A Dark Descent

  Glinda swallowed hard and summoned her courage. “Are you the Mystic?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, a reply rattled out from the depths of the hood. “I am not.”

  “Beg your pardon, mistress,” she ventured, “but do you happen to know where the Mystic is? It’s crucial that I find her because—”

  “If she wanted to be found, you would have found her,” the stranger interrupted in a voice like settling dust.

  “I don’t think you understand the magnitude of this visit,” Glinda persisted. “I was instructed to find Mythra by a very powerful Sorceress of Quadling Country.”

  “Then you have traveled long and far for nothing,” the crone informed her.

  It was all Glinda could do to keep from crumbling under the crushing weight of her disappointment. Find Mythra, her mother had instructed. But instead, all she’d succeed in doing was losing her sword, endangering Ben, and making the useless acquaintance of some hobbling old hag. “You can’t help me locate her?”

  “Not ‘can’t,’ ” the crone rasped, turning her back on Glinda. “Won’t.”

  Won’t? Glinda felt a flash of anger such as she’d never known before. “Why in the world not?”

  “BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!”

  Without warning, the old woman let loose a holler that shook the walls of the cave, and spun back around to lunge at Glinda. Glinda leaped back, dropping the candlestick and snuffing out what little light there was in the cave. In the next instant, the enemy pounced and Glinda found herself pinned to the floor, struggling blindly.

  “Get off me! Let me go!”

  But the crone only gripped her tighter. “What are you really doing here?” she demanded, the creak of her ancient voice even more unsettling in the dark.

  “I told you,” Glinda wheezed. “I was sent here to find Mythra.”

  “That’s a lie!” She gave Glinda a bone-rattling shake. “You could not possibly have been sent here, for there is not a Fairy, living or dead, in all of Oz who could have directed you to the Underlands to find Mythra! Other than that Nome King, nobody knows where she is!”

  “Well somebody knows,” Glinda hurled back, her shock at being taken down by an old woman hardening into indignant fury. “Because somebody went to a great deal of trouble to get me down here.”

  “Liar!”

  “No! I’m telling the truth—” Glinda sucked in a painful breath as a knee slammed into her solar plexus, then gasped out the rest of the phrase. “The Truth . . . Above All!”

  The hag froze, her hands still anchored at the base of Glinda’s throat as the motto trembled in the damp air around them.

  “You’re Foursworn?”

  When Glinda nodded, the back of her head scraped painfully against the rocky floor. The hag rolled off Glinda and bounded lithely to her feet. Since she did not make any attempt to help her visitor do the same, Glinda was forced to scramble up from the floor on her own, brushing the dirt from her backside.

  The crone uttered a hasty spell and the candlewick bloomed, casting a clear, soft light. But Glinda no longer had any interest in looking into the face of this madwoman. “I’m sorry to have imposed on you,” she huffed. “Clearly, I’ve made a mistake, so I’ll just see myself out.” But when she turned to where the stairwell should have been, she saw nothing but a solid rock wall. The doorway leading to the narrow staircase that would carry her back to King Roquat’s palace was gone.

  “It seems you’re not meant to be leaving just yet,” said the crone, reaching up to grasp the edges of her hood with smooth, limber fingers—fingers that had been wrinkled and crooked just moments before. With a gentle sweep, she pushed the hood back so that it pooled softly at her no-longer-stooped shoulders, revealing a tousled mane of silvery hair, shining hazel eyes, and a face of fierce, ageless, and unmistakable beauty.

  In fact, in her long, flowing white dress cinched with a gem-studded silver belt, she looked almost exactly as she had the first time Glinda had seen her.

  Of course, that time she’d been carved from marble.

  And she’d been offering Glinda a sword.

  18

  TALL TALES, SMALL FAILS

  Now who’s a liar?” Glinda challenged. “You are Mythra!”

  “And you are here without an invitation.”

  “I apologize,” said Glinda. “But as I told you, I was sent. I almost gave up, but I’m glad I listened to Ben, since you are obviously not quite as dead as everyone believes.”

