The Ventifact Colossus (The Heroes of Spira Book 1) (35 page)

“And it listened?” asked Ernie.

“Kibi has talked to ours,” said Aravia. “Even when it wasn’t possessing your stuffed bear.”

“But it just spewed out a bunch a’ cryptic mumbo jumbo,” said Kibi. “’Course, it ain’t been all that clear in the bear, neither.”

“You should sit down and have a chat with it when we get home,” said Dranko. “Promise it you’ll give it a good polish every night if it’ll let us carry it around and zap our enemies for us.”

No one was saying the important truth out loud. Morningstar turned her back to the sunlight spilling into the cave. “What will it say when we show up without its brother? When we come back having failed.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

FAILED.
THE WORD should be making her angry, given the reactions of her companions. But it wasn’t. Everyone else was so demoralized—not as much as when Mrs. Horn had died, but there was an air of inevitable doom hanging in the cave.

Aravia was intimately familiar with suffering setbacks. The Gods knew, during her apprenticeship with Master Serpicore, that her improvisations and experiments had not always been resounding successes on the first try. But every time she had accidentally set the workbench on fire, or turned a rack of valuable glassware into sand, or caused Serpicore’s hair to disappear, she had used those…miscalibrations…to improve her techniques and knowledge of the arcane.

For all of Serpicore’s faults, he had never stopped hammering home the importance of keeping a level head. “Being a wizard means being a failure,” he had told her once. “A thousand times you will be a failure before every great success. But if you allow each botched attempt to dishearten you, you will never achieve your potential. There is no place in magic for your heart, and no place in your heart for magic.”

But what
was
in her heart? She searched the memories of her childhood—a perfectly ordinary one, the daughter of two cartwrights in the city of Sentinel, though she spent more time reading and less time learning the family craft than her parents would have preferred. She remembered a presumably typical collage of young emotions: joy, fear, frustration, excitement, sadness. There was the time she had taken a dare from her friend Camilla to swing on a leafy vine across the narrow point of the Adderflun River. She could pick apart the memory, examine it from different angles, note the exhilaration of flight followed by the terror when she realized she wouldn’t reach the far bank, and the relief when she had successfully swum to shore.

But all of that was in her mind, not her heart. The emotions associated with that memory were faded and gray, moved into a dusty cabinet seldom examined.

When Aravia was seventeen, her parents had crumbled in the face of the indisputable evidence of her genius and sent her to study arcanism with Master Serpicore. Though Serpicore was notoriously strict and only accepted students of a certain potential, he had admitted her after but a single interview, forgoing the usual battery of tests. He had even agreed that she could keep Pewter, though he detested pets.

Her heart beat faster when she thought of her cat, left behind with Serpicore. She missed her Pewter, and that was real. She wasn’t sure she could put him in the danger that so clearly was part and parcel of working for Abernathy. But if she discovered that Serpicore was mistreating him…

There.
There
was something that made her angry.

Morningstar and Dranko began to bicker, which jarred her from her reverie. She understood that she should try to cheer the others up, make them see that there was success on the far side of this failure.

“There’s another one, right?” she asked Kibi. “Another Eye?”

“Well, I guess so. The Eye we got at home, it said, ‘You must find my brothers. One is close.’ Maybe it’ll tell us where to find another one, sure. Come to think of it, at the Mirrors, it told me it lacked ‘two willing brothers.’”

“We’re oh-for-one so far,” said Dranko. “And Sagiro has at least one. How many are there altogether?”

“Seven,” said Kibi. “The green one we got said there was seven.”

“That makes sense,” said Aravia. “Magic is full of symmetries, and there are seven Mirrors as well. Kibi, you said the Eye Sagiro just took was red, didn’t you?”

“Yup.”

“And the one we have at home turns green when it’s…active. Now, remember that when the Mirrors flashed, they formed a seven sided light-structure where each side was a different color. I’d say there are seven Eyes, each one corresponding to one of the colors at Flashing Day.”

“Brilliant!” Tor exclaimed. “That has to be right. And there are still five more, and we only need two of them.”

