Pip was there, too; it’d come over during the night. The little dragon glared at me as I went past the tree and out to the tumbled black rocks that lined the shore of Heartsease.
The river was dark and still. I turned my back on the Sunrise and looked across at the Twilight. From here the steep streets seemed empty, desolate. The wind and flame from the first night hadn’t come back. Arhionvar was waiting until tonight, I figured, saving its strength so it could finish the Wellmet magic once and for all. I didn’t have much time.
I climbed into the rowboat and dropped the oars into the oarlocks. I looked back at Heartsease, a ragged, dark shadow against the black clouds.
Good-bye, Nevery.
The river rippled silver under the gray-black sky. I rowed myself to one of the docks that led to stone steps that went up to a street along the river.
Black clouds pressed down from overhead; the air was thick with yellow-black fog. Even though it was morning, it was as dark as twilight, but with no stars. The air was cold and still. Even my breaths sounded loud. Prickles of dread picked at me with icy fingers.
I stood on the dock, waiting for Pip, and then felt the pull of my locus stone getting stronger. From Heartsease came a golden blur, skimming over the waves. Pip landed at the end of the dock and perched there, lashing its tail.
Right, time to go. I went up the stone steps and onto the Sunrise street. It led along the riverbank; I turned and headed up a wider street that led uphill, toward the Dawn Palace. As I climbed higher, seeing nobody, hearing nothing, the air grew colder. I was glad for my black sweater.
It was too quiet. The sky grew darker, and the dread pressed down on me; the air grew thick and hard to breathe. The houses on either side of the street were empty, their doors hanging open from people fleeing as fast as they could run from the Arhionvar dread.
I wondered if Arhionvar could see me, a bright point in the darkness, and if it was waiting for me.
I paused and looked back toward the Twilight. Oh, no. Black clouds crept across the sky, crossing the line of the river through the city. As the clouds spread, fingers of whirling wind poked down from them and went skipping across the Twilight side of the river. Wherever they touched, fire leaped up. Nevery was over there somewhere, and Rowan. And the Wellmet magic, readying itself in the Dusk House pit. Arhionvar had made darkness in the daytime; this was its attack. I’d run out of time.
I pushed on through the darkness and dread, seeing nothing and no one, until I reached the Dawn Palace. I paused at the gate, peering in. The gallows tree stood in the middle of the courtyard, the noose hanging down. The air was still, icy cold and stifling at the same time, but overhead the black clouds churned with silent wind.
On cat feet I crept across the courtyard and up the steps to the front doors, and went in. My footsteps echoed as I went through the wide hallway there.
I needed to find Kerrn first. She’d know where Benet was. The duchess’s rooms, then. I raced down a dark hallway and up three sets of stairs, then along another carpeted hallway. Pip followed.
There, the duchess’s door. It was shut. And locked.
I knocked, the sound faint in the thick air. “Kerrn,” I whispered. She’d never hear me. “Captain Kerrn!” I shouted.
The keys jangled in the lock and the door flew open. Kerrn stood there with her sword drawn. Her braid had come unraveled and her face was pale and smudged with soot.
“You all right?” I asked.
She jerked out a nod.
“We need to hurry,” I said. “Where’s the duchess?”
Kerrn stared at me, her teeth clenched and eyes cold. When she spoke, her accent was very thick. “It is too late.”
Oh. Oh, no. Poor Rowan.
Kerrn pointed farther into the room. On the duchess’s bed was a long, covered shape—her body.
“She has just died. She has turned to stone,” Kerrn said quietly. “We must leave her here. We can go through the streets?”
I nodded. “We have to get Benet first. D’you have keys?”
“I have them,” she said.
We hurried down through the palace to the prison cells underneath it.
They’d put him in the same cell they always put me in. When we opened the door, Benet bulled out, swinging a broken-off chair leg. Kerrn dropped the keys and went for her sword; then Benet saw me and stopped.
“You’re not dead,” he said.
No, I wasn’t. I shook my head.
