All too aware that I was sporting only a sports bra in a magical dungeon far beneath a castle in a fantasy land created in the mind of my client, I positioned myself as close to the sleeping babe as I could without contacting the amorphous blue light.
"Here goes nothing," I said, and tossed the shoe out and over the floating bundle. I was prepared to leap forward should, say, the babe fall like a rock, knocked out of its hovering orbit. But she didn't fall, and the shoe passed over the sleeping girl, through the blue light, to dangle near the floor. She remained floating, and I now had a "safety line" around her, and, most important, I wasn't feeling the very real need to take the mother of all cat naps.
Admittedly, I'd been worried that the magic spell, as evidenced by the blue glow, would snake along my shirt and envelop me, too. But it didn't. The light merely stayed a constant, nor did the babe stir. And so, I did the only thing I could think of: I dropped back to the floor and stomach-crawled, Navy SEAL-like, on my belly until my outstretched fingers could snag my other shoe, which I did after a few swipes. Once done, I retreated and soon I was back to where I'd started: off to one side of the sleeping princess, but this time I was holding one end of my long sleeve and my tied-off shoe. The rest of my contraption was lassoed safely around the babe.
Good enough, I thought.
Sam! Sir Rory is injured! Hurry!
I gave the tee-shirt lasso a tug, and the fabric tightened around the babe. And something else happened, too: the tiny sleeping figure shifted a little in the air. Like a kite altering course in mid-air. I gave the makeshift fishing net another tug, and the little girl drifted some more, this time toward me. Most important, she drifted out of the blue haze. I had been afraid the spell would follow her, but it didn't. In fact, it was doing the opposite. The more the babe moved, the more the blue glow dissipated.
The princess was now drifting toward me, a tiny, tethered dirigible in the sky-
And that's when she dropped like a rock.
Luckily, my reflexes are faster than any dropping rock, and both my hands shot out and caught her before she was even halfway to the floor.
Most important, the glowing blue sleeping spell was gone. I knew this because the sweetheart opened her eyes, took one look at me, and screamed bloody murder.
Despite her wailing, I grinned and summoned the single flame.
Chapter Thirty-five
Queen Autumn screamed when I appeared, and screamed again when I handed over her wailing baby.
Next, I dashed out of the freshly blasted tunnel, splashed through puddles of what had once been solid rock, and emerged into the main tunnel system, where I saw something that would have and should have turned my bowels into water. But it didn't. Not here, and not now.
A wingless, massive, scaled dragon, with claws the size of a Mini Cooper, was presently hovering over my witchy friend who, herself, was hovering over the fallen knight, who was bleeding profusely from a terrible head wound.
So much blood...
Allie held the knight with one arm, while her other arm was raised above her. She had created what appeared to be a very feeble, nearly invisible shield. Meanwhile, the dragon alternately blasted it with jets of fire and raked at it with claws long enough to disembowel an elephant.
Without breaking stride, I summoned the flame again-and this time, saw Talos within it. He seemed eager to come, if that was possible.
And now I was suddenly much bigger than I was before, and the roar that erupted from my mouth was deafening even to my own ears. The wingless serpent snapped its great triangular head up-and if a dragon could look startled, I was seeing it now. It took a step and cocked its head, no doubt surprised as hell at seeing me now. As I advanced, it continued stepping back.
My presence also got Allie's attention, and now she dropped both hands around the fallen knight, summarily losing her feeble shield. She didn't need her shield. She had me now, and, as the dragon continued retreating, I stepped carefully over my brave friend and the fallen knight.
I knew from experience that summoning fire took a little time. It wasn't just something a dragon had, literally, at the tip of his tongue. It had to be generated from down deep, within a special furnace in his lungs. And I felt it generating now, building, building...
Hurry Talos.
Almost ready, Sam, I heard him say in my mind.
Meanwhile, the creature before me stopped its retreat altogether, reared back, and shot a super-heated jet of molten death at me. I did all I could do, and ducked behind Talos's massive wings. I knew instinctively that his wings could only survive so many such attacks. Indeed, the burn I felt was excruciating, and I found myself apologizing profusely to the creature who'd lent me his body. And just when the dragon before us reared back to fire a second blast, an attack that might just burn Talos's precious wings to a crisp, I heard the words I was waiting to hear: