Page 101 of Shadow Throne King
The dragon turned and raised his head, roaring with the sound of an explosion. Lava flooded up out of the hole behind the throne, and I realized exactly how the dragon planned to rebuild his mountain.
“He’s blowing up the volcano,” I said.
“We need to get out of here,” Iradîo said from the entrance to the cavern. The lava had stopped flowing, but heat still shimmered in the air at the threshold.
“Are you going to let us leave?” Tallu asked.
“You and any dwarf untouched by Centipede’s corruption have until the lava reaches you. I have let the prince of the frozen kingdom live. I have given him a gift. I am not required to give any of you safe passage.” The dragon looked over its shoulder, lips pulled back, teeth exposed. “Run, little ice prince.”
Twenty-Four
We couldn’t cross the threshold and escape the way we had come. Lava bubbled up from the ground, the heat so intense I fell back and Naî panted. The walls shook, enormous chunks of stone came crashing down, and deeper in the mine, I could hear the screams of dwarves as they began tunneling their way out. I remembered all the homes that we had seen in Mountain Thrown City and thought of all the dwarves who were going to be desperately climbing down the mountain paths, hoping to outrun the fury of a fire dragon.
One of the walls of the cavern fell, exposing tunnels beneath us. I gritted my teeth and reminded myself that there was no physical feat I could not perform. Feeling pain with every movement, I tugged on Tallu’s hand, gesturing for Iradîo to follow us as we limped over and slid down into the tunnels beneath us.
“How does this help?” Iradîo asked. She was sweating, massive beads of it flowing down her face.
In her arms, Naî whimpered with exhaustion, eyes screwed tight. She was barely more than an infant, even if she had all the memories of her foremothers. The heat would be painful to her, just as ice had been an annoyance to the fire dragon.
“There are miners down here who live on this mountain and know its every stone,” I panted. “They’re going to be looking for a way out just like us. If we can follow along behind them, we can get out.”
“The lava is a liquid,” Tallu said. “It will follow the tunnels first.”
The blood monks tried to help, tried to call out dead ends, but the mountain shifted too quickly and they returned, traveling closer to us so they wouldn’t get left behind. None of them spoke, trying to keep us undistracted, but Lerolian’s worry was etched in the creases of his forehead.
I could hear voices in the walls, the rumble of murmured panic. It didn’t sound exactly like people, but that was what it had to be.
“Listen for the miners!” I shouted over the crash of falling stone, jerking on Tallu’s hand for him to follow me. “I think there’s some over there. We just need to follow them.”
“Those aren’t miners. Those are badgers. You need to speak with them,” Iradîo said. “You know how bad I am with anything that isn’t a bird.”
We stumbled over a pile of rock, the sharp edges scraping my palms. The other side was nearly sheared off, and we slid down. I caught myself at the last moment, just barely avoiding breaking my ankles.
I turned, catching Naî when Iradîo tossed her to me before sliding down herself.
“My ability to animal speak isn’t reliable. I can’t always do it,” I shouted over my shoulder. Naî was heavy, but running from a volcano had given me a new burst of energy. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, but I couldn’t let it matter. If we didn’t get out of the caves, we were going to die here.
Iradîo took Naî back from me as Tallu and I desperately pushed at loose gravel, making a hole large enough for usto crawl through. “I thought you were just pretending so the imperials wouldn’t kill you.”
“No!” The caves were so hot that the water on the wall had turned to steam. Had I gotten turned around? Or was the lava everywhere now? “I can’t animal speak. Why don’tyouspeak to the badgers?”
“If I try, we might never get out of these tunnels. Most don’t like my attitude,” Iradîo said. “I tried talking to my horse when I was following you, and the thing bucked me off. I spent half a day tracking it down, and then it tried to bite me.”
“Well, I can’t!” The raw pain of it echoed in my chest. I might have acquired ice magic, I might even understand how to do fire magic, but the fact that I couldn’t speak to animals—an ability that had once tied me to the Northern Kingdom, something that had made me who I was in more ways than one—was like taking a knife to the gut each time I thought about it.
“I can’t,” I said again, softer.
Iradîo made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and grabbed hold of my hand with her free one. In her other arm, Naî scrabbled against her shoulder, desperately trying to get relief from the heat.
“You’ve learned ice magic—something no one else has ever done before—and now you think you can’t animal speak?” Her nails dug into my hand, and she searched my face. “So you forgot for a moment. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost it. Animals are speaking because they have something they want to say.”
It was the most basic instruction given to a young animal speaker. Usually, a parent or an older sibling would set the child down in front of a familiar animal. My father had sat me in front of Spoiled Brat and told me that the animal had something to say. I had listened desperately, wanting to know what great wisdom it would offer.
It turned out that the wolf had wanted an extra serving of food. But in my gratitude, I had nearly given it the entire dinner Mother’s sixth wife had been cooking. Tallu took a few steps down to the end of the tunnel we were in, and he looked in both directions. When he turned back, his expression was grim. “Both ends are blocked off.”
His face was slick with sweat, and it was clear that the heat would kill us before we ran out of air. I could still hear murmurs in the walls, and I collapsed down against one of them, pressing my ear to the stone.
There were badgers in the walls. What did they want to say?