Benet reached out with a big hand and grabbed me by the scruff of my neck. He bent down and growled into my face, “Next time be more careful, you.”
“I will, Benet,” I said. My voice sounded squeaky.
“You’d better,” he said, and let me go.
* * *
Boy is off on mission to lead Duchess, Captain Kerrn, Benet out of Dawn Palace.
Conditions in Twilight worsening. People frightened, growing desperate enough to flee city. All supplies cut off; food already growing short. Winds and fires making organization difficult.
Have met with Lady Rowan and new Underlord, Embre-wing. Can now see family resemblance between Connwaer and his cousin. Embre has set up tents in Sark Square for Sunrise people, organized patrols by minions, set gutterboys and guttergirls hunting down and trapping white predator-cats, spies of Arhionvar. Lady Rowan has sent Twilight and Sunrise people to work in fire teams, with buckets of water in case of sparks.
Went to Dusk House pit. Air there alive with magic.
Have returned to Heartsease. Am preparing pyrotechnic traps. We can set them at various points in the Twilight. Resulting explosions will strengthen our defense, make our weakened magic’s spells stronger.
* * *
CHAPTER 31
Kerrn and Benet and I headed down the hill from the Dawn Palace toward the bridge. Across the river, fires burned in the Twilight.
“How’re we getting across?” Benet asked. Kerrn had been leading us toward the bridge.
“Not that way,” I told her. “I’ve got a boat at a dock off High Street.”
“This way, then,” Kerrn said, turning right down a narrow alley. She went first, then Benet with his broken-off chair leg, then me.
As we came out onto a wide street, a whirlwind swept out of an alley ahead of us, blocking our way to the bridge. It spun in place in the middle of the street, flinging off shards of glass and splinters; a shard slashed across Benet’s face, drawing a line of blood. Then another whirlwind appeared, and as one they turned and roared toward us.
“Get back!” Kerrn shouted. Her sword made a ringing sound as she drew it from its sheath. The whirlwind sent out a tendril of wind like a reaching arm, and Kerrn slashed at it with her sword until it dissolved into dust and stray breezes.
The other whirlwind hurled a chunk of brick, and Benet batted it aside with his chair leg. Benet turned and shoved me back into the alley. “Stay out of the way, you.”
Right. I backed away, looking wildly around for Pip. I could help if I did some magic.
There, across the alley, perched on a third-story windowsill, far overhead. Too far for a spell to work very well.
“Pip!” I called.
The dragon cast me a glance and hopped off the windowsill, then flew higher to perch at the very edge of the roof.
At the mouth of the alley the fight with the whirlwinds went on; I heard a clang as a sword struck something, and then Benet shouted.
Wait. This was it. Benet and Kerrn were distracted. Time for me to do what I’d come here to do.
I stood in the alleyway, looking up at Pip. I needed it to come down and help me. “Pip, you’re being stupid,” I called. It didn’t need to try so hard to stay away from me. I needed it with me while I dealt with Arhionvar. I wasn’t going to hurt it.
Was I?
Oh. No. I was the one being stupid. The little dragon crouched on the gutter, shivering, curling its tail around itself.
What if I’d been stuffed into an old knapsack and stolen away from
my home, and knew that Nevery was gone forever? What if I had to stay with somebody because of a locus stone; what if that person kept using me to do magic? What would I think of the stranger who did that to me?
I’d hate him, was what.
“I’m sorry, Pip,” I whispered. The little dragon looked so alone, perched up there.
Alone…
The Wellmet magic had chosen me because I’d been alone, because I could understand what that meant.
But I hadn’t really understood.
The Wellmet magic had been a dragon. It was the only one of its kind here, but it had a city of people to protect, and we comforted it. Arhionvar didn’t have anything. Its city had been destroyed, and all its people had fled. It was a predator because it was a wanderer, trying to steal a new city for itself, so it wouldn’t be alone anymore. It was more alone than I’d ever been, even when I’d been a gutterboy sleeping in winter doorways in the Twilight.
“Arhionvar,” I whispered.
