Ragar looked confused as if he was trying to sort out the analogy. I didn’t blame him, though I did get the gist of it. And it looked like Jason got it too.
“Whoa, like those supernatural kind of shows you see on TV?” he asked.
Auraus looked confused as usual, but I nodded.
“What are you talking about?” interrupted Heather, stopping struggling for a moment. “It is me. Who else could I be?”
But the more Heather spoke, the more I believed Auraus.
“Oh, really, Heather? Then tell me where and when did we meet for the first time?” I asked her.
She didn’t answer and started fighting like a wild cat to get away again. She nearly succeeded until I added my strength to Jason’s and Auraus’. Despite a few kicks and punches along the way, we soon had Heather manacled back on the table where she’d come from. Ragar, perhaps not so surprisingly, hadn’t moved from where he’d stood to either help us or hinder us.
“Let me go! Let me go! I am here now and I am not going anywhere!” Heather screamed, pulling on her bindings.
That tore it for me. I believed beyond the shadow of a doubt that it was Morsca hanging around inside Heather’s body.
“So, you admit it,” I said. “You’re not Heather. So are you who I think you are?”
Auras looked grim. “Who else would it be? It has to be Morsca.”
My jaw dropped, but that was nothing when compared to Ragar’s reaction. He exploded towards the table she was on, claws extended and wild fury in his eyes.
CHAPTER 34
Ragar stopped only when Jason, Auraus and I got between him and her. “MMMorrrrsca!” he roared, trying to reach around us to get at her.
She flinched and tensed until we pushed him physically back a couple of steps. When he was far enough away, she said defiantly, “Yes. I am Morsca.”
“How. Just–how?” I turned and asked Auraus incredulously over the sound of Ragar’s angry howls.
“After the fight with Morsca beneath the keep in the cavern, I told you that things, and people, can be prepared to receive a soul,” she reminded me, shooting a glare at Ragar that reduced the volume of his howls. “My guess is that Bascom had something arranged to hold Morsca’s soul if she died, and that he was ready with a ritual or a spell to prepare a vessel to receive Morsca’s soul afterwards.”
The Wind-rider peered up at the ceiling thoughtfully, and then an ‘a-ha’ kind of look appeared on her face. Auraus looked back at me.
“Did you not say from previous conversations that the picture up there was glowing the last two times you were in this room?” she asked.
Involuntarily I looked up again at the still-dark picture on the ceiling.
“Ye-es?” I said, mystified as to what she was leading up to.
Auraus turned to Morsca. “That was a soul-trapper up there, was it not.”
I noted that Auraus said it as a statement, and not a question. Morsca must have realized it, too, because she shrugged with a certain resignation as she spoke.
“You are correct. Bascom had made preparations long ago to save my soul from ever becoming a ghost or heading to the afterlife should the unthinkable happen to me. He promised me a young, beautiful body if my own could not be restored.”
“But why Heather’s?!” I demanded, breaking in.
Morsca shrugged again and said off-handedly, “I do not know. I did not get a chance to ask him, seeing as you killed him before I became conscious.”
Wow. That was cold, considering he had been her lover. I flinched as my eyes drifted momentarily to the dead, mutilated body still lying between the tables and then up to the ceiling picture. If only I had known about that picture being a soul trapper either of those last two times I was here! I could have somehow smashed it, and then this whole mess wouldn’t have happened.
“I admit that I …,” Morsca’s eyes flickered, and she stopped speaking. In a moment, though, she continued as if she hadn’t stopped, “I admit that I was not expecting the body of a Human. That will have to be rectified in the future when it grows old.”
“There will be no future for you,” growled Ragar. “If Heather is gone, then there is no need to keep her body alive. I will not see it profaned by one such as you.”
Morsca’s borrowed face looked terrified for a moment before she smoothed it into a sneer. “You would not do that to your beloved’s body, would you, my Kitty?”
But the flash of terror I’d seen on her face was out of character for Morsca, and it gave me sneaking suspicion.
“Wait, Ragar! I don’t think Heather is all the way gone just yet!” I said, putting a hand on his arm.
He rounded on me. “First you say Heather isn’t in her body, then you say that it is that filthy Morsca in there instead, and now you are saying that Heather may still be in there too? Which is it?!” he roared at me in frustration.
I shied back, images of what Ragar had just done with Bascom’s body flitting through my mind.
Auraus snapped at the mountain-cat-elf, “Ragar! Get control of yourself! Things are never easy when it comes to full mage magic, and you know it well!”
Ragar dropped his head and looked away from me, muttering, “Sorry.”
“How were you able to take possession of a living body?” I demanded of Morsca.
“How do you know it was still living?” she smirked in reply.
Ragar growled at her, and she subsided. It was Auraus who answered me.
“Souls cannot go into dead housings or they become the un-dead. They do not live again. Perhaps Bascom didn’t know that at first, and when he did, he came after us. Did you not say that Bascom had once said you could be useful to him, and then later called Heather a prize?” she said.
I nodded and made a face, recalling what had happened when Bascom had nearly squeezed the life out of me.
