They moved through a series of interconnected caverns. All of them weren’t as large as the first one, but Kellen quickly realized that since they were following Ancaladar’s preferred route in and out of the caves there weren’t going to be any small passages. The only real problem that Kellen encountered—other than having to hide from the Shadowed Elves—was that terrain that Ancaladar could cross with ease presented towering obstacles for Kellen to climb over or detour around. Occasionally Ancaladar would grow impatient with the delay and pluck him into the air, setting him down somewhere several hundred yards distant. Kellen hadn’t quite made up his mind yet, but he thought he preferred scrabbling over slabs of basalt to being whisked through the air in the claws of an impatient dragon.
Not that he was feeling terribly patient himself, with Idalia somewhere ahead, trapped and hurt. He didn’t know, of course, but he had the sense that Ancaladar was being forced to detour by the Shadowed Elf patrols. That wasn’t good.
Finally Ancaladar stopped. He lowered his head, so it was right beside Kellen’s.
“This is the last of the ways we can go to reach your sister,” the dragon said, in a whisper so low that Kellen barely heard it. “It could be the safest of the ways we can go, or the most dangerous—it’s very narrow, and there’s nowhere to hide, but they may not have thought to look this way yet.”
Narrow. Terrific, Kellen thought, following the dragon as he moved forward again.
But “narrow” was a relative term. The passage was narrow for Ancaladar— the dragon had to fold his wings tightly and crouch down on his belly—but there was enough room for Kellen and the entire rescue party that had started out from Sentarshadeen (if they’d been there) to ride down the tunnel.
Suddenly the dragon stopped, stretching out his neck, his nostrils flaring.
“Oh, no—” he said in dismay. “We’re trapped—”
For the first time, Kellen fell into battle-trance immediately, without having to invoke it; it fell over him as he cast off the tarnkappa, as if it were somehow taking the place of the cloak.
In a way, it was; the dual-sight allowed him to see in the dark as the cloak spell did. He saw the Shadowed creatures as they stalked forward out of the darkness just as clearly as if he were still wrapped in its folds. He did not, however, charge.
Instead, he drew his sword, and waited. Waited for his doubled-sight to show him that they saw him for what he was. The aura of threat that surrounded him was unmistakable—that he knew from his lessons in the House of Sword and Shield. He was armed, and he was waiting for their attack. Now it became their choice to fight or flee.
They saw him for what he was—and they charged. One of them threw the net it carried. As if it were floating like a puff of down, Kellen watched it drift toward him, and in that odd slowed-time, he cut it in half as it started to fly past his head, aimed at Ancaladar, evidently, and not him.
The moment that the steel of his sword touched it, the two halves of the net withered and dropped to the ground. Kellen continued the stroke with a sideways twist of his wrist, to take off the head of the unwary creature that was nearest him.
They were frail, these Shadowed Elves; he killed it, and the one behind it, then let the momentum of his blade carry him around in a spin to cleave another across the spine. He made a recovery move, blocked the sword of a fourth as he kicked a fifth in the stomach, cut under the blocked blade to eviscerate the fourth one and as the fifth staggered backward, followed, and gutted it as well. The sixth and seventh were no real challenge; he took them out as they stared at him, dumbfounded.
He whirled. Ancaladar was frozen in place, eyes wide. “Move!” he snapped.
Ancaladar managed to compress himself against the wall of the tunnel enough to let him squeeze by.
This time he did charge, catching the much larger party that thought it was sneaking up in the rear entirely by surprise. For all of the weapons that they carried, for all of their superior ability to see in the dark, they might just as well have had no defensive ability at all. They were absolutely no match for the special advantages of a Knight-Mage, not even at fourteen-to-one.
The battle-trance faded, and the world was utterly black once more. Kellen stood in the darkness, feeling a faint regret.
But nothing more. When he’d drawn his sword, they could have run. When he’d begun to kill the others, they could have run. They chose not to. If he had not fought, he and Ancaladar would have been killed or taken prisoner, and Idalia would die. Because he had refused to accept that, he had chosen to kill. That was the way of the Knight-Mage, the agent of the active principle of the Wild Magic.
