Spellbound statues, p.9
Spellbound Statues, page 9
She imagined she probably smelled strongly of dragon after playing with him after returning from the fort. And she had transformed into a dragon herself, which probably didn’t help. The last time she had transformed into a dragon, she had been helping the cats and he hadn’t minded. But this time, it had nothing to do with him, and he disapproved.
Reg looked through the fridge to find the best possible treat for him, making him a breakfast buffet of three different kinds of fish.
While he gobbled the meal noisily, Reg left him to it and headed across the yard to the big house to chat with Sarah.
The kitchen was fragrant with the smell of orange pekoe tea and cinnamon. Sarah had tea in the morning rather than coffee, claiming that, as she got older, her body did not respond to coffee the same way it used to and it was best avoided. Reg had known her to break this rule and hadn’t thought to bring a mug of coffee over from the guest cottage. But unlike Davyn, she didn’t need the caffeine to stay awake this morning. She would manage with just tea.
“There are some muffins,” Sarah said unnecessarily, pointing Reg toward the freshly baked cinnamon streusel muffins on the counter next to the stove. “I was going to bring some over to you.”
“They smell great. I’m famished.”
Reg helped herself unselfconsciously to two muffins, not even waiting until a decent interval had elapsed after eating one. She’d burned plenty of calories fighting the fire and exploring the castle, though the calories burned as a dragon probably didn’t count.
Sarah nodded her approval, and they sat down at the kitchen table to drink tea, eat muffins, and catch up on what had happened since they had last met.
Reg related her meeting with Corvin at Sarah’s suggestion, glossing over taking energy from Corvin, then described the fire and what they had discovered in the forest and the fort.
“We were hoping you might know more about the fort, its history, and whether… there is anything you can tell us about the ruby that is hidden there. Have you ever heard about it before?”
Sarah frowned, pondering this. “Yes… I do recall a stone of that description many years ago. What happened to it, I cannot say. If it was secreted at the fort… I believe that happened since it was decommissioned. I do not believe it was there while the fort was in use.”
“Why would someone put it there after the fort closed?”
“That is the question,” Sarah agreed meditatively. “That is a very good question.”
“It isn’t used like the temple, is it? For rituals or prayer?”
“No, certainly not. It isn’t at any sacred site, as far as I know, and it has nothing of historical or astrological significance. It was in an important position for trade and defense. The location was practical.”
“And no one lives there and uses it… to defend this stone?”
“Not that I am aware of. It is not a very hospitable location. Not somewhere that attracts squatters. It is too far away from town to be convenient. It is windy and stormy because of the way it stands on its own, not sheltered by the terrain.”
“So whoever hid the ruby there… they just left it unprotected?”
“Well, not personally guarded, which I don’t think is the same thing. It could have all kinds of protections in place. Didn’t you sense anything?”
Reg nodded and explained the sense she had of an electrical field around the gemstone, maybe powered by hidden lightning rods that attracted strikes during storms.
“Ingenious,” Sarah observed. “It’s very smart to use natural features to help keep the artifacts protected. The geode being buried within the temple and protected by ward stones and the altar. The ruby in a hidden chamber in the fort, protected by lightning. Some thought went into protecting them without someone guarding them.”
“But I would expect there to be magical spells there to protect them as well, wouldn’t you? If it was you… wouldn’t you weave protective spells as well?”
“Of course I would, but not everyone has the same abilities. We must each work with what we have.”
“Whoever put it there must have had power. How did they get into the chamber? We looked for a door or passageway to access it and couldn’t find a way in.”
“And it was too dangerous just to transport yourself into an unfamiliar room with unknown hazards.”
Reg nodded. Transporting herself into the middle of a magically created electrical field did not seem like the smartest course of action. Not without finding out a lot more about it first.
“That was probably wise,” Sarah agreed.
“I didn’t want to end up zapped or petrified.”
Sarah sipped her tea and broke a piece off of her muffin. Frown lines creased her forehead as she chewed.
“Tell me again about the statues in the forest. These… unfortunate souls.”
“Davyn said they were neighbors. It looked like they were trying to run away from the fire. Their expressions were afraid.”
“And like with Gideon, you could feel their presence? They were still aware?”
“Yes, just the same.”
“Then they have to be connected. It isn’t just some weird coincidence.”
Reg nodded her agreement. She had never seen anyone petrified before, and then suddenly, multiple statues were being created. They had to all be connected.
“I guess I should find out whether Corvin has figured anything out. He was going to look into it like you asked. Do you want me to give him a call?”
“No… I think we should play this close to our chests for a while. I was hoping that, having been friends with Gideon and an expert in the history of the area and magical artifacts, he might have an immediate answer. Since he didn’t, I have to wonder whether he is being honest or if he has something to hide.”
“Corvin isn’t involved in this.”
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s not. He couldn’t be. He isn’t able to use his powers right now. He couldn’t be the one who petrified Gideon.”
