Angst (Book 4) (34 page)

19

A part of Magdel seemed to die when she heard Giorge say, “I
am Symptata,” but most of her simply acknowledged what she had already
suspected: the curse wasn’t over. Giorge had died and Symptata had taken
control of his body, just like the fungus had taken over the corpses in
Symptata’s tomb. No, that wasn’t quite right, was it? Giorge was still there
with
Symptata. She had talked to
Giorge
when he had admitted taking The
Tiger’s Eye. And the poem said they would be joined, didn’t it? But Symptata
was the one fighting with Angus, and she had to stop him. She had to save
Giorge.

“The Tiger’s Eye is in a place you will never be able to
find,” Symptata taunted Angus. But that wasn’t true! Magdel had found it, and she
had put it where she hoped Giorge wouldn’t find it. Now she had to get it back.

The ledge beneath Giorge started to glow orange and the
stone bubbled, but Giorge seemed to be unaware of it. He
laughed
and
calmly walked through the lava toward Angus. Angus backed away and looked as if
he were about to jump off the cliff when a little pony rode onto the ledge. Its
rider—an elf!—leapt from the saddle and thrust a staff out in front of her. A
beam of orange light streaked toward Giorge, but Symptata screeched and
countered it with a green beam of his own. The two streams of light
intertwined, whirling around like ropes dangling loosely in the wind.

I have to do something!
she thought.
They’ll kill
Giorgie!
She reached for the poniard in her belt, but before she could draw
it, a large hand firmly gripped the back of her cloak and tunic and lifted her
easily off the ground.

“Easy,” Lieutenant Jarhad said as he deposited her on the
saddle in front of him. “You’ll get trampled.”

“No!” she protested. “I can stop this!”

Lieutenant Jarhad turned his horse to join his retreating
men. “Hold still!” he ordered as she squirmed in his grasp.

“You don’t understand!” she cried. “I can help him!”

“Wizards fight alone,” Lieutenant Jarhad grumbled. “It is
best to let them be.”

Magdel bit back the sharp retort and tried to bring her
emotions under control. She could help Giorge, but in order to do that, she had
to convince Lieutenant Jarhad to help her. There was only one way to do that.
“I know where The Tiger’s Eye is,” she said.

Lieutenant Jarhad stiffened but didn’t slow the horse down.
A few seconds passed, and then he said, “Embril’s box. You put it in there the
other night, didn’t you? That’s why it was padlocked when I woke up.”

“Yes,” she said.

He hesitated a few more seconds, and then shouted, “Halt!
Form a defensive line!” As his men complied, he weaved his horse through them
until he was next to the pack horse that had Embril’s chest secured to it. As
he dismounted, he shouted, “Kaleb! Help me get Embril’s chest down from here.”

Magdel stayed on the horse and tried to watch what was
happening to Giorge, but she couldn’t see much. The green and orange ropes
struggled with each other, and Angus had jumped off the ledge to get out of
their way. Streaks of flame snapped from his fingertips, but—thankfully!—they
didn’t seem to be doing anything when they hit Giorge.

“Break the lock,” Lieutenant Jarhad ordered.

“No!” Magdel shouted as she turned to them and slipped off
the horse. “Let me.” She tugged a pick out of her belt and knelt in front of
the lock. The only light was the soft, sepulchral orange glow from the fire on
the plateau, but she didn’t need any light to pick the simple padlock. It
sprang open in less than ten seconds, and she lifted the heavy lid and thrust
it away from her. She tossed book after book aside until she could see
Symptata’s box and the pouch containing The Tiger’s Eye. As she reached for the
box, she surreptitiously slid the drawstrings of the pouch around her fingers,
and as she lifted the box, she brought the pouch out with it. She made a show
of dropping the box to give herself an opportunity to tie the pouch to the loop
under her arm, knowing the darkness would keep them from noticing what she had
done. Then she picked up the box and turned back to the horse.

Lieutenant Jarhad wrapped his heavy hand around her shoulder
and stopped her. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

She looked up at him and said, “Angus wants The Tiger’s Eye.
It’s in this box, and I’m going to give it to him.” It wasn’t true, but she
made it sound as if it were. If he caught sight of the pouch… “Symptata—” she
had almost said Giorge “—doesn’t want him to have it. It will stop the fight.”
His grip held firm for a long moment, and when it loosened, she turned to the
horse and said, “Boost me up!”

