The Wicked Will Rise (19 page)

She stepped over to the spot where Pete's form hovered and circled him, looking him up and down wolfishly. “Is he as
charming
as he appears?”

I tried my best to explain the whole Pete situation—what I knew of it, at least—to Polychrome, who nodded along with the story as I related it to her.

“I see,” she said. “When Mombi attempted to disguise the
princess, she inadvertently created the seed of a new soul. It happens! The trick is catching it and nipping it in the bud before it comes into itself. Mombi has always been so sloppy when it comes to the details. It seems simple, now that you explain it. When Ozma was restored all those years ago, she suppressed this other soul. Then, when Dorothy did her little number on the princess, the thing was allowed to flourish again. At any rate, it shouldn't interfere much with things.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“I can see now that the spell Dorothy cast on the princess was all anger and impulse. No sense of precision at all, but it was powerful, too. That makes it a bit more complicated, especially now that it's had so much time to put roots down. But I think with a little elbow grease, I can restore Ozma to her proper state—the state you see before you instead of the simpering, foolish nincompoop who has been occupying her place all these years. And
that
will certainly change the game, won't it?”

“What will happen to him? To Pete?” I tried to hide the panic I was feeling, but I don't think I did a very good job of it.

“Oh, dear.” Polychrome gave me a sympathetic frown. “Did you develop a little crush on the rogue soul? Well, he
is
handsome, I'll give you that. But you can't let yourself get all mushy over it. I imagine it'll just disappear.”

“Please,” I said. “You can't. It's not a crush. He's a good person. I don't want him to die.”

“Amy, sweetie. Listen to me. It can't
die
when it's not alive in
the first place. And it's not a person at all—just a little bad witchery that got out of hand. No matter what happens, you'll always have your perfectly lovely memories of it, now won't you? And a memory is worth a lot, especially when Ozma's return will do so much for Oz. So you lose yourself a plaything. There are more fish in the sea!”

I didn't like the way she was talking to me. As if I was some dumb little girl and she was my big sister who had come back from college and thought she knew everything because she'd had sex a couple of times and had read some French novels.

But while people like me had been fighting for Oz, Polychrome had just been locked up here in her castle, doing practically no good to anyone while she played tonsil hockey with her vapid, rainbow-smoking boy toy. And now she was trying to lecture
me
about the good of Oz? Some people had a lot of nerve.

On the other hand, she had a point. Having Ozma back for real
would
change the game in a serious way. Was the risk of losing Pete worth it? And even if it wasn't, could I stop it from happening?

At this moment, the only thing I could be sure of was that Polychrome was annoying. “Would you like a hug?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said.

She snapped her fingers, and the floating images of Pete and Ozma were instantly sucked back into the body of the
real
princess, who doubled over at the shock of having all of her parts returned to her. She stumbled from the stool on which she'd been standing and landed on her hands and knees on the stone
floor of the Lumatorium, and promptly began to retch.

Instead of vomit pouring from her mouth, a flurry of tiny rainbows came out, and pooled on the ground in a sick puddle of jumbled-up colors.

Polychrome ignored the fairy princess's distress, and instead directed her attention to me.

“Don't you fret over all this, at least not for now. The Ritual of Restoration will be difficult, and before I can perform it, I must ask my sprites to gather the necessary ingredients. Also, I need my rest—I can practically feel the dark circles forming under my eyes as we speak. And, not to be a bitch, but you look like you could use a little beauty sleep, too. I'll let Heathcliff take you to your room, and tomorrow, we'll get everything all settled, okay?”

“I'll take my stuff, first, thanks,” I said. The things I'd taken from the Lion and the Tin Woodman seemed even more important than ever now, even if I didn't know why, and I didn't want to let them out of my sight.

“Of course,” Polychrome said, and I gathered them quickly into my bag, wondering what to do next.

“We need to get out of here,” I told Nox. After leaving Ozma in the room Polychrome had given us—this whole huge castle, and that dumb fairy couldn't even give me my own room!—I hadn't been able to sleep, and so I had gone to find Nox. Now he was leaning against the wall in thought, staring out the window at the rainbows that swirled outside in the dark, and I was sitting on the edge of his bed as I related everything that had just happened.

“Get out of here and go where?” he asked.

“Back to the jungle to find Mombi,” I said. “Or to find Glamora. I don't know. Anywhere.”

