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Giserre’s face went white at the sight of the body slung over Avender’s shoulder when they returned. Avender twisted to let her see it wasn’t her son, but her alarm remained. The fact that Reiffen wasn’t even with them frightened her even more than the thought that he was dead.
“We tried.” Ferris’s voice trailed away as she answered Giserre’s unspoken question. “There was nothing we could do.”
No matter how horribly Hubley felt her father’s death, she knew her grandmother felt it more. Letting go her mother’s and Avender’s hands, she ran to Giserre and wrapped her arms around her waist. A moment later she felt her mother’s arms around them as well.
How long they wept, Hubley didn’t know. When they were done, her mother and grandmother took her upstairs to her bedroom and tucked her into bed. Shafts of moonlight from the room’s single window thickened the sadness in their pale faces as they kissed her goodnight. Finally Hubley understood why Giserre had stayed with her father in Ussene. Reiffen had been all her grandmother had, and to part with him would have been worse than death for her.
As parting from Hubley for the last thirty years must have been worse than death for her mother.
She woke the next morning much later than she wanted. No dreams had troubled her, and her sadness had sloughed away along with her fatigue. Rather than remembering her mother’s and grandmother’s sorrow, her first thought was that they couldn’t possibly have waited this long to return to Issinlough, and must have left without her. If her mother thought she could get rid of her that easily, she was totally wrong. It wasn’t as if she was an ordinary child. They would need every magician they could find if they were going to defeat the mandrake. Hubley knew her power was as strong as anyone’s, except perhaps her mother’s, and was confident no one would object, or be able to do anything about it, if she returned to Issinlough on her own.
Jumping out of bed, she discovered they’d even taken her clothes. As if leaving her in her nightgown was going to stop her. She was already collecting the travel spell in her mind to return to the wardrobe she’d found the day before, when someone knocked on the door.
“Come in,” she said in her most irritated voice.
Avender poked his head into the room, her clothes in his arms. “Looking for these? Giserre took them last night to keep you from running away, so I stole them back this morning.”
Hubley accepted Avender’s peace offering and ducked behind the door to dress. “Have they all gone back to Issinlough?” she asked.
“No. Issinlough’s already fallen. They went to Vonn Kurr.”
“Issinlough’s fallen? And Mother still thought she could just leave me here?”
“She wanted to, but I told her trying to leave you behind wasn’t a good idea. You know too much magic now.”
“Hmph. I’m glad somebody noticed. Why’d they go to Vonn Kurr?”
“The mandrake’s on the Sun Road.”
Hubley stopped with her boot half-tied. “The Sun Road? Is he trying to get to the surface?”
“He was, but Huri took care of that when he and the rest of the Granglough Bryddin destroyed Uhle’s Gate. The beast can’t get out any other way - none of the other roads are big enough for him. They did hope he’d try to dig his way through so they could knock the road down on top of him, but he turned around and headed back to the Abyss instead.”
He told her the rest of what had happened over toast and eggs in the kitchen. Ferris had called a conference with Brizen and all the magicians, who met long into the night at Tower Dale. Lorennin, whom Hubley had last known as a girl not much older than she was, had made the dangerous trip back to Issinlough to see what the mandrake was doing. Her report, and the fact that Uhle had the presence of mind to bring his mirrors with him when he left the city, had kept Ferris and the others up to date on what was happening underground.
“The Dwarves think the mandrake can feel things in the stone the same way they do.” Despite Hubley’s impatient eye, Avender peppered his eggs briskly. “That’s why he stopped going up the Sun Road even though he was still miles away when they broke the entrance.”
Hubley sopped up her yolk with a piece of toast. “So, are they going to smash the roof at the bottom and trap him in between?”
“That was your mother’s idea, until Uhle explained how the mandrake would probably be able to dig himself out if they caught him between two deadfalls. He thinks the creature can dig through loose rock, or at least bring down whatever he can get his tail around. But he can’t break through walls or solid stone, especially if he can’t move. So Dwvon came up with a better plan. They’re going to try and bury him at the bottom of Vonn Kurr. Then they’ll open up the drains on the Lower Lift and drown him. To top it off, you magicians will freeze everything. You gave them that idea when you cast the cold spell at the Halvanankh. Once he’s unable to move, Findle and a few other Dwarves will tunnel through the ice and rock to slay him.”
