‘You fake being a green?’
‘It’s not a difficult trick. Recolouring my hair and eyes does for most situations. I’ve let them see me in scales once so they’re quite convinced.’ Cadenza peered at Krystal. ‘You’ve never thought of changing your colouring to disguise yourself?’
‘I, um. No.’
‘You’d make a fine indigo, darling,’ Felicia said.
‘I said you’d probably be one when I didn’t know you were a royal,’ Trudy added. ‘No one’s going to be surprised.’
‘And you’d really only need to show your fake scales once. Perhaps at the founding event at the start of term. Charity will do a fine impression of a green.’ Felicia was wearing a rather malicious grin by the time she finished.
‘I’ll show you the pattern later,’ Cadenza said. ‘Anyway, the Nightskys seemed to have given up looking for me, so I returned to this place. I’m the forest witch to some, Clarise Arbour to others. I discovered you had made it to the orphanage and I kept an eye on you when I could. Did they ever give you the copy of Thoughts on the Nature of Magic I found?’
Krystal blinked. ‘When I passed the exam for the school and got my scholarship.’
‘Oh, good. “Clarise” knew of a young orphan, a potential magus, you see? And she would bring books from time to time to help her. Anonymously. She has a reputation as a hard-bargaining merchant to keep. I gave them the last book, Thoughts on the Nature of Magic, and then you were gone the next time I came back.’
‘Well then, thank you for the books. I’m still trying to work my way through Thoughts.’
Cadenza laughed, a melodious, joyful sound. ‘Mallory Nightsky is a little dense. Nadira has a better writing style, but her treatise is obviously on a narrower topic. Mallory Nightsky was trying to capture all his thoughts on many aspects of magic. I’m not sure I understood all of it.’
‘That’s encouraging. I, uh, I think I need some time to take all this in.’
Cadenza nodded. ‘You’re probably still suffering a little from your fall. You should get some rest and see how things look in the morning.’
~~~
‘You are supposed to be resting.’
Krystal looked up from her great-grandmother’s book to see Trudy giving her what could only be described as a knowing grin. ‘Yes, and I am. I’m reading.’
They were all, technically, in bed. There were no rooms set up as bedrooms, other than Cadenza’s room, where Krystal had woken up, so they had put blankets and straw down on the floor of the lounge. Trudy shuffled a little so that she could give Krystal proper, disapproving attention. ‘You’re reading some sort of treatise on advanced magic. That is not restful.’
‘Is so. It’s a lot easier to read than Mallory Nightsky’s thoughts on the subject, and I’m only reading the introduction. There’s nothing that difficult here. It’s kind of weird, actually.’
‘Weird?’
‘Yeah, it’s almost like she knew who would be reading it. I mean… I feel like she’s talking to me. Which is ridiculous. This thing was written over a thousand years ago.’
‘Maybe she used divination… or something.’
Krystal giggled. ‘There’s no form of divination I know of that could tell her that her great-granddaughter would be lying here reading her book surrounded by her six friends who happened to be all the different colours of dragons. No, I’m sure it’s just the way she writes. Anyway, it’s interesting, and relaxing, and that means I’m resting.’
Trudy shook her head, grinning. ‘Yeah, for you, that’s probably true. Don’t read too long.’
‘Yes, mother.’
‘Can’t say that now. You’ve got a real mother to tell you off.’
Krystal did not reply, but it was sort of true. She did have a mother, but a ‘real’ mother? Cadenza had not been a part of her life for more or less the whole of it. Could she be a real part of it now?
10th Day of Highsummer.
Something made Krystal open her eyes and sit up. Nightshade took exception to this, having curled up against Krystal at some point during the night. Still, when she got to her feet, perplexed by an odd feeling of urgency which seemed to have settled into her mind, the tanglecat got up and followed her out into the corridor.
‘He really has decided he likes you,’ Cadenza said.
