Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book
Read Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book Online
Authors: HRH Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian
Copyright © 2013 by Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian Translation © 2013 by William Rodarmor
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or
[email protected]
.
Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.
Visit our website at
www.skyponypress.com
.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
ISBN: 978-1-61608-969-6
Printed in the United States of America
ONTENTS
Chapter 5
Of Gnomes and Kidnappings
Chapter 10
The Spirit of the Black Roses
Chapter 15
The Ravager of Souls
Chapter 18
The Ravager Revealed
Chapter 19
Trapping a Spellbinder
1
M
URDER
, T
HEY
S
AID
T
he glittering mask was black with fury. The dark figures huddled around its wearer were careful not to move.
“So, that fool dares to defy me!” roared their leader. “Very well! I can't kill her openly. My fellow Bloodgraves would never forgive me. But if it happened by accident . . .”
The master began to laugh, and his mask slowly turned blue with satisfaction.
“Yes, an accident . . . An accident that would both destroy my adversary and trap my enemyâa happy coincidence! Once the girl's in my power, I'll have access to all the demonic power objects, and nothing will be able to ever stop me. Here's what we are going to do . . .”
Hearing the complicated plan the master had devised, one of the dark figures trembled.
No, that can't happen! The girl mustn't be captured alive.
There was no longer any choice. Tara Duncan had to die!
The shadow moved stealthily along the wall, silently cursing the silver moonlight shining in through the windows. It skillfully avoided sofas, chairs, and tables while making for its goal: an office door behind which angry voices could be heard.
The figure took out a transparent object, carefully set it against the wall, and smiled as the voices in the office became clearly audible. What they were saying was very interesting.
First came a male voiceâthat of the dragon wizard Chemnashaovirodaintrachivu, Master Chem for short. He sounded defensive and ill at ease. The second voice was also male and sounded cultured, but seemingly unable to easily pronounce certain words. It belonged to Manitou, a wizard currently in the body of a Labrador retriever. The third, very angry voice was that of the wizard Isabella Duncan. The fourth belonged to Selena Duncan, Isabella's daughter.
“Of course I am!” Isabella snapped, apparently in answer to a question. “For crying out loud, Chem, you didn't even tell me Tara had been kidnapped! If you weren't already a big batrachian, I'd turn you into a toad this instant!”
“Saurian!” protested the dragon. “I'm a saurian, Isabella. Please don't insult me. Anyway, what more could you have done than I did? Besides chewing your fingernails to the bone, that is.”
“You have no excuse, Chem,” she thundered, “and you know it!”
“But everything turned out fine in the end, didn't it? We found Tara, we freed the kidnapped apprentice spellbinders, and we defeated Magister.”
“No thanks to you,” growled Manitou. “Tara, Fabrice, Robin, Sparrow, Fafnir, and I escaped from the Gray Fortress without your help. And we're the ones who fixed Magister's hash, not you!”
Master Chem, who was feeling cornered, tried to change the subject.
“Speaking of hash, we've been getting complaints about you, Manitou,” he said. “A half-dozen female spellbinders in Lancovit would like to skin you alive.”
The black Lab groaned. “All right, what did I do now?”
“You probably can't remember it, but about ten years ago you sold them an eternal youth potion,” said Chem. “Which wasn't exactly eternal, since it aged them fifty years overnight. We got the latest cases a few days ago, but I've been trying to treat one of the women for a year now. The problem is that your potion's side effects are unpredictable. I've been able to cure the others and restore their looks, but this one woman's case seems hopeless.”
“Woof?”
barked Manitou. “Darn, I mean, âWhat?' If I did sell that stuff, I don't remember doing it, so I can't help you! As you know, I only regained my human consciousness a month ago, and my memory is a disaster. I don't have lapses, I have black holes. My mind is just shot.”
“Well, it's a good thing you're here on Earth and not many people know you've been turned into a dog,” said Chem with a chuckle. “Otherwise your hide wouldn't be worth a plugged nickel.”
“Are they really that angry?”
“What do you expect? Their husbands and boyfriends went to bed with twenty-year-old girls, and in the morning woke up next to grandmothers! Imagine the shock! You shouldn't have written âForever Young' in your ads.”
Isabella interrupted them. “Let's not get sidetracked by the problems my father has such a talent for causing whenever he performs magic,” she said irritably, unwilling to let the dragon off the hook so easily. “I'd like to get back to our initial topic, namely Magister, the Bloodgrave who nearly opened the rift between Earth and Limbo, which would have allowed the demons to invade the planet. That's more important than some poorly concocted potion. It was very lucky that Tara was smart and powerful enough to destroy the Throne of Silur.”
“That's right, so let's not beat ourselves up about what could've happened and what we should or shouldn't have done,” said the old dragon, who was getting tired of being yelled at. “You got your daughter Selena back, whom you thought was dead, and your granddaughter Tara is thriving. So, let's please discuss our other problems instead, namely: Who is hiding behind Magister's mask? Who is this Hunter he mentioned to Tara? And who tried to kill her in the vortex? It couldn't have been Magister himself, since Tara is the key that gives him access to the demonic objects. We have a lot of questions and can't even begin to answer them. I hate that.”
“Hmm . . . What do you make of the Rigibonus?” asked Manitou, who was thinking hard.
“The what?”
“That strange ray that one of Magister's henchmen used at the manor house. Remember when Magister first tried to kidnap Tara? He sent one of his Bloodgraves, who tried to kill Isabella while he was at it. The ray starts as a Rigidifus, to petrify the victim, and then becomes a Carbonus to burn them. That's why I call the spell a âRigibonus.' It would have cooked Isabella's goose, except that Tara grabbed the burning rayâwe don't know quite howâand fired it back at the Bloodgrave. It seriously wounded him. And since it's a double spell, only Tara can heal it. In the meantime, the guy's face must look like charcoal-broiled steak.”
“Yuck!” said Selena. “Spare us the gory details, Manitou. But that means that he'll recover automatically if Tara dies, right?”
“Exactly,” said the dog. “So, do we know the guilty party?”
“I don't think so,” rumbled the dragon after a few moments' thought. “I imagine the pain must be so intense that he's probably not good for much. The only thing he can do right now is blow bubbles.”
“Bubbles?”
“That's right. He probably puts his head into icy water to dull the pain and must make a lot of bubbles when he screams,” Chem explained, sounding amused. “So I'm afraid we have to look elsewhere.”
Chem's black humor was greeted with silence.
“Tara picked up some hairs from Magister's hairbrush,” said Manitou. “Did that yield anything?”
“When we captured the Gray Fortress, we got the brush and some of dear Magister's clothesâeven his underpants. We turned the lot over to the hunter-elf crime laboratory, but it was all so steeped in demonic magic that we didn't learn much. We weren't able to identify the rat or locate him.”
“Magister always wears that mask,” Selena said softly. “In the ten years he held me prisoner I never learned who he was.”
“And I didn't hear about any of this until later,” said Isabella, “so I have no idea either, unfortunately. But right now I have a much more important question: How are we going to deal with the fact that Tara is the heir of the Omois Empire? I have a few thoughts on that, but . . .”
The listening shadow remained glued to the wall, careful not to make any noise. It was so concentrated that it didn't see the enormous puma silently creeping up behind it. Ears flat against its skull, the cat approached stealthily, eyes focused on its prey. Suddenly the figure moved, and the cat froze, hugging the ground. Its lips drew back, revealing gleaming fangs.