Jinx's Fire (19 page)

“Too much opportunity for exploitation on both sides,” said Brown Robes.

“Mayhem,” said the Carrot.

“It probably is time for us to get involved in what appears to be—” said Angstwurm.

“An external threat to our mutual habitat,” said Brown Robes.

“Invasion,” said the Carrot.

“You mean you've decided to join us?” said Jinx.

“Join you?” Angstwurm burbled surprise. “Goodness no. We've decided to lead you.”

Oh, yeah?

“We'll have to have a meeting to decide about that,” said Jinx.

Angstwurm sneered. “A meeting? You and Simon?”

“No, all the people at Simon's house. They'll get together and talk about it, and then we'll all vote.”

“Vote? Is that some kind of spell?”

“This is a waste of time,” Simon snapped. “We can settle all this later. We're being attacked. And it's not just the Bragwood king. The king of Keyland has invaded—two kings of Keyland, in fact—”

“Two?” said the Carrot.

“Seems excessive,” said Brown Robes.

“And there's the Bonemaster,” said Simon. “And we magicians have to be the ones to deal with him.”

“Your old master?” Angstwurm sneered.

“Plan,” said the Carrot.

“Right,” said Brown Robes
.
“If we're going to attack the Bonemaster, we need a plan.”

“Got one handy, Simon?” said Angstwurm.

“Attack the Bonemaster?” said the elderly wizard. “Magicians don't interfere with each other.”

“Didn't mind interfering with the chipmunk, now, did you, dearie?” said Dame Glammer. “Playing with pink goo at your age!”

Jinx was starting to feel smaller by the minute. People
were calling him chipmunk and mere apprentice and all kinds of things.

“Meeting?” the Carrot suggested.

A blue-green wave of consternation rippled through the wizards, and Jinx didn't blame them. He hated meetings too. Still he was relieved when they all nodded.

“Six o'clock,” said Simon. “My house.”

“Your house, with all those nonmagical people spilling out the windows? I think not,” said Angstwurm.

“Cottage,” said the Carrot, nodding at Dame Glammer.

“True, it's near one of the Doorways,” said Brown Robes. “If you don't mind, Dame?”

She grinned.

“Are you going to teach us this new-fangled ‘vote' spell?” said the black-robed wizard.

“I might,” said Simon.

Jinx and Simon walked back toward Gooseberry Clearing together. Jinx could hear the trees mourning the lives lost in the fire.

“I hate those wizards,” he told Simon.

“Mm-hm.”

“They're worse than little kids,” said Jinx.

“Well, they're individualists,” said Simon.

“And that purple prison thing was deathforce magic.”

“No it wasn't,” said Simon. “There was vestigial deathforce
there, but it was at several removes.”

Jinx was surprised. “You can tell that? I thought you'd lost your magic.”

“It doesn't take magic to know what you're looking at,” said Simon. “Anyway, I haven't lost it. It'll be back.”

Jinx had his doubts about this. “Do you think the other wizards noticed?”

“Why would they?”

“Don't magicians kind of sense—”

“As for Alphonse, I doubt you'll find any of them that haven't done some sort of deathforce magic at some point.”

“The Qunthk bottle spell is deathforce,” said Jinx.

“Not really,” said Simon. “Not entirely. I—”

“You used ghast-roots to do it,” said Jinx. “And ghast-roots are made by sacrificing a human to kill a tree.”

“Yes, at some point.” Simon's thoughts squirmed. “But it may have been done hundreds of years ago, and—”

“The trees don't like it,” said Jinx. “It's twisting the Ancient Treaty. And they say the treaty is broken.”

“Never mind that,” said Simon. “What's your plan for attacking the Bonemaster?”

“
My
plan?” said Jinx.

“That's what I asked, yes.”

“You want my plan? So you can go to that meeting and pretend it's your plan?” Jinx was beginning to feel extremely unappreciated. “I got rid of that flippin' purple
box and those wizards thought you did it! They wouldn't even listen to me, they treated me like I was some stupid kid and they only listened to you and—”

“That's not important,” Simon snapped. “What's important is getting Sophie back.”

“I know that!” said Jinx. “My plan is that I go back down through the paths, come up under Bonesocket like I meant to in the first place, grab that flippin' bottle of his, and—”

“Hit the Bonemaster over the head with it?” Simon said.

