Chapter 9
“Oh, God, it’s intelligent!” Spike groaned. “That makes this so much harder!”
They had all heard that enormous, baleful voice reverberating in their heads.
“We should leave now,” Jirun was stuttering. “It knows we are here. We should be dead. Why aren’t we dead? We should leave. Come back later. Element of surprise...”
Hugely contemptuous laughter filled their heads.
“Yes, run. I can find you now, wherever you run to. I know the taste of your minds. I had more than enough time not only to learn them, but to succumb to tedium in the hours that it took you to crawl up here.”
It had watched them then, probably from the moment they had arrived at the station. But where had it been all this time?
“A childish toy that Baniel scorpion created,” the dragon said in answer to her thought. “It reads two hundred of your miles in all directions. But straight upwards? It cannot even read two hundred feet. I was on the next peak westward. He had no vision. Truly a fool.”
“Is that why you killed him?” Buffy snapped.
Cold laughter filled her head, malefic and inimical. “He really thought I would not. He was so surprised when I did. It was to laugh. Insect.”
Buffy climbed to her feet and stood with her hands on her hips, glowering at the cavern.
“Thinks a lot of itself, doesn’t it?”
Spike grinned tightly. “But we’ll take it down a peg, pet.”
“You amuse. Come converse with me. It will provide a moment’s diversion.”
“Wonder if it’s male or female,” she muttered.
“Male. You are concerned about progeny. As if I would condemn my children to this cold, dull, heavy world of yours. You may have ensnared me here. You will snare no others.” A sense of snarling teeth clashing together came across. “I will ensure it. There will not be one of your species left when I am done.”
“We will stop you,” Buffy snapped.
“You? You puny little creatures who can do nothing but run and scream and hide at the very sight of me? I think not.”
“I will stop you.”
“You,” it said again. Laughter sounded, dripping with an annihilating scorn and disdain. “Can you truly believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Your overconfidence is diverting. Oh, I see. I come upon it in the minds of these your fellows. You are their ‘champion.’ But even they do not believe that any more.”
“What they believe doesn’t matter.”
“Your mind is different. You have strange things in it. A grotesque, mechanical world. Ah, now I understand. They called you also across the great divide. To fight me. How disappointed they must be now!”
“Arrogant sod,” muttered Spike. Buffy just glowered.
“Come and speak to me, ‘Champion’. I grant you passage. I may even let you leave. We have much in common and I wish to see what flea it is that tries to bite my ankle.”
“Not alone!” the Guildmaster gasped. “Avera, we must come with you!”
“I will not guarantee the continued existence of any who accompany you.”
“No one comes with me except Spike,” Buffy said flatly. “We’re the Champions. This is our job.”
“Avera!”
“No. I want you to collect your men and get as far away from these Caves as you can.”
“We will not abandon you!”
“That’s an order. We’ll join you when we’re done.”
“Dehren.” Spike moved towards where Dehren was struggling with his h’laren.
“You will want your swords,” said Cadhi, bringing them.
“Why not?” said Buffy, exchanging an amused glance with Spike. She strapped it on, though it was unlikely that it would be of any use whatsoever. But who knew?
“Get them as far away as you can,” Spike was saying quietly to Dehren.
“I will try, aver.” Dehren handed him the saddlebag he had unstrapped from the h’laren.
“I hope you have asbestos shields in there,” said Buffy, looking at the saddlebag curiously as Spike slung it over his shoulder. It looked very heavy.
“Dragon can read your mind, Slayer.”
“Good point.” Best not to know what he was carrying in that saddlebag.
“Banzai,” grinned Spike as they stepped into the tunnel. They both laughed.
They moved shoulder to shoulder through the darkness towards the flickering, fiery opening at the far end. It was strange but at the same time natural to have him beside her as they went to face this creature. Strange because she had always gone up against dangers alone before; natural, because in the last fifteen days she had become used to having him at her side. She glanced at him and saw the flash of his teeth in the darkness as he grinned. He was having fun. Buffy enjoyed fighting, but risk was a duty to her, not a pleasure. Spike enjoyed it.
They stepped out of the tunnel into a vast cavern stretching hundreds of feet. Cracks and fissures split the rock under their boots, and jets of fire and steam from potholes spewed fifty feet up. The air was hot as a sauna, but breathable despite the gases.