“Well
that
sounds like a plan.” Nox shifted his weight and crossed his arms at his chest. There was something else bugging him.

“What?” I asked. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

Nox took his time answering. “Why didn't you want me in there with you?” he finally asked. “What were you telling her that you couldn't tell me?”

“I . . .” I started. “I don't know. Nothing. It's just . . .”

“That you still don't trust me? Even now?”

At first I was hurt, and then I was angry. “Of course I trust you,” I said. “I
want
to trust you. And I do. But there's only so much trust in a place like this, and I didn't come here to find a boyfriend. So get over it. I just wasn't sure. And I'm telling you everything now, aren't I?”

He looked surprised at my outburst, but then he just nodded. “Sorry,” he said. “I get it. And you're right. I think I went soft when I was lost. I sort of—I don't know. Maybe I started to lose perspective. It's just . . .”

I waved him off. “Never mind,” I said. “Just help me figure out how to get out of here. Whatever she's about to do to Ozma, I don't like the sound of it.”

“Really?” he asked. “Or is it that you don't like the sound of what she's going to do to
Pete
?”

“What difference does it make?”

“It makes all the difference,” he said.

“I don't want her to hurt either of them,” I said. “We have no idea what kind of voodoo she's cooking up, or what could go wrong. For all we know, she wants to stick Ozma in a box and saw her in half.”

“I kind of doubt that,” Nox said. “But I'll tell you what
I
know. I know that Ozma's important. And I know that she's already acting different. More powerful. If there's something we can do to help her, we have to.”

“Pete's my friend,” I said quietly.

Now it was Nox's turn to look angry. “Do you know how
many friends I've buried?” he asked. “Have you forgotten Gert? She wasn't the first, and she won't be the last, unless we do something. Look, I hope Pete's okay after all this. But it's worth the risk.”

It was pretty much exactly what Polychrome had told me back in her lab, but in nicer words.

“Not
it
,” I shot back. “
He.
And if
he's
worth the risk, then who else is? Are you? Am I? Isn't there a point where we stop deciding to sacrifice anything and start saving people?”

Nox sighed and looked at the ceiling. “I don't know,” he said after a bit. “I really don't.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, remembering back to the Fog of Doubt, and what Dorothy had said about becoming like her. Even if I hadn't admitted it before, it really was the thing I was most afraid of. “You might not know, but I do.”

Nox looked me up and down with something I recognized as respect.

“Okay,” he said slowly. “I'll help you. You've come this far without me. You've earned the right to make the decisions. Whatever you want me to do, I'll do. Your call. But do me a favor, and think about it first. Just sleep on it.”

I stood up. “Fine,” I said. Even if we were going to leave, I still had to figure out how. “But tomorrow, we go.”

Back in my chambers, Ozma was already asleep in the darkness. I got under the covers and was still trying to put together all the events of a long, confusing day, when, from the other bed, a voice cried out. I sat up.

It was Ozma. She was screaming, writhing under the silk sheets, struggling with an invisible enemy. “No!” she was shouting angrily. “Go away!”

Half of me just wanted to ignore her and try to fall asleep anyway. Ozma talking to herself was nothing new, after all.

But I jumped up, and felt a now familiar darkness coming over me as I prepared to fight whatever was attacking her.

“Help me!” Ozma pleaded, but it wasn't her own voice now. It was a man's.

Then she was screaming again, still writhing in pain and fury. “I won't!” she said. That was when I realized there was only one person in the room. Whatever was attacking Ozma was coming from within her.

“Pete?” I asked tentatively.

For a moment, the princess calmed herself, and turned her face to mine. “Please,” she said, and now I was sure it was him talking. “Amy. Please. You promised. Help me.”

“Pete . . . ,” I said. “I . . .”

“I helped you,” he said. “And you promised. I'm begging you.”

I had to make a split-second decision. I don't know if I would have done anything differently if I had that moment to do over again. It was true. He had helped me. More than once. He was my friend.

Despite what I'd said to Dorothy's Fantasm in the Fog of Doubt, and as wicked as I knew I could be when I had to, I had one weakness: kindness.

And kindness
is
a weakness. I can see that now. But it's a weakness I'm still not sure I'd want to give up entirely.

I didn't have a choice. He would have done the same for me.

I shifted myself, only for a moment, into the shimmering world of light and energy that I'd discovered, the world where all I had to do was pull a few strings to get what I wanted.

