Chapter 30

 

Peter had never been in so much pain in all his life. Somewhere in the back of his consciousness he registered the fact that the shards of glass had reversed their descent, and returned to the roof of the strange structure, where they had been before. He saw movement in his periphery and knew that his dad had sat up to watch in wonder.

With a great effort, Peter moved his good arm and grappled uselessly with the penumbra on top of him, but he knew he was much too weak to stand a chance against it. Unable even to get a grasp, his hand fell limp by the waistband of his trousers, where it came to rest on the outside of one of his pockets. Beneath it, his fingers closed upon a bulky, irregular shape…

The pouch!

The words came through his muddled thoughts with a strange clarity, like a ray of hope. With what felt like an almost heroic surge of strength, Peter managed to move his good arm just enough to plunge his fingers into his pocket, and inside the leather pouch. His fingers felt clumsy and awkward, but with an effort, he eventually managed to clutch the coin inside the pouch between his forefinger and thumb, and slid one over the other feebly. The coin responded to his touch almost instantly, growing hotter than the inside of a furnace. He opened his mouth in a different kind of scream, this time high-pitched and sharp, as the heat scalded the fingerprints off the pads of his fingers.

Somewhere through the sound of his own agonized voice, Peter heard a crack, then another, and another. With each one, the room brightened with a dazzling radiance – not like the ethereal light from before, but rather like somebody had just turned on a lamp in an otherwise darkened room. With a rush of elation, Peter knew with certainty that a glow like that could only have come from one source: the nimbi.

“Achen!” Peter heard Bruce cry out in a voice that nearly broke with relief. “Bellator! Verum!”

Another second later, clinging to the stone of the walkway by his shredded fingernails, Peter saw his vision swim over the most welcome sight he could possibly have hoped for: Isdemus. His silver robes caught the light reflected from the nimbi, and he seemed to shimmer with power. A small crowd of people surrounded him, but Peter did not see them.

“Isdemus!” he croaked, like a plea.

Isdemus returned his gaze, but what he said was, “Cole! Hurry!”

Peter’s eyes flickered towards the terrified face of his best friend, seeing him for the first time. A nimbus ran in front of Cole towards Peter: he was an impossibly thin creature who swung a weapon that looked like it was made entirely of light, mowing down the penumbra and sending them into watery abyss below. Bellator, Peter thought vaguely, remembering the sentry from outside of Carlion. Cole moved as quickly as he could across the gossamer walkway in the wake left by Bellator. Finally, Bellator reached Peter and pulled the fanged creature off of him by the scruff of the neck, and flung it into the water with one arm.

In the next second, Cole knelt beside him, breathing in short, labored gasps. “Pete!” he said frantically. “Okay, hold on, I know this! Um, um…” He willed himself to remember the words he had committed to memory. “Leigheas!”

The first thing Peter noticed was that his consciousness became clearer, though his muscles still burned furiously. Cole continued to repeat the same word over and over, and as he said it, Peter’s pain receded, replaced by prickling tingles and numbness left over from the sensory overload. Peter sat up at last, tentatively clutching his fist and releasing it again, tracing the new flesh over his biceps.

“Cole!” he exclaimed in wonder, intending to say thank you. When he looked into his friend’s face, though, he saw that he was white as death. “Cole!” he said again, but this time in alarm.

Cole grunted in reply, unable to speak. His eyes shone unblinking up at Peter.

“Cole, you idiot! You didn’t have to heal me all the way. That was too much for you!”

“No time for that now,” said Bellator gruffly. “Get behind me, both of you.”

Peter pushed Cole behind himself as Bellator defended them expertly, but there were too many of the penumbra, and Bellator could only protect them on one side.

That was when Peter remembered the machete. He also remembered Kane’s warning, should he produce the machete without the corresponding expertise required to use it… but at the moment, he had no choice. Peter stood with his back to Bellator, Cole sandwiched between them, and he whipped the large knife from his shin, swinging it wildly out in front of him and hoping he looked like he knew what he was doing. Fortunately the penumbra kept just out of range, so that Peter struck only air.

Out of the corner of his eye, Peter could see that Brock and Bruce were still imprisoned.

“You fools!” cried Sargon’s harsh voice to the penumbra, “Are you or are you not shape-shifters? Morph!”