“He can still use his powers. It just causes him pain. You don’t know whether he could withstand the pain enough to ensorcel Gideon.”
Reg opened her mouth to object. She had seen how serious Corvin’s pain was when he had accidentally exercised just a bit of his powers. With something big like that… she wasn’t sure whether he would even be able to survive it. There had to be a certain point at which the human body just gave in. Even for someone with Corvin’s abilities.
But she didn’t know for sure. She didn’t think that he would have been able to do anything like that, but she couldn’t swear it.
“Besides, what happened to Gideon might also have been from a trap previously set. It might not have required any current exercise of power by Corvin.”
Reg nodded. “So you think… Corvin could have had something to do with this? Gideon was his friend.”
“One thing I have learned during my long life is that you can never be sure how a relationship will change over time. What seems like a devoted, stable relationship can quickly sour, and best friends or lovers become enemies. Or,” she raised her brows at Reg, “enemies become friends. Just because Gideon and Corvin were friends a couple of centuries ago, that doesn’t mean they still are. Something could have happened between them. Jealousies, lovers, insults, or even just drifting apart. Gideon could have been envious of Corvin’s place as the leader of the coven. Many people were not happy with him being elected to that position. That could be true even of a friend.”
“Corvin said… he wasn’t sure whether he had told Gideon of the werewolf attack.”
“That seems unlikely.”
“Yeah. I thought so, too. But he has been drinking a lot.”
“Ah.” Sarah nodded. “Maybe not so strange, then. They had seen each other recently?”
“Or at least talked.”
“Did Corvin have any insight into why Gideon was at the temple?”
“He didn’t say. He didn’t think it was odd.”
“Nor do I,” Sarah said quickly. “It’s completely natural for any witch or warlock in this region to visit it. Whether they are seeing it for the first time or visit it regularly. But this petrifaction… that has never happened here before in my memory.”
“And no one knows about the geode?”
Sarah patted her lips with a napkin. “I couldn’t say no one does. But I am unaware of any lore about it. Neither Davyn nor I had ever heard anything about it, and Davyn has been the leader of the coven that has met there for centuries. If there had been rumor of the existence of the geode, then surely he would have heard about it.”
Reg was inclined to think so, too.
“Then it isn’t strange that Corvin didn’t know anything about it? It makes sense that he would have to research it, to dig down into ancient records to see if he could find out anything about it.”
“Except that Corvin… has a sense for magical artifacts. If a powerful stone was buried where he was attending regularly, he should have sensed it, don’t you think?”
“It is buried very deep. And surrounded by wards.”
“Yes. Still…”
Reg could understand Sarah’s reluctance to accept that Corvin hadn’t known about the geode. But she’d had to reach deep to find it herself. Reg had been to the temple a couple of times without being aware of its presence. And she had a certain affinity for stones, developed while learning to cleanse the cursed gemstones in her possession.
“If Corvin doesn’t know anything about it and hasn’t come up with anything in his research, then how are we going to find anything about it?”
Sarah pressed her lips together. “I wish I had an easy answer. There are some repositories of ancient knowledge… but many of them have passed on in recent years. I will have to make some inquiries.”
Something twinged in the back of Reg’s brain. Ancient knowledge. She had a source for ancient knowledge.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
What is it?” Sarah asked, obviously reading something in Reg’s face.
“I know… I know something… someone… who may be able to help.”
“Who?”
“I… do you remember that witch, Sma Firea?”
“The one who was trying to poison the mayor? Certainly, I remember her.”
“She had a lot of ancient knowledge. Old books and scrolls, stuff that went back hundreds of years, maybe longer.”
“And you managed to acquire these books?” Sarah shook her head, frowning. “There isn’t anything in the cottage.”
“Yeah… I kind of… went a different direction.” Reg had been keeping her project a secret, not just from Sarah but from everyone, not sure how it would turn out or what others would think of it. She thought it had worked pretty well so far but knew that things could turn sour quickly.
She cleared her throat and went on. “You know how they have those computer programs now that they feed a whole bunch of information to, and then you can ask it questions, and it will give you mostly good answers?”
“Large Language Models?” Sarah asked brightly. “Yes, they are so cool. I have a young warlock friend who is setting up a custom GPT that will—”
“I kind of had all those ancient records that Sma had converted into a format where you can… you know, ask it your questions, and instead of having to read through all of that old stuff, it will answer in normal, modern language that you can—that someone like me can understand.”
“You put Sma’s records into an LLM?”
“Uh, sort of.”
Sarah looked at her, blinking, waiting for the rest of the story. Reg cleared her throat again. “Maybe we should go out to the garden.”
“What is in the garden?” Sarah asked, disapproval in her voice even though she had no idea yet what Reg had done.
“It’s better if I show you.”
Sarah raised her brows. Reg squirmed in her seat as if she were pinned by the glare of the principal at one of the schools she had attended as a child. She hated the scrutiny of an adult who knew what she had done and was trying to squeeze it out of her or make her choose her own punishment.
