About halfway down they pa.s.sed from sun into shade. By the time they stood safely on the flat, the valley floor lay in night, though the very tops of the caldera walls jutted into the gilding sun. Beyond them the volcano's peak, just visible from this angle, shone gold tinged with pink.

'I sec a stream over yonder,' Rhodry said. 'Judging by all those trees. What are they, anyway?'

'I call them mountain larch, but I know not what a loremaster would say to that. I be ready to camp, I tell you. We might be able to scrounge enough dead wood for a fire.'

'I wonder if we dare light one.'

'True spoken. Well, a summer night without a fire never killed a man.'

As they walked on, heading straight toward the centre of the bowl, they both kept a good watch, turning their heads constantly, glancing up at the sky often, but the valley lay in the deep silence of coming night.

'I don't suppose the dragon would lair right out here, anyway/ Rhodry said at last. 'All the tales I ever heard said caves.'

'In where it be warm, near the fire in what's left of this mountain, I'd wager. Deep in its belly, most like.'

'Not what you'd call a safe place to make your home, then.' 'Not for us. Safe enough for a dragon.

These ancient fire mountains be full of flues and pa.s.sages, all smooth and round, where the molten rock poured out fast and left its skin behind like a shedding snake. That outer bit, the skin if you would, hardens to leave a proper tunnel. And heat rises into caverns. They were big bubbles in the melt once, most of them. The wyrm will have found one of those cosy spots to lair in.'

'Maybe so, but the mountain could blow again, if it's not dead.' Rhodry glanced round, with a cold shudder as he tried to imagine what sort of eruption it would take to gut half a mountain this way. 'The dragon couldn't trust it.'

'The great wyrms do share a soul with the fire mountains, or so the tales say. Deep deep in their hearts a fire of their own does burn, just as fire burns in deep in the mountains, and there in their hearts they understand each other. The wyrms know when the mountain sleeps and when it's about to rouse. The mountain itself will warn them, like, because at root they're brothers.' Then he laughed. 'But my father, he did say that the beasts have splendid hearing, that's all, and sensitive bellies. When they plop themselves smack down on the bedrock, they can hear the melted rocks gurgling and sc.r.a.ping below and feel the mountain trembling under them. They learn to judge the noises, he always said, like a midwife with her car on a pregnant woman's paunch.'

'I prefer your way of speaking, but no doubt he was right.' Enj grinned and started to speak, then fell silent, raising a warning hand. By then they'd reached the shelter of the first ratty-looking trees, stunted and half-bald as well, but some sort of cover. They froze, straining to hear, as the sound that had caught their attention came again, distant and more the impact of a sound than a noise. To Rhodry it seemed like the slap of hand on a drumhead when the goatskin cover's got loose with age - a distant thwack, all spongy, but throbbing again and again, and closer and louder until it resolved itself into the beat of enormous wings against still air. Automatically they both looked up, peering through the branches.

Black against the sky, its legs curled under but its tail flung out for a rudder, the dragon flew over the valley. For a dozen strokes its huge naked wings beat the air then they held steady, and it glided, dipping down straight for the cliffs on the far side, turning a little toward a vast rock formation shaped like a pillar stuck to the cliff by its length. With a smack and rustle of folding wings, it settled. For a moment they could see it clinging to the flume like a woodp.e.c.k.e.r clinging to a tree trunk. In the darkening light, judging accurately was near impossible, but Rhodry guessed it thirty feet long, not counting its tail. With a little shake it squirmed; the tail whipped; the dragon disappeared inside some crack or cave that not even his half-elven eyes could find. Enj let out his breath in a long sigh. He looked like a man who's just seen his beloved appear briefly at a window, then pull the shutters closed.

'Lucky, aren't we?' Rhodry whispered, 'They must hunt by sight, not smell.'

'So my father always said.' Enj was whispering as well. 'So it be not lairing in the high peak, then.'

'Let's hope not, but it may have found some pa.s.sageway through and up. Think we could climb to that hole?'

'Mayhap, but I'll tell you this, Rori. I don't much like the idea of crawling right in after it.'

'I've never agreed with a man more. What about a back door, like? The base of those cliffs look as full of holes as a wormy cheese.'

'In the morning it'll be worth a look. If we work our way from tree to tree, we'll be safe enough.

Maybe.'

It was late that night before either of them could sleep. Even though it was quite likely that the dragon had just fed, since it had flown home to lair, this was not a probability either wanted to put to the test.

For some time they sat under the trees and talked in low voices about the problem of getting near enough to the beast for Rhodry to enchant it, 'You'll need a few ticks of a heart at least,' Enj said. To call its name in the right way and all.'

'Just so, and a place to sit or stand where I can get a good lungful of air, too.'

