The Viking Horn Spell

by Amanda Hartford

  ♦

  Barry was pretty shaken up by his afternoon, but he was also exhilarated. I figured the auroch felt the same. He’d come back into the world and found himself in the middle of a strange, modern city surrounded by a rowdy crowd. He was way, way out of his comfort zone. But then again, so was Barry. They had a lot in common.

  It was going to take a lot of beer to get Barry to calm down, and it would take a lot of kind words and a firm hand to get the auroch under control again.

  Barry had proven this afternoon that the auroch, at least in its materialized state, could be managed by an experienced handler even if he wasn’t a skilled witch. Somebody had spent some time teaching the bull some manners, but in its resting form as a drinking horn, it seemed to be less well-trained.

  The horn wasn’t twitchy or vibrating, like a lot of untrained objects are, but it had developed a weird purple aura that made me uneasy. The object felt sentient. That was never good. It meant that the horn was capable of acting on its own, outside the control of its owner.

  I needed a quiet place to work, and there is no place quieter than my vault. I keep a small table and a single chair in the vault for moments like these. I left Lissa to tend the store while I picked up the trombone case and popped downstairs.

  The over-stimulation of the auroch was palpable, even from outside the case. As I reached for the brass latches, the lid of the trombone case popped open on its own — never a good sign. Inside, the drinking horn glowed like a hot coal.

  I went back to basics. I started with the calming spell, singing my lullaby to the drinking horn. I put myself on a loop, crooning the song over and over in a low voice until I saw the bright violet aura begin to fade to blood red.

  The horn appeared to be calm enough that I could pick it up. I reached out with both hands, cupping them six inches away from the silver-clad mouth of the drinking horn. Blue sparks crackled inside the funnel of the horn, and I whipped my hands back. I was going to need to deliver the magical equivalent of a Xanax.

  There is a longer incantation that can be applied to situations like this, but I use it only rarely. I don’t like the side effects. If I used that at all, I had to get this one just right. If I didn’t give it enough juice, all I would do is annoy the auroch — not a great idea at this point. If I did too much, I ran the risk of killing its magic forever.

  I began very slowly, enunciating each word precisely as I had learned it from grandmother Marie-Eglise’s spellbook. My normal speaking voice has vanilla American diction, tinged with a little of the Bourbon Street of my youth. But when I do a serious incantation, I fall back into my grandmother’s voice, heavily accented with French.

  I spoke the words carefully. The future of Ajax and his little buddy Barry both depended on it.

  Chapter Eight

  Barry, Ajax, the Brahma and his rider were the color photo on the front page of the Phoenix newspaper the next morning. The auroch’s owner called me the minute I hit the shop that night.

  Mark was sitting in the Eames chair when the call came in, so he heard my side of the conversation.

  “Yes, that was Ajax,” I said into my cell.

  I listen to the angry voice on the other end until he ran out of steam. I saw Mark grin.

  “Yes, I understand, but your locking spell was invalid. The object was in transit…”

  More yelling on the other end.

  “I’m sorry you feel that way. We take every precaution to secure the objects in our care but we’re not responsible for the bad behavior of...”

  Another stream of colorful language.

  “No, there’s no damage to the object. And, even though you haven’t bothered to ask, no one was hurt.” This guy was starting to get under my skin. “If my courier had not been expert at handling animals such as your auroch, this could have been a tragic…”

  He hung up on me.

  “Well, that went well,” Mark said.

  I sighed. “He has a right to be upset, but part of this is his own fault for not properly training that horn. I’m not sure he has the skills to own something that powerful.”

  “So, now what?”

  “I’ll give him some time to calm down. Maybe when he thinks about it, he’ll decide that owning that horn is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  At that moment, the door admitted Barry. He looked none the worse for wear, but I was pretty sure he’d spent the night exploring Scottsdale’s legendary drinking establishments.

  “Morning,” he said quietly.

  It was after 10 p.m., but nobody pointed that out.

  “How are you doing?” I asked him.

