“Nice work, girl,” Mombi said approvingly. “We’ll make a soldier out of you yet. Now listen—don’t you dare use magic on your own yet. You remember what happened when Nox pissed you off? You have some talent, don’t get me wrong, but no control. Try to use magic on your own before I give you permission, and I’ll throw you out of the Order. Are we clear?”
“Clear,” Lanadel said. Mombi peered at her suspiciously, but seemed satisfied with her answer. But was the witch telling her the truth about her magic being potentially harmful? The Order seemed keen on keeping information from even its most advanced trainees. Maybe Mombi was afraid Lanadel would find out something she wasn’t supposed to if she used magic on her own. Maybe the real danger wasn’t to her—it was to the Order.
Mombi snapped her fingers, interrupting Lanadel’s thoughts, and with another sick jerk the vista was yanked away and replaced with the training cave where they’d started out. Nox and Melindra were sparring, their faces taut with concentration. Nox dropped his fists when Mombi and Lanadel reappeared, and Melindra knocked him flat with a roundhouse kick. “Never drop your guard!” she sang out cheerily. Lanadel hid a smile.
“Thanks for the reminder,” Nox said from the ground. Melindra pulled him to his feet. “How’d she do?” he asked Mombi.
“Not bad for a first timer,” Mombi said. “Not bad at all. A little rough around the edges, but we all have to start somewhere.”
“That’s my girl,” Melindra said proudly. “Dorothy hasn’t sucked up all the magic out there yet.” Lanadel smiled at her, flushing with pleasure. At least Melindra wasn’t shy about giving out compliments. Melindra wasn’t shy about anything. More and more, Lanadel was wishing she could be that way, too.
But what she said didn’t make sense. “Dorothy’s stealing magic? From Oz?” she asked.
Mombi nodded grimly. “As far as we can tell, she’s been siphoning power everywhere she can get it since she returned to Oz.”
“I don’t understand,” Lanadel said. “Why would anyone do that?”
“Why would Dorothy try to steal Oz’s magic? Why would she corrupt the Woodman and the Scarecrow? Nobody has the answers to those questions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening. That’s what we’re fighting,” Melindra said.
“Don’t you have to know why to stop her?”
“You didn’t have to know why to come here,” Nox pointed out.
“But maybe someone can—I don’t know, reason with her. Show her what she’s doing to Oz. She’s not from here. Maybe she doesn’t understand somehow.”
“Oh, she understands, all right,” Nox said bitterly. “Nobody doubts that. She wants power. It doesn’t matter why. Maybe everyone from the Other Place is like that. The Wizard loved power, too, don’t forget. Whatever happened to him in the end.” Nox looked thoughtful. “It’s possible the Wizard could help us stop Dorothy if he’s still alive. We don’t understand how her magic works here—how someone from the Other Place can use power in Oz. There’s so much we still have to learn. But we don’t have time to sit around and send out spies. Dorothy’s moving fast. We have to stop her soon, or it’ll be too late. And there aren’t many people we can trust anymore. Word is that Dorothy has spies everywhere. That she’s working with Glinda, even. That the two of them are responsible for whatever happened to Ozma.” He shook his head. “Nothing’s the way it should be anymore. That’s the only thing you can be sure of now.”
“Can I trust you?” Lanadel asked. “Melindra? Mombi? How do I even know you’re telling me the truth?” Mombi snorted and muttered something under her breath.
“You can’t trust anyone,” Nox repeated, ignoring the witch. “We’re trying to teach you the skills to fight Dorothy, yes. But I’m also trying to teach you to fend for yourself. To see things as they are. How can you fight if you won’t acknowledge what it is that you’re fighting? If we keep acting blindly, it doesn’t matter if we defeat Dorothy. Something just as bad will take her place. We can’t trust each other. The only thing we can trust in is Oz.”
“I don’t even know what that means,” Lanadel said.
“I know,” Nox said. “But you will. That’s why you’re here. If you’re ready to fight for Oz, and not yourself—if you fight for the way things should be, you’ll never lose sight of the truth.”
