The Book of Deacon (56 page)

The girl, now on the drawbridge, tried to
rush silently past her. Once the student had made it inside the
castle, Azriel willed the individual stones of the floor to rise up
as bars to form a cage. Myranda stopped abruptly. Azriel opened her
mouth to gloat, but stopped. Poking her hand through the bars to
grab the girl, her fingers passed right through.

"An illusion! I didn't expect to see any of
those out of you," she said.

The teacher ran outside and forced away any
illusions that were not her work. Clinging to the wall were a
number of bars of ice, forming a crude ladder leading to one of the
first floor windows that had fortunately not been willed away like
those of the second floor. Azriel rose into the air and approached
the window. It widened to allow her through easily, but Myranda
could already be heard hurrying down the hall. Azriel made her way
out of the room just in time to see an image of Myranda rush into
every open doorway and slam it.

"What fun, a student with creativity," Azriel
said.

The powerful wizard touched her fingers to
the wall and the stone became as transparent as glass. The effect
spread until each and every block that composed the castle could be
seen through. One by one, the illusions of Myranda were dispelled,
but finishing was not necessary. The change that came over the
castle startled the true Myranda, who stumbled backward, knocking
over the bookshelf.

When her eyes met Azriel's, and a wicked grin
came to her instructor's face, the girl sprang to her feet and ran
toward the hourglass. Only a minute or two had passed, and the
rules said that the test would be ended when the last grain
returned from whence it had come. If she inverted the glass now,
she would need to last only a minute or two more. Azriel was moving
quickly toward her, unimpeded by the walls and floor, which
separated like curtains at her approach. Just as the teacher's feet
came to rest on the floor of the banquet hall once again, Myranda
grasped the timepiece. With any luck she would be able to invert it
and lock it in ice until the last few grains fell.

Luck, alas, was not with her. When the
floating hourglass was tipped to the side, the whole of the castle
seemed to lurch in the opposite direction. She lost grip on the
glass and slid along the floor, colliding painfully with the wall.
Nothing else seemed to be affected by the bizarre shift, which was
a mercy, as were the furniture similarly affected she would have
been crushed beneath it.

"Surprisingly, you were not the first to
attempt to exploit that little technicality. As a result I have
assured that, regardless of which way the hourglass is pointing,
the sand continues to fall in the appropriate direction. Just for
fun, I have seen to it that
you
fall in that direction as well, no matter which
way I turn it," the devilish instructor said.

As she spoke her last sentence, she turned
the hourglass in a random direction, sending Myranda sliding or
falling in that direction. She concluded by flipping the hourglass
over. Myranda held fast to the table, which she had become pinned
against. It was heavy enough to keep her down.

"Well, if that is how you want it," Azriel
said. Suddenly the furniture, with the exception of the pedestal,
the book atop it, and the hourglass, plummeted upward. In a
thunderous crash of splintering wood, the contents of the room
collided with the vaulted roof.

Myranda struggled to move, a good portion of
debris having landed atop her. Many bones were broken by the crash,
but no sooner had she realized this than they were repaired. As she
pulled herself from the rubble, Azriel floated "down" to the
ceiling and flipped upside down to survey the damage.

"Still able to move about, eh? Very well. We
shall have to restrain you," she said.

The sorceress's eyes wandered as she tried to
think of something creative to torture her student with. They came
to rest on the chandelier, which was hanging "up," unaffected by
the shift. She smiled, and the leg-like candle holders twitched to
life, scurrying up its chain and across the ceiling like some
ornate spider. Everywhere the candle-tipped feet touched took to
flame. Myranda freed herself and moved as quickly as she could
across the rubble-strewn ceiling, but the animated candelabra moved
across debris as though it was born to do it, which of course it
had been. The pseudo-creature tore its chain from its mount and
threw a loop of it around the hapless girl. In a twinkling she was
wrapped tightly in the chain, and the fire was pooling around
her.

