The Keeper (18 page)

I jumped back so far that I actually slammed into the opposite wall.

Full in my face, burning a hole in my brain really, was a jabbit curled up in a cage made of brilliant light. The terrible creature was fast asleep, its hundreds of eyes closed. But sleeping or not, I wanted to run away shrieking.

Instead, I tapped my wand against my leg, hissed “
Pass-pusay
” and thought of my destination. Anywhere but here, actually.

Moments later I was outside the cottage and also free of the green dome.

I looked around at the peace and quiet of an early morning’s light. I got a running start and took to the air with Destin firmly around my waist. I kept my gaze swiveling back and forth both above and below, my wand at the ready.

A sudden gust of wind hit me and I went into a dive. I caught myself in plenty of time, at least a hundred feet up in the air. Righting myself, I looked ahead and paled. The clear sky had turned to a towering darkened mass. Jagged skylight spears were being cast out of the black clouds. Accompanying thunder-thrusts pierced my ears. I had no choice but to flee to the ground.

I landed hard and stumbled a bit before regaining my balance. I looked upward. The sky was once more crystal clear.

What the Hel?

I bent my knees and shot upward. I was immediately engulfed in horrendous wind and torrential rain. I was flipped and shoved all across the sky, the rain hitting me so hard it felt like whacks from a piece of wood. The water blasted in my eyes and down my throat, making me gag.

I shot downward and sprawled on the ground, soaked to the bone.

I rolled over and looked up once more. The sky was all blue again.

I twisted my hair, wringing the water out of it, and did the same with my clothes. When I looked to my right, I was so astonished I touched my arm to make sure I was still where I thought I was. Because it was
me
approaching me! Barely ten feet from me, it stopped and stared. Now, I’ve had experience with a maniack, a despicable creature-thing that can take the form of someone and then clutch on to you and make you relive your worst fears while it slowly crushes you to death. But I had never been confronted by, well, me.

Of course I knew it wasn’t me. It had to be some creature that was intending to do me harm. Well, I was prepared for that. I would just do something to scare it off. I raised my wand, pointed it at the creature, gave my wand a flick, kept my eyes on the thing’s right arm and said, “
Injurio
.”

The pain was so immediate and so intense that I gasped, bent over and grabbed my right arm. That had really hurt. I must have done the spell wrong.

I pointed my wand at my arm and said, “
Eraisio
.” The pain stopped.

I looked at the creature. It had drawn closer. It was my exact double. And now my fear was mounting. Though it had done nothing threatening, every instinct I had was telling me to be very afraid.

Focusing my mind, body and spirit, I pointed my wand at its leg, gave a slashing movement with my wand and said, “
Jagada
.”

Four rips in my leg appeared and I howled in agony, dropped to the dirt and clutched my wounded limb. Tears in my eyes at the pain, I looked up to see the creature now standing barely a foot from me.

The thing’s mouth opened and I saw inside hideous rows of blackened, sharpened teeth. Then a tongue flicked out and licked my face. But it wasn’t a pleasant touch. I could instinctively tell it was
tasting
me. Blind with pain and fury and not wanting to be eaten, I raised my wand, gathered my hatred for the thing, focused my mind, body and spirit and screamed, “
Rig
—”

I never finished because my voice was gone, which meant I couldn’t complete the spell. This thing must have done it. And without my voice, how could I stop it from eating me?

The thing opened its mouth wider. All I could see was this impossibly large black hole big enough to actually swallow me whole.

“
Impairio
,” a voice said.

A blindingly white light hit the thing full in the face. It instantly changed into a blackened husk that was all teeth and gnarled limbs with a single massive eye.

Then the same voice said sharply, “
Rigamorte
.”

A coal-black beam shot out and hit the creature directly in the chest. It burst into a huge ball of smoke and then was gone.

I turned to see Astrea standing there, her wand still upraised. She looked down at me, pointed her wand at my leg and said quietly, “
Eraisio
.”

My cuts instantly healed. I stood on shaky legs.

She pointed her wand at my face and said, “
Unmutado.”

“What was that thing?” I asked, my voice now returned.

She looked at where the creature had been. The grass underneath was burned.

“A dopplegang. A creature that can become whatever it sees. In this case it became you.”

“But when I tried to cast a spell on it, the spell hit me instead.”

“That’s the primary strength of the dopplegang. Its prey will strike out at the thing, never realizing that it is, in fact, attacking itself. The dopplegang will wait patiently for its prey to kill or incapacitate itself, and then it will eat the unfortunate one.”

“So when I tried to use the
Rigamorte
curse?”

“I stopped you. Because you would have killed yourself.”

“But how
did
you stop me?”

“
Mutado
. A spell that takes your voice away. I just performed the reverse curse, which is why you can speak once more.”

