Finally, all were kneeling. As far as the eye could see, men and women who had only a moment before been fighting one another now huddled together in fear. The Dawnwalkers who had been roused to action by Fulgora’s lust for revenge forgot their fight and thought only of survival.
Billy could see them all. Like he was a part of every one of them – and in a way, he was. He bore four of the weapons, he lacked only the armor. He was a part of Earth, and Fire, and Water, and Wind. Only Life and Death were beyond him – and, he suddenly supposed, perhaps they were in reality beyond any person.
All of the Powers knelt, all of them quaked. Billy saw Fulgora, stripped of her lion steed and kneeling. He saw Mrs. Russet – though not her husband, Terry – also on her knees, and knew she must have felt Vester’s loss almost as keenly as had Fulgora. He saw Tempus, the old man’s face grayer than usual and even his Hawaiian shirt uncharacteristically muted. He saw Eva Black, gazing at him with terror and hatred, and even saw Cameron Black, his eyes barely sane enough to be terrified. He saw them all. And they all knelt before him.
All but one.
The cloud was enormous, seeming in this moment to cover much of the earth. And the one man who did not kneel at Billy’s words was at the other end of it, but he drew close in an instant, traveling the distance between them in the time it took an electron to spin around a nucleus.
He was clothed in black – not just his physical clothing but the power that sheathed him. He had been hidden before, cloaked in disguise, but Billy’s spell had exposed him and he stood proudly.
“So,” said Mordrecai, “you have come into your own.”
“What meanest thou?” asked Billy. The words sounded strange to his ears, but they were at the same time the right ones. They were the words he had to speak to Mordrecai.
“Thou hast met the Lady of the Lake, and the Bard, and the Wizard,” said Mordrecai. He pointed in turn to the shield, the dagger, and the spear that Billy held. “But thou hast not found the old Victor, or the final item.” He laughed, a short bray that had as much mirth as a loaded gun.
“Who art thou?” said Billy.
“I am Mordrecai. The greatest Black Power to ever live. Nephew to Arthur, grandson to Uther, heir to the White Throne and the seat of Power.” He clapped his hands together, and a dark energy crackled between them. “And I will have my revenge for thy birth.”
He opened his hands, and Billy saw a black tail, then teeth, then a head that was covered with scales and spikes. Mordrecai all but disappeared from his view, as he could only see the black coiling beast that the man had drawn forth from the Power of Death. It was a dragon, but it was made not of blood and bone but of despair made flesh. Its teeth were shining lengths of bone with the flesh half-ripped from them. Its scales were the skin of long-dead men, mummified and petrified. Its eyes were the eyes of souls gone to a place of weeping and wailing.
It screamed, and Billy could not help but scream as well, for its voice was like a cloud of gloom that engulfed him and made him want to curl in on himself.
The dragon, which had only a moment before fit between Mordrecai’s clasped hands, now seemed to take up the entire horizon. It reared back, and its mouth opened wide. Billy could smell the beast’s breath, which was fetid and rotten.
It was – it could only be – a DeathDragon.
Billy quaked before the beast. He had never felt fear like this, not even when under the influence of the Dread. Then, as had happened only a few times before, the fear fled. He was gripped by a power much greater than himself. He felt his hands curl on his sword and his dagger, felt the weight of his shield.
And knew. Knew what he had to do, knew where he had to go.
Knew who he was.
The dragon reared back to strike, but before it could Billy snatched the Spear of the Winds from his back and cast it at Mordrecai’s DeathDragon. The quasi-visible spear left his hands with the speed of a laser, moving so fast it cut the air and left a sonic boom in its path. The sound of it drowned out the dragon’s roar, dampened the despair that the beast’s cry could bring.
It hit the dragon. The spear went through it, and though it left no wound behind, the DeathDragon gasped as the passing of the spear stole the air around it and left it in a sudden vacuum.
