by E. D. Baker
"Let me see if I understand this," said Eadric. "Someone who has no magic can look into that ball and see someone using magic? Does that mean that every time you use magic, that ball is going to tell the trolls where you are?"
"Or at least where I was when I used the magic. I guess I won't be able to say any spells for a while if we don't want the trolls to find us. It will be a lot easier to rescue Bradston if their army doesn't know where we are." I rubbed my temples, trying to massage away the headache that was just beginning. "There's something / don't understand. Someone made a magic-seeing ball to see me. To focus the ball, you have to include something that belongs to the person you're focusing it on. What could they have used that was mine?"
Eadric nodded. "That's a good question, but I have a better one. If you can't use magic, how are you going to turn us back? We can't hold hands all the way to Roc Mountain."
"Yeah," said Shelton. "And I want to go for a swim. Even freshwater is better than nothing."
"Don't worry," I said with more confidence than I felt. "I'll think of something."
Eight
Would you look at this!" Eadric said, emerging LAV ahead of me from a stand of trees that extended all the way to the water's edge. It had probably gone farther, but the bank had been washed away, carrying the trees that had been growing there with it. The sun had finally reached down into the valley while we were stumbling along the riverbank, making it possible to see the extent to which the river had grown during the night.
"What's wrong?" I asked, coming up behind him. Then I saw the river ahead and he didn't have to answer. An enormous pile of boulders that had long ago tumbled as far as the new riverbed blocked our way. Although it would have been easy to pass the day before, the river had continued to widen and now almost filled the valley from one side to the other.
Eadric used his free hand to gesture up ahead. "The best way to get to Roc Mountain is to follow this valley, but as it is now we can't walk along the river unless we turn into mountain goats. Flying would be better, but we'd have to use magic then, too. And since we can't use magic because the only way we'll get Bradston back is if we have surprise on our side . . ."
I let go of Eadric's hand and sat down abruptly, leaning against the trunk of a tree.
"Hey!" said Eadric. "Why'd you do that?"
I didn't want Eadric to see me looking as discouraged ' as I felt. Sometimes being invisible can be handy. "I need some time to think," I said, which was true as far as it went. I also needed some time to myself. The mess we were in was all my fault. If I had said a different spell to keep the trolls away from the men, or even one to limit the size of the river, we could have walked the length of the valley in half a day.
"Emma!" Eadric sounded alarmed. I glanced up but couldn't see him until he bumped my head with his hand. "Ah, there you are!" My distress must have shown on my face, because he dropped down beside me and took my hand in his. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"I've let you down," I said. "I feel terrible about it. I was supposed to get us to Bradston. Now I can't even get us to the end of the valley. I can't use my magic and there's no way else to . . ."
"Of course there's another way!" said Eadric. "That brook went through the valley and out the other end, which means that the river does, too. The ride might be rough, but I'm sure we can cobble together some sort of raft and let the river carry us there."
"That's a brilliant idea!" I said, and I kissed him full on the lips. "I don't know why I didn't think of it."
Eadric stood up, still holding my hand. "Because you've gotten in the habit of using your magic to solve our problems. But not every problem needs a magical solution."
It didn't take Eadric long to find fallen trees to form the floor of our raft. He lashed them together with vines, then made a makeshift rudder so we could steer it. The raft came apart twice as we dragged it to the water's edge, but he put it back together each time without complaining. After that, I didn't have the heart to tell him that it still didn't look very sturdy.
Once we had the raft by the water, it slipped in easily enough and we had to scramble to get on board. The logs started separating almost immediately, so we set to work tightening the lashing as best we could while trying to stay in physical contact with each other. Shelton didn't help much. He kept disappearing, and each time I was afraid he'd fallen overboard. Eadric finally got tired of my fretting and said, "If you're so worried about him, why don't you just make us visible again? I wish you would anyway. It's safe now—the trolls can't reach us here."
"We talked about this. If I use my magic, they'll see that we're on the river and will know that we're headed toward the mountain. At least now they don't know where to look for us. And if we stay invisible, we might have a better chance of sneaking into the mountain and finding Bradston."
Eadric shrugged. "Suit yourself, but you're going to have to do it sooner or later."
The water had been smooth at first, but as the valley narrowed, the river coursed over rocks and boulders that had fallen in ages past. White water foamed around us as we rushed past plumes of spray and boulders too big for a giant to lift. We were fortunate at first because the raft hit a partly submerged rock and spun around, but didn't tip or come apart. The next time, however, it caught on something we couldn't see under the water, and we lost one of the logs. After that, we had to fight to hold the raft together. When it hit the next rock, the whole thing came apart, and I tumbled into the water headfirst.
Over the previous year and a half I'd become a very good swimmer—as a frog or a fish or even as a turtle. I hadn't done much swimming as a human, however, so I floundered in the water, trying to turn myself around and find Eadric and the remains of the raft before I was too far away to reach them. As my skirts weighed me down and caught on wedged branches and jagged rocks, I was tempted to turn myself into something, anything, that could fly or swim or . . .
"Emma!" Eadric shouted. "Where are you?"