“Careful where you step, Slayer.”
“Yes.” Any crack or fissure at random might belch forth fire or steam.
The dragon was lying in the middle of the cavern. It looked like jewelry work, like something precisely crafted out of plates of gold, the light of the fires glittering on the scalloped layers of scales. Except it was gigantic. A T-rex was nothing to it. A hundred feet wide, hundreds of feet long. Unfolded, its wings would have covered an entire village. Just one of its claws was longer than her arm from elbow to fingertip.
It turned its head to look at them. Her gaze ran up from its narrow snout to the oily green eyes. The pupils of those eyes were vertical like a cat’s and Buffy could have stood up straight in either of them, the eyes were that large. Smoke rose from the red pits of its nostrils. Between the gleaming, white fangs, glare flickered from the ever-present furnace in its belly. She got a sense of immense age and of youth at the same time. It was both ancient and young, in its prime. Terrible and beautiful at once. Magnificent.
“I am,” it said. “And you are this Champion. You do not impress.”
“Yeah, people keep telling me that. Then they find they were wrong.”
It laughed coldly. “At least you have courage. Unlike the others. What is that creature with you? I cannot read its mind.”
“Thought not,” said Spike under his breath with satisfaction.
“This is Spike. He is a vampire.”
“A...demon, you think him. Possibly that is why I cannot read behind his surface thoughts, only what he projects when he speaks. I sense connotations of magic and threat. A somewhat mystical being. Like me.”
“Yeah, we’re both evil,” Spike grinned.
“Then why do you oppose me?” It sounded curious, not concerned. “Even she wonders that.”
“I have my reasons.”
“Fair enough. I have no specific antipathy towards you, vampire. Her mind says that you too were drawn here by the malign machinations of these despicable people. Should you choose to step away, I will let you go. Your Slayer has just remembered that you are particularly flammable.”
It grinned, fangs showing all the way around that wide, wide maw as the golden lips writhed back. Buffy gave Spike a rueful glance.
“You are, Spike. I should have thought of it sooner.”
“We’re in this together, Slayer.”
“Noble,” sneered the dragon. “Touching. It really is. But will that sentiment have meaning to anyone when you are ash?”
“And will revenge have meaning when you are a stinking carcass on the ground?” Spike threw back.
“Ah, you know what I seek. Come, come, vampire. You are a demon. You know that revenge is sweet for its own sake.” It hissed and a jet of fire spat from its jaws to burn across the stone floor. “That arrogant insect with his white hair and beard and delusions of power. How dare he drag Me across the dark and the cold? Trap me here in this ugly world, so chill it freezes my bones, so heavy it drags upon my wings and binds me down, down, to the dead earth. And all for the ‘secrets of the universe.’ As if I know them! But he thought I did. He wanted gratis the knowledge that I had strove and fought to accumulate over five millennia. If he wanted knowledge, why did he not search it out himself, work and learn, not steal it by force from others?”
“He could not hope to,” said Spike. “His lifetime is only a hundred years at most.”
“Mayfly,” spat the dragon scornfully. “He will not reach that hundred now. For his hubris, I burned him where he stood. And his people and tower with him.”
“Five millennia,” Buffy remarked. “Are you immortal?”
“Perhaps I am. I do not know. I am long-lived. I have lived five thousand of your years and I am young for my kind. But who can claim to be immortal until the end of days is known?”
“True. What is your name?”
“You could not pronounce it. It is...” It said several syllables in a voice that was the very voice of fire itself, a vast exhalation of heat and flame and sparks.
“You’re right. I can’t pronounce that. May I call you ‘Dragon’ instead?”
“The word has connotations of terror and splendor. It is acceptable.”
“Um, yes. Dragon, you are ancient and you are wise. Why do you waste your time destroying these people?”
“The word is Revenge. I like the taste of it in my mouth. It rolls. It sings.” Its lips snarled back from its fangs. “I had a life, Champion. I had a world of fire and beauty. I had a mate whom I loved. I had companions with whom to play and converse and soar. I danced among the stars. These people have trapped me here alone forever on this ugly, heavy world. They will pay. The new word is...Death.”
