Kendel's Quest

Kendel’s Quest

Mithar crept along the ridge, bow in hand. His steps were feather-light, his catlike green eyes narrowed but still bright as emeralds. His preternaturally acute senses gauged the wind-speed, the angle of the slope; his pointed ears caught the faint sounds of rustling grass, and of someone breathing. With the single-mindedness that marked him out among his clan, he focused on the figure ahead of him, tall and regal, swathed in a haze of blue mage-fire, chanting almost inaudible incantations. Mithar edged closer, fingers lightly sweeping the ground for balance, watching.

Suddenly the mage-fire sputtered and died, and Mithar saw the figure stiffen. He imagined the weathered face rigid with concentration, the thin mouth set under the snowy beard, the black eyes glittering. He wondered what was passing through the age-wise mind of the greatest wizard he had ever known.

“Well, fuck this!” the figure exclaimed suddenly, flinging its staff over its left shoulder and dropping cross-legged on the ground. Mithar caught the staff neatly moments before it hit him, the wood slapping against his palm – the figure turned to face him so sharply Mithar was sure he could hear vertebrae snapping. “And what in the name of all fourteen gods, nine goddesses, six elemental deities and countless minor demons are you doing here?” the wizard asked, clearly furious. Mithar closed the distance between himself and the sage in a step and settled himself onto the grass. He proffered the staff he had caught, letting go quickly as the wizard snatched the stick away and threw it as far as he could in the opposite direction. “Bad day, Kendel?” Mithar asked, not meeting the wizard’s eyes.

“You might say,” Kendel growled, his lip twitching. “You might say I had more fun being swallowed by the Great Dragon of Garetna. You might even say I had more fun being excreted by the Great Dragon of Garetna. Given the choice between today and the dragon, I would happily proffer myself on a spit for roasting. At least then I’d be able to warm up.” Kendel punctuated his words with a violent sneeze, setting a nearby tree alight with mage-fire. He put it out by swearing at it, then sat staring determinedly ahead, muttering angrily. Mithar was tempted to give the wizard a conciliatory pat on the shoulder, but decided against it. Elves as a rule were no good at physical comfort, and he had no desire to inflame the angry wizard further. The unfortunate tree still smouldered gently, glowing blue at the edges. Mithar watched it, waiting for Kendel to say something else.

“Master Healer Darrow gave me a once-over this morning,” Kendel said, sounding as though he were keeping calm with an effort. “Said he had a new healing spell he thought might help me. And do you know what it did? Do you know what that healing spell did?”

Mithar shook his head tactfully. Kendel stood, sniffing slightly, and stared Mithar straight in the face. “It re-bounded. Bounced right off me, hit the wall and cured the dog. Now that maniacal mongrel is running around with more capacity for annoyance than it’s had for the last six years, while I – I, Kendel, deputy head of the Mage Council and greatest wizard this side of the Bellemane Ocean – remain practically incapacitated by the common cold. Where the hell did I put my staff?”

Mithar didn’t answer: he was busy ticking things off a mental list. “Kendel?” he asked, as the mage sneezed halfway through a complex incantation and expelled a flock of butterflies through his left nostril, “how long have you had this cold?”

“Five weeks, three days, fourteen hours and thirty-three miserable [cough] minutes.”

“You’ve seen the Council of Healers?”

“Yes.”

“Performed the three-day rite?”

“Yes.”

“Consulted the grimoires, the prophetess Sekia and the scrying-glass?”

“Yes, yes and damn you, yes!”

Mithar spotted the blackened remains of the staff hanging from a branch of the still-smouldering tree, and moved into Kendel’s line of vision to distract him. “Then you know what you have to do next,” he said, meeting the wizard’s gaze directly. In the centres of Kendel’s black eyes, blue sparks ignited. “Feed me to a rabid chimaera, Mithar, you have got to be joking,” he said despairingly.

***

Quests, Drowin thought miserably, downing another tankard of beer and wiping his mouth with his beard. Why did everything come back to ruddy quests? He was sure there was no problem that couldn’t be solved with a healthy roast, a keg of beer and a nice, long mineshaft, but still it always came down to quests. “The Quest for the Golden Deer”. “The Quest for the Crystal Fountain”. “The Quest for the Ring of Power”. As far as he knew, the quest for the Holy Grail was still going. Every time something had to be found, fixed or fought, it was saddle up, get bossed around by a wizard, pissed off by some girly elf, chucked off a rampart by a greasy ranger who thought he might be king some day…there was just nothing in it for the dwarves. Even the pensions were lousy these days.

From outside the tavern, the bell in the village square rang three times. Drowin scowled into his empty tankard, hiccupping slightly. He wouldn’t have minded an epic quest, something prestigious. The one with the ring and the volcano; long before his time, but that was one people still talked about. One of his ancestors had even gone along that time. And then there were all the ones with dragons – now, they carried clout. Great on a resume. He imagined it: “Drowin of the Balmor mines, four hundred and seventh year of the Third Age, aided in the defeat of the Dragon of Cartigon (not that Cartigon had a dragon), as part of the Great Quest for the Gem-seeking Pickaxe”. There: that sounded far better than finding a cure for some wizard with a head-cold.

The bell rang again, and Drowin flung a couple of coins onto the counter, swivelled on his stool and jumped the foot or so to the ground. He checked his axe was firmly secured to his belt and swaggered out into the sunlight, swaying slightly as the five tankards of beer stated their presence. The villagers were already assembled in the square, the eager adventurers gathered on the dais, the Council of Healers presiding over the assembly, with Master Healer Darrow officiating. As he pushed his way through the crowd to the dais, Drowin noticed to his displeasure that Mithar was among the questing troupe; when he saw Drowin, the elf lifted his finely sculpted nose in a picture of distaste, while Drowin responded by giving him the finger. The wizard Kendel sneezed halfway through giving the dwarf a disapproving look, spoiling the effect and completing the picture of slapstick impropriety. Drowin hoisted himself onto the dais, giving the assembled company a curt nod and attempting vaguely to concentrate on what the Master Healer was saying.

He needn’t have bothered: Darrow was midway through the customary long speech about the nature of a quest, the bond of brotherhood between its members, the trials and tribulations they would have to face…Drowin had to suppress a laugh. If Darrow thought he’d ever form any sort of bond with the likes of that elf, he was duller than he looked. As for trials and tribulations, unless the wizard was contagious they were all in for an easy ride. After all, they were only going to the Evergreen Mountain. How hard could it be? More than anything, Drowin wished they could be on their way so that he could come home again and pretend the whole farcical episode had never happened.