Krystal glanced down at the tanglecat trying his best to trip her up. The corridor was dimly lit: Cadenza had not brought a candle with her or made light, so the only illumination was coming from the lounge behind Krystal. Still, she could see Nightshade, Cadenza, and Opal, who was sitting at Cadenza’s feet but looking tense. ‘Your cat looks like she’s feeling what I am.’
‘No. Opal is reacting to me. I am probably feeling what you are.’
‘And what am I feeling?’
Cadenza smiled. ‘The city wards are informing members of the family that someone is attempting to penetrate them. Perhaps someone attempting to find me, or the Crown of Harmony. People still come here from time to time believing the crown was hidden in the ruins somehow.’
‘I… don’t think so. I think they’re after me. Or us. Me and my friends. Someone set traps for us in the forest. Those wolves attacked us for no reason. I don’t know why, but someone has it in for us. Still, it seems like they want it to appear that we died of natural causes.’
‘Huh. A wolf attack in Tangleroots would be considered natural causes by most. Have you made any enemies recently?’
‘No, of course– Um, well, maybe.’
‘Maybe?’
‘Well, just before Midwinter, we stopped the spirit of Lorenzo Darkmoon from letting a few hundred demonic necromancers loose on Concord City. They never figured out who was really behind that. A-and the Scarlins may not like us much since we stopped one of theirs from stalking Mona. But it was Celestina Nightsky who imprisoned him in stone on the roof of our hall, so I’d have thought they would go after her.’
‘You’ve had an eventful first year at school.’
‘It had its moments.’
‘Apparently.’ Cadenza looked up at the ceiling, frowning. ‘They’re backing off, whoever they are.’ The alarm note in Krystal’s head did seem to be lessening. ‘It seems that they’ve given up for now. You should get some sleep.’
‘So should you,’ Krystal replied, turning back to the room she was sharing with the other girls.
‘I will. Oh, Krystal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Celestina Nightsky. If you’re ever in real trouble and you need help, Celestina can be trusted.’
‘She’s always been quite good to me. To all of us, actually.’
Cadenza nodded. ‘Interesting. Sleep well, Krystal.’ And then she was gone.
~~~
The cause of Krystal’s sudden wakefulness was far more obvious this time: Nightshade had dug his claws into her arm. She opened her eyes, ready to complain, but the look in the cat’s eyes as he stared back at her stopped her. When he turned his head toward the door, Krystal followed his gaze and figured out what had caused the cat to wake her: half a dozen large spiders were edging their way into the room as though unsure of what they were doing. At least the spell to straighten her eyesight was still working, because otherwise the creatures would have been barely visible.
‘Xan!’ Krystal hissed. There was no response, so she tried again, louder. ‘Xan!’
‘Whu?’ There was stirring from around the room, but Xanthe sat up, blinking at Krystal. ‘What? Is it time to get up?’ She rubbed at her eyes.
‘By the door. What are those?’
Xanthe did her best to focus, frowning. Then her face paled. ‘No one move!’ she snapped. ‘Everyone keep very still.’
‘What is it?’ Charlotte grumbled.
‘They’re brown shadow spiders.’
‘Spiders!’ Felicia squeaked.
‘Don’t move,’ Xanthe repeated. ‘They live in the deep forest. They’re almost blind, but they can sense vibrations in the ground very well. They basi
cally hunt by touch. They eat small animals, but one bite can put down a cart-bull.’
‘Spiders don’t usually travel in packs,’ Krystal said. There were more of the things entering the room now. Each was bigger than a large man’s hand and covered in brown hairs which shaded from pale to dark, a pattern likely designed to provide camouflage in the forest’s shade.
‘No, brown shadows are solitary. The only time one of them is happy near another one is when they mate. And then it usually ends in one of them dying.’
‘Like the wolves who shouldn’t have attacked us.’
‘I don’t care why they’re here,’ Felicia said, ‘or how they shouldn’t be. Make them not be here.’
