by Matt Forbeck
“Besides which,” I said, pointing at the drawings unrolled upon the table. “That doesn’t look like a battleship so much as an escape.”
“As wisdom dictates, we are exploring all our options at the moment.” Whitman grimaced. “Some are less palatable than others, but we are running shy of choices.”
“You should be out there in the towers,” Moira said. “You should be taking up positions on the ramparts! Instead, you’re hiding in here with your heads in your books.”
“Sharp words from one who holds no truck with the power we can wield!”
The headmaster glared down at the halfling, but she stared back at him with her jaw stuck out and her eyes set hard. Belle put a hand on her shoulder to indicate her support and her protection. A part of me wondered if she’d done that to keep Moira from launching herself at the wizard as well.
My father took up his position behind the headmaster at his right-hand side. He gave me an even sharper glare than Whitman could spare, but I ignored him.
“If you have a plan,” I said to Whitman, “then share it. We’re here to help.”
My father scoffed at that, and more than a few of the other wizards in the room joined him. “You could have started by not killing the Dragon,” he said.
“He attacked me,” I said. “And he lost.” I scowled at him. “Don’t bother pretending you’re glad it didn’t go the other way.”
My father bit his tongue. “It didn’t have to be a matter of you or him. You let it get to that point.”
“The Dragon would have devoured me in place of my sister, who was in league with the Ruler of the Dead,” Belle said. “Would that have been just?”
“It would have been a damn sight better than letting us all die!” My father glowered at Belle as she gasped at him. “What? I’m supposed to offer sympathy for the immortal tart who stole my boy’s heart and then used that to put him between her and the Dragon? He was never anything to you but a momentary distraction from the ennui of your life. You’d have done us all a great favor if you’d never let him lay eyes on you at all!”
I glanced at Belle and saw her losing the fight to hold her own temper. For myself, it took everything I had not to punch my father in the nose. Fortunately, Moira took care of that for me.
Of course, she couldn’t quite reach his nose. She hit him someplace much lower but even more sensitive instead.
He doubled over in pain, which brought him down to Moira’s height. She took advantage of that to take a shot at his nose as well. He went over in a spray of blood, unconscious before he hit the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I sighed in frustration. This meeting wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped.
I knelt next to my father to check him. I sighed in relief when I saw that he was still breathing. We’d had our troubles, and I didn’t always want to be in the same room with him, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to die.
“Now that you’ve dealt with your father issues,” Whitman said with droll disapproval, “is there anything else we can help you with? Or have you wasted enough of our time and deprived us of enough of our brains?”
“What are you working on here?” I asked as I stood up. “Besides evacuation, I mean.”
“You’re confident enough to want to take that off the table?” he said with undisguised surprise.
I shook my head. “Just sure that whatever ship you might be taking out of here I wouldn’t be welcome on it.”
He frowned. “That’s a fair assessment. As for our work, we’re exploring a number of possibilities, each according to his own predilections.”
“How about you?” Danto asked. “What are you puzzling over, Bill?”
Danto was no fool. He knew that the headmaster would spend his own efforts where he saw the greatest chance for success — or the greatest threat. Whitman’s sage nod confirmed that.
“My biggest concern isn’t whether or not we can fashion a ship that can carry the leaders of the Academy away from here. We clearly can manage that and might even be able to make it to safety across the sea. The ship’s already been built.” He gestured to a model ship in a bottle sitting on a mantel on the eastern wall. “We just need to deploy it.”
“So what’s nagging you?” I asked.
“The Ruler of the Dead has a tremendous possible resource out there that she’s let lay fallow for more than a day. We need to figure out why that is and then stop her from taking advantage of it, assuming that’s possible.”
For a moment I didn’t understand what he meant. Then it hit me between the eyes and staggered me back. “The Dragon,” I said. “You’re talking about the Dragon.”
Whitman nodded. “The greatest necromancer the world has ever known has access to the corpse of a newly slain dragon, and she’s yet to do anything about that. We need to understand why, and more importantly, we need to make sure she keeps her hands off him.”
“You think she’ll try to control the Dragon’s corpse?” Danto scowled at the idea. “Wouldn’t the nature of the Dragon’s corporeal form make that impossible? In his hide alone, there’s just too much thaumaturgic interference.”
“We’re not fools,” Whitman said. “Of course that’s why she hasn’t taken control of the Imperial Corpse yet, but that doesn’t mean that she couldn’t.”
“She’d have to come to Dragon City to overcome those hurdles.” Danto made a face at Whitman as if he wasn’t sure who the fools might be here. “To be sure of her control, she’d have to lay hands on the Dragon herself.”
“And you don’t think she’d risk that? Not even for the incredible power that would give her?” Whitman grunted. “We have some here who agree with you, but I’m not one of them. The Ruler senses she’s close to getting everything she wants, and controlling the Dragon’s cadaver would make that a certainty.”
Danto nodded, coming around to Whitman’s way of thinking. “With his might at her disposal, she might even be able to break into the Stronghold or topple the Dragon’s Spire. What force would be able to resist an undead Dragon?”
