The Malicarn #4
“We have to go save Gregorian,” Hannah said. “I saw him. Back in the citadel. Those mirrors on the wall. I saw Gregorian in them. He’s in the Dollories Monastery, I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“No,” Lilly said. “We’re getting out of here.”
“No, please, we have to help him.”
“You don’t have any idea what’s happening here. It’s not safe.”
They walked back through the lobby, but beyond the front door she heard yelling, saw the torches, the spears held aloft.
A stone flew through the door, glass shattering over the lobby floor. Lilly held the neuroscanner tight and began running for the stairs. She didn’t even realize Hannah was still behind her until they reached the bottom and the entrance to the underground tunnel.
“What do you mean, an army?” Roger yelled into his radio. He had half a dozen people embedded all over the island and each of them was saying something different. “It’s a mob. They’re not organized.”
“Well, I’m looking at it right now. Sector fourteen. Gotta be a thousand of them. Swords, horses. Even rifles. It’s a real army. The pilot is with them.”
The tanks stopped again. Something blocked the road in front of them. “Jesus Christ,” Roger shouted, watching them from the Black Hawk, endlessly circling. “What now? And where the hell is sector fourteen?”
Lilly heard voices, angry voices and dim lights, some ways down the tunnel.
The mob had found an entrance beneath the wizard’s tower.
Lilly stopped at a service exit half a mile down, and she and Hannah climbed up a ladder to emerge in an abandoned hut.
Nobody but staff had probably used this building in years.
“Gregorian can help us,” Hannah said, as Lilly looked out the windows and tried to see if anyone was nearby. “You can trust him, believe me.”
“I know him a lot better than you,” Lilly said. “He can’t help with anything.” She tried her radio but there was nothing but static. “Roger, can you copy? Roger? Shit.”
They had to go back to the extraction point, but now they were down the mountain and way off course.
They could go west, avoid passing back by the Citadel, and hope not to run into any more rebels.
The Dollories Monastery was not so far out of the way, Lilly remembered.
Maybe new homes or towns had been built between here and there in the last sixteen years, but if not the road would be relatively barren.
Glenn was probably going to die, Lilly thought. She didn’t owe him anything.
Who was Glenn to her, anyway?
“How fast can you walk on that leg?” Lilly asked. “Can you make it to the Dollories?”
On the field of the Morlon Kastaun, Kreek addressed his troops.
“They are coming for us, my friends. Men of great evil. They ride beasts of metal, they ride monsters of steel. They have come for the dragon rider. They have come to tell us that we do not control our destiny. That we do not deserve magic. That the Malicarn does not belong to us. That we must bow to their will. Well, I say to you today: We will not be cowed! We will not be made to suffer! We will not be ground under the heels of our oppressors anymore. Today, we stand tall. Today, we say that we are Men of the Malicarn! Today, we fight!”
Jules wiped blood from his forehead as he listened to Kreek’s speech over the feeds in his office. It was a good speech. Doyle delivered it well. Jules couldn’t have written it any better.
Hannah and Lilly emerged from the hut, cutting as straight a path as they could toward the monastery.
Buck tightened Glenn’s bindings. A Portuguese soldier climbed out of his tank, yelling at a man to move his cows off the road.
A family from Cameroon, living on their Malicarn farm for only six months, watched their house burn down as they hid from the mob in the woods.
Derek and Paul waited in line at airport security, hoping to catch an outbound flight.
Roger banged his fist against the helicopter door.
Kellington ran through the woods, hoping someone at the north mountain garrison was still alive.
Men took their family swords down off the mantel and marched out to join their brothers.
Kreek raised his sword above his head, an army of patriots cheering before him.
Glenn tried to remember where he had seen Buck before.
Children wept as their fathers promised to return.
The royal stablemaster fled over the hills with a carriage filled with the children of castle staff.
Quentin watched as Wallace beheaded Sanderson in front of the burning castle.
Zihao hoped the sound of the helicopter meant he was being rescued.
Each road and hill Lilly passed was drenched in memories she didn’t know she still had.
Hannah looked at the rising sun and convinced herself that Gregorian could save them.
A red flag of freedom was hoisted in the Old Village, atop the tower of the Great Wizard.
All of this happened at the same time, with you alone to comprehend its enormity.