by K. E. Mills
“You think so?” said Lional, teeth bared in a feral smile. “Then you’re an idiot, Gerald. A doltard, like Rupert. You’re no match for me and my dragon.”
“Actually, Lional?” He pulled his right hand from his pocket and held it up, fingers spread wide. “It’s my dragon. And I’d like it back now, if you don’t mind.”
He clenched his fingers hard and fast, wrapping his potentia around the Tantigliani’s tight strands. Shrieking, Lional dropped to his knees. Beside him the dragon roared, fresh flame burning the flower-scented air, head thrashing in wild protest as the binding incant cut deep.
He winced. “Sorry, my beauty. Sorry. Be strong. It’ll be over soon, I promise.”
Teeth gritted, blood trickling from both nostrils, Lional fought back. His magic may have been stolen but that didn’t mean it wasn’t formidable.
“No—you can’t have her—you won’t have her—we won’t let you—we are one!”
The punch of Lional’s resistance was hard enough to rock him on his heels. Bones thrumming, blood surging, he punched back. Felt a sizzle of pleasure as Lional cried out and fell onto his hands and knees. Felt a trickle of guilt as the dragon’s roar echoed his pain.
“It’ll only hurt worse if you resist me, Lional,” he warned. “Let go. Stop fighting. I won’t tell you again.”
But of course Lional didn’t listen. He was mad, after all. With an outraged howl he lurched back to his feet and spat out a slew of filthy curses. So foul were the incants that the air between them caught fire, drowning the scent of flowers with the stench of putrid death.
Gerald extinguished the hexes with three unbinding words.
“I swear, Lional, you’re the doltard,” he said, as Lional recoiled in shock. “Compared to you Rupert’s a bloody genius. Now for the love of Saint Snodgrass, you fool, stop this nonsense and—”
With another furious howl Lional launched a fresh attack. This time the dragon attacked with him, teeth and claws and flame and poison unleashed.
No time for kindness or a delicate touch. With both fists clenched now, with a word and a vicious push of his potentia, he severed the unnatural bonds of the Tantigliani sympathetico. Severed Lional from the dragon and set the beautiful creature free.
Lional collapsed, screaming as though he’d just been eviscerated. Half his face and his right arm were turned to blackened lizard scales. The dragon screamed with him, lethal tail lashing, thrashing the surrounding flower beds to shreds.
Gerald leaped forward. “No! No! It’s all right! It’s all right! He can’t hurt you now! I’ve saved you!”
Dazed and confused, the dragon swung its head side to side, looking first at himself and then at screaming Lional. One luminous crimson eye was clouded gray and weeping blood. Blood dripped from its wide nostrils and fell scorching on the ground.
Hating himself for hurting the creature, Lional’s victim like so many others, heedless of the green poison oozing from its mouth, he risked a hand to the dragon’s shoulder. Wrapped its pain in a soothing hex and forced it to calm.
“There, there,” he crooned. “Stand still. Stand quiet. You’ll be all right soon, I promise.”
The dragon looked at him with its one good eye, tail continuing to thrash. The flower beds Lional’s father had so lovingly cultivated were ruined, reduced to churned dirt and torn foliage. Bits and pieces of blossom. All that diligent work, destroyed in scant heartbeats.
Well, it serves him right for raising such a horrible son.
Slowly, slowly, the dragon’s tail ceased its thrashing. Its head lowered, drooping groundwards, as its anger surrendered to magic.
“That’s better,” he told it. “Poor thing. You be quiet now. I’m your friend. I won’t hurt you.”
“But I will, you treacherous bitch!”
And too quickly for stopping, Lional blasted the dragon with a mordicanto majora from Stanza Seventeen of Madam Bartholomew’s Little Surprise.
The dragon shrieked once and fell dead at his feet.
Gerald spun around. “Lional! What the hell did you do that for?”
Lional rolled over and sat up. His right eye was burst and bubbled in its socket, the lizard scales where his cheek had been now dribbled with gore. His left eye was turned dragonfire crimson, glaring with a rage as hot as the sun.
“The dragon was mine,” he growled. “You had no right to touch it.”
