Jack had the impression of dozens of people frozen in mid-scramble across the barricade of bardos. Their anger dispersed, much as Rejiia’s magic had.
Some of the villagers scuttled away, crossing themselves repeatedly, making the flapping wrist ward against Simurgh in between each invocation of the Stargods.
Then he realized that the Rovers were much easier to see. The haze had thinned. Sunlight began to penetrate to the courtyard.
“The gloaming is fading. We have to finish this now, before Rejiia manages to escape again,” he said to Lanciar and anyone else who cared to help. He raised his hands once more to find a spell, any spell that would trap the witch.
Just then the weasel broke free of the last of its tin casing and leaped from its perch on the bardo.
Lancier flung his arm forward as if launching a spell or an invisible spear.
“Come back here,” Rejiia screamed and dove for the slippery animal. It eluded her grasp. “Don’t you dare leave before I’m ready. I am your master as long as you are enthralled. I will be your master when you live.” She crawled after the elusive animal into the midst of the sledges.
A pain ripped across Jack’s gut, leaving him dizzy and disoriented. What was he about to do? He touched his temples, trying desperately to ground himself. His eyes crossed and lost focus.
Then his vision cleared of the afterimages he’d seen ever since Rosie took up residence in his body. His bottom no longer itched as if to twitch a tail.
“Rejiia and Krej, Krej and Rejiia, father and daughter, daughter and father, bound together by blood and by magic, cling to each other in the chase,” Lanciar said quietly as he traced a sigil in the dirt with his toe. He followed with more words, spoken too rapidly in a language similar to Rover, but . . . Jack didn’t have the concentration to think through a translation.
More pain attacked every joint in Jack’s body. He needed to fall to his knees. He didn’t dare.
And then Katrina was there, holding him, giving him the strength he needed to continue, as she had done in that dank and miserable dungeon cell beneath Queen’s City.
But this time the weakness that assailed him felt like a kind of freedom.
Rejiia continued to crawl after her father, coaxing now rather than screaming. She stopped to groom her wet and straggling hair. Then she returned to her determined chase.
“Did I see her lick her hand and wash her ears?” Jack asked. Feeling suddenly lighter, he patted his gut, his backside, all of his joints in turn. Rosie did not respond. He risked a minor trance to search his inner being.
“Katrina, I think I’ve just lost one of our problems.” He couldn’t help grinning.
Then Rejiia did pause in her mad scramble beneath the sledges to rub dust off her hands and lick them.
“What?” Jack eyed Lanciar carefully.
“I just put a compulsion upon her.”
“Compulsions are illegal,” Marcus reminded him.
“I’m not a member of the Commune and not bound by their conventions. Yet.”
“What did you do to her?” Jack asked again.
“She’ll follow the weasel until one or both of them dies. And until she catches it—alive—she can’t throw any magic.”
“She’ll be tracking that thing for years before she realizes she’s under a compulsion!” Marcus chortled.
“All Lanciar did was enhance her own inner demons,” Jack added. “She’s been obsessed with her father since before his spell against Darville backlashed and turned him into a weasel. I think that was why she embraced Simeon as a lover. He looked so much like her father, and Rejiia controlled that relationship from the beginning.” He didn’t add that with the cat persona embedded with her own, the compulsion would compound. No one could outstubborn a cat.
“Even when Simeon thought he commanded the world, Rejiia gave him the commands,” Lanciar mused. “She controlled him as she never could her father.”
“How long does a weasel live?” Marcus asked. “What happens when Krej dies? Are we back to battling Rejiia?”
“I don’t think so.” Lanciar whistled a jaunty Rover tune. “That compulsion won’t go away unless she captures the weasel
alive
! She’ll search for him even after he dies.”
“I think we need to get back into the library,” Robb reminded them. “The gloaming is lifting, but not gone. Vareena needs our help.”
CHAPTER 5
V
areena watched and listened as Powwell and Ackerly continued their bitter litanies against each other. Over and over, she tried to project love and peace into their hearts. She’d done this for every ghost who came under her care. She had to show these two lost souls the lighted path through the void to their next existence.
’Twas her destiny, her purpose in staying so long in this cursed and unforgiving place. If she could not help these two, she would never have freedom, even if she left.
Ackerly and Powwell rejected every offer.
“Stop it, both of you!” she finally insisted. “Stop and listen to yourselves. You just repeat the same arguments over and over, phrased a little differently, but accomplishing nothing.” She stomped her foot in frustration.
Both ghosts paused and looked at her, acknowledging something outside their own bitterness for the first time.
“You have both been trapped in this half-life, this nothingness, for three hundred years. You’ve accomplished nothing in that time, a true reflection of the nothing you accomplished in life.”
Both opened insubstantial mouths to protest.
“What did you achieve?” she asked Powwell.
“I was the greatest healer of my time. I researched the healing arts and brought new techniques to ease the pain and suffering of many,” Powwell intoned. The little hedgehog perched on his palm bristled as if protesting the statement.
“According to this journal, written in your own hand, Powwell, many of those techniques were borrowed from rogue and blood magic. All of them have been rejected by the Commune since then. Your legacy is forgotten.” She held up the little book.
