Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages)

by Austin J. Bailey

  Tabitha gasped.

  “The what-arack?” Brinley asked.

  “The Hezarack Stone,” Habis repeated. “An ancient altar in Aquilar where the witches once made human sacrifices.”

  “Everyone avoids it,” Tabitha explained. “Birds won’t even fly over it. I’ve seen it before, once.” She stopped talking abruptly and looked down. Evidently the memory was not pleasant.

  “So what?” Brinley said. “I mean, that’s horrible, but what does it have to do with—”

  Habis cut her off with a wave of her hand. “As the trees grew they were watered with the tears of turtured men, breathed upon daily by Shael himself, and scorched with fire taken from the heart of a dragon.”

  “Ech!” Brinley said, disgusted. “That sounds like a lot of nasty work.”

  Habis nodded. “It was worth it. He was able to arm his soldiers with the most deadly weapons known to mankind. They were a force to be reckoned with.”

  Tabitha was frowning skeptically. “Habis, what do you mean, the heart of a dragon?”

  “Oh, yes,” Habis said, nodding. “The heart of a dragon will burn for weeks outside its body. One of the very last dragons was slain for this purpose.”

  Brinley shivered. “There are dragons in Aberdeen?”

  “Possibly,” Tabitha said.

  “Definitely not,” Habis corrected. She stirred the stew, checking the potatoes, then dished them each a bowl and served it alongside a red and yellow bread with a strange smell. “Not anymore, that is. A thousand years ago there were only two, a male and a female. Shael killed Anorre, the female, for her heart. In his anger, her partner Kuzo attacked Shael’s fortress in the Ire but was wounded badly. He died from his wounds somewhere in the wild. That’s rotoberry bread,” she added proudly as she watched Brinley inspect it. “My own recipe.”

  Brinley took a bite of it and froze. It was horrible.

  “His body was never found,” Tabitha pointed out, not noticing Brinley’s face.

  “He is dead,” Habis said dismissively. “You forget that Shael is my father. I was at the battle in question. I saw the monster’s wings burning with my father’s fire as it retreated into the northern sky.”

  Tabitha set her jaw stubbornly but said nothing.

  Brinley flicked a piece of rotoberry bread across the table at her when Habis wasn’t looking.

  “Look here,” Habis said. Brinley jumped and dropped the rest of her bread, but Habis was pointing at the book again. She indicated the space between the trees where their branches almost touched each other. Brinley took the opportunity to sneak the rest of the rotoberry bread off her plate and into her pocket.

  “There’s something wedged between the tree branches,” Tabitha said. Brinley could see it too now. A small box of some sort.

  “It’s called a Panthion. A prison box. This particular one was forged of mage steel, that is, steel drawn from the earth by the Mage of Metal, by Cassis’s predecessor. It is of strange design. It has no exit, only an entrance, and it cannot be broken or melted. It can only be opened by the Magemother.”

  “Wonderful,” Brinley said sarcastically.

  “Indeed,” Habis agreed. “Life is full of responsibility.”

  Tabitha, who had picked up the piece of rotoberry bread that Brinley flicked at her, suddenly clamped her hand over her mouth in disgust. Before Habis realized what had happened, she covered it up by saying, “You mean he’s locked in there? Isn’t he out? He sent March after us. And he sent the two Idris before that.”

  Habis laughed. “If he were out, we would all be dead or at war. No. He seems to have found a way to communicate with his servants, but it is safe to say that he has not escaped the Panthion.”

  Tabitha leaned in to inspect the picture more closely. “It looks so small,” she said. “How could it hold an entire person?”

  “It is a magical prison,” Habis said. “There is no telling how big it is on the inside, or what it could hold. For all we know there could be a whole world inside. Or he might be crammed into a single tiny room. The only way to find out would be to go inside.”

