I heard a rustling sound behind me.

  Saw the troll's little pig eyes look past me.

  "Oh, good," Galahad said airily "The battle isn't over just yet."

  That broke the spell. I turned, looked, and yes, he was there.

  Pale but unwavering. His bare chest a mess of unhealed wounds and smeared blood. The Frankenstein stitches across his lower belly were a hideous grin.

  In the weird silence he said, "My lady, I would not intrude if you are determined to stain your sword with this troll's blood. But if not, I beg you to do me the honor of letting me kill him for you."

  I said nothing. The trolls gaped. And then Christopher yelled,

  "Galahad!"

  He nudged David and David echoed the cry. "Galahad!"

  One by one, then in twos and threes, the battered men-at-arms began to take up the chant. "Galahad! Galahad!"

  The trolls quailed, and the men attacked, still crying,

  "Galahad!"

  The perfect knight watched, nodding approval, resting his weight on his sword as if nothing here yet required his help.

  He couldn't do any more. It had taken all his strength to walk out of the tent and put on that brave display.

  The trolls fell back, retreating from the camp, over the wall. But the men did not have the strength to follow them. Most collapsed on the ground, panting, groaning, begging someone, anyone for water.

  I went to Galahad.

  "You shouldn't be up," I said.

  "And you should not be standing alone against an onslaught,"

  he countered.

  I shook my head. "I wasn't. I just froze. Couldn't move."

  I realized it must have looked as if I were being brave. I must have looked as though I were standing there like a rock, just me and my borrowed sword, ready for anything the trolls had.

  Not exactly the truth.

  "I feared that having your blood flowing in my veins would unman me," Galahad said with a shadow of his old smile. "Now I see that it can only make me more bold."

  I didn't know what to say to that. It wasn't the kind of compliment you hear very often. A perfect knight doesn't come up every day and compliment me on my blood.

  "Oh." I said. "Thanks."

  I'd been wrong. Sometimes fear did leave you with a sense of

  "go for it." Maybe I was getting used to being scared. Maybe there were different varieties of scared. Maybe I was somewhere past being scared, or just losing my mind, but part of me badly wanted him to lift me up onto his horse and ride away to some castle, or at least some Marriott.

  He was a babe. Better, he was a man. He was a man that other men thought was a man. Sir Gawain had yelled his name like all the others. And here I was, the only non-witch woman within miles. And we were probably going to die. He would die, and my friends, and I'd have to die without even having him kiss me, which seemed a hell of a waste, except that how do you smoothly move the conversation from "nice troll-killing" to "shut up and kiss me before we get killed"?

  Senna would have been able to —

  Senna. Stop the tape.

  Where was Senna?

  As if in answer, a huge, familiar voice, a voice that bent the trees with a terrific wind, roared, "I have come for my witch!"

  Chapter

  XXI

  The men dragged themselves up to their feet. David, Jalil, and Christopher came trotting back to me and Galahad. Jalil had a mean little cut under one eye. A gash of white fat and red blood.

  "Where is she?" David demanded of Galahad.

  Galahad looked around, as unsure as I was. No Senna.

  "Where is she?" David repeated, frantic. "He's coming. Loki is coming."

  Something large was crushing through the underbrush just out of sight, pushing the trees aside, shaking the earth with the weight of each step.

  King Kong after all.

  It occurred to me in the rational, observing quarter of my mind that Loki understood theatrics. He was building the fear. Building the dread. Using suspense as a weapon like a good director.

  "I do not know," Galahad said, troubled. He called to the men who'd been guarding her. "What of the witch?"

  They seemed puzzled. As if the question were slightly embarrassing for Galahad. "My lord, you sent word she was to be released."

  "Sent word?!" he snapped. "Who gave you this message?"

  It was immediately apparent from the blank looks that neither man actually remembered getting that message.

  Senna had planted the suggestion.

  "You have been bewitched," Galahad said. "Go, men. Join the others."

  Now it was the trolls chanting, their own brutish echo of our own voices.

  "Loki! Loki!"

  "She took off," Christopher said bitterly. "Big surprise."

