Jinx's Magic (22 page)

High, green
flames. They completely blocked the corridor. There was no way out.

“That's what I was trying to tell you,” said Wendell.

26

Battle

J
inx tried to draw the flames into himself, but they just grew higher. This wasn't wizard magic, this was KnIP. Jinx tried
knowing
the flames weren't there, but even drawing on Sophie's knowledge, he was no match for the preceptors.

Because the preceptors were there, behind the flames, all thirteen of them. Jinx could see the vast golden knowledge, overlapping, crowding, filling the corridor.

“Can't you make the flames disappear?” said Sophie.

“No,” said Jinx. “The preceptors have got too much power.”

The flames crackled toward them. Rivers of light and shadow climbed the walls. There was no smoke—the preceptors didn't want to choke themselves, Jinx supposed. But there was plenty of heat.

“Can you make a hole in the wall behind us?” said Sophie.

“No good, Professor,” said Wendell. “This is an outer wall, and we're about fifty feet up.”

The flames were still marching toward them. Jinx, Wendell, and Sophie backed up until they were pressed against the dead end of the passageway.

“So, Sophie. You're craftier than I thought.” It was the Preceptress's voice. “All this time you were pretending not to study magic, you were busy becoming a creator adept.”

“What's this green fire?” said Sophie, shouting over the roar of the flames. “Is this KnIP? Are you using magic? What about the law?”

“We make the laws,” said the Preceptress. “Laws are for other people.”

“Why—”

“We'll ask the questions,” said the Preceptress. “How did you learn KnIP, after you refused my offer of a preceptorship?”

“You have to let these boys go,” said Sophie. “They haven't done anything.”

“The boy deserves to die as much as you do.” The flames began to edge along both sides of the corridor. “He came here as a spy for Simon Magus, and he is positively foul with magic.”

The flames reached to the ceiling. Things were becoming uncomfortably warm.

“If you let him go, he'll go far away,” said Sophie. “He'll never return here. I can promise you that. And—”

“And we should accept your promise? After you've betrayed our trust for so long?”

The green, dancing fire was completely opaque. Jinx couldn't see the preceptors, but he could still sense that huge mass of knowledge. And knowledge was power.

“Sophie, keep talking to them,” Jinx said quietly. “I've got an idea.”

The flames grew hotter still, and bright, bright green. Jinx heard Sophie arguing. He moved closer to the preceptors, closer to the flame. He felt his eyes getting too hot, and then his face.

Now he was just a few feet from that enormous store of knowledge, and he began to draw on it. And draw on it. It was a vast amount of power. It was as great as the Urwald's, but it was a very different kind of power, a doing instead of a being kind. He reached out a hand for it, through the flames, and felt it wind and intertwine with his own knowledge.

Now then.

Jinx backed away from the flame fast. His hand was burned and blistered. Wendell immediately started whacking him on the head.

“Hey!” said Jinx.

“Your hair's on fire,” said Wendell.

Jinx grabbed Wendell and said in his ear, “I'm going to make a door, and you absolutely, totally have to
know
that it's there.”

“Okay,” said Wendell.

“I mean it,” said Jinx. “You have to
know
it's there.”

“Sure.”

Sophie was yelling at the preceptors, stuff about how they didn't let knowledge out of the Temple because they wanted to preserve their power, and how they kept magic illegal so that they could be the only magicians in Samara. The flames had crept all the way around now, completely surrounding Jinx, Sophie, and Wendell. And the circle of fire was drawing inward.

The sleeve of Wendell's shirt caught fire, the green flames dancing upward. Wendell's hair was on fire now, and Sophie beat at his head. Her hair was on fire, too. Distractions! Jinx gripped the preceptors' rolling, unwieldy knowledge and concentrated as hard as he had ever done in his life.

He turned to the dead end of the corridor and
knew
the Urwald was there.

A tear appeared in the flames. It wasn't a door exactly, it was nothing like so neat. It was a round, ragged rip in reality.

“Do you see it?” he demanded.

“Yes,” said Sophie.

“What?” said Wendell.

