by A. J. Ponder
Arrant’s forces wouldn’t be held back for long. The bell should be ringing. The evacuation should have started.
Back at the city walls Dirk would already have set the boiling oil traps and be retreating. Together with the bravest soldiers he’d be deliberately corralling the enemy toward the trap.
That damned bell needed to ring now if it was to warn Avondale in time.
“Wizards, please ring the bell in the bell-tower.”
They looked at Sylvalla. “What?”
“Ring the bell—by the gods, please ring the bell, or my people will die like rats in a hole.”
“Sorry—I can’t ring the bell,” Capro said. “No, wait—I can make it sound like it’s ringing.”
The sound of tinny bells rang over the city.
“Deeper,” Sylvalla said, and the sound deepened to an insistent clang, clang, clang.
People were running. Hundreds of them. Not the crowd she’d expected, but enough to cause chaos back at the exit tunnel Torri had organised for their escape.
Amarinda and too many good people are being left behind.
“What about the people in the bell tower?” someone asked, as Sylvalla joined Torri and her engineers.
And I can’t save them, either. “Probably dead.”
“Go!” Torri ordered Sylvalla. “My engineers and I will follow in a minute.”
“But—”
“There’s nothing you can do. Go!” Torri insisted.
“Ready the barricades!” Torri yelled. “And…now!” She cut a stay with an axe and the boards went up, blocking off the courtyard’s exits to create a funnel-like trap intended to squeeze the enemy soldiers into a killing ground.
A cheer rang out.
“It’s not over yet,” Torri said.
“Are the archers coming, or what?” one of Torri’s engineers yelled. “They’re supposed to be here.”
“They’re coming,” Mr Goodfellow yelled. “See?” He pointed to the archers clambering over the rooves of the houses closest to the castle.
The last of the Avondale civilians almost ran into the trap.
“Other way!” Torri’s people and the evacuating soldiers screamed at locals who tried to enter. The lieutenant obviously wasn’t all bad, he’d done a good job ensuring his men listened to instructions.
“Go!” Torri repeated. “Run. Won’t be long now. They’re coming!”
Heart thumping, Sylvalla took off.
KaBOOM! The first shockwave hit her hard, sent her diving. Only as she rolled back to her feet did she feel the bloody graze where an arrow had clipped her arm.
Countdown: Day 1 of the Timelock
24 hours and counting…
The time comes
Potsie raised his voice to cut through the arguing wizards. “We have less than twenty-four hours before the paths open. To defeat Dothie, or should I say Dothie-Xem, the blasphemous union between Dothie and The Nameless One—”
“Might as well call him Xem’rial now,” I said. “It’s a bit late to be coy about summoning the monster now he and his brother are already here.”
Potsie coughed. “Anyway, we need to make a decision—save Bairnsley University or help Sylvalla defend Avondale and take down Dothie-Xem.”
“That is no choice,” one of the oldsters said. “I care not for the outside world. I vote for Bairnsley U.”
Potsie blinked owlishly from behind his glasses. “No, no, we cannot let Dothie-Xem free…he will create chaos, and then come back and kill us all.”
I shook my head. “Those options are terrible. There has to be a better way.”
“I hope so,” Potsie said. “That’s why I’ve asked for your support. I alone do not want the burden of having to make the decision to abandon our beloved university or our colleagues to almost certain death.”
“What?” the oldster demanded. “Are you crazy? Save some poxy kingdoms over Bairnsley University? Never!”
“Let’s vote,” I said, trying to cool tensions. “Then we can make a decision about what magic can be authorised—”
An alarm rang out.
“He’s out!” Potsie yelled.
The time-freeze had broken nearly twenty hours early. We all looked to each other. It hadn’t been one of us.
Alarms were ringing.
Of course they are, Dothie’s out!
My stomach lurched—the alarm was ringing from the wrong direction.
“The university,” Mynyn yelled. “It’s under attack.”
All our arguing had been for nothing. The university bells had never rung so loud, or so long. Avondale was going to fall, no matter what Potsie said. So for the rest of us, the only question that remained was, would our precious university fall also?
We ran.
