Victor led them through the servant’s entrance. “Good evening, Halvor,” another servant said.
“Good evening, James,” Victor said. “These are my students Tara Millerson, Cynthia Harrison, and her sister, Danielle Harrison. They are studying alchemy and pharmacy with me.
“I will show the four of you to my study,” he said to the women. They walked through the halls and climbed up the servants’ stairwell to the fifth floor. They opened the door and walked into a hallway.
They came to a small door. Victor opened the door, which led to a spiral staircase. When they got to the top of the stairs, they entered a room that had a telescope in the center of it, pointing out a window. Willow wondered why a doctor would have a telescope in his lab, or that he would have a lab in a place that wasn’t his permanent office, for that matter.
She decided not to ask him about it until after they had done what they came to do. They each opened their bags and pulled out the small boxes that their suits of armor were in. Before they had left, they’d shrunk their armor down so small that the suits would fit mice. That way, they could sneak the armor around the castle and the city without anyone seeing it. Willow opened her box, pointed her wand at the armor, and said, “Grow and expand, your time for use is at hand!” A light shot out of the end of her wand and hit the armor. The armor grew until it reached its normal size.
Willow and the others suited up. They watched the clock in anticipation of their assassination attempt. Willow spent the time reading her ancestor’s books. Then, 1 a.m. finally came. Willow hoped the assassination would go exactly how they’d practiced it many times back on Enchantica. Willow, being the best swordsman of the group, was going to assassinate King Banderon.
Victor showed Willow to Banderon’s room. Rosaria and Lillithia ran off to another part of the castle to distract the guards. Willow opened the door and crept inside.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” Willow whispered.
“I will stand out here and watch for trouble,” Victor said. In a way, Willow was happy that she would be facing Banderon alone. It was going to feel wonderful to be the one to kill him after his unfair laws killed her parents.
She quietly closed the door and pulled her sword out of her sword belt. She lit her left hand up and saw Banderon lying in his bed, snoring very loudly. A cold chill ran down her spine when she recognized him as the exact same man she had seen in the vision she’d had while fighting Lillithia the first day she was on the island. Willow decided to take the risk of being caught and wake the man up. She desperately wanted to confront him about what he had done to her parents.
Willow placed her hand on him and shook him. He awoke with a start and looked at her, bleary-eyed. “What?” His eyes grew wide with terror, and he sat bolt upright in his bed at the sight of Willow’s glowing hand. Willow was thrilled to see the monster cowering in fear at the sight of magic. “Wha-What?” he stammered as he tried to point at her hand.
“My name is Willow Nightshade. You killed my parents, Garrison and Andaria Nightshade, because you have something against people practicing sorcery in Ethermoor!” Willow spat.
“GUARDS!” Banderon hollered.
Victor, when are you going to come in and help me? Willow thought nervously.
It was either now or never. Willow held her left hand high into the air and threw a lightning bolt at Banderon, striking him right in the heart. The lightning made terrible burns on his skin, and the man slumped over in his bed. His eyes were glassy, and Willow could see that he was now dead.
A fire erupted as the electricity singed the bedsheets. Willow conjured a raincloud in the room to put the fire out and prevent it from spreading. A surge of emotion flooded her as she realized that she had just killed the man who was responsible for her parents’ deaths.
She heard the thunder of many feet running down the hall. Willow looked around for an escape, but there were no windows in Banderon’s room that she could float out of. Suddenly the door burst open, and several palace guards ran inside. Willow was shocked. Victor was supposed to be watching for the guards!
Willow stuck her left hand out in front of her and shot a lightning bolt out of her fingertips, striking one of the guards dead.
She kicked another man in his stomach and stabbed him in the chest with her sword. She struck all the remaining guards in the chest with her lightning, killing them.
Willow ran out the door and still did not see Victor anywhere! She ran down the hall and down the servants’ stairwell. Willow heard some footsteps coming toward her on the stairs. She heard what sounded like a massive group of people running from behind her. Willow raced down the stairs and saw an unarmed elderly servant running toward her. “Don’t strike me! I have a note written by your mother!” he yelled as he held his hands up. Willow looked at his right hand, and much to her shock, she saw a note written in her mother’s handwriting! “Say nothing!” the man hissed as he handed the note to her. The sound of the soldiers’ footsteps grew closer.
Willow folded the note up and put it in her pocket. She ran out the door at the bottom of the stairwell. Black dust rained down around her, and she fell to the ground. Her sword fell out of her right hand and clanged loudly as it hit the stone floor. She saw Lillithia, Rosaria, and Victor standing with the crowd of guards standing at the door of the stairwell as if they were among the guards, not distracting them. They had also shifted back into their natural forms.
“Oh, thank goodness you caught her!” Rosaria squealed. She picked Willow’s sword up off the ground. Willow could not believe what she was hearing. The three people she thought were her friends were working with the palace guards to trap her!
“Imagine, she could have killed the rest of us nobles!” Lillithia chimed.
Us nobles? Willow thought. If the guards hadn’t drugged her, her head would have been spinning. She suddenly shifted back into her natural form in her weakened state.
