“The hedge witch?” Vivienne said. “She’s so sweet. Why would she do that?”
“Whoever asked for the blend threatened her. She nearly killed us when we asked her about it,” Fritz said.
“Gilly worms?” Vivienne asked with a slight spark in her eye.
“Yep,” said Fritz.
“Who would do this?” Gelé said and started crying again.
“Whoever is doing it isn’t messing around,” Fritz said. “Marzi, Andor, and I were attacked by a horde of rats in the woods a few weeks ago on the first day of trials. There were thousands of them, and they were all attacking us.”
Everyone gasped.
“We couldn’t outrun them. I had to blast a large rat off Edward. We barely made it out of the woods alive.”
“Wait …” Vivienne sat back, “you blasted a rat off Edward here at school?”
“In the woods,” Fritz clarified.
“Drossie, how could you do magic on school property?”
Fritz shrugged. “I mean … I don’t know. I just … did?”
“Maybe the woods aren’t under the dome,” Gelé suggested.
“The dome covers everything,” Faruk countered. “Believe me, I’ve checked.”
“Maybe Edward just shook it off,” Marzi proffered and squirmed in her seat. “Drosselmeyer obviously didn’t do magic on school property. There are enchantments, and he would have been punished by The Order.”
“The Order should hear about the attacks,” Faruk spoke up. “We should tell them.”
“No!” Four voices responded in unison.
Andor accented his reply with three emphatic “no” signs.
Gelé clenched her fist and glared at Faruk. “If Glacinda finds out I told you all anything, I’m done. She will remove me in an instant.”
Faruk threw up his hands. “Ok. Ok. I won’t say anything. I promise.”
The bell rang, and they all jumped. They chuckled at their reaction to the sound, and the atmosphere lightened.
“Time for class,” Faruk said and walked out the door.
Marzi and Fritz stayed behind.
When the others had exited, Marzi asked, “Are you still on for tonight?”
“Yes. I’ll meet you here after school.”
“Minerva has to give us some answers,” Marzi said, resolute.
“When we talk to her,” said Fritz, “Let’s begin with ‘pretty please’ and go from there.”
Marzi laughed. She turned to leave but Fritz didn’t follow. “Are you coming?”
“I have some things I have to look into,” he said. “I’ll meet you here after class.”
She left, and Fritz waited a few minutes before exiting the school. He crossed the road and hurried around the corner so he wouldn’t be seen by any teachers. He blinked on his magic vision.
The school was enveloped in a dazzling, rounded dome. The shapes were innumerable and so beautiful it nearly took his breath away. He approached the dome and looked at the patterns closely.
Fritz walked the perimeter, careful not to touch it for fear of setting off a warning. As he approached the far side of the school wall, he stopped and squinted.
The enchantments formed floating, latitudinal strips, or rings of repeated magical glyphs. Each ring turned counter to the one above and below it in a slow, steady rotation. The ring closest to the ground was the largest, and each ring closer to the sky got progressively smaller, forming a tight, dome-shaped wall of enchantment.
He craned to see as high up the dome as possible, and every ring of glyphs he saw repeated the same pattern.
He bit his lip, deep in thought.
“How far up do you go?” he wondered aloud.
Satisfied for the present, he blinked off his magic vision and sauntered to class.
Chapter 17
Fritz and Marzi crossed their fingers and traveled to the alleyway near Minerva Mooncup’s shop. No one was present when they stepped from their misty shrouds. They glanced around, but all the shutters in the alleyway were closed to keep out the cold winter air.
As they walked toward the alleyway entrance, Fritz told Marzi about the attack the night before.
“What?!” she exclaimed.
“I think Nicholaus is behind all of this,” he told her. “He has to be. The rat connection is too much of a coincidence to be anyone else.”
“Nicholaus isn’t a wizard,” Marzi said.
“But with his dad’s money and connections, he probably has access to wizards.”