As Lieutenant Jarhad reached for her waist, she tucked The
Tiger’s Eye under the box and nestled it against her abdomen. Then she was
airborne for a brief moment before settling in the saddle.

“Let her pass!” Lieutenant Jarhad called as she did her best
to coax the reluctant horse forward, toward the mayhem in front of them. The
orange and green ropes seemed to be knotted together in a stalemate with Angus
fluttering around them, flicking useless flames at Symptata.

The horse didn’t want to approach the battle. She didn’t
blame it;
she
didn’t want to approach it either. She did her best to
keep it moving forward, but the horse wasn’t listening to her very well.
If
I live through this,
she thought,
I’m going to have Giorgie teach me to
ride.
Her breath caught in her chest as the thought continued on its own,
If
he lives through it, too.
She had grave doubts about that.

She made it most of the way to the battlefield before the
horse balked for the last time and refused to go any further. It snorted,
stamped its feet, turned around, and started running from the melee. Magdel
leapt neatly from the saddle and rolled into a crouch. A moment later, she was
running toward Angus and was about to call his name when Embril swooped up from
below the ledge just a dozen feet in front of her. Embril waved her hands and
pointed at Symptata—at
Giorge
!

“No!” Magdel cried. “Embril! Stop!”

But it was too late. The spell sent Symptata flailing into
the cliff face. He slid down the cliff and settled into a crouch. The orange
rope wrapped around him and Symptata screamed. It didn’t even sound like Giorge.
Then the green rope doubled up on itself and pulled the orange one away.

“I have The Tiger’s Eye!” Magdel shouted as she ran up to
Embril. She reached up and tugged the pouch free of the loop and held it out to
Embril. “Here it is!” She said as Embril half-turned toward her. “Giorgie
didn’t take it,” Magdel gasped, her heart pounding as another screech erupted
from Symptata. “Symptata did. It was the curse,” she finished as she came to a
stop in front of Embril. “Take it back!” she pleaded as she thrust the pouch
into Embril’s hands. She paused and desperately held out Symptata’s box. “We
have to end the curse. The Skull’s in here,” she continued. “It has to be
destroyed.”

Embril stared at her as if she wasn’t hearing what she was
saying, and then she blinked abruptly and her eyes widened. She nodded and
grabbed for the box. She half-turned, paused, and thrust the pouch holding The
Tiger’s Eye back into Magdel’s hands.

“Get back,” Embril said. “Keep it safe.” Then she leapt off
the cliff and flew toward Angus. She shouted at him, and when he finally turned
toward Embril, the flames fled from his fingertips.

Then Magdel turned and ran back toward the patrol—but she
didn’t run very far before she stopped and turned around again.

20

Angus raged inside. His flame magic was impotent against
Symptata’s shield, but what else could he do to help Dagremon defeat him? At
least her staff’s magic was holding Symptata at bay, and maybe the minor
distraction of his own spell could tip the balance to her favor. But what had
Symptata meant about The Tiger’s Eye being hidden from him? How could it be?
His Firewhip shouldn’t be more than a dozen feet long, but it was shooting out
three times that far. It would only do that near a nexus of flame, and that’s
what The Tiger’s Eye drew to it. It was even making the spell last far longer
than it should have.

Symptata suddenly lurched through the air as if he had been
clouted by a giant fist. He struck the cliff face, and Dagremon’s magic swarmed
in around him as she tried to rip the apparition from Giorge’s body. But
Symptata recovered quickly and forced Dagremon’s magic away from him. Angus
tried his Firewhip again, but Symptata’s shield had not been disrupted. It
should have been; at the very least, the impact with the cliff should have
broken his concentration, but it hadn’t. It wasn’t Giorge’s body that was using
the magic; it was the apparition wrapped around it, and that apparition—Symptata—seemed
impervious to the damage done to Giorge’s body.

“Angus!”

The call was from his left, and he immediately recognized the
voice.
Embril
he thought as he turned toward her and felt the flame
magic flutter away from his grasp.
She’s alive,
he thought, suddenly
quite numb, quite calm. Embril was flying toward him, and she had a box in her
hand. It looked familiar—like the ones from Giorge’s curse.

“Angus!” she cried again as she fluttered up to within a few
feet of him, stopped, and hovered in place. “Do you have your wand?” she asked.
“The one you used on Hellsbreath’s wall?”

