The Black Reckoning

by John Stephens

  “You’re alive! I was worried when I saw those three worms—no offense, Princess! But now you’re back! And just in time! You see we knocked a few holes in the city wall—buggers didn’t know I’d mined it before we abandoned the island! We’ll break through their line soon enough and rush the Citadel. We may just do this after all!”

  Michael looked at Wilamena. “Take off the bracelet.”

  “What?”

  “Take off the bracelet.”

  “Don’t be foolish. You need me.”

  “I know what it’s doing to you. If you wear it much longer, you won’t be able to turn back. Take it off.”

  Michael waited, not entirely sure how this was going to go.

  Then, after what seemed a very, very long moment, the dragon bent her head and flicked the clasp on the bracelet. Instantly, the giant lizard began to shrink, the wings vanishing, the great scaly arms transforming into slender, delicate limbs, the blood-red eyes turning the blue that Michael had always remembered but could never describe, and Wilamena collapsed against him.

  Without Michael’s having said a word, a pair of elves appeared at his side.

  “She’s wounded,” he told them. “You have to get her to a doctor.”

  After the elves had carried her away, Michael picked up the bracelet, which had shrunk as well to human size, and placed it on a stone. He turned to King Robbie; he was working hard to stay on his feet and keep his voice steady. “Can I borrow your ax?”

  The dwarf king handed it over; Michael dropped it.

  “I can get you a lighter—”

  But Michael, using both hands, lifted up the ax as high as he could, then let it fall, cutting the bracelet in half.

  “Hope you know what you’re doing,” the dwarf king said. “Having a dragon around is awful helpful.”

  “I know—” Michael began, and he tried to hand the ax back to King Robbie but dropped it again, and almost fell himself, stumbling against the dwarf.

  “Hold on, lad. What’s wrong? Are you wounded?”

  Before Michael could respond, there was a sound that drew the attention of everyone on the beach, and they turned to see the dark water of the bay beginning to churn and boil as an enormous—Michael didn’t know what it was, a something—rose out of the sea.

  “What…what is that?”

  “No idea,” Robbie McLaur said. “But I have a feeling this is one of those times you’d want a dragon on your side.”

  —

  Running through the Rose Citadel, Kate had expected at every turn to find the Dire Magnus—Rafe—waiting for her. But she hadn’t. And somehow, despite the way her mind had been spinning with questions—What had Emma done? Was she hurt? Was she really coming?—she’d been aware enough to avoid the troops of Imps and Screechers stomping through the halls.

  And she had been racing along for some time, with no direction in mind save down, when she’d exploded out of a doorway and into the Garden, crashing through branches as lightning broke across the sky.

  She’d stumbled forward blindly and abruptly come out into the clearing, and there before her were the tree and the pool.

  She’d stopped.

  Half the tree’s branches had snapped off and lay about the clearing. Dead leaves littered the ground; they covered the surface of the pool. There’d been more lightning, and she’d felt the rippling shock of thunder.

  It had occurred to Kate that no one had told her where to go; she’d simply known. But where was the portal? Where was Emma going to come from? She screamed her sister’s name again and again, even as the sound of her voice was swallowed by the storm. At one point, she glanced back the way she had come, into the darkness of the Garden, half expecting to see Rafe stepping from the gloom, and it was then she heard something behind her, a splash, the sound of someone gasping for air, and she turned to see Emma pulling herself out of the leaf-clogged pool. For a moment, Kate forgot everything else—the Books, the battle, Rafe—and rushed forward, clutching her sister to her breast and sobbing.

  “Emma! Emma! I thought we lost you! I didn’t know—”

  Emma dropped to her knees, hacking up water.

  “Are you okay? Emma?!”

  “I can’t…I can’t believe he pushed me!”

  “Who pushed you? And what happened to your hand? Oh, Emma!”

  Emma shook her head. “It’s all right. I’m…I’m okay.”

