Well, good. He’d figured that out. Naturally he had. He was remarkably intelligent, after all. Look how quickly he’d been promoted, at the Temple of Knowledge in Samara. He—
He stopped walking. “I know what you’re doing,” he said aloud. He thought. “Intelligence is like magic. It’s what you do that matters, not what you have.”
That seemed to work. Jinx walked on.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do when he got to Bonesocket. He expected to come up in the dungeon. If he was right, then the mysterious bottle-shaped mass of ghostly ribbons that he’d once seen there was the Bonemaster’s lifeforce . . . and connected in some way to the Path of Ice.
It’s like a wick, Jinx thought, and was suddenly certain of it. The Bonemaster is the wick of ice but that bottle thing, it’s part of the wick too.
Then what was the wick of fire? Besides Jinx, that is? Was there anything that stood atop the Path of Fire and channeled its power?
Of course. The Urwald itself.
The Path of Fire, the lifeforce, was channeled into the Urwald, and the Urwald’s power was channeled into Jinx.
Jinx wondered how he had been chosen to have all this power.
The wicks choose themselves. The words came back to him from somewhere—where? Oh, he remembered now. Neza the elf had said it to Dearth in the forest near Cold Oats Clearing. They’d put a spell on Jinx to make him forget, but he had no trouble remembering now.
So with all this power, he’d go up to Bonesocket, and—what? Bearing in mind that he knew only a handful of spells and the Bonemaster knew, oh, probably hundreds?
I’m going to have to kill him, Jinx thought. If I get there at night, I can kill him in his sleep. I can do it. If I have to. And I do have to. The Bonemaster needs killing.
In fact, there were a lot of people that needed killing, when you thought about it.
The Bonemaster, of course. That went without saying. The Bonemaster had killed so many people that he could make a bridge out of their thighbones, cups out of their skulls, and line a tunnel with the rest of them. The Bonemaster would go on killing people, and had to be killed himself to prevent it. No question.
And the preceptors. They were evil people who controlled all the knowledge in Samara and kept everyone else in ignorance—except for the Temple scholars, whose knowledge fed the preceptors and made them even more powerful. The preceptors deserved to die. And—
Jinx came to another steep, icy slope. He stopped and looked up. His feet were cold, but that was no problem. He’d send fire into them in a minute, when he melted the ice. What was it he’d been thinking about the preceptors? Oh yes, that they should die. They were threatening the Urwald, that was reason enough. Anyone who threatened the Urwald needed to die.
Take King Rufus of Bragwood, for example. Rufus the Ruthless. Rufus had put Reven’s stepmother into a barrel stuck about with nails and rolled her downhill. Rufus would have to go. And that other king, Bluetooth of Keyland. The one who’d murdered Reven’s parents. Obviously he would have to die.
And what about Reven?
Well, there was no question about Reven, really. Reven was invading the Urwald. Reven would have to die. There was no way around it.
The cold had crept up from Jinx’s feet now to his knees. He tried to take a step, but his feet seemed frozen to the path. That was okay. He’d melt himself free in a minute. What was it he’d been thinking about? Right, a plan. A plan for what? Oh, yeah, to get rid of unnecessary people. People that needed killing.
Pretty much everyone that wasn’t an Urwalder, when you got right down to it. Except Sophie, of course. He was fond of Sophie. And Wendell, well, he wouldn’t kill Wendell, of course. Wendell was his best friend. But other than that—
Jinx, get a grip on yourself.
Jinx started, as if he’d been caught in a nightmare. He blinked and looked around. No one there. And his legs were encased in ice, well past his knees. He tried to move and couldn’t. The ice was real.
And the nightmare in his thoughts was real, too.
“Don’t start that with me,” said Jinx, aloud. “You can’t possibly be getting those thoughts from me, because I’ve never wanted to kill anybody, not once in my whole life.” He stopped, and thought. Being completely honest was the only way to overcome the ice. “All right, maybe I did want to kill Siegfried, when he was cutting down trees. But he didn’t die, he just turned into a tree. And if I’ve ever thought we’d all be better off if someone or other was dead, well, sometimes that’s the actual truth, and—”
With a crackling noise, the ice crept a little higher on his legs. It seemed to form out of the air itself, a little mountain of ice with Jinx stuck in the middle.
