“I have a place that I go to when the world seems completely unfair,” Brinley said. “When everything I am trying to accomplish seems like it is sure to fail. I want to take you there. I have many things to think about now, and three days in which to do it. My friend may be suffering every minute as we decide how to act. Suffering, every minute, as we prepare for what must come…but there is nothing that I can do about that just now. There is something that I can do tonight, though, and so I will do it. And you can help me, if you wish. You all can,” she added, looking around at them.
“What?” Lignumis said. “Name it, and I will do it.”
Brinley looked up at him seriously. “We can finish building a house.”
Chapter Twenty-One
In which there is a home
“What is she thinking? Why did she send us here alone? And why didn’t she let him out? She’s got to let him out of the Panthion, no matter how long she sits and stews about it. I mean, I don’t like the idea of Shael released and free in the world any more than the next person, but he has forced her hand. I don’t understand what she’s waiting for.”
Cannon’s voice echoed around them as he and Tabitha wound their way through the dark tunnels beneath the dungeons of Thieutukar’s castle. Brinley had taken the others to go and help her finish Maggie’s house, and sent Tabitha and Cannon to bring Gadjihalt’s sword to Kuzo. The big sword felt heavier and heavier in her hands the longer she carried it. It was an ugly, brutish thing, and she could barely bring herself to hold it. It was better if she didn’t think about the great curving dragon’s spike on the end of it, or how a beautiful creature had been killed to put it there.
“Ouch!” Cannon said. “You poked me with the sword again! Will you just let me carry it?”
“No,” Tabitha said. “Brinley asked me to do it, so I am going to do it.”
Cannon’s hand reached out, feeling awkwardly in the darkness. When it met her shoulder, he grabbed her arm and led her around him. “You go first, then,” he said. “I’m tired of you literally stabbing me in the back. I didn’t come all the way through the Wizard’s Ire just to be killed walking down a flight of stairs. Mind you, I expect that we will be killed at the bottom. It was Hugo that saved us last time, and though I’ll do my best, I don’t know how much I can do with wind against a dragon in the dark.” Cannon sighed. “Why did Brinley send us to do this? And why can we not let Thieutukar do it for us? He said he was willing. Is there something you’re not telling me? Something that everyone else knows that I don’t know? Because let me tell you, Tabitha, I’ve been here before and this dragon will probably eat us when we can’t do that dragon dance thing of his. Can you do it, Tabitha? Can you? Because I certainly can’t. I think what we will have to do is—”
“Enough!” Tabitha rounded on him, bumping him with the flat of the sword again, mostly by accident. “Brinley knows what she is doing. And I’m sure you would do a lovely dragon dance, but that won’t be necessary. Kuzo will speak with me.” She returned to the stairs, and Cannon kept his peace for the remainder of their descent.
“Back again,” Cannon whispered when they reached the bottom. His voice echoed about them differently, revealing a massive chamber ahead.
“Who is there?” a voice said from out of the darkness. “Name yourself.” A little ball of light glinted suddenly out of the sea of black, growing larger as it approached them.
“Oh, no,” Cannon said wearily. “Here we go again.”
Tabitha squared her shoulders and strode towards the approaching figure. It was a man, she saw. Tall and slender, with hair that glowed like fire. He was Kuzo, the last dragon of Aberdeen, and he was about to know her name.
She changed, her skin shimmering, her body lengthening, growing scales and claws and wings. She felt the now familiar sensation of heat in her belly, the desire to release it into the blackness and bathe the dark in her light.
She roared and loosed a pillar of fire into the air above Kuzo’s head, casting sudden light upon his startled expression. She heard a yelp and a thud from behind her, but she didn’t dare look away to investigate. Cannon had probably not been expecting her to change into a dragon. She had forgotten to tell him.
The surprise faded quickly from Kuzo’s face, replaced by a look of intrigue. “A masterful thing,” he said quietly. “To take the shape of a dragon. Few have ever done so. None that I know of now live.”
