There were hundreds of them, darting at his face, biting his ears. Furiously he batted at them, and tried to work his way into the spell, but was distracted by the fact that his purple prison was filling with a nasty, gluey pink liquid that smelled like pickles. It was already up to his waist.
He got out of the lead-foot spell and struggled goopily to his feet, flailing his arms to repel the goldfish. He couldn’t get a grip on the goldfish spell at all. It was partly illusion, and he’d never been able to understand illusions, and. . . .
The temperature inside the purple cube began to drop. It grew colder and colder. Jinx sent fire into the cold, and was still trying to work out what to do about the pink goo when it began to rain spiders.
“What’s going on here? Stop it! All of you.” Simon’s voice rang through the glass. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. We’re at war, and you have nothing better to do than torment a—”
Don’t call me a child, thought Jinx, whacking a goldfish.
“—mere apprentice,” said Simon. “It’s disgusting.”
The goldfishes stopped flying, flopped down into the goo, and dissolved.
“Rats,” said the Carrot.
Jinx looked around hastily in case any had appeared. Nope. The goldfishes had been hers—Jinx could feel the short, carroty print of her magic. He brushed spiders off himself and worked his mind into the pink goo spell, which seemed to have come from the elderly black-robed wizard. Jinx gave the spell a little twist and reversed it.
Simon was still haranguing the wizards. Everyone was shouting at each other, except Dame Glammer, who was merely watching in amusement. The spiders had stopped falling. Jinx looked at the ones scuttling around his feet and decided not to bother with them. The spell he really wanted to undo was the purple prison.
He felt his way into it. It was complicated. It used deathforce, not from a sacrifice, Jinx thought, but from something that was a twist on a sacrifice—perhaps some contact with the ice that had originated in ghast-roots. He touched the wall—it gave a nasty crackle—and pushed fire into it. It began to melt, slowly.
By the time the purple cube was gone, Simon and the wizards had finished yelling.
“We feared for your safety, Simon,” Angstwurm was explaining. “After all, it wouldn’t be the first time an apprentice has—”
“Not my apprentice,” said Simon.
“How did you manage to undo my purple prison, Simon?” said the wizard in the dark brown robes, aggrieved. “No one has ever been able to even touch it.”
“That’s for me to know and you not to know,” said Simon. “Now, are we done playing childish tricks? Because we’re at war—”
“We know that,” said Angstwurm. “We’re not fools. We’ve seen the soldiers.”
“And this is the fifth fire in the last month,” said the black-robed wizard. “Where’ve you been, Simon?”
“Absent,” said the Carrot.
“Who set this fire?” Jinx demanded. He knew fires were sometimes started naturally, by lightning or firebirds. But not at this time of year.
“One of King Rufus the Ruthless’s ruffians,” said Angstwurm, sparing him a glance.
“How do you know?” said Jinx.
Angstwurm smiled a thin little smile. “Your apprentice could stand to listen more and talk less, Simon.”
Jinx gritted his teeth with fury. Dame Glammer gave him a grin that was like a silent cackle.
“How do you know who set it?” Simon repeated levelly.
Angstwurm shrugged. “The fires follow the army. They always start a few hours after the Bragwood army has passed through. I assume they leave someone behind to set them. We’ve been running our legs off, fighting them—”
“Fighting the armies?” said Simon, with a little blup of surprise.
“Fighting the fires, of course. Dame Glammer”—Angstwurm nodded in her direction—“graciously guides us through the new magic Doorways.”
Jinx worried about this. Every Urwalder should know where the Doorways were. That was the point of them. But he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of all these wizards learning KnIP.
“Why aren’t you fighting against the army?” said Simon.
“Well, we’ve talked that over—” said Angstwurm.
“Discussed it at some length,” said the elderly wizard. “Pros and cons.”
“The need to preserve the autonomy of the individual magician,” said Brown Robes.
“Freedom,” said the Carrot.
“The witches, too, have expressed diverse opinions,” said the wizard in black.