Delighted a spell she’d thought of had been included in the plan, Hubley crammed the last wedge of toast into her mouth and wiped her chin. Once they got to Vonn Kurr, she’d show them she could do much more than cold spells now.
They couldn’t leave right away, however, because Hubley had never been on the Sun Road. All her trips to Issinlough had always been taken magically, traveling with her parents. When a quick search of the tower turned up no one who could take them, they had no alternative but for Hubley to take them somewhere else instead.
Avender tugged at her hand as she was getting ready to cast. “Hold on a second. Where are you taking us?”
“To the Brydds B’wee.”
Avender shook his head. “It’s not there any more. You’ll have to think of something else.”
“Mother Norra’s kitchen?”
“That’s no good either. The mandrake smashed every unneret in the city. Do you remember anywhere close by?”
One of Hubley’s favorite places in the Underground leapt into her mind. She hadn’t gone there very often, as there was nothing to do but admire the view, but the memory of it was as complete as anything else in Issinlough.
“The Dinnach a Dwvon?” she asked.
Avender nodded. “That ought to do. I can’t imagine Fornoch could have done too much damage to that. Not with all that water.”
Closing her eyes again, she focused on the place where the eldest of the Dwarves had built his first forge. The image of the vast cavern loomed in her mind, the Issin flowing down the middle of its polished granite floor. At the open end, the stream fanned out into a wide sheet that poured into the Abyss as one of the Seven Veils, the lights of Issinlough gleaming in the darkness beyond like cobwebs strung with dew.
The smell of burning bit her nose, signaling that they had arrived. Opening her eyes, Hubley found she couldn’t see the city at all. Thick smoke swirled past the edge of the cavern, long tendrils fingering the water and stone. In the light of Avender’s lamp it looked as if they were staring at an immense spider whose crooked legs were holding its belly tight over the outlet of the cave.
Shuddering, Hubley stepped back. A gap appeared in the reek to reveal a small clutch of gleaming jewels, but even then it took Hubley a moment to recognize the once-grand view. Where unnerets had hung gracefully above the darkness, only stumps remained, clinging to the bottom of the world like broken teeth. Catwalks and bridges dangled like gaping jaws. Around them yellow flames flickered in the sockets of empty windows, their smoke pouring into the darkness black as blood. Even the Seven Veils, whose water had always shimmered with the glow of the city they surrounded, had disappeared. The mandrake had ruined it all.
Not wanting to look at the awful sight any more than she had to, Hubley turned away. Even though she’d been in the middle of the mandrake’s attack, seeing what he’d done from the outside was a lot worse. The beast had ruined other lives besides her own. Dwarves had worked for hundreds of years to build their shining city, but Fornoch had destroyed it in a day. Not to mention all the humans who had lived here as well, some of whom Hubley had seen fall from the lamplit bridges to the dark below.
Taking her hand, Avender led her to the back of the cave. They climbed the stairs that led to the Upper Way, where they met a few human stragglers fleeing the city with whatever they could carry. Some looked questioningly at Hubley and Avender as they passed, not understanding why the two were going the wrong direction.
“How are they going to get home?” Hubley asked as the last of them vanished into the tunnel behind them. “The Sun Road’s closed.”
“There are other ways,” Avender told her. “Mostly through the mines. The biggest problem will be food. But if we can take care of the mandrake, it won’t be so bad. Huri and the others can reopen Uhle’s Gate with a couple of days’ digging. But first we have to kill the mandrake.”
They saw no one else along the way. After a while Hubley felt a growing dampness in the air, the first sign they were approaching Vonn Kurr. Small passages led off on either side, to mushroom caves she guessed, where the Dwarves had set up small farms to capture the wet. Soon Hubley heard the rumble of the waterfall as well, shivering through the rocks and air.
They came out at the back of the deep near the bottom of the Lower Lift, across the cavern from where Uhle’s Stair led on to what had once been Issinlough. The waterfall thundered before them, mist billowing past their faces and up into the dark. At its foot, the Brilliant Pool rolled like a twisting rainbow as the currents tugged at the hundreds of Dwarf lamps covering the bottom. Above the mist, the cliffs gleamed with lamplight of their own, a second Bryddin city carved from the stone walls. The roof was much too far away to see.
Hubley looked around her in awe. At least some of the beauty of the Under Ground remained. “It’s a lot bigger than I remember.”
