Tris & Izzie (16 page)

T
ristan stood at my side, groaning in despair. “But—” I said. “But—” This wasn't possible. Tristan had killed the serpent. Hadn't he?

“Death cannot stop me,” said Gurmun. “Your father learned that. I am surprised he did not tell you. Oh, but I killed him before he could speak to you again, didn't I, little magic one?” He shook himself, and I heard the swooshing sound of his scales sliding against each other.

That was a sound I never wanted to hear again.

“Your father was a very powerful elemental sorcerer. I told him as he lay dying that I would come after you. I told him that I would kill you slowly, and you would cry out for death from me as a mercy, that you would beg me like a child begging a father for a gift.”

No wonder Mom had taken me away from Curvenal as soon as she could and had kept me away. No wonder she had never told me about my magic. No wonder I had not wanted it back myself for so many years.

Gurmun was trying to make me angry, and he was succeeding. I was so mad that I could feel the heat inside me rise from the pit of my stomach into my throat. Soon it would be coming out of my ears. But I couldn't let go of it yet. I wasn't ready. I didn't know how to kill Gurmun. Not permanently, anyway.

“I can see that your father has been gone too long. There must be someone else you love enough that you would do anything to keep him safe from me?”

I glanced at Tristan. It was stupid, but I couldn't stop myself from giving away that tiny reaction.

Gurmun took full advantage. He might have done it anyway, but I felt it was my fault when he plucked Tristan off the sand beside me and held him in his teeth. Tristan had taken the invincibility potion, but I was sure its power had already been destroyed by the serpent's spit.

Tossing him this way and that, Gurmun swung his body around me as if to give me the best view of Tristan's plight.

“Please,” I said. “Please. Put him down.”

Gurmun's eyes seemed to grow brighter.

“I'll do anything,” I said. “Just let him go.”

“Isolde, don't—” Tristan said, and then bit off the words as the serpent tossed him, spinning, into the air and caught him before he fell to the ground, this time on the other side so that I could see the wounds the teeth had made along the top half of Tristan's body. Now, with the potion burned away, his shoulders, neck, and side were purple and bleeding, likely poisoned.

I had to do something to help him.

“If you kill him, you'll have nothing to hold against me. I won't care if I live or die!” I shouted.

Gurmun gradually stopped moving and slowly, almost gently, put Tristan back on the ground, on his feet next to me.

I could hardly believe that he had done what I'd asked. I felt a surge of relief, followed immediately by icy fear.

I looked up at Gurmun.

He hissed. “As you wish,” he said. Then the serpent with-drew a few feet.

Tristan slumped forward, his hands outstretched. “I can't see,” he said. “Isolde, I'm blind.”

There were tooth marks around his eyes and on the rest of his face. The poison from the serpent's teeth must have seeped into his eyes. His other wounds weren't as bad as I had been afraid of, mostly superficial. But he was blind, and he stumbled, letting go of his sword. It dropped to the sandy shore, and he stepped on it clumsily.

But I did not trust myself to try the sword. That was his magic, not mine. I put out a hand to steady Tristan, and it trembled against his skin.

“Isolde,” he whispered.

“I'm here.”

“Don't leave me,” he said.

It broke my heart to hear him. Gurmun really did know how to hurt humans. He wasn't like the slurg or the giant, who just wanted to kill. Gurmun wanted power over us, and to get that, he had to terrorize us. He'd been doing it to Cur-venal since he had woken. He would do it to all the world if he had the chance.

I had to stop him. Now that I knew what he was, I wasn't tempted to run away anymore. This was evil that had to be faced.

“I can't see,” said Tristan. “It's all black. And it hurts.” He pressed his hands to his eyes.

“I know. I'm sorry.” I didn't know what else to say to him. I kissed one of his hands and then the other. Then I bent forward and kissed his eyes. “I love you,” I said.

“But I'm useless this way. I can't use the sword. I can't do anything.”

“You're not useless,” I said. “Not to me.”

“You don't need a blind man at your side. You need a warrior.”

