Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders

by Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian

  The trainer then showed her how to put on the saddle, cinching it tight enough to keep it in place, but without squeezing the horse.

  Meanwhile, three stable hands had saddled the other pegasi. The spellbinders led their mounts out of the stables and headed for the exercise arena.

  Gallant’s presence was a constant in Tara’s mind now. After telling her his name, the pegasus hadn’t said anything else, but he vividly communicated his feelings to her, as she did hers to him. He was happy to be there, the saddle wasn’t heavy, and he was eager to fly with her.

  Teasingly, she mentally told him that she imagined her first flight would be on a broom, like some old fairy-tale witch. Gallant’s indignation made her laugh. How dare she compare him, a stallion of the skies, with an uncomfortable stick of wood? He sent her images of herself perched on a broom, trying desperately not to fall and wincing in pain after only a ten-minute ride.

  Tara had to admit that Gallant was right. Riding a broom couldn’t be a lot of fun.

  “Okay, we’re ready,” said Chanfrein, after checking everyone’s cinches and headstalls. “How many of you know how to transform your clothes?”

  “I do!” answered Angelica.

  “So do I,” said Cal.

  “M-M-Me t-t-too,” Sparrow stammered.

  “Then you know what clothes to wear.” Turning to Angelica, he said, “Show your friends.”

  She waved her hand from top to bottom and commanded: “By Transformus, I want a riding outfit, pants, a shirt, and riding boots.”

  Immediately, she was wearing black riding pants and boots, and a black and white shirt.

  “By Transformus, I want a riding outfit, pants, a shirt, and riding boots.”

  Cal and Sparrow cast the spell at the same time and laughed to see that they had both chosen brown boots and tan pants.

  Except for Fabrice, who briefly wound up in a nightshirt, the others’ transformations went pretty well. Sparrow knew that Tara was reluctant to use her magic, so she conjured her a pair of pants and boots.

  Unlike the others, Tara’s pegasus kneel ed to help her climb on. Once in the saddle, she took the reins, and before she even had time to think, found herself thirty feet in the air.

  The feeling was incredible. She flew toward the sun, breathlessly watching as people and places shrank below her. She was riding a pegasus! And he obeyed her slightest wish, almost before she even thought it.

  With a burst of laughter, she banked in a steep turn, brushing by Cal, who didn’t look quite at ease. Neither did Sparrow, who was clutching her reins, terrified of falling.

  Experiencing Gallant’s feelings so strongly and sharing the sensation of freedom was so intense, it brought tears of joy to Tara’s eyes.

  Fabrice, grinning like a maniac, shouted to her: “Pretty neat, isn’t it?”

  Cruising alongside Tara, Fabrice sat his pegasus well. He was a very good rider back on Earth, and the two of them had often gone out together in Tagon. The count owned a half-dozen horses, and Fabrice and Tara used to ride them every Saturday. But this was something else!

  Gallant’s powerful muscles rippled under his white coat and his wings beat steadily. But Tara was sorry not to have braided her hair, which whipped her face with the stallion’s every move. She had the same thought about the pegasus’s long mane, which wrapped around her hands. Next time, she would braid his mane as well.

  Master Chanfrein flew up to them on Danguerrand. Watching Tara carefully, the trainer was delighted. He’d never seen anything like it: girl and horse were flying as one. He had a plan for Tara, and if he didn’t pull it off, he would eat his helmet!

  After an hour’s flight, Chanfrein had the whole spellbinder group return to the ground. Then, being a believer in mens sana in corpore sano—a sound mind in a healthy body—he made them spend a weary hour cleaning tack, grooming the pegasi, putting hay in the stalls, and straightening the stables. When they were done, he gave them permission to go back to the Castle.

  Gallant was put in a stall without a lock and was free to come and go as he pleased. Because of his size he couldn’t go to Tara’s bedroom, of course, which saddened them both.

  As the spellbinders walked away from the stables, Tara found herself on the verge of tears. Leaving Gallant was causing her almost physical pain. It didn’t last long. Despite the stable hands’ efforts, the pegasus walked out of his stall and joined her just as she reached the Castle.

  Heads turned as the imposing stallion walked by, and everyone gathered as an embarrassed Tara tried to make him understand that he had to go back to the stables.

