But in that chaos, the magician didn't see him coming until he was very close. One of the enemy stoneskins plowed into Reive's ride, with a sound like two boulders crashing together. Reive frantically kicked off and flew through the air. He made one last attempt to shift, but he was still human-shaped when he thumped into the cleft in the rocks where the magician had made his stand.
Reive tackled him, because there was no way he could win if the magician had a chance to get those fiery-hot invisible chains around him. They slammed into the rock wall together.
It felt like grabbing a live coal. Those scars in the magician's body, bleeding coal-red light, didn't just look hot, they were hot. But for once, the growing numbness in his body worked in Reive's favor. He pressed the other, slighter man into the wall, flattening the magician beneath his own half-stone body.
The cowl had slipped off the magician's head, and Reive was struck once again by how young he looked. Not long ago, Reive thought, this might have been him. Some dumb kid, trapped by other people's choices.
The magician struggled to free his arms, but Reive had him pinned, and it appeared that he couldn't do magic if he couldn't move; those hand gestures were a necessary part of it. The unnatural heat of the magician's body scorched Reive's wet clothes and what was left of his human skin.
"Get off me," the magician grated out as Reive crushed him to the wall. "Help me, why don't you? We could work together. We want some of the same things, I bet.”
Reive snarled. "You want to stop turning into stone too?"
Shock crossed the magician's sharp-featured face. "I thought you wanted to use the book to turn into a gargoyle."
Reive barked out a hard laugh. "Want to? It's happening to me whether I like it or not. What I want to do is turn back the clock and stop it. Change myself back to what I was before."
"You can do that with the book too. I could help you."
This made him hesitate enough to be pushed back a step. "Mace said it's impossible. It can't be stopped. All I can do is complete the transformation."
"Of course he said that. He's a gargoyle. Why wouldn't he want you to be like him?"
Reive's doubts flooded back. Somewhere deep in his mind his dragon was protesting, but it was so distant and weak that he could barely hear it. Darkness hovered around the edges of his vision. He was losing his fight to stay conscious. He couldn't win. Maybe the magician could help him; it seemed all other hope was gone.
"You can't trust them," the magician went on, and that was his mistake. Reive's head filled with thoughts of Jess, beautiful and defiant. In flesh or stone, human or gargoyle, she was lovely and true.
"The one I can't trust," Reive snarled, "is you!"
He had nothing left to lose. He threw his good arm around the magician's neck and, with his last strength, dragged them both over the edge.
They fell. Reive held on, even as his consciousness collapsed. He was dimly aware of hitting the water with a cold shock, and then nothing.
Jess
Water fountained over Jess. She blinked it out of her eyes, gasping, and dropped the pieces of stoneskin in her claws.
"Reive?"
She floundered toward him just as the magician scrambled to the edge of the pool, water hissing into steam as it streamed off him.
"Mace—!"
"I'm on him!" the gargoyle shouted. "Get Reive!"
No one needed to tell her. Jess knew where she needed to be. She threw herself forward, diving beneath the surface. Even with her eyes open, she could barely see; it was nearly dark under the pool's surface. She felt her way toward where she had seen Reive fall, and her hand slipped across his clothes. For some reason she was having trouble getting a grip on him. When she finally did get her arms around him, he was horrendously heavy. She remembered how easily she had carried him before, but now she had to struggle. Was she weakening from fighting the stoneskins? She didn't feel weak. But his weight was like an anchor holding her to the bottom of the pool.
No! I won't leave him here—I won't—
Her head broke the surface at last, and she sucked in deep gulps of air. She was dimly aware of the fighting continuing around her, but she only had eyes for Reive's face. Eyes closed—unconscious—gray—
He was made entirely of stone.
"Reive," she gasped. His weight was already dragging her arms down again. It was like holding a man-sized statue. He was just as still, and just as hard. Unlike her living, yielding stone flesh, his gray pebbled skin was simply stone. There was no flesh left on him anywhere.
"Reive!"
He didn't answer. Frantic, desperate, she let his weight pull her under the surface and went to her knees on the bottom of the pool. He lay across her lap, rigid, holding her down. Despite being living stone, she did still need to breathe, and she felt her lungs cry out for air. But there were no bubbles rising from his mouth. She ran her fingers over his lips and felt nothing but cold, immobile stone. His mouth wouldn't open. He was like a carving of some strangely inert stone that her usual stone sense couldn't penetrate.
Reive—no—Reive, you're supposed to live, you're supposed to change—
Was it because the magician had interrupted the ceremony? Rage began to rise in her, fanning her flagging strength even as her lungs screamed for oxygen. She started scrabbling backward across the bottom of the pool, dragging the statue that had been Reive toward the edge. Maybe if they got him out into the air—maybe it just took time—
Something hard and clumsy and rocky slammed into her from behind.
Sandstone.
What little breath remained in her body went out of her in a cloud of bubbles. She involuntarily started to suck in a breath, and choked as seawater flooded her mouth. Coughing and gasping, she was dragged out of the pool in the grip of several stoneskins.
"No!" she roared.
Her arms were immobilized, but her feet were still free. She lashed out, raking her hind claws through crudely formed stone flesh.
"Reive—!"
She couldn't believe he was dead. Wouldn't believe it. He couldn't be dead, so she couldn't just leave him on the bottom of the pool, where he had no air to breathe, even with some part of her telling her that he didn't need to breathe anymore. She kicked and raked at the stoneskins surrounding her.
"Mace—Mace! Where are you? Help me!"
"He's not coming to your aid," the magician's voice said, trembling slightly with strain.
Dimly, she realized that the crunch and crash of battling stoneskins was no longer going on around her. There was only the thunder of the surf beyond the tidal pool. Twisting around in the grasp of the stoneskins holding her, she saw with a shocked start that Mace was pinned to the cliff face with several stone spires through his body, like a butterfly in a specimen jar. He didn't seem to be moving.
"Take her there," the magician ordered, and the stoneskins dragged a resisting Jess to the cliff face. "Hold her."
The magician limped to her. He was looking considerably the worse for wear; he had lost his cloak in the pool, leaving him naked to the waist. In the near-dark at the bottom of the grotto, he glowed brightly as if lit from within. Fire seemed to bleed out through every one of the many cracks and scars in his skin. There was blood too, in places where his skin had freshly split open, trickling down his arms and hands.