There were four of them altogether: the wizard Kendel, the elf Mithar, the dwarf Drowin, and a Feria thief named Kallakin. Kendel assured them they’d pick up a human along the way, to complete the party; in the meantime, they filled their haversacks with provisions and set off, the wizard leading the way. Kendel was obviously in a foul mood: even Mithar, normally on friendly terms with the wizard, was keeping his distance, concentrating on getting to know the Feria so he could pointedly ignore the dwarf. Like most Feria, Kallakin was a hermaphrodite, flat-chested but with otherwise startlingly feminine features. His/her eyes were a disconcerting shade of yellow, and more than once on the first few nights Drowin caught him/her staring at him through the dark like a pair of eerie, living lamps. While Drowin struggled to come to terms with Kallakin’s gender, Kendel gave up altogether; for some inexplicable reason he found that calling the thief “it” improved his mood. Kallakin didn’t seem to hold much of an opinion: s/he tagged quietly along and occasionally pilfered things from Drowin’s haversack.

They made their first stop in the village of Emlis, well known for the healing powers of its well. Secretly Kendel hoped the water would cure him, so he could cut this ridiculous quest short and go home to thoroughly curse the Master Healer. Emlis was a common first stop for questers, so aside from the traditional feast with the traditional elf/dwarf drinking contest (Mithar drank Drowin right under the table, but had a worse hangover the following morning), the group were paid little attention. Kendel took a visit to the town’s Healing Council, from which he returned angrier than ever and sneezing butterflies at regular intervals. Kallakin, kleptomaniac urges as yet unused on the journey, made the mistake of stealing the mayor’s best hat, after which the group was politely but firmly urged to leave.

Drowin sidetracked halfway to the next stop to visit some cousins and got lost: they followed his trail nearly fourteen miles out of their way, battling harsh terrain, flash floods and even the occasional orc, only to find the dwarf merrily exchanging banter with the barman at the legendary Garetna Inn. “And a wonder I [hic] found it, [hic] too” the dwarf slurred merrily. “Only [hic] appears once a [hic] year, when the dragon comes out to celebrate his [hic] birthday.” Kendel and Mithar exchanged wary glances; they were the only two who had survived the last quest to subdue the Great Dragon of Garetna, and Kendel had been eaten in the process. Dragging the dwarf bodily from the tavern, they beat a hasty retreat, deciding to skip their next stop and get as far away from Garetna as possible.

Next to upset their progress was Mithar: finding fault with Drowin’s every move, he eventually made the bickering so unbearable that Kendel left him at a village to pursue a side-quest, promising to wait for him when they reached the town of Antimel. However, when they arrived they found Antimel vanished, flattened completely by the Great Dragon of Garetna a year previously, during one of its raucous birthday parties. Not only was Antimel gone: the whole shape of the mountain range had changed, deep canyons scored into the rocks by the dragon’s enormous claws, rivers diverted by massive rockfalls and one mountain decapitated completely, its peak lying discarded in a valley with the snow slowly melting into rivers. With his keen tracking sense, the elf didn’t take too long to find the rest of the party, but there were still three days of directionless wandering, fruitlessly trying to find the place where Antimel might once have been. Kendel’s humour, hardly improved by the almost constant stream of butterflies drifting from his nose, grew darker still as he surveyed the damage from the top of one of the surviving mountains. “Why does it always come back to that sodding dragon?” he muttered stormily, catching a butterfly in his handkerchief and squashing it vindictively.

“It’s because we still don’t have a human,” Mithar grumbled a few days later when they reached Iliath, his normally serene countenance dour. “We can’t complete the quest without the proper assembly, and we’re more than halfway to the Evergreen Mountain. Of course things are going to go wrong.”

“Why didn’t we just take one of the villagers?” Kallakin asked, speaking for almost the first time all journey. Kendel shook his head miserably, poking the ground with his staff. “You need a human with destiny, someone with royal blood or a mage’s blessing, or who was nursed by a wolf as a babe…something like that. I’ve scried each and every one of those villagers a thousand times, and they’re all dull as ditchwater. The only one duller is the mayor.”

Drowin belched his drunken agreement, and Mithar shot him a dirty look. Kendel rapped him smartly on the knuckles before he could do anything else to the inebriated dwarf, and Mithar returned to focusing hard on his knees, his green eyes slightly glazed in their misery.

“Mark my words,” Kendel continued, more to himself than to the thief, “we’ll turn up in a village and find we’ve been followed for miles by some dirty huntsman who needs to join us on our quest so he can kill his usurping uncle and claim the throne of some nonexistent province or other. In fact, Kallakin, if you should happen anywhere to see a man with long, greasy hair and copious quantities of stubble, he’s probably the one, so I recommend you grab him, stuff him in a sack and tie him to my staff so we shall be assured of his presence for the rest of our quest. That should make things easier.” Kallakin nodded, and agreed to be the rear guard for a while, to try and catch any promising humans who strayed into their trail. By this point everyone – especially Drowin, whose haversack was by now considerably the lighter for Kallakin’s skills – knew how sharp the Feria’s senses were; still, it came as something of a surprise when s/he dropped from an overhanging tree branch and whispered in Kendel’s ear, “Don’t look now, but I think we’re being followed.”

As one, the group turned to regard the road behind them. Standing on it, and making no attempt at concealment, was a young woman, maybe eighteen years old. She was dressed in what looked like expensive clothes, though slightly the worse for travelling, and her makeup needed re-applying. In a slightly flimsy-looking way, she was quite pretty, in much the same style as the butterfly that crawled out of Kendel’s nostril, shook its wings and fluttered into the air.

“Well, begging your pardon, ma’am,” Kendel said, brushing the insect away with a dismissive sweep of his hand, “but who the fuck are you?”

“I’m Catamar,” the girl said without batting an eyelid, “third daughter of…”

“…someone important, betrothed of someone else important, princess of somewhere exotic and soon to be queen of somewhere unpronounceable. Yes, I know the drill,” the wizard said irritably, “now what the hell do you want?”

“To join you,” Catamar said at once. “I want to join your quest.”

Drowin burst out laughing, but Mithar, who was having a hard time concealing his own mirth, knocked the dwarf’s feet from under him with his bow, depositing him firmly on his behind on the road. Catamar raised an eyebrow at the fallen dwarf. “I’m serious,” she said, sounding it. “I overheard you in Iliath. You need a human. Take me.”

Kallakin coughed apologetically. “With respect, princess,” s/he said, “we were more looking for a dirty huntsman who needs to join us on our quest so he can kill his usurping uncle and claim the throne of some nonexistent province or other. Preferably with long, greasy hair and copious quantities of stubble. None of these seem to describe you.” Finished with the longest speech s/he would ever utter, the Feria blinked twice and scampered back up a tree. Catamar snorted derisively. “You’re all sexist pricks,” she said acidly. “You think that because I’m not a man I can’t have the necessary touch of destiny, right?”

“It’s not just that you’re a woman,” Drowin said hurriedly, trying to redeem himself.

“No,” Kendel agreed, “there’s far more to it than that. Can you use a sword? The human’s always the swordsman.”

“Never seen one before,” Catamar admitted proudly. Kendel and Mithar exchanged glances. “Have you been in many battles?” the elf asked. “The human’s always the tactician.”

