Wizard Squared (5 page)

Kill
them
? He’d
never
kill them.

Oh God. I really am going to die.

Some six inches from his nose a rustling of leaf litter. He sucked in moist, compost-rich air, unmoving. Another rustle. And then a lizard, a skink, skinny and brown with only one good eye, darted out from under a leaf and stopped, nervously scenting the air with its tiny tongue.

Gerald held his breath. Memory replayed recent, desperate words.

“I’m the only wizard with a hope against Lional. But only if I fight with the same weapons he’s got!”

When he’d said it he was convinced that meant using Lional’s stolen copy of
Grummen’s Lexicon
. But what if… what if…

You know what they say. Fight fire with fire. Or… dragon with dragon?

His stunned mind reeled. No. He was mad. How the hell could it possibly
work
? As lizards went this one was pathetic. With its left eye shriveled, practically
crippled
. Its matrix would make a piss-poor dragon; even with the strongest magic this little skink could never hope to match the brute muscularity and mindless viciousness of the Bearded Spitting lizard Bondaningo Greenfeather had found for Lional. The dragons would never be equal: magic could only do so much. And that meant…

I’m sorry, Reg. I’m sorry, Monk. I don’t have a choice. Lional has to be stopped.

At all costs, the monster had to be stopped. And this weak, tiny, half-blind lizard wasn’t the answer.

I’m not the answer. I’m not good enough. Whatever tricks I’ve done here, I did by luck and accident. I have no idea what I’m doing. And when push came to shove… when I needed to be strong?

He’d seen the truth in Melissande’s eyes. Worse—in Monk’s. They didn’t think he could defeat Lional… and they were right. He couldn’t. Not without a special kind of help. And if Shugat wouldn’t give it to him then his only sure chance of saving New Ottosland from its insane king was with
Grummen’s
Lexicon—
and any other handy texts Lional might’ve left lying around.

And when it’s over, and that mad bastard’s finished, the Department can de-incant me. They must have some kind of top secret apparatus for stunts like that. And if they don’t, well, Monk can invent one. After the portable portal he should be able to take care of that little problem in his sld blem inleep.

With another rustle of leaf litter, the tiny half-blind lizard turned tail and scuttled back under cover. Feeling sick, Gerald hoisted himself onto his elbows and risked a look around the gardens then up at the sky No sign of Lional or his hideously beautiful dragon. So he’d best make a run back to the palace now because there was no way of knowing how long this sliver of luck would last.

Probably Lional and his dragon will broil me alive as my fingers touch the handle on the palace’s back door… and who’s to say it wouldn’t serve me right?

But that kind of thinking wasn’t helpful. If Reg could hear him she’d be severely unimpressed. On a deep breath he rose to a crouch, got his bearings on the palace—and ran.

Breath rasping in his throat, elbows flapping, knees pumping—he’d never been one for sports, not even at small school—he sprinted, more or less, towards the nearest bit of palace he could reach. Every gasp of death-tainted air churned his belly. He caught a smeary glimpse of Shugat and Zazoor and their camel army, serenely safe within their milky shield.

Miserable bastards.

There was still no sign of Lional or the dragon. But even as he ran he could feel the lick of flames, the
burn of acid poison, and hear the ominous slapping of wings.

Miraculously he reached the palace in one piece and started looking for a way inside. Forget the enormous front doors. An obvious entrance like that, in full view of any dragons that happened to be strolling past, would be asking for trouble. Instead, skin crawling, he jittered his way along a blank section of wall—what, not even any windows to clamber through?—until he stumbled around a cornery bit—

—and over another body.

Damn.

It was Reggie, Melissande’s sort-of boyhood chum and erstwhile house arrest guard, tumbled out of an inconspicuous side-door at the foot of a long, steep staircase. Some kind of special secret palace guard in-and-out, perhaps. From the ugly angle of Reggie’s crooked head it seemed the fall had broken his loyal neck. There wasn’t time to feel grief or guilt, to kneel and press the young man’s eyelids down over his clouding, sightless eyes. To shed a tear. Lional and his dragon were coming.

