by Rain Oxford
“You won’t find much here except vegetables and time.”
“We’re looking for… it might look like a colorful stone or---”
“The heart,” he interrupted. “Yes, you’ve come to the right place.”
“You know it?”
“Many men have come looking for it just like you, and not one of them got it, so I don’t even know if it really exists.” He pointed to a mountaintop to the north. While it didn’t look very far away, it was steep. “You must go to the top of the mountain and perform the ritual at sunset.”
“Ritual?” I asked. “We weren’t expecting that.”
“If you have the scroll, you’ll know how to do it. Otherwise, you can’t get it. You need the scroll.”
“I forgot to mention it,” Merlin said. “Things have been a bit out of control since we got the… since we started this quest. I have already gathered the supplies and will explain along the way.”
We thanked the man and headed for the mountain.
* * *
While we found a set of stone steps, they were steep and narrow. So much so that I had trouble. Merlin had an even more difficult time of it. Gmork didn’t even try. Instead, he said he would find another way up. Every time I was so out of breath and achy that I thought I would die if I took another step, I would look down. No way was I spending a moment more than I had to on the steps.
As we climbed, Merlin explained the ritual. “I told you about the five elements.”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember what they are?”
“Ground, air, fire, water, and spirit.”
“Good. According to the scroll, there will be five altars of some form, one for each element. I have to present an offering to each. For spirit, the offering must be something that was important to me. In your bag, I placed five bottles. One contains a stone, one contains fire, one contains water, and one contains the ring I made for Madelyn.”
“How did you bottle fire?”
“With magic, it was easy. Maybe you should have been paying attention instead of frolicking in the meadows.”
“I have never frolicked in my life.”
* * *
We reached the top of the mountain with little time to spare. The view was gorgeous. The ground was fairly flat, which was good because I didn’t have to worry so much about falling. There were five tall, stone pillars with the dragons’ language on them. I knew these were the altars Merlin had to decipher. Between them, however, were stone statues of monsters.
The monsters were what I would consider a cross between a bat and a dragon. They had short faces with long, sharp ears and horns on the back of their heads. Their wings had sharp tips that resembled claws. Their arms and legs were long, yet they sat hunched on the legs. With their jaws slightly open, I saw many sharp teeth. Even their tails looked dangerous.
Fortunately, Gmork joined us then, so we didn’t have to do all the work ourselves. He was pretty out of breath, though. “Did you find an easier path?”
“No.”
We went to the closest pillar and Merlin got to work deciphering the words while Gmork and I got the artifacts ready. I stopped at one of the gargoyles to study. It was creepy, and as I observed it, I felt like it was staring right back at me. “Do we need to do anything with these things?” I asked, turning to Merlin. He glanced at me and his eyes widened with shock.
“Get away from it!” He said.
I turned back to the gargoyle and nearly jumped out of my skin. It was still completely motionless, but it was reaching for me. “It moved!” I stepped away from it, watching it carefully. “How could it have moved? It’s a statue.”
“I have known a few gargoyles in my day, and every bloody one of them moved.”
“What do we do?” I looked at him and saw three of them from the corner of my eye. “Those ones moved, too!” He looked, but they were motionless.
“Why aren’t they moving now?” Gmork asked, watching the one in front of me. I looked at where the last one had been when we arrived, but it wasn’t there.
It was right behind Gmork, reaching for him.
“Behind you!” I shouted. Gmork spun around to watch it, but Merlin didn’t take his eyes off the three. I looked at the one that had reached for me and a chill ran down my spine. It was closer.
“Keep an eye on those two,” Merlin said. There was worry, but not panic in his tone.
“Why aren’t they moving?” I asked.
“I believe I know what they are. Hǫrvðr. The stone watchmen cannot be killed by time or blade, nor can they be swayed by riches or threat. They are stone, lifeless and indestructible. Look away for an instant, however, and they move faster and quieter than a shadow.”
“I want to go back to Caldaca. We don’t have monsters like these on Caldaca. We have chimera, dragons, and trolls.”
“Stay calm, young sorcerer. We can handle this.”
“Sure, the three of us can just not look away at all, but that’s going to make it really hard to complete the ritual.”
“These three are standing together. Can you look at the other two?”
“If I turn my back on the three.”
“I will keep watch. You adjust yourself to watch the other two.”
I carefully did as he said. “Okay.”
“Gmork, you watch these three.”
“You trust me to watch Ayden’s back?”
“I have little choice, as you cannot read the dragons’ language.”
Gmork backed up to me and then turned to watch the other three. “I am watching them,” he said.
I saw Merlin slowly backing up to the pillar out of the corner of my eye. Unfortunately, the harder I stared at the gargoyles, the dryer my eyes felt until I blinked…
And the gargoyles were a little closer. “Merlin, they’re really fast.”
“Try not to blink.”
“Trying not to blink makes me have to blink more!”
“I am working as quickly as I can.”
