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  “Always to be remember,” Doctor Zeiger had said, concluding his lecture, “that healing arts is not for bodies—just bodies—but is for minds and hearts. Mind the heart and mind, mine students, and mend the body better.”

  “Ain’t the heart and mind part of the body?” someone had muttered behind her, and Heather turned around to see an ancient doe, ragged and wild-eyed, bent over a small book positively crammed with notes and drawings. A cane leaned against her crossed legs as she looked up from her scribbling. “What are you gawkin’ at, young’n? Ain’t you never seen an old rabbit before now?”

  Heather had answered without thinking. “Not as old as you.”

  Aunt Jone barked a laugh that sent spittle spraying over Heather and the next five nearest students. The other trainees wiped their shoulders and, noses scrunched, eased away. But Heather laughed, put her hand over her mouth, and apologized. “I’m so sorry, Aunty! That was rude and wrong. Please forgive me.”

  “Nothing to forgive!” Aunt Jone had cried, shooting in to hug Heather while her book and cane were dashed onto the floor. “It’s truer than you know, I’m quite sure. Maybe you’re a true seer or, possibly, something even more awful, if it can be imagined.”

  “I’m just a trainee. Hoping to be a healer.”

  “Well, let me tell you something,” and the spittle fairly flew once again with these words. “The art of healing ain’t all tonics and truisms. I think it’s a noble quest to wreck death itself.”

  “It comes to us all, doesn’t it, Aunty …?”

  “Jone Wissel, little white learner.”

  “Aunt Jone,” Heather had said. “I’m Heather Longtreader.”

  “Ah,” Aunt Jone had said, peering intently into Heather’s eyes. “A dangerous name.”

  Heather nodded, then returned to the subject. “Aunt Jone, doesn’t death come for us all?”

  “You might never die, Miss Longtreader,” Aunt Jone had said, her eyes sparkling as she smiled her toothless smile. “I never have.”

  Heather laughed at the memory, as she had laughed that day, thinking Aunt Jone had said something clever. But now?

  She headed for the mossdraft pool, wary of being surprised but curious to find the door to the passage. The way to Smalls. She didn’t like being cut off from him like this.

  Heather bent to fill the bowl and drank deeply, delighting in the refreshing, reviving draft. Looking up at the scant light above, she considered testing the walls for climbing.

  She felt so strong! What if it comes to that? What if it comes to the whole place caving in and us desperately trying to climb out? It didn’t look possible, or anything like it. Still, there might come a desperate moment when that was their only hope.

  Gazing into the shadowy corner, if corner it could be called, where the keeper had led Smalls, she stepped forward. Pressing her hands against the wall, she tried to find any way through. It seemed all of one piece, slick rock and thick wet moss. At last she found a small crack, big enough to fit a large hand into but nowhere near large enough for anyone to pass through. She thought of putting her hand inside the crack. Memories of Seven Mounds, where she had become stuck and vulnerable to being killed by the pursuing wolves, including the wicked Redeye Garlackson, flooded her mind. She stepped back. Heather wanted to find Smalls, to know how to get out of this massive cavern, but she also wanted, if possible, to avoid any small passages and tight rock entrances. Even in Akolan, that slave city of Morbin’s where Father and Mother and Jacks had long been kept, she had had to crawl through a small cave passage into the ancient Tunneler’s first secret meeting place. They had done more tunneling in Akolan since those early years of their captivity, and vast caves were open to them now, and countless rabbits planned a daring escape under the leadership of the newest Tunneler, Whittle Longtreader. Father.

  Breathing deeply, she stepped forward and reached out for the crevice, determined to probe its depths. When her hand first felt the edges of slick rock, a sound of violent crashing, of tumbling rock on rock, came from deep inside the island.

  Smalls!

