Spellbound Statues, page 12
Sarah sighed and gazed out the window before going on.
“We were all young and reckless, eager to explore this new frontier and to make our place in the world. Mistakes were made; I can forgive Corvin for that, I suppose. I made many of my own as well. But I didn’t hang on to them and defend them.”
“He’s defensive,” Reg said. “He’s tired and in pain because of the curse and inability to use his gifts. He’s like a big, grumpy toddler. Maybe if he was feeling better, he would act differently about it. But what was he supposed to do? Release the elementals after he decided it wasn’t the right choice? What would have happened if he had tried to do that?”
“I imagine he would be where Gideon is now. The elementals are clearly not happy with the way they were treated. I am not sure they have conscious thought processes as we do, or personalities or self-awareness. But I think it is clear that they are angry about their incarceration.”
Reg nodded. She had only encountered one of them so far, but she could attest that the fire elemental had not been ready to let go of its resentment of being bound and to simply enjoy its newfound freedom.
Far from it.
“Are we going to free them?” she asked Sarah. “Do we have the skills to do that? And can we free them without ending up…” Reg trailed off.
“Like Gideon?” Sarah finished.
“Yeah. And we still have that challenge, too. Figuring out if there is a way to reverse the petrifaction.”
“And if it is the right thing to do,” Sarah added. “If he helped to bind the elementals for all of this time, maybe it is appropriate that they bind him in turn.”
“But what about the others in the forest? And whoever else the earth elemental runs into in the next little while? It’s more than just Gideon.”
“Yes, of course, you are right,” Sarah admitted, frowning. “We must find out how to reverse the petrifaction, regardless of what happens to Gideon.”
Reg pulled in to the curb in front of the house.
“We will have to do what we can,” Sarah said before opening her door. “We need to restore what we can. Set things right as much as possible. Corvin is right about one thing… we let this happen without doing anything about it. What did we think when the trouble being caused by the elementals ceased? That they had all washed out to sea? Decided to go somewhere else? Or to stop causing chaos? We should have done something back then to see whether we could live in peace with the elementals or to find a way to drive them out. Instead, we stood by while someone else took action.”
“What Corvin did wasn’t your fault.”
“In a way, it was. We should all have known what was going on. We should have been holding council and coming up with a plan of action. Instead, we were too caught up in our own exciting lives to take any responsibility.” She paused. “Or I was; I cannot speak for anyone else. I take responsibility for my part in what happened. In my ignorance.”
Ahead of Reg was a truck she recognized. One with dragon scratch marks on the roof. As Sarah got out of the car, Davyn stepped out of the truck. He walked toward them. Reg glanced up at the sky, but didn’t see or feel Ember anywhere close by. He must have stayed at the house.
“Is everything okay?” she asked Davyn. “Ember?”
He smiled. “Ember is fine. What are you worried about?”
Reg rubbed the back of her neck. “Everything. All this stuff with the elementals, but also about him getting too big and going away… becoming more independent. Worrying about him getting hurt.”
Davyn looked at Sarah. “All this stuff with the elementals?” he repeated.
Sarah nodded. “We have just been talking to Corvin about what happened to Gideon and the artifacts Reg discovered at the temple and the fort.”
“Oh.” Davyn’s face grew pale. He swallowed. “What exactly did he do?”
Sarah motioned to the house. “Let’s go inside. It is best not to talk about this out in the street.”
She led the way into the house, and Sarah gave Davyn a brief rundown of what they had learned.
“Corvin and Gideon and an unknown number of practitioners formed a shadow coven and… bound these four elementals to four artifacts. Corvin has been maintaining the binding spells and protections over the years. But that ceased when he was injured and cursed by the werewolves.”
“And the earth and fire elementals have been freed.”
“Or broken free. So it would appear.”
Davyn rubbed his face. “Well… this is a situation.”
“It is indeed,” Sarah agreed. She opened a sideboard in the parlor that Reg had not seen her access before. Reg saw it was a liquor cabinet. Sarah had refused to drink with Corvin, but felt that she needed the fortification now.
Once they had all been supplied with drinks, Davyn looked at Reg and Sarah. “We will need to act quickly. Two of the elementals are free. The others may follow quickly. We need to at least check on how secure the arrangements are.”
“We need to retrieve the relics and free them,” Sarah insisted.
“Perhaps, yes. But we don’t know what the consequences of freeing them would be. Corvin and Gideon decided many years ago that the only way to protect Black Sands from the influence of the elementals was to bind them. What solution do we have? Unleashing four angry spirits into the environment does not seem like the wisest course of action.”
Sarah looked at Reg. “Maybe Reg can communicate with them. Convey to them that we are trying to help them, to restore their freedom to them and atone for what was done in the past.”
The only one Reg had encountered so far was the fire elemental, and it had not seemed very open to any kind of explanation.
