Bedtime Story (72 page)

Bream drew the sword from her body, and stepped toward Cora Took.

The magus gestured toward the Queen’s body. “Dafyd,” he said, “the Stone.”

I made a move toward David, toward Jacqui’s fallen body, but I was held back by the pinch of cold fingers on my arm.

I turned to the bed. Lazarus Took had pulled himself up, had reached out to stop me.

“Is that …” he said in a pained whisper. “Is that your son?”

I nodded, wanting to pull away, wanting to turn from the sight of him, from the sight of the body on the bed next to him, the wizened man with the bloody wound in his chest, the red foam at his lips.

I stopped myself, my thoughts reeling: if that was the King, how had he been wounded? That wasn’t in the book. And if that was Dafyd, then the man who had just killed the Queen, the man who looked so familiar …

Took’s face formed with effort what might almost have been a smile. “Good,” he said, releasing my arm.

“Reg,” Cora said as he faced her, as if they were the only two people in the room.

“Cora.” His voice had lost the hint of sadness.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” she said breathlessly.

“After this, you mean?” he said, looking down at himself, at the uniform of the King’s Men, at the sword.

She reached out and ran her fingertips along his cheek, smearing the Queen’s blood in thin trails. “It’s been so long,” she said quietly.

Dafyd followed the magus’s gaze down to the Queen’s body, to where the Sunstone lay just above the wound from Bream’s sword.

“Quickly,” Loren urged.

Dafyd lunged toward the body and grasped the Stone. Pulling it sharply, he snapped the chain, and the Queen’s head bounced against the stone floor with a dull thud.

“I did everything you asked,” Bream said.

“I know,” Cora said, in the tone one might use to comfort a child. “I’m sorry.”

“You told me we would be together.”

“Yes,” she said, still stroking his face. “I’ve missed you. It’s been so long.”

He stiffened at the words. “How long?” he asked, his voice suddenly cold.

Cora took a step back. “It’s not—”

“How long?” he asked again, his voice rising.

“Sixty years,” I said, advancing a little, hoping to get past them to Jacqui and David.

He turned at the sound of my voice, his sword rising. It was as if he hadn’t even known I was there.

“It’s been more than sixty years,” I said.

“Sixty years,” he muttered, rolling the words in his mouth.

Dafyd slipped between Bream and the bed, the chain of the Sunstone dangling from his right hand.

“Sixty years?” Pilbream repeated, turning back toward Cora. “But how? You haven’t changed.”

She shook her head slightly, suddenly awkward in the face of his questioning eyes.

“That’s why she sent you away,” I said, taking a half-step forward. Bream cocked his head, listening to me without taking his eyes from Cora. “Why she put you into the book. It was all a spell. To keep her young.” I tried to keep my voice from breaking, tried to sound strong, but when I looked toward the doorway, saw Jacqui’s body still on the ground, saw David crouching again next to her, touching her gently on the cheek, I cracked. “She didn’t care who she hurt.”

Her eyes flashed at me, and I retreated back to the bedside.

Dafyd stood beside the bed for a long moment, his fist tight around the Stone. He looked first at the King, his chest shuddering, blood seeping from his wound, soaking the sheets around him. Then he looked at his mother, slumped against the foot of the bed, her face damp, contorted in pain.

“Dafyd,” the magus urged him.

He bent toward the King, lowering the Stone to the wound on his chest. When he glanced at Bream, their eyes met, and the soldier nodded, his face showing something that looked like pride.

The Stone began to glow as it neared the wounded man. Dafyd closed his eyes—

—and didn’t see the King reach up and grasp his wrist, pushing his hand away.

Dafyd’s eyes flashed open.

“Stop,” the King muttered, in a voice so weak it was difficult to hear.

Dafyd struggled against his grip, trying to push the Stone back toward him.

“Stop,” the King ordered again, and this time his voice resonated with a trace of its former power. “Your mother.”

“Your Majesty,” Bream said, starting forward.

The magus grasped his shoulder, stopping him.

Tears streamed down Dafyd’s face.

The King’s grip on Dafyd’s hand loosened, and his arm fell heavily to his side. “Your mother …”

Dafyd bit his lower lip and rose to his feet. Before he turned away, though, he took the King’s hand in his own and squeezed it gently.