“The fact is,” Angstwurm went on, “we’ve more or less reached a conclusion that, while wizards don’t usually mix with unmagical folk—”
“Too much opportunity for exploitation on both sides,” said Brown Robes.
“Mayhem,” said the Carrot.
“It probably is time for us to get involved in what appears to be—” said Angstwurm.
“An external threat to our mutual habitat,” said Brown Robes.
“Invasion,” said the Carrot.
“You mean you’ve decided to join us?” said Jinx.
“Join you?” Angstwurm burbled surprise. “Goodness no. We’ve decided to lead you.”
Oh, yeah?
“We’ll have to have a meeting to decide about that,” said Jinx.
Angstwurm sneered. “A meeting? You and Simon?”
“No, all the people at Simon’s house. They’ll get together and talk about it, and then we’ll all vote.”
“Vote? Is that some kind of spell?”
“This is a waste of time,” Simon snapped. “We can settle all this later. We’re being attacked. And it’s not just the Bragwood king. The king of Keyland has invaded—two kings of Keyland, in fact—”
“Two?” said the Carrot.
“Seems excessive,” said Brown Robes.
“And there’s the Bonemaster,” said Simon. “And we magicians have to be the ones to deal with him.”
“Your old master?” Angstwurm sneered.
“Plan,” said the Carrot.
“Right,” said Brown Robes. “If we’re going to attack the Bonemaster, we need a plan.”
“Got one handy, Simon?” said Angstwurm.
“Attack the Bonemaster?” said the elderly wizard. “Magicians don’t interfere with each other.”
“Didn’t mind interfering with the chipmunk, now, did you, dearie?” said Dame Glammer. “Playing with pink goo at your age!”
Jinx was starting to feel smaller by the minute. People were calling him chipmunk and mere apprentice and all kinds of things.
“Meeting?” the Carrot suggested.
A blue-green wave of consternation rippled through the wizards, and Jinx didn’t blame them. He hated meetings too. Still he was relieved when they all nodded.
“Six o’clock,” said Simon. “My house.”
“Your house, with all those nonmagical people spilling out the windows? I think not,” said Angstwurm.
“Cottage,” said the Carrot, nodding at Dame Glammer.
“True, it’s near one of the Doorways,” said Brown Robes. “If you don’t mind, Dame?”
She grinned.
“Are you going to teach us this new-fangled ‘vote’ spell?” said the black-robed wizard.
“I might,” said Simon.
Jinx and Simon walked back toward Gooseberry Clearing together. Jinx could hear the trees mourning the lives lost in the fire.
“I hate those wizards,” he told Simon.
“Mm-hm.”
“They’re worse than little kids,” said Jinx.
“Well, they’re individualists,” said Simon.
“And that purple prison thing was deathforce magic.”
“No it wasn’t,” said Simon. “There was vestigial deathforce there, but it was at several removes.”
Jinx was surprised. “You can tell that? I thought you’d lost your magic.”
“It doesn’t take magic t
o know what you’re looking at,” said Simon. “Anyway, I haven’t lost it. It’ll be back.”
Jinx had his doubts about this. “Do you think the other wizards noticed?”
“Why would they?”
“Don’t magicians kind of sense—”
“As for Alphonse, I doubt you’ll find any of them that haven’t done some sort of deathforce magic at some point.”
“The Qunthk bottle spell is deathforce,” said Jinx.
“Not really,” said Simon. “Not entirely. I—”
“You used ghast-roots to do it,” said Jinx. “And ghast-roots are made by sacrificing a human to kill a tree.”
“Yes, at some point.” Simon’s thoughts squirmed. “But it may have been done hundreds of years ago, and—”
“The trees don’t like it,” said Jinx. “It’s twisting the Ancient Treaty. And they say the treaty is broken.”
“Never mind that,” said Simon. “What’s your plan for attacking the Bonemaster?”
“My plan?” said Jinx.
“That’s what I asked, yes.”
