“Kafira. You’re quoting scriptures now too?”
“I’m practicing. Dragons are expected to be wise.”
Bessemer laid his head down next to the stove and closed his eyes. Senta stepped over and opened the stove, poking the coals with the metal poker. Then she tossed in half a dozen pieces of wood.
“I think those will catch.”
The dragon snored.
“Fine. Sleep. Hopefully nobody will come along and steel your ox… or your ass.”
Senta walked up the steps, pausing at the top of the first flight to look around the dark room. Bessemer didn’t really need all this space. He usually just stayed downstairs by the stove. She continued to the top of the second flight.
“Uuthanum,” she said, waving her hand and all of the oil lamps in the room flared to life.
Senta ran a bath, tossed off her underclothes, and soaked in the hot water. While she floated there, she noticed there was a dress staring back at her from the chair in the corner of the room. Apparently Zurfina had laid it out for her before she had left. She blew bubbles in the water. When she was completely pruny, she climbed out, dried off, and put on her nightdress, then walked back down stairs. Bessemer was still sleeping.
The room had grown cozy with the fire. Senta lit all the oil lamps on this level with a spell, just as she had upstairs. Then she opened the froredor to see what there was for dinner. There were three eggs of various size and colors and a large piece of yellow cheese with a few spots of green mold on it. She pulled out the cheese, carving off the mold with a kitchen knife. Then she sliced several thick pieces, and putting the remainder away, sat down in a dining chair to eat.
As she ate, she thought about the battle with Wizard Bassington. His aura was much more powerful than Suvir Kesi’s had been. He should have been able to crush her easily. He should have had much more powerful spells than he had displayed. This couldn’t have been a real attack. He must have been testing her. And if that was the case, what had the test been for?
Deciding at last that she was full enough of cheese, Senta went back up the stairs, brushed her teeth, and climbed into bed. With a snap of her fingers, she turned out all the lights on both the second and ground floors. All night she dreamed about Smedley Bassington in some form or another. Once he looked a lot like Graham, once he wore a peach dress, and once he was made entirely of cheese. In every incarnation, he was out to get her, either by slinging dangerous spells or by sending summoned creatures to attack her. In the morning when she opened her eyes, the room was bright from sunlight streaming in through the single window and she was looking directly at the black dress in the chair.
“Fine. You win, Fina.”
Standing up beside her bed, she pulled the nightdress over her and tossed it on the bed. She put on a new set of unders and grabbed the black dress. It looked like the inner tube of a steam carriage tire—long and thin and rubber. She pulled it over her head. It stretched as it went over her, but it was tight. It went all the way down to her ankles. The sleeves were short, but on the chair, previously hidden by the dress, was a pair of black rubber gloves that reached up past her elbows. Once she had put them on, she walked to the bed —she could only take tiny steps—and put on her black leather shoes. The final stop was the cheval glass where she examined her reflection carefully. She looked like a seal. Turning around to look at her bottom, she realized that in this dress, without a bustle, she didn’t seem to have one. She had as much shape as a licorice whip.
Her ornate hairstyle, decorated with pearls, looked far too fancy for the new outfit. There was also a stray strand of hair sticking out to one side. Zurfina’s magic, which had kept her hair clean and in place, must be wearing off. Senta thought that it was time she took care of her own hair. Pointing her finger, she swirled it over her head.
“Uuthanum.”
Her hair flew about for a moment then settled back down. She had envisioned a lovely but simple hairstyle, along the lines of those worn by Miss Lusk or Mrs. Dechantagne. What she got instead was her natural hair—her plain, simple, boring, natural hair. It was clean, blond, straight, and flat.
“Flipping heck!”
Senta had to hop down the stairs with both feet together. Down on the ground floor, Bessemer was still sleeping. A thin wisp of smoke rose from his left nostril and formed a grey cloud near the ceiling. No sooner had Senta stopped at the bottom of the stairs than a knock came to the door. When she opened it, she found Hero, wearing a simple white dress that emphasized her pretty face and long, wavy black hair. Her friend looked her up and down.