“So that’s it?” Jinx said. “Wanting someone else’s death . . . oh, of course. The Path of Ice is the root of deathforce power.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t want anybody dead.”
Not even the Bonemaster? he wondered. Of course he wanted— Wait. This was important. His feet were numb, and frostbite was undoubtedly setting in, and he had to get this exactly right.
What he wanted was for the Bonemaster never to have happened in the first place. Or to have grown up differently, never chosen the Path of Ice, never learned deathforce magic.
And since changing the past wasn’t possible, what he wanted was for the Bonemaster to stop killing people. Er, maybe the Bonemaster could, let’s see, take up an interest in something else—gardening, say? Or poetry?
Jinx said all this aloud. “That’s not going to happen,” he added. “And so something else is going to have to happen. But I don’t want him dead.”
He tried to send fire into his boots. But nothing happened. He stayed frozen in place.
“And the rest of them, I don’t want them dead. In fact, I hope they don’t die. That might not be how things work out. We might have to—”
He stopped himself. He had a feeling the words have to were especially dangerous when you were talking to the ice.
“Well, it’s a war, and we didn’t start it—”
The ice crackled upward.
“I’ll do whatever will protect the Urwald,” said Jinx. “But I’ll do it hurting as few people as possible. Because that’s what I choose.”
He tried again to send fire into his boots. This time he felt the sharp, horrible ache of thawing feet. He kicked out and the ice around him cracked. He looked at the slippery slope in front of him, started to melt it, and braced himself for a flood.
The wall of water rushed down, knocking him off his feet. He had to scrabble at the ground to keep from being washed back the way he’d come. He got to his feet—now his clothes were soaking wet. He unbuttoned his pocket to check on the eyeball.
The sphere had gotten bigger. Much bigger. It strained at the edges of his pocket. Jinx took it out. The aviot was stuck into it like a thorn. That looked painful. Jinx plucked out the little gold bird and stuck it in his mouth, as he needed both hands to hold the sphere, which now had two eyeballs in it. A head was forming around them.
Jinx watched in revolted fascination as the head grew a nose, and then a mouth, and then Simon’s twisty brown hair. And then it stopped, while it was a head. There was no more Simon.
“Did you talk to me a minute ago?” said Jinx. “Did you tell me to get a grip?”
The eyes blinked. The mouth worked, trying to speak, Jinx thought, but it was stuck inside this blob of clear jelly.
“Did I make this happen by defeating the ice?” Jinx asked. Then he worried—that sounded conceited, and the ice liked conceit. But it might simply be true, he thought. The Elf Princess had said he’d need to give Simon something of himself. What if—
Gently and carefully, Jinx sent a little bit of lifeforce power into the sphere.
The head grew a neck. Jinx fed it more power, and a chest started to grow downward from the neck. Shoulders appeared, and then arms. The sphere was growing heavy. Jinx set it down on the ground, and fed it more power.<
br />
The whole process was really not something you wanted to watch, and yet Jinx couldn’t look away. In a few minutes Simon, all of him, was struggling, like a snake trying to work free of its old skin.
The gloop fell away.
Simon coughed, clearing his throat. “You’re not the Bonemaster.”
“No, I—”
“You’re . . . you’re the boy. Jinx.” Simon brushed gunk off his face. “Why on earth did I name you that?”
“You didn’t,” said Jinx. “I was already named it when you found me. And now I’ve found you.”
“Hmph.”
Jinx was enormously relieved to hear the hmph. It was a genuine Simon hmph.
And Jinx had seldom been so happy to see anyone in his life. Simon really was one of Jinx’s favorite people. Simon was impatient, disagreeable, and always on Jinx’s side no matter what. You couldn’t ask for more than that.
