All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [257]
Robert punched the wolf and broke its skull.
Fiona shook the animal off, wincing as teeth pulled out of her flesh with sucking sounds. She winced again at the sight of her blood trickling down her arm.
She looked up at Robert and tried to communicate her thanks.
He met her eyes with a steady gaze.
Eliot’s music ascended into an audible range: it was heavy and ponderous and classical, but older than anything truly “classical.” It spoke of layers of stone and how they rumbled over one another, rising into hills and ridges and mountains, others plunging deeper, under the ocean floor, and into an endless molten sea.
The thick wall behind them cracked.
Eliot’s song layered chords of bass notes over one another.
The earth beneath Fiona’s feet shifted and plumes of dust shot up from the fissures.
“He’s doing it,” Jezebel whispered, her eyes wide with wonder.
Sealiah did not look so enthusiastic, frowning as she nodded at her Tower Grave. “My personal guards have failed us,” she said.
A dragon within the tower poked its snout though the hole, and then pushed through the tower’s wall, demolishing that section. The tower shuddered—base to steeple—and a thousand skulls rained down, clattering and shattering.
Another dragon pushed out after the first, casting its head about, and then fixed its dark stare at them.
Fiona braced, and drew her chain between her hands, ready to fight that thing . . . although not quite sure how she was going to fight something that big . . . let alone two such monsters at once.
“I will go,” Jezebel said. She drew in a breath, trembled, and then she whispered to her Queen, “It is time.”
Sealiah gazed at her protégée with what might have been called “pity” on a normal person, but on the Infernal’s perfect features it looked alien.
Fiona was about to interrupt this little moment between them—those dragons were slinking closer, moving faster, sniffing and snorting, growing excited.
The Queen, however, stroked Jezebel’s face and kissed her on the cheek. Whatever trace of pity that had been on Sealiah’s features vanished. “Do what you must.”
Jezebel looked over at Eliot once—then whirled about and strode toward the dragons.
Despite the eminent danger, Fiona paused. The skin at the base of her spine crawled. Something just occurred between Jezebel and Sealiah that had zero to do with this fight—something wrong.
“Hey!” Fiona said, and started after Jezebel.
Sealiah held out a slender arm to block her. “You belong by your brother’s side. He is the only thing that matters now.”
Jezebel crossed the courtyard toward the Tower Grave. She called to a dozen knights finishing off a squad of patchwork men. They came to her, lances at the ready, and together approached the shadow dragons.
Jezebel shifted form, tiny curled horns pushed out of her head, wings sprouted though slits on her armor, and claws grew out holes in the tips of her gauntlets, but it wasn’t like gym class. She remained human size.
Eliot’s fingers danced up in scale, the notes came faster, and he transitioned from a major key and an orderly Baroque cadence to a minor, insistent beat.
The ground splintered. Deep within the mesa came a grinding as stone stressed and then shattered with an agonizing noise that was oddly in harmony with Eliot’s song.
Meanwhile, the dragons decimated Jezebel’s knights—but even as they were ripped to pieces, Jezebel took a lance and stabbed one in its throat.
Fiona moved to join her. She had to help her. Sealiah couldn’t stop her this time.
Eliot, however, did.
The mesa shifted . . . the whole mesa.
The ground under her dropped six feet. Fiona tumbled, and Robert caught her.
Dust exploded from the cracks about them.
The mesa tilted. The outer wall on the other side of the courtyard crumbled.
Then all motion stopped.
And so did Eliot. His hand rested on his guitar strings to still them. He sank to one knee and hung his head.
Fiona, Robert, and Mr. Welmann went to his side. Louis looked at the destruction and nodded appreciatively.
The knights fighting rallied, reorganized, and drove many of