The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) (47 page)

Imitating Gaius when he dueled, she stood sideways to present a smaller target. Then, ignoring the eye-watering pain, she tried again and again and again.

The fourth time, his shield dissolved, taking her sparkles with it. She had broken through but had not hit him. On her fifth try, Remus Starkadder spun around. With a leering grin, he parried her sparks, sending them toward Locke, who deflected them into a wall. Remus then turned his back on Rachel, returning to his fight with Dread.

Rachel frowned. He did not even think her a big enough threat to bother watching.

“Boss!” Lucky’s voice cut across the distance.

Jonah Strega was creeping up on the motionless Joy and the Princess. Blood dripped down the side of his face. His eyes gleamed manically His teeth were bared with some perverse hunger, In his hand was his jagged, cruel knife.

“Strega!” Siggy shouted. He swung helplessly upside down, yet he still managed to unclip the knife Valerie had given him and stabbed the air wildly in the other boy’s direction. “Lucky, get him! Burn. Him. Now!”

Strega raised his knife and plunged it toward Joy’s back. Quick as wildfire, Lucky darted between them. Drawing back his head, the dragon breathed a huge plume of brilliant red-gold flame directly into the older boy’s face.

Strega’s scream would echo in Rachel’s nightmares. The smell of burnt flesh filled the chamber. One of the girls among the Drake students shrieked and covered her face, despite the fact that her eyes were still clouded.

Rachel focused her attention back on Remus. She tried her spell twice more. Each time she whistled, he parried. He hardly even glanced her way. The third time, a flicker of annoyance crossed his handsome but brutish features. He volleyed her spell back at her.

The blue sparkles swirled toward her. Rachel started to leap out of the way. Then she paused. An idea struck her. The tell-tale whistle was betraying her. Remus could hear her spell coming. What if she could strike him silently?

Biting her lip, she asked herself the all-important question:
Did she trust Gaius Valiant?

Yes.

Drawing a very deep breath, she bravely stepped forward directly into the path of the swirl of blue sparkles. She spread her arms. Her rebounded spell struck her. Blue sparks played across her limbs, bringing with them the scent of pine. Then, her body gleamed, mirror-like. The blue glints bounced off the reflective shield cantrip Gaius had cast on her before he ran after the chestnut wolf. They flew back toward the Transylvanian prince.

Remus Starkadder never turned around. Her spell struck him squarely in the back.

Remus froze, motionless, his wand arm still outstretched. With almost lazy grace, Rachel reached toward him and commanded, “
Tiathelu!
Varenga
Wand.” His wand leapt from his hand and flew to her. She snatched it out of the air and put it in her voluminous pocket, where it joined the whip and the wand belonging to the boy who had stopped her broom.

The distant roar grew suddenly louder. A hip-high wall of water burst through the far door into the chamber, knocking over two paralyzed students.

“
Keithwyth Selu
,” Vladimir Von Dread’s voice boomed. He had moved to the center of the room. The warding circles and summoning triangles glowed a deep violet around him, gleaming under the water. He had taken off his right glove and drawn his fingertips together, gesturing at the approaching liquid wall.

The water trembled and rose. It formed a gigantic figure with a torso, crude arms, and a rounded head with simple features. Dread pointed at the remaining geased students. The watery giant surged forward. Strega, Joy, Nastasia, and Lucky disappeared beneath its living wave, followed by the paralyzed Remus and the others. Siggy kicked and jerked, his head beneath the surface. Then, he curled upward at the waist and drew his head out of the water, gasping and sputtering as he grasped his legs to keep his head above the waterline.

Lucky burst from the surface and spiraled around him.

Dread gestured with his wand. The princess and Joy flew from beneath the wave into his grasp. He put them onto the dry stone sacrificial altar in the center of the room, as it was still above the water. William Locke moved his right hand, index finger raised. Over the roar of the water elemental, Rachel could not hear him use the Word of Ending, but Nastasia and Joy suddenly were moving again, gasping and sputtering.

Vladimir Von Dread gestured. The being of water moved back twenty feet, leaving the geased students flopping and gasping on the floor. Walking forward calmly, Locke paralyzed those who were still moving. Rachel, too, crept closer. She gathered several dropped wands, slipping them into her pocket with the others.

The great living wave turned its head and looked at her. An eerie tingle slithered down Rachel’s spine. She stopped picking up wands and backed slowly toward the door.