“Tell me there’s no real chance of that happening,” I said, rubbing my head. “Tell me you’re just babbling about wacky conspiracy theories.”
I sensed someone behind me then and looked down to see my old classmate Celia caring for my father. She gave me a grimace that contrasted sharply with the open and honest happiness I remembered most about her. “Thank you,” I said a soft tone.
“It’s not wacky,” she said. “There’s a reason they’ve stepped up plans for the evacuation. Did you see all the activity when you came in?”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“Most of that came from students trying to warn their families. Some of them left here to fight alongside their parents and siblings. Others have been trying to convince their loved ones to join us when we leave. It’s chaos.”
“Why aren’t you out there?”
She rubbed my father’s head, and the blood dried on his face faded away. His color improved, and he started to breathe easier. I’d never been all that handy with healing magics, but Celia had graduated at the top of our class for many reasons.
“My father passed away years ago, and my mother refuses to leave. She was born here, and she intends to die here. She doesn’t know any other life, and she claims she’s too old to consider starting over someplace new.”
“You think the Guard turning Goblintown into a pit of death might change her mind?”
She shook her head. “Already checked.”
“But the Ruler of the Dead hasn’t ever entered Dragon City,” Belle said. “She controls her creatures from afar. She’s far too cautious to be drawn here for any reason.”
“Even for so tempting a prize as the corpse of her greatest rival?” Whitman loosed a bitter laugh. “The question isn’t if she’s coming here but when. Will she wait until we’re all dead first? Or will the temptation of using the Dragon to destroy the last of his subjects prove too much for her?”
&
nbsp; “Isn’t there anything you can do to stop her?” Moira asked, sincere in her confusion. “The greatest wizards in the city can’t come up with a way to help?”
“That’s what we’ve called this council for.” Whitman gestured to the wizards clustered in various spots of the room. Most of them tried to pretend they were ignoring us, but they weren’t fooling anyone. “So far, we’ve not had much success.”
“Can someone go down there and take control of the Dragon’s corpse before the Ruler gets here?” I said.
“I don’t know how much attention you paid to our curriculum when you were with us, Master Gibson, but we don’t teach classes in necromancy at the Academy.”
“Come on,” Moira said, urging him to be honest. “Sure, you don’t parade that field of knowledge in front of your apprentices, but at least one of you has to have spent some time researching it, right? In the dark of night, when no one else was around?”
She gaped at Whitman as he shook his head at her. “I’m afraid not, miss. The Dragon himself prohibited it, and we take the dangers inherent in such research very seriously.”
“Then what good are you people?” Moira stared at Whitman as if he’d just confessed to regularly soiling his robes. “Your greatest foe is a necromancer, and you can’t even be bothered to learn how she does it? Damn wizards!”
Moira’s shout elicited a response from my father, who groaned where he lay on the floor. The halfling took a large, sheepish step away from him, not wishing to be too close to him when he awakened.
Danto took that moment to clear his throat. “Not every wizard feels the compunction to follow all of the Academy’s dictates.”
Whitman’s face paled at Danto’s nervous words. “This is exactly the reason we asked you to leave, is it not? Your complete lack of regard for both authority and well-reasoned boundaries!”
I have to admit, I understood Whitman’s revulsion. I might have shared it right then if Danto hadn’t been offering us exactly the kind of knowledge we needed. There’d been many times I hadn’t been happy with the wizard — most often when he’d been riding the dragon, as addicts like him called smoking dragon essence — but this was not one of those moments.
I put up a hand. “Let the man speak.”
Danto blushed with embarrassment. “I haven’t taken my studies too far — well, all that far at all, I mean. I experimented on some dead animals, but that’s it. Never on people.”
“Quit your prevarications and make your point,” Whitman said.
Danto shrugged at the headmaster. “All right. We’re screwed.”
“Thanks so much for that terribly helpful information.” Whitman threw up his hands in frustration. “Now, if you would kindly leave and take your friends with you, I think we’ve wasted enough time on this.”
Danto looked to me for a signal. I didn’t see that we could do much more with the Wizards Council. I was about to spin on my heel and lead him, Belle, and Moira out of there when I heard an interruption from the floor.
“Just hold on a moment.” With a little help from Celia, my father pushed himself to his feet and brushed himself off. While his face was clean, his shirt still showed fresh stains from his blood.
Perhaps to his surprise, we all waited for him. “Yes, well,” he said, as he noticed us all staring at him, “it seems that getting knocked cold was just the thing I needed.”
I peered at him to make sure that he hadn’t sustained a concussion, but he just gave me a wry smile. “Honestly, I’ve been so stressed about all this that I’ve been more on edge than ever. I don’t know if I’ve had a wink since the Dragon died.”
“I’m glad that Celia’s spells have repaired that for you, Richard, along with your nose,” Whitman said, “but could you please get to your point?”
My father groaned in exasperation. “We’re not making much headway here, Bill, on anything other than an escape plan. I wouldn’t normally suggest consorting with a necromancy-dabbling drug addict.” He turned to Danto. “No offense.”