I heard roaring inside my ears. Arhionvar pried at me with fingers made of stony dread. Black spots swam before my eyes. I shook my head and blinked the black away to see.
I just had to tell Kerrn and Benet to go on without me, and then I could deal with Arhionvar.
In the street, Kerrn swung her blade around and sliced the whirlwind in half. Bricks and wooden shards rained to the ground as it fell apart. The other whirlwind spun into an alley and disappeared.
Kerrn sheathed her sword. Benet swung around and spotted me in my alleyway.
“Come on,” he said.
I kept my head down. “You go ahead,” I said. “I’ve got something to do here.”
I backed away a step, ready to run into the alley to get away, when Benet lunged forward and grabbed me by the shoulder.
“No you don’t,” he growled. “You said you’d be careful.”
“Benet—” I said.
“Master Nevery wouldn’t like it,” he said. Keeping hold of my arm, he nodded at Kerrn.
I didn’t say anything. Benet and Kerrn hurried us away, down the hill to the docks where we’d left the boat. We piled in and Benet set to the oars.
I felt Arhionvar’s attention on me the whole way, in the dread pressing down and in the shadows that kept creeping in at the edge of my vision. I crouched in the bottom of the boat, shivering.
When we got to Heartsease, Benet dragged me out of the rowboat and across the cobblestones to find Nevery.
He was there, in the unfinished storage room. Barrels and sacks of blackpowder materials were piled around the room; on the plank table he’d laid out the ingredients for a slowsilver fuse like the one I’d read about in the Jaspers treatise. He sat on a box-chair at the table, measuring out a vial of tourmalifine crystals.
He glanced up, then looked back at the measuring. “Ah, Benet,” he said. “Good. Just a moment.”
I stared down at the floor. Arhionvar pulled at me, hanging over my head like a cloud of dread. My breath came short.
A clatter of footsteps on the cobblestones outside, and Rowan burst in the door. She spied me and came over.
“I saw Kerrn outside,” she panted. “Where is my mother?”
I didn’t look up.
“She’s dead, Lady Rowan,” Benet said.
At the table, I heard a clink as Nevery set down the vial, then heard him get to his feet.
Rowan stepped away from me. I stole a quick glance through the gathering darkness; her face was white.
“Conn?” Nevery said.
Arhionvar pulled at me, making it hard to think. “All right,” I said. The words felt strange as I spoke them. Arhionvar was here, surrounding me with tendrils of shadow. “Nev—” My mouth felt frozen, like it was turning to stone. “Set—off the—pyrotechnic—traps.”
Nevery reached out for me. I saw his lips moving, but couldn’t hear him through the gathering dread.
They needed to get away. “Now!” I shouted, and my voice boomed out like a crash of thunder.
At the sound, the unfinished roof of Heartsease blew off, bricks and shards of wood spraying out into the night. Deepest black and silver against the clouds, magic arced down and slammed into me. Another bolt of magic followed, trailing sparks like a shooting star, wrapping me up in a blaze of light.
I threw my head back and looked up, into the blaze of stars and blackest, deepest night that was the magic. It drew me up; my feet left the ground; sparks rained down all around me.
Something pulled at my feet. I looked down through the magic.
Nevery held one leg; Rowan and Benet held the other, anchoring me to the earth.
“Connwaer!” Nevery shouted.
He knew my name, like all true names, had power; it smashed through the magic, weakening Arhionvar’s hold on me.
I looked down at Nevery and Rowan and Benet. Wind whipped their clothes and they squinted against the bright light surrounding me. They held on to my feet tightly.
If I stayed with them, I couldn’t do the thing I needed to do. I’m sorry, Nevery.
I kicked my feet free and let the magic pull me out of their hands. I saw a flash of glimmer-gold wings, and Pip shot past me, straight into the heart of the magic. Arhionvar pulled me up, and away.
CHAPTER 32
The magic held me like a dragon holding me in its claw. Black clouds boiled around me; wisps of cloud fluttered in the wind; stars like sparks whirled past and then away. In the middle of the whirlwind, where I floated, it was black and silent and still. Pip hung in the air near me, its wings stretched wide, its eyes flashing red.