Peter could no longer divide his attention after that: the humanoid penumbra he held at bay with his awkward swings suddenly sprouted talons, feathers, and wings. It flew off the precarious walkway and began to swoop down on him from above, while the hag behind it lunged towards him. Her arms suddenly extended and hardened: to Peter’s horror, she now wielded a pair of swords rather than arms. The metal of her arms made contact with the metal of Peter’s machete, while the hawk-like creature from above dove at his head.

“Peter, duck!” shouted Bellator, and took out the hawk creature with a swinging ball of light. With a flash, the creature vanished from existence. In the split second while the hag with dual sword arms paused to glance at the air where her companion had been, Peter lunged forward and sank his machete into her abdomen. He couldn’t pull it out again until she fell to the ground, and then he pried it off, leveraging her body against his foot. Then he kicked her corpse into the water.

In his brief moment of reprieve, he glanced automatically towards Bruce and Brock. Then he saw Kane and Lily racing towards them, Kane acting as Lily’s shield from the onslaught of penumbra that beset them on every side. As he ran, Kane spoke fluently, and mini-cyclones threw the creatures off balance, casting them into the water before they got close enough to attack. Behind him, Lily expertly swung a sword overhead, protecting herself from the penumbra with wings. Meanwhile, neither Kane nor Lily bothered to pay attention to where they stepped, because the ground beneath their feet sprung up from nowhere a second before they landed on it, under the steady stream of Brock’s words. Suddenly both Kane and Lily collided with the forcefield, buffered by their hands, and immediately they spun around to keep fighting.

“I can’t hold them all off!” Kane shouted to Isdemus in between commands in the Ancient Tongue and corresponding cyclones. “We need some help!”

Isdemus remained at the front of the castle near where the portcullis had been, with Jael. Jael took over Isdemus’s fight as well as her own, giving him enough spare attention to bellow, “Balla dóiteáin!”

Peter cried out. In the next second, where Kane, Lily, Bruce, and Brock had been, there was only a dome of fire. It looked as if they had been consumed.

Bellator, still engaged in hand-to-hand combat with a shape shifter, shouted over his shoulder to Peter, “They’re fine! Don’t worry!”

Inside the dome of fire, Lily also screamed, startled. “What’s happening?”

It was Bruce who answered. “Isdemus,” he said, indicating the flames. “I don’t know what he thinks it’s going to accomplish, other than buying us another few minutes –”

“Lily says she has the gift of electromagnetism,” Kane cut him off, and sudden understanding dawned on Bruce’s face, followed quickly by the glow of hope.

“What does that mean?” Brock demanded, looking from Bruce to Lily and back again.

“It means she can reverse the polarity of the forcefield by applying an electric field to the particles!” Bruce exclaimed, and then nodded at Lily encouragingly. “Go on!”

Lily looked positively terrified. “Isdemus only taught me one phrase before we left! That’s all we had time for!”

Bruce kept nodding, unperturbed. “Just do what you can. I’ll help you if you need it! I may not be able to use all the gifts, but I know the words for most of them…”

She bit her lip and plastered both hands on the wall she couldn’t see, concentrating hard. Then she commanded, “Chruthú maighnéad!”

Bruce tested the wall, but it held solid, and he shook his head. “No good. That means ‘create magnet,’ and there’s nothing here to magnetize. You have to make an electric field by itself in this case, because then the particles in the forcefield will spontaneously rearrange to line up with the field you create –”

“JUST TELL HER WHAT TO SAY!” Brock shouted.

Startled, Bruce looked back at Lily and said obediently, “Try leictreach reatha!”

Lily nodded once and repeated perfectly, with ringing authority, “Leictreach reatha!”

Bruce, whose weight had been pressed against the wall of the forcefield a second before, lost his balance and fell to his knees. When he had scrambled back to his feet, he cried to Lily appreciatively, “You’re a natural!”

She smiled at him weakly, and then made eye contact with Brock. “You all right?”

“Sure,” he said, trying to smile back. He took a step forward to hug her and then changed his mind.

“All right, Isdemus, let us out!” Kane shouted, and instantly the fire receded into the ground.

“Bruce, think fast,” said Kane, unstrapping the extra machete Peter had given him. Bruce caught it one-handed, and instinctively moved so that Brock and Lily were sandwiched between them.

“I should be in front so I can blaze the trail!” Brock protested.

