A lot of the Freemen were losing it. “The pink isn’t working! It’s like she doesn’t know we’re on her si—” one Freeman shouted, right before getting flattened under the dragon’s foot.
A pair of tall mechanical cranes on tank treads flanked the rift—whale carriers, probably, connected by wide expanses of wet nylon netting. Saxbriton was stumbling through this netting over a slick patch of ice that looked to have been recently hosed down with fresh water. Yes, thought Scott, there were the hoses now, attached to pumper trucks—a ridiculous operation to keep a blue whale alive long enough to haul it across ten miles of ice. Some distance away Scott saw the ghost of Haskoll, pretending to ice-skate in and among the panicking Freemen. And a little beyond that, he spied his father and Merle and the queen, and he sighed with relief—even if they were currently being held at gunpoint.
Scott moved closer, trying to think of a way to help them. Saxbriton moved close as well, and one of the Freemen lost it—he turned, his allegiances forgotten, and fired off a dozen rounds at the dragon. It got the monster’s attention, even if that was all it did. She snapped her neck straight and caught the gunman in her jaws, and most of the nearby Freemen scattered. Those who didn’t got put to sleep with a sweep of Merle’s wand. Others took shots at Saxbriton, short bursts of noise and light in this dim desert of ice.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence that everyone we’ve met carrying a gun is superdumb?” asked Scott.
“Nah,” Mick answered. “It’s the gun that does it to ’em. Makes it hard to think about anythin’ but the gun. ’S like carrying a load o’ eggs—yeh can’t relax till you’ve either set them down or thrown ’em at people, yeh know?”
“You’re spending Easter with someone else.”
“HOLD YOUR FIRE!” someone shouted. “WE HAVE TO CALM HER DOWN!”
But there was never any possibility of calming her down, Scott decided as he watched from a cracked shelf of ice. Nimue didn’t care about her Freemen—she’d hardly need them after she raised her child army and brought her people through the rift. But she did need Saxbriton. She was probably calling out to the dragon right now.
As if he’d read Scott’s mind, Mick said, “We gotta keep that dragon here, grounded.”
Gunfire and screams echoed all around as Scott looked up at the nearest crane. “How hard do you think that thing is to figure out?” he said.
Saxbriton was fairly hopping about, pecking at Freemen like a hen.
“Well, she’s officially off her diet,” said John.
“Okay,” said Merle, turning to the queen in John’s backpack. “We’re back on Earth. Quick—knight me.”
The queen pursed her lips. “I can’t knight an American, Merlin.”
Merle blinked. He looked like he wanted to swear. “That’s . . . frustrating.”
“You should have thought of that before declaring independence.”
John stripped off his backpack, and the queen fumbled to keep her balance.
“Merle, guard her. Or better yet, try to get her to McMurdo Station—that’s an American base and it should be nearby.”
“And you? What are you going to do, as if I didn’t know.”
John didn’t answer as such. He just charged toward the dragon, sword unsheathed.
Scott sat in an uncomfortable chair in the crane operator’s cab. They’d climbed atop this huge yellow two-headed tank of a thing, with its long skeletal arm saluting the sky. They’d found the driver’s cab first, but that just made the tank move—and the tank couldn’t move, not with its outrigger jacks anchoring it to the ice. Scott tried to make sense of the controls—he counted eight joysticks and sixteen buttons—as Mick read rapidly from the owner’s manual.
“‘The dragline consists of a bucket an’ fairlead assembly,’” he said. “‘The wire rope components are the drag cable, the bucket hoist, an’ the dump.’”
“The dump,” Scott repeated, nodding and looking with vague eyes at all the sticks and buttons. In front of him was a big pane of glass, through which he could see the Antarctic tundra, and what was happening there. He tried to pretend the glass was a television instead of a window. The television was currently playing a Japanese monster movie.
“‘WARNING,’” Mick continued, and he gave Scott a stern look. “‘Be sure the fairlead’s in a vertical position when lowering the boom.’”
“The boom and the dump,” Scott said. “Got it.”