  "At least we can stop this stupid battle," I said. "Loki just wants her.

  We can just tell him."

  "Like he's going to believe us?"

  "He'll believe Galahad," I pointed out

  "Better she be free than in Loki's hands," Galahad said.

  David nodded. "We have to distract Loki. Keep him fighting.

  Otherwise he'll send his trolls after her"

  Galahad shook his head slowly. "We pay a fearful price for my ancient hatred of dragons. The witch might now be safe in Merlin's care, far from here, in some enchanted place only Merlin knows."

  Jalil touched the wound by his eye. Winced at the pain, and at the unfamiliar feeling of parted flesh. "You know, Sir Galahad, you could have just killed Senna. Solved everyone's problem at once.

  Except ours, of course. End of issue."

  "I would have done so, had all else failed."

  "Jalil's right, dude, why wait for all else to fail? You could have had your boys take her out."

  Galahad looked as if he must have misunderstood them. "But, surely you don't imagine that one of Arthur's knights, a Knight of the Round Table, son of Lancelot, would take the life of a woman?

  I live by the code, sir. By the code."

  "Yeah. And now old Percy's dead, and Kay, and a bunch of other guys, too," Christopher said. "Didn't have to happen."

  Galahad laughed, almost regretfully. "I am a creature of myth and legend, sir. I am what I must be, real or unreal, man or . . . or mere imagining. I am a knight. Brave and true. Enemy to dragons, defender of maidens, servant of honor. I am what I must be. No more, no less."

  We were chat ing. Like people standing on the train tracks who can hear the train coming but are acting cool. Or maybe just psychotic. Death was coming, and we were discussing what we might have done.

  I was watching Galahad's youthful face, a face that might have lived a thousand years, and saw his eyes focus past me on the rising mass of the god who had come to kill us all.

  "Loki," Galahad said.

  I turned, dread slowing my every movement. He appeared a lit le at a time as he climbed the hill. He was smiling. Happy. Doing what he enjoyed doing, I suppose. He sensed victory. He would get his witch, and then he would escape Ka Anor and Everworld and enter the real world.

  He was fighting for his life. He was not going to be scared away.

  Larger and larger he loomed. He raised one boot up and over the crumbled wall and slammed it down with such force that we jerked and jumped like bugs on a drumskin.

  "Well, hello, Galahad, and you, Gawain. I'd heard you were mortally wounded, Galahad. An exaggeration, I see." He peered close. "But not much of an exaggeration. Now. Give me the witch and you can go riding off on one of your ludicrous quests. Surely there is some maiden in distress somewhere."

  "I must decline. Great Loki," Galahad said with a deferential nod.

  "Then I will kill you."

  "That maybe."

  Loki reached down, wrapped his hand around the base of a sapling nearly his own height, and ripped it up. Dirt clung to the roots.

  He shook it, knocking some of the dirt loose, then threw it sideways at us.

  Galahad swept his sword upward and sliced the sapling in two.

  It passed us by harmlessly. But that was Galahad's last blow. The sudden exertion ripped half a dozen stitches from the wound in his stomach.

  He collapsed, clutching his sword hilt with one hand, his stomach with the other.

  I knelt beside him. Tried to hold the wound shut.

  Loki took three bounding, eager steps. He had grown no larger, at least; he stood twice the height of a tall man. But he was filled with palpable energy, untouched, unscarred, al wounds healed and forgotten.

  Gawain yelled and rushed him.

  David reached over and grabbed Galahad's sword. "With your permission, sir?" he asked gently.

  "So long as you strike the foe," Galahad gritted.

  Gawain whirled and brought his blade sideways, slashing, a blow that should have bitten clear through Loki's leg. Instead it hit, cut, drew freezing black blood, and stuck. Gawain tugged but couldn't pull it free.

  David held Galahad's sword high, stabbing-style, running full out and yelling. Loki swept him aside with a brutal slap that threw David twenty feet into the tent.

  "To me!" Loki yelled, and there came an answering roar of troll voices. So many. Too many. And now they appeared, head and shoulders first, massed and rushing over the wall, an avalanche of animated stone, hideous living statues.

