Chapter 22
Kip stood alone in the woods, fuming. Four wig gets lay unconscious at his feet even though he’d said the undo spell twice. Bloody incantations. He needed to look up flying spells in his lab. He started down the trail toward the castle when a commanding female voice shouted, “Halt! Do not leave them here.”
He jolted to a stop and looked around. All he faced were trees. “Who’s there?”
“One who respects all life,” the disembodied voice replied. “Your magic has made these lives vulnerable.”
He peered over his shoulder at the birds he’d accidentally put to sleep. Now that the voice had brought it up, she had a point. In their present condition, the wig gets were easy targets for any carnivore that might happen by.
Kip looked to the sky. “Can’t you watch over them? The spell won’t last long. I’ve got places to go.”
“Your place is right here, Wizard. Events have been set into motion.”
Only an oracle would talk like that. “Maggenta?”
“I answer to that name.”
“Where are you?” Her voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. “Why won’t you let me help Winnie?”
“You’ll help by staying out of danger.”
“What kind of wizard would I be if I only worried about me own safety?”
“One who lives to see tomorrow. I am aware of circumstances you don’t understand. Go back to the castle. Take your birds with you.” Her final words drifted away on a sudden chilly wind.
“Go back to the castle and take the birds with you,” he muttered in a falsetto. He snatched off his cape and laid it on the ground. “I’m aware of circumstances.” He carefully lifted each limp bird onto his cape.
At least his levitation spell worked. The birds and cape floated behind him all the way to the castle.
The wig gets napped in front of the unlit fireplace. Kip paced and grumbled to himself. He circled the lab five times, then bellowed at the ceiling, “Where is a book with powerful spells?”
The floor shook under his feet. Bottles rattled. Three shattered. His bookshelves swayed and banged against the wall. A single book spewed from the top shelf. It crashed to the floor, and the room went still.
A satisfied smile played on his lips. He liked it when magic listened to him. He crunched over broken glass. A book as thick as a dictionary, its black leather cover cracked with age, lay at his feet. He carried it to his desk and tapped the faded title with his wand. The lettering glowed. Open this book only if you dare release the power of Krell.
That sounded promising. He whistled for his familiar.
After a short wait, Willum glided through the open window and landed on the hearth. He hopped among the sleeping wig gets on the floor. “What’s all this, then? One familiar not enough for you?”
“Don’t be daft. Once they wake up, they’re me transportation. What’s Krell?”
Willum landed on the black book. “Krell is not a what but a who. If you’d studied your history properly, you’d know Thaddeus Krell was the most powerful wizard of the realm. He vanished three monarchs ago. You don’t want the power he had. It comes from a dark place.”
“Black magic, you mean?”
“Fury magic, I mean. It works when you’re cross.”
“That’s all right, then, so long as it’s not black magic.”
Kip shooed the bird out of the way and opened the book. Instantly, it drew him into the text. It wasn’t so much that he read the book as the book read him. Each succeeding page reached into his mind, probing every negative thought he had ever had. It didn’t simply conjure past memories. It grabbed them in an angry fist and shook free every slight, every disappointment, every annoyance he had experienced since preschool.
With each memory, more hot fury welled inside him. It pummeled at the very fiber of his being, threatening to burst through his skin. When he could hold it no more, he snapped up his right arm. The book told him where that raw force must go. He aimed his hand toward his wand on the table. His rage turned to lightning that sparked through his fingertips and surged into it. Every snub, every insult increased the electrical arc’s intensity.
Yes. Sparks crackled around it. There lies a wand worthy of a wizard.
Once the heated stream played out, the wand sailed across the room. It banged against the far wall. Kip fell backward and landed on his backside. The fall didn’t hurt or even knock the wind out of him. He vaguely sensed anger but chortled instead.
Willum waddled beside him, muttering, “Now you’ve done it.”
“Nah, I’m okay.” Kip patted the stone floor. “Yo, this is, like, solid. Good thing I didn’t crack my skull, bro.”
Willum ruffled his feathers. “Your wizard voice is gone.”
Kip cocked his head. “Huh?”
“You’ve gone and split yourself in two,” Willum sputtered.
Kip could account for all his body parts. Still, hollowness gnawed at the pit of his stomach. He stood. “What just happened?”
Willum flapped his wings. “The book, that ruddy book.”
Kip turned to the tattered book on his desk. He vaguely remembered putting a decipher spell on his wand last week so he could read the books. He stared into his empty hands. “Wasn’t I holding my wand a second ago?”
He peeked under the desk. Only a dusty quill pen lay beneath.
Scratching noises from behind the wall beside the fireplace halted Kip’s search.
“Sounds like you’ve got a visitor.”
A brick wiggled loose and thumped into the room. Three more dropped out. Polo’s bald head poked through the opening in the wall. Kip helped pull the rest of him into the room.
“I do beg your pardon, Master Wizard, for not using the door.” Polo slapped the dust off his tunic. “I didn’t want the queen’s guards to know I’m here.”
“Keeping it on the down low. Gotcha. What’s up?”
Polo looked him up and down. “Are you well, Master Wizard?”
“Yeah, I’m cool. What about you, little dude? You look hyped.”
He raised an eyebrow at Kip. “I have troubling news. The queen and her hunting party just returned. Without our dear general. I fear she’s been lost to the hunt.”
Kip’s heart thudded. “Is she alive?”
“We believe so, Master Wizard, but you’ll need your magic to find her.”
All he needed was his wand. Where was it?
The air throbbed with energy. He raised his right arm, and the wand hissed through the air toward him. It slapped into his open palm. A raging force poured into him, filling him up. He felt whole again, only more so.
