Waves of power surged from the artifact into Scott and Ricky still and they both looked so old. Sami’s anger burned.
She watched in wonder as Elke’s wand moved faster, even though the world around her seemed to move so slow. That’s what the messenger had meant. She wasn’t more powerful than Sami. She was faster. A purplish-blue lightning bolt had started crackling out of the end of Elke’s wand, but Sami stepped to the side.
Sami’s arms flared in the dark room. The symbols of magic blazed on her hands and made her way up her forearms, past her elbows soon to cover her arms. Sami felt her eyes light up and she knew anyone looking would’ve seen them glowing like a smoldering fire.
Sami walked toward Elke and thought she saw the witch’s eyes flick toward her. She didn’t know how much time she had like this, but she was going to make good use of it.
Mikki screeched at the witch, teeth bared, still holding onto Sami’s neck.
Samantha Dawn Proctor, Solarian Elf of Azuria, took a deep breath and drew all of her magic into mind. Every spell she had learned from her mother, every power she’d remembered since Elke had released her memory, every ounce of magic she could find in her soul…she wrapped it into one big fireball.
She raised her hands at Elke and let it go.
Without raising her voice, she said, “incendo.”
When it exploded, Mikki flew from her neck and she felt that strange sensation of leaving a moving sidewalk or a treadmill after a long run. Time raced back up to its normal speed, or more accurately, Sami slowed down.
The blast that hit Elke blew the roof off the building and flattened the walls behind her. In fact, it had blown the entire floor outward into the dirt that surrounded them. Her body was thrown back twenty feet. The lines of magic that had been coming out of her wand stopped abruptly.
Carter’s bullet slammed into Seville and his head blasted backward. His dead body tumbled into RayRay and the music stopped. The silence was deafening.
Sami slumped to her knees, drained of all her energy.
Impossibly, Elke stood up. Her hair was gone, all burned away. The fire had incinerated her gown too. She stood naked before them. The magic, it seemed, had reversed in a tragic way and her body was droopy, wrinkled and disgusting. Rage filled her eyes.
She walked toward Sami, the hate growing on her face.
“You idiot! What have you done? All I have worked for—gone!”
Sami raised her hands to draw her magic, but it wasn’t there. She was too tired for a fireball.
Well, she thought, maybe I wasn’t strong enough after all.
Elke bent over the spent Solarian Elf and breathed hot anger into her face.
“Time to die, bitch.”
She raised her wand and a blue blaze formed around it. Carter Cross took careful aim with his derringer and used his last shot to blow Elke’s fingers off in a spray of blood. The black stick dropped with a clatter to the ground in front of Sami.
With the blinding speed she had shown earlier, she reached down with her left hand, grabbed the wand and hurled a fireball at Carter. He slammed into the wall behind him and slumped down unconscious.
Sami knew she had to act fast, but she had nothing left. The Caulla of Haw Ridge was powerful and she had recharged some even in the fleeting seconds that Carter had given her. But try as she might, her fingers only barely glowed. She could think of only one spell that would work with this measly amount of power.
The first incantation her mother had taught her was one that all magic users learned in their early lessons. It was often abused for pranks and the unspoken rule was that the teacher would let the hilarity ensue for a few moments to give the students a love and joy for the magic they were learning.
“Chorus pullum,” Sami whispered.
Elke Anderson, to Carter Cross’s disbelief, tucked her hands under her arms, began to flap them wildly, and clucked like a chicken.
“Sonofa—,” Sami muttered and blacked out. “It worked.”
24
Gone
Bekkan, Bokaj, and Orin felt the blast that came from the ground beneath the silo. They all three felt the magic ward that had been keeping them out collapse.
“What was that?” Orin shuddered.
“Powerful magic.” Bekkan pointed at the top of the silo where black smoke billowed up and away to the sky.
“Was that…Sami?” Orin jogged toward the guard gate.