‘Working on it,’ Xanthe replied. There were still more of the big arachnids, almost falling over each other as they poured into the room, spreading out as they went and getting ever closer to Felicia and Jesse, who happened to be closest to the door. ‘Got it!’ Xanthe exclaimed, and suddenly the nearest of the spiders reared up on their back legs and then fell back, scurrying as fast as they could go. More of the creatures were coming, but each of them reacted the same way: about nine or ten feet from Xanthe, they twisted and writhed as though in pain and then backed up.
‘Pain exclusion?’ Krystal asked.
‘Uh-huh,’ Xanthe replied. ‘I’m just glad I remembered that Nightshade was there and exempted him.’ Nightshade could not have understood that, and probably just meowed in Xanthe’s direction at the sound of his name. Really.
‘Are you girls all right?’ Cadenza’s voice came from outside, possibly in her room given the volume.
‘So far,’ Krystal shouted back. ‘Xan put up a pain exclusion. It’s keeping them back.’
‘Great minds think alike. Opal woke me up when they came in.’
‘Ha! Nightshade stuck his claws in my arm. What do we do about them? They’re being controlled.’
‘Yes… Do you think you can cast some more exclusions to drive them out into the corridor?’
‘If we’re quick,’ Ramona shouted back. ‘They’re spreading out. We need to hem them in quickly and then drive them forward.’
‘Right,’ Krystal said, already shaping magic in her head. She reached out toward one side of the room and dropped another sphere of pain in the path of the spiders. Several let out odd hissing sounds as they tumbled back from the field. ‘You get the other side, Xan.’
‘Already on it,’ Xanthe replied. ‘You know you’re faster at these than I am.’
Krystal frowned. ‘Magic seems easier here. Like the labs at the school.’
‘Not for me.’
‘Oh.’ Krystal waited for Xanthe to block off the spiders’ path into the room and then began to put in more pain exclusions, narrowing the area the spiders could occupy until they were forced out into the corridor. Xanthe followed suit, as fast as she could manage, and the arachnids retreated.
The spell was a fairly simple one and worked on most animals with a nervous system. It caused pain while you stood in the area protected, and most living things preferred to avoid pain. They could decide to stay, if they really wanted to, but then the pain would stick with them all the time and, apparently, the control spell which had been used on the spiders had not overridden their most basic instincts.
‘They’re out of the room,’ Krystal shouted when the overlapping fields pushed the spiders out.
‘Very well,’ Cadenza called back. ‘Keep away from the door, please.’
‘I have no intention of getting anywhere near the door!’ Felicia called back.
‘You’re not afraid of spiders, are you?’ Jesse asked.
‘No, I am not afraid of spiders. I simply think that anything with that many legs should be avoided. Unless you happen to have something to flatten them, and those spiders look like you would need a sledgehammer to do that.’
There was a flare of light and flame from the doorway as, as best Krystal could tell, the entire corridor filled with fire. The stench of burned hair began to spread into the room. ‘Or,’ Krystal said, pinching her nostrils closed, ‘you can just burn them.’
‘All clear,’ Cadenza yelled. ‘Sorry about the smell. We’ll let the exclusions come down and then we can get the brooms out.’
‘On the bright side,’ Felicia said, ‘I don’t know about any of the rest of you, but a late breakfast won’t be a problem. I know I don’t feel like eating anything right now.’ She found something, a cloth and a bottle, in her bag, dripped some of the contents of the bottle over the cloth, and pressed it to her nose with a sigh. She peered at Jesse. ‘And you said I was being silly bringing perfume with me.’
Jesse gave a shrug and grinned. ‘I must admit that needing to save my sense of smell from the scent of burning spider hair did not occur to me when I objected. Can I have some of that?’
Felicia grinned, looking around at the others. ‘I accept gold, silver, and gems. No credit. But in your case, Jesse, we can… come to some arrangement.’
Jesse sighed. ‘Hand it over. The stench is getting worse. Whatever it costs me, it’ll be worth it.’
~~~
‘The Armonia family has been shaping magic on this site for millennia,’ Cadenza said. ‘Of course it’s easier for us, though the effect is wearing thin. It used to be more obvious, but it’s still there.’
