Within the Hollow Crown (31 page)

Devesant, noticing the slight tingling sensation on his left flank, craned his neck to see the assailant, then quickly opened his wings, brushing Corthos eight feet back, airborne, and landing hard on the stone floor.

This gave Michael the chance to attack. He jabbed the Saintskeep into Devesant’s right shoulder, making a real cut and getting quite a yell out of the beast. In anger, he snapped his neck forward, biting Michael’s right shoulder, and shaking his prey in his mouth.

Then there was the sharp click of a crossbow.

The bolt was aimed for Devesant’s left eye from across the room. But the light was poor and the dragon was moving, and even Lady Vye couldn’t hit her mark. But because the dragon’s mouth was open, the bolt caught itself in his gum, on one of the left bicuspids.

Immediately, Devesant roared in pain, spitting out the injured King and filling up the room with such a sound that a low-grade earthquake registered several miles away.

Vye let the end of the crossbow flop to the floor. She stomped her boot down, jacking the handle up with her shoulders. She loaded her next shot, swung the weapon over her arm, and fired again.

The bolt embedded itself in Devesant’s neck. The damage was small, but the irritation was extreme.

Michael got to his feet, but Devesant didn’t care. He wanted the archer dead for hurting his tooth. That had became his first priority.

He backhanded Michael into the nearest wall. Michael slammed into the wall before he collapsed onto his hands and knees. He was coughing. He was bloody. Some bones were broken, though he didn’t have time to count them all. He dropped the sword.

With kettle-drum like footsteps, Devesant crossed the length of the Great Hall in seven strides. Vye managed to load and fire twice more, landing bolts in his torso and right leg.

Finally, Devesant cornered Vye, pressing her up to the far wall. He inhaled. No Saintskeep here. Fire would do the trick.

As he exhaled, Vye tumbled to her right, just barely clearing the blaze. The wall glowed for a couple of seconds after Devesant stopped. The light was so intense that everyone suffered from sun spots for a couple of seconds after the smoke cleared.

Vye got to her feet and ran. Devesant took one step, made one turn, and blew fire again. Vye dove forward, clearing a pit in the floor as the fire singed her legs.

Devesant laughed a booming laugh. Vye couldn’t move her legs. She crawled as Devesant took another step forward. He was over her now, looking down. Vye crawled into a corner, drawing her sword and looking up at her assailant. Devesant grinned.

He inhaled.

He breathed fire.

In reflex, Vye put up her left hand. The hand that was marked with death. The hand that had stopped Gerard from killing her.

The fire hit Vye like a heat wave, but when she got together the courage to open her eyes, she could see that it wasn’t hurting her. It was moving around her.

Devesant ran out of breath and looked down at Vye. What manner of woman was this, he thought? Is she of the same breed as the stranger who came earlier?

But he didn’t have time to think. Michael and Corthos, having picked themselves up, had sprinted across the Great Hall and were now attacking the Wyrm from both sides. Vye rolled out from under the beast, dragging herself to safety.

Jareld watched from an alcove as Devesant slapped his tail against Corthos and picked up Michael with his claws. To gain distance, he flew up into the fourth level balcony. Michael was swinging the whole time, jabbing the Saintskeep into Devesant’s right front paw.

Finally, Devesant was forced to release Michael. Michael was airborne for a moment, but managed to grab hold of a third level balcony, and pulled himself up into it.

As he secured his footing, several loose bricks came falling. As Jareld was positioned right under him, he was forced to dive further into the alcove.

Vye felt a shooting pain in her left arm. The magic had come back to her, but it hurt to use it. Also, she felt weak. She didn’t know how much she could do.

“Why?” she said to her own mind, “Why can’t I do what I once did?”

It was then that she remembered Halmir’s words to her, when she had helped him escape into the woods. He had explained that he ran out of magic when he wasn’t in the woods. That he was weak because he had been in the stone prison for a week.

A stone prison. Vye had been underground for days. The magic hadn’t totally abandoned her, but she wasn’t replenishing herself. If she had known more, she would have realized that she was borrowing from her own life in order to cast more spells. In her own way, she was casting The Beyond.

Devesant scanned the Hall from his alcove. The woman had resisted her, but she was still sitting against the wall. The pirate was picking himself up from the ground. The “King” was collapsed in a third level balcony. He had seen the pathetic man scurry into one of the small alcoves in the room. Devesant had never known what was in those alcoves, since he couldn’t fit inside to see.

He didn’t know where the jester was, but at least he wasn’t near the Queen. Even in the dark, Devesant could tell because he couldn’t see anyone in the Queen’s balcony.

Anyone…

Anyone at all…

Devesant suddenly became more alert. He looked around. Left. Right. He looked in every balcony. Where was the Queen?

“Corthos!” someone yelled. “Corthos! Get Lady Vye and get out of here!”

Devesant looked straight down. The pathetic man, Jareld, had emerged from his alcove. He was shouting orders to the others.

Corthos, still dazed from his encounter with Devesant, didn’t wait for an explanation. He sheathed his sword, picked up Lady Vye with both hands, and started carrying her to the door. He would have liked to sprint, but there wasn’t that much power left in his legs.

“Your Majesty!” Jareld called up. “Your Majesty, can you hear me?”

Devesant would not sit still for this. He leapt from the balcony and swept down to the floor. He ignored Corthos and Vye, who were staggering to the door. He had more than ample time to kill them, if he decided to.

“What is your game, little runt!?” Devesant demanded of Jareld. “What are you playing at? Do you want to fight me?”

Devesant closed in on Jareld, but Jareld held his ground.

“Your Majesty, if you can hear me, I need you to do something for me,” Jareld called. “There’s a small sandbag in the corner of the balcony you’re in. I need you to grab a hold of the rope attached to it. I need you to grab it and not let go.”