The flat malignity in its voice was chilling.
“They made a mistake,” Buffy said weakly.
“Indeed they did.” It laughed malevolently, a dreadful, horrible sound inside her head. “But they have not corrected it. They have in fact compounded it. They brought you here out of your world. Do you not see, Champion? They have not learned anything yet.”
“They just wanted help.”
“They must learn not to meddle with things they do not understand. I will teach them that lesson. I will write it across their world in letters of flame and blood.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“And how will you stop me? With that sword you have at your side? That pin? I see in your head that your proper world has weapons that might have damaged me. Rockets and missiles and such like. Very interesting toys, those. But you are not in your world now, Champion. Neither of us are. And this world has nothing that can harm me.”
“There are things that can harm you. The ruler of this land is sending ballistas to every town and village. The country will be blanketed with them. You are armored everywhere, so perhaps their bolts will bounce off your scales. But your wings are thin. They can be pierced and shredded. You would be crippled. Flightless.”
She saw the dragon’s snakelike neck rear up, nictitating membranes flick once over its eyes. That had struck home. It knew she was speaking the truth because it could read it in her head.
“And once you’re on the ground, they will find a way to kill you. They are numberless. You are but one.”
“I am but one, Champion. That is the whole point. What is death to me but a release? To be chained here forever. To spend eternity bound to this world, solitary and alone. That is horror. But I will take as many of these vermin with me as I can before I go.”
“Gotta agree,” muttered Spike. “Go down fighting. That’s what I’d do.”
Buffy gave him a look. “God! Do you have to start empathizing now? Enemy there.”
“Hey! Got no problem with killing it. But can’t help thinking it’s been handed the shitty end of the stick.”
Buffy had to agree. Baniel had harmed everyone by bringing the dragon here, not in the least the creature itself.
“Dragon...”
“More argument? I have learned what I wanted to know. Ballistas can be circumvented now that I have been forewarned.” It laughed. “None of you should have come up here with that in your minds.”
“No, wait...”
“My curiosity is satisfied and you are no longer of interest, ‘Champion’. Go. I permit it.”
“I have an idea.”
“You become tedious and predictable. Enough. There is no more to be said. I weary of this.”
“Dammit!”
Spike caught her arm. “Slayer. Really think it’s time to leave.”
“You are no longer diverting.” The dragon’s head was turning their way, its jaws opening.
“Slayer, ever heard of a tactical retreat?” Spike said rapidly in her ear. “Get out, come back later with a goddamn plan!”
“Dragon...” She yanked her sword singing out of its sheath. The dragon laughed.
“A thorn like that will not even prick my hide. Go, little fool, before I lose patience!”
“Listen to me for just one minute.” She was aware that Spike had let her arm go and had turned sideways, doing something with his saddlebag. “Spike, don’t do anything!”
“Well, it’s your own fault,” remarked the dragon.
“Dragon, stop!”
She heard the suck of the dragon’s breath, then its jaws opened wide. Spike’s left arm whipped beside her. Something dark flew from the slingshot in his hand and exploded halfway down the dragon’s gullet. The dragon fell back, choking and clawing at its throat.
“Damn!” said Spike. “One’s not enough! Gonna take the lot to do it, I think.”
“A bomb? You made a bomb?”
“Sort of.”
“Gunpowder! For God’s sake, Spike! You taught these people about gunpowder?”
“No one knows. Dehren stood guard outside, but he doesn’t know either the ingredients or the proportions. He thinks it’s a spell.”
“Damp T-shirts.” Not swimming, but a bath to wash off the acrid smell.
“Slayer, get out of here. Now.”
“What are you doing?”
He had a hand deep in the saddlebag. “Gonna blow up the place. Blow the thing up. Got enough here to do it. It’ll work. The whole cavern will come crashing down. Tested it in the caves at Emladris. I can give you five minutes. Enough time to get out of here, grab the others, put some distance between you and this place.”
“But you...!”
“Can’t be helped. I was planning to toss the bag in with a time-delay. But the thing’s intelligent. It’ll either rip out the slow-match or take off out of here where we can’t get at it. Slayer! Go! Now!”
The dragon was staggering back onto its feet.
