[Magic Kingdom of Landover 05] - Witches' Brew (29 page)

“What difference does it make?” Abernathy cut him short. “What matters is that the witch has Mistaya and is using her to hurt the High Lord, just as she promised she would. You were right, Questor Thews. We are here for a purpose, and it must have something to do with helping Ben Holiday. We just have to find out what it is.”

“A book of spells,” Questor recalled, thinking back to where this conversation had started. “All right, then.” He wheeled about, strode quickly to Poggwydd, and placed both hands firmly on the Gnome's narrow shoulders. “Where you are doesn't matter, Poggwydd. What's important is that you are in no immediate danger. But the little girl, Misty, is. We have to get out of here and back to where she is. There is something here, in this place, that can help us do that—if we can find it. That is what we intend to do right now. While we search, I want you to stay right here.”

Poggwydd looked around doubtfully. “Why should I do that? Why can't I just go home? I can find my way once I'm outside again.”

Questor gave him a sympathetic look. “Not from here, you can't. You will have to trust me on this.” He
paused, thinking. “If you try, Poggwydd, Nightshade might get her hands on you a second time. Do you understand me?”

The Gnome nodded quickly. He understood, all right. “I'll do as you say,” he agreed reluctantly. “How long do I have to wait?”

“I don't know. Maybe quite a while. You must be patient.”

Poggwydd sniffled. “I don't have anything to eat. I'm hungry.”

Abernathy rolled his eyes. Questor squeezed the Gnome's shoulders and released him. “I know. Be brave. We'll try to find you something to eat and bring it down. But you have to stay where you are, no matter what. This is important, Poggwydd. You must not leave this room for anything. All right?”

The Gnome rubbed at his nose and shrugged. “All right. I'll wait. But try to hurry.”

“We'll be as quick as we can.” Questor backed away, looking once again at Abernathy and Elizabeth. “We'll have to start over, tourists or no tourists. The common rooms first, then back into storage. But I'm willing to bet the book we need is right out there where we can see it.”

“You know,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully, “I think there were some books that were kept separate from the others, ones printed in a language that no one here could read. My father mentioned them once.”

“Now we're getting somewhere!” Questor exclaimed in undisguised glee. “Books written in Landover's language, carried over by Michel or my brother! They would have to be the ones, wouldn't they?”

And with that, following Questor's final reassuring smile and wave of the hand to Poggwydd, they were out the door and on their way back through the castle.

* * *

The search took them longer than they expected, however, extending well into the late afternoon, when the last of the tourists were straggling back to their buses and cars and heading home. They hunted through the rooms of the castle twice before they found what they were looking for. There were books in every room, and most of them were under lock and key. That meant keeping watch and distracting both tourists and guides while the locks were released and a quick survey made to determine if any of the books were what they were looking for. Questor used magic on the locks, which hastened the process, but checking through the books took an inordinate amount of time and for most of the day yielded absolutely nothing.

Until finally, with time running out and the castle closing down, Elizabeth remembered a massive old glass-front cabinet in an upstairs drawing room tucked away in a dormer that was not visible from the roped-off doorway. There were some books there, she thought. Just a few, but she remembered them because her father had remarked once on their covers. Following her suggestion, they hurried to the drawing room as a bell sounded closing time in the downstairs hall. While the girl and Abernathy kept watch, Questor stepped over the ropes and wormed his way through an obstacle course of furniture to the cabinet. He peered inside. Sure enough, there were the books, a dozen of them, all wrapped in dark cloth covers that concealed the titles. The cabinet latch was locked, but a whisper of magic and he was inside.

Excited now, Questor reached past a collection of amethyst glassware that fronted the books and pulled the first out. To his extreme disappointment it was written in English and had nothing at all to do with Landover. He checked another two. It was the same. Another
dead end, it seemed. Hope dwindling, he continued on more quickly. Books on gardening, travel, and history.

“Questor Thews, hurry!” Abernathy hissed from the doorway as voices from down the hall rapidly approached.

