SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Thirteen
In a blink Richard had the hose in hand and directed straight at the golem while another boy primed the well pump. With the golem bearing down on Nick, water blasted into its clay body; its movements slowed, became sluggish. Hardened dirt morphed into sludge. Mud slopped off the golem in weeping globs.
The mythic began to shrink as it loped away. By the time it had gone ten feet, it was no more than a leprechaun-sized blob of sloughing muck. Watery limbs flailed.
On reaching the roiling puddle Duchaine blasted it with his makeshift flamethrower. Water boiled. Mud-soup hissed. Vaporous clouds filled the air. As the warlock torched a large swathe of earth, Yutuu Fukushima came rushing up, dragging a dolly laden with a 55-gallon drum and a shovel latched on with bungees.
Duchaine let up with the flames, then dug a vial out of his vest, upended it into his palm, and tossed the contents in the air, where they suffused with the vapor. A strange otherworldly burbling accompanied his incantation, as if the contents of the vial were fighting the vapor. Whipping out a spray can, he painted a large luminescent yellow circle around the remains of the defeated mythic.
“Make sure you get every last bit, Yutuu,” Duchaine growled.
The janitor unlatched his shovel to start loading the disinterred golem into the barrel. Duchaine meanwhile went around checking on injured students. Other teachers ran out to help as well. Eventually, when those in need of medical attention had been brought inside on wooden stretchers to Miss Lamborghini, and Duchaine had thanked Richard and the other boy for their help, he approached Nick.
“You all right?”
Nick nodded.
“That was impressive, what you did with the golem,” he stared strangely at Nick, as if searching for some concealed magical weapon. A powerful ring, perhaps? A mystical sword?
Hoping to circumvent the warlock’s inevitable train of questions—which Nick didn’t know how to answer—he said, “What happened? I thought you’d captured the golem?”
The big man shook his head, switched off the pilot burner on his flamer.
“We captured a golem,” Duchaine clarified. “Some of the other warlocks don’t want to admit this, but the mythics seem to be getting more aggressive. Add that to their population growth and we’ll be S-O-L before you figure out how to craft a wand.”
“How I figure it out?”
“Hey,” Duchaine grunted. “We old-timers have been at it fifteen years. We need fresh blood.” He patted the flamer. “Fates alive, we’re lucky this worked.” He reminded Nick he could back out of the W.A.N.D. Project initiation if he was having second thoughts.
In response Nick reminded him of the golem that’d just pummeled his gym class. He was grateful to note that Duchaine turned back to Yutuu without noticing the two-foot swathe of dead grass at Nick feet. The tiny stalks had lost their color and dried up when he spoke the Command.
The rest of the days’ classes were cancelled. Driver Jensen left to try and use the land line down at Coven Acres to try to call the parents of the injured.
Caught on his way to Fukushima’s chandler room to serve his detention, Nick was forced to downplay his inexplicable control of the golem as mere luck. “I surprised it, is all,” he said to the curious students.
He tried not to think about that, about what it might mean, as he helped the little Japanese janitor lug ten-pound wax blanks from boxes over to his worktable, a huge pine plank that looked to have been hewn from a tree grown in Brobdingnag. He spent most of his three-hour tour of duty shopping up wax into equally tiny chunks with a meat cleaver. Nick thought he did a fine job of it, but every so often Fukushima would point out “That one is too big. Cut again!”
To which Nick would mutter: “Yes sir, Fuk-u-shima.”
By the time midnight rolled around, he estimated he’d diced approximately fifty pounds of wax and cut to length a hundred feet of low-smoke braided wick from a spool. His head was getting dewy from the humid atmosphere created from the wax boiling in multiple pouring pots, and from the dozens of candles simpering in every sconce.
He was about to ask if he could leave, when he spotted a pair of oddly shaped green candles dangling from the drying rack. Nestled along the far wall, beyond the work area and separated by rows of molds and dyes, he’d almost missed them.
“Um, sir?”
“What does the boy want now? A towel to wipe his precious hair?”
“Are those . . . those look like—”
“They’re not,” Fukushima bustled over to the obscene candles, knocking over one entire stand of dyes. The glass vials tinkled to the floor and rolled everywhere. When Nick bent over to help, Fukushima waved him away. “No. You done. No more detention. You go now.”
Nick grinned as he left. He’d just figured a way out of any further detention.
The next two days passed gloriously free of Dreaming debacles and harrowing mythic encounters. Nick even managed to survive a couple pranic healing classes with Miss Lamborghini. The only real excitement happened on Friday evening when a few parents arrived to check up on their injured kids; Duchaine and Delacort struggled to soothe the frazzled parents and keep them from suing the Institute for gross negligence.
