Although I wasn’t the target, I needed to shield myself — needed to speak my own words of power. Not something I had learned with my tutor, but words whispered in my ear when I was only eight years old by my grandfather.
I opened my mouth to speak, then stopped.
I could feel black tendrils of spell smoke reaching out for me from inside the spice shop. I figured they weren’t looking for me now. But what would happen if Gerard heard or sensed me? Would he blast me out of existence? I certainly didn’t have the skills (or the skin) of that beautiful girl in there. What if he attacked me instead?
Until then, no one except the girl had seen me, and I hadn’t even made the smallest noise, since the moment when the girl had put her finger to her lips. After all, hadn’t that been a warning, from the girl, to be silent?
But should I trust her? Just because she was beautiful?
I had always trusted Gerard, even if he was more than a little frightening, and this girl seemed to be Gerard’s enemy.
But the magic that Gerard used was clearly dark magic. And had I really trusted Gerard? Everything was so confusing.
Where was the girl now?
I had to do something, and the black tendrils were growing thicker around me. They were about to sense me anyway.
No more time to think. I spoke a small word of power, the same word spoken by my grandfather Karl Hendrik, and the word was: Licht.
A ball of light burst forth, small and tight, in the middle of the circle.
The tendrils of smoke dove into the light and disappeared, and the light burned on.
The last time I did a spell like that was with my tutor. That time I made a little ball floating above my left hand using the word lumière, the word in my school books.
This time was totally different. I had formed a ball of Germanic light that burned somehow on both sides of the gateway. The light burned bright not only in my room in the castle, but in the shop as well.
If I wanted to escape detection or avoid attention, I’d done a very poor job of it. My spell work was there on display in the spice shop, making a small bright fight against the dark spells of Gerard and the girl.
Things happened very quickly, then.
I saw two faces, as my spell burned brighter, and I felt my stomach burning too, a warm good burn, as if my stomach was full of spicy food, or a little ginger beer.
The girl was staring straight at me, looking puzzled but unharmed. Gerard, however, didn’t look so good. His face was darkened by her spell, his eyes bleary, his pupils huge and black from the darkness. Now he was blinded a second time by my bright Nordic light.
Then his pupils narrowed, and he saw me.
A deep guttural roar came out of his open mouth.
The girl took one last look at me, spoke a word of power: durch, and jumped, her hand outstretched.
I reached out and got her hand in mine.
Her hand felt warm and firm and her fingers clasped my fingers.
Now this was the first time I’d ever held a girl’s hand, believe it or not. And my face was covered in green clay. At least she couldn’t see me turning red under the green. I pushed these silly thoughts aside — this was no time to get embarrassed. Not if I wanted to outlive my pimples.
I pulled at her, through the dark circle.
It was like when I helped Carlo, the veterinarian, with the birth of his filly, Luce. Luce had not wanted to come out either, and we had to pull with all our might.
There was the same resistance here.
I had her hand, and then her head popped through.
“Pull, hard!” she shouted then at me.
I pulled, and looking up, I saw that Gerard held her.
Gerard was looking at me, and there was a glint in his eye.
I really thought at that point the game was up. Whatever game we had been playing. Because there was that evil glint in Gerard’s eyes, and he opened his mouth.
“Let her go, Anders,” Gerard said.
How could he recognize me, with my face covered with clay?
I felt the power of the Gerard’s sixth level wizardry in his words. My grip loosened. My hands had to obey, I had no choice — I was going to let her go. But then the girl did something that no one had ever done before. She squeezed my hand. And her hand was so warm. Still I felt my fingers loosening, against my will.
“Hilfe,” she said.
Her word of power must have balanced his words of command. Suddenly I had control of my hands again.
I pulled with all my might, and I opened my mouth. My ancestors spoke through me, my mouth stretching, my throat tightening, and the word rolled out and smashed into Gerard, who was opening his mouth to speak again. The word was: “Feuer.”
Flames hit Gerard then, wizard flames that formed in my stomach and flew through my body. My own hair and skin burned, as the fire coursed through me into Gerard. I leaned back, pulled at the girl again with all my strength and we fell together in a tumble to the floor.
Talk about embarrassing.
But the gateway was still open.
We looked at each other. We looked at Gerard in flames, opening his mouth once again.
The girl was quicker.
“Schluss,” she said.
And where the gateway had been there was wall.
The girl felt warm and smelled of flowers.
Perfume. I hadn’t seen a girl my age for quite a while. Her face was beautiful, her skin a perfectly smooth light brown. I held her with my hands and she grinned at me with white even teeth.
She kissed me on the lips and I let her go in surprise.
Her lips were warm and tasted like strawberries. Or maybe that was her perfume. It was all very confusing.
She giggled. “You don’t get kissed much, do you?” she asked, still holding my hand.
I shook my head, feeling even more embarrassed.
“What’s with the green face?” she asked.
