All the water in the courtyard that had been flung at friend and enemy alike responded to his plea, willingly bonding with its own kind. It gathered in puddles that traveled quickly to join with other rivulets streaming from the well. Then the puddles piled on top of each other, fed by the deep underground spring, forming a wall of water traveling forward toward Jack.
“Air rush to fill the emptiness,” Lanciar chanted beside him. “Join with Water, swell the wave. Oppose each other in battle, aid the brave.”
The wave grew and spread wide. A strong wind pushed it higher yet. The two elements raged where they met, churning each other, adding pressure to the path they followed.
At the moment the wall of water reached Rejiia’s back, Jack and Lanciar both dropped their hands. “Water seek your complement. Ground in the Kardia taking Fire and Air with you,” they chanted together.
The wave crested over the witch. For a moment Rejiia was lost within the roaring water, pushed forward, off-balance. She thrashed about, spluttering for air.
Water retreated. Fire sought its opposite, ready to do battle, and fled her fingers to ground itself harmlessly in the Kardia.
“Aid me, Air, reignite my Fire,” Rejiia called, still spitting water from her mouth. She emerged sputtering from the rapidly dissipating Water, hair drenched and scraggling in thin and tangled tendrils. Her once elegant black-and-silver gown hung upon her body in ugly, misplaced lumps. Her skin looked pasty. The boost to her magic given by the Tambootie was wearing off.
Air ignored her, rushing onward.
“From North, South, East, and West and the lesser points between, I call upon the coven to come forth. Aide me, brethren. Defeat our enemies now and forever,” she called, turning a full but wobbling circle with her arms outstretched.
Again the magic fizzled as soon as it left her body.
“They aren’t coming, Rejiia,” Lanciar taunted her. “Your summons never left the compound.”
She raised a fist and shook it at him in anger. Some of her lumpy padding dislodged and settled near her waist.
Lanciar giggled slightly. “All those tempting curves were nothing more than cotton padding,” he said. A touch of magic projected his words to the farthest corners of the embattled courtyard.
More giggles rippled around the crowd, many of them from the throats of villagers. Much of the anger that had propelled them dissipated, much like the water retreating toward the well.
“You can’t do this to me!” Rejiia screamed. Frantically she pushed at the lumps in her clothing, only misplacing them more. Her hands trembled. A convulsive shudder vibrated her entire body. She looked as if her knees would no longer support her.
At that moment Jack realized that humiliation was the one weapon Rejiia could not fight—especially not with her magic drained and an exhausted body. She’d not restore herself soon without more Tambootie. He detected no more leaves in her possession.
“She couldn’t even bother enhancing her appearance with a magical glamour. She just used the common artifice available to any mundane woman,” Jack chortled.
“I’ll show you magic!” Rejiia raised her hands again. This time she held half a dozen metal stars in each palm. When accurately thrown, the wickedly sharp points could take out an eye, or penetrate to the heart.
Jack sobered immediately. He needed to be in the courtyard, standing atop one of the ley lines to command enough magic to wrap Rejiia in a bubble of armor strong enough to contain those stars. He edged forward, Lanciar in his wake.
“Merawk!” Amaranth screeched from atop the tallest tower. He spread his wings and swooped down, talons extended. Sunlight hit his feathered wings, making them glisten purple. He seemed to grow, to shed the light his black body absorbed. He skimmed over Rejiia’s head, grabbing several tufts of her dripping hair.
“Yieeeeee!” Rejiia’s screech echoed and amplified as it bounced off the stone walls that confined them all. She dropped the throwing stars to clutch her scalp.
Amaranth shrank back to normal size as he swooped about, displaying his trophy.
The weasel rose up on its hind legs and nipped at the flywacket’s tail feathers.
Amaranth screeched, compounding the noise. He flew higher, scattering tufts of Rejiia’s hair.
A bald spot showed clearly just off center of her head.
“Krej is nearly free of the spell,” Zolltarn gasped. “We must stop him from running.”
“Or transforming back to a man,” Jack added.
“I don’t want to go back to the days when he was regent,” Robb said as he ran up from the gate area. The fray at the entrance had given way to astonished gasps and stares.
“I don’t think he can become a man again,” Lancier said, pointing to the now animate animal. “His humanity is so deeply buried within the tin, it will take magic to bring it forth again. He’s been a weasel for three years. A weasel he will stay.”
Jack had the impression of dozens of people frozen in mid-scramble across the barricade of bardos. Their anger dispersed, much as Rejiia’s magic had.
Some of the villagers scuttled away, crossing themselves repeatedly, making the flapping wrist ward against Simurgh in between each invocation of the Stargods.
Then he realized that the Rovers were much easier to see. The haze had thinned. Sunlight began to penetrate to the courtyard.
“The gloaming is fading. We have to finish this now, before Rejiia manages to escape again,” he said to Lanciar and anyone else who cared to help. He raised his hands once more to find a spell, any spell that would trap the witch.
