Richard caught the blow on his shield. He cut low, trying to slip under his adversary’s guard. The black shield turned the blade. Wyndon’s sword struck Richard’s shield with a loud crack.
Miranda winced, but Richard didn’t falter. He sliced toward his foe’s side. Dodging, Wyndon swung backhanded for Richard’s neck.
Richard ducked. Leaped back and jerked his shield up. Twisted clear of a shortened thrust toward his face. His blade glanced off the vambrace on his foe’s left forearm.
The men exchanged a wild flurry of blows. They stepped back, panting, a hollow sound when filtered through their helms.
“You’ve more skill than I thought.” Wyndon’s face plate muffled his voice. “More, but not enough.”
He backed off. The swirling mists obscured his outline, then turned purple and concealed him utterly.
Frowning, Richard flipped up his face plate. Sweat trickled down the side of his face and beaded on his upper lip. “Edmund?” he said.
“I know not, lad, but there’s a wicked feel to the mist.”
Miranda shivered at the energy crackling in the fog. “Can we stop what he’s doing?”
“Not without knowing what that is,” Edmund said.
The swirling mists expanded, stretching upward to a height three times that of a man. The swirl tightened into a shape, and a black dragon trumpeted into the mists. When it looked back at them, its purple eyes glinted with malevolence.
“Christ’s bones.” Edmund thrust her behind him. “Feel the power he’s drawing—seems the bastard mastered a skill we all thought only a legend.”
“Edmund, send Miranda home.” Richard dropped his face plate.
“Not unless you come, too,” she insisted.
I can’t. We may never have as good a chance to stop him.
Would killing him here even do that? They couldn’t leave him here alive, either, to work more mischief.
Flame belched from the dragon’s mouth. Richard raised his shield in time to deflect the flare, but he staggered backward. He turned to Edmund. “Go!”
Richard raised the shield against another flare. Edmund tugged at Miranda’s arm.
“I won’t leave him,” she insisted. “Can’t you help him?”
Richard leaned forward, into the fire. Behind the shield, he held his sword up. He took a step, and then another. The sharp forward angle of his body revealed his strain as he pressed toward his foe.
Grimly, Edmund said, “I am helping him, by protecting you.”
Pain flared in her bond with Richard. With it came suffocating heat. Every breath burned in Richard’s chest. This hadn’t happened in the dream.
Somehow, she had to help. She lunged toward him.
Edmund caught her arm. “No, child. If that beast puts a claw on you, Richard will surrender.”
The truth in his words hit her like a blow from a cudgel. Having Edmund guard her deprived Richard of aid that might save his life.
She pressed a fist to her mouth. Should she leave? Could she, without knowing he was safe? If she did, he would be trapped here. She had a single anchor stone, and she didn’t know how to come back for him.
Richard had almost reached the dragon. He drew back his sword arm. The beast let out a rumble that sounded like laughter. As Richard thrust, its great tail whipped around its body. The tail hit Richard’s shield and knocked him into the air.
Pain screamed through the bond, down his limbs and hers. Miranda shuddered with its force.
His sword dropped from his hand. The shield fell away. With a great, clanking thud, he landed. He rolled twice, ending face-down, and lay still. The armor vanished.
Miranda stifled a cry. His pain still racked her, so he must live, but he lay so still.
The dragon trumpeted again. Fire curled around its snout as it turned toward its helpless prey.
Gaunt shapes swirled from the mist, heading for Richard. From Edmund’s hand, argent power flared to beat them back.
Miranda shivered. Richard’s pain shuddered in her bones and screamed over her limbs. “I’ll distract it. You help Richard.”
“While the beast slaughters you. No, lass. I’ll draw the creature off while you help Richard. I think I can still protect you from the wraiths.” Armor formed around Edmund’s body.
“I can protect myself,” she said.
The dragon looked at them in triumph. Its lips drew back in a gesture that might have been a smile. It took another step toward Richard.
