The Magicians' Daughter, page 38
“Hubley,” said Ferris when they had returned to the cave below. “It’s time to go home.”
“Home?” Hubley was appalled. “After all the times the Dwarves have helped us? How can we run away when it’s finally our chance to help them?”
“You’re just a child.”
The Halvanankh shook as the mandrake pounded it again. Small rocks rattled down from fresh fissures in the ceiling.
“Your mother’s right.” Avender brushed dust from his shoulders. “You need to take her back to Valing to tell everyone what’s happening. Let the more experienced mages help the Dwarves. And maybe they can bring some of Brizen’s soldiers with them, too.”
“I’m as good a mage as any of them.” Just touching the surface of her memories, Hubley could tell her father had provided her with much more than fireballs. “Besides, someone has to go get the Inach swords you wanted. Mother’s too tired, so that only leaves me.”
“Sweetheart—”
“She’s right, milady,” said Mindrell. “None of the Bryddin will get past the creature without a good sword.”
Avender disagreed. “I still say they should go home. Fornoch can’t get to us as long as we stay away from the windows.”
“He’ll smash the whole city before any other magicians get here,” said Hubley. “I’m the only choice.”
Before anyone could stop her, she raised the image of the Bryddis B’wee in her mind. Ferris, still clinging to her daughter’s arm, came with her.
Even knowing where they were going, mother and child both gasped when they arrived. The Abyss opened beneath their feet, the thick glass floor as clear as Dwarven art could make it. Through the windows, they saw the mandrake curled around the top of the Halvanankh, its long tail laced through a pair of openings at the point where the great ankh was attached to the bottom of the world. With the same strength the creature had shown earlier in breaking the blumet catwalk, it now strained to rip apart the stone. Its tail tightened; the rock between the openings exploded out across the night, sparkling as it fell.
The mandrake moved deeper in, and looped its tail around another of the pillars that kept the Halvanankh fastened to the bottom of the world.
“I don’t believe it,” said Ferris. “He’s weakening the ankh. He’s trying to make it fall.”
Hubley saw what her mother meant at once. The Dwarves had mined so many passages out of the Halvanankh that it was hollow as a sponge. Already the mandrake had worked himself a third of the way into the pillar’s top. Were it to remove much more, the ankh would surely fall.
The Bryddin had seen the same thing. Half a dozen had managed to channel one of the many streams that powered Issinlough’s workshops and mills through a narrow hose. As Hubley and Ferris watched, they shot a powerful jet of water straight at the beast from the top of the nearest unneret.
Like a sputtering goose, the mandrake shook its wings and spat. The Dwarves aimed the hose directly at the creature’s jaws. Steam hissed; a cloud formed just below the roof, but Fornoch’s fire was drowned. He scrabbled for purchase on the wet rock as the Dwarves played the stream across his body, forcing him back around the ankh, where a second hose caught him from the other side.
Deciding he’d had enough, the mandrake dove off into the darkness. A great cheer rose from the people watching. Hubley’s heart lifted at the thought they had found a way to defeat the creature so quickly.
Except they hadn’t. Swooping on wide wings, the mandrake circled back. The Dwarves with the first hose tracked him as best they could, but eventually they lost him behind their unneret. The other hose was too far away to help. With one powerful wing beat, the mandrake shot through the passage at the top of the upside-down tower and attacked his enemies from behind. The Dwarves popped out on the other side and scrambled away. Fornoch followed with a roar, the hose foaming between his jaws.
Wondering if the mandrake hated cold as much as he did water, Hubley squeezed her hands through the delicate stone lattice of the windows and cast what had just come together in her mind.
“Throw my cold across the night.
Freeze the mander in its flight.”
Beyond her fingers the air bulged. Towers and catwalks bent as if seen through a growing bubble. When it reached the mandrake the bubble broke, encasing the creature in a crust of ice. The water spouting from the hose froze as well. For a moment it looked as if the mandrake was suspended over the Abyss at the end of a white stick. Then the stick broke with a sharp crack and the frozen creature fell.