Just then the weasel broke free of the last of its tin casing and leaped from its perch on the bardo.
Lancier flung his arm forward as if launching a spell or an invisible spear.
“Come back here,” Rejiia screamed and dove for the slippery animal. It eluded her grasp. “Don’t you dare leave before I’m ready. I am your master as long as you are enthralled. I will be your master when you live.” She crawled after the elusive animal into the midst of the sledges.
A pain ripped across Jack’s gut, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. What was he about to do? He touched his temples, trying desperately to ground himself. His eyes crossed and lost focus.
Then his vision cleared of the afterimages he’d seen ever since Rosie took up residence in his body. His bottom no longer itched as if to twitch a tail.
“Rejiia and Krej, Krej and Rejiia, father and daughter, daughter and father, bound together by blood and by magic, cling to each other in the chase,” Lanciar said quietly as he traced a sigil in the dirt with his toe. He followed with more words, spoken too rapidly in a language similar to Rover, but . . . Jack didn’t have the concentration to think through a translation.
More pain attacked every joint in Jack’s body. He needed to fall to his knees. He didn’t dare.
And then Katrina was there, holding him, giving him the strength he needed to continue, as she had done in that dank and miserable dungeon cell beneath Queen’s City.
But this time the weakness that assailed him felt like a kind of freedom.
Rejiia continued to crawl after her father, coaxing now rather than screaming. She stopped to groom her wet and straggling hair. Then she returned to her determined chase.
“Did I see her lick her hand and wash her ears?” Jack asked. Feeling suddenly lighter, he patted his gut, his backside, all of his joints in turn. Rosie did not respond. He risked a minor trance to search his inner being.
“Katrina, I think I’ve just lost one of our problems.” He couldn’t help grinning.
Then Rejiia did pause in her mad scramble beneath the sledges to rub dust off her hands and lick them.
“What?” Jack eyed Lanciar carefully.
“I just put a compulsion upon her.”
“Compulsions are illegal,” Marcus reminded him.
“I’m not a member of the Commune and not bound by their conventions. Yet.”
“What did you do to her?” Jack
asked again.
“She’ll follow the weasel until one or both of them dies. And until she catches it—alive—she can’t throw any magic.”
“She’ll be tracking that thing for years before she realizes she’s under a compulsion!” Marcus chortled.
“All Lanciar did was enhance her own inner demons,” Jack added. “She’s been obsessed with her father since before his spell against Darville backlashed and turned him into a weasel. I think that was why she embraced Simeon as a lover. He looked so much like her father, and Rejiia controlled that relationship from the beginning.” He didn’t add that with the cat persona embedded with her own, the compulsion would compound. No one could outstubborn a cat.
“Even when Simeon thought he commanded the world, Rejiia gave him the commands,” Lanciar mused. “She controlled him as she never could her father.”
“How long does a weasel live?” Marcus asked. “What happens when Krej dies? Are we back to battling Rejiia?”
“I don’t think so.” Lanciar whistled a jaunty Rover tune. “That compulsion won’t go away unless she captures the weasel alive! She’ll search for him even after he dies.”
“I think we need to get back into the library,” Robb reminded them. “The gloaming is lifting, but not gone. Vareena needs our help.”
CHAPTER 5
Vareena watched and listened as Powwell and Ackerly continued their bitter litanies against each other. Over and over, she tried to project love and peace into their hearts. She’d done this for every ghost who came under her care. She had to show these two lost souls the lighted path through the void to their next existence.
’Twas her destiny, her purpose in staying so long in this cursed and unforgiving place. If she could not help these two, she would never have freedom, even if she left.
Ackerly and Powwell rejected every offer.
“Stop it, both of you!” she finally insisted. “Stop and listen to yourselves. You just repeat the same arguments over and over, phrased a little differently, but accomplishing nothing.” She stomped her foot in frustration.
Both ghosts paused and looked at her, acknowledging something outside their own bitterness for the first time.
“You have both been trapped in this half-life, this nothingness, for three hundred years. You’ve accomplished nothing in that time, a true reflection of the nothing you accomplished in life.”
Both opened insubstantial mouths to protest.
“What did you achieve?” she asked Powwell.
“I was the greatest healer of my time. I researched the healing arts and brought new techniques to ease the pain and suffering of many,” Powwell intoned. The little hedgehog perched on his palm bristled as if protesting the statement.
“According to this journal, written in your own hand, Powwell, many of those techniques were borrowed from rogue and blood magic. All of them have been rejected by the Commune since then. Your legacy is forgotten.” She held up the little book.
I taught many new magicians in the University while Nimbulan wandered aimlessly in search of something that eluded him all his life, Ackerly returned.
