“It’s him,” said Shade. “The Queryor, banging his drum. It’s part of the Searcher’s Ritual.”
“Ritual?” Locasta flung up her hands in agitation. “There’s a ritual?”
“Maybe it would help,” Glinda said to Shade, “if you told us exactly how this ritual works.”
“It begins with the Searcher,” Shade explained. “That’s what those who come in search of answers are called. The Searcher approaches the Queryor and bows.”
“Bows?” said Ben. “Like this?” He extended his arm and bent at the waist, just as he had done when Glinda and Locasta first met him.
Shade nodded.
“Does the Queryor bow back?”
Shade shook her head. “Not that I’ve ever heard of.”
“Seems a little haughty to me,” Locasta huffed. “He’s part goat, for Oz’s sake!”
“Even so,” said Glinda. “He is wise and learned, and as such he is entitled to respect.” She nodded to Shade to go on with her explanation.
“After the Searcher bows, the Queryor asks his question, and the Searcher has to give the correct answer before the Queryor finishes drumming or else . . .” She trailed off, her words swallowed up by another round of pounding from the drum.
Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . .
The drumming stopped so abruptly that Glinda jumped. The next sound they heard was a long, ominous drumroll.
“What’s that about?” asked Ben.
Shade looked away and said no more.
Whatever it was, they would find out soon enough.
28
AGE BEFORE BEAUTY
The first time Blingle Plunkett misdeclared, she chose Nurse when she should have chosen Chambermaid. This, according to Madam Mentir, had come as no surprise. Even then Blingle had been far too wrapped up in what she thought of herself to give any credence to what others thought of her.
The second time she misdeclared, she picked Seamstress, and when her scroll pronounced her a Governess, no one blamed her for that error either. The fact of the matter was that Blingle would not have made an acceptable Seamstress or Governess (or Nurse or Chambermaid), for by her very nature, the child was unsuited to anything even remotely productive. Cruelty, malice, and spite were her only talents.
This had all taken place in the days when Aphidina still attended the Declaration Day festivities. The Wicked coup had only just occurred, and her reign was in its infancy. She was still new to being a queen and easily thrilled by the sensation of her own power. It was important to let the great ferocity of her presence be known to her subjects—even to those droves of pathetic little schoolgirls bedecked in hair ribbons and apron ruffles.
Blingle went on to misdeclare twenty-two more times, and on the morning of her twenty-third ceremony, Aphidina (who was by then growing rather bored with watching Blingle get Youngified), pulled the girl aside and offered her something much more valuable than a scroll.
“Let’s put an end to this ludicrous charade, shall we?” the Witch of the South had drawled. “I will personally train you in the Magical Pathway of Wizardry, and when you have mastered it, you may work as my agent here at the academy ad infinitum.”
Blingle was unfamiliar with the phrase ad infinitum, but her eyes had lit up at the thought of such an opportunity.
“You will be responsible for intimidating and tormenting anyone who shows signs of having a mind of her own,” Aphidina had explained. “You shall use your Wizardry to make yourself appear forever as you do right this moment.”
“Young and beautiful,” Blingle had clarified.
“Juvenile and mean,” Aphidina had corrected. “For after all, what is more frightening to a good child than a bad child?”
Blingle had eagerly accepted the Witch’s proposal and was thus spared the discomfort of being Youngified yet again. She reveled in the idea of being robust and dewy and (most of all) blond until the end of time.
That had been over one hundred and twenty-five Declaration Days ago.
And yesterday Blingle had been given her most monumental assignment to date. Yesterday she had been entrusted to capture the daughter of Tilda Gavaria and to secure the pendant that contained Aphidina’s fiery nemesis.
But she had failed. Miserably. Epically. And unforgivably.
Aphidina knew this because, following the disaster at Maud’s cottage, a disgraced Blingle had sent a buzzard to the palace to relay the details of her botched mission to the Witch. Of course, the ageless imbecile had never imagined that the buzzard would also tell Aphidina where to look for her, namely a woodsy patch near the Quadling outskirts, where she’d been dropped out of the sky by a white-headed winged thing.
