by Becket
CRASH!
The two other vampires plowed straight into her and all three went tumbling along the floor. Key was not hurt badly, and was back on her feet in an instant. Then she saw the two others she’d collided with, and to her dismay, she knew them.
Raithe and Crudgel.
Raithe was the frail, pale vampire girl with thin lips, a pointed nose, short blonde hair, and dark rings around her eyes, who had called Key a “troll” exactly two hundred and fifty years ago – a wretched nickname that had stuck ever since. By all outward appearances, Raithe seemed only a few years older than Key, but for all she knew, Raithe could have been centuries older. Regardless of this, there had never seemed a more scheming, crueler, heartless vampire than Raithe – aside from Old Queen Crinkle, that is.
Crudgel was more like Raithe’s pet than her friend. Looking a little older than her, he was tall and thick, with long black hair and a ring in his nose like a bull. To Key he smelled like a bull, too, for he seemed to know as much about bathtubs as he knew about geometry or knitting.
He got to his feet quickly, but Raithe stayed on the ground, moaning, trying to tell Crudgel how she must have been run over by the Barely Dead Beast of Blackpool. She was just explaining how she could have easily leaped out of its way but chose to take the hit for his sake, when she happened to notice that he wasn’t paying any attention to her. Instead he was staring at Key in puzzlement.
“Aren’t you listening to me?” she demanded. “I saved your —” she had started to say, but stopped and followed his gaze.
For a moment or two, Raithe and Crudgel gaped at Key, as if she were a ghost servant who had just materialized. They appeared to be pondering all sorts of punishments they could lawfully (and perhaps unlawfully) inflict upon her, but then they realized that she wasn’t a ghost. Was she a goblin? No. An ogre? No. A troll? Maybe. They had no idea who or what she was. Then, slowly, a look of recollection spread across Raithe’s face, which melted almost that same instant into a look of unhidden disgust. Her eyes narrowed into a menacing glare as she pointed her thin finger at Key.
“Who let you out of the dungeon, Troll,” she growled.
Tudwal growled back at her in response. Oh, if only there had been a half-moon that night, he would have promptly transformed into a twelve-foot tall wolf monster and bitten her into tomorrow. But even as a puppy, his growl did sound threatening enough to make Raithe crawl backwards and hide behind Crudgel – and by the speed with which she moved, you might have thought Warhag had just crossed the hallway.
Raithe started shoving Crudgel from behind, cajoling him, insisting that only real vampires hit puppies.
Tudwal snarled at him upon hearing this.
As Crudgel was only slightly more afraid of Raithe than he was of Tudwal, he started timidly creeping towards the immortal puppy. Fortunately for him, he could breathe a sigh of relief when Miss Broomble stepped between them.
Being much taller than both Raithe and Crudgel, the witch had no fear of either. Key had known her friend for almost a century, and she had an idea that she was indeed brave, but she had not seen her fearlessness in action until now.
“Key is with me,” Miss Broomble said through her half-mask, boldly staring down Raithe and Crudgel.
They blinked in some confusion. Then they glanced at one another with questioning expressions, mouthing, “Key who?”
Miss Broomble gave them a withering look as she gestured towards Key. “She’s the one you refer to as a troll,” she said, not bothering to hide the irritation in her voice.
“Oh right,” said Raithe and Crudgel together, trying to be uncommonly polite, even though Key could tell they still didn’t remember her name.
“Besides,” said Miss Broomble, “I think you’ve got bigger problems. A Cybernetic Cyclops is attacking your castle.”
“Silas?” asked Raithe, now in an incredulous tone.
As if on cue, another shudder suddenly rocked the castle. It sounded farther in the distance, but no less threatening. Silas had moved his attack to another part of the castle.
“Your home might not last long against him,” Miss Broomble remarked. “If all you Keepers of the Dead – including you two Deadlings – don’t defend it, there might not be much of a resting place for you before the end of this night.”
“But,” Crudgel complained, “Galfridus said we could stay in and play Pundicle.”
