Magic, Madness, and Mischief

by Kelly McCullough

  We’d left Dave out of it this time since he was home with strep throat, and getting the hatch open had almost been more than I could manage. But even if Dave had been available, I’d have been reluctant to include him. Oscar was so much more powerful now that he had actually become the Winter King. Bad enough risking my own neck without putting my best friend’s in the noose beside me.

  Minutes ticked past with no sign of anything that might hold the missing Vulcan regalia. Sparx hopped down to join me as I finished up under the big model table and crawled out into the open.

  “What next?” I glanced around the room. Between the tables and the various cabinets, there were a lot of places where you could hide things.

  “Let me look for signs of magic. I was too busy holding the Darkness at bay last time to do that properly, but the warding circle seems to have it covered this time.”

  “I’ll go poke around in the utility closet.”

  The only interior wall in the basement blocked off an area beside the stairs where the furnace and water heater lived. It was a biggish space, but searching it turned up nothing except dust and disappointed spiders, so I soon came out and started opening cabinets. Mostly what I found were the tools of Oscar’s trade. That included various sorts of refills for the big 3-D printer he used to make parts for the models, tons of older-model pieces ready for reuse, and a fair pile of things like X-Acto knives, paints and paintbrushes, and sanding blocks.

  While Sparx sniffed around for magic, I slowly worked my way toward the desk where Oscar’s computer sat beneath an enormous wall-mounted LCD TV he used as a monitor. Next to that was an old-fashioned drafting board that I’d never seen him use. I’d just opened a big steel cabinet full of surveying gear when Sparx rejoined me.

  “Try that one.”

  He pointed at the next cabinet in line. The first thing I noticed was a shelf at about waist level that was covered with an array of stone knives that made me think of every story I’d ever read about ritual sacrifices. Looking at them gave me a feeling in my middle like I’d swallowed a gallon of live worms, so I shifted my gaze upward. The next shelf held dowsing rods and wands. The one above that was covered with crystals and geodes and slices of polished rock.

  Sparx let out a low whistle then, and I bent to see what he was looking at. The bottom of the cabinet held dozens of roughly carved stone figures. I didn’t recognize many of the forms, but right out front were several of the badgerlike delvers. Though they looked crude, the carvings conveyed an incredible sense of vitality and presence, like they might spring to life at any moment. My guts did the crawling thing again and I found myself backing away from the figures without any conscious intent.

  Sparx hopped to the left and pushed one side of the cabinet shut. “Get the other door. What we’re looking for isn’t here, and there are things in there it would be better not to wake.”

  The cabinet next closest to the desk was set up like a wardrobe. It held robes and cowls in a variety of colors above and matching boots below. Sparx had me pull out one of the boots to check the sole, and I was surprised to find the bottom of the boot was literally made of stone—a red granite that matched the shade of the leather. I was almost disappointed to find nothing but office supplies in the cabinet after that—the one closest to the desk.

  “Have you spotted any more magic?” I asked Sparx. “Besides those two cabinets, I mean?”

  “There’s low-level stuff in most of the models, but I don’t think it’s what we’re looking for. It feels wrong for that. Let’s try the desk.” An easy bound landed him beside the computer.

  The desk was huge and ultra modern, with chromed supports and a massive granite desktop. It was almost more a table than a desk, and I couldn’t see anyplace to hide something as big as a Vulcan’s helmet, but there was literally nowhere else left and Sparx was the expert. So, I settled into Oscar’s chair and pulled myself in close. Then I reached for one of the drawers. Or, rather, I tried to reach for it, but I couldn’t move my hand from where I’d grabbed the edge of the granite. In fact, I couldn’t move either hand.

  “Sparx!” I yelped. But he didn’t respond, and I realized that he hadn’t moved or spoken at all since he’d landed on the granite surface.