“Never even fought with my siblings,” Catamar said, shrugging.

“Can you follow a trail?” Kallakin’s voice came from somewhere in the tree. “The human’s always the tracker.” Catamar shook her head.

“Do you have an evil, double-crossing, insidious streak the width of the Giants’ Chasm?” Drowin chipped in enthusiastically. “The human’s always the one who joins the quest for the wrong reasons and gets corrupted by evil and sells out his friends for his own stupid, selfish…can I offer you some ale, young lady?” he finished, suddenly acutely aware that Catamar had grabbed one of Mithar’s arrows and was about to shove it up his right nostril. Kendel rolled his eyes, suppressing a sneeze. “In short,” he concluded, “Catamar, third daughter of someone relatively unimportant, you are completely useless for any practical purpose whatsoever.”

Catamar opened her mouth to protest, but Kendel raised a hand to forestall her. “That, young Catamar,” he continued, “would happen to be the one thing that everyone on this idiotic quest has in common. You’re in.”

***

By the third day after Catamar joined them, two things had happened. First, they seemed to be making smoother and more unimpeded progress towards the Evergreen Mountain. Second, Kendel’s cold got much worse. He shivered almost constantly, his attempts to warm himself up with mage-fire thwarted by frequent sneezing. His head made numerous disappearances behind clouds of multicoloured butterflies, and Mithar heard Catamar mutter something about causing hurricanes on another continent. He assumed she was talking about the force of Kendel’s sneezing, but decided not to ask her about it. Mithar was a clan-prince, and unused to being made to feel an idiot; still, despite her complete uselessness as a questing adventurer, Catamar managed it. Mithar had made the mistake of trying to explain the Evergreen Mountain to her before he was wise to the human’s devious ways, and he was sure he would regret it for the next millennium.

“So there’s nothing there,” Catamar had said pointedly, after eavesdropping on a whispered exchange between the elf and the ailing wizard.

“Oh, there’ll be something,” Mithar had said in what he was sure was an encouraging fashion. “We just don’t know what it is yet.”

“I don’t understand,” Catamar had stated blandly, catching a butterfly as it shot out of Kendel’s long-suffering nose. The wizard moaned, clutching his head in long-fingered hands, and Mithar took this to mean he should explain.

“It’s a well-known fact that you can solve anything by questing for it, Catamar,” he began gently. “Anything at all.”

“Why?”

“Because either you find what you’re looking for, quest for so long you forget what you’re after or die horribly before you accomplish anything,” Drowin burped happily, raising a flagon. Mithar kicked him.

“Much as I hate to admit it,” the elf continued, impaling Drowin with an evil stare, “the dwarf is almost right. Unfortunately, there can be problems, and those problems arise when you quest without a clear objective. You need to be quite specific in your goals, or you’re likely to fail. Anyway, after we lost most of the population of three villages questing to sort out the Great Dragon of Garetna about a hundred years ago, the Mage Council came to the conclusion that there was too much fruitless questing.”

Catamar looked confused: “I don’t follow,” she said.

“Half the members of that quest only joined because their own quests weren’t getting anywhere,” Kendel explained hoarsely, stifling a sneeze. “They thought that if they could join a quest with a clear direction…well, that’s why there was such wholesale slaughter. All the quest objectives got mixed up, and when push came to shove, most of the men were too confused to do anything except get killed.” He coughed, hard, expelling a live frog onto the forest floor with an audible “plop”. He stared at it in anguish for a moment before motioning to Mithar to continue with the tale.

“The Mage Council decided that they had to find a way to give every quest an objective,” Mithar went on, “or they risked more people getting killed next time a big quest came along. So they decided to create the ultimate quest objective. They picked a mountain, suitably far from anywhere and imposing in stature, and sent the twenty most powerful mages in the world to enchant it. They spent three years casting spells over that mountain, until the very air was so saturated with magic that even the insects were casting mage-fire. By the end, the Evergreen Mountain had absorbed so much magic that it became the ultimate quest objective. Whatever the nature of your quest, if you set out towards the Evergreen Mountain, you either find what you’re looking for or get so distracted that you end up on the right track eventually.”

“A failsafe,” Catamar said, nodding her head. Mithar agreed. “Idiot-proof,” Catamar continued. Mithar agreed. “A safe haven for incompetent twits who don’t have a clue where they’re going or what they’re going to do when they get there,” Catamar finished triumphantly, getting up and striding away with her face a perfect picture of regal disgust. Mithar was left with more than a fleeting feeling he might have been made to look stupid.

“There’s something that disturbs me about that human,” Mithar said to Kendel the next morning, after checking that Catamar was safe in conversation with the Feria and couldn’t eavesdrop again. Kendel sniffed to show he was listening. “Since she joined us, we must have mentioned the quest to kill the Great Dragon of Garetna at least once, am I right?” Kendel sniffed again. “And at least once we’ve made it clear that we two were the only survivors.” Kendel blew his nose, a caterpillar sliding onto his chin. “Well, doesn’t that strike you as odd?” Mithar asked. “She’s in the presence of the only two people to have survived an encounter with the Great Dragon of Garetna, yet she doesn’t seem even remotely curious. I don’t even think she likes us.”

“What’s to like?” Kendel croaked, pinching his nose so he could get through a throat-soothing spell. Mithar resisted an almost human urge to punch him. Kendel swallowed several times before sneezing violently again, showering Mithar with death’s head moths. Mithar regarded them with some concern. “Tell me those things aren’t a bad omen,” he said, the painted skull on the back of one moth reflected in his pupils. “Of course not,” Kendel said irritably, batting them away. “They’re a natural response to my innate discomfort at all this talk of that blasted dra…”

A deafening roar split the air, shattering nearby boulders and causing several trees to keel over in protest. Mithar momentarily forgot his dislike of physical contact and clutched Kendel’s arm; Drowin slopped ale down his beard and stared around wildly, axe in hand, while Kallakin took refuge behind Catamar’s long skirt. From somewhere miles ahead, behind a mountain range, twin plumes of smoke started to column into the air, tinged reddish at their base. A tongue of flame licked over the side of one of the mountains: the forest had been set alight and was burning at an incredible rate. Soon the whole mountain seemed to be ablaze, and from behind the inferno, something was rising, something reddish gold, huge and reptilian…

“By every god in every pantheon,” Kendel screamed furiously, “why does it always come back to that fucking dragon?”

As though it could hear him, from behind the mountain range the Great Dragon of Garetna rose laboriously into the air and turned to face the band of questers.

Drowin, who had been drinking steadily for almost five days, swayed uncertainly and hit the ground with a resounding thump. Kendel was onto him in seconds, lifting the prone dwarf and shaking him into sobriety. “You told me,” he growled, his weathered face contorted with rage, “that thing only appears on one day a year. This is not that day.”

