The Guardians

by William Joyce

  Katherine hurriedly looked at the book’s cover. She could decipher the easy part. Spells of . . . Of what? Of what? She’d never seen the next word before and needed to consult two different dictionaries to piece it together, but once she did, she gasped. The title read Spells of Enslavement.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sly Is the Evil That Travels Unknown

  IT HAD BEEN ROUGHLY an hour since Ombric had started to suspect that the djinni was now likely controlled by Pitch. A tiny detail had raised Ombric’s suspicions, something that only an ancient wizard would notice. He was certain that North was unaware that something was amiss; North was agog at the sight of the Himalayas; he’d let his warrior guard down. But what the ever vigilant Ombric had noticed was that the djinni was admiring the mountains too. Subtly and furtively, as if it did not want to be noticed. And Ombric knew that this was something that no machine would do on its own.

  A machine could not be curious. A machine could not feel interest or awe. It could only do as it was told, and neither Ombric nor North had ordered the djinni to do anything but fly them as instructed.

  Ombric shut his eyes and concentrated.

  Even from miles away, he could still communicate mentally with his owls in Big Root. Within a few seconds, he heard them. Katherine gave us more food than you do, they said. We want bigger portions from now on. It took some mental wrangling, but eventually, the drowsy, well-fed owls were able to focus on the questions the wizard was asking them.

  One of them remembered having seen a spider just above the djinni’s head the night before. The owl had thought nothing of it and had gone back to sleep—spiders in Big Root were not an unusual occurrence; they told marvelous jokes and were awfully good at tickling.

  What sort of spider? Ombric inquired silently.

  An odd spider, the owl responded. Completely black. A wolf spider, I believe.

  That was all Ombric needed to know. Russian Wolf spiders were dormant in winter. He knew that much, and the likely conclusion was this: Pitch had made his way through Ombric’s defenses in what at first glance was the most simple of guises—a house spider.

  But how to proceed? With Pitch now controlling the djinni, Ombric knew that his and North’s best chance was to catch the robot off guard and defeat it. But could they defeat a machine of that strength? A machine, Ombric recalled with a cringe, that was armed with one of North’s hand-forged swords?

  And it was more than their own safety at stake. Pitch was clearly out for them both, and he was probably after the lost relics of the Moon Clipper as well. The djinni must not get near our true destination, Ombric determined. There was no telling what Pitch would do if he found what they were looking for—and the power it surely possessed. And they were quickly honing in on that place now. . . . Ombric had to try to trick the djinni. He would need to rely on incantations and magic, and timing would be everything.

  “The base of that peak—that’s the place. Land there, Djinni!” Ombric shouted out quickly, pointing to the mountain looming ahead of them.

  “As you command,” said the djinni, and with a slight shift in direction, it guided the ship down to the snowy drifts below.

  Ombric tried to catch North’s attention, but the apprentice was too busy looking about the landscape. Cheeks flushed, whether with cold or excitement, Ombric could not tell, North asked, “Is this the spot?”

  “Indeed it is, Nicholas,” replied the wizard. “We’ll find what we seek hidden under tons of rock and snow. But thanks to you, we have the djinni to dig it out.”

  North continued to gaze about intensely. “Perfect place for an ambush,” he muttered. “We’re sitting ducks for any force that might lie in wait.” He drew both swords and stepped out of the sled, alert and ready.

  Ombric knew he’d have to be very careful now. He gripped his staff tightly. A machine could be stopped by one spell. But if that machine was controlled by an evil from inside, it would be much more difficult. Ombric’s feet crunched the snow as he tried not to pace. He sifted through his memory, seeking the most effective incantations.

  Then he had it. Two spells spoken simultaneously without hesitation or flaw could do the trick. Such an incantation would take four seconds, maybe five. But five seconds was a long time when faced with a situation this dangerous. Ombric would need to distract the djinni and time his spells with perfection.

  “Djinni,” Ombric began, “retract your airship and prepare to dig.” What happened next was almost imperceptible, but Ombric saw it: The djinni hesitated. And now Ombric was certain. The djinni was possessed. As he was thinking this, the djinni began folding the ship back into itself.

  Ombric had the spells clearly in his mind.

  He was ready to blurt them out when suddenly, without warning, North attacked the djinni!

  Even more quickly, the robot unsheathed its own sword and deflected North’s blows.

  “I knew it! It’s possessed, Ombric!” North cried out. “I didn’t tell it to defend itself!” North slashed furiously at the djinni, but the robot met every one of North’s thrusts.

  A fleeting moment of pride in North’s good intuition flashed through Ombric’s mind, but he couldn’t dwell on it, for now was the time! Invoking two spells at once is something only the greatest wizards can do, and Ombric was doing it flawlessly.

  Equally flawlessly, North was fighting the djinni; his precision, fed by his fury, was uncanny. I can’t recall ever fighting better, North was thinking, while Ombric was racing to utter the last of the spells.

