“My name has been taken from me,” he said, with a bitter smile. “You know how it feels, don’t you? To have what is most dear to you ripped away?” He raised his hand and the walls that had surrounded her earlier came thundering down around her again, blocking off her view of Animus, of Belterras. His smile widened and pain shot across the inside of her skull. It felt like someone had driven a knife through her brain.
Moments later, Animus was picking her up off the floor again.
“There is a creature trying to break into his mind,” she said. “A man with the head of a jackal.” She stopped, wondering if she should tell him the whole truth. “And there is another like him, with the head of a snake. I think…”
“What?” Animus said. His face had gone white.
“I think I have let him into my mind. He’s sealing me off from the mages and…” She was going to say “he hurt me,” but it sounded foolish. “And I think it’s my fault,” she finished.
Animus inhaled sharply. “The Janrax,” he said. “It is him, then. And he has found you first.”
“The Janrax,” Tabitha whispered, looking pale.
Animus eyed her carefully and then continued to address Brinley. “Clever of him to attack you before revealing himself to me. How did it happen? When?”
Brinley shook her head. “It’s a long story. I didn’t know it was real. I thought he was just a dream. Who is he, Animus?”
Animus placed a hand on Belterras’s shoulders and pushed him slowly to the ground while Tabitha fetched a folded cloth from the corner and placed it under his head like a pillow. “Little is known about him. I was young when he was teaching magic to the first wizards.”
“He’s the one who broke the Bridge to Nowhere?” Tabitha asked. “Belsie mentioned him, I think.”
Animus nodded.
“He works for Shael now?” Tabitha asked. She was tugging on Animus’s sleeve. “You must get him out of Belsie, Animus. You must! Make him stop!”
Animus put a calming hand on her shoulder. “That is easier said than done. Have patience. There is hope for him yet.” He turned to Brinley again. “What did he say to you? What does he want?”
Brinley thought about it. It struck her as odd, suddenly, that the man with the snake’s head had not done more to hurt her. “I think he just wants to keep me from helping Belterras. He stopped me when I tried.” She hesitated. “The snake-head man in my mind looks like the jackal one that’s attacking Belterras. What are they?”
Animus’s expression darkened. “Evil,” he said hoarsely. “Of more than that I cannot be sure, but if I had to guess I would say that they are the spirits of wicked men—or wizards—who the Janrax has bound to himself. It would explain how I cannot sense their presence.”
Tabitha gasped. “Ghosts?” she said, placing a hand on Belterras’s arm protectively. “Is he going to be okay? Why does it want to get inside his mind?”
Animus placed a hand on her shoulder and pointed at a blanket, which she moved to retrieve. “A mind is a fragile thing,” he said, helping her spread the blanket over Belterras’s body. “It can be tipped, changed, even destroyed. Belterras serves much of this world and holds great power. Is it so hard to see why Shael would want to break him, or even just distract him?” He bent down again to tuck the blanket carefully around Belterras’s feet. “We need not fear for him yet. Belterras is old and wise. A mind like his will not be easily undone, though I daresay that if it was Shael’s aim to simply incapacitate Belterras, then he has succeeded. It will require all of his strength to fend off the attack.”
Brinley nodded. “He doesn’t want Belterras to be able to fight in the battle that is coming.” She glanced up at the ancient mage as he rose to his full height. “But Animus, you may be in danger too. He may be after all the mages.”
“I’m sure he is,” he said. “But that is not what worries me.”
“What is it?” Tabitha asked.
Animus steered them toward the little balcony. “What worries me most, Magemother,” he said, “is that your mind has already been penetrated. What worries me most is that you may be unable to save us. What worries me,” he said, glancing back at Belterras, “is that the mages of Aberdeen may all be engaged in a silent struggle for their own sanity when the battle for this world commences, and that you will be unable to help them.”
Brinley felt hot tears swell in her eyes. She felt powerless, and more than that, stupid for letting the man with the snake head into her mind. She should know by now that her dreams were often more than just dreams. “What now?”