  Even as that thought crossed my mind, I felt a terrible cold seeping out of the stone and into my fingers, like I’d grabbed a block of ice. The cold moved from my hands into my wrists and started working its way up my arms, seeming to go faster as it climbed toward my heart. I tried to yell again, but my mouth wouldn’t obey me this time. I felt ice in my feet and calves then as well and looked down, though bending my neck seemed an almost impossible task. I’d never noticed it before, but the floor under the translucent plastic chair mat was made of the same icy-gray granite as the desk itself, rather than concrete.

  The chair mat seemed to flow away like water as my feet slid through to the stone floor beneath. A moment after that, they began to actually sink into the granite, and I was slowly pulled off my chair and down into the floor. Looking up at Sparx, I saw the hare was also sinking. He was up to his midriff in the desk, though I couldn’t see from where I was if the rest of him was hanging out the bottom or what. I could feel another scream growing within me, but the terrible cold reached my chest in that moment and froze the sound in my lungs. Then the ice was climbing my neck. When it touched my jaw, everything went away.

  * * *

  Fire ran through the endless night and I ran through the fire. I was in a dark place deep beneath the earth—a cavern of some sort. Despite the brightness of the flames I could see only an occasional glint of reflected light from the stone of the walls and ceiling. It was as though the darkness were a living thing that drank the light before it could travel more than a few inches.

  That darkness felt ancient and angry and terribly heavy all at once, like an animate force that wanted desperately to crush me. But the fire that held me also held back the darkness. I sensed the dark like it was some great fist trying to close on an ember. The will was there, but the flesh could not bear the pain of burning long enough to snuff out the light within.

  “Where am I?”

  “We are in the place between.” The answering voice belonged to Sparx and seemed to come from all around me.

  “Between what?”

  “Exactly!” He said it in what I had come to think of as his sarcastic teacher voice, and it made me want to growl at him.

  Before I could formulate a more coherent reply, the darkness went away, taking the fire with it. Leaving me … where? The cold that had taken me earlier still pervaded my body, though it seemed to be sinking toward … my back? Orientation returned. I was lying flat on my back on what felt like a rough slab of rock. More rock was above me, little more than a few arm’s lengths away, and there was dim gray light coming from the stone itself … no, from a tiny forest of upside-down mushrooms clinging there.

  I tried to turn my head. It took enormous effort, but I finally managed to tilt it to the right and…! If I’d had the power to move, I’d have rolled backward off the rock I lay on then. For Oscar was there. He sat on a massive stone chair, his elbow on its arm, his chin on his fist, anger on his face, and the Corona Borealis on his brow. He wore robes styled like those we had found in his cabinet. These were the yellow gold of freshly exposed sandstone.

  “What am I to do with you, Kalvan?”

  “Huh?” It was the wittiest thing I could think of in the moment—sue me.

  “You pose a very difficult problem for me.” He rose from the chair and came to stand and stare at me, his face as hard and cold as the stone around us—he had never looked less human. “I put as strong an influence on you Halloween night as ever I’ve spun, but it broke within a few hours. I felt it crack and fall away like a distant landslide. That should not have happened.”

  “Our boy is full of surprises.” The voice came from somewhere down by my waist, and I realized then that I had a warm weight resting against my right hip.


  “Sparx?” I croaked.

  “I’m all right.” He didn’t sound it. He sounded frightened and angry. “The Winter King and I have been having a little chat while we waited for you to wake up.”

  Oscar spoke again. “Ever since Halloween I’ve been trying to sort out how you broke my spell. The influence I placed on you that night was tailored to fire, and not just any fire, but to the fires of ash and oak, the ancient flames of your house. You shouldn’t have been able to break it at all, much less so quickly.

  “Not while I wore the Crown of the North fresh and renewed from the fallow time.” Oscar touched a finger to the white stone at the center of the Corona Borealis. “But you shook it off. That one and three more since. When I first found the hare trapped with you in my studio, I thought that perhaps he was the author of your resistance to my spellwork. But the experiments I’ve conducted over the past hour have dispelled the notion. There is something deep in your heart that resists the weight of stone as no flame should.”

