End Times in Dragon City (11 page)

“Pull up!” Belle said as we barreled straight for the second story of a bookseller’s place. 

I hauled up on the front of the carpet with both hands and commanded it to rise with my mind. Maybe wrestling with the fabric like that didn’t help any, but it felt right anyhow. At that point, I was willing to try anything if it would let me handle the carpet half as well as a professional like Schaef. 

It worked. We rose fast enough that we skimmed over the edge of the bookseller’s roof and kept climbing until we topped all the surrounding buildings too. There weren’t many towers in this part of town, and I didn’t have to worry about moving upslope or downslope on our way to our destination. I just needed to get to the far end of Low Pavement as fast as I could. 

Below us, I could hear the sounds of battle ringing through the streets of Goblintown. Gunfire rattled here and there, and muzzle flashes lit up rooftops at random as people fired down at the zombies from their roofs. 

“Run!” Belle shouted at them all as we raced past. “Head upslope! Goblintown’s about to blow!” 

I don’t know if anyone listened to her, and I don’t guess they had enough time to do anything about it either way. She knew that too, but she kept on trying. 

“Run to the Village! Time is running out! Run!” 

I kept focused on the task at hand. I would have loved to have been able to dive into Goblintown and start ferrying people out on the carpet, but if I stopped to do that, I’d never reach Kells and Cindra in time. I hated to admit it, but if I had to make a choice, I was going with the people I cared about, so we flew on. 

Every second on that eastward dash along Low Pavement seemed like an hour. I pushed the carpet to its limits, right up to the moment I felt its edges start to flutter. If I shoved it any harder I might have lost the carpet’s internal integrity, the ability it had to straighten itself out in midair. If that happened, we’d have dropped like a stone. 

I kept it right there on the edge, hoping we wouldn’t tumble over by accident. It didn’t give us any margin for errors, but I was willing to risk it if it meant we’d reach our goal in time. 

After what seemed like the better part of a week, I spied Kells and Cindra’s rooftop at the far end of the street. They had it lit up like a theater’s stage, and I could see Kells standing on the downslope edge, blasting away at oncoming zombies on the street with his machine-gun. Cindra stood next to him, covering him with her pistols and picking off stragglers that moved outside of his arc of fire. 

Johan’s black palanquin — the one he’d borrowed from the Brichts and which he and Kells had outfitted for our fight with the Dragon — sat in the middle of the roof, its curtains drawn. As we got closer, I could see Johan sitting in the pilot’s compartment and Kells and Cindra’s kids peeking out through the open door on the side. 

“Run!” Belle shouted at them as we got closer. “I mean, fly! Fly!” 

The machine-gun made a horrible racket, though, and they couldn’t hear us over it. They didn’t even look our way. 

I can help!

Spark leaped from my shoulder and zoomed ahead of us. When he wanted to move, he was damn fast, and he burst past us as if someone had lit his tail on fire. 

“Don’t surprise them!” I shouted after him. I couldn’t tell if he got that or not, but I heard his voice in my head an instant later. 

Why not? 

Fire leaked from his snout as he approached Kells and Cindra, and she must have spotted it out of the corner of her eye. As hopped up on the adrenaline of the battle as she must have been at that point, she didn’t think to wonder what it was that might be coming at her and her family from the sky. She just turned and fired at it. 

“That’s why!” 

It might have been the first time in my life I’d ever wished Cindra was a lousy shot. She’d been blasting away at so many zombies that the barrels of her guns were starting to steam in the night air. Turning and snapping off a shot like that at a half-seen target coming at her from out of the night sky, I could at least hope that she might be a little off her game. 

No such luck. 

I couldn’t see exactly what happened, but Spark’s angle of approach on the roof turned into free fall toward the streets below. I gasped in horror and the knowledge that there wasn’t anything I could do to help him. I was already going as fast as I could, and he was too far in front of me. 

“Spark!” 

He didn’t respond. 

Belle had her wand out and started to cast a spell, but she cut herself off with a curse. Spark had fallen too fast for her to react in time. 

