“It’s gone! You monstrous beast! I know what you want—you want her, don’t you!” Baslik pointed at Isla with the tip of the long, sharp knife he was still holding. “Well, you can’t have her! If I can’t breed her, no one can!”
And he ran at Isla with the knife. At the same time, he activated the Force Bubble he always wore, which surrounded him at once in a shimmering, impenetrable layer of protection.
Isla watched him, frozen and helpless. Inside, every nerve was screaming with terror, for she knew that while the Force Bubble protected Baslik from outside threats, he could also reach through it and do whatever he liked.
So he was perfectly capable of stabbing her right through the bubble while staying safely inside it, protected from any and all attacks himself.
How often had she heard him extol the Force Bubble’s virtues? He was immensely proud of it—it could repel any kind of attack, from projectile weapons to lasers to flame throwers. It was heat resistant up to five hundred thousand Nadirs. He had once told her that it could withstand the blast of a fifty-megaton bomb even if it blew up right in his face, as long as he was enclosed in the bubble. It was flame proof, blast proof, projectile proof, and bullet proof.
Then, just as Baslik had reached her, and was in the act of stabbing downward with the knife, the Drake blew another sharply collimated blast of freezing air.
Apparently, the Force Bubble wasn’t ice proof.
Or maybe it was just that the Drake’s breath was so cold it superseded the bubble’s controls, Isla thought. For Baslik was suddenly frozen in place—or at least, the bubble was. It was an icy sphere surrounding him and its sides were no longer permeable from the inside. That much was made clear by the way he was screaming and stabbing at the frozen side of the bubble ineffectually with his knife.
“I will kill her!” he shrieked at the Drake, who was glaring down at him with those pale, deadly eyes. “You’ll never have her! No one will if I can’t! I swear it! I swear—”
The Drake leaned down and opened its jaws. It bit a hole in the top of the Force Bubble, as though it was taking a bite out of a big, round ice cube, Isla thought. This left Baslik completely exposed and it seemed that he realized it, for he suddenly stopped screaming and threatening and cowered instead.
“Wait, now—wait!” he exclaimed, looking up at the great beast, which was staring down at him through the hole it had bitten in the frozen bubble. “You can’t really think I was being serious? Why, I was only joking! Take the girl—you’re welcome to her! You want her for a snack, I presume—well go on—bite her head right off if you like! She’s completely immobilized so she can’t stop you or run away. I don’t mind a bit—she’s no more use to me. She—”
A rumbling growl came from the great beast’s chest. Then he—for Isla was quite sure it was a he—leaned down and blew another icy blast—but this time inside the bubble.
Baslik stopped talking and froze in place—literally. Isla could see through the side of the bubble and when the chilly mist cleared, she saw that her husband now looked like an icy statue of himself. Ice crystals covered his skin and clothing and hair and his eyes were open but unseeing. It was exactly like what had happened to his tentacle shaft, only it was his entire body this time, she thought numbly.
Then the Drake lifted one enormous paw—was it a paw or more like a hand with very long claws, Isla wondered? —and brought it down on the bubble.
The frozen Force Bubble held for a moment, then jagged cracks appeared, running down its spherical sides like lightning strikes. After a moment the bubble literally burst—jagged shards of ice flying everywhere.
Isla gasped as she saw one headed right for her. But suddenly something flicked out in front of her, faster than her eye could follow, and the ice shard bounced off it.
Isla blinked. Was it some kind of shield? It was black with pale blue ribs running down it—rather like a kind of wing, she thought. But a wing without feathers. Then she realized it was a wing—the Drake had extended it to protect her from the flying shards of ice.
After a moment, the immense beast folded the wing against its back again. He curved his snaky head around to contemplate Isla as though checking to see that she was all right.
“I…I’m fine,” she told him in a low, hoarse voice. “Th-thank you.”
The Drake nodded his head once in a gesture that clearly said, you’re welcome. Then he turned his attention back towards the place were the bubble had been.