"Right. I am rather proud of that one."
Azriel beamed as she moved to the pedestal and took up the pen.

Myranda used her mind to gather up as much of
the fire that surrounded her as she could and focused it around the
chandelier spider. The automaton melted immediately, dripping in
bright orange blobs to the floor below, but the chain cocooning her
remained taut. With the utmost of care to protect herself, as she
had the leaves in Solomon's test, she sliced the chains with the
fire.

"Your resourcefulness is remarkable. I may
have to redefine the word capture," said Azriel.

Approaching the hourglass again, she gave it
a twirl. Instantly, Myranda found herself falling, jerked this way
and that as "down" perpetually changed. It was disrupting beyond
belief. She could barely think. She certainly couldn't move, as
each time she approached something that she could grab onto, she
fell away from it again. She was trapped in mid-air. Another smile
of satisfaction came to her instructor's face and the pen was once
again in hand.

Myranda's mind searched for something that
might free her. The only thing that seemed to have a chance was
levitation. She had never managed it on anything but water before,
but Deacon had assured her that the same technique needed to be
changed only slightly to levitate anything. Myranda consciously
took hold of the mystic energy inside of herself and commanded it
to be still. Her uncontrollable flight through the room came to a
swift end. A second thought brought the spinning hourglass to a
halt, this time properly oriented. As she lowered herself to the
ground, Azriel gave a smug smile.

"I must say, you are driving me to new
heights of creativity," Azriel said.

Myranda opened her mouth to reply to the
compliment, only to be stopped by an odd sinking feeling. She
looked down to discover that the floor beneath her had turned to
quicksand. She sank swiftly to her waist before she once again put
the levitation spell to work. The sand held firm, but slowly she
was beginning to pull herself free.

"Sandstone," Azriel said audibly.

Instantly the sand was stone once more, and
straining against it felt as though her legs, still encased within,
would give far before the stone did. Azriel still had the pen in
hand and approached the book to mark the failure. Myranda needed
time. She threw up a wall of flame between Azriel and the pedestal.
Azriel smirked and undid the spell, barely missing a step. Myranda
focused her mind on the tremor spell. A few moments of shaking that
threatened to turn her bones to powder shattered the stone of the
floor. The pieces of rock fell away, as there was nothingness
beneath them, but Myranda levitated herself up.

"Right, that is quite enough levitation for
one day," Azriel said.

Myranda dropped, grabbing onto the edge of
the hole she'd made. She tried to levitate again, only to find that
some spell--an enormously complicated one--was blocking her from
doing so. Though she knew that with time she could break the spell,
she had more pressing matters at hand.

The girl pulled herself out of the hole in
the ground and bolted for the doorway. The chains of the drawbridge
pulled taught as she approached, and the stones of the floor began
to shoot up in front of her, forming bars as they had for her
illusion earlier. She dodged some and cast a quick tremor to
shatter others. She was determined to escape this castle. Azriel's
spells were becoming more potent by the second, and there was no
doubt that she was not far from discovering one that would stall
Myranda long enough to mark her failure. She simply
had
to get as far from
the book as possible to maximize the time she had to escape.

The drawbridge was nearly halfway shut by the
time she had fought her way to it. As she climbed the steep wooden
incline, the surface turned into a checkerboard of fire and ice.
Was Azriel trying to catch her or kill her? She swept the fire away
with her mind and managed to leap from one piece of charred wood to
the other until she pulled herself onto the nearly vertical end of
the bridge. With a mighty leap, she came crashing down on the outer
bank of the moat. The drawbridge sealed shut and for a moment there
was peace. Myranda breathed a sigh of relief, but it was cut short
by the creaking of the chains. A moment later they snapped and the
drawbridge began to fall open. The terrified girl rolled
frantically away, narrowly avoiding being crushed beneath the
massive door. So narrow was her escape that, when she tried to
move, she found that the hem of her tunic was pinned beneath the
bridge.

