Lional.

Cold with inevitability, Gerald looked to Shugat and the sultan. Unmoved, they watched Lional make his suave, insinuating way through the ruined flowerbeds to the edge of the carriageway where grass met gravel.

He turned to Zazoar, the blood pounding in his head. "It isn't too late. Help me. Please."

Unmoved, unmoving, Zazoor sat on his ebony war camel and stared down at his holy man. Shugat inspected the tip of his staff, leathered face creased in thought, then glanced up at Zazoor. After a moment of silent communion they closed their eyes.

So. I'm alone.

Something... some hope or belief or faith in the ultimate goodness of man... broke inside him. Bled swiftly, quietly, flooding all the cracks and chasms of his soul.

Lional laughed. "Gerald, Gerald. Why are you surprised? Didn't we tell you they're a dreadful bunch?"

He snapped his fingers... and in a beating of wings, with a hissing song of welcome, the dragon touched lightly to the ground at his side. Sunlight trembled on its scarlet and emerald scales, striking sparks from the diamond-bright sheen of its spines. Poison, green and glowing, oozed from each razor-sharp tip. Dripped harmlessly down the dragon's brilliant striped hide and Lional's green silk arm. Fell to the ground... which at its touch dissolved in a cloud of noxious smoke.

Kissing his palm to the dragon's cheek, Lional sighed. Some subtle flow of flesh and bone rippled beneath his skin. Seemed to elongate his skull and dagger his teeth. Gerald thought he saw a shimmer of crimson scale, swift as fish-scales in a river.

"We were hunting," said Lional in a soft and singsong voice, subtly not his own. "The sheep, the boar, the bullock, the stag... blood like crimson nectar... but before we'd killed our fill we felt the air change. Smelled the rank unwelcome coming of the nasty little man with his stone of power and we thought..."

Abruptly, Lional blinked. The dragon blinked. They stirred as though waking from a dream. Two creatures, one mind. Their living connection absolute. It was terrible... and beautiful. Then Lional smiled, a bright flashing of teeth, and the shadows beneath his skin sank from sight.

"Well, well, well," he drawled. He sounded himself again. "Hello, Zazoor. What brings you and your holy lapdog to my kingdom? And without an invitation. So rude!"

If Zazoor was unnerved by the ravening beast just feet away he gave no sign. He might have been attending a tedious tea party or receiving a tiresome guest in his own home. "What brings us here, Lional? Fate. Destiny. The will of the Three."

Lional's smile widened. "Can't you make up your mind? Well, it's nice to see some things never change."

Zazoor's answering smile was deadly. "When we were at school, Lional, I knew you for a cowardly boy who bullied and cheated to get his way. Now you are a man grown and you resort to torture when bullying and cheating no longer suffice. Indeed you have the right of it, my old school chum: truly, some things never change."

Lional's smile vanished. His caressing fingers-with nails longer and thicker than they'd been just yesterday-dropped from the dragon's face and his blue eyes darkened, the flickering red flame in their depths leaping high.

"Burn them, my darling. Burn them to ash."

The dragon roared, its lower jaw unhinging to reveal a cauldron of fire. Flames writhing green and scarlet burst from its dagger-toothed mouth. Swift as a striking snake Shugat snatched the stone from his forehead and held out his hand. A bolt of blue-white light collided with the gushing fire. There was a hissing of steam and stinking smoke like hot lava striking an arctic sea. The dragon screamed, rearing on its hind legs, wings thrashing. Lional, fingers clawing desperately at his mouth, screamed with it.

Gerald turned on Shugat. "See? You can hurt them! For God's sake, Shugat, you have to help me!"

Shugat glared, his eyes like the heart of a distant sun. He opened his mouth as if to speak... then froze. His eyes rolled back in his head, his arm flung wide and his tight-clutched staff began to shiver and twist.

The stone he held exploded into life.

Its surge of power drove Gerald to his knees. As he struggled to breathe he heard Lional, shrieking, and the dragon's echoing roar. He looked up.

Lional's fingernails had gouged deep furrows in his face; blood flowed from his cheeks, his lips, his chin. The dragon was wounded too, its scales cracked and blackened, thick gore bubbled and stinking. But within moments the scales healed, and with them Lional's wounds. His hands came up, fingers curved into talons, and his eyes were soaked in scarlet.

Shugat moved in a blur of speed. As a stream of foul curses spewed from Lional's lips he swept staff and stone in an arc that encompassed himself, his sultan and the entire Kallarapi army. In its wake sprang a translucent domed barrier; motionless within, Shugat and Zazoor and the warriors of Kallarap waited.

Stranded, unprotected, Gerald watched Lional and his dragon throw flame and vitriol and the worst curses in history at the holy man's shimmering shield. Spittle flew from Lional's mouth and green poison poured down the dragon's teeth, turning the ground beneath their feet to acid mud as the attack went on and on.