“Me too, I can mow ‘em down while Brock creates the floor!” Lily added, brandishing her samurai sword.

“You should both be in the middle so you don’t die. You’re not Watchers, remember?” Kane shot back, slashing to either side with his scimitar. He struck an enormous black reptilian creature that looked something like a bat, and it fell into the water, dead.

Brock elbowed Kane out of the way anyway, and before Kane could protest, Brock shouted, “Leathnú cloch!” Instead of plunging straight ahead towards the awaiting penumbra in front of them, as Kane would have done, Brock created an unopposed path to the side. Lily joined Brock at the point of their group and held her own as they were attacked from above, and Brock forced the group instead towards Cole, Peter, and Bellator.

As the two groups converged, battles raged around the periphery of the fortress. Sully kept changing location, warping to different parts of the castle whenever one of the penumbra got the better of him. Meanwhile, the nimbi wielded weapons made of light, and Isdemus of fire. Dan commanded the water, and the rest of the previously still surface began to respond, churning like a storm upon the sea. No matter how many of the penumbra they killed, though, there always seemed to be more. There were too many of them.

“Ignore the others!” they heard Sargon’s tight, cold voice cry out above the chaos. “Kill the Child of the Prophecy! Kill Peter Stewart!”

The air around Peter grew thick with winged penumbra swooping upon him from above. He was drenched in sweat and blood, and bent over Cole’s body protectively, with feet planted wide for stability. Every few seconds he cried out as one of the penumbra successfully landed a blow. None of the blows had yet been fatal, but it seemed only a matter of time. Bellator did his best, but he could not protect both Peter and Cole from all sides.

“He’s not gonna make it!” Bruce shouted frantically.

A few seconds later Brock created an oasis where he, Bruce, Lily, and Kane merged with Peter, Cole, and Bellator.

“Lily!” cried Bruce when they converged, “I need you to say, chruthú allamuigh!”

She dutifully repeated the phrase, and all around them the air crackled to life, knocking two of the winged penumbra out of the way like birds colliding with a highly polished window. Peter knew what had happened, but he pressed his hand out just to be sure, where it came in contact with a solid, invisible wall. He breathed a sigh of relief, and dropped the arm that held the machete. He mopped the sweat from his forehead and looked at Lily, smiling weakly. “Thanks.”

She shot him a filthy look, arms still raised as she held the forcefield in place.

“You just created a forcefield? That’s amazing!” Peter tried again, dropping his hands to his knees to catch his breath.

“I just do what I’m told,” she said haughtily.

“Look, I’m sorry I ran off and left you guys –” Peter began, but Brock cut him off, pushing him out of the way to get to Cole.

“How is he?” Brock demanded, lunging towards his brother. Cole’s eyes lolled in Brock’s direction. His face was pallid, and he barely clung to consciousness.

“I know I can fix him,” said Peter through gritted teeth, “If I could just get back to the meadow where I reversed the glass, I could reverse this too. I just don’t know how I got there…”

“If you did that, you’d reverse your own healing also,” Bruce pointed out. “He needs Carlion healers, they have more tools than just their own energy. We need to get him out of here! Listen, Peter, I have an idea!”

“How… long… do I have to keep this up?” Lily said, her voice beginning to tremble.

“Another few seconds!” said Bruce, and then looked back at Peter earnestly. “Look, here’s the deal. If you can get everybody out, I can blow this place up –”

“You’ll die in the process! Not an option!” Peter shot back angrily.

“It’s the only option! I’m the only one who can do it!”

Peter shook his head vehemently. “There has to be another way. Isdemus will tell us what it is.”

“Let’s get everyone in one group in the meantime. Then we can all escape together,” said Bruce.

“Now?” Lily asked desperately.

“Fine,” Peter said to his dad grudgingly. In their direct path were Achen and Verum, and then some distance away, Dan fought alone with his back against the mirrored wall.

“Okay, Lily. Now!” said Bruce.

Peter caught Lily as she nearly crumpled to the floor, and propelled her forward in the same motion. Brock spoke the ground into existence in Dan’s direction, and the rest of the group ran along behind him.

Suddenly Kane circled back around and sprinted in the opposite direction, away from them.

“Kane!” shouted Peter furiously. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t worry!” Kane shouted back, and hurtled on through the crowd of penumbra alone, brandishing his scimitar in one hand and another blade in the other.