Von Dread’s voice echoed in the vaulted chamber. “I can hold the moat in this form for some time, but I do not have the skill to dispel it. Can someone please retrieve Master Warder Nighthawk or one of the other competent tutors.”

“I’ll do it!” Rachel shouted.

Ignoring the searing pain in her leg, she ran back toward the narrow staircase.

Outside, she spied Gaius Valiant striding toward her, grinning triumphantly. Dashing toward him, she grabbed his hand.

“Come on! Mr. Von Dread brought the moat to life, but he can’t dispel it. He needs help. We’ve got to find the Master Warder.”

Gaius’s brows leapt up. “Wow! That’s a rather advanced spell—even for Vlad.”

They ran together toward the Watch Tower, deep in the hemlocks behind De Vere Hall. Before they reached it, they came upon the Lenni Lenape tutor, a tall man with craggy features and a nose like a bird of prey. He stood with his arms crossed, outside a circle of salt. Urd Odinson and Eve March, both young women from De Vere whom Rachel recognized from the Knights of Walpurgis meeting, stood beside him. Trapped inside the circle, a dozen shadows steamed in the sunlight.

“Sir. Mr. Von Dread summoned up something he can’t put down. He needs help.”

“Many people need help.” Nighthawk’s voice resonated deeply. Suddenly, his head shot up, alert. “Dread, you say? What did he summon?”

“The moat. He called it
Selu
. He said:
Keithwyth Selu
.
Keithwyth
means ‘come’, right?”

His craggy face remained impassive, but his pupils widened a hundredth of an inch. Rachel suspected this was the equivalent of a scream of shock from other men.

“Where is he?”

“Southern Summoning Vault,” Gaius stated.

With a curt nod to the two older girls, Nighthawk murmured something beneath his breath. There was flash of light, and he was gone.

Rachel’s jaw dropped. “I didn’t know anyone could jump on campus!”

“A few people have been given…” Gaius cut himself off and shrugged. “It makes sense that the Master Warder for the school would have the keys to the wards.”

“That’s probably why Mr. Von Dread asked for him.”

Rachel was limping badly now. Her leg hurt too much for her to continue running. The two of them walked slowly, still holding hands, Gaius looking down at her with concern. As they came around De Vere Hall, Rachel glanced to her left and froze. On the grassy area filled with stumps behind Roanoke Hall, a great black dragon was still facing off against the dean.

All around the two figures was destruction. On the pathway leading from the rent in the ground in front of Drake Hall, trees lay fallen. The earth was torn. A stand of hemlocks burned, crackling loudly. Black smoke billowed skyward, clogging the air with a smell that reminded Rachel of a paralysis enchantment.

Dean Moth faced the dragon, sweat pouring down her brow. Exhausted, she had tied herself to a tree trunk with a belt. The tree was not yet on fire, but one branch smoldered. Her hands were raised in a gesture Rachel recognized as a restraining cantrip. The dean panted, laboring to hold the monster in place.

Across from her, the dragon struggled. Twenty Glepnir bonds lassoed the great beast. Even as Rachel and Gaius watched, they snapped, one after another. The cantrip restricted the creature’s motion, but it could still move.

Gaius gulped. “I didn’t know…Glepnir bands could break.”

Rachel squeezed Gaius’s hand tightly. Her gaze locked on the duel. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to help.”

“What can we do?” he whispered, squeezing her hand back. “Our best bet is stay out of their way.” He would have said more, but the tutors started speaking. Rachel shushed him.

“You have always been weak, Jacinda,” purred the great black dragon, shrugging. A glowing golden band that had been encircling its shoulders popped, vanishing. “So pathetic. Too encumbered by principles. Too slow. Maybe you can find some students to cower behind, like you did last time.”

“I did not set the Young Sorcerers’ League on the Veltdammerung. That was entirely Darling’s doing.” Dean Moth panted, straining to maintain her immobilization spell. “But I was proud to stand with them, Melusine. As you should have been.”

“Proud?” raged the dragon, struggling against the dean’s spell. “To stand beside those who undid my masters? Bah!”

“The Terrible Five were not worthy masters.”

“Perhaps, but my new master is worthy. And subtle. So subtle that he hides in plain sight, and no one sees him. No one knows who he is.”

“I know!” Rachel said softly, her eyes growing large.

“You do?” Gaius gawked.

“His name is Mortimer Egg,” she whispered. “He works as a desk clerk for the Wisecraft. Hiding in plain sight. He’s the man who tried to kill Valerie Hunt.”