“You want my plan? So you can go to that meeting and pretend it’s your plan?” Jinx was beginning to feel extremely unappreciated. “I got rid of that flippin’ purple box and those wizards thought you did it! They wouldn’t even listen to me, they treated me like I was some stupid kid and they only listened to you and—”
“That’s not important,” Simon snapped. “What’s important is getting Sophie back.”
“I know that!” said Jinx. “My plan is that I go back down through the paths, come up under Bonesocket like I meant to in the first place, grab that flippin’ bottle of his, and—”
“Hit the Bonemaster over the head with it?” Simon said.
“Well, I can go up into Bonesocket from the dungeon, he won’t be expecting that—”
“You think not? The Bonemaster’s no fool, boy. And—”
“Stop calling me boy!” Jinx yelled. He’d had a difficult day, and it had been more than two months long. He’d dealt with trolls, elves, the nadir of all things, a forest fire, and being harassed by a bunch of stupid wizards. And he’d drunk in so much lifeforce and fire he felt ready to burst with it. “You call me boy all the time! I have a name! And I know that’s not important, but I don’t care!”
“I don’t call you boy,” said Simon.
“You do too! All the time! All the flippin’ time!”
There was a trompling sound of breaking branches, and an enormous ogre burst through the trees. It had gleaming, red-streaked eyes. It opened its snarling mouth and revealed fangs as long as Jinx’s belt knife.
Jinx spared it a look. “Get lost!” he snapped.
The ogre gaped, stuck in mid-snarl. It stared at Jinx, its feelings clearly wounded to the quick. Then it turned and slunk disconsolately away into the forest.
Simon glanced after the ogre, and then back at Jinx. “Fine. Jinx. All right, let’s say you do go up through the paths and grab that bottle, whatever it is. What are all the other magicians doing meanwhile?”
“Attacking Bonesocket,” said Jinx. “Creating a distraction.”
“And what’s happening to Sophie?”
“I don’t know.” Jinx thought. “She’s not like the bottle; she can move. She can come down to me—”
“And how’s she supposed to know to do that? And what will you do then? Take her on the paths?”
“She probably can’t go on the paths,” said Jinx. “I’ve been trying to teach her magic—”
“Sophie? Magic?”
“She’s not much good at it. Elfwyn’s been trying to teach her too. She’s better at KnIP, though. Sophie is, I mean. She and Satya have been practicing it. Or they were.”
“Little Satya? What is she, four?”
Jinx remembered that Satya had known Simon before Jinx had. Simon had been in the Mistletoe Alliance in Samara. “I think she’s sixteen. And—”
“Sixteen? Are you sure?”
“She might be seventeen. But anyway, she’s a traitor.” He told Simon about Satya helping the Bonemaster.
“She’s not a traitor,” said Simon. “She did what someone in the Mistletoe Alliance would do. Knowledge should be free to everyone. How was she to know that the Bonemaster wasn’t the right kind of everyone? I doubt he introduced himself as the Bonemaster, or mentioned having killed hundreds of people.”
“But—”
“The important thing is whether she kept helping him after she found out.”
“She asked Wendell to hide a book for him in a treehouse,” said Jinx.
“But did she know, at the time, who the Bonemaster was?”
“I don’t know,” said Jinx. “I kind of haven’t talked to her since we found out.”
“Because you called her a traitor and chased her out of my house?”
Jinx shrugged. He hadn’t expected to be made to feel guilty about it. “Anyway, that’s not important right—”
“It’s extremely important,” said Simon. “Because we need the Company’s help to find out what the Bonemaster’s mysterious bottle is, before you go grabbing it. Did you find out anything about deathbindings in Samara?”
“Not exactly,” said Jinx.
“We have to find that out, too,” said Simon. “Because it would be nice if we didn’t both drop dead if we do manage to get rid of the Bonemaster. Right, we’ll need to get in touch with the Mistletoe Alliance. And Satya’s probably the quickest way to do that. I’m afraid you’re going to have to apologize to her.”
“What?” Jinx was outraged. “I have to apologize to her?”
“It’s always simplest to apologize, with women,” said Simon. “The important thing is to get her back on our side.”
