Silenus nodded. “I can see how that would be a dilemma of significant proportions,” he said somberly.
“Right,” I said, a bit irritably, for I already knew that. “Do you have any ideas on how we could do it?”
Silenus was silent for some time. I waited with increasing anxiety, never taking my gaze off him. If he didn’t have an idea, what was I to do?
Finally, he said, “You will recall, Vega, that we once spoke of the true purpose of magic; the probability of improbability, let us call it.”
I nodded. “You told me that spell casting came out of necessity.”
“Yes, I did. What is magic but the will of the owner of such power to accomplish something which is desired? You say you want to match the bottles to the people? And then return the magic to them?”
“Yes, of course.”
Silenus now stared over at the bottle of dust containing my grandfather’s magical remains. “If that does indeed contain the magic that once flowed through the spirit of your grandfather, then all that you need is within those grains.”
I said dully, “I’m not sure I understand.”
“You say the creature in the Tower Room is Virgil Alfadir Jane?”
I nodded and said eagerly, “Yes, exactly. Well, I think it is.”
“You are wrong.”
“Excuse me?” I said, half in anger, half in disbelief. “I’m wrong about what?”
Silenus said, “The creature in the Tower Room is simply a husk, the remains of an animal carcass, only in this case the carcass still breathes.” He eyed the bottle once more. “There, in that vessel, is your grandfather. He is with you now.”
I looked at the bottle, my spirits soaring, but then an element of doubt crept into my mind.
“So how do I get him out of the bottle?” I said.
“That is largely up to you. And your wand. But the key element, Vega, is that you must believe. Even a smidgen of doubt and it will not work.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I have seen what doubt can do, Vega. It can wreck the best-laid plans.”
“I don’t understand. Is it that hard to really believe in something?”
Silenus smiled the weary smile of someone who had seen this very thing over and over.
He said, “It is actually the hardest thing of all.”
And with that enigmatic statement, he vanished from the parchment.
I felt my mouth turn downward in disappointment.
Well, that was clear as dung.
Why couldn’t the bloke give me a piece of uncomplicated advice just ONCE!
I looked at my wand and then at the bottle.
I raised my wand, pointed it at the bottle and said, “Virgil Alfadir Jane, please come to me.”
Exactly nothing happened.
I refocused. I willed myself to believe that my grandfather truly was in that blasted bottle.
I waved my wand again, touching the tip of it against the glass of the bottle.
“Come back to me,” I said.
My eyes widened slightly when I saw just a little pop of light at the end of my wand, but then it quickly died out.
I tried several more times, but nothing else happened.
I put the bottle in my pocket and slid the journal in the drawer of my cabinet.
I went back to the library, walked over to the fireplace, gripped the edge of the stone mantel and bowed my head.
How was I supposed to have no doubt when doubt was all I’d had ever since leaving Wormwood?
As I stared into the flames, I felt the tears creep to my eyes. I didn’t want this to happen, it just did. I had fought so hard. Come so far. And now it appeared that I could go not one inch farther.
I slumped down to the floor and curled up into a little ball.
As the timekeeper on the mantel ticked away, I just lay there, not moving. It felt like no energy would ever come back to me.
This is not helping, Vega.
This is stupid.
You’re stronger than this.
I rose and turned away from the fire.
I had to do something. Anything that would make me feel like I was accomplishing something.
To make me feel that I was not a failure.
I picked up the bottle with my grandfather’s dust in it. I put my face right next to the glass. I closed my eyes and envisioned my grandfather as I had last seen him.
I opened my eyes and gasped.
My grandfather was in the bottle.
He was hovering above the pile of fine dust. Suspended in air.
When I blinked, he was gone.
I had only imagined it.
There was nothing there.
I knew there had never been anything there.
I set the bottle down and pondered what to do as I sat back down in the chair.
Empyrean was very quiet. I knew Delph and Petra were asleep.
I didn’t know if Pillsbury actually slept. I wasn’t sure that a suit of armor ever got tired.
As though in answer to my thoughts, Pillsbury appeared next to me.
It happened so fast that I nearly toppled from the chair into the fire.
“Do you require anything, Mistress Vega?” he asked.
“What?” I gasped. “No, I’m … I’m fine.”
His visor quivered just a bit.
“May I be somewhat impertinent, Mistress Vega?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. I gazed up at him.
“I suppose so,” I replied uncertainly.
“You have a great deal of burden on your youthful shoulders. If you don’t mind me saying, it would overwhelm someone far older and more experienced.”
I blinked. “I guess so,” I said calmly, but then retorted, “but I can’t use that as an excuse to fail, Pillsbury. I really can’t. It’s not like I’m going to get another chance to make it right.”
“I recall that Mistress Alice was in a similar predicament when she lived here.”
I perked up at this. I was beginning to feel a strong connection between Alice and me. I only wished that she were here right now. But Pillsbury had known her. That might be the next best thing.