Billy knew the spear would return to him, but he didn’t wait for it. In the instant that the weapon struck Mordrecai’s beast, he leapt at it with his remaining weapons. The dagger swept out, pricking at the monster, and then Excalibur slashed forth and pierced its chest.
Black fluid oozed out of the DeathDragon’s wounds. Billy thought for a moment that it would succumb to his attack. But the monster screamed, and with the scream came a thousand other screams. Billy looked around and saw that Darksiders and Dawnwalkers alike had hands to their ears, trying to blot out the terrible cry of the dragon. Then, as one, they turned ash-gray and fell, plummeting through the cloud that no longer cared to hold them.
The DeathDragon screamed again, and another thousand people died. It didn’t care whom it took, for Death was no respecter of people but gathered all to its breast. And as it screeched, as the Powers died, the DeathDragon waxed stronger. Its wounds healed and the black ichor that had come from within it ran backwards and was swallowed up in its breast again.
The beast’s head darted at Billy. He raised his shield, and was only barely fast enough to avoid being bitten. The DeathDragon bit the Shield of the Sea instead, and Billy felt the impact like a ten-ton weight hitting him on the shoulder. A sound that was half shrieking souls and half crashing surf pounded at his eardrums, and Billy would have screamed if all his strength weren’t dedicated to staying alive.
The dragon screeched again, and Billy knew that with every cry more Powers would die. More energy would flow to the monster that Mordrecai had created, and Billy’s chances of survival would grow ever slimmer.
The monster attacked him again, and Billy dodged aside. His feet were nimble, quick and sure – in other words completely unlike they usually were. But that had been the old Billy, the clumsy Billy who didn’t really know who he was and who he was destined to become.
Now, he was in control of himself for the first time. He was Billy, the Messenger and Seeker. And so much more.
He lashed out with Excalibur and again felt the blade bite through the dragon’s black, putrid flesh. Stinking fluid gushed, and he swept the Dagger of Flame at it, burning it to nothing. Then, before the monster could recover and scream its terrible scream again, Billy threw the Spear of the Winds.
The dragon dodged aside, but Billy hadn’t been throwing it at the beast. He had been throwing it at the cloud below its feet, and Billy’s aim was true.
The spear collided with the cloud, and where there had before been solid footing now there was only mist once again. The dragon tried to scream, but before it could it fell out of sight. It was gone in an instant.
Billy had not much longer than that before he felt a tearing deep within him. His breath whooshed out of him in a cold puff of air. He felt like someone was tearing out his heart, and he pulled up his shirt. The wound that he had borne, the DeathBlade’s gash, glowed a bright purple that spread around it and infected him from head to toe. Billy screamed, and with the sound the wound grew even brighter. He thought he could hear the dragon’s scream in his own, like an echo of Death that was coming ever closer to him.
Billy felt something tug at his wound. It pulled softly at first, then harder, and then the pull turned into a yank and the yank turned into a full-bodied wrenching. Billy flew off his feet and was dragged bodily across the cloud, then through the very opening he had created for the dragon.
He realized what was happening: the dragon was calling out to the seed of Death that had been planted within Billy. The monster was pulling him to it. And there was nothing Billy could do to stop it.
Down, down, down he fell. The Spear of the Winds returned to him, and he tried to use it to halt his fall, but the power of the dragon – the power
of his own Death – drew him ever downward.
Billy gritted his teeth. He once again willed the spear to carry him, and this time it did. But he wasn’t trying to escape from the dragon, no. Now he was pushing toward it, racing through the air toward the monstrous beast that was falling like a hideous meteor to the earth far below.
Billy crashed right into it. He cut with the blades in his hands, he threw the spear. He used the shield to batter at the dragon, to pummel Death itself into submission.
And they fell.
The ruby blade sliced, Excalibur’s diamond edge bit deep. The dragon’s bony teeth gnashed at Billy, its dark talons raked at his stomach. Billy wheeled through the air like a feather in a hurricane, moving this way and that to avoid the monster’s strikes.
And they fell.
The ground rushed up at them, morphing from something hardly visible in the distance to something that spanned the horizon to the only thing that could be seen.
