“Clair said from time to time in the past, they made mages stand around and magic up extra feasts, so they could eat and eat and the food would vanish and they wouldn’t get fat. There was a spell book for that. I just made up my own recipes!”
“What a waste of magic,” Irene said, hands on hips. “I mean, I like to eat, but all day?”
“Well, it’s considered, um — ”
“Decadent,” Seshe supplied, making a gag-face.
“That was the word.”
“They keep the servants up all day and night, too,” Diana muttered, scowling.
I opened my mouth, and then closed it. Diana never talked about her past, so asking How do you know? might be considered nosy.
“Eating all day was fun?” Sherry asked. “It sounds boring.”
“Well, anyway, I think it’s a fine spell to have,” Faline declared. “I like those pies. They squish so nicely! And make a delightful mess all over those fawncy clothes! Oh, and PJ got so mad he forgot to cuss!”
“Too bad it isn’t permanent for them,” Irene said. “Just think how they must feel, riding back in the hot sun with all that goo on them, and serves them right.”
“But they’ll be back,” Sherry said, eyes round.
“If they do,” I said, “they’re gonna come this way, since it’s the main road. And so, now that I know magic really works — I mean, mine does — let’s booby trap this place, so they decide they never want to be here again.”
“Won’t be for a while in any case,” Dhana said, her eyes closed as she sniffed the air.
“Oh. Sure. Right,” Irene said, wiping her sweaty brow. Then she forgot the weather as she stared at the road. “Look at that!”
The goo had lessened in volume. As she watched the edges of it turned insubstantial, and then vanished altogether, like fog in the sun. The components were going back into the ground.
“Wow,” I muttered under my breath. Magic was so ... so amazing, so wonderful, and even more amazing was the idea that I could do it!
“C’mon, let’s get back to the Junky. I’m thirsty, and hungry too, and I sure am not going to eat any of that!” Faline said, pointing at the last of the mess in the road.
“After I get this,” Diana said, stooping to pick up PJ’s gaudy sword. “Trophy. For our triumph.” She swished it back and forth.
“Good idea,” I said.
So we trooped back to the Junky.
After a rest, I transferred up to the white palace, and I found Clair busy at her studies. She stopped, of course, and listened while I told her everything.
She grinned at my account of the pie fight, but other things made her frown. Especially that business about the ‘allies’ that Purple had mentioned, and then corrected with such suspicious haste.
“What do you think that was? Fobo’s stinker of a brother?” I asked.
Clair shook her head. “No. Has to be Kwenz,” she said, looking serious again. “I’ve had several reports of messengers riding into the Shadowland. Wherever he’s been, he’s now back.”
FOURTEEN — Kwenz Strikes
If Clair could have, she would have kept us forever safe from danger.
This was of course despite the fact that she was herself in danger, something she sometimes tried to hide, and other times shared, at least with me. I worked hard at my magic studies. Oh, not every day, because sometimes the weather was just too nice, and we girls would get involved with a long, complicated game.
I also skipped magic studies when I got busy writing down the first version of my records, from which I have taken this account you’re reading now. At first I wrote down everything — everything the girls said, everything we did, guesses (mostly wrong) about various things. I even put down what desserts we had, because I still wasn’t used to having dessert, especially whatever I wanted.
Then I’d see Clair, or think of some spell I wished I could do, and guilt would goad me right back to my desk and I’d hit the books, studying furiously for the better part of a day, and determined to keep to a tough schedule. The sort of schedule that had become second nature to Clair.
So my progress was kind of like a hopping frog: a bloop this way, then that way, then another way, but I sort of made progress.
The main thing is, the girls were happy, and so was Clair.
Well, we had one last pretty patch of weather, and knowing that winter was nigh, Diana suggested a last camp-out in the woods. Most of the girls thought it was too cold at night. Irene and Dhana had had one of their squabbles, and so Irene declared that she was coming with us, that she needed fresh air. We all knew she hated camping, but we’d also learned by then not to say anything, or she’d get stubborn.
So the three of us carted sleeping bags out of the Junky, and up to a little hill that Diana liked, near a stream. I made us a fire, which was a big mistake, but the balmy day had fast turned chill.