“Hush,” hissed Raithe as she glared at Miss Broomble. “How do you know it’s Silas?”
“I’ve seen him,” said Key, which was half-true. When Silas had knocked a hole in the dungeon, she had seen only his giant legs. One was flesh and bone; the other was made of moving parts like wheels and gears and a locomotive engine.
“That Old Queen stole my plan to take over the Necropolis,” gasped Raithe in disbelief, turning to Crudgel with a horrified look. “Did you tell her?”
His eyes went wide with fear and he started fidgeting. “Well,” he muttered nervously, “it might have slipped out a few nights ago, when I had too much strawberry blood nectar. Sorry.”
Raithe looked so angry her white face turned as red as a blister. “When this is all over,” she hissed at him, “I’m going to turn you into a —”
But he never got to hear whether she might turn him into a newt or a rhinoceros (which she’d done on a few occasions, usually at potion parties), for right at that moment, several large explosions thundering in the distance were so powerful that the whole castle shook.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!!!
“Oh no!” yipped Crudgel in alarm. “The kitchen is being attacked. All those delicious blood foods are being wasted!”
“Do you only think of your stomach?” Raithe criticized.
But he didn’t seem to hear her as he was hurriedly lumbering off down the hall.
“Perhaps,” suggested Miss Broomble, smirking at the frail, pale vampire girl, “you might consider enlisting the aid of the Toags, or maybe even begging some assistance from Warhag – if she’s feeling merciful and doesn’t eat you first.”
Raithe then faced Miss Broomble and Key. Anger blazed in her eyes as she focused all her outrage on them. “I don’t care if a giant destroys the whole castle. Don’t think you’ll get away with letting the troll out of the dungeon. Just because you are a witch doesn’t mean you’re the only one who can use magic.”
Raithe then held out her hand, cleared her throat, and recited, “Fire, fire, burning ire, fry my foes within your pyre.” A purple flame appeared on the palm of her hand and she started to throw it at Key.
Now, Miss Broomble was a very skilled witch – “the best there is,” Mr. Fuddlebee used to say – and in her long lifetime, she had been in many Magical Duels with many Mystical Creatures much more skilled with incantations than Raithe. So it was with little effort that the witch now waved her hand at Raithe’s small magic fire and incanted, “Sana me DIOS.”
The purple flame in Raithe’s hand vanished in a puff of smoke. Her eyes went wide with surprise and sudden pain. She grabbed her wrist in shock and she fell to her knees. But this only seemed to kindle her anger even more. With a burst of hate she spat out another strike of magic.
“Wind of power, wind of might, blow away my foes this very night.”
Hardly before she’d finished speaking, Miss Broomble started to intone the first few words of another incantation, but she was cut short, too, when Key stepped forward.
Keeping eye contact with Raithe, pointing past her shoulder, Key incanted in a powerful voice: “DIOS ut liberes me.”
As if lifted up and carried by a forceful wind that Key could not feel, Raithe was suddenly hurtled far down the long hallway like a tumbleweed. The blast sent her so far off into the distant darkness that Key lost complete sight of her.
— CHAPTER THREE —
The Dimensionally Intelligent Operating System
Tudwal began chasing after Raithe, thinking that it was time to play fetch, but Key called him back. He whimpered and hung hi
s head dejectedly, evidently quite upset that he could not bring the frail vampire girl back like a stick.
“The decimation of the castle isn’t playtime,” Miss Broomble said to him as she fixed her eyes on Key with a look of astonishment. “Where did you learn magic?”
“That’s the only incantation I know,” Key confessed. “I read about it in Wanda Wickery’s History of the Necropolis, the little book Mr. Fuddlebee gave me long ago. It was lost when the dungeon flooded, or else I’d show you where I found that incantation. It had been in the part about Modwenna, the first witch buried in the Necropolis, though I think it was called the ‘Catacombs’ then.”
“Modwenna used to love that incantation,” Miss Broomble reflected in a distant voice, as if recalling a long forgotten memory of that ancient witch.