“That’s…quite extraordinary,” Gaius murmured, impressed.

The dragon struggled. Two more golden bands snapped, one around its middle and one that had been securing its legs. “My new master knows a marvelous spell. The price is high, but it’s quite worth paying. What are a few traumatized infants, a few lost worlds, compared to what we seek to achieve? Soon we shall succeed. Then the true Veltdammerung shall occur. This damaged world shall end, and a new, grander one shall rise in its place!”

“And how shall this new world differ from our current one?” Dean Moth asked disdainfully. “Let me guess: the Wise shall rule the Unwary. You know from your study of history that this doesn’t go well for either of us.”

“Rule? What care I for power over the meager minds of mundane men! Yet, people will beg for us to lead them, when they discover we can give them what they truly desire!”

“And what is that again?” The dean’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “Wealth? Beauty? Extra pairs of shoes?”

“Resurrection of the dead.”

Surprise jolted Rachel. She stood straight up. Could it be done? Could she have her beloved grandfather back?

Even the dean started, though she recovered quickly. “Not possible, Melusine. Necromancy is a failed Art.”

“I am not speaking of necromancy, Jacinda, but of true resurrection.”

“No power on Earth can accomplish true resurrection!” the dean stated fiercely.

“Not on Earth.” The dragon laughed, a deep, grating sound. “But my master is not from the Earth, Jacinda. He is from beyond the edges of our world. Where do you think all this new magic comes from? Who do you think is bringing it?”

Rachel’s breath caught, her heart banging against her ribs.
Mortimer Egg was a Metaplutonian!
Was it just Egg? Or was the entire Veltdammerung—the organization devoted to the Twilight of the World—from Outside?

“You sneer,” the dragon continued, “but don’t you also wish to live in that future? What if we could bring back
your
dear ones?” The dragon leaned its horned head toward the dean. Its sapphire eyes glittered. “What if we could resurrect Jasper Hawke?”

“How…could you know of that?” Dean Moth gasped, her voice strangled by her shock.

“You goody-goodies are not the only ones who have visions. Wouldn’t you like him back? Your star-crossed love? It is unlikely that he is in a good place now.”

“W-why would you say such a thing?” the dean asked thickly.

“Come, Hawke hardly had clean hands.”

“He died a hero!” Dean Moth ground out through clenched teeth.

“Certainly he did, defeating Bismarck’s sorcerers…alongside Aleister Crowley and General Blaise Griffin,” sneered the dragon.

Rachel stiffened at her grandfather’s name and leaned farther forward. Her palms were slick with sweat, but Gaius’s hand still grasped hers firmly. The solid presence of the boy beside her brought great comfort.

“Crowley, I give you,” the dean replied. Her face was unnaturally pale, and her voice was failing. “But Griffin never went astray.”

“Oh? In the last century, no act has been so great a boon to those who walk the Dark Path as the weakening of the Eternal Flame when Amelia Abney-Hastings broke her Vestal vows.”

“That’s my grandmother!” Rachel whispered.

“She was a Vestal Virgin?” Gaius asked, surprised.

“I…” Rachel tried to swallow, “didn’t know that.”

“I don’t know much about it,” Gaius asked slowly, “but…when Vestal Virgins break their oaths, doesn’t something bad happen?”

Rachel nodded, finally swallowing with some difficulty. “The Eternal Flame—that white and gold stuff? It loses some of its efficacy to harm wickedness and not hurt innocence.”

“Ah. So that’s…” Gaius paused.

Rachel wet her very dry lips. “Bad.”

“One can’t blame her, under the circumstance,” the dragon purred. “Who among us could have endured what he did and kept going as bravely? And yet, you can hardly hold him up as proof that your dear Jasper is not twittering about in Hela’s Kingdom, the plaything of some vengeful god. Wouldn’t Hawke be better off alive and walking beneath the daystar?”

Dean Moth did not reply. Her face glowed with sweat, her breath uneven. Rachel feared the dean would faint. Only five golden bands restrained the dragon now. What would happen when the last one broke before she could cast more?

Rachel leaned forward on her tiptoes, her legs trembling. But she could hear nothing. They were both silent. She replayed her memory of the conversation she had just heard. What was Mordeau talking about? What had happened to her grandfather? What had been difficult to endure? She jammed her jaws together angrily. How dare the dragon insinuate that Blaise Griffin was anything other than the best of men!