Chapter 30 #2
“Oh yeah, definitely. Anyway, I might have asked her to, uh, pass something along? And I was wondering if . . .” I had the sudden urge to whistle, to feign nonchalance. “If she accomplished that?”
“No,” said the sorcerer, sharp and immediate.
“Huh.” I felt an odd sinking in my chest. “I guess she didn’t feel inclined to do me any favours. But now I suppose you’re curious as to what—”
“Not even remotely. Cameron, our immediate survival is my priority at present, so if you’re capable, let’s save our breath.”
Wanting to push the matter, I glanced at Merulo, and saw something I shouldn’t have: sunlight, cutting through the fog and casting his face bone-white.
“This mist is thinning,” I said in horror, and he nodded.
That was the last we spoke for some time, our energy funneled into forward motion, our breaths coming heavier as we mounted the slope.
We’d made good progress when the sorcerer sat forcefully, nearly causing me to fall. His posture and robe brought to mind a large, diseased crow.
“I’ve been thinking.” He sighed.
“Good. That makes one of us.” I sank beside him, careful of my bandaged ankle. Throughout our walk, the sorcerer’s stone eye had not flashed once. I wondered if it would ever light again.
“We need help. I need help.” His face contorted, the admission seemingly as painful as bad gas. “I must make contact with . . . someone.”
With the fog dissipating around us, I felt rather exposed on the rocky face of the escarpment. “Could we do it in the castle?”
He shook his head. “It’s too far, and there’s barely enough blood left in your body to fill a glass.”
Hyperbole, I wanted to protest, but the temptation to curl like a mouse and fall blissfully asleep remained. I could imagine it: the fading of my senses, a gentle tumble into the void. Back into nothing.
Nothing.
“Merulo, I know you’re a solo artist”—I reached up to grip his shoulder, making a conscious effort not to dig my nails in—“but how’s about you give that person a yell?”
He shrugged out from under my hand, fiddling with his robe. “We’re on rather poor terms at present.”
“Well, it’s never too late to apologize! I mean, hey, if you want tips on how to kneel and beg, you’re looking at the expert.” I beamed my brightest, most encouraging smile.
“Fine. But I’ll need to remove a toe.” A spidery hand disappeared into his robes, reemerging with a glint of silver. The wicked blade he’d used to prick himself on the seaside cliffs.
I blanched. “Yours, or mine?”
“Mine. Why would it be yours? Never mind, just . . .” The sorcerer grimaced. “Do it in one stroke. I enchanted the knife; it should cut true. If you resort to hacking, I will . . . vomit on you.”
“If that’s the best threat you can manage, then I fear for our intimate life.” I accepted the knife from him, evaluating its cold weight.
“Cameron, quell your perversion just this once and cut my damn toe off. This one here.” Merulo slipped off a shoe and pointed at the smallest toe.
Judging from their knackered length, he hadn’t cut his nails in some time.
Squatting with the faint embarrassment one usually feels when handling feet, I pried the toe away from its brethren and placed the base of the blade above it, a guillotine in miniature.
Before committing to the cut, I said, “Are you sure? If a gesture of appeasement is needed, there’s got to be a way that doesn’t involve mutilation.”
“That’s not . . .” The sorcerer threw back his head, exasperated. “It’s for the spell. Dragon bodies are a powerful source of magic. I may be drained, but that doesn’t mean I cease to be a resource.”
In other words, a spell he’d usually cast with less effort than a belch would now cost a minor digit. Poor Merulo. Without another thought, I pressed down on the blade, meeting only the briefest resistance. Merulo gave a banshee wail and scrambled away from me. His jaw hung open, uncomprehending.
“I thought it’d be better without build-up,” I said, shaken. “Anticipation can be worse than the actual thing.”
“No,” the sorcerer finally managed. “No, I’d say the actual thing is worse. Damn it.” Bringing the torn corner of his robe to his mouth, Merulo ripped off another strip with his teeth and packed it around the gushing stub.
The toe lay like the pale larva of some unmentionable insect in a spreading pool of blood.
Pressing admirably through his pain, Merulo seized it and, using the cut end like a quill, smeared a crude sigil onto the rocky ground.
He placed the toe in its center and uttered an incomprehensible plea.
Violet flames erupted, consuming the forsaken digit.
The voice that emanated from the fire was deep, and full of startled outrage. “You dare? After pawning my microwave?”
Merulo kneaded his forehead. His hands still shook from the shock of amputation. “Hydna, I wouldn’t call if the situation weren’t dire.”
