Curse of the Midions (15 page)

Charley got up, stared fiercely at Jarvey for a second, then slunk away. Midion crossed his arms. “You think I am an old man, and you are young and strong. Do not deceive yourself, boy. I have the art, and I can deal with such as you by crooking a little finger.”

“You've got the art,” Jarvey bluffed, “but I've got the Grimoire.”

Midion's face writhed. His shaggy white eyebrows bunched in a ferocious scowl. “What? Grimoire? Don't be a fool, Green.”

“My name's not Green,” Jarvey said. “It's Midion. Jarvis Midion.”

The old man staggered as if hit by a blow. “Midion? Midion? It's not possible!”

“Look at me,” Jarvey said, hoping his voice sounded braver than he felt. “Remember the old rhyme? Hair like rusty gold, eyes a midnight blue?”

“Nonsense!” Midion snapped. “I'll soon beat the truth out of your hide—”

“Do, and you'll never find out what happened to the Midion Grimoire,” Jarvey said, gambling that the old man would believe him. “You've known something was wrong with your little kingdom for weeks, haven't you? Well, here's what's wrong. I came through the Grimoire to your Lunnon, and I brought the book with me.”

“Here?” Midion screeched, and Jarvey heard real terror in the sound. “No, it can't be. You'll come with me!” One of his talonlike hands shot out and seized Jarvey, dragging him out of the chair. Midion marched him through the darkened house until he came to a tall, narrow door. Standing before it, the old man raised his free hand, clenched like a claw, and began to chant in a weird, singsong voice: “
Foris! Abra, abri, abrire!
I command it!”

The door did not open, but dissolved. Beyond it lay a swirling darkness, a whirlpool of fog and night. “That is living death, you snipe,” old Midion said. “I have but to give you a push, a little, little push, and in you go, to be swallowed there. Death, did I say? No, death in life! There you will drift forever, aware, alone, and not even able to die, lost in darkness for all eternity! Shall I give you a little push, my lad?”

Jarvey's voice shook: “Go ahead if you never want to find the Grimoire.”

With an animal bellow of anger, Midion dropped his hand, and the door stood as before, solid. “I'll learn your secrets, and when I know all you know, I may be merciful and merely throw you through the dark gate. Or I might do something even worse to you!”

 

Bread and water and loneliness. They came to be all Jarvey knew, locked in a windowless room on the second floor of the palace. Sometimes old Midion would appear to ask if he'd changed his mind yet. Jarvey refused even to answer. Time and time again he tried to work some magic to open the locked door. It refused to budge. Curled in a ball of hopelessness on the floor, Jarvey passed the time by dreaming up ways he could revenge himself against good old Charley.

None of them would work, but they passed the time.

At last Jarvey became aware that the interval between meals had stretched on and on. His throat was dry, and his empty stomach clenched. He dully wondered if old Midion had decided just to let him starve.

His mind drifted, and it clutched at something that floated by: that strange word,
abrire
. Old Tantalus had chanted it before the magical doorway, but he had heard it chanted before. It was one of the words—he was almost sure it was—that Siyamon Midion had said just before the Grimoire pulled him in. If he could only remember the other. If he could only . . . he drifted in and out of strange dreams.

The clicking of the lock wakened him. He braced himself. Midion must be coming back to make his demands and his threats again. The door swung open, the yellow light spilling in painful to Jarvey's eyes—

“You're a sight,” a familiar voice said. “Ready to get out of this, are you, cully?”

Jarvey sprang up, tottered, nearly collapsed. “Betsy!”

“Sh! Come on. Old Nibs is out for the evening—Council's meeting and he's presiding as Lord Mayor and Dictator for Eternity. Come on!”

Jarvey staggered into the hall on unsteady legs, blinking in the light. Betsy wore a gray skirt and a white blouse and apron. A white bonnet covered her red hair, and her face was cleaner than he had ever seen it. “How did you get in?” he gasped.

