Spellbound Statues, page 23
“You were petrified.”
Gideon nodded once. “I never felt anything like it before. I was not just unable to move, but unable to feel, to see or hear, and was only aware of the occasional being that moved through this place.” He looked at Reg. “Like you. You have a strong psychic presence.”
Reg shrugged, a bit embarrassed by his observation. She had reached out to him while he had been petrified; that was why he had felt her. Her presence couldn’t be that much stronger than any other.
“You do yourself a disservice,” Gideon said, reading her expression or possibly her thoughts. “You have great strength. Especially to be able to free me. I do not know why you would ally yourself with these practitioners.” He flicked a glance to Davyn and Sarah. “You know that they will only hold you back. They are staid and traditional and, as you see, they will not accept innovation. Convincing an old witch to look at a new idea…” He shrugged expressively.
Reg thought about Sarah’s and Davyn’s opposition to Reg’s rescue and use of Theodore. No matter what she said or how useful Theodore had already proven to them, they would not accept that Reg had done the right thing or had the right to do what she had done. Gideon was right about innovation. There were some things that the old guard, the traditional practitioners, would never accept.
“Like you binding the elementals. That was something you knew practitioners like Sarah would never accept.”
Gideon nodded. “You can understand it when you look at history. Witches have been wrongly imprisoned or executed for their beliefs and spiritual practices. Many species have been enslaved and shown in freak shows and zoos. Any sentient creature being bound is anathema to them.”
Sarah was nodding her agreement.
“But such thinking cannot be transferred to an elemental. They are not sentient creatures. They are not creatures at all. They have no bodily form. Whether they even have intelligence or whether it is only an energy force is up for debate. Not all powers within this sphere are wielded by intelligence. Some simply… exist. We have harnessed them with machines, exploited them for our own use, and there is nothing wrong with that because they are useful to us and they are not living, thinking things. Just forces.”
He stared at her intently with glittering obsidian eyes. Shrewd and calculating.
“So it is with the elementals. You cannot view them as living, thinking beings, because they are not. They are just… sparks. Forces. And if those forces are not directed or harnessed, they can cause problems. Bring about dangerous imbalances and disasters.”
Reg was almost convinced.
But she had learned a lot from Davyn and Sarah during her time living in Black Sands, and she trusted their viewpoints more than that of this stranger who had turned against the traditions of the community.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance. Reg looked up at the blue sky and wondered where it was coming from. She didn’t see any threatening clouds. There was no wind, no sign at all of an incoming storm.
Gideon looked around, his face still pale as stone.
There was another rumble. This time, Reg felt it under her feet. Not thunder. An earthquake? She had never experienced an earthquake while in Florida. She wasn’t sure if Florida ever got them. Sinkholes, yes, thunderstorms and hurricanes for sure, but an earthquake?
She caught a whiff of sulfur that was gone as quickly as it had come. Gideon held out his hands, looking around as if expecting an ambush, ready to use his magic to combat it no matter which direction it came from.
The ground shifted again. Reg looked at the spot where the broken altar stone lay, where Gideon had stood as a statue, and where she could still feel the power of the Geode of Gaea, surrounded by the protective ward stones. All clustered together in one place. She felt suddenly too close to them. Too much power was focused on that one place.
She was still tired from reanimating Gideon, as well as the rest of the adventures of the day. She felt the terrible weight of inertia. Trying to move from that place seemed like folly. But she had to do it. Reg crawled away from the altar and forced herself to rise.
Her injured leg buckled under her. It was like her body didn’t want her to escape. But she did not wish to share Gideon’s fate, whatever it was to be.
She gathered all her strength to take a few steps away, dragging her injured leg but managing to stay on her feet. Davyn watched and frowned, opening his mouth to ask her if she were okay. She could feel his concern.
The next rumble ended with a thunderous crack as if the bedrock beneath them had split. Reg reached out to steady herself on the wall of the temple but, of course, it was only an illusion. There was nothing for her to grasp, nothing for her to steady herself against, and she fell to her knees.
The ground under Gideon opened up, a tremendous black maw determined to consume him with a growl of grinding stone. He gave a yelp for help and tried too late to run. He was still too slow from his petrifaction, but he probably could not have escaped even if he were a young and vigorous sprinter. The earth was determined to have him.
Gideon disappeared from sight. The earth closed back up, pressing itself back together so that not even a crack showed. There was another rumble deep inside the earth that sounded remarkably like a belch, and then silence.
Reg stared for a long time at the spot where Gideon had disappeared. She swallowed, her mouth and throat very dry.
Davyn and Sarah looked at each other. Their eyes were wide and round. Reg didn’t like to see her mentors frightened. What did it say for her own safety?
The ground could open up and swallow any of them at any time. What was to stop it?
“This is very disturbing,” Sarah said finally, in a dry, cracked voice. She looked around her. “The earth elemental is clearly still here and has taken its revenge on the man—or one of the men—who held it bound for so many years. Now is the time for us to take action and make amends for what was done before it strikes again. It could turn all of us into stone at any moment.”
