Nicholas Raven and the Wizards' Web - Volume 1 (49 page)

Jagga sniffed the air the following afternoon, the scent of roasting meat riding upon a thin breeze out of the west. He followed it, tramping through a small field toward a thicket of trees alongside a narrow dirt road. He was cautious at first, but as he neared the road and saw a woman cooking dinner over a fire, he grew less afraid. She was wrapped in a colorful cloak and singing joyfully off tune as she tended to her meal. A brightly painted wagon with a wooden enclosure sat nearby, its pair of back doors open wide to reveal sacks and small barrels of food stuff, rows of shelves filled with glass vials of colorful powders and liquids, stacks of old, tattered books and piles of blankets and animal pelts. The woman looked up as Jagga stood gawking, gazing at the curious sight.

“Hungry, mister?” she asked, smiling at him. “I’m warming up a bit of salted beef if you’d like to join me. Say, I like the look of that hat on you.” Jagga nodded, knowing that the woman wasn’t making fun of him but really meant what she had said. “My name is Carmella. What’s yours?”

After polishing off their meal less than an hour later, they both sat by the fire and sipped hot spiced tea, enjoying a long conversation under the cool sunshine that slowly faded in the west. Jagga was pleased to keep the woman’s company, not feeling the least bit intimidated by her and certain that she felt the same about him.

“Since you say you have no place to go, Jagga, you could work for me,” she suggested. “I’m in desperate need of a driver. Though the trail to my cousin has gone cold, I still need to return home to Red Fern before winter. There you’ll be provided with meals and my stellar company. You can even help me tend to the farm.”

Jagga accepted her offer. “It is better than wandering. I did enough of that for years with the wizard Caldurian.”

“And look where it landed you–sleeping in a cave for twenty years! He’s a wicked character,” Carmella said. “Or so I’ve heard,” she hastily added.

“I don’t fear him anymore. Or Vellan either. They can do nothing to me now.”

“Why’s that?” she asked, adding wood to the fire.

“Because I took the key to that nasty device I told you about earlier. I destroyed it. It is gone now. I threw it away.”

“The key to the Spirit Box?” Carmella sounded skeptical. “How did you get it?”

Jagga explained how he had extracted information about the key’s location from Gavin and eventually stole it from a man named Arthur Weeks, careful to leave out the details of Arthur’s murder. “Now I am a
free
Enâr, the first of my kind.”

“I guess you are,” Carmella said as she sipped her tea while glancing at Jagga over the rim of her cup, suspecting that he was only telling her part of the story. Yet she couldn’t blame Jagga for wanting to escape the likes of Caldurian at any cost. “My cousin Liney had once worked for–”

“Here!” Jagga excitedly said, removing the medallion from around his neck and handing it to Carmella. “You keep this for being nice to me. It’s a gift.”

“A gift for me?” She took hold of the leather string and held up the piece of metal to the firelight. “It’s quite beautiful in a subtle way. Did you make this?”

“Someone made it for me, but I want you to have it. I don’t need it anymore.”

“I’m both honored and flattered,” she said, wrapping her fingers around the medallion. But the moment her skin touched the metal, a shiver coursed though her body for an instant and was gone. She looked at Jagga with vague suspicion.

“Do you not like it?”

“No,” Carmella replied, forcing a smile. “It’s quite lovely. I guess I’m not used to receiving fine gifts from strangers.” She placed the medallion over her neck. “How does it look on me?”

“Good. Very good. You let me drive and farm, so I give you that new gift.”

“New? How long have you had this, Jagga? Maybe you don’t want to part with it so soon.”

“I’d rather someone else have it. I wish to forget about it forever,” he said with a grunt. “You keep that round piece of metal for your kindness, Carmella. Now that it’s an object that can’t hurt me anymore, I–” Jagga caught himself in mid sentence. “I just don’t need it anymore.”

