Page 29 of The Poisoned King (Impossible Creatures #2)

The Cave

The cattle took some persuading to allow them to mount. Anya offered up all the food in her pockets. In the end, two shaggy-haired cows allowed them to swing onto their backs. Anya dug her hands into the bushy fur. If they smelled like the cows, the blind dragon wouldn’t detect them.

Gallia flew a little ahead, still within the herd, with fresh grass in her beak, guiding them. Anya’s heart was racing. Gallia looked at her, her head flicking left-right—“All well?”—and Anya jerked her head upward.

They came closer to the dragon. He lay in the mouth of the cave, and his beauty, Anya saw, was colossal.

His scales were, from a distance, purest black, but up close they shone purple and deep green and midnight blue; except around the underbelly, underwing, and underchin, which were the startling red of fresh-dug rubies.

As they drew closer, he began to sniff. Anya tensed every muscle as he gave a huff of acquiescence and allowed the first cows to meander inside.

She held her breath as her cow approached the cave mouth; at the last moment, she gripped with her arms and legs and swung round to the underside of the cow’s belly, clutching to its pungent fur with both hands.

The dragon’s head passed over the cow, but he only sighed, and a spark of fire lit the walls of the cave.

The cattle continued through the pass, round a corner, down a path and into darkness.

As soon as they were out of sight of the dragon, Anya thumped to the ground. Christopher followed.

“Do you have a light?” he whispered.

Anya nodded. She took the phoenix feather Koo had brought her from her pocket and snapped it. The core emitted a low reddish glow.

But she had forgotten that a cracked phoenix feather emits both light and a powerful scent of fireworks and bonfires.

Behind them, there was a great sniffing: a snorting, inquisitorial drawing in of breath.

And then, suddenly, without warning, a burst of flame came down the corridor of stone. The remaining cows gave a bellow of fear and took off in a thunder of hooves further into the mountain.

“Run!” cried Jacques.

They ran, legs pounding, stumbling on loose stones, the flames roaring behind them. Gallia gave a screech.

“Gallia!” Anya twisted and held out her arms, and the bird flew into them.

“Just a little charred,” she croaked. “Not cooked.”

Hurtling downward and inward, they came to a fork. Anya hesitated, choking in the dragon’s black smoke. One path, to the left, was broad, the other very narrow, slanting into darkness; the narrower would surely be too tight for the dragon to follow, but if it was a dead end, they would die.

She could not bear the idea of crouching, now, in the dark: panic and speed were in her. Christopher was thinking the same thing—“Left?” he said—and they darted onward, grazing against the stone walls.

They burst suddenly into a small cave. Here the cattle had gathered, and they pushed in among them. The dragon halted, confused, his blind head twisting around for the scent of them.

It gave them time. Christopher took from his pocket something long and curved and smooth: a sphinx tooth. Anya stared in astonishment as he cried out, this time in the ancient language of the red-winged dragons. “Wait!” he said. “We beg forgiveness for intruding.”

The dragon was panting; he was on the edge of mania. It was like watching a mad dog with the power of a planet.

“We have come to find the dragon Sarkany,” said Christopher in English. “She sent for me.”

“Sarkany?” said the dragon, and there was darkness in the voice.

“Yes! She called me to her. I’m from the Outerlands; she trusted me to help, where she would not trust man or creature from the Archipelago.” Anya urgently nudged him. “And I came, too, to ask for her help in return,” said Christopher.

“Help?” There was disgust in the voice. “A dragon, help a human? I will show you what help humans deserve. Follow me.” He turned his back—but as Anya and Christopher moved after him: “Do not come too close! I cannot bear the smell of you.”

The dragon went on all fours ahead of them, massive and closed-winged. It was like following an earthquake; the ground shook as they went.

Anya saw an occasional scattering of golden coins under their feet as they passed.

Jacques saw it too. “Brother,” he said. He flew to the ground and sniffed it. “Where is your gold? The hoards in these mountains are famous. What are these paltry coins?”

“You will see,” said the dragon. “Do not speak. Just follow.”

The dragon led them down a long passage, which widened to become the mouth of a cave: vast enough, Anya thought in awe, for a thousand humans. The ceiling was open in places to the sky outside; directly below one crack in the rock was a small lake.

There, at the heart of the cave, were five dragons.

They lay like black-and-red carvings of unspeakable beauty; like the final great inventions of a perfectionist god. They did not move.

At first Anya could not understand what she was seeing—they were so huge, and so still…and then understanding began to grow blackly inside her. “No,” breathed Anya. “No, no, no, no, no!”

It was the site of a massacre.

It was impossible. She let out a sob, and Gallia pressed her head against Anya’s cheek.

Jacques had flown to Christopher’s shoulder, and he was shivering violently.

Christopher made a retching sound. He walked toward the dragons. “How did this happen?” he said. Anya could hear from his voice that he was weeping.

“Humans,” spat the blind dragon. “The rank arrogance and greed of humans.”

Anya approached the huge red bodies. A few stray coins clanked under her feet.

It was the ruin of something terrifying, wild, and magnificent. They had been thousands of years alive. They had been titans. All their understanding and knowledge, all their work to fly and mate and hunt and endure—all that abounding life, taken.

“I have to stop this,” she heard Christopher whisper. “I’m a guardian.”

Carefully, still half afraid it was only sleeping, she laid the tip of a finger on the largest—and then the palm of her hand. She unlooped her silver necklace from her throat, and held the disk beneath the dragon’s nostrils. No breath blurred the silvery metal.

“It is Sarkany. She is dead,” said the blind dragon. His voice was bitter. “She will not stir.”

The dead dragon was cool to the touch, and her scales were hard.

Anya ran her hand up the neck and looked at the vast, lifeless scaled face.

Sarkany’s eyes were closed, but her mouth had fallen half open.

The teeth, as long as Anya’s forearm and sharp as knives, were bared.

Around the mouth there was an acrid smell.

The smell was familiar.