“No I [hic] never,” Drowin protested blurrily, his eyes crossed. “Said it [hic] woke up to [hic] celebrate its [hic] birthday. That dragon must really [hic] like to [hic] party. Hic.” Cursing, Kendel rapped Drowin sharply on the head with his staff, knocking the inebriated dwarf back into unconsciousness. His face a mask of despair, he looked out at the dragon, and, even from that distance, he was sure he saw a crocodile smile appear on the dragon’s face. The languid beat of its wings flattened the grass for a mile in each direction as it lazily wrapped itself around the peak of the tallest mountain, unsheathed its scythe-like claws, and ripped off the top. Kendel howled despairingly, his face ash-white, his eyes orbs of angry mage-fire. Even Mithar, exemplar of the stoicism of elves, blanched and let out a whimper. “The Evergreen Mountain,” he whispered, his throat working. “The Great Dragon of Garetna just decapitated the Evergreen Mountain.”

Catamar looked at the stricken faces of her companions, for the first time tasting the edge of pure, abject terror. “It’s miles away,” she said quickly, trying to keep her voice from trembling, “surely it can’t hurt us.”

“Look at the size of it,” Kallakin answered, shaking violently. “It could cross the distance in a heartbeat.”

“Kendel,” Catamar said desperately, “you’ve defeated the dragon before. Can’t you do something?”

“It’s sitting on an overflowing well of magic!” Kendel moaned. “The sheer power I’d have to use just to touch it…”

“But you’re the most powerful mage this side of the Bellemane Ocean!” Catamar cried. “If anyone has access to that kind of magic, surely it’s you!”

“Yes, but Catamar,” the wizard wailed, “do you know what would happen if I sneezed while trying to summon that much power? I’d kill us all!”

“Mithar,” Catamar whispered, but the elf’s chalk-white face answered her question before she could ask it. “I’m sorry, Catamar,” he said, meaning it. “The dragon has only one weak spot, the corner of its eyes. But it has three sets of eyelids: without a mage to guide the arrows, and at this range, and with that kind of timing…not even an elf could make that shot, and if I hit it anywhere else it will anger it, and then our deaths will be slow and painful. We’re all going to die.” Mithar regarded the unconscious dwarf with a look that was dangerously close to affection. “Lucky Drowin,” he mused gently. “He’s the only one who will never know what hit him.” With that, the elf turned his finely sculpted face to the mountains, and closed his eyes to meet his death.

Barely a second later, they snapped open again, as Mithar felt someone lift his bow and his quiver from his back. Catamar was stringing the bow, notching an arrow to the string and taking aim. “Catamar, what are you doing?” Mithar said urgently, as the girl pulled the bowstring back. “Saving our frigging behinds,” Catamar answered, letting the arrow fly. Mithar drew in his breath through his teeth: the arrow was miles high, giving the dragon ample time to bat it away with a leathery wing. But Catamar was fitting another arrow; less than a second later, it rocketed towards the first, while Catamar was already preparing to fire a third. Mithar’s jaw dropped open. The second arrow was speeding towards the first as it dropped, and the two collided, while moments later a third and fourth joined the melee and sent the arrows flying in four different directions. Kendel, realising what Catamar was trying to do, pinched his nose and cast a hurried spell to re-fill the quiver, which was just as well because soon arrows were flying in their dozens, three or four released at once to join the aerial display above the dragon’s head.

Watching the dragon twist its neck around to watch the arrows exploding like fireworks in the air, Mithar finally understood. None of these were supposed to hit the dragon. They were supposed to make it curious. Already the dragon had lowered the wings it had raised to protect its eyes when the first arrow was fired, and it was blinking more and more slowly, not wanting to miss a minute of the action. Its neck was stretching out, bringing the narrow head away from the protection of the great wings, and now the great eyes were unshielded by any of the three sets of lids, opened wide in childlike delight at the spectacle. Hesitating for the first time, Catamar paused to take aim carefully with a single arrow, sighting along the shaft with concentration worthy of an elf. For a moment the air seemed to sing around her with tension. Then she let the arrow fly. It sped into the fray, knocking a single shaft gently on the tail, and dropping it straight into the tear duct of the Great Dragon of Garetna.

The dragon screamed, a long, piercing screech that knifed through the air and sent Drowin straight into his morning-after hangover. The great, lizard-like body writhed in agony, the claws ripping gouges in the already headless mountain. For a moment, as the beast reared upright, Catamar was afraid it would come after them in revenge, but the dragon spasmed, arched its back, and toppled backwards behind the mountain range, the thump of its fall opening a small canyon in a nearby valley. Catamar lowered the bow, pale and breathing heavily. Mithar dropped to his knees and kissed the earth, while Drowin threw up noisily in a nearby bush; Kallakin uttered a short prayer, and Kendel turned to face Catamar, a spark of mage-fire in each of his black eyes.

“Tell me, Catamar,” he said, “why didn’t you mention that you could do that?”

“You didn’t ask,” Catamar replied simply, before bursting into tears.

She was just in shock, she assured the wizard, as he tried awkwardly to comfort her without covering her in butterflies. She had never killed a dragon before.

“Oh, you didn’t kill it,” Mithar said as he sharpened some new arrows. “Arrows couldn’t kill that thing; I’m not even sure magic could.”

“Then what did…”

“The Great Dragon of Garetna has exceptionally sensitive eyes,” Kendel explained. “Any irritation, particularly around the tear ducts, causes it to develop terrible migraines and protective cataracts. It will currently be starting a three-week course of eyedrops, after which its urge to celebrate will hopefully be quelled and it can fall back into the enchanted sleep in which we left it a hundred years ago.”

Catamar regarded the wizard curiously. “Is that what you did to it, then?” she asked. “Enchanted it so it would sleep except for its birthday parties?”

“It was the best we could do,” Mithar said ruefully, “and even that cost the lives of over a hundred men.”

“I didn’t even realise we’d left the birthdays open,” Kendel mused. “The problem [cough] is,” he continued, “if what we saw was any indication, it’s beginning to get wise to the fact that it can prolong its freedom with longer parties. Tell me, Mithar, how long can one celebrate before it officially no longer has anything to do with one’s birthday?”

Catamar left the two of them arguing semantics while she went to check on Drowin. The dwarf looked a mess: the dragon’s keen of agony seemed to have accelerated his reaction to all the alcohol he had consumed, and he still had a greenish tinge to him. He eyed Catamar with pained suspicion. “Honestly, young lady,” he said, holding his head, “I appreciate what you did, but the way I’m feeling right now I’d as soon have let the dragon kill me.” Catamar smiled and sat down, staring into their campfire. From a few feet away she could hear Kendel coughing and wheezing, and wondered if he felt the same way as the dwarf. She looked across at him: from the looks of things, his momentary good humour at the escape from the dragon had dissolved completely, returning him to his usual sullen, butterfly-sneezing self. She left Drowin and wandered back over to the elf and the wizard, settling herself next to Mithar this time.

