Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders (9 page)

The high wizard's pocket didn't stop ringing during their entire walk. Tara saw Chem pull out a fist-sized crystal ball. It was clearly the local equivalent of a cell phone, but one that would've made Earth geeks green with envy. Not only could the ball project perfectly clear sound and images of the person calling, but it didn't drop calls every two minutes! To Tara's amusement, the exasperated wizard finally waved his hand over the ball three times, switching it off.

Chem and Tara barely avoided being run down by a battalion of brooms that were sweeping the hallway, swaying to the tune of a flute being played by a sweaty spellbinder. A little farther on, another spellbinder was trying to order a water elemental to take its dirty water outside. The irritated elemental retaliated by releasing a huge wave of soapsuds.

This time, Tara decided she wasn't going to budge. She'd been fooled once, by the crevasse, and she didn't want to look stupid a second time. So she was very surprised when hundreds of gallons of cold, soapy water crashed down on her. Soaked and spluttering, she then found herself surrounded by fish and corals, including a huge shark that was looking at her hungrily. She staggered to her feet, shrieking. The Castle realized that she was frightened and replaced the underwater seascape with a pretty meadow. Nimbly hopping around the puddles, Chem caught up with her. He was followed by an excited Manitou, who energetically shook himself, soaking Tara all over again.

“Why didn't you get out of the way of the water, dear?” Chem asked.

“Because I thought it was one of those lousy illusions again,” snapped Tara, literally foaming at the mouth.

The young spellbinder who had unleashed the deluge came running. “I'm terribly sorry!” he exclaimed. “I'll fix things right away!”

He waved his hands at Tara and yelled, “Dry!”

A warm wind filled the hallway, immediately drying everything and everyone in it. But Chem scowled at the young man.

“‘
Dry
'? What do you mean, ‘
Dry
'? Couldn't you come up with a spell with a little more style? Something like, ‘By Cleanus and Dryus, the rose and the thistle, make the pretty young spellbinder clean as a whistle'? What will people think if we start saying things like, ‘Dry'? We're
magicians
, for heaven's sake, not washerwomen!”

Ignoring the young spellbinder's embarrassed apologies, Chem stomped off down the hallway, followed by Tara, who was trying hard not to laugh. The old wizard looked so offended!

As they turned a corner, an affectionate mop suddenly wrapped itself around Chem's head, who in turn started spluttering and hiccoughing as he tried to get it off. A frantic, red-faced spellbinder ran to free him, and this time Tara couldn't contain her laughter. With his hair now standing on end, Master Chem looked more like an owl than ever!

They continued their walk, seeing pages and squires racing this way and that, and Tara began to grasp how enormous the Living Castle was. When they passed a row of warrior statues in dramatically aggressive poses, Chem quickly pulled her to one side. Under Tara's astonished eyes, one of the statues came to life, stretched, and shook off the dust covering it. (In the process, it evicted a pair of resident spiders who felt the neighborhood was getting a little too lively.) The other statues did likewise, in a great creaking of marble, and Tara found herself dodging the huge bodies. The statues clearly didn't bother noticing whether someone was in front of them.

A sudden noise caught her attention, and she was alarmed to see people bending over, as if they were having terrible convulsions.

Her heart skipped a beat. Were the Bloodgraves attacking?

“What're we gonna do?” she yelled at the wizard.

He gave her a look of surprise, while fighting a persistent hiccough.

“Nothing special Just do like everyone else when he passes you.”

The cause of the courtiers' convulsions was approaching, and she realized that the people weren't vomiting, but respectfully bowing to a . . . Tara gasped, hardly able to believe her eyes. The thing before them wore a chic bonnet with a splendid yellow plume and a handsome blue cape held by a beautifully engraved silver brooch. This artistic ensemble covered a creature with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tale of a dragon.

The thing gravely greeted the old wizard, who nodded, then peered searchingly at Tara before going on its way.

She whispered: “By Demiderus, as my grandmother would say, what the heck was
that
?”

