Jinx's Magic

by Sage Blackwood

  Now that he had the hang of it, Jinx lowered Simon faster and faster, so that at the last part Simon’s boots hit the ground hard and skidded. Simon fell off the plank into the snow.

  He got up, brushed snow off his robe, and grabbed Jinx by the chin. “Look at me.”

  “You did this already,” said Jinx, looking back. “I’m not in the Bonemaster’s power. What are you suspecting me for? I didn’t think you’d done it.”

  “Me? Why would I wipe out Cold Oats Clearing?”

  “Because you loathed them,” said Jinx.

  “I don’t go around killing people.”

  “What about Calvin?”

  “Fine, so you’re not in the Bonemaster’s power. What am I supposed to think, when I hear all kinds of rumors about you, and then I come and find you here and everyone’s been murdered?”

  “For one thing,” said Jinx, “you could believe me instead of stuff you hear about me from other people.”

  “All you said was that some of them got away,” said Simon. “The Bonemaster might’ve said the same. And after all that time you spent in Bonesocket, how do I know what he’s done to you?”

  “He can’t control me, can he?” Jinx was suddenly doubtful. “There’s no such thing as a mind-control spell. That’s what you told Sophie.”

  “Well. Sophie.” Simon dismissed her with a wave. “You can’t go around telling her everything. She overreacts.”

  “So there is such a thing as a mind-control spell?”

  “There might be. How would I know?”

  “You’re supposed to know a lot about magic,” said Jinx.

  “Don’t take that tone with me,” said Simon. “At least I know more than three spells.”

  “But I have a lot more power than you,” said Jinx.

  He hadn’t meant to say it. It had just slipped out. But surely Simon had sensed it, anyway, just now when Jinx had taken over the spell.

  “You’re using the Urwald,” said Simon. “How do you do it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jinx.

  “Hm,” said Simon. He looked around the clearing. “What happened here?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Obviously.”

  “I guess—” Jinx thought about what he had seen. “It looks like the Bonemaster came and, um, turned people into bones. He probably took most of the bones with him. Because he, um—likes bones, I guess?”

  “He does,” said Simon.

  “And it looks like some of the people got away, but I guess, um, I guess your dad probably didn’t.”

  “Hm,” said Simon.

  “Is that purple potion something the Bonemaster uses for deathforce magic?” Jinx asked.

  “Yes. We’d better look around and see if there’s anybody we can help.”

  So they searched, in a wide circle, scrambling over fallen trees and sliding in the snow. But the footprints faded out among the forest leaves.

  “There’s no knowing how long they’ve been gone,” said Simon. “And I have to go and hunt the Bonemaster.”

  “How did you know to come here?” said Jinx. “Did you know he’d escaped?”

  “Yes, but I was looking for you,” said Simon. “After I found he’d broken through the wards, I went home and looked in the Farseeing Window. But instead of you, I see that idiot boy who wants to be a king.”

  “I figured I should keep an eye on Reven. He might be dangerous.”

  “Supposing you explain to me what all these rumors are about you.”

  “Oh. I kind of turned a guy into a tree.”

  Jinx had been wanting for a week to talk to someone about this, and it was a relief to finally tell it. He didn’t leave anything out, the Urwald’s power or the way he’d lost his temper or anything. Because there was this about Simon: He wasn’t ever going to slam and bar his door and yell at Jinx to go away.

  “Can you change him back?” said Simon.

  “No,” said Jinx.

  “Well, I suppose it worked.”

  “What?”

  “You were trying to get them to stop chopping down trees. It worked, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Jinx. “That doesn’t make it all right, though.”

  “Possibly not,” said Simon. “But there’s nothing we can do about it.” He frowned. “Just how long have you had this Urwald power?”

  “Since, I guess since that time I first did the concealment spell, when I sprained my ankle and a werewolf was coming after me.”

  “And you never thought to mention it till now?”

  “Well, you didn’t ask.” Jinx figured Simon knew perfectly well that Jinx had been deliberately concealing it.