“It’s for my skin,” I said.
I didn’t want to tell her more. Maybe it was better to be covered with the green stuff, than have her see my face. But how it itched.
“Oh,” she said. “Well that’s interesting.” She stared at me for a moment. “Have you tried charcoal soap?”
I shook my head in confusion.
She looked around then, serious once more. “Come now, wizardling, no time now for beauty secrets,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. Gerard will be looking for a way through.”
Her face looked very serious now.
“And we need to get out of here before he finds one,” she added.
Chapter IV
The beautiful girl with perfect skin was beating at the door with her fists. She turned to me. “What is this? Some kind of cruel joke between you and Gerard? How do we get out of here?”
I looked around the room.
There was a little window a cat wouldn’t fit through. Not to mention that we were six stories up. There was the locked door. There were books, and bookshelves; there was burning incense, and tea. There was a tiny gap under the door to put my homework through — not that I would need it now. There was my chair and desk.
But there was no way out.
“Who are you, anyway?” I said. “Why are your ears pointy? What were you doing in Gerard’s shop?”
She shook her head violently. “We have no time for that now. He knows you, right?”
I nodded. “I bought spices in his shop. I think he knows my father as well, although I’m not sure my father likes him.”
I wasn’t sure if I should be telling her all this. All I knew about her was that she was young and beautiful, that she knew how to cast spells. And how to steal books.
And she smelled nice. With lips like strawberries.
And she was warm to the touch. With perfectly smooth brown skin. And pointy ears.
Obviously, I felt a need to trust her. Maybe just because she was beautiful, the first girl to ever hold my hand and kiss me. But I told myself it m
ust be more than that.
I was afraid it was all a trick. But like she said, we had no time. Gerard knew me, knew my father. He wouldn’t take long to figure out where we were, and when he found us...
She cursed under her breath, and I smiled.
“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”
I shook my head.
The truth was, nothing was funny. She was just really cute when she was angry.
We were both in danger. You didn’t have to be some high level wizard to feel the threat when Gerard had talked to me.
I had no idea what Gerard would do to this girl, but I knew he would thrash me, at the very least. My parents could complain all they wanted, but there was little you could do about a magician of Gerard’s level.
And my parents would probably beat me too.
“Who are you, anyway?” I asked the girl. “What’s going on?”
“You can call me Kara,” she said.
She smiled at me again. I stood there grinning like a big idiot with my green face. I wondered if she was going to kiss me again.
She shook her head like she had fished the thoughts right out of my head.
“We have to get out of here,” she said. “I took something from Gerard, something he stole from my people.” She paused, bit her lip. “After he got rid of my father, and my mother. And I don’t think this time, if he finds me, he will hesitate before getting rid of me. Or any witnesses.” She looked around. “Why are you locked in here, anyway?”
I shrugged. “It’s supposed to keep me safe and working. My parents say it increases magical concentration, frees the mind from distractions.”
“I guess it didn’t work this time,” she said, smiling again despite the danger we were in. “I’m a pretty big distraction, aren’t I?”
“You can say that again,” I said, with a grin. “But really, I wasn’t concentrated on anything. It was hard enough to forget about this clay mask.”
“But you felt me reach out for help.”
“I don’t know what happened,” I said, honestly.
“There must be some link between us. Maybe we’re distant cousins, or born on the same day, or we ate the same food, or drank the same tea. No connections, no gateway, not even a little one like we had.”
“Are there bigger gateways?”
“Some of my people can create gateways as big as a house.”
“Your people?”
“I’m Kriek.”
“Kriek? The teleportation people? I thought they just existed in books.”
“I’m real, and I’ll prove it,” she said, pinching me on the arm.
“Okay,” I said. “I believe you.”
“You must be Kriek too, or I couldn’t have connected with you.” Kara stopped to look at me. “You really need to get that off your face. It looks silly.”
“I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“My face underneath this stuff doesn’t look much better, either.”
“Now I’m really sorry,” she said. “But you could try the charcoal soap. Let me see…”
Kara stared off into space. I had this feeling she was thinking about how to treat my skin.
“Look, forget about it,” I said.
She bit her lip. “We really need to get out of here,” she said. “But let me see your hands.”
I held out my fists, thinking she was still interested in my skin.
“Your palms, silly.”
Kara shook her head, examining them. “Your lines are very faint. Maybe your great grandfather. But you have our blood.”
“How can you tell?” I asked.
“Only our people have this line on their palms.”
She ran her fingers down lines on my left and right palms. A buzzing warmth in my hands stretched up all the way to my itchy face and down to the rest of my body.
It was almost like she had kissed me. Wow.
She nodded.
“You feel it now, don’t you?”
I nodded. Did I ever. “And Gerard, is he Kriek too?” I asked.
She shook her head violently. “It would take too long right now to explain what Gerard is. We need to get out of here. Think, boy, think.”