“I have to blink as well,” Gmork said. “If we can back up far enough, perhaps we can watch all of them at once. Then we can take turns blinking.”
I nodded. “We’ll try it. The three are closer.” I carefully maneuvered myself around Gmork so that I didn’t break his line of sight. The ground was unsteady under my foot, though, and I tripped. I lost sight of them for a moment, and by the time I looked up, it was too late.
Merlin had stopped what he was doing to watch them, but the three that had been grouped together were now spread out so that we couldn’t look at them all. One was only an arm’s length from me, but I was able to watch him and the one behind him at the same time.
I didn’t have to focus on them; I only had to see them in my peripheral vision. “I have an idea.” I pulled my wand from my pocket. “My bag,” I said. Magic shot through me, out the staff, and into the bag, which flew to me. Without looking, I pulled out the mirrors we had brought for Merlin. “Hold this here,” I said to the wand while holding the mirror in place.
Although my wand usually embarrassed me with glittery and pretty displays of light magic, it was a lot more obedient than my staff. In fact, it didn’t even make a spectacle this time, as if it knew how serious the situation was. When I felt my magic running through the mirror, I let go, and it floated in place.
I passed the gargoyle carefully and turned so that I could see both the one in front of me and the other one in the mirror. Using another mirror, I adjusted it so that I could watch another gargoyle next to Gmork. With magic, I held it in place and used a third mirror to watch two more.
The last one was the most difficult. I had to levitate two more mirrors and magically guide them into place so that the reflection bounced from one mirror to another. “What do you think, Merlin? Will this hold them?”
“We will have to see. I am going to return to the ritual, and if I am not immediately eaten, we will know it works.”
“That’s not encouraging.” Instead of answe
ring, he got back to work. Gmork slowly approached me, careful not to block any of the mirrors, so that he could watch them all as well. Then we took turns blinking.
Merlin was almost done when he groaned.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, not looking. It was distracting, though.
“I am not perfectly fluent in the dragons’ language. This word can mean two different things and I am not sure which.”
“I am going to see if I can help him,” Gmork said.
“Do you know the language well enough?”
“We were friends for years; I picked up a few things.” He went to help Merlin.
I ignored them, since I couldn’t afford to get distracted. When I heard movement underground, it drew my attention to Merlin and Gmork. I wanted to see what they were doing. Unfortunately, although I could see most of the mirrors out of the corner of my eye, one of the gargoyles moved.
The sound of a mirror shattering filled the air. I couldn’t look. “Merlin!”
“I’m watching him,” Gmork said.
“I am very close on this,” Merlin said.
“Gmork, if you can watch the mirrors, I will try some spells on the other one.”
“That would require one of them to be unseen while one of us changes focus.”
“No, it won’t. Back up to me so that you’re ready to look at the mirrors. Merlin, when he’s ready, watch the gargoyle while he turns to watch the mirrors. Then I’ll watch the gargoyle. I have an idea, but I don’t want them to hear it ahead of time.”
We made the switch without any problems, and while Merlin was working and Gmork was watching the other ones, I aimed my staff at the gargoyle. “Levitate.” He did, and although the strain on my magic gave me an instant headache, I had lifted worse. Without his weight on the ground, I pushed him easily. His body, as I had expected, felt no different than a stone statue.
“Throwing it over the edge won’t work,” Gmork said. “It has wings.”
“But if I’m looking at him, he can’t use them.”
“Actually, that’s a good point.”
I pushed the gargoyle to the cliff and released my magic, not taking my eyes off him. At the bottom, he shattered. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. The gargoyle was still in pieces on the ground. “It worked. I just wish I hadn’t had to kill a creature.”
“It is made of stone,” Merlin said. “It can be reformed with magic and it will be as alive as it ever was.”
“Oh. Then I’ll get to work pushing others off the cliff.” I made very short work of the remaining gargoyles, but by the end of it, I was exhausted and needed a long rest.
Fortunately, the rest of the work was up to Merlin. As he placed the bottle with the ring in front of the last pillar, the writing on the scroll changed. “Now I have to read the incantation.”
By ground and sky, binding high,
By water and flame, binding same,
Open the way, from end to start,
So I can claim this stolen heart.
As he read the words aloud, the words on the pillars started glowing white. As soon as he was done, the scroll disintegrated in his hands and scattered like dust into each and every word on all five pillars.
Then the ground started to rumble. Before we could run, a massive portal formed in the circular space and the world disappeared.
* * *
We were in an underground structure. It was huge and every surface was made of stone. There was no furniture. Instead, there were numerous flat and curved bridges, sudden drops, and stairs. Since the hundred or so torches, lamps, candles, and candle chandeliers were randomly placed, it was extremely disorienting.
“I am so done with portals.”
“You want to walk home?” Gmork asked.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
“We will split up and search for it, but if you find it, do not touch it until we are all together,” Merlin said.
We split up. I tried some steps that I thought would lead to a bridge. Unfortunately, that was a trick of the light, and instead, they ended abruptly in the middle of the air. Then… “Hey, I found something!” I said.