I shouted at Cindra, who’d turned to look at us now, her pistols held out before her. “Hold your fire!” 

Whether she recognized my shape or my voice, I don’t know, but she put her guns up for a moment and peered into the sky. Then she tapped Kells on the shoulder and pointed up at us as we zoomed their way. He took his finger off the machine-gun’s trigger and squinted up at us. 

“Get out of there!” Belle shouted at them. “The entire neighborhood’s about to blow!” 

I think if anyone else had come screaming at them out of the sky, Kells and Cindra might have ignored them. Having been part of our team, though, they still trusted us. They didn’t ask any questions, and they didn’t hesitate for even an instant. 

Cindra started for the palanquin right away, shouting at Johan to get it into the air. Kells abandoned the machine-gun and sprinted straight after her, right for Johan’s borrowed ride. 

Just then, the explosives underneath Goblintown went off. 

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

I’d expected the blasts to be deafening — they were meant to bring down a large section of Dragon City, after all — but they sounded more like muffled thunder rolling in the distance, combined with corresponding earthquakes. The series of dull booms started near the wall and grew closer, with a distinct pause between each one. 

From up on Schaef’s flying carpet, I saw the first ones go off. The buildings crowded up against the inside of the Great Circle rose up as if a sleeping giant had bumped them from below. Then they collapsed, the lights scattered on, about, and through them all snuffing out at once and joining the growing darkness. 

The next closest row of buildings lurched up into the air then and fell back down, right in line with the first set of victims. Then the next and the next. They imploded in precise increments and exactly in order, just the way you’d expect the Guard to manage it. 

This made it seem as if the entire mountain was collapsing slowly into itself. I wondered if the wizards who’d come up with the system had engineered it well enough to ensure that they wouldn’t bring the entire city down in a landslide. The way Dragon City was structured, the Elven Reaches and the Dragon’s Spire would be safe no matter what, and probably the Stronghold would survive too. The Academy would be safe up on the crag along which ran Wizards Way. The rest of us, though, would be buried alive, all the way up to Gnometown. 

“Move!” I shouted down at Kells and Cindra. Kells had his duffel bag full of guns slung over his back, and the from the way he moved he must have stuffed an arsenal into it. “Johan! Get that thing in the air!” 

The dwarf snapped me a quick salute. He’d already gotten himself strapped in, and I could see the palanquin lifting clear of the roof by a foot or so. 

The kids screamed in panic. The girl, who had to be around nine, cried out, “Mama!” The boy leaped out of the palanquin, terrified that it might take off without his parents. 

Cindra tossed Kells one of her pistols and scooped the boy up in her now-free arm without missing a beat. She clutched him to her chest and leaped into the palanquin as it started to rise farther into the air. 

Feeling the weight in the back of the palanquin change, Johan pulled out the stops and hauled the slick black flyer into the air as fast as he could. Kells hadn’t quite made it there yet, and he dove for the still-open door catching it with one hand. 

With the weight of his duffel bag pulling him down, I knew Kells couldn’t hold on for long. With her son refusing to let go of her, Cindra wouldn’t be able to reach him in time either. It was up to me. 

That’s when Kells and Cindra’s home disappeared. The explosions had been getting louder and louder as they worked their way up the mountain. Part of this was because they were getting closer, but another part of it was the fact the tunnels that ran under a Goblintown grew fewer and fewer as you moved farther upslope from the Great Circle. This far up the mountain, the wizards just couldn’t bury the charges all that deep.

When the blast below us went off, it sounded like a bolt of lightning had somehow struck in the building’s basement. The roof leaped about a foot into the air, and then the whole thing came crashing down on top of itself. And the same thing happened to every other damn building on the downslope side of Low Pavement, all the way across the city.

I had already put the carpet into a dive when the borderline of Goblintown joined the rest of it. The force of the blast jostled the palanquin as it rose into the air, and that was just enough for Kells to lose his tentative grip on it. He tumbled backward toward his collapsing home, his bag of guns hauling him down. 