  The handful of men fell back almost without a fight. It was hopeless. Some ran. More ran. They fled past us, brushing by me in their panic.

  The tidal wave of brutish, stone-handed creatures came on at a lumbering run. Seconds. That's all I had left. Seconds of life.

  Life flashing before my eyes? Yes, no. Disjointed images, here and there, a fractured dream, all drenched with the sickness of dread. I was going to die.

  "My lady," Galahad said. He was holding something for me. A knife. A dagger. Hilt toward me. Did he think I would stop the trolls?

  Did he think I would stop Loki?

  No. Oh, God. It was for me. For me to use on myself.

  Chapter

  XXII

  I took the knife. But my arm could not support the weight. I didn't have the strength, no strength at all. My arm hung limp, dagger hanging by my fingertips.

  All over. What would happen? What was death like?

  Then a loud voice began to chant. A rhythmic sound.

  "Ancient Stones,

  Broken Bones,

  Mend and grow,

  Ancient Stones.

  Wizard's tower.

  Upward flower.

  Ancient Stones,

  Hear again your master's voice."

  A second wave of trolls was coming over the wall. They never made it. The wall had begun to grow. Trolls half over suddenly howled in pain as the wall grew beneath them.

  All around, all around the oval of stone, the walls were growing, pushing up through the accumulation of grass and mold and lichen and moss. Fresh, white stone, stark in the darkness, then yellowed by reflected firelight.

  The tower whose ruins we'd camped within was growing again.

  Merlin stood there, shining from an inner light, hands held high, eyes wide and seeing something no one else saw. He was uplifted, chanting, repeating the incantation.

  The rocks grew. Piled up as if some invisible giant were stacking them up at impossible speed.

  The walls surrounded us, thirty feet high, but too late. Dozens of trolls were trapped inside with us. And Loki. Galahad down, Gawain disarmed, the men-at-arms panicked and outnumbered by the trolls. Too late. Merlin, too late.

  "I warned you, Loki, that you were far from home," Merlin said.

  "I built this tower seven hundred years ago. It has since given way to the decay of time, but yet will it answer my commands."

  He sounded confident but I could see that Merlin, too, had used up his last ounce of strength.

  He fell to his knees, his arms dropped, his voice failed.

  "Very good. Merlin, very impressive," Loki acknowledged. "But not enough."

  I didn't know what to do. Merlin looked at me, right at me, his eyes sad and weary and defeated. His lips formed a single, soundless word.

  "Door."

  I looked around. There was no door in the tower walls. The only way out was straight up.

  I looked helplessly at the wizard and shook my head. He looked annoyed, despite everything. He turned his head only slightly, toward the tent.

  No, behind the tent. He'd left an escape route. Of course. Loki was twice the size of a man. The door would allow us through, but block him, for a while at least.

  "Christopher. Jalil. Get ready."

  "What?" Christopher demanded.

  "When I say run, follow me. Sir Galahad, you're coming, too."

  "We can't run, he'll just catch us," Christopher said harshly. "We gotta just see if he can understand, you know?"

  "Fine, you stay and give up," I snapped. "We are leaving."

  Loki reached down and yanked Gawain's sword out of his leg.

  He grabbed it like a knife and went for Merlin. Everything was happening at once. The trolls falling on the remaining men-at-arms. Slaughter. Merlin backing away. Loki's laugh. A scared, sobbing voice, mine.

  Merlin had failed. We were not saved, and now Merlin himself was desperately fending off Loki's taunting thrusts, a cat to Loki's mouse.

  The wind kicked up suddenly, grabbing at my hair, my clothes.

  Some strange natural feature of the open tower had created a wind, or maybe Loki had. It swirled within the enclosure like a tornado. Faster, warmer . . .

  "There!" David yelled, face uplifted, arm pointing straight.

  I looked up.

  Dragon!

  The dragon swooped closer, round and round at the top of the tower, closer and closer, the wind of its wings warmer and warmer.

  Loki hesitated, unsure of how to respond to this new fact. And then, the dragon breathed.

