They skimmed above hissing treetops, far too close for Ilien's comfort. He shut his eyes again and tightened his grip on Pedustil's spike.
"We're entering Southford from the north," cried Pedustil. "This forest ends soon and the outlying fields of the town are ahead. You'll have to direct me to a safe spot to land, a place where we won't be seen, one close to your house."
Ilien forced his eyes open. The treetops flew by below, their bushy tops like fleeting storm clouds. He realized that this was the same forest he had marched through on his way to Evernden, before Gallund fell in the marsh. He smiled grimly. Somewhere below hopped three horned toads, two brown and one black, toads that had once been witches. He wondered if there were any owls in the forest.
"Well!" shouted Pedustil. "Where do we land?"
Ilien snapped back to the present and tried to figure where they were. It took him a moment to recognize the familiar landscape from the air. They were nearing Farmer Parson's place. "Are you sure you can see well enough to land?" he asked.
"Of course I can see well enough to land."
"I mean with your eyes and all."
Pedustil cracked open a gill flap, swamping Ilien with moist steam. "I'm fine! Now where do we land?"
"Okay! Okay! Up ahead. It's not far."
It was far more difficult than Ilien had imagined to steer a flying Gorgul through the night to a spot on the map of the world no bigger than a pin prick. He was headed for the pine covered-hill beside Parson's field, the hill where he had once imagined a tunnel lay, where he had once encountered Reknamarken's shadow in a dark and frightening dream. Though he could have walked from his small two-story farm house all the way to that spot blindfolded, it was an altogether different matter at night, flying fast just above the treetops while the world tilted and twisted below. Everything looked different and strange from a hundred feet up.
On their third pass above the outlying fields he finally spotted the hill where they could land. Pedustil banked sharply, and again Ilien's stomach rushed to his chest. In a few moments they were down on the ground. Ilien looked around, relieved.
He scrambled off Pedustil's back and dropped lightly to the ground. The wind hissed in the pines that crowned the hill. The air smelled of tilled earth and pungent sap.
"It's not far," said Ilien, peering through the inky gloom in the direction of his house, past the surrounding brambles, across the flat, unseen fields beyond. A light twinkled in the distance, then disappeared. Probably Farmer Parson checking on his chickens. Foxes were rampant in Southford.
"Let's go," said Pedustil as he tucked his wings away upon his back.
Ilien looked in surprise at the Gorgul. "You can't come."
"Why not?" asked Pedustil.
"You'll wake every dog from here to my house, and believe me, there are plenty to wake. No one has ever seen a Gorgul in Southford before. I think it's best that they never do."
Pedustil wagged his great scaly head from side to side and peered out through the brambles. He sniffed the air deeply, then let out a puff of steam through his gills. "Perhaps you're right. But you must hurry. You have thirty minutes, forty-five at best." He glanced skyward. "The night is fading. We must get back before dawn, or Bulcrist will discover we're missing."
Ilien nodded and started toward home. He pushed his way through the brambles and was gone.
He'd been away less than two weeks, but it seemed a lifetime since he'd last set foot on familiar ground. He walked along the worn track that led into Parson's back field, a strong breeze ruffling his hair. The comforting smells of his hometown drifted on the wind, soil and stone, smoke and wet leaves. He entered the starlit field. A sudden pang of homesickness overcame him. Perhaps it was only the worry he felt for his mother's safety, or the fact that he'd been through so much in so little time that led him to feel that way. More likely it was realizing that the final memories he might ever have of home would be of this night, stealing across Parson's field in the dim starlight, the smell of mud in the warm air, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
He broke into a jog, heeding Pedustil's words. Forty-five minutes was all he had. He stopped only once, outside Parson's, to make sure the old farmer wasn't still checking on the chickens. It wouldn't do to be seen this late at night, skulking around his farm. His nearest neighbor didn't take kindly to mischief, and was apt to loose his dogs to chase him off.
All was quiet. No lights in the windows. He moved on quickly.
