The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  Wilamena took the golden bracelet from her pocket and looked at Michael. “Get the saddle.” Then she turned and dove over the side, disappearing into the fog-covered water. Michael ran to the saddle and swung it onto his shoulder. It weighed almost nothing. King Robbie bellowed, “They’re coming round again!” But just as Michael looked up to see the dark shapes rushing toward them, there was an explosion of gold from the water, a great rippling jet of flame, and Michael saw four of the demon birds fall burning into the sea as the dragon seized another and literally ripped it apart.

  “Ha!” King Robbie shouted. “That’s the way!”

  The dragon hovered next to the ship, and Michael felt, as he always did in the dragon’s presence, a thrilling wildness in his breast, a sense of being desperately, dangerously alive.

  “Are you ready, Rabbit?”

  “Yes! How do I—”

  “The saddle knows what to do. Throw it.”

  Michael obeyed, and watched as the saddle settled perfectly on the dragon’s back, the straps fastening themselves underneath her torso.

  “You’ll have to leap. I cannot hold to the ship without swamping it.”

  Michael didn’t hesitate, but climbed immediately to the railing. They were still cutting through the water, and Wilamena was flying to keep pace, the beating of her wings taking her up and down, up and down.

  “Whoa, there!” King Robbie said, catching sight of Michael. “What’re you—”

  Michael jumped, landing askew in the saddle, his arms grasping uselessly at the scales of the dragon’s neck, and for one terrifying moment, he thought he might tumble into the sea, but then the saddle seemed to grab hold of him and pull him into place, the straps lashing themselves around his legs.

  “Never fear, Rabbit. Once on my back, you will not fall!”

  Then Michael heard Master Chu clap his hands once—twice—

  A powerful gust of wind swept over the sea, almost pushing the ship onto its side. The fog cleared. Silence.

  The island of Loris was not six hundred yards distant, the city and harbor lit by hundreds of fires. But between themselves and the island was a solid mass of ships, at least twice as many as the attackers, and each one larger and taller than Michael’s ships and bristling with Imps and Screechers and trolls and who knew what else. The sky above was thick with the demonic birds. Their enemy had been waiting for them.

  Then, as if on cue, all the Screechers on all the ships let out a single, shattering cry.

  —

  “Open your eyes.”

  Kate felt fingers at her temples. And it was not the tingle of ghostly fingers, but the pressure of real ones, and she looked up into a pair of green eyes. He was leaning over her; she was lying on the floor, a pillow under her head.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Fine.”

  He moved back as she sat up. She was in the Rose Citadel. She knew that, though she had never been in this room before. It had a stone floor, a long wooden table, paintings and maps on the walls. There were candles about the room, more hanging from a pair of iron chandeliers, and there were three curtained archways that gave out to a wide balcony, past which she could see the glow of fires. And she could smell smoke and burning metal and tar. There was the shrieking of morum cadi, but it sounded far away.

  The patched pants and shirt and jacket that he’d worn when he’d appeared to her—Rafe’s clothes—were gone, and he was dressed in a long black robe. His dark hair, his slightly crooked nose, his eyes—all that was the same.

  She tried not to look at him, and forced herself to stand.

  “Has anyone told you what the Books are doing?”

  “Yes. They’re tearing apart the world; and the only way to stop it is for me and Michael and Emma to die.”

  “Then lucky for you, I’m the one person who knows how to save you.”

  She looked at him now, unable not to.

  “I’m not lying,” he said. “Why would I? I’ve already got you here.”

  “Tell me how.”

  He smiled. “Patience.”

  Frustrated, Kate turned away, and her eyes fell on a sword that was lying on the table. It was three feet long and sheathed in a beaten leather scabbard, and had a bone handle. She knew she had seen it somewhere before.

  He reached over and picked it up. “This belonged to your friend Gabriel. He used it to kill Rourke, which was a blow, I’ll confess. Rourke was a faithful servant. Perhaps after I’ve got the Chronicle, I’ll bring him back.”

