The soldier nodded his agreement. “Best case, they will follow me and we will be able to outpace them.”
“Yes,” Habis said, “though not likely.”
“At least let him have some water before you go,” Tabitha said, picking up one of Dung’s half-empty buckets from the ground.
The soldier paused at the look on Tabitha’s face. “Very well, but be quick.”
The horse took three deep gulps, after which Tabitha tipped his head sideways and poured the remaining water under his lip.
“Where did you learn that?” the soldier asked, surprised. “I misjudged you.”
“I know about horses,” Tabitha said simply, “and a great many other things.”
The soldier mounted his horse again. “Then you should know that a Gan-Garan stallion like this can run at a full gallop for nine hours straight, though he’ll be wasted the rest of the week.”
“There are no other Gan-Garans like this one, I think,” Tabitha said shrewdly. She patted the horse appreciatively and whispered something in its ear. Like a rocket, the horse bolted away, causing the soldier to shout in surprise.
“What did you say to him?” Brinley asked, impressed. She was constantly amazed at Tabitha’s ability with animals.
“I told him that an ogre was after him,” Tabitha said darkly.
“Well, don’t just stand there waiting to get eaten,” Habis said, shoving them in the back. “Get inside.”
“Inside what?” Brinley asked, looking around.
“My house!” Habis said. The witch had dropped to her hands and knees and was crawling straight at a large boulder. “Just pretend it’s a hole,” she said and disappeared into it.
Brinley closed her eyes and crawled after Habis, doing her best to pretend that the large, very solid-looking boulder before her was a hole. Sure enough, the impact never came. She kept crawling for a few strides, just to make sure, then opened her eyes to the most wonderful crystal room. It wasn’t really crystal, she knew. Rather, it was made of some shimmering magical material which allowed them to see exactly what was happening outside. Apart from the strange nature of the walls, the space was quite cozy. There was a perfect little iron stove in the corner with a pot of tea boiling, and several comfortable chairs. Brinley was pleased to see that Habis’s living room was no longer decorated like an apothecary.
“Wow,” Tabitha said, appearing behind Brinley. “This is a very nice boulder, Habis.”
“Thank you.” Habis stuck her head back outside the boulder. “Get in here, Dung! What are you doing?”
Brinley, looking for the source of the problem, saw Dung standing in the middle of the garden, holding a pitchfork and trying to look threatening.
“Idiot,” Habis spat. “He’s going to get himself killed this time for sure. He fancies himself as my protector.”
“I’ll get him,” Tabitha said.
“No, wait!” Habis began, but Tabitha was already through the boulder.
As it turned out, Dung needed quite a bit of convincing to come into hiding, and when they were halfway back to the boulder, the ogre burst through the trees.
At first glance, Brinley thought it looked like a mix between a large man and a dinosaur. It had thick, green, scaly skin, a bald head with human features, and legs as thick as tree trunks. Large as it was, it moved with remarkable precision as it crossed the field toward the two figures, now staring at it, motionless. The witch, March, sat upon its shoulders, draped in a deep green robe, but there was no sign of the cloaked figure that the soldier had mentioned. Tabitha glanced at the boulder and then back at the house, clearly wondering whether it was wise to lead her enemies back to her friends.
Brinley wanted to run out and help, despite the fact that she knew she would be of little aid, but Habis had an iron grip on her arm.
“Come on, girl,” Habis whispered, watching Tabitha. “Go into the house.” Then she said to Brinley, “If that empty-headed herald of yours doesn’t head for the house I’m going to have to go out there.”
Luckily, out in the field, Tabitha was thinking the same thing. “Let’s go!” she cried when the ogre was halfway to them. “This way!”
Dung followed her to the edge of the garden, but when she opened the front door to the trap house and he realized what she was doing, he stopped dead in his tracks.
