The Wizards of Once

  Xar’s blackened clothes closed around him so tightly that he could barely breathe.

  There was a writhing snake pattern on the broken dust of the mud floor where Xar was standing. The patterned snakes on the floor began to move around one another, and then they grew solid, slid up and off the floor, and twined their way around Xar’s legs, and his now-living clothes carried him up in the air like he was swinging from the branches of a tree, and the hissing snakes turned into liquid mercury that curled around him, solidified, and turned into chains, so that he was hanging suspended in the air, twisted around with bonds.

  “LET ME DOWN!” cried Xar, furious with temper.

  “You have gone into the Badwoods, against my express instruction,” said the Enchanter. “You sought to take Magic from a dark source and bring it into this fort to cheat your way into winning a Spelling Competition. I will keep you up there until I decide your punishment.”

  “I don’t see why I should be punished at all!” fumed Xar, struggling in the chains, his legs kicking wildly in the air. “It’s not fair! I don’t see why you always pick on me!”

  “I always pick on you because it is always you who has done everything,” replied the Enchanter in exasperation.

  Caliburn spread his wings and whispered in the Enchanter’s ear.

  “I would suggest patience,” said the raven. “It’s very important that you are patient with children, and try to see things from their point of view.”

  “I have been very patient with the boy,” said the Enchanter from between gritted teeth, “but I am running out of patience. The boy must learn to obey me, and if he does not, he must be punished.”

  “The more strongly you punish him, the more he will rebel,” warned Caliburn.

  Demendor, the Ambassador to the Court from Drood High Command, stroked his beard and put his finger high in the air. “A boy without magic is a sign the gods are most displeased!”

  “That’s true,” said Swivelli, for he was always trying to overthrow Encanzo (this is another story I’ll tell you about later). “And maybe your failure to punish and control your son effectively is a sign you are not fit to be the ruler of this tribe…”

  Ah, being a father and a king is harder than it looks.

  And everyone thinks they could do a better job than whoever happens to be the parent or the monarch at the time.

  “BE QUIET, THE LOT OF YOU!” cried Encanzo the King Enchanter. “When I need your advice I will ask for it. Xar is merely being childishly disobedient and showing off in front of his friends because his Magic hasn’t come in yet.”

  Xar lost his temper.

  “Well, at least I’m trying to DO something!” shouted Xar. “At least I’m trying to ACT! Whereas you, Father, you do nothing at all!”

  The hall full of Wizards drew in their breaths simultaneously. The outline of the Enchanter hummed with fury. Great shooting sparks came off him, and above, the clouds drifting across the high ceiling of the room grew darker and darker, and great rumbling bursts of thunder echoed throughout.

  Caliburn put his wings over his eyes. Was Xar actually trying to get himself expelled?

  “Why aren’t we going out there to fight the Warrior army?” shouted Xar.

  “That was just the point that I was making,” purred Swivelli, eyes alight with pleasure. “Even Encanzo’s own son thinks his father is not doing a good job as king…”

  Swivelli broke off, because the Enchanter’s finger had given a little flick and the torque around Swivelli’s neck tightened inexplicably, and it was quite a while before Swivelli could breathe again.

  “Confronting the Warriors would only be a good thing if it was a fight that we could win,” said the Enchanter, trying to keep his temper.

  “Why do you think we cannot win it?” shouted Xar. “Maybe the Warriors are wiping us out anyway while we hide here in our slowly shrinking forest, twiddling our thumbs, and thumbing our fiddles and doing our silly little Magic spells and love potions, while they burn up our forest and kill our giants and destroy our entire way of life!”

  Encanzo the King Enchanter’s eyes blazed.

  “We are hiding from the Warriors like cowards,” Xar shouted back. “Why are you teaching us to be such cowards, Father? Maybe you are a coward…”

  “Silence!” stormed the Enchanter. “Or I will MAKE you silent! I will sew your lips tight with Magic!”

  “Do it, then,” said Xar. “I do not care.”

