The Magicians' Daughter, page 42
The prince inclined his head, acknowledging the compliment. “Actually, milady, Findle and I failed. It was Avender who rescued your daughter at the Bavadar Lamp. Without his daring leap, the sissit would have kept their prize.”
“Really, Merannon,” Ferris laughed. “Sometimes you’re too much like your father. Your mother, on the other hand, knew better than anyone the right time and place to toot her own horn.”
“It is why we loved her,” said Brizen.
“Really?” said Durk. The king noticed the stone had a prominent place among Hubley’s pillows, a large pink seashell nearby. “I thought it was because she was so beautiful. I never saw her myself, of course, but everyone always said so. Queen Loellin’s mother was quite the beauty in her day, too. Have I ever told you the story of how we met once? She wasn’t married to King Grinnis yet—”
Hubley covered the stone with another cushion. Muffled protests sounded from underneath the embroidery and down.
“You’re just in time for the games,” she said, sliding carefully off her chair. “We’re going to start with Pin-the-leaf.”
“Will you permit Merannon and me to present you with our gift first?” inquired the king.
Hubley’s eyes lit up. “Another present?”
“Do not be greedy, Hubley,” said Giserre.
The other guests clustered around, especially the children, all of them eager to see what a king’s gift looked like. Hubley accepted the small box Brizen offered her with a swift thank you, then tore off the wrapping with nimble fingers. Inside she found a fish-shaped brooch with chipped tourmalines for scales and small, topaz eyes.
“It was Wellin’s,” said the king. “She wore it when she was ten, I think.”
Hubley held out the brooch so Brizen could pin it on her dress. The nearer guests oohed and ahhed as the child showed it off.
Proudly wearing her latest present, Hubley led the party on to the games. Brizen was disappointed there was to be no magic; he had always loved the displays at Castle Grangore, rockets exploding and impossible animals cavorting around the garden. There had been something with talking cats, once, he recalled. But he understood why that particular tradition had been abandoned, at least this year. The magical displays had always been more Reiffen’s gift than Ferris’s.
It did not take much to cajole him into the game. Giserre tied the blindfold around his face, but only Hubley was bold enough to spin him. The other children looked on in awe. He shuffled unevenly on his feet, dizzy after a single turn. Taking pity on his age, Hubley led him to the large beech they were using as a target. Tears started behind the light cloth binding his eyes as he remembered playing this game with Merannon years ago. For all Wellin’s faults, he had been fortunate to share her life.
“Not there, Your Majesty.” Hubley laughed from close beside Brizen’s hand. “You’ll trip over the chair. This way.”
Fingers fumbling along the bark, he fastened his leaf to the tree. The other guests clapped and cheered. Lifting his blindfold, he discovered he had pinned his token far around the side of the trunk from the robin’s nest that marked the target. But others had placed their leaves farther away than his. For an honorary grandfather he had not done badly at all.
Hubley’s turn was next. He bound the handkerchief securely around her face, peering with weak eyes to make sure the knot was tight. The children darted in to spin her around many more times than she had spun him but, even with no one helping, she pinned her leaf directly on the nest. Laughter followed, and good-natured teasing.
“Cheat!”
“She used magic!”
“His Majesty didn’t tie the blindfold tight enough!”
Then Hubley tugged the handkerchief off her head and pulled on the edges to show it had been knotted securely, and her new friends accused her even more loudly of having used magic. And more cake was served, and Ferris brought out a jug of cider, and the king, exhausted by the hue and cry, settled wearily into an iron chair beside Giserre, Merannon attentive at his side.
Now that he was close enough to get a good look at her, Brizen thought Giserre had aged since the last time he had seen her, her stern, dark beauty finally gone.
Hubley raced back to them, almost knocking the glass from Brizen’s hand.
“Mims and Avender are here!” she cried.
The king looked where the child pointed as she dashed away one more time. A stout woman was approaching across the meadow, accompanied by a limping man.