“Yeah … to Boroda,” said Marzi. “Unless you want to accuse your own master of the attacks, I’d suggest keeping your gaze wider than Nicholaus. I get it—he’s a jerk—but I don’t think he’s that smart.”
They walked up to the shop, and Marzi took a deep breath deeply to calm her nerves.
They entered the shop, and the familiar, dank smells once again accosted their olfactories.
“Let’s get this over with quickly,” said Fritz.
The beaded curtain swished and out stepped a tall, thin woman with straight blonde hair wearing a circlet of flowers woven into the thin copper bands on her head.
“May I help you?” she asked. Her dress was made of a delicate material that swished with every movement she made.
“We were looking for Minerva Mooncup,” Marzi said.
With a coquettish grin, the lady asked in a breathy voice, “I’m afraid Minerva isn’t in. I’m Finuala. How may I help you?”
Fritz eyed the gauzy material wrapped around her body in delicate folds.
He swallowed. “We were looking for an herb blend with one week’s nutrition.”
Finuala caught his gaze and raised an eyebrow flirtatiously. “Of course. Is there anything else you want?”
Fritz blushed.
“I was also looking for some morphing herbs,” Marzi said.
Finuala glanced at her dismissively then addressed Fritz. “I’m afraid those potions are beyond my ability. You would need to see Minerva for that.”
She glided behind the front counter. “Is there anything else?”
“No, thank you,” Marzi said, her voice laced with annoyance.
“The potion will take an hour to make.” Finuala made eye contact with Fritz. “Please wait.”
She slid through the beaded curtain.
Fritz followed her exit, craning his neck.
Marzi punched his shoulder. “Hey! Pay attention.”
“I am!” Fritz said, rubbing his arm.
“If Minerva isn’t here, how are we going to find out about the morphing potions?”
“I don’t know,” Fritz snapped back.
“Look around the shop and see if you can find anything that might give us a clue,” Marzi said, scowling.
They began to walk around the little shop, looking at the assorted bottles and bags of mixed herbs and oddly colored liquids.
Fritz approached the mushroom table warily. There were hand printed cards stuck in the dirt explaining the benefits of each variety.
He picked one up.
Funghi Wartius: health giving. One mushroom feeds one person for one day.
“That’s odd,” he said. There was a pile of mushrooms already cut lying in a heap near the edge.
“What is?” Marzi asked from a few aisles over.
“Here’s a mushroom that will feed a person for a day,” Fritz said. “You should just get a whole bunch of these.”
Marzi walked over and looked around. She knelt down and examined several packages below the mushrooms.
“Look at this!” she exclaimed.
She held up a large glass container filled with a mixture of dried herbs. A note was taped to the top.
Nutritional Blend: One tablespoon, brewed = one day of eating.
“You think Finuala knows this is here?” Fritz asked. “She’s probably in the back making the same thing. I should go back there and tell her.”
Marzi frowned. “Something doesn’t feel right.”
Fr
itz grabbed the glass jar. “I’ll go ask her.”
Marzi snatched the jar back. “I’ll go ask her.”
“Fine.” Fritz yanked the jar away. “You ask her, and I’ll hold the jar.”
Marzi shot him a dirty look and strode quickly toward the front counter.
They walked through the curtain and into a room stacked floor to ceiling with dried plants. Finuala wasn’t there, so they walked past the plants to another room separated by a beaded curtain.
There was a crunching noise coming from the far corner.
“Maybe she’s chopping dried herbs?” Fritz whispered.
Marzi shoved him forward.
The crunching was coming from a large chest.
Fritz opened the chest, and Marzi shrieked and jumped back.
Inside the chest, a mass of worms churned over each other, hungrily chomping on their meal. Sticking out of the wormy mound was the unmistakable half-eaten face of Minerva Mooncup.
Fritz let the lid fall back with a loud slap. “Watcher, help us!”
Marzi grimaced. “Gilly worms.”
They crept back the way they had come, glancing around for any signs of danger.
“Where is Finuala?” Fritz whispered.
“I don’t know, but it’s safe to assume she’s not a friend,” Marzi said.