§
Focus, Torri thought, fumbling the flint.
The enemy soldiers were coming at a frightening pace.
They couldn’t be allowed time to think or they’d easily push down her hasty barricades.
Torri watched. Waited. Then, when nearly two hundred men were in the trap, she lit the fuse.
“Go. Go Go!” she yelled.
Her crew and the archers scrambled.
Three, two, one. The detonation ricocheted. Smoke blasted through the air.
Coughing and choking, her engineers and archers fell back to set the next trap, before the castle’s portcullis.
Torri’s engineers were laying down the bombs when the archers started firing.
“By the gods!” an archer yelled, and fell, encompassed in flame. Arrant! He strode toward them, calling his soldiers to join him and attack.
“Steady,” Torri said. “Steady. Get it right.” Her words were almost drowned by the sound of the archers firing.
“Go!” she yelled. The engineers and archers didn’t need any encouragement. They fled. As soon as her engineers were past, she raised the line of barricades with the chop of an axe.
Arrant levelled a spell at her.
Sylvalla should be safely in the tunnels by now. She’d better be. Torri lit the long fuse and pelted toward the portcullis, a fireball sizzling overhead.
Three, two— The explosion knocked her off her feet. Mud and rock pelted her.
Someone was running past her crew, toward her—Sylvalla. Dirk and Jonathan were not far behind.
What’s she doing?
Behind Torri, the enemy roared toward them like the tide. An arrow grazed her arm. Another whistled past an ear. I’m not going to make it. None of my traps have slowed them down. They keep on coming, uncaring of the carnage.
“Queen Sylvalla,” Torri yelled. “Close the portcullis.”
Despite Arrant and his army descending, Sylvalla yelled, “Not yet, Dirk. Wait for Torri.”
Dirk ignored the order and slashed at the rope holding the portcullis open. Torri scrambled to make it before it clanged to the ground and locked into place.
“Thank you,” Torri said.
Sylvalla grabbed one of her arms, and Dirk the other. Together, they scrambled to the stables as enemy archers lined up to shoot through the iron bars.
Behind them was a loud crash.
“It’s Arrant!” Jonathan yelled, raising a magic shield that looked like a soap bubble. “I told them he was using magic. And strong magic, too. Tearing down a portcullis is no mean feat.”
Typical wizard, talking too much. Pain from the arrow shooting through her arm, Torri threw off Sylvalla’s hand and tossed a bomb at Arrant.
She flinched for the expected explosion, but there was none.
Keep running. The smells of horses and fear were overwhelming as they raced through the empty stables to the tunnel.
Another arrow. It pierced Jonathan’s shield and ripped through Torri’s leg. She fell, pain flaring red-hot even as the rest of her felt slow as stone. Gods, everything hurts!
Jonathan turned back, flame erupting from his fingers.
The enemy soldiers threw themselves behind cover.
A few more
steps and we’ll be in the tunnel—we can blow the stables and be gone. She lit a bomb and placed it in the waiting wheelbarrow.
Her energy was fading now. I’ve lost too much blood.
Torri thought about the dangerous book she carried in her side-bag. Too dangerous to leave it behind. I should have destroyed it… “The book, Sylvalla, the book,” Torri said, her eyes closing, stretching out her hand to give the ancient document[105] to Sylvalla.
Mr Goodfellow senior snatched the book away.
Where’d he come from?
It didn’t matter, it was already too late. “Run, Sylvalla!” Torri cried. “Run fast, the world is about to explode.”
Sylvalla and Jonathan and Dirk grabbed Torri and ran. The pain was unbearable. Torri couldn’t catch her breath. The explosion should come any moment.
There was a whump!
Torri braced for the explosion.
Last Goodbyes
Dothie-Xem opened a rift to Avondale, furious. If it wasn’t for Xem’rial’s knowledge and Toots, his familiar, alerting him, he’d never have known he was caught in a Timelock, let alone be able to break out before the spell ended. Angrily, he reset the path for the castle courtyard, determined to tear the place apart, get Sylvalla and go back to making the wizards pay for their treachery.
