Blood of the Red

Chapter 40 - Ingold

"No!"

Raymell's despairing shout brought Ingold's head rolling back. Dain stood as before. He seemed to be smiling at Raymell. He pointed up the slope. Ingold's wits kicked in as oxygen found its way to his brain once more. He heaved himself into a sitting position, groaning in agony. Dain pointed to the cave from which Raymell had emerged.

The trembling seemed real. Ingold could hear it now too, a rumbling noise. Pieces of rock detached from the roof, and were crashing down around the cavern. The huge stalactites fringing the side cave appeared to be cracking up. A great plate of limestone fell from one of them. Beneath this outer scale a deep red material stood exposed, identical in hue to the obstruction under which Ingold so nearly drowned an hour earlier. In a rain of fragments the upper and lower spires lost their coatings. They were all the same, glassy and translucent.

A loose thought rolled across the back of Ingold's mind, Like Gartus' talons.

A deep fissure opened before the cave mouth, wide enough to swallow a man. A second fissure tore across the cave floor, heat rippling the air above it. The foremost of the black pillars, supporting the roof of the smaller cave, cracked in half. The pillar beside it bore the increased load for a moment, then exploded in a cloud of fractured stone. Raymell raced past Ingold, leaping up the tiers, running for the cave. The remaining pillars collapsed simultaneously. The crash, as the cave roof descended, left Ingold's ears ringing.

As Raymell reached the cave the two rows of vast red teeth gnashed together. The mouth closed. The huge and luminous eyes of the dragon regarded the small figure before them. Raymell stood transfixed by that stare, black against the hot glare radiating from its scales of red and gold.

"Ah. So I am dreaming," Ingold murmured to himself.

The dragon's mouth opened a fraction. Ingold had to close his eyes. It was as though the sun itself were straining to escape the mighty jaws.

"No!" Dain's voice came faint against the rumbling.

The jaws snapped shut. Raymell hesitated for a moment, then, with a despairing wail, he threw himself into the depths of the fissure before him. How far the man would fall before he found rock Ingold couldn't say. But he was gone, vanished into the depths.

Gartus moved past Ingold, limping heavily, cradling his arm. Ingold shook his head to clear his mind, and got to his feet. He felt better. The wound in his head had almost gone, the pain in his throat now only an ache.

Ingold looked at the dragon. Gartus stood directly before the thing now. The two of them seemed locked in a staring contest. The rest of its body must be held in the rock, he thought, Must be half a mile long! In any event it was too big for him to deal with. He sought comfort in a lesser question.

"Why did you let Raymel go, Dain?"

Dain looked up at Ingold, his eyes very blue. He took Ingold's hand then looked back towards Gartus. "He wasn't always broken."

They watched Gartus for what seemed to be a very long time.

"What is it? Who looks away first?" Ingold pondered. He still had the distinct feeling that none of this could really be happening.

"Cordus is telling Gartus about the old days," said Dain, "before Arthur Bloodbane betrayed the dragons and locked them in the earth."

"Ah," said Ingold.

He looked at the dragon, Gartus held its gaze but Ingold still felt that the beast perceived him too. Each eye was two yards across, a fiery amber background overwritten by intricate swirling patterns in crimson. He remembered those red teeth, the shortest twelve feet tall. "So things were good in the old days? When dragons with enormous teeth and even bigger bellies flew the skies?"

"They don't eat people silly. That'd be like you and me living off ants. They didn't live here either, they came because Arthur's ancestors asked them to."

"So the greatest hero history has to offer us captured these poor... enormous monsters ... and ...?"

"He's a hero because he wrote the histories, and the songs," rumbled Gartus, striding towards them. "Men have been drinking their blood ever since. Men like me, for men like Attlus and Handelf."

"So what does it ... what does 'Cordus' want?" asked Ingold, acutely aware that the hot eyes of a mile-long dragon were now scrutinising him. He heard the answer in his mind as Gartus spoke it.

"Freedom."

Ingold put his hands to his hips and regarded the dragon evenly. "That is going to take a lot of digging."

Gartus went so far as to crack a smile. Dain remained serious. "Arthur's spell is very strong. Only somebody like him could break it. Only somebody with command of all the Bloods. We have to go to Sark for the Black, to Arkas for the Blue ..."

Ingold cut across him, anger tingeing his voice. "We do? Why us? I didn't come here to find dragons and I certainly don't intend to go half way across the world to free them."

"I'm going," said Gartus.

"Me too," said Dain.

"You are not!" Ingold was furious now, "Gartus, you made all those overblown promises to protect Dain, and now you're talking about taking him to Sark? Don't they have trolls up there? Lots of them?

"This is insane in any case. Go on a mad quest, fine, but you don't take a child along!"

Gartus looked Ingold in the eye. "You're saying this because you don't want to face it, but we both know it's true. Dain is the only one who can command the Bloods. Only in him can the Bloods mix. Only..."

"So he can become a monster like ... like Raymell?"

"Like me?" Gartus said softly. "Look at him Ingold. He swam in the Blood, he dived into it. A sniff of the Blood will set most men on fire. He's got more Blood in him than me. He's special. He won't become the thing the Arkasian did. The Bloods won't change him or corrupt him. Their magic can't touch him, unless he wills it."

"Why?" Ingold still refused to accept it. "Why should he do this thing? If you want to protect him then we'll find a place to live safely!"

"Because it's right," said Dain. "Because the Blood is used for war and death, because of all the men who die to gain its power. Because of young men like Jamus of Rike."

"I ... I never spoke of Jamus," Ingold stammered.

Dain held his eyes, "Those who die by fire, live in the flame. I hear them now."