The Magical Book of Wands

by Raven M. Williams

  Rylan cleared his throat. “What’s your world like?” He realized she’d never really talked about it.

  “A magical world,” she said simply.

  “I gathered that, but really, though. How is it different from this one?”

  She let out a breath. “Very different. There are humans and elves, of course. But many others, some great, some terrible ... I don’t know your words for them.“

  Rylan considered. “We don’t have any of those here, but we have stories, legends from the beginnings of time ... from Marakath, apparently.”

  “Ché,” she agreed, and caressed his thighs with her naked leg.

  She looked up toward the stars and pointed to Orion. “One thing not different; same stars. We call that one Drana’kelmar, the Hall of Dragons. The three brightest are the First Ones, whose fire breathed life into the world.”

  “No, that can’t be. How can they be the same stars?” Rylan asked. “Unless...”

  “We live on different worlds, and yet the same. I noticed it the first night.” She gathered herself to him. “I miss my home. I am of the Riverlands ... our realm spans the forests of the lonely river Anteriel, from the headlands to the salt Oln’kunamara. I will miss the twin spires of Dell Fyalmel.”

  “You’ll see it again,” Rylan said, a part of him hoping she wouldn’t because of what it would mean.

  “Seems unreachable now,” she said. “My home is here with you.”

  He turned his head to look at her, and her eyes were closed, her chin upturned ... he kissed her on the lips, and she responded.

  He rolled her on her back and explored her more thoroughly, delighting in the small noises she made. They made love again, more slowly, more spiritually. He felt like he was melting into her, and perhaps he was.

  Chapter 22

  Tired and satiated, Rylan feel asleep, Elwen in his arms, and this time, Naia’Toth was waiting for him. He didn’t have a sense of travel; he was just there, and he had a body this time. Her pendant glowed brighter than ever; casting a shadow on her face in the darkness. They were standing on the shore of a lake, the moon fat in the sky and reflected in the water below.

  “Hello, Rylan,” she said, her voice Naia’s alone again. “We expected you sooner.”

  Rylan backed up a couple of steps.

  Naia giggled. “We’re not going to hurt you. Relax.”

  “You attacked me last time,” he accused. “And what was that at the bridge?”

  “I didn’t attack you ... sorry,” she said, and took a step toward him but stopped when he stepped back. “Toth explained it to me. Trying to embrace a traveling spirit ... it must have felt like I was walking across your grave. As for the bridge, we are sorry about that. We’re still learning. All those people ... we just wanted to slow you down.”

  Rylan balled his fists. “And Elwen? Kill the bitch, Elwen?”

  Naia’s mouth opened to speak. She looked him up and down and broke into a grin. “She slept with you? First time for you, was it?” she teased. “Good for you, Rylan, she’s quite the hot little milf. But you’re feeling quite loyal now, aren’t you? Oh, Rylan, you need to learn about women. She’s manipulating you.”

  He swallowed. “What do you mean?”

  “She probably told you Toth is a despot, but it’s her and her kind who kept the world in the dark age, killing anyone who became a threat. Her husband, Jolon, turned against that and joined with me, combined our power to overthrow them. She was enraged at his betrayal, swore to kill him. Almost did until you opened the portal.”

  “No, that can’t be,” Rylan said, his head swirling.

  Naia walked toward him; he didn’t back away. “She plans to kill me, Rylan.”

  “No. She said there was another way!”

  This close, her eyes smoldered red in the pendant’s reflected glow. “Did she really? Ask her again, for me.”

  Chapter 23

  Rylan started awake. Somehow it didn’t wake Elwen, who slept snuggled peacefully in the crook of his shoulder.

  “Elwen?” he asked, shaking her with the hand that was nestled against her back. “I need to ask you something.”

  She awoke, her hair tickling his skin as she looked around, then looked at him with her cat-glow eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you plan to kill Naia?”

  She sat up, fully awake. “What did she tell you?”