  Kate stared at her. Perhaps it was because she was sopping wet, but Emma had never seemed so small and thin and tired, as if she had not eaten or slept in days.

  Emma looked up and met her sister’s eyes. “Gabriel’s dead.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry. But how did you find out?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She stood slowly, shakily, still holding Kate’s arm.

  “Wait—you have to tell me what happened. You did something, didn’t you? Ra—the Dire Magnus, something happened to him. It was like this light was streaming out of him.”

  “I gave the dead back their memories. He couldn’t hold on to them.” Then Emma said, “I’ve got the book.”

  And Kate saw that Emma’s bandaged hand, which she had kept pressed against her chest, clutched a small black book.

  “Good.”

  Both Kate and Emma turned to see the figure stepping from the shadows.

  Rafe said, “Then we can finish this.”

  —

  Robbie McLaur shouted, and thirty archers ran from the wall to take up positions along the beach and begin shooting arrows at the monster.

  The creature had a huge, rounded back covered with barnacles and seaweed and black sludge. Along its sides there were a dozen long tentacles waving through the air. The creature was still rising out of the water, and Michael saw a pair of glowing eyes, each as large as he was tall, and then its great mouth was revealed, with rows of teeth furrowing back into its throat.

  “It’s a kraken.”

  Michael turned and saw Wilamena’s father, the elf king, beside him.

  “But it can’t come up here, right?” Michael said. “It can’t come up on land.”

  In answer, the creature stepped forward on legs as thick as tree trunks, and its tentacles began snaking out and snatching up soldiers and either throwing them into its mouth, bashing them against rocks, or tossing them far out to sea.

  Michael ducked as a tentacle swung toward him, and he felt the whoosh as it passed overhead. But his escape was short-lived, for the tentacle whipped back, wrapping about Michael’s body and pinning his arms to his sides. He was lifted into the air, high over the beach, and he struggled to reach his knife, but the tentacle held him fast. Then it was carrying him toward the gaping, razor-fanged mouth, and just as he was about to scream, Michael saw a shimmering off to his right, almost lost in the darkness and the rain, and something incredibly large came charging toward him. There was a heavy, wet thud, and he was dropped.

  Michael fell, and fell, and then—

  “You okay, Toadlip?”

  Michael found himself staring into the enormous, grinning face of Willy the giant. He had caught Michael in midair.

  “How…how’d you get here?”

  “Come through the portal, of course.”

  He hooked his thumb, and Michael saw that a portal had been created just beyond the mouth of the harbor—that was the shimmer he’d seen, and one giant after another was stepping out of it. They were wearing armor and carrying clubs and maces, and they were now, as a group, pounding away at the kraken, which was keening and shrieking and doing its best to crawl back into the water.

  “Your friend, the hairy, rude one, told us you needed help.”

  “Who?”

  “Who’d you think?” barked a voice, and Michael saw Hugo Algernon clinging to the giant’s shoulder. “I heard your story and thought having some a’ these great lumbering clods around would be useful! Magda von Strudel-Brain said I couldn’t make a portal big enough! Looks like I was right and she was wrong! As usual—”

&
nbsp; And then he tumbled forward. But Willy caught him, then bent down and placed both Michael and the unconscious Hugo Algernon on the beach beside a stunned-looking Robbie McLaur and the elf king.

  “He tuckered himself out bringing us here,” Willy said. Then he noticed the elf and dwarf staring up at him. “How do? You all friends of the little wee children?”

  Both King Robbie and the elf nodded silently.

  “Right, so we’ll just sort out this sea slug, then we’ll help you with your whole battle thingy. Perhaps we could throw some boulders at those monster-looking fellows. We do like throwing boulders.”

  “Throwing boulders,” King Robbie said hoarsely, “would be fine.”

  The giant then bent toward Michael and did the thing where he made an attempt to lower his voice, though the volume still boomed. “You notice the armor? It’s King Davey’s; I had it polished up. It fits nice, don’t you think?”

  It seemed to Michael that the armor was several sizes too large, but he said, “It looks great.”