“We have to find the head,” Tabitha said, surprising Brinley with the fierceness in her voice. “If you cut off the head of a snake, the body dies.” Tabitha turned back from the balcony and spread her arms wide to the birds. “Keep him safe for me,” she said in a commanding voice, and the birds leaped into the air and began to circle the mage on the ground. “Protect him until we return.” She turned back to Brinley, but then stopped short and said over her shoulder, “And feed him, please, if he gets hungry.” Then she looked at Brinley a little sheepishly. “It’s a good thing he likes birdseed.”
To their surprise, Animus let out a bark of laughter. “I think we should not leave him for the birds.” He snapped his fingers, and Belterras rose on a swirling bed of air to float beside them. “I will take him to Maggie’s cottage. Habis can look after him, since her other patient is improving.”
Brinley looked at the ancient mage with admiration. Of the seven mages of Aberdeen, he was the oldest, and the wisest, but it was his ability to remain calm in the face of a storm that had always impressed her the most.
“And then what?” Brinley asked. “What happens next?”
“We will go through with our plan,” Animus said softly. He gave her a sharp look. “The Janrax wants to disrupt us. We must not let him. We must meet with the kings, and then you must go to Inveress. In three days’ time you must release Shael from his prison or Hugo will die. That much has not changed. Those three days will be more dangerous for us now, that is all.”
“Will you come with us to Inveress?” Tabitha asked.
Animus considered them for a moment. “No. I will not go with you. My powers will likely not work there in any case, since Inveress lies beyond the borders of this world. As such I would only be a burden on your journey. No. I will be of more use assisting King Remy in his preparations on this side. I will see to Belterras.”
Tabitha looked longingly at Belterras for a moment, and Brinley realized that she was probably torn. As his apprentice, her place was with him, but as the Magemother’s Herald, her place was at Brinley’s side. Finally, Tabitha changed into a swan and allowed Brinley to climb onto her soft black back.
“Go now,” Animus whispered. “Tell the others what has befallen Belterras, but keep it quiet. We do not want to cause alarm just yet. I will see you at the meeting.”
Brinley nodded, and she and Tabitha slipped out of the tower and into the night.
***
At midday, a red-tailed hawk caught a rising draft of warm air as he soared above the city of Ninebridge. He banked over the circle of magical bridges that surrounded the town, counting each of them as he passed and naming their destinations to himself idly. The first bridge led to the Magisterium, where once, long ago, he had trained the first wizards—including the man whose bidding he now did. Bridges two, three, and four led to cities in Chair and the Greggan States that held few memories for him. He caught a different draft of air, then pitched out of it sideways and began again. The sixth bridge led to the Wizard’s Ire, where he had been a prisoner for the last hundred years. It was guarded heavily—the only one of the nine that was—but that didn’t matter to him. He would never go back that way. The seventh bridge led to the dwarf kingdom of Hedgemon, and the eighth to Aquilar.
The ninth bridge was broken.
He had broken it. Once, in his youth, it had led to heaven—the realm of the gods themselves—but no longer. He smiled at that. Now they ca
lled it the Bridge to Nowhere, and this morning he had learned something that surprised him. He could not remember the last time something had truly surprised him. Perhaps when the gods had taken his name and his power, but if he was honest with himself, he had seen that one coming. After all, he had broken their bridge, cut off their connection with this world, and by so doing plunged Aberdeen into a period of darkness. Today he had learned that the Bridge to Nowhere actually led somewhere: the fabled land of Inveress where Cyus, the banished god, was said to live. Soon, very soon, he would take that path.
He leveled out at the base of the fifth bridge and banked upward, following its steep incline. At the top, he flew through the gray curtain of mist and reappeared hundreds of miles away on the other half of the bridge, in the shadow of the mountain city of Calderon.
