A Dark Descent, Page 4

  In search of trouble.

  She was, as always, prepared for both.

  4

  THE NAUTILUS SHELL

  Glinda was too restless to sleep. Slipping silently off the couch, she tiptoed out of the Grand Drawing Room, took a candlestick from a hall table, and lit the taper by placing a quick kiss to the wick. It flared as though it were honored to be lighting her way.

  For hours she wandered aimlessly along the corridors, many of which were lined with portraits of the school’s most illustrious Declarants. Glinda had always been too swept up in rushing to her next class to pay much attention to them before, but tonight she took the time to study them. What she saw were scores of girls from years, decades, even centuries gone by, all sporting the same uniform of red ruffled dress and white pinafore, all blissfully engaged in the pointless endeavor of what passed for an education at Madam Mentir’s Academy.

  To Glinda’s shock, one of the portraits appeared to be of Blingle Plunkett. Holding the candle closer to the canvas, she peered at the likeness through the faded paint. The hairstyle was different—an old-fashioned coiffure Glinda had never known Blingle to favor—but the eyes were the same; in a word, mean. What was strange was that Blingle couldn’t possibly have had time to pose for it, having gone off the day after Declaration to trap Glinda in Maud’s cottage. So clearly this wasn’t Blingle, but perhaps an ancestor to whom she bore an uncanny resemblance.

  With a shudder, Glinda walked on, heading toward the library and pausing in the doorway. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt if I opened just one book, or unrolled a single scroll. . . .

  But she knew that delving into even one book would be tempting the smoky wrath of the Wicked fifth Witch. What she needed was to put some distance between herself and Squillicoat’s collection. Perhaps a walk in the fresh air would clear her head.

  She made her way out to the back lawn, withdrew Illumina, and said, “Blade of Brilliance, blaze me a trail.” Instantly the metal dissolved into a slender pulse of light.

  Following the sword’s path, she soon found herself at the lake where only days ago she’d defeated Aphidina’s Lurcher during a Magical blizzard brought on by the Wards of Lurl.

  On the opposite side stood the Maker’s cabin, clearly visible in the moonlight. When she’d first spied it from this spot days ago, it had been obscured by thick vines and tall weeds. But as it was no longer necessary for the Goodness that dwelled there to conceal itself, the vines had all fallen away. What remained was a cozy little lodge, nestled in the woods.

  With a jolt, Glinda realized that she’d left something very precious in that cabin: Haley Poppet. The thought of her beloved rag doll being lost was almost too much to bear, and it occurred to Glinda that this was probably the reason her sword had led her here—so she could retrieve her doll without Locasta around to poke fun at her. But when she took a step toward the cabin, Illumina’s blade dimmed.

  Glinda cocked an eyebrow in confusion. “Don’t you want me to visit the Maker’s lodge?”

  The answer came with her next step, when Illumina’s light vanished completely.

  “All right, then,” she said, resting her foot upon a large stone that jutted up from the shallows. “I’ll just stand here and enjoy the gentle lapping of the water.”

  At this, the sword flared mightily, casting a bright glow across the lake. Glinda watched as the dark water rippled under the gleam; despite the absence of any breeze, the water rose up into a ruffle of tiny whitecaps. One of these rolled toward the edge where Glinda stood; she managed to jerk her foot off the stone just before the little wave broke over it with a splash.

  “Hey!” She frowned at Illumina. “That wasn’t nice!”

  As though in apology, the blade’s light twinkled briefly upon the water. Then it gathered itself into a gentle glow, revealing a beautiful seashell balanced upon the stone beside Glinda’s foot.

  It had not been there a moment ago.

  Glinda bent down and lifted the fragile object. Similar in shape to the Queryor’s horns, it glistened with golden stripes against a lustrous background of aquamarine; it seemed to weigh less than if she were holding nothing at all.