“Well, Catamar,” Mithar said kindly, “whatever my reservations might have been, it is clear now that you were meant to be on this quest.”

“You’re flattering me,” Catamar answered wryly, elbowing Mithar gently in the ribs.

“No,” Mithar said, edging away, “I mean it. On this kind of quest, there are no accidents…”

“My speech,” Kendel’s voice croaked. Catamar and Mithar turned to face him. “It’s always the wizard who gives the ‘no accidents’ speech,” he muttered grumpily, cocooned in his cloak and still shivering. “Always the [cough] wizard.” Mithar ignored him. “When you demanded to join our quest,” he continued, “we couldn’t see a purpose to it. Now it is clear that you were meant to save us from the dragon. Had we refused you before, we would all have died today. Of course,” Mithar added, a note of mischief entering his voice, “now I’m redundant and we still don’t have a swordsman.”

Kendel’s head snapped around so fast it cracked audibly. “Say that again, Mithar,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Now I’m redundant and we still don’t have a…”

“That’s it!” Kendel cried, sneezing so hard he propelled himself to his feet and added a flock of emperor butterflies to the inhabitants of the forest. “Kallakin, over here! Drowin, you can…just stay where you are,” he finished, seeing the dwarf lying comatose and still green on a tussock. He turned to the assembled company. “Catamar wasn’t just meant to save us from the dragon today,” he said proudly, his eyes twinkling. “She was meant to show us how to complete our quest! We needed a human, and for that purpose Catamar’s completely useless, am I right?” There were reluctant nods of assent. “Ah, but give her a bow, and she outshines the elf!” Catamar blushed deeply, but Kendel wasn’t finished. “Take me, for example,” he continued. “You can’t have a quest without a wizard, but I can’t finish an incantation without sneezing and ruining it. So what can we do?” The question was purely rhetorical: the wizard flung out an arm to point expansively at the thief. “Feria have a store of magic almost as great as wizards do! Kallakin can be our mage! Then we need a thief and a spy. Elves are quick-fingered and light on their feet: Mithar can do it! And finally,” he concluded dramatically, pulling a shortsword from a hidden sheath at his hip and tossing it into the air, “someone to handle a sword.” Kendel caught the blade, grinned excitedly, and sneezed.

Drowin didn’t hear of the developments until he came to almost a week later: after all, of all the company he was the best at being a dwarf, so there had been no need to inform him. In the meantime, progress had been encouragingly fast. Catamar’s efficiency with the bow was almost frightening, Kallakin had already mastered several basic incantations, and Mithar’s preternatural senses made him almost better equipped for thieving and spying than the Feria. Kendel, meanwhile, was still frustratingly impeded by his frequent coughing and sneezing fits, but with far less dangerous consequences as a swordsman; when he was neither sneezing nor coughing, he was able to wield the blade with startling proficiency.

It was not long before the group started to work as a unit, as though, without realising it or registering the moment of transition, they had become one of the great questing troupes of the epic, legendary quests. True, Kallakin still had trouble with the more complex spells, and Mithar did feel naked without his bow and quiver across his back, and Kendel was still sneezing butterflies at regular intervals, but Kendel’s epiphany following Catamar’s defeat of the dragon had spurred them on to find more overlaps in their skills, more chinks in their armour that could be covered by someone else. Catamar revelled in it. She had acted on desperate instinct, barely even aware of the arrows she had fired at the dragon, but the group insisted on giving her full credit for the dragon’s defeat, and for their new group ethos. With Kendel no longer the mage, and Catamar no longer useless, she was fast on her way to becoming unofficial leader of the quest. When she asked questions, she got sensible answers, and when she gave advice, the others finally started to listen.

“Kendel,” she said one uneventful afternoon, as they sat in an inn in Loquat, where they had been stocking up on provisions, “I’ve been watching your symptoms.”

“Playing healer as well as archer, young Catamar?” the wizard asked with all the jollity of slightly too much good ale.
“I just had a thought,” Catamar shrugged, swirling her mug pensively. “The sneezing, the difficulty breathing, streaming eyes and red nose. I mean, do you think you might have hayfever?”

Kendel spluttered, spraying his mouthful of ale over Drowin, who was already too drunk to notice, and burst out laughing. “She thinks…she thinks I [cough]…thinks I might have hayfever!” he laughed, elbowing Mithar, who also burst out laughing. Drowin took a moment to catch on, but when he did it was with a guffaw so hearty it shook the table, and even shy Kallakin couldn’t suppress a giggle. Catamar frowned, offended. “What, what’s so funny?” she asked.

“Catamar, my dear,” Kendel chortled, “wizards can’t get hayfever. It’s a physical impossibility. The magic provides immunity.”

“I wasn’t to know that!” Catamar said indignantly.

“But everyone knows that!” Mithar spluttered. “Anyone who’s even seen a wizard…”

“But I hadn’t,” Catamar said quietly. “I’d never met a wizard before.” Kendel, Mithar and Kallakin stopped laughing, though Drowin continued to chuckle softly. “Catamar, what on earth can you mean?” Kendel asked, sounding amused. “Where have you been all your life?”

“Sequestria,” Catamar said, looking close to tears. “We don’t have wizards there. We don’t even have magic. We haven’t for more than a hundred years.” She stood, controlling herself with an effort. “That’s why I’m here, Kendel,” she said. “You were right: I’m not on this quest by accident. I was sent, on a quest of my own: to find a wizard, the most powerful I could, and persuade him to come back with me. We need someone to fix the problem of Sequestria’s magic.” She sniffed. “But it seems to me that maybe wizards aren’t something we want.” Sobbing, she turned and ran out of the tavern. Giving Mithar a thoroughly pained look, Kendel sneezed a swallowtail butterfly into his empty mug, and chased after Catamar.

Mithar was woken late that night by the sound of the wizard entering his room in the inn. The mage managed to light a candle with mage-fire without sneezing, illuminating the room in a sickly blue. Kendel, Mithar noticed with some concern, looked exhausted.

“How’s Catamar?” the elf asked, as Kendel slumped onto the floor, not bothering to find a chair.

“Better,” the wizard said sullenly. “I promised to take Sequestria’s problem to the Mage Council for review when we get home, and I apologised thoroughly for being pig-headed. I hope you appreciate what a sacrifice that was.” Mithar smiled to himself: Kendel apologising for anything was a noteworthy occasion. “You know the worst part?” Kendel continued, staring morosely at the flickering candle. “It’s all our fault.”

“How?” asked the elf, wondering if the illness was impairing Kendel’s ability to think clearly.

“Think, Mithar,” Kendel said. “What happened a hundred years ago?”

“We fought the Great Dragon of Garetna,” Mithar said. Kendel nodded miserably. “Exactly,” he said. “Remember how futile it seemed? How we had tried everything we knew, and I’d even let myself get swallowed so that I could have a clear shot at the beast? We gave it all the magic we had, both of us, and still it didn’t seem to make any difference. And then, somehow, at the last minute, we found the extra. Remember the earthquake? Just like that, out of nowhere, we had a power surge, and it was enough not only to put the creature to sleep but to get me out before I was digested. Well, now I know how we did it. We created a magic-well.”

