Heiress of the Underdwellers

“There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Two empires past, it was an ugly, fearful place. The Valley of Wails was the gentlest name by which it was known. It was settled in centuries past by a war-weary people, who coveted the protection of the surrounding mountains. But then foulness came, and those same mountains now protected the outside world from the evils within. Men and women of the valley lived in terror, secreted in holes and caves, while the vilest of the earth’s children scuttled and slithered and crawled across the open land.”

Grandmother was delirious with injury. Jeralyn knew the story of old, and barely listened as she frantically scoured the fetid cavern. A labored rasp issued forth as Grandmother’s chest bulged and shrunk; blood of dark green spattered her scales; one wing was torn.

There was barely light enough to see. Grandmother had ignited the nearby debris with a feeble cough of flame. Any passageways were well beyond its glow, and Jeralyn could not tell the size of the cave wherein they had fallen. All she could do was search for tools of protection along the floor.

“These caverns,” Grandmother went on, “became home to the Valley’s people. Generations were born and died having never seen the sunlight. The world above was a forbidden place. Theirs was a miserable existence. The creatures native to the underground were hateful and ever hungry. Think you how horrible the evils above must have been that the people looked on this as a place of refuge.”

Jeralyn tripped over the wreckage of their explosive landing. They’d collapsed some wooden structure, a bridge or perhaps a scaffold. The young woman grabbed an armful of splintered wood to feed the source of their dying light.

“Word of their miseries reached the ears of dragonkind,” the regal creature went on, “and while most were unmoved, remaining always withdrawn and solitary, some took pity on these wretched people, and offense at the blasphemies that usurped the Valley. I was young when I followed Thunderwing into combat, and we cleared the land of its pestilence. Those who dwelt below returned to the surface, their eyes dazzled by the light. Their gratitude was immense. The dragons remained, neighbors and protectors. And so the land became known as the Valley of Scales.

“I’ve watched with the joy and sadness of a mother as one generation begat the next. I knew the impudent brat who became the Valley’s first governor; sang songs with lusty men who built the temple of Yolgoth; watched, even guided the courtship of the ten times great grandparents of that baker’s boy you watch with dreaming eyes.” There was a long intermission in this reminiscence before the dragon spoke again in softer tones, “We were derelict in our duty. The centuries of peace, the songs of our great victory, made us complacent. Now the evil is returned, and we have failed you.”

Grandmother fell silent then, save for her husky breathing. Jeralyn returned to her and lay against her side. The dragon’s wing quivered and there was a sharp intake of breath. “Does it hurt much?” the girl asked. The side of Grandmother’s head scraped the floor as she gave a subtle nod, and the affirmation brought tears to Jeralyn’s eyes. This beautiful creature was her one constant friend, the closest she had to family. Jeralyn spent countless afternoons in the dragon’s cave, seated with her back against a scaly flank, listening to stories of centuries past, heroes buried, and continents long forgotten. In the Valley the dragon was known as Veridhale, which meant “Green One” in a tongue Jeralyn did not know. The youth thought the title uncreative, but a dragon’s true name is unpronounceable to humans, and the creatures generally accepted any convenient agnomen that was given. Jeralyn called her Grandmother, and the dragon seemed to like it.

Grandmother lay on her side where she had fallen, and Jeralyn could see her exposed wing bending wrongly from its shoulder. This had happened in the crash, the young woman guessed. The other injuries were incurred above.

The whole episode was a phantasmagoria to Jeralyn. The yammer of busy streets had shifted so quickly to cries of terror that the young woman had not noticed. She was knocked about by her frenzied neighbors. The sky grew a ruddy orange. Clouds choked out the light, and from the dimming horizon came black shapes of wicked outline.

Then from all around Jeralyn came shrieks of pain. With thin blades the lengths of their bodies, men in ebony garb struck down the townsfolk. Jeralyn could not move, caught in a blizzard of grisly visions. Her hair had whipped suddenly across her face as a great gust shook her off balance. The heavens shuddered with the roar of the Valley’s guardians. Streams of flame scorched the earth where the dark things marched. A counterstrike of spears and arrows further darkened the sky, and the noble beasts of the air faltered and fell. Like ants on a fallen bird, the black-clad men swarmed the dragons and drenched the streets with their blood.

As the tides of death lapped nearer to Jeralyn, she was suddenly plucked from the earth, watching as her bleeding village twisted and shrank away. The beat of Grandmother’s wings drowned out the screams below as she dove beneath an arcing wave of arrows. The dragon was headed toward a vast crater, the entrance to one of the countless caverns from which the Valley’s ancestors had emerged. Jeralyn did not see what struck the dragon down, but suddenly Grandmother’s flight became erratic. She tucked Jeralyn close to her breast as she slammed against the crater’s rim and plunged into the abyss. Frantic efforts to regain the air only sent her colliding with one obstruction after another. They tumbled through the honeycomb of passages that led into the bowels of the earth, and just as Grandmother made her final impact with the cavern floor she tossed Jeralyn into the air. The girl’s landing, while undignified, was mild next to the pulverizing impact of her rescuer.