  Returning Illumina to her sash, she turned the shell over, and the beauty of it nearly took her breath away. A series of perfectly graduated spirals curled outward from the center, opening wider and wider as they went. It was motionless and yet filled with motion, ancient and infinite. To Glinda it resembled a swirling stairway, a spiral of steps that might lead to the future or the past, to above or below, nearer or farther away, depending on where one wished to go. More than anything, the graceful design reminded her of the way Locasta looked when she was twirling into a Magical dance.

  “Strange, though,” she murmured, “to find a seashell in a lake.”

  Illumina flared again, throwing its light back toward the path on which Glinda had come.

  “Time to go already?” she asked the sword, smiling. “Yes, I suppose it is. Someone might wake up and wonder where I am. And I don’t want them to think I’ve had a run-in with the smoke.”

  Glinda turned to leave, but whirled back again when she glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye—something shiny and swift, flicking across the lake and disappearing.

  Probably just Illumina’s reflection, she decided. Slipping the pretty shell into her pocket, she headed back toward town.

  * * *

  From the door of the Makewright’s cabin, a figure watched Glinda accept the shell . . . and smiled. At long last, the time had come to set the plan in motion, this complex and delicate scheme that had taken the better part of forever to compose. And the burgeoning Magic of the young Sorceress would be the key. Indeed, any hope of Goodness once again prevailing in Oz would depend entirely on what Glinda Gavaria did next.

  This silent witness, more than anyone—more than even Glinda herself—knew the cost of finding oneself in possession of unimaginable power. And though he could have simply come to her (again) and told her and the others what he wanted them to know, he had learned over the ages that to know things too early could be just as disastrous as knowing them too late. The most he could do was to nudge her from outside of Time, communicating within those tiny spaces that swam between then and now and later. He hoped that with the suggestion in place, and with this token from his undersea friends, she would arrive at her own conclusions.

  In her own Time.

  He could easily take himself to the end result, if he wished to, by skipping over all that lay between. But as he began the long walk through the Woebegone Wilderness, he found that he was in that rare sort of mood in which he felt the need to experience the multitude of seconds as he passed through them. Because no moment was insignificant enough to overlook.

  He’d learned that the hard way.

  * * *

  The lake was well behind her when Glinda felt the words of a whisper swirl around her.

  “Time will tell,” the whisper said.

  And although she would not remember, she would indeed know (in the corner of her mind where promises were made and secrets were kept) that the voice she hadn’t heard belonged to Eturnus, the Timeless Magician.

  Hero of Oz.

  * * *

  It was nearly dawn when she got back to the academy. Her first stop was the Grand Drawing Room, where she slipped the nautilus shell into Ben’s knapsack for safekeeping. But while her visit to the lake had calmed her, it had also made her ravenously hungry. Craving a honey bun with tamorna jelly, she and her growling tummy headed for the kitchen.

  To get there, she would have to pass through the dining hall . . . where a good portion of Squillicoat’s historical treasures still waited.

  The academy dining hall was an immense room with gleaming floors, broad fireplaces, and four enormous chandeliers—but these lights were not wrought from iron or brass; rather they consisted of delicate silken nets studded at each knot with a tiny faceted crystal; caught inside the nets were millions upon millions of twin
kling fireflies. Once, during a particularly boring dining period in Fledgling year, Ursie Blauf had stared at one of these nets for so long and with such intensity that all the knots that held it together split open at once. Thousands of infinitesimal crystals showered down upon the delighted academy girls as they enjoyed their noonday meal and witnessed what could only be described as a fantastical firefly exodus. Ursie Blauf was instantly promoted to an advanced placement class called No Nexus Can Perplex Us: A Girl’s Guide to Knots, where she could be both carefully instructed and closely watched. At the time, the untying incident had been fluffed off as an unfortunate consequence of “overaggressive daydreaming.” No one had called it Magic.

  Tonight the dining hall was lit not by fireflies but by streamers of pale moonglow. This was the Moon Fairy Elucida’s promise to Oz, and the thought of the Wickeds torturing her into permanent darkness as she had seen them do in Tilda’s vision both terrified and enraged Glinda. Also terrifying was the fact that when the vision repeated itself in the Reliquary, Glinda had seen herself and her mother being held prisoner in the center of it all. There had been a third captive as well, but Glinda still had no idea who it was.

