Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders

by Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian

  CHAPTER 2

  A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S SCREAM

  Snug and warm in her bed, Tara was asleep. Her stuffed toys stood guard near the window. A hi-fi glowed softly in the darkness. Because it was still vacation time, the desk was clear of school books and folders.

  Suddenly a powerful gust shook the curtains and slammed the French doors open, and a ghostly white shape floated into the room. Very gradually, as if painfully, the apparition took on human form: a beautiful young woman with long, wavy brown hair, looking terribly sad. The pale ghost approached the bed and leaned over Tara, seized by a powerful wave of love for the girl.

  “Tara . . . Tara, darling, listen to me, hear my voice!”

  The girl smiled in her sleep.

  “Mom . . . Mommy? Is that you?”

  “Yes, love, it’s me. I’ve finally succeeded in sending my spirit to Earth. Listen carefully, because I don’t have much time. You and your grandmother are in terrible danger!”

  Her eyes still closed, Tara frowned.

  “Mom? You aren’t dead?”

  “No, darling. I was kidnapped by Magister, the terrible master of the Bloodgraves. He made everybody think I was dead, but I’m alive and being held prisoner in the Gray Fortress on OtherWorld.”

  “We have to . . . we have to warn Grandma, and free you.”

  “No, anything but that!” the woman cried with alarm. “Magister put a deadly spell on me. You mustn’t try to find me, darling. You just need to take care of yourself. Listen, when I’m gone, I want you to wake up and go see your grandmother. Tell her that you had a strange vision, that a man with a shiny mask was attacking the manor house. I doubt Magister will come himself. He’ll probably send his right-hand man, Treankus. Your grandmother will know what to do to protect against him. But don’t tell her about me, Tara. I forbid it, do you understand?”

  Before Tara could protest, the apparition touched the girl’s forehead to implant her command, but jerked her hand back.

  “By my ancestors, an amnesia spell! Your grandmother put a Mintus on your mind! So you’ve already come into your powers! Now I understand why Magister wasn’t interested in you before now. He was waiting for you to become a spellbinder. My God, Tara, the Mintus will erase what I just told you! You’re going to forget it all!”

  The phantom desperately tried to break the Mintus, but she was too weak and the spell too powerful. It was already erasing her presence and her words from Tara’s mind. With a painful moan she quit struggling and disappeared after a final warning: “Remember! I’m begging you, daughter. Remember!”

  But Tara remained sunk in a deep sleep induced by the Mintus, and the hours passed, heavy and cold, without her stirring.

  Suddenly a scream rang out through the open window. Tara opened her eyes and sat up. She had no idea how she’d wound up in her bed, but one thing was sure: she had heard a strange noise.

  Another scream rang out. Heart pounding, she jumped out of bed and ran to the window, where she witnessed a nightmarish scene. By the light of the waning moon, four dark figures were fighting with Tachil and Mangus, who were struggling desperately not to be overwhelmed.

  Tara gave a frightened shriek and raced from her room. Her grandmother was already running down the stairs, and she followed her. When they emerged in front of the manor, Tachil and Mangus were lying on the ground. The four dark shapes bending over them straightened up menacingly. Tara turned pale. These things weren’t human! Short fur covered bulging muscles, and their paws sported fearsome steel-colored claws. The lumpy, awkward bodies didn’t look too steady on their stubby legs, but they rushed toward Tara and Isabella at incredible speed.

  The old woman didn’t flinch. She raised her hands high, which were glowing with blue fire, and cast a spell: “By Retrodus, I banish you to the depths of hell, to languish in anguish until your death knell.”

  A bluish ray leaped from her hands and hit the four monsters, who swelled and writhed, screaming in pain. Despite their efforts to get to Isabella, the spell took effect just as their claws brushed the hem of her long white nightgown, and they vanished.

  But a fifth shape was stealthily moving closer.

  Isabella couldn’t see the figure behind her back. He was dressed in dark gray, his face hidden behind a mirror mask. He yelled: “By Rigidifus hold the spellbinder fast, then Carbonus fire its deadly blast.”