“The others, they have swords. They have magic. They have courage, training, prowess. What do you have that could possibly help you now?”

“A rudimentary understanding of theatrics,” Jareld retorted, scurrying back into his alcove.

The alcove he had run into was actually the fly rail system for the Great Hall. Because of the complicated nature of the curtains, staging areas, and movable walls, this small room had been built to operate the whole affair.

Jareld had never worked in theatre, really, but he took an architecture class which included complex diagrams of famous theatres. Also, he had taken the Towers’ only theatre practical training, but only because he knew that Olivia Watkins was taking it. That two-week course had taught him the quick and dirty of running a fly rail system.

Because he couldn’t fight the Dragon, Jareld had spent his time hiding counting the balconies. He figured out the numbering system. He knew where the curtain ropes were.

He found the ropes for the balcony in where the Dragon had deposited Michael. He pulled the back rope, forcing the sandbag up. It felt heavy enough to convince him that Michael was holding on. He was lifting the King out of the balcony.

When he had lifted the ropes about ten feet, he switched to the other one. The weight was on his side now, as Michael had cleared the balcony, holding onto the curtain ropes. All he had to do was add resistance, to make sure Michael didn’t fall too fast.

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Michael was almost out of it. He almost didn’t have the presence of mind to follow Jareld’s instructions. It had taken what he thought was the last of his strength to climb into the balcony. After being slammed against a wall, and crushed in the claws of a dragon, and bitten in the shoulder, he wouldn’t have thought it possible to grab the rope.

But fortune bore him out, and he had deposited himself right next to the curtain. The rope was right in front of him. While his brain tried to reason with him, and explain to him that it wanted him to pass out, he decided to ignore the pain, ignore the weariness, ignore the sense of death, and grab the rope.

As soon as he had grabbed it, the rope tugged suddenly up, pulling Michael out of the balcony. He was now dangling from the sandbag over the open space. Devesant was directly below him.

Then, about ten feet up, the rope changed directions. Now it was lowering Michael down. Slowly. And Devesant was waiting for him.

But Jareld hadn’t been working out. While his leg muscles had improved from all the hiking and climbing, his arm muscles weren’t up to snuff, and the rope started to slip. He tried to control Michael’s descent, but the rope burned his hands, and the weights were gaining momentum.

Michael saw that he was falling fast towards the dragon. Right into the Devesant’s mouth. His speed was increasing. Devesant was poised to snap his jaw down on Michael’s ribcage.

But Michael was also spinning. The rope hadn’t been properly unwound, and the kinks were opening themselves as he fell, so he was also turning, slowly, while falling, quickly.

Before Michael could think about what he was doing, his legs made contact with the wall. He pressed into the wall, then ejected himself as far as his body could manage.

Devesant was waiting. Waiting with bloody breath. Waiting for his prey. Michael kept falling to him, falling to him, almost there, almost there…

Devesant’s jaw snapped forward to consume Michael. Michael repelled off the wall and swung over Devesant’s head, positioning him right beside Devesant’s neck.

Michael held the Saintskeep out and swung hard, catching Devesant just under the jaw. The sword dragged down, slowing Michael’s fall, and also tearing Devesant’s neck from jaw to torso.

Michael landed with a thud. Devesant screamed. But the wound in his neck, from where he made his fire, was split open. He was losing his control, the fire blasting across the walls as the behemoth staggered around the Great Hall.

Jareld felt the room shake, and even felt the heat searing through the stone wall as Devesant struggled against his own death throws.

Jareld pulled one more lever, then ran.

In the Great Hall, Jareld scurried out from the alcove only meters away from Devesant. The Wyrm’s eyes were bloody. His mouth was making a constant stream of fire. Blood and smoke were gushing and steaming out of his neck, making the room wet, noxious, and thick.

Jareld saw Michael, dragging himself toward the door. Jareld didn’t know the extent of Michael’s injuries, but he could see Michael was not going to make it on his own.

Jareld ran around Devesant, put himself under Michael’s arm, and dragged/carried him to the doors.

Devesant turned to them, with as much motion as he could still control. It wouldn’t take much, Jareld thought, to wipe them both out. Michael was as far as you’d want a human to go before dying, and Jareld had the stamina of a lame raccoon.

Devesant couldn’t inhale, but he could flail about, and his body was now expelling powerful forces of magic.

But before he could deal the final blow, the first boulder hit him.

That last lever Jareld had pulled, the one he pulled just before leaving the fly rail room, was the reason a boulder hit Devesant. While he had been hiding in the fly rail room, Jareld had noticed that particular lever, the one that was with many flags and had the word “Danger” written on it in ten languages. It was the lever that opened the glass ceiling, in case you wanted to let the pure sunlight in.

The glass had broken long ago, and the rocks and boulders that had falling in their place had balanced themselves perfectly, but the framework was still there. The four bars that held the windows in place, once upon a time, were still there, resting, as part of the balanced rock formation.

So, before Jareld left the alcove, he had pulled the lever. He had disturbed the perfect balance. He had hoped to be clear of the room before the real damage happened. But as with everything since the finding of the erroneous journal entries, back in the Towers, things hadn’t gone according to Jareld’s plan.

The first boulder hit Devesant in the left wing. It didn’t do any major damage, but it would leave a bruise the size of a door.

It was the second boulder that broke the Dragon’s spine.

Jareld moved as fast as his body could carry himself and the King. Rocks started falling around him, each one redefining the word, “close.”

Jareld saw the door, fifteen paces away, but knew he only had the energy for five more steps. Then, a boulder exploded three feet from him, and he and Michael fell over, coated in dusty debris.

There was nothing left. Jareld couldn’t move. Michael couldn’t move. The door was only a short distance away, but it was a short distance too far.