  He sat up to face her. “You promised you’d find another way, but there isn’t, is there?”

  Her face registered several emotions before answering. “It is the only way,” she admitted.

  He tore himself away and stood up. “Don’t you think that’s something I needed to know? When were you planning to tell me?”

  “I tried to tell you but you wouldn’t listen. I spared Jolon and millions died. I have had to live with it. I tried to prepare you for that truth; I don’t want that for you.”

  “Is that really what happened?” Rylan asked. “She said Jolon volunteered for the joining to stop you. That you slept with me just to get my loyalty.”

  She gave him a look that curdled his blood. “You’re a fool. I slept with you in a moment of weakness, a mistake I won’t make again. You brought me to your world, I can’t get back. I have no magic here, and my wand only works for a stupid boy. If all she said was true, why should I pursue her now, except to help you? Naia’Toth is your enemy, and you listen to her?” She made a disgusted sound. “Defend yourself! Defend your world.”

  Rylan fell heavily to the ground. “You’re right. I’ve made a huge mess of things. Letting Toth through to our world ... Naia can be a pain in the ass, but everything she did, she did for me. All she asked in return was for me to step up and protect her, and I didn’t, I let Toth take her over. And now I have to destroy her,” he said with a sob. “The only family I have left.”

  Elwen came to him and kneeled, taking him into her arms. He collapsed into her and cried, the only sound among the trees Rylan’s despair. After a time she cocked her head in thought, then reached into her pocket and pulled out the compass. She came to a decision.

  “There may be a way,” she said, her fingertips on his chin to turn his face toward hers.

  Rylan wiped his eyes. “What?”

  “With the right incantation,” she said, indicating the stone, “if Naia touches this, Toth will be drawn into the stone. Naia can be free.”

  He sat up. “Why didn’t you think of this before?”

  “Spirit stones are rare on my world,” she said, looking away from him. “It didn’t occur to me until now. I’m sorry.”

  Hope welled within him. “You really think it can work?”

  “Yes. She just needs to touch it.”

  He took it from her, turning it over in his hands and thinking. “I should be the one to give it to her. She trusts me.”

  “She thinks you are naive,” Elwen corrected. “Do not trust her. But you are right; you must be the one to give it to her. She will certainly kill me if I come close.”

  “So how do we turn it into a weapon?”

  “We must find where she is before we use the Spirit stone for something else. Where is the map?”

  Rylan got up and went to his jeans to recover the state map they’d gotten in the bus station, and spread it out on the forest floor. Elwen suspended the compass over it and it pointed to a different location than before, dozens of miles west from where she’d been.

  Rylan’s heart fell; he suspected as much from the dream. She hadn’t been in the dead clearing of the forest, but on the bank of a lake. He could see it on the map, it was several miles east of...

  “Jackson,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  “A small town, looks like. Probably thousands of people.”

  Elwen’s face fell. “He will twist their bodies and take their minds. He will use them to build his army.”

  “Teach me to teleport,” Rylan said, his jaw tight.

  Chapter 24

  “Not
ready,” Elwen said. “Teleport is dangerous.”

  “I believe in your teaching skills,” Rylan said, getting up to go get dressed. “And I’d rather die having tried than live knowing I could have saved them.”

  Elwen smiled and while he dressed, she put on her clothes and retrieved her bow from where it leaned against a tree.

  They met in the middle and she gathered his hands in hers, looking him in the eyes. “Teleport is different from magic you already learn. With that magic, you use it, it flows through you. With teleport, you enter maché, and through maché, you enter kova, the life-net of the world. It is easy to get lost. You want to get lost.”

  Rylan remembered that sensation from his dream travel. “Let’s avoid that, then.”

  “This will help,” she said, taking out the Spirit stone and placing in their joined hands. “It is tuned to her spirit.”

  “You shouldn’t go,” Rylan said. “This only needs me, and you already said she’ll kill you on sight.”