A rumor of a troll uprising did add a little spice. Unfortunately the DME was being real hush-hush on it, so the students were forced to embellish the rumor until, by Saturday morning (according to the latest news via rumor mill) a horde of trolls had broken past the spiked and enchanted walls around the school, tore through the wards, fought off all the gargoyles, and killed a few of the richest students (apparently because trolls hate wealthy people). Depending on whom you asked, Nick had either peed his pants and died horribly, or slaughtered three trolls by turning them against each other with his mind powers.
Saturday morning dawned red and drizzly.
While searching for his comb, Nick stumbled on a shabby book wedged between his mattress and the slats. “Lem-e-get-on?” he mouthed. Looking around, he saw he was the only one awake. Richard’s angelfish was staring at him from its tank while Severus was curled up on the foot of Richard’s bed, the traitor.
Where had this book come from? It looked too old and—Nick decided, after flipping through it—too dark, to have been catalogued into the sanctum sanctorum. If a teacher found him with such a tome in his possession . . . well, that would be another kerfuffle he wouldn’t be able to explain.
He tucked the book back underneath his mattress, making sure the comforter came down over the bed and rail. Following a quick trip to the bathroom Nick laced on his jerkin and belt. Made sure his athame was good and sharp.
At the entrance to the bestiary Nick wolfed down a Nutri-Grain bar before plunging through the ward.
By the time he reached Duchaine’s cabin, Nick was feeling better. The warlock waiting for him in a rickety old rocker on his porch was sharpening a broad sword. Just under three-feet long, double-edged with elegant flowing lines from shaft to rune-stone-encrusted pommel to handle, the weapon looked almost too beautiful for such grizzled hands.
“Don’t you think that pig-sticker’s a bit of an overkill for sprites?” Nick chided.
Duchaine grinned back and set his polishing stone down. “Way I figure it, once they see my stang, Darklance here, those little tinkerbells are just going to drop dead out of pure fright.” The warlock made his way down to Nick. Scanning the boy’s face, he said, “You all rested up?”
Nick nodded.
“Good,” Duchaine snapped the stang into place on a sling strapped to his back. “Because this isn’t some game of Mageball. This is the big leagues. We mess up, people die. We don’t mess up, monsters die. So—”
“No worries?” Nick offered.
Duchaine grinned. After locking up the cabin, donning a gaudy red hunters cap complete with earflaps, he led Nick into the woods, following the yellow-stone path through the bestiary until coming to a gateway guarded by two more gargoyles.
Next to the warlock, Nick sighed. Here we go again.
But instead of jumping on him and otherwise making an annoying spectacle, the mythics nodded at Nick and stepped aside. As they were locking it behind them, Duchaine offered his two cents to Nick.
“That was weird.”
He did not look down at Nick when he said this, but the boy wizard could sense the comment had been rife with insinuations. He tried not to think about why.
Duchaine stopped about fifty feet into the foreboding forest. He scanned the woods.
“Where’d you get the name ‘Darklance’ from?”
Resuming their trek up the winding overgrown path, Duchaine quietly said, “I didn’t name it. Old family heirloom.” He trudged ahead, adding cryptically, “I have many family heirlooms.”
The yellow-stone path long faded into dirt, their passage through the forest circuitous and frigid this early in the morning. Nick began to wonder if coming out here might not have been the brightest idea. He was about to ask after their destination, when he noticed a familiar face in a birch tree.
“Are we going to Shamgar’s?”
Duchaine spotted the tree god’s face. “No. that’s not one of his current markers. Shamgar carved those faces into many trees around here over the years. We’re about a half mile away. Come on.” He led Nick down a steep stairway made of half-rotten railroad ties.
Nick nearly slipped about halfway down; only Duchaine’s lightning reflexes prevented him from tumbling the rest of the way down to the river.
“This is like the Death Star,” Nick mused.
Making his own sure-footed way down, Duchaine asked, “What do you mean?”
“You know,” Nick said, “the Death Star didn’t have any railings either. Those poor workers had to walk along these high places right next to the ledge, no railings to keep them from falling off. I guess most of the Empire’s budget went into its super-laser, so maybe they couldn’t afford railings. Then again, they could afford to make a second Death Star, but still no railings? Personally, I would’ve written a letter to my local Sith Lord.”
