Mystify the Magician
Page 12
But Terry and Al shook their heads. "That ain't Big John. I've never seen that guy."
"Kill him!" Senna snapped.
The sound of guns blazing and the victim fell. He fell and as he died his appearance changed. Senna ran forward eagerly, expecting to see Merlin's bullet-riddled corpse.
Instead she saw what had to be the actual John Loboda.
A laugh. Loud and sustained and mocking. An old man's laugh. Merlin's voice.
Senna flushed red. She realized too late: Merlin had altered John Loboda's face, just as he had disguised me.
"You wanted to play Merlin's game, witch," the wizard said from nowhere in particular. "Your move."
Senna was definitely freaked. So were her troops. This wasn't in the script. Mighty Senna the Great One was getting yanked. She'd just been tricked into ordering a faithful follower shot. That didn't sit well with the other faithful followers, and Senna knew it. It's okay to punish failure. This was a whole other thing.
And at that moment a voice cried, "Hey! Hey! Something's happening down in the town."
It was a lookout, high on the walls.
"What is it?" Keith yelled back, assuming the mantle of lieutenant, I guess.
"It's like... there's a bunch of guys coming," the lookout cried.
"And some kind of big, I mean, freaking huge-ass wolf."
In my dopey, bewitched state of mind, I didn't click. Didn't figure out who the wolf was, who it had to be.
But Senna did.
"Fenrir," she whispered. "Yes. Come, Fenrir, come, Loki, I await you."
"He comes, witch," Merlin's voice-from-nowhere shouted.
"Great Loki is come for you at last."
Jalil started talking, loud, persuasive. "You poor dumb fools, you don't know what she's gotten you into. Loki is coming. He's a god. And his son, Fenrir. You know what Fenrir is? He's a wolf the size of an elephant. She's gotten you all killed. You followed this psycho and she's gotten you all killed. Look! She's lost control. She can't handle Merlin and Loki at once. Fenrir is going to chew you up and crap you out."
"Silence!" Senna screamed. But her brain was going, wheels spinning, too busy to waste time torturing Jalil.
"Loki comes," Merlin intoned helpfully. "You may still escape, witch. Surrender yourself to me."
"What do we do. Great One?" Keith demanded.
"You're all dead," Jalil crowed. "You think she's going to lead you? She's some head case of a girl from the North Shore, how stupid are you?"
"Great One," Keith pressed.
My own slow, bewitched brain clicked. A druid with green eyes? April! April the actress. April. Senna would be so happy to find April.
"Senna," I said. "I know —"
Senna pressed her hands against her temples, squeezing.
"Shut up. Obey me!"
"Everyone shut up!" Keith reiterated savagely.
"Forget the wizard, I'll deal with him later," Senna said.
"Man the walls. Raise the drawbridge. Close the gate. We have a battle to fight!" That last was in a roar, her face up to the crowds atop the walls.
The troops bellowed their relieved approval. This they understood. They were going to get a chance to shoot some people. Cool.
Could they really stop Loki and Fenrir? Could bullets kill a god?
"Here they come!" the lookout yelled. "There's, like a —man, that wolf is huge. And the guys aren't human."
"Trolls!" Merlin's mocking voice cried helpfully. "Living stone."
"You're all dead," Jalil said, keeping his trash-talking monologue. I expected him to start with "no batter, no batter"
next. "You'll be lucky to be dead. Loki may give you to his daughter, Hel," Jalil said. "You'll be buried alive up to your necks. You'll be cobblestones for her to walk over."
"I think I'll kill you right now," Keith screamed at Jalil, spit flying,
"Your Great One hasn't given you that order," David intervened quickly. "A soldier follows orders."
"There's hundreds of them," the lookout cried.
Keith put his face up to Jalil's. "Great One," he said, "let me kill this one. Right now."
David sloughed off the last of his chains, free, and slammed into Keith. Keith hit the ground, swung his gun up, and caught David a brutal blow under the chin. David dropped.
The ground shook like the opening rumble of an earthquake. Something big was knocking on the castle door.
Gunfire blazed from the wall above. Everyone on the wall was firing, a deafening din.