Willow felt a needle pierce through her skin, and then everything went dark.
The guards picked up Willow’s body and carried it into the dungeon.
“This is a thoroughly dangerous criminal and a sorceress! DO NOT let her out of your sight!” Victor ordered. He took her wand out of her holster, yanked her shifter pendant off her neck, and locked the cell door.
He, Rosaria, and Lillithia walked out of the dungeon. “What will we do when she wakes up?” Rosaria asked. “You’ve seen what kind of magic that sorceress is capable of!”
“I’ve seen what she is capable of doing to you, not me! Don’t forget who I am!” Victor spat.
“I don’t want to take the risk of her waking up and trying to get payback for us having tricked her this whole time!” Rosaria screamed. She ran down to the dungeon. Much to her utter shock, Willow was gone. Several guards lay dead in the dungeon, and the cell was empty! Its door swung wildly on its hinges.
She turned around, and to her horror, she saw the strange spectral woman who had approached Willow when they were practicing the transporter spell on the island! She stared Rosaria right in the eye.
“You . . . you again!” Rosaria stammered. The creature let out a horrific scream and grabbed Rosaria’s right hand. Her hand suddenly froze, and it became so numb from the cold that she couldn’t move it. The creature yanked Willow’s sword out of her hand and vanished.
Rosaria’s heart leaped into her throat. Willow possessed very dangerous sorceress powers, and she was loose. Rosaria ran back upstairs and found Victor. “She has murdered all the guards and escaped!”
Victor’s eyes narrowed. “That’s impossible! Iron fluid injections are enough to knock a sorceress unconscious for a day!”
The two of them ran down the steps, and Victor was shocked by the sight that met his eyes. Sure enough, the guards were all dead, and the cell door was open.
Victor and Rosaria searched all over the dungeon but did not find her. Victor also noticed that Willow’s wand was missing out of his holster. They both ran back upstairs a
nd organized a search party to search the castle for Willow. When morning broke, Willow still hadn’t been found.
When Willow woke up, she was lying in bed. “Ah, good morning!” a woman’s voice said. Willow looked around in total confusion. She saw an elderly woman standing beside her bed. “It’s been a while, and a lot has happened here since you were locked in the castle dungeon.”
“I was in a dungeon?” Willow asked.
She looked around and noticed that she was lying in a bed in a bedroom inside a small house. “Yes, you have been unconscious for a day. My husband, a castle servant, said that they drugged you with iron,” the woman replied.
“How . . . but?” Willow stammered, gazing around at her surroundings.
The woman smiled and said, “You have a lot of allies on your side, especially since you showed such kindness to the poor when you arrived in Ethermoor City. Word spread.”
Willow thought about the man who’d handed her the note that her mother had written. Willow tried to stick her hand in her pants pocket but discovered that she was wearing nightclothes.
“Um, a man gave me an important note when I was in the castle,” Willow said.
“Open the nightstand drawer.”
Willow opened the drawer and saw her mother’s note. Her heart raced as she picked it up. It certainly was her mother’s handwriting. “How did he get this?”
“He cleans the palace archives room. The note was put there. Halvor took it back to the palace after your arrest. When my husband heard that Willow Nightshade was in the city, he took it out of the archives, intending to find you and give it back to you,” the woman said. “Some of Banderon’s men tried to find the Pyraxia Library, but they stumbled around in the mountain range and froze to death. That’s what our grandson told us.” She chuckled.
The directions read,
“Here is the way to the Pyraxia Library and the Pyraxia Vault, which are both located in the Celexia Mountain Range. Look for these two rock formations. Snow covers both of the doorways. To melt the snow away from the door, stick your hand in the snow and say, ‘Florida.’ The snow will melt away, revealing a door. The second magic word to open the door is ‘Please.’ Use these words when opening both the door to the vault and the door to the library.”
Willow remembered that when they were practicing the transporter spell, she had traveled to a snow-covered mountain range when a part of her wanted to find the library her mother had told her about. She didn’t remember her mother saying anything to her about a vault. Then, she realized that she had left the conch shell and her mother’s books in Victor’s study.
A perplexed expression came across the woman’s face. “Tell me, do you know anything about a conch shell?”
“Yes!” Willow replied.
The woman stood up and walked out of the room. She returned seconds later, carrying Willow’s bag and her sword! “How did your husband get my things?” Willow gasped. She remembered seeing Rosaria pick up her sword. She didn’t think Rosaria would have just given it to a palace servant.
“It wasn’t him who gave it to me. I had this odd dream last night, right before my husband and one of the dungeon guards brought you to our house. The ghost of a woman came to me, and she told me I was to give you this bag and this sword! I thought it was a dream. My husband woke me up after he brought you here. I saw the bag sitting on my nightstand, and the sword was propped up next to it.”
Willow looked through the bag. Sure enough, both of her ancestor’s journals and the conch shell were there! But who in the world would have given her bag back to her? “Thank you so much! These two diaries are family heirlooms! My father gave me this sword!” Willow said, smiling.
