"Kushner,.Donn.-.A.Book.DragonUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

layers of harder rock, shining with flakes of gold and of quartz.
He continued to find his grandmother's scales along the walls.
There was no sign that she had retraced her path. She had
gone on, and he must follow.

Time passed; was it hours or days? He didn't know; he
seemed to have been in the tunnel forever. Nonesuch thought
that the light from his eyes was becoming fainter. Was this
from weariness, making his fires bum less brightly? No, rather
all of the surfaces of the tunnel itself were glowing with heat.
Blasts of hotter air were reaching him from the tunnel's further
depths.

Nonesuch realized then that the tunnel had become a
volcanic vent, leading down to the molten rock in the center of
the earth. Once, very long ago, his grandmother had told him,
all the earth had bubbled like soup in a cauldron. But in time
the surface had cooled and hardened. She had, he recalled,

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spoken of this with regret. Had she gone in search of "the
warm liquid rocks" at last?

He could see that his grandmother had come this far: her
scales were more abundant on the walls than before, glowing
brighter than the dull rocks. He must follow her still.

But it grew hotter as he descended. Even dragons have
their limits. Nonesuch had long since passed the level of heat
at which a man's hair would have blazed up and his skin
cracked and shrivelled. As he continued down he felt no pain,
but he was invaded by a curious melting sensation, as if his
skin were fusing to his flesh, as if all the cells and tissues of
his body were losing their individual character and becoming
one entity.

A few hours later, when the heat was so great that None-
such's paws began to be deformed by his own weight, he
realized that if he went much farther he would simply melt and
flow into the tunnel's walls. Had this happened to his grand-
mother? Nonesuch could see no trace of her body on the walls;

only scales that continued out of his line of sight, a path he
could no longer follow.

He believed then, and he became more certain afterwards,
that his grandmother had continued her journey to the end,
into the molten lava itself. Perhaps, he thought (though this
was much later), she had travelled to the source of strength of