So now Jeralyn lay against the green dragon, listening to the slow throb of her mighty heart and wondering what she was going to do. The timid fire that had been lighted was shrinking into embers; except, Jerlayn noticed, for one little pinprick of light. It seemed actually to be growing hotter: a brilliant starlet of gold. Jeralyn left Grandmother to inspect further, and found a pale gemstone amidst a circle of diminishing flames. The girl stooped to pick it up, and it filled her hand. The light emanated from within.

An instinct directed Jeralyn to place the stone upon the receding flames. Like the blacksmith’s metal, the light of the stone grew brighter in the heat of the fire. “Starstone,” Jeralyn heard Grandmother grumble.

The shadows trickled back from the cavern walls. Great portals to neighboring passageways became visible. Jeralyn tapped the stone with wary fingers, expecting a scalding heat. But the gem was only moderately warm. She took it again in her hands. “I’m going to search for a way out,” Jerlayn told Grandmother. The dragon did not reply.

Jeralyn chose a passageway and started forward.

“Jeralyn.” The girl stopped. “The people of the Valley left these caves long ago.” With effort, Grandmother craned her neck to look at Jeralyn. “But that does not mean that they are empty.” Goosebumps rose along Jeralyn’s arms as she imagined who or what might still call this underworld home. The dragon laid down her head once more. The unspoken warning to be careful rang clearly in Jeralyn’s mind.

She started down the tunnel.

* * *

With each step, Jeralyn expected some hideous face to materialize at the edge of the starstone’s golden light. Anxiety matured to near terror in her chest.

Slight though it was, Jeralyn perceived she was on a slope, and now and then she’d come to a descending step in the floor. She considered turning back, as her current path only led deeper into the earth. Yet putting her back to the unexplored darkness and its imagined inhabitants brought its own terrors, and for now she kept straight.

The occasional opening appeared in the tunnel wall. The largest of them yawned tall enough that Jeralyn could have passed through while barely stooping. A glimmering residue trailed down from the rim of these apertures, and Jeralyn thought uneasily of the slime left by worms.

By and by, the passage widened into a new cavern. Stalagmites sprouted in clusters all around, looking like great candles whose wax had hardened in fat streaks on all sides. Jeralyn wound through the columns and came to a series of steps that curved downward to the left. Once at the bottom, she discovered a collection of structures that seemed not of natural formation. Closer inspection revealed a row of small dwellings to either side. In the large gaps between them stood pedestals that held up unlighted stones like that which Jeralyn carried. The dwelling walls were of layered stone.

Jerlayn thought it prudent to see if a weapon was to be found in any of the buildings, and so approached one. The entrance was undoored. She stuck her hand through the opening and the full brilliance of the starstone was upon the walls. She entered.

Everything was made of the same pallid material, not unlike ivory. A table formed the centerpiece of the home, its surface low to the floor. Jeralyn pictured the inhabitants cross-legged as they ate. To one side a metal pot hung on a tripod over a pile of ash. To the other were three mounds that resembled beds, sand spilling out from beneath rough-sewn coverlets. Against the back wall behind these lay a sword, or rather an unskilled imitation of one, tarnished and crooked.

Jeralyn went to the weapon and took it by the hilt. It was heavy, unbalanced, and awkward. The girl frowned. She would have been a poor fighter even with a blacksmith’s masterpiece, let alone this misshapen behemoth. She let it rest against the wall once again.

Glancing down, Jeralyn noticed that one of the beds was smaller than the others. On its lumpy surface lay an object: a small, uneven orb atop a short rod. The side of Jeralyn’s mouth twitched upward. A toy.

Jeralyn bent down and pinched the rod with her forefinger and thumb, lifting it for inspection. It made no noise, was colorless, and seemed to have no moving parts. Whatever charm it held was lost to Jeralyn, but then children uncover the delights in the simplest of things. She twisted the rod in her fingers, slowly twirling the orb. The rear side presented two large black holes side by side. Suddenly chilled, Jeralyn dropped the thing back onto the bed.

It was a tiny skull.

Jeralyn walked backwards from the bed. Perhaps, she thought, it was the skull of some small cave beast; morbid, yes, but a convenient object she supposed for a people of limited resources. And yet it had not looked like an animal’s.

