by E. G. Foley
He landed on the column just long enough to grab the terrified gnome and lift the little fellow up onto his back. At once, it reached its arms around the lad’s neck and braced its feet in the back of his brown sash, freeing Maddox’s hands for their immediate escape.
The battering ram barreled straight at them.
Maddox dove off the column and caught himself on a rope hanging nearby. Just as he went arcing away, the battering ram smashed into the column and turned it to rubble.
Everybody gasped. The three fake ones burst into colorful explosions of feathers like confetti.
But it wasn’t over yet. Maddox still had one final challenge: a long, hair-raising jump from rope to rope with the gnome on his back. A Guardian, after all, must always transport his charge to safety in an attack situation, as Jake knew from Derek saving his neck in the past.
He didn’t let himself blink as he watched Maddox make the gravity-defying spring between ropes without dropping the frightened gnome.
He did it!
Isabelle and Archie and even Dani cheered. Thunderous applause erupted as Maddox grabbed hold and clung to the last rope in relief, steadying the gnome and then letting it climb up to sit on his shoulder.
As Maddox stepped down onto solid ground, Jake applauded like a good sport along with everybody else. The kid deserved it, he admitted in begrudging admiration.
“Oh, good show! Well done!” Archie cheered, clapping madly. “Well, sis, I approve.”
Isabelle was staring raptly at Maddox St. Trinian through the telescope again while Dani grinned like the cat who had eaten two canaries.
On the field, Maddox put the gnome down, shook its hand, then bowed to the Old Yew and marched off the field. Panting and sweaty, he picked up a waiting canteen and swigged some water.
At least he had the decency to look a little shaken up after what could have easily been the wrong choice and a total disaster.
Jake started to make a wisecrack. “Don’t faint, Izzy. No one brought the smelling salts…” But the rest of the words died on his tongue as he saw what happened next.
Maddox St. Trinian was shaking hands with Derek Stone.
Down there on the edge of the field, Derek was beaming at him, clapping the boy warmly on the shoulder like they were old pals. He was obviously congratulating the younger Guardian on a job well done, and Jake realized at that moment that Derek had been sitting in the front row all along, watching Maddox carry out his Assessment.
Jake was utterly taken aback. He let out a great, indignant huff. Well, that’s a fine how-do-ye-do! Derek’s supposed to be my mentor! If he wasn’t jealous of Maddox St. Trinian before, he certainly was now. I think I hate that kid.
“Uh, I guess Derek knows him,” Archie said as tactfully as possible, for it was not difficult for the others to guess Jake’s reaction when they, too, saw Derek making a great, proud fuss over the lad.
“He must be training him,” Dani offered.
Jake couldn’t hold back. “You’d think he would’ve said something about it—warned me!”
“Steady on, coz,” Archie advised. “You need to keep a clear head in case they call you next.”
Jake suppressed a growl.
Archie was right, and they both knew it. Within moments, the next victim would be called down.
Even now, Sir Peter waved his wand at the obstacle course and made it disappear, clearing the Field of Challenge for the next Assessment.
The metal framework, the columns—even the rubble from the one that had been smashed—dissolved and vanished as if they’d been no more solid than a morning mist.
Weird, Jake thought. Then he did his best to follow his cousin’s sensible advice and ignore the fact that he was totally intimidated by this tough older boy with such outstanding skills. A boy that his own hero, Derek Stone, had obviously been more concerned about than him.
Jake felt small and unimportant, forgotten. Abandoned. He had come to know that feeling well growing up in the orphanage, but it had been a while since it had plagued him.
Leaning forward on the uncomfortable bench, he rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his fingers loosely, refusing to look at Derek or his great Guardian protégé anymore. It was too vexing. Like Archie said, he had to stay calm. Out there in that field, it was going to be him against whatever obstacles the Elders deemed appropriate for a boy who could see ghosts and move things with his mind.