“What sort of predicament?” I asked.
“She knew that war was coming with the Maladons. I remember seeing her sitting in the very chair you’re in now, far into the night, thinking and worrying, thinking and worrying.”
“Did she tell you what she was thinking about?”
Pillsbury nodded. “I appeared before her, something I did not do lightly. She was a very forceful person, was Mistress Alice.” One did not like to intrude on her.
He hesitated and rubbed his metal mitts together.
“Go on, Pillsbury, please.”
“Well, I could sense that she might need to talk to someone, or at least voice her concerns out loud. So I provided a way for her to do that.”
“But surely she had her husband, Gunther, to do that with.”
To my surprise, Pillsbury slowly shook his head.
“Master Gunther kept very much to himself on such matters.” He paused once more and then plunged on in a rush. “He did not want war. But it also got to the point where Master Gunther … where he …”
He ground to a halt once more.
“Where he what? Please, tell me,” I implored.
“Master Gunther, it seemed to me, would have avoided war at all costs. All costs.”
I slowly revolved this around in my head before saying incredulously, “What, you mean even if it meant the Maladons would take over and rule them?”
Pillsbury nodded.
“I could never imagine doing that!” I said forcefully. “I would much rather die.”
“As would Mistress Alice. As she did,” he added sadly.
I thought this through, trying to connect the dots that Pillsbury was putting out there, however haphazardly.
“Was she worried that Gunther might do something foolish regarding the Maladons? Something that might hurt Alice and her a
llies in the war to come?”
I didn’t know where this inspiration had come from.
“I think she was worried about a great many things,” Pillsbury said diplomatically. “And I daresay that might have been one of them.”
“You said that Necro came here before the war.”
“Yes.”
“How recently before the war started?” I asked, for I thought the timing might be important.
“As recently as the night Master Gunther died,” said Pillsbury.
I slowly stood. “Pillsbury, I have seen Gunther’s body in the coffin here. His neck was slit. Are you telling me that … ?”
Pillsbury nodded, and I saw a solitary tear emerge from under the visor and meander down the metal skin.
“That foul Necro came here late that night. Mistress Alice didn’t know. It was on the pretense of preventing the war. That’s what he told my master. They met in this very room. Just the two of them. And when I came in later to see if they needed anything, there lay my poor master in a pool of his own blood. And the fiend Necro was nowhere to be seen.”
“He murdered Gunther?”
“Yes,” exclaimed Pillsbury. “As sure as I’d seen him do it.”
“And what did Alice do?”
“She would have killed him, I’m sure of it, or tried to. But the Maladons started the war the very next day.”
“You said that the war started because Uma Cadmus and Necro’s son, Jason, had fallen in love but ended up dead.”
“That’s only partly true. Necro blamed Jason’s death on our side. Said that we’d had him murdered. Even said that Uma had done it after bewitching Jason at the behest of her father. And he said that Master Gunther was a coward who had slit his own throat because he knew his side could never defeat the Maladons.”
“What a pack of lies!” I snapped. “Total rubbish.”
“Of course it was. But nevertheless, the Maladons wanted a war and they got it.”
“And they won it,” I reminded him miserably.
“Yes,” he said, his gaze on the floor.
We both stood there in silence for a bit.
“Pillsbury, there’s going to be another war,” I said.
He didn’t look at me, but his visor went up and down.
“Yes, Mistress Vega. I daresay there will be.”
“I can’t guarantee the outcome. I don’t know that we won’t be beaten a second time, and utterly destroyed. But I can tell you that I will fight to the death. I don’t want peace with the bloody Maladons. I’ve seen what they’re like. I’d rather die than have anything to do with that lot.”
Now he looked at me. I mean he really looked at me.
“I have no doubt of that, Mistress Vega. If you’re not the spitting image of Mistress Alice, then I don’t know what you are.”
He left me on that note.
I sat back down and stared at the fire for a while. I thought about all that he had told me. It wasn’t that I needed more reasons to hate the Maladons, but if I had, Pillsbury had supplied me with plenty more.
They had an army of well-trained sorcerers who could fly and fight and kill.
I had Petra, Delph, Harry Two and a bunch of bottles with dust in them.
Some army.
And I didn’t know how to lead an army, even if I had one.
I could barely lead myself!
What I needed, I decided then and there, was my grandfather. A mighty sorcerer, an Excalibur.
I knew exactly what I had to do.
I had to travel back to Maladon Castle and rescue him.
Otherwise, all of this was for nothing.
MALADON CASTLE WAS directly in front of me.
Harry Two hung in his harness. I had ventured out without Petra and Delph. I felt strongly this was something I needed to do without them. I had brought Harry Two because he seemingly had a connection with the creature in the Tower Room. Inside my pocket was the bottle with my grandfather’s magical dust.
The castle rose from the darkness like a hideous mass ready to kill all who ventured close.
