“Master, please remember that my mother is imprisoned in the Fortress. You’ve got to find her and free her from the deadly spell.”
“Don’t worry. She’ll be my main priority.”
Exhausted and anxious, Tara let herself slump to the ground. Gallant lay down next to her and gave her arm a friendly rub with his muzzle. She stroked his velvety nostrils while worrying about the upcoming battle.
The minutes passed silently. They were all tired, even Sparrow, who was too agitated to sit still and was pacing, while listening intently. After half an hour of this, she quit and flopped down next to Tara.
“Ouch!” she said with a grimace. “I sure am sore!”
“Me too,” said Fabrice. “And I want all this to be over and done with. When you come right down to it, life on Earth is really calm and peaceful. I’m not at all sure I want to stay on OtherWorld.”
“If the Bloodgraves win, no one will be safe anywhere,” Robin remarked soberly.
“So what are we waiting for?” cried Fafnir. “We aren’t going to just sit here twiddling our thumbs while others do the fighting for us, are we?”
“But what do you want us to do?” asked Swallow, taken aback.
“This!” Bouncing up like a spring, she grabbed the two elf guards’ heads and banged them together, knocking them out cold.
“What are you doing?” Manitou and Fabrice both asked in astonishment.
“I’m putting them to sleep,” answered the dwarf, carefully hitching her axe on her back.
“We can see that,” snapped Fabrice, “but why?”
“Because they probably would have stopped me from leaving. All right, I’m going to the Fortress. If any you would like a nice little fight, follow me. But hurry up, because those two elves aren’t going to sleep forever. See you later!”
And the dwarf took off like an arrow through the forest, heading for the Gray Fortress.
Robin leaped to his feet, eyes bright with enthusiasm.
“She’s right, they might need us! Let’s go!”
“Are you sure?” Fabrice protested. “I feel we’re the ones who need them, rather than the other way around. We’re more likely to get in their way than anything else.”
Sparrow agreed.
“I don’t much like staying here either, but Fabrice is right. Master Chem will be furious if we disobey him.”
“That’s too bad,” said Robin firmly. “At worst we’ll get chewed out, at best maybe we can save somebody. In any case I can’t stand staying here without knowing, so I’m going. If you want to follow me, it’s now or never.”
“I’m coming too,” decided Sparrow, who promptly shape-shifted. “Anyway, nobody can do much to me in my Beast shape.”
“And I have to help save my mother from Magister,” said Tara.
Angelica elected to stay behind, saying she wanted to protect the unconscious elves.
Protect them from what? Cal grumbled to himself. Squirrels? But he didn’t press the point. They left her behind without regret.
While the kids were crossing the forest to join the elves and the dragons, Master Dragosh was cautiously flying down the halls of the Gray Fortress. He had gotten in without much trouble, through the open window of a Bloodgrave who liked fresh air at night. The bedroom door squeaked slightly when he opened it to go out—not easy with little bat hands—and he froze, rigid with fear. But the Bloodgrave only sleepily muttered, “No, Mom, not the frog. Not the frog!” Then he rolled over and went back to sleep. Heaving a sigh of relief, the vampyr slipped out into the dimly lit hall and took flight. Twice within a few minutes he was only saved by his very dark coloring. Two young spellbinders came out and walked to the toilets without seeing him, cautiously hanging above their heads. Once they were back in their rooms, the vampyr was able to continue his ghostly progression. As he passed a hall, he suddenly spotted something familiar: tapestries. The five tapestries of the Gray Fortress Transfer Portal.
“I’m in the Portal Hall,” he whispered into the crystal ball. “What should I do?”
“You need five tapestries for a transfer to work,” said T’andilus. “Can you take one of them down and hide it? That way, nobody could use the Portal to escape.”
Changing back into human shape, the vampyr unhooked the tapestry showing the unicorns. Then he changed again and flew up to hide it on top of the main beam, in the shadows by the ceiling. No one would think to look for it there.
“I’ve done it,” he whispered into the crystal ball. “What now?”
“You have to find the Hall of Spells. There will probably be a guard inside.”
