Chapter Thirty-One
Before us, a gigantic machine loomed, making growling whirs as if trying to warn us off.
Steel formed the whole machine, with pipes poking from its top like spiky hair and dials on its side displaying strange symbols.
It was barrel-shaped and stood on a frame of steel posts.
It was also untouched by the Silver Rot.
And yet, the rot stemmed from it. I was certain.
As our team joined us, the machine growled louder, reaching a crescendo upon which steam burst from the pipes with a menacing hiss.
“Get back!” I shouted as I yanked the King away from the thing.
Everyone stumbled back and ducked. I watched the shimmering steam, afraid it would fall like rain and infect us.
But it went straight to the ceiling, and the rot absorbed it.
Nothing was wasted. Everything taken. Then a glow spread from the insertion point, out over the ceiling and down the walls.
The floor glowed under our feet, the rot that we'd crumbled under our boots repairing itself.
A glowing pulse radiated from the insertion point like ripples across a pond, the light continuing up the stairwell and out of the room.
Searching for victims.
“Holy fuck,” Orro whispered. Then he jerked. “Leera!”
“She's fine.” I held up a hand. “Don't worry. I believe it's moving through the stone. She's well beyond the bridge, safe with the workers. The living is not its target.” I turned back to the machine. “But go, Orro. I'm sure you'll want to make sure she's alright.”
Orro, calmer, nodded and headed for the stairs.
“What is this thing?” Falken asked.
“I don't know, but it's old.” I peered at the writing next to a panel with buttons. “Oh, dear Gods.”
“What is it?” Falken looked over my shoulder. “Harmonizer? What does that mean?”
“Magical fields emanate from every magical object. With all the advancements here, it created too many fields. They disrupted each other.”
“Disrupted?”
“Destabilized. The enchantments eventually failed. I recall reading about it in a history book. They made the harmonizer to stabilize the magic. It balances the fields.” I shook my head. “I was indeed wrong, but not entirely.”
“This is the source of the rot?” The King straightened.
“Yes. It affected the resonant enchantment loops first because they have the most powerful magical fields. But it won't stop there. Once it consumes those, it will spread to every magical item in the city.”
“Oh, fuck,” a knight whispered.
“What do we do to stop it?” Falken moved to inspect the machine. “Can we clean the harmonizer?”
“No, I'm afraid it's lost, Your Majesty. The only way to save the city is to shut it down. Then we'll have to destroy everything infected.”
“But won't that destabilize magic?”
“Yes, we'll have to remove the most recent advancements and limit the city to the magic used by other kingdoms. Those kingdoms are not experiencing magical destabilization, so we can assume those inventions emit fields small enough not to interfere with each other.”
“The city will revolt,” a horn soldier said.
Falken grimaced. “This is our only option?”
“I'm sorry, but yes. I need to shut down the harmonizer and destroy it so that no one tries to turn it on in the future.” I stepped back to wait for his decision.
The Dragon King sighed, looked at the machine, and then at me. “Do it.”
“Sire.” A knight waved at the stairs. “If you think the last riot was bad, the next will drive us from the city.”
Falken lifted his chin. “I am the King. I must make the best choice for my people, even if they hate me for it. But they will not drive me from my city. They can try, but they will fail.”
The Dragon knights straightened, and the one who had spoken said, “Yes, Your Majesty. You're right. They will fail because we will stand with you.”
“Thank you.” The Dragon King looked at me. “Do it.”
I turned to the machine just as the whirring got louder. Glancing up at the pipes, I hurried to the controls. The noise increased further. I squinted to read the instructions to power down the harmonizer. This was not my field of expertise.
“Sevarin!” The King urged.
Louder. The hissing built. Pipes shuddered. The soldiers backed away. The next release was coming.
With gloved fingers, I pushed two buttons simultaneously and then pulled a lever down.
Just as the pipes began to thrum, a loud clanking came, and then the whirring wound down. The harmonizer shuddered into silence.
The Dragon knights, soldiers, and Hud applauded. I smiled in relief, but before I could turn to nod at them, something caught my eye. Although the machine showed no sign of Silver Rot, something glittered near the top. I stretched to grab it, and it broke away from the machine with a crack.
Everyone went quiet as I pulled the piece down. The top was mounded with silver, but the bottom, where it had touched the harmonizer, only had silver veining.