Krystal nodded. It made sense and, with the scent of burned spider now little more than a background irritant, Krystal’s brain was back to working at full power. ‘The family stronghold of a family of magi. I suppose that there would be some twisting of reality here.’
‘Yes. It was shaped, manipulated so that it aided us and not others, but the effect would have been here, I’ve no doubt, even if no one had touched it.’
‘Which explains why Krystal can fire off spells so easily,’ Ramona said, ‘but not why someone sent a load of spiders to try to kill us.’
‘Well,’ Cadenza said, frowning, ‘the why of the spiders is not too difficult. They were too small to trigger any of the alarm wards.’
‘And they’re entirely mundane,’ Xanthe added. ‘None of the magical defences would be triggered by them.’
‘Indeed. Of course, that still leaves us with the problem of who sent them. Ramona Rose, Krystal mentioned the Scarlins?’
‘Not their style,’ Ramona replied. ‘Unless they hired someone to come after me, or us, they would come at us with swords, not traps and controlled animals.’
‘It would be easy enough to ensure no one ever found the bodies in Tangleroots. So that leaves us with the people behind this necromantic spirit you defeated. How did you defeat such a thing?’
‘Marianne Nightsky’s mass exorcism spell from Defensive Magic,’ Krystal replied. ‘Though the official story is that we knocked Lorenzo Darkmoon’s host out before he could complete his spell. No one seems to have asked where he went after he failed, which is probably for the best.’
Cadenza grinned. ‘Impressive, daughter.’
‘It took all of us. Well, except Mona because she wasn’t there. It’s a hard spell and I needed everyone to pull the shape together fast enough. We all woke up the morning after to discover it actually worked. But I don’t think Lorenzo Darkmoon was at the back of it all. Someone had to help Charity – uh, she was the host – to get in touch with Lorenzo and I don’t believe he was behind what happened to Glinda.’
‘Glinda?’
‘My best friend,’ Charlotte said. ‘Someone killed her and turned her into a zombie. Krys killed the zombie, with a fireball.’
‘And,’ Krystal added, ‘we never found out why Glinda was killed. I still think she was sacrificed for a ritual of some sort.’
‘I know the name Lorenzo Darkmoon,’ Cadenza said. ‘He was associated with the Lords in Waiting.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And the Lords in Waiting are associated with Shastin Nightsky.’
‘I’ve heard that name too,’ Krystal said. ‘But he’s dead, or should be. I know he keeps coming
up as the man behind all sorts of atrocities, but it can’t really be him. Dragons just don’t live as long as–’
‘Somehow, Shastin Nightsky has lived that long. The Nightskys don’t talk about him much. They disowned him long ago, but they know he’s still out there. If you’ve made an enemy of him, then you have a problem. He holds long grudges, but he won’t show his hand too obviously. Staying in the shadows is important to him. While people believe he is little more than a legend, no one tries too hard to find him.’
‘It would make sense if it was him then,’ Ramona said. ‘He waited until we were in the forest before trying anything. In here, no one is going to notice when he takes his revenge.’
‘Then we must get you all out of here,’ Cadenza stated flatly. ‘I can get us all to Appleyard without difficulty. He won’t openly attack you there. We’ll go tonight, as soon as it gets dark.’
~~~
There was a lot of symbology in Nadira Armonia’s book that Krystal simply did not recognise. In truth, she had not had enough time to do a full study of the text, which might have explained her difficulty, but she was not entirely sure about that.
The symbols had the same style and form as the Ancient Draconian symbols commonly used in magic. The language was dead. So far as anyone knew, there were no living dragons who understood more than a few hundred glyphs, and those were only partially known. It was believed that any given glyph could have a number of meanings, somehow differentiated by context, and only the ‘mystic’ meanings had survived down the centuries together with a very basic grammar of sorts which indicated how to put them together into spells. The real grammar and much of the pronunciation had been lost. And, apparently, so had these symbols since Krystal had never seen any of them in any book she had read.
Misfit Witchcraft (Misfits Book 2) Page 19