To begin with, he just dug in a nightmare fugue, then he began to realize how the older man wielded his shovel with almost impossible ease, excavating huge clumps of the sandy earth and heaving them aside. Fethan paused and shrugged when he noted Tanaquil’s scrutiny.
‘Used to dig drainage sluices on Masada,’ he explained.
Tanaquil nodded, not really understanding. He could push his own blade only half its length into the ground, then had to strain to lever up half a spadeful of earth. Fethan could shove the blade of his tool fully into the soil, as easily as if into a pie, and each time the spade’s solid metal handle flexed alarmingly.
‘You talked often with Dragon?’ Fethan suddenly asked.
‘No.’
‘Did you ever go to the plain?’
Tanaquil shook his head. He could not speak, and was grateful when Fethan pressed him for nothing more. Together, in silence, they completed the task, then together they laid Jeelan in the hole they had prepared. Her skin was now cold. Tanaquil scrambled from the grave on his hands and knees, and puked acid bile.
‘I’ll finish off for you,’ said Fethan.
‘No,’ insisted Tanaquil, returning to work. He scooped a spadeful of sandy earth down onto Jeelan’s naked body, once, twice, then staggered away. He couldn’t breathe down here. He could not live in this shadow.
The world seemed to go away for a while. Past him flashed a chaos of twisted metal, stairs, people shouting questions at him, as he ran. The blimp tower eventually provided refuge and, with no one around, he tried to release that lock inside himself. But again the tears would not come. Instead, he just grew calm and cold, knowing that this was something he could never get over. He did not want to live; didn’t have the will to die.
‘Tell me about Dragon,’ a voice intruded.
Fethan had walked quietly out onto the platform beside which was moored the remaining blimp, perhaps holding back somewhat because Tanaquil was sprawled by a pillar right next to the edge.
‘He took the Undercity as his own, right from the beginning,’ said Tanaquil, not even knowing why he was explaining. ‘That was thirty years and four Chief Metalliers ago.’
‘About right,’ said Fethan, studying the blimp. ‘The four spheres separated over fifty years ago, solstan.’ He turned to Tanaquil. ‘That’s the mean time of the Human Polity—something you need as a standard when you ship out between the stars, shedding decades like dandruff.’
Now Tanaquil felt angry because the man had stirred his curiosity. ‘Spheres? Solstan? Human Polity?’
‘Dragon’s original form was one of four conjoined and living spheres, each about a kilometre in diameter. They were one being, which then broke into four. One of those four came here.’
Tanaquil remembered visions from his time of nightmares. He pointed out over the Sand Towers towards the plain. ‘I saw it rise up and leave us. Dragon is gone.’
Fethan was abruptly up beside him. ‘Perhaps we should go and see.’ He gestured to the blimp.
There was more here than an interest in Dragon, Tanaquil thought. ‘Why would you want to see?’
‘I won’t lie to you. While you have been here I’ve spoken to your people, wandered your city… There’s someone I need to find, and that person does not seem to be here. That being the case he is maybe out that way.’ Fethan nodded towards the plain. ‘He’ll always be where the action is.’
‘I cannot leave my people.’
‘They know you need time. I’ve spoken to some of them.’
Tanaquil could not summon the energy to argue, and there was something attractive about climbing into the blimp cabin and just sailing away. Perhaps stepping out into the air when the blimp was high was the only way to release the leaden lock in his chest.
One day, Anderson decided, he might ask Unger Salbec why Bonehead had not fled after the death of Stone when earlier it had panicked and fled, and why it was now prepared to carry him into battle against the droon. He suspected the answer related to sentience. A creature that could come to understand human language was not an animal, and probably possessed motivations equally as complex as those of any human. Possibly Bonehead was embarrassed by its earlier behaviour. Whatever, Bonehead remained steady beneath him, its eyestalks spread like a rifle sight below his lance, which he pointed towards the droon as it stepped delicately into the arena he had chosen. Anderson now studied his opponent.
The creature stood upright on two chitinous legs, which possessed an extra joint and terminated in feet that were a complex tangle of mismatched digits and hooks. Its tail, counterbalancing its extended upper torso, was ribbed with carapace and square in section, the corners everting so that each of them was sharp as a blade. Halfway down, the tail divided, its twin ends jointed like extra limbs. Carapace also ribbed its upper body, and custard-yellow flesh bulged between ribs, forced out by the distension of its over-full guts. Below its primary arms, it possessed two other sets of limbs that served as either arms or legs. Its primary arms ended in large two-fingered hands. Rows of hooks ran up its forearms to two further digits at its elbows. Its neck, extending from a sloping collar of armour, curved back on itself swanlike underneath its ziggurat head. Four black targeting eyes ran along the lower fold of this head. Six mouths, starting with the largest at the bottom, stepped up its sloping visage to its two distance eyes—slightly protruding and crablike—set at the very top of its head. When it opened its mouths to expose their bright orange interiors its head stretched half its own height again. Then the head snapped down, only the top mouth staying open, and the creature made a coughing hacking sound. It expelled only a mist of acid now, though. Anderson knocked his goad against Bonehead’s carapace and the sand hog began to move forward on its crawler limbs.
Straight into some of that custard flesh, bulging from its torso, seemed the best target to Anderson. He knew from his studies that the droon possessed insides similar to a sleer’s; its brain being a wormlike organ extending all the way down the length of its body, which obviously made it very difficult to kill with just a head shot. As with sleers, then, his way to kill it was by causing as much internal damage as he could, there being no one particular spot on its body he could target to bring it down.
‘Ho, Bonehead! Ho!’
The sand hog went up on to its main limbs and accelerated, and it seemed to Anderson that only then did the droon become truly aware of their impending attack. Its head stretched again, and it coughed another fog of acid. Then, like a wrestler preparing to meet an opponent, it extended its arms out to either side.
‘Ho! Ho!’
The knight centred his lance perfectly on target. If he did not kill it with this charge, then he would certainly be doing it some serious damage. But, of course, the resolution of a knightly trial was never simple.
At the last moment the droon brought both its two-fingered hands in and down on Bonehead’s carapace. The sand hog juddered to a halt, its momentum driving the droon back five metres, the monster’s feet cutting furrows in the ground. Anderson slammed against his saddle straps, the saddle itself cracking alarmingly beneath him. The point of his lance went into custard flesh, but not very far at all. Recovering quickly, Anderson leant forward, trying to push it further in, but it was like trying to push a knife into a tree. The droon bellowed, hauled back, nearly snatching the lance from Anderson’s hands because he did not have its back eye over its peg. He clung on grimly, though, pieces of yellow flesh and a squirt of clear fluid following the lance tip out. Then with one hand the droon slapped the lance aside, its head working like upright bellows as it tried to spit acid it did not contain. The air was full of burning droplets.