Asha yanked Priya to her feet and they ran together into the boulders, ducking and sliding and feeling through the shadows with outstretched hands to find their way in the dark. Shadows and starlight conspired to paint the world in grays and silvers, twisting the shapes and outlines of everything nearby. But Asha spotted a sliver of darkness deeper and blacker than the others and she pushed the nun into it.
“Is this a cave?” Priya scrambled forward on her hands and knees. “Maybe you should go first.”
“It’s a very dark cave, so you can see as well as I can in there.” Asha knelt at the entrance to the hole listening to her horse snorting and crying and kicking somewhere below them. But beneath those noises boomed the deeper sound of the dragon’s soul and the endless shushing noise of the dragon’s belly sliding down the hill after them.
When Priya had disappeared into the cave, Asha ducked in after her and crawled back along the cold earthen floor. She could hear the nun’s labored breathing echoing just ahead of her, and she occasionally encountered a well-worn sandal with her fingers.
“Asha, there’s an open space here,” Priya said. “I can stand up.”
The herbalist crawled down the last little bit of the tunnel and found Priya’s hands waiting for her. She stood up beside her friend in utter darkness and quickly explored their new shelter with her hands. It was a small chamber, but it appeared to be solid stone on all sides. “Good. Hopefully, we’ll be safe in here for a while.”
“Do you think the dragon will go back toward the city?”
“It might if it… Oh. Oh no. It’s not going anywhere.” Asha flattened out on the floor of the cave and squinted back up the tunnel, trying to spot a glimpse of the starry sky. “I’m sorry, Priya. I shouldn’t have come in here with you. I only just realized it.”
“Realized what?”
A violent shudder ran through the earth and the stone cavern crackled and groaned all around them.
“The dragon out there.” Asha pressed her hand to her right ear, but the booming and ringing carried on, filling her head with a terrible wet scratching sound that felt like a talon clawing at her brain. “That dragon is the same one that bit me when I was a girl. It’s no accident that it’s here now. It’s been following us, following me, hunting me all the way from Ming.”
“It still wants you? After all this time?”
Asha shook her head in the darkness. “It doesn’t want me. It wants the drop of its soul that it left in my ear.”
4
The cave walls and floor continued to rumble and quake from time to time, and gradually the air in the chamber warmed and stank of dead horse.
“It’s up there at the mouth of the cave,” Asha said. “It knows I’m here now. It must be lying out there, watching the exit, breathing its stench into the tunnel.”
“But it will have to leave eventually, won’t it? To eat? To drink?” Priya sat somewhere to Asha’s left. “Or perhaps when it falls asleep, we can escape past it. You must know something about dragons, don’t you?”
Asha shrugged. “I know they’re poisonous little lizards that need to be collared to keep them from growing too large. Obviously, this one’s collar wasn’t strong enough. Did I ever tell you that my father made its collar?”
“I think so. Maybe when we first met.” Priya sighed. “I suppose it was caged for a long time, and kept small. And then one day, somehow, it escaped. Or it was lost. Or stolen. Or sold to the wrong person.”
The cave shuddered and small chips of stone rained down from the ceiling.
Asha sighed. “Look, I-”
“No,” Priya said. “You’re not going out there. Then you’d be dead and the dragon would still be out there. It might go down to the city and kill thousands of people. And then who would lead me around and find fatty bits of meat for Jagdish?” The mongoose squeaked as though on cue.
“Well, what do you propose?”
The dragon roared and a fresh miasma of blood and lemons wafted into the cave.
“It’s a living creature and you have a bag full of medicines,” Priya said. “Perhaps a sleeping tonic? A very large dose, I think.”
Asha sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I could throw my whole bag down its throat and it probably wouldn’t feel a thing. You didn’t see it, how big it is, how long. It must weigh several tons.”
“Then you can trap it, or trick it. We’re smarter than it, right?”
“We’re smarter than the seas and the mountains combined,” Asha said. “That doesn’t mean we can move them.”
The ground shuddered and the dragon hissed. Asha winced, touching her ear. “It’s moving.” She looked up. “It’s moving away.” She hesitated a moment, then began scrambling back up the tunnel.
“Asha, no!” Priya’s cry echoed in the darkness.
“Stay here!” The herbalist moved carefully, crawling on all fours, feeling the rough sides of the cave scraping at her shoulders and hips. A patch of stars appeared and she moved faster. The dragon went on slithering and sliding around on the grass and gravel outside, still moving away to the west, down the slope into the valley below.
Asha crept out of her tunnel and stood up. The entire sward had been churned over and over into motionless waves of earth and grass and stone, and she found the ground slick beneath her thin sandals. Far below, she could see the dark wriggling shape of the dragon by the light of the stars. And beside the beast, there was a flash of steel.
Holding her bag close and silent, Asha slipped down the hillside, peering into the distance. The golden dragon hissed and roared and thrashed, but it did not advance, and Asha began to perceive the tiny black figure holding a sword near the monster’s head. The blade sang as it slashed back and forth at the dragon’s whiskers, and the dragon hissed as it reared back.
Asha perched on a stone to watch. She thought of Gideon for a moment, but this sword did not shine and seemed to be curved instead of straight.
The swordsman dashed forward and the beast drew back. The silver fangs struck, the golden tail whipped, and the red claws swiped, but each time the warrior ducked or dove or lunged and returned to his stance, sword at the ready. The warrior shouted, a long string of harsh words that were garbled by the wind, but Asha could hear the anger in them. Then the blade flashed, whirling in a vicious circle, spinning so fast that it almost appeared to be a solid disc of steel, and then the warrior struck. The dragon roared, coiled back, and leapt away, slithering and thrashing wildly as it raced off into the night.
The warrior dashed after the beast, but only a few steps. He stopped, sheathed his sword, and turned to trudge up the slope toward Asha. She stood up and waited, and when he came closer she raised one hand in greeting. He waved back, his armor clinking softly, and a moment later he stood just below Asha’s stone.
“Some night. Are you all right?”
Asha blinked at the voice. It was a woman. “Yes, we are. Are you?”
“Seem to be.” The stranger nodded and took a moment to catch her breath. “I barely scratched it though, just across the nose. It’ll be back, sooner or later.”
“I’m Asha,” the herbalist said. “I found a cave just up the hill that’s too narrow for the dragon to get near us. My friend is there now.”
“Then we need to get her out and get back to the city. We’ll need to raise an army to fight this monster, and that’s going to take time. Time we don’t have.” The stranger started up the hillside.
Asha followed. “No, I can’t. As long as I’m out here, the city should be safe. The dragon is here for me. Just me.”