Jinx could tell from the warm blue cloud around Simon’s head that the wizard was extremely glad to see him too. Jinx thought the least Simon could have done was say he was glad to see Jinx. But that was Simon for you.
Then again, Jinx thought, I suppose that’s me, too.
“Hmph,” said Simon again. “I could use some clothes.”
Jinx fumbled in his pack. “Er, there’s this blanket—”
“Give it here.” Simon grabbed the blanket, wrapped himself in it, and got to his feet.
Jinx started to take his coat off, in case Simon wanted that.
Simon shook his head. “You’re shivering.”
Jinx hadn’t realized he was. “M-my clothes are wet.”
“Dry them off,” said Simon.
“I d-don’t know h—” But fire should do it, right? Very carefully, so as not to set himself alight, Jinx sent fire into his clothes. Just enough. Steam rose from him, and a smell of damp wool, and then he was dry.
Simon frowned. “You’re older. You’ve grown.”
“No I haven’t,” said Jinx. “I don’t.”
This was rather a sore point. Jinx actually did grow, in small increments now and then. But everyone else his age seemed to grow in large leaps, all the time.
“How old are you?” said Simon.
“Fifteen.”
“I thought you were thirteen.”
“I was,” said Jinx patiently. “But now I’m fifteen.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” said Jinx. “Completely sure. I was thirteen and then I was fourteen and now I’m fifteen.”
“Hm. Where are we?” said Simon.
“On the Path of Ice,” said Jinx.
“Nonsense.” Simon looked around him. “What would either of us be doing there?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“It can be as long as it wants, but it won’t explain that,” said Simon. “I don’t see any ice.”
“I’ve just melted some of it. The Bonemaster turned you into a seal—”
“What, you mean one of those creatures that swim about in—”
“No, to seal the paths. To bind the fire to the ice,” said Jinx. “He was draining the Urwald’s power. Drawing it down through you and up into the Path of Ice.”
“What took you so long? Why didn’t you come before?”
“You told me not to come down here at all,” said Jinx.
“Nonsense. When did I say that?”
“Two years ago,” said Jinx. “You appeared to me in this vision, after I broke my arm, and you told me not to come down here.”
“Appeared to you—” Simon narrowed his eyes. “That really happened, then. I was trying to cast a spell, but—” He frowned. “Things faded out. It was just a couple days ago.”
“Nope. Two years.”
Simon swore. “I suppose I should be grateful it wasn’t a hundred. And I told you not to come down here, and for once in your life you decided to do as I said?”
“No,” said Jinx irritably. “I didn’t. I’m here. And if I hadn’t come down here, you’d still be stuck. Nobody else could have rescued you.”
“Right, true,” said Simon. “Thanks.”
“You knew that?” Jinx was surprised.
“Suspected it,” said Simon. “Some sort of nonsense about Listeners and deep roots. Sophie kept going on about it. What about your arm?”
“What?” said Jinx.
“The one you broke.”
“Oh. It’s okay.” Jinx held it up for inspection.
Simon felt it. “It doesn’t hurt?”
“Not really.”
“Hm. All right. And you think we’re on the Path of Ice now?”
“Yeah. The ice talks to you,” said Jinx. “Says, um, kind of horrible things, actually.”
Simon nodded.
“It’s not saying anything now, though,” Jinx added. “You have to talk back to it, and tell it what you really think. Which means you have to kind of, um, figure out what you really think.”
“Yes, yes,” said Simon, making an impatient gesture with the hand that wasn’t clutching the blanket. “I know all that.”
“Did the ice talk to you?” said Jinx. “What did—”
“Would you mind making it warmer in here?”
Jinx sent a little more fire into the rock, warming the floor. “What did the ice—”
“Did you bring anything to eat?”
Jinx brought out the remainder of his bread. It was very stale now. He broke it and gave half to Simon.
Jinx gnawed at it, but couldn’t make a dent.
Neither could Simon. “Hmph.” He handed the bread back to Jinx, and started walking, his bare feet pluffing against the stone floor of the tunnel.