“I don’t know. I can try, but I don’t know if I’ll have much luck.”
“Knowing what they are will help,” Davyn assured her. “When you encountered the fire elemental, you did not know what it was. We will need to do some research.” He rubbed his forehead. “Of course, the person with the most knowledge about ancient relics and spirits is Corvin. I take it he is not willing to share?”
“He told us a little about them. How they are bound and protected. But he said they were meant to last forever and to be unassailable.”
Sarah nodded her agreement.
“Well, clearly that is not the case,” Davyn said. “But I do not know who to go to that will have the best knowledge of these ancient rites.”
Reg looked at Sarah. “To Theodore, of course.”
Davyn raised his brows. “Theodore. Who is Theodore?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Davyn’s reaction to Theodore was pretty similar to Sarah’s “What have you done?”
“I don’t understand why everyone is so worked up about it,” Reg told him. “I didn’t go out and perform some kind of forbidden magic. And you keep telling me,” she pointed this remark at Sarah, “That there is no such thing as dark magic. As long as it doesn’t harm anyone. And what does it hurt anyone for me to have a homunculus? It isn’t even like I created it. I’m just using what Sma left behind when she died.”
“The homunculus should not even exist after she died,” Davyn pointed out.
“I understand that. But you can’t deny that he does. Well, you haven’t seen him, but Sarah has, and he’s real, right?”
Sarah nodded reluctantly.
“So if he exists, why can’t I use him? It would be better for him to just keep wandering the forest with no home and no master, no purpose, and for all that knowledge to disappear? I thought you need someone with that ancient knowledge.”
Davyn’s confusion over this suggestion was humorous. Reg could see that he wanted to tell her that she should not, under any circumstance, have had anything to do with the homunculus. And yet, he had just said that he needed the very knowledge that Theodore possessed. And he couldn’t say that she had done anything wrong by rescuing Theodore. How could it have been wrong? Why should she avoid having anything to do with him just because he was created using alchemy that she didn’t understand?
“Reg… there is danger in delving into these ancient arts.”
“I haven’t done anything. Other than giving a homunculus some reading material…”
“You are shameless.”
“Why should I be ashamed? I am not the one who created him. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Davyn shook his head.
“Theodore told Sarah that it was because of Corvin’s spell breaking that the first elementals got out,” Reg informed Davyn. “We didn’t know that, but he did.”
“I’m going to have to think about this.”
“What is there to think about? You need the knowledge he has. How long can we put this off?”
“I at least need to think about it tonight. I’m sorry, Reg, but I can’t just jump into this. I am an example to others in this community; where I get my knowledge or what means I use to acquire it is important. These are dire circumstances. I have heard of what happened in the days before they ‘disappeared.’ And we know the kind of power they have to cause severe storms, forest fires, and other disasters. But I need a day. I need time to think it through.”
“Okay.” Reg shrugged. “I have appointments tonight. We’ll talk tomorrow and see… whether you are going to help or not.”
He looked surprised. “Of course I’ll help, Reg. I wouldn’t abandon my community when they need me. The question is only the method we use to approach it. I will consult other resources tonight and consider the issues involved.”
“Well, I will be talking to Theodore.”
Reg said it flatly, wanting him to understand that she wasn’t asking his permission or approval. The homunculus was a huge help, and his knowledge was much easier for her to access than books, the internet, or some other practitioner in the community. She wasn’t going to ignore the one really good source that she had.
Reg was more concerned about who else would be helping out with their quest. She had Sarah and Davyn for sure. She knew they would both be helping, even if she was using a source of information they didn’t approve of.
She was sure they would come to accept Theodore and be happy to use him when it came down to the crunch. She bet they would even come to like him.
But she also didn’t know whether they would recruit others to help. Letticia? Damon? Other witches or warlocks who had been away for centuries that she didn’t know? She didn’t want too many people involved or for word to spread throughout the community about what they were doing. If they could keep it to just a nice small group, she felt they had a better chance of success than if they involved a lot of people.
She didn’t know much about elementals, but it seemed they might get agitated with more people around. Sometimes, it was better to be able to fly under the radar and not stir things up.
Especially when those things could wreak havoc on the entire state.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Reg finished her readings and a seance and thought she would be able to fall asleep fairly quickly. It had been a long day, and she had barely slept the night before. Fighting wildfires and elementals was not easy work.
But she kept reviewing everything Corvin had said about the remaining elementals and wondering how she and the others would achieve their goal. Or even what their goal was. To free the elementals? To make sure that the two that remained could not get out and attempt to bind the earth and fire elementals or drive them away? To gather them together and try to come to an understanding that wouldn’t endanger anyone in Black Sands?
The longer she lay in bed, the more she tossed and turned. Starlight, who normally either slept on the bed or watched out the window while she slept, eventually snorted and huffed and strode out of the room in irritation. She’d tried to explain why she was so restless, but he seemed to have no interest in the doings of elementals, and she already knew his opinion of Corvin.
