The Golden Tower (Magisterium #5)(17)

Astride the dragon, grinning now, Alex shouted, his voice booming across the forest. “Stop! All Masters of the Magisterium, stop where you are! I am Alexander Strike, the first ever Devoured of chaos, and I will destroy you all unless you follow my commands.”

A Devoured of chaos? Call looked over at Master Rufus, but Master Rufus was intent on staring at Alex. He looked enraged. All the Masters did, but they had stopped in their tracks, knowing they had no choice. Above them, they could hear the Iron Years screaming, their cries carried thinly on the wind.

Call turned to Tamara. She was trembling with fury.

“We have to do something,” she said. The black flames licked higher, eating up more of the woods. Fire, Call thought. He had put out fire before.

It nearly killed you, Aaron protested. Now, without a counterweight —

Alex was still talking. “First, release Anastasia Tarquin from captivity or I will drop these brats into the fire and then finish off the rest of you. After you watch them burn.”

A murmur ran through the crowd. Anastasia Tarquin? Not everyone knew she had been Alex’s stepmother; even Call was astonished Alex cared enough to bother springing her from prison.

It was Master Rufus who stepped forward to speak. “You must give us time,” he called. “We have to contact the Panopticon.”

Alex was grinning savagely. Call could only imagine the pleasure he was getting out of ordering around his old teachers. “Get a tornado phone out here in five minutes, or I’ll toast a tot.”

Master Rockmaple turned and plunged into the Magisterium.

“Call and Tamara,” Alex said, turning his star-blackened gaze to them. His face looked like parchment behind which brilliant black light was burning. “What a great reunion!” He threw his head back and laughed.

“You should have stayed in the void,” Call shouted as he concentrated on pulling the air away from the chaos fire eating away at the trees. But no matter how he pulled, the flames didn’t so much as flicker. They weren’t like regular fire, fed on air. Call wasn’t sure what they fed on, but as his magic flowed toward them, he felt neither heat nor light. If the opposite of chaos was soul, then he feared the fire fed on the substance of the world itself.

He couldn’t put out the fire that way, but he was a Makar. He should be able to control it. He sent his power toward the licking flames of chaos, concentrating on stopping its spread. It seemed like it was working — the fire began to ebb, burning itself out with nothing more to feed on.

“And you should have never been born,” Alex told him, looking delighted to do so. “You are a parody of all that the Enemy of Death was, you flimsy imitation.”

“He’s a Devoured,” Tamara said quietly to Call. “That’s kind of like being an elemental. You could control a chaos elemental, right?”

Good idea, Aaron thought.

Call smiled with vengeful hope. If he could control Alex, he would be hard-pressed not to make him do something stupid and humiliating — after, of course, setting down the Iron Year kids. He reached out again, this time not toward the fire itself but toward Alex —

— only to hit what felt like a wall of sticky nothing. He felt his power being pulled toward Alex and yanked it back with what felt like physical force. Whatever Alex had become, he was too powerful for Call to control.

Master Rockmaple raced back through the Mission Gate with Master North and Mr. Rajavi — who had apparently not made it off the grounds of the Magisterium. Master North carried a tornado phone.

Tamara looked over at her father. He gave her a quick glance in return but didn’t speak to her, which was probably the right move. Better for Alex not to be reminded of their relationship. Better for Alex not to think of a new way to hurt one of them.

“We can’t really give in to this,” Master North was saying. Then he spotted the kids hanging from the claws of the dragon, both of them looking increasingly panicked, increasingly sure they were going to be fed to chaos.

“For now,” Mr. Rajavi said, activating the tornado phone.

On the other end was a guard at the Panopticon. Call recognized the uniform with a shudder.

“We need you to get Anastasia Tarquin and prepare her for release. But bring her here first. We need to see her and that she is all right as she is set free,” Mr. Rajavi said.

“Anastasia Tarquin?” demanded the guard, stunned. “On whose authority?”

“On behalf of the Assembly, which I speak for,” Mr. Rajavi said as the guard seemed to slowly realize both who he was talking to and the confusion of what was happening in the background. He paled and ran off.

Up on his dragon, Alex smiled, smug. The dragon opened its claws and the girl slipped, her scream carrying to them. The dragon caught her again, as though she were a ball and it was playing a game. Her screams went on and on.

“Stop!” cried Mr. Rajavi. “We’re giving you what you want! Only return the children —”

“Sure, I’ll send them back — lightly seared,” said Alex, laughing. It occurred to Call that this was what Alex had always wanted to be. This was what he’d always thought the Enemy of Death was supposed to be like: this maniacal, howling horror.

“The children are innocent,” said Master Rufus. “They have done nothing to you. Take me.”

“Drew was innocent,” snarled Alex. Call struggled not to point out that this wasn’t in the least bit true. He didn’t think it would be helpful. “You murdered him, all of you. You are the teachers of lies!”