She saw a stick lying in the bottom of the bag that looked like her wand, but it had lost all of its silver-and-gold luster and was just a brown stick. Willow looked down and noticed that her shifter necklace was gone. She remembered Victor yanking it off her neck after he threw her in the jail.
“Was she able to retrieve my necklace?”
“I didn’t see a necklace with your things.”the woman replied. Willow searched the bag for it, but could not find it. “My name is Marian, by the way, and my husband, Nicholas, is the one who handed you the paper in the stairwell. He and a dungeon guard named Xavier snuck you out of the palace.”
“My name is Willow Nightshade. What happened to Victor? Or Halvor, as he was known by at the palace.”
The woman closed her eyes and shook her head. “He is our king now. Banderon had no heirs, and since he was the king’s most trusted advisor, Banderon promised to make him king when he died.” She walked out of the room and returned with a newspaper. “King Assassinated!” was the headline.
The article read:
“At 1 a.m., King Banderon was murdered by a sorceress named Willow Nightshade. King Banderon’s advisor, Halvor, and Princess Desdemona Thiregan of Nimudor and Princess Ambrosia Wyvorn of Frohadon caught her after the attack. She has since disappeared from the palace. If you have information on the whereabouts of this woman, please inform King Halvor immediately. She has long, curly brown hair and green eyes.”
Willow was thankful there was only a vague description of her appearance and no drawing of her. She read in another article that Halvor’s coronation was to be a week from that day.
“Princess Ambrosia and Princess Desdemona?” Willow asked, angry. She remembered hearing Rosaria referring to herself as “us nobles.” Being that Willow had never ventured outside Aralin before, she had no idea what the members of the nobility looked like. She had only seen the Prince and Princess of Aralin, and only on rare occasions.
“I knew them as Lillithia and Rosaria. Which one was which?” Willow asked.
“My husband will have to tell you. He has seen them around the palace from time to time on state business,” Marian said.
Willow tried to wrap her head around everything that had happened to her. She felt sick. “Those creatures wanted to trick me into thinking they wanted to help me get vengeance on Banderon for my parents’ deaths, but they just wanted me to kill Banderon so that no one would suspect them of murder and Halvor could become king!” Willow growled. She seethed with anger so much that she shook.
“How in the world did you think that creature wanted to help you?” Marian asked.
“I . . . he taught me magic! He really did! He acted like he wanted to help me!” Willow whimpered.
“Did he teach you dark magic? Because that’s how he helped catch your parents! Certain people are trying to help warn the sorcerers about him!” Marian said with a deadly expression on her face. Willow was speechless. “He was hired to help King Banderon kill sorcerers. He has this formula that police mixed with apothecary medicines to determine if they contained fairy magic or not.”
“How do you know all this?” Willow asked.
“My son-in-law is named Tyrus Firedorn, and he is a Knowledge Sorcerer. His best friend was a man named Damian Anderson. Damian was murdered the night before your arrest.”
Marian took a breath and continued. “Several Knowledge Sorcerers have secured positions within the Ethermoorian Police force to investigate a series of odd deaths. All of the victims were either lunatics or apothecaries. When he went to discuss the progress of the investigations with the king, Halvor, thinking he was just another non-magical person working for the government, gave him a briefcase full of the formula he’d used to track down sorcerers and sorceresses, and explained what he did with it. They found Damian dead outside the city two weeks later.”
“How long has Halvor been working at the palace?” Willow asked. He had told her that he was a retired doctor, but she’d found out that was not true.
“He has been there for four months,” Marian said.
“So, how did he work at the palace and teach me, Lillithia, and Rosaria magic all at the same time?” Willow asked.
“He came at night,” Marian replied.
He came at night, Willow thought. All this time, sh
e had believed that Victor was going for a walk at night on an island. That was the explanation that Rosaria and Lillithia gave for why he wasn’t around the castle at night. Willow never thought he was leaving the island. Then, it dawned on her that the transporter spell enabled him to travel anywhere he wanted in seconds.
“I never saw him sleep during the day. How was he able to stay awake all day and all night?” Willow asked.
“Perhaps he cast a spell on himself to keep himself awake all that time. Or perhaps he’s immortal and doesn’t need to sleep,” Marian said. Then, she looked around as if to make sure that no one was watching them. “Some think he might be Tareth returning to Ethermoor. The strange killings started after the boom in the sky two months ago. All the witnesses describe the murderers as blue-and-white ghost-like creatures. The victims were all found to be sorcerers and sorceresses, which means the creatures might be Faeblood Wraiths. When their corpses were found, all the victims, including Damian, had the same horrific expression on their faces.”
Willow remembered that Riordan had questioned her about strange deaths. “That’s ridiculous. Tareth has been dead for five hundred years!”
Marian raised her eyebrows and said, “He is not dead. Zadelia imprisoned him on the island of Valroth. Tareth is immortal! You can believe what you want about the Tareth part; it is only a theory.”
Willow heard a timer go off in some other part of the house. “Sounds like breakfast is ready!” Marian said. Willow heard someone banging pots and pans around in the kitchen.
The Night Sorceresses Page 11