A third stream of smoke soared through the clouds, this one as white as snow. The vapor trail paused in the air above the ship, and Joey was able to make out a woman inside it. Her long white hair flowed in the wind, and she seemed to hold lightning in her hand. “There’s nowhere left to run, traitor! This ends tonight!” It was the same voice that had spooked Hypnova moments before. Now Joey understood why. The woman’s eyes were full of fury, and electricity radiated from her fist. She threw her hand forward, and lightning struck again.
Fortunately, it turned away at the last second, skidding off some kind of force field that lit up just before the bolt hit its target. Joey flinched when he saw it, simultaneously relieved that the Caliburn Shield was protecting them. The ship took many hard twists and turns, trying to escape, but they couldn’t shake the Secreteers or the fierce weather they had brought with them. Many more lightning strikes followed. They failed to penetrate the shield’s invisible barrier, but Joey worried how long it would last. Eventually, the ship straightened out and forged ahead, sailing into the eye of the storm.
“How are they doing this?” Shazad asked. “I thought they just had memory powers like Hypnova.”
“They know the world’s biggest secrets,” Hypnova explained, coming back into the cabin. She had taken the Caliburn Shield down from its place above the cabin door and now had it strapped over her arm. “That includes the location of many magical objects. They’re using some of them against us right now.” Lightning flashed again, filling the room with a flickering light. “I believe that one’s called a thunderstone.”
“Shouldn’t they call it a lightning stone?” Janelle asked. “After all, thunder is just the sound caused by lightning. The sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning causes a rapid expansion of the air surrounding the lightning bolt, which creates a sonic shock wave that—”
Hypnova put a hand on Janelle’s shoulder. “That’s… fascinating,” she said gently. “But not now.”
“Sorry. Nervous rambling,” Janelle said.
“Forget about it,” Joey told her. “I do that too.” While Janelle was going on about the proper name for the thunderstone, his imagination had been running wild about the stone itself. He wondered if it had any connection to the firestone around his neck or the “ice stone” Mr. Clear had worn as a bracelet. He wondered how many stones were out there. It occurred to him that the hypnotic red ruby Mr. Clear had frozen and shattered could have been thought of as a “mind stone,” as they had used it to control the security guard’s mind. That made Joey think of Marvel comics, Avengers movies, and infinity stones. He kept those ideas to himself, deciding the others wouldn’t appreciate his random thoughts on the matter any more than they had Janelle’s impromptu lesson in meteorology.
A booming thunderclap rumbled so loudly, it sounded like it was coming from inside the cabin. Everybody jumped. For a second Joey thought the Secreteers had blown a hole in the ship’s hull.
“There’s your thunder,” Leanora said to Janelle.
“It’s all right,” Hypnova said, patting the Caliburn Shield. “We’re safe for now. I told you, if not for this shield, I’d never know any peace.” Her voice was calm and confident, but Joey couldn’t help noticing how tight she was gripping the shield.
“Just out of curiosity, if you’re in here, who’s driving?” Shazad asked Hypnova.
“Don’t worry about that. There’s nothing for us to crash into this high up. That’s the good news.” Hypnova looked out the window at her former friends in the Clandestine Order. “The bad news is that’s Oblivia out there calling me out.”
“Oblivia?” Joey said. “The head Secreteer?”
Hypnova nodded. “She’s in quite a state tonight. I expect her mood has to do with you all taking out the dark magic markers. She’s not letting up. I can’t lose them.”
Outside, lightning continued to strike against the protective barrier that surrounded the ship. The Caliburn Shield twinkled with an ambient glow each time the force field lit up. As the Secreteer’s relentless assault continued, Joey noticed the light was fading, both inside and out. He wasn’t the only one who saw it.
“Should we be worried?” Janelle asked.
“No,” Shazad said. “The shield will keep us safe. It’s one of the big three Arthurian artifacts. Nothing can get past its defenses except Joey’s wand.”