  Brinley frowned. “But—”

  “We have strayed from the point,” Habis said briskly. “I have told you all of this to explain the power of the twistwood trees. As you see, Shael created them so that their power could not be undone by one mage alone. Just as he used every element to curse the tree, every mage will need to do their part in lifting the curse.”

  “So that is why I must find the mages first,” Brinley said. “That is what you meant when you told me that on Calypsis.”

  “That was my guess,” Habis said. “Now I am more certain. I feel confident that together, they can lift the curse of the twistwood tree on a single piece of bark. If we then feed her a tincture of the healed bark, it should do the trick.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, pondering the magnitude of the task before them. Brinley was about to say something when a loud, rumbling belch issued from Tabitha’s general direction. Brinley stared at her and Tabitha’s eyebrows went up slowly. Habis was staring intently at Tabitha’s coat.

  Brinley cleared her throat. “Um, Habis, I don’t suppose you know where the lost mages are hiding?”

  Habis snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Well, then maybe you can help me with something else,” she said. “Do you know what the Void is?”

  “Excuse me?” Habis said. “What kind of ridiculous question is that?”

  “It’s not ridiculous,” Brinley said. “When I was with my mother in the lightfall on Calypsis, before you arrived, I traveled back to Earth for a few moments.”

  Habis sat up straighter. “Really? Intriguing.”

  Brinley nodded. “When I came back, someone came with me…my father. He came through the portal with me, but when I got back, he was gone. We were holding hands. I didn’t even feel him leave.”

  “Describe this portal to me,” Habis said.

  “It was the door of an old church on one side—the Earth side—and a door of light inside the lightfall on the other.”

  “And between them?”

  “Like a dark tunnel.”

  Habis raised an eyebrow. “Portals are not precisely my specialty…in fact, as far as I know, only the Magemother has ever used them. It is a magic beyond anyone in this world,” she said thoughtfully. “It may not be magic at all, technically speaking.”

  Brinley didn’t know what she meant by that, nor did she particularly care. At the look on her face, Habis returned to the matter at hand. “Perhaps he slipped back to his own world,” she said doubtfully.

  Brinley shook her head. “My mother told me that he must have gotten lost in the Void.”

  “Ah,” Habis said almost excitedly, tapping her fingers together. “Interesting.” She studied them carefully for a moment, and then said, “I have no idea.”

  “What do you mean?” Brinley exclaimed.

  “I mean I have no idea. You can’t expect me to know everything. I know of the Void only as a theoretical state of being.” She picked up a peanut from the table. “If I vanish this nut, for example, where will it go?”

  “I don’t know,” Brinley said. “Nowhere?”

  “Precisely,” Habis said. She snapped her fingers and the peanut vanished into thin air. “Nowhere. Or, as some would say, the Void. I have always thought of it as representing nonexistence. I had not thought of it as a place that a person could go to physically before now.”

  Tabitha looked at Brinley. “Does your father like peanuts?” Brinley gave her a weird look.

  Habis was tapping her fingers thoughtfully. “If you did indeed walk through the void between worlds, then perhaps it is a place that you can visit. If so, I have no idea how you would get there, unless you open another portal.”

  Tabitha looked at Brinley curiously. “Can you do that?”

  Brinley shrugged. “How should I know? It’s not like I got much training at this whole Magemother thing.”

  Habis smi
led. “Indeed. Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. I am sure that you will find a way.”

  “I do have one idea, actually,” Brinley said shyly. It was the only thing that she could think of, apart from learning how to open a portal herself, and it had been gnawing at her for days.

  “Go on,” Habis encouraged.

  “The summoning bell you made brought me here from another world—across the Void, I guess. So I thought, maybe…you could make another summoning bell, but for my father…”

  Habis cocked her head thoughtfully. “Not a bad idea. That could bring him here, theoretically, no matter where he was. But I’m afraid it is not possible.”

