I also wondered who in the hell had created this “lock,” and whether they were totally clueless or had a great sense of humor. Knowing the often emotionless Alfar of today, unless things had changed dramatically since the ancient Alfar walked the earth, I figured it was the former.
Together, we walked toward the pyramid, stopping to form a circle a few feet away from it.
“What is it?” Iris asked. Caleb shrugged, clearly stumped. And it didn’t look like any of the rest of us had a clue.
“Let me see,” Nell said, and I felt her give the pyramid a gentle probing. As if on cue, more crystals sprang from the sides of the pyramid.
We frowned at each other, wondering what to do next, when Iris reached forward.
“Makes sense that what we did before should work now, too,” she said. Before we could stop her, she’d reached out and touched a crystal that looked the same as the one we’d just been group-fondling before.
The now familiar sound zoomed out through the room, and the previously exhausted crystals all began not only to sing with the pyramid’s crystal but to glow, faintly. We all took a step back as the glowing increased, eventually blinding us with its brightness. Shielding my eyes, I, for one, was figuring we were done for, when suddenly the light ceased, leaving the cavern in darkness again.
Blinded by the light, our eyes took a few seconds to adjust. But when they finally did, we saw that it was only our abused vision that had assumed it was entirely dark again. For floating a few inches above the tip of the central pyramid hung what looked like a mirror, its surface showing a series of sinuous shapes that changed with every second. Frowning in confusion, we all took a step forward.
“What is it?” I breathed.
Nell sighed from where she stood next to me. I hadn’t noticed the gnome’s expression, as she was so much shorter than me.
“It’s an ancient Alfar hieroglyph,” she informed us. “A sigil.”
“Great!” Iris replied. “You know what it is. Can you read it?”
“Of course I can,” the gnome replied, her kindly voice gone bizarrely irritable for someone who was telling us everything was going to be okay.
“But not this one,” Nell concluded, to our regret. “It’s gotta be not only the lock, but it also is locked. And until it’s unlocked, it’s unreadable.”
It took me a moment to think my way through that, but eventually I nodded to myself. The lock was locked. Or something.
Iris asked the question we all were thinking: “Well, can you unlock it?”
“I have no idea,” Nell replied, staring at the hieroglyph in contemplation. “But there’s only one way to find out,” she finished, as she stepped toward the pedestal.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We braced ourselves as the first waves of magic crashed through the cavern. The force of Nell’s power pushed us back, until Caleb, Iris, Anyan, and I were all pressed against the walls, trying to avoid being shish-kebabed by the decorating scheme of priapic crystals. Meanwhile, the grandmotherly little gnome stood facing the pillar in the middle of the cave, forcing her power upward toward the dangling mirrored surface with its ever-changing sigils.
She pushed and she pushed and she pushed… and nothing happened.
Lowering her arms, she swore a blue streak. I’d first noticed when Conleth had attacked us in Rockabill, all those months ago, that Nell became Pirate Nell, Swearer of the High Seas, whenever she got frustrated with something magical. And today was no exception.
After she’d finished reveling in her theories regarding the probable connection between the ancient Alfar and people who enjoy sexual congress with their own mothers, she lowered her little arms. And then raised them again only to yell, “Motherfuckers!” one last time, before finally lowering them to her side.
She took a long, deep breath before she finally turned around to face us.
“Anyan,” she said, very politely for someone who’d just made even my jaded ears turn purple. “Could you help me, please?”
He grinned and walked toward Nell.
Iris, Caleb, Trill, and I just gave each other sideways looks as we settled ourselves firmly against our safe, relatively crystal-free patches of wall.
Nell’s power had felt strong enough to level mountains. But combined with Anyan’s formidable strength, I wasn’t sure we wouldn’t be crushed. So I quickly threw up the strongest shields I could muster around the four of us against the wall, and I soon felt the others join their own power with mine.
