The Magician's Tower (2 page)

First of all
, she thought,
Uncle Alexander has never needed to remind me to brush my teeth, because brushing one's teeth is simply the logical way of keeping them from rotting out of one's head
. Thus, it followed that Oona needed no reminders.
And secondly
, she thought,
Uncle Alexander may have indeed been turned into a toad, but that was nearly three months ago, and it was not my doing!

This was also true. It had been her uncle's lawyer, Mr. Ravensmith—in cahoots with Dark Street's most notorious criminal mastermind, Red Martin—who had done the abhorrent deed.

And thirdly
, she thought,
I never use magic if I can help it
. Despite her recent return to the position of Wizard's apprentice, the truth was that, in Oona's opinion, magic remained highly unpredictable.

And if all of this wasn't enough to justify the uncomfortable stares, then there was the fact that Oona was the only person with a raven on her shoulder—and a talking raven at that. But of this, Oona did not care what people thought. Deacon was not only Oona's closest companion, but also a wealth of facts and highly useful information.

“Welcome, welcome, welcome!” cried the man on the stage. The chatter of the party guests tapered off, and all eyes turned to observe the squat man at the front of the stage. He wore a tight fitting suit and a top hat nearly as tall as he was. His small eyes took in the well-to-do onlookers. “Welcome
to the Magician's Tower. I am Nathaniel Tempest, the tower architect.”

A round of applause began. Oona did not join in.

“I don't know if I'd be so proud of that,” she whispered to Deacon.

The tower swayed precariously in the breeze, giving the impression it might topple at any moment. The middle portion leaned south, rising slantwise for nearly thirty feet before overcorrecting and tilting north. A set of rickety steps corkscrewed around the outside, and near the seventh floor the entire structure bulged out like a great serpent swallowing an egg. The sound of creaking wood could be heard from as far away as the Iron Gates.

“Look at that monstrosity of a building,” Oona half whispered.

Deacon stifled a laugh as the Wizard gave her a disapproving glance from his seat beside her. Dressed in his traditional hood and robe, the Wizard made an imposing figure, as was befitting the head of all magical activity on Dark Street. Oona considered him for a moment. Despite the fact that the only living magicians on the street were the Wizard himself and Oona, the position was still highly respected in the community, and one day, Oona knew, it would belong to her.

“Once every five years,” the man in the top hat
continued, “a new tower is constructed, and a new contest begun. It is a contest that stretches back hundreds of years. Anyone brave enough to enter”—the man paused to gesture toward a slanted door at the base of the tower—“will have a chance at solving the first day's challenges … but only the first four contestants to make it through the trials will move on to the second day's challenge. After that, two more challenges a day will be offered: a test of the mind and a test of the physical kind. Each day the last contestant to finish will be eliminated, until there are only two left. On the fourth and last day of the contest, both finalists will have an opportunity to solve the final challenge, at the tower's pinnacle; a task so difficult that, in its entire history, it has never been accomplished.”

The crowd was silent. Heads tilted back, and all eyes stared up at the pyramid at the very top of the tower. It swayed dauntingly in the night air, barely visible against the night sky. It reminded Oona of the Goblin Tower in the Dark Street Cemetery, at the top of which she had rescued her uncle from imprisonment, except that the Magician's Tower in front of her appeared as if it might crumble at any moment, and the Goblin Tower had stood for nearly five hundred years.

“The contest begins tomorrow at noon!” the man cried. “I am the only one who knows its secrets, and the challenges that lay inside.” He held up a leather satchel.
“Only I hold the plans and the answers to the puzzles that await those brave few.”

Again a round of applause filled the park, and this time Oona clapped along. Indeed, of everyone at the gathering, it was Oona who clapped the most enthusiastically. Here at last was a challenge she could embrace. As much as she disliked admitting it, her new detective business had been rather slow to catch on. She'd had only two cases in the last three months, one of them involving a missing nail file, and the other, a six-year-old girl who had hired Oona to discover the truth surrounding the existence of something called the Easter Bunny. It was most embarrassing.

But now, finally, here was a worthy challenge. The famous Magician's Tower Contest.