I pulled them, and Ozma's body began to contort.

She was Pete, then she was herself. Like she was melting, her figure began to deform itself into a grotesque mishmash: Pete's legs and chest, Ozma's arms and face. She was fighting it. But Pete was fighting, too, desperate to get out.

So I helped him a little more. I had promised him. I pushed a little harder, then pulled, giving the invisible magical skeins a sharp yank, and Ozma screamed one last time, at the top of her lungs, and was gone, leaving Pete in her place, sweaty and panting in the bed where she had just been lying.

He sat up. He was crying.

“I'm sorry,” he said, rubbing his brow. “Thank you.”

“No,” I said, my mind made up. “I won't let them do anything to you. I promised, and I still promise.”

“I'm sorry,” he said again. “I don't want any of this. I never did. But I don't believe you. And I need to live.”

He took the lamp from the table next to the bed, and before I knew what he was doing, he clocked me with it. Right in the face.

“Amy,” Nox was saying. I felt a hand patting the side of my face desperately. “Amy, get up. You have to wake up.”

My whole body shuddered as a sulfuric, noxious smell filled my lungs. It smelled like burning hair, but worse. I coughed, hacking, as my eyes fluttered open, and I saw Nox's stricken face looking down at me. Something had obviously roused him from sleep: he was wearing only a pair of loosely fitting pajama pants, and his hair looked even crazier than usual.

“Nox? What's going on? Why am I lying on the floor?”

“I don't know,” he said. “You tell me. Whatever. It doesn't matter. You have to get up. Something bad is happening. Something
really
bad.”

Then I remembered. Pete. Why I wasn't in my bed. I twisted out from underneath Nox and spun around, searching the room for my attacker. He was gone. Of course he was.

I racked my brain trying to remember every little detail,
trying to figure out why he had done what he had done, and where he could have gone. But my head was still spinning, and I could barely put the simplest thoughts together.

“Pete,” I said. “He hit me. There's something . . .”

I stopped as my gaze landed on the giant, panoramic window on the other side of the room. The stars were still out but the sky was bright. In every direction I looked, all I saw were flames.

All across the horizon, the islands that made up Rainbow Falls were awash in a sea of fire—and not just any fire. The flames that licked the sky were every possible color of the spectrum, from pastel pinks to deep, royal indigo and sick, toxic green.

The sky was burning. It wasn't just the islands. The rainbows themselves were on fire. If you've never seen a rainbow burn, consider yourself lucky. It might sound pretty, but it's not. It's horrifying.

This was where the smell was coming from.

“Did Pete do this?” I demanded.

“I don't know,” Nox said. “But we have to get out of here. Now.”

But before we could figure out
where
exactly we were supposed to be going, Polychrome burst through my door, with Heathcliff at her side and Bright, clad only in a pair of hot-pink underpants, right behind her.

“We've been betrayed,” Polychrome said.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I didn't mean . . .”

“They never mean to, do they?” she asked a shell-shocked-looking Bright.

He shook his head sadly. “This is it, huh, babe?” he asked, without emotion.

“This is it,” she said. “We couldn't stay above the fray forever. We knew this day would come. I just wish you didn't have to be here to see it. If you've ever been good for anything, try to make yourself useful for once in your useless life. If you kill someone, I promise I'll give you a surprise later.”

She flung the window open. “There,” she said, pointing to the largest and most distant of the floating islands in the burning sky. “They're waiting for us. They want us to come to them.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who's they? How did they find us?”

Polychrome looked at me in disgust. “Oh, don't be stupid,” she said. “Your little friend got scared and went running to the only people he could think of. Don't tell me it didn't occur to you that this might happen.”

The fact that it hadn't occurred to me made me feel even more foolish than I had before. But when I searched my pockets for the handkerchief that Queen Lulu had given me back in the forest and couldn't find it, I knew exactly what had happened.

Pete. He'd taken it. He'd used it to contact Glinda. He'd fallen for her trap—he'd gone to her for help, just like she'd tempted him to, and had brought her right to us.

Polychrome was right. How stupid could I have been? For that matter, how stupid could
Pete
have been? Did he think Glinda had even the slightest selfless intention in her entire body? Why hadn't he been able to see this would happen?

I guess sometimes things get bad enough and you just don't care anymore.

