Spirits and Spells (11 page)

“Come on!” he said, pushing Tansy before him. “We have to get out of here!”

Weak from loss of blood, Tansy staggered as Matt thrust her toward the flames. “Matt!” she cried in horror. “Don't!”

“It's not real! Hurry, before they figure that out!” He continued to push Tansy ahead of him, and new terror filled her as she stumbled into the flames.

Charity was screaming.

The flames roared around Tansy, licking at her face and hands. Yet to her astonishment, she felt nothing.

Reaching past her, Matt opened the door. He thrust Tansy onto the top step, stepped out with her, then slammed the door behind them.

Instantly the air was filled with angry squeals and the sound of heavy bodies slamming against the door. His face grim, Matt braced himself against it. After a moment the pounding stopped, and he relaxed a bit. “I guess they've given up,” he said. Putting a hand to his forehead, he swayed just a little.

“What … what did you do?” asked Tansy.

He grinned smugly. “I used my
other
power—the spell of illusion. It was enough to convince them—”

Suddenly his eyes rolled back in his head so that only the whites showed. His knees buckled and he began to fall. He grabbed Tansy's arm for support. Weak and off balance herself, she staggered and dropped the boxes. The larger one burst open, and Charity's bones went bouncing down the stairs, flying around Matt as he, too, thumped and bumped his way to the bottom.

Tansy lunged for the box with Charity's head. Grabbing it from where it teetered on the edge of a step, she overbalanced and fell after Matt. She screamed as she rolled down the uncarpeted steps. Battered and jolted, she landed beside Matt at the base of the stairs.

Though she was unconscious, she still clutched Charity's box, which remained securely latched.

It was all too much for Charity, who sat down at the top of the stairs and began to cry.

Matt groaned. He stirred once, lifted his head, then fell back to the floor.

Tansy did not move at all.

So neither of them saw the enormous snake slithering in their direction.

“Oh, miss!” cried Charity. “Wake up, miss. Wake up before it's too late!”

Tansy moaned but didn't stir.

The snake was only a few feet away now. Its head was larger than Charity's, and its eyes glittered with an almost human intelligence.

“Wake up, Miss Tansy!” cried Charity. “
WAKE UP!
”

The snake's body had begun to coil. It raised its massive head from the floor, preparing to strike.

15

COMPULSION

“Gwynhafra!” whispered the Guardian of the Sword. The note of fear in its voice made Denise shudder.

Jenny looked around the room until she spotted Denise. “Niana?” she asked.

“Don't call me that! It scares me.”

Jenny looked distressed.

“What happened in there?” cried Derek. “Did you use your spell to open locks? How did you get the rod?”

Jenny turned on him. “There is no time for questions,” she said disdainfully. “We must return to the library.”

“What do you—”

Her voice was sharp as she cut him short. “To the library!”

She strode forward. As she passed the creature, she shot it an angry glance. It shrank back from her, as if afraid of being struck.

Speechless, the group followed Jenny into the hall.

Suddenly she spun about and lowered the rod.

Derek and Denise turned, too. Denise grabbed Derek's arm and began to scream.

At the end of the hall coiled an enormous snake, forty feet long at least. Its triangular head was raised and ready to strike.

Beyond the snake, at the foot of the stairs, sprawled Matt and Tansy.

The snake hissed and thrashed its tail.

The crystal globe mounted at the end of the rod Jenny was holding made a sizzling sound. Suddenly it erupted with light. A red bolt streaked down the hall. It struck the snake's head, which disappeared in a cloud of vapor. The body writhed violently, smashing against the walls. Green ichor pumped from its neck.

When the thrashing had, stopped enough for them to pass, Derek and Denise scrambled down the hall toward Matt and Tansy. Jenny followed at a slower pace, moving as if she were a queen.

Denise dropped to her knees beside Matt, crying out in horror at the ragged rat bites that scored his body. Derek rolled Tansy over and, shook her shoulders, trying to wake her.