“Perhaps he thought that he could get some advantage for Morsca by using a Human’s body, like maybe a Human’s immunity to magic. But Heather had to have been alive when this transference was done to her, or it would have all been for naught,” Auraus finished.
I shuddered but said, “But the whole process shouldn’t have worked on her in the first place! She’s Human!”
“So are you,” sneered Morsca.
I rounded on her. “She was a Human on whom magic didn’t work. So why did Bascom’s spell succeed?”
Out of the blue, Ragar stopped howling and said intently, “Heather had talked with me about how she wished that magic would work on her. She had taken to heart what you had told her about being careful what she wished for since that was how it began for you. She must have succeeded in allowing herself to believe while we traveled the Sub-realms.”
“Just in time for the magic to be able to work on her for me. How fortunate,” said Morsca gratingly. “And you cannot do anything to me for fear of hurting your precious friend’s body, so you might as well let me off this benighted table.”
“I don’t think so,” I said before that could set Ragar off again. “From the way I just saw you react, I’d bet a million dollars that Heather’s soul is still in there, too!”
Ragar, Jason and Auraus looked sharply at me.
“Whatcha mean, chica?” Jason asked.
Morsca blinked at me, startled, and then said with a supremely confident air, “Even if that were true, there would be nothing you could do about it in any event.”
“What do you mean!” demanded Ragar of me, louder than Jason had.
“Ragar, Jason? Wait here, and watch Morsca. Hey, uh, Auraus? Can I see you outside on the landing for just a second?” I said as I motioned the Wind-rider towards the door.
“What makes you think that Heather’s soul is still there?” Auraus asked once we were out of everybody else’s hearing.
“The look on her face when she was talking. She paused in the middle of talking, and then continued like she hadn’t interrupted herself, and then later looked terrified when Ragar threatened to kill her. That jus
t didn’t feel like Morsca to me. Call it a hunch,” I answered with a big yawn.
“Champions are trusted by their Deities to rely on their hunches,” Auraus said with a smile.
The pep-me-up stuff was wearing off, and I could feel it leaving my system. But I couldn’t go to sleep just yet, so I took another swig of the stuff form the waterskin. Auraus frowned at me again.
“Speaking of deities, can’t we just ask Caelestis what to do? This has to be so far out of the usual kind of happenings that surely she could give us advice?” I said, as much to deflect the Wind-rider as because I wanted the answer to my question.
Auraus shook her golden head. “Asking the Divine for help is something to do when you literally have no other recourse. And even then They do not always respond.”
“But Caelestis has given me information before,” I argued. I told her about the prayer conversation I’d had with our goddess just before Heather had come into my life.
Auraus tapped her fingers on her arm contemplatively. “Hmm. It could have been because you are a Human who worships her, or because you are a Champion, but more likely because of both. But do not expect that to happen except rarely, because the rules of the Divine and of no interference hold sway above any Deity’s desire.”
“How is getting Heather her body back interfering?” I asked. “We’re just trying to put things right.”
“What is right for us may not be right for Them. This had to have been explained to you in the past. Caelestis is not the only goddess of the Divine, and there may be some other god or goddess who is interested in letting Morsca keep Heather’s body.”
“But we need help!” I argued, not willing to give up even though the ‘no interference’ rule had been explained to me when I first entered this world.
She sighed. “And the Divine help those who help themselves. If Bascom was behind this, then there must be notes on how he did it. Or a copy of the ritual or spell itself. Caelestis might be able to nudge us when we are near what we seek, but that would be all, most likely. Anyway, you have told us of the alchemical lab upstairs where there were many books and scrolls,” she finished. “That will be the place to start looking.”
We popped our heads back in to inform Jason and Ragar of our plans.
“No!” shrieked Morsca form her table. “You cannot go up there. You are not allowed! And it is well guarded. You would be killed before you had taken one step across the threshold.”
“Oh?” I raised my eyebrow and looked at Auraus. “Now I know we will find something up there. Apparently Morsca doesn’t know that I have been to this tower twice and was never attacked by any kind of guardian up there.”
Morsca looked absolutely furious, and her incoherent screams followed us as Auraus and I left the room. We went up the stairs to the top level and picked our way over the mess into the alchemical lab. It looked even more chaotic and disturbed than it had last time I’d been here. Clearly Bascom had had a temper tantrum in here—or maybe had been extra sloppy doing something very fast.
“Auraus, will you recognize what we’re looking for?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, that’s going to make things a bit more difficult,” I grumped.
CHAPTER 35
Auraus and I started with Bascom’s desk. Sorting through all the reference materials piled haphazardly on the wooden surface was a pain, but we didn’t dare skip over anything. While we didn’t end up finding a paper that said exactly what the mage had done, all of the scrolls and books we found had references in them to creating soul keepers, vessels, and the possibilities of transfers. That there was no reference to actually putting a soul in a different body concerned Auraus.
“I give up,” the Wind-rider said with a sigh as she shut a particularly large book. “I am going to have to try and undo his mage magic with my clerical magic. As it involves souls, which is generally not a mage province but is a cleric’s concern, I hope that it means I may be successful.”