  “Where’s Gabriel now?”

  “Dead.”

  He threw the sword carelessly onto the table. Kate sensed he was telling the truth about Gabriel, and struggled not to show how much it upset her.

  “Come here.” He took her hand and started to draw her toward the balcony.

  “Emma—”

  “Not yet. I’ll know when she’s close. I want to show you something.”

  Holding his hand caused a shiver to run through Kate’s entire body, the same as it had on a street in New York a hundred years ago. And though she hated herself for it, she did not try to pull away.

  But this isn’t him, she told herself. This isn’t Rafe.

  He led her to the edge of the balcony, to where they could look out over the city to the harbor and the sea beyond.

  The Loris that Kate had first come to, days before, had been calm, peaceful, beautiful. Terraced houses and narrow stone streets, groves of olive and lemon trees, and even at night, the white stone that the city was built from seemed to make everything glow. What she saw now was a hellish version of that city. The houses torn down. Olive and lemon groves burned. The white stone scorched with smoke. The city swarmed with Imps and Screechers and other creatures that Kate couldn’t identify, and she could see huge engines of war gathered behind the walls, great boiling vats of tar and oil. And the noise rising up—the shrieking and shouting, the steady and terrible beat of drums—was both deafening and jarring, and it battered at the remnants of her courage.

  But that wasn’t the worst.

  Just past the arms of the harbor, she saw the two fleets, the one massive, the one so much smaller, and the smaller she knew contained Michael and King Robbie and all their friends—

  There was no way they could win; they were doomed.

  “Please—”

  “No, not this time.”

  “But—”

  “It’s up to them. If they surrender, I won’t harm them. It’s their choice.”

  “But they’ll never surrender! King Robbie, the others, you know they won’t!”

  And he said, “Then they’ll die.”

  —

  For the first few minutes, though Michael told himself the elfish saddle would keep him firmly on the dragon’s back and he was in no danger of falling off, he found he could do nothing but hold on and try not to vomit as Wilamena spun and flipped and dove through the air. It was still hours till dawn, but Michael could see, thanks to the showers of flaming arrows, the fires aboard the ships, and the glow from the distant lights of Loris. He could see how the two fleets had moved in among each other, the enemy throwing out chains and hooks to grapple onto King Robbie’s ships, pulling in close so that their Imps and Screechers could swarm over the sides. And even with the wind rushing past, he could hear the cries of the morum cadi, the horns and drumbeats, the swoosh of arrows, the thud of spears striking wood: none of it escaped him.

  And there was something else, apart from the battle raging on the water, that engaged Michael’s attention. He’d always—at least since he’d known who the dragon was—been able to detect Wilamena in her. Now, as she ruthlessly tore through and burned and ripped apart the flying creatures of the enemy, she seemed somehow more dragon, and less elf princess, than ever before.

  Fortunately, this new viciousness meant that soon enough, the sky was clear. But Michael didn’t celebrate. For, looking down, he could see that their side was still greatly outnumbered.

  “Go back to th
e ship!” Michael shouted. “We need to talk to King Robbie.”

  To his distress, Wilamena flipped backward and dove straight down.

  They found the dwarf king’s ship trapped by a much larger ship and in the process of being boarded, with Imps and Screechers storming across planks and King Robbie’s soldiers struggling to fight them off.

  “We have to help them!” Michael cried.

  The dragon growled, “How long can you hold your breath?”

  “What?”

  And Michael just had time to grab hold of his glasses and take a deep gulp of air as the dragon plunged into the water beside the enemy ship. All around them was darkness, and the water was very cold, but Michael could feel the dragon wiggling like a great fish, her tail whipping behind them; then she grasped on to something and, a moment later, there was an explosion of light. By the time he dared to look, he saw the dragon unleashing a concentrated stream of fire into the wooden bottom of the ship. Michael could feel the water heating up around him, then the fire stopped, and the dragon began ripping out the charred planks with her claws, creating a bigger and bigger hole in the bottom of the ship, and Michael pounded against the dragon’s back to tell her he had run out of breath, but she kept ripping out planks, making the hole ever bigger, and just as Michael reached the point where he truly knew he couldn’t take any more, the dragon let go, thrusting up to the surface.

