Dragon Mage Read online

  She couldn’t see anything, and was afraid to move faster. It was like being in a cave. She’d done that before with her father in Georgia, went in one of those caves on a tour with a bunch of elderly folks who were from out of state. They’d followed a path that had a rope along one side to keep people from wandering off. At one point in the tour the guide flipped the light switch, plunging the cave into blackest black. The guide was demonstrating what it was like to be caught in a cave without a lantern.

  Shilo hadn’t enjoyed that part of the tour, just like she certainly wasn’t enjoying this. Here she was in a cave again, and with her father again—but he was somewhere ahead of her. And he was younger than her and oblivious to the fact that they were related.

  This wasn’t the way they had planned to get under the Hanging Gardens. In fact, she thought that the point of this morning’s exercise was to find a way into the mountain—which they had—but by the Euphrates, by backtracking the water and finding a way in via the river. They were supposed to come back at night when it was dark.

  Well, it was plenty dark here.

  This should have been planned better, she thought, maybe with diagrams and certainly more discussion. Certainly with candles or a lantern—they would have brought those at night. Maybe if she’d been older, if all of them were older, they would have approached this differently, certainly not so unprepared.

  There was a scraping sound ahead, regular and soft, and Shilo guessed it was Nidintulugal’s sandals hitting the floor. She reached behind, her hand closing on Kim’s arm.

  “Wait,” she told him, squatting, and feeling that he squatted with her. She placed her free hand flat against the floor, feeling straw-laced bricks. “All of this is man-made,” she whispered.

  “I don’t like this,” the boy admitted.

  “I don’t either.”

  She stood and moved forward again, a little faster now that she realized the floor was even and not likely to trip her up.

  Shilo kept her right hand against the wall and her left arm thrust out in front of her, hoping she would feel Sigmund’s or Nidintulugal’s back. The wall was wet, and she slowed her pace slightly, fingers dancing over the mud and bricks. She guessed one of the troughs or basins in the Hanging Gardens was leaking.

  “Shilo…”

  “Nidin!”

  “Hush,” he told her.

  A heartbeat later, Shilo’s fingers brushed Sigmund’s back, and she came to an abrupt stop, Kim bumping soundly into her.

  “Listen,” Nidintulugal said. The priest was directly in front of Sigmund. “Do you hear it?”

  Shilo heard voices, two of them, and by concentrating she turned their tongue into words she could understand. They were speaking a language similar to Nidintulugal’s, but there were differences.

  “Water comes down this wall,” one man said.

  “It is a leak that we must trace to its source.” This voice was deeper and had a rasp to it. “Climb the east tunnel and see if the problem is there. We repaired the east pipe a few days ago. It is likely the source of the problem again.”

  “Are we in the east tunnel?” Sigmund asked.

  Shilo could tell Sigmund was trembling. At least he well understood the danger in what they were doing.

  “I don’t know,” Nidintulugal said. “I really don’t know where we are.”

  Then Shilo felt Sigmund move away and heard the priest’s soft footfalls.

  “We’re moving again,” she whispered to Kim. Again she kept her right hand on the wall and her left reaching out, trying to touch Sigmund’s back. After a few moments, she heard the voice with the rasp, the unseen man complaining about being forced to look for the leak. At the same time, her right hand lost contact with the wall, indicating a turn in the passage. She located the corner and took the turn, Kim following her.

  A few moments after that she saw a glow in front of her, growing brighter with each heartbeat. She likened herself to a deer frozen in the headlights of a car. For an instant she didn’t know what to do.

  A man held out a lantern, spotted Shilo, and stopped.

  “Who?” he asked.

  Shilo could hardly see him, the light coming forward and revealing everything in front of him, while keeping him in shadows. However, she could tell he was short and broad-shouldered, almost stocky—she could tell nothing beyond that. The lantern illuminated the walls. The dirt was hard-packed, serving as mortar between the baked clay bricks. Many of the bricks were etched or glazed with images of lions and bulls. The brickwork curved up to make an arch of the ceiling, and all of the bricks there were glazed and shiny-looking, as if they were wet.