“Spike...”
He reached out and touched her face lightly, smiling at her. “Last night was good, pet. I’m glad to have had it.”
The dragon roared, a sound that shook the caverns. “Vermin! You dare!”
“Stop right where you are,” Spike called, “or I’ll blow you to kingdom come!”
“You will die too!”
“That’s our job, innit?”
“Both of you stop!” yelled Buffy. “Dragon! What if we can send you home?”
There was a blank silence.
“Home?” said the dragon.
“What?” said Spike.
“I didn’t think of it while we were under the impression that he was just an animal and had to be killed. But he’s intelligent and he doesn’t want to be here and he didn’t ask for all this. Dragon, will you forego your revenge if we send you home?”
“Home,” sighed the dragon, its voice low and yearning. “The singing winds. The lightness. The warmth. To soar over the gulfs once more. To dance among the shifting curtains of the auroras. To see my mate and my people. Oh, yes! Send me home!”
“Can we do that?” Spike asked.
“I don’t see why not. Adara and the Convocation brought us here. They can open the passage again. Dragon, if we open the gate, will you know the way to your own world?”
“I will know it. Do I not have power? It will call me.”
“Forty-four days before they can open the passage,” Buffy said thoughtfully. “Maybe it could be less. Adara said they couldn’t do it sooner because they didn’t have the power. But he has the power. A dragon is magic. All the legends say so. If they do the spell with his power behind them, maybe the gate will open right then and there. I have to talk to Adara. Dragon, would you be willing to wait a few days without harming anyone while I do that?”
“I swear it.”
“We can get back to the capital by tomorrow and I’ll ask Adara. If it can be done right away, I’ll send someone back to the train station here. Dragon, do you know where the station is?”
“Of course.”
“We’ll light a beacon. If you see a beacon at the train station, come to Emladris at...at noon the next day. There’s a great square in the center of the city...”
“I have seen it.”
“In your overflights, yeah,” Buffy grinned. “Come there. If the passage can’t be opened earlier than the forty-four days, we’ll see whether Adara can come up with something else and Spike and I will come back to tell you about it.”
“Agreed.”
It coiled back down to wait while they ran quickly across the cavern and into the tunnel again. Once outside, they found that Dehren had managed to talk the Guildmaster into pulling back the guard several hundred yards down the trail in case Spike really did decide to blow the caverns. When they saw Buffy waving at them, they came rushing back, all relief and exclamations.
“You are alive!”
“Where is the dragon?”
“What happened?”
“We made a deal,” said Spike.
“What?” Confusion, either with the translation or the concept.
“We have an agreement,” said Buffy. “It is willing to leave this world. But I must talk to Lady Adara at once. We must leave right now. How did you know that he couldn’t read your mind, Spike?” she asked as Dehren was bringing up her h’laren.
“Because if he could, he would have known about the bombs I was carrying the minute we arrived at the station and he would have burned us right there and then where we stood.”
Buffy let out a breath. “We were lucky.”
“You can say that again.”
This time they didn’t make camp when night fell, but kept on riding until they reached the station. Buffy spent the train ride fast asleep in the curve of Spike’s arm, her head on his shoulder. By the time they reached Emladris, dawn was breaking. Buffy wanted to go at once to see Adara, but the Guildmaster flatly refused to let her do that. Instead, he sent an urgent message to her and insisted that they wait for her in their own apartment where he could be sure they would be safe.
“Does it have so much power?” Adara asked disbelievingly when things had been explained to her. “All of us together can not force the passage.”
Spike held out one of the graphs that showed the dragon’s passage over the city and the jump on the chart that nearly went off the page.
“It has power. Where would the Convocation show on this graph?”
Adara winced. “The entire Convocation trying their hardest has not a tenth of that power.”
“And it wasn’t even trying then,” said Spike simply. “It was just flying along.”
“A dragon’s a magical being, the way I understand it,” Buffy said. “It’s got more power in its smallest scale or wingtip than you can possibly imagine. Our stories tell of wizards paying a king’s ransom or fighting each other to the death for a drop of dragon blood to strengthen their spells.”
“If it will add its power to our spell, I see no reason for the passage to fail to open.”
“I would rather kill the thing,” muttered Cadhi.