  Tara screamed when the ray hit her grandmother. Unable to defend herself, Isabella crumpled as the ray changed color, turning blood red. But the shock shattered Tara’s amnesia spell, and she suddenly remembered everything! She acted in a flash. In a desperate attempt to divert the red fire, she grabbed the ray and bent it back toward the attacker, hitting him full in the face.

  Screaming with rage and pain, the man staggered backward, then blindly retreated to the waiting limousine. The long black car spun around in a screech of tires and roared off.

  Tara rushed to her grandmother, but she felt as cold and hard as stone. It was like touching a statue. Tara moaned, not knowing what to do. Just then Deria came running, alerted by the cries.

  Keeping her cool, the young woman rushed over to Isabella and carefully palpated her body, then did the same to the two servants. Looking Tara right in the eye, she said, “Tara! Stop crying and listen to me. I’m going to need your help.”

  “Deria, what happened? What in the world happened?”

  Tara had no idea what to do, but she remembered it all: the conversation, the Pocus, her grandmother’s betrayal, the amnesia spell—and the fact that her mother was alive.

  “I’m such a fool,” Deria answered bitterly. “I was tired and I fell asleep. I failed as a protector. I came running when I heard the screams, but was too late. You’ll have to tell me what happened.”

  “A protector?”

  “Yes, I’m a kind of bodyguard. Your grandmother had me look after you. And I’ve been very efficient, as you see. I’ve done a wonderful job protecting you from bees, mosquitoes, and snakes, but apparently that’s all I’m able to do.”

  Deria’s remorse seemed so profound that Tara affectionately patted her on the shoulder.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “You can’t be on guard 24/7. These humpy things with claws attacked Tachil and Mangus, and then Grandma came out and she zapped the monsters, but a man in gray with his face hidden, he hit her with this ray, so I grabbed it and turned it, and it hit him right in the face. And he screamed and ran away.”

  Deria was breathing noisily.

  “You grabbed the ray and turned it on him? Good heavens, I’ve never heard of such a thing!”

  “But what did they do to Grandma? What turned her into a statue? And what about Tachil and Mangus? Are they—?”

  “Dead? No, just unconscious. Monsters usually like their prey to be alive when they . . . well, let’s say that without you they would’ve been in for a very rough time. You saved them. The attacker didn’t want to use his powers against two ordinary spellbinders. He was saving that for your grandmother. Hmm . . . let me think . . . he must’ve used wizard fire. Did you see what color it was? I know it’s hard for an inexperienced spellbinder to tell, but it’s important that you try to remember.”

  “White first and then red,” Tara answered promptly. “The ray was red.”

  Deria gave her a sharp look.

  “Red, eh? All right. It would be a new kind of petrifying carbonizer, of course. Makes sense. When you bent his ray aside, it had time to petrify your grandmother, which prevented her from casting a counterspell. He would have carbonized and killed her then, but you redirected the ray back into his face. You’ll have no trouble recognizing him from now on. It’s a wound that never fully heals. His face will burn until the end of his days, unless you cancel the spell, or you die.”

  Tara said nothing, but she felt a kind of savage satisfaction.

  “All right,” said Deria. “Listen to me. Your grandmother isn’t dead, but her condition is serious. We can’t leave her here. I have to go get
help. I’m going to use a levitation spell to transport the bodies. I want you to watch me very carefully, because you’re going to have to do exactly the same thing.”

  Tara was startled.

  “A spell?”

  “A levitation spell, yes. It lets me lift the bodies without touching them. I’ll show you on Tachil and Mangus, and you can try with your grandmother.”

  Tara was too shaken up to think, so she didn’t argue.

  Deria explained: “You make a gesture of lifting and you say, ‘By Levitus, I raise you in the air. You obey and float midair.’”

  Under the girl’s astonished eyes, Tachil and Mangus’s rigid bodies rose smoothly off the ground. Deria began to push them toward the manor, and Tara turned to her grandmother.

  This whole business was completely nuts, Tara thought. She knew from experience how hard controlling her gift was, so it was without much conviction that she gestured the stiff body upward while imagining that it would obey her and begin to float. She was so skeptical that she even forgot to recite the spell.