  “Enough!” shouted the Enchanter. “I have decided your punishment. You and your sprites and your animals shall be locked in your room for the next three days.”

  “It’s not enough,” muttered Ranter furiously.

  Xar looked stricken. “No! Father!”

  “Then you should not be disobedient, should you?” said his father the Enchanter in his sternest voice. “Now, be silent.”

  “I was the one who was disobedient! Don’t punish THEM! Punish ME!” said Xar angrily.

  “Three days,” said the Enchanter, even more coldly and white with temper. “Every time you speak I will add on one more day.”

  Xar opened his mouth to speak… and shut it again.

  “Four days,” said the Enchanter. “You shall not leave your room for four days. And if you do not listen to me and disobey me further, I will take your animals and sprites away from you FOREVER!”

  Xar did care about that. Oh my goodness, he cared about that.

  He was silent.

  “I am the king here…” said the Enchanter. “ALL of you in this room need to remember that. And Xar needs a reminder of who we are…”

  His father continued, “You have a very fine opinion of yourself, Xar, but the truth is, you are conceited, you are willfully disobedient, you are astonishingly selfish, and the fact that you tried to obtain bad Magic from a Witch shows you do not understand the very basics of what it means to be a Wizard, for Wizards should seek good Magic, Xar…

  “You have one last chance to be good,” warned the Enchanter. “Be good, for any more disobedience and I will be forced to expel you and remove all your animals and sprites.”

  “YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT ME!” cried Xar at the top of his voice. “ALL YOU WANT IS A SON WHO IS MAGIC!!”

  “SILENCE!!!” roared the Enchanter.

  He moved his arms once more, and all around the hall, where columns and pillars and staircases had been shattered into thousands of tiny pieces by the blast of the spelling ring exploding, the tiny dusty fragments lifted up from the floor and danced in the air, like clouds of humming bees.

  The Enchanter moved his arms as if he were conducting an invisible orchestra, and the dust responded to his instructions.

  “It is easy to destroy,” said the Enchanter. “But I am not like a Warrior, impressed by destruction. It is far harder to create, and creation is what we Wizards are all about. Play, fiddles, play!”

  The fiddles shot up into the air and began to play themselves, and the millions of tiny fragments billowing through the gigantic hall in enormous drifts, like smoke from a forest fire, danced in time to the music, with such speeding energy that you could feel the heat coming off them and warming up the faces of the wondering Wizards looking up in awe.

  It was a very effective demonstration of the power of the Enchanter, for invention was far more difficult Magic than demolition, and only HE could perform Magic as tremendous as this. He was doing it to make a point to his son and to remind Swivelli and the other Wizards gathered there of what Wizards should stand for.

  And it worked. Even Swivelli reluctantly gasped in awe (while cursing under his breath, mind you).

  “Create, Xar, create, and then you will impress me,” finished the Enchanter, his arms whirling wildly and gloriously to the tune of the music he had inspired. “And in the meantime, you will stay in your room until I tell you to come out.”

  BAM!

  With a final eardrum-bursting clap of thunderous Magic that lit up the hall like sheet lightning, the millions of t
iny pieces of dust slammed together and formed whole columns once more. The crack in the floor closed, and Xar’s clothes and the flying snake-chains carried Xar up, up to his room, where the door flew open, and the snake-chains swung him back and forth and then suddenly released him, depositing him on the floor.

  The Enchanter made a sign to Xar’s animals and sprites, and the animals leaped out of the hall and up the stairs, with the sprites following, and Caliburn too, with slow, reluctant wingbeats.

  The door of Xar’s room slammed shut behind them.

  “It won’t be enough,” sniffed Looter, whose lips had at last come unstuck. “Ranter was right. You should have expelled him.”

  The Enchanter roared at Looter, unusually, for Looter was normally his favorite son. And when I say roared, I mean he opened up his mouth and a blast of furious Magic came out of it with such force that it actually blew Looter off his feet.