Mithar’s normally fair skin paled until it was almost transparent. “Kendel, do you know how many laws that breaks…”

“I know, but we weren’t even aware we were doing it! Somehow, without realising it, we sucked a pool of magic right out of the earth and used it on the dragon, and since that day, there has been a constant channel between that pool and our spell, keeping the dragon captive. And do you know what was sitting right on top of that pool?”

“The village of Sequestria,” Mithar finished, now sounding just as miserable as the stricken mage. “It has no magic because it’s all being used on the dragon.”

“And now even that seems to be failing. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again,” Kendel muttered, “why does it always come back to that fucking…”

He sat bolt upright. “Great gods, Mithar, that’s it!” he whispered. “It all comes back to the dragon! Oh, I could kiss the Mage Council for coming up with the Evergreen Mountain, that’s it! Mithar, what happens when a magic-well is created?”

“It forms a continuous spell, channelling magic from the well to the subject.”

“But it has to run out sometime,” Kendel went on breathlessly, too excited now even to sneeze. “And what happens when it runs out?”

“The spell shifts to channel magic from its caster.”

“But no one’s powerful enough to maintain a spell that immense for long,” Kendel breathed, speaking quickly, “it must have effects, symptoms, if you will. My cold, the sneezing butterflies, the inability to finish an incantation: it’s all symptoms of my magic being drained, my immunities wearing off. I can’t be cured until we finish off the dragon and restore Sequestria’s magic!” Kendel stood, his eyes blazing with mage-fire, once again the image of the great, wise mage. He turned to Mithar. “Maybe I do have hayfever,” he finished, with a smile, and sneezed a miniature dragon onto the wooden floor.

Drowin arrived late to breakfast, aware that he was inches from a hangover and taking things slowly to forestall the inevitable. He ordered a large bread roll and a mug of weak ale from the bar and sat himself gingerly down with his troupe, tuning in just in time to hear Kendel say, “…and then we kill the dragon.”

The hangover hit. Drowin gasped in pain and clapped a hand to his forehead, dropping his roll onto the table where it bounced twice and lay still. Mithar regarded the dwarf with something dangerously close to concern; Kallakin stared at Drowin with his/her eerie yellow eyes and actually asked if he was alright.

“Hangover…it’s nothing,” the dwarf mumbled. “Thought I heard…killing dragon…stupid, really…must still be drunk…”

“No, no, Drowin,” Mithar said, allowing himself to enjoy the dwarf’s pain now that his concern was over, “you heard correctly. We are now questing to kill the Great Dragon of Garetna.” From the look on Drowin’s face, Kendel guessed that several of his synapses had just short-circuited and fried. “How…” he mumbled, trailing off ineffectually.

“He has a point,” Kallakin said suddenly, surprising them all. “How can we, with five, succeed where you, with hundreds of men and a mage at full strength, failed?”

Kendel smiled beatifically while he took a moment to untangle Kallakin’s syntax. “Ah,” he said at last, “but this time we have something new. This time we have Catamar, and I strongly suspect she will prove the key to our success.” Catamar blushed with appropriate modesty, but her face was set with determination. Kendel stood majestically. “Now that the Evergreen Mountain is no longer, we have a new objective. Questers all, we are bound for Garetna!”

The quickest way to Garetna – and, for Catamar, home to Sequestria – was to cross the Evergreen Mountain anyway. Mithar, self-appointed tactician, advised as much haste as possible: if they could surprise the dragon before it finished its course of eyedrops, they would be more likely to succeed. Either that, Catamar pointed out, or they would really infuriate it and ensure their deaths that much more certainly. The mountains were not far from Loquat, and soon they were scaling the steep side of the Evergreen Mountain. The air was electric with magic, spilling from the deep crevasses the dragon had gouged out of the mountainside. Kallakin’s yellow eyes widened with surprise when s/he felt it. “The magic has direction,” s/he said softly. “It is flowing to a particular place, but it meets resistance.”

“That’s the backflow,” Kendel said, looking pale and feverish. “The magic leaking from the mountain is counteracting the channel from Sequestria. The magic-well can’t hold under this much pressure. I don’t think the dragon will be going back to sleep any time soon.” He sneezed, a catfish flopping listlessly from each nostril. “I think I’m getting worse,” he complained, watching as Kallakin scooped up the dying fish and started to gut them for dinner.

They camped on the now flat summit of the mountain, though everyone found it difficult to sleep on top of this overflowing well of magic. Drowin found his ale had developed an unpleasant habit of turning into elderflower cordial, while Kallakin spontaneously grew two feet, making him/her three inches taller than Catamar. Mithar, his elvish blood granting him some resistance to the strange effects of the excess magic, stayed awake all night anyway to keep watch on the wizard. Though Kendel hid it well, Mithar could tell that his friend was dangerously ill, and he suspected that the overflow of magic from the Evergreen Mountain was causing Kendel’s rapid decline. If the magic-well beneath Sequestria could not hold under such pressure, then nor could the wizard, and the elf made a mental note to add haste to the list of characteristics the quest had acquired. Kendel had survived being eaten by the Great Dragon of Garetna; Mithar was not going to risk losing him to a cold, even if, as Kendel would say, “it all comes back to the fucking dragon anyway”.

Ailing though he obviously was, Kendel managed to trudge on with the weary trek across the mountain. Kallakin, more adept with each day, cast a discreet energy spell to help the wizard along, secretly impressing Catamar with his/her initiative. Even Drowin lent a hand, using his axe to clear a path through the dense forest on the far side of the mountain. The air became almost tropically hot, the forest giving way to jungle as they approached the valley. “Must be near where the dragon sleeps,” Kendel gasped, clutching his side and leaning on Mithar for support. “Entire climate changed…quite impressive…” He fell silent, breathing heavily, and Kallakin cast a minor confusion spell so that Kendel’s pride wouldn’t interfere with Mithar’s carrying him most of the way to the next village. There, Catamar finally gave up on the long skirt, which was becoming fairly ragged; she exchanged it at a small shop for a short tunic and light leggings, giving the troupe an unprecedented view of her legs and successfully distracting Mithar from the fact that the wizard was actually quite heavy. From the balcony of a tavern at sunset, Catamar nostalgically pointed out the dark smudge on the horizon that was Sequestria, and the group got quite drunk drinking to the death of the dragon and the health of Sequestria. There seemed little point drinking to Kendel’s heath: the wizard was barely able to stand, and, though he would be the last to admit it, Mithar had started to feel a nagging fear that the mage would not survive his second encounter with the Great Dragon of Garetna.

