If I didn’t figure this out, Marguerite would carry out her plan for getting the talisman. Something Casper had said when he tried to get the talisman rang in my head: I had to want the chain to release. At the time, he thought I was holding on to the talisman, but I wasn’t. Unknowingly, I think he had been pretty close to the truth. If it was my father’s magic—sorcerer magic—in the amber stone, then it made sense that I had to want to release it the same way any sorcerer had to consent to their magic being taken.
My talisman was more than an inanimate object to me. The magic inside it was a living thing. Together we had formed an inseparable team. Now the time had come to part, hopefully for just a little while. I thought it all through, trying to communicate to the stone. This was the best option. Just because I was handing it over to Marguerite didn’t mean she’d be able to wield its magic the way I had. She’d control it, but it wouldn’t be the same.
Uncertainty filled me when I needed confidence. If I handed over my talisman, how would I create the portal I needed? Without the stone, I was still a pidge, but the only magic I’d ever performed without the talisman was to call it to me. Without it, I wasn’t whole, literally or figuratively. My mother had stripped my spark of magic and placed it inside the stone. Could I still perform magic without the spark? The amber on my chest warmed. The fundamental difference between mages and sorcerers was that mages had a spark of magic that could activate magical objects and sorcerers had pure magic in their blood. My mother had been able to remove my spark without my consent because it wasn’t the source of my magic. It added to my power when I had it, but it didn’t take my power with it when it left. The magic in my blood would be enough to create a portal. Everything would be all right. I had to believe that, because it was the only way to get my talisman to release.
Once I consciously released my talisman with full knowledge of what I was doing, a clasp appeared and I removed the chain from my neck. Not risking close contact, Marguerite levitated it to her. Seeing the stone sitting on her chest made my stomach churn. Already I felt naked without it’s familiar weight.
“There we go. There’s no need to make this difficult.” Marguerite walked to the pillar and placed her hand in the indentation just as I had. When I’d seen the memory, I’d had the distinct impression that it flew from the pillar into the talisman. If she had known what she was looking for, Marguerite wouldn’t have even needed to touch the pillar. The memory resided in the stone. But given the faraway look in her eyes, I surmised that the pillar triggered the memory to replay.
Once she had the memory, I didn’t know if she’d try to take the sorcerer’s magic again or get angry at the long con needed to achieve her aim. Regardless, I didn’t have much time to create a portal. Focusing all of my energy on the task at hand, I summoned a portal that led into an interrogation room in the Greenhouse. Interrogation rooms were the only spaces inside the Greenhouse that allowed portals for security reasons.
A crackle of light shone between my hands and disappeared. Summoning more magic, I tried again. A miniature portal formed, and through it I could see a Greenhouse interrogation room. It took all my concentration to maintain the portal, and it was only the size of a basketball. Enlarging the portal shouldn’t be difficult. Millhook did it all the time. Magic wasn’t a foreign skill that took great energy and effort to learn. It was part of me, inextricable from who I was. Relaxing, I stopped trying to control the magic and let it flow freely. The portal grew until it stood taller than me.
“No you don’t.” Marguerite yanked me to her with a magical binding and pinned me against the pillar. “You’re more powerful than I thought. But did you really think I’d let you get away?”
Thirty-Two
“Now you know I was telling you the truth. You have to release my friends.” If I could get Millhook, Nicole, and her family out of here, it would make things easier. Without their safety weighing on my mind, I’d have the freedom to take more risks.
Marguerite narrowed her eyes as she leaned over me. “The vow said that you must show me how to take a sorcerer’s magic, and you haven’t done that. You haven’t shown me how to get a sorcerer to willingly give up his magic.”
“Haven’t I, though?” Confusion flitted across Marguerite’s face. I raised my eyebrows as if I were explaining something to a young child. “My father gave up his magic to protect me.”
“That doesn’t help me get this sorcerer’s magic.”
“No, it doesn’t, but that wasn’t part of the vow.”
Marguerite levitated me a foot into the air and slammed me against the pillar hard enough to knock the air out of my chest. “Keeping your friends alive after I release them wasn’t part of the vow either.”
The shield around Millhook, Nicole, and her family disintegrated. Their yells echoed in the cavern. With or without my talisman, I had to fight. Mustering all the strength I had, I pushed against Marguerite’s body. When my hand made contact with her arm, I sent as much ice as I could out of it, freezing her. I maintained contact, continuously pouring more ice onto her body.
“Millhook, take them and run!” I yelled. Nicole’s mom and Danny sprinted from the cave, hesitating at the sight of Alex and Deacon still in their animal forms. The men, noticing their hesitation, shifted and gestured for them to come through.
“Go, go!” Millhook shouted behind them.
Nicole turned back before stepping over the threshold. The look in her eyes said she was terrified and loathed herself for the fear that drove her from the cavern. I hated that she felt that way. Fear was the only rational response. Running was the biological imperative.
Steam poured off of Marguerite’s arm as she generated heat to combat the ice. She shot a stream of fire toward Millhook and Nicole. The heat of it forced me to relinquish my contact with her arm.
“Get out of here, now!” I screamed.