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  THE KEEPER’S ALLY

  It wasn’t only sound. The ground rumbled, the cavern shook, and some rock and moss chunks broke off and plummeted down from the high cavern’s arched wall to shatter on the stone floor below. Some just missed patches of dragon eggs. Others fell in the mossdraft pool, and Heather, regaining her balance and unwilling to stand by idly, reached to fish them out. The rumbling stopped, and Heather swallowed. She gazed around the vast room, eerily silent now. She walked quickly over to what she thought of as their own section, brushed away debris, and worked to make all as clean as it had been. Resting on her knees, she gazed across at the large support beam. She thought she could make out, even in this dimness and at this distance, a long crack. If that beam breaks apart, will this all come down? Maybe not immediately, but soon after, I think.

  “Where are you, Smalls?” she asked in the silence.

  “He is working,” a scaly voice spoke into the quiet, almost as if into her mind. She spun around to see the keeper, dimly visible, gliding her way. “You worry he will not come again?”

  Heather swallowed. “I only want to see him.”

  “Fear is wicked, little doe,” he said, moving closer. “The keeper has no fear.”

  “That must be comforting.”

  “The keeper has nothing from which to be comforted. He only does his duty and awaits the conference.” He came closer. She looked down, but his gaze drew hers up and she could not resist staring into his pale yellow eyes. He smiled, drawing closer still, then exhaled, enveloping Heather in a noxious cloud of breath. She tried not to gag, but she drew back, coughing from the fumes. “The little doe can help the keeper keep his conference with the king.”

  “I can help you,” she said without even having decided to speak. “Smalls is—” she began; then, shaking her head, she coughed and continued. “Where is Smalls?”

  “He is at work, as he should be,” the dragon said, smiling. “He wishes to keep you safe in your new home. Does it distress you that you will never leave here, that you share the fate of the keeper and the dragon seeds?”

  “Perhaps we will leave when the new queen comes for the conference,” she said weakly.

  “Oh, the queen will never come,” the keeper said, “but I wonder if you might go to her? Bearing a message from the keeper? Asking for her to keep the appointment? Unless she is dead already.”

  “She’s alive,” Heather said, louder than she intended. Her words echoed off the cave walls. “How could we get out?”

  “The keeper could let you out,” he said, scraping his claws together like two handfuls of knives, “and you could bring the queen here. But the way must be made.”

  “There is no way now?” she asked.

  “No way, but there is a room, and a way inside the room.”

  “A room?”

  “A room, yes. The keeper will show you.”

  “Won’t you show me with Smalls?”

  “The buck is working. The keeper will show you now.”

  She almost stood up but hesitated a moment. She remained seated on the soft moss. “I would rather wait for Smalls.”

  The dragon smiled, inclined his head. “Would he not be pleased if, when he sees you again, you have made a way for your escape?”

  “Our escape, you mean?” she asked. “Mine and Smalls.”

  “Yes, of course. You will be to him like a queen to a king, even now. And the keeper will see you pleased, and he will reward your work.”

  “Reward … How?”

  “There is treasure here,” the keeper said, “and a store of learning. Old knowledge. Here for you, if you only help the keeper.”

  She was silent for a moment, unsure how to reply. “Help you, how?”

  “It comes down to the room,” the dragon said, breath rattling in his throat as he stepped closer to Heather. “The keeper will show you the door. It is th
e way.” She stood, heaving the strap of her satchel over her head. “Come now,” the dragon continued, stepping away.

  Almost thoughtlessly, Heather walked behind him as he headed past the mossdraft pool. Her mind felt foggy, but she knew she wanted to help. And if she could say, when she saw Smalls again, that she had found a way out, he would be so pleased. The dragon reached into the small crevice she had found earlier and pulled back. A small fissure appeared, a door sliding sideways to make a way into a dank passage. The keeper led, and she followed him into the darkness.

  Inside the faintly lit craggy passage the powerful body of the dragon slid ahead of her. She found it easier going, but that feeling of oppressive closeness, of nearness to being trapped, intensified. Soon, to her relief, the passage widened, and they came into a long, low cave. Water dripped onto her and onto the mossy floor. Ahead, a torch blazed above three arched openings. The keeper passed through the leftmost way, and she, hesitating only a moment at the three doors, heard a distant clatter down the central tunnel. Then she hurried after the keeper into the darkness.