Or…
Reg stared at the ground where Gideon had disappeared. She could no longer feel him, no matter how hard she tried. He was simply gone.
“How are we going to do that?” Reg asked. “What do any of us know about how to stop or control it? Gideon is the one who had that knowledge. And Corvin, but you know he isn’t going to share. You saw how he reacted to Theodore reading what was in his library. He wants to keep all his knowledge a secret, to hoard it so that he is the only one who can understand what is happening.”
“And Theodore.”
Reg nodded. “Except for the locked books.”
Sarah sighed. “It will have to do. What those boys chose to do was based on their interpretation of ancient texts, so perhaps those will inform us of our alternate path. We don’t have the details of the exact spells Gideon and Corvin used or why they chose the places or relics they did. We will have to use what knowledge is available and guess at the rest.”
“So now you want Theodore.”
Sarah pressed her lips together. “I’m afraid I do,” she admitted. “I fear that we are dabbling in arts that we should not, but it seems the only option at the moment. Will you summon him?”
Reg was already on her knees. She scooped up a handful of soil, wondering whether it was wise to summon her homunculus with earth when they were trying to avoid being killed by the earth elemental.
She threw the soil down in front of her, breathing the sweet scent of oranges in deeply.
“From soil and stone, by magic spin,
Theodore reform, our work begin.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
A small dust devil started to spin in front of Reg and, unlike at the Cyclone Tower, where it kept fizzling out, it worked this time. Reg was tired, but apparently that did not affect her ability to summon her homunculus.
Theodore stared at Reg with his flat black eyes, giving no indication of what he thought of being summoned there or the fact that she was kneeling on the ground. He looked around the ruins and observed Sarah’s and Davyn’s presence.
Knowing about all they had discussed so far, it was probably no surprise to him that they were all at the Temple Orange Grove.
“The warlock Gideon is here no longer,” he observed.
“No,” Reg agreed. “I managed to reverse the spell on him, but… apparently, the earth elemental wasn’t too impressed by the fact, and…” Reg gestured helplessly at the place where Gideon had disappeared. “The ground just opened up and swallowed him.”
Theodore nodded as if this were the most natural thing in the world. Maybe to him, it was. Maybe it was all expected after what he had read about the elementals and everything that had been happening in the ancient texts. Perhaps the whole thing had been prophesied a thousand years before.
Reg licked her lips and tried to figure out how to explain their dilemma to Theodore and find out if he had any knowledge that could help them succeed. It all seemed so convoluted that she was afraid he wouldn’t understand or that he would give the wrong answer.
“The earth elemental is still here,” she said slowly. She couldn’t feel it like she had been able to feel the fire elemental, but then, her affinity was not for the earth. Everything but the earth. Sarah had said that the elemental was still there, and that was what had consumed Gideon, so she would go with that. “It took its revenge on Gideon. We want to… well, we don’t want to be petrified or fall into the earth too. We just want… to help the elementals.”
Theodore clicked and cocked his head at her, even though she hadn’t asked a question yet.
“They were bound by Corvin and Gideon, like you said, and we want to free them. But we want to find a way to free them without them attacking us. And the big problem is, once we do that and they are free…” Reg looked at Sarah, trying to take any clues from her as to what to say. Sarah just nodded and looked reassuring. “Well, we want them to be free without causing any catastrophic events… Before when they were free, there were a lot of bad things going on… a lot of people were killed. That’s why Corvin and Gideon bound them in the first place.”
“They wanted the power.”
Reg blinked. She looked at Davyn and Sarah to see if she had understood Theodore’s words.
“What? What do you mean?”
“The elementals bound to the relics provide a powerful source of energy.”
“Corvin harnessed them as a power source,” Sarah said slowly, understanding spreading over her face. “Like having his own little nuclear generators. He would always have all the power he needed and more. Enough for several people, apparently.”
Theodore nodded. His face betrayed no interest or concern in the matter. He was just the messenger. She had asked him to read all those books and scrolls, and he had done so and had come up with a theory. If it actually was a theory and not something that Corvin had explicitly detailed in an unlocked journal.
“I thought they bound the elementals to stop them from wreaking havoc in the community. They were dangerous. They had caused a lot of deaths.”
Theodore shrugged. “There was much havoc and death,” he agreed.
“So that part was true. They were causing a lot of chaos. You remember that, right?” Reg directed the question to Sarah. Sarah had been there. She could verify what Corvin and Gideon had said.
“Yes,” Sarah confirmed again. “I remember all the stuff going on. It was a perilous time, with a lot of natural disasters as well as lawless people. The land had been through so much war, and people just wanted to… they wanted land and homes and a place where they could raise their families. But there were also many people who were there to hide from the law or make their fortunes by harming others. It was a difficult time to make your way.” She sighed as if remembering how tiring it had been, then lifted her chin. “It was a lot of hard work, but we carved out an existence here. Clearing forests, draining swamps, cultivating the land for crops. It was a difficult life, but hard work won out.”
“And in the middle of all that, the elementals were causing all kinds of problems,” Reg suggested.
