Billy: Messenger of Powers (69 page)

Tempus let go of Billy, and Billy ran to Fulgora. He almost hugged her, but before he did he could sense the oven-like heat coming off her and changed his mind. He didn’t care to get burned by a hug.

Fulgora was looking around herself, blinking as though waking from a dream. One entire side of her head was a huge bruise, an ugly purple and yellow, and one of her arms hung limply at her side. It looked like she had dislocated a shoulder during the fighting. “What happened?” she asked.

“You fell,” said Billy breathlessly. “You fell, but you became the dragon—part of a dragon, anyway—and you…you flew down and landed safely.”

“What?” said Fulgora, still dazed-looking. “Impossible.”

Tempus was wheezing nearby, his hands on his knees, clearly winded by the effort of catching Billy and the ensuing aeronautical acrobatics. “It’s true,” he managed. “What Billy said is true.” He straightened. “I thought you would have believed it possible by now,” he managed between gasps.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” snapped Fulgora, and Billy was almost relieved to hear her do so: she was coming back to herself, assuming the personality he had come to appreciate in recent days.

“Well,” answered Tempus, “I just assumed…I thought that was probably what you were doing all that time when you were gone and we were imprisoned on Dark Isle. I mean,” he paused a moment, still trying to catch his breath, “I figured you were off with your people, trying to find out how you turned into a dragon.”

“No,” said Fulgora, a far-away look in her eyes. “As I said before, I
did
go to my people, and tried to find out for a short time, but never did. Nothing like that had ever happened before, and I got nowhere in my search.”

“Then what
were
you doing while we were incarcerated?” asked Tempus.

Billy was surprised. Explosions were still going on all around them, the island was on the verge of collapse, and who knew what was happening on the top of the tower. But apparently Tempus really wanted to know. “Well?” he asked.

Fulgora’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t answer him, but looked up toward the top of the tower. “He cast me down,” she said angrily.

“What?” asked Billy, now even more confused than ever.

Fulgora swung to look at him, anger blazing in her face. “Wolfen. He hit me with some spell, and I only managed to put up a shield in time to block most of it.” Billy grabbed his chest in sympathy, suspecting that she had been hit with the same devastating attack he had. But Fulgora didn’t notice the movement, now in her own world of indignant anger that someone—anyone—would dare attack her.

“Well,” said Tempus almost conversationally, still apparently oblivious to the noise around them, “what did you expect?” He looked at her witheringly. “What kind of special privilege do you think
you
had?” He spat to one side, clearly disgusted with Fulgora. “Especially considering how useful you’ve been,” he added sarcastically.

Billy was shocked. This was totally unlike Tempus. What did the old man think he was doing? Forget about the fact that Billy was pretty sure Fulgora could wipe him out without even thinking about it, but there was a
war
going on. And Tempus suddenly wanted to insult the Dawnwalkers’ general and get into some petty argument?

But Fulgora obviously didn’t care that there was a war going on either. She drew herself up in the face of Tempus’s derision and said, “You
dare
? You dare insult Fulgora the Red Lady, Councilor of Fire and Princess of the Underworld of Flame?”

“Princess, Shmincess,” said Tempus derisively. Billy looked back and forth between his two friends, his head whipping this direction and that with the speed of a marble in a blender. “Don’t wave your credentials at me, ‘Red Lady,’” Tempus continued, bowing in mock courtesy. “Results are what matter.”

“You wish to see results?” she whispered. “Results?”

And with that, she turned on her heel and walked away. One of the bonfires that had been set around the island was nearby, and she strode straight toward it.

Billy looked at Tempus in horror as she went, and was shocked to see that, far from looking angry, the old man was grinning. He winked at Billy, and chuckled quietly.

Fulgora, meanwhile, had almost reached the fire when a group of three Darksiders sprung from a patch of nearby shadows. They all hurled their spells at her, but Fulgora was suddenly holding a shield of flame, and the spells bounced off it back at the Darksiders, rendering them all immobile and crying in the darkness, obviously gripped by some form of Dread.

Then, with a last angry backwards glance at Tempus—and Billy noticed that the old man put on an angry face when Fulgora looked back—the Red Lady stepped into the bonfire. There was a great crackling of logs popping in flame, and suddenly she was gone.

Billy wheeled on Tempus. “What the heck are you doing?” he demanded. “You risk getting turned into a toasted Pop Tart by baiting her, and then you keep doing it until she runs away? She’s our
general
, for crying out loud! How long are we going to last without her?”

Tempus grinned again, then grew somber. “The battle was lost,” he said. “I was flying over the island doing recon—that’s how I came to be nearby when you were falling, thank goodness—and I know. We’ve lost, completely and utterly.”

“So you got rid of our battle leader?” said Billy incredulously.

“Not got rid of,” said Tempus, a twinkle in his eye. “Just encouraged her to bring reinforcements.”

And with that, there was a bright eruption of flame from the bonfire that Fulgora had just disappeared into, and just as suddenly as the Red Lady had gone, she was back again. Only this time, she was not walking. She was riding.

Billy gasped. Fulgora was astride a huge lion of fire. The red animal growled, and flame shot from its mouth. “Meet Volcano,” she said, and patted the huge beast.

“What’s going on?” asked Billy under his breath.