“What is that?” The King came up beside me.
“It's a ward plate, but it's old.” I frowned. Then I remembered where I had seen one just like it. “Oh, fuck!” I spun. “Get the King to the palace!”
The Dragon knights rushed for their King and pulled him toward the stairwell as I dropped the ward plate and fumbled in my satchel for something to destroy the machine. Turning it off wouldn't be enough.
“Let go of me!” Falken fought them. “I'm not leaving without him!”
“I'll be up soon!” I shouted after Falken.
“Why? Tell me what you're afraid of?!” Falken roared.
“Someone put that plate there.” I yanked out a jic potion and opened it. “This didn't happen on its own, Your Majesty.” I poured the potion over the front of the machine. As long as the controls were destroyed, it was useless. “This is an attack. And they—”
Shouts cut me off, and I spun to see a group of Argaiv men and women come out of the stairwell.
They wore hooded black robes with silver dragonflies on the left breast, declaring their status of Imago—the highest tier of sorcerers among the Argaiv.
Their hands glowed, held out to their sides to cut off the King's exit, and his knights and horns had drawn their swords in response.
I froze, dropping the empty vial. The Dragons had the physical advantage, but the room wasn't large enough for them to shift, and the magic of an imago sorcerer was enough to fell a Dragon in his man's form.
“Step away from the harmonizer.” The man in the central position stepped forward, drawing his hood back.
He didn't wear a mask, utterly unafraid of the Silver Rot. It was Lord Turgov, and when the others drew back their hoods, I saw Vanre beside him.
“You're both supposed to be in a cell,” Falken growled.
Turgov laughed. “We hid our power to infiltrate your court, but we are Imago sorcerers. There is no cell capable of holding one of us.”
“It was you who infected the harmonizer? Why?” I stepped away from the harmonizer, toward them. It didn't matter now. The jic reagent was already spreading, eating away the metal like acid. Once applied, nothing could stop the reagent’s effects. The harmonizer was as good as gone.
“That machine is an abomination!” Turgov pointed at the harmonizer.
“Magic is meant to be free, not regulated.
And now it will be. You have lost, King Falken.
The Silver Rot—a disease born of your people's arrogance—has brought down the city.
It will spread into every magical item until Eberein is clean and can return to using magic as it's meant to be used.”
I frowned in thought. “That ward plate was from the old armory, but you have to be a Dragon to gain entry. How did you get inside?”
Turgov preened, sending smug glances at his friends.
“As I said, we are Imago. All we needed was a little piece of a Dragon—in this case, a hair taken from a knight's jacket—and we created a spell to change one of us into a Dragon. The effects are brief, but they worked long enough to get us into the armory.”
The Dragon knights shared worried looks.
But the Dragon King didn't care, and I knew why. He was going to kill these sorcerers.
“You have failed, you fool!” Falken shouted. “We’ve already destroyed the machine. The Silver Rot is over. Yes, we will have to eliminate every contaminated item, but the city will recover.”
“And now that we know it wasn't the harmonizer at fault, we can build a new one,” I added. “Things can return to the way they were. We don't even have to worry about the rest of the kingdom.”
Falken shot me a grin.
“No! The machine will spread—”
A cracking sound cut him off as the machine collapsed in on itself. I'd been hiding the inward spread of the reagent, but now it was obvious.
I grinned at Turgov. “You lose.”
“No!” Turgov flung his hand out. A slim dagger flew across the space between him and the King. Magic wreathed the metal, and it hit Falken in the chest.
As the other sorcerers attacked, two knights pulled the King back, his body crunching through the silver heaps on the ground.
The rest of the Dragon knights moved forward to protect their king, and the horns joined them.
But sorcerers weren't just magic-users. They had control over occult forces and spirits.
Even as the knights bashed into the ranks of sorcerers, unseen entities battered, electrified, and carried them away.
The Dragons were trying to fight magic with might, and it wasn't working.
“Use your Fire and Water!” I shouted at the Dragons as I ran for Falken.
The sounds of the battle dulled as I dropped to my knees beside Falken.
His eyes were closed, and his chest was barely moving.
The wound was on the right side of his chest. It hadn't hit his heart, but it was bleeding profusely.
A knight had both of his hands pressed onto the wound, but blood seeped through his fingers.
When the knight looked up at me, there were tears in his eyes.