  Her embarrassment turned to horror when she saw Master Dragosh making his way toward her through an excited crowd of courtiers—followed by the king, the queen, and the chimera.

  When Dragosh saw the reason for the excitement, he bared his canines in a sinister rictus. Tara thought he looked ready to bite her. OtherWorld vampyrs apparently didn’t fear sunlight, because Dragosh was paying it no mind.

  “Well young lady, what have you done to attract attention now?” he hissed malevolently.

  “I haven’t done anything!” said Tara defensively. “It’s just that Gallant can’t stand not being with me.”

  “That animal has no business being here, young lady. Take it back to the stables right away. You will be punished.”

  Frowning, the queen was about to remind the vampyr that Tara was a guest, when Cal spoke up: “He’s her familiar. She was just chosen!”

  A murmur of surprise greeted this statement. Such a big familiar! Very unusual! The king and queen exchanged a smile of delight.

  The vampyr was surprised as well, but quickly recovered.

  “That it’s her familiar is neither here nor there. The fact remains that this animal may not enter the Castle. So take it back to the stables, young lady. The punishment stands.”

  Tara felt a fierce, abnormal rage slowly rising in her mind. Something inside her hated being contradicted. Was this miserable little vampyr daring to cross her? He would learn the price of opposing her. Driven by the demonic rage, she was about to speak when a booming voice stopped her.

  “What’s going on here?”

  Old Master Chem was making his way through the crowd. His eyes widened to see the king and queen, Tara, the pegasus, the vampyr, and the chimera, its tail slowly sweeping back and forth.

  “Nothing that I can’t handle, Chem,” said the vampyr calmly.

  Still, Tara could see how much the wizard’s intervention annoyed him.

  Master Chem paid him no attention. Staring at the pegasus’s golden eyes, he instantly grasped the situation.

  “My word, you’ve been chosen by a pegasus!”

  Tara tried to restrain the abnormal fury boiling within her and coldly answered, “Yes . . . Master.”

  “May Dragondor dash me, this is really something! What were you going to do?”

  “She was just returning to the Castle, Master,” said Cal, ignoring the vampyr’s menacing look. “Gallant couldn’t stand being separated from her. You know how it is in the beginning; the attraction is almost irresistible. So he left the stables and caught up with Tara just as she was about to enter the Castle. Master Dragosh wants to punish her because he’s sure she deliberately attracted Gallant here to show off. But that’s not true. He only followed her!”

  “Regardless of the reason why this animal is here, it still can’t enter the Castle with her,” said the vampyr firmly. “It must go back to the stables!”

  “Can’t enter the Castle?” asked the old wizard in surprise. “Why ever not?”

  “Yes,” chimed in the queen severely, “that’s exactly what I was going to ask.”

  For a second, the vampyr looked stumped. Then he said, “Well for one thing, it’s much too big!”

  “Bah, that’s nothing,” said the dragon wizard. “I’m a good twenty feet tall in my natural shape. Besides, if my memory serves, Tara’s grandmother was chosen by a ten-foot Bengal tiger. It obviously run
s in the family! Here is what we did in those days.”

  He pointed at the pegasus and said: “By Miniaturus shrink the winged horse, so it can accompany Tara as a matter of course.” As she watched in amazement, the pegasus shrank and shrank until it was the size of a German mastiff—still big, but quite acceptable.

  “To return it to its normal size,” Chem kindly informed her, “simply say: ‘By Normalus it would be wise if you regained your normal size.’”

  And the pegasus grew again.

  “Go ahead, Tara, try it,” said Fabrice.

  “Don’t bother,” hissed the vampyr. “This ‘guest’ of yours can’t control her power! You saw what happened in the Throne Room.”

  At that, the courtiers cautiously backed away from Tara. They were in no hurry to experience her power again.

  “That’s irrelevant,” said the old wizard, frowning. “She can control her magic perfectly if she’s careful.”

  Tara knew she could change the arrogant vampyr into a squeaking little mouse with a twitch of an eyebrow if she wanted to. Giving Dragosh a contemptuous glance, she said: “By Transformus, I want my clothes, with my usual robe on top of those!”

