The entire crowd gasped. She waved her hands and yelled to quiet the crowd.
“I didn’t hide to deceive you. I was kidnapped and held hostage in the North by two evil women. One you know as evil and one you don’t. Mombi was my jailer, but she and Locasta are not mortal enemies. They are old friends. Locasta would visit her in the cover of night and bring her magic and ingredients. It was Glinda and who you know as the daughters of the Wicked Witches of the West and East that came to save me. They brought friends. They are my friends. Oz needs to take a good hard look at who they think are Good Witches and Wicked Witches.”
The crowd was exchanging uncomfortable looks and was getting restless. Glinda joined her at the podium.
“Some of you believe I went missing from the school I started recently. I was not. I was being held and tortured in a jail in the North. I was rescued by Ozma, Francesca of the West, Saffron of the East, Dorothy Gale, and a mix of forces. They were able to get me out, but I was not the only person in that jail. Other prisoners were being experimented on. Locasta is working with a powerful sorcerer who intends to steal magic from all of Oz. He wanted to start with me, but Locasta’s ruse of policing the black market in Uptown is to give him people to drain.
“We saw two of the unfortunate people he’d fed on, and that should never happen to any living person no matter what kind of magic you practice. They were also experimenting on the talking animals. I’m not just asking you to believe me. We rescued another girl from Locasta—her servant. She has details of an attack coming that affects all of you.”
I could hear the whispers in the crowd. Some people were talking about Locasta, and some thought Glinda was about to produce some Gillikin girl who would lie to them. Esiro joined Glinda and Ozma at the podium and glared at the crowd. Honestly, Esiro was a little scary. She reminded me of the type that would just kill you and ask questions later. Francesca was like that after her mother died, but Oprix and I got her through it.
“I know some of you are thinking I’m a plant, but I’m going to do something off the book. I was Locasta’s servant. She has attacks planned in all regions of Oz. She wants to rally you to attack Emerald city to get what she and the sorcerer she is working with really wants—Glinda, Francesca of the West, and Saffron of the East. They have the strongest magic out of everyone in Oz. If he gets his hands on them, he will be unstoppable and he will destroy Oz.
“You can sit there and not believe me. You can go home and think Glinda and Ozma are lying to you, but there will be an attack in the East in four days. Strong magic and walking corpses will attack the East. Locasta will swoop in and try to convince you it was Glinda. She will do the same in the West and South until you have rallied to attack Emerald City. Your best bet for protection lies with Glinda, and the women you think are Wicked Witches.”
“Why should we believe you?” a Munchkin yelled.
A Munchkin stood up with Francesca’s chin. “Then believe me. My daughter is up on that stage. Yes, I had a daughter with Azami of the West. I’ve spoken to my daughter, and she is not Wicked. Neither is Adora’s daughter, Saffron. Locasta has spent a lot of time with us in the East, but ask yourself this. Why would Locasta tell Dorothy Gale to see the Wizard if we all found out he was a humbug? Wouldn’t she already know that?”
I shot a glance at Francesca, and she was grinning proudly at Pridius. Todus was with him and looked like he wanted to disappear under his chair. The Munchkins were all talking, trying to figure out if they had been manipulated or not.
One of the Winkies stood up. “How can you say Saffron is not Wicked when her mother enchanted our Emperor’s axe to turn him into tin?”
Esiro yelled over the crowd. “Adora didn’t curse anyone in the East. It was Locasta. She intends to leave the North and settle in the East with her sorcerer after they’ve taken Emerald City. The Munchkins will be their slaves. You were manipulated into turning on Adora and Azami.”
“But the Winkies can all remember all the horrible things Azami did to us! Something is not adding up with your story.”
Of course, it would be a Winkie that wanted the full truth about the curse, and Glinda had to be careful talking about it or we would have an entire realm of people with broken minds just ripe for the Fisher King to take over. How was Glinda going to get out of this and could she do it before Esiro just blurted it out?
