Toby and Taz were hard at work, assisting the railway dragons. Or rather, Taz was delivering provisions to fuel the heavy tasks of moving boulders and melting drifted snow. Toby was giving unsolicited advice to the Fireman, as the train’s wrangler was known, about caring for his dragons. The Fireman listened without enthusiasm.
The men stood in the small compartment in front of the tender that was the Fireman’s duty station. Verity had to crawl over the tender to reach them, whereupon she tapped first Toby, then the Fireman on the shoulder and presented each with one of the bracelets. The din from the thumping boulders, triumphant dragon bellows, and sweeping tails deployed for boulder removal made speaking, for her, a bit difficult.
“Thanks?” Toby said in a puzzled tone. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not much one for jewelry.”
“The cave wraiths have hitched a ride,” she said. “Iron seems to be an effective deterrent, so I thought it might be wise to sport some new accessories.”
“Ah,” he said, slipping it on.
The Fireman said. “Not part of the uniform, Miss.”
She looked at his sooty hat, face, jacket, shirt, overalls, and boots, uniformly black with some runny bits of flesh and cloth showing through. “How would anyone tell?” she asked.
Meanwhile, men and cats boiled out of the passenger car. The cats leaped atop the car or gracefully hurled themselves onto the flat car. Two of the men almost went over the side, but were pulled back up by their comrades. Ephemera was not among them, and Verity had to wait until the way was clear to enter the car and find her to give her the iron bracelet.
Her aunt stood as if braced against a strong wind. Her hair came loose from its braid as she vibrated with the forces pushing against her. The singing from the shells on her dress was a polyglot chorus of spell, lament, and braggadocio.
Ephemera’s teeth were bared, her lips pulled away from them in a grimace. Her arms were spread.
The forces around her detected Verity’s presence and made to pounce upon her like a pack of invisible wolves, but there was a clear zone around her, an inch or two from her body, an aura of safety afforded by the iron bracelet. Wading against the current of anger and despair, Verity slogged toward Ephemera and slid the last iron bracelet over her hand.
Immediately, the wraiths vanished like the dowsed dragon flames, leaving only a residue of grief and anger.
Silence dropped over the interior of the car like a heavy curtain. Ephemera’s arms dropped and her body drooped. She fell back onto the bench with a shuddering sigh.
Verity sat next to her, putting her arm around her aunt for the first time. “I’m sorry, dear. I’m so sorry, but I had to make these, you see. I knew iron would chase them off.”
Ephemera smiled weakly. “So it did.” She patted the seat beside her and handed her a shell. “But not entirely. This is one of the shells I brought with me for material I might wish to record. It is no longer without content. Listen and tell me what you think. No need to put this one in your ear. It broadcasts loudly enough that you can just hold it.”
Verity held it, but although it was indeed loud enough, declaiming something or other in some sort of gibberish that sounded vaguely like what her Ancient Languages mistress called Runish, she couldn’t understand a word of it. Ephemera gave her a sly sidelong look that made her feel that her aunt had a better idea what was being said than she did.
Verity shook her head and shrugged. “Yes, something is on there now. Pity we haven’t a clue what it’s saying.
“Didn’t you tell me you and the dragons understand one another because of those beads you made?”
She nodded, shivering, since no one had relit the fire in the little stove. It went out when the wraiths first appeared. Her aunt gave her an encouraging look with a significant glance at the bead around her neck.
“I see!” Verity said. “You think if the beads can help me communicate with dragons, they might help us to understand the shells?” She plunged her hand into the pocket on the right side of her skirt. Fumbling through the beads, she felt their curves and ridges, long ones, short ones, squat ones, round ones, and flat ones, all cold, cold; cold, despite her woolen skirt and body heat—except one.
“Now that’s odd,” she told Ephemera. “This bead is all of a sudden warmer than the others—and the shell suddenly seems to be approximately the same temperature. Very strange.”
“Magic is like that,” her aunt said and nodded for her to continue.
Verity still had a hard time accepting that anything could be attributed to magic, even with the mutual understanding she had with the dragons through the beads. She thought it surely had something to do with attuning their brain waves to each other via proximity and shared fumes or something scientific like that. She was a sensible modern girl and under no illusion that just because she couldn’t explain how something worked meant that there was no explanation.
She looked questioningly at Ephemera who said, “Perhaps you might see if any of the others match up.” Her aunt held out her hand and Verity placed the shell and the bead in it. Ephemera carefully set the trinkets on the bench between them and handed her another shell. Verity fumbled in her pocket again and retrieved another bead, grown inexplicably warm.
After retrieving four beads, all of them round and slightly flat with little channels running through them, as she could feel with her mittens off, the blurting sound the corresponding shells made when she handled them began to make sense, though she had to rearrange them a few times to get their story properly sequenced.
“Astral date 11, Year of the Great War, 3, Reign of the Regent Rupert representing the Absent Queen Romany, Who Has Been Walkabout since Birth.”
“That seems irresponsible of her,” Verity said.
“Who, dear?”