“Nothing we know of,” Janelle said as the ship rattled its way through more turbulence. Her tone didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence.
Joey watched the light show outside with growing unease. The Caliburn Shield was impenetrable. That was an absolute, unassailable truth, but at the same time, he knew that magic was not an exact science. Joey thought about the Sword of Storms that Ledger DeMayne used against him and his friends outside Camelot and the Majestic Theatre. That sword had once had another name: Excalibur. It was supposed to be unbreakable too, but it had surely broken. There was always a chance the Caliburn Shield’s power would fail eventually too. What if tonight was the night?
“We’ve got to fight back,” Joey said, drawing the wand out from his sleeve.
“No,” Shazad said. “Not with that.”
“Shazad’s right,” Hypnova agreed. “This isn’t what that wand is meant for. We’ve got to get you out of here. It’s not your fight. They’re here for me.”
Outside, the relentless assault continued. The ship bounced up and down like an air force bomber taking flak from enemy artillery. Oblivia’s voice carried over the howling wind, delivering more threats.
“She’s here to kill you,” Joey said.
“She’s been trying to kill me for a year now. I’m still here. Believe it or not, this is a good thing. I want her distracted. The more focused she is on me, the less attention there is on you and the Imagine Nation.” Hypnova looked at DeMayne, who was squirming on the ground, trying to sit up with his back against the wall. “Untie him.”
“What?” everyone said at once.
“Do it.”
Shazad and Leanora unraveled Gleipnir, freeing DeMayne. He rose to his feet, massaging his wrists and eyeing Hypnova suspiciously.
“What are you up to?” he asked her.
“I believe you magicians call it misdirection?” Hypnova went to a corner of the room and found a fabric and metal contraption that resembled a folded-up kite. “This is an escape glider.” She tossed it over to DeMayne. “Think you can handle it?”
DeMayne caught the glider and gave it a cursory inspection. He looked like he was being asked to try on an outfit someone had just pulled out of a sewer. “We’re a thousand feet up. Where am I supposed to land?”
“On the ground, of course,” Hypnova said. “You’ll get there eventually. This is your chance to leave here with your memory intact. If I were you, I’d take it.”
“Hang on,” Joey said. “With his memory intact?” He didn’t like the sound of that. “Can we talk about this?”
“There’s no time,” Hypnova said as lightning struck outside, sending another tremor through the ship. “This should be an easy decision,” she told DeMayne. “What are you waiting for?”
DeMayne frowned as he flexed the frame of the glider, teaching himself how to work it. “I want to be clear: Letting me go doesn’t change anything between us. What’s done is done. Your offenses are unforgivable.”
“I could say the same to you,” Hypnova replied.
“This isn’t over.” DeMayne sneered. “There will be a reckoning. You can count on it,” he added, fixing his eyes on Joey. Then he dashed out the door. Joey watched as Ledger DeMayne ran across the deck of the ship, flapped open the glider, and leaped from the gunwales. The Secreteers took off after him as he flew out into the night. The skies cleared as they chased after him, taking the rain and thunder with them.
“He moves pretty good for a guy his age,” Janelle said as DeMayne and the Secreteers disappeared from their sight.
“Why’d you let him keep his memory?” Joey a
sked Hypnova.
“Trust me,” Hypnova said. “We’re going to need it.” She pushed past Joey and opened a hatch outside the cabin door. “Quickly. Get below before the Secreteers realize that wasn’t me on the glider. DeMayne won’t fool them for long.”
Joey didn’t like this development any more than he understood it, but he knew there was nothing he could do about it now. DeMayne was long gone. The group hurried outside and down the steps to the ship’s lower deck. “Where are we going?” asked Leanora.
“You’re going to the Imagine Nation,” Hypnova said. “I’m going to stay here to lead the Secreteers away from you. If I can’t lose them, I’ll scuttle the ship.”
“What?” Joey said. “No! You can’t do that.”