  Shilo didn’t have time to figure out if they really were wet, as the man held the lantern higher and closer so he could better see her.

  “I’m lost,” she said. “I-I-I fell down some hole and—”

  The man growled. “One more thing to worry over today.” He sighed and lowered the lantern, giving Shilo a better look at him.

  He wore a skirt that came to about his knees. The fabric probably had been close to white at one time, but there were gray and black streaks in it, like the soiled shirt an auto mechanic might wear. His legs, arms, and chest gleamed with sweat, and his face was unlined and smudged with dirt, his hair oiled and pulled back into a ponytail.

  Nidintulugal had not come this way, and had probably kept going straight. This side passage had been a bad mistake. Great, she thought. Great, great, great.

  “I’m lost,” Shilo repeated. “I don’t know where I am.” The truth. “I am so hopelessly lost.” The truth again. She relaxed when she saw him offer her a faint smile, the tightness of his face easing. “I’m glad you found us, really. It was so dark, we couldn’t see anything. I don’t know what we would have done if you hadn’t come by.”

  “I will take you outside.” He held out his free hand. “Come, let us be away from here.”

  So they would be able to get out of here without hitching a ride on the water conveyor! But Shilo didn’t want to leave just yet. There was her father to consider, and Nidintulugal and the eggs. Now what was she going to do?

  Suddenly he pulled his hand back, his eyes widening and mouth opening. “Who are you?”

  Not how did you get down here. That would’ve been the question Shilo would have asked. She followed his gaze. He was looking at her right hand. She’d been running it along the wall, and where the wall had been wet—it had smeared the dye. Her fingers and palm were pale, and the skin from the back of her hand to a few inches past her wrist was horribly streaked.

  “Skin condition,” she said, thinking quickly. “A terrible rash.”

  She might have been able to convince him of that. But as she watched, the dye ran in a brown blob down her arm.

  “Ooops.”

  25

  Nidintulugal’s Quandry

  Nidintulugal wondered just how many more tests Shamash was going to put him through. Clearly meeting Shilo that morning in the temple was the first test. Had he passed it by scurrying with her out into the city? And helping her escape from the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar and the guards?

  Or had he failed that first test? And because of it, failed the rest?

  Though Nidintulugal supported King Nebuchadnezzar and appreciated all the fine things he had brought to Babylon, the young priest was not especially fond of some of the king’s representatives, including the Hand. So while it might have been a favorable thing to keep the girl out of the Hand’s clutches, perhaps it had not been the right thing to take her from the Temple of Shamash that morning.

  Maybe he should have sought the counsel of the elder priests. Maybe Shamash had wanted the girl turned over to them for safekeeping. Nidintulugal had been handed over to the temple as a child, having lost his parents to an illness.

  Was Shilo to have shared the same destiny?

  But Shilo had not been able to speak their tongue at the time, and so who knew what the elders would have decided to do with her. If he had turned her
over, would she have discovered the dragon in the cave? Would she have learned of the demon threat?

  She came from far away, that was certain. Her skin and hair and accent were like none he’d ever encountered. But just where exactly had she come from?

  “Where are you from, Sigmund?” Nidintulugal had resisted asking Shilo that question before. In truth, though he’d wanted to know, he hadn’t wanted to possess that knowledge. Priests of Shamash were utterly truthful, and if someone had asked him where the girl came from, he would have told them. Would that bit of knowledge have mattered?

  Now, walking in the pitch-black inside the Hanging Gardens, the priest’s curiosity finally won.

  “Whatdya mean, Niddy?”

  Nidintulugal had come to accept Shilo calling him “Nidin” once in a while, and almost found the shortened version of his name endearing. But he did not like “Niddy.” Somehow it felt demeaning.

  “I mean … Sigmund … from what land do you hail?” Nidintulugal kept his voice to a whisper. “Certainly not Babylonia.”