  “The door is not far,” the dragon said, his long tail swishing back and forth in front of Heather. She could hear him, but sight was almost gone now, and she felt along the mossy wall, stooping as she went. After a few minutes of frightening turns, during which she kept close to the swishing sound and occasional guttural utterances from the dragon, a faint light appeared ahead. She wished Picket were with her. He had a knack for finding his way, for navigating strange places and quickly calculating newly revealed routes.

  Finally, the tunnel issued into another torchlit hall, dank like the others and stinking of mildew. The ceiling was high, though not as high as the central cavern. Support beams were everywhere, wedged against each wall. She gazed around to see if she could spot Smalls, but he was nowhere to be seen. The room was round and featured twelve arched tunnel doors all around its edge. A few of these tunnels seemed to have collapsed, their mouths closed by a heaped pile of stone debris. And indeed, debris covered much of the floor, and the dragon dodged between sizable sections of rubble as they entered the hall. Across the hall from where she stood, a long triangular-shaped structure jutted out from the wall. It seemed to Heather to stand in place of the thirteenth tunnel door. The dragon keeper motioned with his long clawed hand to follow. “The door,” he said, pointing. She nodded and followed him across.

  Reaching the moss-covered exterior of the unusual edifice, the dragon pulled back a tangle of moss, revealing a stone door with a small triangle etched in its center. The triangle outline seemed to bear markings within, but Heather couldn’t see them well.

  “What does it say?” she asked.

  The dragon raised his powerful claws and struck out at the overhanging moss, cutting free a swath so that they both could see more clearly. Heather shrank back at this sudden act. Heart pounding, she stepped forward again. She leaned close and peered at the central triangle, unable to make sense of the marks.

  “The doe can read it?”

  “I cannot,” she said, frowning. “It must be an old language. Is it the dragon tongue?”

  “It is not your tongue, nor the tongue of dragons.”

  “Then what can it be?”

  “If little doe can discover,” the dragon said, getting closer to Heather and exhaling a putrid breath, “then free she shall be. And free shall her buck be.”

  Heather coughed, her eagerness to help the dragon swelling, but never took her eyes off the door. For a door she believed it was. And this central triangle was, she was convinced, the key. “I want to get him back. To get out of here, at all costs,” she said, peering at the series of slashes around the edges of the structure’s front. “Could you bring the light closer?”

  The dragon nodded, slipping back to snatch a torch from the wall. While he was gone, she stared intensely at the triangle, trying desperately to locate the clue to unlock the mystery.

  The keeper returned, extending the torch to Heather. She held it close to the triangle, and more damage was clear all over the door’s front. It looked as though an army had tried to get in there. Scratches, dents, and marks of intense attack—apparently a failed one—aimed at getting inside.

  “What’s inside here?” she asked. “Why is it so important for you to get inside?”

  “The keeper has good reasons. And the doe has good reasons to want to rescue her beloved buck and help the rabbits fighting outside.” He drew close again, his fetid breath oppressive to Heather. “You will open the door for the keeper and receive the reward you merit after.”

  “I will help you,” she said automatically, gazing with new intensity at the triangle. “I will get you inside.”

  “Good little doe.” The keeper withdrew a few paces, and Heather shook her head, foggy a moment, then refocused again on the triangle. She felt as though her focus was narrowing to see only those things before her, the thirteenth tunnel door and bringing Smalls news of their imminent escape. Gazing at the triangle, she could see nothing that made sense to her. The strange indentations inside the small triangle were unintelligible. What can it mean? She stared and stared, eyes fixed on the problem. Finally, moving to the side a few steps so that she gazed at the triangle from an angle, she thought she saw something familiar. At the same time, some small doubt came to her mind as to why she might help the dragon keeper. Do I trust him? She did, at least some, but why did she? Why not? Amid these confused deliberations, she stepped closer still, torch almost up against the impenetrable door. She saw then that someone had tried to burn the door before, among the other forms of destruction attempted on the triangle structure.