The vampyr set out again and opened all the doors he encountered, closing them very, very carefully when he came across sleeping Bloodgraves. After a quarter of an hour of nerve-racking searching, he finally found the Hall of Spells. The Bloodgraves had posted only a single guard inside. Like a shadow, Dragosh slipped behind him, changed into human shape, and knocked him out. Ripping strips of the Bloodgrave’s gray robe, he used them to tie, gag, and blindfold him.
Satisfied, he stood up. All right, he thought, now he had to figure out how to deactivate the evil spells.
“I’m there,” he muttered into the crystal ball, “but the place is empty. There’s nothing here.”
“Defenses are usually materialized in objects,” said T’andilus. “That’s what you have to find, Master Vampyr.”
The problem was, there wasn’t anything special in the room. A table, a comfortable chair, tapestries and carpets, a few statues, and a sofa—that was it.
Wait a minute . . . there was something odd about those statues. Dragosh came closer, and held his breath. The three statues represented terrifying demons. The first featured a giant worm whose mouth was lined with mandibles and whose tentacles were ready to shoot out to seize prey. Stumps of arms emerged from the seething mass, with needle-sharp claws and horribly human eyes. The second was a two-headed wolf with a flayed torso from which half of a monstrous three-eyed baby burst with an array of long fangs dripping poison. The third had the head of a vicious moray eel and the body of an octopus. It was covered with wriggling larvae, who, when they split open, displayed thousands of tiny, bloody mouths with hooked beaks, eager to tear and rend.
When he realized what the statues were, Dragosh stumbled backward. The lost statues of Mu! Carved by the mad demon of Ragnarok! Everybody thought they had been destroyed when the ocean drowned the mythical continent of Mu, but the Master of Bloodgraves had obviously found them. Now the vampyr was sure that Magister had completely lost his mind. Controlling such demons called for the blackest and most dangerous magic. Make the slightest error in manipulation and you’d find yourself in the demon’s stomach!
“You won’t believe this,” he murmured to the crystal ball. “Take a look!”
The vampyr put the ball in front of the statues and watched as the elf and the dragon gasped in surprise.
“Those can’t be . . . ” murmured Chem.
“I’m afraid they are,” Dragosh confirmed. “The lost statues, the demonic guardians of the Temple of Mu. And if these are defending the Fortress, then we have a very, very big problem!”
“We don’t have any choice,” said Master Chem. “You must deactivate those defenses. Find their system!”
This is going to cost me my life, Dragosh muttered to himself, stepping closer.
The statues were studded with jewels, and he noticed that they were blinking. Not very brightly, but definitely blinking, and in a regular pattern, from red to orange, and then from white to black. The vampyr grimaced. It was a code! If he had a couple of hours ahead of him he could figure it out, but here it was impossible. He needed help.
“I’m stuck,” he whispered into the crystal ball. “There’s a code to switch off the statues, and I don’t know what it is.”
“Let me see,” whispered T’andilus.
“Take a look.”
The elf carefully studied the blinking of the statues, then gave a sigh
of relief.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I know that sequence. You have to first push on the black, then the white, then on the orange and the red at the same time. It’s a pretty simple code.”
“Good, I’ll do that now,” said the vampyr with a smile.
He was about to start with the first jewel when Master Chem interrupted him.
“Safir, wait! Don’t touch anything! That’s not normal!”
The vampyr jerked his hand back.
“What now? What’s not normal?”
“If you were protecting your palace, would you use a code that was so easy to crack?”
The vampyr thought for a moment, and a cynical smile appeared on his lips.
“No, of course not. You think it’s a trap?”
“I’m positive it’s a trap! Look at the statues more carefully. See if there isn’t something else.”
The vampyr examined the demons with great care. Some details were so horrible that he instinctively looked away, before realizing that was exactly the desired reaction. He looked more closely . . . Yes! On each demon’s back, in the midst of what looked like rotting, worm-eaten intestines, was a small, nearly invisible black stone. He described this to the old wizard.