“Just grab him,” said Jinx, and he and Sophie dove through into the Urwald, dragging Wendell between them. They rolled on the ground, putting out their burning clothes and hair.

 

“Ouch,” said Jinx, sitting up.

“Wow, is this real?” said Wendell.

“Realer than anything,” said Jinx.
“And it's really dangerous, so don't do anything stupid.”

Orange puff of hurt. Jinx sighed. “I don't mean
stupid
stupid, I mean unfamiliar-with-the-Urwald stupid.”

“The prison's still there,” said Sophie.

And it was. There was a hole in the air, a couple feet above the Urwald floor, and through it Jinx could see the green flames.

“I can see it now!” said Wendell. “You made some kind of—door through the world, or something.”

“We need to get out of here,” said Sophie.

“They can't get through, can they?” said Wendell. “They don't know the hole is there.”

“They'll know when they take the flames away,” said Jinx. “And don't find our bodies.”

“But
I
didn't see the hole,” said Wendell.

“No offense,” said Jinx, “but they're better at this than yo— than we are.”

Yes, the preceptors were better at KnIP than Jinx. They were creators adept, and he was just some kid feeling his way through magic that was much too hard for him.

At least, that was how it had been back in Samara.

But this was the Urwald. Jinx felt its power breathing and flowing through him. He wasn't some lowly scholar here. He was the Listener. He was the Werechipmunk. He was the Urwald.

I need a ward spell,
he told the Urwald. He'd never done the spell, but he'd strengthened Simon's, with the Urwald's help.
Do you remember?

Wizard's magic. Strong and tall like trees. Yes.
The Urwald remembered.

Around this portal, then,
said Jinx.
Over and all around
.

“What's he doing?” said Wendell.

“Hush,” said Sophie.

Jinx knew he learned magic best from the inside, and he'd seen the inside of Simon's ward spell. He and the Urwald grew the ward the way a tree grows, reaching and crawling deep into the soil, stretching high toward the sun.

Inside the portal, the green flames vanished. The preceptors appeared, standing in the prison hallway.

“How did they do that?” said Sophie. “KnIP spells can't be undone.”

“I guess the fire must be different,” said Jinx. “You kind of draw it in, maybe.”

The preceptors crowded at the end of the corridor, milling around, two feet in the air. Their thoughts were a purple-black blur of confusion—as if they were wondering where the corpses were.

Unfortunately they didn't stay confused for long.

“They've made a portal,” a preceptor snapped.

“I can't see it,” said a preceptress.

“Surely they've been dashed to bits if they made a portal in this wall. It's fifty feet down to the courtyard.”

“Unless they made a portal to somewhere else.”

“They don't have the power for that.”

“Nonetheless, I think they did,” said the Preceptress. “In fact, I
know
they did. And I
know
where.”

“Where?”

The Preceptress paused for a moment, as if considering whether to answer.

“We should get out of here,” said Wendell.

“No,” said Jinx.

“They're in the Urwald,” said the Preceptress.

And a moment later all thirteen preceptors were climbing through the hole in the air and tumbling out onto the forest floor.

Sophie and Wendell backed away. Jinx did not. He stood watching them as they recovered from their stunned surprise and got to their feet.

“So it is real,” said a preceptor.

Jinx remembered his acting lessons. People would believe he was who he pretended to be. Arrogant. Imperious. He drew himself up to his full height, such as it was.

“I could have killed you all just then,” he said. “But I chose not to. Yes, this is the Urwald.”

“Thank you,” said the Preceptress. “We've been trying for years to open a portal to the Urwald. But we couldn't do it, because none of us
knew
the Urwald.”

She took a step toward him and hit an invisible wall.

“What's this?” she said. “Some sort of ward? I
know
it's not there.”

“Then you're wrong,” said Jinx.

The other preceptors were pushing against the ward, their faces pressed grotesquely flat against it.

“Cool,” said Wendell.

“Very nice, Jinx,” said Sophie.

The preceptors were busy summoning their vast golden knowledge, which was all crowded into a few square yards with them. They were creating portal and door and window spells in the ward, but nothing happened. Knowledge was power, but the Urwald was a different kind of power.