“My name is Tabitha. I am the Magemother’s Herald,” she said, and she roared again for good measure, making the air shake. When she had finished, she looked down at him. “I brought what you wanted.” She raised a giant foreleg and slammed the sword down at Kuzo’s feet.
The dragon’s eyes widened, staring at it. His jaw loosened, his mouth falling open in surprise as he bent to pick it up. “My Anorre,” he whispered. He broke the spike off the end of the hilt with a firm twist and dropped the blade on the floor, kicking it away in disgust. Then he looked up at Tabitha, fingering the spike in his hands tenderly. “You have done me a great favor. What do you desire in return?”
Tabitha shrank back into her own form, and Kuzo watched her, his expression unchanged as he looked down at her. It was the first time anyone had ever looked at her like that. It made no difference to Kuzo, it seemed, what she looked like. To him, she would always be a dragon.
“I want what Hugo wanted,” she said. “Tell me what you know about Chantra.”
The dragon nodded. “I did not hide her.”
Tabitha held her breath. Was that all he had to say? Had they come all this way, sacrificed so much, for this?
“But I did help her,” he went on, and Tabitha relaxed. “She was trying to help me, help me get my fire back.” He looked down at the spike in his hands. “I told her that the only way was to get Anorre’s spike. To burn it. To put her soul to rest…But Chantra had other ideas.”
He glanced up at Tabitha. “None of them worked, of course. But I didn’t mind. I was happy just for the company.” His face twisted distastefully. “She was the only person I ever saw in this place who didn’t want something from me.
“We became friends, in time. And friendships between humans and my race are very rare indeed. But Chantra was special. We spoke of treasure, and I told her of my adventures. She had a strange passion for rubies. Her brother, the Mage of Metal, even tried to teach her how to go inside one. That was her dream. Her secret ambition.” He looked down. “Such a wonderful child.”
He glared up at Tabitha. “Then the Magemother told her to hide. Once again, the Mage of Light and Darkness had lost his mind and threatened to destroy the other mages. Chantra came to me that day, in secret, terrified. She did not know where to run, where to hide.”
Tabitha took a step toward him. “What did you tell her?” She looked around the room, wondering if, perhaps, the Mage of Fire was crouching in some dark corner, still hiding from the darkness that she had run from years before.
“I gave her a gift,” Kuzo said. “The last of my possessions.”
He smiled faintly at a pleasant memory. “When I was imprisoned by the gnomes so long ago, they searched me for treasure. A dragon never goes anywhere without a little treasure, you know, just in case. I let them find it, take it from me, so that they were satisfied. But they did not find it all.” He grinned deviously. “I had one gem left…a ruby.”
He bowed his head. “I gave it to her that day, just to calm her. But then an idea struck me. What better hiding place for her than that? Inside a stone. Who would ever look there? And this was the perfect stone for it. It was uncut, you see, a rough, dark gem. To most people it would look like a plain old rock. But inside! Inside, she would have the palace of her dreams.”
“So did she do it?” Tabitha asked, eyes bulging. “Did she get inside?”
Kuzo nodded. “Not at first, but we practiced together, right here, until she could achieve it.”
“Where is it?” Tabitha asked, taking another step forward.
Kuzo smiled,
folding his arms across his chest. “I do not know,” he said. “I told her to take it somewhere safe. Somewhere that nobody would think to look. Not even me. She said the Magemother would know where to hide it.”
Kuzo stared at her for a long time, but Tabitha was at a loss for words, unsure what to ask next.
“Go,” he said finally. “I have what I want, and you have what you want. And tell the king of the gnomes that I will not be his prisoner for much longer.” He smiled, looking down at the spike, then changed in the blink of an eye into his true form.
“One thing more,” he rumbled, his giant head swinging down until it was level with Tabitha. “You owe me one last thing, for helping you. One last thing, if you want to leave this room alive.”
He dropped the spike at her feet.
“Burn this for me.”
