9
‘Gods curse it,’ I swore, groping for my pipes and my wand. I should have been better prepared, but it had happened so damned fast — Ayllin hadn’t even reached the bottom of the staircase.
‘Pipes,’ barked my mother to me.
‘Ayllin—’
‘Pipes. Your job is to ruin that damned lindworm.’
I don’t know what Mother planned to do, but Jay had his rubescent Wand in hand and was running for the stairs. My mother was going to extract Ayllin with her bare hands, apparently — or hand, anyway.
Me, though. Ruin. Right.
This time when I played, I went for a different song. The last one was a lullaby; my only goal had been to keep the thing pacified long enough for us to escape. Lindworms aren’t up there on the same level of rarity as, say, griffins, but we don’t wreck them without good cause either
