Chapter 20

My depression was still with me. Without my girl, I had little reason to carry on living. It seemed like a perfectly natural thing therefore to step over the dead giant and squeeze through the narrow passage into the valley of perils ahead.

The valley walls remained narrow and created a passageway that ran for perhaps twenty feet. The passageway ended in a chasm with a sheer drop of some fifty feet. There was a rope bridge spanning the chasm and I studied it and the drop below before deciding to attempt a crossing.

Something was moving down there and it took me a few minutes to figure out what I was seeing. Snakes! There were thousands of them, all coiling around one another in a single, seething mass.

Like most people, I thought there was something sinister and particularly nasty about reptiles. Snakes were probably the worst and I gave an involuntary shudder as I stared down at them.

The rope bridge looked rickety to say the least and I had no idea how old the braids actually were. There was a simple decision to be made. Go back the way I had come? Or take my chances with the bridge? I decided to take the risk and stepped out onto the bridge.

Visions of some of the adventure movies I had watched on TV sprang to mind and I expected the thing to snap at any moment. I was ready, poised to leap forward to grab whatever I could, just like the action heroes always did. The bridge didn't snap though. No, but something else happened.

I was nearing the midway point, the point of no return, when I heard a flapping noise above me. I had been so focused on the snakes that my eyes had looked only downwards, never up. Now I did snap my eyes upwards, and saw that fantasy had become reality.

Swooping towards me were two leathery, spiky, dragons! Real, live dragons. Dragons that were spouting flame from their snouts. Dragons that were diving towards me, clearly intent on frying me to a crisp.

There was no time for conscious thought (I was out of practise in that anyway) and I simply ran forward as fast as my feet would carry me.

The other side of the bridge looked much like what I had just left behind, a narrow passage. I threw myself forward, over the last six feet, and scrambled up the passageway. I was not a moment too soon.

Flames followed me as I crawled forward and I kept going as quickly as I could until I thought I was far enough away from the opening that the dragons couldn't reach me.

The passageway wasn't a tunnel. The walls rose for perhaps forty feet, but there was then open sky above. The dragons were not giving me up easily. I could see them landing and their weight dislodged rocks which crashed down around me. Fortunately their gouts of flame couldn't reach me and that seemed to be making them madder than hell.

There was a further opening ahead, with the passageway running for a few hundred feet and I scrambled forward. When I was still fifteen feet from the opening, I could see that there was a second chasm and a second rope bridge.

My suspicion was that I was currently on a circular column of rock and that the chasm ran all the way round it. That would mean there were probably snakes under this second rope bridge and no doubt the dragons would be waiting for another chance to attack.

Just then there was another gout of flame from above, which let me know where one of the dragons was at least. A plan formed in my head and I made as much noise as I could backtracking down the passage the way I had just come.

Once I was satisfied that at least one of the dragons had followed me, I set off at a run for the second rope bridge. There was no time to hesitate and I burst from the passageway onto the bridge at full speed.

A glance downwards confirmed that there were indeed snakes below me. I did not want to fall! Most of my focus had to be on where I was putting my feet on the bridge, but I risked one look upwards. I almost wished I hadn't, as I saw one of the dragons swooping down.

It was clear that I wouldn't manage to reach the other side of the bridge this time before the dragon was on me, so I did the only thing I could ... I leapt off of the bridge and drew my sword.

By my reckoning this fight had to be over very quickly. I might be lucky and manage to defeat one dragon, I didn't fancy my chances against two and the other one couldn't be far away.

The first thing I did was something that tested my nerve. I pulled my arms in close to my side and plummeted downwards! My reasoning was that I needed speed to defeat the beast and this was the best way to generate it. The snakes came closer and closer. I was able to make out individual snakes in the coiling mass by the time I arched my back and pulled out of the dive.

'Puff' had been following me down, but at a much slower speed. When I started to climb, there was one opportunity for him to roast me, but my manoeuvre had caught him by surprise and he fluffed his chance.

The dragon's wings flared, as it stopped its swoop and tried to change its direction. By then I was already above him and I turned once more, diving to drive my sword through the top of his head.

The force of the blow had every ounce of power I could muster behind it. The sharp shriek from the dragon told me that it was a killing stroke and I didn't waste any time in hanging around to admire my handiwork. I flew as fast as I could for the opening on the other side of the rope bridge.

My experience of crossing the first rope bridge told me not to stop until I was far enough into the passage to avoid a blast of dragon flame. Surprisingly however, the second dragon didn't appear to be following me and I counted my blessings and scrambled forward.