And still they fell.
Billy cut, he slashed. He attacked the DeathDragon for the Greens, for Vester, for Veric, and for Ivy. For Blythe and even for the Darksiders that had died to give the monster its strength.
And they fell.
The black beast started to falter. It still lashed out with tail and tooth, with claw and with scale. Billy avoided each attack, suffering not so much as a scratch. He knew that a single touch might be enough to destroy him.
And still they fell.
The ground was close. Too close. The dragon was dying, losing its strength and with no one else nearby from which to draw more. It was moving slowly, myriad wounds streaming dark fluid that dripped away and then disappeared in their headlong flight.
And still they fell.
Billy stabbed out one more time with the Dagger of Flame. He cast the Spear of the Winds at the heart of the beast. He cut with Excalibur, and separated the dragon’s head from its neck.
It was dead.
Billy used the spear, concentrating on stopping his headlong flight, his plummet toward inevitable destruction.
He slowed.
And felt a pinch.
He looked down. He saw the dragon’s smallest claw, which twitched a final time before it collapsed in on itself like a dark nova that was born and died in the space of an instant. The claw touched Billy. Just lightly. Just a speck of blood drawn.
Then the dragon was gone.
And Billy felt his breath leave him. Felt his own doom.
His eyes closed.
He fell.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
In Which Billy Knows, and is given a Choice…
Everything was flashes, everything was thunder and light and sound and fury.
Billy tried to concentrate, but couldn’t. He couldn’t because his life was ending. He could feel it drawing out of the wound on his chest, could feel it like a cloud of steam hissing through the gaping slit that the DeathBlade had carved. He knew he was falling, but that was less important than the life ebbing from him.
A part of him, a part long-hidden and only now coming fully awake, cried out. Help me. My Message is undone, my Quest unfinished. Help me.
And help came. He heard the beating of heavy wings, the neigh of a beast far kinder and at the same time more cruel than the DeathDragon. A tri-tail of gold flicked the air with a sound like thunder, and a sharp point touched his skin. The oozing wound on his chest had turned crimson, but now it shone bright gold, a color like the sun. Billy couldn’t even look at it, it was too bright to be seen directly. It could only be viewed obliquely, quick side glances that would allow him to know something was happening, but not to see exactly what that thing was.
The light took him, folded him in a velvet grasp. It slowed his fall, then stopped it. Billy felt his feet touch something, and the hand that still clutched Excalibur, the sword taken from the heart of the Earth, felt like a low electric current was running through it. He was back on the ground, he knew, just as he knew that the cloud far above that had been the gateway to the City of the Sky was gone forever, its purpose served.
He could feel the world. He could feel the changes that had been wrought. The destruction that Mordrecai had brought about in his quest to ascend – after millennia of waiting – to the White King’s throne.
Billy looked around, sure that he would see the unicorn that had once carried him to safety and must have done so again. But it was gone.
Come back, he thought. Come to me, I summon thee.
The unicorn did not appear. It did not come when summoned for just any reason, apparently, but only in time of great need.
Instead, other voices greeted him.
“Billy?”
He turned and saw Mrs. Russet, Tempus, and Fulgora standing nearby. They were looking around as though unsure how they had come from the cloud to this place, which seemed to be a barren desert in the middle of nowhere. Billy understood their confusion, but he didn’t have time to explain things to them. Not now.
“Mrs. Russet,” he said. “I need to get to my….” He hesitated, looking for the right words, then finally settled on, “My parents.”
Mrs. Russet looked surprised. “I hardly think that now is –”
Billy cut her off with a wave – a wave made all the more firm by the fact that he used the hand that held the Dagger of Flame. “Take me to them. Take me to the man and woman you made Still as Stone.”
Mrs. Russet went white, as though she had heard something in his voice that terrified her. She nodded and raised a hand. The earth crackled and shuddered at their feet, and four thrones of solid stone rose up beneath them.