“Don't waste time with that foolishness,” said Jenny in an imperious tone. “Niana, you are a healer. Use your power to help them.”

Derek turned to Jenny with bewilderment in his eyes. Denise shot her a venomous glance.

But she began to sing.

Her voice was soft and seemed to come from far away. Though the words were strange to Derek's ears, the tune seemed comforting. As Denise sang, she passed her hands over Tansy's wounds. The flesh closed beneath her fingers, forming angry scars that puckered and then vanished as the song continued.

Tansy moaned and began to stir. Denise turned her attention to Matt.

Fifteen minutes later a strangely assorted group stumbled into the library. Matt and Tansy, their clothes torn but their bodies healed, carried the mortal remains of Charity Jones. Behind them walked Jenny, a strange, serene smile lighting her face. Derek and Denise, who had never been close, now clung to each other like a pair of lost souls. Next in line, invisible to all save Matt, floated a weeping Charity Jones. Lurching along at the end was the creature from the cellar.

“Well, here's your damn ring,” said Matt, slapping it onto the table in front of Travis. “And here are Charity Jones's famous bones.” He dropped the box onto the table, causing the bones to rattle inside it. “Here's her head, too, if that interests you,” he added, taking the box from Tansy. “And there's the rod. If you can get it away from her, whoever she is, you can have it.”

Travis looked from face to face. “What's going on?” he asked. His voice sounded so small and helpless that Tansy might have laughed if she hadn't been so scared herself.

“You're not Karno yet,” said Jenny in surprise. She looked around at the others. “Where is everyone?”

She stepped away from them and raised the rod above her head. The ball began to glow a smoky red, casting a bloody tinge over everything in the room.

“Karno!” she cried. “Wathek, Niana, Diaz, Theoni. Come to me! Gwynhafra calls!”

The orb at the end of the rod began to pulse, its red light dimming and flaring.

“Stop her!” boomed the creature.

“Karno!” cried Jenny again. “Wathek, Nia—”

Derek lunged against her, knocking the rod from her hands. It clattered to the floor. Its light flickered and died.

“You fool!” hissed Jenny. She raised her hands, but Derek grabbed her wrist, swung her around, then pinned both hands behind her. He looked to the others for help as Jenny struggled against him.

“Your spell, Derek!” shouted Denise. “Use your spell of binding!”

“I don't know how!”

“Travis, help him,” said Matt.

Travis stood unmoving, as if too stunned by the chain of events to do anything. Matt shoved him aside and grabbed the game book. He paused. The book seemed somehow larger than it had before. The pages were yellowed, the old-fashioned lettering hard to decipher.

There was no time to worry about that. Jenny was fighting, and Derek was having a hard time holding her. Matt flipped through the pages.

“Here it is!” he yelled. “‘By the power of my staff, I conjure you to cease all motion.' Those are the words, Derek. Use them!”

Derek repeated the spell. Nothing happened.

“You have to be holding this, you fool,” said the creature, snatching the stave from the table with one of its tentacles. “Here, take it!”

Derek had to take one hand off Jenny's wrists to grab the stave. The instant he did, she tried to wrench herself away from him. But as his hand closed over the stave, he repeated the spell.

Instantly Jenny went still, her face stolid and unmoving, her body rigid as death.

Derek stepped away from her, his hand up, ready to reach out if she should move.

She was like a statue.

Travis shook his head as if he were coming out of a trance himself. Looking at Tansy, he said, “You have the power to compel truth. Let's find out what's going on here.”

Tansy nodded. The others gathered about her in a tense knot. She stepped forward and stood face to face with Jenny.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“My name is Gwynhafra,” answered a voice that was not really Jenny's. It was strange, mournful, distant. Hearing it, the others knew beyond all doubt that Jenny's body was inhabited by someone else.

Tansy hesitated. Fearing the answer, she asked, “Where is Jenny?”

“In here, with me.”

“May I talk to her?”

“No! This is my body now, and will be until we make the final crossing. Then she can have it back.”

“Is she all right?” asked Tansy.

Gwynhafra didn't answer.