“What is he doing?” Peter repeated angrily to Bruce.

“He’s a big boy,” said Bellator grimly, “he’ll take care of himself.”

Achen and Verum joined the group heading for Dan. The other Watchers still fought along the periphery, but it was clear that they were fading fast.

The group reached Dan. He looked like he was on the brink of collapse, attacked by at least three penumbra at all times. The moment he vanquished one, casting it into the churning waters below, another moved forward to take its place, like an infinite queue. All the while, he spoke fluently to the water and periodically the waves cascaded over the ground just behind his immediate attackers, sucking another penumbra down into oblivion. Many of his attackers sprouted wings in order to avoid the deadly waves, forcing Dan to command the water higher and higher in order to consume them before they got close enough to attack him directly.

Verum embedded an arrow between the shoulder blades of the penumbra directly in front of them. After it vanished in a flash, Brock slid next to Dan and shouted, “Jump on!” as if he were offering a ride on a motor boat. Dan joined the platform of stone that Brock had created, and as Brock guided them away from the onslaught, Dan shouted to Bruce, “Destroy the ground behind us!”

Bruce blinked for a moment, and then understood. “Why didn’t I think of that?” He shouted words in the Ancient Tongue, and the ground behind them erupted in flashes of light. The penumbra standing on it disappeared into the seething abyss.

“Peter!” Dan shouted in alarm, and Peter looked up to see a satyr mid-leap, its teeth bearing towards Peter’s throat. Before Peter could do anything about it, Verum released a light-tipped arrow from his bow directly into the satyr’s open mouth. The second the arrow made contact, the satyr vanished with a flash.

“Sully!” cried Dan when they were close enough to him, and grabbed him by the collar, dragging him into the protective triangle with a sudden burst of strength. Sully lay panting at Dan’s feet, his katana blade covered in the viscous blood of the penumbra. He, too, looked disturbingly pale.

“You’ve been warping too much!” said Dan reproachfully.

Sully groaned, and gave Dan a bloody smile, like a grimace. “Kept me alive, didn’t it?”

“You have to get up!” Dan said, pulling Sully staggering to his feet. “Brock can create a path out of the castle for us, but I don’t think I can carry you. I can barely run myself…”

“Where’s Rambo when you need her?” said Sully.

“Soon as we get over to her, she can sling one of us over either shoulder and still fight ten of ‘em off at the same time,” Dan replied with a weary, lopsided smile.

Isdemus and Jael still positioned themselves defensively at the place where the portcullis had been. Isdemus looked unsteady, but he whipped a circle of fire over his head and released it. It spread out in a line, sending five charging penumbra at once into the seething depths below. Jael meanwhile twirled a pair of numb chucks in either direction, knocking penumbra into the water on her left and her right and advancing to take the territory. But she never got very far, since another set of penumbra always filled their places. She was the only Watcher who did not yet look fatigued, though.

Suddenly the wraith nearest Jael morphed. It grew to immense proportions, and the black folds of its cloak lightened to a reddish brown, with scales, fiery eyes, and talons the length of their heads –

“A dragon?” Peter cried in horror. He had only seen one once, in Arthur’s memory at the Battle of Salisbury Plain. It had been the one that Mordred rode, and it had foreshadowed Arthur’s impending death…

“Get Kane!” Isdemus managed to shout to Peter. “We can hold it off for now – get Kane!”

Kane was beset on all sides, wielding his weapons in either hand, each moving so quickly in a rotating figure eight that they were only a luminous silver blur. He kept the creatures far enough away to keep from killing him, but just barely. He bled from so many places that it was impossible to locate his wounds.

“Kane! We’re coming!” Peter shouted, the walkway springing to existence as they sprinted towards him. Kane glanced up at their approach, just as Achen lashed out at the ogre blocking their path to him, destroying it in a flash of light.

“Come on!” said Dan, reaching an arm out to pull Kane into their protective circle.

For a split second, Kane had a clear path to join the rescue party. Peter’s eyes locked on Kane’s, and Peter had the uncanny feeling that he was watching a calculation taking place in Kane’s mind, weighing his options. He knew the moment when Kane had arrived at his conclusion, because an expression crossed his face that was almost a challenge. His lips, impossibly, curled into a smirk.

Then, he dove in to the churning waters below.