The Chain

  The daylight brought to life the world around him, the shadows falling away. In the surprisingly near distance, beyond the island, an exquisite, grand white building appeared, set back into the rise of a lush, green hillside. Along the shoreline, it sprawled like an Italian villa, with spires rising up from gleaming domed roofs, almost cathedral-like in their beauty. It caught the bright sunlight in the most stunning way, taking Alex’s breath away.

  There were walls surrounding it, but they were not the grim, gray walls Alex was used to. These were of the purest white stone, adorned with elaborately carved statues that stood atop the battlements in measured intervals, reaching up toward the sky with delicately sculpted golden hands. There was nothing ugly and unforgiving about this place. Not like Spellshadow Manor. Everything here was beautiful and somehow welcoming. There was none of the insipid gray ivy, either, as far as Alex could see. The only plants he could make out were bouquets of roses, luxurious cream and deep red, surrounded by sprays of much smaller white flowers, set among vivid dark green leaves that hung from baskets against some of the walkways he could see in the brightening daylight.

  There were figures, too, moving around the open piazzas of white marble and clustered in the beautiful, sunlit courtyards. He watched them for a while, mesmerized—seeing their glossy, perfect hair shining in the warm daylight. From nowhere, a choir raised its voice to the heavens, as angelic as Alex had ever heard. The music lifted from within the grounds and soared toward him. Tears prickled his eyes as he realized it had been months and months since he had heard proper music, and this song was like nothing he had ever heard before. He couldn’t put into words the way it made him feel.

  Alex sat, helpless to do anything but watch and listen from his solitary spot, as he felt his worries slip away, if only for as long as this dream lasted.

  Chapter 6

  Alex had drifted off for a time, in the quietude of the lamp-room, though it had grown too hot as the sun burned brighter. It was late afternoon by the time the others awoke, looking more refreshed than Alex had seen them in a long time. There wasn’t any food left, but everyone had gathered on the first floor to share a bowl of water Natalie had fetched from the lake. Alex declined the offered dish as he leaned against the staircase banister, though his throat was fiercely dry.

  “We found it,” he announced, once everyone had quenched their thirst.

  “What do you mean?” Jari asked.

  “Stillwater House—I’m pretty sure it’s Stillwater House, anyway. It’s not too far. And believe me when I say it’s beautiful.”

  “It exists?” Jari frowned in disbelief.

  Alex nodded. “I’m fairly certain.”

  “It’s… beautiful?” Ellabell sounded unsure.

  Alex nodded again. “It’s stunning. I saw it while you were sleeping. We couldn’t see it in the dark, but it’s there, I promise.”

  He took his friends up to the top of the tower so they could see it for themselves. A weight seemed to lift from the atmosphere as they gazed upon the view. There was still a short way to go, but Alex was confident they could do it without being detected. Even Aamir seemed more peaceful, no longer contorting in his fevered state.

  As the sun set and darkness fell once more, the weary but hopeful quintet closed the door of the lighthouse behind them and pushed the rowboat back into the water, hopping aboard with a refreshed lightness in their step. Now that their destination was in sight, the rowing seemed much easier. Alex took up his position at the oar once more, with Jari beside him. There was still some light to see by, but enough darkness to keep them covered as the boat made its way over to the shoreline.

  Within the hour, they had reached the shallows, though they docked a fair distance away from the glowing torchlight of the villa. As it ran aground on the same eerie, pale pebbles that had defined the beach on the other side of the lake, the four able-bodied friends hoisted Aamir from his sleeping spot and carefully set him down on the grass above the beach. Once he was safely to one side, they dragged the boat right up onto land, turning it sideways and hiding it in a cluster of densely packed trees.

  A short distance from the cleverly camouflaged boat, Alex spied a quaint cottage-like building, set into a semi-circle of thin trees, the glistening walls surrounded by a perimeter of plump bushes made up of tiny, waxy leaves. The structure was built of the same pure white stone as the villa but looked as abandoned as the lighthouse on the island. The door had the same ancient quality to it, as did the faint blue paint that had all but peeled away from the sills of the boarded-up windows.