  Indeed, the entire purpose of the moon ceremony still evaded her.

  But it suddenly occurred to Glinda that there was a certain vile someone who just might be able to help her understand the Witches’ plans for the moon—a Wicked affiliate with strong ties to the late Aphidina, Witch of the South. And as it happened, this someone was currently being held captive, right downstairs.

  5

  STATIC

  In the North, the sky was a wash of dull indigo. In Gillikin Country, even the dawn looked as if it had been beaten black and blue.

  In a castle of quartz, the Witch Marada sat upon her throne, dressed, as always, for battle in a steel breastplate and spaulders on her shoulders. On her feet she wore sturdy leather sandals adorned with vicious spurs, and on her hands a pair of Silver Gauntlets with jointed fingers, which still carried smudges of red soil from her visit to Quadling. This distressed her. What good was a thing of silver if it did not shine?

  The Witch grunted at the grubby lad who stood humming in the corner, and held out her gloves to him. He came forward and took them without so much as a quiver.

  “A good buffing is wanted,” she commanded. “Mind the crevices, and gentle with the joints. Should you return them to me with so much as a dent, I will happily inflict the same upon your skull.”

  The scamp said nothing, just retreated to his corner to begin the chore. Humming.

  The boy was a recent addition to her court, a fresh little slave hauled in just over a fortnight before, and he’d been standing stoically in that corner ever since. She had barely fed him (he was likely used to that) or even spoken to him until just this moment when she’d given him this task. Ordinarily she would have simply turned him into a statue of stone, as was her custom with those who displeased her.

  But she didn’t need another statue. The grounds surrounding her castle were already littered with them, as well as the stony wreckage of the ones she’d crushed—pebbles formerly known as peasants.

  Marada turned to gaze out a tall, arched window, a gash in the stones perfect for shooting arrows, something she longed to do. Through it she could observe her subjects as they trudged out to toil in her mines. It was grueling work, descending deep into the belly of Lurlia to pick and hack away at the world’s innards. But the Gillikins were hers to do with as she wished, which was why she had long ago ordered they be clasped into shackles—crude metal manacles secured around their wrists. The dull clunking sound they made as the miners trekked to work was music to her ears.

  The only thing Marada enjoyed more than seeing her subjects slog off to the mines was taking from them what little they had. She called this process Levying, and it was her favorite game to play.

  Two weeks past, Marada had gone out at daybreak to entertain herself by tormenting the residents of a shabby little mining camp. The stomping of the soldiers’ boots and the clanking of her own heavy armor had roused them from the piles of hay and rags on which they slept. Tromping through the sad little village of tents and shacks and lean-tos where the Gillikins were forced to reside was the closest she’d come in ages to mounting an invasion.

  “Get up, you Gillikin prospectors,” she boomed. “Come bow to your Witch and make your pathetic offerings to she who is so much greater than you. It is time for the Levying.”

  The Gillikins staggered out of their shelters in their tattered nightclothes, rubbing the crust from their eyes.

  As she made her way down the path, she held out her hands, the palms of her gauntlets upturned. The sleepy, hungry Gillikins rushed to proffer whatever they had to give: the speckled shell of an Ork’s egg; a whimsically whittled knickknack, colorful stone chips unearthed from the mines. All useless nothings the Witch despised on sight. Most of these she threw back in their haunted faces, but such ingratitude did not discourage their neighbors from trying to please her with their own piteous remembrances—bent coins, mended stockings, little brushes fashioned of boar’s bristles. Garbage, all of it! The Witch had expected as much.