  Barry just shrugged. “Is he still here?” he asked.

  I nodded to my desk, where the trombone case lay.

  Barry walked over and put his hand on top of the case. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “I put another confining spell on the drinking horn last night, just to be sure.”

  Barry looked wistful. “This here’s the finest bull I ever rode.”

  I’d never known Barry to care much about magical objects, but clearly, he and Ajax had bonded.

  “Maybe we can work something out,” Barry said hopefully. “My place up in Wyoming — I could take him there. My cows would love him.” He patted the top of the trombone case. “I’ll bail you out as soon as I can, partner.”

  Mark raised his eyebrows. “Barry, this is not like adopting a puppy,” he cautioned. “Ajax requires high-level magic to control him. If he gets loose again and somebody gets hurt…”

  Barry looked indignant. “I just rode him in a parade, right through the middle of town.” He affectionately patted the trombone case. “Everybody’s fine. This guy’s a real crowd pleaser.: Barry looked up hopefully. “I mean, you said that the parade wants him back next year. It would be a shame to disappoint the kids.”

  “Let me see what I can work out,” I said. “No promises.”

  ♦

  Mark, Barry and I had worked with Jim to make Pentacle Pawn more secure, but in the end, all of our planning didn’t matter. When Penelope came for me, I was alone.

  Lissa and Orion had been busy all day, moving her belongings from her mother’s pool house to his townhouse. Lissa had promised to make it into work before midnight, but we had no appointments scheduled for the evening so when she called in, I told her to take her time.

  I sat in the Eames chair and popped downstairs to retrieve the drinking horn. I could take advantage of the quiet to give it another obedience lesson

  I had just stood up from the duplicate chair downstairs when I heard a noise in the showroom above me. A woman’s laugh echoed around the vault.

  It was Penelope.

  I dropped back into the Eames chair and quickly mumbled the upstairs incantation. Nothing happened. Maybe I’d said it too fast, I thought. I recited the incantation once more, carefully enunciating each word.

  I was still in the vault.

  I heard a loud crash above my head. My heart sank when I realized what Penelope had done.

  This was my own fault. I’d been meticulous in crafting the door incantation, making sure that it wouldn’t admit people and objects that might do me harm. It had never occurred to me to tell the door to keep an eye on objects that were going back out.

  That’s precisely what happened. The first thing Penelope did when she broke in was to grab the Eames chair that sat in front of my desk upstairs. She held it up over her head by its skinny aluminum legs and crashed it down on the floor. The molded plywood seat, half a century old, shattered.

  With the upstairs chair destroyed, I had no landing place to get out of the vault. The Eames chairs were a pair, tuned to each other’s vibes. I was stuck.

  It was just a smashed-up old chair, nothing very special. But to me, down in the vault, it was everything. The Eames chair was my only portal out.

  But Penelope had miscalculated. If I couldn’t go up, Penelope couldn’t come down. I was trapped, but I was safe, a
t least for the moment.

  At least I could call for help. My life revolves around magic, but I’m smart enough to know that I should always have real-world backup systems. When I was setting up Pentacle Pawn, I’d had a phone installed in the vault. Nothing magical about it: just a plain old AT&T landline wired to the vintage pink Princess phone on the wall. I winced when I paid that bill every month, but tonight it was worth every penny. I called Mark.

  While I waited for rescue, the destruction above my head continued. Was Penelope looking for something up there? Or was this just about revenge? I had no way to know.

  For the next half hour, I listened, helpless, to Pentacle Pawn being destroyed. I could hear Penelope’s footsteps on the floor above me she moved around the room, so I had a pretty good idea of what was going on up there. There’d be a pause as if she was deciding what to do next. Then, staring up at the low ceiling of the vault, I’d follow her steps across the room to her next target. I held my breath as I waited for the crash. I could tell by the size of the impact whether she had tossed an expensive vase or turned over an irreplaceable piece of vintage furniture. It felt like the attack went on above my head for hours.