Duchaine chuckled. At the dock he gestured for Nick to enter the rowboat before untying the rope from the mooring cleat and climbing in after him. The dinghy rocked and displaced a few inches under his weight. Once they were settled and had pushed off from the small dock, Duchaine took up the oars and stared paddling, making the rowlocks creak in rebellion.
Unseen frogs croaked, long rubber-band noises filling the air. Crickets chirped. Birds—mostly sparrows, but a few singing robin too—crooned their morning tunes.
“So how do we find sprites anyway?” Nick asked ten minutes later.
The warlock wasn’t listening to him. His eyes were roaming over the tree line edging the river. What could be seen of his face was crinkled by a grim expression.
“We’re not going after sprites today.”
“Why not?” Nick queried.
Duchaine started to paddle faster. “Because something is hunting us.”
Nick retreated as low into the boat as he could in a vain attempt to make himself look small. A scan of the tree line revealed nothing to his untrained eyes. “What’s hunting us?” he whispered. “Do I even want to know?”
Duchaine steered harder on the starboard side to avoid some rapids. Over the roar of the rushing water he said, “They usually roam miles from here, in a valley to the north. I’m sorry, Nick. If I’d known one was this close, I wouldn’t have brought you out today.”
“You’re making me nervous,” Nick said, water splashing into his mouth. “What’s hunting us?”
For the first time since entering the boat, Duchaine looked him in the eye. “A shaga.”
Heart skipping a beat, blood chilling, Nick’s mind flashed back to that day on the bus. He’d seen a picture of a shaga in Duchaine’s Fantastic Beasts. Mammoth creatures with impenetrable body plates.
“Don’t worry,” Duchaine stopped rowing while they trounced over some more rapids. “I’ll get you safely to the DME headquarters.”
“What?” it came out as a high pitched squeal. “Why don’t we just go back to the Institute? It’s not far. It’s got to be closer than the DME.”
Duchaine shook his head. Water splashed over both of them, great foaming sprays spilling into the boat only to slop back out. “Too late for that. It’s caught our scent. I can’t risk leading it back to the school; the shaga might pursue us and charge right through the gate. No, our best bet is to take this river as close to headquarters as we can. That might throw it off our scent.”
“Won’t it just follow us along the riverbanks?” He couldn’t help but envy Richard and Bruno, asleep in their warm beds, comfy and oblivious, the lucky jerks.
“Shaga’s have terrible eyesight,” Duchaine explained. “It’ll scour the forest ahead in search of our disembarkation. It’ll pick up our scent there. We’ll need to run. Once we hit land, we’ll split up. I’ll contact the other warlocks. We were supposed to meet up with them later near Ravensport where we’ll get off. Once I summon them, they’ll lead the shaga away and we’ll race to the DME.”
“Did you say we’re going to split up?” Nick hated how terrified he sounded. But this little excursion was making his encounter with the golem look like a pregame show.
In Duchaine’s hands the oars broke water with terrifying swiftness; he powered through the river like a motorboat. “It’ll sense two scent-paths,” he explained. “It will follow mine. I have a stronger, older scent. Shaga’s always hunt the more experienced prey. It’s our safest bet. Trust me, Nick. No worries.”
“Yeah right.”
On reaching Ravensport, a shallow marina with a boathouse, fifteen minutes later, Nick felt like he hadn’t taken a breath in ages. He clung to the edges of the boat as Duchaine stepped off and tied it down. Living up to its name, dozens of ravens perched along the boathouse and pier markers, with another murder cawing on the surf, tearing apart a decomposed kill. Moose, perhaps. It was hard to tell, considering its state.
Together they knelt at the edge of the sandy turf, peering into the forest. Overhead the sky was still an angry crimson hue the shade of blood in water. Thunder bellowed in the distance.
“Is it out there?” Nick whispered. “Has it caught up yet?”
“If it had, we’d look like that moose over there, only a bit fresher—and bloodier.” Duchaine checked his old pocket watch, grunted as if disgusted with its suggestion of the hour, and secreted it back inside his vest. “You run south. If you’re lucky, you’ll encounter the warlock party. And Nick, keep your athame handy.”
Hands shaking, knees trembling, Nick nodded.
“Sir?” he said. “What do I do if it comes after me?”
Duchaine reached into the muddy surf. “It won’t.”
“But let’s just say it does,” Nick pursued. “What do I do then? Know any spells that’ll stop a shaga? Maybe some rue powder, essence of mugwort, some alchemical weapon?”