We changed to nightgowns in the bags, and then sat in them round the fire, the orange light flickering on the girls’ faces as we traded off telling stories. Diana’s eyes were so dark the fire reflection danced in them, twin reflections, as she spoke, and listened. Her voice was soft, her stories short, mostly about animals.
Irene’s mood always improved when she told stories. They were usually funny, made up things about PJ and Fobo, silly stuff that was funny at the time because of the way she acted them out. Writing the words down just doesn’t do them justice.
When it was my turn I told an episode from a story I’d read during my days on Earth — Pippi Longstocking — that the girls loved hearing (they thought she was a real girl, as if anyone on Earth could be so lucky), and then we snuggled down to sleep. I remember lying there, looking up through the layers and layers of black branches and twigs silhouetted against the dark blue sky with its scattering of stars. A cold breeze whispered through the branches, stirring them just enough to make that ghostly forest sound, and insects chirruped quietly. Most of the birds had gone north, and those that remained seemed not to make noise at night. The air smelled of cold ground and pine, a smell that I found cozy because I was warm in my bag, and the firelight was so lovely.
I drifted off to sleep while watching the slowly dying flames, my heart light with joy at how much I loved this place, and the people, and the prospect of a future here for ever and ever.
So I slid into dreams. About Earth, of all things — running around school, trying to find Clair, but all I saw were more buildings, and more, and —
And then I was awake, so suddenly I couldn’t figure out where I was.
“Someone’s coming!” Diana muttered. “That way!”
My first reaction was relief to find that I was not on Earth, but here in MH. The joy was strong enough to keep me from feeling the least sense of danger.
But Diana felt it. “Gotta be some creep,” she muttered. “If it was the girls, they’d yell.”
So there we stood, formidable warriors three in our tangled hair, rumpled nightclothes, and bare toes — mine still in my sleeping bag — looking around in the darkness.
Crackle, crunch! Heavy steps, coming at us from two sides.
There was only one thing to do —
“Run!” Irene squeaked, gathering up her bag, and she flitted down the hill, looking like a ghost in her billowing nightgown.
“Run,” I echoed to Diana, who lingered, uncertain, as I tried to kick free of my sleeping bag.
Tromp, tromp. I could hear the footsteps, and all I could think of was PJ and his idiots. Well, I had some fine new spells for them. Diana took off, running silently, and I started after —
Got one step, and one foot caught in the opening of my sleeping bag. I went flying, landing hard on rocks and a tree root. “Ow!”
Tromp, tromp, the footsteps came faster. I scrambled dizzily to my hands and knees. Then a mitt closed on the back of my nightgown and I was hauled to my feet, coughing and choking.
“Got one,” said a voice, that of a youngish man.
“One’s enough,” sai
d another. “Let’s go.”
Strange words — and yet I understood them. I remembered my medallion, and realized that I was hearing Chwahir, but the words translated into my mind as Mearsiean. As Mearsiean, and not as English. I guess I was still stunned from that hard fall, because I didn’t worry — at first — as that mitt muscled me down the hill to where horses waited, with more silhouettes. Mearsiean had become so comfortable to me, my thoughts were now in it. I hadn’t even been aware of the changeover.
Abruptly someone tossed me up onto a saddle pad, mounted behind me. I began to struggle, and someone smacked me. Not really hard, but no one had hit me since I’d left Earth, and it made me wild with anger. It wasn’t my Dad, and I didn’t have to sit there and take it! I doubled my fists and swung them, though I almost fell off the horse.
“Here.” Someone else threw something heavy and scratchy over me, catching on my arms and covering my face. I smelled mildew, and coughed, trying to fight the thing off. But then the ends of it wound tighter, and there I was, caught in a heavy woolen cloak. My face felt hot, and I could scarcely breathe. “That’ll keep her quiet.”
A sturdy arm held me in place and the horse began to move.
Don’t ever ride a horse when you can’t see. It’s a terrible experience.
