Chapter 23
THE THREAT OF AN AMOROUS BARBARIAN AND PANCAKES TO THE RESCUE
His first read-through had been marked by the unquenchable delight of discovery.
His second, purpose. His third, obligation and drudgery.
A brilliant mind repelled repetition. It needed stimulus.
It didn’t need to find him here slouched in his seat with his chin cupped in his palm and his eyes glazed over as they scanned words on a page he already knew.
But the Master’s exam would be unlike any test he’d had before.
This was the exam where the professors removed their kid gloves and did all within their power to imperil him.
Only dexterity of mind and a thorough knowledge of myriad spells would see him through to the end.
And the ability to speak them, he grumbled to himself.
One might question what was the point to memorizing spells when one couldn’t even incant them, but Bradley was a believer in being prepared. He would remove the curse. He would be ready for the exam immediately after. He would ride out these feelings of boredom and frustration and inadequacy and—
His gaze slid across the desk to the cherrywood box and the dark magic instruction manual inside.
Bradley’s pulse danced in his veins; his breath stilled in his lungs.
Summoning. Conjuring. Could either one assist him?
He couldn’t summon a sorcerer to remove his curse—the sorcerer would remember the compulsion after his task was complete and report him to the College Board.
They’d strip him of his magic for sure. And if Master Excelsior, who was a grand master himself, though he shunned his full title whenever he got the chance, couldn’t remove his curse, then who?
The only thing greater than a grand master was an archmaster, and the world hadn’t seen that caliber of magic wielder in an age. Even if the archmasters did exist, they were probably too busy to pay him any mind.
Noodle brain, he thought, recalling the term his mentor has always used. Your mind needs to be as limber as a wet noodle, Bradley.
He rolled his shoulders and shook out his hands.
Could he possibly summon an ingredient to make one of his alchemical remedies not a failure? That would require a lot more research, but Bradley still had many weeks ahead of him, so . . .
His fingers resumed the five-beat drumming dirge as he slumped back into his seat.
Maybe he should take a break from reading spells he already had memorized.
Maybe he should return to the research he’d abandoned yester-evening.
If he couldn’t remove his curse, then knowing all the spells in all the world wouldn’t do him any good.
And he couldn’t very well conjure anything if he didn’t know what exactly to conjure.
It just sucked that Dirk wasn’t here to lend his luck to the process, or at least commiserate with him. Or talk him out of the temptation of using forbidden magic.
To his knowledge, the baby dragon hadn’t left the dungeon where the Major Inconvenience and the newest addition to the tower, Major Inconvenience’s Enabler, were devising their How to Be A Pirate training program.
Aka Miss Shiny Object and Shiny Object’s Assistant.
Dragons, regardless of species, were like raccoons that way—the sparkly and unique attracted them.
Bradley sighed as he wallowed, the fingers of one hand still drumming. The strange rhythm soothed him, and words rose from memory to accompany them: Dirk the Dangerous dozes dreamily deep in—
The tower shook.
Bradley lurched upright and flattened his arms against the stacks of books that threatened to collapse.
He clamped his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling, but the vibrations were so strong, they wobbled his spectacles clean off the edge of his nose.
The bowl created between his thighs by his robe caught them, but another strike to the tower pitched him and his spectacles clean off his chair.
He flung his arms up over his head to protect against the bludgeoning cascade of all those heavy books and looked up in a panic as many, many breakable sorcerous bit and bobs rattled.
They didn’t break—yet—since he’d shoved them all up in each other’s business against the workroom walls, but it was only a matter of time.
The workroom had environmental stabilization wards in place, but nothing against vibrations that shook the very foundation of the tower.
The apprentice managed to snatch his spectacles and secure them to his face before a third quake released another shower of books, this time from both the desk and the shelves.
Hiking his robe up past his knees, he kept low and scuttled over to the nearest balcony to see what in tarnation was assaulting the tower.
He'd only gotten halfway when the trapdoor burst open, the princess and the hedge knight tumbling into the workroom. Dirk followed immediately after and slapped the door shut with a swish of his tail.
“No offense, miss,” Sir Roger said as he helped Millie to her feet, staggering a bit himself, “but you’re not touching a sword until you can climb those steps without keeling over.”
