Spellbound statues, p.15
Spellbound Statues, page 15
Theodore shook his head slowly. “It is impossible to know what was in the warlock’s mind,” he reminded her. He had never even met Corvin. Whatever knowledge he had of the warlock was gleaned from Sma or her library. “The guardian was called by the Oceanids. Whether Corvin foresaw this… I know not.”
Reg eyed the water. “What is the guardian?”
“Guardian of the deep. Terror of the trench. Depths’ Doom.”
“But… what is it?”
The water lapped at Reg’s feet. Suddenly, something broke through the water’s surface. A green-gray, seaweed-draped tentacle. It reached toward the rocky shelf on which Reg stood. A rotten, fishy smell filled the chamber.
Reg’s heart sped in panic.
She needed to get out of there.
What was she doing still standing there watching the approach of something that could snatch her off of the rocks and drag her down below the surface of the water?
She might be able to live and breathe underwater, unlike most humans, but she was not immortal. She couldn’t live there forever, and she had a feeling that the creature from the depths had plenty of other ways to deal with her than just drowning her.
The tentacle that rose out of the water was as thick as a man’s thigh and undoubtedly as strong.
Trying to keep calm, Reg pictured herself on the beach with Sarah. She imagined the sun on the sand, her friend waiting for her, her skirt lying where she had weighted it down with a rock.
But nothing happened. When she opened her eyes, she wasn’t on the beach again. She was still in the magical chamber, the water touching her toes and the creature filling the pool, rising slowly out of it to grab her and pull her back in.
Maybe it would squeeze her like a python. Maybe it would deliver her to the Oceanids to do with as they would. Maybe it had a mouth lined with tiny teeth the tentacles would pull her into. Or a beak like a squid.
She really didn’t want to find out.
“Now would be a good time,” Theodore prompted. “If you can transport yourself…”
“I know. I’m trying. But it isn’t working.”
He looked at her. “Perhaps try harder.”
Reg again pictured the beach. She smelled the tang of the salt water. The way the sun had shone on her face in the early morning. The silence, interrupted only by the mew of seagulls.
Still, she was not transported there.
“I don’t understand it. Does it have magic that is preventing me from transporting?” Reg looked around the chamber for another escape route. There had to be a dry tunnel she could get out through. She couldn’t see anything, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She ran her fingers along the wall, hoping to find it as she had found the tunnel between the two chambers, feeling for the opening behind the illusion. She looked for a rune that might mark the exit.
“Perhaps you prevent yourself,” Theodore suggested.
He was looking anxiously toward the water and the multiple tentacles now reaching out from it.
Reg knew her panic was probably preventing her from being able to transport herself. She needed to be calm and clear-headed, and it would come naturally to her, just as it had the previous times she’d needed to transport herself.
One of the tentacles had nearly reached her but seemed to be stopped by an invisible barrier.
It wasn’t until then that she realized she was still using the psychic shield she had formed to protect her from the attack of the Oceanids. She could not transport while using the shield. She had experienced that in Egypt when she’d tried to simultaneously use defensive measures and active transport.
It was impossible.
She could only use one at a time.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
It took a great force of will to drop the shield while the tentacles reached for her. Everything in her resisted dropping the only protection she had. But she needed to get out of the cave, to escape the danger entirely rather than just hold it off for however long she had the strength to do so. When her shield finally failed, she would have no more energy to transport.
As soon as she was able to drop the barrier, she found herself standing on the beach. The sun shone on her face just as she had imagined, and the salt tang in the breeze flooded her senses. She was back.
Sarah pressed a hand over her chest. “Oh, Reg! You startled me.” She took a deep breath. “I thought you would come back from the water.” She indicated the spot where Reg had dived in.
Reg collapsed to the sand, her legs shaking. One of the tentacles had touched her skin just as she had finally managed to get the transportation to work, and she pressed her hand over the stinging skin. It had been a very close call.
“Reg! Are you okay?” Sarah hurried over to her and took her by the arm.
Reg breathed deeply. Her heart was still pounding hard, like she was in danger. But she was safe now. Beyond the reach of the Oceanids and whatever that creature of the deep was.
“Yes, I’m fine. It was just… close.” Reg breathed out, trying to slow her breathing. “I’m fine.”
She rubbed her leg where the tentacle had touched. It burned. Reg saw a puffy welt. The tentacle must have had some kind of poison on it. A good thing it hadn’t done anything more than brush the surface of the skin as she had managed to whisk herself magically away from it.
She could picture the tentacle now, pounding the surface of the rock in frustration. She would hate to be woken up after centuries of inactivity to chase after prey that just managed to slip through her fingers. Or her tentacles.
“What’s that?” Sarah demanded. “Did you scrape it on a piece of coral? Some of those are tipped with poison. We will need to clean it and treat it.”
“It wasn’t coral. It was just…” Reg trailed off. There really wasn’t any way to minimize it and pretend that it had been nothing of concern. “Well, it was some guardian of the deep with tentacles and it reached me just before I got out of there. I don’t know; I don’t think it was bad. It barely touched me.”