“You look… nice?”
“Thank you for that boost to my self-esteem.”
“No, really. You look like…”
“A seal?”
“Well, kind of, yes. But in a good way.”
“If I didn’t have to go buy a new bustle, I would just hide here at home all day.”
“You know who you look like?”
“Who?”
“Zurfina.”
“I don’t look like Zurfina here.” Senta put both hands on her chest, and then moved them to her bottom. “Or here.”
“But you do kind of look mysterious and scary.”
“Really? Scary?” Senta smiled crookedly. “That wizard did call me a sorceress.”
“What wizard?”
“Smedley Bassington. You should have seen it, Hero. We had an awesome magical battle. He was casting spells and I was casting spells. It was so ace! I would have magiced the crap out of him but Bessemer came along and broke it up.”
“Yes, and don’t bother thanking me,” said the dragon from the corner.
Hero’s face had turned pasty white.
“Maybe you should stay home then.”
“I’m not going to be forced by some wizard to hide. It’s my duty as a sorceress to be fearless and… stuff.”
“But you’re not a sorceress,” said Hero. “You’re just a girl.”
“What did you say yesterday, Bessemer?”
“You’re no ordinary girl,” said the dragon, without opening his eyes.
“See? I’m no ordinary girl. Any boy can see that.”
“Boy?” wondered Hero. “What boy? Oh. This isn’t about the wizard. It’s about him. He’s not even back in town yet.”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Senta.
“Your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend, because he said he’s not my boyfriend, so he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Was auch immer sie sagen,” said Hero.
“What does that mean?”
“I’m sure you’re correct.”
“Too right I am.”
The two friends walked downtown, purchasing two bustles from Mrs. Bratihn and a turtle shell comb at Parnorsham’s. Her earlier contemplation upon her appearance suggested a treat to Senta, so she purchased a pair of licorice whips for a pfennig, which she and Hero shared. Then they took turns sticking out their blackened tongues at each other. They went to Hero’s house for lunch, which was fine, considering the rather sparse contents of Zurfina’s larder. Honor was putting the finishing touches on dinosaur and tomato sandwiches.
“Well Senta,” said Honor, serving her a sandwich. “That’s quite an interesting dress.”
“Scary, huh?”
Hero’s sister insisted that she stay home and work on her studies, so Senta walked home alone. She was watchful the entire way, expecting that Smedley Bassington would jump out at her from behind a tree, but she saw no sign of the wizard. When she reached the tower, Bessemer’s spot by the stove was empty. Just like her friend, Senta had studies to attend to. In fact, she hadn’t cracked a book since Zurfina had left. She thought about studying now, but she just couldn’t bring herself to care enough about either the mathematics text or the book of poetry, both of which sat gathering dust on the shelf. Instead, she decided to go upstairs.
The f
irst step she took by stretching the rubber dress apart with her legs and then stepping up. This was far too difficult. So she put her feet together and hopped up a few more steps. This was fun at first, but not by the time she reached the top of the first flight. She reached down and grabbed the dress, hiking it up above her knees, and then continued. She didn’t stop at her own level but continued up to the next floor where her guardian’s bedroom was located.
Zurfina’s room was set up almost exactly the same as hers was, with the addition of one more heavily padded chair. The walls were painted deep purple though, making the room much darker. Several large paintings on the walls featured images of the sorceress provocatively posed in various stages of undress. On the large bed sat an open book. Senta walked over to it and picked it up.
The book didn’t seem to be a book of writing at all, but rather of strange scrawling around abstract pictures. Flipping from page to page, Senta at first couldn’t make heads or tails of anything. After a few moments though, some of the bizarre pictures began to be familiar. As she continued to look through the book, the scraggly marks along the edges seemed to shift into words and before she knew it, the apprentice sorceress found that she was reading diary-like entries.