Bekkan and Bokaj followed, the three of them looking more like a convention of monks more than a powerful group of wizards. After a short climb down the metal stairway flanking the elevator, the men stepped onto a floor that was smoldering. Pieces of roof were still falling and crashing around them, but the hall was quiet. With no walls left, they could see Sami and her friends huddled together.
Near them, an old woman hopped around and clucked, pecking something with her nose. Carter stood up and pointed his now empty derringer at the men, hoping they would buy his bluff.
“Hold it right there.” He could tell these men were magic users like Elke and he had no way of knowing if they were friend or foe.
Orin recognized Carter’s voice immediately and held out his hand. “You must be the young man who finally answered my call. I am Orin Nightmander, Wizard of Azuria.”
“Okay, good,” Carter lowered his gun. “For a second there, I thought you might turn me into a newt.”
Orin shrugged. “Only if you wanted to be one.”
Carter smiled, but turned toward Sami who was still lying on the floor, passed out from the exertion of using so much magic at once.
“Can you help her?”
“She will be just fine,” Orin said, touching her forehead. “I suspect the Caulla under this lab will have her feeling better in no time at all.”
Mikki sat beside Sami rubbing her cheek with a tiny paw. She had tears welling in her eyes.
“Not to worry, little one,” Orin patted her head. “She's strong, this one. What is your name, my new TikTuk friend?”
“Mikkiiiii.”
“I am quite pleased to make your acquaintance, Mikki. Bekkan, Bokaj, help me get Sami into this chair.”
The three wizards lifted her up and her eyelids fluttered and opened. Mikki jumped up to curl into a ball in her lap. She purred like a kitten.
“Hey, girl.” Sami petted her.
She looked up to see Orin standing over her. Bekkan and Bokaj had moved to check on RayRay, Ricky, and…Scott.
“Oh, God,” Sami tried to stand and a sharp pain jolted her side where Elke had been shooting lightning into her. “Scott…is he…?”
Orin looked over his shoulder. “He’s doing fine, but he may appear a little different to you now. He has had his youth stolen. He’s…he’s an old man for now.”
She heaved herself out of the chair and ran to his side. His face was saggy and wrinkled. What had once been his youthful complexion was ruddy and dull. His blue eyes were watery and sunken. A sob escaped Sami’s throat as he looked up at her.
“Hey, Sami,” he wheezed. “Don’t look at me. I feel like ten miles of bad road and I’ll bet I look ugly enough to make a freight train take a dirt road.”
Sami laughed through tears that fell on her cheeks.
“Don’t you worry about that,” she said, looking up at the wizard standing nearby with RayRay. “We can fix all of this, right Bekkan?”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Not very likely.”
“It is likely and we will fix it!” Sami demanded.
Bekkan lowered his head and said nothing.
“Don’t be messin’ with me, you dang magic freak,” Ricky yelled. “I’m checkin’ on my friend.”
He was kneeling beside Doris who had crawled toward her husband’s body lying on the floor. Sami ran to her. The old woman was hugging him and caressing the side of his head.
“Doris, is he…?”
“He’s gone.” Doris smiled, through thin lips. “But that’s the natural way of things. My
Arthur would be over a hundred by now.”
“But this man is Artemis, and I don’t know exactly, but I’d guess he’s only about sixty.”
Orin had come to stand behind her. “He lived at The Farm with you?”
Sami nodded her head. Orin knelt beside him.
“He was probably near enough to RayRay’s playing that his aging slowed. I guess he took on a new identity to hide the fact that he wasn’t growing old like the rest of his human friends…including his ex-wife it would seem.”
“But why?” Sami asked.
“Who don’t want to live forever?” Ricky chimed in.
Sami studied him. He wasn’t as old as Scott and he’d started out as an older man before the magical concert began.
“Ricky, why aren’t you old like the rest of them?”
“Huh?” he said, turning his right ear toward her, “I told ya before, but you was kinda busy. Ya see, I went to a lot of rock concerts in the eighties, Whitesnake, Poison, Van Halen, Warrant, Motley Crue, all of ‘em.”