In the center of the room, dust and small chunks of crystal were swirling through the air as Anyan and Nell really poured on the juice. As for the sigil, it had continued its wild changing, but now that I was watching it closely again I could see that every once and a while the permutations would stutter, as if it were starting to wind down.
“Something’s happening!” I called, pointing at the mirrorlike surface.
Anyan’s sharp ears picked up on my shout, and he peered upward before he nodded, letting me know he saw it, too. Then he nudged Nell, gesturing for her to look. When she’d seen what we’d seen, the two of them bombarded the sigil with even more power.
That’s when it started to glow.
I amped up the shields I’d thrown around my friends, knowing I’d need a swim very soon. But I was also beginning to get a bad feeling about all this. Nell had seemed pretty confident she knew how to unlock that sigil so we could read it, but what they were doing felt more like the magical version of kicking in a door. Whoever created that mirror obviously didn’t want it to be read easily, so what else had they done to protect it besides making it hard to find?
The air in the cavern was really getting stuffy as all of Anyan and Nell’s mojo blew the dust around. It was also getting dark as our mage lights winked out, all of our magic channeling into either unlocking the sigil or protecting each other from the unlocking of the sigil. Only that mirrorlike surface floating in the center of the room glowed eerily, until its light began to pulse. I squinted upward, trying to see through the gloom and grit.
It’s not pulsing, I realized, as I blinked away the grime from the eyes. It’s spinning.
Sure enough, the mirrorlike oval was spinning like a top, moving faster the more Anyan and Nell sent their mojo winging its way. Then, suddenly, its light went supernova and became tinged with pink as the mirror began to glow an angry red.
I was just about to scream for them to stop when it exploded. Despite having thrown so much of my power into our shields, we were still badly shaken. I had moved a little bit forward, about to yell, so I had enough space between me and the wall that when I was flung back, I hit my head pretty hard. I didn’t pass out, but it was touch and go there for a second, as I felt myself slide to the floor with a plop.
Blinking in the darkness, all I could hear was coughing, barking and a… baby crying?
Why is a baby crying? I wondered, trying to shake the ringing from my ears. I sat up, weakly, and then flopped down again with a splitting headache.
“Eww, gross, stop licking me, Anyan,” I heard Iris say, from a few feet away. Then I heard a doggie whine, which explained both the barking and why Anyan was licking Iris. Sort of.
Once I no longer felt like a chisel was being driven through my brain, I lit a weak mage light, although I didn’t try to sit up again just yet. As soon as the light went up into the darkness, it was blocked out by a big hairy beast lapping at my face.
“Anyan, dude, what the hell?” I said, swatting his big dog’s head away. Even though he looked like a giant puppy, he was still Anyan inside of there. And while I definitely wouldn’t mind a thorough licking from man-Anyan, it was decidedly weird coming from dog-Anyan.
The barghest whined again, sitting back on his haunches to scratch at his ear with his back leg. Then he stopped and sat, staring at me, till I finally raised myself up on my elbows.
“What is wrong with you?” I asked him. “Go help the others.”
Anyan whined again before he hunched over
to his left side in order to nip at an itchy place on his hindquarters.
I was about to ask him if he’d also gotten hit in the head when I heard it again: the distinctive wail of a baby’s cry.
I stood, shakily, to find Caleb helping Iris to her own feet. Trill was standing, dusting herself off just to my left. We all lit more mage balls to find the cavern a wreck. Most of the crystals had broken off the walls and were heaped about the room. The pillar still sprang from the dirt, and above it still hung the mirrored oval, showing off its ever-changing sigils. But it had stopped spinning and was no longer glowing with its own light.
“Did you guys hear a—” I began, just as Iris pointed to my right, her eyes wide. I peered over, sending a mage ball trailing in the direction of her finger.
“Nell!” I cried, as my eyes lit upon the gnome’s large, gray bun. She must have been lying with her head pointed toward me, for that was all I could see of her.
We all hurried over to Nell, Anyan bounding in front of us, barking and wagging his tail maniacally. I couldn’t begin to understand why he was acting like that, and it was driving me nuts. In fact, I was just about to yell at him as he scampered about our feet when I heard Iris cry out.
