The Vault of Destinies (James Potter #3) (70 page)

"What are they doing?" Ralph asked tentatively, frowning at the tall image. "What's all that silvery stuff running all over the ground?"

"Alas," Erebus replied darkly, "according to the Ballad, the evil witches and wizards realized that their plan had been foiled. They had murdered their only hope of conquering the other dimensions and mortally wounded the creature that might have granted them powers beyond their dreams. In a final, ghastly attempt to harness the magic of that hidden realm, they fell upon the wounded unicorn and consumed its blood, still warm from its failing heart. As they feasted upon it, piteously, the poor beast died.

"Unmoved by the extremity of their crimes and grown cruelly powerful by their draught of the unicorn's blood, these witches and wizards turned into legends of horror for decades thereafter. They had become virtually unstoppable, you see, darkly magical and inhumanly strong. They were known to strike terror into the hearts of all they met since both their eyes and mouths glowed with a pale silvery light, forever tainted by the blood of their prey. To cover this, they fashioned masks of metal, even more terrible than their human faces, and wore them as signs of their fraternity. For nearly a century, these beasts in human form ruled with mayhem, torture, and murder, known universally by the name that they had chosen for themselves, a name that explained both the source of their powers and the depths of their depravity. 'Death Eaters', they called themselves; a word that became synonymous with dark ambition, inhumanity, and power at any cost."

"
They
were the original Death Eaters?" James asked faintly, staring up at the horrible image. "But… Voldemort…?"

"The devil cannot create," Erebus said evenly. "He can only pervert. The villain your age knew as Voldemort adopted the policies of these, his spiritual brethren. He took their name and claimed it for himself, but he did not invent it."

Shuddering, Wentworth asked, "So, what ever became of those guys?"

"Over the decades, heroes of stout heart and courage hunted them down," Erebus answered, nodding gravely in his frame. "Many knights died in the attempt, but one by one, the Death Eaters were dispatched, their heads cut from their shoulders and buried while their bodies were burned to dust. In the end, only one remained, a woman named Proserpine. She was finally cornered in her secret citadel, deep in a tractless forest. There, rather than facing her pursuers, she took her own life, leaving her own severed head smiling on the doorstep, its eyes still glowing with dead malevolence. Her body, the legends claim, was never found."

Ralph shivered. "Hellooo, nightmares," he squeaked.

"What about the unicorn's body?" Wentworth asked, shaking his head. "Didn't they try to preserve that somehow?"

Erebus scoffed lightly. "The Death Eaters cared not for preserving the corpse of their victim. According to legend, however, explorers did eventually find the poor creature's skeleton, complete with its magical horn. Rather than burying it or bringing it back, they decided to leave it as a memorial, hidden within a seamless blanket of unplottability, forever at rest. They did bring back one thing, though, as proof of their discovery: a single silver horseshoe, which they claimed was still attached to the beast's right front hoof, gleaming and uncorrupted. For centuries, that very horseshoe was a symbol of humility and regret, kept safe by a council of knights whose sole job was to watch for the appearance of any more delegates from the dimension beyond. If such a delegate were ever to appear, the horseshoe was to be returned to them in homage, a humble, insufficient apology for the crime that had been committed against their people."

"Wow," Zane said softly, somber for once. "So are those knights still out there somewhere, guarding the horseshoe and watching for anyone from that other dimension?"

"Alas, no," Erebus sighed. "My family was the last of those knights, and I was the last of my family, come to this new country in the hopes of finding a permanent hiding place for the relic. As a result, the horseshoe was granted to this college, an heirloom and a sacred trust. Unfortunately, by then, its significance had been all but lost. For many years, it was preserved in the museum atop the Tower of Art, well guarded but forgotten. Now, I suspect, none even remember that it was ever there."

"Why?" James asked, blinking suddenly. "What happened to it? Where is it now?"

Erebus chuckled ruefully. "That, as they used to say in my time, is the thousand Drummel question. It seems that sometime after my own death, the horseshoe was borrowed from the museum and never returned. Obviously, I myself am less than clear on the details—we portraits have rather a difficult time absorbing much of what happens beyond our own deaths—but I believe that the horseshoe went into the library of a trusted private collector. I suppose I should care more about it, seeing as I was the last of a long line of those whose duty was to protect the relic. But as I said, death offers its own unique perspective, one facet of which is that it becomes exceedingly easy not to give a damn. I can only hope that the horseshoe has been well cared for. Or, at the very least, been tossed into a very, very deep well."

James' eyes had grown wide as he listened. Silently, he turned to look at Ralph, and then Zane. Both of them returned his look of speechless realization.

"What?" Wentworth said, frowning. "You three look like somebody just shot Freezing Charms into your underpants."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" James asked quietly.

Zane nodded. "I'm thinking I bet I know who the mysterious patron is that 'borrowed' the old lucky horseshoe."

"But how would Magnussen have figured it all out?" Ralph asked. "
We've
got the portrait to explain everything, but Magnussen didn't get anything from him, apparently."

"Magnussen wouldn’t have
needed
anyone to explain it!" James whispered, flush with
excitement. "Remember what Franklyn told us? Magnussen was a guy who loved stories! He'd
probably already read all about the legend of the Rider!"

Zane nodded. "Then, later, when he's out prowling the halls here in the castle, he spies these tapestries and starts putting everything together. He connects the tapestries with the silver horseshoe up in the Tower of Art and bammo, he's got the dimensional key he's been dreaming of all along!"

"Wow," Ralph laughed a little nervously. "So the riddle was right after all. The truth walked the halls of Erebus Castle, right here. The truth was
Magnussen
and the
tapestries
put together!"

