Wand: A Fantasy of Witches, Wizards, and Wands
Chapter Twenty-Nine

Late Thursday evening, following a very long day of Necromancy lessons with Ussane, Nick joined a bunch of students out on the back lawn. These were those kids seeking extra credit work in Amulets and Talismans. Nick couldn’t say why the others needed the points, but he was hoping to make nice with at least one teacher—and it gave him a (lame) excuse to get out of another night of abuse and fruitless work with the warlocks.

Other than for Duchaine and young Arthur Penrose, the warlocks had not taken well to Nick. Most ignored him. But a few went out of their way to make him feel unwelcome.

Mrs. Willowroot arrived before anyone had a chance to harass him too seriously—meaning no purple-nurples and only minimal use of the sorcerer-sneeze. She led the students around the labyrinth on a field trip beneath a cloudless sky, following a meandering brick path bordered by ferns and late blooming lilies, which the boys took great pleasure in deflowering. Within a quarter mile the bricks gave way to dirt. By the time they could see the old docks of Paradise Bay down on Lake George, something else of interest was within a stone’s throw.

Mrs. Willowroot, until now rambling on with her daughter, explained their destination. “The Kanju Mines on the northernmost edge of the school grounds was once responsible for sixty-five percent of all gobstone production in the country.”

“What happened to it?” asked a Shaman girl who’d somehow managed to make her witch regalia appear Goth.

“Well,” Mrs. Willowroot explained, “it was . . . requisitioned by a group of efrits.”

A collective gasp.

Mrs. Willowroot put her hands out and laughed. Her necklaces jangled. “The warlocks came in and cleaned them all out, of course. It’s perfectly safe now. Goodness.” She reached the rutted earthen ramp leading down into a hole in the mountain, and called to Charles, who was lugging a canvas sack. This Charles kid always seemed to crop up when teachers needed something, though Nick didn’t seem to replace this peculiar.

Together Charles and Mrs. Willowroot unloaded the torches, lit them, and handed them out to the best behaved students.

Nick did not receive a torch.

“All right, partner up,” Mrs. Willowroot yelled over the rabble of excited and frightened conversations. “Three people to a group. Safety in numbers, right? That’s good. Honey,” she spoke a bit softer to Lisa. “Would you like to partner with me?”

“Mom,” Lisa managed to break the word into two syllables. She wandered away from mom over to Nick, who was busy trying not to look lonely and pathetic. “Want to partner up?” she chirped.

“Sure,” Nick said, mostly because he was hoping she had ‘the stuff.’

“Mind if I join?”

Nick flinched at the sound of Richard’s voice. He turned and saw his bunk mate grinning at them with that frustratingly annoying knowing grin.

“Sure,” Nick said, because Richard had a torch and he didn’t.

“When we get inside,” Mrs. Willowroot was saying, “stay within the designated areas. Do not, I repeat, do not go wandering into the cordoned off zones.”

“Why?” the Goth girl said. “Are there efrits in those areas?”

Beside Nick, Lisa fingered one of her pendants.

“The efrits are long gone,” Mrs. Willowroot let out an exasperated sigh. “No more efrits, I promise you. The cordoned off areas are just unstable, cliffs and drop-offs and things of that nature. Now, everyone have their hammers and chisels? Hold them up.”

Richard and Lisa—and everyone else—held up the miners tools.

“I wasn’t told anything about no hammer and chisel,” Nick complained.

“Yeah, we were supposed to collect them from Shamgar before meeting beside the labyrinth,” Lisa said. “Nobody told you?”

Nick shook his head. Delacort had mentioned Shamgar when Nick went to discuss the extra credit assignment with him, but only to forbid Nick from going to see the old blacksmith.

“You can use mine,” Lisa offered, holding out her decidedly small tools.

“Thanks,” Nick groaned and strolled down into the mouth of the cave behind another group that appeared to be in much finer spirits, judging by their riotous laughter and complete and selfish obliviousness to Nick’s misery. Perhaps they’ll wander into a cordoned off area and fall into a shaft, he mused darkly.

The air in the cave was cooler by fifteen degrees at least, and it didn’t have that autumn aroma of dying leaves and undergrowth. In here, the atmosphere embraced you like a wet blanket. Death and putrescence ruled in this subterranean chamber. The drip-drip of tepid water slopping down somewhere in the deep darkness provided the only sounds besides the hushed whispers of students, and lent an appropriate degree of creepy to the cave.

Nick slowed his pace until his group took up the rearguard.

“Lisa,” he nudged the little blonde in her arm. “Did you get the dreamroot?”

“Ooh, almost forgot,” Lisa dug into her book bag/purse and withdrew a glass jar about the size of a baby food container. In fact, judging by the faded label, Nick was sure this jar had once held Gerber peas. Lisa held it daintily between her right thumb and index finger, and shook it. Small quarter-inch diameter twig-like thingums, white and light brown, jangled inside. “Kind of pretty, huh?” the girl beamed.