“Sorry, Reggie,” he said, gingerly stepping over the sprawled corpse. “Sorry.”

Somewhere deep inside himself someone was screaming. It was the old Gerald, the Gerald he’d been before the cave. Before he surrendered to Lional, to cowardice, and created that glorious, murderous dragon.

No. Stop. Reg was right, you can’t do this. Those grimoires are poison. Stop right now, Dunnywood, before it’s too late.

But he couldn’t afford to listen to his ghost. These
drastic times were his doing and only drastic action could undo them.

The secret guard staircase took him up and up and at last to an open doorway. Stepping through it into a deserted corridor, he realized from the painting on the thinting wall in front of him—a particularly memorable flock of bilious-looking geese—that he wasn’t far from Melissande’s apartments. But did that mean Lional’s kingly suite was close by? He’d never been given an actual top-to-bottom palace tour. He had no idea where the bastard put his head down at night… and he didn’t have time to waste searching this antiquated rabbit-warren. There had to be a faster way of finding that
Lexicon
.

Frustrated, uncertain, Gerald banged a fist hard against the corridor wall beside him. That small pain woke lightly sleeping memories of his recent, harsher sufferings—and he abruptly straightened. Really? Was it possible? It should be. Shugat had tasted Lional in his blood. And if Shugat could, then surely so could he. And
if
he could then that meant…

Closing his eyes, he sank himself deep within. Sent his
potentia
questing. When it found Lional’s lingering, filthy fingerprints he shuddered. So. He was marked for life, then. The foul incants Lional breathed into his mouth were become a part of him, part of his matrix, flesh, blood and bone. The notion was horrifying. Almost as horrifying as what he contemplated doing now.

Maybe Reg was right. Maybe there was another way to—

Stop it, Dunwoody. Stop trying to wriggle out of this. You know you have to. There’s no other way.

So. He’d found Lional’s mark. Now to use the mad king’s foulness to track down his private suite in the palace.

Shuddering anew, Gerald wrapped a thread of
potentia
around Lional’s hideous echo. Then he turned the rest of his magical self outwards and sought for the echo’s counterpart—memories of Lional—contained within the confines of the palace.

No, not there. That’s the dining room. Not there either, that’s the Large Audience Chamber. And that’s the Small one. Come on, come on. I want his bolt hole. I want his lair.

He was being tugged to the easiest places, the public places, where he’d already been. And why was that? Because, Tavistock or not, the glorious dragon or not, he was still at heart a Third Grade wizard with a Third Grade wizard’s grasp of magic? Or was it Lional being crafty? Even in his own kingdom was he protecting himself?

Of course he is. Lional’s mad and dangerous but he’s not an idiot. With a succession of First Grade wizards on the loose of course he’d protect himself.

So. Don’t look for Lional’s echo. Look for his fingerprints, on carpet and brick.

Straight away, because it was close, he stumbled across the incant Lional had used to keep Melissande locked behind her own doors. Very nasty. Brilliant, but nasty. It was nothing short of a miracle that Monk had been able to break it. Briefly he felt a burst of pride in his friend. Crazy Monk Markham, the metaphysical genius. On the heels of pride, sorrow.

He’s going to be so angry when he finds out what I’ve done.

With a grunt he wrenched himself away from that
profitless line of thinking. It didn’t matter how Monk felt, or Reg, or Melissande. Or at least he couldn’t let it matter. He let himself he let hisink more deeply into that dark place Lional had hollowed out inside him.

Sentiment is weakness.

Eyes still closed, leaning against the corridor wall now, his body shaking, he pushed further and harder. Stirred up in his blood, the remains of Lional’s curses started screaming. Or were they his own screams? Either way, it didn’t matter. The only important thing now was finding the
Lexicon
.

A tug on his
potentia
. A sharp rebound. A sudden burning conviction.
That way.
On a deep breath he opened his eyes, pushed off the wall and started walking. Instinct dragged him along, dragged him almost to jogging, down corridor after corridor, up staircase after staircase, heading for the palace’s highest floor. The closer he got to Lional’s domain the harder his
potentia
tugged at him, so tuned now was it to Lional’s caustic thaumic signature.

