The moment Nesha-tari drew even with the fences an explosion of snarling barks came from behind the one on her right. She hissed and flattened herself against the left fence, eyes flaring but seeing only the outlines of a hulking shape through the slats. Edgewise chuckled, rapped his knobby knuckles on the fence, and almost cooed in soft-spoken Codian. The barking changed to pants and whines, and the goblin grinned at Nesha-tari.
“I hate dogs,” she said.
“That,” the goblin said, “is not a dog.”
Edgewise stepped into the lead as Nesha-tari remained flattened against the fence. She sidestepped after him, still pressing back hard enough that splinters snagged her cloak. The unseen shape behind the fence growled, but it did not bark again.
The goblin rounded a corner, for while the right-side fence was built flush to the stone wall, that on the left turned in at a post and left a gap. Both Edgewise and Nesha-tari had to turn their shoulders sideways to step along, hands on the smooth stones and hips squeezing around posts. The goblin trailed the pads of his fingers along until halting halfway down, and held his hand sideways as though the tips were in the faintest crack. He turned to look back and up at Nesha-tari, one pointing earlobe twitching as it brushed the fence.
“Be right back,” he said, then turned and followed his hand into the crack that was not wide enough for a playing card. Edgewise.
Nesha-tari blinked at the space where the goblin had been, but in another moment there was a startling creak from the wall right in front of her. The dog, or whatever, started to bark again from the next yard, booming yaps that covered the grinding sound of stone moving against stone as a block as tall and wide as a doorway rumbled down right in front of Nesha-tari’s nose, and into the ground at her feet.
Edgewise doffed his hat in the doorway and waved Nesha-tari inside with a flourish.
It took her a moment to proceed. As much as a squeeze as the alley and fences had been, there was still open sky high above Nesha-tari’s head. Edgewise was beckoning her forward into a low-ceilinged tunnel, the interior the same black stone as the rest of the wall. She looked at the goblin’s eyes, and the glowing bronze pupils by which she had recognized him for what he was, just as he had known her by her blue ones. Nesha-tari balled her fists and stepped in past the goblin.
Edgewise knelt and spread his hands flat atop the section of wall that had slid into the ground, a great block as thick as it was wide. He lifted his hands, not gripping, but the block rose with them and continued to do so even when he took his hands away. The gap closed with a sound Nesha-tari imagined like a shutting tomb, and she shivered. With all natural light cut off she could see absolutely nothing until her blue eyes flared a bit brighter, and then she could. Edgewise was still grinning at her.
“Allow me a guess. You hate enclosed spaces as well.”
Nesha-tari did not answer. The goblin chuckled and stepped past her, wide feet slapping the smooth stone floor.
She followed him with her hands balled at her sides and ducking for the low ceiling. She could hear her own heartbeat loud in her ears. A tunnel wound deeper into the ground at a slope, soon changing from black blocks to a natural stone cleft with a rough floor and a higher, though not nearly high enough, ceiling. A minute or two seemed much longer before light from ahead began to thin the pitch darkness. Edgewise stepped out of the tunnel into a larger, dimly-lit space with a sandy floor. Nesha-tari almost sprang out of the cramped hall behind him, and regretted it immediately.
Her dampening spell which she was presently maintaining with no more thought than it took to breathe crashed in on her like a wind storm striking from every direction. Nesha-tari’s feet flew out from under her and she gasped, spinning wildly in the air a time or two before she landed shuddering on the sandy floor, on all fours.
“Did you have a spell raised?” Edgewise demanded, voice sounding alarmed for the first time. “You can’t come in here with that!”
The goblin squatted in front of her, bronze eyes gleaming. Nesha-tari snarled.
“You might have told me that!”
“I did not think it necessary to say. Would you be allowed in the presence of your Blue Master with an active incantation?”
“Of course not, but how was I to know we were close?”
“Oh, we are that,” Edgewise said, straightening and stepping aside. “Close indeed.”
Nesha-tari had her breath back but she gasped again as she took in their surroundings. They had entered a great cavern, rough rock rising to a dome high above the sandy ground over an area larger than several city blocks, which was an easy judgment to make as there were several city blocks within the cavern. Two compass-straight boulevards lined by rows of stone buildings rising two, three, and even four stories in the air met at a square around a massive, ziggurat-like pyramid, so tall that the rough ceiling actually pressed on the top tier as though it were a central pillar. The buildings all around the pyramid gaped hollow and empty with thick sand visible in the interiors, but the two wide boulevards were swept clean to reveal the brick surfaces. Both were lined by flickering torches on regularly spaced staffs, lighting the paths to the pyramid.
“Welcome,” Edgewise said, “to what was once the ancient city of Ettacea.”
Still on all fours, Nesha-tari stared at him, but she could think of nothing to say. Edgewise extended a hand and after a moment she took it and got to her feet.
The goblin led her down the ancient street between the torches. Nesha-tari saw no one else about, and though her spell was now ended she sensed no attention on her either. Certainly not that of a human male.
Great stairways extended out on ramps from the central pyramid which may have been constructed of the same beige sandstone as the surrounding buildings, though it was faced with panels of veined marble. Edgewise and Nesha-tari took the long stairs facing them up to the first ziggurat tier, where a circular doorway big enough to drive a wagon through awaited. The entrance was rimmed in bronze, casting back the torchlight from below, but the space within was a total darkness not even Nesha-tari’s eyes could penetrate. Edgewise took his hat off as he stopped before the portal, and held out his hand again.
“Is my cousin prepared to meet my mistress?”
Nesha-tari stared into the blackness darker than any she had ever known since her Master, Akroya, had given her eyes that were as blue as his, a very long time ago now. The thought of the Great Blue Dragon brought to mind thoughts of the petty misdeeds for which Nesha-tari had seen Akroya maim or even eviscerate others among His servants. Nesha-tari was more favored than any of those others had been, but she had no expectation of mercy if she displeased the Dragon in a major way. She nodded, the movement feeling awkward and jerky, and took the goblin Edgewise’s rubbery hand. They stepped into the darkness together.
It was like passing through a veil, or a wisp of cobweb. One step and Nesha-tari was again on a sandy bit of floor, and a soft light without source dazzled her eyes.
Before her were treasures beyond comprehension; coins and gems and objects carpeting the floor, mounded into piles, spilling from chests. The wealth of kingdoms and empires spread out to the inner walls of the ziggurat, which were themselves hung with embroidered tapestries and rich curtains of purple and gold. Yet none of it made any impression on Nesha-tari, for her attention was fully transfixed by the being in front of her, for She was Ladamia, The Lady, The Great Bronze Dragon, and she was beyond magnificent.
She was massive, nearly as large as Akroya though where the Azure One’s scales shimmered like a sunny sky, the Lady was everywhere a burnished shade of bronze, deepening to a warm brown along her great flanks and powerful limbs. Those limbs ended in grim claws like swords, presently sunken into the treasure carpeting the floor beneath her. She lay supinely, seeming to fill the vast chamber with her very self, tail coiled along the edges of the room and great wings folded back against her flanks of overlapping scales, each larger than a man’s shield. On her back along her spine emerged a double row of spikes, also folded down, that ran up the length of her long, graceful neck which described a vast over-reaching arc, like a bridge up to the heavens. Then there was her head, suspended in the air over Nesha-tari like the face of a god.