“Surrender or else!” yowled Rikard again, followed by a maniacal cackle at the sky. To do this he had to put his head back, and in that moment Morven tried to escape. She leaped sideways, but the Duke didn’t let go. He pulled savagely on her hair. Morven lost her footing, teetered backwards, and then with a despairing cry went over the edge.
Only Rikard’s grip on her long braid kept her from falling. He held her there with unnatural strength, his skeletal white face stretched into a horrible grin as the princess swung like a pendulum against the tower wall.
“Surren … Oh, forget it!” screeched Rikard. He slowly opened his hand, Morven’s braid slipping through his fingers like a lifeline come unstuck.
“No!” screamed Anya. She lunged forward as if she might somehow catch her sister, but she was too far away, the tower too high. There was nothing she could do.
In the moment the Duke finally let go completely, Prince Maggers leaned through an embrasure and grabbed Morven. She reached up to embrace him and for a moment it seemed the prince might be able to pull her up to safety.
Until Rikard pushed Maggers out.
Prince and princess fell together, locked in an embrace, their mouths meeting for one last kiss before they were dashed to death on the ground below.
Only they never made it to the ground. As they fell entwined, there was a flash of light. Suddenly two magpies spun out of their fall, spread their wings, and flew towards the forest, caroling their joy.
“True love,” said Ardent. “Never would have thought it of Morven.”
Anya watched the magpies go. She couldn’t believe it either. But it must have been so, for Maggers to be transformed back to his natural form, and their love so strong that Morven also became a bird.
“Now you’ll all just have to die instead!”
The thin, petulant scream from the tower drew Anya’s attention back to Rikard. He had climbed to the very spire of the tower and now stood balanced on the weather vane, his face white in the moonlight and his pale, scrawny arms extended up out of his robe, so he looked rather like a disembodied head and hands from a black velvet puppet show.
An arrow arced towards him, but suddenly flew off course as it got close. Another followed, only to circle back and narrowly miss the robber who’d shot it.
“Fools! No weapons can harm me!” screamed Rikard. “And now you will pay for your discourtesy to the great, the powerful, the one and only Master Sorcerer Rikard the Omnipotent!”
He looked down at Anya on the wall, his eyes glowing red.
“You! Anya! Frogkisser! I will transform you into a slug! A large and juicy slug for the frogs in the moat to eat! You troublesome brat!”
He gabbled out several horrendously strong words of power and thrust one bony finger straight at Anya. She dodged, knowing it was useless. The type of spell Rikard was casting would invariably find a target.
But as a blinding green spark shot from the Duke’s finger towards her, an orange shape leaped up and interposed himself!
The spark hit Shrub and disappeared, not even scorching his hide.
Rikard looked at his finger, scowled, and clenched both fists.
“Stupid newt! You may resist transformation, but you cannot resist The Blood and Bone Exploder!” screamed Rikard. He pointed again and shouted words of power that left his mouth like screaming winds.
A brilliant red spark shot from his finger, straight at the newt!
“Shrub!” screamed Anya, crouching and covering her head against the inevitable explosion and the bits and pieces of newt that would be showered everywhere.
But there was no explosion.
“Impossible!” snarled Rikard. He waved his hands around above his head, summoning his sorcery, and once more shouted out a spell, the words of this one so powerful they rattled every window in the castle with thunderous noise.
A whirlwind of swirling sparks materialized above Shrub and began to spin down, accompanied by the sound of a thousand fingernails being drawn across a thousand slates. Anya could feel the intense heat from it even a dozen paces away.
Surely, it would incinerate Shrub as soon as the whirling sparks got close enough.
But Shrub actually jumped up at the tornado with his mouth open. And then the tornado wasn’t there, as if Shrub had somehow eaten it.
“No! No! No!” screeched Rikard. He started hurling spells directly at the newt. Spells of rending and mangling and spells of discorporation and transformation. Spells to stop a heart and freeze blood and turn people inside out and just generally kill them on the spot.
None of the spells had any effect. Anya glanced away for a moment as the Duke paused, his arms hanging down and head bowed, his sorcery depleted.
The battle below was effectively over. The forces of good were rounding up the surrendering, totally demoralized weaselfolk, assassins, and bandits. The trolls were all broken into their component rocks, the dwarves collecting the pieces in sacks to be returned to the troll homeland where they might or might not be put back together. Only criminal trolls ever left their mountains.
“This cannot be!” wailed Rikard. He drew himself together and raised his right hand, fingers clenched into a claw. “I will, I will, I will destroy you.”
“No you won’t!” called out Anya. “Just give up!”
“Never!” shrieked Rikard. “It seems you are proof against my spells. But not if I destroy myself and all with me!”
He cackled then, a fatal error, for it took several precious seconds when he could have been casting his ultimate spell. Even as he began to form the first terrible word of power there was a “Kee!” above him.
The call of a hunting owl.
Rikard looked up as Gotfried, fully owl, plummeted into his face and stuck his claws through the sorcerer’s pale cheeks. The shock of the owl’s impact threw the Duke backwards, one of his slippered feet coming off the crossbar of the weather vane. He teetered there for a moment and then, with a despairing cry largely muffled by feathers, he fell.
Owl and sorcerer, locked together, bounced off the battlements of the tower and plummeted all the way to the ground.