Tempus grinned, visibly pleased with himself. “I knew that if she went back to her home, they’d see what had been done to their Princess. They usually don’t get involved in the affairs of the Powers—though heaven knows we’ve asked them to often enough—but I knew if they saw Fulgora all roughed up the way she was, they’d take it rather personally….”

“They?” asked Billy. “Who is ‘they’?” Tempus didn’t answer, but just grabbed Billy suddenly and whipped him into the air. They went up about a hundred feet, Billy writhing in the old man’s grasp. “Who’s ‘they’?” he demanded again. “What’s going on?”

“Relax,” said Tempus quietly. “I think you’re going to want to see this.”

Then, before either of them could say anything else, Fulgora, still on her fire lion below them, raised a flaming sword in her one good arm. “Warriors of the Underworld, now is the time to avenge your Princess!”

And with a great rending blast, a huge wave of heat rolled over the island. Tempus went up even higher, allowing more of a view of Powers Island, and as he did so, Billy gasped. He knew from watching the defensive preparations that there were about a thousand bonfires scattered over Powers Island, and from what he could see now, every one of them had grown white-hot. A tongue of flame shot up from each one, a thousand blazing columns of fire that Billy could feel raising the temperature everywhere around them.

And then, figures stepped out of the infernos. They were all dressed in red armor, like Fulgora. And like Fulgora, each was astride some beast of flame. There were war-horses with saddles of ruby fire, giant red bears whose riders roared with the same ferocity as their steeds, huge wolves of flame that bared teeth that looked like the white-hot fires of a welding torch, and even some giant crimson eagles that rose on the updrafts of the bonfires and carried their armed riders into the air.

The riders all held swords, and spears, and shields. And every one of them saluted toward Fulgora.

“See?” said Tempus in a decidedly self-satisfied voice.

At the same moment, Fulgora raised her eyes and spotted the flying pair. “And don’t go thinking you goaded me into this, you old Gray manipulator!” she shouted. “I’ve been planning to bring these reinforcements for weeks, and Vester and I have been working on the appropriate time to bring them into the battle since we got here!”

Tempus’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. “When did you have time to go to your home and get them ready?” he shouted.

“What do you think I was doing the whole time you were in prison?” answered the Red Lady, Princess of the Underworld of Flame, and smiled grimly. “What is a general without an army ready to do battle at her call?”

In spite of the dire circumstances, Billy almost laughed out loud at the befuddled expression that took the place of Tempus’s satisfied smile.

Fulgora raised her arm, and a lightning bolt arced down from the sky to touch her sword, ringing it with blue flame. Then she slashed her sword downward, breaking the connection between earth and sky, and a sound like a sonic boom rolled over Powers Island. Billy could see an avalanche begin on the snowy summits to the west.

And at the sound, the warriors of fire screamed as one, and attacked the Darksiders.

The battle erupted in earnest now. It had been slowing as the Dawnwalkers’ forces were forced toward an inevitable defeat, but now that the red fighters had joined them, the battle raged anew.

Billy and Tempus hung above it all in the sky. Occasionally Tempus would swoop down and Billy would grab a rock or a discarded brick from the ground, then they would go up again and Billy would take careful aim and drop his crude bomb, aiming for the head of a Darksider. “Bombs away!” Tempus would scream, laughing manically as he played the part of a B-17 in this strange war.

The mirth was short-lived, however. Because as they watched, Billy could see that even with the influx of force and skill the Fulgora’s warriors brought, the battle was still being lost. The Darksiders still had too many people on their side. Their forces were still too well-organized. And worst of all, the Darksiders’ own troops were being continually augmented by the Death’s Head Moths that Billy could see flitting about the island. Whatever they touched turned into that hideous latticework of tiny bones he had seen before, and whatever they touched turned instantly into an agent of the Darksiders. Billy gasped as he saw one red fighter astride a huge angry tiger of fire attack a group of Darksiders, scattering them in panic. Then the red warrior suddenly writhed, and both he and his steed were turned to bone as they stood there. What had once been a red warrior now wheeled on his friends, attacking them with a spear that had been transformed to a huge dead tooth in his hands.

We’re losing, Billy thought. We’re still losing.

He thought about what might be happening on the top of the tower, where he had left Mrs. Russet, Vester, and Ivy behind with the host of Darksiders, but he knew that there was no way he and Tempus could fly up there. The clouds were full of lightning being pulled down by Red Powers on both sides, and to fly upwards would be suicide. So he pushed the thought of his friends out of his mind, and he and Tempus did their best to do their small part in the battle by casting their pitiful bombs of brick and stone.

Billy dropped one rock on the head of one of the Darksiders’ monsters of bone, trying to forget that it had until recently been a Dawnwalker, and was thrilled to see the gruesome puzzle of skeletons that made up its head explode into a million tiny pieces. But his smile fled as the pieces then reassembled themselves in midair, and reset themselves on the Death’s Head’s shoulders again. The monster went forth and continued its attack, undeterred by Billy’s direct hit.

Still, Billy clung to a hope that the battle could be won. The red warriors were now aware of the Death’s Head Moths, and were taking care to avoid them, burning the tiny insects out of the sky. The battle began to turn again, a fluid beast that could be won or lost at any time by any side.