I taught many new magicians in the University while Nimbulan wandered aimlessly in search of something that eluded him all his life,
Ackerly returned.
“Our histories tell us that Nimbulan found dragon magic and brought an end to the Great Wars of Disruption. You died opposing him in the final battle of the war.” Vareena allowed the silence to stretch for another endless moment. “We remember Nimbulan with love and adulation. No one remembered either of you until Nimbulan’s journals were found.”
Nimbulan found peace with his wife and family. He died at the age of ninety, content with his life and his death. I was there. I guided him to the void that final time.
Powwell almost choked on this thought/words. His words and form faded to a mere echo inside Vareena’s mind. If he faded much more, she’d lose contact with him altogether.
He was the greatest man of his time. More a father to me than you, Ackerly. He loved me, nurtured me, wept with me when Kalen died.
“Then accept him as your father and seek a new existence. Continue his greatness by passing beyond your misery and seeking happiness and good in a new life.” Vareena sensed Powwell’s hesitation. His form wavered, strengthening and fading in his indecision.
“And you, Ackerly. Give up your gold, give up this illusion of power. True power is in the kind of love Nimbulan gave his family, his apprentices, and his country. You are reviled as a traitor by those who do know of you. You can have the kind of power Nimbulan had in your next life if you only try. You can have a family to nurture and love next time. But you have to give up the gold.”
Powwell reached out a hand to Ackerly.
Join me, Father, in this new quest. Begin your healing alongside me.
Ackerly lifted his hand as well.
The solid iron of the staircase blocked them.
Tears in her eyes, Vareena ran to the first step. She had to brush Ackerly’s ghostly robes. Chills racked her body at the unnatural touch. Just a small taste of what was to come, if she succeeded.
She couldn’t turn back now. She had to succeed. She had to end this here and now.
One at a time she mounted the steps until she stood halfway between the two ghosts. “Let me guide you both forward.” She held out a hand to each. Bare finger-lengths separated her hands from theirs. “You have to try harder. You have to reach beyond your fears, beyond the limitations of this existence.”
Both ghosts leaned forward, bending around the iron barrier.
Still they could not reach her.
Then Powwell shifted his staff. He grasped the butt end and pushed the crystal-studded head down. It dropped on the second step.
Ackerly couldn’t reach it without touching the deadly iron. Vareena grasped the crystal at the end of the staff. Ackerly held out the hilt of his knife for her questing hands. She clutched them both tightly.
Light, power, love pulsed through the staff and the knife. They washed over Vareena in endless, daunting waves. The onslaught of emotions drained the strength from her knees. The intricate pattern of the iron stair pressed through her gown, bruising her mortal flesh. She fought to remain conscious, to keep the tunnel of light open for the two souls who must take the first steps toward their next existence.
The magical tools burned her palms. The iron stairs seared her knees. Light pierced her eyes, until she knew she must close them or be blinded for life. Her aching need for freedom intensified. How could she leave if she couldn’t see? How could she work her meager acres without her sight? Who would love her, a blind spinster with burn scars hampering her grasp and her walk?
Still she clung to the tools, binding father and son together.
“Vareena!” Marcus and Robb cried.
She couldn’t see them. The staff and the knife continued to vibrate, continued to bind her to her ghosts. She sensed Ackerly and Powwell lifting free of the confines of their half-existence. Sensed their spirits joining, melding, leaving her behind.
Their joy flooded her. “Take me with you,” she whispered. “Take me away from the hurts of this life, from the weight of my duty and responsibility.”
“Not yet, Vareena. You have too much life to live and love to give.” Marcus eased the staff from her hands. “I’ll help you heal. I’ll take care of you, if you let me.”
She heard the wooden staff land on the stone floor with a clatter. The knife followed, its blade shattering.
Robb lifted her free of the staircase. Both magicians held her close, crooning soothing words. Each loving her in his own way.
“You’re safe now. The Rover women are coming to heal you.” Marcus kissed her temple, smoothing tangled hair out of her eyes.
“Lord Andrall has pledged his protection of you and your acres.”
“You are safe now.”
She couldn’t tell which man spoke, only that they both took care of her as she had taken care of them and all the ghosts of this place. She leaned into Marcus, cherishing the strength of his arms supporting her.
Thank you, Vareena. Thank you for your gift of love and healing
, Powwell and Ackerly both whispered across her mind.
She opened her eyes. Too much light still blazed around the edges of her vision. The gloaming lifted. She could see only a few dark figures at the center of the brightness. But she could see.
She saw a tiny hedgehog scuttle away from the staff under her skirts, seeking protection and love. She stooped to cradle it in her burned hands.
Thorny
, the creature announced his name to her.
“I guess that makes you a magician after all,” Marcus said around a huge smile. “Powwell left you his staff and his familiar.”
A gift of love and healing for a gift of love and healing.”
Powwell’s voice echoed around the library, spreading to the courtyard.
The mist of Ackerly’s spell lifted from all around. The gold lay inert and uncharmed upon its shelves, ready and waiting to be put to use.