  Helplessly listening to the destruction of my shop was terrible, but it was even worse when the room above me went silent. I hadn’t heard Penelope walk to the door. So, where was she? I pictured her standing in the middle of my showroom, arms crossed over her chest and a smirk on her face, admiring her handiwork.

  I waited for her to move around again, but the sound never came. What was going on up there? Was it safe to go back upstairs?

  ♦

  Almost an hour later, I heard footsteps over my head again. The Princess phone rang.

  “Devil’s Island,” I answered.

  I heard Mark laugh through the phone. “How are you doing down there?”

  “Just hanging out. Everything okay up there?”

  I heard Mark’s sigh. “Penelope’s gone, but not forgotten. She’s done quite a remodel up here. I’m not sure you’re going to like the new layout.”

  I was pretty sure he was right. “I heard the sound effects, so I’ve got a pretty good idea what it looks like. Is Lissa okay?” I’d been worried that Lissa had come into work and walked right into the carnage.

  “She’s fine. I talked to her a few minutes ago. They’re still moving furniture. They got distracted so they were late getting done — which probably saved their lives.”

  Let’s hear it for young love. I breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I tried to pop upstairs a while ago,” I told Mark. “The Eames chair is gone, right?”

  “Out in the alley in a few dozen pieces, I’m afraid,” Mark said. “I don’t suppose you could work the spell if I brought one of those pieces in and put it back in front of your desk?”

  I sighed. “Nope, doesn’t work that way. It takes two matched objects.”

  I could almost hear Mark thinking. “So, nothing in, nothing out,” he finally said.

  “Right. Including me.”

  “Does that mean we have to bore a hole in the floor to get you out?” The floor to the shop — which was also the ceiling to the vault — was concrete supported with steel beams. I’d outsmarted myself again. I explained the problem to Mark.

  I glanced over at the concrete wall that separated my basement from Bronwyn’s. The wall had been completely rebuilt last year after Penelope’s first attack. The new construction included a vertical wall of sheet steel between the two runs of concrete blocks except where Bronwyn’s safe was set into the wall. To put that safe in her basement had required dismantling half of her floor, a crew of six guys and a crane. Moving the safe was not an option.

  I explained it all to Mark.

  “I’m not sure where that leaves us,” he said.

  I looked around the vault, hoping a solution would suggest itself. All I saw were boxes, crates, and cages containing unique objects, none of which had a mate upstairs in the free world.

  Except one. My gaze fell on the trombone case.

  “What’s Clayton up to these days?” I asked Mark.

  ♦

  Clayton Coyote is a shaman. He’s pretty vague about his ancestry, but he’s led us to believe that his origins are in the Four Corners region where the borders of Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet.

  Four Corners is home to the Navajo, Hopi, Ute, and Zuni, along with several small pueblos and independent Native American communities, so that didn’t narrow it down much. Once, out drinking with Barry, Clayton let slip that he’d gotten into some trouble as a kid and gotten himself expelled from his mother’s clan. His father was long gone, so he was on his own.

  Many northern Arizona tribes are matriarchal cultures, so getting expelled from his mother’s clan was a big deal. At 13, Clayton was packed off to live with his father’s second cousin in Flagstaff. She was a potter and her husband was a painter; Clayton was soon immersed in the arts counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s. He dropped his birth name, won himself an art scholarship at the university and never went back.

  Now, nearly 70, Clayton is renowned as a Native American silversmith and artist who paints compelling Grand Canyon landscapes in watercolors and oils.

  Europeans have a fascination with American Indians, and Clayton has taken full advantage. He lives in the European Union most of the year. He likes working in Germany best, because of the Germans’ fascination with the American West, especially the movie version. Clayton is a frequent celebrity at Wild West reenactment weekends where everybody dresses up as cowboys or Indians. Clayton shows up in a buckskin jacket and an impressive (and counterfeit) Lakota feathered warbonnet, a getup that has nothing to do with his own culture but gains him free drinks all weekend.

