Hilda - The Challenge (41 page)

They did get their lazy parts out of the bed
and into some clothes, after which they presented themselves for
breakfast.

"You two are terrible," said the ugly witch,
"it's a good thing I am deaf or I would have been awake all
night."

Hilda screamed for laughter, William was
entirely puzzled by the contradiction in her words. He let himself
be pulled to the table by Hilda.

After breakfast, Hilda and William collected
their things. "We may have to come by again, before our challenge,"
Hilda said, "we should be very aware of the forest."

"I wouldn't bother," Baba Yaga said. "It
changes itself, so there's little point in coming over. It even
confuses me at times. The only thing relatively stable is this
here, where I live."

William frowned. This was relatively stable.
Okay.

"Well, kids, have a nice flight home, do give
me a yell when you got there okay?"

The three exchanged hugs and then Hilda and
William mounted their brooms and headed for home.

The house was glad to see them, once the
chains were gone. "You have missed some company," it reported.

"Oh, really? Who wanted to see us?"

"Hmmm. See would be the least of your
problems," said the house. "It was a small regiment of soldiers
that wanted to take you away."

"Soldiers?" William was surprised that
someone would send soldiers to capture a witch.

"Magical soldiers, William," Hilda
enlightened him, sensing his confusion. "Herald has friendly ties
with Ringeholm and Oxfern, both of whom have legions of
soldier-magicians. And when a horde of those march through Lorn,
there are not many in that kingdom stupid enough to try and stop
them."

"I see..." William boggled at the idea of a
legion of soldier-magicians. Even a dozen would be bad.

"The good news is that they left without
shooting too many arrows in me," the house proclaimed further.
"There probably was not enough visible of me, thanks to the
chains."

"This is something you must remember,
William. The house was glad it was chained up! There's a first!"
Hilda laughed, pulled six arrows from the wood, and they went
inside.

Each arrow carried the same message. Lamador
was shocked about the invitation to the challenge, as this could
not be taken serious. But he accepted.

"I wonder why they shot six arrows with the
same message," said William as he magicked up two glasses of
wine.

"Uhm, sweet man, isn't it a bit early for
that?", Hilda asked. She did take the glass with the diluted wine
though, before he had the option to make it go away.

William took his glass and toasted with
her's. "We'll decide about that after drinking, I'd say. The fact
that Lamador accepted our challenge means something."

"Oh? And what does it mean?", asked Hilda
after taking a good sip.

"I'll let you know when I find out, okay?"
William took a healthy swig from his wine also.

"Well, at least he takes us serious," said
Hilda. "I'll talk to Babs and let her know we've arrived."

William raised her glass to her and sat down
at the table, opening his valued precious book. It made him relax,
looking at the scribbly writing and the pictures. As he paged
through the book, there was something wrong. No, not wrong, he
corrected himself. Different. He just wasn't sure what it was.

Hilda returned to the table. "What are you
looking at?"

"Not sure, it just looks as if it tried to
make sense to me."

Hilda picked up his wine-glass and put it out
of his reach. "I'm afraid, William, that this was indeed too early
for you. When you came here first you said you could only read one
out of every twenty or so pages, and now that page starts making
sense to you? I mean, I can read this because I am a witch. I am
magical."

They looked at each other.

"Oh... suck an elf... you are becoming more
and more magical too..."

William nodded. He held out his hand and his
wine-glass floated to it. "I'll drink to that, Hilda."

They spent the remainder of the morning going
through the book. William managed to decypher one of the spells
that were in it. It was a simple one, to recolour flowers, but
Hilda was amazed that the book salesman turned wizard could
actually read it.

"Gimme," she said then, pulling the book
towards her. Quickly she paged through it, until she reached a page
that was almost at the end of the book. "Can you see what this
says?" She pushed the book under his nose again.

William scratched his nose. "Well, that looks
like an S... That could be a T..." It was obvious that the page
Hilda had selected was still a few steps too high.

"Too bad. I really would love to know what is
written there," Hilda pouted, "I can't read that either."

"Which means?" William looked at Hilda and
touched her hand for a moment.

"Means that we both don't know," she grinned.
"But who knows, maybe the book keeps it up to make more sense to
you. And when you can read it, you can tell me."

"Sorry, sweetwitch, but somewhere in that,
there seems to be a flaw in your logic. You've been able to read a
lot of this since the first time you saw the book, while I could
merely read the nursery rhymes and look at the pictures. And now
you tell me that I may be able to read things that you can't?"

"Sure." Hilda saw his wondering face not
getting any less wondered. "Okay, listen carefully. You are making
the big mistake again. You talk about logic. Now logic is a
wonderful thing, but do not try to substitute that for magic. Magic
is an entirely different beast. It compares to logic like a brick
does to a blackbird." Hilda frowned at that comparison, but as
William did not seem to mind, it was fine with her. "I'm a witch. A
wicked witch, born and raised. You are... uhm... well, you are not
born and raised a witch. I do things, you do things. And magic
assists us in doing what we do, and enables us to make us do it as
well as we can."

"Oh. I see. I didn't know that," said
William.

"Neither did I," said Hilda in response, "I
just made that up, but it sounds pretty convincing, doesn't
it?"

William looked into her eyes. There was no
red, no blue. Just black eyes. He had no clue if she was joking,
being serious or anything else.

"Remember that I am a wicked witch, William.
It is inside me." She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "Now
someone has to go do the rounds. Do you want to come with me, or do
you want to stay here and spend time with your book?"

He knew she was asking that without
wickedness. "I'm coming with you."

She smiled, blue sparks in her eyes.

In the days that followed, they worked on
their plans concerning their challenge. William convinced Hilda
that it would be a sign of fair play to write up the guidelines for
their challenge and send those to Lamador.