“And you struck the dopplegang blind because if it can’t see, it can’t become something else? Meaning it reverts back to its true self?”

“And with that defense gone, I was able to kill it.” She added sternly, “You’re quite fortunate that I found your room empty and came looking for you.”

“I was flying around when a storm struck.”

“Of course it did.”

“Because the Quag doesn’t want me to fly over it?”

Her angry look faded. “Excellent, Vega. You are treating the place as a living, breathing, evolving organism, as well you should.” She looked at the spot where the dopplegang had been. “You actually learned a valuable lesson this light, Vega. You must be prepared for anything. I can teach you much, but I can’t teach you all that you will face in the Quag.” She pointed ahead with her wand. “The first of the Five Circles lies just out there. Destin’s flying ability will be limited from now on.”

“But not impossible?”

“No. But you should use it only in extreme circumstances. And even then the danger you’re fleeing may be as nothing to the peril you create by attempting to fly.” She looked pointedly at me. “But speaking frankly, please do not think that all three of you will make it through alive. The odds against that are so enormous as to approach the miraculous. And while I do obviously believe in magic, I do not and never have believed in miracles.”

She turned and walked off. But I stood there, as though rooted in the dirt of this awful place. I’m not sure the dopplegang could have hurt me any more than Astrea just had.

She tapped her wand at the blackboard, and writing appeared on it. “The Quag, as I told you before, is divided into Five Circles.”

Delph had his ink stick poised over his parchment. It appeared to me that he was even more focused on this lesson than I was. And then it struck me why. He couldn’t do magic. But he could know the circles as well as anyone. That might prove important later on.

“The First Circle,” began Astrea, “is named the Mycanmoor.”

I flinched. The Mycanmoor had been mentioned on Quentin’s map.

“The Mycanmoor is a maze of startling complexity and populated with creatures that might well prove lethal in any encounter.”

“What is the maze made of?” I asked after I wrote all this down.

“It can be many and various. Thick, living hedges and forests of trees. Walls of stone so high you can’t see the tops of them. Vines of poisonous plants. Battlements of bones. And these elements can change on a whim.”

“Bones?” I interjected. “What of?”

“Bones only have one source,” she said. “The dead.”

“Yes, but dead what?” I persisted.

“No Wugs, if that’s what you mean. Other creatures that were killed in there. The principal threats in the Mycanmoor are the chontoo and the wendigo. Also the manticore is nothing to be trifled with.”

“So what’s the secret of getting through the mazes?” Delph asked.

In response, Astrea tapped the board and on it appeared a mess of pathways that seemed to have no end. She pointed her wand at it and said, “
Confuso, recuso.
” The maze lengthened out and became as straight as a poplar tree.

I turned to her in amazement. “That’s it, just the one spell?”

“It’s not simple if you don’t know what it is. In fact, if you don’t, you’ll wander the maze forever, for it is what is deemed a perfect maze.”

I looked curiously at her. “What does that mean, a perfect maze?”

“One with no detached walls, and no isolation sections, which refer to a passel of passages totally encircled by walls. These are completely unreachable because there is no trail to those sections from any starting spot in the maze. There is exactly one solution to a perfect maze and only one. And there is only one path in the maze from one spot to another spot. Making it utterly perfect, hence the name.”

She tapped the board once more. Instantly, another maze appeared there. As I looked at the thing, I could make neither head nor tail of it.

However, as though in a trance, Delph rose and went over to the board. He ran his eye up and down the drawing and then picked up an ink stick that lay on Astrea’s desk and started to draw a line. Around and around he went, up and down, side to side, down this path, down another, left here, right there, and the whole time, Delph was staring at the board, his focus complete. Finally, his line of ink ran itself right out of the maze.

He turned to see both Astrea and me watching him in amazement.

“What?” he said, eyeing us warily.

“How did you do that?” Astrea exclaimed.

“Do what?”

“Get out of the maze,” I blurted out. “Ruddy brilliant it was, Delph.”

He looked at what he had done as though he was seeing it for the first time. “I … I just went the way that would get me out of the bloody thing.”

Then it occurred to me that Delph had always been like that. He had found the most efficient paths through the forests in Wormwood better than anyone. He had come up with a strategy for me to prevail in the Duelum. He had come up with a diversion so that I could escape from Thorne’s room. He had a mind that grew large thoughts from small things.

“Well,” said Astrea. “I think that you might do very well in the Mycanmoor even without the spell I just gave Vega.”

I was glad she had said that, for I could see Delph’s spirits lift immeasurably.

“Now we must move on to the beasts that will confront you in the Mycanmoor. You must be prepared for them.” She looked at Delph. “
Both
of you.”

She waved her wand. Appearing on the blackboard was something that made me jump up, my wand at the ready, and Harry Two to bark and then attack.