“We’re too close to stop now,” Hypnova insisted. “What you saw in DeMayne’s mind… the women with Merlin? One of them was Kadabra, founder of the Order of the Majestic. The other was the first Secreteer. The first Majestrix of the Clandestine Order. I understand now. I see it. The emperor’s palace became her place of power—the Secret Citadel. I’ve never been there. I don’t know anyone who has, or what’s inside, but thanks to DeMayne we have a clue where it is. His memory showed us where to look. It’s somewhere in the Outlands of the Imagine Nation.”
The ship tilted sharply as the unwelcome sound of thunder rumbled outside.
“They’re back,” Shazad said, putting a hand on the hull of the ship to keep his balance.
“That was fast,” Joey agreed.
Hypnova cursed under her breath. “No matter. I’ll deal with them. You have to find the Citadel and turn off whatever it is that keeps the Imagine Nation hidden. You’ve already given magic back to the world. Now let’s set the Imagine Nation free. I’m with you.”
“But you’re not with us,” Leanora said. “You said you were going to crash this ship. You can’t be serious.”
“You’ll die!” Shazad protested.
“Don’t count on it.” Hypnova patted the Caliburn Shield. “I’ll see you again before this is over. I promise.”
“I don’t know,” Joey said. He sensed the concern his friends had for Hypnova and felt the same way himself. “I don’t like the sound of this.”
“You don’t have to like it—you just have to trust me,” Hypnova said. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“How?” Janelle asked. “Because I’m not taking one of those gliders. I’d rather take my chances on the ship.”
Hypnova smiled. “That won’t be necessary.” She led the group deeper into the hold of the ship and pulled the tarp off a mystery item that had been gathering dust in the corner. Joey instantly recognized the object as a magic mirror.
“Ever use one of these?”
10 Mirror, Mirror
Out of the four of them, Janelle was the only one who had never traveled by way of magic mirror. She reached out and touched the glass. The surface rippled as if the elaborate baroque gold frame contained a vertical plane of silvery water. Thunder boomed in the distance, and the ship rolled to the side. Janelle pulled her hand back.
“How does it work?” she asked as the ripples in the glass steadied.
“Nothing to it,” Joey said once the ship had stabilized. “We just go through it.”
He had used a magic mirror only two times in his life, once to enter the mirror world and once to leave it, but it was like riding a bike. He plunged his hand forward. It sank into the mirror as if the glass were not glass at all, but a thick, lustrous gel. He retracted his hand and nodded to Janelle.
“You try.”
Janelle poked at the glass tentatively. It remained solid for her.
“Just relax,” Shazad told her. “The mirror is just like any other magical object. It has all the power you need. You just have to believe.” He inserted his hand just as Joey had done, then stepped away to give Janelle another chance.
“I don’t know if I can do this.” She tried again with no success.
“What’s wrong?” Hypnova asked. “You started to do it a moment ago. What happened?”
Janelle prodded the solid glass a few more times. “Nothing happened. It’s just… hard to believe.” She checked behind the mirror, as if she might find a secret compartment of some kind back there. “There’s no scientific rationale for how this works.”
“You don’t need a scientific rationale,” Joey said. “I’ve watched you spin the Staff of Sorcero from small to large and back again a hundred times. There’s nothing scientific about it, but you manage that just fine.”
“Actually, I think about the molecular structure of malleable metals when I do that,” Janelle said.
“The what structure?” Shazad said.
“Of the what?” Leanora added.
Janelle sighed. “On a molecular level, atoms of malleable metals can roll over each other into new positions without breaking their metallic bond. It’s why gold and silver can be pressed into new shapes so easily. Granted, it’s not just malleability you have to think about in that case. It’s ductility, too. That’s the property that allows metals to stretch without—”
“You’re rambling again,” Joey cut in before Janelle really got going. “And what you’re saying doesn’t make any sense. The staff isn’t even made out of metal. It’s wood!”
