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His sister entered, followed by Rayg. What was she doing with him?
“My brother,” Wistala greeted him. “DharSii has returned. He’s trying to learn more about the crystal statue taken from the Red Queen.”
His bats had told him that DharSii was in the Lavadome, mostly visiting with Wistala. As for that crystal…Rayg had been experimenting with the crystal for years. For all its size, it didn’t seem to do much. He’d done much better with the smaller jewel AuRon had brought into the Lavadome when he delivered the Queen’s ultimatum.
DharSii wanted permission from him to descend with Rayg into the depths of the Lavadome, Wistala explained.
“Unless he’s interested in a show of lights, I don’t understand what he thinks he can learn.”
“I’ve been studying what happens to the lights when we try to interact with the crystal,” Rayg said.
Interact? What, could a piece of stone live?
He needed to get his mind off of the upcoming questioning. “I’ll come. I’d like to see what DharSii is up to with my own eyes. I hope the great dandy doesn’t mind getting his sii dirty.”
“The Ankelenes are slowly coming around to my opinion,” Rayg said.
“What’s that?”
“It’s easier if I show you.”
They met DharSii outside, and the Copper waved off the usual formalities, though he did offer the visitor a mouthful of coin. DharSii declined.
“I’d rather keep my thoughts clear.”
They descended through Imperial Rock, down into the livestock pens and storage rooms, and finally to slippery chutes coated with waste from dragon, thrall, and livestock. The Copper hadn’t been this low in the Lavadome since learning the few passageways into the depths during his time in the Drakwatch. The only things that thrived in this noisome mess were worms and brightly glowing cave-moss. Thick masses of dwarfsbeard hung from the ceiling like hedges.
Rayg led them through a series of dripping passages. Unpleasant waste pooled and reeked.
They passed along a natural watercourse that churned the muck out of the Lavadome and down. Here they picked up a cleaner trail again.
Then they came to sort of a twisting passage that dropped like a root, with a root’s branching divisions. Rayg, hanging on to a rope thrown around the Copper’s neck, stayed on his feet.
The party began to see pieces of crystal running through the stones. Cavern increasingly gave way to crystal.
“We’re on Anklemere’s old road,” Rayg said. “After he was killed, dragons took out his stairs to make room for us to pass.”
They came to sort of an overlook. The Copper thought the cavern looked like an unusually angry sea, the whitecaps frozen forever into blue-white still life.
Lights like tiny drifting jellyfish ran inside the crystal caps. The lights waxed, sparked, waned, and flickered out like fireflies dying in the time it took to draw a long breath.
“What is this?” the Copper asked.
“It looks like fairy fire,” DharSii said. “But brighter. We get it in the sky in the far north.”
“It reminds me of stars,” Wistala said. “What is it?”
“Not even the Ankelenes know,” Rayg said. “Some believe that this is where the heat from the Lavadome is channeled and dispersed, the way wet drips off a mammal’s fur.
“I can tell you one more thing. These lights—they’ve become more active. They start and burn out faster, and there are more of them. According to the Ankelenes, the only variation before was when the lava was more active. They would burn brighter, longer.”
“Magic?” the Copper asked.
“Magic is a cheap explanation for the inexplicable,” Rayg said. “A dragon’s fire may seem magical to many humans, but it’s just an oil fire with a little sulfur mixed in. With a few more chemicals it’s difficult to identify, because they react so strongly to air.”
“Rayg’s practical,” the Copper said.
“Let me see him create dragonfire in his workshop,” DharSii said.
