Nemeth wailed as his precious book slid away. He must get it back! He had only one hand to use now, for the green fire would destroy it. He held fast to the spindle, chanting the spell to surround the small female with a ring of fire that would consume her. He would take the book as she burned to death. The spindle slipped out of his fingers, out of his reach. The little girl turned to crawl away from him. He threw himself after her and seized her foot. The boot came off in his hand, and he found himself looking at the strange, toeless little foot of his vision. At that moment he knew he was doomed.
“Give it back to me!” he bellowed, as the book disappeared into the web of flames that surrounded him.
Tildi defied him. She wrapped herself around the scroll and huddled over it, holding to a patch of bare floor. She sensed that the book hurt, too, from having been torn by Nemeth. It wasn’t exactly intelligent, but it was alive. They soothed each other in the midst of the battle. She was no longer hungry, thirsty, or tired. She had the book. It made her feel profoundly happy in spite of the pain.
The castle shook around them, and she heard the clatter of more stones falling off the roof. The Madcloud overhead was taking its vengeance on the people inside. It must go away. She thought about the vast, multicolored cloud, and surrounded it in her mind with a cage of wards, as Olen had taught her. Enclose it, and send it far away, into the eastern seas.
There was a sudden silence overhead, and Tildi knew that the book had made it true. The Madcloud was gone.
So this was what it was like to have infinite power over the things of the earth,
she thought. She was glad to
have experienced it once before the fire killed her. The heat made her gasp. Any moment she was going to run out of air. She would be ashes moments after that. Only the fact that she had been wet to the skin had prevented her and the book from being roasted, but she was dry now. The flames were licking at her sleeves. Over her head she heard shouting and scuffling, followed by a wild scream of pain. Tildi trembled.
After what seemed like hours a hand reached through the flames and felt around until it located her collar. With a powerful jerk, it pulled her free of the circle of flames and all the way to the far wall. Tildi took a deep gasp of breath. Lakanta pounded her on the back.
“Your arm,” Tildi panted. “It’s not even burned!”
The dwarf gave her meaty hand a casual glance. “Fire doesn’t affect me same as you, my dear. We’re part of the earth, you know. You’ve got it! Good girl!”
Tildi unrolled the scroll just a little. It was agony to handle it, but more manageable now. She felt as if she had never loved anything as much as the book. It seemed that it liked her, too, curling up to caress her hand. She welcomed the pain, because it felt good at the same time. The book made her happy. She looked at the page where Silvertree’s rune was scribed. Olen was still well. She was glad to have saved him. She must save all of her friends. The book would help her to do it.
“Give it back to me!”
Tildi looked up. Nemeth was on his feet now, lurching toward Tildi. He threw a handful of light at Serafina. His spells no longer seemed as powerful, without the book in his hands. The young woman clearly saw that she had an advantage. Her staff emitted an enormous ball of red light that surrounded the wizard. He staggered. He was angling to get past the soldiers, to get to her, to retake the book, but he was growing weaker by the moment. Tildi clasped it to her. He must not have it!
Rin interposed herself between Tildi and the charging wizard. She rose up, her powerful hooves flailing. Nemeth let out a terrible cry, and went down before her.
“Leave me alone!” he shrieked. “Leave me alone!”
“Get back,” Serafina ordered, as Teryn and Morag closed in upon the fallen Nemeth. “We have defeated him. The book is ours.”
“No,” Morag said. “It is not over yet.” His eyes glowed as blue as Nemeth’s. He stepped forward with his sword raised, a dark shadow against the dancing flames of the burning tapestries.
“Don’t,” Serafina pleaded. “He’s beaten now.”
“It is justice,” Teryn said, holding the wizardess back with her sword.
“But we will never be able to help Morag if he dies.”
“Tildi will,” Teryn said firmly.
Lakanta covered Tildi’s eyes to shield her from the sight, but Tildi heard the blow. Nemeth let out one final scream. Tildi dissolved in tears.
“I didn’t want anyone to die,” she said.
“I know, child,” the peddler said, patting her on the head. She looked down at the book in Tildi’s lap. “Look at that! Isn’t it fine? No wonder my husband thought he could sell scraps of it. But we’ve got it back now.”
I have it,
Tildi thought.
Nemeth loved it, but it’s mine now.
She was shocked at her own thoughts. She did love the book, but her entire purpose for coming along had been to obtain the book, to safeguard it so it could go back to where it belonged. Edynn had sacrificed her life for her. Olen would be disappointed if she did anything else. She pulled herself together, though it wrenched at her heart. The book would go back to where it belonged. She would be able to enjoy it for a time, but she would see it set in a place of safety where it would stay for all eternity, where no one else could harm it or tear out its pages. Edynn and Olen, and Teldo, too, would be proud of her.
Serafina came over to her at last. “Well done, Tildi,” she said, crouching down beside her. She took each of Tildi’s hands in hers and concentrated. The gentle warmth healed some of the raw, burning sensation that handling the book had caused.
“It’s glad I have it,” Tildi said.
“It’s just a thing,” Serafina said. “Just an object. A beautiful and precious one, but it has no consciousness.”
