Natalie Jane Prior                        

Lily Quench and the Magician's Pyramid

In the shadows behind Baba's enormous foreleg, Lily crouched and pulled her hood down over her eyes. The light in the corridor was coming closer. A figure in a dark cloak entered the chamber. Lily stole a furtive glance around Baba's leg and saw that it wasn't Joscelin after all.
  It was Roger.
  'Good evening, Baba,' Roger said. 'Is anything amiss? I was surprised to find the door open. I suppose you're hardly in any condition to leave but it's unlike Joscelin to be so careless.' Baba shrugged, and he went on, 'Not saying anything, dearheart? I thought I heard voices in here. I was looking for a visitor of ours who's lost. A girl with a silver helmet and fair hair, about so high. I don't suppose she's been here?'
  Lily felt a shudder ripple through Baba's body. Her scales lifted slightly, as Queen Dragon's did when she was alarmed or frightened. One loosened, razor sharp platelet suddenly stood out on end next to Lily's face and she ducked just in time to avoid being slashed by it. Lily grabbed the scale and pushed it down with all her strength until it sat flush against Baba's side.
  'Or perhaps you were talking to yourself,' said Roger, as a familiar squeaking sounded in the entrance to the pyramid. 'Never mind. Here's Joscelin coming to drench you. That will give you something to take your mind off things, won't it?'
  'What are you doing here?' A harsh voice spoke unexpectedly loudly. Lily jumped. For a terrifying instant, she thought she had been discovered. Then she realised that Joscelin was talking to Roger. She peeped over Baba's leg and saw him standing with the wheeled cart he had been using earlier in the evening. It was now loaded down with a horrible contraption that looked like a giant syringe hooked up to a metal tank.
  Roger bowed politely. 'Just looking in on our dragon friend,' he said, sounding normal and cheerful. 'You left the door open, Joscelin. I was concerned something might have happened.'
  'I've been fetching my drenching equipment,' said Joscelin. 'What are you doing in this pyramid? You know it's out of bounds to you.'
  'I was just on the way back to my observatory,' said Roger. 'I've been having a little talk with Lily.'
  'Now that we have captured the dragon, Lily is not important,' said Joscelin. 'Let Quin deal with her from now on. She wastes less time and is less given to sentiment than you are.'
  'As you wish, Joscelin.' Roger bowed again. He backed away towards the entrance, turned on his heel, and was gone.
  Joscelin waited until his footsteps faded and turned to Baba. For a long while, maybe half a minute, he stood looking her over, measuring her up. A feeling of intense danger ran down Lily's arm and she felt another shudder of fear ripple through Baba's body. Joscelin's inspection finished. Lily saw him unhook a stepladder from a nearby wall and set it up close to Baba's face. She heard the soft rattle of a hose unwinding. A moment later Baba recoiled sharply and started squealing in pain and terror.
  Lily yelled out too. In any other circumstance, her cry of fright would have immediately given her away, but the noise Baba was making was so horrendous it would have drowned out any army of elephants. Lily had never heard anything like it in her life. It was shrill, agonised and inhuman, a convulsed scream that almost made the pyramid shake, it was so loud and desperate. Lily clapped her hands over her ears, but it was useless. Then as Baba, twisted and writhed, her right foreleg suddenly shifted, trapping Lily between her leg and body.
  'Help!' Two monumental walls of dragon flesh and scale closed in and started slowly crushing her. Lily's eyes bulged in her head. She felt the breath squeeze from her lungs; only her fireproof cape protected her from being burned from head to foot by Baba's scales. Lily saw something swing towards her face and ducked instinctively. The razor sharp scale she had already pushed back into place had flipped up again and grazed within a hairsbreadth of her cheek.
  'Ow!' Any closer, and the scale would have ripped the side of her face off. Lily punched at it, but her arm was trapped and she couldn't get enough swing to knock it away. The scale flapped back and forth, dangerously close to her head. Then the hood of Lily's fireproof cape flopped down over her eyes and she could not see at all.
  It was as if she was trapped in a sack, being squashed between two millstones, with an axe being swung at her head. Lily screamed for help, no longer caring who heard. Then suddenly her left arm, the arm with the scales on it, Wriggled free. It thrust out of her fireproof cape, slid, scale against scale, over Baba's burning body, and punched upward with a life of its own.
  With a thwock! The deadly scale ripped out of Baba's flank and hit the wall, falling in tinkling shards onto the floor. And at that exact moment, Baba's burning flesh went deathly cold. Her fires went out. She stopped writhing, stopped screaming, and slumped unconscious on the floor with a hideous thud.
  If Baba's falling body had landed slightly to the right, Lily would have been squashed to a grease spot. Instead, the dragon fell straight where she was standing. Lily went down with her. She lay trapped behind Baba's massive foreleg, unable to move an inch. Lily heard Joscelin's cart being wheeled down the passage to the entrance and the light went out.
  'Baba? Baba! Can you hear me? I'm stuck! I'm trapped! Please, wake up!'
  Baba stirred and groaned. She lifted her head slightly and dropped it back down on her forelegs. A small gap opened up and Lily scrambled out, shaking and breathless. Baba was lying slumped on the pyramid floor, her green colour faded to a sickly chartreuse. There were tears in her eyes and thick mucus dribbled from her nostrils. It was an unnatural, sulphury yellow colour, and it rattled in her sinuses when she tried to speak.
  'I'm sorry, Lily,' she said weakly. 'Joscelin does that once a week. He puts some potion in the syringe and injects it up my nostrils. It puts out my fires so I can't attack him. It always makes me so ill.'
  'I'm sorry, Baba.' Lily laid her hand briefly on Baba's foot. It felt dangerously cold and she found herself wondering how long she could last like this. Baba leaned forward and spoke to her urgently, in a voice that was little more than a forced whisper.
  'You must go quickly now, Lily. You heard what Joscelin said. Sinhault has been captured, she is in terrible peril. Find her and rescue her, and then both of you leave the pyramids as quickly as you can. There is nothing in this place for dragons except death!

Lily Quench and the Magician's Pyramid © Natalie Jane Prior, 2005. Published by the Penguin Group.