  “And you could have used this power to help me with the wards around Bonesocket, and you didn’t?”

  “I didn’t—” The enormity of what Simon had said hit Jinx. He looked around the ruined clearing. “I hate myself.”

  “Waste of time,” said Simon.

  “But if I had—”

  “Anything that starts with ‘if I had’ is always a waste of time. The question is, what are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t want to use it anymore,” said Jinx. “It uses me.”

  “All power is like that,” said Simon.

  “But the Urwald has . . . opinions. It could make me hurt someone it wanted hurt. . . .” Jinx stopped. Hurting Siegfried had been bad. But supposing he’d hurt Simon? That would have been horrible.

  He suddenly didn’t want to use the Urwald’s power anymore, at all, ever.

  “The trick with any power source is to be in control,” said Simon.

  “I can’t be in control of the Urwald! The power’s changing me. I’m as bad as the Bonemaster!” said Jinx.

  Simon gazed at the burnt, blasted clearing. “Really? In what way?”

  “Siegfried,” said Jinx.

  “Nonsense,” said Simon. “He’s not dead, and you’ll figure out a way to turn him back eventually. Besides, you didn’t do it on purpose, and you didn’t do it for yourself. Nothing like the Bonemaster.”

  “Oh, great, so I’m not as evil as the Bonemaster.”

  “Yes. That was my point. And by the way, this tendency to wallow in self-pity is not your best quality,” said Simon.

  “What is, then?” said Jinx, curious.

  “You get things done.”

  “I get things done? That’s it?”

  “What, you’d rather be admired than useful?” said Simon. “Plenty of people are neither.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Now, do we need to stand around here soaking our feet in the snow, or can we go home?”

  “We can go home,” said Jinx.

  And they did.

  12

  The Eldritch Tome

  “You can’t go after the Bonemaster without me,” said Jinx.

  They were in Simon’s workroom, and Simon was stacking up books that he wanted Jinx to study.

  “No? Am I not old enough?” Simon flipped a book open, frowned at it, and added it the stack.

  “I thought we were both going to go after him.”

  “Think again,” said Simon. “It’s always been my plan to send you to Samara. Anyway, I thought you wanted to go.”

  “I did. Before. But there’s stuff here I have to do. And you need my help.”

  “Yes. Here’s the help I need,” said Simon. “I need you to go to Samara, enroll at the Temple—”

  “But you need my help to catch the Bonemaster!”

  “—and use the library there to find out everything you can about the Qunthk bottle spell.”

  “What’s Qunthk?”

  “The language the spell is in.”

  “But you already have a book about the bottle spell.”

  “Yes. The Crimson Grimoire. But it doesn’t tell enough. It doesn’t explain what he’s done to his own life . . . that strange bottle you said you saw in his cellar last summer.”

  “It wasn’t a cellar,” said Jinx. “It was more of a
horrible underground-passage kind of crypt thing. And I did see it.”

  “That’s what I said. If we don’t figure out what he’s done, we can’t defeat him. There will be other Qunthk books at the Temple. There’s one in particular—”

  “Why didn’t you look for it when you were there?”

  “Because, if it’s any of your business, I was more interested in other things at the time.”

  “What other things?” said Jinx.

  “Finding the healing magic, for one thing.”

  “What’s the healing magic?”

  “I don’t know, because I didn’t find it,” said Simon.

  “Should I try to find it?”

  “No, you should try to learn about the bottle spell! And learn everything else about magic that you can. Learn KnIP.”

  KnIP—Knowledge is Power. Sophie had told Jinx that KnIP was Samaran magic. “But magic’s illegal in Samara!”

  “Very. Don’t get caught. Now, let’s assume I can count on you for that. You’re to—”

  “Won’t they recognize me?” said Jinx. “They all saw me last year.”

  “That wasn’t even close to all of them,” said Simon. “And I doubt they’ll remember you. They don’t look at people much.”

  “They remembered you,” said Jinx.

  “Didn’t they just.” Simon added several more books to the pile and frowned at Jinx. “Hm. Well, you’ve grown, haven’t you?”