A second cheer went up, louder than the first. The Bryddsmet swayed as the mandrake plummeted past. But almost immediately a burst of fire splashed the night below the city. The sound of ice shattering replaced the cheers; the smell of sulfur washed the air.
His wings unfrozen, the mandrake flapped back to the top of the Halvanankh. Ignoring the second hose, which couldn’t reach him on this side, he went back to work with his tail.
“We have to warn Nolo,” said Ferris. “There’s no time to get the swords.”
Hubley agreed, and took her mother’s hand.
They found Mindrell alone in the room without windows, his head fallen to one side as if he were asleep, his hair as white as snow. When he didn’t answer Ferris’s question about where Avender and Nolo had gone, Hubley poked him in the shoulder to wake him.
He didn’t move.
“Hubley,” said her mother. “Get behind me.”
Though she didn’t want to, something in her mother’s voice made Hubley obey. She had never seen a dead person before, and found herself as curious as she was repulsed. Her repulsion, however, grew as she watched her mother push back the bard’s lolling head and look into his eyes. He was definitely dead.
All of a sudden it came to her that her father was gone as well. There would be no more spells, no more magic at birthday parties or two-headed kittens. It had taken the sight of Mindrell’s corpse to do it, but now she understood. The mandrake was here, but her father wasn’t coming back. Ever.
“Hubley.” Her mother’s sharp voice recalled her daughter to the world. “Now is not the time to lose control. You’re the one who wanted to stay. Avender and I will need you to get back home. Do you hear me?”
Swallowing her tears, Hubley nodded. Her father would want her to be strong.
Avender came up the stairs as the ankh shuddered
“We have to get out of here,” said Ferris. “Especially Nolo.”
“He’s already gone. What about the bard?”
Ferris shook her head. “Without the proper magic, he never had a chance. Once Reiffen went through the mirror, the spell lost its power.”
Hubley was surprised at how little Avender seemed to care about Mindrell’s death. Then what she had hoped never to remember came back to her bright and hard, the night in her bedroom when Avender had lost his hand. She swallowed again, but this time it wasn’t to hold back tears.
“Does Nolo think he can get past Fornoch without an Inach sword?” her mother asked.
“No,” Avender answered. “He’s gone the other way. He figures it’ll be easier to go back down to the Bryddsmett and climb the cables. The mandrake probably won’t even see him.”
“And if he does?”
“I asked the same thing. Nolo reminded me Dwarves don’t fall.”
“We need to make sure he gets away.”
The ankh shook steadily with the force of the mandrake’s attack as they descended the stairs. At the first window they stopped and searched for a sign of their friend. Rocks tumbled past, clanging off the mett like giant peas.
“There he is,” said Avender. “On the cable.”
Hubley looked where Avender was pointing but, before she could spot the Dwarf, she felt herself fall. The lights of Issinlough jerked up and away. Her knees bent as the ankh struck the Bryddsmett with a great crash, and then they were falling once more.
The window went dark. Wind whistled up the stairwell, growing so strong so fast that Hubley found it hard to breathe. And she had to cling to the sides of the window to keep from being blown away. Her mother and Avender were holding on as well.
“What happened?!” she shouted to make herself heard over the roaring wind.
“The Halvanankh has broken free!” Avender shouted in return.
“What about Nolo?! Is he still holding on?!”
As Hubley leaned out the window to see, Avender and Ferris grabbed her dress to make sure she wasn’t swept away by the gale.
Looking up, she saw Issinlough shrinking rapidly overhead. Already its thousand lamps had merged to one. Still, there was enough light for the Bryddsmett to shimmer in the darkness below them like a moon. The bottom of the Halvanankh had punched through the center of the mett like a jester pulling his head through a hat, only upside-down. The cable Nolo had been crossing rose like a long, narrow sapling in the darkness before her.
Dwarves don’t fall, Hubley told herself.