Still the shield held.

Exhausted, half-fainting, Lional fell back, one hand grasping at his dragon's spines to stop himself from falling. Equally spent, the dragon lowered its head and panted, wings limp and splayed upon the ruined grass.

Inside the barrier Shugat's eyes unrolled. He sighed, arms falling to his sides. Looked at Gerald, one wild eyebrow lifting in sarcastic invitation.

Oh. Right. Gerald ran.

The flowerbeds at the far edge of the palace gardens had somehow escaped untouched, with unburned blossoms rising rank upon perfumed, bee-buzzed rank. With the last of his strength he dived headfirst into a cloying collection of hollyhocks, daisies and snapdragons.

Ha.

Panting, he snatched up his arms and legs thinking: hedgehog. This far from the palace, to his shamed relief, he couldn't smell the stench of the dragon's kill. Thank God. Images of Lional and the dragon rose like flames before him.

Kill them? He'd never kill them.

Oh God. I really am going to die.

Some six inches from his nose a rustling of leaf litter. He sucked in moist, compost-rich air, unmoving. Another rustle. And then a lizard, a skink, skinny and brown with only one good eye, darted out from under a leaf and stopped, nervously scenting the air with its tiny tongue.

Gerald held his breath. Memory replayed recent, desperate words.

"I'm the only wizard with a hope against Lional. But only if I fight with the same weapons he's got!"

When he'd said it he was convinced that meant using Lional's stolen copy of Grummen's Lexicon. But what if... what if...

You know what they say. Fight fire with fire. Or... dragon with dragon?

His stunned mind reeled. No. He was mad. How the hell could it possibly work? As lizards went this one was pathetic. With its left eye shriveled, practically crippled. Its matrix would make a piss-poor dragon; even with the strongest magic this little skink could never hope to match the brute muscularity and mindless viciousness of the Bearded Spitting lizard Bondaningo Greenfeather had found for Lional. The dragons would never be equal: magic could only do so much. And that meant...

I'm sorry, Reg. I'm sorry, Monk. I don't have a choice. Lional has to be stopped.

At all costs, the monster had to be stopped. And this weak, tiny, half-blind lizard wasn't the answer.

I'm not the answer. I'm not good enough. Whatever tricks I've done here, I did by luck and accident. I have no idea what I'm doing. And when push came to shove... when I needed to be strong?

He'd seen the truth in Melissande's eyes. Worse-in Monk's. They didn't think he could defeat Lional... and they were right. He couldn't. Not without a special kind of help. And if Shugat wouldn't give it to him then his only sure chance of saving New Ottosland from its insane king was with Grummen's Lexicon-and any other handy texts Lional might've left lying around.

And when it's over, and that mad bastard's finished, the Department can de-incant me. They must have some kind of top secret apparatus for stunts like that. And if they don't, well, Monk can invent one. After the portable portal he should be able to take care of that little problem in his sleep.

With another rustle of leaf litter, the tiny half-blind lizard turned tail and scuttled back under cover. Feeling sick, Gerald hoisted himself onto his elbows and risked a look around the gardens then up at the sky No sign of Lional or his hideously beautiful dragon. So he'd best make a run back to the palace now because there was no way of knowing how long this sliver of luck would last.

Probably Lional and his dragon will broil me alive as my fingers touch the handle on the palace's back door... and who's to say it wouldn't serve me right?

But that kind of thinking wasn't helpful. If Reg could hear him she'd be severely unimpressed. On a deep breath he rose to a crouch, got his bearings on the palace-and ran.

Breath rasping in his throat, elbows flapping, knees pumping-he'd never been one for sports, not even at small school-he sprinted, more or less, towards the nearest bit of palace he could reach. Every gasp of death-tainted air churned his belly. He caught a smeary glimpse of Shugat and Zazoor and their camel army, serenely safe within their milky shield.

Miserable bastards.

There was still no sign of Lional or the dragon. But even as he ran he could feel the lick of flames, the burn of acid poison, and hear the ominous slapping of wings.

Miraculously he reached the palace in one piece and started looking for a way inside. Forget the enormous front doors. An obvious entrance like that, in full view of any dragons that happened to be strolling past, would be asking for trouble. Instead, skin crawling, he jittered his way along a blank section of wall-what, not even any windows to clamber through?-until he stumbled around a cornery bit- -and over another body.

Damn.

It was Reggie, Melissande's sort-of boyhood chum and erstwhile house arrest guard, tumbled out of an inconspicuous side-door at the foot of a long, steep staircase. Some kind of special secret palace guard in-and-out, perhaps. From the ugly angle of Reggie's crooked head it seemed the fall had broken his loyal neck. There wasn't time to feel grief or guilt, to kneel and press the young man's eyelids down over his clouding, sightless eyes. To shed a tear. Lional and his dragon were coming.