The weary manner in which the warlock shook his head stole the last bit of wind from Nick’s sails. “Even if you bombarded it with a dozen wardstones, all you’d accomplish is making it very pissed off. You spot it, you run.” Duchaine lifted his hands from the muck and rubbed mud over Nick’s exposed skin. “To cover your scent. Just in case. Now, run!”
Like a shock to the heart Duchaine’s words spurned Nick into action. It felt good to run. Yoga was fine and all, but nothing got his heart pumping and his mind churning like a good long run-till-you-drop race through the woods with a huge beastie on his tail. He skidded on a pile of wet leaves while the fleeing ravens distracted him. Once out of sight of Duchaine, Nick stopped looking back. If the shaga was going to get him, he’d rather not see it coming.
He’d rather it be quick, like tearing a band aid off with one clean yank.
“Oh man,” Nick winced about ten minutes later. Another minute and the cramps biting at his sides were going to do him in. He stopped, doubled over. It had been ages since he’d felt this winded; not since that race he’d taken on a dare with Alexis when he was ten. Ah, pretty Alexis. That girl could run.
A branch cracked somewhere nearby, prodding Nick out of his reverie. He ducked behind a fat pine trunk and tried to get his rapid breathing under control so he could listen.
Nothing but the distant chirrup of birds sounded in the gloom. He imagined that if it were a shaga he’d be hearing louder noises than twigs breaking; probably something along the lines of branches cracking, ground quaking, a real hubbub tumult.
A series of tiny scratching and tittering sounds erupted directly overhead just as Nick was catching his breath.
Looking upward through the canopy, Nick moaned, “I’m in a right kerfuffle now.”
Everything went quiet for thirty seconds, as if all sound had been sucked from the area, but then a gaggle of sprites burst out of a bole nearby. Like a plague of locusts they descended on Nick. He swatted and slapped. The tiny people evaded his every attempt with maddening ease, flittering around and zipping to safe distance long before his hand arrived.
The female sprites, adorned in wispy robes of leaves and spider webs, fluttered in close and started flashing him. At first annoyed by their antics, then amazed at their wings, which, contrary to the butterfly-like appendages he’d expected to see on tiny fairy creatures, were more like living flames burning brighter the faster they moved, Nick was soon mesmerized by the flirting sprites. He’d read up on them in Fantastic Beasts in preparation for today’s hunt, of course, but nothing had equipped him for this. He almost forgot about the shaga as he gawked at their minuscule—but gorgeous—bodies.
And then two of the male sprites filched his athame.
Nick spotted them flying away out of the corner of his eye. The blasted female sprites had been distracting him with their beauty.
He lashed out, grabbing for the knife.
The sprites zipped upwards, out of reach. Their laughter was just the spur Nick needed, reminding him that he too had his gifts. Summoning all the fury at his disposal, fueled by years of adults concealing secrets, telling him lies, he directed his command straight at the two wily sprites hefting his athame ten feet overhead.
“Drop it!”
The tiny thieves quit laughing, pausing in their levity. But it was only a respite; they soon resumed their frolicking behavior.
Well, as his father had once suggested, ‘when all else fails, throw rocks’. Nick scrabbled in the dirt, snatching up a few choice pebbles. Slinging the first one wide to the right, he adjusted his aim and sent the second stone screaming. It plunked satisfyingly into one of the thieves. The sprite released his hold on the knife and plummeted out of the air. His partner in crime dropped also, apparently too weak to heft the blade alone.
As the others looked on in shock, Nick retrieved his tool from the ground. Once it was snug in its sheath, he picked up the body of the sprite he’d knocked unconscious. Its fiery wings were mere tendrils now, thread-like attachments with pinprick holes dotting their surface. The weight of the sprite didn’t even register in Nick’s hand. He held it up so its brethren could see it.
“You see this?” Nick growled. “That’s what happens when you don’t listen to me. When I tell you frigging mythics to do something, you better dang well do it.” He paused. The sprites were silent. Nick roared: “You hear me?”
A shutter went through the gaggle of sprites. They descended as a unit. Hovering before him, placid, no longer laughing, they seemed somehow less exotic.
His dark enjoyment of the moment vanished when the ground began to tremble.
Turning and peering round a tree, Nick spotted the source of the mini-quake. A shaga was charging through the woods, knocking aside any tree less than five inches in diameter. There was nothing to do but follow Duchaine’s advice and run.
Thirty or so paces into his sprint, Nick unwittingly began screaming, small bursts of pure unadulterated fear erupting from his mouth.
