Wasting no time, I barreled out into the hallway, only to trip to a halt as the sorcerer shouted, “WAIT!” He stood in the doorway, offering . . . the wand?
“Domitia may arrive at any moment, and you have no defense. Use this.” He shoved the wand into my hand, then manipulated my fingers, closing them around the handle. “You’ve been around us long enough. You must have picked up some spells.”
The wand felt oddly warm in my grip. Tilting it produced the slosh of dragon’s blood, hidden in the compartment at its base. “Uh,” I said, “just the one.” It was the spell I’d memorized in my childhood, the one the Church had used to drain me.
“That will have to do.” The sorcerer shooed me, as if I were still a vulture. “Go, go now!”
I took a tentative step backward. “I don’t know if I can use this.”
“It doesn’t matter if you can. You must. Damn it, GO!” Merulo slammed the door in my face. I stood stunned in the hallway, realizing that I’d been left unchaperoned with an item of immense power.
The door opened again. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Merulo’s single eye shone wetly. “Domitia. She looks like my mother. Except blue.”
“Yes,” I said softly. “She looks very nice.”
This time when the door closed, I broke into a run.
CHAPTER 50
In Which Glenda Has Been Cruelly Betrayed and Cast Aside, despite All Her Hard Work and All Her Commitment, All because of One Fucking Comment Which She Probably Shouldn’t Have Made, but Then Again Domitia Shouldn’t Be So Damn Sensitive, and Definitely Should Not Have Abused Her Power in What Was Essentially an Assault, and In Which Perhaps Glenda Should Report to the Church that the Half-Dragon Isn’t as Under Control as They All Believe.
Glenda was venting her rage at a tree, kicking and kicking until bark rained in splinters to expose soft pale wood, when the clouds above formed a man’s face.
And not just any man. Her enemy, the hideous sorcerer, a man who—from the sharpness of his form—looked to be lashed together from knives. The glower of his eye, the oily curtain of his hair, all were picked out in the curling whisps of a darkening thunderhead. Craning her neck, Glenda saw that it was far from localized; in the distance, another face formed, and another. She could see no end to them.
All the faces moved at once. The sorcerer’s stone eye flashed with lightning, rain falling like spittle, and he spoke in therumble of a storm: “You’ve all heard of me. I am Merulo the sorcerer, and on this day your God will die at my hand. I will wipe this planet free of its corruption, and in doing so, purge your magic and open up the cosmos! If you are frightened, good, be frightened. Flee all magically supported structures, as they will crumble. Flee the Church, as they are liars. If this warning goes unheeded, then the cause of your death will be stupidity. No more needs to be said.”
With that, the clouds dissipated into white puffs that hung in a tranquil sky. After some hesitation, the birdsong resumed.
“Evil fucking bastard,” Glenda breathed, the tree forgotten for now. “He can’t succeed. Can he?”
In the stories her parents read to her as a child, the villain always lost, right at the end when things looked their worst. And she couldn’t forget the prophecy. They’d fulfilled the conditions! Cameron had died bloodily, and in doing so, secured their victory. Unless—and what an unspeakable unless—the sorcerer had undone their work with his reversal of time? But then, who could stop him?
“Domitia.” Glenda spoke to the empty forest with the reverence of a prayer. “We haven’t always . . . gotten along. And I’m sorry for making that comment, really. But please, please . . .” She regretted the Passionweed now, hating the tears that rolled down her cheeks. “Don’t let him win. End that evil fucking prick. We’re all rooting for you, even if the rest of the world doesn’t know it. They’re praying for someone to save us, and it’s you! Please, Domitia . . .” Glenda collapsed against the tree trunk, seeking comfort and support from the same vegetation she’d just been mulching. “Please save the world. And,” she added as an afterthought, “please kill Cameron.”
CHAPTER 51
In Which I Find that I Have No Particular Aversion to Severed Limbs, Likely because of All the Time I Spent as a Knight in Battles and Such. In Which, to Be Truthful, I Typically Arranged It so that I Would Arrive after the Battles, Meaning That I Mostly Saw the Shed Limbs and Not the Shedding.
As it turns out, severed legs weigh rather a lot.
And Merulo’s leg was far lighter than it should have been, consisting as it did of the thinnest possible layer of muscle over bone. “Completely hairless,” I said to myself in wonder, as I lifted the leg from the icebox. Thinking about it, I’d never seen him shave, or show the faintest hint of stubble. Must be a dragon thing.
His eye I found under a layer of stacked livers, in the iciest corner of the box. A coating of frost dulled its iris. This brought a tightness to my throat, and I told myself to better appreciate the rich black of Merulo’s remaining eye when I next saw him.
After some thought, I dropped the eye down the neck of my shirt, so that I could carry his leg two-handed. The eye rolledagainst my skin like a lost grape, caught in the fold where my shirt tucked into my pants. A terrible thought occurred, as I jogged from the building: if I tripped, I would feel the eyeball squelch flat against my abs.
I’d made it halfway back (tryingvery hardnot to trip) when the water above the dome vanished.
I might not have noticed, if not for the change in light. I’d grown accustomed to the white ribbons that danced in faint patterns across the resort, the product of sunlight refracting through water. Between one footfall and the next, they disappeared.
Without them, the resort looked harsh and flat. I stared in wild alarm to see nothing above me, not a single puddle. Only far off, on the edges of the dome, could I still make out the distant swirl of water. She hadn’t removed the entire ocean, then.
I was panting hard, almost hyperventilating. Merulo might be drained, but he was still a dragon. I only had to reach him, and he was close, incredibly, frustratingly close. It so thoroughly consumed my focus that I nearly ran right into Domitia.
A gently rounded woman, muscle evident in the breadth of her arms and legs, stood on the resort road ahead of me. Her hair hung like spun starlight, picked through with delicate braids in an elven style. She looked like she might be fun to dance with, on a less serious occasion. Trying not to whimper audibly, I shoved the frozen leg beneath my arm and withdrew the wand.
“Sir Cameron,” said Domitia. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Somehow, she infused even those blunt words with melody, like the opening verse to a song.