  Just as the wizard thought he was going to make it—he found he suddenly had no control over his mouth. It felt . . . frozen. Then the icy feeling spread to his face, then shoulders, until his whole body was stiff and paralyzed, and it was shrinking, shrinking. He fell to the ground with a small thud. Followed by a second one. North. The two found themselves suddenly lying in the snow, unable to move. The djinni looked down at them both. A dark and terrible laugh echoed from deep inside its chest. It was a laugh like no other. It was the laugh of Pitch. “May I be your apprentice too, Master Ombric?” he snarled. “I learned your spells of enslavement quickly enough!”

  North struggled to look over at Ombric, but he couldn’t even blink. Then he began to realize that he wasn’t just paralyzed.

  “You’re my slaves now!” gloated the djinni. “My little puppets.”

  It was true. They’d been turned into small porcelain versions of themselves, no bigger than dolls.

  The djinni hunkered beside them, casting a massive shadow over their tiny bodies. “Now tell me of this weapon you seek.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Telltale Hoot

  NO SOONER HAD KATHERINE made the alarming discovery concerning the djinni than every owl roosting in Ombric’s lab began to hoot. They obviously had received a message from the wizard.

  Katherine spoke very little owl (for all its seeming simplicity, owl was one of the most subtle and difficult bird languages to master), but she listened intently and managed to understand one key word.

  “Danger!” she cried out, and the owls nodded in confirmation. She rushed to Ombric’s globe. “Show me where!” she pleaded, turning back to the owls. They pointed with their beaks to a vast white area in the central Himalayas.

  “Ombric and North are in danger?” she asked one last time, as if wanting to be absolutely sure.

  The owls seemed to understand for they hooted vigorously.

  Katherine had waited a long time to have her own great adventure, and now the chance was here. It seemed she had the instincts for it. Perhaps this was something that had been passed down from her parents. As a foundling, she’d never know for sure. It took her only moments to formulate a plan. She was surprised by how natural it seemed. Then she took action.

  The lead owl is always the first to answer.

  “Fly to the forest. Bring the reindeer,” she commanded the owls, miming the order with her hands. The owls took off with a loud rustling of feathers. She lo
oked at the compass North had given her. It pointed the way. She ran to her room. It would be cold and dangerous where she was going. She would need a coat and a dagger.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In Which a Twist of Fate Begets a Knot in the plan

  PITCH’S SCHEME HAD WORKED more beautifully than he had dared hope. He was supremely happy with the djinni’s protective metal shell. Not only was he now safe from sun and moonlight, but he could move about as easily as he could in his own shadowy form. Granted, in the robot’s body he could not turn to vapor or grow to the size of a thundercloud, but it reminded him of what it had been like to be an actual being—solid, substantial, real. Something no child or adult could dismiss as a mere nightmare or imagined vision.

  In the months since he’d been freed from the cave, Pitch and his minions had found their way to almost every corner of the globe, leaving fear and unease in their wake. But there’d been limits to this new freedom that were frustrating him. At night he could be as fearsome as any creature that ever existed. He had learned to summon clouds to block the Moon’s interfering light. In pure dark, he was pure evil, capable of flooding whomever he chose with torturous nightmares.

  However, with the coming of every dawn, he and his henchmen had been forced into retreat. The light of day had the power to undo all his work! Adults dismissed their encounters with him as having never happened; they were just “bad dreams.” And they convinced their children of the same.

  Even worse, children had taken to calling him the “Boogeyman,” a name he despised. And though they feared him, they did not entirely believe in him, either. But now—now!—he would be something they could see at any hour. Now he was something they could not deny.

  This, of course, was not enough. New knowledge and weapons would be needed to conquer the day. Plaguing children with nightmares was just the beginning, he now realized. To achieve his goal, those nightmares would have to be believed.

  He felt more powerful than ever. No force could stop him. The bear, that meddlesome tree—they would all fall to him now, as quickly as that idiotic old wizard and his feckless apprentice had.

  But first . . .

  First there was the matter of the device, the weapon, the thing that the old wizard had set out to find. If the wizard believed this weapon could destroy him, then it must be very powerful indeed.

  Pitch plucked up his two miniaturized captives and turned them this way and that, demanding answers. But he was not getting the ones he needed. Ombric would not or could not speak. No matter how many times Pitch ordered him to reveal what and where this “weapon” was, the toy-size wizard lay mute. And North could not answer for the simple reason that he did not know. Ombric had never told him where they were going or what they were hoping to find.

  North was seething with anger. He was trapped by the very creature he had set out to destroy—and he had no one to blame but himself. Why hadn’t he listened when Ombric had warned him of the danger that the merging of old and new magic could bring? North felt a deep and crushing shame—and a feeling that was wholly unfamiliar: helplessness. As a young warrior, he had found himself in some very compromising positions. But even backed into a corner, he could fight his way out. But as a toy? He was useless, powerless, and, to add insult to injury, duped by his own device.

  Pitch’s spell was wickedly ingenious. Not only was North unable to do anything other than what that devil commanded, but he was trapped as a toy with no real will of its own. He knew of no spell that could undo so many layers of entrapment. He couldn’t even try to converse with Ombric and find a way out of this nightmare. He could only speak when Pitch told him to, and Ombric had not uttered a word since Pitch’s spells were cast.

