Page 16 of The Dragon Queen

We walked past a series of workbenches, pots and tools lying unused upon them.

“No real need for that anymore, though.” Stefan quickly walked through the room and towards another door to reveal a staircase that led further down. “Watch your step. Stairs have been scored and salted, but they’re still slick with ice.”

With painfully slow, mincing steps we climbed down. Air hurt tobreathe, being exhaled in great cloudy gusts, but suck it in we had to until our goal was revealed. Snowflakes fell in lazy spirals, partially obscuring the heavy wooden shelves and all the pots lined up along the cave walls.

“What is…?” Soren asked, drifting closer, but I knew. I’d seen those same pots suspended beneath the bellies of the dragons that flew into the dragon city. His hand went out, ready to touch, but Glimmer and I were of the same mind.

“No!” we both barked, inside his head and out of it, freezing Soren to the spot.

“Know what that is, do you?” Stefan looked me up and down with renewed interest. “Saves me an explanation then.”

“Humour us,” Brom growled.

“Dragonfire is a funny thing. Stable at this temperature, dangerous as all get out when warmed. Drop it and you’ll have an explosion the likes you’ve never seen. Shoot it at someone and they’ll be meat confetti moments later. Breaks stone, bone, glass, metal, you name it. Everything but ceramic for some reason. But if the ceramic breaks…”

I sucked in a breath, wondering what the hell he was doing as he strode over to the shelf, picking up a tiny ceramic vial.

“Well, you better bend over and kiss your arse goodbye, because you won’t be doing much more seconds later.”

Why? How? What the hell produced the ice this deep in the earth? Questions teemed in my mind, but they weren’t about to get answered.

“Do the inventory my cousin asked you to complete, and fast,” Stefan said. “I’ve got my own tally, but you can check if it’s correct when you’re done. You’ve only got a few minutes before you start to go into hypothermia, so better work together on this.”

So they did. Not me, not Glimmer. Brom was forced to put her down and she moved away from the jars of dragonfire. I followed.

“Looking at the old artworks?” Stefan’s tone was conversational. “Used to fascinate me when I was a kid. I snuck down here often enough to earn myself a beating or two when my father found out,but…” He nodded to the inscriptions. “Never really found out what they meant.”

I was dimly aware he was rubbing his hands together, blowing on them despite his thick gloves.

Ice…Glimmer’s voice was like a whisper inside my mind, prompting my hands to sink down into my pockets, the crystal eggs a cold, heavy weight in my gloves.

I’d heard the sound of dragons singing each time I found another crystal egg, but it was different here. Like comparing the thin warbles of children against the deep basso of a male opera singer. It was resonant, rising up from the stones themselves, something that had Stefan swearing, but it didn’t stop us from moving. Towards the friezes, painstakingly carved by dragons at some point, now with shelving shoved in front of it, we drifted closer, Glimmer’s head rising as my hand did. I traced the shape of dragons, still and stylised, and yet somehow I knew they were far larger than the ones that lived now.

And more powerful.

An egg had been carved into the wall, the perfect size to fit into my palm. Stefan cursed, his eyes whipping around as the earth itself began to shake.

“What the…?”

His hand shot out, grabbing mine, trying to haul me backwards, but that was never going to happen. It had been hidden in the wall for years, centuries even, for just this moment. The cut Soren had cleaned so well broke open on my fingertip, smearing the carving with blood. That caused it to glow. I heard it then, the slow, rhythmic pulse of a heart.Boom… boom… boom…It felt like years, decades passed between each beat, as his heart beat on long after he’d fallen.

Aisenbran…

I heard the name inside my mind as Stefan’s hand encircled my wrist, the minute my fingers went around the egg. When he wrenched me backwards, the egg came with it.

We have to get out of here!Glimmer’s fear hit me hard, as if she’dbeen battering at my mental defences and only just got through.We disturb his rest. He must not wake!

“Get this fucking witch out of here!” Stefan snarled.

His brothers, my men, they all surged forward, but I couldn’t fend any of them off. The egg felt cold, far too cold in my hand, sending ice crystals surging through my blood. I lost feeling in my hand, in my arm, that terrible coldness creeping faster and faster until…

The world fell away, replaced by perfect whiteness.

Chapter 9

There are many different kinds of cold. Sometimes it steals your warmth, sometimes it steals all sensation, but this one? It took the breath from my lungs, crystallised the blood in my veins, and as it crackled up my arm and towards my heart, it eradicated me as well, replacing it with this.

I’d seen many dragons in my life, but none the size of this one. Whatever optical faculties I had left strained to take in his enormity. There was that massive blue-scaled claw, that long, long tail that seemed to span miles, those shuttered wings that when they flapped out, threatened to block out the sun. It was his eye that caught my attention, though. Ice blue, it stared blindly when the eyelid flicked open, but the serpentine, vertical pupil focussed abruptly as soon as he saw them.

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