Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book (12 page)

Once within sight of the entrance to the jail, they watched as the two familiars slipped off into the darkness. A moment later, a clatter of spears falling to the ground was heard, followed by loud snoring.

“Let's go,” said Robin, who had stealthily crept ahead to scout. “The guards and the chatrixes are all asleep.”

And in fact, it was bedtime at the jail. People and animals slumped this way and that, each snoring louder than the next. The prisoners were asleep as well. Sparrow carefully sealed the bottles, and they were soon able to remove their masks. Within minutes, they were in front of the quartz crystal door to Cal's cell. Blondin's sleeping nest was empty, but they could see Cal under the covers.

Sparrow knocked loudly.

“Cal! Cal! Wake up and open the door.”

The shape didn't move.

“Darn it!” said Sparrow worriedly, “I hope he covered his mouth and nose the way I told him to yesterday. Otherwise we won't be able to wake him until tomorrow morning.”

“He was supposed to pick the lock,” fretted Fabrice. “Without him we're stuck!”

“Maybe I can help, young man,” came an icy voice behind them. “Could this be what you need?”

They spun around.

The chatrixes might still be asleep, but the guards were wide awake. Standing in front of the horrified young spellbinders was Xandiar, dangling a small silver key from one of his four hands.

“Ha, ha, ha!” chortled Angelica, who wasn't sleeping either. “You think I didn't overhear your stupid plan? I warned the captain of the guards that you would try to help Cal escape, and he took steps to stop you. This way, I'll get favorable treatment and Cal won't be able to ruin my parent's efforts to get me out of here.”

“Angelica, you're very lucky to be locked up, believe me!” growled Robin, a light of fury glowing in his eyes.

She backed away, as if she could physically feel the menacing glare. Then, realizing she was safe, she drew herself up and spoke: “I haven't forgotten the way you treated me, you miserable half-elf. Why should I pass up a chance to get revenge?”

She raised her voice. “What about you, Cal? Don't you have anything to say?” But Angelica was answered only by silence.

Suddenly suspicious, Xandiar turned the key in the lock and slid the cell door smoothly aside. In two steps, he was at the motionless figure and yanked the blankets away. Everyone gasped.

Angelica's revenge was going to be short.

Very, very short.

Cal's bed held only two carefully positioned pillows.

The cell was empty!

C
al was stressing out. He'd learned that expression while on Earth and found it fit his present situation perfectly. He may have been strutting his stuff (another expression he liked) for his friends, but he wasn't at all sure he could actually pull off his crazy scheme. Knowing that failure meant being locked up for the rest of his days did nothing to improve his mood.

He'd been nervously arranging his bedclothes in preparation for the escape when Blondin suddenly started to growl. The fur on the fox's back was standing straight up, and he was staring at the rear wall of the cell. The feeling Cal was getting from his familiar was strange. Blondin was sensing some sort of
force
trying to break in. Cal was about to walk over when a couple of stones from the wall crashed into the room, raising a cloud of dust.

Coughing, he was astonished to see four blue gnomes emerge from the cloud and bow deeply to him. It can be tricky for humans to tell gnomes apart, but he thought one of them looked familiar.

“Master Glul Buglul?” he gasped, trying to wave away the dust.

“Good day, Apprentice Spellbinder Caliban Dal Salan,” said the gnome politely.

“Eh, good day,” said the flabbergasted thief. Even without an Interprets, Cal understood Gnomish fairly well, though he spoke it with an awful Lancovian accent.

Cal's sense of humor quickly returned. “Tell me, Master Buglul, do you have any special reason for destroying the prison, or did you just see a light and decide to go in?”

“Not the prison, Apprentice Spellbinder Caliban Dal Salan, just the wall of your cell. We have a proposal for you.”

“You do know that people also come in through the door, right? And for pity's sake, call me Cal. Otherwise this could be a very long conversation.”

“We do not wish to be seen,” Buglul explained with dignity. “We have come to beg for your pity.”