“Wendell can get her back on our side,” said Jinx. “I’m not apologizing. She gave the Crimson Grimoire to the Bonemaster.”
“She what?” Simon stopped walking.
“He got into Samara and the Mistletoe Alliance gave him copies of all kinds of books because—”
“Because they would.” Simon dispatched the Mistletoe Alliance with a string of swear words. “If he’s got his bony hands on a copy of the Crimson Grimoire, that means he can bottle Sophie’s life.”
Or her death. The thought hung in the air between them.
“But,” said Jinx. “He knows she’s your wife, and he’ll know she’s worth something to him as a hostage, and . . .”
He trailed off. It probably wasn’t reason enough for the Bonemaster not to kill Sophie. “What are we going to do?”
“Hm.” Simon stepped over a beech seedling. “There are obviously a few things we need to figure out.”
“Maybe the wizards will come up with a plan at the meeting tonight,” said Jinx.
“Oh, of course they will,” said Simon. “But we’ll come up with a plan first, and then I’ll do what Sophie does.” There was a little twist of red pain when he mentioned Sophie. “I’ll get them to come up with a plan, and then I’ll nod and listen and nudge the plan around until it’s just like my plan, and then I’ll get them to vote on it.”
Jinx looked at him in surprise. “Sophie’s meetings are kind of like that.”
“They would be,” said Simon, with a touch of pride.
“When we go to the meeting—”
“You’re not going,” said Simon firmly. “They wouldn’t listen to you anyway. You just saw that, back there.”
“But I could listen to them!”
“And keep your mouth shut? I doubt it. And even if you did, they’d sense that you’re sloshing with power,” said Simon. “They may have been too busy harassing you to notice before, but in a nice quiet meeting—”
“You think I’m overbearing, don’t you?” said Jinx.
“You? Overbearing? You’re not overbearing,” said Simon. “I’m just afraid you’ll frighten them all off like you did that poor ogre.”
Jinx said nothing and walked on, fuming. It was bad enough that Wendell, Nick, Hilda, and
Elfwyn could handle difficult discussions better than Jinx could. But when even Simon thought he was more tactful and diplomatic than you were, well, that was just discouraging.
The Melted Sword
Wendell persuaded Satya to come back, and Satya got in touch with the Mistletoe Alliance. She told them Simon needed every Qunthk book they could find. Books began to arrive in the night in the book room of the Samaran house, brought stealthily by shadowy figures who slipped away silently in the dark.
It was difficult to defeat someone who had a bottled lifeforce. In order to fight the Bonemaster, they had to find out exactly what he’d done to preserve his life, and how they could undo it. And there were the deathbindings, too—people who would die if the Bonemaster was killed. Those would need to be undone. These were Qunthk spells, and somewhere in all these books must be the answer to how to undo them.
Jinx hadn’t found these books when he’s searched the Temple library; members of the Mistletoe Alliance had hidden them. So much for knowledge being free to everyone, Jinx thought. But no, to be fair, he hadn’t asked Satya for Qunthk books during his brief time at the Temple. He’d just asked for the Eldritch Tome, and she’d brought him that.
A committee formed to study the books and the Eldritch Tome. It met in the front room of Simon’s house in Samara, all day and sometimes late into the night. Mainly it consisted of Jinx, Simon, Satya, and Malthus. The people in Simon’s house got very nervous each time the werewolf passed through the kitchen.
Satya was rather cold to Jinx.
Jinx wasn’t much help on the committee. He could read Qunthk better than Malthus and Satya could. But the books were written intentionally to confuse, and Jinx got more confused than anyone. Besides, he hated sitting still for hours on end to study.
Simon took charge of organizing the Urwish army. He divided it into sections, with each section under a leader. Jinx was surprised and offended that one of the leaders was Cottawilda.
“People listen to her,” said Simon with a shrug. “And she’s experienced in battle.”
“She’s evil,” said Jinx.
“That’s really beside the point,” said Simon. “If anything, it may help.”
Jinx's Fire Page 17