Calderon lay at the edge of the Rift, a cavernous divide that separated Aberdeen from the Wizard’s Ire. It was impassable—so deep that the fabric of the void billowed out of it like a black, vacuous wind. The entire canyon howled like a great beast and inhaled dragons and dragonflies with equal ease. Between its bleak and empty appearance, the disquieting sound, and the promise that anyone who fell inside would never return, the Rift made a convenient haunt for those who wished to remain unnoticed. Even Animus had not thought to check inside the Rift itself; otherwise he might have found the hidden path that had been carved into the cliff face, and the series of natural caves to which it led. The caves were filling every day with whatever unspeakable creatures March gathered from the more unsavory corners of the land to support her father’s troops in the coming battle.
He saw the witch’s head peek slowly over the edge as she climbed out of the Rift and, leaving his hawk form behind, took his own shape beside her: a thin, wiry corpse of a man with tired, pitlike eyes and skin the color of night.
“Good,” March said, “you have come.” She turned to walk along the edge and motioned for him to follow. “What news? Which mages have you begun to haunt?”
“Belterras,” he replied, “and the Magemother herself. Belterras is resisting me, but he is incapacitated. He will be of no use in battle.” He grinned malevolently. “The Magemother is completely under my control. Her power comes and goes as it pleases me.”
March clapped her hands with enthusiasm. “Excellent,” she said. “But what of Animus? You followed him from this spot this morning. What happened?”
He shrugged. “The Wind Mage eluded me. He is not as impulsive as the others, but I will have him in time.”
“Fool!” she spat. “His guard is up now. I expected better results from the Janrax.”
He frowned. That was what they called him now. Few remembered his true name. He himself was unable to recall it, or hear it if it was spoken. The gods had taken even that from him.
“Do they suspect you?” March asked.
“Perhaps. Animus suspects everyone, and Unda has had his eye on me since my appearance. I have not fooled him as well as the others, but he is unsure of what it is he senses. As long as I tread carefully, I think I will be able to maintain my disguise.”
“Good, good,” March said, rubbing her hands together. “What of the meeting this morning? The news is everywhere. All the kings have gathered together on the plain.”
“Yes,” the Janrax said. “The Magemother summoned the five kings and shared her plans for the next three days.”
“Two and a half,” March corrected. “Two and a half days until my father is released! Are they terrified?”
“Some of them,” the Janrax said. “Others do not believe it. They do not see how he could have survived in the Panthion for so long. Others tried to convince the Magemother not to let him out. They wanted her to let the Mage of Light and Darkness die rather than release Shael from prison.”
“What did she say?” March asked.
The Janrax smiled grimly. “She will save her mage, no matter the cost. She does not have the stomach for killing her friends. She has convinced herself that Aberdeen will be able to withstand your father, should he escape.”
March threw back her head and laughed. “Foolish child! He will escape. Aberdeen will fall, just as we have planned! Shael has foreseen her actions perfectly.”
“There is one thing he did not foresee,” the Janrax said.
March stopped walking. “What?” she demanded.
“The Magemother has found the land of Inveress.”
“The land of…What are you talking about?”
“Inveress,” the Janrax repeated. “The fabled world beneath our own, where all our actions are recorded by the exiled god and his magical cat—”
“I know the tale!” March spat. “What do you mean she has found it?”
“She has found a way to get there,” the Janrax clarified. “The king’s pet servant, Archibald, went looking for the Magemother’s lost father and came back with the Swelter Cat, who says that he can lead her to Inveress. She is leaving this evening.”
March massaged her left temple with two fingers. “Why would she want to go there? Information? Cyus sees all, I suppose, so he could tell her anything…about our plans, about everything. How to defeat Shael, perhaps?”
“Her father is there,” the Janrax said. “She is going to collect him. She refused to reveal the rest of her plan in the meeting, though I expect that Animus knows.”
March glared at the Janrax for a moment, as if this turn of events were his fault. “I thought that Inveress was impossible to reach. In the midst of the void. How will she get there?”
“By taking the Bridge to Nowhere.”