She smiled at the boy. His attitude flew right in the face of Serpicore’s teachings. He was never discouraged, but he achieved that state not through any intellectual rigor or practiced self-discipline. He was
all
heart, and it kept him boundlessly optimistic. That was boosted, of course, by the fact that he was incapable of dwelling on anything negative long enough for it to color his worldview. Nor was he ever likely to become a wizard.

“But we don’t know how many Sagiro already has,” said Ernie. “Or the Sharshun.”

“More importantly,” said Morningstar, “we don’t know what the Eyes
do.
”

“They unmake the world,” said Tor. “Do we need to know the details?”

“Knowing
how
they unmake the world might help us put a stop to it,” said Morningstar.

Aravia knew they weren’t going to find any answers standing around in a cave. “Then let’s go home. Maybe Abernathy has woken up, or Bumbly will have more to say. Gather round, and I’ll teleport us back to the Greenhouse.”

* * *

She cast her spell, the cave vanished, and there was the Greenhouse door. But just like before, something tugged at the magic, as though it was taking its effect only reluctantly.

“It happened again,” said Ernie, looking around. “Where’s Kibi?”

“Running late,” said Dranko.

As when they teleported the first time, the stonecutter appeared five seconds after the rest of them. He stumbled a few feet sideways.

“I feel like I been stuffed in a barrel and rolled down a hill,” he said. “Aravia, any way you could make your teleportin’ a mite less dizzifyin’?”

Aravia frowned at him. “It should be a seamless translation,” she said. “Did any of the rest of you experience any discomfort?”

“Not me,” said Tor, and no one else had either.

“You’re also showing up a few seconds late,” said Aravia to Kibi. “For some reason the spell isn’t working quite right with you.”

“I’m startin’ to get the sense that all magic goes wonky where I’m concerned,” said Kibi. “Though I suppose there’s more good than bad in that if that’s why Hodge’s crazy fire didn’t bother me.”

“But Sagiro’s attack with his Eye of Moirel knocked you out, longer than any of us,” said Aravia. “We’ll have to experiment on you to know for sure.”

Kibi crossed his arms. “We won’t have to do any such thing.”

“Have it your way. But if it were me, I’d want to know as much as possible about my resistance to magic. And that reminds me. Kibi, I want to check all the objects you brought back from Seablade Point, to see if they’re enchanted. I don’t have much magic left today after teleporting
,
but one
aura sense
before bed shouldn’t be a problem.”

Aravia strode inside, but her sense of purpose slid away when she saw Eddings at the stairway, shaking his head.

“Abernathy has still not regained consciousness, though his breathing is steady and he suffers no fever.”

Aravia was happy the old wizard was alive but impatient all the same. “Dranko, can’t you wake him up?”

“I’ve taken care of his burns and cuts, and he’s not injured in any other way I can see. He’s going to have to wake up on his own.”

“Fine. In that case let’s find out if Hodge had any enchanted goodies stashed away.”

Tor helped her make a pile of objects on the living room table, which included the twenty-seven little metal pyramids, red leather book, bag of rubies, and rolled-up carpet from Hodge’s trunk.

“You want me to fetch the Eye of Moirel from the basement?” asked Kibi.

“That’s not necessary,” said Aravia. “I’m confident our little green diamond is the most magical thing in the Greenhouse right now. Once I’ve taught myself the spell that identifies the
properties
of magical objects, then we’ll see what I can learn about it.”

Aravia cast her spell and gazed upon the pile. “No magic on the gemstones or the book, but the pyramids all have a medium-grade enchantment upon them. So does the rug.”

“Ooh!” said Tor. “Maybe it’s a flying carpet! My mother read a story to me when I was little where a young girl discovered a flying carpet and used it to rescue her grandmother from an evil prince. I’ve always wanted to fly on one!”

“Unlikely,” said Aravia. “I expect its purpose, as well as that of the tetrahedra, was as part of the rituals Hodge was going to use—or maybe already had used—to activate the Kivian Arch.”