“Leave him,” the magus said to Bream. “It’s what the King wants. It’s what he always wanted, to save the woman he loves.”

As Dafyd knelt beside his mother, the glow of the Sunstone flickered off her face. Cora Took was standing next to Bream, completely rapt with what she was watching, her gun at her side.

I took a careful step back and glanced at David. He was craning his neck to watch as Dafyd pressed the stone into his mother’s wound.

She gasped as the stone touched her, and bucked like David in the midst of a seizure, her body snapping and flailing.

And then the movement stopped, and she opened her eyes.

Dafyd lifted the Stone away.

“Dafyd?” she whispered.

I glanced back at David, wanting to urge him to run, but when I saw the expression on his face, the words died on my lips. His eyes wide, he was watching Dafyd and his mother as they embraced, as the Sunstone fell with a barely perceptible clatter to the floor.

Jacqui.

Cora was still watching Dafyd and his mother.

I took another step back. Neither Cora nor Pilbream seemed to notice.

But Pilbream wasn’t looking at Dafyd: he was looking at the wizened, festering body next to the still form of the King.

“Lazarus?” he whispered, his horror plain.

The old man didn’t speak: he seemed to radiate weakness and pain, his face contorted in agony, his hand fallen over the book where I had dropped it beside him.

“Lazarus, what has happened to you?”

“He’s just an old man now, Reg.”

Bream’s eyes darted around the room, taking in the sores on Took’s body, the symbols written on the floor. He approached the bed and dropped to his knees.

“Lazarus, can you hear me?”

Cora flinched when she noticed me still beside the bed, as if she had forgotten that I was there. Her fingers tensed on the gun, but it remained at her side.

I should have told David to run while she was distracted.

By what seemed to be sheer force of will, the old man lifted his hand from his side and took Pilbream’s in his own. Pilbream turned back to Cora. His eyes were bright with tears.

“Did you do this to him?” he asked, his voice low.

“It was all part of the plan,” she said, keeping her voice light with affection. She sounded like she had in the coffee shop, when she’d kept me off guard long enough to lure me here.

“What plan?” he said, seething. He lowered Took’s hand gently to the bed and stood up.

She took a step back. “The plan we talked about.”

He moved toward her, and I could see his fingers tightening on the hilt of his sword. “You told me we would be together. You told me we would go somewhere, and never have to worry about him.”

“Yes,” she said, taking another step backward.

“You never told me about this.” He followed her retreat.

“And what—” she asked, her voice suddenly sharp, “what would you have done differently?”

“I never would have hurt him,” he said. “Not after everything he did for me. I would have refused.”

She laughed. “You’ve never said no to me.”

His sword flashed.

I didn’t think it had even touched her, but seconds later a thin seam opened across her throat, widening as blood spurted from it. She rocked back on her heels, and I expected her to fall.

Instead, a faint glow seemed to come from the centre of her chest, just below the neckline of her blouse, a glow that intensified as I watched until it was almost blindingly bright.

And as quickly as it had opened, the slash across her throat closed, like a zipper shutting. The glow faded, leaving her neck pale and unmarked.

She smiled, and raised the gun.

Pilbream stared at her, not understanding, until she reached with her free hand and drew her pendant out from under her blouse, holding it toward him, toward us. It was an identical match to the Sunstone from the book, the amulet that Dafyd had used to heal his mother.

“I don’t die easily, Reg,” she said coldly. “Though that did take a lot out of me. Keeping me alive is one thing, but healing me …” She looked at the Stone, seeming pleased. “I wasn’t sure it would work. This opens new worlds of possibilities. New worlds, Reg. But not for you.”

I saw the hole open in his forehead, saw his body snap backward, before I heard the shot, the thunder that seemed to fill the world. It echoed in the room as Pilbream’s body crashed to the floor.

“David, run!” I screamed, turning toward the door myself, catching his eye.

Cora Took spun and fired.

The bullet caught me as I began to run, too. It should have hit me in the chest but instead hit me in the left side, just below my ribs. It felt like a punch, and I clutched myself, surprised at the burst of searing pain, the sudden disorientation. Glancing down, I saw my blood pouring out of the hole.