“Well, I can go up into Bonesocket from the dungeon, he won't be expecting that—”

“You think not? The Bonemaster's no fool, boy. And—”

“Stop calling me boy!” Jinx yelled. He'd had a difficult day, and it had been more than two months long. He'd dealt with trolls, elves, the nadir of all things, a forest fire, and being harassed by a bunch of stupid wizards. And he'd drunk in so much lifeforce and fire he felt ready to burst with it. “You call me boy all the time! I have a name! And I know that's not important, but I don't care!”

“I don't call you boy,” said Simon.

“You do too! All the time! All the flippin' time!”

There was a trompling sound of breaking branches, and an enormous ogre burst through the trees. It had gleaming,
red-streaked eyes. It opened its snarling mouth and revealed fangs as long as Jinx's belt knife.

Jinx spared it a look. “Get lost!” he snapped.

The ogre gaped, stuck in mid-snarl. It stared at Jinx, its feelings clearly wounded to the quick. Then it turned and slunk disconsolately away into the forest.

Simon glanced after the ogre, and then back at Jinx. “Fine. Jinx. All right, let's say you do go up through the paths and grab that bottle, whatever it is. What are all the other magicians doing meanwhile?”

“Attacking Bonesocket,” said Jinx. “Creating a distraction.”

“And what's happening to Sophie?”

“I don't know.” Jinx thought. “She's not like the bottle; she can move. She can come down to me—”

“And how's she supposed to know to do that? And what will you do then? Take her on the paths?”

“She probably can't go on the paths,” said Jinx. “I've been trying to teach her magic—”

“Sophie? Magic?”

“She's not much good at it. Elfwyn's been trying to teach her too. She's better at KnIP, though. Sophie is, I mean. She and Satya have been practicing it. Or they were.”

“Little Satya? What is she, four?”

Jinx remembered that Satya had known Simon before
Jinx had. Simon had been in the Mistletoe Alliance in Samara. “I think she's sixteen. And—”

“Sixteen? Are you sure?”

“She might be seventeen. But anyway, she's a traitor.” He told Simon about Satya helping the Bonemaster.

“She's not a traitor,” said Simon. “She did what someone in the Mistletoe Alliance would do. Knowledge should be free to everyone. How was she to know that the Bonemaster wasn't the right kind of everyone? I doubt he introduced himself as the Bonemaster, or mentioned having killed hundreds of people.”

“But—”

“The important thing is whether she
kept
helping him after she found out.”

“She asked Wendell to hide a book for him in a treehouse,” said Jinx.

“But did she know, at the time, who the Bonemaster was?”

“I don't know,” said Jinx. “I kind of haven't talked to her since we found out.”

“Because you called her a traitor and chased her out of my house?”

Jinx shrugged. He hadn't expected to be made to feel guilty about it. “Anyway, that's not important right—”

“It's extremely important,” said Simon. “Because we need the Company's help to find out what the Bonemaster's
mysterious bottle is, before you go grabbing it. Did you find out anything about deathbindings in Samara?”

“Not exactly,” said Jinx.

“We have to find that out, too,” said Simon. “Because it would be nice if we didn't both drop dead if we do manage to get rid of the Bonemaster. Right, we'll need to get in touch with the Mistletoe Alliance. And Satya's probably the quickest way to do that. I'm afraid you're going to have to apologize to her.”

“What?” Jinx was outraged. “
I
have to apologize to
her
?”

“It's always simplest to apologize, with women,” said Simon. “The important thing is to get her back on our side.”

“Wendell can get her back on our side,” said Jinx. “I'm not apologizing. She gave the Crimson Grimoire to the Bonemaster.”

“She what?” Simon stopped walking.

“He got into Samara and the Mistletoe Alliance gave him copies of all kinds of books because—”

“Because they would.” Simon dispatched the Mistletoe Alliance with a string of swear words. “If he's got his bony hands on a copy of the Crimson Grimoire, that means he can bottle Sophie's life.”

Or her death.
The thought hung in the air between them.

“But,” said Jinx. “He knows she's your wife, and he'll know she's worth something to him as a hostage, and . . .”

He trailed off. It probably wasn't reason enough for the Bonemaster not to kill Sophie. “What are we going to do?”

