Headwaters strolled our way.To say he was human was like comparing a theater mask to a living actor’s face.
He was tall, easily eight feet, and swathed in layers of wool and satin and leather that gave him a patchwork opulence.
His hands were gloved, his face obscured by a heavy hood.
Nightmares were sketched in his shadow, horrors crawled between his feet.
It had been a hundred years since I’d seen this monster, and in those years he had become more fetid, his body twisted with rot, swollen with disease.
He saw us, too, and paused six yards distant.
“Brogan Gauge,” it purred, voice low and sonorous.“I see your flesh, I see your bones, I see your soul.Such sweet fear in you.Show me how alive you are.”
A sharp pain flared in my chest, like a fist squeezing my heart.My knees went soft, but I refused to fall, to kneel.I grunted and panted through the pain.
“Lula Gauge,” he sang.“How beautiful you have become.”
She jerked her head as if she’d been slapped and stumbled backward.Bruises spread across her neck and up her cheeks.
She glanced at me, eyes wide and panicked.
Then I did the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life—I turned my back on the monster.
Lu opened the book.
“You touch it,” the monster gasped, “the spell book.”
I tipped the mirror, trying to steady my hand to catch the words in the glass.I filled my lungs and opened my mouth.
The spell was fire across my tongue, down my throat, in my belly.Sounds collided, blended, broke apart, skittering painfully between my teeth.
This wasn’t like the transformation spell.There would be no beautiful flowers at the end of it.
This spell was violence and pain, it was horror.Each word tore out of my chest and left me raw.
Lu’s hands shook, and still I spoke.
The mirror cracked, and still I spoke.
Thunder growled across the sky, lightning bombarding the horizon.The wind howled across the plain, kicking dirt and debris as the ground rumbled.
Still, I spoke.
I couldn’t see Headwaters, didn’t dare look away from the mirror, from the spell.
I wouldn’t see his attack when it came.
My heartbeat went ragged, making it hard to pull in enough breath fast enough to continue the spell.
All through in one, Card’s words came back to me.
I had to finish the spell, or none of this would work.
Lu’s entire body shook.I had to constantly adjust the mirror to keep the spell in view.
Then the last word ripped out of my lungs, and everything went suddenly, painfully silent.
Nothing happened.
