Moonlight spilled from a key hole in a door on the fourth landing. Crisp black shadows leapt up behind each young sorcerer as they approached the silvery light.
“Libra!” Xandra performed the Word of Opening cantrip. The door trembled, but it did not open. “It’s warded. We can’t get in.”
“Oh please! Allow me.” Valerie knelt in front of the door and examined the lock. “This is a very old fashioned lock. I should be able to open it if I only had…” She frowned at her camera, as if trying to decide which fastening from her red strap she wished to cannibalize.
“Would this help?” Rachel pulled from the pocket of her robes one of the bobby pins she kept to hold her hat on when she was flying, the hat she had lost today, while trying to stop the plane.
“Perfect!” Valerie exclaimed in delight. She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s pop open this puppy.” She wiggled the pin around in the lock.
Click. The door swung open.
“A girlfriend with criminal tendencies!” Sigfried grinned with fierce pride.
Valerie gave him a friendly punch and led the way into the Mirror Hall. Rachel and the others followed. Beyond the doorway was a chamber as large as the great hall below, though it was only two stories high, not three. Mirrors lined both walls. Some glittered with a bluish or greenish hue; others were hidden behind curtains. One mirror emitted a silvery light so bright that the chamber seemed to be lit with the brilliance of a full moon.
Rachel bent low over her handlebars and slipped through the door above the heads of her friends. Darting into the chamber, she flew up to the mirror from which the silvery light emanated. She had never seen anything like this before.
“What are we seeing, Griffin?” Siggy came up beside her. He peered at the silvery mirror with cautious interest. “Is this a weapon? Can we blind people with it? Cause them to jump at their own shadows?”
“That’s a lame attack, boss,” said Lucky the Dragon, sniffing the glass.
“Not if we could make their shadows come to life and strangle them!” crowed Sigfried. He tapped the mirror with the tip of the poleaxe. “That would be wicked cool!”
Rachel flew a quick circuit around the hall and returned. “Most of the others are green. That means they’re talking glasses. There are some blue ones. Walking glasses.”
“Any chance one of those would take us home?” asked Xan-dra.
Rachel rapidly reviewed her memory of the images she had just seen. “Most of the ones I could see, some were hidden behind curtains, looked as if they led to private dwellings, probably other places in Transylvania. Still, there might be one that leads to a public glass Hall. We can examine them more carefully.”
“And the light?” pressed Siggy.
“No idea,” admitted Rachel. She glanced at the upperclass-man.
“Me, neither,” murmured Xandra, shaking her hooded head.
Hovering beside the silvery mirror, Rachel peered into it, trying to catch a glimpse of the glass’s hue. From the edges, it looked as if the glass itself was silver. But that made no sense. There was no known glass that shone like the moon. On the other hand, she had never seen a real looking glass before this year, either. So, maybe there was more to glasses than she knew.
“Hold on!” she cried suddenly. “Do you think this could be the moon glass?”
“The what?” Siggy jabbed invisible enemies with the tip of the poleaxe.
“Wait…” Valerie pressed her fingers against her temples, blinking several times. “Dr. Mordeau asked me about that. She wanted to know…” The blond girl screwed up her face, struggling to remember.
Rachel watched her uncomfortably. The difficulties that others had with their memories always unnerved her. Finally, she could not stand it.
“In your interview with the Agents, Valerie, you said that Dr. Mordeau asked, ‘If Agent Griffin had told his daughter about the moon glass.’ I wonder if this could be it. The moon glass.”
“There’s a plaque.” Valerie moved up next to the mirror and frowned at a brass rectangle set into the wall. “Oh. It’s written in Hungarian. Of course. Duh!”
Rachel moved forward and glanced at the writing. A shiver ran through her from scalp to sole.
The plaque read:
Darius Northwest átment a hold tükrön, eltûnve mindörökre
She felt as if the breath had been sucked from her lungs.
He had been right here. In this spot.
