Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders (15 page)

“Well, duh!” said Cal sarcastically. “Of course she would have disappeared!”

But Fabrice grasped what Sparrow was suggesting.

“She would have disappeared,” he said, “just like the four apprentices last year!”

The others exchanged astonished looks.

“My god, you're right! You think there's a connection?”

Tara thought hard as she chewed on her white forelock.

“In any case, Dragosh is mixed up in it, one way or another,” she said.

The dinner bell interrupted their cogitations.

“Oh, we better go,” Tara said.

She jumped up, but Fabrice held her back.

“Aren't you forgetting something?” he asked, pointing to her glittering robe.

She smiled. “You're right! I almost forgot.”

Tara made her horses disappear so casually—almost without thinking about it—that Fabrice felt envious. He'd already realized that his book learning wouldn't be of much use to him on OtherWorld, and that while his gift was real, it didn't seem very powerful compared to Tara's.

When the friends entered the dining hall, the other apprentices' eyes all went to their unadorned robes. Angelica made a nasty crack about Tara having pets who followed her around like puppies.

After dinner Tara returned to the library to borrow some books on OtherWorld life and customs, such as the blood oath, and bid her friends goodnight. After brushing her teeth, she spent some time helping Sparrow get settled in the apprentices' dormitory.

Right away, Tara noticed that Sparrow's clothes were quite beautiful. That struck her as odd, since the girl had said her parents weren't wealthy. The fabrics were . . . strange. Nothing in their textures or colors looked like anything on Earth. Sparrow explained that what Tara thought was white fur was actually glavie
,
a plant that grew in the mountains of Gandis, the land of giants. The bluish leather of a pair of pants was really the tanned hide of a spalendital, a kind of giant scorpion found in Smallcountry, the land of gnomes and imps. The silk had been woven by aragnes, a species of giant spiders raised by gnomes, who also used them for riding.

After hearing Sparrow's explanations, Tare decided not to ask what her own robes were made of. She didn't want to find out that the beautiful fabric had been woven from the snot of some weird animal.

Once Sparrow was settled, Tara climbed into bed to read her interesting book. She learned that the blood oath was indeed a warrior custom. If a warrior's friends were killed as a result of treachery, the survivor had to swear to avenge them or to carry out any task that they gave him. If the survivor didn't keep his promise, he died—the spirit of the dead came and carried him off. The curse could only be lifted by a blood relative of the dead person, provided that he or she was not the reason for the oath.

“Rats!” Tara swore.

That meant that she herself couldn't cancel her grandmother's promise. She had to find a blood relative of her father to release Isabella from her word. Manitou couldn't do it because he was her grandmother's father. And even if Tara found her own mother, she couldn't do anything, either.

“Rats again!”

From what she'd gathered from the overheard conversation between her grandmother and the count, Isabella had promised Tara's father that she would never become a wizard. Yet Isabella had encouraged her to use magic to free herself from the paralyzing Pocus spell. This meant that she could use some power, but without knowing what might endanger her grandmother's life. Great!

Tara yawned as she closed the book. Rocked by a warm breeze under a peaceful landscape of desert dunes glowing silver in the moonlight, she slipped into a deep sleep.

At the next morning's meeting, the vampyr merely smiled on seeing the four apprentices' identical plain robes.

They worked on an aqueduct project led by Master Den'maril, and Tara got to learn yet more passages through the Castle as Chem's errand-girl. If this went on, she would know the blasted building like the back of her hand, she thought. The Castle had a lot of fun putting oceans, trenches, streams, and canyons under her feet, and she had to restrain herself from tripping, retreating, or jumping. Her only consolation was that the Castle played the same jokes on all the young spellbinders, pages, and stable hands—not to mention a few courtiers, who were helpless victims of its teasing.

The afternoon was given over to physical training, and Sparrow challenged Tara to a friendly bout of judo. Repeatedly thrown by the slim and seemingly fragile brunette, Tara got to savor the pleasures of gravity in half a dozen rough landings.

Master Chanfrein hid a smile as he watched Tara spitting out the sand she'd eaten in her latest fall and decided to change exercises. He was curious to see how an Earth girl would handle herself in an unusual environment.

