Spellbent (28 page)

Pal cocked his head at me. “I have to say that eyelid looks a bit, er,
abnormal..
.“

“Abn—oh fuck me.” I lurched to my feet. Pal scrambled to cling to my shoulder. “I need a mirror.”

The Warlock beckoned me to a jewelry chest and raised the lid so I could look into the mirror inside. I tried to ignore the gemsight as I stared at my socket. The eyelid that had grown back didn’t look like anything that ought to be on a healthy human being. The skin was red, the ragged lashes pointing out in all directions. At first glance the lid looked as though it might simply be scarred, but I realized the skin was mottled and covered with a fine layer of translucent gray scales. I pulled off the dragon- skin glove with my teeth so I could touch my new eyelashes; they felt more like spines than hairs.

Suddenly feeling very, very cold, I grasped the orb with my thumb and forefinger and tried to pull it out. It was firmly rooted in my head.

“It’s hooked into your muscles and nerves by now,” the Warlock said, sounding resigned. “It’s not going to come out without surgery.”

I turned on him, scared and furious. “What the hell did you put inside me?” I hollered.

“I didn’t—”

“Yes you
did!
It was yours and you
knew
what would happen! It took me over and now it’s stuck and I
hate
it!”

“But in the dream—”

“Fuck you and your dream!” The bright ghosts from the orb lit my rage like a blowtorch on dry tinder. I hauled my arm back and socked him in the mouth as hard as I could.

“Jessie!” Pal exclaimed.

My punch rocked the Warlock backward on his heels, his lower lip split. He tried to grab my arm. “Whoa there—”

I stepped forward and kneed him in the groin. The Warlock grunted and doubled over
in
pain.
I
kneed him in the side of his head, knocking him over, and fell on him in a blind rage, punching him in the head again and again. I felt his nose crunch beneath my fist. Blood spilled down his face onto his chest and his velvet bathrobe.

“Jessie, no!” Pal shrieked, clinging to my collar and trying to avoid the Warlock’s defensive flailing. When I didn’t stop, Pal bit me on the ear, hard.

“Ow, crap!” I exclaimed, swatting Pal.

That was enough distraction for the Warlock to knock me sideways and get my arm and wrist in a joint lock behind my back. I swore at him long and hard and struggled to get free, but he forced me down on my knees.

“Cool. De fug.
Down,”
he said sternly. “You broge
my
node.”

“So
did
your dream warn you about
that?”
I snapped.

“Yes, as a madder of fag Id did.”

“Jessie, for goodness’ sake calm down,” pleaded. “You’re not helping anything.”

I trembled in the Warlock’s grip. “What’s in my head?”

“No more hittig?” he asked, shaking me. “No more hitting,”
I
agreed, slumping forward. He released me and pulled a crumpled light blue bandanna out of the left pocket of his black jeans and gingerly blew some of the bloody Snot out of his nose. “I godda get Opal to figs dis. Stay here. Don’ touch anythig.”

He strode past me out the door as I tried to shake off the soreness in my fingers, wrist, and arm. My knuckles were swelling red and blue, bruised despite all my heavy bag work at the dojo. Hoping the pressure would keep my hand from swelling up too much, I pulled the dragonskin glove back on. I blinked through several gem views until the room around me looked mundanely normal.

“Well, that could’ve gone better,” Pal said. “I understand your being frightened by the compulsion charm on that Stone, but our allies are in short supply right now. It’s best not to attack them, yes?”

“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

“Your apologies are best given to the Warlock when he comes back.”

“Yeah. I know.” The gem was still jittering little waves of not-quite-pain through my head. I pressed against it to see if pressure would make it stop. It didn’t help a bit. “What
is
this thing, anyway? Should I be worried it’s going to take over my brain or something?”

“Well, it’s obviously an ocularis; they used to be much more common centuries ago when people were more prone to losing eyes than they are now. Back then, it was often far cheaper to purchase a used ocularis than to seek the assistance of a master healer. The most common types simply gave the user normal sight; multiple viewing modes are hard to enchant, and expensive to acquire. They typically do
not
come with compulsion charms, much less charms strong enough to influence trained Talents. That’s certainly worrisome,” Pal replied.

