Aftermath

As Fred laid him down on the sand, his eyes flickered open. "I'm sorry," he whispered, almost too faint for Fred to hear. Then his face froze into total immobility, and Fred knew that he was dead.

Fred would have liked to bury him, but as he lacked any tool to do so that would have to wait. With Simon's death, it seemed to Fred unlikely that he would ever learn what had been going on.

Unless the other members of the group, manning the catapults, had been in on the plot? That might explain why they hadn't fired. But that made no sense, he realised. Why would they go to all the trouble of building and moving the catapults if they had known that they were not going to be used? If he himself had been the only one (apart from Astra) not in on the plot, it would have been far simpler for them to have killed or restrained him rather than go through with such a charade. Perhaps Anselm or Simon had given a second bird call which he had failed to hear, to get them to abort the attack?

The others must have seen the fireball, he realised, so no doubt they would make their way down to the beach to find out what had happened. Meanwhile, what could he do? He could not reach Astra, up on her pedestal. If she was still in some sense alive, he hoped that she was securely balanced. If she toppled and fell to the sand, the impact might be enough to shatter her. What had the dragon called her? A steingeweser, that was it. The word meant nothing to him.

Was it possible for her condition to be reversed, if he could find a sufficiently powerful mage? The dragon had mentiond a spell that would allow her to move, but the implication was that she would remain stone, so that - though arguably better than nothing - would be far less than ideal. And he had not liked the bit about "will make her life depend on my will". The princess deserved far better than to become some sort of golem slave. The mage that he found would need to be trustworthy as well as powerful.

Could Thomas and Anselm still be "alive", in the same sense that Astra was? He recalled that the test that the dragon had used had been whether the stone was warm to the touch. He checked on Thomas first, who must have been unfortunate enough to emerge from the water just before the fireball. He had been too far away to suffer a direct hit from the flame, but for some reason had been petrified like Astra. On touchiing him, Fred found that he was warm.

Then he checked Anselm, who seemed to have suffered the "double whammy" of being both burnt and petrified. Fred touched him, and yelped as he hastily withdrew his hand. The rock was not just warm but hot to the touch, no doubt the result of the fireball. It seemed unlikely that Anselm could be in any sense alive.

The only consolation for Fred was that at least the dragon was dead. How he and the others could escape to the outside, and perhaps fetch a wizard to help Astra and Thomas, was far from clear, however. The dragon had had substantial forces in the caves, and these were likely to remain a threat for some time to come.

1. Fred finds the item that Simon had been trying to pick up just before the fireball struck him.
2. The catapult parties reach the beach. Fred explains what has happened, and tools are fetched to bury Simon.
3. The spell to reanimate Astra had actually taken effect just before the fireball. There is the sound of rock moving.

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