The force of the explosion below us jostled the carpet too. It threw me off just enough that I undershot Kells by a few feet. I tried to haul up short to give him a chance, but I could see that if he didn’t manage to get a good grip on the carpet, he’d just tumble right off the back of it. 

I’d forgotten about Belle. She reached up for the man with one arm, still clutching the carpet with her other hand. Kells hit the carpet behind her and somersaulted through the open air toward the back of it, just as I’d feared. 

Kells grabbed Belle’s outstretched arm and got a solid hold on her. That tore her grip from the carpet, though, and the two of them slid toward its back. I put everything I could into slowing the carpet down, hoping the change in momentum would keep them aboard. 

It helped, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. Belle and Kells would both fall into the pit that had once been Goblintown and die. 

Spark hit the carpet hard then, having turned back around to come at me head on. I’d been too busy watching the troubles behind me to see him until he landed. He dug his claws into the carpet hard enough to puncture it, and then he lunged forward and bit Bell on the belt of her pants. 

Belle wore a dress most of the time while she was in the city, but she’d made an exception back in our adventuring days, substituting something more practical for the times we left town. Knowing that the threats from the wilderness were invading the city today, she’d dressed in her old traveling clothes again today, and I’d never been so glad to see her in them. If she’d been wearing a dress, Spark might not have had anything solid to latch on to. As it was, her belt held, and the dragonet managed to stop both her and Kells from sliding off the carpet to their deaths. 

I banked hard to the left to put us up over the undestroyed part of town and headed deeper into the Village. I tried to take it as slow as I could, but at the same time the screams of the dying and the eruption a cloud of dust and debris from the remains of Goblintown spurred me forward. 

The first chance I had, I headed for an open square and set the carpet down on a bare stretch of ground. We bounced on the cobblestones there harder than I would have liked, but we were all too happy to be alive to complain. 

“Are you all right?” I spun around to check on Belle and Kells. Spark still had a grip on Belle’s belt and looked like he might never let go, but both she and Kells were intact and unbloodied, stretched out along the carpet and still too overwhelmed by the experience to do anything more than lie there and try to catch their breath. 

I knelt next to Spark and gave him a squeeze. “Great job,” I said. 

He pried his jaw apart and pulled back. Belle would need a new belt, but he hadn’t put a scratch on her.
I couldn’t let them die
. 

“Thank you.”

“Yes,” Cindra said as she came racing up, her son still in her arms and her daughter chasing behind. “Thank you so much!” 

I spied the palanquin parked behind them, and I gave Johan a sharp salute for a job well done. He grinned back at me in relief. 

Cindra and the kids hauled Kells to a sitting position and gathered him into the tightest group hug I’d ever seen. The kids were still terrified, of course — they’d just lost their home and borne witness to the destruction of so much of the city — but their joy at having their father in their arms again helped temper that. Cindra wiped a tear from her eye, something I’d rarely ever seen on her face, then gave Kells a gentle slug when he tried to play it off like it hadn’t been the closest to death he’d ever been. 

I gathered Belle into my arms and spoke to her gently. She was trembling, although more from the adrenaline coursing through her than from any fear. “Are you all right?” I asked. 

She planted a tender kiss on my lips. I took the time to enjoy it. 

When we parted, she answered my question with a nod. “For now.” She looked past my shoulder at the cloud of dust settling out of the downslope sky. “But not, I suspect, for long.” 

I kissed her once more, for luck, and then sat back down at the carpet’s controls. We couldn’t stay here in the open. While the destruction of Goblintown must have taken out a massive part of the Ruler of the Dead’s army, I had no illusion that meant all the zombies were gone. 

“We need to get out of here,” I said to Cindra and Kells. “Now. You’ll be better off in the palanquin.” 

They gathered up their children and Kells’ precious duffel bag, for which he’d almost died, and piled into the dwarven ride. “Where to?” Johan asked, calling over to me. 

“Head straight for the Quill. We’ll rally there. Steer north of the Old Market Square though. It’s full of jailers and guards.” 

“Where are you going?” 

I glanced at Belle, who nodded at me, knowing just what I was thinking. “I need to make a quick stop first.”