Of Sorcery and Snow (4 page)

She didn't bother to stop when she heard my voice. She just kept ushering Rumpelstiltskin, our dwarf librarian, through the crowd, her hands clamped on his shoulders. “Rory, I'm a little busy right now. It will have to wait until after the tournament.”

“No, this is important.” I grabbed her elbow.

Lena pulled up next to me. Her gaze fell on the three-foot-tall book Rumpel was hugging to his chest. It was bound in purple
leather, and its pages had gilded edges. Books like that only came from one place. “Is that the current volume? Why did you take it out of the library? Is there a new Tale? Did the Director ask to see it?”

Ellie and Rumpel exchanged a glance. It was the look grown-ups give each other when they're trying to decide how much to tell the kids. My stomach sank down to my toes—something else had happened, something bad.

Chase obviously didn't pick up on that. He shoved his way to Ellie's other shoulder and told her about the attack. She didn't seem surprised, not even when he told her about Ripper showing up. Then he added, “Ellie, they were talking. They were
fresh
.”

Ellie shuddered, which honestly freaked me out more than the ominous way Chase said “fresh.”

“We'll tell the Director,” said Rumpel in a dull voice. Then they shuffled off through the crowd, leaving us behind.

We stared after them.

“They should have made a bigger deal out of that,” Chase said.

“Well, it's not exactly the first time it's happened. We do get attacked a lot.” But Lena sounded a little uncertain.

“What do you mean when you say they're ‘fresh'?” I asked.

“You know that the Snow Queen
makes
the wolves in her army, right?” Chase said, and I nodded. “Well, after a few years, they forget how to speak. The wolf takes over. So none of the Snow Queen's old army should be able to talk.”

“Except for Ripper. He's the only one who never stopped talking,” Lena added.

“So they've been turned into wolves recently,” I said. “What's the big deal?”

“It's a
huge
spell, Rory,” Lena said. “Only two sorceresses
have been known to perform it successfully: Solange and General Searcaster.”

Solange was the Snow Queen's real name, and Genevieve Searcaster was her four-story-tall general. “But the Snow Queen's in prison, and Searcaster's under house arrest.”

“
Supposed
to be, but we know she still gets out,” Chase reminded me. We had seen her and her eye patch in person when we went up the beanstalk during Lena's Tale.

“It had to be Searcaster. The Snow Queen couldn't have done it in prison,” said Lena slowly. “The Glass Mountain limits her magic too much.”

“So she's starting to move. Again,” I said.

The Big Bad Wolf leading an army of freshly turned wolves. Maybe Ellie and Rumpelstiltskin already knew. Maybe a new Red Riding Hood had already Failed her Tale, killed by Ripper at her grandmother's house. Maybe that was why they looked so upset already.

“Rory!” I heard someone call behind me—Kyle Zipes, one of the triplets in our grade, was pushing his way toward us. He pointed at the dueling event. Hansel had just disarmed a tenth grader, who was chasing his sword across the arena's smooth flat stones.

I had almost forgotten about my duel.
Almost
.

“You're on deck,” Kyle said. “Come on.”

I scowled. It had to be
another
April Fool's joke. “I'm not even registered yet.”

Kyle shot me a weird look. “Yeah, you are. You're at the top of the list. Chase put your name down before he left this morning.”

I glanced at Chase, eyebrows raised. “He forgot to mention that.”

He shrugged. “Don't thank me. I registered myself right after you. Wear Hansel out for me.”

But I wasn't fooled. He just didn't like to get caught doing anything nice. I smiled. “Thanks, Chase,” I said, starting to hurry.

Lena helped me push through the crowd. “Focus, Rory. Don't think about what happened this afternoon.”

The rest of the eighth graders clumped around the dueling arena. When they spotted us, our spear squadron—Connor and Kevin Zipes, Paul Stockton, and Alvin Collins, who had only come to EAS at Christmas—started whooping and pumping their fists in the air. The stepsisters, Tina and Vicky, shouted, “Rory! Rory!” Even Melodie, the golden harp who was also Lena's assistant, had come out, along with the moving fairy statue she used as her legs. Both she and her dummy chauffeur were clapping their metal hands.