He stared at her. She had taken The Tiger’s Eye, hadn’t she?
She was in on Commander Garret’s plot to seize control of the kingdom. She—

The Tween Effect is affecting me
, he thought with
sudden clarity.
I’m acting like Giorge did when—

Embril isn’t dead.

They didn’t kill her.

She hadn’t taken The Tiger’s Eye.

She had been the one who had struck Symptata.

She—

“Yes,” he said, his mind whirring, his vision narrowing so
tightly that he could see only her lovely face shrouded in that luscious red
hair.

“Good,” she said, lifting the box. “We have to destroy
this.” She glanced at Symptata and added more softly, “His skull is in it.”

His skull?
Angus repeated to himself.
Symptata’s
skull? No, not Symptata’s. The Viper’s Skull. Giorge had completed it!

Angus nodded and flexed his arm to release the wand into his
hand. “There!” he said, pointing at the ledge between the patrol and the battle
between Symptata and Dagremon. As they started toward it, he cast his Lamplight
spell. It was much brighter and far hotter than it should have been, and he
hurriedly maneuvered in close enough to Embril to attach it to Symptata’s box,
and then rapidly veered away from her to avoid a collision. As he flew into
position just off the edge of the ledge, he went through the first two motions
that would release the wand’s power, and then waited for Embril to drop the box
onto the ledge. As she moved away from it, he made the final movement and
directed the wand’s energy at the box.

Thunder roared, and he was propelled backward by the recoil.
He lost his grip on his Flying spell and started to drop—but he only fell a
short distance before Embril scooped him up in her arms and flew them up to the
ledge. Symptata’s green magic was gone, and Dagremon’s staff pinned Giorge
against the mountainside. Embril flew them over the hole the wand had just made
and hovered in place for several seconds. The Lamplight was still there, but
there was no sign of the box.

“It’s gone!” Embril said as she carried him to the edge of
the hole and gently set him down next to it. But instead of letting go of him,
she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. She shuddered against
him and her mewling sobs filled his ear. “I thought you were dead,” she
whimpered.

Angus slowly, carefully wrapped his arms around her and
buried his head in her hair. He sighed.
No,
he thought.
She didn’t
betray me at all. It was Commander Garret….

21

Voltari stepped onto the panels of his machine and cast the
spell that would transport him to the nexus. He rematerialized over a lake of
lava bubbling up from the bowels of a volcano and hovered there. He smiled. It
was a toothless, almost gleeful smile that didn’t last long. There was something
wrong with the nexus. The flow of energy was subsiding! It was as if it was
being siphoned off and sent elsewhere. He frowned. It shouldn’t be happening.
Nexus points never moved, but this one seemed to be doing just that. He would
have to act quickly, while there was still enough energy remaining in it to
fuel his machine. He started weaving together the intricate, complicated knots
that would connect his machine to the magic of the nexus….

1

“Master Taro,” Abner asked as they turned off the road to
Wyrmwood. “You are sure it is wise to travel into The Tween?”

Taro laughed. Wisdom had nothing to do with what they were
doing. Wisdom would have told him to stay at the shrine and let his last days
fade away in peace. Wisdom would call him a fool. No, he was not wise at all,
but he was driven by a passion that burned deep within him, one that was fueled
by the visions he had seen. “I am not a wise man, Abner,” he admitted. “A wise
man would have sent a younger one on this quest.”
So would a wise god,
he thought. “I do this because it must be done. I do this because that dreadful
look in the wizard’s eyes has haunted me ever since I first saw it. I do this
because no one else can.”

Abner was silent for some time, and then he asked, “What will
you do when we catch up with him?”

Taro looked at the young man and wondered why he had
suddenly become so talkative. He had been so trusting, so pleasant all this
way, and now he was asking questions—annoying questions. Taro didn’t know what
he would do; he only knew that he had to do it. He hoped Angus would know what
to do. He turned away and looked at the valley they were riding into. It was a
long, wide valley full of scrubby little bushes that pretended to be trees.
Rocks stuck up at odd angles all over the place, and some of them were bigger
than the shrine. The road followed the valley around the base of the mountain
to the north and Grand Master Fredrick assured him that the road would climb up
the side of that mountain as it curled around it. If he followed the road, he
would come to a ledge that crossed the big mountain behind this one, and at the
end of the ledge he would find the plateau he had seen in his vision. That was
where he was going, because that was where he would find Angus.