Behind him, branches cracked and snapped off, trunks splintered and the ground shook. Naked horror drove Nick onwards, but the path he was on was proving too dense to follow in any kind of hurry, though it didn’t seem to be slowing the shaga down any. Taking a sharp right, Nick darted out of the foliage onto a narrow dirt path. The way was now open, but he wasn’t gaining speed or widening the gap between him and the shaga; this path was an incline.
He dug deep for reserves of energy he didn’t really have, and pushed himself harder. As the gap closed, Nick spotted light up ahead. It was coming from a cabin.
Still screaming, legs burning, stomach cramping, he raced on. The cabin was forty feet away. He could see the simple porch, the smoke curling out of the stone chimney. When he crossed the twenty-foot marker to the cabin, a sensation of dizziness and pain deep in his brain assured Nick that his hope had not been futile; he’d just crossed a ward.
Dizziness clinging to him, he ran up to the porch, jumped up the stairs and started pounding on the door. Had his intentions here been to harm the owner of the property, the ward would still be assaulting him; but as he pounded on the door, the discomfort abated.
“Open up! Please, open the door.”
The beefy wooden door opened. A frumpy middle-aged woman stood looking at Nick. “What’s going on here?”
“There’s a—”
But that was as far he got when the shaga came barreling onto the property. The woman unleashed a piercing shriek. In her sudden terror, she permitted Nick to barge his way inside and to slam the door shut behind them. The entire cabin shook as the shaga crashed through the ward.
Nick watched incredulous through a window as the huge mythic shook its head. This close, he could see red-hot fissures between its body plates. Its brutish skull was lined with burning cracks like a log in the fire glowing with tiny lines just before it breaks apart. In place of eyes the shaga boasted a pair of smoldering coals within otherwise dark pockets on either side of its skull. Steam wafted from its head. The thing seemed dazed; disabled by the protective spell weaved into a ward around the cabin. But it was soon on all four monstrous legs. It aimed its smoldering eyes directly at Nick.
Like the gargoyles back at the Institute, it sniffed at the air.
This reminiscent act conjured a tiny (microscopic, really) hope that there might be a solution to his dilemma here. It was a long shot, though.
The shaga scratched at the ground with its right front hoof.
“What’s your name?” Nick asked the screeching woman without taking his eyes from the beastie.
“M-Molly.”
“Well, Molly,” Nick said, “I hope you have insurance on this place.” Outside in the yard the mythic broke into his charge, racing towards the house. Floorboards trembling, Nick ordered Molly to “Run!”
He was right behind her, fleeing towards the back door.
As a plan began to take shape in his noodle, Nick flew through a sliding glass door Molly had blessedly left open. There was a whirlpool on the back deck, set off to the far right. It was filled. Whirling. “Get in the water,” Nick said, thinking on his feet.
For some reason that he would not understand for a long time, the woman obeyed.
Just as Nick leaped off the deck to the left of Molly and her whirlpool, a tremendous bang announced the shaga’s unauthorized entrance.
In seconds the huge mythic bulldozed its way through the entire cabin. Dry eight-inch thick logs splintered, furniture burst into kindling, and windows and drinking glasses shattered into a thousand tinkling shards. Nick heard everything but saw only the tree line ahead. Those beefy pine trunks were looking mighty inviting. If he could just reach them . . .
The crack of snapping timber directly behind him finally forced Nick to look over his shoulder. The deck was decimated. It had crumpled as the shaga burst from the cabin.
As the mythic tore loose from its splintered confines, Nick breached the tree line and stood with hands braced on a pair of stout pines set four-feet apart. Heart threatening to burst straight through his ribs, Nick waited. When it was at last free and stood shaking off the final shattered remnants of the deck, the shaga sniffed the air for Nick. It caught his scent and charged toward the trees.
Behind him Nick heard crashing sounds. Either another shaga was coming his way—in which case he was totally screwed—or the warlocks had received Duchaine’s call and were on their way.
Twenty feet separated wizard and mythic.
Nick fought all his baser instincts to stand firm. Duchaine had said to run. But when he considered all he’d seen with the other mythics, their peculiar reactions to him, his burgeoning sense of authority over them, he was determined to test this one insane theory.
Fifteen feet separated wizard and mythic.
One of the sprites he’d encountered earlier appeared beside Nick’s head. It started tugging on his ear. Was it trying to save him, or was it just being a nuisance?
Ten feet.
Nick slammed his hands together in a flash, channeling his will into the clap and directing his intentions towards the charging mythic, all while screaming in his most commanding voice: “Stop!”
Drained, ready to fall flat on his face, Nick watched in horror.
The shaga did not stop.