A herd of fifth, sixth, and seventh graders had also squeezed in. They didn't have too many kids actually
entering
the event, so it took me a second to realize why they were there.

Then I spotted a couple posters that said
CHASE IS #1!
and
GO, RORY!

When the trio of sixth graders with the signs saw me looking, they waved—superenthusiastic—until I waved back, smiling.

Some of the younger kids had started following me and Chase around last spring, after we recaptured the Water of Life and saved a few hundred people at EAS. Chase loved the attention, but since it made me feel a little weird, I just treated them like my mom treated her fans. Maybe the movie-star wave was too much.

Adelaide, Daisy, and Candice lurked around off to the side, trying not to look too interested. Adelaide was the prettiest girl in eighth grade, and she knew it. Candice had come two weeks ago and replaced Daisy as her second-in-command. They obviously
came to cheer Chase on, because I'm definitely
not
Adelaide's favorite person.

“We should just skip all this and do the ball,” Adelaide sniffed. I kept forgetting about the dance. That was the
other
part of the anniversary celebration that took place every three years. “I mean, tournaments are so medieval.”

She looked my way, so I definitely knew this comment was for me.

“Not really,” said Kyle. “The king of the Living Stone dwarves announced a
real
tournament up at his new colony this morning. Winner gets his eldest daughter's hand in marriage.”

“Dude, have you ever
seen
his eldest daughter?” Chase asked. “Not exactly a prize.”

With a deep breath, I stepped up to the edge of the dueling arena to wait. Kenneth, a ninth grader, already stood on the stones, his sword unsheathed, his arm muscles bulging out from his sleeveless shirt. He glared at the sword master. “You're going down, old man.”

The proctor rang the gong. Kenneth charged forward, yelling, and then he collided with Hansel, their blades clanging so loud some fifth graders winced. But Hansel just stuck to his old habits—he stepped back and did his low strike. The ninth grader stumbled and barely parried it in time. Then Hansel's fake out to the left came, and when Kenneth tried to block it, Hansel changed positions, stepped inside Kenneth's guard, and knocked the boy's sword from his hand.

Cursing, Kenneth snatched up his weapon and tore off.

The high school proctor rang the gong.

Yeah, Kenneth acted stupid, but he was actually one of the best fighters in his grade. If Hansel beat
him
so easily, I probably didn't have a chance.

I was wasting my time. I should have backed out of the tournament and focused on whatever the grown-ups were up to. I should have—

Then Hansel said, with the smug smile I hated, “I told Gretel this morning that I was getting too old for this, but you kids get weaker every year. This is easy. Who's next?”

I wanted to make it harder for him. I could at least do that. I stepped forward.

“Rory Landon.” Hansel's smile grew wider. “Take that ring off before you smash up the arena, and let's see what Turnleaf taught you.”

I passed my ring to Lena, and she gave me an encouraging smile. “You'll do
great
,” she said again.

“Hey, Rory.” Chase held up three fingers. “Iron Hans.”

That was all he had to say. Last year, in Atlantis, Chase and I had run into Iron Hans, a thousand-year-old metal guy once known as the Snow Queen's deadliest warrior. I'd beaten him in three moves.

“I had the ring,” I reminded him in a whisper, “and the sword's magic.”

“You also had two injuries,” Chase said. “And now, you have another year of training that you didn't have then. You're better than you think you are. He'll be flat on his back in a few seconds,” he added, grinning, and I believed him.

I turned. The proctor rang the gong. Hansel stared at me, and I stared back, not at his face, at his arms. After a few beats, he grabbed the hilt of his broadsword with both hands. If I was reading him right, he was planning to go straight for the disarm—he wanted to finish this quickly.

“Scared, Rory?” Hansel said when I didn't attack, and I just smiled.

Chase said that the strongest position with Hansel was the defensive one.