Eventually, Reg got out of bed. She was too irritated with herself to stay there any longer. She went out to the garden and summoned Theodore. Despite her disagreement with Sarah and Davyn about whether she should have taken on Theodore, she had never summoned him anywhere but the garden. She was wary of inviting anything into her cottage, especially creatures she didn’t understand. She had learned a lot about homunculuses—homunculi—since first meeting Theodore, but she still couldn’t say that she really understood what he was or how he continued to exist.
“From soil and stone, by magic spin,
Theodore reform, our work begin.”
It was more difficult to see him forming in the darkness, but she didn’t want to turn on any outside lights and attract Sarah’s attention in the big house. There was something magical about watching Theodore form in the moonlight. He seemed more tranquil than during their daytime encounters.
Theodore peered at Reg.
“Bound by craft and ancient lore,
In service, I arise once more—“
“No, no,” Reg waved away his opening verse. “I told you that you don’t need to say all that. It’s just you and me here, and I don’t go in for all the rhyming stuff. Just talk to me like a normal person.”
He clicked and cocked his head.
“What do you wish?”
“I just have some questions.” Reg paced, trying to work out the restless tension. “How much do you know about elementals? You know, the ones that Corvin bound.”
“Earth, air, water, and fire. A completed whole. They work together to cause havoc and disaster.”
“Yeah. That’s what I heard.” Reg paused at the garden bench, but was too restless to sit down. She kept walking. “We are going to try to… visit the two that are still bound. Water and air. Corvin told me a little about how they are bound and protected. But I’m worried…”
“What is your goal?”
“I don’t know,” Reg admitted. “I guess that will depend on how things work out. Maybe we will be making sure that they stay bound, and maybe we will try to free them and convince them to go somewhere else with their natural disasters.”
“You wish to free them?”
“Maybe. I mean, not really, but from what Sarah has said, they shouldn’t have been bound in the first place, so I kind of think it’s the right thing to do. Only, I don’t want to… you know… unleash chaos and all that.”
“Your heart is true.”
“Uh, okay. I guess that’s nice, but how will that help me?”
“You have what you need if you set your mind to it.”
Reg remembered Harrison telling her something similar when they had fought the Witch Doctor and his draugrs. And Harrison had been right. By pooling everyone’s talents and abilities, they had been able to defeat the witch doctor when they never should have been able to. He had been so much more powerful than they were. But he’d had weaknesses. In the movies Reg had seen, the bad guys always had weaknesses and, by exploiting those, the heroes were always able to come out on top.
Reg talked with Theodore long past her usual bedtime until lights started turning on in the big house, letting her know that Sarah was up. If Reg were going to get any sleep before they started on their mission, she knew she’d better get to bed and at least close her eyes for a few minutes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
As Reg had expected, Sarah knocked on her door all too soon. Sarah knew that Reg didn’t normally get up until almost noon, but it was apparently a thing that all magical quests had to start early in the morning. How was anyone supposed to accomplish anything unless they started first thing in the morning?
Storytellers had a lot to answer for. Reg was sure she couldn’t be the only quester ever to be a night owl. How was a company supposed to stay up late into the night drinking beer with trolls or gathered around the fire telling the feats of their forefathers if they got up early every morning?
Sarah had a key and, as usual, let herself into the guest cottage at will. She started the coffee brewing, the surest way to get Reg out of bed, and rattled noisily around the kitchen pretending to prepare breakfast, hoping to make enough noise to wake Reg up. Reg just turned over and went back to sleep. It should have come as no surprise that a few minutes later, Sarah knocked on her bedroom door, abandoning the pretense of being polite and progressing to assertive.
“Oh, Reg, I’m sorry, did I wake you up? You probably had a rough night, but I was just wondering… Davyn is here, and we were hoping to start before too long. We don’t want to burn daylight, as they say. When were you planning to get up?”
Reg groaned and pulled the sheet over her head. “Couple more hours.”
“Hours?” Sarah demanded, aghast. “We can’t wait for two more hours.”
“Did we have an appointment?”
“What do you mean? No, we hadn’t set up a specific time for when we were going to start but, you know, Davyn had to take time off work, and I’ve made time in my schedule. It’s rude to make everyone else sit around and wait while you sleep…”
Reg tried to ignore Sarah and go back to sleep. If she engaged with Sarah, she would not be able to fall back asleep.
But already, she was composing arguments about why she shouldn’t have to get up yet. It was too late. She wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. She pulled the sheet down to glare at Sarah.
“You know what my sleep schedule is like. Isn’t it kind of rude to plan to start a quest when I am normally sleeping?”
But Sarah didn’t flinch at the suggestion. “Most people are out of bed by now.”
“So?”
“Well, you’re awake now, so…”