Betsy rolled her eyes. “Thirty housemaids come in every day, Jarvey. Do you think anyone would notice a thirty-first, bringing up the rear?”

“Listen,” Jarvey said urgently. “Charley's—what's the word? Peached on you.”

“I know,” she said grimly. “Don't worry about Charley. He's got himself in trouble, and he won't soon get out of it. The tippers have him in a cell right now, trying to pry knowledge out of him that he doesn't have.”

“He said your father—he said your last name, Dare—”

“Yeah, I know,” Betsy said. She led him down a corridor and through another door. “Come on.”

“Can't leave,” Jarvey muttered. “I have to get back to old Midion's study.” He lowered his voice. “Where's the book?”

“In the pantry,” Betsy said. “Tucked where no one's likely to look. I knew you were going to break into the palace, and I was afraid they'd find a way to force you to give it up so—I took it. I didn't want to trust it to anyone else. I've been carrying it with me everywhere for weeks.”

“You brought it here?” he groaned. “You've got to get it. Is Hawk in the house?”

“No. He'll have gone to the Council with Nibs. He's become old Nibs's bodyguard since my—since Lord Zoroaster disappeared.”

They reached the big domed front room. Betsy pressed something hard and cold into his hand. “Nipped this,” she said. “You might find it useful.”

It was an old-fashioned key, and it fit into the locks of both doors. Jarvey pulled the heavy maroon drapes across the windows of the study, turned up the lights, and frantically began to read through the titles of the books he had not been able to examine.

Enchantments. The Arte of Magick. Ye Practyse of Divers Artes
. Which one, which one?

Then, at the end of one of the shelves, a row of small black books, no titles on their spines. He opened one and read in angular handwriting:

 

A diary. Jarvey flipped through the pages, stopping to read a line here and there, but none of it helped. Most of it took the form of angry ramblings against fools and enemies. One shaky passage dealt with Tantalus's discovery of the date of his own approaching death: June 12, 1848. It ended with the words “I must escape this world before then.”

Jarvey nearly jumped out of his skin when the door opened. But it was only Betsy, holding the Grimoire. “Here it is. Let's go!”

“Wait, wait. It won't do us any good unless—”

“We've got to go!” Betsy warned. “Nibs is always back before midnight, and it's gone half past eleven by now. Come on, there's no time!”

They raced into the big front room—

And the front door opened, freezing them in their tracks. “What!” An outraged Tantalus Midion glared at them. “You! I'll teach you to—”

“This way!” Jarvey yelled, and he ducked back down the corridor toward the library, slamming and locking the door behind him. He grabbed the heavy table that Captain Hawk used as a desk. “Help me!” Betsy took hold of the table, and they tugged and shoved, blocking the door.

They retreated into the inner study, and Jarvey locked that door as well. He heard a thunderous blast from outside. The house shook with it, and he reeled, the way he had teetered when old Siyamon had chanted out—

The phrase came back and as the door to the study bowed as if a giant's hand were pushing it, Jarvey snatched the Grimoire from Betsy's hands and shouted the words aloud.

The door opened—

A door of light, not darkness—

Everything was light.

White radiance flooded the world, and Jarvey could see only the figure of Betsy standing at his side. Before him reared another gray, indistinct figure, its features impossible to see in the white glow, but it had to be Tantalus Midion.

The book, the Grimoire, writhed in Jarvey's hands. It struggled to open.

“Fool! Fool!” Tantalus's voice, sounding distant, thin, tiny.

“To Earth,” Jarvey yelled. “To London, and take Tantalus Midion there!” Words of desperation, not art.

And he opened the Grimoire.

The universe went insane. Everything swirled, water going down a cosmic drain, falling away, down an endless whirlpool. Tantalus Midion swept past, blue eyes wide with terror. Away, away, screams fading.

Jarvey fought a wind that whipped at him, sucking him forward. The book struggled in his hands like a living thing, but he had to resist, had to find his parents.

A power greater than he could resist snatched at him, jerked his feet from under him. Jarvey yelled in despair, trying to hold on to the Grimoire, trying to fight the endless fall, knowing he lacked the power. He tumbled headfirst, toppling, unable to stop himself.

