“With some of the sorceresses to protect him,” said Bowser bitterly.
“I think you’ll find,” said Mr. Less, “that he is protecting the sorceresses. Yes, I’m almost certain that’s the case.”
“Lightning, go on, please,” Chantel murmured. “It’s almost dawn.”
And the dragon swam on. Chantel looked back to see the boat bobbing dangerously in their wake.
The top of the wall, behind the parapet, was thronged with soldiers, both men and boys. There were a few sorceresses casting small spells—they had probably been forbidden to use bigger ones, Chantel supposed.
Chantel did an abnegation spell on herself, and turned quickly to do one on Franklin. She was surprised to see that he had a crossbow in his hand. It occurred to her suddenly that he was a Sunbiter, inside Lightning Pass, and armed.
Then again, she told herself, he was Franklin. He was on her side . . . right?
“Didn’t they take that from you?”
“I hid it at the school.”
They climbed off the dragon. Soldiers stared at Lightning. People jostled past. The water splashed at their feet, cold waves that lapped over the wall-walk and wet their shoes.
Franklin lowered his crossbow and, rather to Chantel’s surprise, took her hand. “Listen, um,” he said.
There’s not time for this, Chantel thought. She could see the crack in Dimswitch. Water was seeping through it. The wall was weakening. It was tired. She could hear the excited voices of the Sunbiters below. It was nearly dawn.
But Franklin was still hanging on to her hand. “If things turn out . . . well, I mean . . . that is, if anything happens that, um, isn’t exactly what you’re expecting . . . just remember what you have in your pocket, okay?”
“I have a lot of things in my pocket,” said Chantel.
She squeezed his hand, let it go, and turned her attention to Dimswitch.
The sorceresses were levitating rocks and letting them fall on the enemy. Paving stones, rubble from broken buildings, even gravestones. The soldiers were raining down arrows and boiling water. Through a crenel in the parapet she could see ranks of Sunbiters standing, just out of range, with crossbows aimed. They’d built new siege engines, too.
A ray of the rising sun caught the red-horned helmet of Karl the Bloody.
Chantel couldn’t see the men who were scraping and hammering and prying at the wall. But she could hear them, the sound of iron screeching against stone. She sensed the weight of water pushing at Seven Buttons. The wall groaned. It was battered and ancient and almost ready to give up.
Well, she was here to strengthen it. She raised a light-globe and waved it to Anna, on the rooftop, the signal that it was time to begin.
Across the water, Chantel could just make out the figures of the other girls starting the new spell.
No bells or trumpets sounded in the beseiged city now to announce the dawn. Instead, bleary-eyed soldiers did battle.
Chantel kicked off her shoes. She cast down powdered snake oil leaves washed with the mist of May morning. She drew the seventh and fourteenth signs with her feet. She drew three new signs the girls had invented. Then she spoke the words that she’d heard Miss Ellicott use.
“Derval sabad ijee. Dwilmay kadapee pasmines choose maul.”
And she touched the wall to make it whole.
Nothing happened. The wall felt just as weary and hopeless as before. Down below, iron scraped relentlessly at stone.
Well, they’d known when they made their new spell that those old words might not work. They’d made a list of things that Queen Haywith had said.
Chantel tried the queen’s vow. “‘By the power of the dragon, I swear to protect the city of Lightning Pass and its people from any force, within or without, that may harm it.’”
Still the wall felt exhausted.
Chantel went through the whole list of words of Queen Haywith that they’d gleaned from different books. None of them seemed to be the right ones.
So maybe the sorceresses were right when they said you couldn’t make new spells. Chantel slumped in despair.
Wait. She didn’t need words from books. She’d actually spoken to Haywith herself.
She tried to think of some words that she knew Haywith had really spoken. But amid the crowding guards, and the screech of the Marauders’ tools on the stones, and the lapping of the water behind her, it was hard to think.
Only one thing the queen kept saying came to her mind.
“‘Too small!’” said Chantel.
And Queen Haywith was standing beside her. “Do you summon me now, for a third time?”
“Yes,” said Chantel.
“Are you certain?” said the queen.
“Yes,” said Chantel. “The situation is desperate.”
“And do you trust me?”
“Yes.”
“Very well,” said the queen. “What comes next in the spell?”
“I already touched the wall,” said Chantel. “That was supposed to make it whole.”
“Are you sure?” said the queen.
“Well, no,” said Chantel. “It was in the rhyme that Miss Ellicott hid in our heads. But the old spell wasn’t complete. We’ve made a new one actually.”
“Things tend to get garbled over the centuries anyway,” said Queen Haywith.
A volley of arrows came thwipping over the wall. Chantel ducked, and heard cries and splashes all around her.
“There is an ancient belief,” said the queen, “that wholeness comes from brokenness.”
“Well, we have brokenness. The wall is cracked. See?” Chantel pointed, still crouching. “Right here. It was cracked after the sorceresses tried to do the spell. And the Marauders are about to break through!”
“Hm.” The queen touched the wall, right where the crack was fused.