“Modwenna.” Key recalled the name. She’d always thought it had a lovely sound. But it also seemed as if Miss Broomble were quite familiar with it, too.
“Did you know the first witch?”
“I’m not that old,” chuckled Miss Broomble, although her amusement was fleeting. The next moment she became rather somber. “I’ve read Wanda Wickery’s book several times. I don’t recall that incantation being in her story.” Miss Broomble considered this very briefly right before another explosion shook the castle again. Taking Key’s hand, the witch began leading her away from the dungeon door, towards the less perilous parts of the castle.
Yet even though there were fewer dangers along Miss Broomble’s route, it was still quite deadly, and once or twice Key almost lost a finger or an arm, and Tudwal a leg. There were the usual Red Rodents and Shadow Spiders that Key had encountered in the dungeon. But there were also deadly tricks of the light and poisonous whispers in the dark. Cursed stones would fling themselves at Key’s head. Hexed torch sconces in the shape of claws would snatch at Miss Broomble’s neck. Living shadows leered at Tudwal and salivated with hunger.
While they hurried, Key thought back on how she had read the words, how they had danced off the page in shapes of sparkling dust, and how they had swirled around her like snow in a globe, forming images of the very things she read about. Yes, indeed, Key had seen that incantation written perhaps not in the book, but most definitely in the shimmering words.
“I’m not lying,” she insisted. “The incantation was in the book.”
“I believe you,” Miss Broomble reassured her as she purposefully smashed a magic mirror, wherein her reflection was inviting her to have a sit down with arsenic tea. “Sometimes books show readers different things.”
“How can that be?” asked Key as she dodged a pendulum that had come swinging down out of the ceiling.
“Sometimes all the words on a page are too much for one reader to take in during one reading. At those times, readers see what they want to read, instead of every topic, every double meaning, every simple statement or question on the page. Then one must read a book more than once to see the same words, as though for the very first time. Mr. Fuddlebee once put it to me, ‘Often, my dear Miss Broomble, we read what we need to see while seldom do we see what we need to read.’ Perhaps you wanted to read that incantation at the time. Perhaps I didn’t when I read it. And perhaps we both needed to see it at work now.”
“Books can be peculiar,” remarked Key in a thoughtful tone.
“Readers can be particular. The words some people read are not always the same words read by others.”
“Words change on the page?”
“Words are like food. They are ingested and digested. And then they change each of us in different ways, sometimes wonderfully, sometimes woefully. But about that incantation, perhaps it was magical. Perhaps it only appears when a reader most needs to see it.”
Miss Broomble and Key both had to hopscotch over a group of mechanical mini-goblins who were trying to bite their ankles.
“Did I recite the incantation poorly?” asked Key.
Miss Broomble smiled kindly at her as a mini-goblin latched its teeth onto her boot. “You incanted it as perfectly as I could have,” she said, kicking off the vile little monster. “Have you been practicing?”
“I used to practice it,” admitted Key, “but it never worked until now. I just thought it was because vampires couldn’t use magic. I don’t understand why the incantation worked now.”
“DIOS,” was all Miss Broomble said.
Key found this remark rather mysterious. She remembered what Miss Broomble had already told her about DIOS. It spells out D-I-O-S, and it stands for Dimensionally Intelligent Operating System. Yet she could not help but wonder aloud, “What does DIOS have to do with magic?”
“All Mystical Creatures can use magic. Some more than others. And DIOS works with us all, no matter what we are.”
“Are witches better with magic than most?”
“It depends on how much they trust DIOS. I’ve known some witches whose magic is about as potent as a Sepulcher Slug.”
“Does DIOS affect all magic?”
“DIOS effects everything, I believe.”
Key did not understand.
“Sometimes using magic is not about knowing how it works,” Miss Broomble told her. “It’s all about trusting a feeling that magic does work. Instinct, you could say. Look at what you just did. You incanted words. You did not know if the words would do anything, yet you trusted a feeling you had that something magical would happen.”