In perfect synch, the gnomes all kneeled down in front of Cal. And that's when the situation really got weird.

“You're going to get your pants dirty,” Cal said, feeling acutely embarrassed. “Get up and tell me what you want. No point in your risking rheumatism.”

The gnome smiled faintly and stood up. “My knees are not what they used to be, I admit. We need you, because we are being killed.”

Cal opened his mouth, then closed it. Hard to make a sarcastic crack after that kind of statement. He waited for the rest—and wasn't disappointed.

“Unlike other races, we gnomes are able to burrow through anything,” Buglul explained. “Stone, wood, metal—except for lava, nothing stops us. We have dug tunnels everywhere on OtherWorld. But we are careful because as we dig, we feed on the nutrients in the earth and that depletes the soil.”

“Is that so?” exclaimed Cal in surprise. “I thought you only ate birds. Which is why I decided I'd never go to Smallcountry. No birds means too many insects for my taste.”

The gnome frowned slightly. “‘Never' is a very definite word, I find. And we only eat birds for gustatory pleasure; what nourishes us is actually the earth. But we are exhausting it and our excrement isn't fertile, unfortunately.”

“So what?” asked Cal, in whom patience wasn't a major virtue. “What does this have to do with me? You said someone was
killing
you.”

“I am coming to that. Here is what our excrement actually is.”

Buglul slipped on a glove and pulled a small pouch from his pocket. With obvious revulsion, he opened it and poured glittering red, white, blue, and green stones into his hand, and then into Cal's. The thief was absentmindedly looking at the gemstones when his eyes suddenly widened.

“By Demiderus, you excrete
jewels
?”

“That is correct. Very few people know this. That secrecy protects us from greedy dragons, humans, and dwarves.”

“I'm a thief,” said Cal slowly. “True, I'm a licensed thief, but a thief all the same. I don't think it's such a great idea to put things like this in my hands.”

“I know the honor code of your profession,” said Buglul comfortably. “I know that you only act under orders from your government. But that does not concern us now. We trust you to keep our secret because we can offer you freedom in exchange for your help.”

Now Cal really lent an ear. This was suddenly getting very interesting.

“A few months ago, a powerful wizard discovered our . . . peculiarity,” said the gnome. “He could have been content to ask us to supply him with stones, which we would have gladly done, but that was not enough for him. As the price of his silence, this wizard forced us go all over OtherWorld stealing magic objects from other spellbinders. When two of us died in a trap, we rebelled and told him we would no longer obey him. Unfortunately, the objects we stole had given him great power—power that he concentrated in an artifactum. Thanks to the power of that artifactum, he was able to imprison our wives and children in a place we are not able to locate. We think he has created a secret Transfer Portal, and he is holding his prisoners on some other planet.

“In desperation, we appealed to the empress for help, without revealing too many details. At first, she did not believe us. We came back a second time, then a third that month. Eventually, the empress sent hunter-elves to search the spellbinder's castle, but they did not find anything. Without proof, it was impossible to charge the blackmailer. Moreover, his new power shields him from the Truth Tellers. They know that he is guilty, but they are unable to read his mind. When the blackmailer realized that we had informed on him, he became furious. In reprisal he had thirty of our wives executed. And sent us their bodies.”

As he spoke those terrible words, the gnome's voice broke. Cal felt tears stinging his eyes and furtively dabbed them away.

“We are not thieves,” said Buglul with a weak smile. “The hunter-elves may be good investigators, but they are apparently not thorough enough. We decided that only a thief could unmask another thief. We therefore decided to secretly study the files on students at the University of Licensed Thievery. We discovered that your professors consider you one of the best future thieves of your generation.”

“Really?” exclaimed Cal, who found this prodigiously interesting. “They're certainly secretive about it! They're always saying that I'll never be as good as so-and-so, or that my grades—”

“That may be,” interrupted the gnome, “but it is the reason we have entered your cell. We need you to find the place where this fiend has imprisoned our wives and children. We also would like to see his artifactum destroyed. Once he is cut off from his power, the Tellers will be able to ‘read' him, and the empress will have him executed for what he has done.”