  Sigmund made a funny noise with his mouth, striking his tongue against his teeth. “I probably shouldn’t tell you where I’m from, not that you’d understand if I told you. But then I’d have to explain just how I got here, and why it should be impossible for me to be here, and then—”

  “Never mind, Sigmund. It was wrong of me to ask.”

  The priest wondered what Shilo thought of his question, as following so close behind she would have heard. Sigmund and she came from the same land—he knew that much—as their accent was similar, and they shared the fair complexion and dusting of dots on their faces. The boy, Kim, looked nothing like them and certainly claimed a different homeland.

  “Among other things, Shamash tests my patience.” Nidintulugal wondered what lesson Shamash expected him to learn by helping the girl and now shepherding her and these two boys through midnight black tunnels.

  “Shamash? Who’s Shamash?”

  “Never mind.” Sigmund definitely was from very far away.

  Was Nidintulugal to learn that it was folly to help foreigners?

  Or was it good to help strangers—no matter how strange they were?

  He was helping them to the best of his ability—and helping a dragon and perhaps all of mankind in the process. Was this what Shamash intended for him?

  Was he to take that leap of faith and go against society’s strictures? Risk the wrath of the city officials? Perhaps risk the wrath of the elder priests? He’d certainly gone against the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar, who was in charge of Babylon in the king’s absence. He’d been going against the Hand every minute of each day since in Shilo’s company.

  Avoiding the guards, not returning to his temple, “borrowing” an ox and cart and a robe from the villagers in Ibinghal.

  Maybe Shamash’s test was to accomplish something important, putting himself last and risking his life. He was doing that, too—every effort had been for this mysterious girl, and now for the even more mysterious dragon.

  Nidintulugal picked up the pace, shoving thoughts of the girl to the back of his mind. Concentrate on the eggs, he told himself, and pray to find a way into Shamash’s light.

  He didn’t know that Shilo and Kim had found a side passage and taken it. He thought them still behind Sigmund. He wasn’t listening for their footfalls; he was too focused on what might be ahead.

  “Georgia.” Sigmund said the word a little too loud for Nidintulugal’s liking.

  “What?”

  “I’m from Georgia, Niddy.” Sigmund wisely dropped his voice back to a whisper. “I figure I might as well come clean and tell you, since you’re being so good to help us and the dragon and all, and because we might die here by stepping in some big pit since we can’t see anything. I figure if we die, you knowing I’m from Georgia ain’t gonna make a difference. And I figure if we don’t die, you knowing about Georgia ain’t gonna make a difference either.”

  “Georgia.” Nidintulugal liked the sound of the word. “Does it sit to the south?”

  Sigmund chuckled. “Yeah, it’s in the south, but not to the south of here. It’s in the United States of America, a place that won’t exist for at least two thousand more years. It’s all magic, Niddy. I don’t know if you—”

  “I understand the concept of magic, Sigmund.” Nidintulugal emphasized the boy’s name, hoping that the show of respect might get the boy to stop calling him Niddy. “The dragon—”

  “The dragon that I didn’t get to see, but you and Shilo saw?”

  “Yes.” Nidintulugal regretted bringing up the question, as he feared they were whispering too much and someone might notice them. Whispers sometimes carried far too well.

  “I think Shilo’s from Georgia, too. Sounds like it anyway. Maybe South Carolina. Kim—Kim Stevens—was originally from Hong Kong. You couldn’t have heard of that place either. It doesn’t exist in this time. But then he moved to Kennesaw—Georgia. He doesn’t live too far from me.” Sigmund made the noise with his tongue and teeth again.

  “Anyway, magic brought me here—across time and space—Kim, too. Neato-keeno, huh? Georgia’s across an ocean, and in my time we have botanical gardens like this one, but I bet you can’t climb around underneath ’em. Oh, and we don’t have dragons. At least, I don’t think we do anymore, Niddy.”

  “We had best be quiet, Siggy. Lest someone hear us.” Nidintulugal initially dismissed the boy’s words of Georgia as ramblings meant to tease him. But the more he thought about it, the more likely it was that the boy told some fashion of the truth. But the future … was it possible?