“I didn’t say it was an apples-to-apples comparison. It’s just a scientific concept I keep in the back of my brain that lets me do this.” Janelle was about to spin the staff around when a peal of thunder shook the room and rattled her nerves. She tensed up, nearly fumbling the staff to the floor.
“Also, there’s pressure,” she continued. “I usually like to sit with any new magical items a while before I use them. It’s the analytic side of my brain. I study things. I take my time.” Janelle took a step back. “You guys go first. Show me again.”
“You need to go first,” Leanora said. “I don’t want to risk splitting us up. We all go through or none of us go through.”
“We have to hurry,” Hypnova warned.
“That’s not helping,” Janelle replied.
Once again, Joey thought about using the wand. He could have used it to whisk everyone away without spending too much energy, but he didn’t bring it up as an option. For one thing, his friends had already shot down that suggestion, and for another, they had a perfectly good escape route right in front of them—provided they could all use it. He remembered being in Janelle’s shoes, trying to use Redondo’s magic mirror for the first time. The trick was that it wasn’t the mirror he’d had to get past, but himself.
“So what if you don’t understand how it works?” Joey told Janelle. “Who cares? It’s just science we don’t understand yet, right? You don’t have to know how it works. You just have to know that it does. What if this mirror is some kind of wormhole? A hole in space-time connecting one place to another.”
“Wormholes don’t look like that,” Janelle said, gesturing at the mirror.
“Says who? Do you know what every wormhole in the universe looks like?” Joey countered. “Don’t overthink it. Just do it. You’ve got this.”
Janelle took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ll try.”
Joey resisted the urge to quote a little green Jedi master on the value of “trying” versus “doing.” He and the others waited patiently as Janelle flexed her fingers and reached out with both hands. They went into the mirror as if it were made of metallic syrup. Silvery droplets fell to the floor and pooled up like mercury at her feet. She smiled at Joey and kept moving forward. Lifting her foot, she stepped into the mirror and proceeded to walk through it. Shazad and Leanora went in after her.
“For the record, I never doubted her for a second,” Joey told Hypnova once they were alone.
“That’s good because you’re going to need each other,” Hypnova said. “The road only gets harder from here.” She touched a hand to her temple and reached out toward Joey. The image of another magic mirror appeared in his mind. She was showing him where to go next
.
“I understand.” Joey stepped halfway into the mirror. He felt guilty leaving Hypnova behind. “Are you sure you’re going to be all right?”
“I’ll be right behind you. Just make sure you keep going, because Oblivia will be right behind me. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.”
“Thank you, Hypnova.”
“Don’t thank me yet. This is a long way from over.” She took Joey’s hand by the wrist and examined the power gauge drawn on his arm. “Make this last. You’re going to need all of it.”
“I’ll be careful,” Joey promised. Hypnova gave him a skeptical look, prompting him to add, “I mean it. I will!”
“Good luck.”
Thunder boomed outside the ship, louder than before. “To both of us.”
He stepped the rest of the way through the mirror and set his foot down on soft, powdery sand. As Joey emerged from the portal, the mirror slipped off his body like liquid metal and re-formed into glass behind him. Not so much as a droplet clung to his clothes. Shazad was waiting for him on the other side.
“There you are. I was beginning to worry. What took so long?”
“Just saying our goodbyes. Everything okay over here?”
“Looks that way. It’s better weather, at least.”
Joey took a moment to get his bearings. The mirror world was every bit as strange and beautiful as he remembered it. The magical land was calm and peaceful, a white sand beach under a pale, violet sky. The shoreline stretched out for miles with no one in sight. There was nothing but sand, water, and mirrors everywhere Joey looked. Hundreds of magic mirrors were stuck in the ground, running up and down the beach. They came in every imaginable shape, size, and design. The mirror behind him, which he had just walked through, was an exact match for the mirror on Hypnova’s ship. Janelle and Leanora were down by the water, where crystal-clear waves lapped gently against the shore, glowing with a bright, phosphorescent light.
The New World Page 11
