“Then what are you waiting for?” said Reg. “Get out to the foyer and unlock them, Mr. Markham!”
But that was a whole lot easier said than done.
One touch to the apartment doors’ binding incant and he broke into a cold and sickly sweat. Snatching his hand back from the polished timber, he shook his head.
Oh, bloody hell. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse.
“You’re right. They’re hexed. But Gerald didn’t do it.”
Standing off to one side, the princess glared. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Markham. Of course he did.”
No. No. I’ve got a first name. You can use it. “Call me Monk,” he said, then pressed his palm flat to the doors a second time. For her, not for him. He already had his answer. The same sickly surge of thaumic energy roiled through him, tangled and twisted and hideous. Bile rose in his throat, burning.
“Well?” Reg demanded, perched on the back of a book-laden chair. There were books on the floor, too. There were books everywhere. Her Royal Highness Princess Melissande was as big a book fiend as he was.
Bloody hell. She’s perfect.
Distracted, he looked at Reg. “Well what?”
“Well can you get us out of here or can’t you?”
With an effort he focused on the job at hand. “I don’t know. Maybe. It’s the most powerful barrier hex I’ve ever come across.”
“Then it has to be Gerald’s,” Melissande insisted. “Because there isn’t anybody else in New Ottosland who could’ve put it there.”
“Mel-Your Highness-I wish that were true,” he said. “It’d make my life a whole lot easier if it was.”
Melissande started tapping her toes. “Fine. Then who was it if it wasn’t Gerald? And don’t say Lional, because he’s not a wizard.”
Bloody hell. I don’t want to tell her. Except he had to. Not only was she ranking royalty and had the right to know… he had no right to protect her. And if he tried she’d probably smack him.
“Look. Your Highness. I know this is going to sound crazy, but-”
“Then it must be true,” said Reg, snippy. “ Everything in this cockeyed kingdom is crazy.”
“Thank you,” Melissande said coldly. “Mr. Markham?”
“The doors were hexed by a single wizard,” he said quietly. “But there are five First Grade thaumic signatures in the hex.”
“So?” said Melissande, her arms folded tight and her chin lifted, as though she could hold the terrible truth at bay.
“So we have five missing First Grade wizards, all of whom reported to your brother the king-and who all disappeared before Gerald got here.”
She didn’t want to believe him, couldn’t bear the thought of her brother murdering five innocent men and stealing their potentias. So he made her prove it to herself using a thaumically-charged gift the missing wizard Bondaningo Greenfeather had given her.
It was the cruelest thing he’d ever done.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t have a choice.
Giving her a moment to compose herself, he turned to Reg. “A non-wizard stealing potentias? I’ve never come across anything like it.”
“You wouldn’t have,” the bird said darkly. “Seeing as you’re a nice young man who doesn’t read that kind of grimoire. But I’ve known men who do, Monk. Crazy or not, you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s true that mad bugger Lional’s not a wizard, but all it takes is one tiny thaumaturgical spark to start the fire. Now get us out of here so we can rescue Gerald before he becomes victim number six.”
Breaking the mad king’s filthy hex nearly finished him. Sick and shaking he forced himself inside its intricate workings. Tried not to hear the faint, terrible screams of those five dying wizards as he unraveled the incant strand by dirty, stinking strand.
The power of its final unbinding blew him clear across the foyer.
Melissande rushed to his side. “Monk- Monk! Are you all right?”
And suddenly the blinding headache and nausea were worth it.
He groaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Not in my foyer you’re not, Mr. Markham! Just you pull yourself together!”
She put her arm around his shoulders and helped him sit up. The urge to collapse into her practical embrace was almost overwhelming. But Gerald needed him, so…
“I will,” he mumbled. “I promise.” Blearily he blinked around him. “Reg?”
Lalapinda’s former queen was hovering between the splintered remains of the foyer doors, wings flapping up a hurricane. “Yes, that’s me! Now get off your skinny ass and let’s go, Mr. Markham!”
Melissande’s fingertips brushed against his cheek. “Are you really all right? Are you sure you can do this? Find Gerald, stop Lional? Save my kingdom?”
Mesmerized by her stern and steady gaze, Monk nodded. Cleared his throat. “Yes. I think so.”
“Good,” she said, with the swiftest, sweetest smile. “I think so too. Now you heard the bird, Mr. Markham. Get up off your skinny ass. You and I have work to do.”
The warm glow of her touch, and her smile, carried him through the fear that he’d not be able to locate Gerald-fed into the ebullient joy when his best locating incant did find him-and lasted right up to the moment they saw the dragon.
On the other side of a palace skylight’s sparkling glass, lazily floating on an updraft like an enormous crimson and emerald striped seagull-with teeth and talons-the fantastic creature opened its massive jaws and belched a fearsome plume of fire.
Staring astonished at the impossible beast, Monk felt a fresh wave of sickness crash over him-because here was the explanation for that enormous thaumic spike.
Gerald, Gerald. What have you done?
Because it had to be Gerald. It couldn’t be anyone else.
“Oy. Madam,” said Reg, perched piratically on his shoulder. “You know who that’s supposed to be, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Melissande whispered, with tears in her voice. “Grimthak.”
“Grimthak?” he said. He couldn’t tear his gaze from Gerald’s impossible creation. “And who the bloody hell is Grimthak?”
“A Kallarapi god,” said Melissande. “Monk-Mr. Markham-get us out of here. Now.”
With Gerald’s location set into the portable portal’s destination node, there came one nasty moment when he thought he wouldn’t be able to adjust the device’s parameters to accept simultaneous travel by two adults and a bird.
Come on, come on, Markham, you pillocking plonker. Are you a genius or aren’t you? Pull your finger out. Get it done.
“Ha!” said Reg, as his rejigging of the portal’s matrix finally took and a pinpoint of light in the air before them began to blossom. “About time, sunshine. What took you so long?”
Bloody hell, Gerald. How do you stand it?
“Sorry,” he said curtly. “But I assumed you’d want to reach the other side in one piece.”
Perched on Melissande’s shoulder now, the bird sniffed. “Let’s leave the witty banter for when we don’t have a dragon on top of us, shall we?” She bounced a little. “Come on, Your Highness. Giddyup. Let’s go.”
“Don’t look at me,” he told Melissande. “I’m not the one who rescued her from the wilderness.” Then he held out his hand. “To be on the safe side.”
Her lips twitched, just a little. “All right. Provided you don’t try making a habit of it.” Her fingers closed around his, cool and ever so slightly trembling. “On three?”
The brilliant portal shimmered like a lake in bright sunshine. He nodded. “Why not? On three. One- two-”
They leaped through it on three.
A dizzying rush… a wrenching unreality… and then they ripped through the air on the other side of the thaumaturgical conduit and landed with a bone-rattling thud onto cold dirt in the sudden dark.
“ Ow! That’s my face!”
