3MA

3MA | Chapter 16

16
THE HEARTHSTONE

For a bald lady pressing a hundred-years-old, Myrna leads me through the castle at a startling pace, artfully ducking into hidden passageways and deftly slipping into secret compartments, the pulsing lemon stone on her cane growing stronger with each step, and cutting a golden path through the dark.

We negotiate our way down a narrow, steep set of steps. With no railings to keep us from plummeting over the edges and falling into the abyss on either side, it takes all my concentration to keep from tripping.

Myrna, however, seems to glide down the rickety balance-beam with a natural ease. If suffering humiliation is a part of my training, I think I'm well on my way to becoming Camelot's undisputed champion.

At the bottom, Myrna stops and enunciates a pretty little word. Her staff burns brighter and illuminates the cavern around us.

I turn around and nearly scream out loud; an enormous skeleton squats in the middle of the space, it's serpentine skull frozen in a permanent howl. A gaping jawbone towers high above us, studded with row after row of curved, man-sized fangs. Hundreds of spiked vertebrae snake in a two hundred foot spiral around us, protruding from the earth like ivory gravestones.

Myrna pats a loving hand on the massive skull. "Marlon, meet Kilgharrah."

Kilgharrah. The name is immediately familiar. It's the name of the river that snakes along Camelot's border, separating downtown from Trudge and the other Outer Boroughs.

And it's also the name of the dragon from the story Amaris read -- the dragon Sir Valem murdered so that Carven could get drunk on its blood. If Mag was here he'd probably faint from excitement-overload.

Myrna plops down on one of the beast's protruding knuckle bones and sighs in relief. She reaches a hand into the folds of her dress, extracts a tarnished flask and takes a little nip. The pungent smell of whiskey reminds me of my Aunt Krystal.

"Don't judge me Marlon, it's cold down here." She wipes the amber liquor from her lips with the back of her veined hand and holds the flask out to me.

I shake my head. "I never drink," I say.

"You say that now. But you still haven't heard."

"There's more? Aside from whatever this thing is."

"Killy? Oh, it has little to do with her."

"Her?"

Myrna grins. "All of the greatest dragons were female. Think about it: fanatic with their jewels, assertive opinions, deadly shifts in mood."

She has a point.

"Anyway. It's not the dragon I brought you to see. It's what she was guarding." Myrna prods her cane skyward.

I look up. An incredibly massive stone hangs--no, floats--above us like a calcified cocoon. I have to crane my neck all the way backward just to get a glimpse of a tiny portion of its monstrous underbelly. Veins of violet and cerulean and crimson light sizzle across its mountainous berth; rumbling electrical storms burning across a vast night sky.

I feel that familiar sensation again. That thunderous, bone-rattling beat. Only now, instead of feeling it coursing through the soles of my feet, I can feel it surging through my entire body; spreading across my tingling scalp, prickling the back of my eyeballs, racing into my lungs with every breath I take.

Wump-wump. Wump-wump

I'm not sure if I love the sensation or loathe it; supercharged in one moment, feeble in comparison the next.