“Here comes the real hero in all this,” said Merannon. “I look forward greatly to hearing his tale.”
“Yes, we all have a lot to thank him for.” Brizen placed a fond hand on his son’s arm.
As the two figures came closer, the king saw the woman wasn’t so old as he or Giserre, though she was old enough to have hair as gray as theirs. Looking more like a goodwife than a magician, she stumped her way forward. Hubley danced at her and Avender’s hands.
Beside him, Giserre gasped.
“My goodness,” she said. “It’s Spit.”
More Than Once Upon a Time
More than once upon a time, Hubley Mims hurried down the Sun Road through the deepest caverns of the Dwarves. More than once upon a time because, in this particular place, and at this particular time, there was more than one Hubley Mims.
Irritably she wondered why she had allowed her older self to talk her into this ridiculous situation in the first place. She should have asked for more explanation. But no, she had to rush off the moment the prize was dangled before her eyes. Just because she was the first chronothurge ever was no reason not to learn to look before she leapt.
She was invisible, of course. Her older self had done that much. “No one would ever understand if they saw both of us at the same time,” the older Hubley had explained. But invisibility is only useful when you’re following someone, not when you’re the one in the lead. Which was exactly where the younger Hubley found herself after the party took a couple of wrong turns, then doubled back to find the road.
Spotting a side passage in the outer wall, she scrambled over the broken stone toward this new way. Shadows outlined the image of a frog carved in the stone above the entrance as the light from her older self’s staff bloomed in the curve of the road behind her.
A few steps into the passage, she stopped and pressed herself against the wall. The shadows outside shortened as the company approached. Once they passed her, she’d be able to follow them again instead of having to scramble in the lead. Presuming, of course, her older self didn’t lead them this way.
Glancing back down the tunnel in the other direction, she saw something that almost stopped her heart. Where there had been nothing a moment before, a thin light now flickered against the ceiling.
Great. Just her luck to pick a passage with a group of sissit coming from the opposite direction. It couldn’t be anything else this deep in the earth. Even if she managed to slip out unseen, back to the main tunnel, the creatures behind her would still see the light of the other party. There would be a fight, and who knew what would happen then. Better to take care of the sissit herself. Maybe that was why the older Hubley had brought her along in the first place.
She crept deeper into the passage. The light on the ceiling grew brighter. Hearing footsteps and ragged panting ahead but seeing nothing, she decided the way must dip downward, and considered tossing a fireball or two into the tunnel. But fireballs were notoriously hard to manage in small spaces, and besides, the noise would surely attract the attention of the party on the Sun Road. No, she needed a quieter solution.
Making up her mind, she stopped a few feet in front of the dip in the passage. The splash of light widened against the ceiling as it came closer. A simple false wall would keep any sissit occupied for more than enough time to let the other party pass. She just hoped they wouldn’t hear her cast the spell.
Raising her arms, she chanted in as low a voice as possible,
“By rock and vein and Inach bone,
Raise a wall of seeming stone.”
Around her, the passage went dark. The sound of footsteps and heavy breathing disappeared. She touched the new wall with her fingers, feeling the cool stone. The barrier would last a couple of hours, plenty long enough to keep the sissit at bay. Sissit were many things, hungry most of all, but their mage lore was weak. A sissit conjurer would be hard-pressed to summon the skill required to pass her barricade.
She turned back to the main passage. Clustered around the light from the elder Hubley’s staff, the small party moved cautiously into view beyond the doorway. Two were of a sort she had never seen before. Diggers, the older Hubley had called them. They were not much taller than children, but solidly built, like Dwarves. The other two, a man and a woman, had the look of well-traveled soldiers.
The woman notched an arrow to her bow as she came even with the passage. She started forward to peer into the darkness, but a word from the older Hubley called her back.
“No time for exploring, Canna. We’re too near the deep. The road doesn’t descend much further.”
Canna cast one last suspicious look toward the passageway, and turned away.