“What truth?” she asked, exasperated.
“Don’t listen to him,” Melindra said, rolling her eyes. “He’s super into filling everybody’s head with the same mumbo jumbo nonsense. The only thing you have to remember is we’re going to hit Dorothy where it hurts.” She mimed punching into the air. “It’s almost time for dinner,” she added. “Magic lesson’s over for the day. You’re free.”
“I decide when the magic lesson is over,” Mombi said, but she didn’t sound too upset. It was hard to say no to Melindra. And for good reason. It was like Melindra was the true heart of the Order. No matter what Nox said, Lanadel trusted her. Melindra could fight, sure, but she wasn’t constantly talking in circles or trying to hide the truth. She said what she thought. Among the Wicked, that was practically a magical power of its own. Melindra leaned briefly into Nox, and he looked startled, but quickly recovered. Then he stiffly put one arm around her.
Melindra smiled at him. “You just have to pretend to listen to him talk for a while, and then he usually stops,” she said affectionately. “You don’t actually have to pay attention.” She elbowed Nox in the ribs, not subtly. He scowled and took his arm away.
“Come on, Mombi,” he said. “I want to discuss some strategy points with you.” And then he whirled around abruptly and stalked away from them. Mombi looked back and forth between Nox and Melindra, one eyebrow raised. And then she followed Nox out of the cavern.
Melindra sighed, suddenly deflated. “So. Big day for you, huh? Mombi taught you some magic, and Nox gave you his patented Wicked ride-or-die talk. You ready for battle now, or what?”
“Something like that,” Lanadel said. “Are you . . .” She trailed off, not sure what to say. Nox and Melindra’s relationship, if it even existed, was a total mystery.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Melindra said tiredly. “Or I mean, as fine as I can be. I just wish I could get through to him, you know? There’s a different person in there. I think I’m the only person who’s ever seen it. And that’s the Nox I care about.”
Lanadel nodded. Melindra could just as easily have been talking about Lanadel herself. Sometimes Lanadel felt like she was constantly wearing a disguise around the Order. But if there was a different person waiting inside her, who was it? What was the real Lanadel even like? She’d hidden herself for so long she couldn’t even be sure. First around her family, who’d never understood that she had always wanted something more than their tiny village. And then, when she got her wish in the most horrible way possible . . .
Melindra shook her head, her eyes following the path Nox had traced as he left. “He’s damaged goods,” she said. “Lucky for him he has that hair, right?” But although she was joking, there was something almost melancholy in her voice.
“Yeah,” Lanadel agreed, pretending she hadn’t noticed Melindra’s hurt was real.
And then Melindra grinned, all trace of sadness gone. “I’m working on him,” she said confidently. “He really buys all that Wicked stuff. Mombi’s filled his head with nonsense. You ask me, it’s not that complicated. Dorothy’s the problem? We take out Dorothy.” She made a slashing motion with one hand. “End of problem.”
“What if there’s another problem after Dorothy?” Lanadel asked.
Melindra shrugged. “Well, then we’re probably screwed.” She grinned again, and Lanadel started to laugh once more. It was impossible to stay focused on her problems when Melindra was around. Melindra was right. Action was way better than sitting around. Who cared if there was some secret Lanadel she’d hidden away inside? She was almost ready to learn magic. She was already learning to fight. Nox and Mombi couldn’t keep her in these caves forever.
And when they sent her out to do the job they were teaching her—well, she wasn’t going to run away from any of Dorothy’s soldiers, that much she knew for sure.
SIX
“What is their deal?” she asked Melindra one night after dinner.
“Whose deal?” Melindra asked, distracted. Nox had been noticeably absent from the dining hall. Melindra had ignored the empty seat at the table, but the melancholy note was back in her voice, and she’d been a million miles away all through their meal.
“Holly and Larkin. Why do they hate me?” Even though Lanadel had been improving in her training in the last few weeks, they continued to treat her as if she was completely incompetent.
“Oh, them,” Melindra said with a snort. “You can’t take them personally. I think they hate everyone, to be honest.”
