"Once the lady fully regains her strength, we need to move on." Zylas eyed the pack. "Could you get me one of those beetles, please?"
Collins shoved a piece of bread in his mouth. He opened the pack, rummaging for the bug jar.
"It's best you have the general layout down by then. We can review and discuss strategy en route.
Collins found the covered crock and pulled it out. He opened the lid, watching the horde of grape-sized insects crawl over one another, then placed it on the chest beside Zylas. He chewed and swallowed. "Are you sure this is really the easiest way?"
Zylas placed his nose into the crock, then withdrew suddenly, sneezing. "You mean sneaking into an unsuspecting castle and removing a small object?"
"Yes."
"As opposed to taking on a phalanx of archers ordered to kill?"
When Zylas put it that way, it seemed clear. "Well…"
"Near a town that found you guilty of murder and sentenced you to a hanging they damn well know they didn't manage to complete."
"All right. I get it."
Zylas again stuck his face into the beetle crock. His squeaks echoed through the confines. "Of course, if you'd rather stay here with us forever…"
It was not an option. Even if his days were not numbered by how long it took the guards to catch up to him, Collins doubted he could live without the conveniences to which he had become accustomed: electric lights, refrigerators, modern medicine, pizza. He sighed at the thought. How much simpler his life could become if he did stay, but it would become so much better with a portal that allowed him to bring back the occasional Tylenol or Twinkie. Finally, he stated what he knew was true all along. "I can't possibly stay."
Zylas withdrew. "Would you mind getting one of those out for me, please. Every time I try, I get the whole bunch of them glomming onto my face."
Collins reached into the crock and pinched out a single beetle. Gingerly, Zylas took it from Collins' grip with his teeth, whiskers tickling.
Collins replaced the lid. "You going to want more?"
Beetle clamped between his teeth, Zylas silently shook his head.
Collins returned the jar to the pack, smiling at how normal it now seemed to feed bugs to a talking rat. Only a couple of days ago, he would have considered it absolutely understandable to find himself locked in some loony bin for even imagining such behavior.
While Zylas ripped into the beetle, Collins studied the bland interior of the cave. The dark, irregular walls surrounded a comfortable area, with nothing but the two chests to break the monotony. "What's in the boxes?" he asked, surprised he had not wondered sooner.
Zylas abandoned the partially eaten beetle to answer. "Personal things, I'd venture. Clothes maybe, though the lady rarely wears any. Food, certainly. Baubles."
"Baubles?"
"Things friends and intimates have given her through the ages."
"Her hoard?" Collins suggested.
Now, it was Zylas' turn to question. "Hoard?"
"Money," Collins explained. "Silver and gold trinkets. Gems. Jewelry." He came by the information through his brief stint of role-playing. "It's generally believed in my world that dragons like shiny things and objects of value."
Zylas abandoned his repast, red eyes positively glowing with excitement. "So you once had dragons in your world, too?"
The rat/man looked so happy, Collins hated to disappoint him, but he would not lie. "Only in myth and fairy tale, I'm afraid."
The light died in Zylas' eyes, and he returned to eating.
"Sixty million years before people, we did have dinosaurs. Those were giant lizards, some of which bore a resemblance to dragons."
"Really." Zylas spoke around a mouthful of bug. "Did they use magic?"
"Most had brains about the size of your lunch." Collins addressed the question more directly, "It seems highly unlikely."
Zylas made a wordless noise.
Collins returned to his point, "Anyway, in the stories, dragons keep hoards of shiny treasure which they guard fiercely."
"It has to be shiny?"
"Apparently." The details of legend seemed unimportant to Collins.
Zylas shook out his fur. "Well, that's not like dragons here. At least, it's not like the one I know. She doesn't have much interest in… material things, except as they pertain to causes."
"That's good to know." Collins could not see a long-term use for the knowledge. "If I ever write a story or start role-playing again, I'll keep that in mind."
Zylas finished the beetle, licked his paws, then cleaned his face with them.
Collins returned the leftover rations to the pack. Zylas waited only until he shoved it aside to ask, "Ready?"
"For what?" Collins asked cautiously.
"To learn the inside of the castle."
"No," Collins said, settling down on his buttocks. He doubted his answer mattered, however.
True to Collins' hunch, Zylas began. "The lowest floor contains the storerooms and dungeons…"
The lesson droned on for hours while Falima continued to graze outside and Ialin made occasional buzzing appearances. Benton Collins got his first break when Prinivere appeared at the entrance. The green-gray scales looked ruffled, the leathern wings droopy, the ancient eyes dull. She dragged wearily back into the cave, finding her sleeping corner, and flopped to the ground.
Zylas abandoned his lesson in the middle of a sentence and rushed to the dragon's side. Ialin fluttered in after her, hovering at her eye level.
Savoring a few moments alone, Collins sighed and remained in place, unable to hear their exchange. His head whirled with information: kitchens and workshops on the ground floor, above underground storage rooms, food cellars, and the dungeons. The second story held the library and great dining hall, the third the servants' quarters. Every floor had what Collins understood to be a primitive bathroom, translated as "garde-robe." Apparently, both dragon spell and translation stone considered it an English word, though he had never heard it before. He imagined it had not entered common American parlance; though, with their known penchant for fart, belch, and bathroom humor, it would have worked well there. Zylas described it rather like a park potty: a thigh-high platform with a hole in it. The rat/man seemed to think it might prove a suitable portal for entry, escape, or for secreting the magical crystal. Though not averse to tossing the stone down the hole, Collins would rather eat bugs than retrieve it afterward. And using it as an exit was not even a remote possibility.
Zylas knew nothing about the two uppermost floors because of their warding against switchers, but he surmised they held the private quarters of the royals. The roof was crenellated, with crossbowmen and ballistae protecting it, and the winding stairwell proceeded a story higher, to a trapdoor that opened onto the top of a guard tower. Heavy ironbound oak doors opened onto each floor and the roof in both directions, though the four to the two upper stories did not admit switchers. Apparently, if a commoner so much as touched it, the door would sound an alarm and latch up tight.
Unable to put any logical explanation to such a system, Collins had to assume magic. Unless other portals exist, and folks from civilizations more advanced than ours have come. He shoved the thought aside. Zylas would know that. Hard enough accepting magic. Do I have to put some Planet of the Apes twist on this? Collins had once read that "advanced science is virtually indistinguishable from magic." The average man on the street could not explain how a toaster or a microwave worked, and a significant portion of the population considered the simple running of electricity through wires a miracle too technical for understanding. He himself found the concept of fax transmission fascinating and incomprehensible. The source doesn't matter. I just need to know how it works on the macro level.
Shortly, Zylas returned, translation stone clutched in his jaws. He scurried up Collins' arm to his shoulder and spit out the quartz to speak directly into the man's ear. "She says she just needs a short nap. Then she should be strong enough to return home."