"Sorry, Reggie," he said, gingerly stepping over the sprawled corpse. "Sorry."

Somewhere deep inside himself someone was screaming. It was the old Gerald, the Gerald he'd been before the cave. Before he surrendered to Lional, to cowardice, and created that glorious, murderous dragon.

No. Stop. Reg was right, you can't do this. Those grimoires are poison. Stop right now, Dunnywood, before it's too late.

But he couldn't afford to listen to his ghost. These drastic times were his doing and only drastic action could undo them.

The secret guard staircase took him up and up and at last to an open doorway. Stepping through it into a deserted corridor, he realized from the painting on the wall in front of him-a particularly memorable flock of bilious-looking geese-that he wasn't far from Melissande's apartments. But did that mean Lional's kingly suite was close by? He'd never been given an actual top-to-bottom palace tour. He had no idea where the bastard put his head down at night... and he didn't have time to waste searching this antiquated rabbit-warren. There had to be a faster way of finding that Lexicon.

Frustrated, uncertain, Gerald banged a fist hard against the corridor wall beside him. That small pain woke lightly sleeping memories of his recent, harsher sufferings-and he abruptly straightened. Really? Was it possible? It should be. Shugat had tasted Lional in his blood. And if Shugat could, then surely so could he. And if he could then that meant...

Closing his eyes, he sank himself deep within. Sent his potentia questing. When it found Lional's lingering, filthy fingerprints he shuddered. So. He was marked for life, then. The foul incants Lional breathed into his mouth were become a part of him, part of his matrix, flesh, blood and bone. The notion was horrifying. Almost as horrifying as what he contemplated doing now.

Maybe Reg was right. Maybe there was another way to- Stop it, Dunwoody. Stop trying to wriggle out of this. You know you have to. There's no other way.

So. He'd found Lional's mark. Now to use the mad king's foulness to track down his private suite in the palace.

Shuddering anew, Gerald wrapped a thread of potentia around Lional's hideous echo. Then he turned the rest of his magical self outwards and sought for the echo's counterpart-memories of Lional-contained within the confines of the palace.

No, not there. That's the dining room. Not there either, that's the Large Audience Chamber. And that's the Small one. Come on, come on. I want his bolt hole. I want his lair.

He was being tugged to the easiest places, the public places, where he'd already been. And why was that? Because, Tavistock or not, the glorious dragon or not, he was still at heart a Third Grade wizard with a Third Grade wizard's grasp of magic? Or was it Lional being crafty? Even in his own kingdom was he protecting himself?

Of course he is. Lional's mad and dangerous but he's not an idiot. With a succession of First Grade wizards on the loose of course he'd protect himself.

So. Don't look for Lional's echo. Look for his fingerprints, on carpet and brick.

Straight away, because it was close, he stumbled across the incant Lional had used to keep Melissande locked behind her own doors. Very nasty. Brilliant, but nasty. It was nothing short of a miracle that Monk had been able to break it. Briefly he felt a burst of pride in his friend. Crazy Monk Markham, the metaphysical genius. On the heels of pride, sorrow.

He's going to be so angry when he finds out what I've done.

With a grunt he wrenched himself away from that profitless line of thinking. It didn't matter how Monk felt, or Reg, or Melissande. Or at least he couldn't let it matter. He let himself sink more deeply into that dark place Lional had hollowed out inside him.

Sentiment is weakness.

Eyes still closed, leaning against the corridor wall now, his body shaking, he pushed further and harder. Stirred up in his blood, the remains of Lional's curses started screaming. Or were they his own screams? Either way, it didn't matter. The only important thing now was finding the Lexicon.

A tug on his potentia. A sharp rebound. A sudden burning conviction. That way. On a deep breath he opened his eyes, pushed off the wall and started walking. Instinct dragged him along, dragged him almost to jogging, down corridor after corridor, up staircase after staircase, heading for the palace's highest floor. The closer he got to Lional's domain the harder his potentia tugged at him, so tuned now was it to Lional's caustic thaumic signature.

He didn't encounter another soul. Every last servant had fled, every single government lackey had deserted his or her post. With their sleepy little kingdom turned on its head, with a dragon raining acid and fire from the sky and their sovereign hunting them instead of protecting them, what could they do except run? But how many had run only to die anyway, in the palace gardens or on its carriageways or down in the city?

And is Zazoor feeling proud of himself, sitting there safe in his little bubble? Is his Holy Shugat pleased? What kind of gods does the old man serve, that he could sit there with all his power and not lift a finger to help the innocent?

Resentful anger simmering, warming him, helping to keep his fears at bay, Gerald kept on through the eerily empty palace. His heart thumped and his breath whistled as he climbed yet another daunting flight of stairs. The next opened door he fell through would take him into the attics or onto the roof, wouldn't it?