Jeralyn was thinking it was time to search elsewhere when she spotted a short stand. On it, amidst a few knickknacks, was a leather pouch. Like an unopened gift, it drew an intense curiosity, and Jeralyn did not resist its pull. Keeping her light in one hand, she lifted the pouch in the other and widened its mouth with her fingers.

Like the toy, it was dropped. Teeth spilled onto the floor. Human teeth.

Jeralyn gawked. Was it some horrid form of currency? The little pellets of bone twinkled at her. Their color...

Their color, Jeralyn realized, was that of the stones that made up the walls; of the low-stooping table.

The house was made of bones.

Jeralyn had always imagined the underdwellers of lore as similar in aspect to normal people; dirtier perhaps, with shabbier clothes, but otherwise familiar. Now she envisioned a civilization of rattish creatures; beady eyes and shaggy heads, teeth chittering constantly as they nibbled on the bones of their neighbors. What had generations without sunlight done to them? For the love of goodness, their children played with skulls!

Jeralyn put a hand on her heart and calmed her breathing. Perhaps, she thought more comfortingly, they honored their dead by putting their remains to practical use. Resources would be scarce in these tunnels, and after all, where would one even dig a grave?

These pragmatic thoughts put Jeralyn at ease, to a degree at least. Above, the earth offered new raw materials every season. Down here, the only replenishing resource would be the fresh bones of the dead.

Yes, the bones, thought Jeralyn as the chill climbed her spine again, but what of the meat?

She eyed the ancient pot hanging over the long cold fire.

No, no, she told herself. It’s time to go. You are on a mission. Grandmother...

Her feet took her across the room.

Don’t look.

She lowered the shining stone to the rim of the pot and bent to peer inside.

“I found!”

Jeralyn withdrew her hand with a sharp gasp.

“I found, I found!” It was barely more than an echo, like a cold wind taking on the articulations of a voice as it blew through dead boughs.

It came from outside. Jeralyn moved to the entrance, back against the inside wall as she peered over her shoulder at the darkness without.

“What did you find?” This voice too was an echo, but whereas the first was like a croaking toad, this had the sibilance of a snake.

“Dragon!” replied Toad. Jeralyn’s nerves steeled suddenly, and she ventured out of the bone house to better hear. “In Cavern Etrayis. Dead.” Jeralyn’s heart froze. “Or near enough. Bloody. Weak.”

“Dragon scales,” hissed Snake, “are most valuable. Teeth as well. Worth meat. Worth water.”

“Worth,” Toad chortled horribly, “warm company.”

“Stupid lecher,” Snake spat. “Starve with your warm company. I’ll eat.”

“You stupid. Stupid and ugly. Cannot even buy company.”

Jeralyn drifted toward the voices. There was an aperture in the cavern wall, about a yard in width. The voices wafted from deep within.

“You call me ugly,” Snake returned. “You are too long in the dark, and have not seen your own self.”

A third voice now joined the discourse—but was it even a voice? It was wet and slopping. Jeralyn imagined the toothless mouth of an elder mashing cold meal between their gums.

“No, no,” Toad answered it. “Dragon alone!”

More of that horrible glopping.

“Yes, let us go now,” said Snake. Then no more words.

Panic electrified Jeralyn. She sprang back to the bone house and stole the twisted sword she had no skill to use.

As she charged back up the steps, it seemed to Jeralyn that the cavern was darker now than when she had first come down. Shadows pressed in hungrily. Jeralyn looked at the mystical stone in her hand. It had lost its warmth, and its light was fading.

Jeralyn ran.

* * *

The path ahead was barely lit. Jeralyn had bruised herself more than once against the tunnel walls. The starstone was little more than a flickering candle in her hand, and the sword dragged behind her from an aching arm.

She at last returned to the cavern where she and the dragon had fallen. “Grandmother!” she called out.

The darkness answered with a croak, and then a hiss. She followed the sounds.

“What is? What is?” A croak.

“It’s a girl.” A hiss.

Jeralyn drew up the sword as she stumbled through wooden debris. “Get away from her!” she ordered.

“It says what?”

“She wants the dragon.”

“No! Ours! She cannot have!”

“She would protect it, methinks.”

And then that retched slopping.

Jeralyn followed the voices until the fallen dragon’s tail finally appeared in her feeble light. Three figures were gathered nearby. Jeralyn brandished the starstone as though it would repel the creatures, and what she saw in the failing glow challenged her courage. One stood on two legs, its aspect similar to that of a man. Another stood on six legs, spider-like in arrangement, though the limbs themselves were human, and all the more unsettling for it. The third had no legs, and for that matter no true shape at all. A shimmering mass that might have been an eye returned the light of the starstone. The rest Jeralyn did not see, as she instinctively averted her gaze.

