Pilgrimage (34 page)

Roland stepped towards Pentdragon, lifting his arms to guard. Pentdragon's eyes narrowed. Then he smiled. Roland felt the air gather and harden like brick wall in front of him. He ducked. The wall of air smashed against him and threw him off his feet. Roland rolled and spun through the air a full five metres before crashing to the ground and tumbling along the rough asphalt. He stuck out his arms to stop rolling. Something on the ground sparked and a small fire trailed behind him. Another blast hit Roland, dragging him another few metres along the road.

Roland pulled himself up to his hands and knees as quickly as he could manage. He wiped the tears and blood from his face. He stopped on his hands and knees long enough to see the trail of fire leading right to him. The jewelled ring on his finger leaked cold blue flames. The fire on the asphalt withered and died, a snaking trail of yellow fur grew beneath it.

The sight raised many questions, questions Roland didn't have time for. He jumped to his feet and looked for Pentdragon. Lord Pentdragon charged at him, sword in hand. It was an emotional, amateur move and Roland readied himself against it. Pentdragon swung his sword up. Roland spun sideways. The sword cut nothing but air. Pentdragon kept running. Roland grabbed his collar and jerked him backwards. Pentdragon choked and lost his balance. He fell back against Roland. Roland snaked his arm around Pentdragon's sword arm, locking it in place. He pressed the ring into Pentdragon's face. The man thrashed and screamed as if the fire was burning right through him and out the other side. Electricity sparked around Pentdragon's body and lightning arced up at Roland in dozens of white tendrils but bounced away. He pushed the ring harder against Pentdragon's cheek.

Pentdragon took Roland's wrist in hand and pulled the ring away. During the struggle, the ground beneath them softened and melted into a thick, black ooze. Shocked and suddenly sinking, Roland loosed Pentdragon and scrambled away, pulling himself back onto solid asphalt. Pentdragon dropped deeper as the ooze liquefied into water. Roland stepped closer and stared at the small, man-sized pool of water. Pentdragon was nowhere to be seen but the water bubbled and hissed.

The hissing sound grew into a subterranean roar. Roland leapt away from the hole. The moment he cleared it, a jet of steam rushed out of the newly created abyss, scorching the air and driving Roland away from the unbearable heat. The steam cleared and a torrent of hot rain showered him. Roland crouched, put his hands over his head and turned his back to the sky to wait it out. Before it finished falling, a foot struck Roland across the face, throwing him back and turning him upwards in time for the last drops of boiling water to rain down on his face. Roland whipped his body around, shaking the water off him like a dog. He tore his shirt off and wiped the scalding water from his face. Pentdragon struck him again while he staggered around blind. Roland turned from the blow and ran until he could get his face dry and his eyes open.

Sudden surges of pain in his chest stopped him. He doubled over, coughing and desperate to regain composure. He felt the sword plunge into his calf and he buckled under his own weight. On his knees, Roland felt the tip of the blade dash the length of his back. Roland tried to pull himself away from it but collapsed prone before Pentdragon. He rolled over onto his back, breathing deep and fighting off the encroaching, agonising death inside him. Pentdragon stood over him. Roland looked up at his would-be executioner. The regal lord had lost all sense of dignity. He looked like he was feeling the price of his upcoming victory. His skin was bruised, his hair dishevelled, his eyes wild.

Pentdragon trailed the sword gently across Roland's body and stopped at the beaded necklace.

“This is what's protecting you, isn't it?” Pentdragon's voice burned with cool fury. “More, I think, than your friend Griffith could manage to create. Whoever your new ally is, they will die too. But you first.” Pentdragon rested the tip of the blade on Roland's neck. “Then Griffith. Then your friend. Then I go and enjoy
your
last meal. And then I watch this whole sad little town rot and die in its sleep.” Pentdragon laughed. “Gravesend becomes a graveyard. Anything to say before you die?”