“Hm.” Simon stepped over a beech seedling. “There are obviously a few things we need to figure out.”

“Maybe the wizards will come up with a plan at the meeting tonight,” said Jinx.

“Oh, of course they will,” said Simon. “But we'll come up with a plan first, and then I'll do what Sophie does.” There was a little twist of red pain when he mentioned Sophie. “I'll get
them
to come up with a plan, and then I'll nod and listen and nudge the plan around until it's just like my plan, and then I'll get them to vote on it.”

Jinx looked at him in surprise. “Sophie's meetings
are
kind of like that.”

“They would be,” said Simon, with a touch of pride.

“When we go to the meeting—”

“You're not going,” said Simon firmly. “They wouldn't listen to you anyway. You just saw that, back there.”

“But I could listen to them!”

“And keep your mouth shut? I doubt it. And even if you did, they'd sense that you're sloshing with power,” said Simon. “They
may
have been too busy harassing you to notice before, but in a nice quiet meeting—”

“You think I'm overbearing, don't you?” said Jinx.

“You? Overbearing? You're not overbearing,” said Simon. “I'm just afraid you'll frighten them all off like you did that poor ogre.”

Jinx said nothing and walked on, fuming. It was bad enough that Wendell, Nick, Hilda, and Elfwyn could handle difficult discussions better than Jinx could. But when even Simon thought he was more tactful and diplomatic than you were, well, that was just discouraging.

The Melted Sword

W
endell persuaded Satya to come back, and Satya got in touch with the Mistletoe Alliance. She told them Simon needed every Qunthk book they could find. Books began to arrive in the night in the book room of the Samaran house, brought stealthily by shadowy figures who slipped away silently in the dark.

It was difficult to defeat someone who had a bottled lifeforce. In order to fight the Bonemaster, they had to find out exactly what he'd done to preserve his life, and how they could undo it. And there were the deathbindings, too—people who would die if the Bonemaster was killed. Those would need to be undone. These were Qunthk spells, and
somewhere in all these books must be the answer to how to undo them.

Jinx hadn't found these books when he's searched the Temple library; members of the Mistletoe Alliance had hidden them. So much for knowledge being free to everyone, Jinx thought. But no, to be fair, he hadn't asked Satya for Qunthk books during his brief time at the Temple. He'd just asked for the Eldritch Tome, and she'd brought him that.

A committee formed to study the books and the Eldritch Tome. It met in the front room of Simon's house in Samara, all day and sometimes late into the night. Mainly it consisted of Jinx, Simon, Satya, and Malthus. The people in Simon's house got very nervous each time the werewolf passed through the kitchen.

Satya was rather cold to Jinx.

Jinx wasn't much help on the committee. He could read Qunthk better than Malthus and Satya could. But the books were written intentionally to confuse, and Jinx got more confused than anyone. Besides, he hated sitting still for hours on end to study.

Simon took charge of organizing the Urwish army. He divided it into sections, with each section under a leader. Jinx was surprised and offended that one of the leaders was Cottawilda.

“People listen to her,” said Simon with a shrug. “And she's experienced in battle.”

“She's evil,” said Jinx.

“That's really beside the point,” said Simon. “If anything, it may help.”

Most of the men, women, and creatures who made up the Urwish army were away fighting, in their newly established sections. Simon's house was mainly occupied by babies and children, and a few parents to look after them. Things got fairly chaotic. Every now and then Simon would come into the kitchen and scowl, which made silence fall instantly.

Much of the time, Simon was away via the doorpaths, giving orders to the section leaders. Sometimes he took Elfwyn with him. People seemed to prefer getting their orders from the Truthspeaker.

Meanwhile, Jinx went in search of the person setting the forest fires.

It wasn't that difficult. The trees had labeled the firestarter a Terror, and they kept track of Terrors.

The man was small, slightly built, and dressed in a red uniform. He had a face that put Jinx in mind of an angry rabbit, and pale hair that stuck out like porcupine quills. Jinx found him a few yards off the path, crouched over a pile of dried leaves, twigs, and branches, trying to strike a spark with a tinderbox.

It was one of those times when Jinx probably shouldn't have let his temper get the better of him. There were
probably a lot of better things he could have done than charge in and punch the man in the face, which was what he did.