“There is no way we can get up there,” Merlin said.
I was on the highest bridge. I hadn’t thought there would be anything on it, I just thought I could see more things. “It’s not the heart. It’s a lever.”
“Pull it, but be careful.”
I did, and there was a rumbling as stone moved. I climbed down carefully, and at the bottom, there was now a round pedestal with a black metal cage. Inside the cage was a red crystal heart. I was surprised it wasn’t any larger than a person’s heart. When I reached for the cage, however, it shocked me.
Gmork groaned. “There must be another trigger to unlock it.”
Once again, we split up to find it. After a long time, I was getting frustrated. Then I heard more stone move and froze. “What happened?”
“I stepped on a pressure pad,” Gmork said.
We rushed back to the heart to find that the cage was now open. Cautiously, I reached for it. Thankfully, it didn’t attack, so I picked it up. It was heavy and cold.
“What do we do now?”
Before Merlin could answer me, another portal formed under us and left us back on the mountain.
Chapter 22
The first thing we did when we returned to Vactarus’s mansion was to put the heart in a chest and put a blood lock over it. I knew the blood lock protected the box from being opened by anyone unrelated to the person who set it. It should have occurred to me that it would require blood.
Even though I could only use light magic growing up, I was still born a sorcerer; I wasn’t afraid of blood. I was uncomfortable pricking his paw, though, so we switched.
Normally, I would want to learn the spell, but since all my worst enemies were related to me, I wandered off. I found Arrow in the library, talking to his teapot.
“Hello, Ayden,” he said when I entered. “I’m glad to see you made it back.” I couldn’t answer him, so I just sat there for a while as he continued talking to his teapot about the woman he loved. Although my wolf smelled something very unique about him, I couldn’t tell what it was.
Defeating Erica was going to be difficult, but we had to do it. She was capable of so much more than killing Nimue. She had an army of powerful dragon-haters. With the amulet, she could gather more and more power until even the dragons couldn’t stop her.
For the first time since he killed Painter, Merlin stopped fighting his future-seeing ability and actually tried to use it. Unfortunately, the ability was unstable at best and wasn’t showing him anything.
I didn’t have a strong plan in mind, but I knew we needed another person with us. When I made the portal to go home to Magnus’s castle, I was surprised when Arrow insisted on going with us.
“There’s nothing here. I will never rebuild my life if I hide from destiny.”
“We’re not seeking destiny,” I said.
“I am a little better at thievery than I let on. I can help you.”
He was sincere, so I reluctantly agreed.
We returned home and found Kalyn alone. Mason had to represent his family at a warrior tournament and Thaddeus went with him to protect him. When we told Kalyn we were going to face a powerful half-dragon with the ability to take everyone else’s magic away, and that we didn’t have a plan, she readily agreed to help us.
* * *
We appeared outside the castle as we had expected. It was white and oddly shimmery, with two tall towers. It didn’t look like a sinister sorcerer’s castle. If anything, it was pretty. A tall, rock wall surrounded the castle, but it was possible to see through the iron gate.
A guard stood on the other side of it with a sword at his hip. He was as large and muscular as a warrior, with metal armor covering his weak points. He didn’t look surprised to see us. “Only Merlin can enter,” the guard said.
“It is my castle!” Gmork argued.
I
kept my mouth shut.
“Only Merlin can enter,” the guard repeated, opening the gate. When Gmork tried to enter, the guard drew his sword.
“Gmork, just wait. Merlin can handle this.”
Gmork grumbled, but didn’t protest further. I handed the bag with the heart in it to Merlin, who took it in his teeth. We had put it in a different bag than mine so that I could still use the potions or tools if we were separated. Merlin passed through and gave me a last glance before walking the long distance and disappearing into the castle.
“How can you be okay with this?” Gmork asked. “We can’t just sit out here while he faced Erica alone.”
“I don’t plan to.” I wrapped my arm around Kalyn’s and led her away. Gmork and Arrow followed. As soon as we were out of earshot of the guard, I said, “Here’s the plan. Kalyn, create an illusion of us standing around, waiting impatiently. I’ll make us invisible and we’ll sneak in, but I’ll drop the invisibility as soon as we get there so that it doesn’t drain my energy. Gmork, you’ll lead us through secret passageways until we reach her. Once we are there, we will watch and wait for the moment to do our parts. If you have an opportunity to get the amulet away from Erica, take it, but we need a way to signal each other so we don’t get in each other’s way.”
“We can’t just say that we’re making a move?”
I shook my head. “Someone could hear us.”
“We can tap our nose,” Kalyn suggested.
I nodded. “That should work.”
“Just remember that Arrow and I won’t be able to understand anything they’re saying, so you’ll have to tell us if something important happens.”
“You’re going to tell her to stay here, right?” Gmork asked me.
“Tell who to stay here?”
He rolled his eyes. “Do you want Kalyn to get killed?”