Enj considered for a moment.

'Since they hunt by sight, we should make a run for the base of the cliff now.'

'Good thinking,' Rhodry said. 'Here, we're going about this the wrong way. We keep thinking we're hunting a dragon, when we should be saying we're hunting a dragon. I'm not the woodsman you are, but I've brought down my share of game in my day.' In the starlit dark he could just see Enj grin. 'So have I,'

Enj said. 'A beast like that will be leaving tracks and signs of its pa.s.sing you'd have to be blind to miss.'

Carrying their packs they dashed across the caldera floor to the rise of cliff, which turned out to offer a wealth of hiding places for two men. They found a shallow cave whose entrance was just big enough for them to squeeze through one at a time. While a dragon might have managed to prise one paw in, they were safe enough from the rest of it. Still, they spent a less than settled night, dozing in turns rather than sleeping straight through. As he sat up with his back to the cavern wall, Rhodry thought he might feel, just every now and then, a trembling as if the rock behind him breathed. When he did doze off, he dreamt of fire that oozed like water through the dark places of the world.

-Before the sun truly rose the sky turned light enough for the pair of them to see. Hugging the cliff, staying as much as possible under the overhanging lip, they searched for other caves and fissures, found many, hut none that seemed to lead in deep. They went back to their night's refuge and sat discussing plans while they ate the last of the Hatbread they'd brought from Haen Marn. They had plenty of smoked meat left from a deer killed early on, but smoked meat alone grows wearisome after a while.

'Well,' Enj said. 'If this beast doesn't eat us, and if you don't tame it, then it's a slow and hungry walk we're going to have back to Haen Marn.'

'Truly. Ye G.o.ds, I hope your mother fares well. I know you've both old me about Haen Marn's dweomer and suchlike, but this Alshandra creature can pop out of nowhere like one of the Wildfolk.

What if Angmar doesn't have time to work whatever spell this is?'

'Not a spell. Haen Marn goes where the danger be not, that's all.' Enj spoke so calmly, so sincerely, that Rhodry felt his worry ease. Soon, perhaps, he would see Haen Marn safe for himself, anyway, if he could tame this dragon.

'Let's be out and searching, shall we?' Rhodry said. 'The more we linger, the better chance it has to realize we're here.'

But though they went back and forth along the cliff for hours, they ever found a crack or cave more than twenty feet or so deep. They asked walking back a-ways, into the open caldera, to study the rock face.

Quite clearly in the bright sun they could see the dragon's entrance, a squat half-round of cave running back from a tiny slant of ledge. Leading up to it, in fact, ran a number of fissures and breaks.

'Practically a ladder,' Enj said. 'I wonder if the beast did sc.r.a.pe all that out, with its claws, like, searching for a way in?'

'That would explain our luck, right enough.'

'Luck? Our luck? Rori, what are you suggesting?'

'Look, we could scrabble round here like moles for days, then find some tunnel and crawl for days more only to fetch up at some dead end. We don't have one of Lin Serr's miners with us, do we?'

'Well, true spoken.' Enj looked doubtfully up at the cave for a long time. 'Ah ye G.o.ds, naught ventured, naught gained! Let's go get candles and suchlike from our packs, and the ropes, and then up we go.'

'I'll go first. If it's waiting inside, it can have a quick bite on me and give you time to get away.'

'Get away? From a dragon so close at hand? A fine man with a jest, bain't you?'

They both laughed, but quietly, lest they warn their prey.

Although the first thirty feet or so were slick and thus delicate climbing, once they got well above the caldera floor they found plenty of holds. Every now and then they found a long scratch graved right into the rock, as if an enormous cat had run its claws down leather. Apparently the dragon had searched for a while before clearing its entrance. Where the fissure narrowed, they could brace themselves and rest, but neither ever spoke except for the occasional whispered warning about some loose rock or suchlike. Even with the warnings, occasionally scree fell in a shower of dust and noise. Rhodry found himself wincing every time, but they never heard any answering clatter from within.

Finally, just when the sun had climbed to noon up the greater cliff of the sky, they reached the ledge, which overhung the face itself. By inching sideways and risking a fall, Rhodry managed to flop himself onto it belly first and scrabble forward to security, but the noise was horrendous, at least to his ears. He got to his knees and glanced into the cave. Mercifully it stretched a long way back into darkness, an entrance only, not a home. With a gasp of relief rather than a sigh, he helped Enj gain the ledge as well.

'Not eaten yet,' Enj said, a little too cheerfully. 'I say we save the candles for a bit.'

'Good idea. Both of us can see in the dark.'