“Yeah,” Roland gasped, forcing his words out over his bloody coughs. “You can have your ring back.” Roland grabbed the blade with his wet shirt and yanked it away from his neck. The sword pushed down through the shirt and struck the ground. Roland rolled himself up, pushing the cracked ring against the blade and scraped it all the way up to the hilt. The leaking, raw magical energy cracked the blade. Roland kicked at Pentdragon's legs. Pentdragon steadied himself on his sword. The cracking metal snapped from the hilt. Pentdragon suddenly and completely lost all balance. He fell to the ground beside Roland. Roland rolled over and forced all his weight onto the fallen man. He grabbed Pentdragon by the hair and slammed his head into the ground before the sorcerer could cast a spell.

“Impudent-”

Roland hit him again. Something cracked.

Pentdragon screamed.

Roland hit him. “Just shut up and die!” Roland drove his fist down onto Pentdragon's forehead. The cracked ring shattered on impact with his skull.

Blue fire exploded out in every direction with a thundering roar that shook the earth. Roland's vision filled with bright blue flames that consumed his arm. Then a violent shock lifted him off the ground. His body lost all feeling and soared through the air. Everything in his vision went pale and cloudy. His head felt so light it threatened to float away. He closed his eyes. He didn't feel it when he hit the ground, he only heard his jeans tear and his bones break on the solid ground. Roland knew what came next. He'd had this feeling before. This was what it felt like before you died. In those moments, his mind, slowly slipping away from him, returned to the first time he'd felt this way. Almost three years ago.

A bar fight. Quick, dirty and completely one sided. Roland went in punching, unaware that it was a knife fight. He only lived because somebody was thoughtful enough to call an ambulance. He hated the doctors for saving him. He had deserved to die and because they saved him, he was sure to spend his whole life in punishment. That was the night he left Violet.

But Roland didn't want to die any more. For just a little while, he had seen that life didn't have to be punishment. He could do so much more than suffer. There was so much he regretted but it all paled in comparison to the shame he felt in knowing that he would die before he even had a chance to say sorry to Violet. And his death was his own fault. He couldn't move his lips or his tongue and so he cursed himself silently, on the inside:
You stupid, reckless, fuck-up.

Chapter 20

Griffith placed the last gofu at the south end of Gravesend. An eruption of blue flame rocked the tiny township. The houses shook to their foundations. Griffith dropped to his knees and curled into a ball. He waited. He was okay. He looked up, right at the bright blue fires consuming the centre of town. Griffith recognised that kind of explosion. He'd seen those fires before and his eyebrows had never properly grown back. That had just been a small explosion; not like this. This explosion had to have come from an object made by an extremely powerful sorcerer. That could only mean Pentdragon. But Pentdragon wasn't the kind to destroy something he'd spent time making, not if he could help it. And he wasn't prone to accidents. Whatever happened, it was guaranteed that Roland was the cause.

Griffith dropped the glass jar where he stood and sprinted for ground zero. He'd wouldn't – he couldn't – let Roland die. Two friends in as many days was too much. Those deaths were his fault. His friends were dying because he couldn't fight his own battles. Was it worth it? If he died upholding the virtues he believed in then that was fine. But should others be dying for his beliefs? Did it even matter at this point? How could he possibly face Caia and Roland in the hereafter if they had died because of his principles and not their own.

He couldn't let it happen like that. He had to find Roland and save him. There had to be time left.

He ran faster than he'd ever run before, pushed on by fear and desperation. He reached the main road and turned, running east and looking in every direction for some sign of his friend. Not far from the Gravesend Hotel he found the ghastly, black, burning remains of a man with a melted basket hilt around his hand. The tattered remains of his clothes, resting in glowing blue sand identified him as Lord Pentdragon – or what was left of him. Griffith looked up from the body and scanned the blast zone. What had survived the blast had been warped and altered by the unrestrained magic. The asphalt road had turned into sand, the utility poles had turned into cacti that flaked and withered before his eyes. Rough chunks of granite protruded from one nearby house and another had disappeared entirely, leaving an empty lot. Further up the road, Griffith spotted Roland's body lying on the pavement under the branches of a dead tree. Griffith rushed to him and knelt beside the body. Roland's hair was burnt, his skin was scorched and his right arm had been all but incinerated. He touched Roland gently and, to his delight, felt Roland's chest moving with shallow breaths. Griffith's spirits soared. He couldn't help but laugh and cheer.

