Accidental Sorcerer (38 page)

The small part of Gerald's mind that remained just Gerald swore.
Oh that's wonderful. I hate flying.

He scrambled on board his own small brown dragon and with the gossamer thread of himself that survived untouched he told his creation
to fly, fly.
With a rusty roar of challenge and a thrashing of inadequate wings and tail, they leapt into the stinking air towards their crimson and emerald enemy.

Through the first mad moments of fire and torque, as the dragons danced and he held on for his life, he tried to think of a plan. A strategy Some way of dealing with Lional that would work once and for all. Tried to think of something more useful than 'bloody hell, Dunnywood, don't fall off

Maybe if I can get Lional out of New Ottosland ...

And that
might
work. Get him over the border and into Kallarap ... if its gods were real ... if they had true power ... the last thing they'd want is

Lional in their midst. They'd have to destroy him. They'd have to.

So much for Shugat. I'll cut out the middleman.

Even as he decided, the brown dragon swerved left. Headed towards the city, towards the border far beyond it, to the desert of Kallarap and the wrath of its gods.

With a bellow of fury, Lional and his dragon launched in pursuit, streaking flame after them
in
searing streams. Gerald felt the heat wash over him, felt his small dragon's agony as a whip of flame licked its tail.

I'm sorry little dragon! Fly faster-fly faster -

He risked a swift look behind them. Lional was gaining.

Now the city was directly below them, they were flying through smoke from its burning buildings. Eyes smearing, tearing, Gerald stared at the rubble ... the bodies ... the ruined streets lined with charred skeletal trees. There were people in the open again, milling like sheep without their shepherd, making vague disorganised attempts to do something about the mess.

And then he really did almost fall off his dragon because
Shugat
was down there. Shugat and Zazoor and the entire Kallarapi army, they were down off their camels and helping the people.

A scream of rage behind him. He turned. Lional had seen Shugat. He was close now, so close. His inhuman face was contorted with fury. Abandoning the pursuit, he and his dragon flung themselves towards the ground.

Oh shit.

Gerald flung himself and his dragon after them.

Lional's subjects were screaming, scattering, running pell-mell into the park which held the Royal Duck Pond. Shugat stood motionless in the cobblestoned street, holding his ground. Zazoor retreated, the army retreated, assisting Lional's subjects wherever they could. Shugat plucked the rough stone from his forehead and held it high in one outstretched hand. No shield of protection this time. Just a pulse of light and a crack of sound.

It was like flying headfirst into a brick wall.

Gerald shouted as he and his dragon bounced off thin air, were struck hard by Lional and his dragon flailing backwards, smacked just as hard by Shugat's invisible hand. Gerald lost his grip and his balance and fell from his dragon's hot back. As he tumbled like a rag doll he caught sight of Lional. He was falling too.

Gerald hit the park's hard ground and felt something break. Pain flooded through him, and in his mind he heard his dragon howl. Somehow he staggered to his feet, the pain didn't matter. He had to stop Lional.

New Ottosland's mad king was unhurt and finding his own feet again several yards from the Duck Pond. Gerald lurched in a circle, looking for Shugat.
You can help me now, you bastard.You're bloody going to help me now!
But the holy man was gone again. So was Zazoor and his army. They'd melted away like mist under the sun. He felt like crying.
Oh damn you. Damn you. Why won't you help ...

Above his head the dragons were fighting.

It was a hopelessly unequal contest. Lional's dragon outweighed the enchanted skink by hundreds of pounds. Its wingspan was half as wide again, its tail as strong and lethal as a battering ram. Gerald stared at the battling dragons, barely breathing. One well-placed blow from Lional's monster would snap his dragon's spine like kindling. And he'd thought his little dragon could
hurt
it?

He must have been mad.

Lional's dragon lashed sideways with its tail: Gerald staggered as it hit the brown dragon a glancing blow. Lional's dragon breathed fire: he cried out as the heat licked him along his arm, blistering flesh. The little brown dragon faltered, one wing seared and smoking. Its wings beat once ... beat twice ... it wasn't climbing. The brown dragon let out a hoarse cry of despair.

Watching, triumphant, Lional laughed.

This was the moment. Live or die. Kill or be killed. Succeed or fail ... and in failing doom two nations to death.

As one with his suffering, struggling dragon, Gerald took a shuddering breath. Ignoring their pain, their fear, for the first time he looked deep within to the source of his power. Vivid as mercury, potent as wine, it poured without end from a reservoir he never knew existed ... drowning him from the inside out.

