Rap opened his mouth, and then the alien voice boomed in his mind again, louder than ever and filled with strange reverberations and ringing metallic echoes: GOLD? It half stunned him, so that he clutched both hands to his head, dropping his spear.
By the time his wits settled, Jalon was explaining to Gathmor how he and Rap had seen a prophecy in a magic casement. The sailor’s face was pale, too, now, but with fury, not fear.
“There it is!” Rap yelled, pointing. A speck, low in the sky. Far, far, away.
Coming. Still beyond the range of farsight. Only one.
A sudden surge of doubt sent prickles racing over his skin. Oh Gods! If its voice is that strong now . . .
Gathmor grabbed the front of Rap’s robe in one massive fist and brandished the other. “You young bastard! You knew about this and you trapped me?”
“Let him be!” Sagorn snapped.
Gathmor whirled to find the source of the new voice, and staggered when he found himself looking up into the shrewd and angry eyes of the old scholar.
“Who the Evil are you?”
“Never mind now. Do not blame him—magic prophecies cannot readily be evaded or nullified. We must take cover. Sometimes these draconic vestiges are cavernous. Come!” The old man set off, striding across the hot sand with surprising agility.
“Yes. He’s right,” Rap said. And yet . . . how inevitable was the prophecy, how significant its details? It had shown the three of them at the base of the cliff where the dragon’s ribs rose from the sand. If they split up now, could they still balk it?
Gold? trumpeted the fanfare voice. Is gold?
Rap felt as if someone had dropped a metal bucket over his head and thrown a house at it. Deafened, blinded, he sprawled to his knees. Gathmor hauled him up and began hustling him across the sand after Sagorn.
His farsight was picking it up now, coming low over the forest, the blast from its great wings stirring the trees in dancing turmoil. It did not compare in size with the mountainous fossil, it was silvery and not black, but it was still as big as Blood Wave or Stormdancer.
He tried to answer Gathmor’s questions while the sailor hauled him—half carried him—toward the towering pile of black rock ahead, but that last word from the dragon had left him too dazed. This was no tiny fire chick, and its sheer intensity overwhelmed him. He had blundered hopelessly. Miscalculated. Everything was lost, and they were all going to die.
Twice more the gigantic voice rang in Rap’s mind, exulting, gloating, ravening after gold . . . yet curious and querying also, as if a current of doubt ran deep below. The power of that voice was unbearable now, every blast an impact of pain that made him think his head was being crushed, that sickened him, that blanked out everything else except the awareness of failure and stupidity.
Sagorn had picked his way between the litter of giant scales and was peering into a crevice in the ropy black face of the cliff itself. He turned as Gathmor released Rap to fall on the scorching sand at his feet.
“Now will you explain—”
“No. These gaps are too shallow. But there may be a cavern of some considerable size within this cadaver.” The old man glared down at Rap. ”Fool! I suppose you thought your mastery might work on dragons?”
Rap croaked hoarsely, then forced himself to sit up. “It worked on a fire chick.”
Sagorn roared in exasperation and shook both fists at the sky. “Where did you meet a fire chick?”
“In Milflor. Bright Water had one.” Gold? Two legs have gold?
The worm was close now. Its voice was a brass band inside Rap’s head, and an earthquake also, and being crushed flat. His skull would fall apart.
Inos! He must think of Inos. He was doing this for her, and he sought to draw strength from her memory.
“Bright Water! You met the witch again?” Sagorn grimaced, baring his teeth like an angry skeleton. “Moron! Young idiot! You should have consulted me! You should have told Andor.” Rap began hauling himself upright, pushing himself up the rough black face of the cliff. It burned, hotter even than the sand. His head was still ringing from the dragon’s last fanfare, and already the worm was much closer, sunlight flashing on silver scales as it soared swiftly over the forest. The beat of its wings was rhythmic thunder thudding against his eardrums. Huge! The next word it said was going to kill him. He cringed in expectation, waiting for the next bolt of agony like a felon hung on the whipping post, able to think of nothing but the coming lash.
“Too strong!” he muttered.
“Obviously!” Sagorn snapped. “Have you tried, though? Have you even tried to send it away?”
Rap shook his head. He was still leaning against the furnace of the rock, as he dared not trust his legs to support him. The dragon was close enough now that he could believe he was looking up at it, a silvery sky-snake, thrashing through the air on wings as wide as the courtyard of the castle in Krasnegar, its tail trailing behind it in long curves, two monstrous jeweled eyes flashing. Beneath it, trees were tumbling and shattering like matchwood in the blast.
“It wants gold,” he mumbled. “It thinks we have gold.” Sagorn spun around and stalked off. “We must take cover!” he shouted over his shoulder. “I must find cover.”
“Why you?” Gathmor followed, firing angry questions. “Just you? And where did you come from, anyway?”
Rap pushed himself erect and tottered after the other two. He ought to try sending a command to the dragon, he knew, but he was terrified that it might reply. That voice was worse agony than anything he had ever known. It would burn his brain to ashes.
Oh, Inos! I tried! I tried too hard.
Sagorn rounded a rock fragment as large as a cottage, which might have been a part of a fetlock. He was scanning the cliff that rose so high above, looking for an opening into that mythical cavern he hoped for. Even if he found it, it would be only a death trap.
Then a gigantic shadow flashed over them, and they all stopped.
The casement! This was the moment. Rap turned to stare across the heat-distorted sand, and for one tiny instant thought he saw a flicker of darkness there, where the observers must have been, where he must have been. If it was there, it had gone . . .
“This prophecy?” Gathmor shouted. “What happens?”
“We don’t know,” Sagorn growled, watching the sky monster sweep around in a curve, coming in lower for another pass. “This is as far as it went.”
“You mean we may die?”
“We probably shall. Unless Rap can sent it away.”
It was up to him. Rap braced himself, trying to imagine he was dealing with Firedragon, the Krasnegar stallion—or a dog, maybe, like Fleabag. He tried to recall how he had influenced the fire chick. He took a deep breath. Go away! he commanded.
The response was even worse than he had expected—a shrill explosion of fright that struck like agony, that hurled him bodily backward to sprawl on the sand. His head came down a handsbreadth from a jagged rock, but he hardly noticed. The dragon shied like a foal, whirled around in the sky as if knotting itself, then spiraled down out of sight behind a hilltop. The forest exploded in a red-black mushroom of flame and smoke.
A moment later, a sound of thunder rolled over the clearing. The pillar of smoke roiled skyward, ever thicker, its feet bright with fire. Sharp booms suggested tree trunks exploding in the heat.
Gold?
That had been a quieter, almost timorous query, but there was tenacity in it. Rap did not think the dragon had given up. It was merely startled, and puzzled.
Sagorn loomed over Rap, staring down with grim fury. His ghostly pale face was slick with sweat, his bony nose and lantern jaw more skull-like than ever.
“Fool! You thought to frighten my word of power from me?” Rap grunted and struggled to rise. In the back of his mind he could feel the dragon’s thoughts now—low self-mutterings of gold and of two-legses by the ancestral relic. It was not even speech, just musings, and it filled his mind with metallic alien echoes so torturous that he could not think.
“You thought you could control dragons!” Sagorn snarled.
“You were going to coerce me into telling you my word of power!”
Rap nodded miserably and forced himself to his knees. “I might have—but it believes we have gold.”
Sagom sneered. “The slightest hint of gold will drive a dragon crazy. Even you must know that! It puts them into a frenzy. They need metal to drive their metamorphoses, gold most of all”