“Holy shit!” I exclaimed, staring down at Nell’s bun… and the baby attached to it. For where there should have been the grandmotherly, if tiny, shape of our local Territory’s guardian, there was a baby, swaddled in Nell’s little homespun dress.
Trill’s voice swore behind me, as she echoed my shock. We all stood there, staring at each other with wide eyes. All of us except for Anyan, who was thoroughly laving his fuzzie doggie balls with his tongue.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I shouted at the barghest, what little decorum I had left snapping like a twig. “Nell’s a… baby! We need your help!” I waited for that gravelly voice I knew so well to speak from the barghest’s throat. But instead he only panted at me, and then went back to his tongue bath.
Dread washed over me as a horrible thought raced through my head, but before I could pursue it, the baby started wailing. Iris and I looked at each other, and then walked forward. She picked it up, cradling it gently against her chest just as I felt a very foreign, yet distinctly familiar magic shimmer through the cavern.
With a very loud pop, Blondie appeared in the middle of the cavern. Her hair was still in a Mohawk, still tipped pink, and her tattoos glimmered in the light shining from the few forgotten mage lights we still had strewn about the cavern. She wore low-cut jeans, and a tight white wifebeater displayed her lithe, muscular form.
“What the hell happened?” the Original demanded, her magic sparking off her like enraged fireflies. “Is Nell dead?”
All of us in the cavern still standing on our own two feet looked at each other, not quite sure what to tell Blondie. It was like we were saying to each other, with our eyes, What we think happened couldn’t have happened, right?
“Because her Territory is now unprotected,” Blondie snapped, causing us all to freeze. I gulped, looking at the baby in Iris’s arms.
In that case, I thought, thinking of Blondie’s assumption that Nell had to be dead. I hope my worst fears are actually correct. Then I looked at Anyan, who’d moved on from his testicles and was now contentedly lapping at his own anus.
Or maybe not.
“Nothing’s happening!” I shouted for about the fourth time, the panic rising in my voice. Anyan was sitting, drooling on the floor and patiently waiting while Blondie tried various things to get him back into man-shape.
Since returning to Anyan’s cabin, and having gotten over the initial shock of what happened in the cavern and Blondie’s sudden appearance, I’d remembered the million things I wanted to ask the Original. But getting our friends back definitely took priority.
“I know,” she growled, throwing some more mojo into her attempts. I went to stand by her, offering her my own power. I felt Blondie funnel my force into her own and out toward Anyan, but still nothing happened.
“This can’t be happening,” I repeated, also for about the fourth time. Having Anyan trapped as a dog—a real dog!—was probably the scariest thing I’d ever seen.
“Shit,” Blondie said, lowering her arms and releasing my magic. “Nothing’s working.”
I looked at her, my face gone white, before turning to the others.
“So Nell is now a baby,” Iris said in her turn to repeat herself, for about the fifth time. “And Anyan is a dog.”
Blondie sighed and scratched at the exposed skin on the side of her head; it looked like she’d freshly shaved around her Mohawk that morning. Then she went and sat down by the fire Trill had built in his fireplace. I think the kelpie was just trying to keep busy—she hadn’t said anything since the cavern. She was probably even more freaked out than me, if that were possible.
Not that we weren’t all upset, so we’d returned to Anyan’s to regroup after what happened. Only to discover Gus had managed to lock himself in one of Anyan’s cupboards. The stone spirit was currently in Anyan’s kitchens, making himself a peanut butter, banana, and potato chip sandwich, a combo I found bold and intriguing, although everyone else seemed to think it was disgusting.
“What else could have happened?” the Original responded to Iris, stretching out her long legs. “We have one baby whose power signature reads ‘immature gnome,’ and a dog instead of a barghest.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” I pleaded, my voice a little hysterical. “How could this have even happened? And why a baby and a dog? It’s illogical!”
