Basilgarrad turned to the Wizard’s Staff—the most celebrated constellation in Avalon, and a special favorite of Merlin’s. His nostrils suddenly flared. He roared in dismay, a roar that echoed across the peaks and woke many a creature to the same terrible discovery.
The stars of the Wizard’s Staff were gone! At the place in the sky where they had glowed since the very birth of Avalon—nothing remained. Nothing but bottomless holes of blackness.
Once again, the dragon roared. The sound, fierce yet forlorn, made even the mountains quake. At last, it faded away into the night.
In the weeks and months that followed, disasters mounted, spreading across the seven realms like a new kind of blight. Basilgarrad raced to every trouble spot, but even his broad wings couldn’t hold back the rising tide of violence. Tensions between Fireroot’s dwarves and dragons exploded into battle when the dragons finally discovered the location of the longsought flaming jewels. That attack soon led to others, then to wider war, then to madness.
Despite Basilgarrad’s heroic efforts, the goal of peace seemed more and more like an elusive mirage. Fireroot’s clashes quickly swept up other peoples. Losses mounted, bitterness grew, and rage erupted everywhere. Alliances formed, pitting the dwarves, most elves and humans, giants from the high peaks, and many clans of eaglefolk against the fire dragons’ cohorts—the industrious but warlike flamelons, dark elves, gnomes, greedy humans, and hordes of gobsken. Even some clans of faeries, among the most peaceful creatures in Avalon, joined in the fighting when dragons set fire to their forest homes. As the fighting spread, reaching well beyond Fireroot, marauding bands of ogres and angry mountain trolls took full advantage of the chaos, pillaging villages and croplands wherever they chose.
The War of Storms, as it came to be called, spread to every realm, making Basilgarrad fly around constantly. Despite the growing horrors around him, he tried his best—ending a battle before it destroyed a beautiful valley, dispersing a band of ogres, smashing the weapons of flamelons, and rescuing a village set ablaze by dragons. But for every success, there seemed to be a dozen failures—more battles, more ogres, more weapons, and more blazes than he could possibly control. A few brave souls helped him, sometimes at the cost of their lives. Others did their part—such as Bendegeit, highlord of the water dragons, who resisted every effort by the fire dragons to form an alliance. For the most part, however, Basilgarrad carried the burden of peacemaking on his shoulders alone.
Broad shoulders they were—immensely broad. He was indisputably the most powerful being who had ever lived in Avalon. Yet in the midst of this rampant chaos, he sometimes felt as weak as a newborn faery.
“Merlin!” he bellowed one night to the sky and stars. He lay, sprawled with exhaustion, on Mudroot’s plains of Isenwy. After a long string of battles, he’d landed here, hoping to get some much-needed rest. Yet even though the land around him seemed tranquil, for a change, his mind exploded with thoughts about this terrible war and what it meant for Avalon. And also about that particular person he missed more than ever.
“Where are you in all this catastrophe?” he roared, pounding his titanic tail on the muddy flats, causing tremors for leagues around. “The world needs you. The people need you. And, Merlin . . . I need you.”
No answer came. Not that he’d expected to hear one. Yet he had, at some level, still hoped. Was Merlin right that the wicked shadow beast could be somewhere far away from Avalon? Or was that merely an excuse for him to depart, a reason to leave this world that had brought him so much pain?
He scanned the darkened sky. When his gaze came to rest on the empty black gash that was once the luminous Wizard’s Staff, he grimaced, gnashing his rows of teeth together. And he thought about the wizard’s parting words: I will be with you—for as long as the stars shine bright over Avalon.
Glumly, Basilgarrad lowered his massive head, until it squelched down in the mud. That beast is somewhere right here in Avalon. I can feel it! But where? And just what is it, really? What are its powers? Its plans?
Wrestling with these questions, he eventually fell into a troubled, uneasy sleep. Yet his dreams, at least, gave him a small measure of escape. He dreamed about his youth in the forests of Woodroot—when all he needed to worry about was how to survive another day without getting eaten by somebody else.
29: LAUGHTER
One thing I’ve noticed about living: Once you start doing it, the habit forms and it’s awfully hard to stop.