  The air was the sweetest thing Michael had ever tasted.

  “Forgive me, Rabbit. I had to make sure the hole was large enough.”

  “Wa—was it?”

  “Look.”

  And Michael put his dripping glasses on in time to see the enormous ship disappearing below the surface of the sea, the Imps and Screechers jumping into the water, where they were being picked off by Robbie McLaur’s archers.

  Okay, he thought, one down. Fifty to go.

  Then the dragon dove toward the dwarf king’s ship. Robbie McLaur was at the rail to meet them.

  “That was well done, Princess! We’re in your debt—again!”

  “But how’re you gonna get past their ships?” Michael shouted, looking out at the still-massive fleet that stood between them and the harbor.

  The dwarf king smiled, and Michael could see that in his own way, he was loving this.

  “We just had to get close enough to shore. Remember the surprise.” He raised his shield, and a crossbow bolt thudded into it. “The fact is, dwarves fight better with something solid under their feet.” Then he turned to where Magda von Klappen stood with Master Chu and shouted:

  “You ready?”

  “We are!” Magda von Klappen snapped. “Though this is complex and—”

  “Right! Get a move on!” And Michael saw the dwarf king signal a trumpeter, and four short blasts sounded through the din. There followed more shouts and bursts of activity on all their ships, and Michael could see the human and dwarfish soldiers doing something to their boots.

  “What’s going on?” Michael asked. “What’s happening?”

  For already he felt the temperature dropping sharply, and the dragon said:

  “Look at the water.”

  Michael glanced down and saw ice forming across the surface of the sea, spreading at an incredible speed as the black water turned white and hard, and all the ships were held fast. Then wooden ramps and iron poles shot down out of their ships, biting into the ice so that the ships were held upright, and Michael saw dwarves and men running down the ramps, and he waited for them to hit the ice and slip, but they didn’t. And he saw that each one had affixed a kind of sharp-toothed metal bracket to the bottoms of their feet—and Michael recalled all the dwarfish smiths on the island so hard at work—and the soldiers’ feet gripped the ice, and this was happening all over, their boats held in place while their armies poured down onto the ice. He noticed that the elves did not wear the crampons, and at first he thought they must not like how they looked, but then he saw that they didn’t need them, the elves ran lightly and surely across the ice.

  The enemies’ ships, meanwhile, were sprawled on their sides, many of the Imps and Screechers trapped within, and the ones who could scramble out were slipping and falling and no match for the sure-footed dwarves and elves and humans.

  In a moment, the tide of the battle had turned.

  There was another blast from the horns, and Michael heard the dwarf king’s voice, booming, “To the wall! To the wall!”

  “Shall we help them?” the dragon purred.

  “Yes,” Michael said. And he felt a new strength rising inside him.

  The dragon tore over the now-chaotic enemy, scattering them further while King Robbie and the army raced into the rocky arms of the harbor.

  Before them, the white walls of Loris rose up, and Michael could see the ramparts bristling with figures, and as Michael’s army charged toward shore, arrows rained down from above. Wilamena swerved upward, and Michael could hear the steel tips clattering off her mailed stomach.

  The dragon checked her climb, just out of bowshot, and Michael, his heart hammering, looked down and saw the army—his army—gathering on the strip of beach before the walls of the city, and he knew that King Robbie would be forming them into units, but the crampons that had helped them cross the ice were now hindering them—

  “We have to do something,” Michael shouted. “We have to—”

  “We have our own problems, Rabbit.”

  Following the dragon’s gaze, Michael looked up, past the town, and saw a shape rising out of the Citadel. His heart skipped a beat. Then another shape rose up. And another.