Aphidina wasted no time in getting herself to the outskirts. As she glided through the straggle of red trees and underbrush, she was forced to endure the pounding of a distant drum—buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom, buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom—which caused her head to ache. On any other day she would have investigated, but on this day, she simply put it out of her mind and kept searching. Fury had a way of keeping her focused.
At last she found the golden-haired Wizardess cowering behind a large rock, crying uncontrollably, and minus two fingers.
Aphidina scaled the rock and perched upon it gracefully. Then she poked Blingle in the forehead with her toe and said, “I am disappointed, Wizardess. It seems you aren’t much use to me outside of the schoolroom.”
Blingle cried harder.
“Are those tears of regret?” the Witch inquired calmly. “Or fear?”
“Both,” Blingle admitted. “What are you going to do to me?”
Aphidina laughed, and the sound echoed through the sparse forest like ominous music. “I will do that which will be the most distressing to you, of course.”
“I was afraid of that.” Blingle sniffled. “Would it help if I begged?”
“It would not help at all,” Aphidina assured her. Then she waved an elegant hand over Blingle’s head and said, “You must pay, and now . . . it’s gray!”
Blingle yowled in agony as the golden hue bled from her hair like gilded paint. The spillage went on until only a limp white tangle of strands remained.
Then the Witch clapped her hands and purred, “For your mistake, your bones must ache.”
Blingle doubled over in pain as her supple spine rounded into a brittle hump; beneath her skin, her skeleton withered.
“From failure comes no teeth, just gums!”
With this every tooth in Blingle’s mouth began to rot. “I beg of you,” she wailed, “no more, no more!”
But Aphidina’s reply was a flaring of her eyes, which caused Blingle’s own sparkling irises to cloud over and turn milky. “And just for spite, I’ll take your sight.”
From her place behind the stone, Blingle—toothless, humpbacked, and blind—wept even louder.
“I’m so sorry,” said Aphidina, though she was not sorry at all, “but the time has come.”
“The time has come for what?”
“For you to grow up!”
With that, Aphidina crooked her finger, beckoning Blingle’s lost years to return from wherever it was that the darkness had seen fit to store them. The sky pounded from within and the ground beneath the whimpering Blingle shook. The forest erupted in shafts of light and darkness, entwined and in motion, bringing forth a past multiplied by a hundred pasts, a torrent of todays, tomorrows, and yesterdays.
Blingle had several lifetimes to answer for, and these inflicted themselves upon her all at once—days, weeks, months, seasons, all working as one to punish her for ignoring their natural passage.
As the tears spilled from her sightless eyes to dampen her swiftly wrinkling skin, the Wizardess tried one last time to reason with her liege. “Aphidina,” she croaked. “Please—”
But the Witch did not call off the fury of the years, and the aging continued, swiftly and brutally, until Blingle Plunkett stood before A
phidina at the ripe old age of two hundred and seventy-five.
And then, she didn’t stand at all.
She collapsed, weak and wheezing, on the forest floor.
“Now,” said the Witch, sliding down from the boulder upon which she perched, “crawl under this rock and remain there, until someone can think of a use for you.”
When Aphidina slapped the surface of the stone, it lifted off the ground and hovered there, a silent invitation.
Blingle dragged her sniveling, shriveled self into its shadow and arranged her frail, ancient body in the mossy hollow.
With a snap of her fingers, Aphidina brought the rock down and smiled at the shimmer of nastiness that escaped from beneath it, where Blingle now lay.
Waiting.
With a sigh and a scowl, the Wicked Witch of the South began the long walk home to her castle.
Knowing that she, too, would have to wait.
29
QUERYING THE QUERYOR
Staring up the steps that led to the Queryor’s Lair, it occurred to Glinda that something Shade had told them did not add up. “You said the Queryor beats his drum until his question is answered. His question.”