  “Maybe you’re just not all that and a side of fries?” I asked, and heard Sparx’s sudden indrawn breath.

  Oscar hissed sharply, like an angry snake. “No, the fault isn’t mine. The fault lies here.” A long stone knife seemed to simply appear in his hand, and he pressed its point into the flesh above my heart, which froze in response. “Should I dig out the answer?”

  That’s it, then, I thought with a strange sense of calm. Last stop for the Kalvan Express.

  But then Oscar withdrew the knife and made it vanish as mysteriously as it had appeared. “If only it were so simple. No, Kalvan; two things keep you alive for the moment. The first and far more important issue is your mother. The bond of blood between you is reinforced by the bond of fire. If you die, she will know it in the same instant, and she is far too fragile to survive the experience in any shape that is useful to me.”

  “What is she to you?” I asked.

  Oscar laughed. “Genevieve is my Summer Queen, obviously. You’ve known about the Crown for some time. You and your familiar were messing about with it back in October, though you covered your tracks well enough that I didn’t figure out what had happened until my subtler trap caught you today.”

  I saw it then. “You pass the Crown to her when winter ends, and then force her to pass it back to you in an endless loop!”

  He nodded. “For now. I’m close to finding a better way, but at the moment breaking her would inconvenience me. Which is the first reason I don’t want to kill you. Fortunately, once I’ve cracked the second reason I won’t need to end you.”

  “What’s the second reason?” I asked.

  Sparx sniffed, and I could imagine him rolling his eyes. “He wants to find out how you broke his influence so he can lay a better one on you and trap you the same way he has trapped your mother, of course. You would become his backup plan.”

  Oscar flicked his gaze toward the hare, and the knife was in his hand again. “You would do best to remember that neither of those reasons prevents me from killing you.”

  I tried to reach up and knock the knife aside, but found I still couldn’t move, though the cold had mostly faded. “Leave him alone!”

  The knife vanished. “I will, but only because killing the familiar can have very unpredictable effects on the master. But you, my boy, would do well to remember that your pet is a spirit of fire, with all its endless variety and vitality, and that means there is a very great deal I can do to him short of death. Cooperate, and he will be spared a theater of pain.”

  “Anything!” I felt sweat break out on my brow and slide down my temple—I didn’t dare let Oscar know Sparx wasn’t really my familiar. Not in the normal sense of the word. That would be the same as signing my friend’s death warrant.

  “I wish I could believe you mean that for the long term,” said Oscar. “It would solve a number of problems. But we both know you’ll be scheming to break your word the second I’m not watching you. Threats to the hare merely buy me temporary leverage while I sort out the bigger issues of your resistance to the power of stone. So, I’m going to have to tuck you away for a bit while I get that figured out.”

  “Tuck me away? Don’t you think Mom’s going to notice if I simply vanish?”

  “As long as you’re not dead and I give her a good story, my influence should hold there. Your mother has a wild strength of fire, but it has devoured her from within. She has no control and little enough true magic left at this point. No, she won’t even worry about you. Not when she remembers that you went on the annual Free School J-term trip to Washington, DC.”

  “But J-term’s over, and I was doing the play anyway, like I always do.”

  “If you really think your mother is connected enough to the world to know that, you’re more foolish than I imagined.”

  I was still trying to think of some response when Oscar cupped the hand that had held the knife and I saw one of the stone figurines from the cabinet nestled there—a delver. “Cetius! Come to me. I have need of you!”

  Setting the figurine on the slab beside me, Oscar turned away and began to pace, his stone boot soles clicking against the rock of the floor as he slowly circled me. I had time to wonder where I was, but no way of sorting it out. Still, there might be other things I could learn.

  “You destroyed my great-grandfather’s Vulcan regalia, didn’t you?” It sure hadn’t been in the basement.

  Oscar turned his all-too-familiar disappointed-stepfather gaze on me. “That’s the most transparent ploy I’ve heard in a long time. You’re a very smart boy, if troublesome. I expect better of you.”

