Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (2 page)

Clair gave us goodies—she gave us a home. None of us had to
go out and prentice to work. We did have work, like patrolling, but we chose
that ourselves. She had asked us to go round to the provinces and neighboring
lands—but if we’d said no, she would have found a way to go herself. She didn’t
make us. And she didn’t give us things to bribe us, or to buy our friendship.
She gave us things because she liked to see everybody happy.

So here we all were, and she was going to tell a story. If
the rest of us were thinking over our words just before telling a story, there
would be jokes and snickers and conversation. But we were quiet, waiting.

Clair said, “I guess the best place for me to start is when
my friend Jennet was alive. I was four or five, I forget now. Maybe five,
because we’d been playing together for a while. We’d been talking about the
Children’s Army—the kids left over after Kwenz pulled his Debt Day wine-spell
trick. We’d rescued some of the grownups by accident, and Jennet kept talking
about the missing ones. Like her parents.”

She paused, and then went on in her low, soft voice, her
green gaze straying toward the fire and staying there as she described how her
mom was actually having morning interviews for once, rather than sleeping, so
the girls sneaked into the magic library. Clair had learned the basics of magic
as well as reading—mostly by practicing on her own, once she’d had a few
lessons. No one knew how far along she really was.

So no one had thought to hide any of the books. She located
one that had transportation magic. She had never been permitted to leave the
cloud-city, but she had sneaked away once, and saw the road around Mount Marcus
that led down into the Shadowland beneath the cloud-city. Clair also knew
enough about transfer magic, having seen people come and go from the Destination
inside the White Palace. She knew she had to say the spell and picture a specific
destination, or when the transfer magic wrenched you out of time and space in
this world, you would vanish forever. So she pictured the edge of the Shadow, seen
when poor Jennet had lost her family to Kwenz’s terrible spell. She took
Jennet’s hand, said the transfer spell, and z-z-z-zap!

Down they went! Without the spell book, of course. But,
being five, they didn’t think about getting back up.

The road leading into the Shadow under the cloud city was
well flattened, the time was early morning, so no one was out. They wandered
along the barren rocky road to the castle. Kwenz did have guards on the walls,
but they were seldom attentive—it wasn’t as if anyone was trying to invade!
Also, they had so much magic on them that they didn’t do anything on their own
initiative, especially when the morning light was strong. It hurt their eyes.

It could be that if the girls were seen, they were just
small girls, and no one bothered to report them. Anyway, the little girls made
it to the castle. Jennet remembered the way, not that it was hard to figure
out. The middle of the main part of the castle had a long series of big rooms,
mostly empty.

Some servants were out and about, carrying things to and
fro. They walked slowly, gazes down. The girls copied them, and no one paid
them the least attention.

They were looking for that tall old man they knew was in
charge. Clair had recently learned a lesson from Steward Janil: that reasonable
children could discuss what they wanted, and maybe get it. Whining and yelling
would never get anything except time in your room. Even if Clair’s mom wouldn’t
listen sometimes, just went on sleeping, or drinking wine out of her silver
cup, Janil always listened. And whatever Janil said always was true. Plus, when
you listened and learned, she gave you hugs and cookies.

So the girls were determined to discuss things reasonably
with that old man. Maybe then he’d let Jennet’s parents go—and even give them
cookies. The girls didn’t really want any hugs, except of course Jennet did
from her parents.

Well, they heard voices. One of them was familiar. It was
the old man, and he was laughing. It wasn’t a nice laugh at all, but it was
familiar, so on they toiled, into a vast, dark room that was full of people!
Only the people were still!

Clair reached to touch the nearest outstretched hand, to
discover a cold hardness, like marble. No warm skin. She snatched her fingers
back as she stared up. The people had been frozen in the middle of movement,
some fearful, some warding threat, some offering threat. A few were sad,
looking down. And some held children in arms or by the hand—babies and children
just as still and cold.

Jennet ran off to look for her parents. Clair walked more
slowly. Her attention was caught by a boy who looked familiar. He had a
squinched-up face, his fingers outstretched, slightly curled. Like he was
reaching. He was just a little taller than she, standing in the center of the
whole room, she realized, surrounded by lots of empty space.

