Jinx's Fire (8 page)

“It's not,” Jinx admitted. “But it's, um, a step.”

“Hm.” Witch Seymour's thoughts roiled purple and blue . . . but there wasn't any struggle, Jinx realized. The witch had already decided to help, and was merely spinning things out because it amused him, and because he was annoyed with them for waking him up.

Jinx turned to Elfwyn. “What can—”

“No questions,” said Elfwyn irritably.

“I was
wondering
,” said Jinx, “what kind of magic a witch can do that might help us.”

“Illusions,” said Elfwyn promptly.

“Really?” Jinx was so surprised he forgot not to make it a question.

“Yes,” said Elfwyn.

“But how—” Jinx stopped himself in time. “I thought witches' spells used the lifeforce power of whoever they were bespelling.”

“Quite,” said Witch Seymour, amused.

“Right,” said Elfwyn. “Witchcraft illusion uses a person's lifeforce power to make them think they're seeing something they're not really seeing.”

“Gingerbread houses!” said Jinx.

“Yes,” said Witch Seymour. “Though I myself have always found gingerbread-oriented witches fearsomely dull.”

“Great!” Jinx turned to Elfwyn. “We might not have to set anybody on fire.”

“Set people on fire?” said Witch Seymour. “One would certainly hope not.”

“Why didn't you use illusions to drive the ruffians off when they attacked your cottage?” said Jinx.

“Illusions can only do so much,” said Witch Seymour. “They're useless without axes to back them up.”

The Battle of Blacksmiths' Clearing

“S
hall we go and look now?” said Elfwyn as they left Witch Seymour's house.

“I'll go,” said Jinx.

“You're not the only one who can do a concealment spell,” said Elfwyn.

Jinx shrugged. “Okay.”

He shivered. It was bitterly cold. They went to the Doorway Oak and stepped inside. They looked through into the forest outside Blacksmiths' Clearing. All Jinx could see was the dark shapes of trees, black against blackness. Cautiously, he stepped through, and quickly drew a concealment spell around him.

He sensed Elfwyn beside him—she had also made a concealment spell, and hers was stronger than his. Jinx hadn't been able to find the Urwald's lifeforce at all. What was happening to it?

They stood, and looked around.

I could build that ward tunnel now, thought Jinx. But he couldn't reach the Urwald's power, and as soon as he moved an arm to do the spell, his concealment spell broke.

“Intruder!” barked a voice.

Then a sword flashed out of the darkness. Jinx grabbed Elfwyn and stumbled through the doorpath. They leaned against the safe, rotting walls of the Doorway Oak. Jinx could feel his heart racing.

“So now we know they're on guard all night,” said Elfwyn.

“And they're guarding the Doorway,” said Jinx.

“That means we'll have to get rid of two bunches of them,” said Elfwyn. “The ones around the Doorway and the ones around Blacksmiths' Clearing. We'll need a second Doorway.”

People were not pleased to learn that Jinx and Elfwyn had changed the plan without asking them. They grumbled. They said that you couldn't trust magicians. Elfwyn retorted that if they didn't trust magicians, then fine, they could attack without magical help.

“Well, of course we trust
you
, Truthspeaker,” someone said, and there were murmurs of agreement.

The night of the battle was, Jinx was relieved to find, slightly warmer, no colder than an ordinary autumn night. The moon was full. The Urwalders gathered around the Doorway Oak, dividing into attack groups, each one headed by someone who was able to work the doorpath and could draw the others through.

Suddenly a butter churn appeared in the air in midswoop. It thumped to the ground, sending the Urwalders stumbling and scattering out of its way.

Dame Glammer cackled as people picked themselves up off the ground. “Am I late, dearies?”

“What are you doing here?” said Jinx.

“One invited her,” said Witch Seymour. “Well, to be perfectly honest, one pleaded.”

“Need a few illusions, do you, chipmunk? Need dragons?”

“Yes, please,” said Jinx.

“Werewolves,” someone suggested.

“Firebirds.”

“Werechipmunks, werebears.”

“Ogres and trolls.”

“You see, I can only do about half of those,” Witch Seymour said, only loudly enough for Jinx to hear. “And my ogres tend to fall apart.”

“I'm just surprised you could get her,” said Jinx. “I can never tell whose side she's on.”

A little puff of surprise from Witch Seymour. “Her own, of course. The same as any other witch.”