The rabbity man was quick. He whipped out a sword, spun around, and slashed at Jinx, who stumbled over backward in his haste to get out of its way. The man came at Jinx again, and Jinx froze his clothes.

Unfortunately this caused the man to fall toward Jinx, sword and all. Jinx rolled out of the way. Then he made a grab for the sword, but the rabbity man was still gripping it tightly, and had just enough arm movement to take another slash at Jinx. Jinx was barely able to dodge it.

Thinking fast, Jinx sent fire into the sword. The man yelped and dropped it. Leaves began to smoke where it landed. Jinx drew the fire into himself and kicked the sword out of the way.

During all of this, it never occurred to Jinx to draw his belt knife. He hadn't been brought up to stick sharp blades into people. It doesn't come naturally to most folks.

“Who are you?” Jinx demanded.

“Don't have to say.” The man's voice was rabbity, too.

“Are you one of King Rufus's soldiers?”

“Don't have to say. Release me, foul wizard!”

“No,” said Jinx. “You didn't even ask nicely.”

The rabbity man was struggling furiously, trying to get out of his frozen clothes. They had been made for a much bigger man, and Jinx realized he might actually succeed.
And there was still the sword, which only one of them knew how to use.

Jinx picked up the sword and, concentrating very carefully, melted the blade. He'd never done anything quite this fiddly with the fire before. The trick was not to let the hilt, which he was holding, heat up, and not to let the blade melt fast enough to drip its deadly heat onto the forest floor. Or onto his fingers.

Just enough to reduce the blade to a misshapen blob. There. And take the fire out and cool it down and . . . it occurred to Jinx that it would be rather a nice touch to hand it back to the soldier, so he did.

It was very effective. Jinx felt he was getting the hang of this diplomacy stuff. The man gibbered with terror.

“You don't want to end up looking like that, do you?” said Jinx.

The man shook his head, once and emphatically.

“So tell me your name, and who told you to set these fires.”

“B-Bagnell of Bragwood,” said the rabbity man. “King Rufus wants the forest burned. Says it'll get rid of all the monsters and brigands, and ready the land up for farming by honest folks.”

“Well, that shows you how wrong a king can be,” said Jinx. “These fires you're setting—they're not even burning for very long.”

Bagnell looked disappointed. “You sure?”

“Yes,” said Jinx. “They all get put out within an hour or so. You've burned a lot of land, but compared to the size of the forest—hardly anything, really.”

“Oh.” A crawling purple cloud of trepidation. “That's not good.”

“Not from our point of view either,” said Jinx.

“The king will kill me,” said Bagnell. He thought about this for a minute. “Er, unless you're going to.”

Killing Bagnell would be neat and convenient. It would solve the problem of the fires. It would be a long time before King Rufus of Bragwood knew his orders weren't being carried out.

It would also mean touching the Path of Ice. Jinx shuddered, as if the ice were actually climbing his legs again.

Bagnell struggled frantically, trying and failing to sit up in his frozen clothes.

“No, I don't think I'll kill you,” said Jinx.

The purple fear diminished, but not completely. “Will you let me sit up?”

And Jinx realized that he'd been rather enjoying watching Bagnell struggle, unable to sit, stand, or lie in his frozen clothes. It wasn't much of an exchange for all the trees killed in the fire, but it was some small compensation. He'd been using magic the way the wizards had used it on him. And that was touching the ice too, in a way.

Jinx undid the clothes-freezing spell and let Bagnell sit
up. Jinx braced himself for the next attack. But Bagnell stayed sitting, and stared at the hilt of his sword and the molten lump on top of it.

“You can go,” Jinx decided. “On condition that you go west, and keep going. You're not to rejoin the Bragwood army.”

“But that would be desertion! You know what Rufus the Ruthless does to deserters?”

Jinx sighed. “I think I have a general idea, yes.”

“He puts them in barrels stuck about with nails and—”

“Well, then don't stop when you get to Bragwood,” said Jinx. “Just keep walking.”

“Can't I stay in the forest?”

“No,” said Jinx. He was starting to feel sorry for this idiot. “Because the forest will probably try to kill you. I'm surprised it hasn't already.”

Bagnell's thoughts whirred, as if he were summing up several recent events. His mouth formed an O of surprise.