At the same time, Mrs. Russet blanched again and looked at Billy. He could see the question in her eyes, and answered it though she spoke not a word.
“Yes, Mrs. Russet, we are not standing in a desert… or at least, not in a new one.” He gestured at the black earth that stretched around them as far as the eye could see. “This is new Earth, dead and blasted by Mordrecai’s evil. We are standing in a place that is now rock and stone, but used to be a forest.”
He gestured with his sword, and the diamond blade caught the sun and shattered its rays into a brilliant spectrum of light that created a stained-glass window of the blasted rock at their feet.
“The Greens are dead. And with them, so go the plants.” He sighed. “They have been sacrificed to feed Mordrecai’s power.”
“But the Darksiders –” began Fulgora.
“No,” Billy said. “There are no Darksiders anymore, nor Dawnwalkers. There are only those who stand with Mordrecai and with Death… and those who would fight him, who would not be meat for the beast.”
He sat, and the others did as well. Billy didn’t wait for Lumilla to cast her spell, but instead touched his stone seat with the edge of Excalibur. The seats withdrew into the ground, pulling the party with them.
For once, Tempus didn’t complain about traveling by something other than Air. No one spoke. They soared through the depths of the planet, through the crystalline caves that any geologist would have sold his or her mother to see, through fields of diamonds the size of houses, and then rose up in front of a small cottage.
The stone chairs disappeared back into the ground. The others looked around them. But for the cottage, the place they now found themselves was exactly the same in appearance as the place they had just left. Nothing but black rock and ash. It looked like everything had been covered in magma that had then cooled and left only a pitted and pockmarked plane of dead stone behind.
Billy didn’t spare a glance at the environment. He knew now. Knew so much – almost too much – and so the blasted landscape was no surprise to him. This was the new look of the world. Not just where they had been, not just where they were, but what the entire planet now looked like. And it was his and everyone else’s doom, if something could not be done.
“What are we doing here, Billy?” asked Mrs. Russet. Her voice was hushed. She obviously didn’t know what was going on, but just as obviously
understood that Billy was… different somehow. And that he should be treated carefully.
“Follow me and see,” he said. He strode to the house. He touched the doorknob, found the door locked, and gestured with the dagger. The lock hissed and melted to slag, then the door opened with a shudder and a ping.
Billy pushed the door open. It swung wide and he stepped into the house. He could feel the others at his back, all of them following him even though none of them understood what was happening.
The house was just a shell. No artwork, no furniture, no accoutrements of any kind. Just four walls, a ceiling, and a floor. It had obviously been created for a single purpose: to house the two figures that stood in the center of the room.
Billy looked at them. Mrs. Jones was frozen in mid-step, her mouth still open in the shock at seeing her son appear with a blade sticking out of his chest. And next to her….
“Remove the spell,” Billy said to Mrs. Russet. She nodded. Raised a hand. “But take care,” he added. “Step away from him.” He gestured at the frozen man before him.
“Why?” said Mrs. Russet. Billy didn’t answer her. He knew that in the old days – even a few hours ago – his failure to answer would have brought a tongue lashing from Mrs. Russet that would have reduced the strongest man to a quivering pool of terrified pudding. But things had changed. They were different, and new, and terrible. So instead of chastising him when he didn’t respond, Mrs. Russet just nodded, the nod dipping so low it almost became a bow, then moved back. Tempus and Fulgora moved with her, so that everyone but Billy stood off to the side. Billy didn’t move: he remained in front of the frozen figures.
Mrs. Russet murmured something, then stamped her foot on the floor. The earth seemed to shiver under their feet, and a sound that reminded Billy of the deep, breathy blast of a huge church organ thrummed through the room.
Billy watched. But not for long. His mother unfroze suddenly, screaming, “Billy, what happened to –” before cutting off in amazement. She looked around, clearly lost as to how she had gone from her living room, standing in front of a son with a dagger sticking out of his chest, to this new place.
Billy: Seeker of Powers (The Billy Saga) Page 23