There was a long meaningful pause as the three boys stared at one another, absorbing the gravity of what they had just discovered. Finally, Wentworth spoke up, breaking the silence.

"Well, this is all marvelous," he sighed, rolling his eyes and pulling James by the elbow. "I don't know what any of it means or why I should care, but bully for all three of you. Now, can I maybe go back and finish my lunch?"

T
he first hints of spring on the campus of Alma Aleron were marked by a series of very gusty days. The warm winds first melted the remaining patches of snow and then dried the winter-yellow lawns so that by the week before Valentine's Day, groups of students could be seen practicing skrim or tossing Clutches over the mall's yards and empty flowerbeds. After nearly a week of grey days, the sun finally broke through a tatter of stubborn clouds, bathing Administration Hall with beams of shifting golden light.

In the days after the revelation of the Erebus Castle tapestries, James, Ralph, and Zane had begun to plan the next step of their adventure, which was to somehow use the time-traveling nature of the school to go back to the date of Professor Magnussen's escape and follow him through the Timelock, out into Muggle Philadelphia. There, they would attempt to nick the dimensional key— the unicorn's silver horseshoe—from the villain professor before he could use it to vanish forever through the Nexus Curtain.

"If we're lucky," Zane whispered one morning in Clockwork Mechanics as Professor Cloverhoof assisted another student with her magical cuckoo clock, "we'll get the horseshoe
and
see where the Nexus Curtain is at the same time."

James lurched suddenly backward as his own wooden cuckoo bird sprang from the tiny doors of his half-finished clock. The bird extended on a complicated accordion of wooden struts, began to retract back, and then lurched to a squeaking halt, bobbing back and forth over James' shoulder.

"Not enough beeswax on the joints," the bird chirped in irritation. "And your measurements are all over the place."

"Shut it, bird," James grumped, reaching to force it back into its compartment. To Zane, he whispered, "You mean if we just follow Magnussen without being seen, we can wait for him to lead us to the Nexus Curtain and then try to nick the unicorn's shoe before he actually uses it?"

"Seems like it'd be cutting things a bit close," Ralph admitted.

"Yeah," his own cuckoo bird chirped from where it lay on the table next to him, surrounded by a variety of wooden cogs, tools, and brass gears. "And finesse doesn't seem to be ya all's strong suit."

"Shut it, bird," all three boys said in unison.

Just to be sure of their information, James had suggested that they take a quick trip up to the museum atop the Tower of Art to learn what they could about the unicorn's horseshoe. During their Wednesday afternoon free period, they climbed the hundreds of stairs to the top of the Tower and spent some time wandering the museum's halls, searching for any information about the apparently missing horseshoe. The curator was not at her desk, unfortunately, and a quick look around the museum's halls revealed no mysteriously vacant display cases or empty frames where the horseshoe might originally have been displayed.

"It's been gone too long," Zane insisted, bored. "The portrait said they didn't even really know the significance of the thing anyway, remember? As far as the curator knew, it was just some silver horseshoe from the Erebus family collection. Totally old and stuff, but still, just a horseshoe. Once it went missing, they probably just closed the display and put in a new bowl of golden scarabs. Let's go back and see them again, now that I mention it. I still have some of those copper shavings in my pocket that they like to eat."

"We need to be sure," James said stubbornly. "Erebus himself said he's pretty fuzzy on anything that's happened since his death. I want to know for certain that the horseshoe really was here once and that it went missing around Magnussen's time. Hold on…"

"What?" Ralph asked as James suddenly pulled him into a side corridor. "You see something?"

"These are just more portraits," Zane said, rolling his eyes. "You going to corroborate one half-baked heap of paint with another?"

"If their stories agree, then yes," James replied. "Besides, I've heard that one of these guys was known for never telling a lie."

"A quote that has long outlived its context," one of the portraits said with a sniff. "It was directed at Mrs. Washington, in fact, on the occasion of a missing slice of apple pie. And, I might add, it was meant to be rather sarcastic."

"George Washington?" Ralph asked, peering at the large portrait on the corridor wall. "What's he going to know about a magical unicorn horseshoe?"

"Nothing whatsoever with an attitude like that, young man," Washington answered huffily. "I've been watching the three of you traipse around the museum. I can't imagine why you haven't already asked any of us portraits about whatever it is you are seeking, especially since the curator is absent.
Not
that said absence is at all unusual."

"That's for certain," another portrait added. James glanced up and saw the painted visage of a rather round-faced man with tufts of iron grey hair poking from the sides of his head. '
John
Adams
', the name plate read. "Our Madam Curator spends about as much time at her post as a Virginia night watchman."

"I take offense at comments like that," another portrait commented from further down the hall.

"We
know
, Thomas," Washington said with a roll of his eyes. "That's why Adams keeps making them. He's been trying to get your goat for centuries. I cannot understand why you keep making it so very easy for him."

"Like shooting fish in a barrel," Adams smirked.

"Some of us prefer more
sporting
contests," said the portrait from further down the hall. James leaned to the side and read the name plate: '
Thomas Jefferson
'. "Us Virginians aim for loftier challenges than mere colloquial insults."

"Do note, John," Washington added carefully, "that I was a Virginian as well."

"Yes, but you can give as well as you get, George," Adams replied jovially. "
You
have a sense of humour, after all."

"Wait a minute," Ralph interrupted. "George Washington. You're the guy that invented peanut butter, right?"

"Ahem," another voice coughed lightly. "You're thinking of George Washington
Carver
, young man. A common enough mistake, I suppose."