  “Thanks. Okay, now I’m gonna go hammer that big fish beasty.”

  And he strode off through the harbor, sending up great plumes of water with each step. King Robbie put his hand on Michael’s shoulder.

  “Lad, you know how to make the right friends, I’ll give you that.”

  Before Michael could respond, he heard voices shouting his name, and he turned and saw two figures running toward him along the beach. As they came closer, Michael saw they were a man and a woman.

  Then he saw their faces, and he felt something break loose inside his chest.

  And he was still watching when there was a hiss of arrows, and both figures jerked about and fell onto the stones. Even from where he was, Michael could see the feathered shafts studding their bodies.

  —

  “Congratulations.”

  Rafe walked toward Kate and Emma. He was carrying a long, unsheathed sword, Gabriel’s sword, loosely in one hand. The rain came down in thick sheets. Above them, the branches of the tree swayed and creaked in the wind. It was a storm in which the very screws and bolts that held the world together seemed to be coming undone.

  “You gave the dead back their memories. I never thought you’d manage it.”

  “Emma,” Kate said, “take my hand.”

  “No.” Emma held the Reckoning tight against her chest. She felt anger, pain, the memory of Gabriel, all roiling inside her. And here was the reason she’d suffered everything she’d suffered; she was going to make him pay. “Not before I kill him.”

  Rafe smiled, planting the sword in the wet ground. “You can’t kill me. You do, and you and your brother and sister are doomed.”

  This threw Emma, but she managed to spit back, “What’re you talking about?!”

  “Ask your sister.”

  “It’s the Books,” Kate said. “They’re tearing apart the world. They have to be destroyed—”

  “I know! Dr. Pym told me!”

  “And the only way that happens,” Kate said, “is if the magic is in us and we die.”

  “Which means,” the boy went on, “that if you kill me, then all those people you think of as your friends, they’ll come after you next. They won’t want to, they’ll hate themselves for it, but what are the lives of three children weighed against the entire world?”

  Emma could scarcely speak. “That’s—that’s not right!”

  Rafe let out a short, bitter laugh. “And what does that matter? It will happen. But I can save you. You and your brother and sister. The magic coursing through each of you is a death sentence. I can take it away.” He shrugged. “Or you can kill me.”

  Emma saw it all then, the way everything had narrowed to this one moment; and her and Kate’s and Michael’s lives would hang on what she did next.

  She could hear the tree’s branches creaking and groaning above her. The rain stung her cheeks. She wished more than anything for her mother and father to appear with the answer that would magically save them. Hadn’t that been the point of their finding out the end of the prophecy? The point of Gabriel dying? Why weren’t they here when it really, finally mattered?!

  But the thought only lasted a second. Maybe their parents had gotten delayed or been captured or killed—the fact was, they’d been gone for ten years. And for ten years, she and Kate and Michael had been saving themselves. Why should it be any different now?

  “Emma,” Kate said, “let’s go. Please. We’ll find some way out of this!”

  Emma knew that if it had been possible, her sister would have gladly sacrificed herself so that she and Michael might live, but that wasn’t an option.

  The boy watched her, waiting.

  She said, “How?”

  “Emma! No! You don’t know what he’ll do!”

  Emma whirled on her sister. “There’s no more time! You can’t see it, but I can! It’s hanging over you!”

  “What do you mean? What’s hanging over me?”

  “Death,” Rafe said. “The Reckoning lets her see it.”

  And so it was: from the instant Emma had climbed out of the pool, she’d seen the shadow over her sister, a shadow darker even than the night, and so close—it was almost touching her.

  “I’m sorry, Kate. I can’t lose you and Michael. I won’t.” She said to the boy, “Tell me how.”

  He smiled. “Please. You know how.”

  And Emma realized it was true.

  “You’ll take on our spirits. Just like you took on the spirits of the dead. It’ll give you the power.”