She had hoped—she had so hoped—but she had not actually expected to find anything. Yet, this plaque next to the mysterious moon glass bore his name. Had he died here? Had he stepped through this glass to vistas beyond, never to return? Had the Transylvanians known his final fate all this time and never told the rest of the world?
Rachel peered at the sentence intently. What did it say? According to the dictionary from the main library at Gryphon Park, Hungarian was one of the few European languages that was not part of the Indo-European family of languages. It was, instead, from the Uralic family, related to Estonian, Finnish, and Thulese. Rachel knew some words of Thulese from summers spent at Hot Springs Beach, but none of them appeared on this plaque.
She could not puzzle it out, but she would remember the phrase forever.
“He must have gone through here,” she whispered, her throat parched dry. “Where does it go? Did he…die on the other side? Or could he be trapped there. I…”
What was on the other side?
She peered and peered, her heart pounding, but she could not glimpse anything except silver light. Fingers trembling, she put her hand on the glass’s surface, despite Xandra’s and Zoë’s warning cry. She concentrated, as one would to activate a walking or talking glass. Nothing happened. The glass did not seem to be working. Either that or something more was needed, the way a thinking glass needed an ore cantrip to activate it.
Wherever Daring Northwest had gone, Rachel could not follow.
“And that’s the guy you want to be like when you grow up, right?” Valerie asked, trying to adjust her camera to take a picture in the unusual lighting. “The one who disappeared here?”
Rachel swallowed, nodding.
“I love his books,” mused Xandra. “My favorite is: Fifty-Nine Beneficent Fey and Where They Make Their Homes. I’ve read my father’s copy at least five times.”
“Yeah, I love that one!” Rachel sighed, as she walked down the line of mirrors peering into the rest, looking for anything that might offer a way home. Over her shoulder, she called, “What about you, Xandra? What do you want to do when you grow up?”
Xandra snorted sadly, as she peeked behind one of the thick velvet curtains. “Be a hermit…and a nurse.”
“Going out on a limb here…” Valerie snapped a picture of the glass with the silvery light, using her last shot. “But isn’t it hard to be both? Don’t nurses have to, um—you know—talk to patients?”
“It’s a work in progress,” muttered Xandra.
Rachel glanced at Valerie. “What about you, Ace Reporter?”
“I’m thinking of majoring in True History and Obscuration,” Valerie paused to wind her film and change the cartridge. Under her breath, she murmured, “If I had known we were going to leave Roanoke grounds, I would have brought my digital camera.”
“True History?” Siggy paused, mid-swing with the authentic Fifteenth century poleaxe, and gaped at his girlfriend. “You mean, True Snoring? The class of Utter Boredom? You know I admire you tremendously, Coochie-Pooh, but I think your rocking horse might have just flipped off its rockers.”
“Sigfried,” Valerie’s voice was soft yet deadly, “don’t ever call me Coochie-Pooh again.”
“You’re right,” Siggy nodded sagely. “What was I thinking? I’ll call you Pert Bosom.”
“I’m going to slap him,” murmured Valerie, turning red.
“Go for it!” Zoë cheered. She reached into in her backpack and pulled out what looked like a large solid paddle made of greenstone. “Or, if you prefer, I can whack him for you! What is the point of having a magic-infused war bat, if I never get to whack anything.” She made a few practice swings.
“It’s okay.” Valerie watched her swing. “If Siggy needs whacking, I’m quite capable of providing said whack.”
“True History.” Xandra shuddered. “I’m with Sigfried…not about the Coochie-Bosom thing, but the rest. But you live with the scholars of Dee Hall, right? I guess that makes sense.”
“Why?” quipped Zoë. “Are people in Dee all crazy and eager to subject themselves to unnatural intellectual torture?”