Astrea waved her wand once more and my canine was whisked gently back to where he had been sitting. She looked at me and said, “This is a chontoo.”

I was staring at a head without a body attached to it. The face was foul with jagged fangs, flames for hair and eyes that were utterly demonic.

“What does it do?” I asked fearfully. “And where is the rest of it?”

“That is all there is,” she replied. “The chontoo was spawned over the centuries by different creatures and species
intermingling,
as we call it here. It is said that the chontoo will wildly attack anything in the hopes of using its prey’s body parts to replace the ones it does not have. As this is not possible, it will always fail. But its bloodlust never wavers.”

Delph said, “So if it can’t use the body, what does it do with it?”

Astrea replied calmly, “It eats it of course.”

“O’course,” parroted Delph, his face growing a bit pale.

“The chontoo can fly, as you might note, since it has no legs with which to walk. It can appear in quite a rush and can do so silently. One must be prepared.”

“And what do we do when it does appear?” I asked.

“You must stop it, Vega,” she said emphatically.

“You mean kill it?”

“This particular incantation is effective.” She lifted her wand and then snapped it downward like it was a whip, right at the image of the chontoo. She cried out, “
Enamelis fixidus
.” A purple light shot out of the wand and collided with the image of the chontoo.

The creature had been baring its fangs. Now its jaws clamped together and its mouth no longer opened.

“What exactly did the spell do?” I asked.

“Cemented its jaws together. And if it can’t eat, it will die.”

I swallowed nervously and looked down. I knew Astrea was staring at me, but I wasn’t prepared to meet her eye. Not yet.

She waved her wand and the chontoo disappeared and another creature took its place on the board. Astrea said, “The manticore.”

I was looking at a thing with the head of a lion, the tail of a serpent and what looked to be a goat in between. The jumble of animals was positively terrifying.

“It is swift of foot, with immense strength, and its flaming breath is unquenchable,” she said.

I glanced at Delph, who was staring at the manticore like it had somehow possessed his soul.

“And how does one defeat it?” I asked.

“Any number of spells I taught you will do nicely. But it’s tricky because a manticore can read minds. So it knows what you are about to do and will take appropriate evasive action.”

“Well,” said Delph. “That’s a bit of a problem.”

“So how do we beat the manticore?” I asked again.

“There are two of you, so Delph will have to distract it. Let it read
his
mind, Vega, while you perform the appropriate spell to rid yourselves of the thing.”

I looked at Delph once more. I thought he would be shaking his head and looking mortified. But he was nodding and said, “Now, that’s a right good plan.”

“It’s a right
bad
plan if the manticore ends up killing you before I can take care of it,” I said forcefully. “It’s dangerous, Delph.”

He looked at me like I was a nutter. “Dangerous! We’ve nearly died, what, six times already since we’ve been here? Dangerous? Har!”

Something nudged my hand. I looked down to see Harry Two pushing it with his snout. I thought he just wanted to be petted, but there was a look in my canine’s eyes that spoke something else.

It was as though he was saying,
There are
three
of us, Vega, not just two.

“Moving on,” said Astrea. She waved her wand again and the manticore vanished and was replaced with an even more odious creature, which I had already seen once before.

I thought Astrea shivered just a bit too as she said, “The wendigo.”

Having already seen this spectral creature devour a deer from the safety of Astrea’s Seer-See, I knew that it ate flesh.

Astrea said, “This creature doesn’t simply kill. It can possess you by eating your mind.”

“It eats your mind?” said Delph, looking horrified.

She said, “You saw what it did to that unfortunate deer.”

I nodded, my mind holding the image of a wendigo running away in
my
body.

Astrea said, “Now, it’s crafty. You must always be on the lookout for the warning signs that a wendigo is nearby.”

I poised my ink stick over my parchment, ready to write down these warning signs. When she said nothing, I looked up. “What are they?” I asked. “These signs?”

“A vague feeling of terror,” she said.

“Well, now, that’s right helpful,” scoffed Delph. “I mean I doubt we’d be feeling that way otherwise, eh?”

She continued, “And a sense that the facts stored in your head are drifting away and being replaced with strange, often horrible memories that are
not
your own.”

“How can it do that?” I asked.

“You are being imprinted with the residual memories of the prey that the wendigo has killed in the past and which linger in its own mind.”

It all sounded horrible enough. “Then what do we do?” I asked.

“There is one and only one incantation that will defeat the wendigo.” She held her wand in front of her and then made a slashing motion that resembled the letter
X
. She said in a very firm, very clear voice, “
Omniall
.”

“What does that do?” I asked.

“It removes the mind utterly and irreversibly.”

“It removes the mind? Then what happens to the wendigo?” I asked.

“It dies of course. That is just how it must be here.”

And I supposed she was exactly right.