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

“Yes,” Polychrome spat. “Shit. We're all buried in it now. For years, the Rainbow Falls have stood protected by Old Magic, free of Dorothy's influence and incursion. It was charmed, protected from the outside, from those who wanted to find us. We were hidden. Now you've brought her to my doorstep, and all of Oz will suffer because of your idiocy.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I . . .”

Polychrome waved me off. “Forget it. There's nothing left to do but fight.”

She began to glow. In the distance, out the window, a lone rainbow crept toward us, winding in and out of the flames.

“I can get there faster,” I said.

“No!” Nox shouted. Too late. I was already slipping into shadow, moving through the nothingness toward an enemy that I could feel at the edge of it.

I felt my way through the dark. All I had to do was let myself become one with the shadows. I didn't know exactly where I was heading or what I would find, but there was a power out there, and it was calling to me.

Then I felt heat on my face, and sweat forming on my brow as it got hotter. I opened my eyes and saw that the shadows had brought me right to the center of an inferno: I was standing on one of the floating islands, and it was engulfed in flames of every color imaginable.

Anything else that distinguished it was impossible to say now. All that was left of it was smoke and fire.

Then, from out of the flames, stepped Glinda. She had
undergone a costume change since I'd last spotted her: now she was dressed for battle in a skintight, magenta bodysuit, complete with a gleaming armored bodice. Her strawberry-blond hair was pulled back into a neat, severe bun.

“Well, lookie loo,” she said in greeting. “Amy Gumm is here! I think we just about have a quorum for a tea party!”

With a wave of her hand, the flames immediately surrounding her subsided enough to leave a ring of burned-out rock—revealing that it wasn't just the two of us.

To Glinda's right was Pete. He was wrapped in chains—and from the scarlet aura around them, I could tell they weren't ordinary chains binding him, but magical ones. In addition to being tied up, he was gagged. I tried to meet his gaze, but he looked away, and I instantly knew my suspicion about what he had done was the right one.

I didn't even bother being disgusted. Pete, and the way he had betrayed me, were the least of my concerns. Because standing to Glinda's left was none other than Dorothy Gale herself. She wore a menacing, self-satisfied grin, like the cat who had just eaten the canary.

Crouched at her feet, looking more like a cat who had just eaten one too
many
canaries, was the Lion. Like Pete, his body was wrapped in a thick, heavy chain, one end of which Dorothy was clutching like a leash. He was whimpering pathetically, hiding his face with his huge paws, quivering in fear. A coward.

“Amy Gumm,” Dorothy said. “Just who we were hoping to run into. Somehow I had a feeling we might find you here—and
when I say a
feeling
, what I mean is that this guy told us.” She nodded smugly in Pete's direction. “Careful who you trust, hmm? That's a lesson you could both stand to learn. Can you imagine? He thought Glinda would actually help him.”

“I'm glad you found me,” I said, mustering more confidence than I actually felt. “It's actually pretty convenient. Everyone I want to kill, and you're all lined up in a neat little row so I can pick you off one by one. Now who wants to go first?”

I couldn't help shooting daggers at Pete. “How about you?” I asked. “Nah. Not worth my time.”

At that moment, my reinforcements came bursting through the wall of flames, the charred rainbow that had carried them expending itself in a final sputter of exhaust as they landed: first Polychrome, followed by Nox, Heathcliff, and, finally, a dazed-looking Bright.

Polychrome didn't waste any time. In one quick move, she jumped astride her cat, and they seemed to merge into one: together, they were undulating with color, a panther and unicorn and girl and rainbow all at once, a single form burning with even more intensity than the flames that were everywhere around us.

“Witch,”
the creature bellowed, rearing on sinewy haunches and launching itself straight for Glinda, claws extended and long as kitchen knives. As it flew through the air, its churning colors shifted up the spectrum until it was a radiant beast of pure light.

Glinda simply flung her arms out, throwing up protection, and the whole sky lit up in a blinding flash as the creature collided with her in a shower of multihued sparks. It looked like
someone had just set off a whole entire barge of fireworks in one go. But the sorceress just let out an uncharacteristically harsh cackle as she stood there, unharmed.

The monster that had been Polychrome just a minute ago drew back, undeterred, and struck again, quick as lightning. The battle was on, and I had to trust that Polychrome could handle her part of it. I had another enemy to fight.