The creatures of the Haunted Marsh kept moving away from the pit of death. Incessantly, in the darkness, they struggled to escape from that wicked place. Whether they slithered, like the maggots and worms, or crawled, like the unseen beasts who dined on rotting flesh, or floated, like the marsh ghouls—they migrated away from the pit as fast as possible. In time, all that remained were the rotting corpses that had been there for ages . . . and the beast everyone else wanted desperately to avoid.
Doomraga, already enormous, continued to swell. And swell. And swell. Now its immense, writhing body bulged to the point of bursting, smashing against the walls of the pit, crushing anything it touched.
Yet the beast kept expanding. The shadow leech grew steadily, little by little, hour by hour. Under its swelling skin, strange ripples began to move, like ominous currents flowing in a darkened sea. With those ripples came a low, gurgling sound, as if something poisonous bubbled just beneath the surface.
Another sound, even more terrible, often joined that one. Doomraga’s laugh, a raspy, bone-chilling noise, echoed across the dark reaches of the marsh with increasing frequency. For deep in its dark heart, the leech felt a new and pleasing sensation—not true happiness, but a growing sense of anticipation.
Of victory over its enemies, the accursed foes of Rhita Gawr. Of conquest. And, together with its master in the Otherworld, of dominance over Avalon.
Two changes caused this anticipation. First, just as Doomraga had planned, chaos and panic and hatred were spreading swiftly across the realms of this world. The shadow beast sensed all that negative energy, smelled it on the air. Even without the messages from its minions, of whom five or six still survived, Doomraga knew that terror now ruled the land. All the better!
Second, that meddling wizard Merlin had finally departed. Where he had gone and why, Doomraga didn’t know. But the fact that Avalon’s wizard was gone could not be disputed. That left only one mortal creature—that hated green dragon—who stood in the way.
Doomraga’s laughter shook the marsh, touching everything like a deadly wind. For it knew that the dragon’s meager efforts were about to end—just as much more was about to end. The time had almost arrived when Avalon would experience Doomraga’s greatest feat, its master stroke, its ultimate weapon. At last! Nothing could possibly deter this new force . . . certainly not a simpleminded dragon.
The dreadful laughter exploded again, reaching farther than ever, seeping beyond the borders of the Haunted Marsh. An ancient elm, growing in the rocky soil outside the marsh, suddenly shuddered. Leaves shriveled, roots constricted, and the tree’s burly branches started to wither.
Even so, the old elm didn’t collapse. As Doomraga’s laughter faded away, the tree’s roots pushed deeper into the ground and its branches reached again for the sky. Leaves regained their color; heartwood quivered with new life. Such resilience might have surprised Doomraga, who was already savoring the taste of victory. But there was something important that it didn’t fully comprehend.
Despite all the leech’s plans, and despite all of Avalon’s troubles, that tree—like its world—was not yet ready to die.
30: FIRE FROM ABOVE
The beauty and tragedy of a spring day comes from the same simple fact: It’s always so brief.
The fire dragons gave no warning.
On a warm day in spring, when the first apple blossoms had just appeared, the dragons descended on the sacred compound of the Society of the Whole in Stoneroot, dropping out of the sky like blazing balls of fire. Within moments, sm
oke curled upward from burning buildings and screams pierced the stillness of surrounding farms that normally never heard any sounds louder than a ringing bell.
Priestesses and priests—along with their loyal maryths, creatures of all descriptions who joined them in a lifelong bond—worked feverishly to drag the wounded or dazed to safety. But nowhere was safe for long. The air buzzed with panicking mist faeries, pigeons, and barn swallows. Frightened goats, horses, and chickens dashed around the compound, crashing into fleeing people, shrieking and bleating, squawking and whinnying. Children ran everywhere, too scared even to hide in the barns, tool sheds, or limeberry bushes.
Rhia, carrying Nuic on her shoulder, dashed to the enormous Buckle Bell. Heaving on the rope, she made the great bell chime seven times, then stop, then chime seven more times—the Society’s distress signal. Before the final echoes began to fade, she ran off to help others, dodging blasts of flame from the circling dragons. She tore one of the vines off the sleeve of her suit to bandage a young goat’s singed leg. Then she joined Lleu in tying ropes to keep a burning tree from toppling onto the pillars of the Great Temple. Moments later, she started hurling buckets of water onto the flames that raged on the roof of the library.