“Looks like the Dwarves have been working hard since either of us were last here.”
A Dwarf ran toward them from the Stair. “You folks must have made a wrong turn,” he said. “The way out’s the way you just came. We’re expecting the mandrake back any time.”
“We know,” said Avender. “We’ve come to help. This is Hubley, the magicians’ daughter.”
The Dwarf peered at her. “You’re the one who thought to try and freeze it, aren’t you? When Ord and the others turned the hoses on it.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Good idea that was. I hear the magicians are calling it Hubley’s Cone of Cold.” The Dwarf gave Hubley a quick nod and wink. “We’ll be using your spell again, when the beast comes back.”
A large bat fluttered out of the darkness. Hubley started as it came straight toward them, but Avender only braced himself as it settled heavily on his jacket.
“About time you two showed up,” the bat squeaked.
“Redburr! You’re alive!” Hubley might have given the Shaper a happy squeeze, only he was terribly ugly, especially his squashed-up nose. She could only imagine what he’d been eating.
“Of course I’m alive.” Redburr snapped his wings smartly, then folded them across his chest like a baron thumbing his lapels. “When everyone else was running away, I kept track of the mandrake by clinging to his back. Your mother sent me down here to let her know when you arrived.”
“Where is Ferris?” Looking up, Avender scanned the dark cliffs around them.
“Positioning the magicians. The beast has made better time coming down the Sun Road than we thought. He’s less than fifteen minutes away.”
“Will Dwvon have the trap ready in time?”
“Yes.”
“If the mandrake can feel stone the way the Dwarves do,” asked Hubley, “won’t he know what Dwvon’s doing?”
“Probably. Uhle and your mother think that’s why he’s in such a hurry. He doesn’t want to get trapped in the Sun Road, you know. But he’s not as cautious as he was when he was a Wizard, or he’d never have left the Abyss in the first place. He’d have been safe as long as he stayed there, where he can make the Dwarves fall and they can’t do anything to him. Here in the Stoneways it’s only a matter of time before they catch him.”
“Good,” said Avender. “Where do we go?”
“Follow me.”
Releasing his grip on Avender’s jacket, the fat bat wobbled away across the cavern. Water drops frosted Avender’s and Hubley’s hair as they followed the Shaper to the stair that led up into the deep on the other side. The tall, thin figure waiting to meet them turned out to be Trier, whom Hubley barely recognized as her parents’ old apprentice. For one thing, she looked terribly old, as old as Avender, and for another she was wearing the sort of long, beautiful robe that baronesses wore more often than magicians. The last time Hubley had seen her, Trier had worn the same homespun as everyone else. But, now that she was the King’s Magician, Hubley supposed things were different.
“Your mother sent me to make sure you had arrived.” Stooping, the woman kissed Hubley sparingly on the cheek. “We are all so happy you have returned. We feel your loss terribly.”
Trier had never been Hubley’s favorite among her parent’s apprentices, and the cold sympathy the woman expressed for her father didn’t help. Redburr, hanging from a nearby carving in the stone, flapped his wings in irritation at the thought that Ferris had sent someone else to make sure he found her daughter.
“Is Plum here?” Hubley asked, remembering the apprentice who had been her favorite.
Trier hesitated before replying. “Plum? Unfortunately, no.”
Hubley had learned what it meant when people didn’t like answering questions about her old friends. “He died, didn’t he.”
The King’s Magician pursed her lips and nodded.
“How?”
“Helping your mother. A long time ago.”
Hubley didn’t ask anything more. The more she learned about how much the world had changed since she’d last been a part of it, the more she wished she could go back to just being ten.
Leading them up the stair, Trier explained the details of Uhle’s and Ferris’s plan. The magicians were already spread out among the lower apartments, waiting for the trap to be sprung.
“But won’t the water run out the Uhliakh?” asked Avender, pointing toward the broad avenue that led to Issinlough. Or what had once been Issinlough.
“Eventually,” Trier told him. “But that is not our worry. Dwvon will bring down enough stone to clog the exits thoroughly. We are expecting ten yards of rock, and another thirty of water. It will take some time for that much water to seep through. By then I am sure the Bryddin will have found a way to eliminate the mandrake entirely.”