“Queen Romany.”
“Well, she was half Gypsy and was raised by them so you might say she had a predisposition to going walkabout. Besides, when she disappeared at birth I very much doubt she had much choice in the matter.”
“Ah. So that is why the country was left without a queen then?”
“Shhh,” Ephemera said with a finger to her lips. “Don’t judge.”
The shell continued:
“At last it seems someone has a plan to end this terrible war. There’s to be a meeting of magical minds held on the summit of Mt. Maguss, beyond the Argonian border, across Brazoria, and into Glassovia. All masters of the Enchanters Guild are attending. Transport with escort will be arriving soon. Must remember my extra socks. It gets very drafty on summits. Furgus is mewing his heart out. He insists on coming. He says he smells a rat.”
Message from the Mages
“Astral date etc. etc. We have endured an arduous journey, our discomfort growing along with the crowded conditions of our transport as the escort collected other of my learned colleagues along the way. Representatives of Widderwinds Amalgamated, the Frostingdungian ally’s organization sponsoring the so-called summit meeting, met us not on the summit, but at the base of Mt. Maguss, where the first part of their proposed plan is to unfold.
I will say that during the trip we’ve been well fed and our thirst slaked with delicious food and drink—those Widderwinds people are very organized and know how to treat guests. It’s best to settle the needs of the flesh before asking much of the mind. The beverage and little seed cakes left me feeling not merely full but relaxed and at peace for the first time since this war began.
Our hosts propose that we combine our power by means of a new apparatus invented by one of their technicians. A technician seems to be a bit like a sorcerer’s apprentice, but without any actual magical powers. Once each of us has provided input, we will ascend to the summit and await the others, including the collection device, which we will then focus with our concerted will upon the forces of the opposition, thereby utterly destroying them. The process begins at once. I could, of course, end the entire messy conflicts myself, except that my students need the practice
. Never let it be said that Sid Sorcerer was a glory hog.”
The shell fell silent and lay still on her palm. Both it and the bead were cool now.
Verity looked at the objects holding all that was left of the unfortunate Sid’s testimony. Though he was drained of his magic, his memories of the journey to his ruin had been collected as well. “He sounds as if he knew somewhere someone would be listening to his words.”
“He was probably gathering his thoughts to record once his journey was over. Eventually he’d have spoken them into a shell and sent it to the Seashell Archives, but since he hadn’t put the account into physical form yet, the apparatus drained the power of his words along with the power of his spells,” Ephemera said and shook her head, “Poor fools. What were they thinking?”
Toby stepped forward from the corner of the car nearest the door. He was filthy. “I don’t think they were,” he said.
“You heard that?”
“Just enough of it to know they were probably given a variant of the pacifying ingredient in the dragon fodder that makes them biddable.”
“The food was drugged?”
“It sounds like it. What else would keep all of those powerful magicians subdued long enough to be stripped of their powers and imprisoned?”
“More magic, I imagine,” Ephemera said.
“Do any of the shells say what became of the actual device that drained them?” Verity asked.
“We really should have looked into the cave while we had it open,” Toby said.
Verity shuddered, “Not for Vitia’s entire hoard. I don’t know about you, but I felt physically repulsed by the wraiths.”
“I agree that when we first opened the cave would not have been a good time,” Ephemera said.”
“I could turn around and go back,” Toby offered, but without enthusiasm.
“No, no, we’re going to need you and Taz,” Verity said. “Besides, we don’t know that there’s anything there. Maybe once they drained the wizards, the Widderwinds people took it away to use on others.”
Ephemera shook her head as well. “That is an object of great power, and whether it exercises it through magic or science, it drained the greatest talents of the day. I have no idea what it is exactly, but it won’t be the sort of thing one can stick in a pocket or bag and haul around.”
“What I don’t understand,” Toby said, “is if the machine drained the magic from the wizards, where did all the magic go?”
“I found a broken flask coated, as the cave walls are, with the shiny stuff we used to make the beads. I think that it may have been the receptacle for the magic, except the dragon ran off with it and it broke all over the walls of her cave, coating them with the collected magic.” She held a bead up to the light. “And Copperwise, Loveday, and I made these beads from it.”
“I thought the magic was in wands and that kind of thing—it is in the stories,” Toby said.
“Those items are used to channel magic, but unless they’ve been enchanted to do so, most of them hold little or no power apart from those who bear them,” Ephemera said. “Or so the Archives say.
“Each bead may contain a power or spell,” Ephemera said. “The ability to communicate with animals is probably only one ability of many. We can research it when we return to Wormroost.”
So they continued sorting shells and beads until the men re-entered the passenger car and the train began to move again. Verity could hear Taz hearing Wol and Gem congratulating themselves on getting things moving. The conductor assured the passengers that a new passenger car would be added for their comfort at Velasco station.
“How can you possibly know that?” Verity asked him. “They won’t know we need one until we get there, will they?”
“Well, no, but when they see that we do need one they will hasten to accommodate,” the conductor said, sputtering just a little.