Questor opened the eighth book in the collection and his eyebrows shot up. It was written in Ancient Landoverian script, in a language the old wizards had commonly used. He paged through it hurriedly to make sure, hearing the voices more clearly: laughter, a quick greeting to Elizabeth, her response. Feverishly, he wedged himself between the wall and the cabinet, where he was out of sight of anyone standing in the doorway.

“Still poking about, Elizabeth?” someone asked, coming to a stop beyond the ropes. “Aren't you getting hungry?”

“Oh, we're almost done,” she replied with a nervous laugh. “Is it all right to stay a bit longer?”

“One hour,” a second voice advised. “Then
we
leave. Call if you need anything.”

The voices continued on down the hall and faded away.

“Questor!” Abernathy warned a second time, his patience obviously at an end.

Questor freed himself from his hiding place and looked down at his discovery. Carefully he pulled back the cloth covering. There were symbols etched in gold leaf on the leather binding that read
Gateway Mythologies
.

“Drat!” he muttered, shoved the book back into place, and pulled out the next one.
Greensward Histories
. He reached for the third.

Theories of Magic and Its Uses
.

“Yes, yes, yes!” the wizard whispered in relief.

He could not take time to read it here, he knew. He
checked the last of the volumes and found nothing. He would have to hope that the one in his hands held what he was looking for. He moved quickly back across the room toward the door.

“I've got it!” he announced triumphantly as he reached Elizabeth and Abernathy.

Abruptly an alarm went off. They all jumped, and Elizabeth gave a short cry. Questor hurriedly tucked the book into the carry bag he had brought. “What's happened?” he gasped, white hair and beard flying out in every direction. “What did I do?”

“I don't think you did anything at all!” Elizabeth grasped his arm as he whirled this way and that, casting about for imagined attackers. “It's a fire alarm! But I can't imagine what set it off!”

Questor Thews and Abernathy immediately looked at each other. “Poggwydd!” they exclaimed.

They hurried along the corridor to the stairs and started down, jostling and bumping against each other, all talking at once.

“We shouldn't have left him alone!” Questor moaned, clutching the carry bag and its precious contents close against his chest.

“We should have tied and gagged him!” Abernathy snapped. From below came the sound of shouts.

“Maybe it isn't him at all!” Elizabeth encouraged.

But it was, of course. Two security guards were hauling Poggwydd into view just as they arrived at the bottom of the stairs. The Gnome was disheveled and covered from head to foot in a coating of ash. He was struggling and moaning pathetically while the guards held him at arm's length between them, not at all certain what it was they had.

“Boy, I've seen it all!” one of them was muttering.

“Shut up and hold on to him!” the other growled irritably.

Poggwydd caught sight of Questor Thews and started to call for help, but the wizard made a quick motion with one hand and the startled G'home Gnome was rendered instantly voiceless. His mouth worked in futile desperation, but nothing came out.

“Stand back, folks,” one of the guards advised as they carried the struggling Gnome past.

“What do you have there?” Questor asked, feigning ignorance.

“Don't know.” The guard's attention was diverted momentarily as Poggwydd tried to bite him. “Some sort of monkey, I guess. Filthy as a pig and twice as ugly. Found him in the kitchen, trying to start a fire. It almost looked like he was trying to cook some food he'd stolen, but c'mon, he's a monkey, right? Anyway, the fire alarm went off or he might have burned the place down. Look at him fight! Mean little devil. Must have escaped from a zoo or something. How he found his way here, I'll never know.”

“Well, be careful with him,” Questor offered, trying to avoid Poggwydd's furious look.

“Careful as can be.” The guard laughed.

“There, there, little fellow,” Questor called after the struggling Gnome. “Someone will come to claim you soon!”

“Can't be soon enough for me!” the other guard called back, and the unfortunate Poggwydd was dragged kicking and writhing through the front door and out of sight.

