“Little present from your aunt,” Olive whispered, slipping the wyvern’s spur into the top of Giogi’s boot. Giogi concentrated on the dream. From behind the nobleman’s body the halfling taunted the wizard. “You’re too late, you know, Flattery. Nameless’s true name is on everyone’s lips. Best bard in the Realms-Finder Wyvernspur.”
Flattery lunged at Giogi to get at Olive but found himself confronted with a wyvern.
Flattery leaped backward with a snarl. His foil was not likely to penetrate the wyvern’s scales, and Giogi’s transformed body was immune to his spells. Flattery might have run, but he spotted Cat picking up the finder’s stone.
Backing away farther, the wizard drew something out of his pocket. It was a crystal as dark as a new moon. Just like the one Jade had stolen, Olive thought.
“Catling, you want this? Come and get it,” said Flattery, circling to keep the enchantress between him and the wyvern, Giogi.
Cat looked with confusion at the crystal. Her eyes shone with desire. She took a hesitant step forward.
“It’s a trick, Cat,” Olive shouted. “He destroyed the real crystal. He just wants to use you against Giogi.”
Flattery was a fast thinker and a faster liar. “I made a second crystal, Cat. It’s everything the first was. Just come here, and I will give it to you.”
Cat froze, then stepped back, taking up a position behind Giogi. “It doesn’t matter anymore, Flattery,” she said proudly. “I can make myself new memories.”
With that, Olive said, “Time to go,” took Cat’s hand, and pulled her toward the exit. Giogi backed slowly in the same direction, waving his tail over his head. He had to get the mage and the bard to safety before he finished with the wizard.
The three of them slipped from the audience chamber quickly. Something exploded behind them. Flattery shrieked, and a howl went up from the undead.
“Run!” Olive shouted.
The halfling and the mage pounded down the corridor. Behind them, Giogi continued backing away as fast as he could. Drone, in his human form, stood waiting outside the door.
“Giogi?” said the old man.
“Right behind us,” Olive gasped.
The wyvern backed out of the keep door and changed quickly back into a human. “You know, this wyvern form is deucedly awkward enough to walk in going forward,” Giogi said with irritation. “I can’t see where I’m going at all when I go backward, let alone try to be graceful about it.”
Drone took Cat by the shoulders. “Where are my scrolls, young lady?” he demanded.
Cat swallowed. “Gone,” she said. “Flattery took them. He’s already opened one, I think. We heard an explosion as we fled the keep.”
“You knew the scrolls you took were covered in explosive runes?” Drone asked.
Cat grinned slyly. “Except for the few I used,” she said.
“The exploding scroll will have destroyed all the others with it,” Drone snapped. “All you needed for a booby trap was one.”
“If I’d only brought him one scroll, he’d be suspicious,” Cat explained. “The more I brought him, the less suspicious he’d be. I had to bring all the ones with exploding runes to make sure he got hit by the first one he read.”
“Devious. She’s very devious, Giogi. She owes me twenty-seven scrolls, though,” Drone growled. “I’ve spent all my power for the day. Without those scrolls, I’m no good to you in battle. I can get the ladies safely to the ground, Giogi, if you can delay pursuit.”
Giogi nodded.
A horrendous howl erupted from the audience chamber, and everyone knew Flattery trailed them with renewed fury.
“Lead Flattery away from this rock, as far away as you can get him to go,” Drone said.
“Yes, sir.”
Drone pulled a small scroll from his sleeve, muttered a few words, and was surrounded by a milky blue glow. When the glow subsided, the old Wyvernspur had been transformed into a pegasus.
“Hand up, if you please, Master Giogioni,” Olive said.
Giogioni lifted the halfling onto his uncle’s back.
“Be careful,” Cat pleaded.
Giogi kissed her once and set her behind Olive. “Don’t fall off this horse,” he warned. “It’s a long way to the ground.”
“Wait!” Cat said. “The undead. If they get past the invisible barrier, they can still chase you, as they did your father. The mage untied her yellow sash, dropped the finder’s stone in it, and knotted it inside. “Change to the wyvern,” she ordered Giogi.
Giogi quickly transformed.
“Bend your head down.”
Cat wrapped her sash around Giogi’s wyvern throat and knotted the fabric tight. “There,” she said.
The finder’s stone shone brightly through the fabric.
Drone stamped his foot impatiently and whinnied.
“Good luck,” Cat whispered.
Drone took off, flying just high enough to clear the fortress walls. Giogi took to the air and circled over the fortress, near the large iron doors. The moon had just risen high enough to shine on the inner ward.
Flattery came out, just as Giogi knew he would, in the shape of a great sky-blue dragon. The wizard looked no worse for all the injury Cat had done him with her magic missile in the nursery and the explosive runes on Uncle Drone’s scrolls. He looked like a dragon in his prime.
Giogi folded his wings and swooped down silently, his moon shadow behind him. Like a wasp, he delivered a stinging blow to Flattery’s head. Then Giogi tore off to the west.
When he took a moment to look back, he could see the dragon’s silhouette in the moonlight, much closer to him than he thought. Dark clouds and white mist flew beside the wizard.
Olive squinted through the telescope at the tiny, retreating figures of Giogi, Flattery, and the few flying minions he had left. The minions were already no more than a collection of motes in the glass.
Drone was balanced precariously on the tower roof, chanting some very powerful spell from a scroll. Mother Lleddew was in courtyard below, praying some powerful prayer from another scroll. Their chants intermixed in a toneless song of magic.
Olive looked up at the flying fortress looming over the castle. Suddenly it began to shake then levitate upward very, very quickly, so that it looked as if it were shrinking.
The halfling could hear Drone jumping up and down, shouting, “Look at it go!” and Cat trying to keep him calm enough so that he didn’t slip off the tower and break his fool neck.
Drone slid down the kudzu vine and back into the room, still chuckling. Cat followed.
“Did you see that?” Drone asked.
“You made it fly higher,” Olive said.
“No, no, no. You don’t understand how gravity works. I made it fall up.”
“Nothing falls up,” Olive said.
“Hee, hee, hee,” Drone wheezed. “Not without powerful magic, at any rate.”
“Will it fall back down?” Olive asked.
“Oh, I hope so,” Drone said.
“But then it will destroy the town,” Olive objected.
“Burn up as it falls. Be quite a spectacular meteor.”
“What?”
“Don’t worry about it, Mistress Ruskettle.”
At the window, Cat fidgeted nervously. Mother Lleddew was casting some sort of scrying spell so they knew what happened in Giogi’s battle with Flattery. Cat didn’t want to miss anything. “Are we finished?” the enchantress asked impatiently.
“Don’t you snap at me, girl,” Drone told her. “You owe me twenty-seven scrolls. You’ll work off every one of them, too.”
Cat looked at the floor.
“Oh, stop that. Don’t mope. I hate it when pretty girls mope. I suppose we’re finished. Lleddew should have her scrying spell set up by now. Let’s go watch the show. Don’t want to miss Giogi beating the stuffing out of the villain.” His voice was light, but Olive could see the worry lines in the old man’s face tighten as he spoke.