Poor thing, poor thing. I should’ve known. I should’ve saved it. “No, it was mine, Lional,” he said, shaking. “I made it. You only stole it. You steal everything. You’re just a petty thief.”
Lional got his feet under him and stood, drunkenly swaying. “I am a king. The King of New Ottosland. Everything contained within this kingdom is mine—including you, Professor. To do with as I will.”
Gerald sucked in a deep breath to stop the shaking. He killed my dragon. He’s going to pay for that. “I’ll give you this, Lional. You’re stronger than I thought. Anyone else would’ve died with the breaking of that sympathetico.”
Lional’s hideously deformed face twisted in a smile. “I’m not anyone else.”
He nodded. “That’s true. You’re one for the books all right, Lional. But now it’s time for this chapter to end.”
“I don’t think so,” said Lional. “I write my own story, Gerald. And in my story you’re not even a footnote!”
Killing hex met killing hex in cacophonous mutual obliteration. For all his unique potentia and the dark magics he’d absorbed, Gerald felt himself fly through the air like so much leaf litter caught in a high wind. He struck the ground hard, the breath driven from his lungs in a grunting whoosh. Bouncing to his feet, blinking to clear his spotty vision, he saw where Lional had landed, clear across the far side of the gardens near the convoluted, meticulously maintained hedge-maze that led to the rear of the palace.
“Right,” he said, scrambling to his feet and dusting himself off. Ow. He had bruises. Lional was going to pay for them too, along with everything else. “Time to finish this.”
Lional was up again and raggedly running. Towards him, not away.
“The fool must want to die, Reg.” He shrugged. “Oh, well. It’s his choice. I don’t care one way or the other.”
But that wasn’t true, and he knew it. He wanted Lional dead.
Strolling, not running, he crossed the undamaged grass to meet Lional’s oncoming rush. With his one good eye Lional saw him and bared his bloodied teeth in a snarl. Came faster, shouting foul incantations between wet, panting breaths.
He snapped his fingers. “Stop.”
Like running face-first into a stone wall, Lional slammed to a halt.
“Lional, Lional, Lional…” Still strolling, he joined Melissande’s motionless brother. Looked all that ruined beauty up and down and sadly shook his head. “Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. I did try to resolve this reasonably… but I suppose that was foolish. After all, who can reason with a madman? Not me, apparently.” He frowned. “You shouldn’t have killed the dragon, Lional. That was the proverbial last straw, I’m afraid. One innocent victim too many, old chap. I simply have to draw the line.”
Silenced as well as halted, Lional impotently glared.
“And now I’m going to punish you,” he added. “Because if anyone deserves to feel sorry for himself, Lional, it’s you.”
With a flick of his finger, a push of his potentia, he tipped Lional over backwards to thud onto the grass. Hexed immobile, Lional could do nothing but glare and breathe. His one good eye rolled wildly, trying to focus.
Gerald looked to the dead dragon, some fifteen paces distant. Poor thing. Wings splayed pathetically, its body sprawled like a giant’s abandoned toy. Anger and power simmered inside him, each feeding the other. Growing fat and impatient. Longing to be let loose to wreak vengeance. Justice. Lional had caused so much pain…
Time for him to feel a little, I think. For some people there’s just no learning without doing.
“I’m sorry. Pleas
e forgive me,” he said, and meant it. Feeling Lional’s panic he glanced down. “No, not you, Lional. The dragon.”
Hoping there was forgiveness, somewhere, for what he’d done—what he’d let be done—he snapped his fingers twice. His potentia, answering, wrenched the two largest teeth from the dragon’s massive mouth. Another finger snap saw Lional’s arms stretched out wide, bared palms to the cloudless sky. A garbled sound vibrated in Lional’s straining throat.
“Pin him,” he said. “Make our Lional the Butterfly King.”
In a blur of magicked motion the dragon’s teeth flew through the air and plunged one each point-first through Lional’s waiting palms, sinking deep into the earth beneath him.
“You can scream if you like,” he said. “If it helps. I don’t mind.”
Released from the holding hex Lional opened his mouth and shrieked, heels drumming his agony against the close-mown grass.
“Hmm. You know, that’s interesting,” he said, head tipped to one side. “I was right. The dragon’s poison isn’t affecting you. Must be a leftover advantage from the sympathetico.”
