Prilkop said nothing, but his mouth sagged and his face grew older.
The blue dragon had claimed the walkway on top of the west wall. He paraded up and down it. His lashing tail razed blocks of stone, destroying the crenellation. From time to time he threw back his head and then snapped it forward, showering the interior of the fortress with acid. I could not see the green, and then, with a wild roar, a much larger blue dragon flashed past the two remaining skull-topped towers. A smaller red one flew low over the town and then landed at the town end of the causeway. On that dragon’s back was something I could not make out at that distance. A rider?
‘Heeby! Beautiful Heeby!’ the crow cried. She tried to lift from Per’s shoulder, but he caught her, his hands moving so fast I barely saw them.
‘Motley, she goes to battle. It is no place for you. Stay here with me, where you’re safe.’
‘Safe? Safe?’ And the crow laughed, a terrible cackle. Per had pinned her wings to her side and she did not struggle, but the moment he set her back on his shoulder, she leapt from him. With two flaps of her wings, she was up and then arrowing toward the red dragon. ‘I come, I come, I come!’
‘As you will,’ Per said sadly. ‘Likely she is right. There is no safety here for her. Or us.’
The great blue dragon circled back. As IceFyre had, she announced her name with a roar. ‘Tintaglia!’ she trumpeted. ‘Vengeance! For my eggs stolen and destroyed, for our serpents imprisoned and abused!’ She struck the tower a lashing blow with her tail as she passed. We stared. Nothing happened. And then slowly, slowly the skull tipped back, beheaded from its stone support. It fell, dragging half the damaged tower with it. We heard the distant crash of cascading stones.
‘You spent so many years at Clerres. As a child, you laboured long in the scroll-rooms. Your own dreams were stored there. You feel nothing?’ Prilkop asked quietly.
‘I feel many things right now. Relief is one of them.’ Beloved stared coldly at the falling walls of Clerres Castle. ‘Satisfaction that what was done to me will never happen to another child.’
‘And the children that were in there?’ Prilkop was outraged.
Beloved shook his head. ‘This is the vengeance of dragons. No one can stop it.’ He turned to look at his friend and his voice was terrible. The voice of a prophet. ‘I spent him, Prilkop! I plunged FitzChivalry into death, a dozen times! No one can know what that cost me. No one! This is my future, my path, chosen by me, as the White Prophet of this time! Are you so blind? He and I, we did it all! We brought the dragons back into the world.’ He turned away from all of us. Arms crossed on his chest he shouted, ‘SERVANTS! You made this path! Long before I came into the world, you set us on this rutted route to this future. When you killed and destroyed for your own comfort, when your own wealth and power were all you cared for, this is the path you created! You delayed this reckoning.’ His voice dropped lower and suddenly he was coldly calm. ‘But my Catalyst and I have won. The future is here, and the vengeance is greater than even a prophet could predict.’ His voice, so grand a moment before, cracked and broke as he said, ‘Bought with his death.’
The sea wind blew past him and his pale hair stirred slightly in its passage. I did not have to touch him to see that he had been a nexus. For one instant, all the possible paths that had been shone around him. Then they moved, converging into one bright way before it, too, exploded into a thousand, thousand paths. They dazzled my eyes and I could not look away. But abruptly, he dropped his hands and he was just a slender pale man as he asked on a sob, ‘Do you think I would undo one moment of my Catalyst’s work?’
He knew, as I did, that it all had to end. Beloved was as much the Destroyer as I had ever been. Pull out the deepest root of the weeds. I did not know I was going to do it, but I stepped forward. I took his gloved hand in mine and we stood, staring at Prilkop.
‘Will they destroy the town as well?’ Prilkop whispered in horror.
‘They will,’ Beloved affirmed. Our small party had gathered around and behind him. ‘Prilkop, I see one narrow path for you. Take those you have and flee to the hills. It is all you can do and all I can give you. This is a balancing of the scales that was long in coming.’ He shook his head. ‘It did not begin with me but with the dragons. And the dragons have come to finish it.’
Prilkop looked toward the castle, his hands trembling. With no fear, Beloved went to him and embraced him. He spoke quietly. ‘Only for what you must feel, old friend, I am sorry. Take those you can. Guide them toward a better path.’
‘There were children there,’ Prilkop said brokenly.
‘There were children at Withywoods,’ I reminded him. I did not say I had been one of them.
‘They have done nothing to deserve such punishment!’
‘And my folk were just as innocent!’ Could he not hear what I was telling him?
Per was suddenly beside me, his round face contorted by an anger I’d never seen before. ‘Did my father and grandfather deserve to die so that you could kidnap a girl? Your people erased my mother’s memories of me, so that she denied me and sent me away. Neither of us will ever get past that! Do you understand that when the Servants came to Withywoods, they destroyed my life as well as Bee’s? And now her father is dead, because of what they did!’
I suddenly understood something from a long-ago dream. ‘Did you know that they arranged for nets to be set off Others’ Island, to capture and kill the serpents so that they would die and never become dragons?’
‘But …’ Prilkop began.
Beloved stepped back from him. His voice was harsh. ‘No one deserves to die like that. But very little of what happens to us in life is what we deserve.’
Still the old man stood staring at us pleadingly.
‘Prilkop. Time does not pause. Go.’
Prilkop stared at him as if shocked beyond words. Then he turned, and stumbled away. In a few steps he recovered himself and began a dogged trot. I watched him go. Our companions looked at us questioningly but there was nothing more to add. ‘Boy-O is awake,’ I said quietly. Ant turned and hastened to his side. He was sitting up, but looked worse than he had. Beyond him, out in the water, something moved.
‘What’s that?’ someone demanded, drawing our attention to the other end of the dock.
‘There’s someone in the water!’ Spark cried. All her heart was in her shout, and with no hesitation, she leapt from the dock to swim to the man who clung to a bit of plank and doggedly kicked. We watched her go, some shouting encouragement. She reached him and we saw her take her place beside him on the broken board. They both kicked then, and slowly, slowly they reached a point where Boy-O suddenly cried out, ‘It’s my Da! He’s alive! But where is my mother?’ He staggered to his feet, swayed and then Ant seized his good arm to support him.