From the moment they left the tavern in the morning, the group were in a constant state of alert: now that they had crossed the Evergreen Mountain, it could not be long before they had to battle the dragon. Catamar and Mithar spent their evenings strategising frantically, both about how to find the beast and how to kill it. Kallakin was constantly twitchy, spending most of his/her time up convenient trees, and even Drowin was more sober than usual. Once they left the mountainside conclusively, Kendel made a small improvement. He was still alarmingly weak and feverish, but at least he was able to keep pace without relying on the elf’s help. The flocks of butterflies streaming from his nose seemed to have taken on a slightly sinister shade, fluttering around Kendel’s head in lazy, coloured spirals. Watching them, Mithar had an idea.

“Last time we encountered the dragon,” he said to Catamar, “Kendel started sneezing death’s head moths. Now that the well under Sequestria is drying up, Kendel has a constant connection to the dragon. Watch out for the deaths’ head moths: I’m almost certain that they’ll be the signal for the dragon’s arrival.” Catamar did not like the sound of “almost certain”, but it was the best they had, and it allowed her to calm down slightly and concentrate on strategising. With the help of the elf, who had encountered the dragon at closer quarters than anyone except Kendel (whose strategy was not one Catamar was eager to adopt), she had started to form a surprisingly complex and ingenious battle plan. Playing directly to the fact that the dragon would still be distracted by its eyedrops, she was almost certain they could win.

Kallakin was practising a more difficult incantation, under Kendel’s strict tutelage, when s/he noticed the death’s head moth. Almost hidden behind a swarm of monarch butterflies expelled during a particularly violent sneeze, it took Kallakin a while to see the solitary moth, but when s/he did, s/he froze with fear, re-absorbing the half-formed incantation and turning him/herself temporarily orange. Trembling, s/he caught the moth in a delicate hand and showed it to the irate, sneezing wizard.

“Advance warning,” Kendel said dismissively. “There’s only one. Must mean we’re getting closer. I’m sure we don’t need to worry until I’m sneezing whole flocks of them.”

From its listening-point only a few metres away, the Great Dragon of Garetna smiled its crocodile smile, and casually set Kendel’s beard alight.

Catamar heard Kallakin’s shrill scream, and set off running, followed by the dwarf and overtaken by the elf. From the top of a bank leading down into a clearing, they saw Kallakin cast a hurried dousing spell at the wizard’s flaming beard, drenching it in water. A thin trail of smouldering grass marked the flame’s trail, and with a lump of fear in her throat Catamar followed it backwards with her eyes, straight into the enormous left nostril of the Great Dragon of Garetna. She caught her breath, grabbing Mithar’s hand and squeezing it tightly. “We’re not ready,” she whispered fearfully. “We hadn’t finished our plan.”

Mithar squeezed her hand just as tightly, to hide how hard he was shaking. “It’s worse than that, Catamar,” he said, staring straight ahead. “Look at its eye!”

Catamar knew from Mithar’s descriptions that the eye she had hit should have been covered in a milky film, bloodshot and inflamed red at its edges. But as the beast swung its head from side to side to view the panicking Feria and the stricken wizard, Catamar saw to her horror that both eyes were jewel-bright, glittering orange and sharply faceted like enormous slabs of imperial topaz. There was no sign of the injury inflicted by the arrow, not even a healed scar. Those terrible eyes held Catamar in a hypnotic stare, filling her with fear as Kendel and Kallakin scrambled up the bank. “It must be channelling magic directly from the leak in the mountain,” Kendel panted, his hand heavy on Catamar’s shoulder. “It’s using it to heal. I can try to focus the magic coming from Sequestria and from me, slow the process and give you time to disable it again, but there’s so little left…”

Catamar nodded grimly. “Do it,” she said. To Mithar she said, “The dragon’s waiting to see what we’ll do. If we attack and don’t disable it, it’ll flatten us. We only get one shot.” Mithar nodded and with light fingers stole the shortsword from the wizard. “I can use one of these,” he said, brandishing it.

“Good,” Catamar said. “Drowin, take your axe and go with Mithar. Stay out of sight if you can. With the two blades you might be able to do enough damage to distract it so I can get a clear shot. Poison them if you have to, but work together!”

The elf and the dwarf shot each other looks of pure evil, but they did not hesitate. Within moments they were out of sight, little more than dark dots edging along the dragon’s enormous, scaly flank. Kallakin looked at Catamar with something like resolution in his/her bright eyes. “What do we do?” s/he asked. Catamar breathed deeply, her head high. “We wait,” she said.

“I can’t believe I’m going to die in the company of an elf,” Drowin muttered, trying to keep pace with Mithar’s slender figure as it jogged the length of the dragon’s side. “I can’t believe I have to live in the company of a dwarf,” Mithar retorted, not even out of breath. “I always thought it would be in a mine,” Drowin went on, ignoring the elf, “fighting an oncoming horde of orcs, my mine-brothers at my side. Blades flashing, blood spurting, entrails flying, the air ripe with the sound of the enemy’s dying screams. That’s the way to go.”

Mithar’s lip curled. “You dwarves are so crude,” he said distastefully. “I’d much rather not die at all, never mind like that.”

“And I suppose you’d rather sit in some hall listening to poetry? Some girl-faced bard plucking a lute?”

Mithar eyed the dwarf in amusement. “That’s what you think it’s like?” he asked. “It’s no wonder dwarves are so prejudiced, with stereotypes like that.”

Thoroughly annoyed and out of breath, Drowin found his curiosity aroused nonetheless. “What’s it like, then?” he asked.

“Well, for a start we have good music,” Mithar said, doing a quick cartwheel so he could stretch out an aching knee. “Last year we had a visit from that northern marching band, ‘Dragon Sound’.”

“Hate them,” Drowin said immediately, and the two lapsed into hostile silence. But after a moment, Drowin said, hesitantly, “I do like ‘Cry of the Chimaera’, though.”

Mithar stopped dead, and the dwarf ran straight into him. Mithar turned, slowly, to face Drowin. “I love ‘Cry of the Chimaera’!” he exclaimed, a slow smile spreading over his face. “Really?” the dwarf asked, genuinely surprised. “Well, that’s unusual!”

The silence wasn’t quite so hostile after that.