Halfway out of the path, a familiar smell tickled his nose and his throat…the combination of sulphur and charcoal and pee.
“Hells!” Dothie-Xem shrieked, recognising the combination. “Explosives!”
Dothie-Xem heard the whump of air being sucked into an explosion, slammed a damper onto the powder-keg and raised a shield.
Of all the luck, Dothie-Xem thought.
“Brother Xem’rial,” Emz’rial cried.
“Emz’rial?” Dothie-Xem said. “You’re here.”
“Idiot,” Arrant screamed. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve let them get away.”
“Not quite,” Dothie-Xem replied, throwing a magical attack at the pyromaniac girl, Torri. She was shielded by the two pesky Goodfellows, but Xem’rial’s magical blast had allowed an arrow to get through their shield, piercing Torri’s leg. Pity it wasn’t Sylvalla but, with any luck, the queen and her friends would be killed by falling stone from the crumbling tunnel.
He raised his arms.
§
Mynyn and I rushed through the main doors of Bairnsley University. As soon as we stepped inside, we were overwhelmed by the stench of rotten eggs.
“Hells bane and sulphur,” Potsie said. “Freddie, what should we do now?”
“Open the chamber doors wide,” I yelled.
Potsie pushed harder. The body blocking the door rolled just enough for me to squeeze in.
It was a chilling sight. Wizards I’d known for years lay on the floor, dead or injured—I couldn’t tell.
Heroically holding my robes over my nose to avoid the fumes, I shoved the body blocking the floor out of the way, and raced to the cracked university foundation stone, tipping ingredients out of my pockets as I went. I was searching for something, anything, to neutralise the smoke-like toxin flooding the chamber. It was like breathing brown coal and horse dung.
Had Dothie-Xem turned all these wizards into fruit flies? Or had some of them been in hiding?
Leaving the door ajar to help clear the smoke, Potsie and I ran to pull wizards away from the smoke.
Denowe stirred as he got closer to the door. “Poison smoke trap. I couldn’t pull all the poison from the spell,” he said.
The broken university keystone was still belching out the magic smoke, as were the walls all around.
In the smoke there were visions—visions of Sylvalla sealing the magical breach, shutting magic from the world forever. They were the same visions Dothie had used to convince many that Sylvalla would destroy Bairnsley and even magic itself.
“Liar!” Potsie yelled. “Liar!” He strode through the swirling visions, waving his arms in an attempt to dispel them.
Coughing from the fumes, I searched through my sleeves for a vial of powdered stone and poured it over the roiling flames. Nothing.
“Try the spell for drawing poison,” Potsie yelled.
“Aus verdammtem Ort.” Immediately, the smoky poison disappeared like mist on a summer’s day.
I praised the genius who’d first thought to use it against malingering spirits and, undeterred, found it worked on poison instead.
Then, my stomach rebelling, I helped clear the room, pulling wizards both alive and dead out into the sunshine. That done, those of us who were able to, searched the rest of the university.
Afterward, we buried our dead, throwing them into the fiery heart of Rite Island Volcano. It seemed fitting.
Now we could all agree the Nameless Ones were loose, Potsie called for us to help destroy them.
Anger flared. Someone was to blame. The Goodfellows, the turncloaks, Potsie.
“Sylvalla will stop them,” Potsie whispered.
§
Dothie-Xem cursed as Arrant’s men filled the tunnel. He should have sent some of his own turncloaks in—
With an ear-shattering blast, a support beam near the entrance was shattered and the tunnel above came crashing down. A handful of the soldiers who went in came running out again, screaming and holding their heads.
“Demonsbane.” The tunnel was blocked with enough rock to require hours, if not days, of clearing before anyone could get through. Sylvalla will have to be chased another way. Tracked down, caught and humiliated so that nobody will ever again dare to stand against me.
Dothie’s familiar dug its claws into his shoulder. Toots had gained weight, and was a burden. Xem’rial would have liked to be able to stop the pain, stop the blood from running down his shoulder. For whatever reason, Dothie was bonded to this strange and annoying creature. He was determined to find out what it was.
