There was a rumble of thunder in the distance.
“Chantel, I find your questions impertinent. I did not raise you to ask questions.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Chantel. “And I wish you had. But, um—” This was hard to say. “You took me in, and fed me, and had me taught to read and do spells, and . . . and I want you to know that—” she looked down at her feet, and then further down at Miss Ellicott. “That I’m, um, grateful for that, whatever happens now.”
Miss Ellicott nodded. “That sentiment becomes you very well, Chantel. Now, your dragon can best be used in service to the king, so if you will summon him—”
“I beg your pardon.” Chantel pulled in her legs and got to her feet. “He’s not mine, and he’s not to use.”
A loud crack of thunder made her start. It was accompanied simultaneously by a jagged pink streak of lightning.
“Chantel!” Miss Ellicott sounded worried. “Come down from there before you’re struck by lightning.”
The dragon was circling lower now. In the distance, the battering ram had stopped.
“I . . . I think I’d better not,” said Chantel. “But, if you don’t mind, I’ll watch you do the spell.”
A sudden gust of cold wind blew deep black storm clouds toward the city from the west. In the east, dawn was just beginning to break. Bells rang; trumpets sounded, announcing the day. Thunder rumbled overhead, and lightning flashed and flickered in all parts of the city.
Miss Ellicott began doing the spell.
Chantel watched carefully. She recognized the sign that Miss Ellicott did as the one from the rhyme.
And Chantel tried, without really thinking about it, to summon what was missing from the spell. But she couldn’t figure out what that was. Something—she had a sense of something to do with a circle—was that the wall itself? Whatever it was, she couldn’t reach it.
She saw Miss Ellicott scatter dust; it must be from seven tombs. She listened carefully for the words that Miss Ellicott spoke, the words of Queen Haywith.
“Derval sabad ijee. Dwilmay kadapee pasmines choose maul,” Miss Ellicott intoned.
And Miss Ellicott reached out and touched the wall.
That ought to have strengthened it.
That was not what happened.
22
OCTOPUS STEW
Two lines near the end of the rhyme, Chantel remembered, were:
Bring the peace that Haywith stole
And touch the wall, and make it whole.
Miss Ellicott had just made the third sign with her bare feet. She placed her hand on Dimswitch.
Thunder, lightning, and the earth shook . . . no, the wall shook. There was a sound of rending and breaking, of rocks shifting. Chantel fell to her knees.
At last the shaking stopped.
And Seven Buttons was cracked, a crack that went right through the wall.
The battering ram? Chantel peered over the parapet. No . . . There was no battering ram at Dimswitch. But some of the Sunbiters had heard the noise, and they were running toward the breach. It was only a couple inches wide, but they dug their fingers into it, and then their swords, and then men came with more tools, long iron bars that looked exactly right for prying a wall apart.
The Lightning Pass guards fired arrows down at the attackers. A hail of Sunbiter arrows came back, zinging over Seven Buttons.
Hunched behind the parapet, Chantel ran. “Lightning,” she said aloud. “I need you now.”
The storm overhead broke, and rain poured down, emptying the sky. The dragon came bursting through the downpour and landed, his claws screeching on the stone wall-walk. Chantel clambered onto his back. They took off into the storm.
Arrows rattled against the dragon’s scales. Chantel felt one hiss past her leg. Flashes of lightning rippled all around them. Thunder rolled across the sky. The city below was invisible, just a grayed-out map of vague shapes, the wall an indistinct gray line.
“Lightning,” Chantel called over the singing wind. “Now they are attacking the city and now I would breathe fire on them!”
And then she couldn’t help adding, “Wouldn’t I?”
Lightning dove sickeningly through the storm, leaving Chantel’s stomach behind. He breathed fire at the masses of Marauders working at the crack in the wall. The flames hissed in the driving rain, but the men cried out and fell away. Chantel couldn’t see how badly hurt they were—or whether they were alive—but she couldn’t afford to think much about that. She remembered what Franklin had said. The streets will run with blood.
Lightning spiraled away, came back, and breathed fire again. More Sunbiters came, but the rain had soaked their crossbow strings and they couldn’t fire.
Chantel leaned against Lightning’s neck and called, “The crack! Close the crack!”
“How?” croaked the dragon.
“Melt the stone!” said Chantel. “Please, I mean!”
The dragon breathed flame after flame onto the crack in Seven Buttons. Hissing and steaming in the rain, the stones glowed red hot and then white hot. Finally the stone fused, closing the crack.
“Now we have to look at the rest of the wall!” said Chantel. “There might be more cracks!”
There were. There were five more places where there were great cracks in the wall, and Chantel supposed that these, and Dimswitch, made up six of the seven buttons. Where was the seventh? she wondered, as Lightning heated and fused each of the cracks in turn.
Then the dragon wheeled out over the sea, and deposited Chantel on the same rock island.
And left her. Chantel watched in dismay as he flew off, circling, plunging, diving—for fish, she guessed. Maybe all that fire-breathing had made him hungry. Meanwhile the storm raged, and everything Chantel had read about thunderstorms suggested that a rock in the middle of the ocean was a very, very bad place to be during one.
The rock was slippery. Chantel found cracks and crags to cling to, and she hung on. The wind whipped across the rock and tried to sweep her into the sea. Her sopping-wet robe clung to her skin. She chattered with cold.
At last the rain let up, and the sun flashed out from behind dark clouds. In the distance Chantel saw the dragon happily diving after a fish, and she momentarily hated him.
“Lightning, come back now!” she said.
She wished she’d thought of that before. The dragon, far away, halted in mid-gambol and came flapping back.
“Was hungry,” he said by way of apology.
“Well, now I am too,” said Chantel irritably. “And cold, and—yuck.”
The dragon looked hurt as Chantel recoiled from the large dead octopus he dropped at her feet.
“I beg your pardon,” said Chantel hurriedly. “Thank you. We’ll take it home and, er, cook it or something, and I’m sure the girls will love it.”
As they soared over the city, octopus and all, Chantel saw that something strange was happening. People were climbing the streets—mobs of people, thousands of people—carrying their possessions on their backs. Babies were strapped atop bundles, and small children clung to skirts and cloaks. Everyone looked grim, terrified, and wet.