  No sooner said than done: jeans and T-shirt promptly appeared along with Tara’s robe. With an imperious snap of her fingers, she decorated her robe with hundreds of glittering horses. Finally she turned to the pegasus and said: “By Miniaturus shrink my winged horse, so it can accompany me as a matter of course.”

  The pegasus shrank once again.

  “Heh, heh!” chuckled the old wizard, pleased but also a bit surprised by Tara’s casual mastery. “I don’t think the girl’s doing too badly! Let her keep her familiar, since she just proved she’s able to take care of it!”

  Tara’s rage reluctantly gave way to joy. With her mind suddenly clear again, she very nearly embraced Chem, but remembered just in time that kissing the High Wizard of Lancovit simply wasn’t done. She bowed gratefully instead. But she did hug her pegasus, who was feeling a little dizzy after his repeated changes of size.

  Tara shot an icy look at the vampyr, whom she no longer feared, turned, and proudly climbed the Castle steps. The king and queen were peppering her with questions, followed by the courtiers who had witnessed the scene.

  The story spread like wildfire, and many people came to see the miniaturized pegasus.

  After taking a shower, Tara explained to Manitou that he would now be going with Fabrice. At first, she thought he didn’t understand, but her great-grandfather made a tremendous effort and managed to speak.

  “Idiot dog!” he muttered with difficulty. “He’s stronger than I am, and I can’t fight him. You’re my granddaughter, Tara. I don’t want to leave you. I want to stay and protect you!”

  Once again, Tara felt the strange rage that erupted when some-body crossed her.

  “You don’t have any choice, great-grandfather,” she said coldly. “I have Gallant, and everybody knows my familiar is a pegasus. You’re of no use to me.”

  “I understand,” sighed the big Labrador sadly. “I’ll go with your friend. Anyway, the stupid dog will be happy to play with a boy for a change.”

  Gallant, who was in permanent contact with Tara’s mind, expressed his strong disapproval. He didn’t like the way the girl was treating her great-grandfather, and he let her know it.

  His compassion melted her abnormal rage. Tara suddenly realized how it pained her great-grandfather to abandon her, and she hugged and petted him as she expressed her thanks.

  From then on, Manitou followed Fabrice like his shadow. Nobody noticed that the dog didn’t have golden eyes, and he seemed to get along very well with his new friend. In any case he quit sleeping all day and started joining in his human companion’s activities like the other familiars.

  The king and queen were fascinated by Gallant and often asked Tara to bring him to their private apartments. She found herself increasingly struggling against the irritation that the sovereigns’ affection caused her.

  When rage or contempt overwhelmed Tara, Gallant struggled to help her. They both knew it wasn’t normal, but something in the girl prevented her from mentioning it to her friends or to the dragon wizard; something that absolutely didn’t want to make itself known.

  Tara was no fool. She understood that the Demon King had put a spell on her that was changing her behavior. Did it mean that she too would turn into a demon? Despite her best efforts, Tara’s demonic rages grew stronger.

  One afternoon, her friends decided to tell her more about OtherWorld, magic, and spellbinders.

  The four of them got together out on the Castle grounds. Since Cal was born on OtherWorld and had already been an apprentice spellbinder for two years, he was the best person to describe the magic planet.

  “All right, let’s see what I can tell you,” he said thoughtfully. “Spellbinders have always lived among nonspells. We have found their traces even among cave dwellers. The spellbinders didn’t realize that they were different, of course. Most of them helped nonspells, usually by treating their illnesses. But some others took advantage of them by pretending to be gods.”

  Catching Tara’s look of surprise, Sparrow chimed in. “That’s right. Among the Aztecs, the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca were both usurped by spellbinders.”

  “Among the Egyptians, it was Isis, Osiris, Anubis, and Seth,” said Fabrice, happy to show off his book learning. “For the Romans, Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. For the Greeks, Zeus and Aphrodite; Thor and Odin among the Vikings. Because of those impostors, the High Council wizards created a special police force to prevent spellbinders from passing themselves off as gods. As soon as a false god tried to seize power on Earth, he was tracked down and imprisoned or destroyed.”