She’d had little practice with healing, but she would find a way. “Tell me when.”
“Go.” With surprising lightness for a man so heavily armored, Edmund sprang away from her. “For God, England, and King Richard,” he shouted, charging forward.
Purple sparks sizzled from his hand. The mists around the dragon sparked with purple, as though catching fire.
The creature recoiled. Although the sparks died, they had caught its attention. It turned toward Edmund. Flame blazed from its snout.
Miranda ran to Richard and dropped to her knees beside him. Red blisters from the fire’s heat mottled his waxen skin. This close, his searing agony washed over her face. She gritted her teeth as tears of shared pain oozed from the corners of her eyes.
The dragon roared. She looked up.
Some thirty yards away, Edmund stood between them and the beast. His sword had become the great weapon of English yeomanry, a longbow. He let fly a shaft and then, so quickly that she blinked, another. The arrows seemed to form already nocked on the string.
Flame belched from the dragon’s mouth. The arrows blazed in the air and fell, but others were already in flight.
She turned back to her husband and gripped his hand. Richard!
He stirred faintly but didn’t rouse.
She had to hurry. Setting her fingertips beside the worst of the burns on his face, she traced their shapes and envisioned them fading. Magic tingled in her fingers. Nothing else changed.
Desperate, she flung a mental deluge of power at him. It flared down her arm and into her hand, then washed over him, across his face and body, like an amber wave.
Agony blazed in their bond. His eyes jerked open. They clenched shut, and he choked back a cry. Miranda gasped but kept her grip on him. Suddenly, as though a dam of healing power had burst, the pain washed away.
His face relaxed. The blisters shrank, fading into his normal skin color. The pain in the bond became a dull ache. He sat up slowly.
The dragon swatted Edmund. His feet left the ground, and his form turned green. In a flash of sparks, he disappeared.
Shrieking wraiths rushed out of the mist. As Richard spun magic into a shielding cocoon, he said, “Feed power to me, love, as you do when you heal.”
Channeling magic down her arm, she felt it merge with his, a tingling in her hand like the one she’d felt at her nape when Arabella joined their magic to scry.
The lunging, clawing wraiths surrounded them, but their cocoon gleamed with power.
Richard smiled grimly. A wave of his hand sent the wraiths wheeling away. He sprang to his feet. Armor formed around him again as he drew her upright. “Stay shielded and run a few paces away. Draw its attention.” A sword formed in his right hand. “Go.”
Pulling power from the reeking fog to strengthen her shield, she picked up her skirts and ran. The wraiths screamed around her. She couldn’t help hunching her shoulders beneath her protective aura.
Behind her, the dragon roared. A glance over her shoulder showed her that it had turned toward her.
She stopped and dropped to her knees, pretending to cower from it, but kept her right hand at her side.
Thought seemed to become reality here, at least when it came to objects. Mayhap she could use that.
“Thought to being, fog to stone, strike that dragon’s big jawbone,” she muttered quickly, imagining a large boulder flying toward the dragon’s breast. She poured magic at the image.
A current of air shot toward the dragon and punched through t
he wraiths. It solidified. Became a flying rock the size of her torso. The dragon roared, flame searing her missile.
“So there,” she muttered, exultant.
She had distracted the creature, and with a new skill. How else could she use it?
Richard leaped through the wraiths screaming around him. He landed astride the base of the dragon’s tail and caught a spiny scale to hold on. The dragon roared again. The tail whipped back and forth but not enough to dislodge him. The beast’s forepaws couldn’t reach him.
Miranda hurled another stone, then fought fatigue to make herself a triangular, blue shield. If Richard used one in addition to a shielding aura, she also should.
Cautiously, she walked forward. The flitting wraiths’ screams jarred her ears and spiked into her soul, but she couldn’t let them distract her. At her command, flames danced along her shield. Good. Dividing the beast’s attention would help Richard.
