“I’m sorry,” David gasped, finding his voice at last. “I didn’t have enough power on my own. I had to borrow yours. Can you stand?”
With a grimace, Max took David’s hand and pushed himself up on his uninjured leg. Leaning heavily on the spear, he turned to survey the ruin upon the battlefield and the crumbling foundations of Rowan’s walls and towers. People were reemerging, streaming out from the remains of the Northgate arch and a hundred other openings to see what had happened. They fanned out to survey the destruction. Some cheered; others fell to their knees in prayer. Most simply stared at the surrounding miles of burning, smoking devastation. Even the earth was trembling and shivering with aftershocks.
It was a minute before Max heard the first scream.
Another followed it and then another. Soon hundreds and thousands of voices cried out as people backed away and then fled from the cliffs.
Prusias was rising from the sea.
The demon had shed his human guise as a serpent sheds its skin. It was no barbarian king that rose above the cliffs, but a great red dragon with seven crowns set atop seven human heads, each slavering with wrath and fury. Max and David were sixty yards from the cliffs, yet the heat that radiated from the demon’s red-scaled body scorched their lungs. Prusias had grown since Walpurgisnacht, gorging and glutting himself on the bodies and spirits of his own kind. Each of his crowned, gnashing heads was swaying far above the battlefield, and yet Max could hear his serpentine coils lashing the waves hundreds of feet below.
The heads leered out at all assembled. Blood was coursing from black, festering slashes across several of the faces and throats, grisly legacies of Max’s last encounter with the demon. Max had not managed to slay Prusias, but wounds from the gae bolga would never heal and so the cuts continued to bleed, dribbling and hissing down braided beards to patter on the scaly necks and the ground below. But despite these injuries and despite the utter ruin of his army, the King of Blys gave a savage smile.
“You think you’ve defeated Prusias?” he roared, looming monstrously over the battlefield. “Ha! I don’t need those insects or machines. I don’t need an army to crush this den of fools and tricksters.” The demon’s eyes settled on Max and David. “I see the faithless Hound and Rowan’s cowering sorcerer, but where is Bram? Bring me the Archmage and Richter, too. Pile them all onto a great pyre and beg my forgiveness!”
The heads swayed lower, thrusting forward like great serpents to loom over the battlefield and its huddling hordes of people. All seven spoke in grinning, leering unison.
“You’ll bow down and raise my flag, you groveling little maggots,” they growled. “You’ll bow down and worship Great Prusias or he’ll devour every last one of you!” The central head whipped savagely about to glare in the direction of Old College.
“Where is the Archmage?” it roared. “BRING ME BRAM!”
As soon as the demon cried out these last words, there was a blinding flash and the sharp crack of thunder. Something had appeared instantly before Prusias, a radiant white figure amid a cloud of pearly, dissipating mist. But it was not Elias Bram who walked toward the demon.
It was Mina.
Prusias recoiled the instant he saw her, as though she were something grotesque and poisonous. The King of Blys swayed back and forth like an enormous cobra. Each of the demon’s seven heads appraised the little girl with a mixture of fear and wonder.
“What are you?” he demanded. “What are you called?”
But Mina did not answer. Spreading her fingers wide, she stretched one little hand toward the demon as though she were grasping at a shiny ornament just out of reach. When she could reach no farther, the girl abruptly closed her fingers and made a fist.
Seven crowns cracked and shattered.
The King of Blys shrieked as they fell from his tangled heads in great shards of hammered gold. Upon each of the demon’s foreheads, the Rowan seal appeared, branded into his flesh as though with a hot iron. With a rending scream, Prusias fell back into the sea and fled over the waves like a vast, repulsive sidewinder.
Mina watched him go, then turned and walked to Max and David. Already, her radiance was dimming and Max realized that the little girl was wearing naught but her nightgown. She padded barefoot through the mud, lifting the gown’s hem so as not to get it dirty. Coming to them, she took each of their hands and gazed up at them, utterly oblivious of the gathering crowds.
“I have cast Prusias down,” she said.
“I should say so,” replied David.
“And I teleported,” she announced, swelling up as though this was far more noteworthy than banishing a seven-headed demon. “You can’t pretend you didn’t see! You know what that means.”
“Another trinket for your magechain,” David sighed. “You shall have it.”
She beamed, clutching their hands as though she never wanted to let go, but at last she turned toward the cliffs and watched the white gulls as they circled and soared against the dark sky.
“I have to go down to the beach,” she remarked. “My charge is waiting for me.”
“How do you know he is there?” asked David.
“Max can say,” she replied, gazing absently at the dark ocean.
“ ‘When the gulls cry out and the waters run red, he’ll rise from the sea to find me,’ ” said Max softly, recalling the girl’s prophecy.
“And he has,” she declared excitedly. “Take me down!”
“I’ll take you,” said David. “I want to see your charge. And there may be something else of interest down there.” He turned to Max. “Can you come?”
“No,” said Max, glancing back at Trench Nineteen. “I have other things to do.”
“But can you even walk?” wondered David, glancing doubtfully at Max’s leg.
“I can ride.”
And indeed he could. As David and Mina departed, Max called out to a nearby knight and asked to borrow his horse. The man helped Max into the saddle. The climb up was agony, but the pain was manageable once he was settled and so long as he kept his mount to a walk.
Max rode to the embankments along Trench Nineteen, to the section where smoke and steam were still rising in little wisps. Peering down into the trench, Max braced himself for the worst.
But YaYa was nowhere to be seen.
Stunned, Max looked up and down the trench. Was he in the right place? Surely he was. There was no mistaking that crater of compacted earth and the smoke still rising from its depths. Prodding with his spear through the wreckage of soil and splintered stakes, Max even saw little pools and droplets of blood. But YaYa herself was missing.
Did ki-rin disappear when they died? Did they simply burn up like rakshasa?
There was no time to solve this mystery. Tugging on the reins, Max rode through the crowds along the ruin of the citadel walls. There was so much commotion, so many cries of jubilation and people streaming past. One group of ecstatic revelers was more than a little stunned when Max snarled at them to move even as they clustered around to thank him.
His eyes were constantly scanning the milling masses for Scathach. He barely noticed Old Tom chiming the Westminster Quarters or the colorful bursts as flares and starbursts exploded overhead. Pushing through, he shouted Scathach’s name and gazed about in search for her. Even in this moment of spectacular triumph, Max’s heart was breaking.
The dread was numbing. Max had not experienced anything like it since he’d found his father bleeding to death in an icy stream. He yelled Scathach’s name again, gazing wildly, frantically about. So many faces surrounded him and yet none was the one he sought.
He was approaching the citadel’s northwest section, riding in the shadow of the ruined walls, when the crowds finally began to thin. There was still an ungodly amount of commotion—ringing chimes and blaring horns and great bursts of fireworks over Old College—but Max could now see each face as people ran past to join the celebration.