“Oh, my goodness.” Sarah shook her head. “Who knows what kind of substance it might have on its tentacles? I will need to do a cleansing ritual… and maybe a poultice… it wouldn’t hurt for you to ask your… you know…”
“Theodore?”
Sarah looked away, shaking her head. “Yes, Theodore. Perhaps he will have some knowledge of it.”
“He did… I’ll ask him if there is some accepted treatment. In a few minutes, when I’ve managed to settle my heart down.”
Reg looked around and realized she hadn’t brought Theodore back with her. But that was okay. He would just disappear once she was gone, and she could reconstitute him when she needed him. The guardian of the deep couldn’t do anything to harm the alchemical creation.
“What happened?” Sarah asked. “You were successful, but I was worried about you diving into this without a solid plan.”
“It went… it mostly went just fine. It was a lot easier for me to do as… you know… part siren, than it would have been for any human to do. I’m still not sure how Corvin and Gideon set it up, since I don’t see how a person could get in there without dive gear, but the entrance was too narrow for anyone wearing dive gear and too long to get in without it.”
“He probably has some sort of back door. Another way to get in that is less obvious.”
“They must have had a way to check on the relic to ensure it was still safe. They couldn’t have just left it there for centuries without checking on it.”
“No,” Sarah nodded, “I’m inclined to agree.”
Reg rubbed her leg. “I managed to get the vial from the Oceanids, but they weren’t happy, I’ll tell you that. And then they awoke this… whatever it was, this guardian from the deep, and it nearly got me before I managed to transport out of there.”
“You were very lucky.”
It wasn’t just luck. Reg had used her skills, both her physical nature and her gifts and logic, and the research she had done with Theodore to get her through it.
Reg would give her a more complete description of what had happened later. When they were sitting in the kitchen with a cup of tea and a plate of cookies.
Reg ran her fingers through her red box braids, which were still dripping down her back. She was safe. Everything was fine.
She heard the car door open and looked up to see Davyn standing there, one leg out of the car and one leg still inside.
“Is it safe to come over?” he called out.
Reg evaluated herself. She was exhausted and still recovering from the incident in the cave. She wasn’t in the water and, although she was still dripping wet, she was not experiencing the sharpening of senses that occurred when her siren nature was triggered. Moreover, she didn’t consider pulling Davyn into the ocean as she looked at him. That was a good sign.
“Yes, I think it’s okay,” she agreed. “Just… come slowly so I can warn you if you’re in any danger.”
Davyn nodded. He left the car door open and approached slowly, his hands raised slightly as if she were holding a gun on him. The wind shifted, and Reg waited, listening to her body and seeing whether the wind would bring her the scent of Davyn’s blood.
But everything seemed to be normal. Reg could sit there and talk to Davyn without worrying about what she might do to him.
“What happened?” Davyn asked, bending over slightly to address Reg. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Everything is fine. It was just… a little bit more arduous than I figured. Corvin said what to expect, but he neglected to mention that the Oceanids might be able to wake up something sleeping in the depths of the ocean.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Sarah said. “I think he would have told you if he knew.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Reg agreed. “I knew he wasn’t telling me everything, but I thought he told me the dangers. It could have been the end of the line for me.”
Davyn took a knee beside Reg. “I think you’re right. Corvin thinks a lot of you and I don’t think he would have sent you into anything where he thought you might be killed because of something that he failed to tell you.”
Reg hoped not. But then, Corvin hadn’t sent her to get the water elemental. He had not suggested that it would be a good idea. He knew that she would try it anyway and, as Davyn had said, she didn’t think he would allow her to go into it completely uninformed about such a significant risk.
“Reg was injured,” Sarah pointed out, indicating the small, raised welt on Reg’s leg. “I think we’d better treat this as soon as possible. We don’t want to take any chances.”
Reg rolled her eyes. “It isn’t anything. It hardly hurts at all. It just barely touched me.” She studied it closely. “Maybe just some aloe or antibiotic cream and a bandage. It really isn’t bad.”
Davyn looked at the injury, moving his face closer to get a better look at it. He glanced back and forth at Sarah and Reg before pulling a pair of glasses out of his pocket. He put them on and again leaned closer.
“Seriously?” Reg said. “You’re embarrassed about needing glasses?”
“I don’t need them for everything,” Davyn dismissed. “Just close-up work. I want to get a better look at that welt. What exactly caused it?”
“I don’t know exactly what it was. Some kind of leviathan of the deep. A sea monster that had been dormant for years, but the Oceanids woke it up. I didn’t get a very good look at it because it was under the water. But it was big. Very big. And it had tentacles and was covered with seaweed. It reached out of the water and grabbed—and tried to grab me. It just barely touched me before I managed to transport.”
“Well, that’s leaving it until the last minute. Why didn’t you transport as soon as you had the Tears?”
“I was sort of busy getting away from the Oceanids. I forgot that I could, and then forgot that I couldn’t do it while I was using a psychic shield, or forgot that I was using the psychic shield, and I couldn’t transport until I let it go. So…” Reg shrugged. “I took a few extra minutes.”