She looked at his eyes. They gleamed and glittered in the
faint light reflected from outside the stone room, looking creepily real. As if
these stone eyes watched her. She backed up a step, two steps—and then heard
voices.

One was the old man again, laughing. It was a wheezy laugh—a
mean
laugh. She hid behind the boy-statue.

“... and there you are! No, you needn’t hold him any longer.”

The new voice sounded garbled. Like someone trying to talk
while underwater in the bathtub, only there wasn’t any water. The voice slowed,
then stopped, while the wheezy laughter continued.

The old man said, “My brother slowed the stone spell, see,
so they know what’s happening to them. Listen, you!”

A third voice was deep and husky. “Interesting. Quite
interesting.”

The old man said, “Here it gets even better. Now, you!
Listen to me, before you freeze to stone. There is an antidote built into the
spell, yes.” He laughed again.

The deep, husky voice growled, “Well known, and easy. So you
put limits on who can cause the antidote to work?”

The old man said, “Yes! And here’s the cream of the jest.
Listen, you, before you freeze. The only ones who can free you are that drunken
queen of yours, or her brat. Neither of whom would ever spend a heartbeat
thinking about you. Or caring if they did. Neither of them will
ever
come seeking you. Ever! Whereas, if you had stayed in my service, you would be
free right now. Think about
that
as time passes while you are stone, ha
ha ha!”

“Lethal.” The deep voice laughed. It was a growly, scary
laugh. “Quite lethal. But are they able to think?”

“My brother insists they can. He was very careful with his
experiments on—”

The voices faded away. Clair looked around, fearing to see
dark magic—black smoke—lightning strikes. All things that had scared her when
she was littler, because she was scared now. The lesson about the difference
between black magic and light magic made sense now.

That old man wasn’t going to listen to reasonable children.
And he certainly wasn’t going to smile and offer people cookies. Not if he
could laugh while turning someone to stone, and call Clair’s mom bad names and
say she didn’t care. She did care, she did! She was just ... not always well
enough to care, but when she was, she did!

Clair stomped in a circle, mired in unhappy thoughts until
Jennet pattered up, her eyes huge.

“Did you hear that?” Clair asked, whispering now. “What he
said about Mama?”

Jennet nodded. “He called you a brat. You’re not a brat.”

“He’s icky. I don’t care if he calls me a brat. What it means,”
Clair realized as she turned around, “is that
I
can free them. I think.”

“Let’s try one!”

They looked around, avoiding the tall men who all looked so
angry. Clair picked one of the women holding a child. She touched the top of
that cold stone hand, saying, “Ala! You are now awake!”

But nothing happened.

She struck the stone hand harder—and then tried giving the
statue a hug. Then tried the ‘clear-away-illusion’ spell, which is one of the
simplest there is, illusions being temporary as well as unreal. But nothing
happened.

Clair scowled, remembering those words about ‘easy’.

Jennet said, “They are
staring
at us, Clair. Try
their eyes.”

Clair had noticed that the gleams of the dim light outside
made the eyes look real, though that could be the smoothness of the stone over
the eyeballs. In any case, she disliked the idea of touching someone’s open
eye, even on a statue, but anything was worth trying once. So she stood on
tiptoe, just barely able to reach the woman’s face, and lightly tapped each
eye.

And the statue made a weird crackling noise, then shuddered.

Quickly Clair touched the baby’s eyes so the woman wouldn’t
be holding a stone baby, and they both wriggled and moved, the baby sinking
with a sigh against its mother. The woman squinted down at Clair as if she had
a terrible headache, but then tears welled up in her eyes. Her real eyes, that
blinked and moved.

Clair hated to see tears. She felt even worse as the woman
dropped to her knees, murmuring broken words of gratitude. That made Clair feel
hot pricklies because she didn’t feel she’d earned such praise, so she said, “How’d
you get froze?”

“I refused to remain in the Shadowland to serve in the
kitchens of Kwenz of the Chwahir.”

“He’s the old man with the beard?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Stay away from him, child.”