Something as strong as iron clamped onto his wrist, and a commanding voice shouted,
“Quietus!”

Darkness and drifting, and then the feeling of something soft and yielding beneath him—a grassy hillside. “What happened?” Jarvey asked.

“You did a foolish thing,” a voice answered from the darkness. “A foolish and brave thing.”

“Who's that?”

“You know me as Zoroaster,” the voice answered. Then it called out, “Elizabeth? Are you here as well?”

Someone lurched against Jarvey, and he heard Betsy gasp, “What happened? Where are we?”

“Not in Lunnon,” Zoroaster said firmly. “And not back on Earth, where Tantalus Midion has gone. I believe we are in an unwritten chapter.”

“An unwritten—” Jarvey broke off. “What about my mom and dad?”

“They are somewhere in this,” Zoroaster said, and Jarvey felt something hard thrust against his chest. He closed his hands on the familiar shape of the Grimoire. “Let's have a little light,” Zoroaster said, and immediately a soft blue-white glow surrounded them.

Jarvey gasped. Zoroaster was older, years older, than he had been a few weeks earlier. “What happened to you?”

“Travel,” Zoroaster said. “Travel between the worlds of the Grimoire and the real world. I can slip back and forth, using my own magic. It may or may not surprise you to learn that Zoroaster is not my name, that I am a Midion too.”

“So I am, too,” Betsy whispered. “I'm your cousin, Jarvey.”

“Wh-what?”

“Lord Zoroaster is my grandfather. My mother was—was—”

Zoroaster put his hand on her shoulder. “She was my only daughter. You see, back on Earth, I was Tantalus Midion's bitter enemy. He never actually met me, nor did he realize that my name was truly Midion, but he knew I opposed his evil plans and his use of the Grimoire. He had no hold on me, but he did kidnap my only daughter and force her to come to this terrible place. You see, he thought that if her life were in his power, then I would give up.”

“But you came here—”

“I came here, yes. I took the name of an evil man who had helped Tantalus—but one, like me, whom he had never seen face-to-face. I came here not just to fight Tantalus Midion's magic, but to find and save my daughter.” Zoroaster took a deep breath. “By the time I arrived, she had vanished into the crowds. For years I searched for her, while pretending to be one of Tantalus Midion's helpers. Until I found her, I was unable to face him openly, you see.”

“Did you find her?” asked Jarvey.

“Too late,” Zoroaster whispered. “I found her too late, not more than a year ago. In all that time, I never realized that she had been married to one of Tantalus's hated policemen. Her husband kept her practically a prisoner, until he made Tantalus angry at him. When Tantalus had the man punished, my daughter fled and went into hiding. By the time I found her—”

Betsy was crying. “She's dead,” she said softly. “The note that my grandfather gave you led me to her grave. He was waiting there and explained things to me.”

“Did Tantalus kill her?” Jarvey asked.

“No,” Zoroaster said. “Despair did. The first Transports were immortal in Lunnon—unless they lost the will to live. When her daughter and her husband were taken from her, my Estella simply gave up and died. Possibly no one but a Midion could do that. Death is a way of escape, you know—the final, grimmest kind of escape. No one around her knew about her parentage, though. No one took particular notice of her death—not even Tantalus, who never knew that the man who became one of his advisors was the same one whose daughter he had stolen back on Earth.”

“Here,” Jarvey said, holding the Grimoire out. “Use this to find my parents. You promised.”

Zoroaster sprang back, his expression shocked. “Don't tempt me with that cursed book! It would corrupt and ruin me, as it has others of our family.”

“You promised!”

Turning his face away, Zoroaster said, “Listen, Jarvey: I cannot use the Grimoire because I have studied magic, and its power would change and warp me, turn my good intentions to evil ends. For weary years I have tried to put right the terrible wrongs my kin have done, but I cannot use the Grimoire to find your parents. You will have to find them.”