Davyn nodded. “It must have all happened very quickly,” he allowed. “Sometimes it’s hard to know what to do when things are moving so fast. We forget all the things we had been trained to do.”
“I didn’t forget everything. But I wasn’t expecting that… thing.”
“Is this it?” Davyn asked, looking at the sapphire vial. “This is the water elemental?”
Reg held it up so he could better see the swirling seawater inside. “Bound in the Tears of Poseidon.”
Davyn stared in fascination. “I never thought to see such a thing myself. We talk about these things as if we know all about them, but what we really know about elementals and similar beings wouldn’t fill a teaspoon. Or…” he nodded to the vial. “A small vial of seawater.”
They were all silent, pondering this fact for a few seconds.
“What do you think?” Sarah fussed, nodding toward the welt and addressing herself to Davyn. “This is very worrisome. So many things in the ocean have poisons and stingers and such. It doesn’t look bad now, but who knows what could happen if we let it go without treating it?”
“Aloe is a good idea,” Davyn said, “like Reg suggested. It has protective powers and will accelerate healing. You might also try a poultice to draw out any toxins. But it is hard to know exactly how to treat it without knowing more about the creature that caused it.”
“We should talk to Corvin,” Sarah said reluctantly. “He obviously knows much about the lore of the Oceanids and may have come across this creature in his studies.”
“I really don’t think it is anything to be worried about,” Reg assured them. “It doesn’t hurt that much. It’s just like poison ivy or something. Kind of stings and itches a little.”
Davyn nodded. “We definitely need to find out anything we can about this creature and the injuries it can cause.”
Reg felt like she was talking to a wall. The more she told them it was nothing, the more concerned they seemed to be.
But it wouldn’t hurt to talk to Corvin. He would let them know that it wasn’t anything. She could see whether he was feeling any better, over his irritability of the day before. If there were something more that she could do for him, she would.
And it meant she would have a break before they had to go on to the next relic. The air relic. She didn’t know what to do about the Zephyr Pearl, suspended in the Cyclone Tower. What was a Cyclone Tower? Was it a tower used to create cyclones? To hide from them? Observe them? Or was it just called that because of the high winds surrounding it? She’d never heard of it before and didn’t know if that was because it was a sacred place or just really obscure.
Maybe it was one of those things that she should know about, but hadn’t because of the way she had been neglected and moved around during her childhood. She sometimes found that with children’s stories like the Pied Piper of Hamelin or Three Billy Goats Gruff, or sometimes with other things that she just hadn’t had any experience with, like the fact that platypuses were real animals and not some creature from mythology.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s go see Corvin.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Reg pulled on her wraparound skirt, tied it in place, and wrapped the towel around her shoulders so that water from her braids wouldn’t keep running down her back. With the skirt on, the welt on her leg was out of sight, and she could pretend that it didn’t exist—other than for the stinging and itching.
“We should stop for something to eat,” Sarah suggested, looking at her watch. “I’m sure Reg has probably burned through all of her calories from breakfast.”
Reg was feeling a little nauseated and shaky, but she supposed that could have been due to low blood sugar. She didn’t feel like eating but, sometimes, she found she needed to eat in order to feel better, even though she didn’t feel like it at the time. Sarah stopped at a drive-thru for burgers and distributed them to everyone. Reg nibbled at hers but didn’t find it appetizing. She had only eaten a bite or two by the time they got to Corvin’s house.
Sarah led the way, a woman on a mission. She rang the doorbell with purpose, and looked irritated when Corvin didn’t answer immediately.
Reg would normally have reached out to him psychically but, since the werewolf curse, that wasn’t an option anymore. She didn’t want to cause him pain. She knocked hard on the door when repeated presses of the bell did not bring him to the door.
“Maybe he is out,” she suggested.
Davyn looked around. He walked over to the garage and peered in the window. “His cars are still in the garage.”
“He might be driving something else,” Sarah said, “Or be out for a walk. Maybe he decided after yesterday that he needed to do more than just sit around at home all day. So he went out for an early afternoon constitutional.”
That did not sound the least bit like the Corvin Reg knew. She reached out her senses tentatively. She still didn’t want to do anything that might trigger Corvin to use his powers, but she was getting concerned. Maybe he just didn’t want to let them in, but it could be something worse. Maybe there had been another werewolf attack. Or maybe the injury and curse he had been afflicted with in the werewolf attack had worsened. They thought it was healing and all he was left with was the curse that would give him pain if he tried to use his powers. But they could be wrong. They had been wrong about other things.
She could feel Corvin’s presence nearby. So he was still at home. Was he thinking about leaving? Going somewhere without talking to them? Maybe he had decided that he had worn out his welcome in Black Sands and it was time for him to move on. Reg had wondered more than once why he had not moved on to better hunting grounds. There had to be better places for him to live than Black Sands, where he was known by the general populace and there were very few with magical powers whom he could draw into his net.
She reached out to touch Corvin’s consciousness lightly. He was aware that they were there. But he did not make any move to answer the door.