Somewhere in his mind something tore loose, shattered, exploded. It was Stuttley's all over again but a million times more powerful. His vision disappeared in a dazzling starburst. When it cleared moments later the world was strangely shadowed. Unreal. And cascading through his blood and bones a torrent of
potentia
that took his breath away. Compared to this, everything that had come before was as an echo, or a memory, or the merest hint of maybe. Flesh and bone fell away and now he didn't
feel
power, he
was
power. And he poured that
potentia
into his failing, falling otherself.

Through a silver corona Gerald watched the little brown dragon spiral away. He
was
the little brown dragon, their burned wing whole again, their broken ribs healed. They heard Lional grunt with surprise and then effort as he sent the crimson and emerald dragon in pursuit.

It was still an unequal fight. The little brown dragon was constrained by its original matrix; no power in the world could change that. And for all his newly woken
potentia
he was still a
good
wizard. Unsteeped in the malice and misery of the
Lexicon.

He and his brave brown dragon would have one chance .. .just one ...

Seeing through the magicked lizard's single eye, using senses he knew were his, yet not his, he felt Lional and his ravenous familiar closing the gap. Felt the hot wind of their breath on his back. Heard the greedy roar of hunger in their throat. Closer ... closer ... closer ...

The monster would be on them in seconds. In seconds it would all be over with Lional triumphant ... untrammelled ...

With a throat-ripping cry of effort Gerald brought his little brown dragon to an impossible midair halt and somersaulted it over the back of Lional's pursuing crimson and emerald monster. Lional and his dragon couldn't stop. He extended his claws - the brown dragon's claws - and sank them deep into Lional's - the other dragon's - hot and scaly hide. Then he reached out his jaws, snapped off one of the poisoned spines ... and plunged it into the vulnerable throat of the crimson and emerald monster beneath them.

Lional and his dragon screamed.

Dimly Gerald felt the acid poison burn his mouth, dissolve his teeth, run down his gullet and eat out his guts. His little brown dragon was dying and he was dying with it. Dimly, turning, he saw Lional drop to his knees, hands clawing at his throat. A bloody foam frothed at his mouth. His eyes were wild and staring, green venom bubbled from the gaping wound beneath his jaw ... and where it touched the flesh curled and smoked and split like rotten fruit, releasing a stench like a thousand drowned bloated bodies.

'Leave, the beast, wizardV
somebody
cried.'Foolish youth, you cannot save it! Abandon its mind before you are consumedV

Unstrung with sorrow he pulled his fading mind free of the little brown dragon. His legs gave way and he collapsed to the grass. As he stared into the sweet blue sky so far above him he saw two dragons ... one brown, one crimson and emerald, locked in a fierce and dying embrace, falling ... falling ...

And then the dragons were gone and it was two tiny lizards, falling ... falling. They tumbled into a clump of burned pink azaleas and disappeared from sight.

To his left Lional let out a choked, gurgling groan ... and fell silent.

Gerald couldn't move. Could barely breathe. Every muscle, every bone, every hair on his head was hurting exquisitely. All he could do was lie on the grass of the Royal Duck Pond park and stare at the sky. A sky that was suddenly full of camels and sultans and tatty old holy men, all gathered around him, their dark eyes approving.

Then the sky faded, and the camels, and the Kallarapi ... and his mind folded in on itself, closing the door to consciousness.

Some time later the door opened again, with resentful reluctance, to the sound of jabbering voices and the feel of brisk but gentle hands pushing him, pulling him. With enormous effort he opened his eyes. Anxious faces crowded above him but he could barely make them out through the waves of searing flame rolling relentlessly through his body. The world seemed strangely shallow ... for some reason sited at the end of a tunnel ...

There was Markham, his welcome face white and frightened. His lips were moving, shouting something, but the words didn't make any sense. Melissande, too, with her rust-red hair coming down from its bun. Her dreadful shirt had lost three buttons and she was crying messily. Reg sat on her shoulder, claws clutching tightly, wise eyes brilliant with fury and fear.

He couldn't see any Kallarapi.

He was still on the ground. Rolling his head he caught sight of Lional, dead on the grass a few feet away. The King of New Ottosland was a ruined travesty of his extravagantly handsome former self. The
sympathetica
had consumed him so completely his human flesh had succumbed to distant dragon poison, dissolved and reduced him to raw bloody meat. His blue eyes were open, gazing back with blank surprise.

Beneath the searing flame Gerald felt a vast aching sorrow.
You fool, Lional. You poor twisted fool. It didn't have to end like this ...