Blondie narrowed her eyes at me, as if she were thinking hard. Then a look came over her face like she might have figured something out, but her next words answered nothing.
“Sometimes there are too many players,” she said, cryptically, before staring off into the fire as if communing with herself.
I watched as Iris shifted the baby Nell on her lap. Anyan, meanwhile, went and curled up to sleep on the floor next to Blondie’s feet, soaking up the heat of the flames. Even as a dog he seemed to trust her. I, however, wasn’t so sure.
“It must have been an ancient Alfar trap,” Caleb’s deep voice intoned. “The sigil was set in a mirror, and the whole thing locked with very ancient magic.”
“But it’s still not logical! Why a baby and a dog?” I repeated, still refusing to believe that the man I’d just made out with was a for-real dog, while our resident Yoda was now crapping in diapers. As if he knew we were talking about him, Anyan raised his sleepy head, his tail wagging distractedly. He was clearly exhausted from the past hour of licking his own genitals.
“Think about it, Jane,” Caleb replied. As always, he was calm. “It’s an ancient spell, set with ancient magic. You know your human folklore. Think of your Celtic mythology, your Arabian tales, your Norse and Native American trickster figures: What’s the one thing you can rely on about magic in all of those mythologies?”
I thought about it for a minute, even though I already knew the answer. “You can’t,” I eventually replied, miserably. “You can’t rely on it.”
“Exactly,” Blondie said, snapping out of her daydream. “It’s precocious. Magic, even in your modern, watered-down fairy tales, has a mind of its own. If you ask the genie in a bottle for everlasting life, he’ll turn you into a spring breeze. If you steal a staff enchanted with speed from a fairy prince, it will turn you into a greyhound.”
“But why a baby and a dog?” I whined, still unable to believe that the only genitals Anyan would be licking for quite some time were his own. Or maybe some of the neighborhood bitches’, and for once I didn’t mean Linda Allen.
“Realistically, the spell was originally enchanted to incapacitate anyone who toyed with the sigil,” Caleb rumbled from where he sat next to Iris. “Over time it probably morphed. Developed a… sense of humor.”
“How is this funny?” Trill asked, from where she sat near Anyan. It was the first time she’d spoken. The kelpie seemed in shock, watching the fl
ames dance in the fireplace.
“It probably killed whoever fucked with it originally,” Blondie stated, starting to lose patience. “Now it’s changed so it’s doing things to them that aren’t death… but that just as effectively knock an opponent out of the game.”
“You said ‘changed.’ Do you think something interfered with it?” I asked.
Blondie shrugged, but I could have sworn she looked guilty. Like she wasn’t telling us something.
“Who knows,” she said. “Maybe it just morphed on its own, like Caleb suggested.”
I watched her warily. She and I are going to have a talk, soon, I decided. Like, before we leave this house.
“So Anyan’s really a dog,” I said, instead. “An honest-to-god dog.”
“Yep,” said Blondie.
“And you can’t change him back? Not even with all your power? What I felt you do in Pittsburgh, to Phaedra…” I was referring to the enormous feats of magical strength that Blondie had committed while she was following us.
Blondie shook her head. “I can do that sort of thing only if I don’t want to do much again for the next week. I also had some help—a couple of talismans I’d poured some excess power into. It’s an old trick… but I haven’t had the time or the extra power to make any since then.”
I frowned. I hadn’t seen Blondie wearing anything, besides her piercings, when she was following us. And she’d gotten nekkid enough that I was pretty confident about that fact.
Not that you’ve ever even heard of talismans, I thought. So they could have been the piercings, for all you know.
“But why is Nell a baby?” Trill interrupted my worries, her voice gritty as if she were just waking up from her shock.
“Because it’s the weakest thing she can be,” Blondie said, her voice gentling for the obviously upset kelpie. “She can’t bond with the earth at that age. Even very young gnomes, if they can bond, can be led by the earth to protect itself. Now she’s just a squalling infant. Leaving the Territory—”
Eye of the Tempest (Jane True) Page 11