Lips flecked with bloodied spittle, Lional tried to lift his head. “I’m going to kill you, Dunwoody. I’m going to—”
He smiled. “No, you’re not, Lional. You’re going to lie there and cry.”
Eyes slitted Lional twisted, gathering his stolen potentias into a tight fist. “Oh, yes. I am going to kill you. But first I’m going to hurt you, Gerald, I’m going to make what I did to you in the cave feel like a slap and a tickle, I swear. You’ll beg me to—”
“Oh, shut up, Lional,” he said—and took back all those thieved magics. Gathered them into a single pulsing, diseased mass and wrenched them without pity from the blood and bones of the wicked man who’d stolen them.
Lional’s scream was beyond agony. Beyond anything human, or even animal.
As Melissande’s brother writhed and gobbled on the grass, spitting blood and bile and vomit, Gerald watched the pulsing mass of power bob in the afternoon sunshine like an obscene, distorted balloon. Tears pricked his eyes. Five wizards killed for thosepotentias. Five good men destroyed. There was only one thing he could do for them now. He clenched his fist. Breathed a single word: Dissipato. And watched the stolen potentias spread and thin like smoke, thin and thin and vanish into thin air.
Lional was shuddering at his feet. He looked down. “Ah ah, Lional, I said cry, not die.”
It was nothing, nothing, to steady Lional’s laboring heart. To restore his violated body’s equilibrium. To keep him alive. Magic was effortless, his potentia so instantly responsive to his will. He hardly needed the words, a simple thought was enough. It was marvelous.
I’m a new kind of wizard. I am unique.
The thought pleased him, enormously.
Eat your hearts out, Haythwaite and Co.
He looked down again. “All right, Lional. Now we’ve got that settled, let’s move this along, shall we? There’s a debt you need to repay and we’ve barely touched upon it. Trust me, one little scream hardly balances the scales.”
His good eye tear-filled and bloodshot, Lional stared up at him. “And you call me mad.”
“Oh yes,” he said, cheerful. “You’re stark staring bonkers, old chap.”
“And what kind of justice is it that tortures a man lacking his wits?”
“Ordinarily no kind,” he said. “But the thing is, Lional, you’re a special case. You sent yourself mad. You did it on purpose, murdering those wizards for their potentias. So as far as I’m concerned that exempts you from any kind of compassionate consideration.” Dropping to one knee, he leaned close. “Or, to put it another way, I’m about to show you all the mercy you showed them. And me. I think that’s only fair, don’t you?”
A pulse beat in the hollow of Lional’s elegant throat. Fueled by terror it pumped and pumped. How satisfying it felt, to know that Lional could feel terror.
“You do know you’ve gone mad don’t you, Gerald?” Lional whispered. “Madder than I ever was. I can see it in your eyes. And they’re going to hunt you down like a rabid dog when they realize. All those wizards in Ottosland’s famed Department of Thaumaturgy? Men you think are your friends? They’ll take one look at you and—oh.”
Mildly curious, Gerald watched as one by one the lizard scales peeled off Lional’s cheek, revealing the glistening and greenish-pink suppurating flesh beneath. The pulse in his throat beat harder, echoing his incoherent pain.
“I’d rather you didn’t talk about my friends,” he said. “I’d rather you didn’t do anything but scream.”
Which is what Lional did. Such a lovely, lovely sound.
It was truly extraordinary, what he could do now. How with a mere thought he could manipulate sinew and muscle. Spring blood free of its conduits. Crack bone. Twist nerves. Lional shrieked like a girl. Remembering those long days in the cave, the filth and the stink and the utter degradations, he spiced up Pygram’s Pestilences with a few neat quirks of his own. Remembering Reggie and all the other palace staff, those poor people in the capital and all of Rupert’s harmless butterflies, he honed his potentia like a sword-blade and blunted it on Lional’s soul. Remembering the trick with the hexed chicken, those terrible hours he’d believed Reg was dead, he scaled new heights of invention and was rewarded with Lional’s desperate tears.
