by SJB Gilmour
‘Some werewolves aren’t so resilient against demons,’ Angela added with an arch look at Benjamin.
‘That was a bullious demon, Cromwell!’ Ronny said hotly. ‘Bullious as in bully. They’re cowards. There are some demons out there that aren’t so easy to dominate, as you well know! And what if he manages to recruit the aid of a devil? Demons are bad enough but devils are even worse!’
‘And you’ll have more backup than one immature Golden Mane beside you,’ Oliver retorted. ‘By the time I’ve finished with her, she’ll be the most destructive force in the universe. Anyway,’ he said, returning to the board. ‘The plan’s pretty simple. Once you get past the soldier crabs, the gnomes can burrow through to just outside the inner sanctum’s protective barrier. While they’re doing that, the werewolf renegades and Isaacs’ Irregulars make a frontal assault on the building. When the gnomes reach as far as they can go, a few werewolves will have to punch through the spells that make up the barrier so we can get in.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘I’m not looking forward to that,’ he told them. ‘It’s going to hurt like hell.’
‘Isaac’s Irregulars,’ James repeated, rubbing his chin. ‘I like that.’
‘You would,’ Mel muttered.
‘Cromwell, none of us know how to get to there!’ Ronny protested. He wasn’t going to let Oliver push his concerns aside so easily. ‘How are we going to get to Conundrum without an invitation?’
‘Leave that to me,’ Oliver stated flatly. ‘I built the place and I know exactly where it is. Guild sorcerers can all access Conundrum any time they want by using their homing amulets that lock onto The Gate. I wrote the spells that way so finding the place has never been an issue for anyone.’ Oliver sighed and pushed his hair back with his hand. ‘Look,’ he said sounding very tired. ‘If you do as Harding here suggested, the military people you’re likely to talk to will appreciate that right now, certain information has to be protected. It’s called “need to know”. Right now, you don’t need to know. They’ll know that. Any commitment they’re likely to make will be subject to all relevant information being made available when necessary. If that fails and you can drum up a band of gnome mercenaries, it won’t matter. I’ll lay it all out for you so everything’s clear as a bell, okay?’ He let his breath out explosively. ‘Besides,’ he added. ‘This rebellion is your bag. I agreed to teach these kids of yours, not plan a major war. You sort it out, but if I were you, Mason, I’d get myself to Gnumphlatia as soon as I could.’
‘Okay,’ Ronny agreed grudgingly. ‘Do you mind if I use your elevator?’
‘Go right ahead,’ Oliver shrugged. He withdrew a small vial of mercury from one of his pockets and handed it to Ronny. ‘If it gives you any grief, use this.’
‘Thanks,’ the angry gnome muttered.
‘I’ll take you there,’ Sarah offered.
‘Thanks, Miss Sarah,’ Ronny mumbled as pleasantly as he could manage — which wasn’t very. He was still fuming at Oliver.
‘No,’ Benjamin said. ‘You stay here, Sarah. If you leave, you might not be able to get back, remember. I’ll drop off James then take our steadfast little gnome here wherever he needs to go. Then your aunt and uncle and I will go on to Wolfenvald.’
Cromwell nodded approvingly. ‘That’ll leave just me and these three—’
‘Master Cromwell, Sir!’ Nathan piped up, poking his head out of Sarah’s satchel. ‘Would you mind if I stay too?’
‘Okay, me and these four,’ Cromwell acquiesced. He nodded at Angela. ‘I’ll be taking over the girls’ necromantic theory training. No offence, but their powers could soon surpass yours and I’ve the greater experience.’
‘None taken,’ Angela replied, her glorious eyes glowing with mirth. ‘If you can cope with their tempers, you’re welcome to give it a try!’ She teasingly tousled her niece’s hair.
Oliver grinned then he waved at his ceiling. The sky, which was an unnatural starless dark blue, flickered and the real night sky appeared.