“Can you see him?” Avender, his lamp screwed into place on his forehead, leaned out the window beside her.
“No.” Her heart seemed ready to leap out of her mouth with the gale.
“There he is!”
Hubley followed Avender’s pointing finger a second time. A small light shone about a third of the way up the blumet cable. It blinked out for a moment, then reappeared a little farther down.
Ferris pulled them back inside.
“Nolo’s still there!” cried Hubley. “He’s climbing down the cable! We have to help him!”
“It’ll be a lot easier for him to get to us,” said Ferris, “than for us to get to him.”
Hubley saw her mother was right, especially when they started crawling back up the stairs in search of some place to get out of the ferocious wind. Having no weight made it hard to walk, and a lot easier to follow the gale up than fight it going down. If not for the horrible things that kept happening, the sensation of weightlessness would almost have been fun.
She found coming back to Mindrell’s corpse was a lot worse than discovering it. But the windowless room was the best place for them to stay. Although the wind gusted through the entire chamber, it weakened as they moved away from the doorways. Hubley followed Avender and her mother to the side away from the bard.
They discussed how they might save Nolo, but had come up with nothing useful by the time he rejoined them.
Nolo had no ideas, either.
Considering his position, Hubley was surprised he wasn’t more upset. Magic wouldn’t work on him, and how else was he supposed to get back home? Was there an airship stashed somewhere in the ankh?
“Not that I know of.” Nolo sighed. “Or anything to make one out of, either. I’ll look for one, though, when I go through the place. We need to check for anyone else who might be trapped here before you go. No, Avender. Stay where you are. I can look alone. This wind’ll blow you right off.”
He didn’t take long. The Halvanankh, which seemed so big from the outside, wasn’t so large within that Nolo couldn’t search it quickly. His friends still hadn’t thought of a way to help him escape by the time he came back with the news that they were the only ones left inside. All the other Dwarves had gotten away.
“No sense wasting valuable time trying to figure it out,” he said after Ferris told him they had come up with nothing new. “There’s a mandrake needs fighting up there.”
Ferris hugged the Dwarf hard. Soot rubbed off on her cheek and dress. “Oh, Nolo. You can’t really mean that.”
“What’s done is done, lass.” The Dwarf patted her on the arm. “Cracked stone can’t be mended.”
Wiping her eyes, the magician loosed her hold. Small gray spots showed on the Dwarf’s beardless cheek where her tears had smudged the soot. Hubley felt hot wetness on her own face before the wind swept it dry.
“There must be a way,” said Ferris.
Nolo shrugged. “Ask Grimble. Maybe he can think of something. If I haven’t already fallen too far for you to get back by the time he does.”
“Can we get back?” asked Avender. “Will the traveling spell work on a place that’s moving?”
“I don’t know,” said Ferris. “It’s never been tried.”
“At least I’m not broken. If you ever do figure out a way to bring me back, I’ll be here.” Nolo patted the tools hanging from his belt. “There’s always stone to work. I figure I can do a lot to smarten this place up before I shut down.”
Knowing her mother was doing the same, Hubley pushed her sadness away so she could memorize every detail of the cave. The weightlessness. The shadows from Avender’s and Nolo’s lamps. The smell of the soot still clinging to the Dwarf’s leather clothing. The noisy rush of the air.
“Do you have any messages for anyone?” asked Ferris when they were done.
Nolo reached to tug at his beard, forgetting it had been burned away. “Buy a pint for Redburr for me at the Bull and Bass, will you?”
“That’s all?”
“Aye. Unless you come back. Then you might bring a whole barrel with you. And you come too, lad.” Affection twinkled in Nolo’s eyes as he turned to Avender. “Though I can’t really call you lad any more, now you’ve got all that gray in your hair. I’d like to hear about where you’ve been these last few years. There’s no time for it now, but the tale’s a good one, I’m sure.”
“I’ll come.”