“They don’t hate you,” Lanadel pointed out.
“Sure they do. They’re just scared of me,” Melindra said.
“Oh.”
Melindra realized she’d hurt Lanadel’s feelings, and softened. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like the way it came out. I’ve kicked both their asses more than once in training, and they know if they mess with me, I’ll beat the crap out of them somewhere Nox and Mombi can’t find us. That was your only mistake—doing it in front of Mombi. She doesn’t go for us fighting among ourselves, even if it’s impossible to resist half the time. Holly was trying to get you to hit her in front of the grown-ups,” Melindra added with a laugh. “She thinks getting people in trouble is fun. And Larkin’s her little lapdog. But don’t mind them, really. They’re just—well, they’re orphans, too, you know. But if you’re a brat before your parents die, losing your family doesn’t necessarily turn you into a ray of sunshine. Larkin was studying to be some kind of fancy-pants warlock, and thinks he’s Lurline’s gift to the universe. Holly’s family was some kind of Munchkin royalty.” Lanadel remembered what Holly had said in the training cave. Right before Lanadel had almost succeeded in beating the crap out of her. That was a happy memory.
“I didn’t know the Munchkins had royalty.”
“They have dynasties, or something,” Melindra said, waving a hand. “Important bloodlines. Whatever, she thinks she’s important. It was a shock for both of them to turn up here and realize they had to learn just like everyone else—and fight next to dirty commoners like us.” She snorted. “They tried all that stuff with me, too. Nox doesn’t even notice. His head’s so far up his—” She stopped short.
“Is something going on with you and Nox?”
Melindra rolled her eyes. “There is no me and Nox. He’s a selfish little toad, that’s all. I’m totally done with him.” But for the first time since Lanadel had met the wiry, irrepressible warrior, something in Melindra’s voice rang false, and her eyes were sad. She cared about Nox, Lanadel realized. Cared a lot. But she didn’t want anyone to see it. She’d built her whole image around being tough and impossible to defeat.
It was like everyone in the Order had created another personality that could protect them from the world they had to live in. Gert’s overbearing sweetness, Glamora’s illusions, Mombi’s gruff bossiness. Nox’s remoteness, Holly and Larkin’s meanness, and Melindra’s tough-chick bravado. And Lanadel herself was just using her anger and her pain to build up walls no one else could climb. But how much was it costing them all to keep fighting all the time—not just Dorothy, but their own natures? What if they’d all done such a good job of inventing new people to be, they’d completely forgotten who they really were?
Melindra was in love with Nox. It was obvious. But it wasn’t clear if Nox returned the feelings. Not that that was her problem. But Melindra was the closest thing she’d ever had to a friend. Melindra was her friend. And it was hard to watch such a strong, capable—and beautiful—warrior made to feel small because of a guy. Especially a guy like Nox.
That night, Lanadel tossed and turned in her narrow bed, trying to process everything. After a while, she gave up trying to sleep. There was no point. She lay awake until the familiar little winged image of Gert roused her for another day of training, her thoughts still a muddled mess.
Now that Mombi and Nox had decided she was capable of learning magic, her training got even more intense. But she loved her magic lessons—not just because, more often than not, Mombi whisked her away again to Sky Island, but because Melindra often trained with her. And she learned much more from Melindra than she did from Mombi. It was Melindra who taught her how to summon up a fireball big enough to blow the dilapidated old Sky Island hotel to smithereens—and then put it back together, piece by piece, so that it was even stronger than before, while Mombi clucked in approval.
Drinking lemonade from Sky Island’s sparkling river, closing her eyes in the hot sun after a long training session, with Melindra laughing next to her . . . For just a second, she could pretend this was all there was in the world, and that she was happy. And then Mombi would yell at them to get up again, dragging her back to reality. The old witch was relentless, and so was Nox. It was as if they were pushing her toward something.
One night, she almost found out what it was. She was walking a route she didn’t usually take back to her sleeping chamber and heard Nox’s voice echoing from an unused training cave.