“That spell surprised me,” admitted Key, looking back in the direction where her incantation had flung Raithe far down the long hall, which was now filled with a horde of Grouchy Garden Gnomes, chasing after them, calling out, “Oi! Get back here and I’ll plant my foot up your —” Key didn’t want to hear the rest.
“Magic often surprises me too,” Miss Broomble continued saying.
Key looked quizzically at the witch. “How can you use something that seems so…”
“Mercurial?” said Miss Broomble with a smirk.
Key had no idea what mercurial meant, but it sounded like a nice, grand word to say, and she practiced saying it to herself.
Seeing this, Miss Broomble explained that the Insanely Bouncy Sprites of San Francisco were said to be mercurial. “Magic can indeed seem like that, always bouncing back and forth without any clear plan. But the opposite is closer to the truth, as long as you trust that DIOS always knows best what you need most. If some magic does not seem to work, then perhaps it’s not the one speaking the incantation. Perhaps DIOS knows that the magic of another method would work better, and is allowing that to happen instead.”
“I don’t understand,” Key said with some exasperation, partly because she didn’t know the answer to her next question, but mostly because a Sort of Dead Octopus reached its rotten tentacle up from a hole in the floor to trip her. “What is a Dimensionally Intelligent Operating System?” she asked.
“No one really knows,” Miss Broomble admitted, helping Key back to her feet. “We can computize all we like, but the more we discover about DIOS, the more we see that her mystery is more endless than the cosmos.”
“Then why should we trust it?”
“Her,” Miss Broomble corrected. “We call DIOS a her.”
“But DIOS isn’t a her, or a him.”
“No more than I am a Mausoleum Mouse. But we’ve always called DIOS a her, so we continue to do so. And in her we trust.”
“Why should I trust her?”
“You have to decide that for yourself.”
Right then another explosion shook the castle again. Silas was still attacking.
“Come on,” said Miss Broomble. “We must hurry.”
As they dashed out of that corridor and up a flight of shifting stairs, Key’s mind was filled with countless questions. She wanted to know more about DIOS, and about how Miss Broomble planned to stop Silas, and about what Mr. Fuddlebee would do once he caught the Old Queen. But the one question that came foremost in her mind, she put to Miss Broomble right when the stair beneath her feet exploded like a fire
cracker.
“Why would the Queen use Silas to help her escape? She’s the Queen. She could have used anything and everything in the Necropolis. Why Silas?”
Ahead Miss Broomble was hopping over a stair that had suddenly vanished. “The Queen must have some power over him that we haven’t seen yet. Silas was a dead enough Cyclops to be entombed in the Necropolis, yet the cybernetic parts of him are still quite operational – thanks to the GadgetTronic Brothers. Every few centuries or so, the cybernetic part of him revivifies his living tissue. He reawakens from his sleep of almost death, rises from his tomb, and then once again tries to escape. Vampire patrols always catch him, though, and always stuff him back in his tomb. He’s never happy about it. He always vows his revenge on all vampires. Same old, same old. But if the Queen is using some leverage to make him help her, then he’s no doubt doubly angry, and we’re in for a rough night.”
Another shudder shook the castle. Somewhere in the distance, Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops was bellowing his outrage.
“I know how he feels,” Key said under her breath, thinking about the long centuries she’d spent locked down in the Dungeon of Despair.
“I suspect the Queen is taking advantage of Silas,” said Miss Broomble.
“You mean he’s innocent?” asked Key.
“I’m not a judge of guilt or innocence. But I can say that Old Queen Crinkle does not have friends or helpers. From her point of view, she has servants and tools. I do not believe Silas is a servant. No indeed, he’s a tool, and she’s using him for her own advantage.”
Miss Broomble led Key out of the stairwell, around a corner, and then into the Hollow Wood Hall, where there was a long table surrounded by tall chairs. Everything in the room was soaked in gold blood, dripping off the edges and pooling on the floor.
Another explosion rocked the castle. Dust drizzled down from the rafters. Another bellow came from the Cyclops. The ground began rumbling as though there were an earthquake.