Jinx's Fire (9 page)

Tumbling blue-gray thoughts from Sophie. Jinx remembered what Elfwyn had said. Sophie thinks she knows what's happened, Jinx thought. But she doesn't want to know.

“That's just a theory I had,” said Sophie. “There's no reason to think—”

“Malthus thinks so,” said Jinx. “He said the Bonemaster might use the paths to get at me in some way. And now I can't use the Urwald's power.”

“But that seems so . . .” Sophie trailed off. She looked at bottled Simon.

“Abstruse,” said Jinx, upside down.

“I think that's what the elves said,” said Elfwyn.

Jinx fell over in surprise. “You talked to elves?”

“No. The Bonemaster did,” said Elfwyn. “They didn't know I was listening.”

“When? Why didn't you tell us?” Jinx demanded.

“About six months ago! I forgot! Stop asking questions!”

“Sorry,” said Jinx.

“I'm sure we would both like to hear what they said,” said Sophie.

Elfwyn swung her feet. “They told him—” She frowned. “I think they told him he could draw fire through the seal, and then they sort of warned him.”

Bright clouds of horror from Sophie.

“What kind—” Jinx began. “Er, I wonder how they warned him.”

“They said without balance, he'd—” Elfwyn sighed. “He'd . . . something. I don't remember. It went all dazzly.”

“Blue sparks,” said Jinx. “They do some kind of memory spell.”

“I think they just did it on me, though. Not him.”

“They want him to know what he is.” Jinx thought of what Malthus had said. “That he's the other wick. Sophie, you've got to let Malthus see the Eldritch Tome.”

“Really, dear—” said Sophie doubtfully.

“He knows about this stuff,” said Jinx. “And you're kind of stuck, aren't you?”

A red wave of hurt from Sophie. Ouch. Jinx tried another tactic. “Malthus is really interested in Samaran scholarship. He wishes he could go to Samara. But he can't, because they'd be sure to notice he's a werewolf, and—”

“Oh, the poor creature,” said Sophie. “But I don't know, the Eldritch Tome . . .”

“He might be able to figure out what's happened to Simon,” said Jinx.

That seemed to be the wrong thing to say. Sophie's thoughts clenched up in a tight blue ball.

“Or anyway, he could figure out what the Bonemaster's doing,” said Jinx.

Sophie looked uncertain.

“I'm sure he'd be careful with it,” said Jinx, willing her to agree.

Sophie's thoughts wobbled. It wasn't that she was afraid of the Tome being damaged, Jinx thought. She was afraid of finding out there was nothing that could be done to save Simon.

“Well, I suppose I could talk to him about it,” she said at last.

The Winter of Exploding Trees

E
lfwyn went a few times to the market in Samara with Wendell. It infuriated Jinx that he couldn't go with her. He wanted to. But Sophie told him that it would be a disaster for everyone if Jinx got arrested in Samara and boiled in oil. And Jinx had to admit that it would certainly be a disaster for him.

Jinx made several trips to the west, to build wards and doorpaths for the newfound clearings. The Urwald's lifeforce was usually out of reach now, especially on the coldest days. Elfwyn, when she wasn't in Samara, joined Jinx on his journeys, and together they put up the best wards they could manage.

To prevent another siege like Blacksmiths' Clearing, Jinx made the Doorways first, inside the clearings, and the wards afterward. That way an enemy couldn't get between the Urwalders and their means of escape. He and Elfwyn put separate, small wards around the Doorways, just in case an enemy figured out how to use the doorpaths.

“I just hope the wards are strong enough,” said Elfwyn.

“Even if they are, it's no good,” said Jinx. The realization had been weighing down on him more and more as they walked.

“You mean it won't stop King Rufus the Ruthless from invading the Urwald,” said Elfwyn.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“But it'll at least protect the people in the clearings,” said Elfwyn. “And they'll be able to escape if they need to.”

“And then they'll all come to Simon's house!”

“At least it gives us time,” said Elfwyn. “To find out how the Bonemaster is draining the Urwald's power, and stop him.”

Jinx heard a crunch and looked up. Werewolves were moving through the trees, keeping parallel to Jinx and Elfwyn as they walked.

Jinx stopped. The werewolves stopped too.

“Hi,” said Jinx.

The werewolves gazed at him.

“We need to talk to Malthus,” said Jinx.

The werewolves grinned. Jinx could almost taste their hunger.

“Could you ask him to meet me at, um, at the edge of Bone Canyon tomorrow—”

“We won't be home by tomorrow,” said Elfwyn.

“Thursday, then,” said Jinx.

The werewolves stood watching Jinx and Elfwyn with golden eyes. Jinx was sure they had understood him.

“And tell him we'll lend him the Eldritch Tome.”