Sami blinked, unsure of what that had to do with the price of tea in China. Her heart ached thinking that sounded like something Scott would say.
“See, I’m deaf in this ear,” he said pointing to his left ear. “one hundred percent. Hell, only got about fifty percent in this ear. I just turned my head away from RayRay and did my best not to listen. I don’t like that classical crap anyway, but it was harder than I thought.”
Orin raised an eyebrow. “Interesting. I shall have to document this when we return the artifact to Boston.”
“Don’t worry, Ricky,” Sami touched his shoulder. “We’ll get you back to normal too.”
“Now, let’s not be hasty,” Ricky sniffed. “I might be okay with where I am.”
“Huh?”
He jerked his head to the side, indicating Doris and winked at Sami. “Seeing as how she’s single now, I might be slidin’ on in there.”
“Really, Ricky? You’re disgusting.” Sami couldn’t help but smile a little.
“What?” he shrugged his shoulders, “too soon?”
“Dude, what are you doing to me?” Carter’s voice sounded harried and drew their attention.
Sami looked over to see Bokaj holding him by the arms and Bekkan looking into his eyes.
“Dedis—” he began.
“Wait! Stop!” Sami jumped up. “It’s okay, he knows…well, he knows almost everything.”
“But we must cover up the events that have taken place today,” Bekkan protested.
“Actually,” Sami said, “I’m thinking he would be a good ally. Right Carter?”
“I don't know who you people are. I don't know what you want. I’m pretty sure I don’t have a job after this, but what I do have is a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like Elke.”
Ricky clapped his hands slowly. “Nice, dude. I love that freakin’ movie! Welcome aboard.”
“This is what you want?” Bekkan asked Sami.
“For now, anyway,” she smiled. “Besides, I can always zap him later if I need to.”
“Isn’t anybody worried about me?” RayRay asked, “You know, blind kid, playing for all those hours without a break? I mean, am I chopped liver over here?”
“RayRay!” Sami yelped, “I almost forgot!”
She ran to him and threw her arms around him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, sis,” he hugged her back. “I was only the conduit. I don’t think I’m old…am I?”
“No, you look normal. I guess the magic was only drawn into the violin and then Elke drew it into her body.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Orin said. “If the life force absorbed into her body, why is she old now?”
No one said anything.
“No energy, magic or otherwise, can be created or destroyed,” he added.
“Meaning what, exactly?” Sami asked.
“Meaning, that the life force stolen from these men,” he pointed at Artemis, Scott, and Ricky, “if not in Elke anymore, is out there somewhere. It might have been collected back in the artifact.”
“And if it’s in the violin,” Sami whirled around looking at the instrument, “then we can get Scott and Ricky back to normal.”
“But—”
“Not now, Ricky. Help me find it, guys. Where’s the violin?”
Bekkan, Bokaj, Ricky, Carter, and Orin began sifting through the wreckage near RayRay’s concert chair. Nothing. It wasn’t there.
“Could my magic have destroyed it?” Sami cried, hoping she hadn’t blown Scott’s only chance at being young again.
“No,” Orin shook his head, “as powerful as you are, you could not destroy the artifact alone. It would take several powerful wizards, witches, magic users, and a lot of dark magic to do that.”
“Speaking of dark magic,” Sami blurted out, “where is Elke?”
They all scanned the room. She was gone.
“You and you,” Carter said, pointing at Bekkan and Bokaj, “check ground level, see if she got out that way. She couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Orin.” He waved a hand at the wizard. “You, Sami, and I will search the other levels underground.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ricky said.
“No. We need someone to stay here with Scott, RayRay, and Doris, they’re pretty much—” he whispered the next part, “defenseless.”
Ricky leaned his head back and grinned. He winked conspiratorially at Carter.
“I gotchu bro. I get it.”
“Good. We’ll report back soon.”