But no. The next door he eased open showed him an opulent corridor-where Lional's thaumic presence shouted loud enough to send him deaf, dumb and blind. Shouted so cruelly he staggered and dropped to his knees, one hand still clutching the door knob, the other fisting to his head. Lional, ever prudent, had warded the corridor with a brutal keep-your-distance hex. Snarling the hallway in thaumic barbed wire, armed with teeth and talons and a bloody minded ferocity, it tore at his potentia until he was whimpering in his throat.

I can't break through that. How can I break through that? I'm only as good as the incants I know right now, and I don't know any incant that could dismantle this hex. Not even Reg taught me an incant strong enough for this.

So-was that it? Had he been defeated before he ever really started? Looked like it. Looked like Lional's native cunning had beaten him without so much as raising a sweat. For all the good he could do here he might as well have stayed in the cave, in the dark, and starved slowly to death. Letting go of the door knob he folded to the floor and rolled himself into a tight ball, battered by Lional's inimical magics.

Gerald Dunwoody, what are you doing? Stop being such a pathetic tosser!

Startled, he unrolled himself and sat up. "Reg?"

But he was alone. That was just Reg's voice, the voice of his conscience, kicking him in the pants. Ashamed, he scrubbed his hands across his face. Oh, lord, he was pathetic, wasn't he?

If I don't get back on my feet and finish what I started then I'm no better than Shugat and Zazoor, hiding behind their precious, indolent gods.

Through slitted eyes he stared the length of the gilded, plushly carpeted corridor. Saw, at its far end, Lional's hexed double doors. Beyond that flimsy barrier lay Grummen's Lexicon and Saint Snodgrass alone knew what other proscribed texts. He was yards, mere yards, from laying his hands on the weapons he needed to defeat Lional, save New Ottosland-and possibly the rest of the world. And the only thing standing between him and victory over New Ottosland's mad king was this one measly, wicked, obliterating hex-which he didn't have the first notion how to dismantle.

But I made a dragon, so I can bloody well do this.

Grimly determined, goaded-and he knew it-by an unaccustomed but undeniable sense of competition with the Department of Thaumaturgy's one and only Monk Markham-he faced his fears. Faced Lional's hexed doors. Braced himself-feet wide, shoulders thrown back, head lifted, teeth gritted-and opened himself fully to the worst of Lional's magic.

CHAPTER THREE.

It was like throwing himself into a writhing pit of insane vipers, or diving headfirst into a vat of boiling acid, or trying to ride a hundred wild horses bareback, all at once. The hex took him and shook him and tried to tear him apart. Flogged him and crushed him and threatened to splinter his bones.

Every instinct he possessed was screaming get out, run away but grimly he fought that cowardly impulse as hard and as bitterly as he fought Lional's hex. His heart was drubbing so hard he was afraid it might burst-or that his eyeballs would explode or his jaw crack into pieces. He could feel a howl building in his throat. Prying his teeth apart he let it out and heard it bounce back and forth between the walls of the corridor, a skin-crawling cry of pain and near-insanity.

Lost within Lional's merciless attack he flailed and thrashed, dimly aware of his battered potentia as it grappled with the onslaught of dark magic. He didn't know how to help his strange powers, or control them, had no idea how to harness their strength to his need. If there was an elegant, subtle way to dismantle Lional's incant, well, he had no idea what that was. And he didn't have the time to work it out, either. Because time was precious and it was fast running out.

Oh, Saint Snodgrass. I could use some help about now...

Howling again, Gerald pulled his potentia back inside himself. Poured every last skerrick of his strength into crushing it small, then smaller, compressing it until it too was howling. He felt like he'd plucked the sun from the sky and was trying to stuff it into an egg cup-and the sun, his potentia, was fighting back. Rivers of sweat poured down his face, down his back. He could feel his spine bowing, his knees bending, could feel his heart trying to batter its way right through his ribs. His unremarkable body couldn't take much more of this. Punished by Lional and by himself it was threatening to fly apart, to escape this unending torment in death.

No-no-just a little more-a little longer- And on the screaming brink of self-destruction he let himself fly free.

Like molten fire his power poured out of him, angry and indiscriminate, to smash the bindings of Lional's warding hex and obliterate its fabric. The keep-your-distance incant went up in flames and greasy smoke, stinking, unwholesome. Reeking of every foul enchantment Lional had so eagerly embraced.

Sobbing, Gerald fell forward onto his face, unable to save himself. The corridor's plush carpeting saved him from a broken nose or worse. Gasping he lay there, excoriated, waiting for the flames and agony to subside. When he thought he could feel his bones whole within him, when he thought he could trust himself to sit up in one piece, he pushed himself off the carpet and looked around at the scorch marks on the gilded walls and the expensive carpet. Stared, astonished, at the smoking doors to Lional's private apartments, drunkenly hanging from their half-melted hinges.