My friend stepped forward and did something I wouldn't have thought of. The nearly invisible bubble that expanded from her raised hands was, in fact, a shield. It was, I was certain, her way of ensuring the tunnel didn't cave in. She caught my eye and nodded. Yes, I was right. Next, she stretched out her hands toward the back end of the tunnel, closed her eyes. Her lips moved in a silent prayer or an incantation, or maybe a little bit of both. Now, energy of a very different kind swirled around her hands. Golden and bright, and unlike anything I had ever seen from her. It stopped swirling and next seemed to pulse. Her arms shook as the balls of light, like mini-suns, seemed to be gathering energy, building, building...
This is gonna be a doozy, I thought, suddenly thankful as hell for the bubble shield overhead.
A sounded emanated from her hand, a sort of subsonic whine, the sound of a jet engine. The sound grew steadily, and when nearly unbearable, two ungodly bright balls of light blasted from Allison's hands and exploded into the crumbling rock wall. That Allison herself wasn't launched backward from the sheer force coming out of her was a miracle in itself. In this case, Isaac Newton was dead wrong: for every force, there was most certainly not an equal and opposite reaction. At least, not when dealing with magic. I expected rock fragments to hurl in every direction. But not even a pebble.
"No, Sam," said Allison. "I worked with the rock's consciousness and asked it to change its basic elemental composition."
"Um, what?" I asked, turning around to see a puff of what could only be described as... steam?
"A cloud, to be exact," said Allison.
"You turned the rock into a cloud?"
"Well, water, and yes. The elements rearranged themselves for me."
"Because you asked them to?"
"In a way. I also provided them the necessary energy to perform the transmutation-"
"The dragon, she comes!" shouted Rory.
We turned and saw it now: a hulking beast that veritably filled the tunnel to capacity, slithering along like a great subterranean snake. Indeed, I knew from Charlie's description that the dragon had, in fact, evolved to move through the tunnels much like a serpent.
"My queen," said Rory, dropping to a knee and taking her hand. "I will protect you until my last dying breath."
As Rory rose and dashed down the tunnel, I said to Allison, "Go help Sir Loincloth. We don't need him fried to a crisp. Last I checked, he's the hero in the story. We can talk about the rock-to-water thing later."
She grinned, turned, and raced off down the tunnel behind Rory. Already, I could see the energy forming around her hands. This time, a pale yellow energy. An energy, I knew, that meant business.
I turned once again to what had been a boulder-strewn end of the tunnel. Now it was something else, entirely. It was a tunnel that went deeper into the rock formation. I looked at the queen, and she looked at me, not sure what to do. I took her hand and said, "C'mon. It's probably safer with me."
Chapter Thirty-three
We headed deeper into the freshly blasted tunnel.
Not too much deeper, granted, but certainly deep enough to put a little distance between us and the ungodly racket going on out there.
You okay out there? I asked.
The dragon is magical, Sam. It can deflect my best stuff.
Okay, sounds like you have it under control.
But I just said-
She growled just as I signed off. Then again, it might have been the dragon growling, too. Either way, with Conan the Barbarian and the Wicked Witch of the West out there, I was pretty sure the dragon had its claws full.
I focused on the task at hand, which just so happened to be saving a baby from an eternity of prison. Although the tunnel had been hollowed out by some pretty cool witchcraft, and most of the walls were as smooth as a baby's butt, that didn't stop bigger rocks and clumps of dirt from dropping free from the ceiling with each explosion or thump from out in the hallway. I might be immortal, which means I would survive a cave-in. Which also meant I could be buried for an eternity, which sounded terrible.
"What do we do, Lady Tam Tam?" asked the queen.
I gave her credit. She sounded far stronger and calmer than she probably had any right to be.
"I have a plan. Kinda."
"I am not familiar with this word, 'kinda.'"
"It means it's not a quite a plan."
"Ah, well, not quite a plan is better than no plan at all," said the queen, and no truer words had ever been spoken.
With the queen huddled close and smelling of something completely foreign to me-a sort of sweet sage mixed with sea salt, undoubtedly what passed for perfume in this strange land-I closed my eyes and rested my palms on the stone. What I saw nearly knocked my socks off. Or my Asics. I had been expecting to see more rock, and maybe a fragment of light.