Carmella bowed her head as she held the medallion, suspecting that it might be the melted key when she first sensed the electric spark of magic within it. Now it simply felt cold and lifeless. But Jagga’s last words confirmed her suspicion and she imagined what unsavory paths the Enâr might have tread to recover the key from Arthur Weeks and destroy it. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know that answer while watching the flames reflect off the medallion, deciding not to pursue the subject further. Had she been foolish to hire him as a driver so quickly? Or was her mind unfairly contemplating the worst about Jagga before he had a chance to prove himself? She was uncertain of either as the firelight glowed brilliantly in the encroaching darkness.

Carmella invited Nicholas, Megan and Leo to stay for dinner, agreeing to ride with them to Morrenwood first thing in the morning. She quietly promised that she would also answer their questions about Jagga after he left to gather more firewood, thinking it impolite to talk about him while he was in earshot. She could tell by her guests’ stunned expressions that they had much to ask her. After their meal, Jagga excused himself to search for more wood in the remaining daylight, preferring solitude to the crowded campfire. The others enjoyed another cup of tea with their conversation, listening to Carmella talk about how she had met Jagga and what he had told her about his recent awakening.

“Though he has taken to my company,” she said, “Jagga is wary around strangers. After living under Vellan and Caldurian’s thumb, I’m not surprised he is so untrusting.”

“I can’t believe I’ve actually seen an Enâri creature,” Nicholas said, somewhat troubled. “After all this time, they’ve finally been released from their sleep, but I wonder why now? And how? Even after all the stories I’d heard growing up in Kanesbury, a part of me doubted their existence.”

“The Enâri are real,” Carmella assured him. “And Caldurian is real, too.”

“But how can you trust Jagga?” Megan asked. “Don’t you fear he may hurt you? Nicholas told me stories about how they attacked his village twenty years ago.”

“Back then, Jagga was part of a group of five hundred under Caldurian’s control,” she explained. “Now he is free which changes one’s perspective on life. But there’s something else.” Carmella revealed the medallion she wore hidden under her dress, holding it up to the firelight. “He gave me this, his words suggesting that it was once the key to the Spirit Box which could destroy his race if ever opened. You must have heard of that, Nicholas.”

He noted that he had, though believing the Spirit Box was just another part of a convoluted legend. “And you think that your medallion was once the key?”

“I felt magic within the metal,” she said, putting the medallion back on and concealing it from view. “But since my training is limited, I can’t say for sure. A full wizard would have to examine the item to be certain. Still, I believe Jagga told me the truth about the key he stole, what little he told me. There are details he left out. Darker details, I’m sure. If Vellan or Caldurian ever confronted Jagga about this matter, I can’t imagine what misery would befall him. Caldurian
can
show a temper,” she said.

Leo looked askance at Carmella, for a moment wondering who exactly they had eaten dinner with. “Are you saying that you know Caldurian?”

“Of course I do, Leo,” she casually replied. “He was the wizard who trained my cousin Liney and me.”

Megan listened in shock. “You’ve associated with Caldurian?”

Carmella nodded. “Yes, but don’t be so quick to judge. It was twenty years ago, Megan, and only for a month. As soon as I learned of his devious undertakings, I was prepared to turn him in to the royal authorities in Morrenwood.” She recalled that troubled episode in her youth with sadness and regret. “Unfortunately, Caldurian and Liney fled my farm in Red Fern and escaped east to the Cumberland Forest with five hundred Enâri in tow, causing all sorts of trouble there as I learned many months later.”

“Kanesbury lies on the northern tip of the Cumberland,” Nicholas said. “All of that trouble landed upon
us
!”

“Carmella, tell us how Caldurian ended up at your home in the first place,” Megan said as she nibbled on a biscuit with her tea. “How did you ever meet the wizard?”

“I met him through my cousin. They showed up at my house one autumn day, asking to stay awhile though not offering many specifics about why. I hadn’t seen Liney in months and was happy to have her as a guest, though I sensed she was in trouble,” she said. “I was suspicious of Caldurian at first, wondering how Liney had met him. But when I found out he was a wizard and had started training my cousin in the magic arts, I asked if he might train me, too. Caldurian agreed, and so for the next month Liney and I learned much, though she was always a better practitioner of magic than I. It must be her excruciatingly serious temperament. I had no idea then that Caldurian was an apprentice to Vellan. And the group of Enâri who were traveling with Caldurian had hid in the wooded hills less than a mile from my farm. I didn’t find out about them until just before Caldurian and Liney fled. It was a hectic month near the end.”