Glinda gently shoved Esiro aside. How the fuck was she going to explain this so a Winkie would accept it?
“All we can tell you right now is that the sorcerer Locasta is working with is from another realm. He has magic we don’t here in Oz. That’s why we called this meeting. When these attacks happen, you could be attacked by the corpses of your loved one. It was magic that gave you certain memories.”
“That sounds like total horse shit,” the former Winkie governor snapped.
“Oh, shut it,” Pridius snapped. “The East has way more to complain about than the West does. Do we have a plan to stop these attacks?”
We hadn’t planned for Galen to speak at all. He was still glamoured to look like a Winkie. So, I think we were all shocked when he got up to the podium and dropped his glamour. His spine was straight, and he looked fierce.
“I have the same magic as this sorcerer does. So do two people on this platform. If I can teach it to them in time and Esiro can tell us the order they plan to attack, we can bless the ground in each region. The sorcerer won’t be able to call your loved ones from the ground and force them to do his bidding.”
The Quadlings had been silent this entire time. I knew why. Daxar was up there, and they trusted Daxar and Glinda. They looked pissed Locasta had taken Glinda, and they didn't doubt her story. The Munchkins were mostly on our side now because Pridius was. It was the Winkies we needed to convince now.
“How can we trust you with that hair color?”
Francesca was so protective of Galen. She wasn’t supposed to talk either, but she elbowed her way to the front.
“After my mother died, did I give you any reason to distrust me?”
“Well, no, but—”
Now Dorothy was up at the podium. At the rate we were going, everyone would have a turn talking.
“Then trust me,” Dorothy said. “Frankie and Saffron are my friends, and they aren’t Wicked. Everything they say is true. If you don’t take precautions, they will attack you, starting with the East. They will manipulate you into attacking Emerald City and Oz will fall.”
That vocal Winkie pointed his finger at Galen and Francesca. “Dorothy, I trust. I’ve got my eyes on you two with the green on you.”
I was half expecting Dorothy to drop her glamour and show everyone she had green hair too, but she didn’t. She deferred back to Glinda.
“Go home and prepare. We will start with the East. Let Galen teach those that can stop the Fisher King how and we will be in the East in two days. We will prepare the East and fight with you.”
The Winkies might not have been on board with this. They thought we were all full of shit, but they weren’t stupid. They knew if they were wrong, they would get attacked.
“Why doesn’t all of Oz just come together and stop them in the East?”
“I agree,” a Quadling that looked a lot like Daxar said. “Why don’t we all just meet them in the East and end this.”
Pridius stood and shook their hands. “I agree if the Sentinels do.”
Glinda looked to Esiro. “Will the Fisher King, his bride, and Locasta all be there?”
“Not out in the open. They’ll be hidden.”
Pridius gave me this grin that reminded me of Francesca. “Yes, but Saffron over there knows all the best places in the East to hide.”
Francesca beamed at Saffron, and I just laughed. She totally did.
Chapter 13
Galen
T
his was not how I wanted to get to know my sisters. I didn’t even have time. Every waking moment was consumed with talking about our fucking parents and their stupid
plot to kill everyone in Oz. Why couldn’t I just have a normal family? I would have been happy having totally boring Winkie parents with nothing interesting ever happening to me. Well, that was partially a lie. The only thing good about this was that I met Frankie and her group, and now I found two sisters.
Me and my twin sisters would probably never be normal. You don’t grow up with the Fisher King or Locasta and grow up with no scars. Even Dorothy didn’t have a totally normal life. She could have, but Oz kept calling her back home before she was quite ready for it, and the people back in Kansas didn’t believe her story. I’d heard a little about what she went through when she got back to Kansas and people were just so cruel.
I couldn’t even be alone with Dorothy and Esiro when it came to teaching them the magic we inherited from the Fisher King. Ozma wanted to be there to make sure nothing bad happened to Dorothy and Frankie wanted to be there in case Ozma flipped out and tried to hurt me.