‘I haven’t done any calculations just yet,’ he told them, ‘but by the time this star,’ he pointed to one that Sarah could not tell was any different from any of the others, ‘and this one,’ he pointed to another close by it, ‘align, something’s going to happen. I’ll wager my left foot that when that happens is when this whole rebellion of yours comes to a head. This means I’ve got front-row seats! Brilliant!’
‘That’s two,’ Mel observed, staring at the specks of light in the sky. ‘Doesn’t an alignment normally have three or more stars involved? It feels like there’s something that’s supposed to go up there.’ She pointed at an empty black spot in the sky.
Oliver frowned. ‘I know,’ he confessed with a worried nod, ‘but damned if I can find any more that look like they’re heading in the right direction.’ Cromwell sighed. ‘Well,’ he muttered, ‘go get some rest. I’m sure whatever it is will show up when the time is right.’
Chapter Ten
The first few weeks of her new life on Oliver’s island were quite exciting for Sarah. The library, when she was allowed there, was absolutely fascinating. Master Cromwell also made the time seem to literally fly past as he taught her more and more about the intricate art of using sorcery. The weeks became months and in seemingly no time at all, Sarah realised that she and Melanie had been on the strange island for more than six months. Over the months, both girl’s thirteenth birthdays came and went without any kind of celebration at all. It was about then that Sarah really began to feel isolated.
She sorely missed James and Ronny, and her aunt and uncles even more. The island itself continued to shudder every now and then and this too was very unnerving, especially since Sarah was spending so much of her time as a wolf. Most animals don’t like earthquakes much, and wolves are no different. Each time the island shuddered, Sarah’s concentration was shattered. If she was sleeping, she woke with a start and found it very difficult to get back to sleep.
Of course, the girls couldn’t study all the time. In the early mornings and afternoon, Sarah found herself wandering all over the island and was surprised at how small it really was. She could easily run around it within a few hours, and this she did with depressing regularity. After a few months of running around the island every day, along the same route, Sarah realised something quite strange. She had always run along the same path and although she could detect her own scent, she had not worn any sort of trail as she would have expected.
Sarah also noticed that the weather was not changing as she expected. Her werewolf senses were very finely attuned to the normal flow of the seasons. Every day was pretty much the same as the day before. It rained occasionally, but there was no other indication that winter had become spring in that part of the northern hemisphere. In the quiet suburb of Oakleigh, in the peaceful and reserved Australian city of Melbourne, Sarah knew that summer was nearly over and that it would start getting colder. Melbourne, of course, was infamous for its ever-changing weather and Sarah found she even missed it almost as much as she missed going to Wolfenvald.
She knew how to get to Wolfenvald, of course, but getting back from there to Oliver’s island would be very difficult. Since her sense of direction wasn’t working at all on the island, she had no idea where she actually was. She felt trapped and was beginning to regret ever going there.
Another frustration, Sarah discovered as she spent hours reading through various tomes from Oliver Cromwell’s massive library. Many of the texts were old and most only repeated the brief phrases the girls had already discovered. So far, all they had managed to discover was that Sarah was supposed to be something called The First and that Melanie was The Last. The Serpentine still refused to co-operate and remained quite firmly closed no matter how hard Oliver tried to open it. Nathan and Angela had no luck either and eventually, the disagreeable tome was left to one side while the girls studied various other tomes.
They found no further reference to the Golden Protector or of anything changing from gold to something else.
Like The Serpentine, these references were left to one side while they concentrated on their other studies.
Their days seemed to fall into a neat pattern. In the mornings, Melanie would study seemingly endless lists and classifications of demons and devils. Demons, the girls discovered, came in various species, none of which seemed very compatible with any other. Devils were different. They considered themselves superior to demons and frequently formed alliances with other devils or dark creatures. Devils also had different races and clans, much the same as humans. Some were lowly, others were high ranking and more powerful and all of them were very nasty characters indeed. Even the lowliest of devils were very strong and quite wicked.
Oliver explained that it was not always necessary for a sorcerer to fight a demon or devil if confronted by one. Though all such creatures naturally hate humans, they also hate each other and will often choose to fight another demon or devil rather than fight a human.