“This is one hell of a mess I’m going to have to clean up, Chris,” she said. “First things first, though.”

She took off after David.

I tried to go after her. I tried to get my feet to move, but I couldn’t.

As I started to fall I caught myself on the edge of Took’s bed, leaving bloody red handprints on the grey sheets, slowing myself enough that I slumped to the floor beside Pilbream’s body.

I tried to fight, tried in vain to pull myself back to my feet.

“Son?”

The voice was a creaky whisper, and I turned to it. To Took.

“Is that your son?” he asked, a question he had asked minutes before.

I nodded, and the movement made me even dizzier. “Yes,” I managed.

“Good,” he said. “Lighter.”

It didn’t make any sense to me. I knew the word. I could picture the lighter in my mind, the engraving. But—

“Lighter,” he said again, gesturing toward the floor.

Yes, I had dropped my lighter. It felt like a lifetime ago.

I could barely reach it, but I found its weight in my hand oddly comforting as I traced the letters of my name as if they were the most important thing in the world.

He gestured for it with his hand, and I passed it to him. Over the edge of the bed, I made eye contact with Dafyd and Mareigh. They were crouching behind the bed, clearly hiding, hoping that Cora had forgotten them, as I had.

“Your son?” Took repeated.

“Yes. Yes,” I gasped, wondering why it was so important.

And then I knew.

I watched as he picked up
To the Four Directions
with one shaking hand, holding it loosely to fan the pages as he struck the lighter. The paper took a moment to catch, the edges curling in the heat. And then it was burning.

Cora burst back into the room smiling triumphantly, dragging David by the ear like a naughty schoolboy, stepping over Jacqui’s body. I thought I heard a groan, faint but unmistakable, and Jacqui’s hand lifted slightly.

Still alive.

My head swam: I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hold on much
longer. Blood pulsed against the hand I had pressed tight over the wound.

“He didn’t go too far,” she said, her voice crisp and bright. “Didn’t want to leave his mommy and daddy.”

Oh, David.

“I thought you might want to watch,” she said, her lips forming a malicious smile. “Kind of a family reunion.”

She lost her balance for a moment: I had thought it was just me, but the room was changing again, shuddering and wavering.

“What …?” She saw what Lazarus was doing, saw the flames consuming the pages. “Lazarus!”

“David!” Dafyd called out, rising to his feet. “The amulet!”

But David was already in motion, writhing in her grasp, turning enough to grasp the amulet hanging from around Cora’s neck and to pull with all his weight. The chain snapped and he stumbled away as she released her grip, reaching instinctively, but too late to protect it.

The room shook like an earthquake had hit. When I glanced at Dafyd, he seemed to be losing focus, shimmering slightly. He was moving to the end of the bed …

“Lazarus!” Cora screamed, his name dissolving into a shriek of pain and confusion.

She was changing, somehow, her body losing its definition. At first I thought it was what was happening to Dafyd and Mareigh, the book in flames, closing on itself, but then I realized: Cora was aging. All of those years, all of the pain and change coming on her at once, her body convulsing, shrinking, crumpling.

As she screamed in rage and fear, she lifted the gun.

I knew what was coming. With my last bit of strength, I pushed myself away from the bed, falling hard on my side.

I couldn’t keep track of what was happening anymore. I could hear Cora screaming. I could see Dafyd moving at the foot of the bed.

I heard David calling, “Dad!”

It was so cold. I could feel myself drifting away.

“Chris!” The voice was deep and strong, a boy’s. I tried to focus, but Dafyd was rippling, growing shadowy. The book … the book must be just about gone.

“Chris!” Dafyd said again. David must have told him my name. “Before it’s too late.”

I looked down at his hand, at where the Sunstone was glowing, nearing my chest. Even it, though, seemed to be blurring, fading, becoming indistinct. One more thing that would leave this world when the book disappeared.

“Sir!” He wanted me to turn, to give him easier access to my wounds.

“No,” I said, holding his hand away, struggling to sit up. “No.”

“But there’s not much time.”

He wasn’t expecting me to grab for the Stone. It came loose from his hand.

“David,” I called, not sure if I was even making a sound.