  Mythra raised one elegant eyebrow and stared at Glinda, studying her for such a long time that Glinda had to fight the urge to squirm under her scrutiny. Then, abruptly, the Mystic withdrew her gaze, strode to the darkest corner of the cave, and once again turned her back on Glinda as she fumbled in the burlap bag.

  In the silence that followed, Glinda allowed herself a more thorough examination of the Mystic’s cave. It would be wrong to call it humble. It was whatever came before humble, a good notch or two below spare; perhaps more in the range of dismal. And, frankly, a mess. Though in Mythra’s defense, she did live alone in the belly of the world, and Glinda had arrived unannounced. The ceiling was high, and dripping with stalactites that looked like fangs. In a far corner was what could only be described as a murky puddle, and scattered throughout were rocks and stones of all sizes.

  The quiet stretched on for so long that Glinda was unable to remain still a moment more. Marching to the table, she began to clear away the dirty bowls and cups, only to find that there was no logical place to put them—no sideboard, basin, or cupboard, just shallow, shelflike niches dug into the stony walls, which held books, vials, quills, and inkpots. She gave up on the dishes and moved on to the pitiful straw bed. As she straightened the scratchy linens and threadbare blanket into some semblance of tidiness, she tried not to wonder how many fleazils and lousemites had taken up residence in Mythra’s bedding.

  Priestess Mysterious? she thought wryly, smoothing the covers and fluffing the sagging feather bolster. Priestess Mess-sterious more like it!

  A chuckle came from across the cave. “Clever.”

  Glinda whirled and saw that the Mystic was emerging from the corner at last. “Did you just read my mind?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “But you knew what I was thinking.”

  “Not knew. Sensed.”

  “How?”

  “Honestly, I don’t know. It has proven itself to be a rare and untamable kind of Magic, which is to say it cannot be employed at will. It happens when it wants to, and I’ve yet to find a way to convince it to do otherwise. Then again, when you are given such a wonderful power, you do well to accept it without questioning.”

  “And what is the name of this Magic?” Glinda asked.

  Mythra lifted one shoulder in an offhanded shrug. “It did not have one when it availed itself to me, so I coined it Connection. It is not a conversation, rather a sharing of sensation, of observation. A melding of awareness.”

  “I think perhaps someone has been connecting with me,” Glinda realized, moving back to the table and using her sleeve to wipe at the heavy layer of grime. “I felt a voice in the lagoon. And then, of course, there was that shell—”

  “Why exactly were you sent here?” the Mystic asked coolly. “Surely it was not to clean up after me?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Glinda confessed, wondering the same thing herself. “Except that it must have something to do with the fact that the Foursworn Revolution has begun, though quite by accident. You see, it was all the fault of the vision and—” Suddenly everything Shade had told her about Mythra and her role in King Oz’s court came back to her. “Perhaps I’m here because you trained the king and his Regents! Perhaps I was sent so you could train me, too. As it happens, I’m quite new to Magic, so—”

  Mythra drew a sharp breath. “You dare to equate yourself with one as revered and distinguished as King Oz? Are you so bold as to compare yourself to his most noble and courageous Regents Vali
ant?”

  “No, no . . . I did not mean to imply that,” Glinda amended hurriedly.

  “And how is it that you are, as you say, ‘new’?” Mythra’s hazel eyes sparked with interest and surprise. “You are twelve summers at least. How is it your sense of your own power is still so unfamiliar to you?”

  “Because there is—has long been, in fact—a strictly enforced Magical Embargo,” Glinda explained.

  “Embargo? Enforced by whom?”

  “The four Witches who have been ruling Oz for ages now. Only the Wickeds and those in their employ are allowed to use Magic.”

  Mythra looked incredulous. “My apologies, fairychild, but did you say . . . ages?”

  Glinda nodded.

  Now the Priestess looked thoroughly waylaid. “If it has taken this long for the Foursworn to rise up, things in Oz must be dire indeed.” With a furrowed brow and a pale complexion, she asked, “Precisely how long have I been gone, child?”

  Glinda had no idea. She shrugged. “How long do you think you’ve been away?”