The shadowy form of Azriel was approaching
through the doorway. Myranda pulled desperately at the pinned cloth
until it tore free. First, she rekindled the blazes on the bridge.
In an instant smoke, fire, and steam concealed the outside world
from anyone within. With the modicum of time she'd bought, the girl
scanned the horizon. There was a scattering of trees and bushes
dotting the open field before her. She conjured a wind to rattle
the branches and prayed that her idea would work.

Azriel walked across the flaming walkway
utterly unaffected by the flames. She reached the other side of the
moat a moment before the tattered wooden door fell into the water.
An unseen force made her twitch. Turning to look through the steam
rising from the moat, she saw that the first five minutes had
elapsed. The hourglass inverted itself, foregoing the gravity
reversal that generally would accompany it. Her purpose here was to
be tested against as many situations as possible, not the same one
over and over again.

With the approaching deadline renewing her
resolve, Azriel turned back to the field. Myranda had been busy.
She'd managed to shake free the seeds from the trees and bushes and
grow a veritable forest to hide in. It was far too dense to see
through, and the girl was still able to thwart her detection
spell.

"Clever girl, but there are more ways than
one to track prey," Azriel said.

She began to stalk forward, seeming to waft
away and back again as a pitch-black wolf with the same flickering
white fire in her eyes. The air carried the scent of her target as
clear as day. As she followed it, the trees nearest to her withered
and died.

Far ahead, Myranda moved--unseen but not
unknown--through the thick woods of her own creation. Precious
little sun made it through the leaves, a fact that made her feel
all the better. As a minute ticked by, then another, the tiniest
hint of a feeling of safety came over her. It was a feeling quickly
dispelled when she heard the quiet swish of grass beneath feet
other than her own. She looked about, trying to spot her hunter,
but Azriel made the very sun in the sky sink below the horizon,
replacing it with a moon with hardly the strength to allow more
than a few rays to peek through the thick canopy. Silently, Myranda
managed to climb the nearest tree.

In a lone spot of moonlight, she saw the
flicker of a black lupine form, and she realized how she had been
found. She conjured a wind from behind her hunter to carry the
scent away, but it was too late. The branches of the tree closed in
around her like a cage. The moon seemed to brighten, lighting the
cleared path leading to the castle.

Something, moving fast, came bursting out of
the distant doorway toward them. It was the pedestal, book and pen
perched firmly on top. When the pedestal was beside her, Azriel
resumed her proper form. She took up the pen. Myranda drew all of
the heat she could from the branches. They stiffened, crackling and
flaking as the cold rendered them fragile. The desperate girl
lashed out against the embrittled wood. The limbs gave way far more
suddenly and fully than she had expected. Every last branch and
much of the trunk collapsed into large, icy chunks.

Myranda landed amid the rubble and scrambled
to her feet. The bulk of the pieces had dropped atop Azriel
herself, as well as the pedestal. There was a powerful aura
emanating from beneath the pile. If the fury of one was ever strong
enough to be felt by another, then this surely was it. Myranda
sprinted away, terrified of what may happen next. After a few
moments, Azriel exploded from beneath the pile. The sky turned
blood-red, glowing with a light that permeated all beneath it.

"No one--
no
one
--attacks me. You little witch. This is no longer
just a game," her voice thundered as she floated high above the
tree tops.

With a thrust of her hand the trees were
spread with such force that some were torn from their roots.
Myranda was knocked to the ground by the force of the energy. The
ground beneath her began to rumble. A vast rift split the ground,
large enough to swallow trees whole. Myranda clung to the edge, but
was suddenly wrenched into the air. She fought hard against the
force that held her, but it had a grip on her that she could not
break. The ground below her began to glow almost white hot.

"What are you going to do?" Myranda
cried.

As an answer, the molten ground swirled up
around her. The heat was unimaginable as she found herself
concealed in a void of the swirling ball of liquid stone. As it
cooled, it became clear, and she saw Azriel with a look of
satisfaction on her face. Myranda was lowered to the still-scalding
hot floor of her glass prison.