Holly scanned the horizon, her eyes squinted against the monotonous sea of yellow grass that stretched out from their tree in every direction. It was like looking directly into the sun, if the sun were all around you and only a little dimmer than usual.
There were dark spots that could be trees, or rocks, or Mindless Ones, or something worse. If Holly stared too long, she couldn’t tell if they were moving or not, and if she looked away and back again, she couldn’t tell if their positions had changed. It was giving her a massive headache.
Margali made a small moaning sound below her, and Holly glanced over at the other woman, wondering if she were having a nightmare. She wondered what that might mean here in the Dark Dimension, where they were just a hop, skip, and a jump away from that hell lord’s domain.
She was astounded to see tears slipping out from underneath Margali’s closed eyelids and sliding down her cheeks to drip from her chin onto her dress.
Holly had not thought the woman capable of crying.
And if she was crying in her sleep, that could hardly be a good thing.
Abandoning her fruitless lookout duties, Holly shimmied down to the branch Margali rested on and took the green-skinned sorceress by the shoulders, shaking her gently.
“Margali! Margali, wake up! You’re having a nightmare.”
Margali moaned again, but her eyes remained stubbornly closed. Holly shook her harder and raised her voice, to no effect.
Well, there was nothing for it. Hopefully Margali wouldn’t blast her into oblivion for the affront.
Holly took a deep breath, let it out, and then slapped Margali across the face. Maybe a tad harder than she really needed to.
Margali’s yellow eyes snapped open, already blazing, and her hand shot out to grab Holly’s wrist. There was no recognition in her face, only fury. Holly braced herself, readying a shielding bubble, but then Margali blinked several times and shook her head as if coming out of a trance, letting go of Holly’s arm.
“Where… where are we?” she asked, looking around in confusion. Then she gasped and her head snapped back around, her face filled with sudden panic as she stared at Holly.
“My children! Amanda! Kurt! Where…?”
She trailed off, the panic replaced by grief as she answered her own question.
“Dead,” she whispered, head lowering. “Dead. My fault. I couldn’t stop it. The Winding Way has abandoned me, left me bereft of both power and children. What am I without them?”
Holly had been trying to follow Margali’s mercurial mood shifts and her disjointed words. She had assumed the green-skinned woman had been in the grip of a particularly nasty nightmare. But now she wondered if it was something more.
The Dreamqueen had assaulted Margali with hallucinations involving her children in Limbo. Was this more of the same?
Whatever the cause, it needed to be dealt with. Holly needed Blast First, Ask Questions Later Margali, not Huddled in a Corner Sobbing Margali.
It was times like this where she really missed Agatha, brusque and unpleasant as the old woman could be. She took no crap from anyone, and there was no crisis she could not handle with aplomb. Except maybe the one where Wanda had killed her. Wanda, another grieving mother, though she faced the actual deaths of fictional children, whereas Margali appeared to be coping with the fictional deaths of her actual children.
On second thought, Agatha might not be that much help in this situation, after all.
Holly was on her own with this one.
Wits, don’t fail me now.
Holly mouthed a quick spell, her words soundless, though their effect was not.
“Margali,” she said in a calm, measured voice, as Agatha had taught her. “Margali, look at me.” Compulsion underlay her words, but it was subtle enough to be confused with free will. Not a spell she enjoyed using, especially on a fellow sorceress. Women like them had enough to endure, being misunderstood and persecuted since time immemorial. Infighting was silly and self-defeating.
Margali raised her head, and Holly saw fresh tears sparkling in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.
“Listen to me,” Holly continued. “Your children are not dead. You are their mother. You would know. The bond between mother and child is a magic more ancient and potent than any sorcery you could ever learn or gain from an outside source. And it’s not something that can be taken from you. Ever.”
You could give it up, Holly supposed, but she didn’t think now would be a good time for that particular discussion.
Margali blinked the tears out of her eyes and wiped the ones on her cheeks away with her fists, but said nothing. Holly thought that was a good sign.
Probably.
She resumed her arguments, like some occult attorney trying to gently lead her witness without getting reprimanded by whoever – or whatever – might be the judge.
“And the Winding Way isn’t gone. Can you imagine?” Holly laughed a little. “The destruction of an entire dimension? What the reaction of the magical community would be? Umar is far too intelligent to court that sort of attention.
“The Winding Way hasn’t gone anywhere, and it hasn’t left you. I can still feel its power in you right now, swirling and eager, as always. It’s there. All you have to do is reach out and take it. And you don’t need me to show you how to do that.”
Not that she could. Witchcraft was based on understanding the energies inherent in all things, including oneself, and learning to manipulate them to achieve desired results. Sorcery was similar, though it focused more on the mastery of self and appeals to higher beings. What the Winding Way was, Holly couldn’t really say. Margali used many of the same spells that Clea did, so Holly assumed it shared properties with that practice, but it also included channeling the power of an entire magical dimension through a mortal vessel. It was no wonder Margali had worn the Eye of Agamotto before Doctor Strange. The only real surprise was that she didn’t wear it still.
Margali closed her eyes. Though she had not been moving, a stillness came over her. Her breathing was slow and even. Holly could almost believe she was meditating or sleeping peacefully. But this was Margali Szardos. She could just as easily be plotting Holly’s imminent demise.
Holly kept her defense spell at the ready, even though she knew casting it would disrupt her concealment bubble. Her death would also have that effect, so it wasn’t a difficult choice.
Finally, Margali took in a deep breath through her nose, nostrils flaring, then she let it out slowly through her mouth a few long heartbeats later. She opened her eyes and looked up at Holly, seemingly herself again.
“Thank you for that,” she said. “Your timely intervention saved me from that assault when I was… temporarily unable to do so myself.”
Holly had a pretty good idea of how hard it was for the other sorceress to admit that. Like Agatha, Margali was proud to a fault, and arrogant to boot. Gratitude and remorse were not feelings the sorceress was particularly conversant with.
Though there were a hundred flippant responses on the tip of Holly’s tongue, her amusement wasn’t worth losing Margali’s trust, so she simply said, “You’re welcome.”
But, of course, her curiosity prevented her from leaving it at that.
“You said, ‘assault’?”
Margali nodded wearily. For the first time, Holly noticed wrinkles around the other woman’s eyes. Had they been there before? They didn’t make her look old so much as defeated.
“I believe it was another of the Dreamqueen’s damnable hallucinations,” she replied. “But now I have her scent. She won’t be able to attack me that way again.”
Then Margali smiled a demented Mona Lisa smile.
“And if she’s stupid enough to try, I’ll be ready.”