Principals could be diabolical.
Rather than trying to explain, Reg stood up and headed out the back door. She went around to the garden beside and behind the cottage, which Forst, the garden gnome, had done such a great job of restoring and nurturing after many of the plants had been destroyed by a certain witch in a rage.
Sarah followed a few steps behind. Reg gazed into the pond with its tinkling waterfall for a moment, remembering the day she had found the dragon hatchling in the garden and, before that, when she had seen elves there. It was a tranquil, magical place, and she could stay calm and relaxed there even with Sarah hovering nearby waiting to see what Reg had done.
Reg bent down and picked up a handful of the rich, loamy earth, regularly turned and tended by Forst.
“From soil and stone, by magic spin,
Theodore reform, our work begin.”
She tossed the earth back into the garden. It swirled around in a mini dust devil, growing darker and more dense until, eventually, it formed the shape of a child standing before her. He had a dirty face and tattered clothes like a pixie, but he was clearly not one of that clan. His cheeks were pale rather than rosy, and he had the flat, black eyes of a shark.
“Reg Rawlins, what have you done?” Sarah demanded in a whisper.
“This is Theodore. He is a—”
“He is a homunculus.”
Reg nodded. Sarah made that sound like a bad thing but, as far as Reg was concerned, a homunculus was a really handy kind of entity to have around.
“Yes. He was Sma’s homunculus. And when she died…”
“Then he should have been released and ceased to exist.”
“But he didn’t. Her spirit refused to leave, so he was tied to her there. And I… well, I managed to straighten things out and get him attached to me, and he has all Sma’s ancient wisdom…”
“You have a stolen homunculus with a library full of ancient wisdom in his head. In my garden.”
“Well, he’s only here when I form him…”
“Reg…” Sarah said helplessly.
“But he’s helpful,” Reg insisted. “You can ask him all kinds of questions about stuff that is only found in ancient books that no one reads anymore, and he can tell you the answers.”
“This is not a good idea.”
“No, it’s a great idea,” Reg insisted. “Better than Wikipedia!”
Wikipedia often failed her in answering questions about myth and magic. Even YouTube fell short on some topics.
“Theodore,” Reg addressed the homunculus, “People are being petrified. Gideon, a powerful warlock, was turned into a living stone statue at the Temple Orange Grove. How are they being turned into stone?”
Theodore made a clicking sound, his head twitching for a moment as he analyzed the question and searched through his repository to form an answer.
“Corvin’s woes brought cracks unseen,
To wards that held the spirits within.
Released from bonds by cursed plight,
Elementals surged into the night.”
Sarah gasped. Reg looked at her, unsure whether this was a good gasp or a bad gasp.
Like with many things to do with the magical world, Reg didn’t understand everything the homunculus had said. Even with a world of knowledge ready to answer each question she had, she still couldn’t always get a straight answer.
But Theodore had mentioned Corvin, confirming Sarah’s suspicions that he might be hiding something.
“What is it?” she asked Sarah. “Does that help?”
“Corvin. Corvin is the key!”
Reg nodded slowly. “Okay, yes, he mentioned Corvin. Even though I didn’t feed him that information,” Reg pointed out with a note of triumph in her voice. Theodore had to be getting it from somewhere. A history book about something that had happened centuries before? Personal correspondence? A book of prophecies? Theodore was able to find patterns and make sense of all the disparate information and to bring it together in a way that made sense. A very bright boy.
“Corvin’s curse,” Sarah said.
“His hunger, you mean, or…?”
“No, the werewolf curse. All of this came about since the werewolf attack. We kept saying that, but I never thought it might actually be causative.”
“Of what?” Reg asked.
“That October cursing Corvin started a chain of events that led to Gideon being petrified, as well as the other things you experienced.”
Reg shrugged and looked at Theodore, planning to ask him for further clarification. At least he was better than Harrison at answering questions. He seemed to have slipped back into answering in verse for Sarah’s benefit. Reg could usually get him to talk in normal language she could understand when they were alone.
“Corvin’s woes brought cracks unseen,” Sarah repeated. “Corvin being cursed and being unable to use his magic. That is what started everything. The spell that he had previously maintained started to break down. The rest of it…” Sarah looked at Theodore, her eyes penetrating. “It sounds as if Corvin had bound these elementals. Bound them to some artifacts.”
Theodore considered, then answered.
“Vessels crafted with ancient lore,
Locked these spirits evermore.”
“But they were not locked up evermore,” Sarah pointed out. “Not if they have now been released because of the failure of Corvin’s spell.”
Theodore clicked a few times, trying to process her comment, then apparently decided that she hadn’t asked him a question or that he couldn’t answer and stood there just staring at them, waiting for the next question he could answer.
Sarah looked at Reg. Reg nodded.
“So this helped, right? I did a good thing. I helped you to figure out what is going on.”
