TWENTY-EIGHT

The Old Dragonlands

The Hotax path was easy to follow between the tussocks of grass, but the going was slow. We encountered a jumble of boulders that had been carved by the wind into curious and frightening shapes, then gaping sinkholes, marshes, and the occasional flaming tar pit littered with the charred bones of large herbivores.

We passed a herd of elephino staring thoughtfully at their feet, as was their habit, then came across a giggle beetle migration, where a line of yellow-spotted carapaces stretched into the distance in both directions, chuckling constantly. We stepped across, walked through a long-deserted village, then found an abandoned road paved with large, flat stones etched with curious markings.

We picked up the pace over the grass-fringed flagstones. “This would have been the dragon’s route to his lair,” said Gabby, “in the pre-Dragonpact days, when dragons roamed freely and were of the same prestige as kings and emperors.”

We followed the ancient roadway in a stop-start fashion all afternoon. We had to wait a half hour while a herd of Tralfamosaur moved through, and another time we paused due to a strange noise, only to discover it was a small herd of honking gazelle, so named because their call is indistinguishable from a car horn. A herd honking in unison sounds exactly like a traffic jam in Turin.

We stopped for a break near a spring of fresh water that bubbled out of the ground and tasted of licorice; there was probably a seam of it somewhere underfoot.

“Anyone got anything to eat?” I asked. I had left everything—food, drink, conch, Helping Hand^™, cash, Boo’s twenty-grand letter of credit—in the half-track.

No one had anything, although Gabby was carrying a full backpack, which he didn’t remove as he sat on a grassy bank.

Ralph disappeared and returned five minutes later with a dead slug the size of a rat and about as appetizing. I knew slugs could be eaten if one were desperate, but desperate in this context meant “perilously close to death,” and we weren’t quite there yet. Because the flesh-dissolving enzyme was on the outside of the slug, it would have to be turned inside out like a rubber sock and then eaten like corn on the cob. After our polite refusal, Ralph ate it himself.

We followed the trail up a hill, crested the ridge, and looked down upon a huge, bowl-shaped depression about a mile in diameter. At the center was a large grass-covered dome, surrounded by a high wall that had partly collapsed. This, said Gabby, was the abandoned lair of the dragon. Nothing seemed to be growing around the lair, and even from this far away we sensed a dark, oppressive feeling. The breeze seemed to grow chillier, and high above, despite the gray overcast, a circle of clear blue sky could be seen directly above the grass-covered dome.

“Okay,” I said, “we should be cautious. Long-unused spells may have recombined in unusual ways.”

As we walked into the valley, the strangeness of the redundant strands of magic manifested itself. The grass in the cracks between the paving stones seemed to shift underfoot as we walked, and when once I looked back, the grass we had trodden upon had become nourished by our life force. Stranger still, partially hidden by the scrubby grassland were what appeared to be statues carved from reddish sandstone. One was human and three were Hotax—like humans, only stockier and with broader, flatter heads. Most were animals: several Buzonjis, a snork badger, a pair of ground sloth, and even an elephino, some honking gazelle, and a juvenile Tralfamosaur. They weren’t true statues, but real creatures enchanted into stone, and one factor linked them all: Each had been caught in an expansive yawn.

“Don’t yawn, anyone.” I pointed to the victims. “A Turning to Stone defensive enchantment has recombined with a spell activated by yawning. The combination is potentially fatal if you become tired or bored.”

They nodded sagely and we quickened our pace out of the danger zone.

We reached the outer wall around the lair, which had once been ten or fifteen feet high and made of interlocking blocks like a three-dimensional puzzle. The lair itself had been a neat truncated dome, much like a cake, with the vertical edge supported by a twenty-foot-high wall of river stones interspersed with jewels.

We walked partway around the paved circular courtyard, and that’s when we came across the dragon—or at least the remains of it. His massive bones were lying in a heap where he had fallen. The jewel was missing from the forehead of his great skull. We could see the evidence of ax marks around his jaws where the teeth had been removed long ago; a dragon’s tooth has a sharp edge that never blunts and is prized as a weapon or in manufacturing, and with a price to match.

“Treasure hunters,” said Gabby, “eager to find the gold, silver, and jewels known to line a dragon’s lair.” He was right. The fine tiles that had once decorated the floor were broken and scattered.

“What a mess,” muttered Wilson.

“What about the books?” I asked, indicating the remnants of bindings also scattered around. “From the dragon’s library?”

Gabby nodded. “It’s like vandals stripped anything of value away.”

“Sham-ook,” said Ralph in a soft voice.

“I know,” I said. “This place must have been spectacular once.”

As the whole sorry scene unfolded before us, I thought of the Mighty Shandar’s role in the dragon’s destruction, and how the powerful and mysterious lair of this beast had been stripped, like so many others, for nothing more than souvenirs and cash. Multi-millennia of wisdom simply lost. If Shandar’s threat to destroy all dragons had been wrong before, it was triply wrong now. Colin and Feldspar must survive, must thrive, and must one day inhabit a lair such as this, where they could think deep thoughts and live a life in the pursuit of greater knowledge.

“This place has sadness stitched into its very fabric,” said Wilson. “Can you feel it?”

“I can,” said Gabby, “like a heavy, damp chill. I think we should pick up the pace.”

“I agree,” I said, and with Ralph leading the way, we skirted past the massive bones and headed toward the route beyond.