“Does Caelestis have rituals like that for you in the priestess book you have?” I asked.
Auraus looked shocked. “No, of course not! To interfere with a soul’s destiny is the height of evil! But,” she sighed, back to looking unhappy, “It seems I will have to interfere myself.”
“But you would not be doing evil. You are righting the wrong that was done,” I argued to try and help her feel better about it. “Isn’t that what good guys do?”
“Do two wrongs, in truth, make a right?” she asked sadly.
“Sometimes it does,” I said, though maybe not as firmly as I would have liked.
I knew that two wrongs really didn’t make a right, but I was certain that we weren’t in the wrong, which meant that saying didn’t apply. I was unhappy that Auraus was convinced that she was going to do what she considered evil even though she was doing it from the best of intentions. It didn’t seem wrong to me since all she was doing was getting Heather back and sending Morsca on her way to wherever. But it would be wrong if Morsca was left in Heather’s body if there was even the slightest chance of saving Heather. I became determined to get Auraus to come around to my way of thinking.
The Wind-rider stood up. “I might be able to cobble together an appropriate ritual. I have never had to create a ceremony before, but obviously it has been done in the past since the rituals we have had to have come from somewhere and someone in the beginning.”
“What rituals do you–we–have?” I asked curiously.
“Birthings, namings, matings, ends-of-life, and other ceremonies along those natures,” she said. “Rituals to solemnize and invite the blessings of the Divine into the important parts of life.”
“How will you even start?” I asked, waving vaguely at the piles of books and scrolls.
She sighed again. “I will have to read carefully through all the text that we find here so I can come up with something,” she said. “I do not know what else I can do, so we may be here a long while.”
“Well, at least we have a comfortable place to wait while you are working,” I said. “Unless I can help you somehow?”
She thought a moment. “Surely. You can mark out all the parts that talk about transference.”
“We can get the boys to help too,” I said. “They can read and take notes just as well as we can.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “What if Jason and Ragar cannot read?”
I blinked. “Of course Jason can. And Ragar must be able to, right?”
Then I remembered what Arghen had once said about that little goblin whom he’d wanted to kill and I hadn’t—that Arghen was fairly certain he couldn’t read or write.
“Well, let’s go find out,” I said.
We went downstairs and pulled Ragar and Jason onto the landing outside the doors, and explained to them what needed to be done. Before I could ask, Ragar said that he would be happy to help research and get ‘that lowlife bottomfeeder’ out of Heather’s body, so that answered the question I hadn’t really wanted to ask.
“But what do we do with Heather/Morsca?” Jason asked. “We can’t leave her strapped to the table for however long this research is going to take.”
Ragar said, “Those cages downstairs puts their occupants into a sleep and keeps them asleep without bodily needs until they are pulled out again. That would be the best place for her–them.”
Jason asked without thinking, “How do you know?”
Ragar growled at him, “Because one of them was where I was kept while Bascom was turning me from the Surface-elf I was into what I am now.”
Jason looked away, embarrassed, and muttered, “Sorry, amigo. I forgot about that.”
Between the four of us, we got Heather/Morsca off the table and down the stairs to the cage room. We shoved her kicking and screaming into one of the open cages—and as soon as we shut the door, which automatically locked it, she yawned, collapsed to the bedding like all of the strength had leeched out of her, and was asleep two breaths after that. Tho
ugh it felt weird, Auraus said that we should leave Morsca’s original body on the table since it was perfectly preserved and because it might or might not be needed later. Leaving the room, I yawned again and stumbled into Jason, who put his arms around me. I reached for the pep-me-up stuff, but Auraus stopped me.
“Oh, no, Lise. No more. When you take more and more of the concoction closer and closer together, it means that it is running out of energy to give you. If you really want to help me, then you should sleep,” she said.
“But …,” I said on another yawn.
Jason swung me up into his arms. “But nothing, chica. Beddy-bye time now.”
“Jason, no!” I said, struggling a little, but not too much because I relished the contact between his chest and my body. That made me relax more than I expected, and I was asleep before he’d carried me into Bascom’s suite of rooms.
The next morning, and for a couple of days after that, we worked hard taking lots of notes sitting wherever we could find space in the messy alchemy lab. Ragar took Bascom’s flying carpet, which we found in the alchemical lab, to the valley to get provisions from time to time for us from Dusk. We slept when we were tired in the New York medieval styled loft. The night of the third day, Auraus re-rolled the last scroll.
“That is the last thing we found on Bascom’s desk,” she sighed, running an ink-stained hand through her golden hair. “Now I need to organize all the notes we have taken.”
It took Auraus most of the following day to do that while the rest of us flaked out, resting after the intense mental effort. Jason and I spent some of it with Ragar, to keep him occupied and to not have him obsess over what was happening, but we did take some time for ourselves. We walked around outside in the lavender-colored grass and picked some of the Technicolor wildflowers in the middle of the afternoon.
“Lise?” Jason said, sounding hesitant.
“Yes?” I replied, looking at him breathlessly.
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