That ride seemed to last forever. It was so long, and I felt so stuffy, I actually fell into a kind of nasty sleep, waking when I was abruptly yanked off the horse, set more or less on my feet, and the cloak unwrapped. My head ached, I felt dizzy and slightly sick, so I didn’t react, especially when I saw where I was.
First thing that caught my attention was the reddish, fitful glow of high-placed torches. Magic torches. They cast shadows over faces below, so all I could see were tall young men dressed in sturdy dark-dyed wool.
“This way,” one said to me, tipping his head.
That red light lapped over his face when he moved, revealing pasty skin, ordinary features, and something really, really creepy; black eyes. I mean, the pupils so wide they swallowed all the iris, so there wasn’t any color but black. Night eyes.
I’d been bagged by a gaggle of Kwenz’s Shadow Chwahir.
My shoulders hunched up to my ears. I slunk along, terrified, my bare feet slapping on mossy cold stone as we left a stable area and walked into a stone archway at the side of the castle. There was a brief glimpse of towers and walls, torches posted along them, and beyond the highest tower enormous cliffs ending in thick cloud. Then we were inside.
Then this has gotta be Kwenz’s castle.
The thought of Clair worrying forced me to abandon both being mad and feeling sorry for myself as luxuries to be enjoyed later. After I got away.
Chwahir were stationed at either side of me, and even if I could outrun someone so much taller, where would I go? I was completely lost in that warren of stone corridors, marked only by the high torches at infrequent intervals. The darkness was murky, and I tripped two or three times, stubbing my toes painfully on the rough stone.
There was a lot of climbing until we reached a big door with a guard before it. This corridor was better lit than most, causing the guards on either side of me to look down, squinting those black eyes against the light. They could see fine in the gloom, but real light hurt their eyes.
The guard before the door looked bored until we arrived, then he raised his brows, stepped aside, and opened the heavy iron-banded door. In we went.
“Ah.” That came from a tall, slightly bent, thin figure over near the fireplace. I looked with fear into a long face with pale, protuberant eyes under tangled grayish white brows. This had to be Kwenz. He was quite old, all right, and obviously hadn’t bothered to cut hair or beard in decades. He wore a long black robe with loose sleeves. “That was not hard, I surmise.”
“They had a campfire,” said the guard to my left. “Led us right to them.”
Remember that about campfires, I thought, trying hard not to shake. I sniffed in disgust, and then coughed. The next thing that hit me about Kwenz’ magic chambers was the smell. No, not of blood or bats’ wings — magic is magic, it’s how you form the spells that makes it “black” or “white”. It smelled of old smoke and mildew and old laundry. The room was much better lit — making the guards wince — but again, from torches set high up, and kept alight by magic.
Kwenz’s eyes were normal, a pale color. He looked at me, and chuckled, a wheezy sound that was not at all merry or kind. “Let’s try a little experiment, shall we?” he said.
“No!” I yelled.
“Make her stand still.”
I tried to dash for the door — what did I have to lose? — but the two Chwahir guards who’d brought me in both put out hands, each grabbing one of my arms, pushed me up against a wooden support near the big worktable.
“Here,” Kwenz said, reaching for a coil of cord that lay atop a bookcase, and one guard held me against the wood, and another would the cord round me. Cord that had been used before, probably lots of times, to hold unwilling victims still for ‘experiments’, I realized as my terror intensified.
He waved the two guards away, and they retreated, probably to chow down to a good meal, after a job well done.
“What’s your name?” Kwenz asked — in Mearsiean — peering down at me from those pouchy, protuberant eyes.
I was not “home”, forced to be polite even to teachers who used sarcasm as a weapon, or angry parents. I was stuck here, a prisoner, with someone who intended harm to Clair, to her kingdom — who was, in fact, evil.
“None of your beeswax,” I stated. I answered in the same tongue, not wanting to let him know I could understand Chwahir.
“You are one of the white-haired brat’s followers, are you not?”
“No, I’m Howdy Doody,” I snarled, naming a puppet from Earth TV I’d heartily loathed. “And I’ve never seen Clair before in my life.” Ah, it felt so good to mouth off! This was Clair’s enemy, and I would not betray her with the tiniest smidge of cooperation.