“Before I found out about magic, I wanted to be an investigative reporter. I wanted to know the truth. I wanted to get to the bottom of things.” Valerie explained as she closed up her camera again. “But what’s the point of investigating, if the Obscurers working for the Parliament of the Wise are altering the records—hypnotizing witnesses, mucking with historical documents? Anything I find out is probably wrong.
“If I want to find the truth, I am going to need to understand how records and memories are changed. What are the signs that the World of the Wise has meddled with something? How is Obscuration done? Can you make a person believe anything? Or just some things? If I understand the process, then maybe I can find the truth. The real truth.”
“That’s quite noble.” Rachel nodded admiringly, wistfully recalling the photograph of Dee she had kept under her bed for years. She had wanted to live there, but, when she arrived at school, she had been automatically put in Dare Hall with her siblings. “And you, Zoë?”
Zoë was in the act of running her hands over her head. As she did, her hair changed from pink to the yellow damask pattern on the downstairs walls. The others gawked. Rachel had never seen hair with patterned design before.
Zoë shrugged. “Don’t care, really. Whatever.”
“Really?” Valerie stared at Zoë as if she had just grown a second head. “You don’t have plans for the future?”
“The future is a long way away,” Zoë replied. “I’ll be lucky if I pass my classes today. I’m a sucky sorceress.”
Sigfried and Lucky had stopped to make faces at each other in a broken mirror. Suddenly, Siggy shouted. “Upstairs! They’re sacrificing a boy!”
The others all cried out at once.
“What—?”
“Who?”
Sigfried was already pelting across the hall toward the staircase. The poleaxe swung beside him as his legs pumped, his new sneakers pounding against the tile floor.
Mounting her broom, Rachel zipped up beside him. “Leap on!”
He vaulted onto the steeplechaser. The two of them zoomed to the staircase. Rachel was grateful that flying up spiral staircases was a particular specialty of hers. Banking hard, she flew straight upward through the middle of the spiral, just as she did when she flew from her room to her grandfather’s library at the top of his tower.
As she flew, her awareness of distances and three-dimensional spaces became crisp and immediate. Unimportant things, such as emotions, were shunted to the background, to be sorted later.
As they shot toward an open trap door in the ceiling above them, Rachel shouted over her shoulder, “Siggy, do you have any charges in your wand?”
“Not sure,” he shouted back. She could feel him shrug. “I haven’t put in very many spells yet, and I used most of them in the battle against Egg’s minions. I have my trumpet, though.”
“Better use that.” Rachel pursed her lips, preparing to whistle.
They burst through the open trap door into a hexagonal chamber at the top of the Southeast tower. Tall, narrow, arched windows opened onto the overcast sky. Carved into the chamber’s floor was a circle inscribed with a summoning triangle and a seven-pointed star. Above the summoning triangle, a churning darkness manifested, as if a cloud of soot had come to life and was attempting to coalesce into a solid shape. At the center of the seven-pointed star stood a large stone slab.
Five figures, garbed in the deep purple robes of the Veltdammerung, bent over the stone slab. Strapped to it was a young boy, maybe six years old. Between the boy and the slab was piled a layer of straw and dried pine boughs. The tallest robed figure stood at the boy’s head. He held a knife high in the air. The other four stood two to either side, holding flaming torches.
As Rachel and Sigfried entered the chamber, the tall figure chanted: “Come forth, Moloch, Devourer of Children. We pass this child through the fire to you. Come to us now, through the way we shall open for you! Great Moloch! Hear us!”
He spoke English. His accent sounded like an American, from New York, where Mortimer Egg had been living. Rachel guessed this was one of Egg’s cronies.
The little boy thrashed in his bindings. He had olive skin, dark hair, and very wide, dark eyes. His face was round, with large ears and a little cleft in his chin that reminded Rachel just a bit of Wulfgang Starkadder. Her heart went out to him. She had no idea how she and Sigfried could beat five adults, but she was determined that the two of them must prevail.