“No.” I shook Tristan, hard enough that he winced. But I wanted him to have to hear me, to pay attention. “Gurmun thinks you are only a warrior. He thinks he has defeated you. But he hasn't.”

“He has,” said Tristan. “He has.”

“You are still the one I love,” I said. “And I always will.”

In that moment, I suddenly knew the truth. All this time, I thought that I had been forced to love Tristan because of the love philtre. But had it been a love philtre? I had poured the love potion I'd made from the Internet recipe down the sink because I knew it didn't have any real magic. And the other one?

In my mind's eye, I could see Mom's potion cabinet. The bottle I had taken out—it had smelled exactly like the invincibility potion that Mom had given us before we came to Curvenal to face the serpent. Sweet and gingery, with a hint of vinegar. In that tiny yellow bottle. That was why the invincibility potion had been so familiar to me when I helped Mom activate it.

Mom had always told me that she was uncertain about love philtres. She had decided not to send the one she made to her friend's daughter because it would take away choice. So why would she keep something that dangerous in her cabinet? She wouldn't. But she would keep an invincibility potion—and that would explain why Tristan and I had survived the slurg's attack.

As for falling in love with Tristan, that fever-hot feeling I'd had when I first met him had nothing to do with a love philtre. It had been my magic recognizing Tristan's. The fire part of my elemental sorcery.

All those years of unconsciously hiding my magic for fear of the consequences had ended. I had known from the begin-ning that Tristan was the one person to whom I could show my true self. That was why I'd fallen in love with him immediately. The love philtre—really the invincibility potion— had just been a coincidence. And then an excuse.

“Isolde, I can't help you against him,” said Tristan. He was holding my arm and trying to sense where Gurmun was, but Gurmun was teasing him, snorting in one direction and then moving to the other before Tristan could respond.

“You can. Tristan, where's your sword?” I said. I loved him. I would always love him. And whether he or I had magic after this wouldn't change that.

“It does not matter. I cannot wield it.”

“You can hold it,” I said. “Trust me.” I would not let him feel like a failure, not now.

Tristan knelt down and began to dig in the sand.

I thought how lucky I was that we had found each other. I had been as blind as he was, in a completely different way.

Tristan found his sword at last. I could hear it humming as he touched it.

“Now what?” he asked.

“I want you to run at Gurmun with it,” I said loud enough for Gurmun to hear, but soft enough for him to think I was whispering. I thought Tristan would argue with me. He had already tried that, and it hadn't worked.

“And then what?” he asked.

“And then I want you to give up. Fall down in despair. Tell Gurmun to kill you, that your life is no longer worth living if you cannot wield your sword and use your magic to protect the one you love.” I was holding tightly to him, hoping he knew I didn't mean for him to believe this. But on the other hand, maybe it was better if he did believe it. Or if the serpent believed he did.

“This is what you wish me to do?”

“Yes,” I whispered, letting go of his arm.

“Then I will do it. When I am gone, I hope that you will find love again.”

He really did believe that I was sending him to his death. I should— No, I couldn't. I let him go.

“Gurmun—do your worst!” he cried, and slashing his sword in front of him, he moved stalwartly forward.

Gurmun hissed with laughter and darted this way and that while Tristan tried to react to him.

I felt sick with anger and fear. What was I thinking, doing this to him?

But he had brought me here, to face this challenge. If he believed in me, I must also believe in him.

Tristan leaped toward Gurmun, and the serpent ducked underneath him, unmooring him. I saw him fall, silently, and roll to the side.

“Kill me,” said Tristan. “I have no reason to live without my love.”

I believed he believed it. How could Gurmun not?

I wept real tears, and I held my breath, waiting to see if he was still alive, but there was no sign of it.

“You are so cruel,” I cried out, though I thought I was the one who was cruel. I twisted my hands around and held my head low. “How can you do this to us?”

“How can I not?” said Gurmun. His head came down closer, just as I'd known it would.

Then he began to let his tongue out, to sniff me. Oh, how he loved the smell of grief and pain and hopelessness. That was proof of his power.