He also understood what Willum meant by his “wizard’s voice.” It had started the summer he’d turned ten. During a three-week trip to England with his parents, Kip began imitating a British accent. Mom and Dad laughed about it at first. They asked him to stop, but he couldn’t. He enjoyed it too much. During a bus tour of London, they told him this would be their last vacation as a family. He hadn’t even seen it coming. In desperation he tried extortion. Call off the divorce, or I’ll never speak Yank again.
The adopted accent didn’t change a thing, but at least it embarrassed his parents in front of company. He’d been talking like an Eastender ever since. It came so naturally now that even his friends forgot his American roots.
As the painful memory faded, he tightened his grip on his empowered wand. His body quivered with rage. The wand coaxed him to focus on the person responsible for putting Winnie at risk.
His wizard’s voice returned. “Where’s the queen?”
“Master Wizard, you’re back.” Polo sounded relieved.
Willum flitted through the room. “Not good, not good.”
Polo bowed low. “Master, the queen is with her advisors, sharing hunting stories.”
Kip stormed through the corridors. His right hand gripped his wand, his left clenched into a tight fist.
Two mel-yew knights guarded the queen’s meeting-room door. With a flick of his wand, a blast of air sent them hurtling down the corridor. They landed with a clatter ten feet away. He aimed his fired-up wand at the door. A second blast tore it from its hinges. The door fell into the room with a crash. He stomped across it and into the chamber.
“Goodness gracious, Master Wizard,” said Queen Bogen. “What an entrance.”
“Where is General Windemere?”
“There seems to have been an unfortunate accident, we fear.”
He aimed his wand at her. “What kind of accident? Choose your words carefully, or I’ll cut you down from here.”
The queen’s councilmen leaped to shield her. Kip’s wand reacted faster. All four froze where they stood. A second sweep of the wand silenced their voices.
“Master Wizard,” she blustered. “Release our councilmen immediately.”
Anger pulsed through him. “I’m giving orders now. Where is the general?”
“We don’t know the exact location. Somewhere in the high country. The general rode on Commander Fynn’s back. Through no fault of his own, a strap broke, and the general fell. It couldn’t be helped.”
“You’d better hope she survived.” Kip spun on his heel and marched out.
“I said release our councilmen,” Queen Bogen called after him. “If you disobey, we shall have you stripped of your wand and your cloak!”
He kept going, his cape billowing out behind him.
“Insolence! This is why our ancestors did away with wizards!”
Willum flew after him, landing on his right shoulder.
Kip didn’t break his stride. “Are the wig gets awake yet?”
“Just beginning to stir, Master.”
“Good. Have them meet me at the north side of the castle as soon as they’re able.” He shrugged Willum away.
Kip charged up the staircase to Winnie’s rooms. A violent search for an article of her clothing ended at the closet. Her freshly laundered Earth clothes hung inside. He snorted in annoyance. For the enchantment spell to work, he needed her essence.
The wand vibrated. He turned toward her bed. Her running shoes lay beneath. He snatched the nearest one and tugged the shoelace free. He expertly pronounced the words that brought inanimate objects to life. The enchanted shoelace zinged into the air.
“Show me to your mistress,” he commanded.
The lace wagged eagerly and shot out the window.
“Oi!” He zapped it with a slackening spell to slow it down. Outside, his awaiting wig gets gripped his cape with their talons.
“Arise.”
The giant birds lifted him. To lighten their load, he concentrated on buoyant thoughts.
Willum flew beside him. “Where we off to, then?”
He pointed at the airborne shoelace. “We’re following that.”
The shoelace guided them up the mountain to a rising cliff. The flying string veered left and over the edge.
Kip’s breath caught in his throat. No human could ever survive a fall from that height. His wand hummed to life. Vengeful thoughts banged against every corner of his mind, but he shoved them aside. Panic for Winnie’s safety surpassed the wand’s desire to destroy those responsible for harming her.
Gut-plunging fear clung so heavily on him that his power diminished. It affected his elderly wiggets. “Too-big, too-big.” They dropped fifteen feet.
He focused on the mental image of leaves gliding on a soft current. The birds caught an updraft and stabilized. The lace zipped into a cave high up on the side of the mountain. The birds followed and landed in a large room cut into the stone. They waddled and preened.
“Ah, the wizard,” a female voice spoke from deep inside the room. A gray voga woman, dressed in a plain brown cloak, stepped forward.
He blinked at her in surprise. He hadn’t expected a voga this far from the castle. He’d never seen one with blue eyes before either.
The woman smiled a welcome. “My sister Maggenta said you’d be by. I’m Cyann.”
He hesitated at the mention of the oracle. Would she strip his powers? The wand pulsated in his hand, putting him back on track.
“Where is the general?” he ordered.
Cyann let out a weary sigh. “What foolishness have you unleashed?”
“The power of Krell,” Willum said.
Kip ignored them both and searched the large, open room. Past the hearth, around the overstuffed chairs and a table, stood a cot. Winnie, so still, so vulnerable, lay on it. In two long strides he reached her side. “Winnie, can you hear me?”
She didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t move.
He dropped to his knees. This was all his fault. He had promised to protect her. At the height of his despair, confident whispers seeped into his head. She breathes. It was the first offer of comfort his wand had given him since the Krell book had filled it with extra power.
He gently took her warm hand in his. He pressed his lips to it, silently willing her to open her eyes. He waited with breath held. No response.
The wand sent an angry spark up his arm. Now was not the time for regret. Its fury coursed into his body, filling him with one goal. Kill the queen.