Yet all this wasn’t enough. As Nuic’s darkening gray color indicated, the compound and its neighboring farms would soon be destroyed, swallowed by flames and panic.
Leagues away, a family of mountain giants was crossing the plains. Led by the fearsome Jubolda—known across the realm for lifting off the tops of hills to expose the caves of marauding trolls—each of their strides was the size of a farmer’s field. Suddenly they heard the Buckle Bell’s call of distress. Immediately, Jubolda and her three gargantuan daughters turned and strode in the direction of the compound. On the way, they were joined by another giant who had also heard the bell: none other than Shim.
“I surely hopes we arrives in time to save those nicely people,” he muttered, his huge feet slamming against the ground.
“Not me,” answered Jubolda. Her earrings, made of waterwheels from an abandoned granary, jostled with each of her steps. “I want to arrive in time to demolish whoever dared attack the Society! Fire dragons, from that smell of smoke in the air.”
Shim glanced over at her. With a rub of his bulbous nose, he said, “Just be careful, Lady Jubolda. You is a giantess, but you is still mortally mortal. We don’t want you getting hurted by them dragons.”
Jubolda merely waved away his concern. But one of her daughters—whose enormous, drooling lips had inspired the name Bonlog Mountain-Mouth—looked at Shim with grateful adoration.
The giants arrived not a moment too soon. Fire dragons were attacking the largest building in the compound, a structure made entirely of countless branches broken by winter storms. No building could be more flammable. Or more cherished. Its high, peaked archways rose like pinnacles; its stained glass windows shone with the radiance of bright-winged butterflies. And in that building, called the Crafts Community, generations of priestesses and priests had learned the skills of pottery, weaving, basketry, glass blowing, and woodworking. Even Pwyll Estonna, the most famous sculptor of the artisan elves, discovered her gifts within its walls. To see that old house go up in flames would have broken the hearts of everyone who knew it.
Three dragons swooped down from the sky, their scarlet wings as bright as flames. Simultaneously, they roared, sending fiery blasts straight at the building’s roof. At that very instant, three gigantic hands reached out and blocked the fire from reaching its target. Those hands, belonging to Jubolda, Shim, and Bonlog, immediately closed into immense fists that slammed full-force into the attackers.
Explosions shook the air as the giants’ knuckles smashed into the dragons’ scaly chests, sending them into a tailspin. They crashed, ribs and tails broken, in a nearby pasture. For them, the battle was abruptly over; crawling away from the giants was now their only goal.
The remaining fire dragons, eight or nine in number, quickly changed tactics. Like angry hornets, they ferociously attacked the giants, ripping at them with terrible claws and shooting blasts of flame. Even so, they proved to be no match for their foes, whose thickly calloused skin shielded better than armor. Jubolda lost one of her earrings (which only made her more angry), but none of her companions suffered worse than minor scratches. The fire dragons fared much worse. Several of them fell to the giants’ flying fists, while one unlucky dragon perished in the teeth of Bonlog Mountain-Mouth.
Rhia, helping douse the flames on the crafts building roof, cheered this turn of fortune. Hope swelled in her heart that the terrors of this day, which had started as such a fragrant spring morning, would soon end. Then, looking to the east, she saw something so startling that she dropped her water bucket.
Flamelon warriors! Marching in rigid formation, the soldiers from Fireroot started to encircle the compound. Wheeling into place heavy iron catapults, made in their volcanic forges, they fired deadly volleys at the giants. Immense boulders slammed into the huge beings’ chests and arms. Vats of boiling oil burst upon their backs. Nets made of sturdy rope tangled their powerful legs, making them stumble.
Sensing their improved chances, the fire dragons pressed their attack. All around the compound, towers of smoke rose into the air, staining the sky. Dragons’ tails slashed violently at buildings, walls, and monuments. Wounded men, women, and children ran, shrieking and wailing, in all directions.
Shim, hearing a bellowing howl, turned to see a giant who had fallen to the ground. Bonlog! She flailed helplessly, her legs tangled in a net. Meanwhile, a troop of flamelons marched swiftly toward her, brandishing a terrible array of broadswords and spears.