Clair and Jennet nodded, having already come to that
conclusion.

The woman looked around fearfully, took a slow step, then
moved faster and faster, fading into the shadows as she made her way out.

Jennet said, “Maybe we better go away.”

“Not until I set them all free.”

Jennet said, “But my parents aren’t here. I looked at them
all.”

“I’m sorry,” Clair said. “I wish they were. But I can’t
leave these others as statues.”

Jennet did not argue, just followed Clair from person to
person. To help Clair reach the taller men, Jennet bent over and made a turtle
back for her to climb on. Soon the creak and crackle of breaking magical stone
and restored flesh and blood filled the gloomy, cavernous space. Some people
took off without speaking, others found the girls to thank them. Many lingered,
telling one another their stories; if they were young, Clair asked, for she saw
that the adults tended to speak to one another.

All had refused to serve Kwenz, and some said he had gloated
about saving them for a full generation’s time, till everyone they knew was
dead, and they’d be a fresh crop of servants. By then his brother would find
will-binding spells.

When Clair came to the boy—she’d saved him for last—he shook
himself all over. Jennet laughed, saying, “He reminds me of a puppy!”

Clair laughed. The boy blinked, squinted, then said, “You
have to be Clevarlineh Sherwood.”

“Yes.”

“Hi, cousin!” He grinned.

“I do remember you, Puddlenose,” Clair said happily. Then
looked puzzled. “But you went away.”

He made a face. “That’s because Uncle Doumei came after me
again. It was after the last nephew disappeared.”

“What?”

“Oh, never mind,” he said, eyeing the five-year-old. He was
about eight, then, and felt that life in the Land of the Chwahir wasn’t
anything his five-year-old cousin needed to hear about. “Let’s get out of here,”
was his next thought. “While we can.”

“... and so he showed us the way out, explaining that he’d
been sent to Kwenz to be taught a lesson, but he suspected it was because
someone had broken into Shnit’s magical wards over Narad, his capital. It was,
and probably still is, the worst warded city in the entire world,” Clair said,
sitting back, then sipping her now-cold chocolate. “Puddlenose says that
nothing will grow in that city, there’s so much black magic leaching away at
life and light.”

“So he got turned into stone? How grotty!” Gwen exclaimed.

“Oh, he kept making jokes about it. Insisting it was a good
day’s rest, but heavy on the dreams. Stuff like that. Maybe it was better than
life with King Shnit.” Clair pinched her nose on the word ‘Kwenz.’

“Isn’t that about the time you met Rosey?” I asked.

Clair grinned. “Oh yes. He kidnapped us, you see. Right
afterward.”

Gwen snapped upright, jaw dropping.

Faline chortled. “Wish I coulda met him. Even if he is a
villain.”

“
If
he is.” Clair made a face. “The more I think
about those days, the more I think that whatever else he was, he was
not
a real villain.”

Gwen looked from one to another of us, and I sensed that our
knowledge and her lack were dividing us, so I pointed upward. “That rain is
louder than ever. We’re not patrolling any time soon, so why don’t you tell us
about Rosey, Clair?”

Clair gave us one of her question-looks.

“I always like hearing about Rosey.” Seshe leaned forward. “He
is such a mystery! Just when you think you know how villains will act—you get
someone like Rosey.”

Irene still had her chin in her hands. “Why don’t we see him
now?”

“I hope nothing horrible has happened to him,” Clair said. “The
more I learn about magic, the more I think he’s actually Shnit’s enemy, though
he seems to be Kwenz’s friend. I don’t know how
that
could be—”

“Euw!”

“Pshooie!”

“Glug!”

“I didn’t even think you
could
be friends with a
villain,” she said doubtfully.

“You can’t,” I pronounced, bulling in. “You can’t trust ’em,
so why be friends?”

“Okay, now I’m really curious,” Gwen admitted.

“Well ...” I could tell Clair was relieved that the rest of
us weren’t bored. “Remember that deep, growly voice I mentioned?”

Nods all around, as above us the rain roared. Seshe got up
to make some more hot chocolate, and Sherry gave the whipped cream a brisk
stir.