Aravia took a lurching side step and steadied herself on the table. “I think I’ll lie down. Teleporting took more out of me than I thought.” Of course, having discovered that some of Hodge’s belongings were enchanted, she itched to know the details.

Tor hurried to her side and helped her to a couch. “Just take a rest,” he told her. “Eddings almost has dinner ready, but I’ll bring you out a plate so you don’t have to get up. What’s a tetrahedra?”

“It’s a fancy word for pyramids. And thanks, Tor. You’re so sweet. While you’re up, would you mind grabbing the thin green book out of my pack? I might as well get some reading done while I eat.”

Whatever else you might say about Tor, he was a gentleman. Aravia had grown up an only child, and though she was older, he was like the big brother she never had.

Tor blinked. “What? Oh, are you sure? You look pretty pale.”

“I’ll be fine,” Aravia insisted. “It’s the book with the spell that determines what our magic stuff does. It’s a straightforward spell; I just haven’t prioritized it before now.”

Tor brought her the book, then hurried off to fetch her stew, but before he returned, her eyes grew heavy and sleep took her. When Eddings gently shook her awake at midnight, all the others had already gone to bed.

* * *

Aravia expected to be the first down to breakfast. Her brain had woken her up from a sound sleep, insisting that she get an early start studying, and her stomach, displeased at having missed dinner last night, had chimed in demanding sustenance. But though it couldn’t yet be five o’clock in the morning, there were already two seated at the dining room table.

Well, technically, one of them was
on
the table. Bumbly the bear sat at one end, slightly flopped over but mostly sitting up, the Eye of Moirel wedged into the fabric of its left eye. It was not moving, or talking, or glowing.

Morningstar sat at the far end, a piece of paper in her hand, and she was looking intently at Bumbly as though engaged in a staring contest with it.

“It was already here when I came down, but it hasn’t done anything yet. It could be waiting for Kibi or Ernie.”

Aravia took a closer look. The Eye was heavy enough to cant Bumbly’s head to the left, lending the bear an almost thoughtful pose. “Why are you up so early?” she asked.

“I…had a dream,” said Morningstar.

“Oh. A Seer-dream?”

“No, not exactly. It was—I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it yet. But it’s nothing bad. When it ended, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

Aravia was curious but didn’t press. “And what is that?” she asked, pointing to the paper.

Eddings came in from the kitchen, polishing a large bowl with a rag. “That was delivered for Morningstar at one hour after midnight.”

“From Previa,” said Morningstar. “She and her Chroniclers were able to find—something—about the Ventifact Colossus. I was going to share it with everyone once you were all awake, but here. According to Previa it’s a scrap from a work called
Gleanings of Romus the Mad,
a compilation of predictions and proclamations from a half-crazed diviner several hundred years ago. One of Previa’s assistants remembered having read it before, since the prophecy in question is so strange. She copied it down as precisely as she could, including…well, it’s easier to see for yourself.”

Aravia took the oversized sheet of parchment. The lettering leaned every which way, as though a child had penned it, and the spelling was appalling.

Th’ Ventifact Giant wyl wayke besyde th’ city o’ Ganit Tuvith, when th’ red tresspass’r wynds the Chelonian Horn from th’ highest tow’r o’ Tuvith an’ calls th’ Colossus forth. Th’ grayte Ventifact Turtle will plod th’ streets o’ Ganit Tuvith and smash haf the city, but as th’ Stormknytes wyl a’ byn warn’d, three o’ their number wyl smyte th’ beest, an’ rytely so; for if the turtle is allow’d t’ live, it wyl call t’ its kyn, an’ wayke an army o’ turtles to conquer the kingdom. Gods help us then! The Turtle Army! Verily it wyl sweep ‘cross th’ land, ARMOR-PLAYTED AN’ STONY-EYED, AN’ WHO IN HYS RYTE MYND WOOLD NO’ FLEE FROM SUCH MYTE! RYVYRS WOOOLD FLO’ WITH TURTLES, YE GODS HELP US, AND VERILY WOOLD THEY DANCE ON MYE HEAD! Heavyns, I need mye elyxyr, my poor hed.