After some time had passed, and Lional had pretty much lost his voice, he pushed to his feet and stretched, unkinking his spine. Breathed deeply of the fresh garden air, absently listening to Lional’s whimpering sighs. The afternoon was waning, dusk waiting in the wings.
“You know Lional, it’s a great shame,” he said, glancing down. “If you’d not gone mad you might have made a halfway decent king. You’re certainly handsome enough. Or you were. I don’t know why it is, but people like their kings to be handsome. Their prime ministers too. Leaders in general. As though a pretty face were any kind of measure of worth. It’s not, of course. I mean, look at Melissande. Even after I’d tarted her up, underneath the polish she was still—well—plain. But you’d be hard pressed to find anyone better at her job. Don’t you agree?”
Lional moaned, barely conscious. His thrashing heels had battered quite deep holes in the soft ground.
“Why, if you hadn’t gone mad you could’ve followed your father’s example,” he said, untucking his shirt-tail and wiping smears of blood from his fingers. “Found something to amuse yourself with and left all the real ruling to Melissande, behind the scenes. But you didn’t. You had to go and get all obsessed with being a wizard. As obsessed as Rupert is with his wretched butterflies. Which only goes to show you two have far more in common than you might think.” He glanced down again. “Lional? Are you listening?”
Stirring, Lional dragged open his eyes. The one that had burst when the sympathetico was severed looked painful. But then, so did the ruptured lizard scales on his cheek and arm, and the bruises and lesions and pustules and boils, and the splintered ribs and shins and sliced wounds in his chest and belly and thighs.
“Bastard,” Lional muttered. “Kill me.”
“Oh no,” he said, cheerful. “I couldn’t do that, Lional. I mean, you spared my life after the cave, didn’t you? Returning the favor is the least I can do.”
A crimson tear rolled down Lional’s ravaged cheek. “Illegal.”
“Yes, I know,” he said, dropping back to one knee beside Melissande’s brother. “Stealing a wizard’s potentia is terribly illegal—and for very good reason. What a blessing it turned out you couldn’t steal mine, eh? I mean, now that we know I’m a once-in-a-lifetime kind of wizard. Think of the mischief you’d have got up to…”
The holes in Lional’s palms had widened considerably, what with all his thrashing about. But the dragon’s teeth kept him safely pinned in place, secure as one of Rupert’s dead butterflies on public display. Kindly, Gerald brushed a fingertip across Lional’s sweaty brow. Smiled to see the mad king shudder and try to turn aside.
&nb
sp; “Now, I know you think you’ve been punished enough,” he said softly. “But actually, Lional, I’m not sure you’re the best judge of that. I mean, admit it—you are just the teeniest bit biased, aren’t you? But I will admit there should be some kind of rhyme or reason to our proceedings. So how does this sound? Let’s say we assign an amount of time for each of your dastardly crimes, say, one hour of suffering—just one little hour—set against every life you’ve taken so far. Does that sound fair? I think that sounds fair.”
For once in his glib life, Lional had nothing to say.
“So if we use that as a yardstick, Lional, I think you’d agree that we’ve barely begun. I mean, only today you must’ve killed over a hundred people. So that’s at least one hundred hours of suffering you owe this kingdom, Your Majesty. And it doesn’t include the five wizards you murdered. Now, by my reckoning you’ve been screaming for two hours. Well, two and a bit. Which means—”
A ripping in the ether. A stirring of new potentias. A familiar, unwelcome flapping of wings. And then he and Lional were no longer alone.
“Gerald Dunwoody!” cried Reg. “What’s the meaning of this?”
It took Monk a moment to make sense of what he was looking at. And then, when he did, he wanted to close his eyes. Or run away. Or possibly throw up what little food he had in his stomach.
Bloody hell, Gerald. Have you gone mad?
Beside him, Melissande clutched at his coat sleeve, making soft little sounds of distress. It was taking everything he had not to echo her. Beside her Rupert breathed harshly, close to groaning. And then there was Sir Alec, who—
“Wait,” he said, his voice low, grabbing hold of the government man’s elbow, keeping him back. The portable portal had spat them out a long stone’s throw past the stricken dragon. In other words, uncomfortably close to Gerald and the half-butchered man on the ground. “Just wait, Sir Alec. Let Reg handle it. He won’t lash out at her.”