“Stop!” Though he wasn’t sure how to help, Shim started to run toward her—but caught an enormous toe on the compound’s outer wall. He pitched forward, falling like a massive tree.
Shouting and waving his arms wildly, he tried to regain his balance. To no avail. He shut his eyes and slammed down to the ground. His huge body struck with such force that a nearby catapult teetered from the vibrations and then collapsed. Shim, knowing that he’d failed to help Bonlog, didn’t want to open his eyes lest he see her lifeless body, mutilated by the flamelons.
I is such a failure! he thought. Such a clumsily failure! Someone shoved him—roughly, with the strength of a giant. He opened his eyes. To his astonishment, he was looking up at Bonlog!
“You is . . . alive?” he asked.
She opened her gargantuan mouth in a smile. “Thanks to you, Shim! You saved me—by throwing your body on top of those flamelons.”
Blinking with surprise, he rolled over. Sure enough, the crushed remains of the entire troop lay beneath him. “But . . . but I—” he stammered.
“That was so brave of you, Shim. So bold. So . . .” She paused, her eyes glittering, as she wiped a foamy river of spit off her chin. “So masculine.”
Shim’s mood swiftly changed from surprise to panic. That feeling spread as he saw, to his horror, Bonlog Mountain-Mouth bending down to give him a kiss. Her gigantic, salivadrenched lips drew closer. Rivers of spit gushed from the cavernous depths of her mouth. Her puckering lips swelled, obscuring half her face.
“Eeeek!” cried Shim. With amazing speed, he rolled aside, bounced to his feet, and sped away, running as fast as he could toward the safety of the high peaks.
The giantess stood again, scowling as she watched him escape. From the depths of her throat came an angry curse, then a giant-size sigh of disappointment. Reluctantly, she rejoined the fight against the fire dragons and flamelons, battling alongside her mother. Yet every few seconds, she paused to look longingly at the departing figure she could still see on the horizon. As Shim finally vanished from view, she breathed another great sigh, spraying a lake’s worth of spit. Glumly, she wiped her cavernous mouth and stepped back into the fray.
Even with Bonlog back in action, the battle went badly for the defenders. Building by building, the dragons set fire to the compound, leaving the
survivors few places to hide. The flamelons pressed closer, tightening their deadly noose. Although Rhia continued to shout encouragement to her followers, she didn’t believe her own words.
All they had done to build this place, to honor the highest ideals of Avalon and their dreams of what it could become—all this was lost forever. She knew it. Nuic, clinging to her shoulder, was now pitch-black.
“Look!” cried Lleu. He pointed his bloodstained arm toward the sky.
Rhia looked up to see another dragon, swiftly approaching. But this was no fire dragon. This was a dragon whose bright green scales, massive wings, and powerful tail could not be mistaken.
“Basil!” she cried. “It’s Basilgarrad!”
At the mere sound of his name, several fire dragons shrieked and fled. Those who hesitated soon regretted their mistake. The moment he reached the compound, his clubbed tail slammed into one dragon, hurling its body all the way to the southern marshes. An instant later, he spun around and struck another hard enough to break every rib in its chest. Before that attacker even hit the ground, he looped his great tail around another’s neck and threw it somewhere beyond the edge of the realm. Meanwhile, he butted his head against the back of another’s skull—so forcefully that one of its eyes flew out, landing in a lake several leagues away.
Seeing this mighty display of force, the flamelons blew their horns and hastily retreated. Skilled warriors that they were, they knew they couldn’t prevail against such an overwhelmingly superior foe. Yet some of their commanders hung back, studying Basilgarrad for any signs of weakness. For they knew, beyond doubt, that they would fight this dragon again. And when that happened, they did not intend to be defeated.
In time, the smoky skies cleared. It took many months of labor, but Rhia and her surviving followers cremated their lost loved ones, rebuilt the damaged buildings, and restored the gardens of the compound. The Great Temple’s pillars were repaired, and most of the scorches cleaned. Priestesses and priests and their maryths rejoiced when, once again, the Buckle Bell rang—this time not in distress, but in welcome. To all those in Avalon who still valued peace. Even the scattered faeries returned, their wings glowing with the colors of blue sky, rosy blossoms, and silver mist.