Casting the stone to the floor, she took the sword in both hands and raised it over her shoulder. “Go! Or I’ll strike you dead!”

“No go! You go!” The cluster of legs skittered toward her. Choking back her revulsion, Jeralyn charged forward to meet it, uttering a cry of battle. The sword reached out in a grand arc. The thing halted before one of its legs could be sheared off, and quickly scuttled back. “Back! Back!” it yowled.

Jeralyn nearly lost the sword as it finished its swing, but managed to hold firm to the hilt and bring it back in a second arc. The would-be dragonslayers retreated out of the light. Jeralyn kept swinging, grunting through clenched teeth. Her foes were invisible to her now, and she swung recklessly in all directions. The blade only struck once, and whatever it hit was nauseatingly spongy. There came a low gurgling of pain or anger.

“Yes,” the two-legged one hissed, “we should go.”

“No! Dragon scales! Dragon teeth!”

“The dragon is going nowhere. We will return.”

Jeralyn ceased her barrage, arms shaking as she clenched firm the blade. She heard feet padding off at a brisk pace, followed by the squelching of a large, oozing mass as it too hastened away.

The cavern was silent again.

Jeralyn dropped the sword and flung herself against the dragon’s chest. “Grandmother!” she cried out, pressing her ear to the creature’s scales in search of a heartbeat. Her search went unrewarded. “No, no, no!” She shoved against Grandmother, feeling very much like an ant trying to shake a drunken man awake. “Don’t leave me alone here,” she pleaded.

Then she simply fell against the animal and wept.

“You’ve the heart of a warrior.”

Jeralyn stood erect. “Grandmother!”

“Yes, child.” The dragon’s words were whispers.

Jeralyn took the starstone, which gave no further guidance, and felt her way along the dragon’s body until she estimated they were face to face.

“I can’t find a way out,” confessed Jeralyn.

“Brave, brave girl,” said Grandmother. “You’ll find the way, I’ve no doubt.”

“Can you relight the stone?”

“Lay it down.” Jeralyn did so. She heard a rumble in Grandmother’s throat, then a great piercing sound like a cough. “I’m sorry, my child. I cannot.” Jeralyn felt hot waves of labored breath on her face. “Would you like to hear one more story?” the dragon asked.

Jeralyn embraced Grandmother by the neck. “Not if it’s the last,” she answered.

“I think it must be. It is one I’ve long waited to tell, perhaps too long. It starts with a small girl the day she first saw the sun.”

But the story ended there. Through one of the many tunnels came the crunch of booted feet on loose stone. Many, many feet.

Jeralyn perceived a pale light deep in the throat of a far off tunnel. Slowly, the light produced a battalion of silhouettes growing ever larger. These were the odious shapes that had appeared on the horizon of the Valley of Scales. Torchbearers lead their way. Their flames were not orange, but a frosty white.

At the front of the horde was one of the black-garbed swordsman that slew the frightened citizens in the streets above. A thin, shimmering blade some seven feet long stretched from his hand, leading him forward. The shoulders of his garb spread to lethal points, and his waving raven hair was pinned close to his skull by a silver band.

He stopped without warning, and with a final, unanimous stomp the things behind him did as well.

“You know what they are, don’t you, Grandmother?” Jeralyn asked in tones barely audible. “You said that the foulness of old had returned. What are they?”

“I can smell you, dragon,” the man spoke. He did not call loudly, yet his voice traveled across the cavern to Jeralyn’s ears, undiluted by distance or echo.

“Go,” Grandmother whispered.

“I taste the metal tang of your blood. You are weak, and will not escape. If you plan to surprise us in a final, misguided attack, it will be short-lived, I promise you.”

“Go now,” the dragon ordered. “These tunnels will hide you well.”

“No,” said Jeralyn, and she scrounged about the floor for her fallen blade. “I won’t leave you.”

“Do you expect to slay them all with a sword you can barely hold? Do not argue. Run!” Jeralyn was thrown suddenly by a giant claw, landing several yards off. “Run! Run!” With that, Grandmother pulled herself to her feet and let out a roar that shook the cavern walls.

The man pointed with his sword. Grandmother charged on faltering legs. With a nimble step, the swordsman launched into the air, completing an arc and driving his needle-like weapon to the hilt into Grandmother’s shoulder. The dragon screamed as the whole battalion rushed her. Those majestic wings became tatters. Scales were hacked off. One attacker was crushed to death in the dragon’s jaws, but a dozen others took its place.

Jeralyn covered her mouth to muffle her cries, and turned away before the black swarm could consume Grandmother completely. She scrambled to her feet, guided only by dim recollection back to the passageway; back to the trails of slime and the houses of bone.