“I think that’s it,” confirmed Master Chem. “Go ahead. If the demons come to life, get the heck out of there as fast as you can. Don’t try to be a hero; you aren’t powerful enough to stand up to them. But if nothing happens, we’ll immediately attack the chatrixes and come join you. Go down and open the Fortress’s main gate as soon as we secure the grounds.”
“Wait!” broke in the elf, who was still chagrined that he hadn’t anticipated the trap. “There are three demons, right?”
“Yes, three of them,” answered Dragosh. “So what?”
“It might be smart to press all three statues’ stones at the same time. If I were a Bloodgrave, I would have added this layer of protection, on the principle that a single spy wouldn’t be able to break all three spells at once—unless he had three hands!”
“Very clever,” said the vampyr with a grimace. “But not clever enough, since in my bat shape I have four hands! All right, I’m about to do it. Get ready!”
Dragosh shape-shifted. Fortunately, he was a large bat, and by stretching his wings he was able to reach all three stones at the same time. Holding his breath, he lightly touched the three stones. A groaning sound was heard, and the statues swayed. The vampyr backed away in fear, ready to fly off. But the statues stopped moving and stood still.
With a hand on his heart, Dragosh took a deep breath. He came close, examining the statues carefully, though this brought him uncomfortably close to the tentacles. Then he barely repressed a yell of victory that would have woken up the entire Fortress. The blinking of the stones had stopped.
He set the crystal ball in front of him.
“That’s it,” he whispered. “The demons won’t be coming to life. You can go ahead.”
The vampyr’s signal triggered a frenzy of activity. While Dragosh was dealing with the statues, the elves had been picking a small purple flower in the forest, extracting an anesthetic sap, and dipping tiny darts in it. Now they had silently scaled the walls around the Fortress grounds. Their challenge was to knock the chatrixes out, but without using magic spells, because, like dwarves and giants, they’re immune to offensive magic. And if just one chatrix howled and alerted the Bloodgraves, the elves were doomed.
The chatrixes caught their scent right away. With a dull yapping, their leader gathered them under the wall the elves were standing on, eager to attack the intruders on their territory. In his thirst for blood, their leader didn’t bother howling. A serious mistake.
T’andilus smiled with satisfaction and lowered his arm.
At his signal, the elves puffed on their blowguns, and darts hit every one of the chatrixes. Yelping with surprise, the black monsters tried to bite their flanks where the darts had hit them. Then one started to sway, took a few shaky steps, and collapsed. The lead chatrix opened his mouth to howl a warning, but before he could, a long arrow slammed into his throat.
The other chatrixes were already unconscious. The elves dropped into the Fortress grounds and tied the monsters’ paws and muzzles.
“Let’s go,” whispered Master Chem after climbing (with some difficulty) the outer wall.
Silent as shadows, the elves crossed the grounds. Ahead, the Gray Fortress main door swung open and Master Dragosh appeared, smiling broadly. He was in his human shape and with one hand was casually dragging the guard he had knocked out.
“The way is clear,” Dragosh whispered. “Let’s try to neutralize as many Bloodgraves as we can.” He had already used Fabrice’s indications to pinpoint their rooms, so missions were assigned and the mop-up begun.
The elves opened the doors, rushed in, and knocked out the rooms’ occupants. Two dragons brought up the rear in case any Bloodgraves unexpectedly came to.
Everything went fine until they got upstairs.
The elves had neutralized their thirty-fifth Bloodgrave when a young woman who’d been having trouble sleeping rounded the hallway corner just as they were tiptoeing out of the rooms. In her terror, she had time to scream before being hit by the anesthesia darts and collapsing. That’s when the battle began.
They had been caught napping, but the Bloodgraves were powerful wizards. They very quickly understood that the Fortress had been invaded and reacted by attacking the elves, who were easier targets than the dragons.
Blasts of demonic magic struck, burned, battered, and killed, and the elves defended themselves as best they could. They sheltered behind magic shields and fired spells and also arrows, an unexpected weapon that disconcerted the Bloodgraves.