“The Bonemaster must’ve had a spell ready for you,” Jinx said. “When you went to battle him. I bet that elf Neza showed him how. He sent you down to the nadir of all things, to seal together the Paths of Fire and Ice, because, um, he could use you for that because you’ve done deathforce magic. And—”
“So what makes you think we’re still on the Path of Ice?” said Simon. “It’s not saying anything, is it?”
“I told you. I argued with it.”
“You don’t argue with the ice, boy. You change paths.”
“Oh.” Jinx thought about this. “You mean we’re on the Path of Fire now?”
“If that’s what you chose.”
“The fire doesn’t—” Jinx stopped. The fire did speak to him. It had told him to send fire into the walls. And it had told him to get a grip. “I thought you didn’t know anything about the paths.”
“Don’t take that tone with me. I know deathforce and lifeforce,” said Simon.
“But I wanted to be on the Path of Ice,” said Jinx. “Because I wanted to come out in Bonesocket.”
“What?” Simon stopped walking. “Bonesocket? Are you insane?”
Jinx explained.
“Well, I’m not frozen inside a giant slab of ice,” said Simon. “I’m here. And it’s a good thing, too, because I can forbid you to go anywhere near Bonesocket.”
Says who? Jinx thought. He’d spent the last two years not being ordered around by Simon, and as far as he could tell it hadn’t done him any harm.
“Where does this path come out if we don’t go to Bonesocket?” said Simon.
“In the Glass Mountains,” said Jinx.
“And what season is it out there?”
“Winter,” said Jinx.
“Wonderful. We’ll both freeze.”
“Actually, I can get us home pretty quickly,” said Jinx. “But, um, I have to let the trolls eat my arm first.”
“What? Nonsense!”
Jinx explained.
“We’ll fight them,” said Simon. “You can freeze their clothes—”
“They don’t wear a whole lot,” said Jinx.
“Then you can—have you learned to do an illusion yet?”
“No,” said Jinx. “I’m not the sort of person illusions come naturally to.”
“And you’re saying
I am?”
“Actually,” said Jinx, “I’m kind of wondering if—I mean, that is. Um.” He took a deep breath, and risked Simon’s fury. “You can’t do any magic at all, can you?”
The Trolls’ Dinner
Simon stopped walking, and glared down at Jinx.
“What?”
“Well, you didn’t—”
“Who’s the wizard here, you or me?”
“You,” said Jinx. “But you keep telling me to do magic. Um, melt the ice and dry off my clothes and stuff. And—”
“It’s this path thing,” said Simon. “You have some kind of power down here.”
And you don’t have any, Jinx thought, with a sinking feeling. At all. “When we get back to the surface—” he began.
“It just takes time to readjust, that’s all,” said Simon. “You try being stuck underground for two years and see how much magic you can do when you have to regenerate yourself—”
“I gave you the power for that.”
“—and there’s nothing to eat.”
Jinx wished Simon would stop harping on that. He was starting to get hungry too, although he’d eaten most of the loaf and he’d only been down here . . . had only been down here . . .
“Time is different down here,” he said.
“Yes.” Simon seemed relieved the subject had gotten off his magic. He started walking again.
“I don’t know how long it’s been since I came down here.” Jinx felt suddenly panicky.
“Best thing to do is come right on up again, then,” said Simon. “Can you make this path end at my house?”
“I don’t know,” said Jinx. “Probably not, because, um, it doesn’t go there. And um, about your house—”
“What?”
Jinx didn’t know where to start. He thought of Simon’s kitchen. The kitchen was where Simon had ruled, even more than in the south wing. And now the big stone stove had dozens of people huddled on it every night . . . laundry hung among the dried pumpkins and strings of onions . . . the cupboard drawers had been turned into cradles for squalling babies . . . meat was being cooked in Simon’s precious cooking pots. And in all likelihood people were cutting up carrots the wrong way.
Jinx opted for less alarming news. “We’re at war.”
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