  And then Encanzo stalked off and threw himself into his throne and put his head into his hands, thinking: What is wrong with Xar? Why has his Magic not come in yet? I have given him the best giant in my land, the finest tree, the most brilliant advisor in Caliburn… But why can’t I control him?

  10. Fifteen Minutes Earlier, in Xar’s Room

  Now, the room Xar returned to was in a very different state than when he had left it only fifteen minutes earlier. Bad things had been happening in Xar’s room.

  These bad things had been happening to Wish and to Bodkin, the sprites and the animals, who had all been locked in that room by Xar, if you remember.

  Very, very bad things.

  In order to explain them, I will have to go back in time, exactly fifteen minutes.

  Of course, in real life, turning back time is impossible.

  I think I’ve already mentioned that.

  But contrariwise, I can do it, for I am the god of this story and thus have rather more Magic than perhaps is quite good for me.

  Imagine Xar’s room, fifteen minutes earlier.

  The Spelling Competition was going on down below, and Wish and Bodkin were watching it through the floor.

  You are in that very fifteen minutes, and even now, very now, through the drenching rain and wildness, something is creeping up the fort walls with invisible, undetectable footsteps.

  Something old and dark and very, very evil.

  It could be a Rogrebreath, looking to get its blood back.

  It could be a werewolf, wanting Xar to join its pack.

  Or it could be…

  Something else.

  Normally Wizard camp would be entirely protected by an invisible barrier of Magic that hung around the forest grove.

  But when Xar had taken the sword into the fort, the iron had tunneled a hole in the Magic. The path of the iron sword led up the tree trunk and into Xar’s room. And such is the power of iron, that ANYONE or ANYTHING taking the path the iron had taken would be undetected by the Magic…

  Too bad, because the two feathers that Xar had tucked into the jacket he left in his room were very gently, ve-ry minutely, beginning to glow at the edges with a sickly greenish light.

  The snowcats and Squeezjoos and Tiffinstorm and the bear had fallen into the deep sleep of those who have spent a nice old-fashioned day out in the fresh air building Witch-traps and running through Badwoods.

  But something in the change in atmosphere made Bodkin and Wish look up from where they were kneeling on the invisible floor of Xar’s room and stare around themselves with shivers of sick alarm. The Enchanted Spoon was shaking with anxiety on Wish’s head.

  Below them, they could hear the sound of the Spelling Competition.

  But outside in the forest, the rain, the thunder and the lightning, and the wind, which had been sending Xar’s bedroom plunging this way and that as if a lunatic were rocking a baby’s cradle, stopped with surprising suddenness.

  The thunder ceased, to be replaced by an eerie quietness, a silence, as if the forest world surrounding them were leaning in to gaze at something unusual and frightening enclosed within its shut green fist.

  The only sound was the water dripping from the edges of the invisible spell above them… Drip… drip… drip…

  Wish could see right through the spell up into the starry, starry sky above, the branches of the trees strangely still as if painted against the dark sky.

  There was a coldness in the air that Wish had felt when they were being chased in the wood earlier that evening, a coldness that seeped into her.

  And to her horror, Wish could see that the black feathers hanging inside Xar’s empty jacket were lighting up with a queasy, pallid yellow-green glow that pulsed steadily in and out as if in time with someone breathing.

  Wish’s breath was so thick in her throat she thought she might choke.

  It was as if ants were crawling through her hair, sending each individual strand shooting upward in a thrill of horror.

  Above them both, the spell was like a piece of glass, with the liquid of the rain already streaked across it.

  But was that something else, some shadow moving like a dream beyond the glass, a nauseating, undulating, greasy movement that blotted out the stars as it moved?

  Or was it just the bilious shadow of Wish’s own imagination, the tired creation of her bloodshot eyes, after a long and weary and frightening day?

  Wish was sure there was a dark shape moving glutinously behind the glass…

  At least she thought she was sure…

  What was it that they said about Witches? That they were as invisible as ghosts but they had to turn visible when they attacked? Or else their hands passed through you as harmlessly as air?

