Justin stood up. A little, nagging wind blew through my thoughts. I stood beside her, still laughing a little, yet poised to hold her if she stepped out of the circle of our firelight. She watched Christabel. Danica watched the fire dreamily, smiling. Christabel stood before the harper. He took his hand from his strings and held it out to her.
In the sudden silence, Justin shouted, “Christabel!”
All the golden light in the world frayed away. A dragon’s wing of cloud brushed the moon; night washed toward Christabel, as she took his hand and mounted; I saw all her lovely, red-gold hair flowing freely in the last of the light. And then freckled, stolid, courageous, snuffling Christabel caught the harper-king’s shoulders and they rode down the fading path of light into a world beyond the night.
We searched for her until dawn.
At sunrise, we stared at one another, haggard, mute. The great oak had swallowed Christabel; she had disappeared into a harper’s song.
“We could go to the village for help,” Danica said wearily.
“Their eyes are no better than ours,” I said.
“The queen’s harper passed through here unharmed,” Justin mused. “Perhaps he knows something about the country of the woodland king.”
“I hope he is worth all this,” Danica muttered savagely.
“No man is,” Justin said simply. “But all this will be worth nothing if Black Tremptor kills him before we find him. He may be able to lead us safely out of the northlands, if nothing else.
“I will not leave Fleur and Christabel behind,” I said sharply. “I will not. You may take the harper back to Celandine. I stay here until I find them.”
Justin looked at me; her eyes were reddened with sleeplessness, but they saw as clearly as ever into the mess we had made. “We will not leave you, Anne,” she said. “If he cannot help us, he must find his own way back. But if he can help us, we must abandon Christabel now to rescue him.”
“Then let’s do it,” I said shortly and turned my face away from the oak. A little wind shivered like laughter through their golden leaves.
We rode long and hard. The road plunged back into forest, up low foothills, brought us to the flank of the great dark mountain. We pulled up in its shadow. The dragon’s eyrie shifted under the eye; stone pillars opened into passages, their granite walls split and hollowed like honeycombs, like some palace of winds, open at every angle yet with every passage leading into shadow, into the hidden dragon’s heart.
“In there?” Danica asked. There was no fear in her voice, just her usual impatience to get things done. “Do we knock, or just walk in?” A wind roared through the stones then, bending trees as it blasted at us. I heard stones thrum like harp-strings; I heard the dragon’s voice. We turned our mounts, flattened ourselves against them, while the wild wind rode over us. Recovering, Danica asked more quietly, “Do we go in together?”
“Yes,” I said, and then, “No. I’ll go first.”
“Don’t be daft, Anne,” Danica said crossly. “If we all go together at least we’ll know where we all are.”
“And fools we will look, too,” I said grimly, “caught along with the harper, waiting for Celandine’s knights to rescue us as well.” I turned to Justin. “Is there some secret, some riddle for surviving dragons?”
She shook her head helplessly. “It depends on the dragon. I know nothing about Black Tremptor, except that he most likely has not kept the harper for his harping.”
“Two will go,” I said. “And one wait.”
They did not argue; there seemed no foolproof way, except for none of us to go. We tossed coins: two peacocks and one Celandine. Justin, who got the queen, did not look happy, but the coins were adamant. Danica and I left her standing with our horses, shielded within green boughs, watching us. We climbed the bald slope quietly, trying not to scatter stones. We had to watch our feet, pick a careful path to keep from sliding. Danica, staring groundward, stopped suddenly ahead of me to pick up something.
“Look,” she breathed. I did, expecting a broken harp string, or an ivory button with Celandine’s profile on it.
It was an emerald as big as my thumbnail, shaped and faceted. I stared at it a moment. Then I said, “Dragon-treasure. We came to find a harper.”
“But Anne—there’s another—” She scrabbled across loose stone to retrieve it. “Topaz. And over there a sapphire—”
“Danica,” I pleaded. “You can carry home the entire mountain after you’ve dispatched the dragon.”
“I’m coming,” she said breathlessly, but she had scuttled crab-wise across the slope toward yet another gleam. “Just one more. They’re so beautiful, and just lying here free as rain for anyone to take.”
“Danica! They’ll be as free when we climb back down.”
“I’m coming.”
I turned, in resignation to her sudden magpie urge. “I’m going up.”
“Just a moment, don’t go alone. Oh, Anne, look there, it’s a diamond. I’ve never seen such fire.”
I held my breath, gave her that one moment. It had been such a long, hard journey I found it impossible to deny her an unexpected pleasure. She knelt, groped along the side of a boulder for a shining as pure as water in the sunlight. “I’m coming,” she assured me, her back to me. “I’m coming.”
And then the boulder lifted itself up off the ground. Something forked and nubbled like a tree root, whispering harshly to itself, caught her by her hand and by her honey hair and pulled her down into its hole. The boulder dropped ponderously, earth shifted close around its sides as if it had never moved.
I stared, stunned. I don’t remember crossing the slope, only beating on the boulder with my hands and then my sword hilt, crying furiously at it, until all the broken shards underfoot undulated and swept me in a dry, rattling, bruising wave back down the slope into the trees.
Justin ran to help me. I was torn, bleeding, cursing, crying; I took a while to become coherent. “Of all the stupid, feeble tricks to fall for! A trail of jewels! They’re probably not even real, and Danica got herself trapped under a mountain for a pocketful of coal or dragon fewmets—”
“She won’t be trapped quietly,” Justin said. Her face was waxen. “What took her?”
“A little crooked something—an imp, a mountain troll—Justin, she’s down there without us in a darkness full of whispering things—I can’t believe we were so stupid!”
“Anne, calm down, we’ll find her.”
“I can’t calm down!” I seized her shoulders, shook her. “Don’t you disappear and leave me searching for you, too—”
“I won’t, I promise. Anne, listen.” She smoothed my hair with both her hands back from my face. “Listen to me. We’ll find her. We’ll find Christabel and Fleur, we will not leave this land until—”
“How?” I shouted. “How? Justin, she’s under solid rock!”
“There are ways. There are always ways. This land riddles constantly, but all the riddles have answers. Fleur will turn from a bird into a woman, we will find a path for Christabel out of the wood-king’s country, we will rescue Danica from the mountain imps. There are ways to do these things, we only have to find them.”
“How?” I cried again, for it seemed the farther we travelled in that land, the more trouble we got into. “Every time we turn around one of us disappears! You’ll go next—”
“I will not, I promise—”
“Or I will.”
“I know a few riddles,” someone said. “Perhaps I can help.”
We broke apart, as startled as if a tree had spoken: perhaps one had, in this exasperating land. But it was a woman. She wore a black cloak with a silver edging; her ivory hair and iris eyes and her grave, calm face within the hood were very beautiful. She carried an odd staff of gnarled black wood inset with a jewel the same pale violet as her eyes. She spoke gently, unsurprised by us; perhaps nothing in this place surprised her anymore. She added, at our silence, “My name is Yrecros. You are in great danger from the dragon; you must know that.”