Black City Saint

by Richard A. Knaak

  I looked around for Fetch, but he was nowhere to be seen. If he knew what was good for him, he’d taken it on the lam to somewhere far, far from me. Feirie would be safer for him, assuming I survived.

  “Nick! Here!” Claryce tried to give me Her Lady’s gift.

  “No! You hold onto it!” It was her best bet for survival, especially against a certain traitorous shapeshifter, if nothing else.

  Before she could argue, a tornadic wind tossed us both into the air. As we both struggled in the unnaturally violent surge, I saw Doolin’s body and one of the autos fly past.

  I desperately grabbed for Claryce as she flew past me. She tumbled to the ground a short distance from the surf, Her Lady’s gift fortunately only slipping a few inches away. I, meanwhile, fell hard too near Oberon for my location to be chance.

  “Can you feel the change in the air, Gatekeeper?” Oberon roared with pleasure. “Can you feel the melding of the worlds?”

  I managed to get to my feet, but that was about it. The card had already put everything around the Gate in flux.

  “Give me the teardrop, Gatekeeper,” he said in a quieter voice that, thanks to the magic he controlled, easily carried through the storm. “I have, through fortunate circumstance and the naive expectations of your scaled companion, obtained the card. I’d expected to retrieve it after dealing with you, but, as the human saying goes, apparently good things do come to those who wait!”

  He wanted the teardrop. I was perfectly willing to give it to him, but not the way he thought. I reached into my pocket . . . and found nothing.

  Oberon laughed. “So, in the end, you do not even have that! What a champion my dear Titania chose! Better she would have kept that fool Kravayik at her side . . .”

  I lunged—and the wind threw me back. I tried again, with the same result.

  Oberon grew serious. “You would one day see the necessity of what I do, Gatekeeper . . . A pity I cannot permit you to live to see that day . . . but at least this time you will not die alone . . .”

  He turned the card toward me. The water churned, then reached for Claryce.

  This is for both of us, damn you! I berated the dragon. Both of us!

  He finally stirred, if only hesitantly. It was not enough, but it had to be.

  I let out a roar that in no manner sounded human. I drew from the dragon as much as I could and felt my body alter, even as I again threw myself at Oberon.

  If I thought he’d be shocked by the change, I was sorely mistaken. He smiled and suddenly the gale threw my still-transforming body toward Claryce.

  “As I said, I can at least grant you the chance to die together for once . . .”

  But I caught the wind with wings that spread wider by the moment, long, arched, and webbed wings, with which I was already very comfortable. I soared up into the storm as my arms and legs turned and bent at angles they shouldn’t have. Long, curved claws stretched from my changing fingers. My chest swelled to mammoth proportions as my lungs corrected to take in the air I needed for flight in this chaos.

  And slowly, very slowly, I felt the dragon begin to join with me, to become a part of me.

  Shaking our crested head, we roared again—this time through a long sharp muzzle filled with teeth nearly a yard in length—and even the thunder of Oberon’s storm couldn’t completely drown out our cry. Our long, long tail whipped back and forth. The Frost Moon added a sheen to our glittering, golden-scaled body, now easily several times the length and girth of one of the elephants in Lincoln Park Zoo. For the first time since Chicago burned, we flew in our full glory over the city.

  We didn’t fly high for long. We dropped down and seized Claryce and Her Lady’s gift, taking both inland to a place far enough from the confused gangsters to keep her safe. We then dove low over the beach, intently seeking the teardrop, even as thugs foolishly wasted their bullets on our thick, scaled hide.

  But even with the acute eyes of the dragon turning the darkness into a brighter emerald, there wasn’t a sign of the gem. Either it was buried somewhere in the sand or Oberon already had it. I had to hope the former, even if it meant that I only had the dragon’s power against that of the card.

  Ignoring the damage to his fine suit, Oberon continued to step back deeper and deeper into the lake. The rough tide ripped fragments of the suit from his body . . . and then ripped what I realized was not fabric but part of William Delke. The skin sloughed away, revealing underneath it a longer, thinner form that immediately clad itself in a forest green and onyx black suit of armor more flexible than cloth.