Because we were doing this the hard way, and I would have to hurt my sisters. Frankie would have to teach me how to do a knowledge transference spell, and then I was going to have to do that awful magic to both of my sisters. I would have preferred teaching them this slowly or not at all.
The magic our father used that we had inherited from him was evil. People like our father were burned alive back in his realm because they thought it was the only way to cleanse his spirit from the world. They had protection to use against his kind of magic that we couldn’t get in Oz because we didn’t have something called priests.
I didn’t know a lot about his weaknesses, but I knew some of them. He wouldn’t speak out loud how to beat him even with my mother just in case she turned against him. But I was there when he tried to teach her to raise the dead so they could attack two places at once and that was how I learned. I learned all the things that would prevent the dead from rising. The Fisher King was sure that couldn’t happen here. He told my mother when she asked how and now I knew how to stop him.
“I will need olive oil from the kitchen and myrrh from the potions lab,” I said.
“Are you hungry?” Frankie asked. “I can get you food. Myrrh doesn’t taste good in food.”
I tried to hide my smile. While people in Kansas bullied Dorothy when she spoke about her time in Oz, the people here tended to have more amusing reactions when they heard about the magic there. There was this innocence about Oz that I would not let my father ruin.
“Think of it like a potion. It’s called Chrism. We have to anoint the cornerstone of all the cemeteries everywhere so the dead can stay at rest. If the ground has been consecrated, the Fisher King’s magic won’t work there.”
Oprix came in and pulled Frankie into his lap. Ozma had left the room to send for what I needed. I was putting off the headaches as long as possible. I hadn’t known Oprix long, but I knew that look on his face by now. He was thinking about something.
“Galen? My scythe talks to me now that we are bonded. She said I could pick a name for her, but not to tell anyone because there is power in a name. Don’t you think that means something? We don’t know the Fisher King’s real name. He was a knight before he was the Fisher King. I’m assuming he has a real name, and no one knows it because they could use it against him.”
I nodded. “There’s power in a name. I don’t know either of my parent’s names. I wasn’t allowed to call them Mother or Father, but I couldn’t call them by their names either because I didn’t know. I could only call them Sir and Ma’am.”
Frankie frowned, but she did that every time I talked about my parents. Everyone in the room was frowning.
“What did they call each other?” Frankie asked.
Did I want to tell them? I had five strong women in the room who would get pissed off. They were never mad at me, but sometimes when they got mad at my father, it made me feel bad for not trying hard enough to stop him.
I closed my eyes and braced myself. “She called him Sir Knight, and he called her Gilbert, which he constantly reminded her was what he called the cats who hung around when he was guarding the grail and what pests they were.”
All five women were pissed. I was pissed too. I had to listen to that shit for over twenty years. I was waiting for the rants. I was waiting for someone to yell, but it didn’t come.
“If we can do things with names, then we need to work with that. We have no way of finding out the Fisher King’s name, but Glinda may know your mother’s name,” Ozma said. “Could we get your mother to betray him?”
I knew why they were asking, but I didn’t think they knew what they were asking.
“If you had her true name, you could do a spell that would force her to do your bidding, but that’s dark magic and would make you no better than the Fisher King. That kind of magic leaves its mark.”
Frankie looked panicked and flung herself at me. I loved it when she did that, and I was now at the point I was comfortable enough to wrap my arms around her and hold her as tightly as I could.
“When the Fisher King gets to the East and realizes what you’ve done to the graveyards, he will know you’re alive. He knows your name. We may not be willing to do that kind of magic, but he is. He could control you.”
“He would need something of mine. He used to keep a doll he made from my hair, but I stole it on the way out. He has nothing of mine to hurt me with, and I have a protective charm on me at all times. We couldn’t do anything to the Fisher King or my mother even if we had their names and were willing to risk that kind of magic, because we would need something of theirs to make the spell work.”
