Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [125]
He was already wreathed in flame, and his hands were clenched in anger. The fiery eyes were looking only at Katya, and she felt her mouth go dry with terror. “You!” roared the Jinn, his voice sounding like a thunderclap.
“No!” shouted Guiliette, interposing herself before the Jinn could act.
“Me!”
“Guiliette—!” Katya cried. This was not how it was supposed to be going.
But Guiliette was paying no attention to anything but the Jinn; she spread her arms wide, staring him down with such intensity that he actually stepped back a pace, and then she began to glow.
Katya stopped dead, transfixed. The hair on the back of her neck rose, though not with fear. This was not like anything the Wili had done before. This was something altogether new. The glow did not come from within her, but somehow, from somewhere outside of her, and it was a pure white light that should have been blinding, but wasn’t. Guiliette looked up, and her face was transformed in a smile.
Katya was filled with awe and wonder. She shivered, feeling that she was in the presence of something so far outside her understanding that there were no words for it.
Guiliette’s lips parted, and she spoke; it was only in a whisper, but it echoed louder than the Jinn’s shout.
“Rheinhardt! I forgive you!” she cried, in a voice full of incongruous happiness. “I forgive me! I forgive us both!”
In that moment, the sky opened, and glory came.
If the sun had turned into a column and stretched itself down to earth, that was, in the most minor way, the only thing Katya could compare to the column of white light that enveloped Guiliette then.
It made her want to sing for pure joy.
The Jinn cried out in pain, and flung up his arm to hide his face as he turned away.
Katya did not. Although the light was so intense it felt as if it were burning its way into the back of her brain, she could see perfectly clearly. She saw Guiliette looking with love and gratitude straight at her. Watched as the Wili—now no longer truly any such thing—put both hands to her lips and blew her a kiss.
Felt tears of joy sting her eyes as Guiliette dissolved into the light, still smiling, infused with the purest happiness Katya had ever seen in her life.
And then, she was gone.
And the column of light faded, leaving nothing of itself behind.
That was when the dragons struck.
Roaring down out of the sky, they came in from opposite directions, giving the still-dazzled Jinn two targets, rather than one. He didn’t make up his mind in time.
Katya awoke from her own daze, filled with a fierce determination. It did not matter that they did not have the final Element. They would fight this creature, and they would win!
In perfect unison, at the bottom of their dive, the dragons opened their mouths.
Enormous gouts of flame fanned out to cover the Jinn in fire, and as they passed, each lashed out with talons at his head.
The Jinn roared with fury; in an instant, there was a sword of fire in his hand and he struck at the bigger grey dragon.
But he missed, and both of the dragons pulled up, shooting up into the sky, mocking laughter trailing behind them.
The Jinn began a gesture.
He never finished it.
With the power that was all instinct, Katya reached for the source of the fountain, found it, and called it with all the urgency that was in her. With an explosive force that shook the ground, the water answered her, blasting the remains of the fountain and its basin out of its path, surging for the sky. She grabbed the half-formed whirlwind that the Jinn had tried to call, infused it with her wild, untamed waters, and turned it loose on him. The whirlwind strengthened, tightened, became a white, churning column that engulfed the Jinn before he could move.
Fight that, wretch! she thought with exultation.
Her father’s powers ran true in her. She had created her first waterspout. And the Jinn was caught, trapped, in the middle of it.
He shrieked, and shot up the center of it, trying to escape and clearly blinded by the whirling waterspout that had him in its grasp.
And behind her, Sasha started singing.