I let myself feel the real despair that was all around me, that Tristan had felt just a moment before. It couldn't be fake. Gurmun had to believe it, and he wasn't going to be fooled by crocodile tears. He had to taste the depth of my feelings.

My magic seeped out in dark wisps around me, like smoke signals from a covered fire.

Gurmun murmured to himself and drank it in.

He came closer.

And closer.

“Tell me about my father,” I said. “At the end of his life.” And I kept up the sense of fear.

Dad had died so that I would live. And I had to believe he'd known that I would return here someday, that I would face Gurmun as he had—and that this time, Gurmun would lose. Like my father, I had the elemental magic that was the only hope for defeating Gurmun, and Mom couldn't protect me from my duty forever. Dad must have left some-thing to help me.

But where? On the shore somewhere? In one of the buildings? Were there others on the island who might know?

He couldn't have depended on any of the buildings being left, or on me finding the people.

I thought desperately, and then I realized that what ever it was, my father had to have left it with either me or Gurmun—in our memories.

“If you wish to see his final despair, I can give you that,” said Gurmun.

To my surprise, Gurmun sent me a magical flash of memory, directly from his eyes to my mind.

I saw my father as I had seen him in my dream when I was little. But he was clearer, and there were things I had forgotten that I saw again and knew I had seen before.

My dad was very tall and strong, and he wore gloves and a leather breastplate. His hair was just starting to gray around the temples, and it was curly where he was sweating. His eyes were dark and full of love. I could sense his magic, as Gurmun had sensed it that day, and it was based on fire and on all sources of light: the sun, the stars, and the moon.

My father put up his hands. “I surrender, Gurmun,” he said. “Your magic is greater than mine. I surrender my life.” He sounded despairing, and I could see Gurmun coming closer and closer to him, as he had with me. Dad was wounded in one leg and was holding his weight off it. Gurmun's teeth had dug into it, and so had his fire.

And even as Dad stood there, Gurmun blew more fire at him. “You puny human, you thought your fire could defeat mine? When my magic was fueled by hundreds of years of anger?”

“I was foolish,” said Dad. “Arrogant in my own magic, and ignorant of you and your past. These past hours have tutored me as nothing else has, great Gurmun.”

Gurmun hissed at this, pleased. “Your kind should never have sought to chain the true great ones of magic. And now you will pay. You and all those like you.” The serpent's fire roared around my father, but Dad's fire weakly fought it back.

“And that is what your father was like,” said Gurmun to me now, calling me from the foggy past of remembrance. “A coward in the end. Just like you and your beloved will be.”

But I did not come fully out of the link between us. With all the strength in my magic, I clung to the memories he had opened up to me, and pressed further in, insistent on seeing more. Because there had to be a reason that Gurmun had ended it there, before Dad died. That was my only hope.

“What?” muttered Gurmun. “You cannot—”

But obviously, I could, and I did. He had made himself vulnerable by drinking in my despair. Now I drank in his memories.

I could see my father writhing on the ground in agony. He was on a sandy shore just like this one. I thought I could even see the same buildings in the distance, although they were newer then, without a hint of destruction.

I heard scuffling sounds against the rocks that rose above the shore. That must have been my mom coming to get me.

I heard a whispered voice and then a child's cry of refusal. And then the scent of my mother's magic was in the air, lightly.

She must have used it to drug me, to make me sleep so that she could take me away. I would not have wanted to leave my dad in such danger.

“Stop!” said Gurmun distantly, in the present.

But I pushed him away and stayed in the past.

I saw my dad shake himself and get to his feet. He turned to Gurmun, and his back was straight. His body was ravaged by wounds and magic, but he looked the serpent in the eyes. “I will die today, but my daughter will live to see you dead. My daughter, who has magic to match yours, fire for fire.”

Gurmun whirled around and saw that I was missing. He roared in anger, turning to my father with glittering eyes. “Your daughter might as well be dead already. She is tiny, vulnerable. I will send out every creature I have for her. She will never survive to understand her magic.”