Lional had hollowed out inside him.
Sentiment is weakness.
Eyes still closed, leaning against the corridor wall now, his body shaking, he pushed further and harder. Stirred up in his blood, the remains of Lional’s curses started screaming. Or were they his own screams? Either way, it didn’t matter. The only important thing now was finding the Lexicon.
A tug on his potentia. A sharp rebound. A sudden burning conviction. That way. On a deep breath he opened his eyes, pushed off the wall and started walking. Instinct dragged him along, dragged him almost to jogging, down corridor after corridor, up staircase after staircase, heading for the palace’s highest floor. The closer he got to Lional’s domain the harder his potentia tugged at him, so tuned now was it to Lional’s caustic thaumic signature.
He didn’t encounter another soul. Every last servant had fled, every single government lackey had deserted his or her post. With their sleepy little kingdom turned on its head, with a dragon raining acid and fire from the sky and their sovereign hunting them instead of protecting them, what could they do except run? But how many had run only to die anyway, in the palace gardens or on its carriageways or down in the city?
And is Zazoor feeling proud of himself, sitting there safe in his little bubble? Is his Holy Shugat pleased? What kind of gods does the old man serve, that he could sit there with all his power and not lift a finger to help the innocent?
Resentful anger simmering, warming him, helping to keep his fears at bay, Gerald kept on through the eerily empty palace. His heart thumped and his breath whistled as he climbed yet another daunting flight of stairs. The next opened door he fell through would take him into the attics or onto the roof, wouldn’t it?
But no. The next door he eased open showed him an opulent corridor-where Lional’s thaumic presence shouted loud enough to send him deaf, dumb and blind. Shouted so cruelly he staggered and dropped to his knees, one hand still clutching the door knob, the other fisting to his head. Lional, ever prudent, had warded the corridor with a brutal keep-your-distance hex. Snarling the hallway in thaumic barbed wire, armed with teeth and talons and a bloody minded ferocity, it tore at his potentia until he was whimpering in his throat.
I can’t break through that. How can I break through that? I’m only as good as the incants I know right now, and I don’t know any incant that could dismantle this hex. Not even Reg taught me an incant strong enough for this.
So-was that it? Had he been defeated before he ever really started? Looked like it. Looked like Lional’s native cunning had beaten him without so much as raising a sweat. For all the good he could do here he might as well have stayed in the cave, in the dark, and starved slowly to death. Letting go of the door knob he folded to the floor and rolled himself into a tight ball, battered by Lional’s inimical magics.
Gerald Dunwoody, what are you doing? Stop being such a pathetic tosser!
Startled, he unrolled himself and sat up. “Reg?”
But he was alone. That was just Reg’s voice, the voice of his conscience, kicking him in the pants. Ashamed, he scrubbed his hands across his face. Oh, lord, he was pathetic, wasn’t he?
If I don’t get back on my feet and finish what I started then I’m no better than Shugat and Zazoor, hiding behind their precious, indolent gods.
Through slitted eyes he stared the length of the gilded, plushly carpeted corridor. Saw, at its far end, Lional’s hexed double doors. Beyond that flimsy barrier lay Grummen’s Lexicon and Saint Snodgrass alone knew what other proscribed texts. He was yards, mere yards, from laying his hands on the weapons he needed to defeat Lional, save New Ottosland-and possibly the rest of the world. And the only thing standing between him and victory over New Ottosland’s mad king was this one measly, wicked, obliterating hex-which he didn’t have the first notion how to dismantle.
But I made a dragon, so I can bloody well do this.
Grimly determined, goaded-and he knew it-by an unaccustomed but undeniable sense of competition with the Department of Thaumaturgy’s one and only Monk Markham-he faced his fears. Faced Lional’s hexed doors. Braced himself-feet wide, shoulders thrown back, head lifted, teeth gritted-and opened himself fully to the worst of Lional’s magic.
CHAPTER THREE
It was like throwing himself into a writhing pit of insane vipers, or diving headfirst into a vat of boiling acid, or trying to ride a hundred wild horses bareback, all at once. The hex took him and shook him and tried to tear him apart. Flogged him and crushed him and threatened to splinter his bones.
Every instinct he possessed was screaming get out, run away but grimly he fought that cowardly impulse as hard and as bitterly as he fought Lional’s hex. His heart was drubbing so hard he was afraid it might burst-or that his eyeballs would explode or his jaw crack into pieces. He could feel a howl building in his throat. Prying his teeth apart he let it out and heard it bounce back and forth between the walls of the corridor, a skin-crawling cry of pain and near-insanity.
Lost within Lional’s merciless attack he flailed and thrashed, dimly aware of his battered potentia as it grappled with the onslaught of dark magic. He didn’t know how to help his strange powers, or control them, had no idea how to harness their strength to his need. If there was an elegant, subtle way to dismantle Lional’s incant, well, he had no idea what that was. And he didn’t have the time to work it out, either. Because time was precious and it was fast running out.
Oh, Saint Snodgrass. I could use some help about now…
Howling again, Gerald pulled his potentia back inside himself. Poured every last skerrick of his strength into crushing it small, then smaller, compressing it until it too was howling. He felt like he’d plucked the sun from the sky and was trying to stuff it into an egg cup-and the sun, his potentia, was fighting back. Rivers of sweat poured down his face, down his back. He could feel his spine bowing, his knees bending, could feel his heart trying to batter its way right through his ribs. His unremarkable body couldn’t take much more of this. Punished by Lional and by himself it was threatening to fly apart, to escape this unending torment in death.
No-no-just a little more-a little longer And on the screaming brink of self-destruction he let himself fly free.
Like molten fire his power poured out of him, angry and indiscriminate, to smash the bindings of Lional’s warding hex and obliterate its fabric. The keep-your-distance incant went up in flames and greasy smoke, stinking, unwholesome. Reeking of every foul enchantment Lional had so eagerly embraced.
Sobbing, Gerald fell forward onto his face, unable to save himself. The corridor’s plush carpeting saved him from a broken nose or worse. Gasping he lay there, excoriated, waiting for the flames and agony to subside. When he thought he could feel his bones whole within him, when he thought he could trust himself to sit up in one piece, he pushed himself off the carpet and looked around at the scorch marks on the gilded walls and the expensive carpet. Stared, astonished, at the smoking doors to Lional’s private apartments, drunkenly hanging from their half-melted hinges.
“Gosh,” he said, his voice a thin, surprised croak. “How about that, Reg? I did it.”
And surely Lional would know he’d done it, too. So what little time he had left, he’d be a fool to waste it. Wincing, he staggered back onto his feet, made his way along the unimpeded corridor-and crossed the threshold into Lional’s private domain.
It stank of dark magic.
Standing just inside the open doorway, one hand braced against its almost too hot to touch frame, Gerald fought to keep his stomach from turning itself inside out. Every breath sucked the stench of corrupted power into his lungs, sent it flooding through his veins. Was it his overworked imagination or did even his sweaty skin feel sticky and fouled with it?
I don’t understand. This entire palace reeks of Lional. How did none of the other court wizards not notice what was going on right under their noses? And what about Shugat and his gods? Am I supposed to think Lional just-what? Slipped their minds?
Possibly that was the most terrifying thing of all-that Lional possessed such strength, such mastery, that he could hide himself and his workings from the keen senses of a holy man like Shugat. That he could hide from the