“Haven't you ever seen a chimera before? That's Salatar, the king and queen's first counselor. A very cunning old rascal. If he asks you any questions tomorrow, be careful how you answer. Chimeras can't be beat when it comes to worming information out of people.”

Tara was too busy straining to see the departing chimera to reply, and Chem had to tug on her hand to get her moving again.

Still hiccoughing, he led Tara through a normal door into a normal office—meaning one whose walls didn't change every five minutes. A huge desk littered with papers filled half the room, a powerful computer stood off to one side, and two very uncomfortable-looking chairs faced an executive armchair worthy of a multinational corporate CEO.

The wizard waved her to one chair and took the other. But after squirming for a moment, he roared between two hiccups: “Lady Kalibris! We aren't a pair of kitchen scullions being reprimanded Give us some decent chairs, by Demiderus! ”

“Oops, I'm so sorry, I was practicing!” spoke a voice. “The more uncomfortable the chair, the more ill at ease the guilty party feels. Of course it's different for you.”

A second voice chimed in: “By Transformus new chairs quickly, please, so my guests can recline at their ease.”

Tara felt something moving beneath her, and she suddenly sank into a soft easy chair.

Lady Kalibris appeared, and to Tara's amazement she saw one body, two legs, two arms, and—she gasped—two heads!

The heads leaned close, observing her carefully.

“So this is the—” said the first head.

“— famous Tara'tylanhnem Duncan,” said the second.

“Welcome, dear.”

“We're pleased to meet you.”

“We are Lady Kalibris. I am Dana Kalibris,” said the first head.

“And I am Clara Kalibris,” said the second.

“Did you have—”

“—a good trip?”

“Yes, thank you. Lady . . . ladies,” stammered the fascinated girl.

“She is very—”

“—well mannered. Isabella has—”

“—done a good job, I see.”

“Tell us, dear Chem, what exactly—”

“—happened? Our informa—”

“Chem? Chem?”

Talking at once and interrupting each other, the two heads spoke to the old wizard, who was turning an alarming color. He gave an even bigger hiccup, and Lady Kalibris barely had time to pull Tara and Manitou to safety.

After a hiccup stronger than the ones before, Master Chem started to swell. Under Tara's horrified eyes, he grew and grew. His face changed, lengthened, and grew monstrous fangs. His arms and legs stretched. Blue and silver scales appeared on his body. A sharp crest rose on his back, ripping his robe. Claws the size of swords sprouted from his fingers. His enormous wings began to beat, blowing papers everywhere.

In the old wizard's place now stood a terrifying dragon, and Tara and Manitou couldn't repress moans of fear.

“Ouch!” howled the monster when it banged its head on the ceiling and brought several chunks of stone crashing down.

“Tara? Lady Kalibris? Where did you go?” rumbled the dragon, in a voice so low that the walls shook.

Tara almost burst into tears. Enemies had obviously cast a spell on the wizard, and now he was going to devour them all! Manitou was trying desperately to squeeze even farther beneath the furniture.

Then Lady Kalibris came out from under her desk, and both her heads bravely confronted the dragon.

“You should be—”

“—ashamed of yourself!”

“Shape-shifting right here in our office—”

“—and trampling half our papers!”

“So change yourself back—”

“—and make it snappy!”

The dragon looked sheepish.

“I'm terribly sorry,” he rumbled. “You know that happens to me when I get the hiccups.”

“Yes, we know!”

“But didn't Shaman Night Bird gave you some medicine—” “—to control that?”

The dragon hung its head.

“I hate the taste of that stuff! It's yucky!”

“Well, that may be reason enough for you, but—”

“—it doesn't cut it with us!”

“All right, all right, I'll start taking it. Stand back, and I'll change. ‘By Alakazam transform this state, from my dragon to my human shape.'”

Within seconds, the dragon began to shrink, losing fangs and claws, wings and scales. The old wizard appeared in its place and quickly snatched a robe that materialized and wrapped it around himself.