  She stopped at the threshold of a shack where a boy and his sister waited, groggy and barefoot. The girl wore a nightshift of lilac cotton; her hair was a long tangle of plum-colored curls. Marada had to look away quickly, for the girl was quite beautiful, and beauty made her queasy. The brother, who was younger, though not by much, had a thatch of thick brown hair streaked with purple, and a mouth that might have pouted if he were younger and less courageous. He stood with his shoulders pressed back and his chin up, though whether his intention was to emulate or mock the Witch’s liveried guards, Marada could not be certain.

  “Have you an offering for me?” she demanded of the girl.

  The girl slid one hand into the pocket of her nightgown and closed her fingers tight around something Marada could not see; then she shook her head. The Witch slid her gaze to the brother and drawled, “Do you have something to bestow?”

  The boy snapped his violet-blue eyes up to meet Marada’s; there she saw a glint of something she could not quite identify. Defiance? Zeal? Stupidity? All of these, perhaps.

  “Your offering?” she prompted.

  “How could a thing that is demanded be offered?” the urchin challenged. “Anything we have to give you is already yours.”

  At this, the Witch lifted an eyebrow. “You are a precocious little dung beetle, aren’t you?” she replied calmly, just before her gauntleted fist slammed into his jaw. Even as the boy staggered backward, his shoulders remained squared.

  Beside him, his sister had glowered but kept mum.

  And Marada walked on.

  * * *

  The urchin, whose name was Thruff, had watched her go.

  He saw the Witch stop next at the tent of an old man whose spine was bent into a brittle arc.

  “What gift do you offer, you crooked waste of skin?”

  The man showed her his empty hands. “Most humble apologies, Your Militancy, but I have no token suitable for one so glorious as you.”

  “That is not entirely true,” Marada snarled. “I see you have three or four teeth left in your ugly head. Perhaps I shall yank those out and string them together for a charm bracelet.”

  Thruff moved like mist, darting out of the doorway and into the street before his sister could even reach out to stop him. He slipped unnoticed through the legs of one guard to place himself in the shadow of an even larger one; he was so close he could see his own reflection in the shine on the soldier’s boots.

  Marada remained focused on the stooped man, pondering his apology. “Cut off his toes,” she decided. “I shall add them to the teeth and fashion a necklace.”

  A cry rang up from the Gillikin miners (who were all wide awake now) as the guard behind whom Thruff crouched stepped forward to catch the old man by the front of his grungy nightshirt. Dragging the frail victim into the middle of t
he street, the soldier pushed him down and grabbed one of his filthy, calloused feet.

  “How many?” the soldier asked the Witch.

  Marada sighed, already bored with the spectacle. “All of them,” she replied.

  The guard smiled and reached for his blade.

  But found his scabbard empty.

  “Looking for this?”

  Thruff had returned to his doorway, holding a lethal-looking dagger in his hand. The village fell silent, but for the faint clanking of the old man’s shackles as he shook with fear.

  Thruff twirled the knife between his fingers. “Seems I have a gift to give you after all.”

  Marada let out a roar of fury. She crooked her gauntleted finger at Thruff in a Magical command, forcing him to stumble forth involuntarily until he’d come toe to toe with her.

  He held up the stolen knife. “For you, Your Ungratefulness.”

  He might have gotten away with his sauciness, if only he hadn’t grinned.

  There was the flash of a silver glove, an explosion of pain, and Thruff’s world went black.

  * * *

  Marada’s thin lips curled into something approaching a smile as she recalled the slap she’d given the scamp for his disrespect. She’d taken great pleasure in watching him crumple to the mud. In the end, she’d left the hunchback’s toes where they were and had the child hauled to the castle, where she could hit him again the moment he awoke from his stupor. Which she had. But that had been several days ago, so perhaps he was due for another.

  She studied him now with mild hostility and saw that he was perhaps a dozen years into his existence. He was possessed of obvious grit, and Marada had to admit, he was disgustingly well-formed, with eyes the color of a Gillikin midnight.

  Without warning, the sky outside suddenly bruised over to an even darker shade of gloom. Marada felt the room rumble, as a slim fissure appeared in the purplish paving stones at her feet. In the next second, the floor had cleaved itself in two.