Chantel reached out and touched the wall in the same place, her hand beside Queen Haywith’s.
And there was a mighty rumbling, and the wall beneath them collapsed.
25
THE CIRCLE
Rocks cascaded down. Water crashed out of the city in an unstoppable torrent. Soldiers fell from the wall, screaming, and vanished in the deluge. Chantel fell, too, and was dragged down into the maelstrom. This was chaos. The water rushed, and things rushed with it. Some of the things were heavy and hurt to be crunched against—rocks and timber. Other things were alive . . . or had been very recently. Chantel tumbled and bumped and bashed along, not knowing if she was right side up or upside down. She kept colliding with things. More and more of her was pain.
Then she hit something heavy and reptilian.
“Take hold of the dragon, Chantel,” said Queen Haywith. “If you want to live.”
“Of course I want to live,” said Chantel, but she wasn’t saying it with her mouth, and she wasn’t entirely sure she was still alive. The queen pulled Chantel up onto Lightning’s back.
Things were still slamming into them, and the flood dragged them along, and Chantel wanted to live. And so she . . . did something. She was never sure afterward quite what.
And then they were floating in a quiet, green place, Lightning, Chantel, and the queen. Nothing banged into them. Breathing didn’t seem to be a problem anymore.
“Am I dead now?” said Chantel.
“Wrong question,” said the queen.
“Well, here’s another one!” said Chantel, furious. She swung around so violently to face the queen that she fell right off the dragon.
This didn’t seem to matter. She floated easily in the green glow. That didn’t make her any less angry.
“Why didn’t you tell me this would be the price of the third summoning?”
“I didn’t know,” said the queen with infuriating calm. “It—”
“You tricked me! I summoned you to help! Not to destroy the wall! I know you don’t like the wall, but that was just sneaky!”
The queen frowned, and stepped off the dragon. “I will ignore your insulting manner, Chant
el, on the grounds that you are upset by recent events.” She sat down on the greenness and floated, with one knee up, and an arm resting on it. “The fact is, Chantel, that you did not want the wall either.”
“I did too!” Chantel stood bolt upright on nothing, which seemed to be an easy thing to do here, and clenched her fists. “Why else would we have gone to all the trouble to make those spells?”
“You wanted to protect your people,” said the queen, floating imperturbably past Chantel and then circling her as if caught in the eddy of a green stream. “But you thought the best way to do that was to take the wall down.”
“How do you know what I thought!”
“I don’t. Tell me.”
Chantel looked away. Lightning had drifted on and was lying belly up, kicking his legs idly.
“I wanted the patriarchs and the king to give the Sunbiters what they asked for,” Chantel said. “And I wanted to see the Roughlands again. And for other people to see them. And maybe I did think that I’d like to go to High Roundpot and the Stormy Isles some day. But that doesn’t mean.”
She let it go at that. They floated on, through an infinite gentle green glow. It was as endless as the sky.
“This much water can’t have come out through Dimswitch,” said Chantel. “And anyway it wouldn’t be so clean, or so—”
“You seem to have summoned a brief interlude from lost time,” said the queen. “Very nicely done.”
“Are the girls all right?” said Chantel. “And those men on the wall, and the sorceresses, and—”
“It’s very likely that there’s going to be a certain amount of not being all right,” said Queen Haywith. “I’m sorry.”
The haggard faces of all the people on the wall seemed to float in Chantel’s mind. “It’s my fault, then.”
And Franklin . . . where had Franklin been?
“The situation existed,” said the queen. “You were among those who chose to act. There is no time for the luxury of guilt. Things are going to happen very quickly now, and it may be possible for you to forestall complete disaster.”
“Forestall it?” said Chantel. “It’s already—”
“Are you prepared to act?”
“I already did, and look what happened!”
The queen repeated her question.
“I—I guess so,” said Chantel. “But what do I have to do?”
“You will know that only when the moment arrives,” said the queen. “As we all do. However, if you are willing to act, you may be able to summon someone to help you. Someones, I should say.”
“Who—”
“They have been watching you for some time,” said the queen. “And they are called the Circle of the Mages of the Dragon. Is that enough? It may be all I’m permitted to say. I’m not in it yet, you see. I won’t be until I die.”
“Oh, great,” said Chantel. “What?”
“Can you see the way to summon them? It may be a sort of fold or a tucked corner of reality.”
Chantel looked at the gentle green all around. There were no folds or tucks. “Can’t you just tell me?”
“No,” said Queen Haywith. “Because I cannot see it. Summoning is your talent, not mine. The important thing is that you have made up your mind to act. Remember not to think too small, because the time to come will call for large thinking.”
“Will you stay with me?” said Chantel.
“No,” said the queen. “Trust yourself.”
And not particularly suddenly, but quite definitely, Chantel was alone. She couldn’t see Lightning anymore either.
Owl’s bowels! Tucks in reality, indeed! And meanwhile who knew what was going on in the city? All that water . . . all those people . . . no matter what Chantel did now, there was no way to stop that deadly rush of water.