Within minutes he stood outside the front fence of his house, clutching the gate, unable to go further. His house stood silent, the way he'd left it that early morning two weeks earlier. But what now? His mother was no doubt asleep. He could steal in and check on her, make sure she was safe. But what if he woke her? What would he say? He couldn't possibly explain everything to her. She would be angry and frightened. She'd never let him leave again. Waking her, even by accident, was out of the question.
He pulled forth his pencil in the dark. It remained silent, impassive. Ilien hoped his Nomadin magic would work again, despite his wand's obvious misgivings. He needed to become invisible. He'd slip inside, look in on his mother in secret, and leave a note explaining what he could.
"Inhibi inhabi, hababi viru," he muttered, half-expecting a sudden argument from his pencil. Instead, he suddenly melted into the shadows, unseen, invisible. Relief flooded over him. Relief and dread at once, relief at knowing the True Language hadn't yet eluded him. Dread at the thought of his mother waking up to find the note in the morning, her worry, her sadness.
He opened the gate and moved toward the front door. His heart jumped to his throat. The door was ajar. He tightened his grip on his pencil. His mother was in danger! Someone else was in the house. His face flushed hot and itchy, but he forced himself to remain calm. That someone else was most likely a Nomadin. Perhaps the open door wasn't as ominous as it looked. Perhaps his mother had failed to close it, and the wind had blown it open.
The dread in his heart told him otherwise. Regardless, he couldn't go rushing heedlessly in. He needed to be more quiet now than ever. He took a moment to remove his heavy boots, then eased through the door and into the hallway.
The house was pitch black, but he knew his way. Ahead lay the living room with its great stone fireplace, now empty and cold. To the right, stairs led up to the study and bedrooms. He paused to listen. He heard nothing save the rush of blood in his own ears. He crept to the stairs and started up, mindful of the creaky fifth step.
A dim light wavered upon the wall at the top of the stairs then disappeared. Ilien stopped, reminding himself that he was invisible. He flapped his unseen hand before his face, then quickened his pace. He froze again at the top of the stairs. The hall stretched to his left into darkness. He strained to hear any unusual sounds. Perhaps the light had been his mother returning to her room with a candle. The house was hushed.
Then came a muffled thud and a faint voice said, "Serves you right." It came from down the hall, past the study. It came from his mother's room.
Ilien moved quickly, unafraid that he might be heard. His own footsteps sounded impossibly loud. They would know he was coming. He held his pencil in a clenched fist, words tumbling over each other in his mind. Whoever was hurting his mother would pay with their life. He passed the study door on his right, then his own bedroom door. Both entered into darkness, black and silent.
He reached his mother's room. The door was closed. There came another thud from within, this time louder. His heart pounded. His vision suddenly cleared as if he could magically see through the gloom. He thrust the door wide.
In the light of a guttering candle, two small figures stood staring in wild-eyed fright at the door that had just flown open. Ilien recognized them immediately.
Stan and Peaty? What were they doing here?
Again Ilien forgot he was invisible and nearly shouted, "Get out!" But he saw how their terrified eyes looked through him, not at him, and he stood silently in the open doorway
for a moment to see what they would do.
It was obvious now that his mother wasn't home, or she would have been holding both boys by the ears until they'd wished they'd been born without them. Where was she? He scanned the room. Her bed was unmade, the covers thrown to the floor. He could see that much in the pale light of Stanley's candle. It wasn't like his mother to leave her bed unmade. He had been punished enough to know.
Something wasn't right.
"Did you see that?" asked Stanley, like a statue come alive again. "That was weird. The door just flew open on its own. I told you this place was haunted."
Peaty shook his head and returned to what he'd been doing, namely rummaging through the night stand drawers. "What did you expect? This is the freak's house, after all."
Stanley remained staring at the empty doorway, and to Ilien it seemed he was looking directly at him. "Let's get out of here," said Stanley. "This was a bad idea. I don't like it here."
"Shut your mouth," said Peaty, closing the drawer he'd been searching and opening the one below it. "Don't be such a loser."
"But what if she comes back?"
Peaty held something up in the air. "Bring the candle closer, you moron."