The werewolves still didn't respond.

“Please,” Jinx added.

One of the werewolves peeled away from the pack and trotted off into the forest.

“Thanks,” said Jinx uncertainly. He and Elfwyn walked on, and the werewolves kept pace.

“You're sure they're on our side?” said Elfwyn, very quietly.

“Yeah. Well, the Urwald's side, and they understand that's the same thing.”

“For now,” said Elfwyn.

“Yeah.”

“They still make me nervous.”

“Yeah,” said Jinx. “Me too.”

They both tried hard not to show it.

Jinx and Sophie stepped through the Doorway at the edge of Bone Canyon. Malthus was waiting for them in wolf-form, but slid up into a more human shape when he saw them.

Jinx could see the roiling clouds of terror enveloping Sophie, although they didn't show on her face.

“Malthus is all right,” Jinx told her. “Or, well, he kind of leaves suddenly so he doesn't eat you. Malthus, this is Sophie.”

Malthus's golden eyes gleamed. “Ah, Sophie the Scholar! This is an honor.”

Jinx was impressed by how calmly Sophie managed her first hand-and-clawshake with a werewolf.

“I have great respect for Samaran scholarship,” said Malthus. “It's been years since I've really had a chance to sink my teeth into—”

“Sophie has some questions she wanted to ask you. About”—Jinx watched closely, in case Malthus suddenly attacked—“the Eldritch Tome.”

“You have it with you?” The werewolf gleamed hungrily. Jinx braced himself in case he had to make a ward spell in a hurry.

“Yes.” Sophie drew the slim blue book from her coat, pulled off her woolen mittens, and paged through it. “I was wondering about the balance of lifeforce and deathforce. If you'll look here—”

Malthus leaned over the book eagerly. “Ah, yes, I see. The Paths of Fire and Ice?”

“Are they real paths?” said Sophie.

“You see this word here—” The werewolf pointed and made a grating, snarly sound. “Means ‘paths.' They are real. The infixes mean ‘ice' and ‘fire.'”

“I know that,” said Sophie. “You told Jinx that when the two paths meet there are explosions.”

“At the upper levels,” said Malthus. “In the visible world. Where the metaphysical manifests itself in the physical realm. You're familiar with Sort's Taxonomy of Pseudophenomena?”

“Of course,” said Sophie. “But—no offense—I'm a little surprised that you are.”

“I have his book,” said Malthus. “Something to chew over in the winter evenings. I've often thought that if he'd actually visited the Urwald, he might have reassessed his stipulation that—”

“But haven't you read Luzani's commentaries?” Sophie asked. “They refute the whole basis of his classification of—”

“'Scuse me,” said Jinx. “Malthus doesn't stay long. He always has to run off somewhere. So could we kind of—”

Malthus frowned at him, which was the most uncomfortable thing Jinx had had happen to him all day.

“What happens if the paths meet at the bottom, instead of the top?” said Sophie.

“I'm not certain that could happen,” said Malthus. “Not without considerable magical intervention.”

“What if there
was
magical intervention?” said Jinx. “Like from the Bonemaster?”

“Then I suppose that they could meet. Whether there would be explosions or not, I don't know,” said the werewolf. “Sort's Taxonomy suggests not. But what did he know, really?”

Sophie flipped over several pages, and pointed to another passage.

“‘Where the paths meet, the paths part. Let ice touch fire, let fire breach ice,'” Malthus translated. “Hm. It does sound like they cross, or meet, somewhere. And yet that's against their very nature.”

“If someone—the Bonemaster, for instance—forced the paths to meet in some way . . .” There was a catch in Sophie's voice.

“Up here, it would cause an explosion. Down there . . . I don't know. I have always assumed the rules are different down there.” Malthus tapped a fang thoughtfully.

“There's this, too,” said Sophie, reaching past the werewolf's claws to flip the pages again.

“‘Let life equal death, and let living leaf equal cold stone. Take leaf to life, and dearth to death, and seal the whole at the nadir of all things.' Hm. I see your point.”

Jinx remembered the note Sophie had made:
Seal = Simon?

“So you think the paths meet at the nadir,” said Malthus.

“I think they've been joined,” said Sophie. “And that the Bonemaster is somehow using”—her voice shook, possibly with the cold—“that is, I think the Bonemaster may have found a Qunthk spell for joining the paths.”

“I believe this may
be
the spell.” Malthus touched the open book with a claw. “He doesn't have the Eldritch Tome, does he?”

“I don't know,” said Sophie. “I've never heard of there being another copy, but—”

“The elves could have taught him the spell, I suppose.” Malthus jotted a note in his notebook.