What stupid talents his own gifts seemed to him at the moment. He would have much rather have been a dashing warrior like Maddox. Now that was what a real hero was supposed to be like, rescuing others, not lounging around chatting with ghosts and other invisible friends—
“Stop it, Jake,” Isabelle said with a knowing sigh.
“You stop it!” he snapped. “Quit reading my mind. Empaths!” he huffed.
“She doesn’t read minds, she reads emotions, unless you’re a dog,” Dani pointed out, for Isabelle only had true telepathy with animals.
“I wish I was! Then I wouldn’t have to go through this torture!” he burst out.
“Excuse me, I turn into a wolf now and then, and I had to go through it, too,” said Henry, glancing over at his outburst.
“Oh, everybody leave me alone,” Jake muttered.
“We’re on your side, coz,” Archie told him earnestly.
“Just—nobody talk to me until this is over, all right?”
“Gladly,” Dani said under her breath.
The others leaned away from him while Jake stared broodingly at the Field of Challenge, waiting to find out who would go next.
“I’ve never seen him like this before,” he could hear them murmuring to each other. “He’s a wreck.”
“He’ll be fine,” Dani assured his cousins. “He just really wants to dazzle everybody. You know, so they’ll pick him for a Lightrider someday.”
Hands sweating, Jake laced his fingers together. Please don’t pick me next. Please don’t pick me next, he repeated over and over in his mind. I don’t want to go after Maddox St. Trinian.
Down by the Old Yew, Sir Peter now held an envelope in his hand. He opened it, read the note inside, then lifted his speaking trumpet to his lips. “Our next demonstration will be from…”
Jake squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced, braced to hear his fate.
“Nixella Marie Valentine: witch!” Sir Peter boomed through his speaking trumpet.
Jake nearly collapsed at this temporary reprieve. Oh, thank you, thank you. Spared again.
“Where is Miss Valentine?” Sir Peter visored his eyes with his hand and scanned the field and bleachers with a pleasant air. “The next candidate will enter the Field of Challenge, please. Ah, there you are! Right up here, my dear, if you please.”
A murmur of anticipation ran through the bleachers. The audience looked around to find the next contestant, a grim-faced girl marching out onto the field.
“Hey, it’s the gloomy girl I saw before!” Dani said.
“What sort of name is Nixella?” Archie murmured.
Dani nodded. “Even sounds like a witch. Hmm, she doesn’t look quite so pale now that she’s not wearing all black.”
“All black? Like Queen Victoria?” Jake asked. “Maybe she’s in mourning.”
With the orange sash of the witches and wizards tied around her waist, the girl walked out onto the field as warily as a stray cat.
Jake’s heart pounded with relief for himself—mixed with sympathy for the girl.
When she arrived before the seating area for all the VIPs, she made a deep, formal curtsy to Queen Victoria, the Elders, and the Old Yew. The skinny, raven-haired girl looked tiny in front of the massive trunk of the several-thousand-year-old tree.
The Old Yew asked her a few questions privately before Sir Peter once more took matters in hand.
“Welcome, Miss Valentine.” With a broad smile and firm grip on her shoulder, he forced her to turn around beside him and face the crowd, his speaking trumpet at the ready.
> She blanched as she looked out over the audience.
“So! Are you ready for the day’s challenge, my dear?” he asked, pleasant as ever.
She quickly lowered her head and nodded, as though she could not bear to look out upon the endless sea of faces.
Jake felt for her.
“Great! And do you enjoy being a witch?”
“Very much, sir,” she said into the speaking trumpet. Then she lowered her head again, toying nervously with her long, cream-colored skirts. She fingered the wand tucked into her sash as if it were a good luck charm.
Sir Peter chuckled. “I believe Miss Valentine would like to get this over with, ladies and gentlemen.”
She gave a more vigorous nod. “Oh, yes, if you please, sir.”
“Very well. Let’s get you all set up, then.” He gestured to a pair of gnomes nearby.