He didn’t encounter another soul. Every last servant had fled, every single government lackey had deserted his or her post. With their sleepy little kingdom turned on its head, with a dragon raining acid and fire from the sky and their sovereign hunting them instead of protecting them, what could they do except run? But how many had run only to die anyway, in the palace gardens or on its carriageways or down in the city?

And is Zazoor feeling proud of himself, sitting there safe in his little bubble? Is his Holy Shugat pleased? What kind of gods does the old man serve, that he could sit there with all his power and not lift a finger to help the innocent?

Resentful anger simmering, warming him, helping to keep his fears at bay, Gerald kept on through the eerily empty palace. His heart thumped and his breath whistled as he climbed yet another daunting flight of stairs. The next opened door he fell through would take him into the attics or onto the roof, wouldn’t it?

But no. The next door he eased open showed him an opulent corridor—where Lional’s thaumic presence shouted loud enough to send him deaf, dumb and blind. Shouted so cruelly he staggered and dropped to his knees, one hand still clutching the door knob, the other fisting to his head. Lional, ever prudent, had warded the corridor with a brutal keep-your-distance hex. Snarling the hallway in thaumic barbed wire, armed with teeth and talons and a bloody minded ferocity, it tore at his
potentia
until he was whimpering in his throat.

I can’t break through that. How can I break through that? I’m only as good as the incants I know right now, and I don’t know any incant that could dismantle this hex. Not even Reg taught me an incant strong enough for this.

So—was that it? Had he been defeated before he ever really started? Looked like it. Looked like Lional’s native cunning had beaten him without so much as raising a sweat. For all the good he could do here he might as well have stayed in the cave, in the dark, and starved slowly to death. Letting go of the door knob he folded to the floor and rolled himself into a tight ball, battered by Lional’s inimical magics.

Gerald Dunwoody, what are you doing? Stop being such a pathetic tosser!

Startled, he unrolled himself and sat up. “Reg?”

But he was alone. That was just Reg’s voice, the voice of his conscience, kicking him in the pants. Ashamed, he scrubbed his hands across his face. Oh, lord, he
was
pathetic, wasn’t he?

If I don’t get back on my feet and finish what I started then I’m no better than Shugat and Zazoor, hiding behind their precious, indolent gods.

Through slitted eyes he stared the length of the gilded, plushly carpeted corridor. Saw, at its far end, Lional’s hexed double doors. Beyond that flimsy barrier lay
Grummen’s Lexicon
and Saint Snodgrass alone knew what other proscribed texts. He was yards, mere yards, from laying his hands on the weapons he needed to defeat Lional, save New Ottosland—and possibly the rest of the world. And the only thing standing between him and victory over New Ottosland’s mad king was this one measly, wicked, obliterating hex—which he didn’t have the first notion how to dismantle.

But I made a dragon, so I can bloody well do this.

Grimly determined, goaded—and he knew it—by an unaccustomed but undeniable sense of competition with the Department of Thaumaturgy’s one and only Monk Markham—he faced his fears. Faced Lional’s hexed doors. Braced himself—feet wide, shoulders thrown back, head lifted, teeth gritted—and opened himself fully to the worst of Lional’s magic.

I
t was like throwing himself into a writhing pit of insane vipers, or diving headfirst into a vat of boiling acid, or trying to ride a hundred wild horses bareback, all at once. The hex took him and shook him and tried to tear him apart. Flogged him and crushed him and threatened to splinter his bones.

Every instinct he possessed was screaming
get out, run away
but grimly he fought that cowardly impulse as hard and as bitterly as he fought Lional’s hex. His heart was drubbing so hard he was afraid it might burst—or that his eyeballs would explode or his jaw crack into pieces. He could feel a howl building in his throat. Prying his teeth apart he let it out and heard it bounce back and forth between the walls of the corridor, a skin-crawling cry of pain and near-insanity.