The doors splintered, the walls cracked, and the barrier between the throne room and the nexus exploded in a burst of wood and stone and ash. The castle shook under the blast, and Elayne collapsed onto the floor. Debris rained down around them as a figure, black and huge and hulking, burst into the space.
Like Alaion’s Forsyth, but monstrously bigger, the dragon broke through the rest of the wall, swinging its scaled head and bringing down a massive clawed foot onto the throne, crushing it with a brittle crack. The much tinier Forsyth took to the sky as bits of skull were shot everywhere, and even the krows ducked away from the shrapnel. Elayne covered her face, but quickly peeked through her fingers to see—she had to see it, just to be sure—and surely there it stood: an honest-to-the-gods, full-sized dragon.
It screamed at the room with a throaty roar, and the place fell into chaos. Krows scattered, pulling out their weapons, Vulras shouted gutturally, and Rosalind actually gasped with joy, but Alaion could only stare up at it as he got back to his feet. Elayne struggled to catch her breath as she stood on shaking knees, unable to blink.
“Is that…” Alaion’s voice was taut even as he stared in awe. He narrowed his eyes looking up at the thing, or rather, what was on its back. “Is that a goblin?”
“He’s a kobold,” Elayne whispered, and a smile broke across her face.
Bix was sat just behind the dragon’s head, his little hands gripping onto an opportune scale. Behind him sat an elf, pale with dark veins like Alaion. Neither looked appropriately terrified, Elayne thought, to be on the back of a dragon, and yet there they were. The animal dipped its head down low and let out another screech, the two throwing themselves forward to hang onto the odd scale, and everyone in the room was blown backward by its breath alone, if not by the powerful, hot gust it had produced, certainly by the smell. But worse was the fear of what might come after.
“Shoot it!” Alaion, finally broken of his awe, commanded the krows.
The dragon squalled at the barrage of arrows suddenly harassing him, though many bounced off. He shook his head and unfurled a wing. It filled up the room and flapped, the air off of it knocking a number of krows and Rosalind off their feet.
“What are you doing?” Elayne growled. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”
“Not that one.” Alaion was snarling, pointing again at the beast. “Kill it! Now!”
A set of krows rushed the dragon with swords drawn as it flapped its second wing furiously, much smaller and underdeveloped. Elayne wanted to run after them, but the dragon managed to raise itself off the ground just in time, kicking wildly and impaling both on a rogue talon as if on accident. Black blood spewed out beneath the bodies in a thick pool.
The dragon flapped his good wing once again, and its taloned tip slammed into one of the columns in the throne room. At its top, a vase was perched, though slightly off center, and it teetered before falling to the marbled floor with a crash. Elayne shook her head, sure she was not seeing an essence escaping, but then one of the krows that had been restraining Frederick collapsed. Now with an arm free, Frederick swung and connected with the remaining krow, the shock sending the creature backward. The knight took up the vanished krow’s sword.
Discord reigned as the dragon flung itself about, making shoddy attempts at flight in the too-small space and knocking into krows, severing at least one head and squashing another as they mindlessly assailed the beast. It managed to bumble its way across the room, and Elayne scurried out of its path, but saw Bix pulling back his slingshot, something shimmering in the holder, his little voice piercing the chaotic sounds of the room. He was aiming at her.
The crystal sparkled as he shot it from the dragon’s back, and Elayne dove through the fray to catch it before it hit the ground. In her hands once again, she sat up on her knees and hugged the thaumat stone. It pulsed with a strange, almost human warmth, and she knew it had been used as she stared down at the way the clouds in the crystal swirled, but the moment she looked back up, a krow was barreling toward her. She shrieked, but then Frederick was there, and ran it through before it even realized it was in his sights.
Another came at them before she could thank him, and he fell into battle with it. Elayne stood, the rubble and bone biting into her bare feet, and shouted up to Bix. “The jars! They’re urns! Destroy them!”