Kendel was struggling, his face ashen, sweat pouring into his singed beard. Watching him, Catamar knew it was now or never. “Guide my arrows,” she whispered to Kallakin, letting one fly straight up the dragon’s nose. At the same time, halfway down the length of the dragon’s tail, Mithar and Drowin found a broken scale and, with the unspoken communication of firm friends, plunged both their blades into the weak spot and severed the tail. The dragon screeched in fury, flapping its great wings, blood trickling from its nose and spurting from the severed artery in its tail. Mithar was drenched in the dragon’s blood: for a moment he stared at the black, viscous liquid. “Poison,” he breathed gently, his bright green eyes rolling back into his head, before he collapsed into the arms of the horrified dwarf. The dragon breathed in, and Catamar saw a column of bright mage-fire arc from the mountain behind her towards the dragon. “Kendel,” she screamed desperately, “break off, break off! It’s drawing magic straight from the mountain, you can’t hold it, break…”

But it was too late. With a gasp, Kendel felt the last of his magic run out. His blood turned to ice, his heart slowed, and he crumpled, cold and motionless, onto the ground. Catamar shrieked in despair. Grabbing handfuls of arrows from the quiver, she fired them at the dragon, hardly aiming, Kallakin spellcasting furiously to guide the arrows and stop the wounds they inflicted from healing. For a moment Catamar stopped firing to tighten the dangerously loose bowstring, and Kallakin took a gamble, collected his/her magic and sent a bolt of electric blue lightning straight at the dragon’s head. It exploded on contact, showering the forest with sparks and setting trees alight, but when the smoke started to clear, Kallakin could see that the dragon was unhurt, and very, very angry. For a moment the forest seemed to fill with silence as the dragon turned its head to see who had annoyed it. Moving as though through water, a single talon scythed through the air and cut Kallakin neatly in half.

As the two halves of the Feria toppled to the ground, Catamar knew they were doomed. She kept firing arrows, but without Kallakin’s spells to replenish the store her quiver was soon empty. A tear ran down her face as she fired her last arrow and turned, unarmed, to face the dragon, while behind the severed tail Drowin clutched the body of the fallen elf, sobbing, and waited to die. Catamar closed her eyes, lips moving wordlessly, and spread her arms wide.

“Shit, that hurt,” an oddly familiar voice said from beside her. Catamar’s eyes snapped open, and she spun on the spot to face the dead Feria. Kallakin was rising, somehow, both halves. But now, Catamar realised, each half had become a whole, one very female, one definitely male, both obviously Kallakin. Catamar gasped as both Feria stretched and smiled. “Stop staring,” male-Kallakin said, tying a piece of the old, torn tunic modestly around his waist. “We have a dragon to kill.”

Drowin was still sobbing over Mithar’s body when he saw something strange from the top of the bank. Blue sparks were flying, arcing into the air like spray from a waterfall and, though he could just make out the dark smudge that was Kendel, still crumpled on the cold ground, he suddenly thought he could see three figures standing. And, from the brightness of the mage-fire surrounding them, two at least possessed incredible power. If there were any possibility his friends were still alive…Drowin stood, holding his axe. After barely a moment’s hesitation, he picked up the elf as well, slinging the motionless body across his shoulders, and set off for the bank at a run.

“Just in time,” female-Kallakin said, as the dwarf crested the rise. “How…” Drowin said as he stared at both Kallakins, dropping the elf in his shock. “I tapped into the magic from the mountain just before the dragon cut me in two,” female-Kallakin explained, while Catamar dropped to her knees beside the elf, stifling a sob.

“Now both of us have access to the same power as the dragon,” male-Kallakin continued. “But, thanks to Kendel’s training…”

“We know how to use it,” female-Kallakin finished. She looked over to where Catamar knelt by Mithar, shaking with tears. “Dragon blood,” she said sadly. “Fatal to elves. Catamar, there will be time to grieve later. Right now we need you.” Catamar stood, her tear-streaked face resolute.

The dragon did not try to attack the six figures – four standing, two dead – shrouded in mage-fire. It knew it could get through, but it was also painful and difficult. Easier to wait until someone fumbled the incantation and dropped the guard. In the meantime it watched. Two of the figures looked oddly similar, like male-female twins. There was a long-legged human with a tear-streaked face, and a remarkably ugly dwarf who looked murderous. The elf and the wizard, whom the dragon recognised as old foes, were dead – ah, revenge was sweet.

The twins were standing apart, one talking urgently to the human and the dwarf, one muttering some sort of complex incantation. Maybe they were going to attack soon? The dragon twisted its head to get a better view: the human was notching a pair of arrows to her bow string, both glowing faintly purple; the dwarf’s axe was glowing purple as well, was that normal?

Almost before the dragon realised that the human had fired, it felt a searing pain in each eye, the cataracts filling in and blinding it a second later. It screeched in pain, diverting magic away from the rest of its armoured body to save its eyes as quickly as possible, knowing the scales would hold until it could see again. It was wrong. From the bank, male-Kallakin recognised the flow of magic into the eyes, and cast his spell, sending a blast of white-hot magic straight towards the dragon’s chest, shattering the scales and ripping away the flesh to expose the enormous, beating heart. Taking careful aim, Drowin weighed his axe in his hand and flung it, guided by female-Kallakin’s magic, into the open chest. The sickly squelch as it penetrated the heart could be heard for miles. The dragon froze mid-writhe, muscles straining in its contortions. Slowly, it looked down, staring at the seam of blue light that was opening in its still-beating heart. Then, with a final, ear-splitting scream, the Great Dragon of Garetna exploded outwards into a shower of butterflies, which scattered and settled like flakes of ash, all over the forest.

No one was watching as a flush of colour bled into Mithar’s marble cheeks, or as his emerald eyes fluttered open, or as the black dragon blood still clinging to him turned to water and soaked into the earth. But Drowin was the first to notice when the elf stood up, and announced to no one in particular, “I feel terrible.” The dwarf knocked Mithar to the ground again with a bear hug, sobbing into his beard and clutching the elf so tightly he almost killed him again. Male-Kallakin smiled at Catamar, who was staring uncomprehendingly at the scene. “Final proof,” he said, “if we needed it, that the Great Dragon of Garetna is no more.”

Female-Kallakin joined her twin, taking his hand. “Look at that,” she said, pointing to a stream of mage-fire flowing away from the mountain to a dark smudge on the horizon. “Without the dragon to divert the flow, the magic from the Evergreen Mountain is going where it should have gone all along: back to Sequestria.”

Catamar smiled weakly, then turned away and knelt by Kendel. The wizard still lay motionless, not breathing. Dead. “What about Kendel?” she asked, tears flowing freely down her face. “What about Sequestria’s mage?”

Both Kallakins bent to help Catamar back to her feet. “You have us,” male-Kallakin said. “We’ll both come with you to Sequestria.”

“So will I,” Mithar said, surprising them. He looked at Catamar, the faintest trace of a blush spreading across his cheeks. “I need a change of scenery,” he said.

“I’m coming too!” Drowin cried heartily, trailing off as the group turned as one to stare at him. “You need a dwarf…I mean, if Mithar wants to…damn it, someone has to keep an eye on the elf!”

They laughed, and turned to go, the five of them walking hand in hand. Catamar turned to give the fallen wizard one last, lingering gaze. “Is it right?” she asked softly. “To leave him like that, there, where he…where he died?”

It was Mithar’s turn to smile. “Catamar,” he said, “I’ve worked with Kendel a long time, and if I know him at all, I know that it takes more than a battle like that to finish him completely. He’ll be back, next time there’s a dragon to kill.”

“Yes,” Catamar said, her spirits starting to lift. “It’s like he kept saying. It always comes back to the fucking dragon.”