She had barely rejoined the others when suddenly, from the hidden gloom in the tunnel behind her, there was a loud crash. She turned in surprise. A single wild figure rushed toward her, silhouetted in the light that had sprung back up in the passage brighter than before. The figure was followed by the harsh shouts and hoots of many sissit, and a flight of black arrows that clattered weakly against the ceiling above Hubley’s head. Turning, she raced for the loway. Sissit arrows were generally poisoned, even if the creatures were notoriously bad shots. And whatever was leading them, sissit or human, had broken her spell with ease. If it came to a fight, her place was with the company outside.
Hurrying back to the loway, Hubley found the party already turned to confront the commotion behind them. As the sissit swarmed out of the tunnel behind her, the soldiers loosed two quick volleys. The pale creatures pulled up in surprise. A fresh group piled into them from the side passage, pushing the vanguard into the middle of the loway. Their fishy white skins glowed in the light of the elder Hubley’s staff. The sissit who led them brandished a great oval shield threateningly when he saw the party below. In response, the elder Hubley raised her staff and called out a spell in a short, harsh voice. The cavern boomed, and half a dozen sissit fell in a burst of light and flame. She expected the rest to turn and run, for sissit, being born in magic, had no heart to fight it. But the shield had kept the leader unharmed and, with a harsh shout, he rushed forward. Still more sissit, an entire tribe it seemed, burst out of the tunnel behind him.
“Quick!” shouted the elder Hubley. “We can’t fight them all! To the deep!”
She grabbed the closest digger by the back of his cloak and pushed him forward. The soldiers followed, still firing arrows at their pursuers as the invisible Hubley raced by, trusting the shouts of the sissit to cover the sound of her passing.
Ahead, the road continued to curve gently down and to the right. Hubley was in such a rush she nearly ran into her older self and the digger standing at the end of the way. Beyond them lay the great gulf of Vonn Kurr. Her boots skidded in the dust as she nearly tumbled into the void.
“What was that?” asked one of the diggers, looking straight at the invisible Hubley.
“A lizard,” said the elder.
The digger didn’t look convinced. He stared at the spot where he thought he’d heard the noise. Hubley stood completely still, her heart pounding beneath her cloak. Then the digger looked away as the rearguard arrived.
“They’ll be on us in a minute,” said the man. “We convinced them to pause a bit back there, but we didn’t stop them.” He chewed his lip at the sight of the sheer cliff where the road ended, and kicked a loose stone out into the blackness. It disappeared without a sound.
“There’s a ledge about three feet down,” said Canna, peering over the edge. “We can hold them off from there as long as our arrows and Hubley’s magic hold out.”
“We won’t need that.”
The older Hubley turned her attention to the middle of the loway, hunting around on the rock floor and sweeping the gravel away into the swallowing depths with her boot as she searched.
“There.” She pointed to an iron ring embedded in the stone at her feet. “You don’t think I led you into a trap, do you? Omarose, if you’d give me a hand with this. I’m not as strong as a Dwarf, but you might be.”
She tapped the ring with her staff. Omarose slung his bow over his shoulder and reached down to grab the iron loop with both hands. The muscles in his neck bulged, but nothing happened.
“Keep trying. That door is old.”
As she spoke, the sissit, having recovered their courage, came howling down the tunnel. Stopping a short bowshot from the party, their leader came forward once more, its Dwarven shield held carefully before it. The invisible Hubley slipped over the edge of the cliff to the safety of the ledge, hoping she could watch whatever came next without having to interfere.
Omarose was still straining at the iron ring. To give him more time, the elder Hubley stepped forward to face the sissit. They hooted at her approach and waved their bows and axes over their heads; but they took a couple of steps backward as well.
Their leader shook his shield. “You give up!” he called loudly, but his tone was more wheedling than demanding. The older Hubley’s magic had scared them all. They watched warily as she stood before them in the tunnel, her staff braced on the floor. The magic glow from its tip cast a light upward across her chin, hollowing her eyes and cheeks in black shadow. A harsh sorceress, all cold anger and fierce justice. Even Hubley found the sight of her older self fearsome.