The dragon, though, already seemed to be trying to destroy, well, everything as he finally rose up from the ground, his smaller wing working twice as hard. He crashed into a wall and managed to crush three of the urns with his hind quarters, and with what was probably an accidental flick of his tail took out another two as well as a flesh and blood krow with a wet slap. Even with their brethren vanishing around them, the others were undeterred and leveled a tight mass of arrows at the dragon, pegging him in his good wing, and with a screech, the dragon landed hard on the ground, crushing two more krows and just missing Neoma.
The elf steadied herself, now free, blinking around as if seeing the fray for the first time. Then another urn fell out of the air just before her, but it was not like the others, small, copper, and when it hit the ground there was only a metal clang and a tinny, grumpy voice proclaiming that that had hurt quite a bit.
“Bloody brats,” Alaion breathed into Elayne’s ear as he grabbed her by the wrist and yanked her back toward the nexus. “At least you’re good for something.” In only a few moments he had pulled her up over the rubble of the throne and to where the oak doors had once been. On the destroyed threshold, Elayne could feel the nexus fully, pulsing, reaching out for her just as Alaion reached out to snatch the thaumat stone by its cord.
Elayne, however, was absolutely not going to let go. She pulled back, and this time the heat never even came. The purple, frozen flames jumped from her hand, across the necklace, and enveloped Alaion’s arm. He released the cord just as it burnt away, and the crystal, now free of its bindings, fell out of the air and bounced across the ground. Alaion fell to his knees after it, scrambling to the edge of the nexus, but it was too fast, and with one last plunk off the edge, the thaumat stone was gone.
There was a scream then, and Elayne turned to see both Rosalind and Bix restrained by the krows. Another had a foot atop Frederick’s sword arm, pinning him to the ground while two others leveled bows at him. Neoma was sat on the ground, clutching Gramps’s pipe to her chest with sword tips in her face, and Vulras had the young elf who had been with Bix in a headlock. The few remaining krows had weapons leveled at the injured dragon who was curled against the exit to the throne room.
Alaion growled, rising up at the edge of the basin. His leather armor had been melted away on his arm, the attached plates falling off and blackened. His arm and chest were exposed, pale and lined with those same dark veins, and his hair had fallen completely loose, just as wild as the anger storming in his eyes when he turned them on Elayne.
“Well, it seems the choice has been made for you. The crystal is gone, and your companions’ throats are as good as slit unless you comply. Give yourself to the nexus.”
Elayne swallowed. She looked back at her friends who were shaking their heads. “Don’t listen to him, El!” Rosalind shouted before a krow threatened her by pressing a blade closer to her neck. Only Neoma was not looking back at her, her head instead dipped down close to the pipe.
There was a spark then, a shimmering light that zapped itself across the once-upon-a-time throne room and up toward the ceiling. The spark bounced off the wall erratically, pinging into a pedestal and knocking the urn atop it free. It zinged across the room once again and smashed into another urn and then it lined itself up and flew through the air at top speed, running through five others in a straight shot.
Krows fell all around them in quick succession, one after another, with no way to preserve themselves. Weapons clattered to the ground as Gramps’s essence broke through each urn in turn until the room was littered with broken ceramic and empty black cloaks.
Elayne’s companions got to their feet, unrestrain
ed, and Vulras, now alone, even released the young elf as the dragon turned to him and growled. Neoma staggered up, lifting the now empty pipe over her head. “Gramps!” she called, “Get back here, old man!” But the shimmer was still pinging skyward.
“Not this time, dearest,” the voice called back as he zipped over all of them to the hallowed chamber and up to the windows at its top. “Your caretaking task is now complete!” And he was gone.
In the silence following the disappearance of almost every elf in the room, Alaion tipped his head back to the others. “Clever, I’m sure you all think you are.” Forsyth dove down then and landed on his bare shoulder. “But it is all for naught.”
Rosalind strode up to Elayne’s side. “There are forces at the border already, and you know it. Give up.”
