Even as he decided, the brown dragon swerved left. Headed towards the city, towards the border far beyond it, to the desert of Kallarap and the wrath of its gods.
With a bellow of fury, Lional and his dragon launched in pursuit, streaking flame after them in searing streams. Gerald felt the heat wash over him, felt his small dragon's agony as a whip of flame licked its tail. I'm sorry little dragon! Fly faster-fly faster -
He risked a swift look behind them. Lional was gaining.
Now the city was directly below them, they were flying through smoke from its burning buildings. Eyes smearing, tearing, Gerald stared at the rubble… the bodies… the ruined streets lined with charred skeletal trees. There were people in the open again, milling like sheep without their shepherd, making vague disorganised attempts to do something about the mess.
And then he really did almost fall off his dragon because Shugat was down there. Shugat and Zazoor and the entire Kallarapi army, they were down off their camels and helping the people.
A scream of rage behind him. He turned. Lional had seen Shugat. He was close now, so close. His inhuman face was contorted with fury. Abandoning the pursuit, he and his dragon flung themselves towards the ground. Oh shit. Gerald flung himself and his dragon after them.
Lional's subjects were screaming, scattering, running pell-mell into the park which held the Royal Duck Pond. Shugat stood motionless in the cobblestoned street, holding his ground. Zazoor retreated, the army retreated, assisting Lional's subjects wherever they could. Shugat plucked the rough stone from his forehead and held it high in one outstretched hand. No shield of protection this time. Just a pulse of light and a crack of sound. It was like flying headfirst into a brick wall.
Gerald shouted as he and his dragon bounced off thin air, were struck hard by Lional and his dragon flailing backwards, smacked just as hard by Shugat's invisible hand. Gerald lost his grip and his balance and fell from his dragon's hot back. As he tumbled like a rag doll he caught sight of Lional. He was falling too.
Gerald hit the park's hard ground and felt something break. Pain flooded through him, and in his mind he heard his dragon howl. Somehow he staggered to his feet, the pain didn't matter. He had to stop Lional.
New Ottosland's mad king was unhurt and finding his own feet again several yards from the Duck Pond. Gerald lurched in a circle, looking for Shugat. You can help me now, you bastard.You're bloody going to help me now! But the holy man was gone again. So was Zazoor and his army. They'd melted away like mist under the sun. He felt like crying. Oh damn you. Damn you. Why won't you help… Above his head the dragons were fighting.
It was a hopelessly unequal contest. Lional's dragon outweighed the enchanted skink by hundreds of pounds. Its wingspan was half as wide again, its tail as strong and lethal as a battering ram. Gerald stared at the battling dragons, barely breathing. One well-placed blow from Lional's monster would snap his dragon's spine like kindling. And he'd thought his little dragon could hurt it? He must have been mad.
Lional's dragon lashed sideways with its taiclass="underline" Gerald staggered as it hit the brown dragon a glancing blow. Lional's dragon breathed fire: he cried out as the heat licked him along his arm, blistering flesh. The little brown dragon faltered, one wing seared and smoking. Its wings beat once… beat twice… it wasn't climbing. The brown dragon let out a hoarse cry of despair. Watching, triumphant, Lional laughed.
This was the moment. Live or die. Kill or be killed. Succeed or fail… and in failing doom two nations to death.
As one with his suffering, struggling dragon, Gerald took a shuddering breath. Ignoring their pain, their fear, for the first time he looked deep within to the source of his power. Vivid as mercury, potent as wine, it poured without end from a reservoir he never knew existed… drowning him from the inside out.
Somewhere in his mind something tore loose, shattered, exploded. It was Stuttley's all over again but a million times more powerful. His vision disappeared in a dazzling starburst. When it cleared moments later the world was strangely shadowed. Unreal. And cascading through his blood and bones a torrent of potentia that took his breath away. Compared to this, everything that had come before was as an echo, or a memory, or the merest hint of maybe. Flesh and bone fell away and now he didn't feel power, he was power. And he poured that potentia into his failing, falling otherself.
Through a silver corona Gerald watched the little brown dragon spiral away. He was the little brown dragon, their burned wing whole again, their broken ribs healed. They heard Lional grunt with surprise and then effort as he sent the crimson and emerald dragon in pursuit.
It was still an unequal fight. The little brown dragon was constrained by its original matrix; no power in the world could change that. And for all his newly woken potentia he was still a good wizard. Unsteeped in the malice and misery of the Lexicon.
He and his brave brown dragon would have one chance…just one…
Seeing through the magicked lizard's single eye, using senses he knew were his, yet not his, he felt Lional and his ravenous familiar closing the gap. Felt the hot wind of their breath on his back. Heard the greedy roar of hunger in their throat. Closer… closer… closer…
The monster would be on them in seconds. In seconds it would all be over with Lional triumphant… untrammelled… With a throat-ripping cry of effort Gerald brought his little brown dragon to an impossible midair halt and somersaulted it over the back of Lional's pursuing crimson and emerald monster. Lional and his dragon couldn't stop. He extended his claws — the brown dragon's claws — and sank them deep into Lional's — the other dragon's — hot and scaly hide. Then he reached out his jaws, snapped off one of the poisoned spines… and plunged it into the vulnerable throat of the crimson and emerald monster beneath them. Lional and his dragon screamed.
Dimly Gerald felt the acid poison burn his mouth, dissolve his teeth, run down his gullet and eat out his guts. His little brown dragon was dying and he was dying with it. Dimly, turning, he saw Lional drop to his knees, hands clawing at his throat. A bloody foam frothed at his mouth. His eyes were wild and staring, green venom bubbled from the gaping wound beneath his jaw… and where it touched the flesh curled and smoked and split like rotten fruit, releasing a stench like a thousand drowned bloated bodies.
'Leave, the beast, wizardV somebody cried.'Foolish youth, you cannot save it! Abandon its mind before you are consumedV
Unstrung with sorrow he pulled his fading mind free of the little brown dragon. His legs gave way and he collapsed to the grass. As he stared into the sweet blue sky so far above him he saw two dragons… one brown, one crimson and emerald, locked in a fierce and dying embrace, falling… falling…
And then the dragons were gone and it was two tiny lizards, falling… falling. They tumbled into a clump of burned pink azaleas and disappeared from sight.
To his left Lional let out a choked, gurgling groan… and fell silent.
Gerald couldn't move. Could barely breathe. Every muscle, every bone, every hair on his head was hurting exquisitely. All he could do was lie on the grass of the Royal Duck Pond park and stare at the sky. A sky that was suddenly full of camels and sultans and tatty old holy men, all gathered around him, their dark eyes approving.
Then the sky faded, and the camels, and the Kallarapi… and his mind folded in on itself, closing the door to consciousness.
Some time later the door opened again, with resentful reluctance, to the sound of jabbering voices and the feel of brisk but gentle hands pushing him, pulling him. With enormous effort he opened his eyes. Anxious faces crowded above him but he could barely make them out through the waves of searing flame rolling relentlessly through his body. The world seemed strangely shallow… for some reason sited at the end of a tunnel…