She left them in one of the apartments the Dwarves had carved from the side of Vonn Kurr’s enormous shaft, explaining she and Ferris would be on the other side, to balance Hubley’s strength. Redburr flew off as well, to see if there was anything he could do to help out Uhle and Dwvon at the head of the deep.
Hubley leaned against the pale moss that decorated the top of the balcony railing, and waited with Avender for her mother’s signal. Ferris was supposed to flash a light when the Dwarves on the Sun Road told her the mandrake was nearing the top of the deep. That would give the less experienced magicians the extra time they needed to ready their spells. Even some of the more accomplished had prepared their magic beforehand, storing their power in small shells and other devices from which the magic could be quickly freed. But Hubley’s father had taught her well. Her spells formed naturally, at the shaping of her mind and fingers. As far as she was concerned a simple cold spell, which amounted to no more than draining heat from one place to another, could be done without aids of any kind.
The waterfall roared; light rippled through the mist like bright snakes coiling.
A brighter light flashed at the corner of Hubley’s eye.
“Here we go.” Avender pushed aside a tall white fern that was blocking his view. “You ready?”
Hubley nodded. Now her gaze was fastened on her mother’s and Trier’s hiding place. The second flash would signal the trap had sprung. Dwvon had explained it would take a third of a minute for the stone to fall the length of Vonn Kurr, and that the magicians should wait for the water to rise before they cast the Cone of Cold. Hopefully the falling rock would catch the mandrake by surprise, knocking him out of the air. But if it didn’t, the magicians were to make sure the beast didn’t escape by casting whatever spells they could think of. Hubley wondered if she could slow the creature by freezing the waterfall’s mist.
“What’s that!”
Avender craned out over the balcony, his eyes on the Brilliant Pool. In his haste, he knocked some potted toadstools at his elbow rattling down into the gulf. Following his gaze, Hubley saw two people bathed in the pool’s bright light in the middle of the floor. A man and a boy.
Not a boy, she realized, but Findle. And that was Merannon admiring the dance of the lights beside him. Even at this distance, Hubley recognized the golden lamp glowing at the prince’s forehead as the one that had nearly rescued her at the bottom of Malmoret. Did they even know what was going on?
A terrible look came into Avender’s face. “No!” he shouted. “Get out of there! Merannon! Findle! Get out!”
Hubley grabbed his arm. “They can’t hear you, Avender. The waterfall’s too loud.”
“Then we have to go get them.” Avender seized Hubley by the arms. Not even during their wild escape from Malmoret and the falling airship had he looked so desperate. “You can do it. You can use the traveling spell to go down and rescue them.”
“But what about the signal? What if Mother gives it while we’re down there?”
Avender’s fingers tightened, pinching her painfully. “There’s still enough time. Once we have them, we’ll run for the Upper Way. I know we can make it. Hubley, in the name of your father and mother, please do this one thing for me. That’s Wellin’s son down there. The heir to the throne.”
Hubley swallowed hard and wondered if she could do it. She’d had her full power barely more than a day; she still wasn’t sure what she could and couldn’t do. But, if she didn’t try to rescue them, an already horrible few days would become unimaginably worse.
Then the second signal came, and there was no more time to decide. Without thinking, she shifted. She didn’t need to think: she’d been just where Findle and Merannon were standing only a few minutes before. The apartment disappeared, replaced by the mist and thunder of the pool. Grabbing hold of her friends, she thought of the place she had just left as something crashed to the ground beside her and nearly knocked her off her feet. The first of the tumbling stones. But Avender braced her with his shoulder and arm so she didn’t lose her hold, not even when something smooth and hot coiled around her wrist.
An eyeblink, and they were back in the apartment. Her left hand was empty: in her haste she’d forgotten the spell wouldn’t work on Findle. Behind her an enormous roar filled the air, swelling up and around them like a blast of wind. Covering her head with her arms, she cowered on the floor. Whatever held her wrist didn’t let go, but the din was so overwhelming she couldn’t do anything but hide.
It seemed to last for hours. When it stopped, Hubley’s ears still throbbed. Her skin tingled. Opening her eyes, she found herself staring into the mandrake’s enormous black orb.
She started, but the thing around her wrist held her tight. The creature’s tongue. Its other end disappeared between the beast’s black teeth. One snap of those immense jaws and Hubley would be swallowed like a frog by a heron.
“What on earth?”