“We'll put you on the second door, Dame Glammer,” said Sophie. “All right, first-door attackers—line up behind Witch Seymour.”

Jinx had to imagine what the next few seconds looked like to Reven's soldiers. A pile of monsters—ogres, trolls, a burst of firebirds, perhaps a dragon or two—rolled out of nowhere and lunged at them. As the soldiers stumbled back, Urwalders swinging axes leapt into existence.

As soon as the first party was through, Jinx drew on the knowledge of those behind him and
knew
a doorpath to a place just outside the Blacksmiths' Clearing ward. When he looked through the new Doorway, there were soldiers all over the place, running and shouting.

Beside him, Dame Glammer grinned, and Jinx saw a flash of fire as an enormous dragon appeared high in the air and swooped down toward the soldiers. Then, to Jinx's surprise, she hopped through the Doorway in her butter churn.

“Right,” said Jinx to the people around him. “Come on. And remember the monsters aren't real.”

Jinx stepped through with Elfwyn beside him.

Dark figures struggled in the moonlight. Axes swung.
Swords flashed. There were screams and grunts.

“They're not real!” a man yelled, in a Keylish accent. “The monsters ain't real!”

Jinx set his clothes on fire.

He stood back to back with Elfwyn. Neither of them had an ax. They just had fire, and it took time, and concentration. They were supposed to be watching the other Doorway, waiting for it to be clear so they could move in and build the ward tunnel. But in the confusion, Jinx couldn't even be sure where the other Doorway was.

“Let's get closer to the—”

“Why aren't the blacksmiths fighting?” said Elfwyn.

“I don't know.” Jinx ran toward the battle. It was hard to tell who was who. But he knew his people didn't have swords, so every time he saw a sword swing, he set its owner's clothes on fire.

He tripped over something, and fell to the ground. A man towered over him, raising a sword. Jinx dodged as the sword point came down. The sword swung around, fast, and Jinx rolled to escape it. He bumped into the thing he'd tripped over and realized it was a body.

Then suddenly a glowing green dragon's head surged up out of the ground. The soldier raised his arm to shield his face from its nonexistent flame, and a butter churn landed on top of him.

Dame Glammer reached down and grabbed the sword
from the stunned soldier's hand. “Isn't there something you're supposed to be doing, chipmunk?”

Oh. Right. Him and Elfwyn. “Where's—”

“No time for ‘where's.' Take this, and don't cut yourself. Run!”

Jinx grabbed the sword—though he had no idea how to use it—and ran toward the first Doorway. It was supposed to be Elfwyn and him together making the ward tunnel, but he didn't know where Elfwyn was and there wasn't time to find her.

Jinx reached the other Doorway. Now . . . concentrate. Jinx struggled for the trees' power, then gave up and used his own. He formed the ward spell into an arch overhead, and began walking slowly toward the Blacksmiths' Clearing, drawing the spell after him. He wished that he had Elfwyn to help him, or that the witches could have helped. But ward spells weren't a part of witches' magic.

So far no one had seen him. He had to turn aside, once, to avoid a fierce struggle. He couldn't interfere because he needed to do
this
; this was the whole point of the attack.

He had to make the ward spell go right over another dead body. Jinx didn't break concentration to look at it.

Once a sword swung at him, and skittered off the ward. Jinx ignored it, and kept working on the spell.

At last he reached the Blacksmith's Clearing ward. He passed through into it.

There was a crowd of people standing around, some holding axes, all looking uncertain.

“Why aren't you guys out there?” Jinx demanded. “We're doing this for you!”

“We didn't know that,” said a blacksmith. “We just heard fighting, is all.”

“They didn't believe me,” Elfwyn yelled. She was standing outside the ward, unable to get through. “I tried to tell them, but they think I'm a spy or something!”

Jinx was enormously relieved to see her, even though she was furious. “Come on,” he said. “You've got to help me strengthen the ward tunnel. And you guys”—he turned to the blacksmiths—“have got to go out and fight! There's not enough of us Urwalders!”

“And how are we supposed to know the Urwalders from the Keylanders?”

“We're the ones with axes!” Jinx yelled.

“You have a sword,” said a woman “And some of the Keylanders have axes.”

Jinx threw his sword down and cursed. “Just go! And when you see a green flash in the sky, retreat.”