  “Oh no,” Michael breathed.

  The three dragons wheeled about in the air, unleashed jets of flame, and dove directly at them.

  —

  For a moment, seeing the ice spread across the harbor, and watching the dwarves, elves, and humans race toward the city—seeing the distant flash of gold she knew was Wilamena—Kate had felt a spark of hope.

  But when she glanced at Rafe, he was smiling, and she took in the size of the army massing behind the walls, and then the three dragons rose up into the air, and Kate whirled on him, tears lashing her eyes, wild with fear and anger.

  “Why did you bring me here? Just to watch all my friends die?! To watch you murder them?!”

  In a flash, his hand was around her neck and he was leaning forward, his voice a passionate hiss:

  “I brought you here because I need you. Don’t you see that? I need you to keep me human. I told you I know myself and I do. Without you, I’m only the monster! I’m only that!” He swung his arm toward the battle, and Kate understood that it was not hatred fueling him, but desperation. “That’s not the world I want! You believed I was still alive in your enemy. Believe in me now. All this will be over. We’ll be together!”

  “You deserve to die!”

  The words sprang out of her, surprising both of them. His hand relaxed. Kate choked back sobs, but she kept her eyes fixed on his.

  “Henrietta Burke told me to love you. She said that would make all the difference. But she didn’t have to tell me, I already did love you! And I kept thinking, all this time, that Rafe was in there somewhere, that he’d come out if I just believed in him.”

  “And now what do you think?” His voice was suddenly, eerily cold.

  “I don’t know if you’re still Rafe or not, if he’s in there or not, but you need to die.”

  He pulled her closer; she could feel his breath against her face. “And will you be the one to kill me, Kate? Can you?”

  Kate stared at him, wondering the same thing.

  Then, without warning, he cried out and fell to his knees.

  On instinct, Kate dropped beside him.

  He gasped, “How…”

  Unable to stop herself, Kate asked, “What is it? What happened?”

  “She…gave them…back their memories.”

  “What…”

  “Your sister—I can’t hold—”

  He let out another cr
y of pain, and then light began streaming out of him. Kate stumbled backward, blinking at the explosion of brightness, and the light rose up from him in a great rush, higher and higher, till it disappeared into the night.

  Kate stared in wonder; this was something Emma had done.

  She heard a crashing and looked out. A huge part of the city wall had collapsed, and it seemed to her that some power or force had gone out of the hordes of Imps and Screechers and trolls; they looked disorganized, lost.

  She glanced once more at Rafe, the light still streaming out of him, his eyes shut tight. Then she turned and ran.

  Emma was coming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The Plunge

  The prison was being dismantled, the cages smashed and tossed into the pit. A massive bonfire now raged there, throwing its flames high into the sky. For a while, pandemonium had reigned as the prisoners had clambered down the rickety scaffolding to the ground. Now the arena had mostly emptied out, and things were calmer.

  During the most chaotic moments, when the arena had been thronged by freed men, women, and children, Emma had clung to Gabriel’s side, clutching his large, rough hand in her good one (How was it that he could be dead? He was so real and solid), while she held her other hand tight against her chest and above her heart to minimize the throbbing. The first thing Gabriel had done had been to bandage her wound, kneeling before her and wrapping a strip of cloth tightly around and around her hand. It had helped stem the bleeding, though dark red irises had appeared on both the front and back of the dressing.

  But Emma scarcely noticed the blood, or felt the throbbing.

  Her attention, when she wasn’t thinking about Gabriel and how she was going to save him, how she would correct the terrible mistake of his presence here—that’s what it was, a mistake—had been drawn by the liberated host of the dead.

  Since her arrival in that world, she had grown almost used to the blank expressions, the dull emptiness of people’s eyes, their listlessness and silence—perhaps the silence and hush most of all. And so it had been dizzying when a thousand people had all started speaking at once, calling to one another, crying, shouting, laughing even.