He reversed his sword and drove the blade between the spine scales. Purple blood spurted over his hands and thighs. The beast shrieked, a sound sharp with agony. It shifted as though to roll, but Richard wrenched the hilt over and down. A loud crack sounded, and the dragon screeched. Its tail stopped moving.
The wraiths dived for it, and Richard leaped clear with the broken sword dissolving in his hand. He formed another in an instant.
Very good, he sent to her, but stay back now.
He needed to slay the dragon, not protect her. She crouched where she was.
The dragon’s head swung back and forth. The fog at its tail turned bright purple. It roared. The tail whipped toward Richard, who leaped over it just in time.
Miranda stifled a cry. The dragon must have used the mists to heal itself. If it could repair the damage so easily, how could he kill the beast?
Chapter 31
The dragon’s chest expanded in a great, rasping indrawn breath. Invisible currents of power rushed past Miranda, streaming toward it like an icy wave.
She flung power in front of Richard to form a magical wall that glowed silver. Flame cascaded from the dragon and poured around her wall, leaving him untouched. But his weariness and discouragement throbbed in the bond they shared.
He hurried to her, drawing power from the fog and expanding the barrier to cover them both. “I don’t know how to counter this.”
“I have an idea. Say the words from the vision.”
His momentary doubt flicked her, but he drew more power until he glowed a brilliant argent. When she reached for him, he clasped her hand. “Together, we’re more,” he said. “Feed power to me again.”
She tried, and shared power flowing through her surged, singing in her blood and filling her with light until she felt like living silver. It rippled outward from her and Richard, forcing the wraiths back from it like a battering ram.
Richard glanced at her. “Far more,” he said with a smile.
Flame boiled around their magic barrier but left them unscathed. The dragon roared. It took one stride toward them, and then another.
Richard released her. He stepped clear of their wall with his sword raised, his shield high, and their joined power humming in the bond they shared.
“Your time is done,” he said, his voice ringing with power. “The untruths and evils you nurtured shall not prevail but pass away. They are but the shades of night, and we are the heralds of day.”
“We?” Miranda asked.
“You’re here for a reason. I can’t destroy him with my power alone.” Richard planted his feet. With both hands locked around the hilt, he pointed his sword at Wyndon, and that same argent power shot from it, spinning a brilliant cocoon around the dragon.
She drew magic from the fog, and he pulled it along their bond, into him, and then funneled it to join the cocoon until it glowed sun-bright. Miranda squinted against the light. Abruptly, the cocoon dropped. Wyndon stood alone, unarmored and staggering.
Richard charged. Wyndon formed a sword in time to slash at him. Richard ducked, then stabbed him through the heart.
Wyndon collapsed, his body shimmering. It thinned until Miranda could see fog through it, and then it disappeared.
“Gone,” Richard said. “To whatever hell awaits him.”
His sword and bloodied armor melted away, and he turned toward her. Deep lines of fatigue marked his face, but his eyes held satisfaction and relief.
She ran to him. He lowered his head for a long, deep, hard kiss. When he raised his head again, he smiled. “You, my lady, never cease to amaze me.”
Laughter rolled out of the fog, and Edmund followed it. “She saved your life, lad. She’s a worthy countess, indeed.”
Frowning, Richard said, “Headstrong, too,” but his eyes twinkled in his weary face. “What happened, Edmund? I feared he’d destroyed you.”
Edmund shrugged. “As I have power over the perpetually damned, the living must have power over me. He banished me but couldn’t destroy me. After all, I’m already dead.”
Richard released her. Solemnly, he offered his right hand to Edmund. “You’ve now saved my life twice, helped me here, and guarded my lady. I forgive you.”
Edmund blinked. His mouth opened and closed. Finally, he managed, “Thank you, lad.”
Ignoring the outstretched hand, he embraced his grandson. Richard returned the embrace.
The two men stood locked together for a long moment before Edmund stepped back. “Now be off with you,” he said. “The living don’t belong here.”
“I hate to be the sour in the cream,” Miranda said, “but did killing Wyndon here truly solve the problem?”