“Look, I'll try to explain to the trees that you're leaving,” said Jinx. “They might let you go, if I ask them. I can't guarantee it, though. Just stick to the path. Keep going west. Don't even sleep off the path.
Especially
don't sleep off the path. Oh, and don't light any fires. Not even to cook with.”

Bagnell was nodding frantic agreement. He was still
staring at the lump of metal in his hand.

Jinx was about to ask for it back—it would make at least one ax head, and possibly two. Then he remembered what he'd learned from Witch Seymour about the value of rumors.

“You can keep that,” said Jinx. “As a souvenir of the Urwald.”

Satya's map of the Urwald was spread out on the workbench, along with various books in Qunthk. Besides the committee, Wendell and Elfwyn were there. Satya listened with the slight frown she always wore when trying to understand Urwish.

“The Bonemaster's bottled life is connected to the Path of Ice,” said Simon.

“It's a wick,” said Jinx.

“The Bonemaster is the wick,” said Malthus.

Jinx remembered what he'd learned on the Paths. “I think they're both part of the wick.” Just like Jinx and the Urwald were both part of the Path of Fire.

“Hm,” said the werewolf. “At any rate, he's put his lifeforce into the bottle that you saw in his lair.”

“His cellar,” said Elfwyn.

“His crypt,” said Jinx.

The werewolf waved aside these quibbles with a yellow-clawed hand. “The bottle is rooted to the Path of Ice. When
you were there, when you saw it before, did it have a cork in it?”

“I don't remember,” said Jinx.

“Yes,” said Elfwyn.

“Are you su—” The werewolf stopped himself, politely.

“Yes, I'm sure,” said Elfwyn. “There
was
a cork, but it's gone now. Or at least, if it's still there, I couldn't see it. It could be hidden in that mess of . . . things.”

“What sort—” Wendell began, and stopped.

“They were like ribbons,” said Elfwyn.

“Ghost-ribbons,” said Jinx. “They were blue, and they looked like smoke.”

“And they moved,” said Elfwyn. “As if they were alive.”

“It was like the bottle was made of them,” said Jinx. “We didn't really see an actual bottle at all.”

“There may have been an ordinary bottle there at one time,” said Malthus. “But it's possible that, at this point, it's made of ice.”

“Ice with a capital I?” said Jinx. “As in Path of?”

“Precisely,” said the werewolf.

“There's no way you can get to it,” said Simon abruptly. His thoughts were orange and blue and worried.

“I'm going to go up the path—” Jinx began.

“And boom, you end up in the bottle,” said Simon.

“How—”

“Because it's not corked,” said Simon, rapping an open
book with his knuckle. “It's a conduit between the Path of Ice and the Bonemaster himself. He must have uncorked the bottle after you destroyed his other power source.”

“When you broke all those little bottles,” said Elfwyn.

Jinx winced at the memory. He'd broken most of himself, too.

“The bottle's part of the path now,” said Satya, speaking in Samaran and not looking at Jinx. She was still mad at him. “You'll just be drawn into it when you come up the Path of Ice.”

“But if I get up there—” Jinx began.

“It's out of the question,” said Simon. “I forbid you to go.”

Jinx gritted his teeth. He'd missed Simon, but he hadn't missed being bossed around. And he knew that he was more powerful than Simon. Quite aside from the fact that Simon couldn't even do magic anymore.

“If the bottle were corked, however—” said Malthus.

“What, you mean a plain, ordinary cork?” Jinx picked up a bottle from Simon's workbench. The bottle was blue and shaped like a fish. He worked the cork out of it. “Like this?”

Malthus reached for the cork, and held it between two claws. “Not precisely.”

“It's a spell,” said Satya shortly.

“Could I do it?” said Elfwyn.

“I suppose.” Simon frowned at one of the Qunthk books. “The cork spell doesn't look that complicated.” (Elfwyn fumed.) “But there'd be no point, because the cork would have to be put in before Jinx got there, and—”

“I can do that,” said Elfwyn.

“No,” said Jinx and Simon together.

But it was Jinx that Elfwyn chose to fold her arms and glare at.

“Anyway,” said Jinx, looking away from the glare, which was rather piercing, “you couldn't even touch the bottle. Remember how it shot sparks . . .”

“I wouldn't have to touch it,” she said. “Watch.”

The cork floated out of Malthus's hand, flew through the air, and swooped back into the neck of the fish-shaped bottle.