“Dung no go in there. No more!” Dung said, shaking his head. The ogre was only feet away now. Tabitha reached out and pulled him forcefully inside, slamming the door shut behind them. She looked around, careful not to take more than one step into the room. She did risk a step to the side, hoping that if the ogre barreled through, it wouldn’t knock her forward into whatever trap awaited.
To her surprise, the ogre did not immediately follow them. She had expected the door to crash inward and the trap to spring, but there was nothing, only silence. Then she heard breathing, sniffing. He was on the other side of the door, smelling for them. There was a guttural growl as the ogre placed one large hand on the door and pushed inward. The door flexed a few inches, and Tabitha found herself looking right into the ogre’s eyes. His nostrils flared when he saw her, and he let out a bellow.
“Follow them, you beast!” March yelled from outside.
She must have dismounted. He released the door, and a second later hit it so hard that it splintered as he barreled through.
As soon as he was through the door, Tabitha grabbed Dung and pushed him back outside. Better to be out in the open with a witch than inside a trap when it springs. They had only just cleared the threshold when an immense grinding, thrashing sound issued from behind them. Tabitha tumbled to the ground, turning to see the two sides of the house slamming together like the jaws of a mouth. The ogre bellowed.
“Blast! Where is the Magemother?” March asked. Tabitha jumped to her feet, turning to face her.
“Mistress!” Dung shouted, raising his hands and running towards March. “Go away! Go away!”
“Ah,” March said, striding toward him. “My favorite fool. Serving my sister now, I see.” She raised her hand and Dung was blasted from his feet, landing hard and hitting his head against a rock. He was still breathing, but he didn’t get up. March raised her hand to finish the job, then paused as Tabitha shouted at her.
“Stop!”
March turned back. “What do you want, little girl? Are you going to try and stop me?”
“I’m not a little girl,” Tabitha said, fists clenching at her sides. “I’m the Magemother’s Herald.” With a sound like a gunshot, Tabitha’s body exploded into a thousand shimmering pieces. The pieces flashed and fluttered, catching the air. It took a moment for March to realize what they were.
“Butterflies?” she said with a little laugh. “Butterflies?”
The butterflies swarmed the witch, covering her in a cloud of soft, brightly colored wings. A flash of blue light erupted from the center of the cloud and several butterflies vanished. The light flashed again and again. Soon there were only a few butterflies left and Tabitha was forced to change back into herself. She was panting, clutching at her side.
“Impressive,” March said, grinning at her, “but hardly effective.”
“I don’t know about that,” Habis said, causing March to spin around in surprise. While March had been distracted by the butterflies, Habis had come up on her from behind. Before March could defend herself, a bolt of red light from Habis’s hand struck her squarely in the stomach and she buckled over, grunting. Habis picked a little stone out of the stream that ran in front of the boulder she lived in and chucked it at her sister. It grew exponentially in the air so that it was ten feet across by the time it reached March. The witch ducked and rolled to the side to avoid it.
Meanwhile, Tabitha had become distracted by the house. The sounds coming from it were now punctuated by a vicious roaring from the ogre. The house seemed to be struggling to digest him. As she watched, one of the ogre’s thick feet came crashing out of the kitchen window. Then it withdrew again. The
re was a low-pitched pounding noise and the house shook. The ogre was beating it from the inside. A moment later the jaws of the house opened and it gave a deep, sonorous belch.
“It’s going to spit him back out!” Tabitha shouted. But Habis had her hands full with her sister. March was swinging a wicked-looking black sword that she had conjured out of thin air, hacking apart a small army of grass soldiers that Habis had created out of the field upon which they stood.
“Why are you hiding the Magemother from me?” March shouted angrily. “Are you so far gone as to help her over your own blood?”
Habis made no response other than to bend down and lift two more grass soldiers out of the ground with her hands. They saluted her and hurried off to join the fray. “And what is it you want with her, dear sister?” Habis said, bending over to lift another soldier out of the ground, this one a horseman.