“Our histories tell us that Nimbulan found dragon magic and brought an end to the Great Wars of Disruption. You died opposing him in the final battle of the war.” Vareena allowed the silence to stretch for another endless moment. “We remember Nimbulan with love and adulation. No one remembered either of you until Nimbulan’s journals were found.”
Nimbulan found peace with his wife and family. He died at the age of ninety, content with his life and his death. I was there. I guided him to the void that final time. Powwell almost choked on this thought/words. His words and form faded to a mere echo inside Vareena’s mind. If he faded much more, she’d lose contact with him altogether. He was the greatest man of his time. More a father to me than you, Ackerly. He loved me, nurtured me, wept with me when Kalen died.
“Then accept him as your father and seek a new existence. Continue his greatness by passing beyond your misery and seeking happiness and good in a new life.” Vareena sensed Powwell’s hesitation. His form wavered, strengthening and fading in his indecision.
“And you, Ackerly. Give up your gold, give up this illusion of power. True power is in the kind of love Nimbulan gave his family, his apprentices, and his country. You are reviled as a traitor by those who do know of you. You can have the kind of power Nimbulan had in your next life if you only try. You can have a family to nurture and love next time. But you have to give up the gold.”
Powwell reached out a hand to Ackerly. Join me, Father, in this new quest. Begin your healing alongside me.
Ackerly lifted his hand as well.
The solid iron of the staircase blocked them.
Tears in her eyes, Vareena ran to the first step. She had to brush Ackerly’s ghostly robes. Chills racked her body at the unnatural touch. Just a small taste of what was to come, if she succeeded.
She couldn’t turn back now. She had to succeed. She had to end this here and now.
One at a time she mounted the steps until she stood halfway between the two ghosts. “Let me guide you both forward.” She held out a hand to each. Bare finger-lengths separated her hands from theirs. “You have to try harder. You have to reach beyond your fears, beyond the limitations of this existence.”
Both ghosts leaned forward, bending around the iron barrier.
Still they could not reach her.
Then Powwell shifted his staff. He grasped the butt end and pushed the crystal-studded head down. It dropped on the second step.
Ackerly couldn’t reach it without touching the deadly iron. Vareena grasped the crystal at the end of the staff. Ackerly held out the hilt of his knife for her questing hands. She clutched them both tightly.
Light, power, love pulsed through the staff and the knife. They washed over Vareena in endless, daunting waves. The onslaught of emotions drained the strength from her knees. The intricate pattern of the iron stair pressed through her gown, bruising her mortal flesh. She fought to remain conscious, to keep the tunnel of light open for the two souls who must take the first steps toward their next existence.
The magical tools burned her palms. The iron stairs seared her knees. Light pierced her eyes, until she knew she must close them or be blinded for life. Her aching need for freedom intensified. How could she leave if she couldn’t see? How could she work her meager acres without her sight? Who would love her, a blind spinster with burn scars hampering her grasp and her walk?
Still she clung to the tools, binding father and son together.
“Vareena!” Marcus and Robb cried.
She couldn’t see them. The staff and the knife continued to vibrate, continued to bind her to her ghosts. She sensed Ackerly and Powwell lifting free of the confines of their half-existence. Sensed their spirits joining, melding, leaving her behind.
Their joy flooded her. “Take me with you,” she whispered. “Take me away from the hurts of this life, from the weight of my duty and responsibility.”
“Not yet, Vareena. You have too much life to live and love to give.” Marcus eased the staff from her hands. “I’ll help you heal. I’ll take care of you, if you let me.”
She heard the wooden staff land on the stone floor with a clatter. The knife followed, its blade shattering.
Robb lifted her free of the staircase. Both magicians held her close, crooning soothing words. Each loving her in his own way.
“You’re safe now. The Rover women are coming to heal you.” Marcus kissed her temple, smoothing tangled hair out of her eyes.
“Lord Andrall has pledged his protection of you and your acres.”
“You are safe now.”
She couldn’t tell which man spoke, only that they both took care of her as she had taken care of them and all the ghosts of this place. She leaned into Marcus, cherishing the strength of his arms supporting her.
Thank you, Vareena. Thank you for your gift of love and healing, Powwell and Ackerly both whispered across
her mind.
She opened her eyes. Too much light still blazed around the edges of her vision. The gloaming lifted. She could see only a few dark figures at the center of the brightness. But she could see.
She saw a tiny hedgehog scuttle away from the staff under her skirts, seeking protection and love. She stooped to cradle it in her burned hands.
Thorny, the creature announced his name to her.
“I guess that makes you a magician after all,” Marcus said around a huge smile. “Powwell left you his staff and his familiar.”
A gift of love and healing for a gift of love and healing.” Powwell’s voice echoed around the library, spreading to the courtyard.
The mist of Ackerly’s spell lifted from all around. The gold lay inert and uncharmed upon its shelves, ready and waiting to be put to use.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 5
The Wizard's Treasure (The Dragon Nimbus) Page 35