A cold breeze started at Hubley’s back as Merannon scrambled away, fumbling for his sword. The mandrake’s eye followed them, but otherwise the creature didn’t move. Except for its head lying on the apartment floor, the mandrake’s body was entirely hidden by the whirling dust outside.
“It’s stunned,” said Avender. He seized Hubley’s hand. “Quick. Take us somewhere else. Anywhere but the surface. Before it recovers. Before it breathes fire. You can do it, Hubley, I know you can.”
Worn to her bones, Hubley closed her eyes. But the spell wouldn’t come quickly. For the first time in her life she found her power wearing thin. Now she understood how her mother had been so exhausted after the fight with Fornoch. And here she was, about to fight him as well. The thought terrified her. Had she had more time to think, her fear might have overwhelmed her. But there was no time for thinking, and she knew at once that Avender was right. They had to get away. If the mandrake broke free, he might kill them all. Her mother and the other magicians didn’t know that, thanks to her, the beast had escaped their careful trap. Only she could stop him now. If she could just regain a tiny bit of her strength before the mandrake regained his. The Dinnach a Dwvon was close, and she had just been there. She remembered the dark, and the smoke swirling across the broken unnerets. The smell of ruin in the cave.
The air warmed. The last of her strength dribbled away. The mandrake was huge, and traveling with it had taken every speck of power she had. But she’d done it, and brought them safely away. Opening her eyes, she saw Avender let go her hand and dash along the creature’s side. Cruelly he wrenched the blade from the creature’s belly. The mandrake trembled. Coming back to stand at Hubley’s side, Avender raised the sword above his head.
Like a worm being swallowed by a bird, the beast’s tongue slithered back into its mouth. The sword slashed down. Stone chips flew from the spot where the tongue had stretched a moment before. Smoke oozed from the mandrake’s mouth and nostrils.
Avender raised the weapon for another blow.
The mandrake wheezed. Scales clanking, it tried and failed to move away.
The sword flashed. A great gash opened across the top of Fornoch’s jaw. The beast quivered.
“It will take a while to slay me, you know,” it croaked. “And I will be recovering the whole time.”
Hubley screamed as Avender, refusing to listen to the beast, stabbed it in the eye. Black blood oozed, smoking on the sword and ground.
Fornoch’s voice grew stronger. “Can you be sure you will slay me before I recover enough to slay you? One breath will do it. I have had the wind knocked out of me in my fall, but, be assured, once I catch my breath, I will kill you. I am not so weak as I once was. Talking no longer slakes my thirst at all.”
Moving past the mandrake’s dripping eye, Avender thrust the sword deep into the soft flesh beneath its shoulder. So deep, he had to brace his foot on the creature’s flank to pull the blade out again. The mandrake shivered like a child who’d played too long in the snow, but didn’t stop speaking. Hubley grew faint at the sight of so much gore.
“If Findle were here,” the creature rasped, “he would tell you a mandrake’s heart is buried deep inside its body. Far deeper, in me, than you can reach with your sword. To find it you will have to butcher me the way you would a cow.”
Avender drove the blade into the creature’s belly a second time. Blood hissed to the ground in small pools and flowed across the floor to the Issin. The river steamed.
“I will slay the child as well.” The mandrake’s smoky breath melted behind small balls of orange flame. “Mothers. Fathers. Children. I will slay them all. Though I shall hunt the Bryddin, first.”
Shifting his feet, Avender swung the sword sideways. The creature’s hide ripped open. Flesh as red as uncooked meat gaped between the edges of the wound. Blood spouted. Avender staggered back as it splashed his face and arm.
The mandrake coughed. This time the flame shot farther from its mouth, crisping the beast’s own blood on the polished stone. Avender stumbled forward, readying another cut.
“No!” Hubley shouted as loudly as she could.
Avender’s boots almost slipped in the mess at his feet as he turned and looked at her.
“He’s going to kill us!” she said.
“No.” Avender gestured with his sword. “I’m going to kill him.”
To prove his point, he brought the stone blade down on the mandrake’s foreleg. Fornoch groaned as the limb fell twitching to the ground. Righting itself, the severed leg skittered toward Hubley. Avender skewered it on the point of his sword, then flicked it back toward its body. Twisting awkwardly on his three remaining legs, Fornoch gulped the leg down before it could run away a second time.