"Over . . . here!" I spluttered as water washed over me. I looked wildly around, trying to find him in the foam, forgetting that he was still invisible, too.
"You have to turn us back now!" he shouted from a direction entirely different from where I'd been looking. "It's the only way I'll find you." Even if he'd been visible, the water was so rough that I might not have been able to see him in the churning waves.
" But . . . " I began.
"No butsl" he shouted. "Just do it bef—"
When Eadric stopped talking, I nearly panicked. He must be underwater. What if he was seriously hurt? Forgetting the trolls and Bradston and everything but Eadric, I said the first visibility spell that I could think of.
"There you are!" said Eadric as we all became visible again. He was holding on to a log from our destroyed raft and was only a few yards away. Shelton was already climbing onto the log when Eadric towed it toward me. Grabbing the back of my gown in one fist, he dragged me to the log and held me until I'd draped myself over it.
"Thank you!" I gasped. "You don't know how happy I am to see you."
"About as happy as I am to see you," he said, and he kissed me.
"Don't you two ever let up?" grumbled Shelton from his perch atop the log.
We rode down the river holding on to the log while trying to stay in the channel and away from the rocks. Shelton strolled up and down, chattering and enjoying the spray. I saw Li'l overhead now and then, coming back to check on us before taking off again. When the river left the valley, the water spread out over a greater distance, becoming shallower in the process until our feet touched the ground. Eadric and I climbed out, abandoning our log. Shelton had crawled onto my shoulder, snagging my hair with his claws, but I didn't mind. I was too happy to be out of the river with Eadric to let anything bother me.
"That was fun!" said Shelton. "Can we do it again?"
Eadric snorted and sat on the ground to dump the water out of his boots. I wrung out my clothes as best I could, wishing that I could dry us both with a l
ittle magic.
"Now we head due north," Eadric said, patting Ferdy to make sure he was still there.
"I thought we were going east through Griffin Pass," I said.
"We were, but the rapids carried us past before I knew it. We don't have any choice now. We'll go north. I saw where the basilisks' caves were on the map, so we can avoid them altogether. As for the other beasts . . . I'm sure Ferdy and I can handle them, whatever they are."
For the first few miles the landscape seemed normal enough, with scattered trees and scrub. Then the land abruptly changed as if we'd crossed a line and entered a completely different kingdom. The ground was dry and hard, and where there were rocks, they were shattered as if a giant had beaten them with a mighty club. There was evidence that wildflowers had once grown there as well as trees, but they were withered now, their leaves so dry that they rattled when the wind blew. From where we walked I could see small brown and white hills dotting the ground at uneven intervals. There was no sign of life, although I thought I heard a rooster crow.
We were approaching the first hill when I started to smell something awful. Eadric smelled it at the same time. "Where is that stench coming from?" he asked, making a face.
"I don't know, unless . . . " What had looked like a small hill from a distance was actually a dung heap nearly as high as my waist. The smell was so terrible that we had to hold our noses.
Shelton turned his eyestalks to examine it as we hurried past. "I'd hate to meet whatever did that!"
We continued on and soon saw a stone spire rising above the land. Perched on top was an enormous nest built from trees piled one on top of another. The nest sagged in places as if it were on the verge of falling apart. Shading his eyes against the glare of the sun, Eadric looked up and grunted. "Looks like a roc's nest, which explains the dung heaps. I've never been here before, but I've heard about this place. That pointy rock has been here for as long as anyone can remember, although the stories say that it wasn't always here. A witch planted it a long time ago, intending to build her home on the peak, then left when the people of Upper Montevista turned against her. Some say she was the reason that people in this kingdom don't like anyone who wields magic."
"I wonder what she did that was so awful," I said.
"I have no idea, but if you ask me, she couldn't have been a very smart witch. If she had been, she would have chosen a better spot to put her home—like on top of a mountain."
"Or in a swamp," I said.
"Or on the bottom of the ocean like Coral's palace," said Shelton, sounding wistful.
I patted the little crab with one finger. "Shelton, I think you're homesick."
"Who, me? Never!" said Shelton. "What's homesick mean?"
"It means you miss your home, like Emma misses Greater Greensward," said Eadric.
I smiled at him, pleased that he knew me so well.
Although the nest looked abandoned, we gave it a wide berth while trying to keep our bearings. Unfortunately, our path took us past more roc droppings and the awful smell. We were passing another one when we saw toads using their front feet to roll eggs toward the dung heap.
"I don't know much about this kind of thing," said Shelton, "but is that normal?"
I gasped as the pieces of the puzzle came together. "Eadric," I said, "remember how your officer mentioned some other beasts that killed anyone who tried to pass through here? He didn't know what they were, but I think I do. If you see anything moving, don't look at it. And if you get a glimpse of something that looks like a snake or a rooster, look the other way. We're in a cockatrice breeding ground and we . . ."
"A what?" asked Shelton.
"I've never seen any before, but I've read about them in one of Grassina's bestiaries. That's a book that tells about different kinds of animals, Shelton," I told the little crab. "Cockatrices come from yolkless eggs that roosters have laid."
"I don't understand how a rooster can lay an egg, let alone one without a yolk," said Eadric.