  And as the water reached his chest, Oberon’s human mask split in the middle and folded away, revealing the much longer, thinner, pale face of Feirie’s former lord.

  Oberon resembled Kravayik, just as all of the Court’s high caste resembled one another. Yet Oberon was an even more handsome version, although there was a bitter cast to his features I didn’t remember from fifty years earlier.

  If he’d thought to hide beneath the waves—which he could do—he’d forgotten that the dragon’s gaze could see him under the churning surface. I suspected he really hoped to delay us so that the card could complete its monstrous work, but in that case he’d finally made a fatal error.

  Keeping Oberon in focus, we dove.

  It nearly proved to be our fatal error instead.

  The water rose to meet us. It didn’t do so because Oberon’s magic made it do it, it did so because it wanted to.

  The almost equine face opened its watery maw wide and exhaled. A column of water struck us dead center. We might as well have been a novice flyweight going ten rounds with heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey. The wind knocked out of us, we crashed into the beach.

  Lake Michigan continued to roil, but now the water gathered together and grew into a shape larger and wider than the dragon. I’d never seen a kelpie before, but I knew what it was. Of course, the kelpies I’d been told about by Kravayik and a few others had only been as big as elephants, not so gargantuan that they could dwarf the dragon.

  Even as the lake continued to seethe, the water that made up the kelpie’s body also churned within. The creature shook its long, weedlike mane and let out a roar that sounded more like that of a dragon than the stallion its top half resembled. The kelpie lowered its head to eye us, its natural adversary, and in doing so revealed that it had a rider.

  Oberon’s smile was a grim yet satisfied one. He wore a helmet with a crest akin to the kelpie’s wild mane and a nose guard that ended in a sharp point. Oberon’s left arm guided a weapon I knew very well, since I’d wielded it myself.

  Staring at the spear, I suddenly understood that, once more, not only had I been played all along, but so had the dragon. I only had to gaze at what was taking shape behind Oberon and the kelpie to know just what the former lord of Feirie’s intent had been for us all along.

  Whether by accident or—more likely with Oberon—design, the Gate now framed him and his savage mount. Moreover, it was no longer the fainter collection of stars I’d seen just before crossing into Feirie. Now . . . now the Gate was as I’d witnessed its rising the moment I’d discovered I was now and forever its keeper.

  The arch rose high above the Tribune Tower and probably anything else men had ever built. I’d never understood its grand nature, only that it was a power unto itself even more than the dragon. I’d never discovered just who or what had created it; Heaven, maybe, or even the Clothos Deck’s mad designer. I only knew that sometimes I thought it seemed alive, even a thinking creature.

  Before, it’d looked as if a few stars lined its edges. Now, it was as if every celestial body in all the universe had gathered to give it definition. The colors of the finest rainbow paled in comparison. The Gate shimmered with a glory I could only imagine existed nowhere else.

  And through its stormy arch, I spotted what at first looked just like Chicago illuminated by a strange emerald glow. Only when I took into account the dragon’s gaze did I realize that there was something transposed over
the city. A mountainous, forest land.

  Feirie.

  The kelpie plunged forward, dragging the lake waters with it as it came to shore in pursuit of us. Oberon kept his head low, but I could see his satisfied smile thanks to the dragon’s eyes.

  You still think he ever planned to separate us other than in death? I demanded.

  My constant companion didn’t reply, but I finally felt some of his fear lessen. Oh, he wanted nothing of the spear, nothing of the weapon that’d proven just how vulnerable he’d been despite what he was, but he couldn’t bring himself to remain as helpless as a hatchling before the kelpie.

  Eye will fight beside you, Saint George . . .

  He startled me with using that title. In all these centuries, he’d never referred to me so. He also gave me free rein over our shared body, even though it was in his form at the moment.

  When Eye must, Eye will command . . .

