Eddy made it into the sewers without being caught, although he had to hide in the shadows of side passages more than once as he heard frantic cries or feet slapping the ground. He also saw the signs of the others' passing; dead Incas, gunned or cut down, lay sprawled across the way. The three remaining soldiers, one cut to pieces and the other two riddled with arrows, were among them. Their pale, still faces gave Eddy the fear-born strength to carry on, and two times he was almost caught by small squads of Incas running toward the temple. He hid in the shadows at the last possible moment, his heart beating faster than their feet hitting the ground.

His luck was there to save him once again . . .

The descent through the sewer was quick. Eddy, dehydrated and exhausted, lost footing and tumbled down the small tunnel head over heels. His life was saved by luck rather than skill as his foot was caught in one of the ropes that they had attached to the climbing irons. He ripped out two of them before his slide came to an abrupt end, leaving him hanging upside down outside the tunnel, too dazed and shaken even to scream. Once the world stopped spinning, Eddy beheld the frantic behavior of the dragon flock above him. They could feel their god's torment and were reacting to it by fighting among each other, searing the heavens with their fire. Ironically, their frenzy allowed Eddy to pull himself up and cross the abyss undetected. Bereft of his strength, he stumbled into the spider caves, a faint smile gliding over his features as he saw his lamp waiting where he had left it. He lit it, only to realize that his hasty escape and near plunge to death had cost him his prized gilded Peacemaker and most of his loot. His pockets were almost empty, merely the golden digit he had taken from the statue and a few smaller gems remained. Eddy felt like crying.

Suppressing a sob, he ventured into the caves. He did not know how, but somehow he made it on his own. At long last, he reached the exit by the waterfall and was almost shot in the head as he stumbled from the dark. The gunshot tore a chunk of granite from the wall beside his head, peppering his face with stone dust!

"Whoa!" screamed Eddy, panicked while diving down. "It's me. It's me!"

"Ah, Señor Finn, glad you have made it," said the Marquis, sounding even more arrogant than usual. As the dust settled, Eddy could see the other man standing in front of the waterfall. Morning had begun to dawn, and the veil of water behind him had the color of a cloudy sky.

Isabella melted out of a shadow to Eddy's right. He was too exhausted to even flinch. She gave him a warm smile.

"Good to see you, Eddy," she said. Looking down the darkness of the tunnel, she added, "Mister Grimes?"

Eddy gave her a sad look, then pulled himself to his feet, dragged himself to the nearest wall, and slumped down against it. Isabella stared a few more moments into the black tunnel, then went back to the Marquis, who, already having forgotten Eddy, was now busy packing away a cloth-wrapped bundle.

The Black Diamond, no doubt, thought Eddy.

The Marquis started giggling.

"We did it. We did it!" he hissed between his fits. "I have the Black Diamond. I have it! With it, I can return home to Spain. It will restore the honor of my family."

"So that's it?" asked Eddy tiredly. "Azrael gone, your men dead, and a whole Dragon Nation pissed off and in uproar to redeem your lost honor?"

"What would a worm like you know about such things?" sneered the Marquis. He walked over to Eddy, towering before him in a defiant posture. "My family has been clawing its way up ever since my ancestor Francisco de Orellana fell into dishonor. You have no idea of the sacrifices my house has had to make, how many died to pave our way to the throne."

He smiled. It was a smile Eddy didn't like one bit.

"Yes, the throne," the Marquis continued. "With this stone my family will become next in line for the succession of the throne of Spain. The queen is old; it is but a matter of time before she perishes, and as for her children . . . accidents happen all the time."

Eddy suddenly felt very uncomfortable. What was being revealed to him was nothing anyone would ever share with somebody like Eddy.

"You see, my ancestor claimed that with the power of the Black Diamond, you could actually control dragons, and after what I have seen today, I believe very much that this is true. Once I have taken the power of the throne and learned how to use the diamond, I will bring an army back into this jungle and take the Golden City. We will rob it of its riches. We will slay the god your partner was so kind as to blind. And with the diamond, I will enslave the other dragons. The control over the dragons and the riches of the Golden City will allow me to build an army that will conquer the world. Nothing will stand in my way!"

There was a brief moment of silence following the Marquis's revelation. His eyes glittered feverishly. Slowly Eddy lifted his hands in an accommodating gesture. "Hey, good luck with that. I just want to go home and forget all this shit."

A cruel smile split the Marquis's face. "That will be a problem . . . since we can't have a dirty cow herder like you live, knowing this."

The noble pulled his pistol, and Eddy, having lost his revolver, could only stare at him balefully. An expression of amusement flashed over the Marquis's face, as if a funny joke had just occurred to him. He lowered his gun, turned toward Isabella, who had placed herself slightly behind him, and said, "Isabella, do me a favor and kill this scum. We might still need the bullets."

With a blank face and cold eyes, Isabella pulled her long stiletto.

Eddy was too tired to say anything. He had lost everything: his gems, his friend, his hope. And even if he could somehow manage to flee, there was only the way back into the mountain or down into the jungle, both roads probably leading to a death far worse than Isabella's blade would provide. So he just stared at Isabella with tired, sad eyes.

She gave him a faint smile...

... and drove her stiletto into the Marquis's back.

Like a small thorn, the needle tip of the blade bloomed from the noble's chest, a single red drop falling from it to the ground. Dumbstruck, the Marquis stared at the stiletto's tip, his mouth opening in an unspoken question as the horror of realization washed over his features. It was a look of pure desperation.

Then he slid from the blade, dead, his body falling forward to the ground.

Eddy watched the scene unfold with a strange sense of detachment. Yet the surprise was visible on his face as the dead noble dropped to the ground. He was about to say something, to thank her, yet as he looked into her eyes, he saw that her deed had very little—if anything at all—to do with him. Hers was the gaze of a professional.

So instead he asked, "Why?"

She smirked and said, "The Marquis—or his family, for that matter—was very ambitious. Greedy, even, you might say. And over the years they amassed many enemies. Enemies who take revenge very seriously, and who want those who wronged them not only dead, but utterly destroyed."

"Wait," interrupted Eddy, having learned and experienced enough in one day. "I don't really want to know. I am happy if I can get home in one piece and forget about all this."

She smiled. "Wise choice . . . but one thing you should know. My employer wanted the Marquis to die at the peak of his success, with his prize in hand and him safely away. I had planned to take care of him once we were in the air and beyond the Dragon Gulf." She shrugged. "But I guess that's close enough. In any case, you owe me now."

"No," a voice echoed from the tunnel.

Isabella spun around, and Eddy came to his feet with a groan.

Azrael, the burned remains of his garments dotted with gold, stumbled from the darkness. He looked terrible. His flesh was raw and bloody, seared by flame and liquid metal. Ghastly wounds covered him, cuts and bruises, and the broken shafts of two arrows loomed from his back. His right arm was broken and looked as if it had gained an additional joint between shoulder and elbow, and his good eye was almost swollen shut. How he was still alive, let alone walking, Eddy could not understand.

"We owe you, once you bring us out of this shithole," the dragon killer grunted before collapsing to the ground.