The world blurred, then. Strong arms lifted him, carried him. Placed him inside a covered carriage. The horses' hooves were too loud, they clattered on the cobblestones, on and on, making his head ring. Eventually the carriage stopped. He was lifted from shadow into sunshine. Carried indoors and up stairs, flight after flight. Taken into a familiar place, his suite in the palace. His bedroom. His bed. Swift hands stripped the clothes from his body, cool sheets scorched his shivering flesh. He cried out wildly in fear and pain. He thought Lional had returned to torment him, all blood and rotting flesh, fed to fatness on gross black magics that held the grave at bay.

He felt himself plunge into a pit of fire ... knew that he was dying ... and was desperately relieved.

'I can't
see ..
.' He opened his eye again. 'Reg? Reg, what's happened?'

She wouldn't meet his gaze. 'Do I look like a doctor to you, sunshine? Is there a stethoscope hanging around my neck?'

'Oh God. I'm
blindV

She rubbed her beak against his hair, a rare caress.
'Half
blind,' she said gruffly. 'And it may be temporary. No need to panic yet.'

The little brown skink had been blind in one eye. Was reborn a half-blind dragon.

...
the acid poison burns his mouth, dissolves his teeth, runs down his gullet and eats out his guts. Tlie little brown dragon is dying ... dying ...

A
pawn. A sacrifice. Killed without mercy on the altar of his necessity.

'I'm sorry' he whispered as the lamplight dimmed and soft oblivion claimed him.'I'm sorry ...'

The second time he woke Shugat stood beside the bed, supporting his bent old body with his staff. The bedroom curtains were still closed, and candles burned in their holders. The same night? Another night? He didn't know. He didn't care. He closed one eye and Shugat vanished.

So. It wasn't a dream or his imagination. In darkness he heard Shugat say, 'You said you would pay the price, wizard.'

Darkness was safe; he decided to stay there. 'Your gods did this to punish me?'

He heard a gentle sigh. 'No, wizard. You did this.'

'To punish myself?'

'Forget punishment,' said Shugat. He sounded impatient. 'Think ... consequences. Look at me, wizard.'

He opened his eye. Shugat's grave expression rearranged itself into a fierce and unexpected smile. The stone in his forehead was quiet. Unremarkable. 'You have courage.'

Rolling over beneath the blankets, he pressed his maimed eye to the pillow. /
don't have the strength for this.'I
have blood on my hands, Shugat. That's what I have. The dragon I made killed people. Innocents it was my duty to protect.' He had to stop. Gather himself. 'And then there's Lional.' Another difficult moment, i helped make him what he became. I showed him what was possible.'

'And you destroyed him.That debt is paid.'

Lional groaning. Lional dead.
Dead by my hand. Like him I'm a killer.'You
think I'm
proud
of that?'

Shugat shook his head. 'There is no place for pride in wizardry; you have learned a bitter lesson.'

Resentment welled. 'And what have you learned, Shugat? Holy Man Shugat and your omnipotent gods. Where were
they
when people were dying? You're very good at reading lectures - are you going to lecture
them?'

He flinched as the dull stone in Shugat's forehead burst into life. Power licked his bones, threatened an inferno. Something ancient, something living, pressed him to the mattress like a claw - a talon - a padded paw ...

in his short life a man is many things,' said Kallarap's ancient holy man. 'A lover. A liar. A killer. A king.' Shugat bent down, his dark gaze incandescent. 'A hammer ... and sometimes the hand which holds the hammer.'

Gerald turned his face from that implacable regard.'So you used me. You and your gods.'

Shugat shrugged. 'Better to be used by the gods than a Lional.'

'I don't want to be used by
anyonel'
he said hotly, glaring now. 'I just want to be left alone!'

'The choice is not yours, wizard,' said Shugat, shaking his head.'The power within you has seen to that. You can choose your master ... and that is all.'

His fingers fisted in the bedclothes. 'I can choose to walk away! I can choose to have no master. What am I, a dog, to be whistled for whenever someone needs something fetched?'

'Not a dog,' said Shugat. 'A lizard. Reborn a dragon. Destroyer ... or defender. The choice is yours. Choose wisely, wizard. My holy man's healing is a precious gift. It is not to be wasted.'

Heart thudding dully, Gerald stared at him. 'You saved my life? I really was dying and you saved my life?'

Shugat nodded.

'Why? It didn't seem to matter to you when you refused to help me fight Lional! The bastard nearly killed me before I - before the end.'