  Liquid fire sprayed from the dragon's mouth. Flew through the air. A red and orange stream, powerful as the spray of a firehose.

  It blistered the air. It splashed against Loki's upturned face, drenched the god in napalm, turning him into a walking, living, screaming torch, a pillar of fire that staggered blindly around inside the tower.

  "Now," Merlin cried. "Run. Save Galahad. Gawain, go."

  "I think not, good wizard," Gawain said. "I'll stay a while."

  I grabbed Jalil's hand, guided it to Galahad. Pleaded, "Help me."

  We grabbed the knight under his arms. Christopher grabbed one of his feet. We began running, as fast as we could while dragging a man.

  The tent burst into flames.

  Running, and David joined us, and running, while Galahad protested feebly, and my ears were filled by Loki's screams and the dragon's explosive fire and tornado wind.

  A door. I burst through first, walking backward. Galahad scraping behind. Into the clear, out of the heat, and down winding steps, down to where the dark woods pressed close. Woods that might yet be filled with trolls.

  David dropped Galahad's leg and stepped out in front, sword held ready.

  Troll.

  David raised his sword, Galahad's sword. "You know, I've had it with you things," he said. He ran straight for the troll.

  The troll fell back, unwilling to fight. Why?

  I heard Loki's high-pitched cries. Screams at a supernatural volume. Screams of pain and rage but no fear.

  Of course. The troll heard it, too. The troll saw the wild flames whooshing up above the tower walls. His lord and master was in some kind of deep trouble.

  We kept going, running, staggering more like it.

  "Stop. Stop. I have to rest," I said.

  We dropped Galahad, not gently.

  "Now what?" Christopher asked. "Is Loki done for?"

  "No," Galahad gasped. "Loki can be hurt, weakened, but not killed by mortal man or beast."

  "He was looking pretty well-done back at the barbecue,"

  Christopher said.

  "Lose yourselves in the forest. Escape."

  "We're saving your life, Galahad," David said. "Just play along."

  "No. Find the witch. Keep her from Loki. Keep her from Ka Anor.

  You have done all you can do, and more."

  I tried to see the wound in his belly, but it was too dark. I felt for it. Galahad took my hand and pushed it away.

  "I have been wounded many times, my lady. I will survive."

  "We're not leaving you here in the middle of nowhere. Period."

  "You cannot travel with me. This day is a terrible defeat. Merlin, if he lives, will be weakened for weeks or months. You must —"

  His words trailed off, lost in the gathering wind that dropped down on us from the sky.

  The dragon stooped like a bird of prey, talons out and down, ready to seize Galahad.

  "Hey, leave him alone!" I yelled up at the monster. "He's hurt."

  The dragon landed lightly, almost delicately beside the trail.

  The fire dribbled from its mouth, illuminating my friends and Galahad in orange-black, Halloween colors.

  "Hurt, is he?" the dragon wondered in its basso profundo voice.

  "Hurt but not yet dead."

  "No, not dead," I said.

  The dragon rumbled, thoughtful, amused. His snake's face twisted in a grimace that might have been a smile. Yellow cat's eyes were greedy, triumphant. "Galahad, at my mercy at last. Too badly wounded to raise an arm against me."

  "Let him go," I pleaded. "You're on the same side. Merlin and Galahad are friends."

  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," Jalil said. "The same should be true of friends. The friend of my friend is my friend."

  The dragon laughed, greatly amused. "Friend? Merlin is no friend of mine. What nonsense have you told these Old World fools, Galahad?"

  "Give me my sword," Galahad whispered tersely to David.

  Then, in as loud a voice as he could manage, a hoarse shout, "The dragon fights for gold, like all his kind."

  "Yes, for gold. Why else? For honor? For chivalry? I will be paid for this night's work. A king's ransom in treasure, gold and silver and diamonds and rubies. I will be well paid for giving that upstart god Loki a lesson in humility, but Loki is no enemy of mine."

  The dragon half walked, half writhed to Galahad. The fire dripped from his lips within inches of Galahad's upturned face.

  "Farewell, Galahad, dragon-killer."

 

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