"But why? That way he can prepare himself!"
Hilda shook her head. "If ever I heard a stupid thing, it's called
fair play. He doesn't do that either."

"Hilda, you are just wicked. You need to
learn about some other techniques."

"Do they involve magic, flying or sex?"

"No."

"Sorry William, but why should I bother
then?"

"Because perhaps we want to win this
challenge and unsettle our friend Lamador?"

"Hmmf. Really no...?" She looked at him, her
face a question mark.

"Before and after, okay?"

"Yes! Let's start with the before!"

"Hilda..."

They started with the before.

Inbetween the before and the after, Hilda lay
on William, a happy smile on her face. "So what are these
techniques you were blabbing about? I warn you, make it interesting
or I will fall asleep on you and you will have to lie still until I
wake up again."

William could think of a worse fate, but
tried to tell Hilda a thing or two about bending the rules. He had
written the rules for their contest in such a way that for an
untrained reader of writing by an ordinary, the whole thing looked
simple and unambiguous. But, he explained, there were little things
here and there that could also be interpreted in another way. "I
put that on paper quite flexibly," he said.

Hilda frowned and tried to find a hole in his
reasoning. "I don't really get this. You were not lying when you
wrote the paper, right? Still, now you tell me that the paper isn't
exactly telling the truth?"

"It is telling two truths. One for the people
who expect nothing but the obvious truth, one for us. And we can
take advantage of that."

"I hope you are not going to tell me
everything in detail, because then I will fall asleep on you." In
preparation, the wicked witch closed her eyes and tightened her
hold on William's arms.

"I won't. Just trust me on this one."

Hilda nodded. She wiggled herself into a
slightly more comfortable position, did her kitten purr, and
relaxed. The wicked witch was quickly bored that day, William
decided.

The days that separated them from the first
dark moon came and went. Fast. It felt as if magic was toying with
time.

Hilda and William had flown to Baba Yaga's
hut a day early, so they could relax from the flight. As they
arrived there, Babs told them that Lamador and quite a contingent
of his followers had also arrived, and were camping somewhere not
too far away, in a forest patch that did not act like her own piece
of land did.

"He's been a good neighbour," the ugly witch
commented. The three were sitting in the sunshine that miraculously
made its way down through the thick layers of branches and leaves.
"He's stayed off my yard."

"Has he come to see you?", Hilda asked. It
would surprise her if the sorcerer had done that, but it never hurt
to make sure.

"No, he stuck to his own for now. I've seen
his camp as I was messing about in the air a bit. Decided not to
piss him off by making it rain there. Doesn't make things any
better, and he'd stop it in a moment again." Babs looked at the
couple. "So, what are you going to do now?"

"We plan on going to see him," Hilda said,
stumping Baba Yaga.

"You WHAT?"

"Just a courtesy call," grinned William.

"So you are crazy, right? Did that happen
lately, or have you always been like that and you just managed to
hide it?" Baba Yaga shook her head. "Do you know how he is going to
react?"

"No, not really, but as it is our challenge,"
said Hilda, "he is honour bound not to harm us."

"Lamador and honour." Baba Yaga made a sound
that did not convey much respect. "Maybe I should go along, as I am
your referee and judge on fair play."

And so the trio mounted their brooms. William
was wearing ordinary's clothes, and they made itlook as if Hilda
was guiding his broom, so Lamador and his companions would not be
alarmed. It was unthinkable that they would sense William's magic.
If the two witches could not detect it, neither could the sorcerer.
Magic was there or it was not.

Lamador's camp lay in an open spot in a
rather normal stretch of forest. There were giant tents, but
William was certain they were a lot more sturdy and comfortable
than your average camping utitily. There was much colour and
abundance in the camp, colours like yellow, blue and green
prevailed. In several spots there were fires burning, and
everywhere in the camp there were people busy with things.

Their approach had been spotted of course, so
there was quite a reception committee waiting for them. Lamador was
not in sight. That did not surprise them.

It was a group of four, three men and a
woman, all magical people. Hilda wondered if Lamador would have any
non-magical folk with him. Two of the men wore the brown of Earth
Mages, the woman was in blue, signifying her abilities in the air,
and the last man was in plain grey. He could be anything.

"You are the witch who challenged the Great
Lamador." The words were spoken as an accusation, by one of the men
in the long brown robes.

"Yes," said Hilda. "That must have surprised
him."

The man disregarded her. "And you are the
ordinary that has been seen around her."

"You make it sound like a bad thing," said
William. "My name is William Connoley. And who are you?"

The man in brown clearly considered any
further interaction with William below his dignity, as he turned to
Baba Yaga. "And you?"

"Your part-time neighbour and their judge.
Baba Yaga."

The man nodded and walked off.

"Nice chap," William mumbled, "really would
like to go out with him some evening and have a few beers." He had
sensed a lot of magic around the man.

"William. Shush." Hilda was not sure if it
was a good thing to chat about like that.

The three remaining people that made up their
escort did not say a word. They didn't even seem to notice the
three guests. Some commotion happened near one of the large tents.
It was about the largest of them, with lots of magical marks on it.
It had to be the tent of their adversary in the challenge.
Lamador's.

After a while the tent opened and someone
strode out. This was really striding. The majesty beamed off this
person. William would have believed that this was king Herald, had
he not seen the paintings and statues of the king and his sorcerer
in Heraldion.

Lamador was followed by the man in brown, who
kept a respectful distance. People moved to the side as the great
sorcerer approached and passed by, as if they were driven aside by
a bulldozer. The Great Lamador wore a deep blue robe with gold
stitchwork on it. There were dragons and moons on it, and some
strange creatures that William did not recognise. On the man's head
lay some kind of square blue cloth with small white pompoms on the
ends, making the sorcerer look quite ridiculous.