  It was a fair enough trade, considering we both still stood a good chance of being slaughtered. Not only did we have Oberon, the spear, and the kelpie to deal with, but the storm itself was growing more and more surreal. Blue flashes of lightning now played everywhere above, too much of it concentrating near us.

  No sooner had I thought that than twin bolts fried the beach where we lay . . . or had lain a heartbeat before. Whether his instinct, mine, or both, we’d taken to the air just in time to prevent being seared.

  Of course, that was exactly the way Oberon’d planned it.

  Guided by Oberon, the kelpie veered to meet us. Oberon tightened his grip on the spear. I wasn’t surprised by the almost fanatic eagerness I could read in his body as he neared. He’d lied again, this time about trying to give me a chance to run away with Claryce. I wondered if Oberon even knew what truth was, anymore. Lying was a far more natural trait in Feirie.

  He needed us dead, but not just because of the threat we presented. The card could manipulate Feirie and the mortal realm, but there was one thing I finally understood that neither it nor the entire deck could probably touch. The Gate.

  But the dragon and I . . . we were tied to the Gate as nothing else was. Oberon believed, rightly or wrongly, that our deaths would impair the Gate and allow his reshaping of the realms with the permanency he desired. So long as the Gate remained, there would always be a chance, however remote, that Feirie and the mortal world would separate again.

  We dropped in an effort to avoid the spear.

  Lightning struck us once, twice, three times.

  We spun about, barely able to keep conscious. Neither the dragon nor I could regain enough control to take our mutual body from the midst of battle.

  An agonizing pain tore through our left wing. Somehow, we succeeded in pulling away, though merely flying now demanded more effort than we really could offer. A savage tear now crossed a good portion of the wing’s membrane where the spear had not only pierced the skin but had created a long rip when we’d been forced to retreat.

  The kelpie’s long head darted in. I managed to maneuver the dragon’s claw forward in time to catch the kelpie at the snout. The powerful claws ripped through the equine muzzle.

  But the damage vanished instantly, the kelpie as much water as the lake itself. The gouges filled in even before the claws finished passing.

  The kelpie exhaled. Another barrage of water assailed us.

  We had no choice but to retreat, flying low over the beach and momentarily away from the lake’s edge. The dragon wanted us to head into the city, but I was more interested in what I saw below.

  Fetch squatted on all fours, his nose close to the sand. He sniffed twice, then thrust his muzzle into the loose ground.

  Even before we passed him, I saw him pull the teardrop out with his teeth. Worse, I saw Claryce, Her Lady’s gift still clutched in her hands, moving to confront the lycanthrope.

  A dragon’s hearing is very acute and can focus on particular sounds. I heard Claryce shout Fetch’s name and I heard him snarl back in warning. I didn’t have to hear the words that followed to guess what was going on. Fetch had once been a highly favored servant of Her Lady, sent to track down those who’d disobeyed her. He could bring them back alive or in pieces. When Her Lady’d believed it better for me to die than live, she’d sent her unfailing hunter after me. I’d not only stopped him, but saved his life and earned his debt of gratitude.

  But what he’d earned in turn from Her Lady had been a life scrounging on the streets. I knew that part of the reason Fetch’d refused my aid had been because it only reminded him what he’d lost.

  Now . . . now, with the teardrop his, he had the chance to win all of that back.

  The kelpie flowed deeper onto the beach, its huge forelegs kicking at the sky in challenge to us. I could feel the dragon falling more and more prey to his base desire to meet his enemy head on. His fear had faded away as primal instincts had taken over. I had to make sure I kept him in check until the most critical moment.

  If we lived that long.

  I caught one more desperate glimpse of Claryce and Fetch. I saw a Fetch I hadn’t seen since that fateful night we’d fought, a savage two-legged beast half again as tall as me. He clutched the teardrop in one hand and glared at Claryce . . . Claryce, who bravely held the point of Her Lady’s gift underneath Fetch’s chin in a manner that showed she had no qualms about thrusting it the last inch.

  Then, all I could see or hear was the kelpie.