She flipped back to the first page and read in earnest the story of a girl not to different from herself, orphaned and sent out into the world all alone. The girl had been taken in by a strange man who could do magic. The man treated the girl like a slave, and worse. He was abusive, mentally and physically. But the girl learned his secrets. She learned his magic. Then one night, she sewed him up in his own sheets and dousing him with lamp oil, lit him on fire. Senta was only a few pages from the end when she realized that the girl was none other than Zurfina. The story ended in the book with Zurfina leaving the town where she had lived with the strange man—a sorcerer, Senta now knew.
As she closed the book, Senta could feel an energy seeping from it, into her fingers and up her arms. She didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but it felt warm and tingly. She pulled the book to her chest and just let whatever it was seep into her. After awhile, when she felt so much warmth from the book that she thought she would become feverish, it suddenly stopped. Instead, a different feeling came over her. She felt drawn to the stairway. She left the book lying on Zurfina’s bed and followed the strange impulse that seemed to be pulling her. It pulled her to the staircase and upward toward the one level of the house that she had never been in.
Senta didn’t know what she expected at the top of the stairs, but she wasn’t disappointed. The top level of the tower was a single huge room. It was dark with only two tiny stained glass windows to illuminate it. Spying a candle across the room directly in front of her, Senta waved her hand and cast a simple light spell. More than a hundred candles burst to life all around. There wasn’t a single chair in the room, but there were seven large cabinets. Each seemed filled with the promise of mystery and power.
She started to step forward, but noticed strange writing on the floor directly in front of the stairs. Looking down carefully, she saw a twelve-foot circle drawn on the wooden floorboards, with a series of smaller concentric circles within and more of the strange scrawled writing that she had seen in the book. This writing she couldn’t read though. She stepped carefully around the circle. She didn’t know what it was, but she didn’t want to set off some kind of magical ward.
Making her way across the room, Senta opened the first cabinet. She was disappointed to find it full of clothing. It was Zurfina’s clothing—strange but not all that different than that which Senta herself was wearing at the moment. She closed the door and walked to the next cabinet, moving anti-clockwise around the room. This second cabinet was locked.
“Uuthanum,” she said, pointing her finger at the lock.
She heard it click open.
Pulling the now free doors of the cabinet open, revealed shelf after shelf of small bottles. Some of the bottles were colored glass, brown or blue, but most were clear. They were filled with liquids and powders of all colors.
She went to the next cabinet. This one too was locked. Once again she used magic as an alternative to a key. Inside were six large jars, about three gallon capacities, with clamp-on lids. Each was filled with clear liquid, and suspended in each was the body of some strange, malformed creature. Each was different, but all were frightening. Some of them had wings. Several had reptilian like heads, while two had very human looking faces. The skin of all six was the unhealthy yellowish color of urine. Senta stared in rapt fascination until suddenly, one of the things shifted in its bottle. She slammed the cabinet door shut.
Moving to the fourth cabinet, Senta now expected locked doors. She once again used her simple spell in order to unfasten the mechanism, but this time it didn’t work. The doors remained locked. The only option being to break into the cabinet, she regretfully moved on. The next cabinet and the one after also denied her entry. She stepped over to the last of the seven pieces of furniture. This one she found unlocked.
This cabinet was completely empty, with the single exception of a glass sphere six inches in diameter. She felt the same pulling sensation that had called her to this level of the house and she reached out her hand toward the sphere. When her fingertips were only inches away, a bolt of energy shot from the object into her hand. It traveled up her arm and seemed to go right into her heart.
“Prestus Uuthanum,” she said, casting a spell of shielding.
The spell didn’t create the magical barrier between the orb and her that Senta expected. Instead, the magical energy that she had used stopped in the air between her and the cabinet. It slowly coalesced into a shimmering sphere the same size as the sphere that she had discovered in the unlocked cabinet. This sphere though was tinted red and it wasn’t solid. It began to condense, growing smaller and smaller, until it resembled a tiny jewel. Then it floated up and began to orbit Senta’s head as a moon orbits its planet.
Senta had created her first glamour—a spell that was stored in the tiny floating gem that she knew was invisible to everyone else. When she needed it, Senta knew that she could pluck that ruby gem out of the air and cast the spell without having to call on any additional magic. And she suddenly realized that she knew how to make more of them.