They stepped into the cave, letting their eyes adjust. From the entrance light filtered in, revealing two tunnels that led deeper, but only one was wide enough for a dragon to pa.s.s through. It was possible, of course, that the narrow tunnel wound round to join the wider at some safer place, but Rhodry and Enj looked at each other, shrugged, and took the broad. Its floor was swept clean of loose rock and debris, practically polished, in fact, by the dragon's belly and tail. As they crept along, putting one quiet foot in front of the other, pausing often to listen, the light from behind them dimmed, and the smell rose in a chemical melange - the gagging reck of brimstone, certainly, but mixed with it was another scent, as acrid as sweat.

'The stink of wyrm,' Rhodry whispered.

Enj grinned and nodded.

As it sloped down, the tunnel twisted, leaving the sunlight behind, but yet it never grew completely dark to Rhodry's half-elven sight. Here and there he saw streaks of some pale blue glow, veining in the rock walls. The usual dwarven fungus, he thought at first, then realized that since it had never been exposed to sunlight, it couldn't be phosph.o.r.escent- dweomer, perhaps, placed by the dragon to light its way. He'd never heard of their being able to see in the dark, after all. If the beast would mark the way to its lair for all to see, then it must have been supremely confident of its safety. He began to hope that they might come upon it asleep, especially if it had indeed fed the day before.

The tunnel twisted down and in, farther and farther, for what Rhodry estimated as half a mile. The air grew hotter and hotter, stinking of brimstone. Rhodry felt as if the back of his throat were crusted with the stuff, making him want to retch. Far ahead he could just see a different sort of light, pale red like the glow from hot iron on a blacksmith's anvil. He signalled for a rest, and they pa.s.sed the waterskin back and forth, Though he said nothing, Enj was grinning like a berserker.

As it sloped toward the reddish glow the tunnel narrowed, until its sides and roof turned polished, too, a^ if the dragon forced a tight way through every time it laired. They walked slower and slower, placing each foot carefully on this slick surface. The glow brightened to a hundred lanterns. Rhodry could smell hot water, the steamy reek of mineral springs and simmering brimstone. Ahead the tunnel mouth gaped.

He glanced back at Enj, grinned, and led the way out onto a Jedgc, perched on the wall of an enormous cavern, formed aeons past, curved like the inside of a bubble, strangely smooth and dead-black, though fissured here and there by huge cracks.

Rhodry realized that they stood halfway up the southern wall and looked across some hundred yards and down some fifty feet. The whole cavern stank of wyrm, and of steam and minerals - the walls dripped and oozed with condensation, Looking down to the misty floor he wondered if this fire mountain were as dead as the dragon seemed to think, because it lay pitted and pooled with springs of sulphurous-smelling water, oozing out of rust and yellowish mud, sending out long tendrils of steam to the irregular roof, where in places light shone in through slits. Down to his left, the cavern continued into shadows so dark that he couldn't estimate how far it stretched, although he could see how the floor fell sharply away. Down its slope stood dim shapes of what might be spires of rock and other tunnel mouths.

To his right, half-shrouded by steaming mists, the great wyrm lay coiled upon a wide ledge that overhung the hot springs themselves. In the faint light from the cracks in the cavern ceiling, it glittered all black and greeny-black, the great head, resting on one clawed paw, more of a copper verdure, the long body and folded wings tending toward jet.

'Warm in here,' Enj whispered. 'It'll be awake.'

The head snapped up, the eyes opened wide, the colour of polished copper and gleaming as they searched out the source of the voice. One wing unfurled with a dry rustle and swept out - and out and out, a vast expanse of green-black skin and delicate bone that roofed half the cavern beneath. Rhodry could only wonder at himself, that he felt no fear, only an awe at how beautiful she was. He was certain -he'd never been so certain of anything in his life - that the dragon was female.

'Get back,' Rhodry said. 'Leave her to me.'

As F.nj scrambled into the tunnel, the ma.s.sive head swung Rhodry's way, and slowly, with a sound like wind in a thousand trees, the wing furled again.

'Leave her, you say? You have sharp eyes, elf.'

The voice was more a hiss than a roar, but it boomed and echoed through the cavern in a winter flood of Elvish words. Rhodry stepped forward onto the ledge. As he faced her, not twenty feet away, he felt himself laughing, his low berserker's chortle half under his breath. The huge mouth opened to reveal a hedge of crooked fangs like swords. t Tou laugh at your dying?' She yawned, extending a long, long pink tongue, then curling it back like a cat. 'Very good. I like courage in a male.'

'Do you, my lady? Because n.o.ble you are, truly, as n.o.ble and grand as a thousand queens.' He made her a low bow, as courtly as he could manage. 'And my lady as well, because I'm sure as I can be that my death's riding on your wings, and always have I served the lady called death.'

