Page 116 of Time's Fool

“We’ll see,” he said viciously.

And then they were falling—straight toward another portal.

Kit hadn’t even noticed it opening up below them, and didn’t know whether Anthony had created it or Rilda had come to their aid.

He also didn’t care.

“Sh-sh-sh-sh—” Kit managed to get out.

“What?” Gillian screamed.

He tried to answer, but it felt like all the breath had been forced out of his lungs and he honestly didn’t know which way was up anymore. But it didn’t matter because the dragon was falling now, too, with a boiling mass of flame rushing out in front of it. And that seemed to knock something loose in his throat.

“Shut the damned portal!” he screamed.

“I can’t! We haven’t gone through it yet—”

“When we’re through! When we’re through!”

“I still can’t! This isn’t—”

“Augghhhhh!” Kit shrieked, just as the dragon’s tail swatted them away from the opening, right before they would have escaped through it.

“Ooh, that’s him done for,” the old woman said, with what sounded like satisfaction.

“I thought you didn’t like violence,” the young man sneered.

“Watch your tongue, boy. I’ve just seen a sight more of it than you.”

“So has he. Oh, wait. I think the witch might have saved him.”

And she had. Gillian had thrown up a shield an instant before they were hit, which didn’t stop them from being batted across the sky like a tennis ball, but did keep their organs from liquifying in the process. More or less.

And then several things happened simultaneously: a group of crazed looking women on broomsticks appeared out of the night, casting a dozen spells at the dragon; Kit’s Lady whispered something that had power flowing through him again; and Rilda raced up alongside their bubble, yelling.

“What?” Kit stared at her. She appeared to be upside down. Or perhaps that was him.

“I said, put it down!” Rilda told him, furiously.

For a moment, Kit didn’t understand what she meant. The pain slamming through him from his injured leg and the strength that he was being sent by his master had met in his head, and were having a party to which his consciousness did not appear to have been invited. But he clung on anyway, and finally understood.

Only to shake his head.

“Why not?” she screamed.

“The damned thing won’t let go! I’ve tried—”

She cursed, and then threw out the arm with the wand in it, and blasted another portal into existence in thin air. Kit sailed through with the mother dragon right on his tail, which rather made the whole thing pointless as far as he was concerned. But there was no time to debate it, not when he found himself speeding through, not one portal, but a whole line of them, opening up in a string in front of him.

It looked like a tunnel, albeit the strangest he had ever seen. There were gaps in the sides, which he realized after a moment were the different landscapes they were passing through. Each was visible briefly whenever he was dumped out of one portal and before he entered the next, striping the swirling, blue-gray darkness with glimpses of a stormy sea, with great waves lashing a jagged shore; a brilliant desert where the sun still shone, blindingly bright after the darkness; and a frozen wasteland with snow whipping against his skin, so cold that it burned, and felt like it was about to scour all the hide off his leg—

His leg?

He looked down at his missing limb to find that his calf had reappeared, having grown new flesh about the bone, although he was still missing a foot. But veins and flesh were reaching downward even as he watched, and attempting to knit themselves together. It was so shocking that he almost forgot about the danger he was in.

He had heard of vampires who had healed seemingly impossible wounds, but had not had the experience himself. It was . . . disconcerting. He could feel the phantom limb he no longer possessed, and then see it as it was being rebuilt, piece by piece. The power his master was lending him—

“Has limits,” she informed him dryly. “Concentrate.”

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