***
Brinley twirled the thick wooden button between her fingers, and after a moment, replaced it in her pocket. She was watching the night sky for Cannon and Tabitha, but there was no sign of them yet. She hoped that they were okay. It had seemed like a good idea to send Tabitha to speak with the dragon, since she could turn into a dragon herself. But then again, just because an idea seems good at first doesn’t mean it turns out well in the end.
She returned to the clearing where the mages were working and put a hand on Lignumis’s shoulder as he bent over a thick length of wood.
“Lignumis,” she said kindly. “Let me give you your power back. I daresay you could move that wood more easily as the Mage of Wood.”
He took a step back, looking shocked, but then nodded. She motioned for him to kneel, then placed her hands on his head as she had done with Unda.
Before she could get the words out, he grabbed her wrists. “Wait,” he said. He stood up, shaking his head. “Can we just wait for a little while?” He rubbed his eyes. “I’m not ready. Not feeling good. I need some time to adjust. I—”
“That’s okay,” Brinley said in a soothing tone. “I understand. You’ve been in the Wizard’s Ire so long.”
“It isn’t that,” he said quickly. “I mean, I just need a little time. So much has happened in the last few hours. I just feel…wrong. I want to be ready, when I receive my power.”
“You need to get your head in the right place?” Unda said, making them both jump. He had come up behind them, and there was a strange look on his face. If Brinley didn’t know better, she would have thought it was suspicion.
Lignumis relaxed. “Exactly. You put it just right. I just need to get my head in the right place.” He smiled weakly and put a hand on Brinley’s shoulder. “Give me one day, Magemother, maybe two, and I promise I will be ready.
Brinley nodded, glancing back and forth between Unda and Lignmuis. Something had just happened, she was sure of it, but she didn’t know what it was. A second later, Unda had swept the strange expression from his face and he was walking Lignumis back to the house.
“Don’t feel too bad,” Unda said, clapping the other mage on the back. “You weren’t ever very powerful anyway.”
“Unda!” Brinley said, “That’s not helping.”
“He knows I’m kidding,” Unda said, slapping Lignumis on the shoulder. “You did get big, didn’t you! Grew like a weed these last few years…of course, you would grow like a weed.”
Brinley was about to scold Unda again, but Lignumis was chuckling now, so she let it go. The three of them joined Cassis at the front of the house, where he was pulling nails out of the ground as if they had fallen there. He was making them from what ore there was in the soil beneath their feet, she knew, but it looked like he was just picking them up. Since Lignumis was unable to control the trees to make wood for the house, Brinley had been forced to make some changes in her design, but the one thing she wouldn’t give up was a good, solid front door made of wood. Cassis had made them tools to work with.
“I’ll fix it later,” Lignumis said, mumbling over several nails clamped between his lips. “We’ll make it look good in the end, after I figure out what’s wrong with me.”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Brinley said, but Lignumis just gave her a skeptical look and kept pounding nails.
“Brinley,” Animus called, and she went to him.
He was sitting at the edge of the clearing, apart from the others. He had been sitting on the Panthion, head propped on his fist, lost in thought the whole time they had been there. Now he looked as if he had made up his mind about something.
“I think you will have to let them out,” he said. “I can’t find a way around it.”
Brinley nodded. “I know.”
Animus straightened. “Oh,” he said. “I did not realize you had already made up your mind.”
She sat on a rock across from him. “I have. I’m going to let them out, but not until the last possible moment.”
Animus nodded slowly. “That will give us time to prepare,” he said. “There is much to do if we are to be ready to face Shael, or war, in three day’s time…” His eyes flitted to the house behind them. “Is our time spent wisely, just waiting here?”
Brinley smiled at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “But this is where I come when I don’t know what to do. So far it seems to be working.” She turned to survey the house. “And we’re almost finished. I can’t stop now, Animus. I might never get it done. Who knows if I’ll survive the next three days?”
Animus laughed grimly. “True enough.” He glanced around. “Where did that cat get off to?”
“He went with Archibald to get Maggie,” Brinley said. “They shouldn’t be much longer. I just hope we’re done before they get back.”