He asked the apprentices to follow him to an enormous chamber in a part of the Training Hall that Tara and Fabrice hadn't seen before. Once inside, she realized that it was impossible to tell up from down or right from left in the chamber. This was partly because all four walls were completely covered with vegetation, but mainly because it had no gravity! Tara stepped in, took off, and to her alarm started floating away.

Suddenly a small black box with a big eye, a tiny jet engine, and two wings came to hover in front of her, crying, “Aim, aim!” Below it, a slightly bigger one was yelling, “Shoot, shoot!” A third maneuvered around to get a good angle on her, while repeating, “Zoom, zoom!”‘

“Don't worry about them,” explained Cal, who was comfortably hanging onto a tree. “They're called scoops, and they broadcast our exercises to video screens outside the hall.”

Tara cocked her head and flashed her most dazzling smile. The scoop practically hummed with excitement.

“Your attention, please,” cried Chanfrein. “You are bound to encounter situations in which you can't use magic. In that case you have to make use of your environment. Let's see how you manage here. You have only one goal: to immobilize or neutralize your opponent without magic, just by using your brains. Cal, show Fabrice and Tara how to do it.”

Cal braced himself against the tree and leaped, using his momentum to knock Fabrice to the center of the space. The boy hung suspended there in mid-air, helplessly thrashing around without being able to move an inch.

Tara quickly grasped the game's central feature: unless you had something to hang onto or push against, you lost, because you couldn't move.

At one point, Cal was bumped by Tara and spun around, and also found himself in the center of the chamber. He then did something very strange.

He spat.

It was crude, but effective. It only moved Cal's body about an inch backward, but that was enough for him to reach and grab onto Fabrice. Momentum brought them close enough to the walls so that they could seize them.

Some pages and other spellbinders were training in the hall, and Chanfrein decided to recruit them, creating two teams. The Alpha team would consist of Cal and Fabrice, plus Skyler, Carole, Bea, and Tricia. The Gamma team would be Tara and Sparrow, plus Jane, Tanguy, Mo, and John.

Tara carefully studied the layout of the chamber and its strange vegetation, then signaled to Sparrow and the others to join her behind a grove of trees that would hide them from their opponents' eyes.

“Listen,” she said. “Cal is very individualistic, and Fabrice is awkward with weightlessness. I don't know the others, but I imagine that the Alphas and Gammas are pretty equal. But if we work as a team, we should be able to trap them. Take off your robes.”

Sparrow stared at her in disbelief.

“You want us to d-d-do what?”

Tara flashed her an evil grin.

“Don't worry, I have no intention of sending you out there naked, though I'm sure it would completely rattle the boys, and the scoops would probably make you a star. I just want you to give me a robe—assuming you're wearing something underneath, of course!”

“I'm w-w-wearing shorts and a shirt,” said Sparrow, blushing. “B-b-but what do you want our robes f-f-for?”

When Tara told them, her teammates erupted in admiring laughter. It was a downright diabolical plan, they said, and no one had ever tried it before.

“All right, let's go,” said Tara. “We have to eliminate Cal first. He's probably the most dangerous person on their team.”

Cal, Fabrice, and the rest of the Alphas planned to attack by splitting into two groups and shoving their opponents to the middle of the chamber where there weren't any trees or walls for them to hold onto. So they were completely taken by surprise when Sparrow suddenly came flying toward them at the end of what looked like a rope and shoved Cal into the center of the chamber.

Buzzing with excitement, the amazed scoops started filming the whole scene.

Fabrice drifted to a branch and turned around to figure out what was happening. Meanwhile, John went to grab another tree and sent Mo soaring to neutralize Carole.

Suddenly Cal understood the trick. Tara and the Gamma team had tied their robes together and were now using them as ropes, with a solid anchor at one end and a flying player on the other.

“Hey, that's cheating!” yelled Cal. “You can't do that!”

“Sure they can!” cried Master Chanfrein, smiling at the Gamma team's ingenuity.

Tara, who was stronger and heavier than Sparrow, chose anchors that allowed her to shoot the agile brunette off in any direction she wanted.