“Do yeh? If you don’t have the fairlead vertical, you’ll bend the boom base. Apparently.”
“Which one’s the fairlead?” Scott squeaked. “Which one’s vertical?”
John tried to get close to Saxbriton, but she was really worked up. She reared back, flashed her tail, batted at the ice with her talons like a cat. And soon she’d eat her fill and take to the air, and who knew what damage she’d do before they caught up to her again.
He ducked a claw and stumbled over the pink body of a Freeman. The Freeman’s pink gun was right there. John had handled a lot of prop guns on the set of this movie or that—he knew how to work one. But he’d just watched a dozen Freemen bounce a thousand bullets off Saxbriton’s iron hide.
Well, it wasn’t any sillier than trying to stab her with a sword. He lifted the rifle and tried to track the dragon’s head. No—not her head. Her wings.
“‘The fairlead guides the drag cable onto the hoist drum,’” Mick quickly explained. “‘The hoist wire is reeved through the boom point sheaves an’ raises the bucket.’”
“Okay,” said Scott. “You know what? In video games you can usually just pound every button really fast and still manage to beat the first couple of guys.”
“I don’t think Saxbriton is level one, lad.”
But Scott was already doing it. The crane arm jerked, something clacked loudly that sounded like it shouldn’t have, the whole contraption shuddered. There was a ball and hook connected to the giant arm with a metal rope, and this yanked on some thick nylon netting, which in turn yanked on one of Saxbriton’s toes. So now they had her attention, and she wheeled around, went back on her hind legs, raised a front claw to strike. But then there was a rat-a-tat from below, and Scott’s father was raking the dragon’s wings with gunfire.
She shrieked as the taut sails of skin between her digits were perforated with holes. She beat these wings, rising slightly but listing clumsily to one side, and inhaled deeply until the barrel of her chest glowed like a Chinese lantern. John ducked behind his shield as Scott jabbed at joysticks, and the entire crane arm veered to the left. Which was directly away from Saxbriton, as it turned out.
“Other way!” shouted Mick.
But just as he was about to correct the crane’s direction, Scott thought better of it; instead he pushed the joystick harder. The crane turned a full circle and clocked Saxbriton in the face just as she loosed her fire. The blue arc of it missed John, curved and engulfed the crane as Scott and Mick ducked, suddenly sweltering. They lifted their heads to find the windshield glass dripping from its frame.
“Nice one, lad!” said Mick. “Hit her again!”
Saxbriton tried once more to take to the air, just as one of the limp fire hoses suddenly sprang to life, whipping and thrashing and spewing water like an unwell anaconda. It soaked the dragon’s belly, her back legs, her wings, and where the water landed it began immediately to freeze. Scott followed the line of the hose with his eyes and could just make out Merle and the queen crouching where it attached to the pumper truck.
“Merle!” John shouted. “I told you to get the queen out of here!” He was out of ammunition, and he hacked at the dragon with his sword. But it was dangerous work, and he never got a swing at anything more vital than a leg. For a moment it seemed as though he’d given up—when a claw came close he ran, then kept running in the direction of the other crane. Saxbriton watched him with interest, so Scott spun the arm of his own crane around again and gave her something else to think about. The arm itself whiffed, but the ball and hook at th
e end of its tether knocked her right above the eye.
“Did I hurt her?” Scott yelled. He tried to move the crane assembly away again as Saxbriton snapped at it.
“I think yeh’re just cheesin’ her off,” said Mick. “Maybe if yeh were a knight?”
Saxbriton gave the crane arm a blow with her left foreleg, and now the whole thing bent like a busted antenna. The force of the strike clattered down the arm into the cab and rattled Scott’s teeth.
“I’m the son of a knight!” he said. “What does that make me?”
“A knot,” said Haskoll. He was suddenly there in the cab. “Get it? NOT a knight? Wordplay.”
By now John had scaled the other crane, shinnied up its arm, and looked to be about to do something heroic and crazy. Scott kept his own crane moving so the dragon wouldn’t notice John leaping off the other and onto her back.
