The Magician's Dream (Oona Crate Mystery: book 3) (5 page)

Oona took her place beside the slowly breathing desk, glancing at Deacon as she did so. He was shifting nervously from one foot to the other. Samuligan stood directly in front of her, his menacing armor clinking as he, too, shifted from side to side.

“May the best man win,” the faerie said.

“But you are not a man, and neither am I,” she said.

“Lucky for us,” he said, his eyes flashing wide. “I’m pretty sure a man could not do this.”

The faerie tilted his head back and pulled a three-foot broad sword from his mouth.

Deacon tutted from the mantel. “A carnival man’s trick.”

Samuligan raised an eyebrow at the raven. “Ah, but could a carnival man do this, as well?”

And to everyone’s astonishment, he raised a gauntleted hand to his mouth and withdrew an entire wooden shield, the edges stretching his grin bizarrely as it slid from the cavern of his mouth and slipped quite neatly onto his forearm. Upon the surface of the shield was a painting of Samuligan’s own face, one eye closed in a perpetual wink.

“Now you’re just showing off,” Deacon said, though he could not mask his tone of amazement.

Oona turned abruptly to the fireplace mantel. “All right, Deacon, please stop encouraging him before he pulls a war stallion out of his mouth next, and I am forced to battle him on horseback.”

“Let’s get started,” said the Wizard. “Now for your first time I am going to act as an intermediary between you and the house to start your link. You will need to take my hand to do so. But once you have tapped in, you will be free to release my hand, and will remain linked until you reach the front gates.”

Oona nervously placed her hand in her uncle’s. The two of them stood side by side, facing Samuligan, and before she had even a moment to wonder what would happen next, she heard her uncle’s voice in her head as clearly as if he had spoken directly into her ear.

“Profundus magicus
!
”

***

The surge of magic was instantaneous, as if she had been struck by lightning. And yet the experience was not a violent one. It was simply that she suddenly had access to a far greater power than she had ever experienced before. The energy and knowledge seemed endless: a vast presence, which presently belonged to her . . . allowing her access to an enormous library of magic in its rawest form.

She could feel the personality of it, of the house. As if it were a person. No, not one person, but
people
. Multiple personalities ran through the magic, all of them offering up their particular strength and ability, and yet it was one magic. One source. The house. She need not have feared it, she realized now. It wanted her to use its deep powers and awaited her command. The choice was hers.

“Use only what is necessary,” Uncle Alexander said from beside her and released her hand.

Oona was not sure she knew what that meant. She was still connected to the house but was unsure of what to do. Curiously, she decided to test her new powers. Pointing her wand at the cup on her uncle’s desk, she uttered:
“Alum.”

She had meant only to levitate the cup, as she had done with the book at the library, but the magic that streamed from the tip of the wand caused not only the cup but everything else in the room to float off the ground, including the desk, the chair, the Wizard, and herself.

Deacon squawked in surprise as he lifted off the mantel without so much as a flutter of his wings. Only Samuligan remained rooted to the floor.

The experience took Oona so off guard that she lost focus and an instant later everything dropped back to the floor with a bang.

“Oh, dear,” she said, only just managing to keep her footing. “Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to . . .”

The Wizard braced himself against a bookshelf. “It’s all right. It is vast magic you have access to, along with your own remarkable skills, not to mention that wand. That’s what this is all about. Learning to control that energy. Now, try to get through that door.”

Oona peered at Samuligan and for a moment she felt sorry for him. With the sheer amount of magic she had at her disposal, he did not stand a chance. The faerie grinned, as if reading her thoughts.

“Shall we dance?” he asked tauntingly.

Oona shrugged, aimed her wand and said:
“Borium.”

The spell, which was meant to shove Samuligan out of the way, only bounced off his dark suit of armor, ricocheting across the room and causing the entire fireplace to shift sideways along the wall. Deacon leapt from the mantel and fluttered to a nearby bookshelf.

“Watch where you’re aiming,” he said.

Oona hardly heard him. She was staring at the faerie who was wholly unaffected by the spell. At first she could not understand what went wrong. The spell had been tremendously powerful. She could still feel its after-effects.

And then it came to her, she understood. The faerie armor. She remembered how, four months ago, Red Martin had managed to get his hands on a faerie-made piece of armor: a glove that repelled all magic. And now here was Samuligan with a full suit.

How am I supposed to get past him if the magic just bounces off?

Samuligan continued to smile mockingly at her. Perhaps a spell to move him physically was the wrong kind of magic. What she needed was something to get him to step out of the way on his own.

But she knew of no such enchantment, and her frustration quickly boiled over.

“Move!”
she shouted in a childish voice, and to her surprise a second spell shot from her wand. Once again the spell bounced off the armor in a jet of white light, this time colliding with the black dragon-bone desk.

The desk shuttered against the impact. It first bulged and then twisted, a roar emanating from within. Oona jumped back, startled, as the desk began to unfold. In the space of two heartbeats, the slumbering desk pulled upright, stretched out a set of bonelike wings, and raised its long neck toward the ceiling. It roared again, this time revealing its skeletal head: a dragon skull the size of a grandfather clock.

“You’ve awakened the dragon!” Deacon shouted, as if Oona herself had not noticed.

“I didn’t mean to!” she shouted back.

“Try using
Abris neetum
!” the Wizard said quickly. “The spell that should return it to a desk.”

“Ah, yes,” Oona said nervously, but raising her wand, she spotted Samuligan flinch as the dragon turned in his direction.

“Or,” she said, as an outrageous idea popped into her head, “I can use it.”

“What?” asked both Deacon and the Wizard.