Elfwyn and Jinx worked feverishly on the ward tunnel. They strengthened it as much as they could. And then they hurriedly told it all the people it had to let pass through.

“I think that's as good as we're going to get it,” said Elfwyn, and she sent up the green flash.

Under a cover of dragons and firebirds, the Urwalders
fled to the Doorways, Reven's soldiers in pursuit. Jinx and Elfwyn stood by to hand people through. Jinx was looking around desperately for Sophie, and was relieved when he finally saw her staggering toward the Doorway, carrying someone over her shoulder.

He hurried to help her. The someone was his ex-stepmother, Cottawilda, and she was still alive.

“Jinx, what happened to you?” Sophie asked, as everyone stumbled into the kitchen.

“Nothing,” said Jinx, looking down at himself. He was covered in blood. “It must have come from—”

Then he noticed he was bleeding from several cuts on his legs and one on his arm.

In stories, when a young man is handed a sword for the first time he instantly knows how to use it. In real life, when you run around in the dark carrying a long, double-edged knife, you generally end up cutting yourself. And that was what Jinx had done.

“It's no big deal,” he said.

The battle had changed them.

Three Urwalders had died. One of them had been Oswald, who hadn't wanted to fight in the first place. Jinx felt awful about this.

He expected people to be angry. But they weren't. Instead, they pulled closer together. The divide between westerners and the people of Simon's clearing seemed to
have slipped somewhat. They were all Urwalders.

Cottawilda lay on the huge stone stove, with her bandaged arms and legs elevated. She was very pale and rather pleased with herself.

“We need a battle cry,” she said. “So that next time, the people we're trying to rescue will know who we are.”

“The Urwald,” said Jinx promptly.

“The Urwald!” cried small Silas. He jumped down from the high stone stove, and Jinx caught him.

Jinx was glad to see that people weren't discouraged.
He
was discouraged. They'd only fought a small portion of Reven's forces. They'd used the best magic they could manage. And though they had done what they'd set out to do—built the ward tunnel—their utmost efforts had succeeded in driving off Reven's soldiers for about five minutes.

In fact, the only thing the Urwalders could do in this war was lose it. Jinx kept that thought to himself.

It was only in the south wing, to Sophie and Elfwyn, that Jinx said what he really thought.

“We can't fight them without more magic. There's just too many of them.”

He was lying on his pallet, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of Simon's workroom. Sophie was sitting on the stool, and Elfwyn on the workbench.

“You need to learn to use something else for power,” said Elfwyn.

Jinx wondered what. There was Simon's bottled lifeforce, but he could no longer sense any power coming from it at all. He looked over at the bottle in Sophie's hands. The Simon in the bottle breathed so shallowly that sometimes you had to stare for a long time to see that the tiny chest was moving at all.

Besides, he didn't want Simon's lifeforce for power. He wanted it back in
Simon
.

There was Calvin, of course, but Jinx absolutely was not in any way ever going to use the skull for power. Calvin was a deathforce power source.

Jinx had tried to learn the chants and chalk drawings and stuff that Elfwyn knew, but he wasn't very good at it. Chanting just made him feel silly. And it wouldn't be anything close to the amount of power he was used to having—and needed, if he was going to defend the Urwald.

He needed to get the Urwald's power back. And he needed Simon.

But there was no way to get him. No possible way.

“I don't understand what's happened to the Urwald's lifeforce,” said Sophie. “Is it because it's nearly winter?”

“No,” said Jinx. “The power's always been there in the winter before.” He put his feet up in the air and thought. “It's not the cold weather that's making the power go away. It's almost like it's the other way round.”

A blue tangle of confusion from Sophie. “The power going away makes the weather cold?”

“Right.” Jinx knew this sounded ridiculous. He sat up.

“What could be making the weather cold?” said Sophie.

Jinx shrugged. He felt sure it was the Bonemaster, but he felt stupid saying it.

“The Bonemaster,” said Elfwyn. “There was that ice he put Simon in.”

Jinx put his hands flat on the pallet and walked his feet up the wall. “The Paths of Fire and Ice,” he said.

“But they've always been there,” said Sophie.

“This has something to do with—” Jinx found it rather hard to breathe in this position. “What he's done to Simon.”

Gingerly he moved his feet off of the wall so that he was standing on his hands. Dust fell off his socks into his face.