me. Kraydak beat you once, he can do it again.”

“Accident.”

“Maybe, maybe not; and he's been getting more powerful while you've been napping. This time he could kill you instead of just putting you to sleep.”

The dragon glared at her suspiciously but he stopped trying to leave the cavern. “Lissstening.”

Crystal let go of the wingtip. She was aware that the dragon considered her at best an annoyance to be eliminated and at worst, regardless of her differences, one of the race he was sworn to destroy. She wiped her sweaty palms on her thighs and met the glaring blue of his gaze. This, the hamadryads hadn't told her. She'd been created to wake the dragon, yes, but that couldn't be the end of it.

“Kraydak will have to be distracted if you're to have any chance of getting close to him.”

“Ssso,” he hissed contemptuously. “What dissstractsss wizzzard?”

She spread her hands and said simply, “Another wizard.”

The dragon smiled. It was the most terrifying thing he had done so far.

“Yesss.”

*   *   *

With Doan as a guide, the walk back to the sandstone pillar was pleasant and much faster than her earlier journey across the badlands. Although Crystal wanted to hurry, for she knew that C'Fas could mask her absence for only a limited time and she'd spent longer than she'd intended with the dragon, the wonders of her surroundings invited her to linger. The caverns of the dwarves were, indeed, as beautiful as legend described them. Thick pillars, carved to resemble fantastic animals, carried the weight of the roof—and the mountain of stone above it—on their massive shoulders.

“Not bad for just a few thousand years,” the dwarf agreed as Crystal admired the jewel-encrusted mosaics covering the walls.

“A few thousand years? But the dwarves have been since the beginning.”

“Been, yes, but not here. We came here to guard the dragon.”

“Against what?” Crystal couldn't think of anything that would dare to harm such a magnificent and powerful creature.

“Against mortals,” Doan snorted. “A plague on the earth they are.
Can't imagine what the Mother was thinking of when She created them. Consider the mess we'd all be in had a human stumbled on the dragon. When Kraydak emerged, they'd have led him right to it and we'd have the battles of the Doom all over again.” He chuckled and suddenly sounded much more approving of mortalkind. “Of course, they'd have probably tried to make him pay for the privilege of destroying them. This is the way out.”

Crystal took one last look around, then began to follow Doan up the narrow, winding staircase. “What I really mind,” she said suddenly, “is having Kraydak be right.”

“About what?”

“Well, he said I couldn't defeat him, and he was right.”