This time the passage did progress into a tunnel. I gave further thanks that I wouldn't be subjected to showers of rock from above. The light quickly disappeared though and I had to rely on my senses to move forward without stumbling. My fear returned, as I couldn't help but remember my last time in a tunnel, when I had been attacked by the Magates - the stone warriors.

Nothing leapt out at me however, and exhaustion was rapidly overtaking me. I decided that I needed to sleep. While I could stay awake for days by using the power, the past few weeks and months had taken a lot out of me physically. On top of that, the fight with the giant and then the adrenaline rush of fighting the dragons had just about wiped me out.

Finding a relatively flat spot in the tunnel, I curled up and fell asleep almost instantly. Despite my exhaustion, my sleep wasn't undisturbed. There were three distinct dream sequences that I remembered when I awoke some hours later.

The first was the shortest. It involved Charles and was from a perspective that made me feel as if I was seeing what he was seeing, hearing what he was hearing.

The sense of things was that there was some problem with the ruling council and it involved me! Charles believed that the council was somehow influencing things to make my life on Gael a misery, but he couldn't work out why.

The second dream involved my birthstone. I had managed to connect with Brenda through the stone in the past, but this time the stone was telling me that something bad had happened. There was no detail, just an overwhelming sense of foreboding.

This dream seemed to be in a continuous loop and it repeated and repeated for some time. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. What the 'something' might be, wasn't clear.

The third segment was the strangest, but it was also incredibly comforting and soothing. I was walking towards a stone circle. The circle was even bigger than the one I had visited often in dreamtime and there was a single tree growing at the very center of it.

The tree was a Hazeldew tree. I had never heard of such a tree before, but in my dream the name was clear. It was a Hazeldew tree, pure and simple.

I watched as the 'dream me' walked up to the tree and peeled away a small sliver of bark from the trunk. It was clear that this tiny sliver was important, but again, it wasn't clear why.

When I awoke, I was a little disorientated for a second due to the darkness. Once I remembered where I was, I was able to use my senses to figure out what was around me.

Before curling up I had placed six small stones on the floor of the tunnel in the shape of an arrow, pointing in the direction I needed to take to continue forward. My senses found them now and I relaxed in the knowledge that I wouldn't be doubling back on myself.

It seemed to make sense to try and figure out what the dreams were trying to tell me before carrying on, so I sat for a while replaying them over and over again in my head.

Nothing made any sense. There didn't appear to be any connection between the three sequences and there wasn't enough detail to work out what any one of them was about.

Having something to work on did have one benefit, though. Without fully realising it, my depression had begun to lift and my mind was in a much better state.

It appeared as if there were things that I needed to do, riddles that I needed to solve and slowly but surely my reason for living was returning to me. That was a startling realisation.

I returned to what the giant had said to me before he had died. Better men than I had tried to pass through the 'valley of perils' were his words and it now seemed important for me to understand what they meant.

What was the 'valley of perils'? So far it had proved to be perilous indeed - so it seemed well named. Why would men want to try to pass through it? How many perils did it contain?

As seemed to be the case so often Gael, there appeared to more questions than answers. I decided that this was one of those times when my 'rules' most certainly applied. I would need to stop worrying about things I could do nothing about! If there were more challenges ahead then I couldn't let fear hold me back. I would go forward and try to make sure I did all little things well in the hope that the bigger things would look after themselves!

With that final thought, I sensed where the arrow of stones was pointing and set off along the tunnel once more.

Several hours later I sensed a dim light ahead. It felt as if I had been walking for miles and I longed to see some light. I emerged from the tunnel into a round cavern with a somewhat higher roof.

The light was coming from hundreds of what looked like transformers that ringed the cavern. There were a number of skeletons lying on the floor and a large stone ball resting against the wall of the cavern opposite the tunnel I had just emerged from.

This was surprising to say the least! It had been made clear to me that technology was forbidden on Gael, yet here were hundreds of electrical components. I studied them, trying to find some clue as to what they were for, but could find no answers.

I did notice that the skeletons had one thing in common. Judging by the breadth of the pelvic bones and the shapes/sizes of the skulls, they had all been female when alive. My head was obviously clearing, because very quickly after realising the commonality between the skeletons I guessed what the transformers were for.

They were there to stop wizards from doing magic! The skeletons had to be the bodies of wizards who had tried to pass through the valley of perils, but had been unable to go any further than this point. I wondered why they hadn't simply tried to go back the way they had come?

When I turned to look at the tunnel, I found that another large stone ball had somehow rolled to block the entrance to it. How horrible! The wizards would have been stuck here, unable to use their magic to escape. My fond hope was that I would be able to move one of the stone balls, using 'the power' if necessary. The prospect of ending up like the skeletons that already littered the floor was not appealing at all.