“We’ll have them soon enough,” Arrant said, misreading Dothie-Xem’s thoughts. “See my army? We’re about to win the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, just like we dreamed centuries ago. Remember how they laughed at us.”
Dothie-Xem’s face stretched into a smile. Turning to the seven least reliable of his twenty wizards, he removed every trace of free will, and transformed them into were-wizards. “Chase,” he said, holding up a strip of red cloth.
The newly-made were-wizards howled. “We chase, Master.” Dothie-Xem’s thirteen remaining wizards looked away.
“Good,” Emz’rial said. “I was wondering when you’d get around to creating your little pets. What did you always used to say? Half-hellhound, half-wizard and better than either.”
“Toots didn’t want them. It’s complicated,” Dothie-Xem snapped. “Besides, it is good to see you’ve been busy in my absence. Let me use one of your winged trinkets, and I’ll show you the power I have amassed.”
“No. You keep your were-wizard playthings—I’ll keep my armies. Together, we will be unstoppable.”
§
Sylvalla scrabbled through the escape tunnel with Dirk, Torri and the Goodfellows, the smell of horses and fear palpable.
“Last one,” Torri said, clutching a bomb. “Let’s see if I can make it count. You’d better run.”
“But you’re injured,” Sylvalla said. “Goodfellows, surely you can open a path?”
“Not here,” Jonathan muttered. “But don’t worry, I’ll stay with Torri.”
“No!” Mr Goodfellow senior yelled. “No, it has to be me.”
Sylvalla felt a push from his shield.
“Run!” Mr Goodfellow yelled.
Jonathan didn’t need to be told twice, he took Sylvalla and Dirk by their arms and ran.
The explosion rocked the tunnel so sharply Sylvalla fell to a knee. Rocks dropped from the ceiling, skittered over Mr Goodfellow senior’s crackling shield, and crashed to the ground.
“We have to go back!” Sylvalla said.
“Old Capro isn’t going to die from a few rocks falling on him,” Jonathan muttered, nervously glancing back
. “He’s too hardy for that.”
“And Torri?” Sylvalla asked.
“Don’t worry, he’ll have her back.” Jonathan’s reassuring words ruined by the way he kept looking back.
Soon, even Dirk was slowing. “I think we should stop,” he said at last.
Sylvalla and Jonathan sighed in relief and turned back.
Mr Goodfellow senior appeared. Bloodied and tattered, he dragged himself down the dark passage—alone.
“Where’s Torri?” Sylvalla whispered.
“Dead,” Mr Goodfellow senior said, steadying himself on the reinforced tunnel wall.
That can’t be right. “Where’s Torri?” Sylvalla repeated louder.
“I’m sorry…so sorry,” Mr Goodfellow senior mumbled, head in hands. “She was crushed under a rockslide. I couldn’t…there was nothing—”
“Did you save her book?” Jonathan asked.
Mr Goodfellow senior glared at his son. “No. And how can you be thinking about a book at this time?”
“Torri can’t be dead,” Sylvalla said. “Not now. She saved us all. This tunnel. The explosives. She knew what she was doing.” Images of Torri scribbling on the silk dresses with ink and charcoal filled her mind. Torri’s quiet good humour, and even her little pact with Amarinda. “Amarinda will never forgive me. If I’d walked away from my throne, she’d still be alive.”
“No. You cannot. Walking away will not save your people. It will not save any of the people of the Seven Kingdoms,” Mr Goodfellow senior said. “You asked to be a hero. There’s no stopping now, just because being a hero sucks.”
“That’s why I’m a warrior,” Dirk said.
“We should go back,” Sylvalla insisted.
“There’s nothing to see,” the old wizard said firmly.
The world was darkness as they stumbled along. By the time they reached the end of the tunnel, it was evening, a cold sliver of moon on the horizon. Snow crunched underfoot as they trudged toward the foothills of Scotch Mist to catch up to the Avondale refugees.
Sylvalla bit her knuckles in a most un-queenly fashion. More evacuees trundled along. Little old ladies, children chasing after their mothers’ skirts. A handful of yobs elbowed their way through the crowds, leaving crying kids and overturned baskets behind them.