Kwenz looked sour, but said nothing as he pulled a book toward him, covered with tiny writing. He then uncapped a little bowl with something in it that smelled odd. He brought it near me, and I almost blanked out from fear.
But then I felt something cold on the top of my head, and his gnarled fingers withdrew, and he wiped viscous blue stuff absently on his robe.
My scalp crawled. The gunk spread, but didn’t drip.
“Let’s see if we can capture your essence,” he said. “It would be so very handy a spell. Very handy.”
He bent over the book and started speaking. Magic words. I didn’t recognize any of them, he spoke too low for that, but I did recognize the cadence, and the feeling of electricity in the air. Only this time that feeling was so intense it was almost a smell. My ears buzzed, my teeth buzzed, even my bones buzzed.
Dizziness hit me, and a slow, sloggy sensation as if I was at the bottom of a swimming pool. When I tried to move, I realized I was shrinking! I could look up and see Kwenz, still reading; the blue gunk smeared down my face and neck, or rather it extended over me, making a jelly-like, quivering oval shape, kind of like a drop of mercury, but you could see blurrily through it.
Terrified, I shoved at that weird bluish curtain. I was able to use my hands! The ropes had fallen away. I shoved again. The blue wall felt like a plastic bubble, kind of.
Had the table grown? So! I was shrinking! And if I didn’t move, and fast, I was going to be shrunk into nothing! Or if not nothing, then swallowed up into that blue ball of fluid that was getting smaller all the time.
So I stepped out of the ropes and ran at that shimmery blue curtain. A sticky, stretchy sort of wall clung to my hair and face and hands and down the rest of me, but when I shoved hard, it ripped in a kind of gummy wall, With a faint pop it let me through. I dove over the pile of ropes and fabric, realizing that with the bindings I’d left my nightgown behind. I scrubbed my face and arms off the best I could from the sticky blue stuff, though now I was so tiny the cotton fa
bric of my nightgown felt like interwoven cords.
I glanced up fearfully. But Kwenz — like many mages — had his eyes shut as he kept intoning. The electrical snap in the air stayed nasty, but the buzzing in me faded away to nothing. I ran across the stone floor, careful not to trip, and hid beside one of the table legs. My ring! My necklace!
I scrambled back, found them both among the waist-high pile of ropes and cotton. The ring I squeezed into, and it settled round my waist, the stone sticking out. It was heavy, but bearable. The necklace chain I wrapped round and round and round my arms, so the medallion hung against my front. It, too, was heavy.
I retreated, and just in time. Kwenz halted, and for a time there was no sound but his heavy breathing, as he recovered from what had to have been a really nasty spell-reaction. At last he reached down, carefully got the jiggling blue ball, which was now about the size of a golf ball, and so thick and blue you couldn’t see through it. He rolled it into the cup thing, his hands trembling.
That he set on the table — I heard the thump way above me — and he mumbled in a weary voice, “There, then, child. Jonnicake wants you, he can have you.” And wisp, wisp, wisp, Kwenz shuffled to the door. “That should keep him busy,” Kwenz added with a wheezy sort of laugh, and went out.
What now?
Get out, of course!
I hiked across the floor, walking with care over the rough stone under my load of silver. Think of, oh, a river that flash-freezes, with all its ripples and troughs and bubbles. When I neared the door, I heard the boom and growl of giant voices. The guards outside, talking! They sounded worse than a thunderstorm.
I lay down and easily slid under the door. I was now about the size of a finger — the ring fitting round my waist gave me a clue — so though distances were now great, at least I could squeak round obstacles.
It was hard to understand the guards. Their voices blended and echoed oddly in the great hall, but I caught a few words: Kwenz, Auknuge, plans. But while they talked I got an idea. The guards wore heavy blackweave riding boots, some of them with a strap and buckle over the top of the foot — their cobblers made two or three sizes, and you used the buckles to make the fit conform to your foot. While the guards talked, I squinted against the reddish light of the torches far above. I had to get out of the castle, and if the guard who’d stopped to gossip moved somewhere ...