Hansel reached forward with his sword, as he'd done with plenty of other students. Our blades clicked against each other, and I moved. With my right hand, I flipped my sword around and wielded it underhand, like a dagger—catching his hilt guard and wrenching my arm back. His broadsword clattered to the stones. His eyes widened. He raised a foot to go after it; he was off balance. I hooked my foot around the leg he stood on, pressed my left arm into his chest, and shoved. He fell back.

I had him! I pressed forward, pinning him to the ground, and I spun my sword around to its regular grip, pointing it at his throat, triumphant—

The proctor rang the gong before I managed to get my blade in the kill position. I looked down. Hansel held a small knife, its point a half inch from my belly button.

I lost. After all that training, all that work, all the favors I owed Chase, I
still
lost.

“He had a concealed weapon!” Chase shouted at the proctor as I stood up, scowling. “Doesn't that disqualify him?”

“They're allowed,” the proctor replied. “It's in the rule book.”

“Hansel
wrote
the rules. He's the one who
told
us the rules, and he conveniently left this one out,” Chase replied. I clearly wasn't the only one who thought Hansel had cheated.

“Your enemies won't tell you when they hide weapons either.” The old sword master got to his feet. He was moving a lot more slowly than he had before. Slamming into the stones had hurt him. Good. Served him right for bullying his students for so long.

“In a real tournament, he'd have to forfeit to Rory,” Chase grumbled.

“In a
real
tournament, Hansel wouldn't be fighting every single dueler himself,” the proctor pointed out. “You're up, Chase.”

My friend leaped up, sword unsheathed, looking pretty intent on avenging my honor. I turned away, but Hansel clapped me on the shoulder.

I raised my chin. If he mocked me now, I didn't think I could control my temper.

“You did really well, Rory,” Hansel said, smiling. “You would have had me if you hadn't taken the time to change your grip. Next time, assume your opponent has something else up their sleeve. Don't let your guard down when it looks like it's all over.”

Hansel was being
nice
? I was so stunned that I forgot to move. Chase had to nudge me off the arena so he could have his turn. “Thanks for bruising him up. I can use that,” he whispered to me as I hopped down to the grass.

I sheathed my sword and sighed.

It was a lot easier to lose when I thought Hansel would make fun of me. Now, it was like he was
teaching
me. I didn't need anyone to tell me that I still had a lot to learn.

Lena hugged me. “That was
amazing
.”

“Yes, I've never seen you move that fast unless the sword's magic was helping you,” Melodie added, but her mind was obviously someplace else. “I'll see you later. I have to go back to Lena's workshop. Touchy spell in progress. Portable wish. Thirty-second attempt, and it's looking very promising. Good thing too, because the Director won't give us any more Water of Life to use for experiments.” She signaled to her dummy chauffeur, and they started weaving their way through the crowd.

The Zipes triplets hurried over.

“That was just
you
?” said Kevin, clearly shocked. “Not the sword?”

I scowled. He made it sound like
I
was cheating, not Hansel. The sword's magic only kicked in when I was protecting someone.

“Nobody's ever knocked Hansel down like that,” Connor said.

“I still lost,” I reminded them.

The proctor's gong rang again, and Chase flipped over his opponent's head and aimed a slash at the sword master's shoulder. Hansel was almost too slow to dodge.

“Why are you so upset, Rory?” Lena asked. “
Nobody
beats Hansel. Give Chase another minute, and he'll lose too.”

“I heard that, Lena!” Chase blocked a high strike from Hansel's broadsword. “You suck at the cheerleader thing.”

Lena looked guilty. “Sorry! Go, Chase!”

I didn't want to say what I was thinking—if I couldn't beat a stupid sword master, how could I defeat a real villain? The Director was keeping a secret from us, and Chase, Lena, and I were pretty sure this was it: that I was destined to take down the Snow Queen. So I just turned toward the fight.

Chase was on the defensive, leaping back as Hansel swung his broadsword. I guess Hansel
did
have a few more tricks after all.

“Don't forget the boundary line!” Kyle called. “You'll be disqualified if you cross it.”

Chase glanced down to see how far away he was, and Hansel locked his hilt guard with Chase's and yanked. Chase's sword sailed from his hand, flipping hilt over blade in a high arc.