“I’m not a boy. And my name is Anders.”
“Think, then, Anders. We can’t get out the window. We Kriek don’t transform ourselves. You really can’t open the door? Is the lock magical?”
I nodded. “Magical and mechanical. The locks of this castle can’t be broken by spell or lockpick. I’ve heard that even professional lockbreakers have wasted whole days blasting away at these doors. When I was little they got a 4th level breaker from Siena when the Baron lost one of the keys. It took several days, and it cost us a fortune.”
“The Baron?”
“The Baron Luigi, lord of Firenze.”
“Who has the key to this door, then?”
“Mom and Dad. The castle keymaster, maybe. No one else.”
“Can you contact them?”
I shook my head, again. “They’re gone. My father locks me in when they leave, and when they come back, they check to see if my work is done. If it is, they let me out. I get to eat and go out. If not I just have to sleep and drink here until everything is finished.”
“Has anyone been by to check on you?”
I shook my head. “No one.”
“Then when can we get out of here?”
“If they don’t make it home, the door won’t be opened until tomorrow morning, when Giancarlo realizes that I’m still locked in here. And even then, he’d need an extra key.”
Kara kicked at the door. “I can’t make a gateway, not without help, not after that fight with Gerard. And I don’t know who I could connect to right now anyhow.” She paused, looked at the dark slit of window. “There’s something else. Something about the light.”
I looked at the window. “It was day, in the shop, before you did the spell. And now it’s night. We didn’t just connect different places, we connected different times.”
Kara shook her head. “Anders, you make it sound so simple. What you’re describing, I just can’t imagine it. There’s no way.”
“When the circle opened here, it was early evening,” I insisted. “The sun had just set. When I looked in at you, the sun was shining brightly.”
Kara looked at me in panic. “Wait, what day is it then, now?”
“Friday, or Venerdi, like they call it here.”
“The winter solstice?”
I nodded, worried about what she was going to say.
Kara looked pale. “Then the day was the same, but the time was different. We just lost three or four hours.”
I felt a sinking feeling is my stomach. “That means...”
Kara nodded. “Gerard should be here any moment,” she said. “Even if he just walks over here, taking his time.”
There was a rumble from deep down underneath in the castle, a crash, and a scream.
I cringed. “I think Gerard just arrived,” I said.
Kara looked at the door. “How long do you think that door will hold him?”
“It’s one of our normal doors.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe an hour? Two hours? Unless he’s brought help.”
There was a banging at the door. Whoever was out there was moving faster than any person I knew. The door shook. Okay, maybe it wasn’t a person. I heard a roar of frustration.
“He’s brought help,” Kara said.
Something slammed into the door, and we heard another roar. The door, itself, did not budge.
“I feel like that myself sometimes,” I said, trying to smile.
Kara glared at me. “There’s nothing funny. We’re about to die, and you’re making jokes.”
“Sorry.” I looked to Kara hoping she was joking, too. But her eyes showed me she meant it.
“We have to get out of here, now,” she said. “How did you create the portal?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean, what did you do right before you saw that circle, with me in it.”
“I burned some incense,” I said.
“Incense? From his store?”
I nodded.
“Whatever you do, don’t do that again. All we need is to make more connections back to him. He’ll get here soon enough as it is.” She sniffed, looked around, found the brazier by the window. “Is this it?”
I nodded.
She took the brazier full of still smoldering incense, and knocked its contents out the window.
There was more banging from outside the door.
“What else did you do?” Kara said. “We need to recreate the rest of what happened, and fast.”
I looked around. “Tea. I drank some of this tea.”
“Drink some, and give me a cup too.”
It felt ridiculous, to be drinking tea while the room shook and a monster on the other side of the door roared in anger. But I sipped and swallowed. The tea was still warm, heavily spiced, and it felt good on my throat as it went down. I felt clearer headed as it reached my stomach.
A shock wave hit us then, and I stumbled. The whole room shook, but the door itself didn’t move. I stood up straight again, and felt oddly relaxed. I refilled the cup calmly, with the last of the tea. I handed the cup to Kara, whose eyes were wide with fear.
She drank the tea in quick small sips.
Then Kara smiled, put the teacup down, and took my hand.
She closed her eyes and seemed to concentrate for a moment, then opened them again, shaking her head. “There’s something I’m missing here. Anything else you did before you saw me?”
I shook my head.
“You sure?”
I started to nod, then stopped. “No, wait, I threw my homework out the window.”
“You threw your homework out the window?”
I nodded.
“Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was angry.”
She looked puzzled, for a moment, but then she smiled. “Well that’s easy.”
She kicked me in the shin.
The sudden pain filled me with just as sudden anger. Just as I was about to open my mouth and swear, she said one last thing — but as her lips moved I heard a second voice as well, in my head. The two voices said the same thing: “Now, open your mind.”
Sword Bearer (Return of the Dragons) Page 3