He forgave them for attacking him, and he forgave himself for killing them, just as Jermayan had taught him.
Absently he wiped his sword blade dry on his cloak—there’d be time to give the blade a thorough cleaning later—and worked his way back up to Ancaladar’s.
“Any more of them?” Kellen asked, stooping to grope for the discarded tarnkappa and don it once more.
“No. You eliminated all of them… Knight-Mage.” The dragon moved forward, stepping fastidiously over the corpses. They moved faster now. There didn’t seem to be any need to try to conceal their presence any longer. Not only had the Shadowed Elves found them, but Kellen seemed to have killed most of the ones searching for them.
“They must want you really badly,” Kellen said after a few moments.
“Has your world wholly forgotten my kind? I’m a dragon,” Ancaladar said, with a note of bitterness in his voice. “And no doubt the Endarkened have a Mage or two in thrall, and an arsenal of spells to try to force a Bonding that they ache to try.”
“Dragons Bond with Mages,” Kellen said, half-remembered scraps of what Jermayan had told him about the Great War coming back to his mind.
“Almost correct. Each dragon is fated to Bond with one Mage—his Bond-mate. After which that Mage becomes incredibly powerful—having an endless supply of spell-energy to draw on—and the dragon’s life becomes incredibly short, for when his Bondmate dies, he dies as well.”
“Oh.” It didn’t seem fair. All the advantage seemed to go to the Mage. All the dragon got out of the deal was dead. “What about Mageprices?”
“Bonded Mages don’t pay them. Not with our power to draw on,” Ancaladar said simply.
“Why would a dragon… ?”
“I don’t know,” Ancaladar said curtly, ending the discussion firmly. “We’re nearly there, thank Sky and Fair Wind.”
Up ahead, the tunnel opened out. Ancaladar stretched his neck out, extending it through the opening. Kellen followed along until he reached the edge of the tunnel.
He’d moved cautiously, and was glad he had. There was only a narrow ledge at the cave mouth, and it extended for only a few feet in either direction before vanishing entirely. The tunnel had opened out into another of the huge caverns Kellen was growing used to, but this one was different from any of the previous ones. Its floor was criss-crossed with other deep fissures—as though something very hot had cooled here—and littered with enormous boulders, as though there had been an explosion as well. He could hear a distinct sighing sound, as if something even bigger than Ancaladar was breathing, but it seemed to come from the cave itself.
He moved quickly to one side as Ancaladar flowed past him and down to the floor of the cave, then looked around in frustration. He couldn’t climb down, it was much too far to jump, and as far as he knew, his Knight-Mage abilities didn’t include the power of flight.
After a few seconds Ancaladar noticed his plight. The dragon turned back and plucked him from the ledge, depositing him on the cave floor.
“Not far now,” Ancaladar said.
Was it Kellen’s imagination, or was there a note of worry in the dragon’s voice?
—«♦»—
IDALIA was lying at the foot of a cliff at the far side of the cavern.
Kellen’s heart twisted in his chest when he saw her. He knew the look of broken bones. He could see—and smell—the blood.
How long had she been lying here? Was she dead?
Then he saw the faint movement of her chest and knew that she was still alive.
He ran forward and knelt beside her. His first impulse was to waken her, but he knew that would be no kindness. She must be in agony.
He had to get her out of here. But even if Ancaladar would consent to carry her, he didn’t dare move her while she was in this condition. Broken legs, broken arm and collarbone… undoubtedly a concussion… probably internal bleeding as well.
“I’ll have to heal her before we can move her,” Kellen said aloud.
Healing was not his strongest skill in the Wild Magic, and he’d never tried this major a healing, especially without someone around to share the Mageprice. He looked hopefully at Ancaladar.
But the dragon cringed away. “You go ahead,” he said, taking a step backward. “I’ll wait over here until you’re done.”
Kellen sighed. I guess it’s all up to me. I just hope I’m good enough.
He had to be. For Idalia’s sake.