  And then with absolute terror, she knew it was no mirage.

  Her painfully stretched ears definitely heard whispering in the invisibility above.

  Drip… drip… drip… drip.

  Whisper… whisper… whisper.

  “Sti ereh… sti ereh… sti ereh…”*

  “Wake up!” croaked Wish to the snowcats and Squeezjoos and Tiffinstorm in a strangled whisper. “Wake up NOW. We have to get out of here…”

  The wind began to blow again, a couple of breaths that brought the hot, foul smell of WITCH down into the room, a pungent whiff of poisoned rat and adder’s tongue as chock-full of death as a dose from an apothecary.

  The snowcats, lying half smothered in leaves, woke to that smell. As one, they opened their sleepy eyes, and all of them knew instantly they needed to be silent, like deer that scent a fox.

  Tiffinstorm opened her eyes, one, two, saw the glowing, pulsing feathers and turned as still as if stuffed.

  Bodkin tried the door.

  But Xar had locked it, of course.

  “We’re locked in!” said Bodkin in appalled horror. “We can’t get out of here!” before fainting dead away with his fingers on the handle of the door.

  “Bodkin!” shrieked Wish. “Wake up NOW!”

  Bodkin woke up with a start, mumbling, “Where? What? How?”

  “Xar’s room…” panted the princess. “Wizard camp… We’re being attacked by something really spooky…”

  “What isssss it??????” whispered Tiffinstorm, staring upward and getting a good grip of her thorn of a wand.

  “The sword! O by the gods of the still and standing waters… We need the Enchanted Sword!!!!!!!!!!!” yelled Wish.

  Now, you see, there are no accidents.

  There was a reason that the Enchanted Sword left Xar’s hand at that precise, very inconvenient moment for Xar, down below in the Spelling Competition.

  Let’s face it, Wish needed the sword at that moment for rather more serious reasons than Xar did.

  SLLLLIIIIIIIIIIICCCCCCE!!!!!!

  With a great piercing, ripping slice that made Wish jump out of her skin and nearly die from the shock of it, and woke up Bodkin, who had fainted again and was still holding on to the handle of the door, the Enchanted Sword sliced up through the ceiling of the main hall of the Spelling Competition and through the spell of Xar
’s floor.

  The sword rose up, quivering, hanging in the air in the middle of Xar’s room, pointing up at the glassy surface of the spell above, exactly an arm’s length away from Wish.

  All she had to do was reach out and take it.

  Oh thank mistletoe and ivy and every single kind of standing water…

  “Once there were Witches…” breathed Wish, reading the message on the blade.

  “…but I killed them.”

  She reached out her hand.

  She took the sword.

  There was a high, piercing, unearthly shriek from the air above her as whatever-it-was dived.

  The undulating shape turned dark and very, very solid.

  There was a confused rush…

  Something of unbelievable force SMASHED into the invisible spell above…

  There was another shriek like a curse…

  …and through the glass above Wish, three talons pierced through the spell.

  Three great shocks of talons, which were very, very real, long, yellow-green, razor-sharp, and curved like swords.

  Wish screamed.

  If it were not for that spell, she would have been dead indeed, for whatever-it-was had been held up by the spell and crashed into it when it dived.

  Zigzagging lines jigsawed across the spell, like ice before it shatters.

  Wish thrust the sword upward, and that extraordinary sword leaped in her hands and dragged her with it, and there was another shriek as the iron of the sword sank through the spell into something soft… and—

  Whatever-it-was, the huge dark shadow above her, shrieked again and was still.

  Wish hauled out the sword, and it came out with a sickening, squelching noise.

  Please… begged Wish. Please let it be dead…

  There was silence for a moment.

  Perhaps that thing, whatever-it-was, really was dead?

  She had sunk the sword into it pretty deep…

  All around, the snowcats were roaring, and Bodkin was repeating “Oh my goodness… my goodness… my goodness…” in a horrified way.