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"I was the first one Claw spotted, " Tarran said, whispering. "The
first one he came for. He hurt me, and he left me bleeding halfway
between him and my friends. "
His words were like heavy stones, one then another, and I felt the
weight of them on my chest, like a barrow being built too soon over me.
"Claw used me for bait, and they took it. First Yarden ... then the
others. I couldn't do anything to stop it happening. Between the dragon
and them... I was helpless. "
Even in the dark people shouldn't talk about such dread. I said, "Stop,
Tarran. I don't want to hear it. "
I spoke roughly, as to a coward baring his worst craven deed. I had no
right to speak like that, and I hated the silence my words caused. But
I couldn't apologize, though I knew I should. His talk of worst fears
was like one more crack in a weakening dam.
"It's all right to be afraid, Ryle. Here, you'd better be. "
I closed my eyes, coldly quiet.
"All right, then. I'll say no more but this: if you don't know what
your worst fear is, you'd better spend the night reckoning it out. You
don't want Claw to be the one to show it to you. "
I didn't answer him, nor did I speak again for the rest of the night.
In the morning, Tarran asked if I'd slept well, and I told him that I
had. He shook his head as you would over a stubborn fool. Once, when he
thought I wasn't looking, he glanced back toward the tunnel that led to
the chasm and the spiral path, the way back.
But he said nothing about not going forward. He'd come too far. So had
I.
* * * * *
We went all the day through a series of chambers, caverns small and
large, narrow and wide, and Tarran Ironwood remembered his path.
"I came in this way, and I went out this way. " He smiled bitterly.
"The last somewhat more slowly than the first. "
He'd had his right arm on the way out; the bone had still hung to the
shoulder. In two places the meat of the arm had been laid open, the
muscles naked to his sight. He told me that, and he said that a man
should never have to see what the inside of himself looks like. He'd
bound the wound and done his best to keep it clean, but the arm already
had the gangrenous stink about it by the time he got out and got found.
He knew before anyone had to tell him that he'd be one-armed for the
rest of his life.
I followed him closely, and he never took a wrong turn, never stopped
for more than a moment to reckon a direction. I marked time passing by
the count of the torches, and so I knew we'd walked a full day by the
time we came to a low narrow tunnel like the one that led off the
spiral road along the side of the chasm. This tunnel was much longer
than that first, and as low. All the muscles in my back and shoulders
were cramped with stooping by the time we came out of it and onto a
wide ledge, like the gallery rounding a king's great hall.
The whole place stank of dragon, the dry, dusty reptile smell, the
scent of endless age, and Tarran's breathing got rough and choppy, like
he was trying not to gag. I looked up to the edge of light around the
hole in the ceiling. The silver moon and the red sat together in a
quarter of the sky, their light pouring down through the opening. By
that shining I saw bones littering the stony gallery, the large rib
cages of cattle and horses, the smaller bones of deer and elk. I saw a
bear's skull, and what had to be the skeleton of a minotaur, the horned
skull larger than that of any bull you'd ever hope to see. Old blood
painted the ledge, rusty brown, dripping over the edge, streaking the
walls of the beast-hall below. Here was where Claw brought his night
kills. Here, on this wide ledge, was where the dragon dined. Below us-
almost sixty feet down-lay the beast's lair, empty, as Tarran knew it
would be. Claw was a night hunter. Above- so high I had to crane my
neck to see-yawned the dragon's way out, and the dragon's way in.
"There's a way down, " Tarran said, his voice hushed, hardly heard. He
pointed to the left, and I raised the torch, saw gouges in the stone,
like stairs.
"They're not as regular as stairs, " the dwarf said. "Some are a longer
step than others. But they'll do. "
"Who built them?"
"Claw. The dragon's got a way of changing his breath and spit into acid
when it suits him. You knew that, didn't you?"
I didn't before then. "Why'd he build steps in here?"
"You'll see. "
He didn't say anything more, and now he was all pulled into himself, as
he'd been when I first saw him in Cynara's rose bower. I strung my bow
and slung it over my shoulder, then checked to see that the steel-heads
were close to hand. I took my sword from the sheath. These were good
weapons and strong, and they'd always been my comfort. Not this time,
and all the hair rose, prickling on my arms and neck as I followed
Tarran Ironwood down into the dragon's lair.
* * * * *
I thought I saw the empty-eyed skulls scattered on the floor before
Tarran did. Maybe that's so, but he knew they were there.
They were four, the bone-naked remains of dwarves by the size of them.
The skulls weren't bleached white, for they'd not lain out in the sun
and the wind and the rain. They were brown, old and shiny things with
gaping jaws and staring eye sockets. One of the skulls was split right
down the middle, and the three whole ones were cracked, the cracks like
dark lace.
"Rowson, " Tarran said, pointing to one of the three whole skulls. "And
there's Wulf. Oran's over there. "
He went and knelt beside the broken skull, the one that lay in two
pieces away from all the others. I raised up the torch. Tarran knelt
right in the middle of a dark stain on the floor, a wide sweeping
streak of rusty brown. There he'd lain, bleeding and begging his
kinsmen to flee. They hadn't done that. One by one they challenged the
dragon for him, biting the bait every time, until they were all dead
and Tarran lay alone in his gore, the broken bodies of his kin
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