Danto waved off his concern as if he shared it himself. “None taken.”
“But this is the most desperate time Dragon City has seen since before its founding. I don’t think it can hurt.”
Whitman rubbed his eyes, looking older now than I’d ever seen him. The stress had taken its toll on this normally unflappable man too. “All right,” he said. “Just please be quick about it.”
Given the opportunity to speak freely, Danto dove right in. “The kinds of spells the Ruler of the Dead is using to control her army permit her to hear and see and even feel through any of her minions. She can put them on a kind of remote, or she can control them more directly, even when faced with manipulating hundreds or even thousands of them.”
“I think we can see that,” Whitman said.
“That’s how she took over Fiera,” Belle said with a visible shiver.
“Right,” said Danto. “But that kind of magic has to be stretching even her to her limits. The trouble she’s having with the Dragon may be twofold.”
“That he’s so powerful and so magical?” my father said.
Danto dismissed that with a gesture. “All right, threefold. Maybe four. The point is that even if she gets close enough to overcome the Dragon’s natural — well, supernatural — resistance to her magic, the effort might actually cut off her control of the rest of her minions, at least for a while.”
“Just for a while?” Whitman said.
“Until she gets used to it,” Danto said. “Maybe.”
“So she’d lose her hold on the rest of the zombies in Dragon City, but she’d be trading them in for a zombie Dragon?” Moira said. “I’m not sure how that helps us much.”
“I’m shocked to admit it, but I agree with the halfling,” Whitman said.
Moira smiled at that for a moment until she spotted the insult buried in it. Then she went back to scowling at the headmaster again.
Danto shrugged. “I just provide data points. The plans are up to you.”
The headmaster ignored the fact that Danto was talking to me. “Well, if you’d kindly leave us to it then, I’m afraid time is running short.”
Danto opened his mouth to respond, but my father took him by the arm and tugged him toward the door. “I’ll just show them out,” he said as he led us out of the council chambers. The large oak doors slammed shut behind us with an ominous echo.
My father let go of Danto and put a hand on my shoulder. “Where are you going next?” he asked.
“To the Stronghold, I think. The dwarves seem to think they can hold out against the Ruler of the Dead indefinitely.”
My father shook his head. “Not if she takes over the Dragon. If she manages that, no place on the mountain or under it will be safe.”
“I think we understand that.” I tried to tamp down any sense of hostility I had toward him, and I failed.
He gave me a wan smile filled with years’ worth of regrets. “I know you do. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry about how I’ve been treating you.”
That almost knocked me to the floor. “How hard did you hit your head in there?”
“It’s not that.” He shook his head. “It was something Celia told me while she was healing me with her magic.”
“And what was that?” I had a good idea, but I wasn’t about to show my hand first.
“It’s not important now,” he said with a smile.
He put his hands on my shoulders and held me out at arm’s length as he gazed into my eyes. “I’m proud of you, and you deserve to know that. Whether we all see the sunrise or not, that won’t change.”
I smiled as he let me go and Belle took my hand to lead me away. “I love you too, Dad.”
This time I meant it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“What was that all about?” Belle said as we cut through the air on Schaef’s carpet, heading upslope toward the Stronghold Gate.
“Nothing.” I hadn’t said a word since we’d left the Academy
, and I didn’t feel the need to start. She was determined to pry a few more than that out of me though.
“Liar,” Moira said. She’d sensed an ally in satisfying her endless curiosity. “I’ve never seen your father be that, well, un-mean to you.”
I looked to Danto for some support, but all he did was shrug at me and pointedly look away. I was on my own.
“I think we have other concerns at the moment.”
“It’ll help us take our mind off those,” Moira said. “We have time. Spill.”
I stared up toward the Stronghold Gate. The tall band of metal arching over it still gleamed in the glowglobes that lit it from below. It had always been my most stable point of reference in the city, at least by night. You could see it from almost any point in the city, no matter how late the hour or how drunk you might be, and I’d navigated my way home by its silvery shape more times than I could count.
Belle stroked my shoulder. “That might be the last time you ever see him. Is that it?”
I sighed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way until you mentioned it. I suppose that’s part of it.”
“What’s the rest?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t hear what Celia said to him. I was too busy dealing with Whitman.”
“But if you had to guess?”
I allowed myself a reluctant smile. I was used to people not giving a damn about me on any given day. “It would be that she told him how I got myself kicked out of the Academy.”
“I thought you dropped out?” Moira said. “Isn’t that what you always said?”
I nodded. “Out of respect for my father’s position in the Academy, I was offered the choice to leave rather than face a hearing and expulsion.”
“What did you do?” Belle said, her voice a soft but insistent whisper in my ear.
“Nothing.” I glanced at Danto. He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I didn’t do a thing.”
“Then why did you let them run you out of the school like that?”
I peered back over my shoulder and saw flashes of gunfire and loosed spells coming from atop the Great Circle. The Guard there still fought on against the invading zombie horde, but it was only a matter of time until their resolve failed.