“If there’s any way to bring you back,” said Ferris, “I’ll find it.”
“I’ll be here.”
Hubley wept as they embraced a last time. It was all so unfair. What was the use of magic, if you couldn’t stop terrible things from happening to your family and your friends? Better off just grubbing in the dirt like everyone else if you couldn’t change anything. Being back with her mother was more wonderful than Hubley had ever imagined, but, without her father too, it was going to be nearly as bad as it had been before.
“We need to decide where we’re going,” said Avender.
“That’s simple,” answered Ferris. “Back to Valing. We need to tell Brizen and the rest of the magicians what’s happening.”
“But what about the Dwarves?” Hubley rubbed her nose and sniffed. “We can’t just leave them to fight Fornoch alone.”
“We won’t. Believe me, sweetheart, once I’ve got my strength back, we’ll come back and get rid of Fornoch once and for all. But first I have to get my strength back. You’ll have to be the one to take us to Tower Dale. Do you think you can do it?”
“Yes.”
Ferris turned to Nolo one last time. “We’ll be back, dear friend.”
“Remember to bring the beer.”
“We should take Mindrell with us,” said Avender. “It’s not what he deserves, but it’s probably the right thing to do.”
They crossed to the bard’s side of the room. With tears leaking from her eyes, Hubley concentrated on her magic.
The Halvanankh disappeared.
Chapter 25
Vonn Kurr
Giserre’s face went white at the sight of the body slung over Avender’s shoulder when they returned. Avender twisted to let her see it wasn’t her son, but her alarm remained. The fact that Reiffen wasn’t even with them frightened her even more than the thought that he was dead.
“We tried.” Ferris’s voice trailed away as she answered Giserre’s unspoken question. “There was nothing we could do.”
No matter how horribly Hubley felt her father’s death, she knew her grandmother felt it more. Letting go her mother’s and Avender’s hands, she ran to Giserre and wrapped her arms around her waist. A moment later she felt her mother’s arms around them as well.
How long they wept, Hubley didn’t know. When they were done, her mother and grandmother took her upstairs to her bedroom and tucked her into bed. Shafts of moonlight from the room’s single window thickened the sadness in their pale faces as they kissed her goodnight. Finally Hubley understood why Giserre had stayed with her father in Ussene. Reiffen had been all her grandmother had, and to part with him would have been worse than death for her.
As parting from Hubley for the last thirty years must have been worse than death for her mother.
She woke the next morning much later than she wanted. No dreams had troubled her, and her sadness had sloughed away along with her fatigue. Rather than remembering her mother’s and grandmother’s sorrow, her first thought was that they couldn’t possibly have waited this long to return to Issinlough, and must have left without her. If her mother thought she could get rid of her that easily, she was totally wrong. It wasn’t as if she was an ordinary child. They would need every magician they could find if they were going to defeat the mandrake. Hubley knew her power was as strong as anyone’s, except perhaps her mother’s, and was confident no one would object, or be able to do anything about it, if she returned to Issinlough on her own.
Jumping out of bed, she discovered they’d even taken her clothes. As if leaving her in her nightgown was going to stop her. She was already collecting the travel spell in her mind to return to the wardrobe she’d found the day before, when someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she said in her most irritated voice.
Avender poked his head into the room, her clothes in his arms. “Looking for these? Giserre took them last night to keep you from running away, so I stole them back this morning.”
Hubley accepted Avender’s peace offering and ducked behind the door to dress. “Have they all gone back to Issinlough?” she asked.
“No. Issinlough’s already fallen. They went to Vonn Kurr.”
“Issinlough’s fallen? And Mother still thought she could just leave me here?”
“She wanted to, but I told her trying to leave you behind wasn’t a good idea. You know too much magic now.”
“Hmph. I’m glad somebody noticed. Why’d they go to Vonn Kurr?”
“The mandrake’s on the Sun Road.”
Hubley stopped with her boot half-tied. “The Sun Road? Is he trying to get to the surface?”