  “You pathetic toys. Are you useless to me?” Pitch muttered in frustration.

  “Yes, Master,” replied North.

  Pitch tossed them both into the snow with disgust. “The weapon is here—that much is certain. In time I’ll find it. All the magic I may need is in those books of yours. I need no tutor.”

  A fresh snow had begun to fall. Cold flakes landed on North’s face. Not exactly a warrior’s death, North thought. Or a wizard’s.

  Then came a familiar flash of light—the light that Pitch despised above all others.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Laughter Is a Bitter Pill

  THE HIGH HIMALAYAS WERE vast, all-encompassing, and silent. But all of that was shattered by the arrival of the spectral boy. The moments that followed were a burst of action and noise. A meteor-like explosion of pure light knocked Pitch away from North and Ombric.

  As Pitch scrambled back up, he found the spectral boy standing before him, the diamond tip of his staff pointed inches away from Pitch’s own chest plate at the key that activated the mechanical shell. Pitch recoiled instantaneously, the memory of having been in this situation before surging through him: a blinding light, a dagger to his chest, centuries of imprisonment in that putrid cave. Well, not this time!

  Katherine’s heroic arrival

  Pitch drew his sword and readied to finish the lad. But something caused him to stop short: the improbable sight of a cluster of reindeer galloping down from the low-lying clouds, thundering directly toward him. Riding the lead reindeer was a young girl waving a dagger with the furious skill of a seasoned swashbuckler. And—how could it be?—they were riding on a sort of mist of light!

  Before Pitch could gather his senses, the girl and her company pounded to the ground. Snow flying in every direction, they stampeded around Pitch. Then the girl dove forward, clinging to the pummel of her saddle with one hand, scooping up North and Ombric with the other. Pitch glared in disbelief as the entire entourage leaped back onto the lighted mist and vanished into the sky. He swung back to the spectral boy. But the boy, too, was gone, only an echo of laughter that refracted from mountain to mountain remained. Like a splinter under the skin, it taunted and infuriated Pitch.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The Oddest Reunion

  WHEN KATHERINE FELT THEY were far enough away from Pitch, she steered the reindeer toward what looked to be a safe and comfortable spot: a cave midway up one of the massive mountain peaks. Night was falling, but the spectral boy’s glow was light enough for her to fully see the terrible predicament her two friends were in.

  Somehow, that awful Pitch had turned North and Ombric into dolls—Ombric in a miniature wizard’s hat, cloak, and staff; and North in his red and black coat, a sword the size of a pin in each tiny hand. Their faces were blank, their stares unblinking.

  “North? Ombric?” she whispered, choking back tears. “How can I save you?” Her worry was steadied by her determination. She would find a way to return them to themselves. She’d bring them back to Santoff Claussen. And she’d study every last book in Ombric’s library—if it took her the rest of her life, she would learn a way.

  The reindeer had nosed their way back to the edge of the cave, sensing Katherine’s sorrow. They encircled her, the frosty haze of their breath warming the space. Outside, the wind began to pick up, spewing an otherworldly howl through the air. The spectral boy dimmed his staff and peered out carefully from the cave’s entrance. Immediately he drew his head back in. The sky was dirty with countless Nightmare Men and Fearlings, and the boy knew they were searching for them. Dense clouds began to block every glimmer of moonlight. Night had brought out all of Pitch’s tricks. The spectral boy could see that he and Katherine were hopelessly outnumbered.

  He looked at Katherine as she sat on the cave floor rocking back and forth, holding her friends close to her. She’d wrapped the corners of her yellow coat around them. The boy had watched her often since that first night in the forest when she alone had been unafraid of the Fearlings. Then he’d seen her again up in the clouds. He’d never seen a Small One up there before. Her smile had enchanted him—made him feel happier than he could ever remember. Then, this very morning, he’d seen her friends—the old man and the young one with the red coat—in the clouds. But th
ey left her behind! That didn’t seem fair. So he’d been on his way to check on her when he’d heard her asking the owls to fetch the reindeer. She wanted to catch up to the Tall Friends. Well, who was better at playing catch than he! So he focused his powers on creating a highway of light and the girl knew just what to do.

  But as they sped across the continent, the boy saw that she looked scared. She looked constantly at the compass hanging from her neck, then straight ahead. Only once did she take her eyes away from the horizon—to glance at him as he flew beside her. Why was she scared? He wasn’t sure, but he knew she was not smiling. And he wanted to see that smile again.

  Now they were trapped. How had he let her guide them to a cave, of all places? And he knew all about being trapped. Hadn’t he been exactly that until his moonbeam came and set him free? Soon the Fearlings would find the cave, and then what?

  The boy peeked past the cave’s entrance once more. The Fearlings were coming nearer. But the boy had an idea—a chase! The best chase ever!—and this time it would be more than just a game. He held the diamond tip of his staff close to his face and grinned at the moonbeam inside. He and the moonbeam had become comrades. The beam was ready. Then the boy looked back at Katherine one last time.