Meanwhile, Tara and her friends had reached the outer wall of the Fortress grounds. They could hear the shouts as the fighting began. Sparrow and Robin climbed to the top of the wall and saw that it would be too dangerous to try to cross the grounds. The battle had quickly become a general melee. Dragons, elves, and Bloodgraves were firing spells in every direction, and explosions of magic were rocking the woods.
“Wow!” cried Cal. “You sure we ought to go in there?”
“Not through the grounds, anyway,” said Sparrow, jumping down from the wall. “We’d be toast in seconds.”
“Well, we can always go underneath,” remarked Fafnir. “Let’s see what those gray-shirts have done to my tunnel.”
They were disappointed to see that the opening of the tunnel had been blocked. But Fafnir waved them back and put her ear to the wall of stone and mud.
“It’s all right,” she said with satisfaction, wiping herself off. “They plugged the exit, probably to keep the chatrixes from escaping. But they haven’t collapsed the whole tunnel.”
She crouched down and pushed with her hands, using her strange power to liquefy the dirt and stones. In a moment she had cleared the entrance.
Tara miniaturized Gallant and they headed into the tunnel, going back in the way they had come out two days earlier.
When they reached the storeroom everything was still, though they could hear spellbinders yelling outside through the open door. They were about to go out when Fafnir suddenly gestured to them not to move. Looking over the dwarf ’s shoulder, Tara saw something straight out of a nightmare. Flanked by Deria, the Bloodgraves master was striding angrily toward the Initiation Hall, towing behind him the hovering body of Tara’s mother!
To clear the way, Magister shoved aside a Bloodgrave who was battling a dragon wizard. He blasted both of them with a jet of flame, then disappeared down the stairway leading to the Initiation Hall.
The seven looked apprehensively at the courtyard where the battle was raging.
“We don’t have any choice,” said an anguished Tara. “We have to get across the courtyard and find Mom, Deria, and Magister!”
“We’ll split up into two groups,” ordered Manitou. “Fafnir, Sparrow, and Fabrice, you come with me. We’ll warn Master C
hem that Magister is in the Initiation Hall. Meanwhile, Tara, Cal, and Robin, you follow Magister and keep an eye on him. But don’t anyone intervene. And if a Bloodgrave attacks you, put your hands behind your back and sit down. That’s a signal that you’re not a combatant. Let yourself be captured. I don’t want you risking your lives, understand?”
“Yes,” answered Tara. “But why don’t you take just Fafnir to protect you, and leave us Sparrow and Fabrice. We’re going to need them.”
Fafnir smiled broadly as she hefted her axe.
“No problem,” she said. “I’m happy to guard the Lab, and if anybody touches a hair on his head, I’ll turn them into dog food.”
“Perfect. Let’s go!”
Keeping their heads down, they made their way through the thick of the fighting. Bloodgraves, elves, and dragons were shooting spells, and rays—burning and freezing, blue, red, white, orange, and green—were crisscrossing everywhere. By some sort of miracle, after crawling, running, jumping, sliding, and dodging belligerents, they reached the other side of the courtyard more or less intact. Manitou’s fur was singed from brushing too close to wizard fire. Sparrow was shaking like a leaf after a dragon mistook her for an enemy and very nearly froze her. Cal was limping because he had missed his landing when he jumped away from two elves attacking a Bloodgrave. But Fafnir’s eyes were glittering. She had managed to save a dragon and an elf by neatly knocking their adversaries out with the flat of her axe, and was eager to try again. This was her kind of fight!
Once in the corridor leading to the Initiation Hall, they split into two groups, as agreed.
When Tara’s party reached the entrance to the Initiation Hall, the two giants guarding it drew their huge swords. Quickly, Robin said: “By Pocus you’re paralyzed on the spot. You might want to move, but we’d rather you not.” The turquoise mesh enveloped the giants, but it sizzled and frayed when it touched their skins, leaving them free to move.
With an evil smile, one of them thundered, “That doesn’t work with us, kid. Don’t try to go any further or we’ll chop you to pieces.”
Tara didn’t give them time to taunt. Without bothering with a formula, she shouted “Melt!” and pointed at the ground.
Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders Page 37