  Suddenly her grandmother took off, and not just by a couple of feet—much, much higher! Before a baffled Tara had time to stop her, she had already soared above the treetops and was rising in the sky toward the moon.

  “Come down, Grandma!” yelled the panic-stricken girl. “Come down!”

  For one terrifying moment, she felt that her grandmother wouldn’t obey her. But then the body obediently began its descent, gracefully coming to float in front of her. Struggling to calm her pounding heart, Tara swallowed painfully, then very gingerly pushed her grandmother toward the house. The body moved effortlessly. All she had to do was to give it a push, and it moved in the desired direction. She had a little trouble turning into the main door, and going up the stairs had its anxious moments.

  “Bring the lady to her bedroom, Tara!” shouted Deria. “I’ll set Tachil and Mangus on their beds and come over.”

  “All right,” answered Tara, who was concentrating on keeping her grandmother from drifting away over the railing.

  When she finally got Isabella nicely floating above the embroidered quilt on her bed, Tara heaved a sigh of relief. True, Isabella’s feet were at the pillow end and her head at the bottom, but she didn’t want to move her any more. On entering the bedroom, she’d miscalculated her grandmother’s momentum and almost sent her shooting out the open window.

  Before long, Deria arrived. Despite the seriousness of the situation, she smiled when she saw that Tara had positioned her grandmother backward and was clearly reluctant to touch her for fear of doing something wrong.

  The big room was cluttered with books, papers, musical instruments, stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling, crystals, vases, and piles of stuff on the sofa, both tables, and three armchairs. And that wasn’t even counting Isabella’s black Labrador Manitou, who lay snoring in his basket, indifferent to all the commotion. He was the only dog Tara knew who could spend twenty-four hours asleep without so much as twitching an ear.

  “Wait, I’ll help you!” exclaimed Deria, startling Tara, who hadn’t heard her come in.

  Together, they turned Isabella’s body around. Then Deria told Tara what she had to do next.

  “We don’t have the power to undo the spell she’s under. We’ll have to get Chemnashaovirodaintrachivu. I’m sure he’ll be able to un-petrify your grandmother.”

  “Chem-who?” asked Tara.

  “Chemnashaovirodaintrachivu. He’s one of the wizards of the High Council. High wizards are the most powerful spellbinders. The problem is that I have to go through the Transfer Portal to contact him, and I don’t dare leave you here all alone.”

  “But Grandma can’t stay here like this! And you said that the person who attacked her was burned, so he isn’t going to come back right away. If you hurry, you can call your High Wizard Chem-thingamabob and get back in a few minutes. Is the Portal in the Besois-Giron castle?”

  Deria shot her a piercing glance.

  “You’re a very smart girl, you know that? Yes, you’re right, that’s where the Portal is located. You sure this is what you want to do?”

  Tara took a deep breath.

  “Listen, I don’t understand half of what’s going on. How can you expect me to make good decisions? I don’t have any choice. Grandma has to wake up! Please go, Deria, and fast. I’m not afraid.”

  “Okay darling, I obey,” said Deria with a bow. “It will take me five minutes to get to the castle, and about ten to go through the Portal, call Chemnashaovirodaintrachivu, and bring him back. Come downstairs with me. We’re going to close all the manor’s windows and shutters. I’ll leave instructions for Tachil and Mangus. As soon as they wake up, they’ll go to the front room and keep any visitors from getting into the house.”

  “How are they?” asked Tara, a little ashamed that she had forgotten the two faithful servants.

  “They’ll wake up with splitting headaches,” said Deria, smiling, “and they won’t be able to cast any spells for a few hours. Aside from that, they’ll be fine.”

  Tara would’ve preferred Tachil and Mangus to be in better shape, but she couldn’t do anything about that.

  “All right, let’s go.”

  Tara obediently followed Deria downstairs. The young woman went to stand in front of the front door, and said: “By Lockus doors and windows close, and keep them barred against all foes.”