After a few minutes' chase around the chamber, Fabrice tried to liberate Cal. But Tara had anticipated his move and sent Sparrow flying toward him just in time. The smaller girl grabbed Fabrice's heels and pushed him into the center of the chamber. He wound up floating near Cal, but not close enough to touch him. Meanwhile Cal was spitting in every direction, but without result.

While Tara and Sparrow were dealing with Fabrice, Tanguy and Jane neutralized Bea. This left only Skyler and Tricia, who had taken refuge in a corner of the chamber they hoped was out of the Gammas' reach and were desperately trying to free their teammates.

Tara assigned Tanguy and Jane to make sure Skyler and Tricia couldn't get near the other floating Alphas, while Mo anchored himself to a tree as close as he could get them. The two Alphas had decided to imitate their opponents, and were feverishly trying to knot their robes together. But Mo didn't give them the chance. He and John linked up with Tara and Sparrow to make a four-person chain. Skyler and Tricia, who thought they were safe in their refuge, now saw Sparrow hurtling toward them. Tricia dropped the robes and Sparrow briskly propelled her to the center of the chamber. She then did the same to Skyler, who found himself floating helplessly before he realized what had happened. The entire Alpha team had been eliminated!

Like demented paparazzi, the feverish scoops crowded around the triumphant winners while a few filmed the disappointed faces of the losers.

“Well done, Gamma team!” shouted Chanfrein. “Congratulations on a very clever plan!”

They grinned at the trainer's praise as he slowly restored gravity, and everyone sank gently to the ground.

“And the winner is . . . the Gamma team!” Chanfrein proclaimed.

Laughing and joshing, the two teams left the hall, surprised by the applause that greeted them outside. Many of the Castle denizens had followed the match live, and flat-screen TVs were now rebroad-casting action shots of Tara's trick.

The story quickly made the rounds of the Castle, and Cal and Fabrice were a little grumpy during dinner. Tara acquired the reputation as a clever tactician, which made Angelica grit her teeth.

The next day, Tara and half the Castle were awakened by an incredible racket. Intrigued, she quickly slipped on jeans and a T-shirt under the light blue spellbinder robe she'd gotten into the habit of wearing.

Cal, Sparrow, and Fabrice, who were just as curious, joined her. Tracking the source of the noise, they were astonished to see a dozen cages containing some very strange beasts. Leaping around in their cages, they shed greasy feathers and shrieked insults at everyone within range.

“I'll be darned!” exclaimed Cal. “Harpies!”

Harpies were hybrids, and female. Their heads and chests were human—Fabrice could hardly bring himself to look at their bare breasts—but their lower body was that of a giant eagle with sharp talons that dripped with a sticky liquid.

“Don't get near them, whatever you do!” shouted Cal as a curious Fabrice seemed about to approach. “Harpies are a plague in Other-World. The high wizards are studying them, but their poison is deadly and so far no one has come up with an antidote.”

“Yikes!” exclaimed Fabrice, retreating cautiously. “Why do they scream like that?”

“Oh, that's how they communicate,” said Cal. “They don't know how to speak normally, and if you want to get their attention you have to talk the way they do. Watch this.”

Cal stepped a little closer and yelled: “Hey, you rotten crow droppings, daughters of crushed worms and cow flop!”

The harpies settled down immediately. One of them hopped to the door of her cage, leaving a trail of smelly feathers behind, cocked her head, and croaked.

“Rhooooo, dinner's just been served, sisters! Check out the yummy little mongrel yapping at us!”

But Cal kept his cool. Bowing sarcastically to the greasy bird-women, he said, “You half-plucked old chickens, you crudbottomed harpies, you eat with your feet and you'd make a jackal vomit!”

“Not too bad” said a second harpy, hopping closer. “But your swearing isn't punchy enough. Try something like this instead.”

The harpy fired a curse that made Cal and Fabrice blush, and Tara and Sparrow gasp.

“Ah, you see?” shrieked the harpy with satisfaction. “It's a matter of getting the right rhythm. Let's try this one.”

The next volley of curses sent Sparrow stumbling backward, hands over her ears. But Tara bravely stood her ground.