Stanley did so obediently, his eyes still fixed on the doorway, oblivious of the hot wax that drooled down his hand. Peaty held up a necklace of blue beads that glittered in the light.
"See? I told you this would be worth it."
Ilien had had enough. He had half a mind to fill the room with lightning bolts, and he began to conjure the spell in his mind. But Stanley said again, "What if she comes back?"
"I told you already," replied Peaty, a sneer crossing his thin lips. "She's not coming back anytime soon, if ever. She left with the old man."
Ilien started. The floor creaked loudly beneath his feet. Both Stan and Peaty looked up, startled. Stanley thrust his stump of a candle out in front of him. Ilien held his breath. A moment later Stanley turned to Peaty. "But what if they both come back?"
Peaty stuffed the necklace in his pocket. "Don't be an idiot. She didn't leave with him by choice. He took her away. She's not coming back. Now bring the light over here." He moved toward the dresser, where Ilien's mother kept her clothes. Again Stanley obeyed, leaving Ilien shrouded in darkness, still invisible in the doorway.
His mother had been taken by the Nomadin! He was too late! Bulcrist had been right. The Nomadin would stop at nothing to get to him. They had taken his mother, taken her to God knows where. A sudden rage filled Ilien's mind, pressing violently at his temples. His mother had been abducted, and now these two boys, these bullies who had made it their daily routine to torment him every day after school, were rummaging through her personal belongings, laughing, gloating, mocking!
Ilien raised his pencil and pointed it at Peaty's head. He smiled wickedly, picturing Peaty's reaction when his hair caught fire. The Nomadin would pay later. These two would pay now.
But suddenly his arm became visible. He could see his hand clenched white-knuckled around his pencil. He looked down at his legs and saw his stocking feet. What was happening? Invisibility spells didn't just wear off.
A violent blow knocked the air from Ilien's lungs, spinning him around and casting him to the floor. He fell with Stanley on top of him. The fat boy snorted in his ear, and pinned him face down to the wooden planks, his arms at his sides. Ilien's pencil rolled from his senseless fingers.
"Well, look who we have here," said Peaty, standing over them, holding Stanley's sputtering candle in one hand. "This house is haunted, alright—by losers!" He noticed Ilien's pencil on the floor and stooped to grab it. Ilien struggled to free himself, but Stanley was too heavy and strong. Peaty snatched the pencil off the floor and admired it in the candlelight.
"So this is the famous pencil that gets you such good grades, the pencil that Stanley here thinks can talk. Why don't you say something now, mister pencil?" Peaty brought it closer to his face, inspecting it with obvious disdain. "Not talking, are we? Well, we'll just see about that."
Ilien gasped aloud as Peaty moved the candle toward his wand. The pencil remained silent, unflinching. Say something! he thought.
But the pencil thought nothing back in reply. The flame of Peaty's candle licked at its sides.
"Stop it!" cried Ilien. "I swear I'll kill you!"
Stanley smashed Ilien's face into the floor. "Shut up!"
Ilien tasted blood. Lightning flashed in his mind. Enough!
"Enough!" His shout took his breath away. Inwardly he pictured the terrible thunderbolt that would impale his foes, striking them dead. "Invocae dium, Involti die!" he screamed.
He squeezed his eyes shut against the blinding flash to come, bracing himself in case his magic struck him as well.
Silence fell in the room as Stan and Peaty froze in apprehension, Stanley still atop Ilien, one hand anchored firmly in the hair at the back of his head, Peaty poised to burn the pencil over the guttering flame of the dying candle. When no stroke of magic fell, Peaty laughed and moved the candle flame beneath his victim.
Ilien struggled to free himself, then sagged beneath Stanley's terrible weight, helpless to stop Peaty from burning his pencil alive. His magic had left him. There was nothing he could do. He blinked back his tears of rage as smoke began to rise from the pencil's end. He was not a Nomadin. He was not.
The house suddenly jumped as a heavy blow smote the wall outside. Another blow rent the window from its casement. It crashed to the bedroom floor, glass scattering in all directions. Stanley leapt to his feet. Peaty capered backward toward the door. Another blow struck the house from outside and a cloud of hot steam blew through the broken window.