‘If confronted by a devil,’ Oliver instructed them, ‘simply summon its natural enemy and let them fight it out. The winner will most likely be exhausted so sending it back to its hell, won’t be so hard.’
Oliver refused to let Melanie even step into a nonagram until she could name and classify every single demon, devil or otherwise nasty spirit. He was not about to let her start forming any sort of portal to other planes until she had a solid grasp of the risks involved. His approach was very old-fashioned indeed. Many necromancers, Angela included, would have let Melanie start a few of the basic rites first. Even though it was boring, Mel was quite relieved that her studies remained theoretical only for the time being.
While Mel’s studies concentrated on all manner of very unpleasant beings, it was mundane and at times quite boring. Sarah’s studies were little different. She spent a great deal of her time examining various enchantments and spells. The brief training she’d received from Uncle Benjamin and Angela had given her a few of the basics. Angela now spent hours patiently teaching Sarah the intricate ingredients of spells and how to weave those various components together. Once the spell had been constructed, a master-word could be used to activate the spell. Some spells, like ichtumblat, were very easy and Sarah realised that she had been able to perform them so easily because they were so simple. Uncle Benjamin’s spell to move a group up or down a mountain or flight of stairs was much more complicated. Wolfenvald, of course, helped her enormously, but she still found the process to be quite draining. The writing of spells, she realised, was never going to be her forte.
Master Oliver Cromwell’s contribution to Sarah’s education was quite the opposite. The purpose of his lessons was not to create a spell, but how to reverse or destroy it. Once she had learned basic enchantment construction, the rest was easy. Wolfenvald, of course, immediately provided answers to any question she had about particular enchantments, regardless of how complex and she easily completed each new task Oliver set her. Sarah was also more and more frequently depressed. She found it much easier to destroy a spell than to create one and when Oliver wasn’t teaching her how to wreck a good spell, he seemed obsessed with teaching her how to write nasty ones.
Each enchantment Oliver had her build was usually quite awful and designed solely to cause pain or harm to someone. Each enchantment he had her break, was more often than not some kind of protective barrier or disguise, thus making Sarah the attacker in a conflict. Although Sarah certainly did not feel afraid of getting into a fight, she had no real desire to hurt anyone. She did not even want to hurt Mautallius, even after all the awful things he had done. Oddly enough, she found herself feeling sorry for the wicked old sorcerer. After all, having one’s soul possessed by a demon must be awful, she thought.
After lunch, the girls had lessons that were much more interesting. These were what Oliver called practical studies. Sometimes it was alchemy or practising the art of illusions and various charms. However, most prac work involved learning all manner of very nasty and quite gruesome spells – and always under Angela’s watchful eye.
Master Cromwell painstakingly instructed the girls how to burn, suffocate, blow up and crush enemies. He also took what Sarah thought to be an unwholesome amount of delight in teaching the girls how to age an enemy several decades in an instant. To do this, Oliver, with Angela’s help, produced a seemingly inexhaustible supply of human corpses, all freshly embalmed and animated with winteroom powder.
Melanie wasn’t quite as depressed by the gruesome nature of these studies and was very curious about just where all the corpses came from. They were a mixed variety of all sorts of people. Some were elderly, some were fit, healthy adults, and even a few were children. The one thing they had in common, except for the fact that they were all dead, of course, was that they had all drowned.
‘Where do you get all these bodies?’ she asked one day when Oliver was teaching them how to inflict leprosy upon a victim.
Angela tapped her desk with a ruler. ‘Never mind,’ she admonished. ‘Just do as Master Cromwell instructed.’ She pointed at the scabrous corpse. ‘Clean him up and do it again.’
Despite her growing frustrations, Sarah obeyed politely and returned to her task. Melanie however wasn’t going to be put off so easily. Over the past few months, she had become much more confident and rebellious. Being cooped up on the island was having its effect on her too.
‘C’mon,’ she urged as she turned her corpse into a gangrenous pile of rotting flesh. ‘Where do you get these face-painters?’
Oliver sighed. ‘Oh, very well,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Think about it, Troy. You’re in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, on an island that most humans can’t see at all. Where do you think I get them?’