  “We both know you’d see through it even if I tried something much smarter than that, so why bother to play it clever?” I felt a weak heat at the back of my throat, barely more than a glow, but there nonetheless. “Either you’re going to tell me where the Vulcan stuff is or you’re not, so the rest is wasted effort. Yes?”

  Oscar snorted. “Better. Truth with a side of sneering, and just the thinnest layer of wheedling. You’re right, I’m not going to tell you where it is no matter how you ask. It’s funny, really; you were so very close to it and at the very same time impossibly far.” He laughed. “Not that knowing the location would do you any good. It’s too well protected.”

  So, it did still exist! That was half of what I’d wanted to find out, and an enormous relief. I didn’t think the Rusalka would have sent me after something that had already been destroyed, but the possibility had weighed on me more and more as we searched for the gear without finding it. Also, I knew now that it was someplace Oscar thought I couldn’t get to. So, probably not under the house.

  Before I could speculate further or pry any more information out of Oscar, a deep grinding sound came from somewhere down beyond my feet. With a supreme effort of will I raised my head. In the dim light I could just make out a place where the dark wall became even darker, suggesting the entrance of a cave. A moment later a low and hulking shape appeared from the darkness.

  “Wotcher need, Majesty?” The voice was deep and growly.

  “Ah, Lud d’Raven, I’m so glad you could oblige me.”

  “Cetius will do well enough without the ludships, Majesty. We’re not so long on formalities underhill, as you well know.”

  Oscar nodded. “And you’ve no need to Majesty me simply because I wear a Crown for one winter.”

  The figure moved forward into the light and I got my first good look at a delver in the flesh. He was furred and colored like the badger he so resembled, but no badger had ever been half that big. Cetius was about four and a half feet tall and three feet wide, with no neck to speak of. Unlike a normal badger, his hips were set more like a man’s and his arms were longer, ending in stubby but serviceable hands.

  He snorted now. “Five winters and counting, Oz. I think that’s enough to buy the occasional Majesty from one who has served you for many years.”

  “Never served, Cetius. Say rather that you are my most valued ally since boyhood and we’ll be
more honest about it.”

  The delver nodded and his expression became less grim. “Well enough.” He waved a hand-paw dismissively.

  The whole exchange had more of the sound of a well-rehearsed play than any normal conversation, and I wondered how many times they’d gone over this and why it needed repeating. Something to talk to Sparx about later, if we had a later.

  “What do you need?” asked Cetius.

  “You recognize the boy, of course.” Oscar indicated me with a nod.

  “Your stepson, the one what broke that influence. Yes?” Cetius tromped over and glared at me, his head barely topping the slab on which I lay. “Doesn’t look like such as should be so much trouble. Not even with the k*tsathsha helping him.” The firetongue word sounded wrong coming from the delver’s mouth, hard and cold where it should have been hot and crackling.

  “There’s more to him than can be seen on first looking,” replied Oscar. “Or even in second sight. I’ve tried several spells over the last hour, and none of them showed what I need. He has a hard core that resists a weight of earth like no fire should.”

  “Interesting.” Cetius cocked his head to one side. “You want we should take him apart and see what his heart looks like?”

  “Much as I’d like to do it the easy way, no. For his mother’s sake I want him intact but immobilized, at least until I know for certain whether he can be turned to good use or not. I would prefer to own him heart and soul, but if I can’t have that I’ll destroy him. We might be able to make a golem from his bones.”

  The delver snorted. “They’s powerful unreliable.”

  Oscar shrugged. “It wouldn’t fool a normal mind for long, but with the influence I already have over my pretty Genevieve I might be able to make it serve for a few years. We should know the truth of the thing within days, I would think.”

  “Good enough.” Cetius pointed at Sparx. “What about the k*tsathsha? There’s fine eating on ’em and they’re devilishly hard to bind short of death.”