“KnIP won't work against it,” said Jinx. “So don't waste your time. You can't get through the ward. But trolls can. And werewolves. And all the other things you've read about. They're all real in the Urwald, and they'll be along soon.”

Won't they?
he asked the trees.

We have no control over the Restless
.

You always say that,
said Jinx.
But I think you do.

We will see what we can do.

“Shouldn't we leave then?” said Wendell.

“Nah. I can do a concealment spell.” Jinx nodded at the preceptors. “
They
can't.”

“Of course we can,” said the Preceptress. “There is much more to KnIP than a mere professor like Sophie has been able to teach you.”

They were still feeling around the ward spell, figuring out that it encased them like a dome.

“Go back through the portal,” said Jinx. “And I'll close it, and no one will get hurt.”

“Idiot boy. You can't close it now,” said the Preceptress. “We
know
it's there.”

Nobody called Jinx an idiot except Simon, and Simon didn't really mean it—or, well, meant it in a way Jinx was used to. “Shut up and get out of the Urwald,” he snapped.

“We'll figure out a way to get through your so-called ward,” said the Preceptress. “And even if we don't, we can simply make another portal somewhere else . . . once we
know
. Ladies and gentlemen, please
know
the Urwald.”

“Trees, numerous,” said a preceptor. “Spaced at distances of approximately one to fifteen feet.”

“Height, up to and including three hundred feet,” said a preceptress.

“Deciduous and coniferous. Diameter at chest height up to eight feet.”

“Shut up,” said Jinx. Their babbling was nothing like knowing the Urwald, but it might well be
knowing
it.

“Fauna, reported: trolls, werewolves, various.”

“The place assuredly exists,” said a preceptor, “and is not merely a metaphorical expression of our fears and anxieties.”

“Inhabitant, observed,” said a preceptress, pointing at Wendell. “Adolescent male.”

“Ah, one of the locals,” said the Preceptress. “A genuine Urwalder. Charming in his savage innocence.”

Wendell opened his mouth to speak, then shut it with a small glow of satisfaction.

But Jinx was getting really worried. “Stop
knowing
! Get out of here, now.”

“Climate, apparently cool to temperate, with frequent precipitation,” said a preceptress.

Jinx needed to do something—but what? He'd been lying when he'd said he could have killed the preceptors. He didn't know any spells that would actually kill anybody. There was fire, but he couldn't burn the Urwald.

“Estimated value of trees, per unit, up to two hundred seventy aviots.”

There was a green gleam of greed with these words, and Jinx remembered what Reven had said. Urwish lumber would be worth a lot in Samara.

“Two hundred seventy?” a preceptor said. “Look at that one over there. Five hundred aviots, at least.”

The Terror is back,
said the Urwald.

Jinx thought of Reven. But the Urwald explained.

The Terror. Thirteen terrors. They must die
. The trees murmured to each other along their roots.
We must kill these intruders
.

And Jinx had a horrible feeling that by “we” the Urwald meant him.

“Jinx? What's the matter?” said Sophie.

I can't kill the preceptors! Even if I knew how
—

We know how.

They'd fight back,
Jinx said.
I don't know what spells they can do, but they might know some that can cross the ward. They'd kill my friends
.

“There must be thousands of trees like that one in this forest,” said a preceptress, pointing at the 500-aviot tree. “We're looking at hundreds of thousands of aviots here.”

Suddenly the air was filled with a stink like rotting meat.

“Millions of aviots,” said a preceptor.

Greed attracts trolls.

Jinx grabbed Sophie's and Wendell's arms. “Don't move, and don't speak.”

He drew the concealment spell around them just in time. The forest filled with trolls—tusks and claws, matted fur and rolling bloodshot eyes, and that terrible troll stench. Even though he knew he was invisible, Jinx had trouble standing his ground as the trolls tromped past, missing him by inches. He kept an extra tight grip on Wendell—Sophie at least knew that the concealment spell would work, but Wendell might do anything.