  He’d not thought of dragons as real, but he’d seen one.

  He’d not thought he’d ever make a significant difference in the world, but here he was, trying to do just that by this venture.

  If magic was possible, he supposed it was possible these two boys and Shilo came from another place, as well as another time.

  It was all very difficult—practically impossible—to comprehend.

  “Shamash,” he whispered, the words so faint he knew Sigmund and the others could not hear, “have I lost my way? Do I continue this? Or do I retrace my steps and return to your temple? Have I gone mad?” “Nuts” was the word Shilo had used for it.

  A part of him wished he were mad, as it would explain all the odd happenings, or wished he were sleeping somewhere and dreaming all of this. But even as he said it, he knew he was sane and awake. A pale light ahead ended his musings.

  He reached behind himself and touched Sigmund.

  “I see it, Niddy.”

  “Tell Shilo … quietly.”

  Nidintulugal took a step forward, and then another, pressing himself against the wall as he went. The light was steady, and so it came from a lantern on a table or hanging from a hook. He hoped no one was there; he wanted the opportunity to see Shilo and discuss what to do next. Find the eggs, certainly. Get the eggs and themselves out, if they could. But where …

  “Shilo’s not there.” In his surprise, Sigmund spoke too loud. “Kim’s not there either.”

  “Hush,” Nidintulugal warned. “Are you certain? They might be farther back. We might have walked too quickly.”

  “They’re not behind us. Shilo’s missing!”

  “Shilo?” The word came from in front of the priest and Sigmund.

  The light flared brighter, then was blotted out as a shape moved in front of it.

  “Did I hear someone mention Shilo? That’s the name of the girl I seek.”

  Nidintulugal recognized the voice.

  It belonged to the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar.

  “Move back, Sigmund.” The priest spit the words out through clenched teeth. “Be quick.” Nidintulugal pushed Sigmund to speed him. “Hurry.”

  “I can’t see, Niddy. I can’t—” Sigmund tripped, either on his own feet or because the priest pushed him too hard.

  Nidintulugal bent and groped in the darkness, hands closing on the boy’s robe and tugging him up. At the same
time, the light flared brighter still and was accompanied by the hurried slap of sandals against the brick floor.

  “Take them!”

  Nidintulugal could not make out any of the details, just that there were four men; a fifth and larger one behind them carried the light.

  “Take them quickly, I say!”

  Nidintulugal and Sigmund were grabbed by strong hands and thrust up against the wall. Two men held each of them. The men were dressed uniformly, but not as guards. Each wore a coal gray skirt that hung to just below their knees. Their chests and heads had been shaved, and their muscles gleamed in the light from the lantern.

  Nidintulugal could have struggled against his captors, possibly breaking free and thus able to run. But Sigmund wouldn’t be able to get away, he could tell, and so the priest did not resist.

  “Hand of Nebuchadnezzar,” Nidintulugal said.

  Arshaka nodded as he approached, carrying a lantern in his right hand and a cloth in his left. He was dressed more simply than usual: a long brown robe that brushed the ground, a long left sleeve, and a bare right arm. A swath of yellow cloth draped around his neck to add a little color. The Hand dabbed the cloth on his forehead and neck; he’d been sweating profusely, even though it was cooler inside the Gardens.

  “You are the priest…”

  “Nidintulugal of Shamash.”

  “I saw you with the girl called Shilo in front of the Ishtar Gate a few days past. All I wanted was to talk to her, and you helped her run from me. I meant her no harm.”

  Nidintulugal smelled the man. His clothes stank of sweat and of a perfume he’d used to help cover that smell.

  “How could you think that the Hand of Nebuchadnezzar meant to harm a child?”

  The priest opened his mouth to offer a reply, then thought better of it.

  “I only wanted to talk, priest of Shamash. Like I want to talk now. Where … is … she?”

  In the lantern light Nidintulugal saw Arshaka’s face redden. “Is she with you? Did you lose her in the darkness?”