She traveled away the jar of mushrooms, still in her arms, and closed her hand around a katana with a worn leather grip and a razor sharp blade. Both she and Fritz prepared defensive spells and held them at the ready in their hands.
With eyes peeled, they inched forward toward the door, making slow, smooth movements.
Fritz heard the beaded curtain rattle in a small breeze as the floorboards creaked under their feet. Behind him, the crunching sound of the gilly worms grew louder and became more sporadic. The chewing sounds melted into the unmistakable sound of tiny claws scuttling. The hair on Fritz’s neck stood straight up.
“Rats!” he warned.
Seconds later, a deluge of the rodents poured into the room.
Marzi aimed her spell, and several rats turned to dust.
Fritz scorched several, but they advanced too quickly for him to kill.
Fritz and Marzi leapt up on a table, firing spell after spell. The rats continued to pour in, clawing up the table. Fritz kicked two back and crushed them midair with a clap.
Marzi screamed and knocked one from her leg. Blood trickled from the wound.
With a sweep of his hand, Fritz threw a spell at the advancing horde. The rats tumbled back as if hit by an invisible ocean wave.
“Let’s get out of here!” shouted Marzi.
Fritz held her back. “No! They will travel with us!”
“There are too many, Drossie!” she screamed. “We can’t fight them alone.”
She now held two katanas and hacked at the rats as they climbed the table.
Rats were beginning to climb the walls and cross the ceiling.
One dropped on Fritz. He threw it to the floor and crushed it. He pushed hard against the stick roof, and it exploded in a shower of wood bits. The rats left behind leapt at them from the edges of the new hole above them.
Fritz looked over at the chest in the corner.
“Gilly worms!” he shouted to Marzi.
They both reached out and pulled against the wooden planks of the chest. The front panel exploded and thousands of worms spilled to the floor. A nearby rat squealed as the worms crawled over it and began tearing into its flesh.
Marzi continued hacking away at the rats with her swords as Fritz traveled piles of the worms, sprinkling them over the rodents.
The rats rushed the table, driven mad by dark enchantments and carnivorous worms chewing at their flesh. Even with the worms weighing them down, the swarms of rats continued to advance.
Sweat was streaming down Marzi’s face as she blasted away rat after rat. The reserves in her charm were perilously low, and her stance faltered from fatigue.
Fritz had a sword in one hand and a ball of fire in the other. He could feel his energy, already low, slipping away. The sounds dulled, overtaken by the blood pumping in his ears.
Inside his chest, a familiar rage boiled. It felt the same as when he was locked in the box at Ivanov’s, but this was not the time to reminisce or analyze the sensation. His green eyes sparked silver pops of energy.
With a yell, he jumped high in the air and, when he landed, slammed his fist on the table. A shock wave spread out, knocking the rats off the table and momentarily confusing them. He reached out, and several nearby plants shot out tendrils and wrapped themselves around the table. Vines snaked across the floor, wrapping around furniture and shelves.
The rats, unphased by the vines, continued to rush toward the table. They scaled the twisting plants with ease and scrabbled to the tabletop.
Marzi stared at Fritz in wonderment as vine after vine covered the floor.
A rat jumped onto the table; Marzi cut it in half and kicked it to the floor. Another rat with a gilly worm hanging off its back crested the edge and charged.
“Fritz!” Marzi called out and sliced two rats midair. “Whatever you’re doing, do it fast. There are too many for me to fight alone.”
He held up his hand and squeezed it into a fist. Thorns sprang from the network of vines, and an instant later, the squeaking stopped.
Fritz felt the electricity race through his body. His eyes buzzed with every pulse. He grabbed Marzi around the waist, pulled her close, and kissed her.
Several seconds later, she pushed away.
The buzz of energy drained from Fritz, and his eyes faded back into an emerald green. He stared at Marzi and stuttered. “I’m … sorry. I didn’t mean to …”
She stared at him in bewilderment. “I’m leaving.”