March snarled, flicking her wrist in a complicated motion to produce a spear made out of what looked like smoke. She threw it at the approaching horseman and it hit him, evaporating as it touched him. The damage was done, however, and the grass that he was made from began to smoke at the edges, then flame. He stumbled among his peers, catching two of his fellow soldiers on fire before he fell apart. March gave a satisfied smile. “I need her help to open a certain box.”
“You were the only one that ever wanted our father back,” Habis said. “I like him just fine where he is.”
March cut the last grass soldier in half and stepped over the pile of clippings to stand before her sister. Meanwhile, the house gave another loud belch. “You can’t beat me,” she whispered.
Habis shrugged. “Not alone, perhaps,” she said. “Tabitha?”
Tabitha was looking at the boulder where Habis’s real house was hidden. She thought she had seen something there—someone—tapping on the rock. But there was nothing there, and Habis needed her help. Tabitha shrank out of sight. She became an ant. Not a very threatening opponent, perhaps, but it was the only thing that she could think of. The first thing she did was run for the house. If she was lucky, if she knew ants at all, they would be close by, near the foundation. She found them. She could smell the queen. Ants, like bees (and mages), could communicate and coordinate with each other over great distances without speaking. She called to them, every ant under the foundation, and they gathered to her. She kept calling and calling, until every ant within a hundred yards was scurrying to her aid. In under a minute, she had an army.
Above the soil, Habis and March were at it again. The house was positively churning now, struggling to keep the ogre inside.
Then the ants came. They burst from the ground at March’s feet like a fountain, engulfing her. They were a foot thick around her ankles, biting her, swarming under her clothes. She screamed in horror, unsure how to defend herself, and began to dance about, trying to shake them off. Then the house shuddered, its jaws opening wide to release the biggest belch yet, the ogre along with it. It hit the ground not far from where March was dancing, and she ran for it, leaping onto its back.
“Run!” she bellowed.
There were ants rising out of the ground everywhere now, crawling up the ogre’s legs. He stomped around for a moment, trying to crush them, then bolted for the trees. As he fled, one ant detached itself from the horde, falling to the earth. Tabitha popped back into her normal size, brushing her hands together in a satisfied way as she walked back to Habis.
“Very impressive,” the witch said appreciatively. She turned and looked at the boulder. “And the Magemother actually stayed put like I told her to. Even more impressive.”
Tabitha nodded. “She did, didn’t she?”
“Of course, I did tie her up.” Habis grinned. “Just in case.”
***
Less than a mile away, March flung herself over the top of a waterfall and fell twenty feet into the churning plunge pool. Most of the ants released her when she hit the water, and those that did not were forced away as she stood in the waterfall’s stream. When she was free of them, she waded to the bank and pulled her sopping body onto it, glancing up as the Janrax slipped out from behind a tree.
“Having fun?” he said.
She ignored him. “Did it work?”
“Yes,” he said. “I was able to slip by quite unnoticed. I was able to locate the entrance to your sister’s house before your little battle was over, and confirmed that the Magemother is indeed inside.” He fingered one of the carved figures in the handle of his wand, a strange twisted man with the head of a snake. “It should be no trouble at all to sneak in during the night and release the first of my servants.”
March eyed the wand uneasily. “What are they, these haunts of yours?”
“Different things,” he said. “Birds and beasts and men, all of them desperate enough in life to make a terrible bargain.”
“To serve you in death?” she asked, guessing the truth. “But why do you insist on targeting the Magemother when my father’s instructions were for you to bring down the mages themselves?”
The Janrax twisted his wand, running his fingers along the figures. “My servants assault the psyche of their targets. They infiltrate the mind, poison the heart with fear. The Magemother would be sure to notice if all her mages became…troubled, haunted at the same time. She would be sure to investigate. Likely she would liberate them with little trouble. So she must not notice. She must be haunted herself. Only if she takes the haunt herself will it be safe to proceed with the others.