Nick took the container from her. “I thought it would be like powder, you know, something I can mix in with my chamomile? What am I supposed to do with these roots?”

“Oh, they gave me instructions,” Lisa explained. She squeezed her eyelids together. “They made me memorize them—even though I told them I suck at memorizing. Okay, you need to crush them with your mortar and pestle, and then stir in one ounce of this powdered dreamroot with a cup of water . . . I think that’s it.”

“You think?”

Lisa glanced up at the dank cave ceiling. “Yep. Pretty sure. Oh, they also said that what you gave me wasn’t enough, but that you shouldn’t worry about it, because they’ll just collect it from you later.” Oddly, she smiled at this declaration.

“They’ll ‘collect’ from me later?” Nick’s eyes bulged. “Great, that doesn’t sound ominous at all.”

They’d been pattering along for some time, and only now did Nick realize how dark it was. He couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead. “Um,” he whispered into the dark, “where’d Richard go?”

“He was just here,” Lisa edged closer to Nick.

The girls’ body heat and intensely close proximity distracted him for a moment. When he recovered, he said, “Did he leave us? I can’t believe he left. Worse, he took the frigging torch with him. Now what?”

While Nick fumed, Lisa displayed slightly more level-headed thinking; she fiddled with her necklaces, finally untangling a silver chained ribbon from the mess, a one-inch amber gem in the shape of a lighthouse dangling from its links. She held the stone tightly within her little digits, whispered what sounded like an Italian incantation, and breathed over the amulet. A moment later it began to glow. Soon it was bright enough to illuminate a narrow but clearly delineated path before them. Now they could move without risking a plunge into some Morian abyss.

She swayed a smidgen from the slim loss of energy, but grinned up at Nick. Under the yellow light her blonde hair shone white.

“Is that a gobstone?” Nick asked, impressed.

Lisa nodded as they began to walk and search for Richard. “Yep. I imbued it myself—with Mom’s help. It’s based on the gobstones along the Institute’s fence, except this one doesn’t have the solar powered enchantment on it. That’s a bit advanced for me—”

The girl paused in her rambling explanation when Nick nudged her to the right, onto a path he was pretty sure Richard and the others must’ve taken.

“Lisa,” he said when she failed to continue. “You don’t believe that crap about me and the aviary, do you?”

“Course not,” she said, almost fiercely. “That’s a bunch of hog swallow.”

As they resumed their search, Nick wavered between a glowing gratitude towards Lisa and a disgust of her naiveté. As much as he’d like to see Delrisa Morgana tarred and feathered at this point, at least the Shaman girl wasn’t fooled. Delrisa was the sort of girl he’d love to have on his side—and in his arms.

“Hold it,” Lisa placed a dainty hand against Nick’s stomach to restrain him. This seemed rather pointless, as he’d already stopped. “What’s that sound?”

Nick listened, extending his perceptions into the darkness beyond their light.

“Footsteps,” Nick said. “Here, let’s go.” He took her hand to lead her to the left, down a narrow shaft—past a chain barrier. Lisa struggled against him.

“What’s the problem?”

A bizarre expression mucked up her pretty features. “This is exactly the kind of thing that keeps getting you in trouble. Mom . . . ugh, Mrs. Willowroot, specifically said not to cross the chains. Do you want to get expelled?”

Nick released her hand and waved this idea aside as absurd. “They’re not going to expel us for crossing a—”

“That’s not the point,” Lisa said in an exasperated cry. “You hear some mysterious footsteps in the scary cave and your first thought is to go running towards them?”

“Well,” Nick mused, “yeah. I guess. I mean, I investigate. That’s how we replace stuff out.”

“Ugh!” Lisa tossed her hands in the air. “Anyway, Richard’s not the type. He wouldn’t have gone down that way. So—”

All the while that they were arguing, the footsteps were getting louder, and Lisa was retreating from the chained tunnel. Now the cause of the footsteps arrived before them. Richard was coated in a fine vest of cobwebs, and on his face he wore a bemused expression in addition to his usual knowing grin.

The boy stared blankly at the two students before saying, “Sup?”

“’Sup?’” Nick said. “Why’d you go down that way?”

Richard shrugged. “I heard a mysterious noise. So I went to investigate.”

Nick turned, crossed his arms over his chest, and smiled at Lisa. “You were saying?”

She shrugged innocently. She then turned her focus onto Richard, whose torch now put her gobstone amulet to shame. “Are you okay? You’re eyes are all red and . . . out there.”

Nick moved in for a closer look. Indeed, Richard’s eyes were surrounded by rouge bags, puffy flesh beneath his lids. “What did you hear?” he asked. No response. With a louder voice he said, “Hey! Pastor Dick. What did you hear?”