Behind her, Siggy blew his trumpet. Rachel whistled. Silver and blue sparkles swirled forward amidst an aroma of fresh rain and evergreens respectively.
The cultists spun in comical surprise. They had a moment to gape before the wind from Sigfried’s instrument lifted the two closer robed figures and tossed them against the far wall. Their torches went flying out of their hands and dropped sputtering to the stone floor.
Rachel’s attempt, on the other hand, failed. The blue sparks faded before they reached the stone slab. Ordinarily, she should have been able to reach a target at this distance. The warding circle carved into the floor was interfering with her enchantment. It was probably affecting Sigfried’s, too, but his spells were so powerful that the difference was not as signifi-cant.
Siggy blew again. He had his trumpet in his right hand and the heavy poleaxe in his left, which he held one-handed with ease. He clung to the broom with his knees. A second swirling of silver sparks swept toward the darkness, just as the tallest figure threw the knife in his hand. Instead of flying toward them, his blade was caught by Siggy’s wind and carried backwards. It struck the far wall and clattered to the floor.
The darkness above the summoning triangle churned and swirled angrily. Rachel halted her broom at the edge of the circle carved into the floor, wary about crossing over the ward. It was designed to keep the creature they were summoning contained. If her passing over it dispersed it, the creature within might be released upon the unsuspecting world. She pointed at the darkness and shouted to Siggy.
“Get that! Blast it with wind!”
He blew a third trumpet flourish, this time toward the summoning triangle. His wind sparkles parted at the edge of the triangle. The coalescing darkness remained untouched.
Two torch-bearing cultists remained on the far side of the stone slab. The flame on the closer torch had blown out. The farther torch flared as the passing breeze fanned its flames. The fire spread, igniting the robes of the man holding it. Letting go of his torch, he shouted, dropped, and rolled around on the stone floor, trying to smother the flames.
Lucky darted beyond the stone slab to where the men Siggy had sent flying lay sprawled.
“The kid and the kindling are safely behind you now, Lucky,” Siggy shouted. “Pull!”
Lucky breathed out a short plume of flame, just enough to keep the two men on the floor at bay. They shouted and scurried backward.
To Rachel’s relief, none of the robed figures pulled out wands. Nor did they grab musical instruments or raise their hands to perform cantrips. Not being graduates of Roanoke Academy, they must only be practitioners of one or two of the Sorcerous Arts.
These men were obviously thaumaturgists—as they were in the act of performing a thaumaturgic spell. Rachel guessed they were attempting to summon some particularly dreadful being, using the boy as their sacrifice. Four of them wore chains around their necks, from which hung Kalesei Astari or Summoning Stars—quartz crystals used as a covenant between a thau-maturge and some supernatural entity that has agreed to come at the sorcerer’s bidding. Poorer thaumaturges, such as these men probably were, often could not afford the high-quality gems needed for a fulgurator’s wand, but they could have as many Kalesei Astari as they had creatures to call.
The cultists also had two talismans among their accoutrements. Short rods, one of ebony and one of ivory, rested to either side of the boy. Each had a carved end piece. The head of the ebony rod was of ivory and looked like a fish head. The head piece of the ivory rod was of ebony and looked like a wind god, its black cheeks blowing. Alchemical talismans worked best if they resembled their function. Rachel guessed the ivory rod with the wind god top produced a wind much like Sigfried’s. She was not sure about the other rod.
The inner ward—the summoning triangle—was powerful enough to bend Siggy’s enchantment. Rachel decided to trust it to contain the dark manifestation. She rocketed closer, whistling again. Blue sparkles left her lips and struck the closest figure. He went utterly still, frozen in the act of bending over to reach for a rod.
Having spent her last battle unable to make a sound, it felt really good to finally accomplish something.
The tallest figure, standing by the boy’s head, grabbed the ebony rod. He pointed the fish-head at Rachel. It glowed with an orangey light. Rachel’s throat constricted. She grabbed her neck, unable to breathe. It was as if water filled her wind pipe, blocking it. Only there was no water there—nothing to cough away. Her chest rose and fell, trying to suck in air, but none reached her lungs.