Mel and Sarah gaped at him.
Sarah remembered her conversation with Captain Thunder. Now she knew he wasn’t joking about a ship’s Captain needing to keep a sharp eye out for trouble in these waters.
‘Do you mean to tell me that you’ve killed all these people?’ she demanded.
Oliver looked shocked. ‘Of course not!’ he exclaimed. ‘They ran into the island on their own!’
‘You disguised it,’ Sarah accused him. ‘You turned it into a trap. You did so kill them. If they could see the place then they’d steer around it!’
Oliver snorted. ‘Just because I like my privacy, doesn’t mean I’m a murderer. Besides, who cares? They’re mortals and I have a very large freezer.’
Sarah grimaced. ‘That’s gross.’
‘Not really,’ he replied innocently. ‘What’s gross is the expense of it all. Keeping a thousand or so bodies on ice just for training purposes is expensive. Trust me. A mortal corpse can be worth quite a bit on the red market.’
‘Red?’ Sarah asked. ‘I’ve heard of the black market. What’s the red market?’
Oliver shrugged again. ‘Same as the mortal black market, except the red market is the enchanted society’s version. Since they deal mostly in corpses and blood, it’s called the red market.’
‘All you’re teaching us is how to kill and hurt people,’ Sarah complained. ‘Don’t you know how to help people too?’
Oliver looked surprised. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. ‘But you don’t need to pay me to teach you that.’
Sarah didn’t understand. ‘Why not?’
Oliver sighed patiently. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered just what sort of sorcerer you’re going to be? You know, Master of this or that?’
Sarah shrugged. ‘A healer, I guess.’
Oliver said nothing. Instead, he walked to his desk and withdrew a long bronze letter opener from a coffee cup that held a jumble of chewed pencils and pens. He went to stand close to Melanie.
‘Hold still, Troy,’ he barked and suddenly stabbed the letter opener through Melanie’s hand, pinning it to the table.
Melanie gasped and clutched at her hand. She then screamed in pain and anger.
Sarah leaped from her desk and rushed to her friend. She yanked the letter opener out of Mel’s hand and the desk and hu
rled it away.
Then, without thinking, she muttered ‘Santicularus!’ the Magaeic spell for ‘get well’. Then she swayed unsteadily as the act of healing her friend made her very light-headed.
Melanie’s bloody hand was suddenly healed as if nothing had happened to it. When she had gathered her wits, Sarah joined Mel, stood and faced the chuckling sorcerer. Melanie glared at Oliver with sparks flickering up and down her body. Sarah assumed her wolf form and was growling with her hackles raised.
Angela was not impressed either. ‘That wasn’t necessary,’ she snapped angrily.
‘What did you do that for?’ Sarah demanded.
While she rubbed her hand, Melanie glared at Oliver. ‘I owe you one for that,’ she muttered.
Oliver held up his hands placatingly. ‘See Coppernick?’ he demanded, ignoring Melanie and her aunt. ‘You already are a healer. You just haven’t learned to discipline yourself. Not even Harding over there was as quick to heal Troy’s hand. I don’t need to teach you how to do any of it because Wolfenvald has already done it.’ He reached out and boldly tapped Sarah’s angry brow. ‘It’s already inside that shaggy noggin.’
Suddenly, everything made sense. Sarah whined and sat back down. ‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, wagging her tail. She glanced at Angela, who nodded seriously.
Oliver grinned at Sarah. ‘You can wait until full moons and brush all your hair out if you really want, but to be frank, there’s no need. You could probably heal death if you tried hard enough.’
‘I don’t agree with Master Cromwell’s methods either, Sarah,’ Angela added, with a stern look at the sorcerer, ‘but I think he’s right.’
Melanie’s hand no longer hurt at all. She grinned at Sarah. ‘Cool! I’ll knock ‘em out, you fix ‘em up.’ Then she held her hand up in front of her face and wiggled her fingers to make sure they all worked as they had done before. She opened and closed her fist several times then quite deliberately, closed it one last time leaving one finger straight up to Master Cromwell.