  With a dull rumble, the manor’s windows and doors slammed shut and the shutters came rattling down.

  “The house is secure now,” said Deria, “except for the front door, which you will lock behind me. The spell will activate as soon as the bolt slides home, and nobody will be able to come in without your permission. Don’t worry, I’ll be quick.”

  Tara nodded bravely. She turned the key the moment Deria went out, then went upstairs and did the same thing in the bedroom. Now she was alone in the big manor house—or at least the only person who was conscious—and she felt completely abandoned. She’d been showing off when she told Deria she wasn’t afraid. Actually, she was scared to death.

  And at night, everything seemed so . . . different. Outside, the moon cast a harsh silvery light, illuminating the dark forest whose trees stood like silent skeletons. Tara shivered, feeling like the star of a low-budget horror movie.

  Suddenly she froze, gripped by the terrifying sensation of a presence just behind her left shoulder. She felt—no, she knew—that something was creeping toward her. Her heart started pounding faster. She was so scared it felt like her heart might burst out of her chest. Holding her breath, Tara very, very slowly turned around. Suddenly, a black shape jumped on her, and she screamed with terror. She leaped onto the bed to get away, roughly sending her grandmother crashing onto the dresser. For a second she couldn’t identify her attacker, but then she yelled: “Manitou! You stupid dog! You mangy moron! You can’t go jumping on people like that! You almost gave me a heart attack! I mean, how dumb can you be? You idiot!”

  Awaked by Tara’s conversation with Deria, the dog barked joyfully, happy to be playing a new game. Then he went to a corner of the room and put his paw on the blue-green carpet. To Tara’s great surprise, a big hole opened up in the carpet. Before she could stop him, Manitou jumped down it. The carpet closed up again, leaving no trace of the secret passage.

  Tara turned to her peacefully floating grandmother and said, “Hey Grandma, you and I are going to have to have a serious talk.”

  With great care, she repositioned the rigid body above the bed, and continued: “I’m getting sick and tired of all these secrets and lying. First of all, lies should be forbidden. You tell me all the time that I shouldn’t lie, that I should tell the truth, yadda-yadda-yadda. So what do you do? You hide the fact that you’re a spellbinder. That Deria, Tachil, and Mangus are spellbinders too. Why not Manitou, while you’re at it?”

  Then she caught herself.

  “No—not Manitou. That dog is too dumb to be a spellbinder. In other words, you’ve been const
antly hiding lots of things from me. And that’s really lousy. There are secret passageways in your room and probably in the count’s castle too. And I don’t know anything about anything, as usual! But that’s all over. You can try and cast some sort of forgetting spell on me, but it won’t work because I’m powerful. That’s right, I am! Well, I will be once I understand what’s going on. And I know something that you don’t know, and I’m not going to tell you, either. My mom is alive. And I’m going to find her!”

  Tara, who had been very angry, now felt a lot better. And her heart sang at the memory of her mother’s tenderness when she leaned over her. She remembered the conversation between the count and her grandmother, who’d been furious that he had revealed the spellbinder secret to his son. Tara also remembered that her mother had told her not to tell anyone about her “resurrection.”

  She continued shouting at the motionless body, delighted to be able to give her grandmother a piece of her mind without fear of retribution.

  Suddenly she heard something outside. The sound of a car.

  In a bound, Tara was at the window.

  The shutters were closed, but by squeezing her face against the windowpane she could see through the bottom cross bars. What she saw froze her blood: a black limousine and a large man getting out of it.

  There was no way to see his face because it was hidden behind a kind of shiny mask, like the first attacker. But he was much taller, and his body was wrapped in a handsome gray cape—it was so dark that it looked black in the moonlight—with a large red circle on the chest.

  The man stood at the front door of the manor. In a voice like liquid velvet, softly sarcastic, he called: “I want to see the little Duncan girl. Tara! You don’t need to hide. I know you’re in there. If you come out, I’ll give you a nice reward. Want some candy? I have lots.”

  Tara wrinkled her face in disdain. This guy must think she’s a doofus. Candy? Not even a four-year-old would fall for that one!