“I think Tariess might feel the same way,” murmured Adara. “The creature is responsible for so much pain and death.”
“Yes, it is,” Buffy agreed. “And you want it to pay for that. And it wants you to pay for bringing it here. Where does all that stop?”
“Baniel’s the one really responsible,” said Spike. “And the dragon fried him. He’s dead.”
“The ballistas...” Cadhi began hopefully, but Buffy shook her head.
“The ballistas are heavy and face in one direction. They can’t be moved easily once they’re in position. The dragon reads minds. It just has to swoop down from the back and burn it. Even if you get a whole bunch and make a circle of them, it can come straight down in the center from above. And it wouldn’t come straight on. It would be weaving and ducking as it came. You can’t be sure of hitting it. There’s no way to be sure of killing it, Adara. Let’s take what we can get.”
“That spell you were working on, Spike-aver,” Dehren said. “Will that not kill it?”
“I tried one of my ‘spells’ on it. Tossed one down its gullet. Made it cough a bit,” said Spike dryly. “Would need all of what I have and in a confined space to kill it. I don’t know how we could do it if it were flying free. And it will fly free. It’s not going to stay in those caves. He’s intelligent. He knows. We won’t trap him that easily again.”
“Should have got it while you could then,” said Cadhi fiercely.
Spike gave her a sardonic look. “Prefer to stay alive, yeah? We’d have had to die to get him. Despite what you all think, I’m no martyr. Not even a bloody hero, thanks ever so.”
“Practicalities,” said Buffy firmly. “You have to be pragmatic about this. You might want revenge. He wants revenge. And all that leads to is more blood and death. If we send him back to his own world, everyone is safe. Be content with that. Adara, explain that to Tariess. Make him understand.”
“He will understand,” said Adara. She waved Cadhi and Dehren back to the guard post and they went obediently. “Those of the Guild think in terms of sacrifice and glory,” she said quietly to Buffy and Spike. “Tariess however is a ruler and rulers are pragmatic. Before night falls today, we will send to light the beacon at Reishi station.”
Spike leaned his head on the back of the couch and smiled tightly at Buffy. “We’ll be back home tomorrow, pet.”
Adara blinked. “What?”
Spike lifted a brow at her. “Well, the dragon will come tomorrow and you’ll send him home and the job’s done, right? So the spell should pop us right back to Sunnydale.”
“Oh, no! Oh, no, no!” Adara was horrified. “I didn’t realize you were thinking that way! The spell doesn’t work like that! Oh, I’m so sorry, averin! I am truly sorry! You still have to wait for the sixty days to be up!”
“Is that so?” Spike started to grin. “Pity.”
Buffy laughed at him. “Another forty-four days, if you count today. Somehow, I’m getting the feeling that you won’t mind.”
“Let me think. Lying about without a care in the world. No boogeyman to worry about. Waited on hand and foot. Probably lionized by the entire city as the hero of the hour. All the...” he raised his brows at her meaningfully, “...pleasures that I want. It’ll be a real hardship, but I think I can force myself to endure it.”
“Such a sacrifice.” She shook her head at him, smiling, as she rose to let Adara out. But when she came back again, she was biting her lip. “And speaking of sacrifices, Spike, what was that bit in the cave? You say you’re not a hero or a martyr, but you sure acted that way in there.”
“Hey! Don’t do things for the greater good, okay? It was either you or me in there, Slayer, and the bombs were my toy.”
“I see.” She watched him avoiding her eyes. “Spike...”
He shrugged a shoulder irritably. “Spur of the moment, Slayer. Let it go.”
She sighed. “I don’t understand you.”
He looked up at her, smiling a little. His eyes were very blue in the sunlight pouring through the windows, amused and gentle.
“No, you wouldn’t. Well, you have forty-four days to figure it out, Slayer. No rush.”
TBC
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Author's Chapter Notes:
The fabulous banner is by the awesomely talented Ben Rostock.
Chapter End Notes:
Glossary:
aver: sir / avera: ma'am / averin: plural / nefai: gentle being / nefa'in: plural / ri: three miles
aver: sir / avera: ma'am / averin: plural / nefai: gentle being / nefa'in: plural / ri: three miles