"Ilien!" roared Pedustil. "Ilien! Are you alright!"
Ilien climbed to his feet, his hands and face cut and bleeding. Splinters of glass littered the floor around him, glittering in the pale yellow light of Peaty's candle. Ilien thought to rush him, attack him and get back his pencil, but he stood in his stockings. His feet would be cut to pieces.
"Let's get out of here!" cried Peaty, and he and Stanley fled from the room and down the hall, leaving Ilien alone in the dark. Ilien could hear them as they took the stairs three at a time in their haste to escape.
Steam billowed through the window. Ilien heard Pedustil outside. It sounded like he was tearing a hole in the side of the house. "Pedustil!" he shouted. "Stop! I'm alright!"
The house fell silent.
Ilien incanted his Light spell. Perhaps not all his magic had deserted him. Perhaps Globe would still come. "Kinil ubid, illubid kinar," he whispered, hoping beyond hope. But the darkness remained. Globe did not appear.
"I'm coming out!" he called to Pedustil.
"Are you hurt?" asked the Gorgul.
"No." Ilien wiped the blood from his mouth with his sleeve, wincing at the cut on his lip.
"I see two people running up the road," shouted Pedustil. "Should I stop them? Did they hurt you?"
Ilien had visions of Stan and Peaty crying in terror, falling over each other as they fled for their lives from Pedustil, hot steam nipping at their backs. "No," he answered. "Leave them be."
Ilien felt a sudden pang; Peaty had his pencil. He hardened his heart against the loss he felt. What good would the wand be to him now? He was finished with the Nomadin. They had betrayed him from the start. They had lied to him, had tried to kill him. They had taken his mother. Now their magic had betrayed him as well. It was time to grow up. Bulcrist was right. It was time to learn a new magic.
It took some time, but Ilien made his way past the litter of broken glass without cutting himself. He stood a moment in the gloom of the hallway, staring into his mother's empty, ransacked room. He had come here to make sure his mother was safe. Now all seemed more lost than ever. Now both his parents were in danger. He looked down the hall to his room. Not two weeks ago he slept soundly in his bed, secure in the knowledge that he was safe, loved, a normal boy from a somewhat normal family. Now all that was changed forever.
He breathed deep the smell of his house one last time. He wouldn't be returning. What was it his mother had so often said that he never quite understood until now? You can never go home. He turned and made his way outside, wanting to cry, but unable to shed the tears.
Pedustil rounded the corner of the house at a trot as Ilien was lacing up his boots. "I heard you call for help," said the Gorgul. "I was waiting for you where we landed and heard you calling for help in my mind. That's never happened to me before."
Ilien rose and surveyed the damage to his house. The fence surrounding the front yard had been flattened. Though the front of the house remained intact, the side where his mother's window looked out upon the yard was battered and broken. Boards hung askew around several holes in the wall. The missing window frame gaped like a black eye in the gloom.
"Things are different now," said Ilien. The sky to the east held a sickly cast of grey and green. Morning was fast approaching. "Let's go. We have to get back. Bulcrist will be expecting us for breakfast."
Chapter VII
The Sword and the Stone
The sun was already up when Ilien and Pedustil landed back at Ledge Hall. They hurried from the river's edge to the golden front gates, their breath steaming between their teeth. They were soon inside and the doors shut behind them, the echo of their closing booming in the darkness. Neither said a word as they marched through the lower levels with Ilien lighting the way as Bulcrist had before. They shared a keen awareness that they were both in trouble. The sun had been up for nearly an hour now. Surely, everyone was awake and wondering where they were.
They reached the stairs leading to the upper levels, and Ilien extinguished his Nihilic light. Pedustil led the way, his green eyes casting pale shadows around them. They eased open the doors to the great, gem-encrusted Hall, expecting to find it lit with Bulcrist's magic. The Hall stood dark and empty.
"We're in luck," whispered Pedustil. "No one is awake yet. Quickly. I'll lead you to your room."
Ilien grabbed hold of Pedustil's tail and soon they stood outside Ilien's door.
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