“Please enjoy the rest of the party,” the architect said over the applause before descending the stage steps and mingling with the partygoers.

The Wizard turned to Oona. “I take it that you plan to participate in this fiasco.”

“I do indeed, Uncle,” Oona said. “Not only participate, but win.”

“And what is the point?” Deacon asked from her shoulder.

Oona shook her head. “The point, my dearest Deacon, is to be the first. To solve the game. To overcome the mystery. What further point is needed?”

“Well, I suppose I can relieve you of your apprentice duties for the four days of the contest,” the Wizard said. “I can get Samuligan to cover for you.”

Oona grinned appreciatively. Samuligan, the Pendulum House faerie servant, would be more than equal to the task.

The Wizard glanced in the direction of the table closest to their own, his face sticking out of his hood and exposing a bumpy nose and long gray beard. Oona turned as well, drawn in by a loud voice at the neighboring table. The voice was that of Sir Baltimore Rutherford, one of the most well-known men of Dark Street high society. A handsome man in his mid-fifties, with thick sideburns and a prominent brow, Sir Baltimore waved a pungent cigar in the air, and was laughing heartily at his own joke. The occupants at his table were riveted.

“As I was saying,” Sir Baltimore boomed, “when I was a boy, a few years older than my son Roderick is—where is Roderick, anyway? Probably off with that new girlfriend of his. That boy's got more girls pining for him than I'd care to count. But when I was about his age, I, too, participated in the tower contest, and I made it to the top. There were just two of us left: myself and Bradford Crate.”

Oona's heart lurched at the mention of her father. She of course knew that her father—the former head inspector of the Dark Street Police Department—had participated in the tower contest, but she had not learned this fact
from the man himself. Or if she had, then she had been too young to remember. The fact remained that her full knowledge of her father's youthful adventures in the contest had come from research in books. The thought saddened her. Indeed, there was so much about her father that she did not know, and would most likely never know; the bullet fired from the barrel of a thief's gun had made sure of that nearly three years ago. The loss of her father, only months before losing her mother and sister, had been like a terrible earthquake, shaking Oona's world down to its foundations. “Bradford was the more clever of the two of us,” Sir Baltimore continued, “but I had the advantage of my fantastic memory. Runs in the family, you know. I can remember every joke anyone has ever told me.”

“Oh, that is wonderful. I wish I could remember jokes,” said a sulky-looking woman at Sir Baltimore's table. “But, alas, the moment I hear one, it's in one ear and out the other.”

“Well, as I said, it's a family trait,” Sir Baltimore said, and then turned abruptly in his seat. “Speaking of inheriting family traits, if it isn't young Miss Crate herself.” His smile was a pleasant one. “I was just recalling the time when your father and I went head to head in the tower contest. I was fifteen, and he, I believe, was a few years older. The challenge on the third day was a kind of maze where—”

“Daddy!” cried a voice, cutting Sir Baltimore short. The voice was high and shrill.

“Yes, dear?” Sir Baltimore said, turning to the young girl seated beside him. She looked to be no more than seven years old, and Oona knew her name was Penelope Rutherford.

“Daddy, read me my story now!” Penelope demanded, and thrust a book out toward her father.

“I'm telling my own story, Penny,” Sir Baltimore replied.

“No!” the girl shouted. “I want you to read one from
my
book. My favorite book.”

Sir Baltimore sighed. “But don't you want to hear how Daddy used his extraordinary powers of memory to find his way out of the tower maze?”

“No!” Penelope exclaimed. “I want to hear about Boon Boon, the man-eating parakeet!”

Sir Baltimore rolled his eyes before turning back to Oona. “Well, it's no matter. In the end, your father beat me out of the maze. I'll never know how he did it.”

“Because my younger brother was as clever as they get,” said the Wizard.

Sir Baltimore's eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes, Alexander, Bradford was clever.”

“You are not still jealous, are you, Baltimore?” asked the Wizard.