I continued to press on the stone in the vain hope it would stop humming. “So do you think this ocularis was built with the charm from the start, or reenchanted?”

“I couldn’t say. I’m far from an expert on these things, I’m afraid.”

I wished the Warlock would come back soon so I could get more information about where and how he’d found the ocularis. “He said he knew when he got the stone it wasn’t for himself, but for a one- eyed girl. Is that charmy metaphor, or literal? Did he mean he got this thing twelve years ago, way before I even came here, specifically for me?”

“I’m at a loss as to what any of this might actually mean,” Pal admitted. “Did anything happen to you twelve years ago?”

“I’d have been eleven, and my mother. . .“ I trailed off, realizing that the Warlock found the ocularis around the time my mom had died saving me from inoperable cancer.

“Dammit dammit
dammit
I don’t
like
this fate bullshit!” I yelled, smacking the floor with my palm in fear and frustration. The impact made my knuckles ache sharply, but I didn’t care. “I don’t like predestination even as. . . as a
concept.
‘Cause the big take-home message there is we don’t have free will and never did. It means we’re nothing but a bunch of puppets.”

“That’s an extremely negative view,” Pal protested gently. “Certain things are meant to come to pass, but not
everything.
Many of us see destiny as a positive guiding force in the universe, a thing to be embraced.”

 “Fate, destiny, whatever. . . it makes us nothing better than marionettes,” I insisted. “And I don’t like getting jerked around, even for the good of the universe.”

I was silent as I considered the primary string-puller in my world. “Do you think this ocularis could have been planted here by Jordan? Could he have cast some kind of memory-change spell on the Warlock to make him believe he got the stone twelve years ago? When in reality Jordan’s men slipped the thing into his box just a couple of days ago while he was out cold? Could this thing be transmitting everything I see to Jordan’s crystal ball?”

“That’s. . . an exceptionally paranoid hypothesis, although I can’t immediately dismiss it,” Pal admitted. “But really, that would require an incredibly intricate set of enchantments. And why would he give you the benefit of sight through it at all, much less extrasensory views?”

“I can’t figure out why he’s done half the stuff he’s done,” I grumbled. “We never did a thing to him, ever. We don’t deserve what he’s done to us.”

A faint, cool breeze ruffled through my hair and kissed my neck and cheek.

The sight-stone is a gift for my best girl.
The voice was a faint, dark whisper inside my ear, inside my head.
Jordan doesn’t know its secrets.

I spun around. “Who’s there?”

“Who what?” replied Pal, looking perplexed.

“Did you hear that?” I asked, looking around the room and quickly blinking through different gemviews to try to catch a glimpse of the entity that had spoken to me. On one view, I thought I saw something like a faint violet mist fading into a skylight. It disappeared so quickly that I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t my imagination or a trick of the light.

“I didn’t hear anything. What’s the matter?” Pal asked.

“I. . . something just.. . crap. I don’t know. Maybe I’m hallucinating.”

“Hallucinating?” the Warlock asked from the doorway. His nose was straight and his face bruised and unbloodied; Opal had made quick work of healing him. Probably this was far from the first time someone had broken his nose. He’d changed out of his bathrobe, black jeans, and slippers and put on a dark gray T-shirt, a clean pair of olive-drab cargo pants, and a pair of black cowboy boots.

“Or not,” I said. “I just had a new invisible friend whisper sweet nothings in my ear. ‘Best girl’ my ass. Cooper gets to say that,
nobody
else, and that sure as hell wasn’t him.”

The Warlock was silent, looking puzzled. “I never—”

“I want this thing out of my skull,” I said firmly.

“I’m sorry I went off on you, but for all I know this thing is going to blow my head right off my shoulders in an hour. Where’s your bathroom? And I need a spoon.”