“Fair,” the princess panted, her face pinker than her taffeta dress had ever been. She hinged forward, hands layering over a stitch in her side.
“What?” Bradley sputtered. “How?”
“I can pick locks, remember?” The princess waggled her letter opener then threw the padlock at him. Bradley ducked.
“And I flew them up here,” Dirk said proudly. “Sorta. Think running up the stairs meets an enthusiastic tailwind. With pulling.”
“Speaking of, never ‘sorta fly’ me anywhere ever again,” the hedge knight informed the baby dragon. “Ever.”
“I won’t.” Dirk wove a complicated twist through the air. Vertebrae popped. “You wiggled so much I nearly threw out my back.”
The three humans spilled onto the floor when the tower quaked again.
“I am too old for this,” Sir Roger muttered, righting himself and yanking a rattan cane loose of the workroom’s mountains of clutter.
Bradley was about to protest the acquisition of his master’s possession, but the bigger, more immediate problem was outside attacking the tower.
The very assembly of stones he was responsible for.
He abandoned the others to collect themselves and caught the wrought-iron railing of the western balcony just as the tower shivered.
The princess was the next to reach the balcony, and when she didn’t immediately anchor herself to the railing, the apprentice placed a hand on the small of her back and shoved her forward so she would have no other choice.
She tsked at his manhandling and elbowed him in the ribs.
Bradley bared his teeth at her but her attention was already far below.
“Crone’s Crooked Tits,” she whispered. “What is that?”
Bradley would’ve taken great satisfaction in correcting her improper usage of the pronoun, as the mountain of a man at the base was definitely a who, except he had to agree with her.
That who was definitely a what because no one grew to that height and breadth and musculature who wasn’t a giant, and they had gone to sleep under the hills long ago.
“Barbarian,” Sir Roger answered from her other side. “Juggernaut class, I suspect, given that warhammer.”
The weapon in question was a block of stone veined with green light and strapped to a wooden shaft that had once been the heartwood of an ancient redwood.
It must have weighed as much as Bradley, but to the barbarian it was hardly heavier than a toothpick given the ease in which he swung it around to rest upon his thick shoulder. The gargantuan Hero waved at Millie.
“Ivar the Bane,” Sir Eustace heralded, and, his duty done, retreated to his desk to record the details of the ensuing rescue attempt. Ivar’s desert guide already sat in the desk’s meager shade and sipped from a canteen.
“Hello, future wife,” the barbarian boomed. “Though you do not have hair as bright as the sun and are a bit too plump to march across the permafrost without slowing down the whole caravan, I will still call you my ice flower.”
Ivar flung his long black hair back over his shoulders to show off his massive chest, which he promptly puffed out. When Millie didn’t immediately swoon, he pulsed his pectorals like an amorous sand grouse.
“I have come from the land of snow and ice to battle this dragon, to rip his guts out of his belly for my bootlaces, to hollow out his horns for my vodka, to make a mighty offering of his heart’s blood to my warhammer Alfalas, to fry up his testicles in his own fat—”
“What?” Dirk squeaked.
“—and devour them so I may be imbued with the strength and stamina of a dragon as I endeavor to sire a new generation of barbarian blessed by Skadi the Icemother by relentlessly ravishing your womb day and night—”
“I beg your pardon?” Millie yanked the cinquedea letter opener from her belt.
“—morning and evening, in the stream, in the tundra meadow, with your ankles up by your ears, with you bent over my sled or straddling me in the saddle of my reindeer, or pressed up against a tree, on your hands and knees with your child-bearing hips quivering for each mighty th—”
“We get the picture, man!” Sir Roger bellowed.
Sir Eustace’s head snapped up from where it was bent over the chronicle. “Stop everything!” He jumped out of his seat and thrust his quill up at them on the balcony. “You there. How are you still breathing? You were dead just a few hours ago.”
Three out of the four tower residents shared a trepidatious look; Millie’s whole plan to become a pirate hinged on her talent stable, Sir Roger had a life debt to pay the dragon, and Dirk had already gotten in trouble with the ministry official over his valet.
The hedge knight bowed low to Sir Eustace. “Apologies, Sir. Apparently I was just stunned. But I was almost dead because of the, uh—”
“The barbecuing,” Millie reminded him.
“Yes, that’s it. Just as I was about to be spitted and roasted, I awoke, and, well . . .”