He landed with an “Oof!” that carried weirdly across the flat ice, and plunged his sword into Saxbriton’s shoulder, just between her leg and wing. She screeched, her neck whiplashing about, a contrail of blue smoke pouring out the side of her mouth.
Scott twirled the crane arm around again, and when Saxbriton snapped at the end of it, the ball and hook lodged inside her mouth. Scott tugged, but the dragon tugged back. The dragon was stronger.
“Give her a little line, lad!” said Mick. “You got her! Look how she slips! She can’t keep her balance on all that fresh ice.”
The crane whirred, its gears grinding.
“Fresh ice,” Scott whispered.
“What’s that, lad?”
“It was my rap name back in high school,” said Haskoll. “Fresh Ice. I’m flattered you know that, Scotty—you find a copy of my old yearbook or something?”
Scott ignored him. “I’m just remembering something from my mom’s emails,” he told Mick. “This part of Antarctica isn’t even land. It’s just a layer of ice, and then ocean below that.”
“Yeah?”
“Is that true?” said Haskoll. “Hold on.”
The ghost dove through the floor of the cab, through the treads of the crane, through, presumably, the ice below.
John tried to get into a crouch in the crook of Saxbriton’s wing shoulder, a tricky proposition even if the frenzied dragon weren’t slick with ice. He hacked once at that wing, lost his balance, and bounded awkwardly—he flew from the creature, barely grasped the end of the crane’s hook and tether on the way down, and swung a low arc before he lost his grip and slid several yards over the ice.
John didn’t get up, not immediately. Scott focused on the dragon. “If it’s just ocean under there, and we could somehow get her to breathe fire straight down . . .”
Mick nodded. “Yeah. That’s thinkin’. I’ll go get word to your da.”
Just then Saxbriton gave a spirited tug, and the whole crane leaned. Scott had the sensation of that endless second between realizing that you’ve tipped backward too far in your chair and the actual moment you embarrass yourself in class. The crane toppled, and Scott clutched tightly to his seat as the whole thing came down on its side with a powerful thud. He looked for Mick, but the leprechaun had jumped free and was already halfway to John, who was just getting to his feet.
Haskoll reemerged, now perpendicular to Scott. “It’s totally true! Just water down there!”
“I know it’s tru—”
Then the crane’s arm jerked again, and the machine was dragged a foot. The hook was still in Saxbriton’s mouth, maybe even lodged down her gullet. The crane dragged some more, and Scott leaped through the open windshield and hit the ice running. Running, then slipping, then drifting to a halt with a turned ankle.
“Ow.”
He was breathing hard, the Antarctic air scoring his lungs. Haskoll stood above him, offering a hand.
Scott took it and started to rise, but the ghost’s grip was all cobwebs and dust. He fell backward again on his tailbone.
“Ow.”
“Sorry, buddy. Guess you’re not magic enough.”
Saxbriton finally bit off the metal cable and swallowed the ball and hook. Now John had her full attention again. Scott could see him fifty yards away, straining to listen to something Mick was shouting into the bitter wind.
Then he saw his father straighten and face the dragon. Saxbriton’s belly went blue again, then white-hot, as she prepared to roast the only human here who mattered, the only one she was really afraid of.
John began to sprint across the ice, to sprint toward her, but that trick wasn’t going to work twice. The knight wouldn’t be fast enough. Scott held his breath, but the dragon didn’t. He could see the searing ball of it climb the length of her neck to her throat.
Then John brandished the chickadee shield in front of him, two-handed, and jumped. He scooped the shield beneath him and landed atop it, on his knees, riding it like a sled across the slick wet patch of ice between Saxbriton’s legs.
She followed his progress with her eyes, let loose her blue flame, but the knight was faster than expected. She cut a fiery path behind him, between her own talons, beneath her and on past her own tail. John’s shield caromed off a back leg, and he wiped out but continued to skid on his own breastplate, the flames licking behind him.
There was a crack like a rifle, but it wasn’t a rifle.
Merle had some small control over the fire hose, which is to say that he had as much control over the hose as the hose had over him. But he was able to keep the spray of it on the dragon as another thundering crack echoed through the ice.