Alaion scoffed. “Dwarves? Humans? What do my elven warriors have to fear from them?”
“What?” Elayne blinked back at Rosalind.
“Oh, I asked our friends to come help. The Blackiron clan said they’d show up, and my dad and cousin sent their guys, oh, and ya know Taryn? He said he’d bring all these archers,”—she turned to Alaion and stuck out her tongue—“so there are some fancy-pants Trizian elves out there too.”
Frederick came up to stand at Elayne’s other side, his mouth open as he stared at Rosalind. “That’s what you were doing in the cell?”
She nodded back with a grin.
Elayne took a breath. “Alaion, the border will come down one way or another. You know this. Your troops haven’t fought anyone in ten years. How do you think they’re going to fare? We can do this peacefully, and no one else will have to die.”
“There is no peace with humans.” He snarled, eyeing the two at her side.
“That’s not true.” She looked on him, wanting so badly to set him alight but knowing she would be no better than him if she did. “I’m offering you mercy here,” she sighed, “Please, just take it.”
“Never.”
As the elf lifted a hand and began to draw the darkness of the nexus up around him, there was a grunt from the back of the room. The massive dragon pulled itself up behind the small group, and Elayne thought for a moment they might all be crushed, but instead it reached over them and flicked Alaion hard in the chest. The elf stumbled backwards with the incredible force of the dragon’s claw and tripped over the edge of the basin.
Alaion shouted as Forsyth took to the sky over him, reaching out and grabbing onto the legs of the tiny dragon. It flapped furiously to get away, but never could have lifted the bulk of the elf, and the two fell backward into the forever darkness of the nexus.
CHAPTER 36
Elayne stood staring down into the nexus, the blackness pulsing in the wake of what it had just absorbed. Alaion, he’d fallen—really fallen—and Forsyth had gone with him. She had no idea where or even if the nexus ended, but there was no doubt that Alaion was gone.
“That was…anticlimactic.” Elayne looked back at the others who had gathered on the rubble of the doors to the hallowed room. The elven boy was with them, appearing eerily similar to Alaion save for the kind uneasiness in his eyes, and the dragon’s looming head cocked a bit, looking back at her as if waiting for words of approval.
She nodded at the beast, then at the boy and the others before taking stock of the chamber itself. It was a bit less creepy without the domineering presence of an elven lord on the verge of madness, but the gloom and doom still needed to go.
The thaumat stone was gone, Idris had given himself to the nexus instead, but as Elayne knelt at the basin’s edge she felt like he was still with her somehow. As she pressed her hands to the rim, shadows played at her fingertips, but they did not crawl up her skin. She listened closely and heard its heartbeat.
Her own heart was pounding but slowly, so slowly, and it synced up. There were options here, she realized, the nexus so full of every possibility, and yet none at all at the same time. She could bend it, like Alaion had wanted her to, forcing it to spread out and go on, or she could push it the other way, clean out the corruption he had wrought and insist it be pure and good and simple.
But it was just a pit, just like Gramps had said. A basin of raw, chaotic aether, and that’s what it wanted to be. So, with her eyes closed and her hands firmly planted on its edge, she let the cold flow through her, out and away and into the nexus. Purple flame flickered over the ground, snaking through vines, under rocks, and into the walls. Even without seeing stones and with rubble piled up all around, the chamber glowed, and then her hands went warm again.
Elayne opened her eyes. It was not perfect by any means, but the slimy, dark corruption had gone. The black crystals that had risen out of the nexus and covered the walls of the hallowed space had gone a luminescent blue, and the whole chamber glittered in the light that was now filtering in through the windows at the top of the tower.
Sunlight.
***
Elayne had promised Frederick they would return to Yavarid, and that’s exactly what they were going to do even if it had to be done on the back of a dragon. The air whipped at their faces as they flew what most would call erratically through the sky. Neoma, her strength returned at the breaking up of the miasma around the duchy, had been able to heal the dragon’s wing where the arrows had pierced it, and in her attempt Wren—she learned the name from the elven boy, Tavaris—shook out his smaller, malformed wing and it grew. It certainly didn’t match the larger one, but Wren had more control now, or at least enough control to swoop up into the sky with five creatures on its back.