Hubley sat weakly on the stone. Beside her, Avender’s face and arm were black and scabbed where the creature’s blood had seared away cloth and skin.
“I want to go home,” she said.
“We can win, Hubley. This is no time to give up. He killed your father.”
The mandrake’s long snout swung toward them. Though the eye that faced them was blind, the creature seemed to know exactly where they were. Its nostrils flared.
“Look out!” cried Hubley.
Avender saw the danger the same as she. Pushing her down, he raised his sword. As if a shield that thin would ever help. With a roar even louder than the cave-in at the bottom of Vonn Kurr, the mandrake breathed.
Orange and yellow flame parted against the flat of the heartstone blade, but Avender’s body was still swept up in the licking heat. Hubley didn’t hear him scream, but she smelled his burning skin. His body turned black as his arm and toppled to the ground. Writhing in pain, he tried to crawl away.
She retched, even as her nose filled with the rot of roasted flesh.
The fire stopped. The mandrake set his wounded eye on Hubley. “Eventually,” he said, “I will burn him until the Living Stone rolls from his belly like grit from a goose’s gizzard. And then I will cook you.”
“No you won’t.”
Looking up, Hubley found Mims standing over her friend like a goodwife at her hearth.
“You!” cried the beast, his anger and dismay both terrible. “Impossible. You were only a slave. How did you escape Ussene?”
“I was warned.”
“But...” Smoke puffed from the cruel curve of the beast’s great jaw. Hubley, who had thought Fornoch would burn Mims the way he’d burned Avender, wondered if something else was about to happen instead.
“Your appearance explains much,” the beast continued in a calmer voice. “I should have known Reiffen was not strong enough to knock Ossdonc down when he was only fifteen.”
“He did most of it himself.”
“I suppose there have been other times you interfered as well. And yet you have waited until now to reveal yourself, when I can no longer take advantage of what you know.” The creature waved its stump. “Not that it matters. I have accomplished all I set out to do. The Dwarves are ruined. Bryddlough is mine.”
“No it isn’t,” said Mims. “Hubley, summon your magic.”
The mandrake hissed. Avender moaned as a tendril of fire curled across his feet.
“I can’t,” Hubley answered weakly.
“You can,” insisted the magician. “Look to your Stone.”
As if it had heard Mims’s command, Hubley’s Living Stone began to throb. Strength surged from her belly, flooding her body. Her breathing quickened; her lungs filled with air. Unbidden, the magic formed in her mind, almost as if Mims were casting the spell for her.
The beast opened its mouth to burn them; the spell burst from Hubley’s hands. Mims launched her magic at the same time. The two spells mingled smoothly, as if they’d been cast by the same person. A cone of ice formed in the air in front of them, its tip pointed straight at the mandrake’s throat. With a flick of their wrists, the magicians hurled it forward.
The beast gagged as the plug lodged deep in its throat. Its jaws gaped. Mims swept Hubley up in her apron and pulled them both to the ground. Before her face was covered, Hubley saw the mandrake’s eyes widen in fury and fear, its cheeks puffed around the icy cork like a croaking frog’s as its fireblast was bottled up behind.
But not for long. Half an enormous thunderclap thumped hard on Hubley’s ears, so brief she wasn’t even sure she’d heard it. Then the world went strangely silent; Mims’s apron bowed beneath a sudden wind. Solid chunks of something Hubley didn’t even want to think about rained down on them like large, heavy hail. Her Stone’s strength ebbed, and a wave of dizziness forced her to close her eyes. She shuddered, afraid that, even if they had blown up the mandrake, the beast was still going to bury them in the end.
The hail stopped.
Still weak, she opened her eyes as Mims swept the apron aside. Lumps of mandrake plopped to the ground. Though Hubley’s ears throbbed as if they’d been boxed and she still couldn’t hear a thing, her sense of smell was unaffected. The stink was awful. A fine red mist filled the cavern, settling slowly onto the chunks of charred gristle and bone that spotted the floor as far as the Abyss. She watched fearfully, half-certain the lumps would start slithering together like greasy slugs the same way the mandrake’s claw had scuttled away on its own after Avender sliced it off. But only one lump moved, the largest.
Her dizziness came back worse than ever when she realized the lump was Avender. The Wizard was gone, but so was so much else. Her father. Nolo. Maybe even Avender, too.
Tired to death, and wishing none of it had ever happened, she swooned.