The Warlock closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He pulled a clean stainless-steel cereal spoon out of the pocket of his pants. “Please don’t do the spoon thing. That never turns out well.”

I got up and took the spoon out of his hand.

“Bathroom?”

He nodded sideways, looking deeply pained as if he wanted to refuse me but knew he’d have another fight on his hands. “To the left, on the left.”

I pushed past him, Pal padding after me. The bathroom was luxurious, bigger than the bedroom Cooper and I had shared in the apartment. I flipped on the lights above a big marble-topped vanity sink and leaned into the mirror to examine the ocularis.

The burn-scarred skin around my eye and on my cheek had thickened and darkened. Patches of the fine gray scales had begun to sprout in places. I poked at my scars; they weren’t nearly as sensitive as they’d been that morning.

Pal clambered up the handles of the vanity’s drawers onto the chilly gray stone of the counter. “You’re not planning to do what I think you are planning to do, are you?”

“Yes, I am.” I raised the gleaming spoon to the ocularis, trying to decide if I should scoop in from the side or from the top.

“But the Warlock said it’s connected itself to your muscles and nerves—”

“All the more reason I should take it out now before it does anything else to my body,” I replied, deciding to go in from the top.

I pressed the bowl of the spoon against the round front of the ocularis and slid it up under my eyelid. My probe was met with a sharp jolt of blue pain that took my breath away. I pressed my face against the countertop, hoping the cold marble would soothe my inflamed nerves. Stone squeaked against stone.

“Damn,” I gasped.

“Seriously, don’t try that again,” the Warlock said from the doorway. “In one dream you put yourself in a coma trying to dig out the stone. In another you bleed to death.”

“Bleed to death? How?” I stood up, frowning at him. “There aren’t any major arteries—”

“Dammit, I should
not
have to talk you out of sticking a spoon in your eye!” The Warlock threw his hands up in exasperation. “I am telling you to leave it
alone.”

“But where did
it
come from?” I pressed.

“I picked it up in an antiquities shop in London. The proprietor, a personal friend of mine, told me it’s originally from Egypt, probably made in 200 BC.
I
have no reason to disbelieve her. And I have no reason to believe the stone will hurt you.”

“But—”

“Stop with the ‘buts,’ okay? You’ll need the sight through that thing to stay alive where you’re going. Are you listening to me? You
need
that stone in your head, so leave it alone.”

“Why do I need this thing so badly?”

He sighed as if he were trying to explain income taxes to a grumpy fifteen-year-old fry cook. “Hells aren’t realms of the flesh. They’re spiritual. Magical. They’ll overwhelm and deceive your senses if you don’t have magical help. We can usually ignore our ears, but seldom our eyes. If you can’t see through whatever illusions Cooper’s hell is going to throw your way, you’ll be trapped. And then you’ll die in there. So will my brother.”

“I’d heed his advice,” Pal said. “I, too, have lingering doubts about the true nature of the ocularis. But I must agree it would be far more dangerous to venture into any hell without it. And it seems unlikely you can remove it without seriously hurting yourself.”

I tossed the spoon into the sink and took a deep breath to calm myself. “Okay. Fine. What now?”

“Opal told me she’s almost done with the engine. Apparently the Einhorn was just what she needed,” the Warlock replied. “Did you still want a helmet?”

“Yes, definitely,” I said.

“Okay, follow me.”

He led me back down the hall to another closet, a narrow room filled from floor to ceiling with wooden racks of hats, caps, and helmets from different eras. This room had mundane incandescent track lighting and beige carpeting. The Warlock reached onto one of the racks and pulled off a gleaming round bronze helmet.

The helmet had a half-circle dome with a quilted leather lining affixed by wrought-iron rivets to the rim. A one-piece soft leather neck/cheek protector was riveted to the lining on the rear half of the helmet. A buckled leather chin strap was riveted to the base of the ear sections. The helmet occupied stylistic space somewhere between something a medieval foot soldier and a 1940s motorcycle bandit might have worn.