She looked up, and saw that there was after all a little snag in the upper corner of the green silence, like a folded-over edge of Now.
She reached for it with her mind, and tugged.
And now?
And now the girl approaches.
Oh?
So soon?
Did one of us help her?
I very much suspect that one of us
did.
Is there a problem with that?
There should be no help.
If there is no help, then what is our purpose?
Our purpose is simply to be.
I very much doubt that that is anybody’s purpose.
Never mind that. The girl, Chantel, approaches. What is our plan?
A plan. We ought to have had a plan.
We ought to have
discussed this.
It is too late.
She is here.
Chantel found herself walking through the catacombs, with skulls staring down at her.
There was a blast of cold air, and a smell like a flooded grave, and the fiend appeared before her, green and glowing. She didn’t back away. She didn’t expect it to attack, and it didn’t. It glided ahead of her, leading the way.
Soon they reached the round chamber in the caves beneath the city, the one with a painting on the wall. She knew the chamber was not actually in the catacombs, but then, she wasn’t sure she was, either. Was she in the space between this world and the next? The place where the restless dead roamed?
The fiend vanished.
The chamber was full of people. They filled the circle of benches. And Chantel was standing in the middle, with all of them staring at her. She turned around and around, looking them over.
“So,” said one of them. “This is the girl Chantel.”
“She wears the dragon robe already.” This was said with a sniff, by a hawk-nosed woman who, Chantel saw, was also wearing a dragon robe. About a third of the people were.
And most of them were elderly. Because, Chantel realized with a chill that went all the way down to her feet, all of them were dead. Queen Haywith had said so.
“Are you all mages of the dragon?” she asked.
“We ask the questions,” said a man with an enormous cloud of hair. He wore red robes.
“We have been watching you for some time,” said another man.
“You can’t be a mage,” said Chantel. “Men can’t do magic.”
“They could in the past.” It was a light-skinned girl who spoke, one not much older than Chantel. Chantel realized with a start that the girl’s purple robe was the one Chantel herself was wearing. There was a slight burn mark on the hem, and a hanging thread on the embroidered dragon’s right front claw. Chantel looked down at the exact same burn mark and thread on her own robe.
This was deeply weird.
“Things in your time have become very unbalanced. That’s why the men have lost their magic,” the girl said.
The man in the red robe frowned at her. “We don’t know that to be the case. It is merely a theory we have discussed.”
“This is beside the point,” the hawk-nosed woman interjected. “We have the girl before us. What do we think? Shall we evaluate her?” Without waiting for an answer, she went on. “She doubts what she is told. That is often wise, but just as often a waste of time.”
“She has courage. But she is afraid of making choices. And of being wrong.”
“I never said that!” said Chantel.
“She is loyal. But confused in her loyalties.”
“I am not!” said Chantel. “Confused.”
“She is often painfully polite, but she has learned to speak her mind. And like many young people, she does that rudely. My concern is whether she will grow in wisdom.”
“What difference does that make?” said Chantel. “My city is being attacked!”
The man with the big cloud of hair glanced at her. “It is all of our city.” He turned to the others. “Her power is Summoning. We have no one strong in that power. When she dies, she will bring that to our circle.”
“I’m not going to die!” said Chantel.
T
here was a soft murmur of laughter around the circle.
“Oh, yes,” said the hawk-nosed woman. “You are.”
“However, it may not happen for some time,” said a woman who had not spoken before.
Chantel looked at her in surprise. The woman was old. Her face had settled into kindly wrinkles. Her dragon robe was thrown on any old how, and not fastened in the front. She was wearing men’s clothes underneath, and useful-looking boots that Chantel could have sworn were caked with swamp muck.
“Queen Haywith?” said Chantel. “The Swamp Lady?”
“We have met before, haven’t we?” said the queen.
“About five minutes ago,” said Chantel.
“I’m sorry,” said the queen.
Chantel didn’t know what that meant, but the queen turned away and addressed the circle of mages.
“This dissection of Chantel’s character is pointless,” she said. “Nor is it necessary for us to evaluate her. She has already tested herself by summoning us.”
“She didn’t summon us.”
“We were here.”
“Then she summoned herself to us. The point is,” said Queen Haywith, “that her summoning skills are very strong. We know we must act. The threat to the city is real. The walls have been breached, and the enemy is entering the city.”
“They are?” said Chantel.
“What did you expect?” said the man in red.
“Bringing down the walls like that!”
“She didn’t bring down the walls, she only opened the gates as they were meant to be.”
“But there are no gates anymore. You fools filled them in, in your time.”
“There were never meant to be gates. There was never meant to be a wall.”
“There must be a wall. The wall keeps the city safe.”
“Someone else here was involved in bringing down the wall.” This was said with a fulminating glance at Queen Haywith.
“I have to get back right now!” said Chantel.
“You must be tested first,” said the hawk-nosed woman.
“Chantel doesn’t need to be tested,” said the queen. “She needs to do battle. She needs to save our city.”
“That is the test, then.”
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