Animus pointed at the sky. “Someone is back.”
It was Tabitha. The black swan descended and changed into her friend as soon as Cannon had stepped down from her back.
“Tell me,” Brinley said without preamble. “What happened? What did you learn?”
“Well,” Cannon said, “for one thing, we set a dragon free. He blasted out of the tunnel right behind us. Don’t think Thieutukar liked that very much…”
“What?” Animus said, rising to his feet.
“And we learned where Chantra is hiding,” Tabitha said eagerly. Her face fell. “Well…sort of.”
“From the beginning,” Brinley said, struggling to maintain her patience.
When they had finished their story, Animus and the other mages started pestering Cannon and Tabitha with questions, so Brinley strode toward the house, lost in thought. Where would her mother have hidden a ruby? Somewhere on Calypsis? Somewhere in Caraway Castle? Those were the two places that she had called home, but would they be the best place to hide something? Probably not. She sighed. Tabitha would have to look for it while she went to find her father. Maybe the other mages could help in the search too.
She smiled at the house. At least one thing was coming together. Cassis had made a roof of stone and filled the windows with sparkling, clear glass. Belterras, upon learning that Lignumis was unable to use his powers, had summoned a team of beavers to help them cut logs, which they had then stacked against the outside walls to give the house a warmer appearance. Birds sang cheerfully from their tiny, colorful houses in the yard, and wildflowers bloomed in a little patch of soil under the kitchen window, as if the gods had looked down on her efforts and decided to help. She certainly hoped that they were pleased with it. This was, perhaps, the only responsibility that they had given her as Magemother that she was fulfilling with any measure of success: caring for those who could not care for themselves.
She smiled at the house. It was almost done. She picked up the hammer that Lignumis had been using earlier and drove a single nail through the wooden button, fastening it firmly to the center of the door. “There,” she said with satisfaction. “It’s finished.”
“It’s lovely,” Tabitha said, drawing up beside her. “She’s going to love it, if she doesn’t think it’s too big.”
“Oh, I’m sure she will think it’s too big,
” Brinley said. “But she’ll get used to it. She needs the extra space for visitors.”
Brinley glanced around, looking for Unda. “Wasn’t he going to build a fountain?”
Tabitha nodded. “He is. I told him to do it out back so that the birds could have some privacy when they bathed. I’ll show you!” She grabbed Brinley’s hand and pulled her around the house. Sure enough, Unda was standing in front of an intricate fountain of rocks and polished stones and tiny waterfalls. But something was wrong; some of the waterfalls were falling up instead of down.
“Oh my,” Tabitha said, putting a hand over her mouth and walking to the fountain. It was as if Unda had lost concentration halfway through and turned the laws of gravity upside down. He was standing in front of the fountain with his hands folded across his chest, deep in thought, staring off into space as if he wasn’t aware of the fountain at all.
“Look,” Tabitha whispered to Brinley. She was gesturing toward a particularly interesting portion of the fountain, where two waterfalls met. One was falling down, and one was falling up, and where the two streams of water met, they swirled around each other in a dizzying circle that seemed to run in two directions at the same time. “Ooh,” Tabitha said, going slightly cross-eyed as she stuck her hand into the center of it.
Unda jerked out of his thoughts and pulled Tabitha out of the fountain as the water began to snake around her arms like little glistening serpents. “Careful,” he said. “Sorry. Got distracted. Thinking, you know.”
“What’s bothering you, Unda?” Brinley said.
The young mage cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. “Lignumis.”
“What about him?” Tabitha asked.
“He isn’t quite…how I remember him. That’s all.”
“He looks different,” Brinley said. “He’s much older now, isn’t he? You are too.”
Unda shook his head. “Not that. He talks the same, acts the same. But there is something different about him.” He glanced up at Brinley’s worried face and smiled. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I am always thinking too hard about something or other.”
Magemother: The Complete Series (A Fantasy Adventure Book Series for Kids of All Ages) Page 56