Shade nodded.
“But I thought the whole point was for us to ask him a question.”
“It’s part of the ritual,” said Shade. “After the bow, the Queryor queries first. The Searcher must give the beast the answer he wants; only then is she permitted to ask him her question.”
“The answer he wants?” said Locasta. “You mean the right answer.”
“I suppose sometimes there is more than one right answer to a single question,” Ben noted. “Depending on who’s being asked.”
Again, Shade nodded.
“All right,” said Glinda, remembering the sudden silence of the beating drum. “So what happens if you don’t give the Queryor the answer he has in mind?”
“The Conundrum.”
Locasta frowned. “The what?”
“According to my tutor at home, a conundrum is a particularly confusing problem,” said Ben. “A complex dilemma, not easily solved.”
“It’s also what the Queryor calls his drum,” said Shade. “It doubles as his prison.”
Locasta cocked an eyebrow. “So if you fail his test, he traps you in a musical instrument?”
“Miss Gage would call that a metaphor,” said Glinda. “Being trapped in your own confusion. Conundrum.” Then another thought struck her: “What happens if you don’t answer at all?”
“You walk away, twice as bewildered.”
“Because you are without the answer you came for, and also without the answer to the question the Queryor asked,” Glinda reasoned.
“What kind of questions does the Queryor put to the Searcher?” asked Ben.
“Some are direct, yes-or-no questions,” Shade replied. “Others are complex puzzles or riddles. Some are challenges. But there is always a profound connection between who you are and what you’re asked.”
“I see,” said Glinda. “The reward for self-knowledge is the opportunity to gain more knowledge. And the punishment for not knowing yourself is to be stuck in the confusion of the Conundrum.”
“So what did the Queryor ask you?” Locasta inquired.
Shade hesitated, her eyes falling into the shadow of her shining hair. When she revealed them again, they looked even darker than usual. “He asked me if I was Good, or if I was Wicked.”
These words hung in the air like heat lightning until Locasta spoke again.
“What was your answer?”
“I did not give an answer,” Shade whispered. “Because I didn’t know.” Then, swirling her cape around her like a small tornado cloud, she began to climb the steps.
At the top was a pleasant sort of terraced garden, with privet hedges and blooming bushes marking its boundaries. At the end of a shrub-lined lane stood an elaborate archway with fluted columns and a finely carved pediment.
Beneath the arch, holding a gigantic drum, the Queryor awaited, and he was whatever came after gigantic. Glinda struggled to recall the definition from the Maker’s book: The Queryor. Formed of ongoing inquiry . . . desire to challenge . . . the general essence of wonder. A being whose power came from boundless intellect, and from being in a position to use it.
But despite his size and importance, his expression was surprisingly patient and kind. He looked down at them with the gentle, wide-set eyes of a ram, glittering in a shaggy gray face. He had two enormous horns that curled off the sides of his head in a way that was appropriately reminiscent of question marks. His four-legged body, however, was not ramlike at all; rather it was gracefully feline—sleek, with silky gold-and-black-spotted fur and a tail that flicked lazily.
“Please do not be appalled by my extraordinary appearance,” the beast said, his voice booming but jovial. “I am by nature ethereal, for inquiry has no solid form, but I have chosen to present myself as a symbol of that which I represent. The head of a ram to reflect the intrepid search for understanding, and the body of a wildcat to represent the miraculous swiftness with which a keen mind can absorb knowledge.”
Locasta wrinkled her nose. “What about the ugly part?” she whispered. “What’s that reflect?”
“Shhh!” Glinda scolded, for she didn’t find the Queryor ugly at all.
When the Queryor’s gaze settled on Shade, he looked pleased. “So you’ve come to try again,” he said. “The truly curious always do. Very well, Searcher. Step forward.”
Shade did, bending herself into a clumsy but earnest bow. When she straightened, the Queryor’s kindly eyes blinked slowly, as if he were allowing the proper query—Shade’s query—to take shape in his mind. When he finally spoke, it was not a question but a simple command: “Tell me a secret.”