Suddenly, Cal had an awful suspicion. “Speaking of the Tellers, was the fact that they couldn't ‘read' me something you came up with? So you could get thrown in jail, and then use me?”

“Heavens no!” exclaimed the gnome, recoiling in shock. “The Tellers say that someone cast a Mentus Interruptus on you, a spell that scrambles thought patterns. But they are sensitive enough to know if an individual is guilty or not—and you are not. Their word is good enough for us, even though it does not satisfy the empress. And now, we no longer have very much time. Will you agree to help us? In exchange, we will free you, which will allow you to find whoever has clearly set you up.”

“That's impossible,” said Cal, remembering his other escape plan. “There's, er, something I have to take care of first. Once I do that, I'll come help you, I promise. But my first concern is to prove that I'm innocent. I'm sure you understand that.”

“We understand,” the gnome assured him, “but we are desperate. With every passing minute, that monster acquires more power. He only has two more objects to obtain: a cursed book and a wooden wand carved by First Circle demons. He gave us four days to steal the book for him. Otherwise, he will kill again and again until we obey. When he comes into possession of that evil book, his power will be multiplied tenfold. And once he acquires the wand, not even the dragons will be able to resist him!”

“The Forbidden Book
!” cried Cal excitedly. “Don't tell me you're supposed to steal
The Forbidden Book
!”

“Shhh!” hissed the gnome, shooting a worried glance at the cell door. “That is indeed the name the spellbinder gave us, but please keep your voice down, or the guards will hear us. So, will you help us, yes or no?”

“Amazing, the number of people who want that blasted book!” said Cal with a grimace. “Unfortunately, my answer is no. There's no way I can go with you, at least not now. But my mother is a lot more skilled than I am, you know. Ask her to help, and she'll find your secret portal in minutes.”

The gnome bent his head and sighed. “We appealed to the empress, and that did not work. Your mother will fare no better. There would inevitably be political considerations and the negotiations would take time, which we no longer have. I had hoped it would not come to this but . . .”

“But what?” Cal was suddenly suspicious.

The gnome raised his head and looked him in the eye. “I am very sorry, but you leave me no choice.”

With unexpected speed, Buglul leaped up and pressed something against Cal's neck.

The little thief felt like screaming, but couldn't. After a quick stab of pain, he found himself completely paralyzed. Blondin barked loudly, feeling his companion's distress, but without understanding what was happening to him.

“That was a t'sil,” Glul Buglul calmly explained. “A parasitical worm from the Salterens desert. It paralyzes its host and burrows into its flesh, usually near the neck. It then enters a major artery and immediately seeds its eggs throughout the victim's body. This takes a few minutes. That done, it dissolves. The paralysis disappears and the eggs remain in stasis until they hatch. It takes about a hundred hours for them to activate. They hatch out as burrowing worms that feed on their host, and the cycle repeats.

“There are two ways to deal with t'sil. The first is to swallow the antidote. It enters the bloodstream through the stomach and attacks and destroys the eggs. It must be taken at least two hours before they hatch. The second is to die. When the heart stops beating, the eggs are deprived of blood oxygen and die immediately.”

Buglul paused.

“You should be recovering from the paralysis about now. That is a sign that the eggs are in your bloodstream.”

In fact, Cal could feel the stiffness leaving his muscles. The instant he regained the use of his arms and legs, he grabbed Buglul and slammed him against the cell wall, squeezing the gnome's slender throat. The other gnomes tensed, ready to intervene, but Blondin blocked their way, teeth bared. Buglul gestured to them not to move.

“We're going to take care of this problem pronto,” snarled Cal furiously, squeezing tighter. “Either you give me the antidote right now, or I'll crush your windpipe.”

“We cannot . . .” croaked the gnome, who was turning purple. “We do not have the antidote here. You will have to come with us. Otherwise, you will die.”

“I can find that antidote at any drugstore!” Cal hissed through clenched teeth.