The search of the now abandoned building was quick. The guards had all fled. There was no sign of Elke, or anyone else for that matter and the violin, the artifact, was gone. There was no trace of it ever having been in the lab.
They regrouped back in the area Ricky was calling ground zero and packed up to leave. Sami couldn’t help but feel like they were missing something, besides the artifact and the evil witch who’d ruined Scott and Ricky’s lives and killed Artemis.
“Not to worry,” Bekkan laid a hand on her shoulder, “Upstairs is sending in a clean up team to search this site with a fine toothed comb. If there’s anything here, we will find it. Then we can work on getting your friends back to normal.”
“Where the hell could she have gone?” Sami shrugged.
“With the kind of power and dark magic she was messing around with,” Orin said, “there’s no telling where she is.”
“I know where she is,” a small voice said from under the overturned lab table.
“Who’s there?” Orin leaned down to look under the table.
A small man, wearing a blue coat, a red pointed cap, and a white fluffy beard crawled out. He had a leather book tucked under his arm.
“Are you from the Athenaeum, good gnome?” Orin asked.
“I am, or rather, I was,” he said. “My name is Finnegan Hobgood and I can tell you where Elkezar has gone.”
“Elkezar?” Sami asked.
He nodded. “Her true name. She’s taken the door.”
“The door?” Sami and Orin asked in unison.
“The stone door to the underground city.”
“What underground city?” Sami shook her head.
“What door?” Orin asked, “We searched the entire complex.”
“The one under the silo,” Finnegan said.
25
Underground
Orin, Sami, Bekkan, and Bokaj ran through the doorway leading into a deep, cylindrical shaft below the center of the silo . The massive mound of corn that had been above them was gone, whisked away by some magic. Tendrils of blue and purple still swirled around the massive concrete tube. The floor at the base of the silo was stone with intricate carvings decorating an outer ring. In the center, there was a scene depicting what looked like a city of tunnels.
“I did not know of this door,” Orin knelt and began to trace the symbols on the outer
ring.
He looked up at Bekkan and Bokaj. They both shook their heads. They hadn’t heard of it either.
“So, how do we get in?” Sami asked.
“See the symbols here,” Orin pointed at them one by one. “Each one is a button of sorts. You have to know the combination of symbols to push.”
Sami dropped to her knees and started to push one.
“NO!!” Orin boomed, “If you push the wrong ones, or push them in the wrong order, it will kill you.”
“Okay, so how do we find out which ones to push?”
The wizards looked at each other.
“We would need to find out if there is any record of this Caulla door,” Bekkan inhaled, “and hope that someone documented the proper sequence. Then we could open it.”
“Good,” Sami stood up. “Where do we look for that?”
“In the Athenaeum.”
“The Athenaeum?” Sami asked, confused.
“The Great Athenaeum,” Orin added, “of Azuria.”
“But they don’t let just anyone in,” Bokaj said. “We would need a reason to be there and likely would need a reference.”
“Um, guys,” a voice echoed into the doorway of the silo. “I might be able to help with that.”
Standing in the door, looking for all the world like the Travelocity traveling gnome, stood Finnegan Hobgood, the leather book still tucked under his arm.
“All we need is a portal,” he said and shrugged his shoulders.
Sami raised an eyebrow. “So how do we get to Azuria?”
“Practice, practice, practice,” Orin said.
Epilogue - Down
Elkezar fell to her knees under the massive stone door that led down the long, winding cobbled stairs into the Haw Ridge Caulla. In her age-shriveled left hand, the hand that was still complete with five fingers, she held onto the artifact, the violin that contained the life force that would make her young again. When she had her youth back, she would set about finding Sami, the insolent wench of a Solarian Elf that had humiliated and defeated her, and she would not only kill her but everyone around her that she loved. Her parents, her friends, her monkey…all of them would die cruel and horrible deaths in the fire of her fury.
Spell Song: An Enchanting Urban Fantasy Page 19