Saxbriton had melted a bowl beneath her, and now the bottom of this bowl gave out. The dragon plunged into the cold water as the ice cracked and calved all around.
John staggered to his feet and began to run. The ground came apart beneath him. Merle and the queen ran too, just as the pumper truck tilted and skidded toward Saxbriton’s monstrous, flailing body.
She howled, threshing her tattered wings—but these were stiff, numb, and heavy with ice. She could barely keep her head and chest above water. Her struggles made a frigid fountain that surged over one icy bank, then the other.
John approached, carefully. Saxbriton tried to light her fire again, but it was too soon, or she was too cold. She got her forelegs over the shelf of ice, and when this crumbled she did it again. That’s where John met her, his sword arm level with her wavering chest.
He stabbed her through the heart.
She sank, still fighting, her hot blood boiling the water around her. Her chest disappeared, and her legs; her long neck snaked beneath the ice, then her nostrils, then bubbles and nothing. After she was gone, John stood and stared at the hole for a long time. He was still doing it when the others joined him—Merle and the queen and Mick and Scott.
“You did it,” said Scott, because he felt like somebody should say something.
“I know. I know what I did.”
They stared at the hole. In another moment they were going to feel the cold again.
“They’re never monsters right at the end,” John added. “Have you noticed?”
CHAPTER 21
Emily had just been rescued for the fifth or sixth time by Mr. Wilson when she came back to the fishbowl again and heard a noise. Not laughter this time, but a keening. A wailing no.
Emily didn’t have it in her anymore to smile. But Nimue was screaming, and that was something. Saxbriton was dead.
The door across the room—the door through which Mr. Wilson kept appearing—opened now. It wasn’t Mr. Wilson who walked through this time, though.
“This changes nothing,” said Nimue as she strode, or glided, up to the cage. “Do you hear me? Can you still understand, darling? Nothing. I do not need Saxbriton to win.”
Emily had no idea if the Fay woman standing before her was real or not. In Nimue’s case, she wasn’t certain it really made a difference.
“Maybe you don’t need Saxbriton,” Emily agreed. “But no dragon and less glamour and a smaller child army because of all that Milk-Seven
we destroyed? I wonder.”
Nimue stared. Her gown writhed. Her hair threw black fits around her head and neck.
“Had any visitors since you arrived, dear?” she asked, counterfeiting a smile. “Any friends or family?”
“Mr. Wilson’s stopped by a few times. He said to say hi. Where’s Erno?”
“In another needle room, somewhere,” Nimue answered with a vague wave. “His mind isn’t as welcoming as yours, so I’ve given him something to read. A little family history, you could say.”
“Scott and John and everyone will stop you,” Emily said. It sounded stupid, even to her.
Nimue mastered herself, and her hair and clothes were still. She looked calm, even sad. “Oh, Emily,” she said. “Why do you hate my people?”
Emily started. She looked the Lady of the Lake in the eyes, and didn’t have a ready answer.
“I . . . can’t see them now, you know,” Nimue added, though she wasn’t really looking at Emily anymore. “We have a giant in chains on the sixth floor, and we’ve taken all his glamour, and now I can’t see him. The Freemen with their pink lenses tell me he’s still there . . . but.”
She touched at her own face, as if feeling for cracks.
“Isn’t that odd? I have glamour to spare, but I still can’t see him. I wonder why that is,” she said with a look that told you that she knew exactly why that was. Her eyes met Emily’s again.
“Someone had to be the serpent in this story,” she said.
The door behind Nimue opened once more, and now a murder of crows entered—eight Freemen in black robes, each wheeling some piece of weird equipment ahead of them. They arranged these pieces in a circle and began fitting them together.
“You’re starting it,” Emily said. “You’re starting it now.”
“You thought I’d wait for Beltane, for May Day? Well, so did I. But I seem suddenly to have a deadline I didn’t anticipate. You can think on that, when it’s done—that you and your friends succeeded only in bringing about the end of your world that much sooner.”