A growl of frustration made the flames flicker. “Why can’t I end this call?”
“Because I am burning my own body to maintain it,” the sorcerer snarled. It seemed a poor time for one of his tantrums, so I waved at him frantically and, catching his eye, mimed an exaggerated smile.
“Merulo . . .” The voice sounded concerned now. “I’m opening a portal. Come through immediately.”
The sorcerer hesitated, casting a regretful look at me. “Not without my library. It must be moved to safety.”
“Then die with your books,” the flames spat.
I jumped in before things could devolve further.
“Please, sir, or . . . ma’am? Merulo has told me about how sorry he is for slighting you, regarding the .
. . uh . . . micro . . . Anyway, he has deep regrets, really.
And we’re hoping, in the spirit of your past relationship, that you can find it in your heart to grant Merulo help in his hour of ne—”
“Who is that?” the voice interrupted. I stopped, wondering whether to introduce myself.
“A friend,” snapped the sorcerer. Relinquishing the negotiations to him, I scoured the fog around us, watching for dark shapes that might betray the approach of knights.
“You don’t have friends.”
“Enough talking.” Even drained and down a toe, the sorcerer maintained his arrogance. “Either you bring through my books, or I’ll have Sir Cameron here cut off my hand so that I can accomplish the task myself.”
Muffled oaths. Then: “You rat bastard. Stand back.”
I was busy mouthing ‘I most certainly will not’ at Merulo, and was thus quite taken aback when the air split open to reveal the second dragon of the day.
Before the portal could fully unfold, the monster burst through, a behemoth of burgundy wings and scale-draped muscle. I recoiled, reaching for a sword I didn’t have, while Merulo rose to greet the thing.
The dragon’s coils disappeared every which way into the fog. Its eyes, a reptilian crimson, were as big as my balled fists.
“Are you like, a baby dragon?” I whispered, as I discreetly positioned Merulo between myself and the monster. He smacked me on the arm, muttering something about sexual dimorphism.
“This is your friend?” came the booming voice of the dragon. “Not a servant, a prisoner, or a concubine? A friend?”
I understood; ‘friend’ implied a level of equality it was not seeing. “Listen,” I said from behind Merulo. “I might be a lowly human being, but you know what?” A beat of silence followed as it waited for me to continue, but I had nothing.
In the midst of this awkwardness, the dragon contracted into a giant woman. Muscular, broad-shouldered, big of hip and thigh and breast. Just . . . large. Her clothes didn’t particularly impress me, being a man’s standard tunic and leggings, but I marveled at how they stretched to fit her contours.
“Listen, man, I’m not being bigoted.” The dragon made an obvious effort to soften her voice as she approached.
“My brother has never had a friend before. I’m proud of him, is all.
” She dropped a hand on Merulo’s shoulder with enough force to hammer in a six-inch nail.
It was commendable that he did not visibly vibrate.
I peered at the two of them in disbelief. With her tawny complexion, wild mane of burgundy hair, and overall glow of health and vitality, the woman could not have looked more dissimilar to my poor, pasty Merulo.
“Huh.” The dragon studied Merulo’s un-shoed foot, then looked me over in turn.
I shuddered to think of the impression I made, with my cheap, ill-fitting clothes thoroughly saturated with dirt, sweat, and blood.
My hair felt like the mangled hide of an animal, and dried mud crusted my face from where I’d been dragged across the field.
Her biceps also outsized mine by several orders of magnitude.
She tilted her head, a curiously bird-like gesture.
“This is the guy you drained yourself for?” At Merulo’s stricken look, she went on.
“What, you thought nobody would notice repeating a day? I organized my entire electronics room, cleared the dust, wiped it down, then boom, now I have to do it all over again. Thanks for that, you little idiot.”
“He did it to save my life.” I stooped to retrieve the sorcerer’s shoe from where it lay in a patch of sun-starved grass.
“And if you bring us through to safety, I can tidy up your room again, while you sit back with a nice beverage. It’ll be as good as it, uh .
. . would have been . . . tomorrow. Did I say that right? ”
Merulo looked pained as he received the proffered shoe and shoved it into the inner pockets of his robe.
“Eh, thanks,” said Hydna, a touch awkwardly, “but nobody touches my machines. Because greedy little thieves”—her voice rose as she turned on the sorcerer—“can’t seem to help themselves!”
“I put it to better use,” the sorcerer snapped, rounding on her. “You used that scrap metal to reheat day-old fish. I traded it for the secrets of the universe!”