  “In truth, I cannot say. Without sunsets or moonrises to tally, the days and nights begin to run together.” The Mystic let out a weary breath. “Time has become a bit of a blur, which I suppose is the lot that one who feigns her own demise and exiles herself to a place of utter secrecy must endure. There is very little point in keeping track of the passage of seasons, the onward march of Time, when everyone I considered a friend or comrade believes me dead.”

  “Not everyone,” Glinda reminded her. “As I told you, I was sent by a powerful Sorceress, a former associate of yours in fact, and I now believe it was so that you could mentor me in the ways of Sorcery. I am in profound need of your expertise.”

  “Need does not always guarantee aptitude,” Mythra drawled. “Do you believe you are worthy?”

  “I do.”

  “And what evidence can you offer for such a claim?”

  “The Road of Red Cobble came for me in the Woebegone.”

  “Red road?’ Mythra looked mildly puzzled. “I’ve never heard of such a thoroughfare.”

  “It’s new . . . ish,” Glinda improvised. “It’s how the Foursworn travel around Oz these days. But it only makes itself visible to those who possess a rebel’s spirit, and it’s made itself visible to me many times.”

  Mythra considered this, then leaned down close enough for her warm breath to ruffle Glinda’s eyelashes. “If you truly desire my assistance, I would have you tell me—right now, without mulling it over—ten significant things about yourself that will aid me in bringing you into your Magic.”

  “Ten things?” Glinda repeated. “What kinds of things?”

  “I believe my directive was quite clear,” Mythra sniped. “Ten significant things about yourself.”

  Glinda frowned. It had never occurred to her that she would be required to present credentials. But if that was what the Mystic wanted, so be it. Beads of perspiration had begun to form on her brow, and her knees felt like they were made of soup. Indeed, if the staircase hadn’t disappeared on her, she might very well have turned and fled.

  “All right,” she began shakily. “Ten things. Significant thing number one is that I have always been an excellent student. Best in my class at Madam Mentir’s, in fact.”

  “Who, pray tell, is Madam Mentir?’ ” scoffed Mythra, then quickly gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Never mind. I doubt very much that it matters. Continue.”

  “The second thing is that I saved Clumsy Bear from the Field Waifs, which took, as Locasta might say, guts, and three: I gave him my hair ribbons, even though I knew it would get me into horrific trouble with the headmistress.”

  She looked up at the Mystic, whose expression was disturbingly bland.

  “Four,” Glinda went on, “I solved the Queryor’s puzzle with relative ease.” This revelation had Glinda smiling. She was fittingly proud of how she’d handled the entire Queryor encounter, and in the end he’d actually bowed to her, which was hardly an everyday occurrence! As she recalled the experience, she suddenly had the strange sensation that she was growing taller. Much taller.

  “Um . . . significant things number five and six: I figured out that the Elemental Fairy of Fire, Ember, was hidden in a red beryl pendant, and I also determined that to release him from the stone, it had to be united with the sword.” She gave Mythra a hopeful look. “Your sword, actually. Which, come to think of it, is another significant thing . . . I correctly chose your statue from the Arc of Heroes in King Oz’s Reliquary.”

  Again she felt herself growing in size and found that it was not an unpleasant feeling at all. It was almost as if her body were expanding to contain her increasing confidence. “How many is that? Seven? Yes, I believe it is. Which brings us to significant thing number eight . . .”

  Her voice was louder now, though she was not aware of consciously raising it; in fact, it was louder and deeper and it filled the cave like thunder. Stranger still was that Mythra, who (once she’d quit pretending to be a hunchback) had been two feet taller than Glinda at least, was now looking up at her. Way up.

  “. . . I fooled Leef Dashingwood by making him think I was swooning over his affections, when in reality I was just using him to secure an audience with Aphidina!” Glinda was enjoying this immensely—rattling off her list of grand heroic accomplishments and growing taller and taller in the bargain!

  “Thing nine,” she said, and the boom of her voice was so loud she made her own ears ring. “I VANQUISHED THE WICKED WITCH OF THE SOUTH AND FREED THE FINAL THOUGHT OF THE KING!”