Millhook pushed Nicole outside. Marguerite would have to leave me and the sorcerer if she wanted to pursue them. With those targets gone, she turned her attention squarely on me. I couldn’t let myself get sucked into a fight with her. I had to force her through the portal where I could get help. That was the one and only goal.
The portal stood about ten feet away from Marguerite. I put up an impenetrable shield. It wouldn’t last long, but I needed time to work without dying. Once it came down, Marguerite would waste no time in killing me. With all my energy, I conjured a cyclone. I poured more and more magic into it, feeding it wind until the force of it nearly blew me over.
The shield evaporated. Three curses rained down on me. Reflexively, I turned the cyclone so it would carry me out of harm’s way. With only a second before Marguerite would attack again, I pushed the cyclone toward her. She spun around, caught in the force of the funnel. It reminded me of the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. With another push, I steered the cyclone to the portal.
Only a few more seconds and I’d have her through to the Greenhouse. A foot away from the portal, a rope shot out of the funnel cloud and wrapped around a stalactite. Marguerite pulled herself out of the cyclone and bound herself to the stalactite, giving herself a perfect view of the cavern. I stood exposed and defenseless below her.
A torrent of spells rained down toward me. Without any idea of how to counter, I tried one of my aunt’s tactics against her. Taking a guess at the spell, I shrunk myself to the size of a thimble and cast a speed enchantment on my feet. Before I even realized the shrinking spell had worked, I set off racing around the cavern.
Spells and curses followed me. I couldn’t outrun them forever. Shrinking myself had solved an immediate problem, but I needed to figure out how to use it to get an advantage. A cluster of stalagmites stood several feet away to my left. They’d provide temporary cover while I came up with a plan.
Rock exploded around me as Marguerite blasted the stalagmites I hid behind. A shield protected me from the debris. I shrank smaller, hiding behind the bits of rock that remained from the stalagmites. Marguerite would have
to pulverize them to find me.
If I ran into the portal, would she follow me? Not likely. As much as she wanted to kill me, she wouldn’t be foolish enough to go into the unknown. My only chance was to either force her or trick her into the portal.
The rock hiding me from view burst into fine powder. Without any other option, I dove into a crack in the floor. The rough stone walls scraped the skin from my knees and arms. In my rush, I’d misjudged the size of the crack. I squeezed in and forced my body to shrink even more. I didn’t know how much longer I could maintain this spell. Already my magic rebelled at the confinement in such a small body. At any moment it might force me to return to normal size. When that happened, I had to be positioned to my advantage.
The crack forked and spread out like a web in front of me. At one point, it curved in front of the portal. I ran in that direction. Keeping the portal open this long strained my magic. If it closed, it would take time to make a new one. As much as I wanted to end this with Marguerite, if it came to it, I may need to escape through the portal and get help.
The only thing stopping me was the safety of my friends. They’d escaped the cavern a while ago. With Deacon and Alex at full strength, they would have been able to heal Millhook in this amount of time. If I went through the portal and Marguerite remained, I felt confident that Millhook would port them all to safety.
A blast of magic gouged a hole in the rock wall to my right. I tripped over the debris and barely managed to keep from falling. Marguerite stood above me. In order to find me, she had to physically follow me. I kept running, and Marguerite continued to follow, blasting rock around me as she ran. I threw up a shield and formed a plan. This could work.
The crack curved, giving me a clear view of the cave entrance. Through it stood Millhook, hand healed, looking ready to fight Marguerite by himself. More importantly, the rest of the group stood around him, all touching. They were prepared. If my plan failed and I had to go through the portal alone, they’d port to safety.
I pushed my legs harder, willing them to get me to my destination before my magic forced me to resume normal size. The portal stood only a few feet away, visibly weakening. The crack curved in front of it, and I followed the course, not slowing or tipping my hand. Marguerite followed. When she came to the perfect position, I used my magic to propel me from the crack. Once my feet cleared the walls, I grew to full-size, surprising Marguerite.
With only one chance to make this work, I threw all my physical and magical strength behind pushing her through the portal.
Marguerite’s feet gave way. The world tilted, and we tumbled through the portal.
Thirty-Three
Special illuminator orbs activated inside the interrogation room. They automatically recorded audio and visual. It would only be a matter of time until someone noticed we were here. They’d send help, and I’d be relieved. All I had to do was last until then.
“And where have you brought me? I should have known you wouldn’t face me in an even match,” Marguerite said as she took in the sight of the small room.
“An even match? You have my talisman and two wands that don’t belong to you.”
“And you’re a pidge. Who knows what other underhanded tricks you’re going to play.”
Despite the situation, I laughed. “Tricks? What tricks?”
“You knew all along that I wouldn’t be able to take that sorcerer’s magic.”
As long as I kept her talking, I’d stay alive. It wouldn’t take much longer for a group of agents to burst through the door and provide backup. Every word she spoke in this room would be used as evidence against her. “This is why you were never as powerful as your sister or mother. Meglana knew how to play the long game. You’re too impatient. You want the power without the sacrifice. Meglana knew what it would take to get what she wanted, and she did it.”