“Yes. Hurricanes, a huge tidal wave that wiped out all kinds of homes, malaria, yellow fever, crop failures. Just when you started to get a leg up, the next disaster would hit.”
“So the elementals had to be bound. But how… how are we supposed to release them without having to face all of that again? There are already enough hurricanes and tropical storms, without adding to them.”
“Heal the earth,” Theodore told them. “The earth is not the domain of humans. It must be healed by one who knows it well.”
Reg looked at Sarah, but she looked just as perplexed as Reg felt at the instruction. Davyn didn’t look like he had any suggestions, either.
“How is the earth not the domain of humans?” Reg challenged. “We live on the earth. We cultivate the earth. Everything we do… is connected with the earth.”
It wasn’t as if humans could survive in any of the other elements. They could not live in the air, water, or fire. Only on the earth.
“Upon the earth,” Theodore pointed out, “not in the earth.”
“In the earth? What, like actually burrowing in the dirt like animals?”
Theodore nodded at this. Reg rolled her eyes. Where were they going to find someone who lived in tunnels under the ground? Some hermit in a cave? Monks? They didn’t even dig basements in Florida because of the high water table. No one lived underground. There were no mountains and no dwarfs building huge underground halls. Only pixies.
Reg frowned and thought about this. She had been to the pixie underground burrows soon after she had moved to Black Sands. Detective Marta Jessup had asked her to help with the case of a missing fairy girl, who had, as Reg had discovered, been kidnapped by pixies. They had gone into the underground burrows to rescue Calliopia, and Reg hoped never to go down there again. It was dark and damp and nasty. She had felt like the whole thing might cave in on her at any moment.
“What about pixies?” she suggested to Sarah. “They live in the earth.”
“They believe anything in the earth belongs to them,” Sarah said, nodding. “Precious stones and stones of power cannot belong to humans because anything under the earth is the pixies’.”
“Right,” Reg agreed, remembering more details as she thought it through. “So if there is anyone with an affinity to the earth and an earth elemental, it would be a pixie, right?”
“Yes,” Sarah agreed reluctantly. “I don’t suppose you are still in touch with any of those… people.”
She said people like she really meant creatures or odious worms. Reg had to admit that she didn’t see eye to eye with the pixies on very many things, but she had gotten accustomed to some of their ways as she dealt with Ruan, Calliopia’s partner, and Karol, his sister.
All three were outcasts from both pixie and fairy society since the two peoples were mortal enemies, and pairings between fairies and pixies were forbidden. Despite Ruan’s affinity for the earth and living underground, he now lived on the surface for his fairy mate. It was pretty amazing the two had stayed together, considering how opposite they were in so many ways.
“Ruan comes by every now and then,” she told Sarah. “Brings a treat for Starlight and stays for a short visit. Calliopia likes the garden. She’ll sit out there for a while in the sun while Ruan stays in the shade, and they are both… at peace. I think.”
“You haven’t let that pixie into the cottage?” Sarah demanded, aghast.
“No.” Pixies did not have the same views on ownership as humans, and that tended to cause conflicts between them. Reg knew better now than to allow a pixie into her house where he might return later to help himself to something he had deemed his. “Just into the garden.”
“Hmm.” Sarah’s expression told Reg clearly that she didn’t like it, but now was not the time to argue about it, especially if they were going to try to get Ruan to help with their little problem.
“Do you think a pixie could help?” Reg asked Theodore. “Pixies live in the earth.”
Theodore clicked and considered and nodded his head. “Pixies may have the knowledge and affinity needed to deal with the earth elemental,” he agreed.
Reg took a deep breath and slowly let it out again. She didn’t know where Ruan might be. He and Calliopia lived a nomadic lifestyle and didn’t stay in one place for very long, since they might be targeted by either of their communities.
“Can you contact him?” Davyn asked.
Reg tried to reach out to Ruan, to envision where he was and what he was doing, but she didn’t get very far. She was tired, and her head ached. When she tried to concentrate on Ruan, she felt like she should just lie down and go to sleep. She rubbed her forehead.
“I need… I don’t know. I wish we could do this another day.”
She knew that wasn’t possible. The earth elemental had already proven it had no intention of waiting to see what they would do. It had swallowed Gideon and could do the same thing to any of them at any moment.
“You aren’t looking so good,” Sarah said, studying Reg.
“I’m not feeling so hot, to tell the truth.”
“It has been a long day.”
Reg nodded.
“Let me see if I can help,” Davyn suggested. He walked over to Reg and sat down beside her. He took her hand and squeezed it, then released it and held his hands out toward her, warming her, again transferring strength and healing heat to her. Reg felt like a weakling for needing so much energy from him. She shouldn’t have had to get energy from him so many times in one day.
But it had been a long, hard day.
“Don’t resist, Reg,” Davyn said. His eyes were kind and a little amused. “You need it, so take it.”
“I just don’t think…”
“You don’t think transforming to and from a dragon, flying, swimming, fighting off sea monsters, flying monkeys, and unpetrifying two people should take that much energy? On what? Tea and Oreo cookies?”