  “Probably not,” said Jinx. “I think I’m shrinking.”

  “No one will have really looked at you,” said Simon. “They recognized me because I was there for years. And you won’t see much of the scribes in the hall, anyway.”

  “What about that Preceptress lady?”

  “Oh, you’ll probably see her here and there making speeches. Just sit near the back and don’t let her get a good look at you.”

  This didn’t sound like much of a plan to Jinx. “If I came with you to look for the Bonemaster—”

  “I said no,” Simon snapped.

  “But—”

  “Look. Where do you think he’s likely to be?”

  “I don’t know.” Jinx imagined the Bonemaster running through the Urwald from one clearing to another, killing everyone. But wizards wanted power. If the Bonemaster killed all the people in all the clearings, then who would he have power over? “Maybe he’ll be back at Bonesocket?”

  “That would be my guess also. And where is Bonesocket?”

  “In the Canyon of—oh.”

  “I assume you can’t use your tree power in there among the rocks, or you would have done a better job of escaping from him than you did.”

  “I escaped from him!”

  “In several pieces, yes. Very impressive. No, you’re going to Samara, and I’m going to Bonesocket.”

  “If I can’t use the trees’ power in the canyon,” said Jinx, thinking aloud, “then I couldn’t have helped you strengthen the wards anyway.”

  “There are ways to move power,” said Simon.

  “Then why can’t I—”

  “Because,” said Simon. “You are going to be in Samara, learning KnIP.”

  “You’re thinking that you’re going to kill him,” Jinx said. “You can’t kill him! He’s tied your death to his.”

  “And? How many Cold Oats Clearings am I worth?”

  “But . . .” Jinx was getting seriously upset. He didn’t want Simon to die.

  “I’ll try to imprison him if I can. If I can’t, I’ll kill him. You, meanwhile,” said Simon, “are going to be in another world, out of his reach.”

  “Maybe I’ll follow you,” said Jinx.

  “Maybe you won’t.”

  “If I killed him, would the curse still—”

  “You’re not going to kill him. He has undoubtedly bound your death to his as well. He would have taken care of that while you were his prisoner last summer.”

  “Oh,” said Jinx.

  He had a feeling that the Bonemaster was his responsibility, more than Simon’s, but he wasn’t sure why. It was all mixed up somehow with his almost-memory of elves.

  “If there’s a way to undo a deathbinding curse, you’ll find it in the Temple libraries,” said Simon. “Probably in a Qunthk book. There’s a source some of the other Qunthk books refer to. It’s called”—Simon made a sound as if he had a fishbone stuck in his throat.

  “It’s called what?”

  “In Urwish, it’s called the Eldritch Tome.”

  “The Eldritch Tome? And it’s in the Temple library?”

  “I don’t know. But if it is, find it.”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “Then you won’t find it. But you’re to stay there until you’re sent for.”

  “How can I be sent for if you’re dead?” Jinx demanded.

  “The Bonemaster doesn’t want to kill me. I’m worth nothing to him dead. He wants the bottle with my captive life back.” Simon selected a very thick book bound in dragonskin, and added it to the stack. “And he’s not going to get that. I expect to survive.”

  Jinx looked at the pile of books and felt hopeless. “You know what I think?”

  “I can scarcely wait to find out.”

  “I think the Bonemaster, well, like, wiped out Cold Oats Clearing because he wanted you to come after him,” said Jinx.

  “That strikes me as extremely likely.”

  “So you’ll be walking right into a trap.”

  “A trap for him, or for me?” said Simon.

  “For you!”

  Simon handed Jinx the book. “Put that on the pile.”

  The pile had grown too high for Jinx to reach the top. “What’s in all these books?”

  “Things you have to know to be admitted to the Temple.”

  “You mean they might not let me in?”

  “They’ll let you in. There’s a test, that’s all.”

  “What if I fail it?”

  “You’d better not.”