Neoma asked to stay behind, and for that Elayne was grateful—she would act as her elven cipher in the castle alongside the Trizians who had come at Rosalind’s call. The Corning and Dwarven troops who had shown up to support Elayne did not cross swords with the rebellious elves, as they had given up almost immediately, and relief was palpable all over Heulux in the two days they had traversed it, assessing the mess Alaion had left behind. Clean up would be long and strenuous, but before she could enact any sort of rule, Elayne had to return to Yavarid and present herself to Quilliam, the new king, and declare herself the rightful duchess. After what they had done—sneaking away in the night, making treaties with other tribes, and essentially declaring war—she knew she had to do at least one thing correctly. That, and, of course, she had given her word.
Behind her on Wren’s back, Frederick was sitting with his eyes wide. Rosalind, of course, was having a great time, shouting and laughing with a too-confident Bix on her shoulders. And then there was Tavaris, Alaion’s son, at the rear. Elayne worried about him when she realized who he was, but when he hugged her and cried that worry slipped away. Despite his height, he was still a kid in elven years, and he begged to go to Yavarid with them. He wanted to see more of Maw, he said, and Elayne thought he might make a good representative of what the people of Heulux could be. Plus, she wasn’t sure Wren would take them without him.
And Wren was certainly taking them. They would get to Yavarid City before nightfall, and Elayne had done her calculations. She smiled back at Fredrick over her shoulder. “We’ll make it, you know!”
Frederick tried to smile back. “Make what?” Wren dipped then, and he grabbed her tightly about the waist.
Elayne laughed. “Quilliam’s nameday! You helped me break the curse, and we’ll be back in time. Like we both promised.”
“Oh.” Frederick’s face changed though the dragon didn’t roll or hitch. He released her. “Right. That.”
“What, aren’t you excited to see your friend be coronated?”
Frederick looked down into his lap. “No, yeah, I am.”
“Everything is sort of going exactly to plan,” she said, nudging him.
He looked up at her again and gave her a half smile. “Sure is.”
***
Frederick was thrilled to slide down off the dragon’s back, but when his feet touched down and he looked out at the courtyard to see the bodies emerging from the castle, his stomach flipped wors
e than it had at any time up in the clouds. Quilliam was leading them, and Voss was right at his side, no surprise, but the rest of the guards with arrows and swords drawn were a bit of a shock. He stepped in front of the others quickly and threw out his hands. “It’s us! Hold your fire!”
The prince held up a single hand, and the others came to a stop. No one had seen a dragon in, well, ever, and one landing in the castle’s courtyard was nothing short of menacing.
“Fred?” Quilliam’s voice rose up from the assembled across the field.
“Yeah,” he replied weakly.
“Who…” The prince started across the field while the guards held their positions, but Voss and Legosen kept to his sides. “Who is with you?”
Frederick glanced back at the others. He was flanked by the son of an elven dictator, a kleptomaniacal kobold, the daughter of a count dressed like a man, and finally a disgraced, usurped, cursed duchess who, by all accounts, was completely unrecognizable to anyone there. He looked back to Quilliam. “Friends,” he said. Then he cleared his throat, remembering. “Dragon’s a friend too, don’t worry.”
The prince came up to him and looked out on the rest. Neither Voss nor Legosen spoke, but both of their faces read more than either could have said. Quilliam finally broke into a wide smile. “You brought me a dragon for my nameday?”
“Uh.” Frederick glanced back at the others again, then he shrugged. “Sort of.”
Quilliam threw his arms out and around the knight, pulling him into a tight embrace. “I knew you hadn’t run off with that poorly duchess! And this dragon will make excellent entertainment for the ball! But who—” The prince’s voice caught. “Who is this?”
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 30