March grew still. “Ah,” she said, her voice like ice. “So we have you to thank for this mess. You and your stunt, all those years ago.” She held up a finger. “You should not have antagonized the gods so blatantly.”
The Janrax sniffed. “The destruction of that bridge was the beginning of a new era. One in which the gods meddled less and less with our world. Do not lecture me. I have paid dearly so that you can enjoy the life you do. Do you think that the gods would allow you and your father to torment Aberdeen if they still shared this world?”
She waved his words away. “Do not lecture me, Maazan Dow.”
He saw her lips move as she spoke his name, but he heard nothing. His heart ached in the face of that silence as though she had struck a blow to some forgotten corner of his soul. “How dare you?” he whispered.
Her face twisted in a wry grin. “If you want your name back, you will serve my father, and serve him without complaint. Don’t make me remind you again. Now, what is your next step?”
The Janrax bit off a retort. She would have to pay later. For now, he had to do as she said. “I will accompany the Magemother to Inveress. She will want to bring me along on the journey once she finds out that there is something wrong with my powers.”
“Your powers?” March asked.
“Lignumis’s powers,” he replied. “The Mage of Wood, whose shape I have stolen, had his powers taken from him, in case you have forgotten. She seeks to restore them to him, as is the natural order of things.”
“But you cannot receive them,” she said. “You are not a mage.” She frowned at the predicament. “You cannot fake the reception of powers.”
The Janrax smiled. “The Magemother has a simple mind. A…caring disposition. She will see me as wounded. Troubled from my long, hard life hiding from Shael in the Wizard’s Ire.”
A grin slowly crossed March’s face. “Will that work?”
The Janrax nodded. “She will pity me long before she suspects me. She will want to keep me close.” He sneered. “Nurse me back to health.”
March cleared her throat. “So be it. Did you learn anything else at your meeting?”
He nodded. “Whatever the Magemother’s plan, it involves gathering the people of Aberdeen into the city of Ninebridge. Messengers have already gone out to the major settlements.”
March looked thoughtful at this news. “What purpose can this serve? Does she mean to
ambush Shael? Make one last stand against his armies?”
He shrugged. “I only know that she gave instructions for everyone to go to Ninebridge.”
March pursed her lips in thought. “She must be trying to hide them,” she said. “Protect the people of Aberdeen from our invasion. She means to march the whole world off the end of that bridge and hide them in Inveress. Ha! Let her do it. Let her think that they are safe.”
“Hmm,” the Janrax said. “That seems unlikely. There is no way out of Inveress. You can take the bridge in, but I doubt it works both ways.”
“Agh,” March said. “Details. Go with her, then. Learn her plan and stop her if you can. It would be better if she did not reach Cyus. Perhaps you can cripple another mage or two along the way. We cannot risk facing them in the battle that is coming. They must not be united against our armies when Shael is released.”
“They will not be,” the Janrax said. “I will see to that.” He glanced up at the sun, gauging the time. “I must be off. It is nearly time for my audience with the Magemother.”
“Good, good,” March said, nodding to herself. “Ah! Look!” She pointed to the sky. “I was hoping he would come.”
“A dragon,” the Janrax murmured, catching sight of red wings through a break in the clouds. “You called him here?”
“Kuzo,” March said. “No, I did not call him. I guessed that he would come. He wants revenge. He will try to cross the Rift into the Wizard’s Ire.”
“But that is impossible.” The Janrax sneered. “No one can cross it. Not even Shael could cross it. Not even I could cross it, in my prime.”
“He did, once…” March whispered. “In his prime…” She watched Kuzo hungrily as he soared toward the Rift. He barreled into the darkness, only to reemerge a moment later. He flew out a little ways and turned back, picking up speed to try again, but this time he was back even more quickly. He roared at the bellowing canyon wind and began to circle restlessly.
“He is old now,” March said. “Not as mighty as he once was. Still, he is strong…”
“You mean to recruit him?” the Janrax guessed.
Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages) Page 59