  Brinley’s heart sank. That had been her only idea. Over the last few days, she had convinced herself that Habis would be able to do it. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Habis nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. A summoning bell is crafted for a specific individual, or in your case, a specific type of individual, the Magemother…I could try to make one for him based on your description, but it would almost certainly not work. They are very hard to make, and they are very complicated. As far as I know, I am the only person ever to succeed, and even I do not understand them fully.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take your bell, for instance. It summoned you, even though your mother was still alive. She was technically still the Magemother, so I would think it would have summoned her. However, you were the Magemother that Aberdeen needed at the time, the new Magemother. Somehow, the bell knew to bring you instead of her. How? Nobody can say. Summoning bells are extremely powerful objects. I will not attempt to make one for a person that I have never met.”

  They sat in silence for a minute as Brinley ran over everything Habis had said. At length, a thought struck her. “Habis, could you make a summoning bell for your father and summon him out of that box?”

  Habis went pale. Slowly, she nodded. “Perhaps…It is helpful if the subject is actually present at the making while their essence is aligned to the bell…but then, I know him well enough that I could very likely do it from memory. A dark idea. Of course, I would never do so.”

  “You hate him that much?”

  Habis’s eyes shifted around the room, coming to rest on her hands. “I did not always,” she said simply.

  Brinley nodded, studying her own hands. She loved her own father very much. He was probably the best person she had ever known. The best father in the world, in her opinion. She couldn’t think of what it would be like to have a bad one.

  “What if someone tried to force you to make one?” Tabitha asked presently.

  Habis laughed. “I would like to see them try.” She shook her head, motioning for them to get up. “We have been talking about heavy things for too long now and your heads are beginning to spin. It is time for you to get some rest. Will you be leaving in the morning?”

  “Yes,” Brinley said. “As early as we can. There is much to do.”

  ***

  Brinley walked alone across the central square before Caraway Castle, stone tiles cold with new snow, muffling the sound of her footsteps. She wanted to visit Maggie. She had been thinking about her, worrying about her living in that tiny house all by herself. It must get cold in there at night.

  But when she arrived at the place where Maggie’s shack should have been, there was nothing there. Where could it have gone? She heard a moaning sound behind her and turned. Maggie was there, lying prostrate on the ground, fingers black with cold, clutching at the frozen stone.

  “I’m so cold,” Maggie whispered. “So cold.”

  Brinley’s breath caught in her throat, and the scene changed. Tabitha was high on the battlements of the castle, running as if her life depended on it, but from whom? She got to the edge and stopped, with no place else to run, and changed into a butterfly. Then Hugo was there, reaching for the frail, fluttering creature. But he did not look like the Hugo she knew. His face was creased and lined, and his eyes were black and cold. He caught the butterfly by the wings and ripped them off, laughing.

  Brinley screamed, but no sound came out.

  The scene changed again, and she was walking with her father through the trees at Morley. He would make everything better. She was telling him about Maggie, about Hugo, about Tabitha. It felt good to talk to him again. She hadn’t realized how much she missed that. He passed beneath the door of Morley Church and fell into blackness. It was like quicksand, but the color of the night sky, and it was pulling him down, down. He called to her, reached out, and she tried to lift him, knees braced against the steps of the church, but he was too heavy. She dropped him, and he was sucked in. She was crying now. She could still hear his voice calling to her.

  No, not his voice. The voice of children. Children she had never met. She opened her eyes and found herself in a maze. Thick green bushes shot skyward on every side. She could hear their voices—Chantra, Unda, and Lignumis. They were calling to her, begging her to save them, help them. They were lost. They needed her. How was she supposed to find them? She ran through the maze, but every turn she took was a dead end. A silver orb swung out of the corner of her vision, obliterating the bushes with a cleaving swing. It began to chase her, swinging back and forth, back and forth, until there was nowhere to run.

  Brinley jolted awake, at first unsure of where she was. Then it came back to her. She was in a tiny bedroom in Habis’s invisible house.

  A voice spoke inside her mind. Are you all right? It was Hugo. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I would reach out and see if you were up, and you were screaming.

  It was just a dream, she said. Just a bad dream.