Another infuriating shrug. 'The gods willed it.'

He struggled to sit up. 'Why? What have your gods got to do with me? I don't worship them, Shugat. These Three of yours, who the hell do they think they are?'

Shugat thumped his staff into the carpet. Behind the curtains panes of glass shivered. Echoes of thunder, rolling. 'Does the hammer demand of the hand that holds it why the chosen nail should be struck?'

'This
hammer does,
yesV

Incredibly, Shugat smiled. 'Yes. It does.' Then he nodded and headed for the door. Reaching it, he slowed. Turned. 'You tread an interesting path, wizard.We will meet on it again.'

Oh terrific. Just the news he wanted to hear. 'We will?
Wlien? Why?
Shugat -'

But Shugat was gone.

'DamnV
he said. And was ambushed by exhaustion.

The third time he woke it was in daylight. The curtains were open, letting in warm sunshine. Melissande sat reading in an armchair close by his bed, and for once she actually looked presentable. Well groomed. Green silk blouse with cream pearl buttons. Darker green linen trousers. Not baggy but tailored, and crisply ironed. No disastrous bun; her auburn hair was sleek and smooth and captured demurely in a flattering braid. She was even wearing ...
makeup?

She heard his little sound of surprise. Looked up and smiled at him nervously. 'At last. You've been asleep ever since Shugat left and that was three days ago.'

Muzzily he stared at the ceiling. 'Three days?' He closed his good eye and the ceiling disappeared.

Not temporary, then. So much for Doctor Reg's diagnosis.
I am. I'm blind. It is a punishment.

Melissande cleared her throat. 'Look. I'm not very good at this, all right?'

He unclosed his eye. 'At what?'

'Apologising!'

'There's no need. None of what happened is your fault, Melissande.'

'Of course it is,' she said harshly. 'I brought you here.'

Her pain was palpable.
I'm not strong enough for this. I don't have the stamina.
'I brought myself. I wasn't kidnapped. Melissande, forget it.'

Her eyes filled with tears. 'How can I forget it? Lional was my brother.'

Lional.
Memory flexed its cruel, sharp claws. 'And so is Rupert. What's your point?'

'Yes ... Rupert ...' Despite the tears her lips twitched in a curious smile but it didn't last long. 'Gerald, let me talk. I've been rehearsing this speech for three days, all right?'

Oh lord.
Can I pass out again, please? Can I sleep till I'm fifty?
Melissande was staring anxiously. He sighed. 'Fine. If you must.'
For all the damned good it'll do either of us.

She dropped the book to the floor and tangled her fingers together. 'All my life I made excuses for Lional. I said, he's just temperamental. He's highly strung. Burdened with being the heir. I told myself that people were jealous. He was so ... beautiful. And he could be kind. When it suited.' Her breath caught in her throat, and at last the tears spilled. 'I should've faced the truth about him, Gerald. I was a coward, a disgrace to every Melissande who came before me. I should've
stopped
him before -'

He reached for her. 'Melissande, don't. Please, just don't. This is my fault, not yours. The blame is mine.'

She dragged an angry hand across her wet face.
'Yours?
Don't be stupid.
You
didn't make him read those awful grimoires or murder Bondaningo and the other wizards. You didn't -'

i made him the dragon.'
Oh God. The dragon. Emerald and crimson and brimful of death.
'How many people did it kill? Do you know?'

She wouldn't look at him. 'Gerald, don't. You can't -'

'How many?'

'Ninety-seven,' she whispered. 'More than twice that number injured.'

His heart boomed like a drum.
Nearly one hundred. Nearly one hundred murdered.
'Were any of them children?'

Her fingers laced and unlaced in her lap. 'Twelve.'

Retreating into his blindness didn't help ... but he stayed there regardless.

He heard her swallow a sob. Then the creak of the armchair and the swish of her linen trousers as she stood. 'I'll leave you alone. The others can come back another -'

'Others?' Reluctantly he admitted light and the altered world. 'What others?'

'Nobody dreadful.' She pulled a face. 'Well, Reg. But Monk and Rupert, too.'

The last damned thing he needed was a conversation about butterflies. Monk, though ... 'Don't send them away.' 'You're sure?'

'Yes. Melissande ... you will feel better. Eventually'

She folded her arms and raised one eyebrow. 'You mean there'll come a day when I'll wake up and there
won't
be this great gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be? When every breath doesn't hurt me and every corner I turn in this wretched mausoleum of a palace doesn't ambush me with a memory? And that soon, dear
God,
I'll stop talking like some dreadful heroine out of a book I wouldn't be caught dead reading?'