“I can imagine,” Megan said. “But how did your cousin meet the wizard? Had she known him long?”

“Not very,” Carmella replied as she waved her thin hands over the crackling flames, savoring the warmth. “Liney worked as a nursemaid in the Blue Citadel, and it was there that she first encountered the wizard, smitten by his hypnotic presence the instant she laid eyes on him. He recruited her for a scheme of his, and when it failed, they retreated to my home, only leaving after I found out what they had been up to.”

Upon hearing those words, Megan, Nicholas and Leo stared at Carmella as if all had been struck speechless, not believing what she had just said. She gazed back at the trio, wondering what part of her story had suddenly intrigued them to such an extent.

“Liney was a nursemaid?” Megan asked. “In the Citadel?”

“Yes. She worked for–”

“–Prince Gregory and his wife, taking care of their infant, Princess Megan,” Leo said to Carmella’s complete surprise.

“How could you know that?” she asked, quickly pulling her pumpkin-colored hands away from the fire. “Are you a mind reader?”

Nicholas chuckled. “None of us are, Carmella. But you’ll find out that we’re full of interesting facts about your cousin Madeline.”

Carmella stood up, hers arms akimbo as she scanned the faces of her guests. “How do you know Liney’s real name? I haven’t called her Madeline since we were children.”

Leo looked at Megan with a crooked grin. “I suppose we should tell her.”

“Tell me what?” she asked as she sat back down by the fire, a trace of worry in her voice. “Something about Liney? If you know the whereabouts of my cousin, please tell me. I must find her.”

Megan nodded. “Your cousin was involved in a kidnapping plot–”

“–of Princess Megan when she was an infant,” Carmella said. “Yes, I learned about that incident years ago. But do you have any recent information about Liney?”

“We do,” Megan said, “and it’s pretty much the same story. Madeline was involved in a second kidnapping plot of Princess Megan several days ago in the village of Boros, but it failed.”

Carmella furrowed her brow, perplexed at what she was hearing. “A second kidnapping? Of the princess? How is that even possible? And if it were true, how do you know that it failed?”

Megan sighed, a slight smile upon her face. “It failed because I am here, Carmella, and not with your cousin.”

“I still don’t understand,” she said. “What does Liney–or her attempted kidnapping of the princess–have to do with you, Megan? How did all of you even learn about my cousin? And where did…?” Her eyes opened wide when the reality of the situation dawned on her. “Megan.
Megan
?” Carmella leaned back, her mouth agape, wondering how she could have been so blind. “You’re
that
Megan
?”

Nicholas nodded. “Yes, Carmella.
That
Megan. Though Leo and I couldn’t believe she was a princess at first either.”

“Oh, I believe it,” Carmella replied, gazing at the King’s granddaughter sitting in front of the campfire in the middle of nowhere and enjoying some of her homemade biscuits. “I don’t know why, but I believe your story completely. After all, I have an Enâri driver, so why should this sudden twist surprise me?”

Carmella listened with hushed astonishment as Nicholas and Leo spoke of Megan’s failed abduction at the Plum Orchard Inn, the switching of identities in Boros, and the subsequent attempt to rescue Ivy along the grassy coastline of the Trillium Sea. That Madeline had once again dirtied her hands with kidnapping made Carmella furious, but to learn that her cousin was also plotting with a shipload of lawless thugs from the Northern Isles nearly sent her into fits.

She shook her head in dismay. “I’m ashamed to be related to that woman, but I’m not surprised by her activities. After all, if she could do a deed as despicable as this to her own cousin,” she said, holding up her colorful hands for all to see, “then what other fiendish and depraved depths wouldn’t she sink to?”

“How did that happen?” Leo asked, indicating her hands.