“Takes the haunt?” March asked.
“Like a drug,” the Janrax explained. “She must take it, accept it into herself, and believe the haunt for the effects to be real.”
“How long until we can tell if she has taken the haunt?”
“Days,” he said. “Maybe less.”
March folded her arms, forcing herself to stop shivering. “You will watch her, I suppose?”
He shook his head. “I have no need to watch. I will know if she takes the haunting. I will accompany you in your work, if that is your desire, until the time comes for me to visit the mages.”
“Very well,” she said, wringing out her clothing as best she could. “We will leave in the morning, when your work is finished. We have a message to deliver to the Mage of Light and Darkness.”
Chapter Five
In which Hugo tries to duel a chicken
A day and a half after Hugo had begun listening to the moon, he was still walking in silence, and he was about to explode. He had been unable to answer Animus’s questions at the end of the first day, but the older mage hadn’t seemed surprised. Now Cannon was trying to cheer him up.
“It took me weeks to feel the wind for the first time after I really started trying.”
Hugo cringed. If I don’t have some kind of breakthrough quick, he thought, I am going to go crazy. It was the middle of the day, and it was hot, and they still had at least five more hours of walking. Hugo pulled a map out of his bag and consulted it. By his calculations, it would take another two weeks to get to Tourilia if they continued at this rate. He shoved the map into his bag angrily.
“What has that map done now?” Animus said seriously.
“I don’t know why we didn’t just go through Ninebridge,” Hugo spat. “We could have been there in a couple days, even walking.”
“As usual, the purpose of this particular journey does not depend solely on reaching our destination,” Animus said.
“I figured you would say something like that,” Hugo said.
Animus nodded. “That is because you are very wise. Can you tell me, then, what our other purpose is?”
“Training me, I suppose.” Or torturing me. Hugo cleared his throat. “You picked a route that would take us forever, so that I would feel extra pressure to figure out my powers. You even made up an arbitrary deadline. ‘The day after tomorrow,’ you said. I suppose you thought that the pressure would make my powers slip out somehow.” But it didn’t work.
Animus winked pleasantly. “
Very astute. Yes, I have often found that it is easier to succeed myself when the stakes are high. You are, however, incorrect on the last point. Your deadline was not arbitrary.”
“What?” Hugo said. “Why a day and a half, then?”
“Ah,” Animus said seriously, coming to a stop beside Hugo and straightening up. Hugo was surprised again at how tall the mage was. He was head and shoulders above Hugo, a fact that was easy to forget when they were separated by a few feet on the road. Animus was studying the sky again, twisting the end of his beard between his finger and thumb. “Because of the weather.”
“What?”
“There will be terrible weather later today,” Animus said. His eyes settled on a mass of clouds on the northern horizon. “I daresay you will not enjoy this evening at all.”
As if in agreement, a peal of thunder sounded in the distance.
***
Two hours later, Hugo was miserable. He was soaked through, but the rain wasn’t the worst of it. The worst part was the cold. Being the king’s son, he had the very best traveling clothes that money could buy. He had even taken his blanket out of his bedroll and put it around his shoulders under his cloak, but with enough wind and rain, it was impossible to stay warm. He clung to the thought that he was not cold enough to die.
Animus was just as soaked as Hugo, which was more than a bit surprising. No doubt Animus had the power to shield himself from the rain. He could probably make the whole storm blow away. But he didn’t. He was suffering right alongside Hugo. He was probably doing it just to make Hugo feel guilty. Or maybe he wanted Hugo to experience the consequences of his actions but didn’t think it was fair to spare himself the discomfort and leave Hugo to suffer by himself. Either way, they were both miserable.
Cannon, on the other hand, had no such qualms about staying dry. A halo of clear air hung about his shoulders, deflecting every raindrop before it could fall on him. He was even whistling. Whistling! Curse him…What a nincompoop.
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