Tara suddenly realized that she had stopped breathing some time ago. She took a deep breath, wondering how many more shocks her nervous system could stand.

Lady Kalibris seemed satisfied.

“Very well then—”

“—as we were saying, we don't exactly know—”

“—everything that happened back on Earth.”

Chem cast a spell, and the two armchairs he had flattened popped back to their previous shapes. He sat down in one and gazed kindly at Tara, who cautiously remained huddled behind the desk.

“Come here, Tara,” he ordered gently, ignoring Lady Kalibris for the time being. “I'm not going to eat you!”

“I'm not so sure about that,” she said in a trembling voice. “After all, you just changed into a dragon!”

“No, I didn't.”

“What do you mean you didn't?”

“I changed
back
into a human. A dragon is what I am.”

All things considered, Tara felt that behind the desk was a fine place to be. Solid. Massive. No reason to leave it—ever—because the wizard had obviously blown a major gasket.

“Okay, sure,” she said sarcastically. “You're a dragon and you turn into a human. And everybody knows all about it.”

“You don't seem to believe me,” he said. “I can show you, if you like!”

“
Nooooo
!” three voices shouted at once, and their cry rent the air.

“If you say you're a dragon, fine—you're a dragon,” said Tara very quickly. “I have
no
problem with that.”

“Then come out from behind that desk and sit down. And reassure Manitou. I don't eat children, and I don't eat old spellbinders who've turned themselves into pooches.”

Tara cautiously walked to the armchair, while giving Manitou a look of regret. The dog was no fool, though, and absolutely refused to come out.

Chem looked at the girl perched at the very edge of her chair, ready to flee at any moment, and sighed.

“I have been the head of the High Council of Wizards for hundreds of years,” he said. “I have trained generations of wizards and spellbinders to master their magic. You humans have gifts that we find fascinating. And we dragons live so long! Do you know what our worst enemy is?”

“Hunger?”

“Insanity,” he said. “We risk going insane. Those who do rampage like a plague through other peoples' worlds, destroying everything in their path, until they are killed like mad dogs. And since we're somewhat bigger than dogs that can take several years. When we roamed the Earth, some of those crazy dragons decimated entire human peoples. They are the main reason that you invented armor, and especially spears. It's the only weapon that can bring down a mad dragon.”

Tara gulped, feeling very ill at ease. How did one know when a dragon had gone nuts? When it bit off an arm or two? It was just another thing for her to worry about.

The dragon wizard continued: “To avoid that kind of . . . problem, we take special pains not to sink into madness.”

“And what if you fail?” asked Tara, now engrossed in the story.

The answer was heavy and implacable: “We die.”

“But that's not about to—”

“—happen here!” said Dana and Clara, who had started picking up their papers.

“Because this is—”

“—a real madhouse—”

“—in the true sense of the word!”

“You're right,” said the wizard with a smile. “Here, the humans are the crazy ones. But let's talk about our little Tara. She was revealed at . . . how old were you when you first used your gift?”

“I was nine.”

Chem gave her a surprised look, but made no comment.

“Oh, really? Very well. Her grandmother Isabella was attacked by a— sorry, by
two
Bloodgraves, including their famous leader, Magister, the source of all our problems. Tara behaved admirably. Not only did she manage to escape but she redirected a kind of new ray that can both petrify and carbonize back at the Bloodgrave who fired it. Finally, her familiar isn't really a familiar, but her greatgrandfather who has come along to protect her.”

“What an—”

“—incredible story!”

“I can give you further details later. For the moment the only thing we know for sure is that the Bloodgraves would give a lot to capture her. So I took her with me while Isabella puts the necessary precautions in place. It was the best I could come up with.”

“Well, that's obviously—”

“—the right tack to take. Those—”

“—idiots wouldn't try anything here!”

“They're all mouth—”

“—and no trousers!”

“Ladies, please!” the wizard interrupted. “Can we register the girl for her accreditation under the name she has chosen for herself, Tara Duncan?”

“Tara, short for Tara'tylanhnem? That's—”