Incredibly that made him smile. 'I promise. Now let the others in before I fall asleep again.'

But instead of going to the door she frowned. 'I'm so sorry about your eye, Gerald. Did you know it's turned silver?'

' What?'

She fetched his hand mirror from the chest of drawers. 'Gerald?' she said, as he stared at it, remembering ... 'What's wrong?'

With a convulsive shiver he banished the clawed memory:
his naked body butchered and eaten ... the glistening snakes ... his battered heart, bleeding a river ... and pain ... such awful pain ...

'Nothing.'

He took the mirror and made himself look. It was true: his left eye shimmered an opaque silver beneath a strange creamy film ... like the scaled

underbelly of a full-grown skink. The mark of the dragon. Magic's thumbprint. Payment tendered ...

And so much less than I truly deserve.

He thrust the mirror back at her. 'Thanks.'

Standing there, fidgeting with the mirror, she said.'Gerald. Can I ask you something?'

He owed her so much, she could ask him anything. 'Sure.'

'What was it like ... to make a dragon?'

Anything but that. 'Melissande -' he began, and then stopped. No. She could even ask him that, it was terrible,' he whispered. 'And it was wonderful.'

And how he was going to live with that, he didn't know.

She swallowed, hard.'Oh.'

Then she turned away, put the mirror back on the chest of drawers and opened the bedroom door. 'He's awake, but you can't stay long,' she said to whoever was outside.

Markham entered first, grinning like a shark. Reg sat on his shoulder, doing smug as only she could. And Rupert -

He sat up, gaping. What the hell? That was
Rupert?

All traces of the butterfly-obsessed buffoon had vanished. His lank fair hair had lost its tarnish, was neatly trimmed and shining. His faded eyes were bright and sharply focused, his lips firm, not foolishly trembling. The loose-jointed shambling was gone, replaced by a taut and muscular discipline. He was dressed in severely cut black velvet, no puce or lace or butterfly dust in sight.

'Your Highness?'

Rupert crossed to the bed.'Dear Gerald. What a relief to see you on the mend. You had us worried you know. If it hadn't been for Shugat - well -' He smiled. 'Let's give thanks for miracles, shall we?'

He stared into that new-made face. 'You look so -' Lord, no. He couldn't say
normal. '-
different.'

Rupert exchanged swiftly amused glances with Melissande. 'I know. Sorry to spring it on you like this. You see -'

Melissande sighed. 'Honestly, Rupert. Don't be a goose. Gerald, he's the king now. Rupert the First. Despite appearances to the contrary, he never was a gormless twit. Turns out
he
was wearing camouflage as well.' A dark look at her brother suggested the matter was far from being closed for discussion.

'Camouflage?'

'Yes,' she said. 'Don't you remember? Just like me, he was hiding from Lional.'

'Of course I remember. I'm half-blind not senile.' He stared at Rupert. 'So ... you
knew
what he was?'

Rupert nodded.'For a long time now' A flicker of rage, building swiftly. 'And you kept
silent?'

'It's complicated, Gerald,' said Rupert, his hands coming up. 'Please. You must -'

'Complicated?'
he echoed. A terrible pain blossomed in his blind eye. 'Tell that to the children who -'

Reg cleared her throat with an ominous gurgle. 'Good morning, Reg, how lovely to see you again, thanks so much for everything you did to get those useless bureaucrats at the Department hopping!'

As he struggled to control the rage, Melissande turned.
'You?
You didn't do anything! That was all me and Rupert! And Monk, a bit.
You
had nothing to do with it!'

Reg bridled, i beg your pardon? I'll have you know that I looked at those anal-retentive civil servants in a very
meaningful
way, madam! And how would you know what I did or didn't do? You were too busy impersonating a headless chook and bleating "Save Gerald!'"

Melissande gaped. 'I never did! I never once
bleated!
And anyway, chickens don't bleat, that's lambs, chicken
cackle,
just like
you,
and -'

'Well if I cackle, ducky, I'm not the only girl in here who does!' Reg retorted. 'So I've got you coming
and
going, haven't I?
Hal
You'll have to pull off your mismatched flannel pyjamas mighty early in the morning to get the better of
me,
young lady!'

Monk grabbed Reg from his shoulder and plopped her onto the bed. 'For ether's sake, she's your bird, Gerald! Take her, would you? She's driving me crazy. And anyway ...' He pulled a face, i have to go.'

'You can't!' he protested. 'You haven't told me what
happened ...'