Well, I would be doing more than venturing close. I was going to invade the place and rescue the Wug I desperately hoped was my grandfather.
As I drew even nearer, my jaw dropped.
I had assumed the castle would be quiet at night.
Instead I saw a scene of manic activity.
Figures in cloaks were hustling to and fro. The castle was ablaze with light. The front gates were open.
What the Hel was going on?
I suddenly had a truly wondrous thought: Had my grandfather managed to escape?
But how could he have done that? His magic still rested in my pocket.
To be sure, I took out the bottle and checked. The dust was still there.
I put it away and eyed the castle once more.
The chaotic scene I was witnessing did provide certain advantages.
I unbuckled Harry Two and attached him to me with a magical tether from my wand.
Okay, here we go.
We set off at a trot toward the castle.
We quickly reached the circle of light thrown off by the entrance. To the left and right of us were Maladons in long red cloaks. I couldn’t see their faces because their black hoods were drawn up.
For some strange reason I felt no fear being in the midst of my enemy. I felt, instead, a certain inexplicable calm.
We were ten feet from the open gates when I saw him.
Endemen burst forth from the entrance to Maladon Castle like a raging storm.
His hood was down and I could see his evil features. Then, as I stood there watching, he transformed into what he really was: that hideous, malformed creature I had seen before. It was far more terrifying than the conjured face he normally wore.
He shouted to his fellow Maladons in some language I could not understand. His voice sounded urgent, but also strangely jubilant. I could make neither head nor tail of it.
My feet started moving and I was past Endemen and through the open gate.
Harry Two and I darted off to a side corridor.
I had to find the stairs up to the Tower Room again.
I searched my memory even as we flattened ourselves against the wall as a group of Maladons rushed past us.
The third corridor on the right? The second stairway off that? Up to the left? Or was it the right?
Oh, to Hel with it.
I drew my wand and muttered, “Pass-pusay.”
The Tower Room corridor was firmly in my mind.
An instant later we were outside of it.
Well, that was informative. I could use the spell to travel within the castle. I apparently couldn’t use it to enter or leave the place.
The first thing I noted: There were no jabbits stationed outside.
The second thing I noted: There was no bloody door.
I looked desperately around. What had happened to the door? Or had my spell somehow gone awry?
But as I calmed, my reason returned.
They knew someone had been in the Tower Room before.
So they had walled it up.
Now the question became: Was the prisoner still in there?
I pondered this for a few moments even as the sounds of whatever was going on down below reached my ears.
I drew close to the wall and put my ear against it. I could hear nothing.
But that wasn’t good enough.
I pointed my wand and whispered, “Crystilado magnifica.”
Now I had my answer. The room was completely empty. Even the slits in the walls were gone.
Okay, the prisoner had been in the highest point in the castle.
So they had obviously moved him somewhere else.
With a spark of logic, I thought: Perhaps to the lowest point?
I cast my gaze downward. I could only wonder what was in the bottom of this awful place. I well remembered my time under the Obolus River with the charming likes of Orco and his wall of the despairing d
ead.
I turned around, and Harry Two and I made our way back down.
The activity had diminished quite a bit, and we didn’t have to dodge Maladons flying through the corridors.
I spied the stairs heading down into the bowels of the castle. They didn’t look the least bit appealing.
Victus!
He was walking past me carrying something.
I skittered over to him with Harry Two trailing right next to me.
“Victus,” I hissed.
He turned and looked around with his all-white eyes.
“It’s me, Vega. I asked you before about the Tower Room, remember?”
He slowly nodded.
“I … I can’t see you,” he said.
“I know. It’s just that I don’t want anyone to see me. What’s going on around here? Why all the activity?”
“Master has simply told us to prepare some things. Provisions and the like, for a journey.”
“A journey where?” I said.
He shook his head. “Master has not said.”
I eyed him closely. “Victus, do you remember who you used to be?”
He flinched for an instant.
I added, “Because you were not always Victus. You were someone else entirely. And you were magical. Just like your masters.”
He shook his head sharply, but I could see in his tightened features that there was … something.
“No. I am simply Victus.”
I said, “Will you and others like you be going with your masters on this journey?”
He shook his head. “Only the masters. We will remain behind.”
I nodded, thinking this over. “Victus, the prisoner who was in the Tower Room. Do you know where they took him?”
“I cannot say.”
“Can’t, or won’t?”
“ ’Tis the same to me.”
“I think not,” I said sharply.
He flinched once more.
I wasn’t sure why I seemed to be able to dent the enslavement effect that he had undergone, but I was glad I could.
I gripped his hand with mine. He instantly became invisible along with me. His skin was icy. But it suddenly began to warm under my touch.
“I think you could tell me if you really wanted to.”
“I … I …”
“That person is my grandfather, Victus. He is a prisoner here. I want to help him. But to do that I need your help. You helped me once before. Will you do so again? Please? It’s so very important. Is he underneath the castle?”
The Width of the World Page 20