“Nothing,” Richard switched the torch to his other hand and walked away in the direction the rest of the class had taken.

“Why’d you call him Pastor Dick?”

“It’s a guy thing,” Nick said absently, wondering what had happened to Richard. He zipped up his jacket and followed his bunk mate. Lisa soon joined them.

To Nick’s dismay, the group took no notice of his and Lisa’s arrival; it was as if their absence and potential demise had been of no concern whatsoever. From the fringes of the group, Nick alternated his attention between Mrs. Willowroots’ explanation of their intent here tonight and apathy for Richard.

“Now,” Mrs. Willowroot was saying while Richard gazed vacantly, “can anyone tell me who discovered the Five Uses of Gobstones and what those uses are?”

Five or six hands shot into the air, including Lisa’s. Nick could name two uses for gobstones, and one he’d discovered mere minutes earlier.

“Christopher,” Mrs. Willowroot called on a dark haired Voodoo boy Nick didn’t know.

“Grand Vizier Vinculus discovered the Five Uses,” Christopher explained. Urged to continue by their smiling teacher, he began to recite the Uses. “The most unique Use of gobstones, or father stones, as the gnomes call them, is their ability to receive a charge from a practitioner’s bioplasma, to be used as a sort of back up energy. They accept all kinds of enchantments, which makes them exceptional among gems. Uh, let’s see. Oh, they can absorb curses—”

“Yeah, and then explode, killing the user,” another boy retorted. Laughter erupted.

“Okay, settle down,” Mrs. Willowroot hushed the class. “We’ll discuss the Five Uses and their effects on the stockpile market tomorrow. Right now I want everyone to take their hammers and chisels and dig out one gobstone each, no larger than one inch in diameter. Shamgar has marked out a section for us where he believes a good vein of gobstone remains.”

For the next half hour the cave was filled with the sound of hammering. Nick’s ears were ringing by the time he’d dug out his raw gobstone, a deep amethyst gem that came out in the shape of a skull. He tried not to read anything into it, but his mind kept going back to the divination scene in The Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry saw the Grim in his tea leaves and a short while later a series of kerfuffles ensued.

The class was rowdy as they started heading back toward the mouth of the cave. Out of the rabble Nick caught a few snippets of conversation—none of which revolved around him.

All in all then, other than for Richard’s bizarre behavior, it was a rather good evening.

Nick was vaguely aware of the Law of Perversity, known by buffers as Murphy’s Law, so perhaps he should’ve expected something to go wrong. At the mouth, Mrs. Willowroot cried out, clutched her head, and fell to her knees.

“Mom!” Lisa zipped over to her mother. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Mrs. Willowroot writhed in agony, hands on head, for another few seconds, and then she slowly lowered her arms. “The ward,” she spoke in a gasp. “Something has penetrated the ward around the Institute. Quick, everyone inside.”

When everyone failed to react with anything more than muted and incoherent babbling, Mrs. Willowroot did something she’d never done before; she raised her voice.

“Everyone back to the school, this instant!”

Her tone acting as whipcord, a herd of teenagers charged up the hill on the path towards the school. Only Nick and—to Nick’s utter shock—Richard remained behind; Lisa joined the herd only after some fierce remonstrating from her mother. As he didn’t want to get caught, and seeing as how Richard was still too bonked out of his mind to run or hide, Nick grabbed his bunk mates’ hand and yanked him out of the mouth of the cave over to a rocky crevice beside the cave and in the cool darkness of a thorny bush. He yanked the torch from Richard’s hand and stubbed it out in the dirt.

“What’s going on?” Richard asked two minutes later, as if he’d just woken up.

“Oh, welcome back, Mister Winkle,” Nick hissed. “Well let’s see. After returning to us in a semi-zombiefied state, you proceeded to stand around with your teeth in your mouth while I dug out a gobstone for each of us with your tools; and then Mrs. Willowroot clutched her head and said that the ward around the Institute, the one keeping all the nasty mythics from eating us, has been broken. We’ve been waiting a couple minutes, watching Mrs. Willowroot mutter some incantations at the trees. So yeah, now you’re all caught up. How do you feel?”

“Like I took too much Eye of Thoth,” Richard said. “I assume Mrs. Willowroot sent everyone back to the school. You didn’t explain what we’re still doing here.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Nick said. “I want to help. Whatever broke that ward, it’s clearly a mythic. And we both know I have a connection to the mythics.”

For a moment Nick wasn’t sure if Richard would blab on him or simply walk away. The guy did neither. Instead he stared at Nick, the grin growing by degrees. “Good. I was starting to wonder about you. Maybe you’re not a sorcerer after all.”

“Oh, thank you, jerk.”