Glinda wondered if she’d heard him correctly. Tell him a secret? There had to be more to the test than that. But he said no more, just whipped his long tail around to pound upon the taut batter head of the Conundrum.
Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . .
Glinda imagined the pounding of her heart was as loud as the beating of the drum. Answer, Shade, she willed silently. You have made a life of knowing secrets.
At last Shade’s voice rose above the rhythm. “I cannot tell you a secret,” she said.
Abruptly the Queryor stopped drumming and tilted his ram horns in a quizzical manner. “And why can’t you?”
“Because if I did, it would no longer be a secret. A secret becomes something else in the telling of it, so neither I, nor anyone else, can ever really tell a secret. We can betray a confidence, but that is something else entirely.”
Glinda held her breath. It sounded like a wise and clever answer to her, but whether it would be acceptable to the Queryor, she could not guess. She hazarded a glance at Ben and Locasta, who looked as anxious as Glinda felt.
The Queryor bobbed his shaggy head, pawed at the green grass with his cat claws, and proclaimed, “You have earned the privilege of asking your question. Do so, Searcher. Do so now.”
“Am I Good, or am I Wicked?” she whispered, repeating the question the Queryor had put to her, the one that had gone unanswered on her prior visit. Lifting her chin from the collar of her cloak, she asked again, louder, but with a catch in her voice that made the words sound broken. “AM . . . I . . . WICKED? OR . . . AM . . . I . . . GOOD?”
With ground-shaking authority came the Queryor’s unequivocal reply: “You are Good, for surely anyone who cares enough to ask if she is Wicked is, by definition, very Good indeed.”
Locasta sprang forward to throw her arms around Shade, who had gone slack with relief. Ben pumped his fist in the air and gave a whoop of unbridled joy.
And Glinda—who was, of course, as happy for Shade as the others—again held her breath.
Because it was her turn to face the Queryor.
And everything . . . everything . . . depended on her answer.
Never in her six years at Madam Men
tir’s did Glinda dread being presented with a question. Today would be different. For no test had ever mattered this much.
Head high, shoulders squared, she made her way toward the Queryor.
“Don’t forget to bow,” Locasta whispered.
As if Glinda needed to be reminded! Going down on one knee, she reverently dipped her chin to her chest. The beast looked down at her, tilting his massive head this way and that, considering her carefully and thoroughly.
“Here is your challenge,” the Queryor said at last, the deep timbre of his voice again causing the ground to shake.
Without any discernable action, word, or even thought from the Queryor, a small, fat-bellied bottle appeared in Glinda’s hand.
“You have there in your grasp a measure of water,” the Queryor went on. “Your task is to make of it something other than it is, three times over. First, you will fashion fire from water; next you must make lurl from fire, and lastly, air from lurl.”
“Lurl?” said Ben. “He means like earth, right?”
Locasta nodded and gave a little snort. “Fire, water, lurl, and air. Is it just me or is anyone else beginning to sense a pattern to this quest?”
“You want me to use water to make fire?” Glinda asked in disbelief. “Do you mean Magically?”
“If that is your choice,” the Queryor replied cagily. “I care not how you arrive at success, only that you succeed.” With that, the drumming commenced.
Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom . . .
Glinda’s stomach turned to knots. How could she make water into fire and fire into dirt without Magic?
Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom. Buh-boom . . . boom . . . boom . . .
The more the drum sounded, the more blank her mind became. She stared at the plump little flagon in her hand, but could think of no means by which to accomplish what she had been asked to do. She glanced over her shoulder at her friends, whose faces told her nothing. Even Locasta the know-it-all seemed at a loss.
Try something, she told herself. Anything. She gave the bottle a shake, which caused the water to spin and slosh inside the pale-green glass, yielding nothing but bubbles. Panic rising, she wriggled the cork and tugged; it gave way with a hollow pop.