She disappeared, leaving him alone with a room full of dead rats and crunching gilly worms.
Fritz dropped to the table. His head was swimming. He traveled back to his room and, gasping for breath, fell on his bed. His vision faded, blinked, then went dark.
Chapter 18
Marzi ignored Fritz all day Thursday.
On Friday, she purposefully let herself get shot during trials so she could exit the woods and sit alone.
Friday after school, Fritz finally caught up with her.
“Hey! Are we still on for tomorrow morning?”
“Yes,” she said. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“It’s a bit chilly outside and pretty cold inside as well,” Fritz said. “Listen, I’m sorry for what happened,” he began, but she cut him off.
“You apologized already.”
Fritz furrowed his eyebrows. “Is there … is there a problem, then?”
“No. See you tomorrow morning.” Marzi stormed away.
Faruk walked up behind Fritz. “What’s wrong with her?”
Fritz shook his head. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Is she mad at you?” he pried. “Wait … are you guys … are you a thing?” He rubbed the tips of his fingers together in a kissing motion.
Fritz grabbed Faruk’s wrist to stop the gesture and glanced around, making sure no one was watching. Satisfied that no students had seen the exchange, Fritz faced Faruk and tried to sound indifferent. “No! We’re not.”
Faruk studied him. “I think you’re lying.” He broke into a wide smile. “Watcher! You are lying. You guys are a thing! You’re thing-ing, aren’t you?”
“We’re not thing-ing,” Fritz said. “We just kissed, and that’s it.”
Faruk’s jaw fell open. “Oh, wow! Dude! If The Order ever finds out about this, you will get skinned alive!”
Fritz leaned in and whispered. “What are you talking about? Is there a rule against … thing-ing?”
Faruk chortled. “Um, no official rules, but The Order frowns on coalitions.”
“But we’re not a coalition,” Fritz argued. “We’re not even a couple. I don’t think, anyway.”
“Hey. Your secret is safe with me,” Faruk b
acked away. “But if I were you, I’d end this thing-ing. Fast.”
He backed away until he ran into a student. He apologized and kept going. As he exited the school, he turned to Fritz at intervals to mouth the word “fast.”
Fritz traveled home and got dressed for training. He kicked the large pile of dolls lying on his floor.
“Why are women so confusing?!” he shouted.
“I am unsure, sir,” Doll said. Some stray threads were hanging off his head.
Fritz swatted the toy. “Shut up.”
He traveled to the training room and stretched while he waited for Boroda.
During their training on weapons, Fritz continued to miss easy shots.
“Focus!” Boroda jabbed with the end of a wooden staff.
Fritz blocked it but put too much weight on his front leg.
Boroda twisted in the air and struck Fritz on the back of the head with his staff. Blood oozed out of the gash.
Fritz ignored the wound and struck out again, but Boroda waved his hand, and both weapons disappeared.
“Sit down. Let me take care of that.”
Fritz obeyed.
“You seem distracted. What’s happening?” Boroda asked.
Fritz bit his cheek. “I’m just having some problems at school.”
Boroda wiped Fritz’s head and neck with a rag and water. “With whom?”
“Not Nicholaus,” Fritz assured him, and the wizard’s shoulders relaxed.
“Then whom?” Boroda said.
Fritz breathed out slowly. “Would it be ok if I didn’t tell you right now? There’s a lot going on, and I’m trying to figure some things out.”
Boroda waved his hand over the gash, and it began to close. “Of course. I will respect your privacy, as long as it doesn’t compromise mine.” He stepped away.
Fritz stood up and traveled in the weapons again.
Boroda attacked, and Fritz countered the blow. They continued sparring for an hour before calling it quits.
“Someone else in The Order got attacked,” Fritz said while stretching after the workout.
Boroda didn’t react. “Who?”
“I promised not to tell, but I thought you should know.”
Boroda’s face clouded over.
“Marzi and I also got attacked by rats today after school.”
Drosselmeyer: Curse of the Rat King Page 18