'Is that why you're here, elf? To die? If the woman you loved left you disconsolate or some such thing, it would have been easier to fall on your sword.' She paused, the eyes flashing copper sparks, 'Look round you! There's no treasure h.o.a.rd here. I've nothing to steal, no gold, no jewels, none of those things your stupid stories all about.'

'Why do you think me one of the People?'

'Who else would you be? You smell elven, you're too large for a dwarf, and not hairy enough for a man of the Meradan.'

'Half an elf I am, my lady, but only half. My mother was of the race of men. Do you know us?'

With a snarl that stabbed his ears she raised herself up on her legs, and at that moment Rhodry saw his death in her eyes. If the fate of literally thousands of souls hadn't rested upon him, he would have welcomed it from such a terrible beauty, but as it was, with a sigh of sincere regret, he flung up his hand and let the silver ring catch the light and flash.

'Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz!' He intoned her name in a wave of sound that pierced her rage like a spear, that resounded over her like a net. 'Arzosah! I call you and command you!'

It seemed that he had cried a dweomcr spell that melded her with the rock and turned her to a vein of copper - so still did she become.

After a long long moment she crouched unmoving, unbreathing like a dead thing; then with a rushy moan she slumped, her head flopping onto her paws, the enormous eyes rolling under drooped lids.

'I have hated your race for thousands of years, Man!' She spat the name out like an insult. 'When you conquered Wyrmkind, we fled away, we flew from you, we left our forests and our crags to you, and now you've followed us here. What will you take from me this time, man. ? My very life?'

Rhodry was too stunned to answer. She lay deathly still, her eyes dwelled on his face like a dog watching a cruel master uncurl a whip, and he hated himself for bringing her so low.

'Without your help those I've sworn to serve will die, or I'd turn and walk out of here right now.'

'I can tell when someone lies to me, and you speak the truth.' Yet still she did not move. 'What do you want from me, Man?'

'When have my people harmed you? I've never met anyone who so much as knew that you existed.'

She raised her head and tilted it a little to one side to study him. He felt like laughing aloud just to see the life come back into her eyes.

'You're speaking the truth again. This is very odd, Man. Or no, I won't call you by that hateful name.

Shall I call you Elf, or will you give me some harmless word to use?'

'My name is Rhodry.'

Her eyes seemed to bore into his and through his very soul.

'So it is,' she whispered. 'So it is. Why would you tell me such a thing?'

'The names of elves have no power to bind them.'

For a moment he thought she was growling in a deep rumble under her breath; then he realized that she was laughing.

'Well, so they don't. Very well, Rhodry. If I am to be enslaved, best it be by an elf like you. What do you want from me, Rhodry Dragonmastcr?'

'Far to the south of here the Horsekin, the Meradan as you call them, are besieging a city, and they want to kill every soul in it. I intend to stop them.'

The rumble of her laughter shook the ledge.

'If I am to be enslaved, best it be for a task like that.' She swung her head to stare over his shoulder with one gleaming eye. 'That creature behind you? Is it your servant, or may I eat it?'

He glanced round to see Enj standing just at the tunnel's mouth with his arms clasped round his chest, staring at the dragon as wide-eyed as any worshipper seeing the statue of his G.o.d.

'Leave him be. He's my friend.'

'Stranger yet. Half an elf, half a man, and friend to dwarves. At least you seem to be an interesting sort.'

'My lady, I can promise you this: many a woman has loved me, a few have hated me, but none have ever called me dull.'

Again she laughed, the boom rolling and echoing round the cavern till Rhodry felt a lash of fear, running ice-cold down his spine. He knew that he needed to rea.s.sert his control of her.

'Tell me one thing,' he said. 'And then we'll return to the sunlight. Why do you hate the Meradan?'

She curled a vast paw and studied her talons, each as long as a broadsword, 'Now this telling is an order I'll take gladly. Many many years ago now, it was, but still it burns in my heart, I had a mate who pleased me. The hairy ones hunted him down like a beast and slew him, all to swell their king's vanity. King! If you can call an animal on horseback a king! I slew many of them as they gloated over my mate's dead body, I slew the king himself, chasing him away from the corpse through the gra.s.s. Oh, how he squealed and whined and p.i.s.sed himself when I had him in my claws! King! I pierced him through his stomach and ripped out his guts, then let him die slowly, whining and screeching to the end. But naught would bring back my dead mate. Always have I longed for further revenge, and if you offer it to me, Dragonmaster, then I will serve you well. Why, I'll serve you freely. You don't even need that ring, truly you don't.'

Rhodry smiled.

'I think I'll wear it a little longer, though, just for the habit of the thing.'

She glared and growled, but just softly under her breath.