“Keep that pressure firm!” I dumped the contents of my satchel onto the floor.
Screams came and smoke rose. The whoosh of water followed the clunk of swords hitting flesh. The Dragons were using their magic. Good. I could focus on the King.
“There it is!” I grabbed the little jar I kept for emergencies. Frantic, I jerked the cork out. “Move!”
The knight lifted his hands, and I dumped the entire jar onto the King's wound. Immediately, the blood clotted. It was a temporary fix, but that's all a Dragon needed.
Cackling, a spirit dove at us and picked up the knight who'd been holding the King's wound.
Bloody hands flailing, the knight fought his incorporeal opponent.
You can't hurt something that's already dead, but you can hurt the one who summoned it.
I searched the battlefield and found an Argaiv man with his attention locked on the hovering knight.
“Him!” I pointed at the man. “Burn him!”
The other knight with me instantly sent a column of fire at the sorcerer.
With him focused on his attack, he didn't see it coming and didn't act to protect himself.
Flames engulfed him, and his screams quickly faded.
As he died, the spirit laughed and vanished, dropping the knight to the floor.
The knight jumped to his feet, gaze searching the air, and then rushed back to us.
I brushed the hair back from Falken's face. He still wasn't awake, but he was breathing, and the wound was closing.
“What's wrong? Why isn't he waking up?” The returned knight looked frantically from the King to me and back.
“I think the magic may have put him in stasis.” I fumbled among my scattered bottles and jars until I found the elixir I wanted. “Open his mouth.”
A knight pulled off the King's mask and pried open his mouth while I uncapped the bottle.
Covering the opening with a finger, I turned the bottle over so that only a drop coated my fingertip.
Then I brushed the elixir over Falken's tongue and quickly capped the bottle.
The stuff was precious. The knight closed the King's mouth, and we all watched the King.
“Come on, Falken!” I shook his shoulder. “Falken!” Trembling in fear, I tore off my mask, cast it aside, and bent to kiss him. Drawing back, I whispered in his ear. “You are not allowed to die. I haven't finished deciding who you are to me.” I sat up. “Now, wake up!”
Falken inhaled sharply as he sat up, startling his knights into jerking back.
“Holy shit, that worked?” I whispered.
He looked at me, ignoring his wound. “You haven't decided?”
“You heard that?” I cleared my throat and collected my things, throwing them into my satchel.
Falken stood up, and flames burst up from his hands as he shouted, “Surrender or die!”
The King's voice echoed off the silver walls as the sorcerers—those still standing—held up their hands and let their magic fade.
The Dragon King strode forward. “Where is Turgov?”
The horns and knights drew back to reveal the Argaiv man, still on his feet, but wounded and glaring at the King.
Falken strode up to him, grabbed him around the throat, and lifted him off his feet. A crack came, and the man went limp.
“Uncle!” Vanre shouted. “You liar! You said we'd live if we surrendered!”
The Dragon King tossed Turgov's body into a mass of Silver Rot. “I said surrender or die. I didn't say surrendering would save you. But don't fret. Your uncle led this rebellion, and his fate was sealed. You will live. Unless you'd like to join him?”
Vanre shrank back.
“Turgov said that no cell could hold you.” The King scanned the group of sorcerers. “Perhaps I should kill you all anyway.”
“He was lying!” Vanre shouted. “Lord Theodore drugged the guards and freed us.”
“Lord Theodore? Thank you for that.” He motioned to the horns. “Restrain them and take them up. One of you fetch the Talons. Tell them to bring a wagon for the prisoners.”
The horns got to work as Falken turned to check on the harmonizer. Seeing that it had disintegrated, he nodded and headed for the stairs. I joined him, leaving the horns to do their work. Two Dragon knights stayed with the horns, but the rest went with their king.
After we left the first stairwell, I stepped up beside him. “How's your wound?”
“Nearly healed.” He crossed the floor quickly, but before he entered the next stairwell, he looked back at me. “Thank you.”
“You're welcome.” Feeling awkward, I focused on his injury. “He coated the blade in magic. I think they spelled it to put you in stasis so you couldn't heal.”
We left the stairwell and then the enchantment room. Falken made a sound of dismay. At first, I thought it was in acknowledgment of what I'd said, but then I stepped outside and saw them.
Orro and Leera lay sprawled just outside the door. Beyond them, the place was empty. The workers had fled.