“. . . can’t possibly think she’s ready,” he was saying. Her senses spiking to alert, she pressed herself against the tunnel wall, straining to hear more.
“We don’t have the luxury of waiting until she’s ready.” It wasn’t Mombi he was talking to. It was Gert. The sweet, grandmotherly old witch. But now her voice was hard as stone.
“Do you have actual information to act on, or is this just some wild hunch?” Nox sounded impatient. Almost angry. Somehow, Lanadel knew they were talking about her. And if they were, he was trying to protect her. Nox? Protect her?
“There were reports before Dorothy returned,” Gert said. “He’s wanted Oz for centuries. It’s the perfect time for him to strike.”
“He can’t come to Oz,” Nox said.
He? Lanadel wondered. Who were they talking about? The Wizard? But that didn’t make sense. The Wizard had already been to Oz.
“We don’t think he can come to Oz,” Gert corrected. “But we don’t know anything about how powerful he is now. We need an agent. The girl is perfect. You’ve seen the way she hides what she’s feeling. She’ll make a good liar, and that’s what we need. She doesn’t even know her own true self, and that makes her unreadable. Like someone else I know,” Gert added, and Nox snorted. “We don’t have time to coddle people, Nox. This is a war.”
“So you keep saying,” Nox said quietly. “I don’t agree with this, Gert. I won’t support you.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Gert’s voice was sharp. “About this, or about Melindra.”
“Melindra can make her own decisions,” Nox said, “but not if she doesn’t know what’s going on.”
“You can’t protect her, Nox. Just because you have feelings for—”
“I’m not trying to protect her!” Nox exploded. “I’m trying to tell you to stop lying to these girls!”
“We’re not lying, and you know it,” Gert said. “We give people the information they need—when they need it.”
“When will I need all the information, Gert? When are you going to tell me the rest of what’s going on here?”
“That’s enough, Nox. Go to sleep. You’ll have to . . .”
But Lanadel didn’t wait to hear the rest of her sentence. She heard a rustle as Nox turned to leave the cavern, and she ducked down the corridor before Nox found her eavesdropping. But she knew what she’d just heard was something huge.
What decision did Melindra have to make?
And as for Lanadel, where were they sending her?
SEVEN
Lanadel wanted more than anything to talk to Melindra about what she’d overheard. She could hardly wait to corner the other girl, but it was nearly impossible to get her alone. Mombi was always there when they
trained on Sky Island. Everyone else was always there when they trained in the caves. And she didn’t want to ask Melindra to meet her in secret in case Gert, Nox, or Mombi overheard and grew suspicious.
Finally, she decided to find Melindra in her sleeping cave after dinner, even though it felt like an invasion. She’d never visited another member of the Order in their own rooms. No one did—it was almost as though there was an unspoken rule against it. In a place where everyone saw each other every day, privacy was a precious resource. But what she’d heard was too important to keep to herself.
Melindra was sitting cross-legged on the floor of her sleeping cave—which, Lanadel noticed, was just as small and sparsely furnished as her own. She opened her eyes as Lanadel cleared her throat hesitantly at the threshold. If she was startled to see Lanadel there, she didn’t show it.
“What’s up?” she asked. “You need something?”
“I need to talk to you,” Lanadel said. “But if you’re busy . . .”
“Nah, I was just meditating. Come on in,” Melindra said, patting the sleeping mat next to her. Despite the seriousness of what she had to say, Lanadel smiled. It was hard to imagine Melindra sitting still long enough to meditate. But if there was one thing for sure she was learning in the Order, it was that anyone could surprise you.
“It’s about the Order,” Lanadel said, sinking down next to Melindra on her mat. This close, she could smell the other girl’s scent—wild and clean, not unlike Nox’s sandalwood smell. Lanadel told her everything she’d overheard. When she finished, Melindra was quiet for a long time.
“Are you sure they were talking about you?” she asked finally.
“No,” Lanadel admitted. “I guess they could have meant Holly. But I just had a feeling. And Gert wants to send you somewhere, too.”
Dorothy Must Die Novella #7 Page 5