“You're alive! You giant, stubborn mule, you just won't give up, will you?” He laughed again, releasing the tension and fear. Those breaths, no matter how shallow, meant there was hope. “Don't worry. Roland. I'm here.”

Griffith rubbed his hands together and straightened his back. He closed his eyes and let his hands hover just above Roland's body. He focused himself and emptied his mind. Then he pushed his mind outwards, seeing the world with magic the way Caia had taught him. Griffith focussed, bringing his vision back and pushing it into Roland's body. The all-seeing eye of his magic crawled through Roland's body, finding every broken bone, every torn muscle. Griffith could see every cell that had been burnt to a cinder in the blast and every open vein spilling blood.

Then Griffith saw, in his mind, Roland as he was beside Roland as he should be. Those two Roland's existed a world apart from each other. Remaking Roland as he should be would take everything Griffith had dedicated himself to learning – anatomy, biology, chemistry, all combined into one magic. He would make that formula a reality. It would not be enough to rewind Roland, like he had the car. He needed to remake his friend. Time was short but Griffith knew what to do. He'd been preparing is whole life for this.

First the bones: He could see inside Roland's body, right down to the skeleton. The bones were split and cracked and broken from the force of the explosion and the impact of the ground. The bones had to bend, regrow and knit back together. Griffith saw in his mind the crystalline matrix of calcium, oxygen, hydrogen and even phosphorus that combined to make the complex framework of the skeleton. Griffith drew and transformed the building blocks he needed from the charcoaled ashes of Roland's body and the earth beneath him. What Roland no longer had, he would make for him just the way Caia had done when she transformed.

He would create the arteries and veins that ran above the bones. Then came the complex construction of nerve endings branching out again and again from the spinal column into every tiny corner of the body, connecting the brain to the organs and systems that made the body live. Then the blood vessels that appear red and blue on the outside, the oxygen and sugar they carried from the heart to the entire body. Griffith knitted these together, pushing the lost blood back into Roland's body and wrapping the new arm in tissue, connecting it to his body.

Finally the muscles and skin, the outer shell of the body that protected it and animated it. Roland was a big man with strong muscles, muscles that were now bruised and torn. His skin was charred and what hadn't been scorched was grazed and cut. Griffith grew the muscles out from Roland's shoulder, down to his fingers and sheathed the new limb in layer upon layer of new, pink skin. The burns across Roland's body receded into nothing and fresh cells grew and multiplied in their stead, stark white at first before finally receiving the flow of blood and taking a healthy colour.

At last Roland's body was whole again. His body hair was missing in patches and his tan was uneven as if somebody had gone over him haphazardly with a paintbrush. But for all its imperfection, it was a complete and undamaged Roland. Griffith moved his hands over Roland’s head and opened his mouth. He turned his focus away from the body and concentrated on casting a new spell. Griffith inhaled, pulling the air around him into his lungs as if there was infinite space inside him. He closed his mouth, keeping the air tight. Then he bent down over Roland and breathed into his open mouth, filling Roland's lungs to capacity in a second. Griffith kept going until Roland's lungs were overflowing and new air pushed the old air out.

Then, at last, Roland coughed it all up and breathed deep on his own. He opened his eyes and pushed himself up. He was awake. He was alive.

“You're alive!” Griffith shouted and threw his arms around Roland.

“I am,” Roland remarked. He clenched his hands into fists and pointed his toes. His body was there, whole and working fine. He had been given another chance and he had never felt so good. “You saved me, didn't you?”

“I did.” Griffith stood and pulled Roland up with him. “Just like you saved me. You saved us both. I don't know how you did it but I saw what was left of Pentdragon up the road.”

“He's dead?” Roland asked.

Griffith nodded.

“Then it's almost over. How is Yasu doing on the town?”