Another massive blow and the castle gate blew inward, matchsticks and kindling.
Fenrir leaped through, enormous, shaggy, and gray. He shouldered into the castle and let loose a roar that would have knocked the glass out of every window, if there'd been any glass.
Trolls shoved around him, under his legs, rushing to get inside the castle. A dozen or more, thick, squat, living-stone creatures with hornless rhino heads. They swung curved swords but had no targets.
The men on the battlements shifted, turned and directed their fire down at Loki's son. The wolf-god was impossible to miss. Hundreds of rounds hit his neck, his head.
Fenrir bellowed in rage and agony. When he opened his mouth, blue blood gushed through his teeth. Still the men fired and now the wolf was lost, snapping at the air, bellowing, dangerous but helpless to reach or stop his tormentors.
A bestial cry of triumph went up from the men and Fenrir fell.
The trolls quavered, unsure. Then, in shock, they broke and ran. Keith stood over a beaten David. Leveled his weapon at him, and my own mind, my treasonous, bewitched mind thought. Yes, do it!
I glanced at the blue druid with the incongruous beard and green eyes. April. King Camulos was dead at her feet. She started toward Keith.
I yelled, "It's her! It's April!"
Senna spun, her attention suddenly riveted on me. "Where?
Where?"
I started to point. Jalil staggered forward, using the weight of his chains to bear Keith down. The two of them fell in a heap.
But Jalil wasn't focusing on Keith. He twisted around and stuck out one hand, one clawed, bloody hand to April.
April leaped, grabbed what Jalil had given her, and in a flash I knew what it was: Jalil's Swiss Army knife. The tiny little knife with the two-inch blade that had been replaced by the Coo-Hatch.
I raised my gun, aimed it at April. April leaped at Senna.
Some unseen force pushed my gun barrel up as I fired. Merlin!
The gun kicked in my hands and a line of bullets passed over April's head.
But the noise drew Senna's gaze to me, to me, away from April, away from the Coo-Hatch blade.
April stabbed.
The blade went in like a red-hot ice pick in a pound of butter.
Senna grabbed her chest, laughed in disbelief, stared at the blue druid, and now, now too late, saw the familiar green eyes. "You," she sobbed.
Senna fell backward. No longer the illusory Senna of rippling muscles, the Valkyrie Senna. Just Senna, the girl I used to date.
I knew she was dead. Knew it beyond any doubt: Her hold over me snapped, ceased, a light switch turned off.
Keith was freeing himself. I ran over, kicked his gun away, and drew down on him.
"You better shoot me," Keith said to me. "Because if you don't, I'll sure as hell kill you."
I shook my head. "I think we've had about enough killing."
Then I slammed my rifle butt into his chin and he went down like a sandbag. "Of course, ass-kicking, that's different: Still have some room for that."
I looked at Senna. Senna the witch. Senna the gateway.
Senna the whole reason for us even being in this nuthouse. She didn't look like too much now.
April was frozen, unable to move. She was just staring. Her half sister's blood was all over her hand.
I don't think any of us would have known what to do next but for Merlin, who appeared beside me.
"We must leave," he said. "The battle
still rages, but Loki has lost. Soon these men will turn their attention back to us. There is a tunnel that leads from the keep, under the moat. It is the only way."
"I will not leave my husband," Goewynne said.
"You will, Goewynne," Merlin said. "You are still a queen.
Your people have need of you."
I knelt beside Etain. "Come on, we have to get out of here.
Hold still"
I laid the lock of her chains on the ground, made sure she was turned away, and shot the lock. I extricated her from her chains and helped her to her feet. But Etain couldn't walk.
I picked her up, like some kind of romance novel hero, I picked her up, and followed Merlin.
Goewynne stayed behind to kneel by her husband and kiss his forehead.
We left the castle in the hands of the now leaderless Sennites. We left Senna lying in the dust. No one retrieved Jalil's knife.
Goewynne came and took April's hand. She led April away. April was gone to us. Jalil helped support David. Merlin led the way, and I hugged Etain close and wondered, as each of us was wondering, how, with the gateway dead, how we would ever get home.
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