“I will tell him of the visions,” Taro said, his voice soft.
“
All
of them.”

Abner looked at him and frowned in thought. Then he said,
“You did not tell Hobart about all of your visions, did you Master Taro? Or the
Grand Master?”

Taro shrugged. “No,” he admitted. “There is one that is for
Angus alone. It is his choice, and it must be made by him.”

Abner stared ahead of them as their mule cart plodded along.
After a time, he sniffed the air and said, “A fire burns, Master Taro. The air
is heavy with its stench.”

Taro nodded.
That’s because the plateau is already
burning
, he thought to himself.
The trees have been nearly consumed in
my vision, and it takes a long time for trees like that to burn.
He leaned
back and frowned. He was going to be late again, and there was nothing he could
do about it. Would Angus wait for him? He looked to the west. The sun was
beginning to set. The sky was free of clouds, but there were hazy streaks of
red and orange already gathering around the sun.

“We must make camp soon, Master Taro,” Abner said.

“No,” Taro replied with a certainty that he had no reason to
feel. “We will not rest this night.”

Abner looked at him for a long moment and then flicked the
reins to coax the old mule into a faster pace, but it ignored him.

Taro almost smiled; he had seen the boy look at him like
that too many times on this trip. Abner had a sincere, deep trust in him that
Taro didn’t deserve. It wasn’t always there, of course, but whenever Taro made
a proclamation of the sort he had just made—without even understanding why he
was doing it, himself—Abner took for granted that it was what needed to be
done. They would ride through the night even if Abner had to get off the mule
cart and drag it himself.

“Something important is about to happen, Abner,” he said.
No,
he added to himself.
It is
happening already
.
Angus is up to
something.
How did he know that?

Abner nodded. “I can feel it too, Master Taro. There is a
foreboding in the air.”

Taro looked at the young man and wondered if the boy’s
presence was as accidental as he had first thought. He was even glad he was
there—Abner was much better at dealing with people than Taro was—but now he
spoke as if he was on the verge of having a vision, himself. He was right, too;
there was something unsettling in the evening air. He didn’t know what it was,
but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was reaching out for him. It
was like the vision he’d had when he had met Hobart and that green snake had
tried to eat him.
Foreboding is the right word.
“A change is upon us, Abner,”
Taro said in an uneasy, low, soft voice. “The paths before us are narrowing. A
crossroads is upon him, and down one fork is a darkness that will swallow up
all of us. Down the other are shadows that will consume him. It is up to him to
decide the path he will take.”

Abner looked at him, but this time there was no trust in his
eyes; instead, they were filled with a sad resignation. “It will cost him
dearly, Master Taro.”

Taro nodded, and they rode in silence until it was quite
dark. Then a single thunderclap rumbled in the distance. Taro stiffened, and
his breath caught in his throat as a cloud of green smoke descended upon him.
He held up his arms in a futile attempt to ward it off, but the smoke exploded
before it reached him. A moment later, it was gone.

Taro blinked and took a quick breath. His hands were
shaking. He looked around them, but there was no hint of green smoke.

“Master Taro?” Abner asked. “Did you have another vision?”

Taro shook his head. It hadn’t been a vision, not really.
His visions didn’t feel like that when he had them. When he had a vision, it
was as if he were a detached observer. There were no smells, no sense of touch
in his visions; they were all about seeing and hearing things. This had been
something else. He had
felt
the smoke as it dissipated, and when it
touched him, it had been cold. Then came the vision, a brief one of an island
slowly sinking back into the sea. It was a familiar island, the one he had seen
in his vision when the green snake-like cloud had sought to devour him and the
rest of the world. Only that snake hadn’t touched him like this one had; that
one didn’t
smell
like charred flesh; that one hadn’t felt like the early
morning breeze by the shrine curling up under his threadbare cloak. He
shuddered, but it wasn’t from cold or fear. “He’s gone,” he muttered, not sure
who it was he meant. He turned to Abner and said, “We must hurry, Abner. It may
already be too late.”

Abner tried to urge the mule to a faster pace, but, as
usual, it ignored him.

Taro sighed and leaned back to rest. As he closed his eyes,
he thought,
His choice is almost upon him. What path will he take?