Chapter Sixteen: The Traitor
Though winter was well on its way out in Birmisia, it was still cold enough at night—cold enough to bundle up tight, cold enough to blow steam in the air with your breath, and cold enough that the lizzies moved with their characteristically slow gate. Police Constable Saba Colbshallow watched them from behind the corner of a warehouse building across the street from the dock. He didn’t know why they were working in the middle of the night, but he hadn’t spotted them taking from the ship any of the curious long crates that he had seen on previous occasions. He watched for more than thirty minutes as the reptilians moved freight.
Finally deciding that the activity represented nothing nefarious, Saba stretched his sore back, pulled a sulfur match from his pocket, and lit the oil lantern sitting on a barrel next to him. Then taking the lantern with him, he made his way across the street. There were half a dozen lizzies loading wooden crates onto a pallet that was attached to the crane to be loaded aboard the ship. As he approached, several of the lizardmen eyed him. Half of them were taller than his six foot three, but all of them hunkered down to look shorter than they actually were. It was a demonstration of submissiveness that the constable had grown used to over the years. Coming to a stop beside the workers, he crossed his hands over his chest.
“Working awfully late, gentlemen.”
One of the lizardmen hissed. Even though Saba was not fluent in the aboriginal language, he could tell it was a non-verbal expression of anger or annoyance.
“Identification.”
The two closest lizardmen held out their arms. They each wore a wooden and twine identity bracelet. Saba held up the lantern and read the engraved information on each of the tags. “Finn: Seri
al Number 22211 BL”, and “Ishee: Serial Number 22214 BI”.
“All right. The rest of you too.”
“Does there seem to be some problem, PC?”
Saba looked up to see the tall, silhouetted form of a man walking toward him from the direction of the ship. When he reached the circle of lantern light he was revealed as Professor Merced Calliere.
“Good evening, Professor. Just checking identifications.”
“I would appreciate some haste then. These fellows have work to do.”
“So they’re working for you? I noticed these two don’t seem to have night passes, and my guess is that the others don’t either.”
“Yes, well I needed help on what you might call an ad-hoc basis. It’s very important business—government business. So I would prefer it if you not delay them any longer.”
“Then I had best let them get back to work,” said Saba. “As soon as I check the rest of their identification.”
“This ship is leaving first thing in the morning.” Professor Calliere hissed from between clenched teeth.
“I am aware of that, Professor,” said Saba, then to the other lizardmen. “Stick your arms out.”
The two reptilians that he had already checked stepped aside, and the remaining four held out their arms to show their identification bracelets. Calliere folded his arms and scowled. Saba read them off one by one.
“Maddy: Serial Number 19705 BL. Sassine: Serial Number 18234 BI. Guster: Serial Number 10100 BI. Swoosy: Serial Number 11995 BI. Oh, I know you, don’t I?”
Saba looked up at the last of the lizardmen. It was a hulking brute, at least six foot five, though it was doing its best to seem shorter. Its skin was deep forest green with large mottled patches of grey here and there. It looked nothing like the lightly colored, rather short female that the constable had seen saved by Graham Dokkins from the new arrivals.
“Hold on,” said the constable, grabbing the wrist with the bracelet.
With a hiss that bordered on a roar, the lizardman leapt forward, grabbing Saba’s helmet in its clawed right hand as its momentum carried both of them backwards. As he fell, Saba felt the alligator-like mouth clamp shut on his right shoulder. The gravel of the street flew as the man and the reptilian landed. The latter flipped completely over and onto his back. Saba jumped to his feet, his hand suddenly holding his truncheon even though he didn’t consciously grab it. With a speed belying its supposed cold blood, the lizardman rolled onto his stomach, and without even getting up, launched himself into Saba. They both fell into the pallet of crates, one of which splintered, spilling its contents onto the ground. Saba swung his truncheon, but couldn’t tell if it connected. The next moment, his opponent was gone.
The Drache Girl Page 24