The sissit leader shook his shield again. In the old and battered metal the younger Hubley discerned the image of a coiled serpent, its mouth locked around a great jewel fixed to the shield’s center.
“You not scare us,” the sissit cried. “I carry great emblem of Ydderri! I guard way to city and worm! We kill you sister! We kill you!”
He shook his shield again and then, quick and furtive, tossed a large, smooth stone at the older Hubley from the end of a hidden sling. She leaned slightly to her left, and the stone shot past her into the gloom beyond. Then the older Hubley raised her staff and presented it parallel to the ground.
“Flame!” she said simply, and a bolt of fire shot out from each end into the crowd behind the leader. Squeals of pain followed, and the smell of charred flesh.
“I have it!”
Omarose heaved a round block of stone up out of the floor, exposing the dark hole beneath. The sissit, who had fallen back under Hubley’s attack, rushed forward again. A flight of buzzing arrows followed their advance, some catching weakly in the leather of the human fighters, others biting only the empty blackness beyond. But no arrow caught the elder Hubley. Around her the air glimmered faintly with a bluish light. She had cast a protection about herself. Only magic could affect her now. The younger Hubley knew the spell well. It was her favorite defense.
The elder shouted back over her shoulder. “Down the shaft, all of you! Canna, you first!”
Another flight of arrows followed from the sissit bows, with the same result. The younger Hubley had to duck her head below the top of the road as errant shafts snaked into the darkness around her. The elder replied with another blast from her staff. The wounded sissit howled.
Canna hesitated at the mouth of the hole.
“Go!” the elder Hubley cried. “Sit on the edge and let yourself slide down. The passage is steep, but it’s safe.”
More arrows flitted past the mage like darting swallows as she turned to make sure the woman followed her instructions.
Canna slipped into the hole and disappeared. Omarose dropped the diggers in separately behind her like two sacks of potatoes. Unsheathing his sword, he came to stand beside the older Hubley.
“Go!” she ordered. “I can hold them long enough for you to be away! You’ll only hinder me by staying! I’ll be right behind you!”
Another flight of arrows splattered off her magical protection cascading into the pit behind them. Omarose bowed his head, sheathed his blade, and stepped into the shaft. At the same moment the sissit rushed the elder magician, sweeping forward in a hesitant wave behind the apex of their leader’s shield. The older Hubley let them come until they were almost upon her, then threw up her arms. A blinding flash blew out from inside her cloak.
Shrieking, the sissit raced back up the corridor. Fresh bodies littered the ground behind them. Only the leader, who had been blown sideways as his heavy Dwarven shield repelled all but the force of the magician’s spell, remained. He fell to the inside of the corridor against the wall, and dropped his shield. But, instead of scrambling after it, he started rolling around in the rubble at the edge of the road slapping and flailing at himself.
Hubley didn’t understand why her older self didn’t finish him off at once. Kill the leader and the rest would flee.
“Blast him!” she shouted, willing to show herself now the rest of the party was gone.
But the older Hubley refused. Instead she kept an eye on the sissit starting to creep back toward them from farther up the loway, while also watching the leader in the throes of his apparent seizure.
“What are you waiting for?” Hubley demanded. “If you won’t do it, I will. We can’t hold them all off forever.”
Her eyes on the sissit, she began the incantation. Just three words, and the fixing of the target in her mind. Gripped by its convulsions, the sissit chieftain stood with its back to her, its hands contorted and straining as if holding something in their thick-knuckled grasp. So much the better. The creature could not have made a better target. The older Hubley did nothing, her back still to the younger.
Hubley spoke the words.
As if guided by deliberate malice, the older Hubley stepped straight into the path of the spell. There was a burst of fire and, where the sorceress had been, now stood a column of white flame. For an awful moment Hubley could see herself frozen in that terrible brightness, a grim statue encased in a cone of writhing fire, and then there was only the pale conflagration, the body within consumed by the magic blaze.