  Closing her eyes, she tried to clear her mind. But before she could even begin to process the problem, the solution was clear.

  The center triangle is not the key. It’s the lock.

  Chapter Thirty

  THE DRAGON TONGUE

  Heather reached out with her left hand and felt the small, precise pattern inside the little triangle center. Yes, she had felt that pattern before, or, more accurately, the reverse of that pattern. She patted her satchel, eager to turn and tell the keeper she had figured it out. When she turned back, smiling wide, a crunching rumble began, and the ground shook. The now familiar sound of falling rock filled the hall, louder and closer than before, and she saw shadows of plunging rock and heard their bursting echo join the calamitous crashing all around. Overbalancing, Heather pitched back against the door, and, rebounding with the impact, dropped the torch. It flipped back, scorched her dress, then landed on her foot. She cried out at the sudden pain and kicked the torch away as she patted, then smoothed, the singed fur of her foot. She crouched against the heavy door, arms shielding her head.

  As the rattling continued, the dragon keeper seemed to balance easily, and the remaining torchlight beyond revealed him swatting away a rock nearly the size of Heather that fell from above. The next two were too large, and he sprang back and forth to dodge them in succession. Remarkably agile, he eluded a huge section of falling stone and leapt inside one of the tunnels just before the last torch went out.

  The rumbling stopped. Her heart beat fast and her gasping breath sounded loud in this settling silence. This episode had been more significant by far than the others she had experienced. And it felt close. She believed that most of the others she had heard were likely to have originated here, or near here.

  Heather had just about shared the secret of the triangle door with the dragon, to solve a mystery he had no doubt puzzled over for a long time. It’s our way out. More urgent now than ever. But is it right? Why does he want to get inside that structure? What’s in there?

  She listened carefully, bending to sit with her back against the old door. Heather hoped to hear Smalls’ voice, to see him break into the rubble-covered hall with a torch. But if he could not come, then she hoped for at least the keeper to return. After several minutes, she heard the sound of footfalls, accompanied by a swishing sound. Quite loud, and closer than she
would have believed. She almost spoke, nearly called out to the keeper, but an urgent inner voice cautioned silence.

  “Yor chey gaba?” she heard. It was the guttural uttering of a dragon voice. “Yor chey, gumbro?”

  “Yee shon humva,” came an answer. “Voo dorn sitt kaan. Urr atro!”

  “Domt nunkolo, gaba gumbro!”

  Her mind reeled. The voices frightened her. Is the keeper talking to himself, using different voices? Was he hit on the head after all?

  More footfalls, and whispers in the distance, as a torch sprang to life. A single dragon, head darting hard one way then the next to survey the room, gazed around eagerly. Heather stayed where she was, easing ever so slightly behind the blocking rock of wreckage lying between her and the dragon. Soon, after making several swipes with his torch along the outside of the hall, he hurried toward one of the tunnels. It seemed to be the one, or very near the one, by which she and the keeper had entered this hall. As quietly as she could, she ran after him. His torchlight, so revealing moments ago, began to fade into the tunnel, and she sprinted across the debris-strewn hall, finally darting inside the tunnel to follow the light.

  Heather crept along at a discreet distance, not wanting him to hear. She wasn’t sure what her plan was, but she felt compelled to follow him for now. This she did, weaving past debris and sliding along small tunnel walls until the light led to an open chamber, small, but similar to the large hall she had just left. This one—and she realized she had been here before—had three tunnel doors on either side of a bare stretch. She ran into the central one on the near side, following the dimming light inside. She recognized the faint noise from their trek inside not long before, but it grew louder now as she rounded a wide bend and came into a cave entrance on her right, where voices carried to her.