"I don't either," I said. "I'm just telling you what I read. Anyway, toads take the eggs into dung heaps to hatch. And don't ask me why toads would care about the eggs, because I have no idea."
"And out comes one of those things you mentioned?" said Shelton.
Eadric nodded. "That's right. They have the head, legs, and wings of a rooster and the body and tail of a snake. They're so ugly that you'll turn to stone if you look one in the eye. They can even shatter rock and wither plants with their ugliness."
"You're pulling my claw!" said Shelton. "There's no such thing . . . Is there?"
Eadric seemed to enjoy making Shelton nervous. "They're real, all right. I've heard that in some places people won't travel without a weasel. That's the only kind of animal cockatrices are afraid of, because weasels are immune to their gaze."
"I wish we had a weasel with us now," said Shelton, shifting from leg to leg.
"So do I," I said. Better yet, I wished I could turn us into weasels or maybe birds so we could fly away. But I couldn't risk any magic again. It was bad enough that I'd had to make us visible on the river. Not only had I used magic that could tell the trolls where we were, but I'd taken away whatever advantage we might have had by being invisible when there were cockatrices around. I could only hope that the trolls would think we had drowned.
"Just keep your eyes open," I told Eadric. "But don't look at anything."
We walked more carefully then, letting our eyes flick from one thing to the next without looking at anything for too long. There were more dung heaps beyond the spire, although only a few had toads near them. When I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, I looked away, afraid of what I might see. "Look straight ahead," I told Eadric. "I think there's a cockatrice to our left."
I should have known better than to tell him, because the first thing he did was turn his head to look. "That's no cockatrice. It's just a big toad."
"I told you not to look!"
Eadric shrugged. "I won't when it's a cockatrice, but I can look at toads, can't I?"
He was so exasperating. "And how will you .. . Oh, never mind. Just keep your eyes straight ahead," I told him, missing my magic more than ever.
We came across our first cockatrice only a few minutes later. It was sunning itself on a pile of gravel, and I looked away as soon as I realized what it was. The creature was smaller than I'd expected and had a head more like a chick than a rooster. I hurried Eadric past it without telling him that it was there.
The cockatrice had seen us and wasn't about to let us go. 'Yoo-hoo! I'm over here. Look at me!" it called in a high-pitched voice. "I can't believe it! You're acting as if I don't exist! You should see how beautiful I am. It isn't every day that someone gets to admire such magnificent plumage!"
"Keep going and pretend you didn't hear it," I whispered to Eadric.
I could hear the clack of tumbling gravel behind us, but I didn't dare turn around. It stopped after we'd gone a few dozen feet.
As we continued on, we began to see previous cockatrice victims scattered across the barren ground. Men and trolls had been frozen in stone in various positions, some running, others raising their swords or clubs, a few even reaching to cover their eyes. We saw birds frozen with their wings spread, about to take off, while others lay broken on the ground, having frozen and fallen from the sky. It was an eerie setting, made more dangerous by the stone mice and insects that could trip the unwary.
The next cockatrice was waiting for us and had planted itself directly in our path. I looked away immediately, clapping my hand over Eadric's eyes. "Keep going!" I said. Turning aside, I tried to husde him away from the little beast.
"I just wanted to say hello!" it cried in a plaintive voice. "You're missing a marvelous opportunity! I'm perfectly lovely and have so much to offer!"
"Most humans couldn't understand what it was saying," Eadric muttered.
"Exactly," I said. "And we have to pretend that we can't either."
That cockatrice followed us, too
, although not as far as the first. We kept going, encountering one cockatrice after another, each one claiming to be beautiful. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever escape them entirely when Li'l found us again. "Hi, guys!" she said, startling me so that I let out a tiny shriek. "Sorry," she said. "I just came to see what you're doing."
"We're trying to get away from the cockatrices," said Shelton, sounding impatient.
"Then why are you running in circles?" asked Li'l. "Wouldn't it be better if you went straight ahead?"
"Circles?" I said in disbelief.
"Yeah. See, you're headed toward that pointy thing with the nest on top. Did you want to go back to the river?" Li'l tilted her wing in the direction we were going. The spire lay straight ahead, with the river running behind it in the distance.
"No," I said, and I pointed back the way we'd just come. "We want to go that way."
"So why aren't you?" Li'l asked.
"Good question," Eadric mumbled, but he stopped when I frowned at him.
"We want to, but we have to avoid the cockatrices. Give me a minute to think," I said. I considered asking Li'l to lead us out, but she shouldn't look at a cockatrice any more than we should. Eadric had mentioned a weasel, but we didn't have one, so that was out. I'd heard that a cockatrice would freeze if it saw its own reflection. Unfortunately, we didn't have a mirror with us. I thought about the cockatrices we'd come across. None of them was very big or very fearsome, maybe because they all seemed to be young. Each one had followed us for a time, although not for very long. Maybe, like a lot of other animals, they were territorial. And maybe, I thought, tapping my cheek with my finger, they have a reason to be.
"I want to try something," I said. "You three stay here with your eyes shut. No matter what you hear, don't open them until I tell you to, understand?"