  “As mankind evolved, the spellbinders evolved as well,” continued Cal, now comfortably stretched out on the grass. “Finally the day came when they were numerous and powerful enough to want to dominate the nonspells. But it didn’t work—”

  “—because of rivalries between different spellbinder factions, and they nearly destroyed Earth with their lousy wars,” said Sparrow, who disliked conflict. “Then the dragons appeared. They came from another dimension. From another time. From other worlds they ruled. Strange worlds where elves, trolls, giants, imps, gnomes, tatris (Lady Kalibris’s people), vampyrs, changelins (were-beasts), and chimeras lived. The dragons were fighting a terrible war with the demons and decided to conquer Earth with an army of elves, giants, and others. The aim was to keep the demons from using it as a base, since the main rift between our world and Limbo is located on Earth. But Demiderus, a wizard of genius, assembled an army of spellbinders who used their magic powers to oppose the invaders. The dragons were very surprised to discover that humans knew magic.”

  “More than surprised,” said Cal, laughing. “They took a pounding, and it stopped their conquest in its tracks. The dragons realized that rather than fighting the spellbinders, they were better off joining them to defeat the demons. So they offered our ancestors a pact. The dragons agreed not to invade Earth, if the spellbinders would promise not to try to dominate it and help them defeat the demons. To train the spellbinders and increase their power, the dragons suggested that they come to OtherWorld, where magic was much more powerful than on Earth. At first, the spellbinders thought this was a trap, but over the years they realized the dragons were sincere. So they agreed, and the dragons cast a forgetfulness spell on Earth. It erased the memory of the centuries of invasion from the nonspells’ memories. What remained were legends about vampyrs, elves, and other magical peoples.

  “Thanks to the alliance, and especially thanks to Demiderus and four other unusually powerful wizards, the demons were defeated and imprisoned on their worlds, in the demonic world called Forbidden Limbo. Magic seals were placed along the rifts, and Atlantis, the main island where the main rift was located, was drowned in the ocean.” (Atlantis! thought Tara. She’d read about the Earth legend of a mysterious island with a very advanced civil
ization that had vanished beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Now she understood what had really happened.) “Only the five original high wizards or their descendents can penetrate them; no one else. At the same time, the dragons created openings—portals— that allowed communication and travel between OtherWorld and Earth. The spellbinders moved permanently to OtherWorld, as did many nonspells.”

  Fabrice continued: “The very few spellbinders who chose to stay on Earth had to swear that they would never use their powers in the presence of nonspells, and never to profit from them.”

  “The special police created to track false gods was merciless and efficient, so it was now given a new mission,” said Sparrow with a shudder. “Under the high wizards’ orders, the elf police was charged with tracking down and punishing offenders. They were the ones who eliminated Druidor Bloodgrave, which is why Bloodgraves hate elves. Along with a few high wizards who remained on Earth, they keep an eye on the nonspells and see to it that no demons try to escape from Limbo. As Cal said, the major rift between Limbo and our world is located on Earth.”

  “Lots of different peoples live on OtherWorld,” said Fabrice, “and not just spellbinders and the nonspells who moved here and now live in the planet’s kingdoms, republics, and empires like Lancovit, Brontagne, and Omois.” He ticked off the peoples on his fingers. “Elves live in Selena; dwarves in the mountains of Hymlia; giants in Gandis; unicorns in Mentalir; imps, gnomes, and goblins in Smallcountry; vampyrs in Krasalvia; trolls in Krankar, and so on. So that we can understand each other, an Interpretus translates everything we say.”

  “And talk about politics!” said Sparrow, rolling her eyes. “Omois is the most powerful of the human kingdoms, empires, or republics. It is jointly ruled by Empress Lisbeth’tylanhnem T’al Barmi Ab Santa Ab Maru and her half-brother Sandor T’al Barmi Ab March Ab Brevis. The empress hasn’t been able to have any children, even though she’s had several prince consorts. Her brother Danviou T’al Barmi Ab Santa Ab Maru disappeared a dozen years ago, and the question of succession will come up soon, because under Omois law, her half-brother can’t rule alone. He must always rule with a full member of the imperial family, because the empress is the direct descendent of Demiderus, one of the five high wizards who imprisoned the demons.”