  Her head bumped against the ceiling, though now she was gigantic enough that it didn’t hurt in the slightest. She was so large she could have pulverized Mythra by grinding her under the heel of her gigantic boot.

  “And finally,” she bellowed, “thing ten! I rescued my mother from the dungeon of the Haunting Harvester.” Here, to her surprise, she heard a catch of emotion in her giant voice. An enormous tear slipped from her enormous eye as she added, “And then I watched her go off with a tin boy into a dark wilderness, leaving me behind to carry the weight of all of Oz’s hopes and dreams on my shoulders.”

  Glinda suddenly felt herself growing small again, so quickly and so violently that she thought she might be sick; she found herself cut back down to her normal size before the echo of her last word had even faded into silence. And still the shrinking did not stop. Littler and littler she became, tinier, punier, until she was less substantial than a grain of sand.

  The ground beneath her minuscule boots had gone from solid and rough to soft and smooth, and there were five tall columns rising up around her, five fleshy pillars.

  No, not pillars. Fingers!

  She had gone from towering over the Mystic to standing in the palm of her hand!

  And judging from the way those tremendous fingers were curling slowly toward her, she had no doubt that she was about to be crushed in the Mystic’s gigantic fist!

  As the fingers loomed closer, Glinda’s mind began to flash back to other moments.

  She saw herself cowering before Madam Mentir, trembling and apologizing, all for want of a couple of braids. How subservient she’d been; how unaware! She’d been a fool to let Mentir treat her so viciously.

  And she remembered watching Abrahavel Squillicoat get hauled away from his apothecary shop by two of Aphidina’s soldiers, watching but not acting—not even thinking to act—even when she knew deep in her heart that he deserved no such punishment and that something was horribly wrong.

  Above her, Mythra’s curling fingers suddenly looked smaller, less threating. But still, Glinda could not stop the thoughts that assaulted her. She imagined her own fingers pinching loose that first bleached knot of the Wicked trapestry, and pulling . . . pulling the thread until she had unraveled her beloved Maud right out of existence! Oh, why hadn’t she tried harder to save her mother’s friend?

  The memory of Maud dissolved, giving way to an image of the Queryor bowing, but along with
it spun a new thought—how could she have been so cavalier as to just walk away, full of her own success but without even trying to help the poor Searchers trapped in his Conundrum? She could have made a plea for their release; she could have reasoned with the gentle beast to give them another chance. But she’d simply left the Queryor’s lair, victorious, and hadn’t bothered to look back.

  But by far the worst realization of all was the one that came thundering into her head now, like a storm on a dark night—it was the memory of how she’d spent the better part of her quest bickering and arguing with Locasta at every turn! True, the girl was headstrong, impulsive, and sarcastic, but she was also loyal, brave, and willing to fight for what she believed in.

  And yesterday Glinda had pulled a sword on her!

  It was this gut-wrenching thought that brought Glinda to her knees—only to find that she was no longer caught in Mythra’s grasp; rather, she was back on the solid ground of the cave, kneeling at Mythra’s feet.

  She had returned to her normal size. But she’d never felt smaller in her life. “Why did you do that to me?” she whispered, keeping her head bowed, her eyes low.

  “You did it to yourself,” was Mythra’s sharp reply. “I asked you to tell me ten things about yourself that would help me train you in the use of your Good Magic. Yet somehow, you took that as an invitation to boast, to brag, to rattle off a list of your most stellar accomplishments.”

  “But they were all true!”

  “Yet they were not the whole truth, were they? Though I am pleased to say you corrected your error on your own, as evidenced by the fact that you are restored to your appropriate proportions.”

  “I saved myself by thinking all those miserable, humiliating thoughts?”

  “You redeemed yourself,” Mythra countered. “The ‘saving’ of oneself, I feel obliged to tell you, is hardly a onetime occurrence. It is an ongoing quest that takes many forms throughout the whole of one’s life. And for the record, humility is not the same as humiliation.”