I had no time to gloat or enjoy. I whipped the knife from my boot, ran down the short tunnel and threw myself on the dragon’s back. My weight knocked it flat, and its wings tangled beneath and around me. Its feet clawed at the ground, scratching like spear tips against the stone. If it threw me off, I’d be just as toasted as Candora.
I pinned its neck just behind its head, the way you would a poisonous snake. Its wiry, squirming form was impossible to hold for long, but luckily I didn’t have to. I slipped my knife under its neck and, with all my strength, ripped it up through flesh and muscle and bone, severing its head.
The head rolled away into the light, where its mouth continued to work as if it could still spew fire. The body thrashed for a moment, then went limp. Past it, Candora lay smoldering, his legs moving weakly. From the waist up he was blackened, and the smell of his cooked flesh mixed with that of the dragon’s flames. I gagged and tried to breathe only through my mouth.
I climbed off the dragon, my heart pounding. I wanted fresh air more than anything. I crawled over the carcass and up the soot-covered rock. Candora made a sound I’ll hear in my nightmares and reached one knobby, burnt extremity toward me.
The sun had not yet risen above the horizon, but the clouds were ablaze with its promise. Liz lay facedown on the ground just beyond the hole. She was still naked, her wrists tied in front, and except for the wind blowing her hair she didn’t move. I knelt beside her and turned her over. Bruises distorted her face, and her eyes were closed. “ Liz! ” I cried, and this time I didn’t have to fake the panic.
Her eyes opened. I wanted to cry. Her lips were dry and cracked, and the corners of her lips were flayed where the gag had rubbed them raw. “Can we have a better plan next time?” she croaked.
“Promise,” I said, and kissed her all over her face. I tasted tears, not sure if they were hers or mine.
“I feel terrible,” she said when I let her speak again.
I spotted my jacket on the ground where I’d thrown it earlier. I retrieved it and wrapped it around her. “We’ll get you to the moon priestesses; they’ll fix you up. Is anything broken?”
She slowly, laboriously shook her head. “I don’t think I can walk, though.”
“That’s okay; I’ll carry you.”
She managed a small smile. “All the way back to town?”
I felt like I could at that moment. “If I have to.”
She reached one hand up to my face, moving slowly because of her injuries. “Not yet. I have to know, Eddie.”
“Know what?”
Something grew young and sad and hopeful in her eyes. “Were there really dragon eggs down there?”
I nodded.
“You’re not just telling me that because you think I’m about to die, are you?”
“No. Because you’re not about to die. There were eggs down there. One hatched.”
I’d never seen a look of such sad eloquence. “What?”
“It hatched. There was a dragon down there. I had to kill it.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “A real dragon?” she said in a small voice.
I nodded.
“And it’s dead?”
“I had to, sweetie,” and felt myself unaccountably wanting to cry, too. “It would’ve killed me, and maybe you, too.”
Her lower lip trembled. “Can I see it?”
The second-to-last thing I wanted to do was climb back down in that hole and drag the dragon carcass out. The very last thing I wanted to do was cause Liz any more pain or distress. So I did climb down in the hole, tossed the surprisingly light headless dragon over my shoulder and was about to climb out again when a thin voice, barely audible, said, “Don’t leave me.”
At least I think that’s what it said. Candora was moving, his arms-if you could still call them that-reaching imploringly for me. His face was completely gone, with only a gaping orifice through which his distorted voice emanated.
I didn’t say anything. He couldn’t see me, or probably even hear me. At best he felt my movements through the ground; maybe he just hoped someone was still there.
“Don’t leave me,” he repeated.
Burns from dragon flames never heal.
I remembered Laura Lesperitt, and Nicky. I remembered Liz hanging in the shack.
I turned away and climbed out of the hole.
The sun had now officially risen, blasting us with its golden light. The morning wind stirred, and crows announced their interest in the cooked meat down in the hole. Liz sat up now, clutching the jacket around her. She coughed and trembled, but when she saw what I carried a look of such heartbreak filled her face that I could say nothing. I gently stretched the headless carcass out before her; in death it appeared far more delicate and fragile, and in the sun its black scales shone with the same rainbow pattern as the eggs.
I stood over it. Liz just stared with a look I could not identify.
“There’s another egg in the cave,” I said quietly. “It’s still in one piece, and I think it’s about to hatch. I need to go smash it before it does.”
She didn’t look up, but reached one hand out to gently touch the creature’s shiny skin.
“Did you hear me?” I asked gently.
She nodded without looking. “This is no time for the fire dreams are made of,” she said, and in those words I heard the little girl who’d once believed in the divinity of dragons. “No time for gods you can touch.”
I went back down in the hole, retrieved Candora’s sword and used it to smash the last remaining dragon’s egg. The smell was awful, and the mostly formed creature that spewed forth writhed for a few agonizing moments before I mercifully cut it in half. Then I drove his own sword through Candora’s heart, an act of mercy that most of me argued against. But I was too weary to be a total bastard.
I speared the severed dragon’s head on my knife and brought it up with me. I placed it beside the rest of the corpse. The eyes were still open, still black, and the teeth gleamed white. Liz sat just as I’d left her, one hand on the dragon.
“She’s a female,” Liz said between gulping breaths. “You can tell by the coloring.”
“Lumina,” I said.
She nodded. “Lumina.” Then she sobbed the way people do when they’ve lost something precious. And I guess she had.
THIRTY
I collected all the horses-mine plus Liz’s, Candora’s and Marion’s-and after retrieving my sword burned down the old miner’s hut. The crows, vultures and rats attracted to Candora’s handiwork squawked and ran madly from the smoke. The ground was too rocky to give Marion a proper burial, and I doubted what was left of him would survive the trip back to Neceda intact. A pyre is a good way for a warrior to go, anyway. Even one who cried like a baby as he was eviscerated; even one who killed Hank Pinster. Candora had definitely balanced the scales for that crime.
Liz was in really rough shape and couldn’t ride on her own. I searched the hut before I torched it, but her clothes were gone. Rather than try to get back to town right away, I made for Bella Lou and Buddy’s place. It would give us shelter and Liz a place to rest, and maybe I could find some discarded clothes for her as well.
As we approached, though, I saw smoke rising from the chimney. When we reached the clearing, Bella Lou and the two kids emerged to greet us. Bella Lou looked sad, and tired, but when she saw Liz’s condition she went right to work. The children cleared a bed, Liz drank some medicinal tea and she was hard asleep within minutes. Bella Lou then treated her injuries with some homemade remedies. At no point did Bella Lou ask me what had happened.
Later, after I’d cleaned up a bit as well, Bella joined me on the porch. She packed and lit a long pipe, and together we watched the trees wave in the wind. The kids played quietly in the yard.
“So you came back,” I said.
“Yeah.” She handed me Frankie’s money bag. “It’s all there. We don’t do charity. We’d always planned to leave if the government came after us, but this wasn’t the government’s doing. It was Buddy’s.”