The Wellmet magic had told me what to do next. From the larpenti spell and the embero spell I’d learned the word for change; from the finding spell I knew how to ask a question; from the spells in the book Nevery’d sent with me, I pieced together enough words to ask Arhionvar what it wanted. I shouted the spellwords as loud as I could; they went through my locus magicalicus and Pip, and the magic heard them.
It didn’t answer in spellwords; it answered by showing me.
Slowly the black clouds opened. Through a gap like a window I saw a shining city in the mountains, surrounded by snow and white clouds and silence. The city of Arhionvar, as it’d once been. The picture shivered, and a crack opened in the middle of the city; I saw people on the streets with their mouths open, screaming, running away, but they didn’t make any sound. Then half the mountain slid away, silently crumbling into boulders and clouds of snow, the people going with it, falling down into the darkness.
Dust and snow crystals billowed up, glinting in the sunshine. The slowsilver under the mountain drained away. The surviving people climbed down from the mountain and went to other cities. The Arhionvar magic was left alone, longing for its city full of people, desolate and empty. It wandered for a long, long time, searching, getting emptier and more alone. It wanted what Wellmet had, a city full of people, and to get that it needed a wizard to work its will. Me. It wanted me. Once it had me, it’d devour Wellmet’s magic and use me to take over the city.
The cold, dead feeling of stone spread through me. My skin numbed; dread got into my chest and left me gasping for breath.
Then, I felt a prickle. Slowly my head turned. There was Pip, floating beside me, its teeth bared. On my hand, a bleeding bite mark, like drops of blood on white snow.
At the same moment, the warmth of the Wellmet magic flowed into me, pushing back the heavy dread of Arhionvar. Spellwords rattled through my bones, too loud for my ears to hear. Warmth flowed around cold stone. As the magics struggled, like dragons snapping and swirling together, whirlwinds spun down into the city. Fires blazed in the Twilight, sending black smoke-smudges into the sky; buildings crumbled in the Sunrise; the river raged and boiled, washing away the docks along its edges.
The dread stone feeling grew worse. Arhionvar was stronger—far stronger—than weakened Wellmet.
I couldn’t let Arhionvar destroy Wellmet.
Then, from the Twilight, far below, I felt the first pyrote
chnic trap explode. Nevery’d set it off. Then another, and another—blackpowder explosions that echoed and crashed and roared through the magics. I knew a banishing spell; I knew the spellwords for exile. With my help and the pyrotechnics, Wellmet could force Arhionvar out of the city. I opened my mouth to shout the banishing spell; I felt it gather in my throat, loud as thunder.
No.
Arhionvar had been a dragon just like Pip; it was a magic just like the magic of Wellmet. It couldn’t be left to wander alone.
With the dread magic flowing through me and the warmth of the Wellmet magic swirling around me and Pip, I looked down at the city, spread out like a map below me. I needed the slowsilver for this spell.
There!
I spoke words and called on the magics, and the river lifted out of its banks, fat and full of fish and trash and mud, hanging above the city like a huge, brown, dripping snake, writhing and flowing in its own wind.
Left behind, in the river’s channel through the rock Wellmet was built on, flowing around the wizards’ islands, was the city’s slowsilver. It was another river, shining like a silver ribbon.
I reached down with the magic and the river of slowsilver flowed from its banks, rippling up into the sky in a glowing arc and into my hands. Both of the magics yearned toward it. I gave one end of it to the Wellmet magic and the other end to Arhionvar, sealing the magics to the city and to each other. Like pyrotechnic materials combining, the magics crashed together and the slowsilver ribbon dissolved into a million shining droplets, hovering in the air, surrounding us.
One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.
The spell needed one more thing to be completed.
I’d been chosen by both of the magics. I’d given up my first locus magicalicus for the magic, and I’d given up my home, Heartsease. I only had one more thing to give up.
Nevery, I’m sorry.
I gave the magics me.
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