Jake believed these were different ones than the last Assessment, but it was hard to be certain. They all looked alike.
Between them, the two gnomes carried out a tall metal brazier onto the field. It had a flat stand as its base; a single pole about five feet tall; and a wide, shallow basin on the top, mounded with unlit coals.
While the gnomes carried the brazier out to the middle of the Field of Challenge, Sir Peter surveyed the audience with his speaking trumpet to his lips.
“Ladies and gentlemen, as some of you know and others will remember from firsthand experience, as I do, the Assessment for the magic-working group requires young witches and wizards to demonstrate their progress in mastering the four elements.” He counted them off on his fingers: “Fire. Water. Earth. And air.”
“Aunt Ramona, did you have to do that for your Assessment when you were a girl?” Isabelle asked.
The Elder witch laughed. “Oh, child, they hadn’t even started doing Assessments yet when I was her age.”
Jake supposed that was a very long time ago, indeed.
“I’ve watched more of these things than I can remember,” the Elder witch added. “Even served on the panel of judges dozens of times, doling out scores for our young hopefuls.”
“Since this is a very challenging Assessment,” Sir Peter continued through his trumpet, “the one aspect we really hope to see is that the coals in the brazier be lit by any magical means the candidate wishes to employ.”
As the gnomes hurried off the field, Sir Peter glanced down fondly at the wide-eyed witch. “We’re ready if you are, Miss Valentine.”
The scared girl nodded and marched out onto the field alone, clutching her wand tightly in her hand.
Sir Peter returned to his place and fluffed his ceremonial robes out of the way as he sat down again.
Nixella took a moment to concentrate, and a hush fell over the watching crowd. Then she lifted her hands to the sky and began murmuring a spell under her breath.
For several seconds, nothing happened.
Jake and the others were already starting to cringe for her, but then, dark clouds began forming over her head.
“Well, that’s appropriate,” mumbled Dani. “Since dark clouds seem to follow her.”
The thunderclouds gathered and grew over the center of the field where Nixella stood; they started swirling, slowly at first, but spreading and thickening as they churned faster and faster.
Jake was suddenly rather uneasy. This was serious power to find in the hands of a kid, and Miss Valentine was only getting started. Demonstrations like this certainly showed why the Order kept as close an eye as possible on all magical children. Especially when it came to witches and wizards.
Just as the oak-sure Guardians were always the reliable ones, the Order’s stalwart loyalists, witches and warlocks were the type most likely to go astray.
At least, that was what Jake had heard. Too often, rumor had it, their power seemed to go to their heads.
Jake hoped Miss Valentine was a good person because even he could see that her abilities were formidable, though she only looked about Dani’s age.
Lifting her wand in a straight line above her head, Nixella made the clouds she had formed obey her, ordering them into a small, intense, whirlwind.
The crowd oohed and aahed and applauded in amazement as the outer bands of wind from her magic-born tornado messed up everybody’s hair.
“I guess that counts as air,” Dani said loudly over the gale, her red hair flying in her face.
“It’s a wonder she doesn’t blow away!” Archie cried, just before somebody’s lost program whipped flat against his face. He peeled the wind-tossed paper off him with a splutter.
“Oh!” Isabelle cried as her pink parasol suddenly flipped inside-out in the stiff breeze.
Nixella Valentine flicked her wand at the sky with a throwing motion and shouted, “Incendia!”
A huge lightning bolt streaked across the afternoon sky, as if Zeus himself had thrown it down to let her borrow it.
Crackling in shades of blinding gold and jagged silver, it pierced the thunderheads, rocketed down through the center of the funnel cloud, and struck the metal brazier.
Instantly, the coals burst into flames.
The applause was immediate, accompanied by astonished cheering as the lightning disappeared and the fire atop the brazier blazed.
“I bet she practiced this a lot,” Archie said admiringly.
Even Aunt Ramona had sat up and taken notice, despite all the innumerable Assessments she had watched over the centuries. “That is a very talented girl.”