  Ushering everyone inside, Alex waited until they were all comfortable before announcing his next plan of action.

  “I’m going to go and explore the outer wall of Stillwater, if anyone wants to come?” he said. After seeing the walls from his vantage point on the outer platform of the lighthouse, he was curious to know whether it had any of the same sort of barrier magic that Spellshadow had. If it did, it could make life harder for them. If it didn’t, it might make things much easier, especially in terms of getting help for Aamir.

  Jari’s hand shot up. “Me! I’ll come.”

  “Anyone else?” asked Alex, but the faces staring back at him didn’t seem too eager. “Last chance?”

  With only Jari in tow, Alex crept along the shore, the pair keeping tight to the trees to avoid being seen as they made their way toward the villa wall. It rose up before them from the emerald green grass, glistening white even in the dim evening light.

  Alex approached it tentatively, glancing up to make sure there weren’t any guards looming down at him from above. Confident nobody was watching, he pressed his palms carefully against the stonework, feeling for a barrier. To his surprise, it did not push back against him, like the ivy-covered walls of Spellshadow would have done. It was simply stone; there was nothing else laced within the fabric of it.

  “Anything?” Jari hissed.

  “It’s just rock,” whispered Alex.

  Despite the wall’s size, the hefty rectangular stones it was built from were staggered, making it more climbable than Alex had dared hope. Keeping flat to the wall’s surface, they climbed it with ease, the edges between the blocks giving perfect hand and footholds for a swift ascent.

  Once on top of the battlement, Alex made sure to keep low, gesturing for Jari to do the same. Surveying the landscape ahead of them, Alex saw there were indeed a few guards set in small lookouts along the walls, but they seemed almost ceremonial. The guards themselves weren’t even looking up from where they sat, flipping through books or dozing off in the glow of cozy torchlight, and they certainly hadn’t noticed the appearance of two strangers on top of the ramparts. Seizing the opportunity, Alex scurried along the wall and halted at the lip of a wide, open courtyard. Jari almost knocked Alex off the edge as he bumped into him, not quite able to see properly in the dim light.

  “Sorry!” he whispered.

  Alex frowned, glad Jari hadn’t been running faster. As he turned his attention back to the villa below, Alex saw a few people moving across the wide courtyard, holding burning torches as they strolled through the grounds. There was no urgency, no pressure to the way they were moving. There was laughter too—bright and bubbling and genuine. A sound Alex hadn’t quite anticipated. As the groups chattered, Alex tried to make out what they were saying to one another, but they were talking too low for him to hear anything much. The only thing he could decipher was the cadence of their voices, which was as crisp and polished as they looked. Alex could hardly believe it: every single one of the people passing below was of the same caliber of beauty as the four scouts they had seen in the clearing.

  Suddenly, Alex heard the surprising sound of a low, loud whistle behind him, as Jari’s eyes fell upon a particularly stunning young woman loitering beneath one of the archways that lined the courtyard. She was tall and slender, with pale, porcelain skin and gleaming hair that seemed almost silver beneath the torchlight. The pair quickly ducked down as the whistle
drew the attention of the woman, who turned and squinted into the darkness, trying to make out where the sound had come from.

  Scrambling swiftly back down the side of the wall, the pair collapsed on the grass, laughing until the tears rolled down their faces. It was the first time Alex had belly-laughed in what seemed like forever, and it felt good.

  “I knew you were terrible at flirting, but I never thought it’d get me killed!” gasped Alex, clutching his ribs.

  “I admit it—that wasn’t my smoothest moment,” Jari cackled, holding up his hands.

  “What possessed you?” Alex asked.

  “Did you see her? I had to!”

  “For a moment, I thought someone was whistling at me!” joked Alex as he lay back in the grass, staring up at the stars twinkling overhead.

  “You wish.” Jari grinned, doing the same.