Oona had no time to explain. Taking in a huge breath to steady her nerves, she leapt onto the back of the dragon, grappled it by its spine, and pointed her wand past Samuligan.

“Through that door!” she commanded.

The dragon obeyed, sweeping Samuligan aside with one thick-boned claw and charging the door. Its skull collided with the wood, tearing the door off its hinges. Its shoulders and wings were too wide, but this did not so much as slow the beast as it tore through the wall on both sides of the doorway, leaving a gaping hole behind. Oona only just managed to cling to its clattering back, her feet pressing against the rib bones as the dragon rose to its full height within the antechamber.

“That way,” Oona commanded, aiming the wand toward the front entrance. The dragon lowered its head to comply but came to a sudden halt when Samuligan vaulted through the wrecked doorway and grabbed the great beast by the tail. He jerked the tail just as the dragon tried to run, causing it to thrash violently about.

“Let go,” Oona shouted at the faerie, but he seemed to be having too much fun.

Samuligan yanked hard, and the dragon swung around in an entirely new direction before slipping from his grip. It plowed forward, now heading down the side hall toward the library.

Oona screamed and ducked, just managing to avoid a knock on the head as the beast dove down the hall, knocking pictures and candle sconces from the walls and tearing great swaths out of the enchanted carpet. It bounded down the corridor, wildly out of control, and pushed its way into the library, where they came upon a very surprised-looking Mrs. Carlyle.

The maid shrieked, diving out of the way at just the last second as the dragon crashed through the double doors into the forest of books. But suddenly, Samuligan was directly beside them. He darted in front of the beast, dropped to one knee, and raised his shield. The dragon’s teeth buried themselves in the thick wood, first cracking it and then shattering it into hundreds of shards.

Springing back to his feet, Samuligan raised his gleaming sword, clearly meaning to take off the dragon’s head. His eyes sparkled with a feverish intensity that Oona found both frightening and awe-inspiring. He seemed to be completely possessed by the moment, deep in his faerie nature, and Oona shuddered at the thought of an army of faeries storming through the Glass Gates with that same battle lust glinting in their enchanted eyes.

She yanked on the bones and shouted: “Back!”

The dragon reared, just avoiding the faerie’s deadly blow. To her surprise, Oona found that she could control the beast by steering it with her hands. She pulled to the right and the dragon turned.

We’d better get out of the library
, she thought,
before this thing starts uprooting trees and making things even more disorganized than they already are
.

She dug her heels into the rib bones, her skirt fluttering about her ankles in a jumble of petticoats, and turned the creature back toward the double doors. Once again the beast came face-to-face with Mrs. Carlyle.

The maid, who had only just regained her feet after jumping to safety, bolted so fast for the door that her shoes flew off her feet in different directions. To Oona’s horror, the dragon took this as a cue to pursue.

“Oh no,” she said under her breath, and then louder she shouted: “Run, Mrs. Carlyle!”

Like an overexcited dog chasing a cat through the house, the dragon plunged after the maid, Oona clinging to its back with all of her strength. The maid emerged into the central antechamber and ran toward the front door. She flung the door open so hard that it banged against the wall and bounced shut behind her. Oona could hear Mrs. Carlyle’s muffled shrieks through the house’s walls.

The dragon made short work of the door, crashing into it with the force of a battering ram. The door cracked down the middle, one side tearing off its hinges and flying end over end off the front porch. The beast ripped and clawed the rest of the way through the wide doorway before lunging down the front steps and into the garden. Oona could see Mrs. Carlyle running barefoot down the garden path toward the front gate in a dead panic. But out here in the open, Oona feared the dragon would easily outrun the maid.

“Stop!” she shouted, and pulled on the dragon’s spine in the hopes of giving the maid more time to reach the gates.

The dragon skidded to a halt beside the rosebushes. It roared to the sky, a haunting, monstrous bellow that seemed to rattle Oona’s very bones. And then Samuligan was once again in front of them, sword in hand, eyes blazing like bonfires. He placed himself between the dragon and the front gate just as Mrs. Carlyle disappeared from view.

Well, at least she’s safe
, Oona thought. And then she just had time to wonder
But am I?
when Samuligan brought round his sword to attack.

The dragon raised its front leg and deflected the blow, the sound like steel striking iron. It lashed out with one of its hideous claws, the black bone coming perilously close to Samuligan’s unprotected face.

The faerie ducked back and then moved forward with a savage attack. Once more the dragon parried. Over and over they came at each other, their movements growing faster and faster, the sound filling the garden and Oona’s skull.

She wanted it to stop. She did not want Samuligan to get hurt, and yet he would not get out of the way.
He’s very good at it
, she remembered her uncle saying in regard to the faerie servant’s ability to keep apprentices from the gate. It may have been more than five hundred years since his last true battle, but Samuligan did not seem to have lost his skill. She knew he would not relent and was tempted to tell the dragon to back off, when it occurred to her that dragons could do much more than run around and rampage.

“Fly!”
she shouted, and aimed her wand at the beast’s wings.

She had no idea if it could do so, especially considering the fact that it was a dragon made entirely of bones, with no flesh to catch the wind. But it was worth a shot. To her immense delight, the dragon responded by crouching like a giant cat and then leaping high over the faerie’s head.

Her breath left her body in a cry of both fright and exhilaration as they bound into the air, the wind whipping at her hair. She clung desperately to the dragon’s back, the two of them surging upward in a great curve that brought them level with the rickety tower that stuck out of the fourth floor of the house, and then took them even higher.

Oona had a moment of panic, fearful that she might fall, but just as she thought she would surely slip, the dragon banked in the opposite direction. They leveled out, giving her a breathtaking view of all of Dark Street.