“Certainly not. I fell ill the night before the final challenge, and was unable to think straight. Otherwise, I feel certain I should not have answered the final riddle incorrectly. Bradford got it right, of course, but failed to solve the final physical challenge. He was unable to open the puzzle box, just like every contestant before him. Don't forget that, Alexander.” Sir Baltimore stubbed out his cigar on his plate and snatched the book of faerie tales from his daughter's hand. He stood. “Come, Penny. Let's find a more quiet atmosphere in which to read.”

The two of them stalked off, though rather than head for the outskirts of the park, Sir Baltimore headed for the cluster of partygoers around the architect's table.

“That was a bit harsh, Uncle,” Oona said, surprised at her uncle's accusation that Sir Baltimore had been jealous of her father.

The Wizard smiled. “I suppose it was. But they were rivals back then, Baltimore Rutherford and your father. That was before Baltimore ran off to England and somehow managed to get himself knighted, and became
Sir
Baltimore.”

“According to the
Dark Street Who's Who
,” Deacon interjected, “Sir Baltimore Rutherford won his knighthood in a card game against the Earl of Dudley.”

Oona grinned appreciatively at the raven. A present from her uncle on her eleventh birthday, Deacon was an
enchanted bird whose vast memory contained not only the entire
Encyclopedia Arcanna
and the complete
Oxford English Dictionary
, but also several other helpful volumes that Oona often needed quick access to in her detective work, including the
Dark Street Who's Who
, a book listing virtually every person ever to have lived on the street.

“Yes,” the Wizard replied. “If there is any family trait more prominent than the Rutherford
memory
, then it would be the Rutherford
gambling
.”

“How do you mean?” Oona asked.

Deacon answered in a hushed tone: “It is rumored that Sir Baltimore got himself into so much debt with Red Martin that he was forced to give up ownership of his family home as payment. Quite a humiliation for such an esteemed family. Lady Rutherford, his wife, is so embarrassed that she rarely shows her face in public. The Rutherfords still live in the home, but they now pay rent to Red Martin's Nightshade Corporation.”

Oona's teeth clenched at the mention of Red Martin's name. The head of the Dark Street criminal underground was presently in hiding because of his involvement in the attack on the Wizard, and since learning that Red Martin was responsible for her father's death, she would have liked nothing more than to see the scoundrel locked behind bars, along with the despicable Mr. Ravensmith. But Red Martin had failed to show up at the trial, and
many believed he was now hiding somewhere on the street, still in control of the criminal element.

But Oona had information that most people did not. She knew that Red Martin had found a way through the Glass Gates—the enormous crystal gateway at the south end of Dark Street, which had been magically locked for over five hundred years—and that he had been smuggling all sorts of magical objects across the Faerie border for hundreds of years. One of those items had been turlock root, a magical tuber that Red Martin rubbed on his skin in order to keep himself from growing old. This, Oona concluded, meant that Red Martin was more than likely hiding in Faerie.

Glancing around the party, Oona's heart gave a little start as she recognized a face in the crowd: the tattooed face of Adler Iree, the very boy she had attended the Dark Street Annual Midnight Masquerade with. Due to the fact that his family spent several months of the year living “off street” in New York City, she hadn't seen Adler since the night of the dance. He sat near the far end of the stage, his handsome face hovering over an open book on the table. She was delighted to see him.

At thirteen, Adler was the youngest law student at the Magicians Legal Alliance, and yet in his short period of learning, his cheeks had already been decorated with the alliance's runelike tattoos, each of which indicated the
successful completion of a new course of study. Dressed in his customary shabby cloak and frayed top hat, he did not appear to see her, but her heart rate rose at the sight of him.

“Excuse me, Uncle,” Oona said. “I see someone I would like to speak to.”

Beneath the canopy of lantern-strung trees, she made her way across the park, growing more and more nervous. It had been three months since she had last seen Adler. Would he still want to talk to her, or would he have forgotten her altogether? She certainly hadn't forgotten him. She could remember the serious look on his face as the tattoos crinkled about his eyes in concentration during the waltz. She could also remember the sting of his feet stepping on her toes several times, though it was not an unpleasant thought, and, admittedly, the toe stepping had been just as much her fault as it had been his.