  It was the closest to being an ordinary teenager Alex had felt in ages.

  Although they had risked being seen, the close shave had put them in good humor as they returned to the lakeside cottage, joking and teasing one another along the way. It was a balmy evening, and, had it been an ordinary lake, Alex would have waded in for a nighttime swim, but his knowledge of the lake kept him away from the tempting water’s edge. Still, it was a nice walk back, with the buzz of laughter still fresh in the air.

  At the cottage, everyone was asleep except Ellabell, who had waited up for them.

  “Hungry?” she asked, passing each of them a loaf of crusty white bread.

  Alex looked at her in shock. “How did you—?”

  She smiled. “Let’s just say I used my time wisely, instead of watching pretty girls,” she teased, though there was a strange undertone to her words that sounded almost like jealousy.

  He wanted to deny it, wondering how she had seen them, hiding up on the battlements. He hadn’t seen her.

  She is just full of surprises, he thought wryly.

  “We weren’t watching pretty girls,” he said finally, trying to keep his voice as even as possible.

  “If you say so.” Ellabell smiled triumphantly. “Either way, we have food now.”

  “How did you get it?” Alex tried again.

  Ellabell tapped the side of her nose. “I have my ways.”

  “But how?” Jari chimed in.

  “It was easy,” she whispered in a low, conspiratorial tone. The two boys listened intently. “I just found out where they chuck the food away at night.” Laughter rippled from her throat, bringing a smile to Alex’s face.

  “I still think it was better to watch pretty girls.” Jari grinned as the three of them moved outside the cottage and sat up against the outer wall.

  As the moonlight made the tiny ripples of the lake dance and shimmer, they chatted and watched the lap of the waves on the shore. The two boys ate the pilfered bread, tearing it off in great, hungry chunks, and Jari regaled Ellabell with the brief tale of his ill-timed whistle, gaining an eye-roll from behind her spectacles.

  “You really need to learn subtlety, Jari Petra,” she said.

  “Hey, I am the king of subtlety!” Jari exclaimed.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Kittens—that’s all I’m saying.”

  Alex laughed, nearly choking on a piece of bread as he remembered the first time Ellabell had told him of Jari’s less-than-welcome flirtations. Alex had barely known her back then. In fact, all of that seemed like a lifetime ago now.

  “Who doesn’t like kittens?” Jari muttered.

  “Nobody wants a room full of them. I still have the scars.”

  “All right, so I was a little heavy-handed,” Jari sulked.

  “A little?” Ellabell prodded.

  “Fine, a lot heavy-handed. What are you bringing that up for again, anyway?” asked Jari. “That’s all in the past. I have my sights set elsewhere now!”

  “Poor girl.”

  “At least I let a girl know I like them!” Jari smirked, flashing a look at Alex.

  Alex felt his throat drying up as Ellabell eyed him curiously. It certainly did feel like a long time since he had first met her. Back then, he had thought he might have feelings for the cute French exchange student whom he had followed blindly into a spooky old house. How times had changed; he certainly didn’t see Natalie in any sort of romantic way now, leaving his path clear to consider other girls, and yet he found it difficult to put the affection he felt for Ellabell into words. With everything else that had been going on around them, he had been too distracted to really think about romance in a serious way. And yet, here was Jari, throwing him under the bus in front of the one girl he thought he might actually like.

  He wondered if she was, in fact, waiting for him to put those feelings into words, as she continued to look at him strangely. Even Jari seemed to want him to say something.

  Alex cleared his throat. “You just scare them away, Jari,” he said, knowing how lame it sounded as Jari visibly winced.

  Ellabell, however, showed nothing on her face. If she had been waiting for him to say something, she gave nothing away. It was only her sparkling blue eyes that showed the merest hint of disappointment, but Alex wasn’t sure if that was him reading too much into it. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to say something to her—he just didn’t have the right words.

  “Right, well, I’m off to bed,” announced Ellabell, with a forced brightness in her voice, as she got to her feet. “Goodnight, boys.”