Chapter 32
Velasco Station
The dragons’ conversation that had buzzed in her head on the westbound track fell silent as the train turned left and limped in a southwesterly direction toward Velasco Station. Loveday and Copperwise, with Taz’s aid, had helped the wounded Vitia to a safer place, away from the tracks.
Everyone had to de-board so that the workmen suddenly swarming over the damaged car could assess the damage and the railroad crew could perform the complicated quadrille it required to uncouple the damaged car, move the undamaged pieces of train far enough away that an engine could be switched onto the same track as its target before hauling it away for repair or salvage.
Meanwhile, passengers who had been scheduled to leave on their (much delayed) train demanded to know what had kept them. Not all of the passengers, of course. An aristocratic looking pair complained bitterly when told they would have to endure further delay.
Verity’s head hurt very badly. The station master escorted the passengers into a luxury first class lounge, where they were given hot beverages and food from, “One of our finest cafes.” This gave Sir Archibald, Briciu, and their followers a chance to regale those waiting for the train to recommence its journey a vivid if somewhat exaggerated account of Vitia’s capture and escape and their own narrow escape from, “Being incinerated alive by the beast of burning death.”
Verity had a blinding headache. Ephemera had retreated back into listening to her shells, so Verity was the only one who had proper perspective on the situation at all.
“She did not viciously attack you,” she said finally. “You invaded her home and threatened her young so she led you away from them. Quite heroic, actually. Following which you wounded her and chained her to those flat cars without food or drink. If I were a dragon, I’d flame you myself!”
“You weren’t there and you have no idea of the raw terror of such an encounter!”
“I can certainly believe she was terrified, poor creature,” Verity retorted. She knew as she spoke that this was going to rebound on her and somehow or other she would end up regretting saying anything, but of course, she had no choice and besides, she really did feel awful about poor Vitia. “I should know better than you how frightening she could be if she wanted to. Remember me, the rescuee? I lived in the same cave with her all winter.”
Briciu beamed at her and she felt her stomach twist. “You certainly did, brave girl. And just how did you accomplish such a feat, pray tell? Or perhaps I should say, prey, tell!”
“And if she was defending her young, what became of them?” Sir Archibald pressed.
“I—um—” She searched about, looking for a way to avoid the truth while not actually lying. Then she noticed that the place where Ephemera had been standing was now empty. “Excuse me. My aunt’s gone missing. She can be a bit forgetful.”
Delay in Route
The gypsy woman’s magic travel did not always work properly. Sometimes, like now, it landed her in an area of magical congestion and became entangled and dumped her short of her destination in unfamiliar territory. Her upbringing led her to consider this sort of situation a serendipitous occasion for exploration.
This time she was in unfamiliar territory with dragons. Fortunately, one of them was immediately familiar.
“Hello there, my beauty,” she said to Taz. “You remember me, don’t you? Would you introduce me to your friends and tell them I’m not for burning?”
Drawing nearer, her heart clenched as she recognized the largest of the dragons lying spent upon the ground, her tongue lolling and her shredded wings hanging limply beside her.
“Vitia?” she asked. “What’s happened to you, poor girl?”
Vitia, the fire gone out of her from the effort of hiding, looked up from half closed eyes then let her jaw drop back to the earth, utterly defeated.
The gypsy circled the larger dragon deliberately. The two smaller ones, not Taz; the others, jumped out of the way as she passed.
She heard one say to the other, “Mother has a two-legged friend, too.”
“Powerful,” Copperwise said with a trill.<
br />
The gypsy fingered a bauble at her throat, hidden under layers of scarves, patchwork hooded sweater, waistcoat, overcoat, and impressively swirly cloak. “Hello, children. Your mother and I have known each other since she was your age. We get them out of here, yes, Taz? I hug Vitia’s neck and, children, you each crawl under one of her poor wings and brace it. Hang onto her legs. Taz, you look much stronger now. You think you can help her up?” At Taz’s assent, she said, “Okey dokey, dragons! We go!”
Verity in Peril—Again
“Strange girl, that,” Sir Archibald said as Verity bolted from the lounge. “Doesn’t seem to have the proper attitude at all.”
“She’s a bit entitled is all,” Briciu said. “From an eccentric family. Filthy rich, but very odd. My poor cousin married into them. Like a lot of the old Argonian native clans, they have some peculiar family heritage. Still, she’s not bad at heart. Now that her parents are gone, she just needs the proper guidance. I’d better go see what she and the old lady are up to.”
He found her outside the terminal, staring into the streets.
“Come away, Verity, dear,” he said in his most insinuating tones, his fingers brushing her shoulder. Of course, her shoulder was so heavily shrouded in winter gear that she barely felt his touch.
“Not now,” she snapped. “I need to find Aunt Ephemera.” She looked down the main road of the town, her eyes following the road as it disappeared up into the hills. A small brown figure floated up the first hill on what appeared to be a fuzzy gray cloud enveloping her to where her knees should have been.
The Dragon, the Witch, and the Railroad Page 28