Questor, Abernathy, and Elizabeth stood staring after the Gnome in silence for a moment. Then Questor said, “This is my fault. I completely forgot about him.”

“You told him to wait where he was,” Abernathy reminded him, evidencing a noticeable lack of sympathy. “He should have listened.”

“Questor, what did you do to stop him from talking?” Elizabeth asked.

The wizard sighed. “Cast a small spell. I couldn't very well let him tell them who we are, and that is exactly what he was about to do. Besides, things would be much worse for Poggwydd if they found out he can talk. He is better off if they think him an animal, believe me.”

“He
is
an animal,” Abernathy muttered. “Stupid Gnome.”

“Stupid or not, we have to help him,” Elizabeth said at once.

“What we have to do,” Questor announced quickly, “is to go back to the house, where I can study this book and find out if it is what we are looking for.”

“It better be,” Abernathy grumbled. “I have seen all I care to see of Graum Wythe!”

“Where do you think they will take him?” Elizabeth asked, her brow creased with worry.

“Wherever they think he came from, I suppose,” Questor replied absently. He was peering down into the carry bag at the book.

“I just don't want us to forget about him a second time,” Elizabeth insisted. They started for the entry. “He looks so helpless.”

“Believe me, he is anything but,” Abernathy sniffed. He was thinking about the G'home Gnomes' penchant for eating stray pets. “He does not deserve an ounce of your sympathy. He is a nuisance, plain and simple.”

Elizabeth took his hand and squeezed it. “You are being difficult, Abernathy. It's not his fault he's here.”

“It is not our fault, either. Nor our responsibility.”

“She's right, you know,” Questor Thews offered.

Abernathy gave his friend a scathing look. “I know she's right. You don't have to tell me that.”

“I was just trying to point out—”

“Confound it, Questor Thews, why do you insist on belaboring—”

Still arguing between themselves while Elizabeth tried in vain to reestablish some semblance of peace, the wizard and the scribe passed down the corridor to the front door of the castle and out into the fading light.

In front of them, a King County police car was just pulling away.

After their return to Elizabeth's house, Questor Thews stayed up all night reading the purloined book. He sat curled up in an easy chair in the far corner of his bedroom with a single light illuminating the pages as he turned them one by one. He was certain early on that this book was what they had been looking for and that hidden within its text lay the answer to the riddle behind their improbable escape from Nightshade.
Theories of Magic and Its Uses
. They were right there, all the discoveries of all the wizards since the dawn of Landover, set out as postulates and axioms, theories proved and suspected, absent only the recipe and ingredients for each specific stew. They were theories, not formulas, but were quite enough to get at the essence of things. Questor even knew what to look for. He hated himself for this, but the obviousness of the truth facing him was inescapable once he accepted its possibility. He worked his way through the book tirelessly, ignoring his exhaustion, suppressing his growing fear, reading on determinedly.

Across the room from him Abernathy slept with his face turned away from the light. It was just as well. His friend didn't want to have to look at him just now.

Sometime during the long, slow hours after midnight Questor Thews discovered what he was looking for. Even so, he kept reading, not wanting to take anything for granted, not wanting to give up his search for a better
answer, although he knew already that there wasn't going to be one. He read all the way through the book and back again. He studied individual passages and considered alternative possibilities until his head hurt. Then he went back to the passage he had discovered earlier and read it again slowly, carefully. There was no mistake. It was what he was looking for. It was the answer he had been seeking.

He sighed and put the book down in his lap. He looked over at Abernathy again, and tears came to his eyes. His face crumpled, and his chest ached with need. Life was just so unfair sometimes. He wished things could be different. He wished this could be happening to someone else. His sticklike frame twisted into a clutter of old bones and wrinkled skin, and his heart knotted in his chest.

Finally, exhausted of feeling, he reached up, turned out the light, and sat motionless in the dark, waiting for morning.

“The title of the book is
Monsters of Man & Myth,”
Ben told Willow, speaking directly into her ear.