Richard and Edmund frowned, looking so similar that she ached for their long estrangement. Shadowed with regret, Richard’s eyes sought hers. “I saw him in the Pendragon library, taking the scroll I found at his house. From it, he learned to contact the dead and to come here.”
“So taking it before he can will fix the timeline?” she asked.
“If we go back in time and take it before he does, or better yet, before he first sees it,” Richard said, “everything should go back the way it was.” He swayed and shook his head as though to clear it.
“You need food and rest, lad,” Edmund stated, frowning.
“Soon enough,” Richard muttered. “First we’ve a job to do.”
Putting the past to rights, he meant. The coming loss of him weighed on Miranda’s heart like a boulder.
With a look that said he knew the words were inadequate, he added, “I’m sorry.”
Everything would go back. Everything.
There would be no need for a warning vision of a dragon and a boar, no ill wind. No summons that brought him to her.
She and Richard would never have met.
Miranda drew a slow, painful breath. At last, she said, “We have no choice.”
Richard drew her close, and she held him tightly. His breath made his chest rise and fall against her cheek. His heartbeat thumped faintly by her ear. At least he was alive.
“I’m sorry, love,” he repeated.
“I know. So am I.” She kissed his shoulder. “We need to find some food, for us both but especially for you. I can feel how weary you are.”
“I’m not completely spent,” Richard insisted.
If he could see how drawn and tired he looked, he would agree with her.
He kissed the top of her head, and his hand caressed her back. A little longer, he thought to her, his heart heavy. We’ll have a little more time together.
Yes, my heart. Swallowing against grief to come, she asked, “Having died here, will Wyndon exist in the restored timeline? If he doesn’t, wouldn’t that change history, too?”
He shrugged. “So far as I know, no living person ever died here before. But if we put everything back the way it should’ve been, he will never have been here at all, never had the chance to die here.”
Miranda shook her head. All these possibilities threatened to make her eyes cross.
“We’ll just have to see,” Richard sai
d. “I found that I could pass through the wards on the protector’s chambers and eavesdrop.” With a glance at Edmund, he added, “Must be one of those things the living can do but the dead cannot. Anyway, I learned he didn’t tell his son how to breach the barrier. Wyndon probably feared being overthrown.”
“What a treacherous family,” Miranda muttered.
Richard nodded. “Too true, love. As near as I can tell, Wyndon always disliked Richard Cromwell—held him in contempt for being so inept. He once said the Gifted should have seized power in the confusion and disorganization after Oliver died. Young Wyndon ingratiated himself with Oliver after his son’s death, so that he was named Oliver’s heir. His older self probably counted on that when he went back to kill Richard Cromwell.”
Edmund’s face brightened. “While you’re fixing things, you could save the lads in the Tower. Avoid the curse altogether. Free everyone.”
She and Richard glanced at each other. As though she’d confirmed his doubts, the brief flash of hope in his heart flickered out.
Grim-faced, he turned to Edmund. “Having the boys live instead of die would create more changes. Lead to more chaos. We have no right.”
“Richard,” Edmund began. “For the sake of justice—”
“No. Chaos has prevailed these past weeks. Any change ripples ever wider. If we do as you ask, some people will live who didn’t before. Others will die. Who should or shouldn’t live has nothing to do with it. Who are we to decide that?”
Edmund scowled. “We are men with a duty to right the wrong I committed.”
Richard’s arm tightened around Miranda, almost as though he needed her belief in him for support. “By saving the boys in the Tower, we injure other innocents, perhaps thousands. That doesn’t balance the scale. It’s wrong. I won’t do it.”
“I can’t intervene,” Edmund said. “Only you can go back to save King Richard’s nephews and free us all. Free the children you hope to have, Richard.”
Richard held Edmund’s gaze. After a moment, he spoke in an even voice. “If their mother can bear the risk to them, so can I.”
“She may not be their mother,” Edmund snapped.
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