Chapter 33 #3
Allie placed herself right in front of him—in that moment, Allie was fearless—and King Sorrow pushed one claw through the hole and batted her aside, his claw ringing off the shield.
Allie was thrown end over end, like a child doing a somersault.
Robin picked herself up off the floor and screamed and grabbed the fire extinguisher and ran at King Sorrow and was just as lightly swatted down.
King Sorrow’s mouth gaped open and Tana threw a chair into it.
He crushed it in his teeth and then his tail snapped across Tana’s back, threw her into a stone wall. Blood spattered.
Gwen turned on her side and swept her arm back and forth. Her fingers batted at the blade of the sword, caused it to rotate
in a slow ringing circle. She flailed again and caught the hilt.
“I can heeeeeear you,” King Sorrow shouted happily, and thrust his tail in her direction. The great serpentine length of it slid beneath the
robe, joining her under the tent of that dark cloak. It probed the air a few inches from her face.
Gwen lifted herself onto her knees. She turned the sword to point the tip at the floor, squeezed both hands around the grip,
and fell. The blade sank through King Sorrow’s tail without any sense of friction. The tip of the sword found the mortar between
blocks of stone and drove itself into the floor with a ringing chime, as if a silver bell had been struck with a silver hammer.
King Sorrow screamed again and all the world shook. Hardcovers trembled and leapt off the shelves behind the chain-link grating.
Chairs danced about. The dragon tried to jerk his tail free, but the sword held him stapled to the stones, a pin pushed through
a butterfly. The tail dropped into the spreading pool of Gwen’s own blood, lifted and dropped again, smacking wetly against
blood-slicked granite.
“You nasty little girl! You’ve stuck a needle into me! A nasty little needle!”
Gwen found herself too weak to even lift herself onto her elbows. She sprawled, chin on the rock beneath her and the robe
spread over her. It was a struggle to breathe, and the want of air made her lightheaded and curiously calm. She had done all
she could. Whatever would happen would happen. There was no more to worry about.
King Sorrow thrust his head through the hole on the opposite side of the tower. His black, forked tongue flicked out, searching
for her. The tip flittered across the floor . . . and tasted the edge of that quivering pool of Gwen’s blood.
“Oh,” King Sorrow murmured. “Oh, that’s good. All that grief. All that loss. That’s good, Gwen!”
He lapped at her blood, his tongue moving closer to her face, sliding under the edge of the robe. It twitched and vibrated
a few inches from her nose, then turned and licked at the blood spattered upon his own tail.
“That’s so good!” he cried again. “More!”
First his tongue lapped at his tail, then it curled around and around it. He pulled. The sword held his tail to the flagstones.
King Sorrow grunted and pulled again, harder, and this time he dragged his tail toward him, the sword splitting him in two
as he yanked himself along.
“Help yourself,” Gwen said. “Dig in.”
She spoke so softly she could hardly make out her own voice. But King Sorrow heard her fine. He chuckled, warmly, amiably . . .
and then inhaled the tip of his own tail, like a graceless diner sucking up a length of spaghetti. The sword carved through
the steadily thickening trunk of his tail, until only the hilt was still visible, which was when it came loose from the floor,
still run right through him.
“Oh, Gwen,” he muttered, his voice clotted and thick. “I never tasted better.”
King Sorrow inhaled another yard of his own tail. He made a harsh, effortful choking sound as the Arthur-sword went into his
gullet . . . and sucked again, pulling in six feet this time.
As he devoured himself, a kind of rippling convulsion passed through his tail. It began to pull itself through the wall, hitting
blocks and knocking them free to drop away into the night. King Sorrow struggled to get more and yet more of himself into
his mouth. He shoved a claw through the opening in the north wall, pulling away stone, widening the space.
“Goot!” he choked. “Goot!”
“Oh, God,” Tana said, pulling herself off the floor on her knees. She was the only one of them to see what was about to happen. She scrambled, found Allie, got her in her arms and pulled her against one wall . . . then grabbed one of the study tables and pulled it over them, to hide beneath it.
In the next instant the dragon yanked the whole armored hoop of his body to the west, pulling himself right through the wall.
Huge blocks of stone fell. Beams splintered and dropped through the dust. Allie and Tana disappeared into the rockslide, the
great collapsing pile of granite blocks. Half the ceiling flew away, tumbling from the tower, down onto the roof of the library
below. The other half of the ceiling was supported by the east wall of the tower, and what was left of the north and south
faces. Dust whirled, a gush of powdered rock and ash exploding into the night, following King Sorrow up into the sky.
Robin reeled to Gwen’s side, dropped to one knee, placed a hand on her shoulder. Her face appeared directly over Gwen’s for
a moment. She pushed hair back from Gwen’s face, offered her a reassuring smile.
“Hang in there, Gwen,” Robin said. “I hear sirens. There’ll be some gents along to look after you in a jiff. Don’t you dare
die on me, now, I’ve been through that with you once already.”
Gwen could hear the sirens herself, very dimly, through the hum in her ears.
Robin lifted her head and scanned the night, possibly looking for the strobes of the emergency vehicles, possibly looking out for a frenzied dragon.
A breath of fresh air moved across Gwen’s face.
When Robin sat up, Gwen could see into the night.
The dust was already clearing, the evening breeze shifting it away in shimmering pale curtains, and she could see King Sorrow high above.
He was a great black hoop, jerking first this way, then that, twitching across that map of stars spread over them.
He wrestled with himself, his wings thrashing furiously at the darkness, while he swallowed one mouthful of his tail and another.
His jaw unhinged—Gwen had heard snakes could do that—to force down his own hind legs.
He was making sounds, great barking noises, as he rose into the dark.
At first she thought it was the sound of the dragon choking.
Then she believed she was hearing the sound of his laughter as he rose, and struggled, and rose, until at last, with one heroic effort, he inhaled an enormous bite and there was a kind of popping in her ears, as at a sudden pressure change, and King Sorrow swallowed himself, and was gone.
Gwen’s insides were all busted up, splintered bone sticking through her chest, through her lungs, the vital tissues in her abdomen torn down the middle. It was a lot of pain.
All the same: she had to laugh.