  “I need to be there in case something goes wrong.”

  He suspected that wasn’t the complete reason. “Still...”

  “You don’t know how to turn this into a weapon,” she teased, squeezing the stone through his hands. “Not yet.”

  “Very well, then,” he said with a warm smile, learning very well how she could get when she was stubborn. “Now teach me the teleport spell.”

  Their hands together and her eyes never leaving his, she spoke, her voice soft. And though he knew it was the incantation, it felt like something else entirely.

  When she was done, he looked into her depthless blue eyes and spoke her vow back to her. “Chalna, m’tae verinon tuva s’ekrit.”

  Chapter 25

  Rylan was the waves above the sand, beating against it and suffusing it, wanting to become the water between the grains and become lost among them.

  Elwen was also here; what made her who she was lived among him, through and within him. A part of him but not ... something, he realized, he could change with a thought and be part of her forever. That, he almost lost himself in.

  He steeled himself and, driven by purpose, he pursued the beacon of the Spirit stone.

  Chapter 26

  They re-emerged in a close stand of trees. The sky was overcast and the only sounds were those of animals moving through the underbrush.

  “You okay?” Elwen asked in a whisper.

  He checked himself. “Everything seems to be attached in the right spot.”

  “No burning sensation?”

  “No, as a matter of fact. Should there have been?”

  “Yes, for someone so new––get down!”

  She grasped him by the shoulder to pull him down with her as her hair phased to deep leaf green. Something large passed within feet of them, not quite visible through the underbrush.

  A cold shiver ran down Rylan’s spine. “You think—”

  She interrupted, putting a finger to her lips and nodding.

  When it passed, they used the Spirit stone as a compass one more time to get an idea in what direction Naia was. Rylan took off the string and earring and in hushed tones, Elwen taught him how to make the Spirit stone a trap for Toth.

  Elwen pointed above their heads, to the branches. “I’ll follow you from there.”

  She swung her bow over her shoulder and leapt taller than his head to catch the first branch by her hands, then swung to her feet on the next branch above that, and with a glance down at him she ran to the next branch and was gone.

  I will never get used to that, Rylan thought, and followed after her on the ground. He was making good, silent progress before his foot punched through the buried rotted trunk of a fallen tree with a sound like a gunshot. He froze and listened.

  Not hearing anything, he worked to get his foot free and it was almost out when he heard a shhhhht fly past his head shift into a whimper and a thud behind him. He whipped around and gasped as something that used to be a cougar twitched through its death throes not six feet from him with an arrow through its eye.

  Used to be a cougar. Rylan swallowed, seeing that it had spiny greyish-red armor in place of fur and evil-looking claws.

  Rylan caught a movement out of the corner of his left eye and threw himself backward, wrenching his foot free and shoving his knife up as hard as he could into the belly of the thing whose jaws just missed his throat. He watched as it landed next to the one Elwen had just shot and it lay still.

  His heart a machine gun in his chest, he stared down at his knife, surprised to be alive, and even more surprised he’d had the presence of mind to do what he’d just done. He thought back to the training Elwen had given him as her voice played in his head: You can fight... but must act, and act with Mind.

  “Maybe I can really do this,” Rylan remarked to himself.

  A twig snapped twenty feet to his right and he froze, only his eyes moving. Something like a wolf glared at him, also with the greyish-red armor, but with spines, like a porcupine.

  “Oh, come on,” Rylan groaned.

  It growled and shook its spines, a plastic rattling sound. Not waiting for an attack, Rylan aimed the wand. “Don’ik’tora!” he said, white light erupting and striking the wolf between the eyes just as another shhhhhht sound accompanied the body of another dead wolf landing five feet away, an arrow through its back.

  “Run!” Elwen cried from above.

  He took off for the edge of the forest, two more of the wolf-things in pursuit, which Elwen picked off; Rylan heard the telltale shhhhhht and the sound of their bodies falling too close to his feet.

