And too quickly for stopping, Lional blasted the dragon with a mordicanto majora from Stanza Seventeen of Madam Bartholomew’s Little Surprise.
The dragon shrieked once and fell dead at his feet.
Gerald spun around. “ Lional! What the hell did you do that for?”
Lional rolled over and sat up. His right eye was burst and bubbled in its socket, the lizard scales where his cheek had been now dribbled with gore. His left eye was turned dragonfire crimson, glaring with a rage as hot as the sun.
“The dragon was mine,” he growled. “You had no right to touch it.”
Poor thing, poor thing. I should’ve known. I should’ve saved it. “No, it was mine, Lional,” he said, shaking. “I made it. You only stole it. You steal everything. You’re just a petty thief.”
Lional got his feet under him and stood, drunkenly swaying. “I am a king. The King of New Ottosland. Everything contained within this kingdom is mine-including you, Professor. To do with as I will.”
Gerald sucked in a deep breath to stop the shaking. He killed my dragon. He’s going to pay for that. “I’ll give you this, Lional. You’re stronger than I thought. Anyone else would’ve died with the breaking of that sympathetico.”
Lional’s hideously deformed face twisted in a smile. “I’m not anyone else.”
He nodded. “That’s true. You’re one for the books all right, Lional. But now it’s time for this chapter to end.”
“I don’t think so,” said Lional. “I write my own story, Gerald. And in my story you’re not even a footnote!”
Killing hex met killing hex in cacophonous mutual obliteration. For all his unique potentia and the dark magics he’d absorbed, Gerald felt himself fly through the air like so much leaf litter caught in a high wind. He struck the ground hard, the breath driven from his lungs in a grunting whoosh. Bouncing to his feet, blinking to clear his spotty vision, he saw where Lional had landed, clear across the far side of the gardens near the convoluted, meticulously maintained hedge-maze that led to the rear of the palace.
“Right,” he said, scrambling to his feet and dusting himself off. Ow. He had bruises. Lional was going to pay for them too, along with everything else. “Time to finish this.”
Lional was up again and raggedly running. Towards him, not away.
“The fool must want to die, Reg.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. It’s his choice. I don’t care one way or the other.”
But that wasn’t true, and he knew it. He wanted Lional dead.
Strolling, not running, he crossed the undamaged grass to meet Lional’s oncoming rush. With his one good eye Lional saw him and bared his bloodied teeth in a snarl. Came faster, shouting foul incantations between wet, panting breaths.
He snapped his fingers. “Stop.”
Like running face-first into a stone wall, Lional slammed to a halt.
“Lional, Lional, Lional…” Still strolling, he joined Melissande’s motionless brother. Looked all that ruined beauty up and down and sadly shook his head. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I did try to resolve this reasonably… but I suppose that was foolish. After all, who can reason with a madman? Not me, apparently.” He frowned. “You shouldn’t have killed the dragon, Lional. That was the proverbial last straw, I’m afraid. One innocent victim too many, old chap. I simply have to draw the line.”
Silenced as well as halted, Lional impotently glared.
“And now I’m going to punish you,” he added. “Because if anyone deserves to feel sorry for himself, Lional, it’s you.”
With a flick of his finger, a push of his potentia, he tipped Lional over backwards to thud onto the grass. Hexed immobile, Lional could do nothing but glare and breathe. His one good eye rolled wildly, trying to focus.
Gerald looked to the dead dragon, some fifteen paces distant. Poor thing. Wings splayed pathetically, its body sprawled like a giant’s abandoned toy. Anger and power simmered inside him, each feeding the other. Growing fat and impatient. Longing to be let loose to wreak vengeance. Justice. Lional had caused so much pain…
Time for him to feel a little, I think. For some people there’s just no learning without doing.
“I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” he said, and meant it. Feeling Lional’s panic he glanced down. “No, not you, Lional. The dragon.”
Hoping there was forgiveness, somewhere, for what he’d done-what he’d let be done-he snapped his fingers twice. His potentia, answering, wrenched the two largest teeth from the dragon’s massive mouth. Another finger snap saw Lional’s arms stretched out wide, bared palms to the cloudless sky. A garbled sound vibrated in Lional’s straining throat.
“Pin him,” he said. “Make our Lional the Butterfly King.”
In a blur of magicked motion the dragon’s teeth flew through the air and plunged one each point-first through Lional’s waiting palms, sinking deep into the earth beneath him.
“You can scream if you like,” he said. “If it helps. I don’t mind.”
Released from the holding hex Lional opened his mouth and shrieked, heels drumming his agony against the close-mown grass.
“Hmm. You know, that’s interesting,” he said, head tipped to one side. “I was right. The dragon’s poison isn’t affecting you. Must be a leftover advantage from the sympathetico.”
Lips flecked with bloodied spittle, Lional tried to lift his head. “I’m going to kill you, Dunwoody. I’m going to-”
He smiled. “No, you’re not, Lional. You’re going to lie there and cry.”
Eyes slitted Lional twisted, gathering his stolen potentias into a tight fist. “Oh, yes. I am going to kill you. But first I’m going to hurt you, Gerald, I’m going to make what I did to you in the cave feel like a slap and a tickle, I swear. You’ll beg me to-”
“Oh, shut up, Lional,” he said-and took back all those thieved magics. Gathered them into a single pulsing, diseased mass and wrenched them without pity from the blood and bones of the wicked man who’d stolen them.
Lional’s scream was beyond agony. Beyond anything human, or even animal.
As Melissande’s brother writhed and gobbled on the grass, spitting blood and bile and vomit, Gerald watched the pulsing mass of power bob in the afternoon sunshine like an obscene, distorted balloon. Tears pricked his eyes. Five wizards killed for those potentias. Five good men destroyed. There was only one thing he could do for them now. He clenched his fist. Breathed a single word: Dissipato. And watched the stolen potentias spread and thin like smoke, thin and thin and vanish into thin air.
Lional was shuddering at his feet. He looked down. “Ah ah, Lional, I said cry, not die.”
It was nothing, nothing, to steady Lional’s laboring heart. To restore his violated body’s equilibrium. To keep him alive. Magic was effortless, his potentia so instantly responsive to his will. He hardly needed the words, a simple thought was enough. It was marvelous.
I’m a new kind of wizard. I am unique.
The thought pleased him, enormously.
Eat your hearts out, Haythwaite and Co.
He looked down again. “All right, Lional. Now we’ve got that settled, let’s move this along, shall we? There’s a debt you need to repay and we’ve barely touched upon it. Trust me, one little scream hardly balances the scales.”
His good eye tear-filled and bloodshot, Lional stared up at him. “And you call me mad.”
“Oh yes,” he said, cheerful. “You’re stark staring bonkers, old chap.”
“And what kind of justice is it that tortures a man lacking his wits?”
“Ordinarily no kind,” he said. “But the thing is, Lional, you’re a special case. You sent yourself mad. You did it on purpose, murdering those wizards for their potentias. So as far as I’m concerned that exempts you from any kind of compassionate consideration.” Dropping to one knee, he leaned close. “Or, to put it another way, I’m about to show you all the mercy you showed them. And me. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”
A pulse beat in the hollow of Lional’s elegant throat. Fueled by terror it pumped and pumped. How satisfying