Esiro looked concerned for me. “Our parents don’t know the curses have been removed on Dorothy and me. If they get to the cemetery and can’t raise the dead, they will know it was you. How can you be sure you got everything on the way out?”
I shrugged. “I can’t be. But if we don’t do this, the Munchkins will have to fight against dead loved ones. Do you know how that will turn out? It will be a massacre. Seeing them again will be a shock. It will give them pause long enough to be run through with a weapon. I don’t know how many cemeteries there are in the East, but I know it’s the most heavily populated area in Oz, so the Fisher King will have a lot to work with.”
Esiro and Dorothy both sat on either side of me. Frankie was still wrapped around me like a snake.
“We aren’t sacrificing you to save Oz, Galen,” Esiro said.
“There has to be a way that doesn’t put you in danger,” Dorothy said.
It was nice to have a family that worried about me after growing up with my parents. I liked this feeling, and I wanted to feel it more. It might not be possible.
I shook my head. “There is no other option except playing my hand and taking away the Fisher King’s most powerful weapon.”
Frankie growled and buried her face in my neck. “The Fisher King isn’t taking you from me, Galen. We’ll find a way to kill him this time.”
Chapter 14
Frankie
I
was learning Galen was just as stubborn as I could be. I knew Galen would have to play his hand and risk the Fisher King finding out he was still alive. Dorothy and Esiro might not realize that, but it was the only way to minimize the casualties and rally Oz against him. I trusted Galen that he cleared every trace of himself out of that cave, and the Fisher King had nothing to hurt him with.
I knew I couldn’t do the Fisher King’s magic, and so did Galen. That’s where we were at a standstill. Galen had a lot of knowledge to transfer and I could help with that if he would help me. I was used to the headaches. Dorothy and Esiro weren’t. I could handle it for longer. Galen could give me the knowledge, then we both could give it to Esiro and Dorothy in spurts while they recovered. I thought it would save time.
Galen didn’t want to hurt me anymore than he wanted to hurt his sisters. It would be a necessary evil. Glinda would have to pass Sentinel knowledge to Esiro this way before she could take over the North. We didn’t have twenty years for Esiro
to learn and take her place. The seat in the North couldn’t stay empty for that long.
I grabbed Galen and kissed him like there wasn’t a room full of people.
“You don’t have to do this alone. Think about it. If I know how the Fisher King’s magic works, even if I can’t do it, it’ll help me protect you.”
“She has a point, Galen,” Esiro said. “The more people that understand how it works, the better chance we have at coming up with a plan for killing him for good this time.”
I played with Galen’s hair. He had such pretty hair for a boy. “You can’t take him on alone. You’ve been helping us. Let us help you. We’re a team.”
“You just don’t know how evil my parents are.”
“Yes, we do,” Esiro and Ozma both said at the same time.
“I might not have met our parents, but if they were anything close to Locasta, trust me, I know,” Esiro said.
“Mombi was considered weak and a pawn to them. She was still pure evil to me. I get it. We all do, and we aren’t letting you do this alone,” Ozma said.
“They manipulated me into killing two people when I was just a kid. They didn’t care I was their child. They didn’t come greet me and tell me they were my parents, and that was how I ended up in Oz. They just used me and had someone else send me back to Kansas. That they would do that to me has all these horrible scenarios in my head about what they did to Galen while he was living with them. I don’t care how horrible the headache is. I want as much as you can cram into my head to beat him.”
I opened my mouth to talk, and Galen silenced me with a kiss.
“Let me handle the dark magic. You need to transfer Sentinel magic and fight training. Esiro will need it to take over the North. I get what you say that understanding his magic will help you beat him, but trust me. You don’t want any knowledge rattling around in your head afterwards.”
“Fair enough. Is someone here with the sweets yet?”
Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3) Page 6