  “Goodnight,” they chorused. Alex watched her retreat back into the shadow of the cottage. For a brief second, she paused in the doorway, as if about to turn back around, but the moment passed and she disappeared into the darkness without another word. Whatever it was Ellabell might have wanted to say, she must have thought better of it.

  “You blew it, man,” murmured Jari, patting Alex on the back.

  I know, Alex thought. I know.

  Chapter 7

  The next day, the sun rose to reveal another warm, beautiful morning. For once, Alex had actually slept, despite thoughts of Ellabell racing through his mind as he had lain down to sleep. He and Jari had stayed up a while longer, enjoying the pleasant warmth of the evening as they finished off their supper, until exhaustion had finally claimed Alex.

  Rested and refreshed, he awoke to find that Aamir had deteriorated in the night. The slick sheen of sweat had returned to his forehead, his face screwed up in a permanent expression of agony. His body twisted and turned in all manner of unnatural positions beneath the exertions of the curse within him. Jari hadn’t left his side, trickling water into his mouth every couple of minutes so he wouldn’t be thirsty.

  Seeing the decline of his friend, who had seemed much better the previous day, Alex decided he was going to try and find an infirmary or a pharmacy or something of that ilk within the villa itself, if he could find a way into the building in broad daylight. He was about to leave the cottage when Ellabell called him back.

  “You need to eat something,” she insisted, handing him more bread and a handful of dried apricots.

  He took them gladly, eating quickly. “Thanks,” he murmured, hoping she had forgotten the awkwardness of the night before.

  “I’d like to come with you, if you don’t mind,” said Natalie, picking up some apricots of her own.

  “Me too,” Ellabell added.

  Alex shook his head. “I have to do this alone. Too many people will arouse suspicion,” he explained. Not for the first time, Ellabell seemed disappointed by his response. Natalie too.

  “Nobody will notice us,” insisted Natalie.

  “We’re pretty useful—you should know that by now,” Ellabell chipped in.

  Alex nodded. “You are both two of the strongest mages I know, but I have to do this alone. There are guards along the walls, and one person might slip past them in broad daylight, but three is too many. Plus, if there are magical barriers and things inside the villa, some of them may not even affect me, but they’ll affect you. I just want to go and test the waters a bit.”

  The t
wo girls frowned at him, making their displeasure known, but he was certain things would be simpler if only he went. If there were barriers and magic obstacles within Stillwater House, as there were in Spellshadow Manor, he knew he stood a greater chance of avoiding them, simply because of what he was. Magical security, as far as Alex was concerned, was set up in magical schools to keep mages in line, but not Spellbreakers. After a frosty few minutes, the girls’ resolve thawed and they relented.

  With a full stomach and a focused mind, Alex moved stealthily along the shoreline toward the white side-wall of the villa, keeping once more to the shady tree-line. Nobody seemed to see him as he clambered easily up onto the top of the broad battlements and scurried along it, skirting beneath the lookouts so as not to be discovered. He pulled himself up onto a higher wall that looked across one of the piazzas, tiled intricately in terracotta and cream-colored squares. Staying low to the wall, he moved toward the very edge and watched the goings on beneath him. The piazza itself was busy with people going about their business—too many people for him to dare drop down into.

  However, as he scanned the archways that led to other sections of the villa, he saw a sign that gave him some hope. On a large square of stone embedded into the brickwork beside the arches, Alex saw, against all odds, a symbol he recognized. He had seen it so often, on all the trips he had taken to the hospital with his mother, that it was instantly familiar. The caduceus, with its two snakes twisting around a rod, and a pair of wings at the top—the symbol for medical assistance. He just hoped it meant the same thing here as it did back in the non-magical world.

  Despite his discovery, it looked as if it was going to be tricky to get into during the day. Not once had the piazza been empty enough to venture across. Once again, his endeavors would have to wait for the cover of darkness, but the sight of that symbol had brought him untold optimism. If it did mean the same thing it meant back home, then maybe they would have something to help Aamir.