  “This is the end of the prophecy. Three shall become one. Three Books in one. Three Keepers in one. Once the power of all three Books is concentrated in me, the Final Bonding will occur. The magic will transfer to me. I am the Final Keeper.”

  “And what about us? What happens to our spirits?”

  “I’ll release them once the Bonding is complete. Just as I released the spirits of the dead when you returned their memories. You really think I want you jabbering in my head for the rest of eternity?”

  Emma hesitated; she could see the boy becoming impatient.

  “There’s something you’re not telling us! There must be something—”

  He waved his hand, annoyed. “There’s a great deal I’m not telling you. You know what you need to know. What’s your answer? Do you kill me, and in doing so doom yourself and your brother and sister? Or do you save your family?”

  “Emma, please! Don’t do this!”

  Kate moved closer, and for one moment, Emma was blocked from the boy’s view. She looked at Kate, willing a lifetime of love and gratitude into her eyes, sending her sister the message that though she had cared for and protected them all for so long, now it was her turn.

  She mouthed, Trust me.

  The rain lashed down, the wind howled.

  Kate gave a small, imperceptible nod.

  Emma looked past her sister. She said simply, “Do it.”

  —

  Michael’s father had been struck by two arrows, his mother by one. The elf king carried his mother while King Robbie lifted his father—though his father was almost twice the dwarf’s size, King Robbie showed no sign of strain—and they raced down the beach to one of the fortified shelters while Michael ran behind and arrows skittered off the rocks around them.

  Michael was shaking. He felt stripped of everything he had been just moments before: Keeper of the Chronicle, leader of the army, commander of dragons and giants; he was suddenly only a young boy, trembling and uncertain.

  By the time he arrived at the shelter, his parents had both been laid on cots, his father’s eyes were closed, and his breath was fast and shallow. An old bald man was leaning over him while another man, equally bald, equally old, examined the arrow protruding from his mother’s side.

  And his mother reached toward him. “Michael…”

  It was such a simple thing, hearing his name spoken by his mother, but it answered a need at the core of Michael’s being, a need that had gone
unanswered for so long that he felt his heart swell and break in the same moment.

  The shelter was a lean-to that was open to the harbor and lit by lanterns strung from the top beam. There were some two dozen cots where the other wounded had been laid. The rain blew in, drenching both the wounded and those tending to them, while the air was charged with the sounds of battle and the fury of the storm overhead.

  Michael dropped to his knees in the space between his parents’ cots and grasped his mother’s outstretched hand.

  “I can heal you!” His voice shook with sobs. “I can—!”

  He began to reach for the Chronicle, remembering only then that he no longer had the book, that he no longer needed it; the magic was in him. The old men were muttering as they snapped the feathered shafts protruding from his parents’ bodies, their hands moving with surprising speed and steadiness as they drew out the tips of the arrows and placed bandages on the wounds.

  “Wait,” his mother said, gasping from the pain. “There’s something you need to know….”

  His father groaned, and Michael turned to see him, his eyes still closed, wincing as the old man removed the second arrow.

  “Michael.” His mother clenched his hand, bringing him back. “He can’t die.”

  “He won’t! I won’t let him! I can heal you!”

  “No! I mean the Dire Magnus. He can’t die.”

  “But—I don’t understand! What’re you talking about?”

  Her voice was growing weaker. “Not until…the Final Bonding…only then…That’s the only way….”

  Her eyes closed, and before Michael could shout or react, the old man leaning over her said, “I made her sleep. She needs to rest.”

  “I can heal her!” Michael sputtered. “I can heal them both!”

  “There’s no need,” the other old man said. “They will both survive.”

  “No!” He was insistent! He felt that this was why he’d found the Chronicle to begin with, to do this one thing, to save his parents. “I’m going to heal them!”

  But as he took his father’s hand and reached for the magic, he sensed something happening to him. It was almost as if he were being pressed on all sides by some invisible force, tighter and tighter, and then he gasped as a thing he’d never known existed, but now realized had always been a part of him, was taken away.