  I knew that Oberon had to be using his magic to enhance it. He couldn’t continuously use the single card to both change worlds and feed power into his mount. He needed us dead and soon, for many reasons.

  Instead of giving him his wish, we gave him a bathing in flames. For this, I let the dragon have full mastery. He breathed as he hadn’t since that last battle more than fifty years ago.

  But the fire never touched Oberon. It surrounded him, but probably did nothing more than warm him slightly. The kelpie’s watery nature enabled it to douse the flames without even slowing its pursuit of us.

  Something dove down in front of Oberon and began clawing at his face. He slapped at the feathered form, but missed. Her Lady’s changeling flew in again and again to harass the former lord of Feirie, managing just to evade his grasp each time.

  This was our chance and we both knew it. Together, the dragon and I surged forward.

  The kelpie kicked at us with huge translucent hooves. We maneuvered around the attack, then exhaled.

  This time, the flames struck Oberon . . . with just as much a lack of results. He’d known better than to rely just on the kelpie’s power.

  But even Oberon had to have his limits. I knew him almost as well as Her Lady did. I knew what he could do. I knew what the card could do . . .

  And I realized at that moment that our only hope lay in not facing Oberon after all. At least, not yet.

  Veering away, we darted toward where last we’d seen Claryce and Fetch, only to find no sign of them. We rushed over the area, scattering hoods and even sending a spiderlike shape hurriedly burrowing into the sand. We scorched the ground where it went under, just in case, and ignored the pathetic hail of bullets one foolhardy thug fired at us with his tommy.

  We listened. We smelled. There were traces of both Claryce and the lycanthrope, but not strong enough for us to locate . . . which meant that we also couldn’t locate the teardrop.

  The kelpie let out a roar that hardly fit its equine semblance. Despite misgivings, we arced around to face Oberon and his steed again.

  Only . . . we weren’t alone. There was a huge, winged shape confronting the kelpie, a shape it took us a moment to recognize despite the obviousness of it.

  The changeling, still in the form of a black bird, had swollen to proportions nearly matching the dragon. It took me a moment to understand how Her Lady could’ve unleashed such power in the mortal realm. It was because this wasn’t exactly the mortal realm any longer. I’d underestimated the swiftness of the card’s influence. In fact, I only had to glance at the city to see jus
t how little time there actually was remaining.

  The Gate still stood, but the boundaries had blurred almost completely . . . and what lay beyond the Gate now was neither Feirie nor Chicago . . .

  CHAPTER 28

  The nightmarish gallimaufry created by the two stunned me so much that I failed to notice the dragon seize control of our body. My gaze was torn from the melding realms back to the battle between the black bird and the kelpie, a battle the dragon sought to join.

  He refused my warnings, refused to even acknowledge me. On the one hand, my guidance thus far hadn’t been all that successful, but on the other, I knew him to have only two basic parts to his nature. Either he crushed what he could crush or, since “dying” at my hand, flew from that which he knew might send him to oblivion again. He still feared the spear and the fact that Oberon wielded it, but Her Lady’s interference meant to him that the edge in this battle was now against the former lord of Feirie.

  I wasn’t so certain of that . . . but the choice was no longer mine.

  The giant avian and the kelpie fought with more than beak and teeth, claws and hooves. A torrent of water continued to assail Her Lady’s changeling, while a fearsome wind sought to tear the watery beast into countless useless drops. Neither seemed to be gaining ground but the fact that Oberon looked not at all concerned in itself concerned me.

  But still my warnings went unheeded by the dragon. What also went unheeded was a shout that only I might’ve cared about. It was Claryce’s voice, either warning us or trying to tell us something of the utmost importance.

  What tore at me more was that it was punctuated by another sinister growl that I knew had to come from Fetch.

  We stopped in midair. It wasn’t the dragon’s choice. It was mine, and it surprised us both with its absolute abruptness. He strained to keep going, but I wouldn’t let that happen. Instead, I made us turn back and, despite his protests, flew to where I thought I’d heard Claryce. Nothing mattered more than her at the moment, not even the Gate.