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“You can’t choose the time. It’s already set.” She gripped his hand, pulled. “Please. Into the house.”
Reluctantly, Cal went with her. “Look, Bryna, it seems to me that a bully’s a bully whatever else he might be. The longer you duck a bully, the worse he gets. Believe me, I’ve dealt with my share.”
“Oh, aye, and had a fine bloody nose, as I remember, from one. The two of you, pounding on each other on the street corner. Like hoodlums.”
“Hey, he started it. He tried to shake me down once too often, so I…” Cal trailed off, blew out a long breath. “Whoa. Too weird. I haven’t thought about Henry Belinski in twenty years. Anyway, he may have bloodied my nose, but I broke his.”
“Oh, and you’re proud of that, are you now? Breaking the nose of an eight-year-old boy.”
“Iwas eight too.” He realized that she had maneuvered him neatly into the house, turned the subject, and gotten her own way. “Very clever, Bryna. I don’t see that you need magic when you can twist a conversation around like that.”
“Just a small talent.” She smiled and touched his cheek. “I was glad you broke his nose. I wanted to turn him into a toad—I had already started the charm when you dealt with it yourself.”
“A toad?” He couldn’t help it, the grin just popped out. “Really?”
“It would have been wrong. But I was only four, and such things are forgiven in the child.” Then her smile faded, and her eyes went dark. “Alasdair is no child, Calin. He wants more than to wound your pride, skin your knees. Don’t take him lightly.”
Then she stepped back, lifting both hands.I call the wind around my house to swirl.She twisted a wrist and brought the wind howling against the windows.Fists of fog against my windows curl. Deafen his ears and blind his eyes. Come aid me with this disguise. Help me guard what was trusted to me. As I will, so mote it be.
He’d stepped back from her, gaping. Fog crawled over the windows, the wind howled like wolves. The woman before him glowed like a candle, shimmering with a power he couldn’t understand. The fire she’d made out of air was nothing compared with this.
“How much am I supposed to believe? Accept?”
She lowered her hands slowly. “Only what you will. The choice will always be yours, Calin. Will you come with me and see what I would show you?”
“Fine.” He blew out a breath. “And after, if you don’t mind, I’d like a glass of that Irish of yours. Straight up.”
She managed a small smile. “Then you’ll have it. Come.” As she started toward the stairs, she chose her words carefully. “We have little time. He’ll work to break the spell. His pride will demand it, and my powers are more…limited than they were.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of it,” was all she would say. “And so is what I have to show you. It isn’t just me he wants, you see. He wants everything I have. And he wants the most precious treasure of the Castle of Secrets.”
She stopped in front of a door, thick with carving. There was no knob, no lock, just glossy wood and that ornate pattern on it that resembled ancient writing. “This room is barred to him by power greater than mine.” She passed a hand over the wood, and slowly, soundlessly, the door crept open.
“‘Open locks,’ “Cal murmured, “‘whoever knocks.’ “
“No, only I. And now you.” She stepped inside, and after a brief hesitation, he crossed the threshold behind her.
Instantly the room filled with the light of a hundred candles. Their flames burned straight and true, illuminating a small, windowless chamber. The walls were wood, thickly carved like the door, the ceiling low, nearly brushing the top of his head.
“A humble place for such a thing,” Bryna murmured.
He saw nothing but a simple wooden pedestal standing in a white circle in the center of the room. Atop the column was a globe, clear as glass.
“A crystal ball?”
Saying nothing, she crossed the room. “Come closer.” She waited, kept her hands at her side until he’d walked up and put the globe between them.
“Alasdair lusts for me, envies you, and covets this. For all his power, for all his trickery, he has never gained what he craves the most. This has been guarded by a member of my blood since before time. Believe me, Calin, wizards walked this land while men without vision still huddled in caves, fearing the night. And this ancient ball was conjured by one of my blood and passed down generation to generation. Bryna the Wise held this in her hands a thousand years past and through her power, and her love, concealed it from Alasdair at the last. And so it remained hidden. No one outside my blood has cast eyes on it since.”
Gently, she lifted the globe from its perch, raised it high above her head. Candlelight flickered over it, into it, seemed to trap itself inside until the ball burned bright. When she lowered it, it glowed still, colors dazzling, pulsing, beating.
“Look, my love.” Bryna opened her hand so that the globe rolled to her fingertips, clung there in defiance of gravity. “Look, and see.”
He couldn’t stop his hands from reaching out, cupping it. Its surface was smooth, almost silky, and warmed in his hands like flesh. The pulse of it, the life of it, seemed to swim up his arms.
Colors shifted. The bright clouds they formed parted, a magic sea. He saw dragons spewing fire and a silver sword cleaving through scales. A man bedding a woman in a flower-strewn meadow under a bright white sun. A farmer plowing a rocky field behind swaybacked horses. A babe suckling at his mother’s breast.