Winterspell by Claire Legrand Page A

black mirrors until Clara was surrounded by a hundred versions of herself, peering out from behind a hundred laughing Godfathers, their bloody hands outstretched.
    â€œIt’s working!” he cried. “I’ve done it—Clara, at last I’ve done it!”
    The dragons, their work complete, settled silently at the edges of the room. Thousands of red eyes watched from the shadows and the ceiling; thousands of whirring metal wings glistened with silver blood. The air stung of salt and nearly choked her with its acridity.
    â€œWhat have you done?” Clara turned to Godfather, torn between terror and awe. He was sweating, his cheeks pinched and gray; she hurried to him and held him up as he caught his breath.
    â€œGodfather, can you hear me?” She slapped him lightly. The relentless clawing noises at the windows magnified tenfold. Fear swelled within heras she watched the boards over the windows bow under the pressure. They were everywhere, these phantom creatures, these loks, whatever that meant. “Are you hurt?”
    He laughed, weak. “A bit. That magic’s not meant for me, but I had no choice. I have no choice, not until things are as they should be once more. It wounds me every time.” He straightened, glaring at the statue and swinging his fist through the air. “And yet still I triumph!”
    Clara drew him back to her. “Godfather, pay attention. Something is breaking in. What are they? What shall we do?”
    â€œWe shall do as I’ve taught you,” he said, turning her away and withdrawing his own sword, slender and unadorned, from where it leaned against the statue. “We shall fight.”
    The energy vibrating off Godfather was cold, as taut as silver wire. It frightened and energized her. She wondered if this was what being struck by lightning felt like, and she wondered why this was happening, and if it had something to do with the statue, which trembled furiously on its base.
    At that moment several . . . things , hulking and black, burst through the windows on the mezzanine and crashed into the forest Godfather had made. Hellish screams filled the air, and against the backdrop of a broken window, Clara saw the silhouette of a long, fanged snout, a knotted back, a hulking, bearlike body covered in armor, and three naked tails.
    Rats, Clara thought. The similarity was unmistakable.
    But, no, not rats. What had Godfather called them? Loks.
    Behind the loks, against the shattered window, a tall, lean figure stood, pale and clothed in ragged garments. The figure was decidedly male, and a light at his temple blinked mechanically, attached to some sort of wired apparatus. He called out a guttural command in an unfamiliar language, and the loks screamed in answer. They were approaching fast, crashing toward Clara through Godfather’s wild maze.
    â€œKeep them away from me,” Godfather said, turning to the statue. “I’ll help you as I can, but I must concentrate. Do you understand?”
    He withdrew more dragons from his pocket, tinier ones, and sliced his unmarred palm above them. Silver dripped onto the dragon’s serpentine necks. They came alive at the contact and scattered across the statue’s surface, ripping at the metal, peeling it back bit by bit. They swarmed over the statue, biting and tearing, their spiderweb wings writhing. They seemed to follow Godfather’s directions across the statue’s body; he was coaxing them to life as a puppet master would, murmuring things under his breath and occasionally slicing open his forearm for fresh drops of blood. As the dragons moved, the statue began jerking violently, screaming something too inhuman to interpret. Blue light flashed along the seams of its metal plates, illuminating the etched symbols from within.
    â€œKeep them away from you?” Clara backed away from the sight, sword in hand. Sounds of battle came from throughout the ballroom—shrieks and