As we stepped from behind some fallen masonry, Ralph stopped dead. We stopped too. There, bathed in the warm orange light of the setting sun and looking every bit as dangerous as its eight-ton bulk would suggest, was a Tralfamosaur. It was barely fifteen feet away and was crouched, ready to spring. It cocked its head, regarding us in a dinner-y sort of way.

I’d been this close to a Tralfamosaur before. I’d seen the tiny red eyes and the saliva glistening on the razor-sharp teeth, but last time the Volkswagen’s windshield had been between us, and there had been a plan. Here there was no plan, nothing between us, and the only possible thing in my favor was that Ralph was closer and probably tastier.

Ralph realized it too, and apparently unwilling to become an appetizer without a fight, quietly reached into his handbag and drew out his flint knife. The Tralfamosaur blinked at us all and flexed its front claws menacingly. I moved slightly as a precursor to darting right, hoping that Ralph and the others might dart left and then one or two of us might have a chance.

But as I moved, the Tralfamosaur moved with me. It had zeroed in on me, and it wasn’t a pleasant feeling. As I was about to make my leap to a boulder a dozen paces away, a hand rested lightly on my shoulder. The Tralfamosaur cocked its head again, perhaps wondering if it could take two of us at the same time.

I looked over and saw Gabby at my side. He had opened his mouth wide, displaying two perfect rows of fine white teeth. It took me a moment to figure out what he was up to. He was pretending to yawn, and I did likewise; Ralph and Wilson joined in.

Yawns are, oddly enough, infectious. Once one person yawns, others are likely to follow. And since we were only pretending to yawn, I figured the spell would not affect us. The question was: Would the Tralfamosaur join in the yawn we had started?

The answer was: Not really. As we pantomimed yawns that would win no amateur drama prizes but could win gold in the Desperate Measures Challenge Cup, the Tralfamosaur peered at us hungrily and rose on its toes, ready to lunge. Faking yawns had been a long shot, obviously, and it looked like we would need to instigate Plan B, which was along the lines of “run like stink and hope for the best.” It is always prudent—and I give you this information for free, as it might come in handy one day—when you are attacked by a hunger-crazed carnivore the size of a bus to remind yourself that it has immeasurably higher mass and cannot speed up, slow down, or change direction as quickly as something smaller. It was said that lively jumping, dodging, and jinking could postpone the inevitable for a minute—tops—until brute force would finally end the sorry spectacle. But even for the unskilled, the first bite could usually be avoided if you kept your eye on the beast.

So I fixed my eyes on the Tralfamosaur’s, and as I watched, its jaws opened as a precursor to a lunge. I paused, wavered, then shifted my weight as I waited for it to make the first move.

But the move never came. The open mouth had actually been a vast yawn, accompanied by the foul stench of rotting carcasses, and the Tralfamosaur changed instantly to a dark granite statue that shimmered subtly in the last dying rays of the sun.

“Ook,” said Ralph.

We looked at one another and burst out laughing—out of relief, I think— and then moved past the silent beast without talking.

We set up camp in an abandoned armored scout car. While Ralph went off somewhere, the rest of us found some fireberries and ignited them by twisting the stalks sharply to the left.

“Anything to eat?” I asked, as hunger was beginning to gnaw.

“Ralph had a hunting look in his eyes,” said Gabby, “but if he comes back empty-handed or fails to come back at all, I have a Snickers somewhere.”

Ralph did return, and with a skinned swamp rat. Using some scrap steel as a frying pan, we soon had it cooked, and the rat was about as welcome as any food could be. Huddled in the wreckage of the armored car with dried grass and heather pulled over us, Wilson and I soon settled down for the night. It wasn’t easy. There were snuffles, scratches, clicks, and whistles as the nightlife of the Empty Quarter went about its nocturnal business—thankfully, at some distance away.

Gabby sat nearby, filling in a report in a leather-bound ledger. “Paperwork,” he explained when I asked. “The top floor wants to know everything we get up to here.”

“I know the feeling,” I said, as the magic industry was a stickler for paperwork.

As I stared up at the stars, bright and clear in the night sky, there was a screeching noise, and a homing snail arrived hot and sweaty on my chest. It was muddy and bruised, one of its antennae was missing, and several scratches on its shell spoke of a narrow escape from a predator. It was well past seven, and since my evening attempt at communication with Kazam hadn’t happened—the conch was still in the half-track—Moobin and the others had sent a snail. I sat up, plucked off the message, and read it by the light of the fireberry.

The previous evening’s message had been written in a neat hand, but this one seemed more hurried.

Couldn’t raise you on the conch so hoping all well. Eye of Zoltar and Perkins now imperative. Tell Perkins from me that all other considerations are now secondary, and Kevin says that if you ever find yourself on the shoulders of giants and need to take a leap of faith, go for it. Weather irrelevant, Moobin

I considered the message carefully. Did Moobin mean “all other considerations secondary” in the way that Wilson had described it in his story? “To use whatever means available to carry out his task”? And Kevin had said to take a leap of faith from the shoulders of giants? What was that all about? Giants had died out years ago and were long ago consigned to Grade VI Legend status, the same as dodos: “once existed, but now proven to be extinct.”

By the light of the fireberries, I could see Ralph sitting sentry on a rock, flint knife at the ready. I tied my handkerchief around my head to guard against yawning, then tried to get comfortable against the remains of the seats in the abandoned scout car. After the day’s events, I thought sleep would be impossible. In less than five minutes I was proven wrong.