  He broke the treeline and turned, summoning all the power he had. “Ama’marona!” he shouted, careful to keep the air hammer low to spare Elwen, and with a flash as bright as lightning, an air hammer the size of a house expanded across the ground back into the forest, tearing bark off trees and snapping smaller ones in two.

  He turned, trusting Elwen to keep his back for stragglers. In the distance, the lights of the town of Jackson shone happily in the shallow valley beyond.

  His shoulders fell. A hundred feet ahead, silhouetted in those lights were about three dozen of Naia’Toth’s experiments in a line, all waiting for him.

  With nausea, he realized some appeared to have once been human. Those were nude, insanely muscled, pale green, and huge like the monster swinging the small tree he’d seen through the portal three nights before.

  Ogres. They’re ogres, and that’s how Toth made them ... taking people, and corrupting them.

  A black figure in the air caught his eye when it blocked out the full moon and moved forward until her head was framed by it. She looked like one of those saints in the old paintings of Mary, but this time it was real and her hair was blowing against the moon’s background like snakes.

  “Welcome, brother,” Naia’Toth said. “Where is Elwen?”

  Chapter 27

  He put the knife and wand away, thinking fast. “I did as you asked.”

  “And?”

  “I told her no matter what you’ve become, you’re still my sister. And I’m with you.”

  She alighted to the ground and walked to him. “So you didn’t do what I asked. I seem to remember saying, ‘kill the bitch.’ Was I not clear?”

  “She’s no threat to you,” Rylan said, his wand arm itching.

  She came to stop in front of him, her pendant glowing brighter. “I don’t think you fully understand the depths of my disappointment.”

  “I brought you a gift,” Rylan said all in a rush. “A Spirit stone, brought here by Marakath himself.”

  That seemed to distract her. “Show me.”

  He handed it to her, actually dropped it into her hand. It can’t be that easy.

  She turned it over in her hands and smiled, her eyes on his like a snake’s on a mouse. “This is very useful to me. Thank you.”

  Rylan waited several seconds more, sweat beading on his lip. Come on.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Naia’Toth said. “Was
something supposed to happen?”

  Rylan reached for his wand and it was half out when she grabbed his hand and stepped behind him to wrench his arm upward, slamming her hand against his throat and holding him fast. She brought her face close and, her hot breath a furnace on his skin, she licked his ear, making him flinch and cry out.

  She laughed. “For the record,” she said, her voice turning demonic as claws extended from her fingertips into the skin of his throat, “your sister really did hope this would work out.”

  Chapter 28

  Instead of tearing out his throat, Naia’Toth threw both of them to the right with a curse as the phhhhhht of an arrow whipped past his ear, narrowly missing them.

  Rylan ripped her clawed hand away from his throat, elbowed her in the side and wrenched his wand hand free. Turning to face her and noting her pendant’s glow wavering, he took a chance and punched her in the head as hard as he could, nearly breaking his hand. She fell backward and the pendant’s light went out completely.

  Not believing his luck, he knelt to rip the pendant off her neck as Elwen called to him to look out.

  He felt and heard the thumping of footsteps. Judging their distance and speed and praying he was right, at the last second he pulled his knife into his left hand and rolled flat on his back, jamming it into the belly of the huge green thing as its arms closed around the space he’d just been; it hit the ground face-first and slid to a stop, entrails spilling.

  He didn’t have time to think; one of the wolf-things leapt at him and Rylan rolled out of the range of its snapping jaws, pulling himself up to stand.

  It didn’t press the attack at first; Rylan guessed it had seen what he’d done to the ogre, but he didn’t rate his chances high, either. This thing was twice as big as the others, a true dire wolf, and intelligence raged in its yellow eyes. Making no fast moves, he reached for the wand in his pocket and with terror discovered it was not there, his frantic eyes finding it on the ground where he’d just been.