“So if he's joined the paths,” said Jinx, “that's how he's draining my—the Urwald's—power, right?” He remembered what Elfwyn had said. The elves had told the Bonemaster he could draw fire through the seal. “And Sophie thinks he's using Simon to connect the paths—”

A blue-brown wave of horror from Sophie. Jinx decided not to say any more about that.

“Of course, I'm not sure if I'm interpreting it correctly,” said Sophie.

The werewolf looked at her with sudden sympathy. “I see. May I— If it's not too much to ask, may I borrow the tome?”

“Please do,” said Sophie.

Malthus flashed that red-gold delight that was
uncomfortably like hunger.

“Perhaps I could come with you to study it,” Sophie suggested.

“Don't!” said Jinx.

“I think it would be best not to,” said Malthus regretfully. “Although I'd be delighted to have your company, I'm afraid the other werewolves in my pack would . . . also be delighted.” He took the book in his claws. “The Eldritch Tome! I can hardly believe it.”

More red-gold hunger. Jinx could tell that Malthus was now having a lot of trouble not eating them.

“We'd better go,” said Jinx, grabbing Sophie's arm and pulling her away.

It grew colder and colder. On their journeys between the clearings that Hilda and Nick had contacted, Jinx and his companions got frostbite on their fingers and toes. One night, in a crowded, drafty hut in Churnbottom Clearing, they were awakened by a loud explosion.

“What's that?” cried Hilda. Most of the people in the hut huddled, terrified, but she went to the door and opened it.

Jinx followed her out into air so cold it hurt to breathe. Nick joined them, his feet squeaking in the snow. Jinx could see tiny ice crystals floating in the moonlight. He listened to the forest.

Two more explosions, one right after another.

“Exploding trees,” said Jinx.

“Is the Bonemaster doing it?” said Hilda.

“No,” said Jinx. Several more trees exploded, and he heard the forest murmur and moan.

“When it gets really cold, their sap freezes, and it expands, and—bang,” Jinx explained. “It hasn't happened in like a hundred years, but—”

“Not the Bonemaster, then?” Hilda rippled cold silver doubt, and shivered.

“How could it be?” said Jinx.

“I think you think it is, sir,” said Hilda. “We're just getting everything organized, getting people ready to fight, so that we can hold out while you go after him. Right?”

“But we'll go with you, of course,” said Nick. “I mean, not that we can do much against a wizard, but—”

“No. You're good with people,” said Jinx, shivering. “You'll have to help Sophie hold them all together while I go.”

“Go where, sir?” Hilda was shivering, too. “Bonesocket?”

Jinx thought of Simon, and of the Paths of Fire and Ice. “I'm not really sure yet.”

Out in the forest, another tree exploded.

The cold autumn became a cold, cold winter. By now Jinx couldn't feel the Urwald's lifeforce anywhere.

Elfwyn and Sophie tried to make a pumpkin pie for
Jinx's birthday, as Simon always had. Jinx appreciated their effort.

Satya stopped showing up to work on the map. They'd found several new clearings, and Sophie added them in pencil, but she said she wasn't sure she'd gotten them right.

“Is it too cold for Satya here?” said Sophie. “Because we could take the map through to the Samaran house.”

“She's busy right now,” said Wendell. “You know. With her stuff.”

There was an uncharacteristic red flash of resentment when he said it.

“Ah. Yes.” Sophie asked no more questions. “Well, I think I'll go through to the Samaran house for a bit, anyway. My toes are turning blue.”

She went through the KnIP door, which they usually left open now to heat the south wing. Even though Jinx knew that people who didn't know the door was there wouldn't be able to see it, having it open still made him nervous.

“So did you have a fight with Satya, or something?” he asked.

Wendell shrugged. “She's really into the stuff she's into. That's all.”

“The Mistletoe Alliance, you mean,” said Jinx.

“It's the only thing that matters to her,” said Wendell.

“No, it's not,” said Jinx, feeling very awkward and
uncomfortable. Satya didn't have pink fluffy thoughts about Wendell, oddly. But she had some purple twisty ones that as far as Jinx could tell were of a highly pro-Wendell nature.

He didn't really want to talk about it, though, and he hoped Wendell wouldn't want to either.

“It's fine, it's no problem,” said Wendell. “If she cares about the Company—”

“The Mistletoe Alliance,” said Jinx.

“—more than anything else, you know, that's her own business, obviously. But she shouldn't expect me to care about them.”

“No,” said Jinx. “I guess they do good work, though, don't they?”

He wasn't sure about this. The Mistletoe Alliance's avowed mission was to free the knowledge that the preceptors kept locked up in the Temple of Knowledge. But sometimes Jinx wondered—since the Alliance itself was so secret, how did they manage to free knowledge?

“The trouble with being in the Company,” said Wendell, “is that you have to do what you're told. Rather than think for yourself.”