“The long game? No one has played a longer game than I have. I had to wait until that witch of a sister of mine died. Meglana may have been smarter, I’ll give you that, but she never understood that all the intelligence in the world can’t get you power. I was the one who climbed to the top of the Directorate. I was the one who was smart enough to let her and everyone else do all the hard work of finding the right spell. And now I’m the only one left standing to benefit from all of it.”
“From what I hear, you’re no longer the Director.”
“It doesn’t matter. Once I’ve collected the magic of a few sorcerers, I’ll be at the head of the Directorate again. I’ll figure out a way to do it that is more efficient than Meglana’s motherhood approach. It’s possible to threaten children without being the one to birth them.”
“And then what? What is it all for?” This question was as much for me as the CCS. I needed to understand how someone related to me could do such horrible things.
“Once I make it known how to take a sorcerer’s magic, we’ll be on equal footing with them. We’ll no longer be second-class citizens.”
“But we’re not, Aunt Marguerite.”
“Really? Why can’t we travel to Earth freely? Why are some forms of magic forbidden to us?”
“That’s for the safety of everyone. You can’t be this foolish and naïve. Once the sorcerers know what you’re capable of, they’ll declare war on mages. They’ll wipe us out.”
“Us? You’re not a mage. You’re more them than you are us. We can defeat them under my leadership.”
She really had gone mad. “And what about the Vortex? The sorcerers are the ones who keep it under control, who keep it from devouring Elustria.”
“We’re more than capable of managing the Vortex if we have their magic.”
“And what if you’re not as good as you think you are? What if the sorcerers win?”
“We’ll go to Earth, make that the new home for mages where we are free to use any magic we see fit. We’ll find the talismans and artifacts left there by our ancestors.”
Any second now CCS agents would storm in and every word of this conversation would be used to convict Marguerite. It had already taken longer than I thought it would. What if the orbs weren’t recording? What if no one knew we were here? If I led Marguerite out of the room, there was a chance she’d get away. For all I knew, the Greenhouse was abandoned. Staying inside the interrogation room had the advantage of cornering her, but that advantage only existed if I had help.
“You’re not as clever as you think,” Marguerite said. Both wands activated. “No help is coming. Or at least, no one is getting inside that door, not for a very long time. It’ll take a well-trained mage quite a while to untangle the enchantments I’ve placed on it. I figured that was your plan. How nice of you to give me this time to properly secure the entrance.”
A cloud formed above me and released fat caustic rain drops. I cast a shield, but not before a few of the drops burned my scalp and arms. My mind blocked out the pain. Survival demanded it.
With a gust of wind, I blew the cloud to Marguerite. She countered, transforming it into a mass of darts and flinging them my way. Before they hit, I turned them into harmless water droplets. While I did that, Marguerite bound my ankles with one wand and my arms with the other, pulling me to the ground. Thick tarry acid formed at both my head and feet, slithering toward me slowly. It burned through my hair and the soles of my shoes. In a minute, it would consume me. My death would be slow and painful.
“This talisman of yours has your father’s magic in it,” Marguerite said as she approached me. “Therefore, it must allow me to make a portal. If you give me the secret of how to do it, I’ll make your death quick.”
“If I’m going to die, I’d rather you be here to face justice for it.”
“Very well, then. Tell me how to create a portal and I’ll let you live.”
The bottom of my right foot burned as the liquid breached a hole in my shoe. The pain overwhelmed me, and I cast a spell to silence my vocal chords so Marguerite wouldn’t get the satisfaction of hearing me scream.
“So
it’s to be a slow and painful death then. Suit yourself. I’ll figure out how to escape on my own.”
She wouldn’t be able to do it. Her spark of magic wouldn’t interact with the talisman in a way that would transfer sorcerer magic to her. My power came from being a pidge. She hadn’t taken that from me.
My blood ran hot, reminding me of the magic there, the magic that I didn’t need a talisman to access. All wasn’t lost until I was good and dead. Every time I had needed my magic, it had been there for me. I continuously discovered new depths of power. My mistake up until this point had been thinking small, like a mage. I’d been so worried about ending up like my mother that I had confined myself by the rules she had to play with. I was my father’s daughter, not my mother’s, and that opened up untold possibilities.
I tapped into magical reserves I didn’t even know I had. If I was going to die anyway, I might as well go down using every last bit of magic I had. Even with newfound power, simply attacking Marguerite wouldn’t work. I had to disarm her. Focusing on the two wands she held, I built up my magical energy as my right ear and foot burned from the acid that continued its relentless crawl toward me. When it felt as if my body could no longer contain the magic, I burst free of the bindings and pulled the wands from her hands.
Surprise delayed her reaction. With two wands to augment my power, it didn’t take much to retrieve my talisman. It practically jumped off her chest when I used my magic and that of the wands to call it to me. With the amber stone back in its rightful place, I flung Marguerite into the wall, knocking the air out of her. Again and again I hit her against the stone, letting my hatred of her control my actions. She put up a shield, but it would be no match for me. The fear in her eyes as I loomed over her confirmed it. I had won. All that remained was the killing blow.
[The Elustria Chronicles: Magic Born 04.0] Magic Hunted Page 15