  The one thing that’s genuine about Clayton is his talent. His artwork hangs in the best museums, and he is celebrated at artsy banquets in the most expensive houses. This is crucial because Clayton Coyote is an international jewel thief. He’s an honored guest hiding in plain sight, unsuspected when the jewelry goes missing.

  Mark tracked him down to a venerable château in the old Alsace-Lorraine on the German/French border, where he was the house guest of a wealthy industrialist who claims family ties to the House of Romanov. Mark’s call woke Clayton from a sound sleep, even though it was nearly noon in Europe.

  “We have a job for you,” Mark said without preamble.

  Clayton was instantly awake. “What does she need?”

  “Call me back on a secure line,” Mark responded.

  “This line is secure. I have it scrubbed every 24 hours.” Of course he did — in Clayton’s line of work, there was no such thing as too cautious.

  “We are looking to borrow an artifact from a Polish museum. It’s a matter of some urgency.”

  “And what is this artifact?”

  “A Renaissance drinking horn,” Mark said.

  “Is it enchanted?” Clayton asked.

  “No, this one is not enchanted, at least as far as I know,” Mark said. “Just necessary.”

  “No problem,” Clayton said. He knew not to ask too many questions. “There’s a nice one downstairs on display in the banquet hall. I can pick it up and be on a plane tonight.”

  “Sorry,” Mark said, sounding exasperated, “we need a very specific one.” He explained about the horn we’d seen online and where to find it.

  Clayton whistled. “That’s going to take some doing. How fast do you need it?”

  “Yesterday. Maggie got herself locked in, down in the vault, and…”

  Mark could hear Clayton laughing through the phone. “Never mind. You can tell me when you see me. I’ll be there tomorrow. Tell Maggie to hang in there.”

  Chapter Nine

  True to his word, Clayton Coyote stepped off a private Learjet at the executive terminal of Scottsdale Airport at 9:45 the next evening. He was carrying an expensive aluminum briefcase.

  Stella picked Clayton up, and minutes later Clayton opened the briefc
ase on my desk upstairs.

  Inside was a beautiful drinking horn, the mirror image of the one downstairs in the vault.

  Barry whistled.

  “Won’t they miss it?” Mark asked.

  Clayton smiled. “Funny story there — there was a bit of commotion at that museum last night. It seems the sprinkler systems went off and flooded the main exhibit hall. Nobody can quite figure out how it happened. Nothing was damaged, at least not any of the artifacts, but their electrical system is shot, so it will be a few days before they can get the alarms and the lights back up and running. Meanwhile, the only security they have is a few rent-a-cops outside. Nobody is allowed in, not even the curators.”

  “That’s a shame,” Mark said, melodramatically shaking his head. “I should send them a nice donation to help them get back on their feet.”

  Clayton was nodding sagely. “It’s the least we could do.”

  ♦

  It only took a few minutes for the boys to get set up for my escape — which was good, because, after a whole day stuck in the vault, I really, really needed to pee. When Mark called on the pink Princess phone, I already had our drinking horn out and ready to go.

  This was no time for fancy incantations. I quickly put a small transport spell on our horn, then gave Mark the text of the spell so he could do the same on the museum’s horn upstairs. I noticed that the horn in the trombone case glowed slightly as Mark connected the two with magic.

  Ajax’s two horns had been separated for more than three centuries. None of us was sure what might happen when they were reunited, but we had no choice. I sat in the remaining Eames chair, holding our drinking horn in my lap. Images of a nuclear reaction banged around at the edge of my consciousness as I recited the incantation.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a small moan came from the drinking horn in my lap. No, not a moan — a low trumpet sound.

  “What’s going on down there?” Mark asked anxiously through the Princess phone. At his end, I could hear the other horn intoning the same musical note.

  “On my way — I think,” I said. I didn’t quite finish my sentence before I found myself standing in the middle of the showroom upstairs. Barry was waiting to catch me, and he grabbed my elbow as I staggered forward with Ajax’s horn in my arms.