  Jinx levitated the book to the top of the pile. The whole stack teetered for a moment, and then it collapsed, sending books cascading everywhere. Jinx ducked a flying volume. All the cats fled the room.

  “Your job is to study these books, pass the test, get into the Temple, find the Eldritch Tome, and learn about the bottle spell. And learn KnIP.” Simon turned to go. “Oh, and pick those books up.”

  Furious, Jinx levitated all the books with a whoosh and dumped them on the workbench.

  Before Simon left, he taught Jinx two small spells. One was the word for opening the hiding place inside the thirteenth step in the south tower staircase. The word was khththllkh, and Jinx had to practice several times before he said it right.

  Simon reached in and took out a green bottle. They both watched the tiny figure of Simon pacing around in a circle at the bottom of the bottle. This was Simon’s lifeforce. The Bonemaster had bottled it years ago, when Simon was his apprentice.

  Putting Simon’s lifeforce back into Simon would require a talented wizard. Jinx was supposed to become that wizard. Someday.

  “If—” said Jinx.

  “Then you’re to smash the bottle,” said Simon.

  “But can’t I—”

  “Not yet, you can’t,” said Simon. “You haven’t learned enough.”

  “I could at least try,” said Jinx.

  “No, you couldn’t. There are too many ways to mess it up if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

  Simon put the bottle back under the step. Jinx said khththllkh backward to lock the hiding place.

  The other new spell was the one for watching Reven.

  It involved putting another aviot on the stone sill, gazing into the Farseeing Window, and concentrating on Reven’s aviot, the one Jinx had planted on him.

  It wasn’t that hard, as spells went, and Jinx got it right by feeling his way inside it. Reven appeared in the window, walking beside a river in the snow, hand in hand with Elfwyn.

  “But where are they?” said Jinx.


  “It appears to be Keyland,” said Simon.

  “Well, yeah, but what part?” It had been three weeks since Jinx had turned Siegfried into a tree. He knew Reven had left the Urwald, and not returned. The trees would have told Jinx if the Terror had come back. But what was he doing? Had he allied himself with Sir Thrip and Lord Badgertoe? Had he got followers? Had he taken all those abandoned axes as weapons for his revolution?

  “The window doesn’t really tell you much, does it?” said Jinx.

  “Only what it wants to.”

  “The thing about Reven is he knows how to . . . work people.” Jinx stared at Elfwyn and Reven, still trudging along in the snow. “Elfwyn said she wanted to learn magic and get her curse taken off her, but instead she’s following Reven around and—” Jinx couldn’t think how to explain the situation without admitting that he could see thoughts. “Following him.”

  “That’s her choice,” said Simon.

  “But she’s being really stupid about Reven!”

  “You’ll find, as you get older, that there’s an area of life in which there are boundless opportunities for stupidity,” said Simon.

  “But I told her what he’s like!”

  “I’m sure that went over well. Are we through here?”

  “I guess,” said Jinx.

  Simon handed Jinx the aviot, and Jinx stuck it in his pocket.

  13

  Through the Door

  “I expect to reach Bonesocket by dawn,” said Simon. “The Bonemaster could die any time after that, and if he’s tied your death to his, I’m not sure what will happen. I want you out of the Urwald by midnight tonight. You’ll stay in my house in Samara. Don’t come back for any reason. Not even for an instant.”

  “What about the animals?” said Jinx.

  “Ermentraud will look after them.” Ermentraud was a woodcutter’s wife who was their closest neighbor.

  Simon dumped a handful of Samaran money on the kitchen table—a couple of gold birds, a bunch of silver snakes, and some copper crescent-moon shapes. “You’ll need to buy some Samaran clothes. You can get your food in the marketplace, but stay away from the Temple until the term starts. You’re supposed to have just come from Angara.”

  Jinx stuck his finger into a coiled silver snake. “Why?”

  “Because nobody really knows much about Angara. It’s a little backwater country a few hundred miles north of Samara. And they speak Herwa there, which you more or less know. And if you seem strange—which you will—people will put it down to your being Angaran and not very bright.”