“I said, ‘Is she all right?'” repeated Tansy fiercely. Then she added, “I compel you to answer me.”

“She is frightened,” said Gwynhafra reluctantly.

Uncertain what to ask next, Tansy finally settled on, “Where are you from?”

“Earth.”

Acting on an impulse, she asked, “And where else?”

Gwynhafra paused. “Quarmix,” she said, after a moment. Her voice was tinged with a note of loathing.

“Ask her where Quarmix is,” said Denise.

Tansy repeated the question.

“Far away,” said Gwynhafra mournfully. “Very far away, yet very near. It is one of Earth's twins. There are dozens of them, lying side by side, in dimension after dimension. Each is like all the others. Yet each is different, in little ways … or big ones. Quarmix is like Earth gone bad. All things there are bitter and twisted—including its people, such as they are.”

“How did you get there?” asked Tansy.

Gwynhafra hesitated a third time. Just as Tansy was about to insist on an answer, she began to speak. Eyes glittering feverishly, she poured out the strange story of Erik Karno.

16

COVEN KARNO

“Erik Karno was a scholar,” said Jenny/Gwynhafra. “It was his nature, and he never tried to fight it. From as early as he could remember, he had preferred the pursuit of knowledge to all other activities. When he was very young and the other boys played in the street, laughing and yelling, Erik could be found crouched at the feet of the old men, listening to their stories, asking them questions. The elders of the village liked Erik. They were pleased by his intensity. Yet he frightened them with his quickness and his probing questions.”

As Gwynhafra spoke, the players felt themselves caught up in the web of her storytelling, her words painting pictures in their minds of a dark time when learning was not easy to come by.

And as they listened, they began to understand Erik Karno's quest for forbidden knowledge.

When he was old enough, Erik entered a monastery—one of the few places in Europe where learning was still given some honor.

He chose this particular monastery for a specific reason. According to rumor, it had once been home to a collection of books that had been outlawed as too dangerous for the world at large. The books had been placed in the care of the monastery, and there were supposed to have been burned. But it had long been whispered that they had actually been preserved by a monk who, like Karno, could not stand to see any book destroyed.

So Karno joined the order, where he spent many years crouched over a tall wooden desk, copying out manuscripts in beautiful flowing script, decorating the pages with his own strange designs and insignia. Often the abbot would reprimand him for his innovations. Yet Erik continued to make them, secure in the knowledge that the reprimands would never amount to more than a scolding, because no other monk worked with such speed and precision, or created such beautiful pages.

The abbey was ancient, dating back to the first thrust of Christianity into Erik's homeland. A place of cold comfort, it was built of stone on a rocky prominence. In winter a demonic wind howled about the walls and towers, and the slate floors were like ice.

Many of the monks died young.

But not Erik Karno. He thrived, because he was able to do what he loved most: dig into the past and learn things better left forgotten.

His learning took two forms.

The first was a slow learning of special beauty that came from copying manuscripts. Erik would dwell on the texts he copied, savoring every word, examining the connections between them, exalting in the intricacies of sentence and paragraph that unveiled themselves more fully every time he put them onto parchment. Crouched in his lonely cell he brooded over the ideas the manuscripts contained, finding depths of meaning most readers would never have guessed were hidden there.

More secret, and thus even more thrilling, was what he discovered in the catacombs beneath the abbey on the night of his twenty-first birthday.

He had spent the day huddled over his desk, copying an ancient text. When evening came and services were over, he found himself strangely restless. Against the rules, he left his cold stone room and padded down the hallway, past cell after cell, where murmuring monks knelt in self-abasement. He had no destination in mind; he simply knew that he could stay in his own cubicle no longer.

His wandering led him to a stairwell that stretched downward into darkness. Backtracking, he took a torch from one of the pillars in a more traveled area. Then he returned to the stair.

By the flickering light of the torch, he descended into the gloom.

Outside a cold wind howled unmercifully.

Above him a hundred monks settled down to sleep and dream.

Before him a whole new world lay waiting.