  Was I in it?

  She grinned, feeling the terror melt away. Like I would tell you if you were. Honestly. She felt Hugo’s mood start to radiate warmth. He was smiling, she realized. Had a hard day?

  You could say that. Animus isn’t any fun at all to travel with. All he wants to do is teach me, and he won’t let me talk until I learn the last thing he taught me, which would be okay if it was simple stuff, but no. He’s picked something a bit more challenging. Not that it should be, for the Mage of Light and Darkness. Should be easy, I expect, but it’s not.

  Aww, Brinley said in the most patronizing thought-voice she could summon, do you miss your castle, Hugo?

  Hey! Hugo protested. If there was an ancient mage trying to get you to travel at the speed of light, you wouldn’t be happy either.

  Huh. I bet I could manage it if I were the Mage of Light and Darkness.

  Hugo laughed. It’s good to talk to you. Animus hasn’t let me say a word all day. Even to Cannon. I’m supposed to be listening to the moon or something.

  You should probably be doing it, then.

  I know. Don’t worry. I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

  Really?

  No. How was your day?

  She thought about it. Long.

  I hear you there…Well, I’ll let you sleep then.

  Hugo?

  Yeah?

  How are things going with our…mutual friend? It sounded silly to say it like that, but she was trying to avoid calling it “darkness.” He didn’t answer right away. Hugo?

  The same, I guess. I mean, I really haven’t felt much different.

  Brinley had the feeling that he was holding something back, but she didn’t want to push it. You’ll tell me when something happens, though, won’t you?

  Silence.

  Hugo?

  It really isn’t your problem, you know, his voice came back. Whatever’s going to happen, you shouldn’t have to deal with it.

  Brinley stood up and began to pace. This was exactly what she was afraid of hearing from him. It would be just like him to try and deal with the darkness all by himself without involving anybody else, and that was probably what would get him into trouble. Without warning, the Hugo from her dream flashed in her mind, and she struggled for a moment to dismiss it.

  I’m the Magemother, Hugo, was all she could think of to s
ay. And you’re a mage. Your problems are my problems. She searched around the empty room, looking for some way to explain her feelings. Hugo, you never knew your mother, did you?

  No.

  Well, let me tell you something about mothers in general. We want to know everything. We want to help you even when we shouldn’t.

  Hugo was silent for a while, but eventually his voice came back to her, more loudly this time. All right, all right, he said. I’ll keep you informed when I have visits from Dark Hugo, and you can stop asking me about it. Fair?

  Fair. As long as he kept up his end of the bargain, that is.

  They said their good nights, and Brinley was left to her own thoughts. It was going to be a long night. It felt like a few hours before dawn still, and she knew that there would be no getting back to sleep. Pulling her warm clothes back on, she decided to go for a walk. Maybe she would grab a snack in the kitchen.

  She peeked into the room next door to check on Tabitha, but the girl was gone. Brinley felt a tinge of worry, but calmed herself. This was normal for Tabitha. She seemed to need little sleep these days, and would often be out walking in the woods at night or patrolling the skies as a bird or filching food from the kitchen. Brinley decided she would look there first.

  A moment later she opened the door to the kitchen and froze. A small man stood there, cloaked and hooded, brandishing a short stick at her. A shape that was half man, half snake, tore from the end of it, flying across the room at her. Then it was gone, all of it, the man, the stick, the snake-man flying toward her; it had vanished as quickly as it appeared, and her scream died on her lips. She stood, rooted to the spot for a moment, wondering if any of it had happened, or if it was a figment of her imagination, the trick of a sleepy mind.

  Brinley ducked her head outside, partly to check for Tabitha, and partly to rule out the possibility of that man being real. What she saw struck her as very strange. Habis and Tabitha were crouched beside a little stream just outside the entrance, tossing stones into it. But that wasn’t the strangest part. There was some sort of creature on the other side of the stream, half hidden in shadows. It took her a moment to realize what it was.