Jake agreed. Thankfully, their talents were different enough that he didn’t feel as threatened by the little witch as he had by the daring warrior-kid, Maddox St. Trinian.
Aunt Ramona was applauding and shaking her head in surprise. “This is extremely advanced work for one so young.”
“Do you think she ever smiles?” Archie asked.
“I doubt it,” Dani said. “She looks like she hates the world.”
Having proved her thorough study of the element of air and succeeded at the main task of lighting the brazier by magical means—which obviously counted as fire—Miss Valentine now turned her attention to the element of water.
The lightning had receded to its invisible dwelling place in the sky. She calmed the winds, dispersing her tornado before it blew out the brazier flames. All that was left now were the dark clouds she had started with.
Jake watched in fascination as she took her wand and tapped her left hand with it, then did the same thing to her right. This interesting bit of magic apparently allowed her to dispense with her wand and use her hands instead. She tucked the wand into her orange sash and then lifted her hands toward the thunderclouds above her.
Like a sculptor working a hunk of clay—smoothing, rounding, shaping it—she compacted the clouds down into a tight, shimmering ball of water.
It hovered about six feet off the ground. She took care to step back out of the way and then, with artful flicks of her fingers, she began making drips of rain leak off the watery sphere here and there.
Drip, drip, drip.
They fell faster and faster, until she clapped her hands together loudly. The water gushed out in a torrential downpour that soaked the circle of grass below it and turned it into mud.
The people applauded her flamboyant show madly, but Nixella was in her own world. Obviously, the girl loved her craft. The final element left now was earth. She seemed to brace herself as she took out her wand again, like she was worried about this one.
Too low to hear, she spoke an incantation of some sort over the mud puddle, then whisked the air above it with her wand. Again, she took a tentative step back, as if she were not quite sure herself what might happen next.
Something began stirring in the mud puddle.
Archie laughed aloud as a brown, misshapen, mud creature rose up out of the puddle. It stood taller than the girl, with big thumping legs, little stunted arms, and wonky long ears.
“What is it?” Dani cried.
“A rabbit!” Isabelle exclaimed as the giant mud-
hare twitched its whiskered nose and hopped three times across the grass, before collapsing back into a large squishy puddle again.
“Brilliant,” Jake breathed.
“Oh, bravo!” Archie applauded with unabashed admiration. “Isn’t that what they call a golem, Aunt Ramona?”
“Correct,” she said in distraction. She looked almost alarmed at the child’s display of magic.
Nixella Valentine gave the Old Yew a quick curtsy before hurrying shyly off the field.
Archie started to make a comment about the girl, but before he could speak—and quite before Jake was ready to hear it—Sir Peter Quince raised his speaking trumpet and boomed out the words that he had been dreading.
“Jacob Xavier Montague Charles Everton, the seventh Earl of Griffon! Will you please come forward?”
CHAPTER FIVE
Lightrider Material?
Jake froze.
“You’re up, man, go, go!” Archie urged, clapping him on the shoulder.
His friends and even Henry began applauding wildly, cheering, as Jake stood up, dizzy, from his seat. He felt as though his knees were made of jelly.
From the edge of the field below, Derek turned and pointed at him in greeting, as if to say, There you are! Beside him, Maddox St. Trinian studied Jake with a long, intent stare—until he noticed Isabelle. Then he looked at nothing else.
But Derek waved and started clapping heartily. “Hear, hear for Lord Griffon!”
Jake practically scowled at his mentor. It was a little late for Derek to be giving him the encouragement he had so desperately needed before. Ah, well. Now he would find out if he could indeed get through this on his own.
No parents. No Derek, no Red. No Henry and Helena to watch his back. No Aunt Ramona, no Gladwin. No Archie or Izzy or Dani helping him out in their own particular ways.
This time, it was just him and the moment of truth, with the whole world looking on. But he supposed that was the point of all this, anyway. He was growing up, and it was time to find out what he was really made of.