“It does,” Tildi insisted. “I hear it.”
The young wizard turned Tildi’s chin so she could look into her eyes.
“Tildi, listen to me. You hear the things inside it. They make a great harmony that pleases you, because it is complete. It’s the world.”
Ah. The world, complete in her lap. She felt all of its ills as well as its joys. To think that a girl from the Quarters would have such an opportunity. Tildi felt somewhat unsteady, trying to assimilate all of what the book’s acceptance of her meant, but for the moment, she knew that it was all right for a girl from the Quarters to possess the greatest treasure in all of Alada.
She looked up at Serafina. “I can’t read these runes. Will you teach me?”
Serafina looked at her distrustfully, and Tildi knew she was recalling
the promises that both of them had made to Edynn. She nodded slowly. “Yes. I will be your teacher now, until we can get the book back to its haven, and I have brought you safely back to Olen.”
“Thank you,” Tildi said simply.
“Help me,” a woman’s voice said. “Wizard, can you help him? He is dying!”
Tildi looked up. The young woman in Scholardom livery sat near the remains of the thrones. She held Magpie’s head in her lap. She appealed to them.
“Can you do anything?” she pleaded.
Tildi felt terrible. She had forgotten about poor Magpie. She and Serafina went to him. The deformities looked even worse than she had thought. His eyes were bulging out of his sockets, and his skull depressed painfully over the forehead.
“Tildi,” Magpie croaked, his voice as hoarse as his namesake’s. He looked up at her, surveyed the scroll under her arm. “You have it. Can you fix me?”
The room was suddenly full of men and women wearing blue-and-white livery. The big woman in the elaborate habit let out an exclamation of horror.
“Lar Inbecca! Stand to attention! Remember your duty!”
The girl ignored her, and focused upon the smallfolk. “Do you know the magic to restore him? I know he must be in the Great Book. All of us under the heavens are.”
Tildi rolled the parchment on its spindles, searching through the largely unintelligible pictographs in search of one that meant
Magpie
to her. She finally found one, but it matched the one that glowed upon his chest. Tildi saw the goodness inside the prickly, playful exterior, and knew it to be a disguise. She blushed suddenly. She knew too much about him. She looked at Serafina.
“That’s why we swear apprentices not to reveal the secrets of our craft, Tildi. It’s not our place to divulge all we know.”
Tildi studied it closely, and turned to Magpie with sincere regret. “I can’t do anything with the one written here. This shows your rune the way you are now, not the way you were.”
The deformed hand unlatched itself from the girl’s, and felt in the pouch at his belt. It emerged with a slip of parchment folded between two of the padlike fingers. He proffered it to Tildi. She hesitated, but
the hand shook insistently. It was the rune she had drawn for him that day at Olen’s house.
“Oh, I can’t,” Tildi said.
“Please,” the girl begged her. “Little one, whoever you are, help him.”
“You saw how he did it,” Serafina said, with the gravity of her mother. “Concentrate, Tildi.”
Tildi seemed to hear voices coming from the book, wizards from all throughout history, speaking to her as though she was an equal. She did not feel the equality, but she must not let down poor Magpie, who had written her a song.
“Draw it for me again, little Tildi,” Magpie said, his tongue thick in his misshapen mouth. “Ironic, isn’t it, that I came here to keep you from harm, and you end up having to doctor me? If it doesn’t work, then please give me the coup de grace. Think of me as a chicken for the pot.”
“Stop saying those things,” Tildi begged him. “I’ll start thinking about chickens, and who knows what will happen?”
“I’ll get feathers,” Magpie said, and began to laugh. That hurt, so he started choking.
“Lie still,” Serafina said severely. She drew wards around them, enclosing the four of them in a sphere of pure light.
Tildi studied the image, trying to memorize every detail. She closed her eyes, doing her best to ignore the golden rune on his body, seeing in her mind’s eye only the faint black line on the parchment. Olen had taught her the basics of rune manipulation, but this was more serious than anything she had ever done. She raised her hand and drew it in silver on the air, willing it to take the place of the other. She must do it exactly right, or Magpie would die. She felt warmth exude from the prone body beside her.
A loud groan made her open her eyes. The rune on his chest was now the same as the one on the parchment. She had done it! Magpie lay on the floor, admiring his hands. They had returned to their normal shape, long and slim with blunt-tipped fingers. He scratched his ribs experimentally, then beamed. He sprang to his feet, and knelt before Tildi.
“Well done, Tildi! You are a wizard among wizards. I’ll sing your praises at every feast from now until my last day!”
Tildi smiled back shyly. She felt another presence at her shoulder and looked up. The guard Morag stood there, his eyes returned to their normal color. He bowed to her humbly.
“Can you fix me, too?” he asked.
Tildi shook her head sadly. “I have no rune for you,” she said. “But I will learn how, I promise.”
Serafina came to lay a gentle hand on the guard’s shoulders. “Now that we have the book, many things will be set back to rights.”
The abbess Sharhava in blue and white regarded them with a sour face.
Tildi gathered up the book and embraced it, the pain less now than before. She was surrounded by her friends, and she was halfway to finishing the task set for her by Master Olen.