Just then a large figure pounded out of the darkness up to Mrs. Willowroot. As it drew nearer it became clear that the figure was not a bear or a troll, but Duchaine, laden with a heavy chain mail vest, the large sword—or stang, embellished with gemstones and inlaid sigils—that he’d carried during their botched hunt, and a wizard’s belt with numerous pouches.

The warlock was ready for battle.

“You felt it?” Duchaine spoke to Mrs. Willowroot.

The woman nodded. “I’ve already charged the trees and warded a Line from this tree to the altar there. If any mythic tries to cross the ward, it’ll get a nice jolt. It should give you enough time. Whoa,” she weaved on her feet.

“Take it easy, Kat,” Duchaine said, holding her up with one solid arm.

The much smaller woman looked up into Duchaine’s eyes, hidden in shadows beneath a Romanesque brow. “How could this happen?” she asked in a shaky voice. “Why wasn’t there any warning?”

On scanning the north eastern quadrant, Duchaine rumbled out an answer: “The enchanted beacons must’ve lost their energy. We never recharged them, in fifteen years. Same with the wards. That would explain how whatever it is managed to break through them. Stupid. A serious oversight. There’ll be an investigation for sure. You go back up the trail and rest now. Tell Ussane to bring his entire stash. I have the feeling we’re going to need every one.

Duchaine watched Mrs. Willowroot just long enough to make sure she made it safely over the rise, and then he turned back to face the shadows and whatever was preparing to come barging out of them.

“Hey Richard,” Nick whispered. “You got any Eye of Thoth on you?” He’d neglected to bring his belt in yet another oversight.

Richard produced one black capsule and handed it to Nick. “What are you planning?”

“Something stupid, probably,” Nick confessed. He swallowed the pill. “I might be able to control a mythic here in the physical world, but I know I can fight it in the Dreaming.” With a grin he leaned back against the rock, legs crossed, and closed his eyes. The night was chill, and colder still in this hidden alcove, but all sense of discomfort faded as the Eye of Thoth began to take hold.

The edges of the world melted away. As Eye of Thoth kicked in, Nick swiftly traversed the four states of consciousness, from Beta, (awake), to Alpha (deeply relaxed, his body slumping against the cave wall), to Theta (tranquil unconsciousness), and finally Delta wave (deep unconsciousness, where one could either sleep, or enter the Dreaming, and in which state Richard could’ve slapped him and Nick would not wake).

Nick came to himself in a place Priestess Carnivales had called the Ghost Zone; it was the astral equivalent, or ghostly realm, of his physical location. While the Pillar of the Silver Net represented the true edge of the Dreaming, these Ghost Zones could be reached much easier and quicker.

Vaporous trees stood where real solid trees sprouted in the physical world. Correspondences—humming strands of energy—thrummed within the husks of bark. Nick could see it all, the living energy of the world, flowing through everything; it reminded him of the way Neo saw the Matrix. He stood. Close by, the shade of Duchaine was a paragon of readiness, enormous stang held within strong hands, body crouched, waiting patiently to face whatever was about to come out of the darkness.

Through telescopic vision (anything was possible when there was no spoon), Nick peered into the shadows, scanning them, searching for trouble.

“There you are,” Nick voiced to himself, spotting a figure moving in the distance, a broken fence and a shattered ward acting as its background. Glowing shards of the protective enchantment were slowly dimming by degrees, acting as a sad reminder that all things fade, even magic. Nick looked down at his hands. He still held the hammer and chisel.

Intense focus was required to alter elements in the Dreaming, oneself and one’s accoutrements requiring the greatest hub of focus. As Nick understood it, most practitioners required months of practice to change their hair color in the Dreaming, and years to transmute one object into another. Perhaps due to his engineered nature, Nick had picked up the trick his first trip here. He gazed at the chisel and imagined a sword, smaller than Duchaine’s, with a gobstone-encrusted hilt. The chisel grew warm in his hand. It began to vibrate. Before his very eyes the wooden handle transmuted into gold, decorated itself with variegated gobstones, each one glowing and smooth as glass, while the angled metal point grew by inches, until it was a rendering of a gladius, gleaming under the flow of energy surrounding him.

Within moments the hammer became a small shield boasting the Hammond family crest.

Nick smiled and marched towards the encroaching figure.

Oh yeah, he thought, I am totally bad-ass.

When he was within ten yards, he realized the figure was the shade of a troll, well over six feet tall and built like a linebacker—and it was not alone.

Nearly a dozen more troll shades followed the hulking figure.

They charged, not like a well-trained army unit, but like a pride of lions running pell-mell towards prey. Each one was armed with a long curved weapon that looked like something out of a Conan movie, the sort of brutal device some overgrown barbarian would yield.

As they charged, Nick decided he no longer felt like a bad-ass.