Suddenly Nox was at my side. “Ready to raise the body count?” he asked.

“I'm ready,” I said. As if it would ever be a question. It had taken me sixteen years to figure it out, but this was what I had been born for: to fight. When I looked down on the knife that was already in my hand, I saw that it wasn't a knife at all anymore, but now a sword with a shining ebony blade.

Dorothy hadn't moved an inch. She was observing the scene in unconcerned amusement. She looked down at the Lion crouched at her feet.

“Cowardly one,” Dorothy commanded. “Prove your worth.”

“But . . . ,” the Lion whimpered. Dorothy yanked at the chain that bound him, pulling it tight around his neck, choking him with it.

“Kill them,” she said.

He roared, not with menace but with rageful anguish, and attacked, bounding for us. Nox hadn't come bearing a weapon, but he didn't need one: his magic was made for battle. His hands began to crackle with mystical energy. He dropped to the ground, letting the Lion sail over him, and then reached up
and plunged his burning fingers into the beast's belly. The Lion yelped and rolled away as Nox bounced right back up.

“I've got him,” Nox said. “You take Dorothy.”

I teleported myself ten feet over Dorothy's head and dove for her, swinging my sword with both hands like a batter ready to hit the game-winning home run.

She just laughed and ducked.

I kept on going, feeling like a windup toy. I was hitting her from every possible angle, slicing and dicing and shooting off one fireball after the next, moving with the grace and precision of a ballerina. But every shot I took missed, and she barely seemed to have broken a sweat.

She was still holding tightly to the end of the chain that she seemed to be controlling the Lion with, and she kept glancing over at him, muttering things under her breath like she was giving instructions. Was she controlling him with magic? It was like she was fighting in two places at once, her mind—and maybe her power—divided between me and Nox.

It should have given me an advantage to have her distracted like this. It didn't. Nothing I did seemed to even come close to hurting her.

But I couldn't give up. I wouldn't give up. I had been brought here to do this. It was my only purpose, and I wasn't going to fail again.

Then a voice pulled me out of my fugue. It was Pete. “Amy!” he shouted. I snapped my head toward him, only to see Bright lying unconscious on the ground and Nox in the clutches of the
Lion, who had him by the collar of his shirt and was dangling him aloft. Nox writhed and fought, helpless in his grip.

Dorothy shot Pete a look of disgusted consternation. “Oh, shut
up
,” she snapped, sending a bolt of energy flying for him. “You can't keep changing sides like that.” As the magic connected with a ruby-red flash, Pete disappeared, replaced, once again, by Ozma.

That was the least of my worries. If I didn't do something fast, Nox was a goner.

“Kill the warlock,” Dorothy cooed at the Lion, who was baring his fangs in threat. I realized he was trembling. Once a coward, always a coward. “I want to see him suffer,” Dorothy said.

“I . . . I . . . ,” the Lion stuttered. “I don't . . .”

Nox gave me a wide-eyed look of panic. “Forget me!” he shouted. “I'm not important.”

I looked from him, to the Lion, to Dorothy, making a calculation. Nox was right—this wasn't about him anymore—but at the same time, what good would it do for me to keep on fighting hopelessly against Dorothy just to let him die?

For her part, Dorothy just looked annoyed at the Lion's inaction. “Do it, coward,” she said. She gave a sharp yank on the chain she held the Lion with, and I saw a wave of energy ripple through it. So
that's
what she was controlling him with.

It gave me an idea: a cord can always be cut. So instead of striking directly at Dorothy again, or at the Lion himself, I stepped forward and brought my sword down on the leash.

A freezing jolt zinged through my body as the metal links shattered. The Lion collapsed to the ground, dropping Nox from his grasp, and Dorothy screamed, recoiling. Whatever I had done, it had wounded her.

I probably should have gone straight for her while I could—hit her while she was down. But I only had a moment to make my choice.

I was now certain that my decision to let the Lion go the last time I'd seen him had been stupid, and I could have weakened Dorothy before now, before she'd had a chance to bring us all together like this. And I should have put him out of his misery when I'd had the chance.

As he heaved on the ground, covering his face with his paws, I blinked myself to his side and in a single, determined stroke, sliced his head off.

I did it with no pleasure. I hardly thought about what I was doing at all, but I was surprised at how little resistance I felt as my dark blade tore through his thick, muscular flesh; at how effortlessly I drew blood.