Without air, she could neither breathe nor whistle.
Little dots danced before her eyes.
Siggy blew again, blasting the tall man from his feet. He tumbled, end over end. The fish rod went flying. The orangey glow died. He landed on his own knife, which scratched his cheek He now lay on the floor next to the first two whom Sigfried had bowled from their feet.
All three cringed away from Lucky’s threatening flames.
Breath rushed into Rachel’s chest. Wasting no time with frivolities, she whistled again.
The last of the Veltdammerung followers was rising, having extinguished the flame on his robes. Now he froze, paralyzed by Rachel’s enchantment. Siggy blew his horn and knocked over both this man and the fellow who was caught leaning over with his behind in the air.
Vroomie hovered above the slab now. Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel noticed the tall man, who cowered behind Lucky, reaching behind him for his fallen blade. She tensed. Her precise three-dimensional mental picture of the room told her the man was out of her whistling range.
But not out of Canticle range! She pointed at the knife lying next to the tall man and performed the cantrip she had practiced at least a thousand times in her secret hallway, upstairs in Roanoke Hall.
“Tiathelu!”
The knife rose into the air. With a gesture, she drew it across the room into her hand. As she caught it, she silently vowed to get Gaius to teach her the Glepnir bonds. The constricting golden bands were the most effective attack of any cantrip she had seen. Considering how often she had found herself in fights, it would be useful to know.
Sigfried leaned over and sliced the ropes holding the boy with the poleaxe. With a second, massive swing, he also chopped the ivory rod in two. Rachel cringed, as breaking a talisman sometime produced a bad result. This one merely fell to the ground in two pieces. The little boy leapt up. He backed to the far edge of the stone slab, gazing in fear at the coalescing darkness. Pointing, he jabbered in a language Rachel did not understand.
“Here, you take him, Rachel.” Siggy slipped off the broom and lifted the frightened child onto it. “Get him out of here. I’ll hold them off. Okay, Lucky, let’s get ’em. You burn ’em. I’ll run ’em through. Not the paralyzed guys. That wouldn’t be sporting. We’ll get to them later. But the rest of these murderers of innocents are going down!”
“Uh…boss, I think I should get that shadowy…whatever it is. Before it manifests.” Lucky the Dragon gestured with his cat-like head at the summoning triangle above which the darkness was forming into a huge, vaguely-humanoid shape with horns and wings. “It doesn’t look good.”
“Go for it, Lucky!” crowed Siggy. He ran toward the three robed men, brandishing the top point of the poleaxe like a spear. “Okay, you child murderers, do you understand what I am saying? You die. Today!”
Rachel helped the boy get his balance on the steeplechaser and began heading for the trap door. Behind her, a voice spoke from the darkness—a deep voice, steady and slow, as if the speaker were partially asleep.
“Who disturbs my slumber?”
A strange tingle of familiarity raced through Rachel. She felt as if she should recognize that voice, and yet a quick check of her memory assured her that she had never heard it before. The sound itself was not unpleasant to the ear, and yet something colder than terror gripped her.
They must do anything—pay any cost—to stop this monster from waking.
Lucky shot forward and breathed fire on the swirling darkness. It bellowed. A shadowy hand swiped at the flames. Then came an eerie wailing, followed by a loud pop.
The darkness vanished.
“Got ’im!” chortled Lucky.
BOOM!
A wave of immense force, set into motion by the dark figure’s gesture, lifted Sigfried from his feet and catapulted him into one of the narrow, arched windows. The window was too small for Siggy to pass through. His body made a terrible cracking noise, as it slammed against the stone casement.
The ancient stone casement wobbled. With a horrible grinding sound, it tore free of the tower wall and fell backwards, plummeting toward the ground—and taking Sigfried with it.