Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book (21 page)

“He's also an ardent fisherman. He often wets a line in the river down by the dock. He finds our fish less aggressive than those on OtherWorld.”

The friends exchanged looks. A river? What did a river have to do with anything?

“Very well,” said the Lab. “We'll go take a look at those fish too. Goodbye for now, Guardian. Lead the way, Fabrice.”

With the count looking on suspiciously, they left the rose garden. Fabrice sighed. “I think I'm going to spend the next century locked in my room!”

“I'll tell your father what happened,” said Manitou. “What we're doing is important, and he'll be very proud of you if we succeed.”

“Yeah, but his being proud won't keep him from punishing me because I disobeyed him.”

“You didn't disobey him,” remarked Cal. “He didn't
specifically
forbid you from going to OtherWorld.”

This didn't seem to console Fabrice, and they walked on in silence. Barune was quite surprised by the rather monochrome color of earthly vegetation and tried to sample everything. He eventually swallowed a big clump of nettles and got prickles in his tongue, and they had to cast a Healus to fix him up. From then on, he wouldn't touch anything and followed Fabrice so closely he kept stepping on his heels.

Fabrice sighed again. Between his too-strict father and his overly affectionate familiar, the coming months were going to be pretty lively. And he dreaded the prospect of their inevitable meeting.

“Here we are,” he said. “There's the dock.”

Silhouetted against the blue of the river, a long brown dock extended out over the water. Fabrice and Tara had enjoyed good times there, jumping into the chilly water. Having left sleeping Tingapore and now standing in the hot afternoon sun, they had trouble associating the image of the monstrous wizard with this peaceful landscape.

“You see any gnomes around?” asked Cal sarcastically.

They searched the vicinity with a fine-tooth comb, but found no secret entrances and no hidden dungeons.

A despairing Glul Buglul fell to his knees, blue tears in his eyes. “My sweet Mul, my beautiful love! I'll never see you again!”

Manitou put his head down and started sniffing carefully, walking up and down the dock.

“I smell
sniff . . .
I smell him
sniff, sniff.
. . . I can tell that he came here. Yes, for sure. His scent is strong. But he didn't stay very long.”

Robin was scanning the river with his elf vision.

“I wouldn't swear to it, but there seems to be something in the water,” he said.

The others gathered around, peering into the depths.

“Yes,” agreed Sparrow. “I can see something too.”

“I'm the thief here, so I guess I'm elected,” said Cal with a sigh. “Too bad; we already have a dwarf and a gnome, we're just missing a mermaid. Good thing I can breathe underwater!”

Tara gaped at him. “What? You can breathe underwater?”

“It's dangerous to use magic in an unknown environment,” said Cal loftily. He pulled off his spellbinder robe, revealing a T-shirt and underpants in a matching camouflage pattern. “At best, it warns the potential victim that you're robbing them. At worst, it activates defenses that are often disagreeably deadly. So I try to avoid doing it. And no, don't look at me as if I'm about to grow gills. I just kept the oxygenator King Buglul gave me. I figured it might come in handy.”

“I'm going with you,” the gnome broke in. “I actually
can
breathe underwater, and I'm not leaving the job of freeing my people to anyone else.”

“Oh, great, now he's on a hero kick,” grumbled Manitou. “We're off to a bad start.”

“By the way,” murmured Sparrow to Cal, her hands joined in a pose of total admiration, “speaking of heroism . . .”

“Yes?” he said, puffing out his chest.

“Your camouflage underwear, is that for nighttime attacks on your teddy bears?”

Cal made a face at her, and Tara and Sparrow burst out laughing. Out of male solidarity, Fabrice and Robin kept from laughing, but their eyes shone with amusement just the same.

Cal rolled his eyes. He put the oxygenator on his face and winced at the twinge he felt when the little animal began to feed.

“We're just going on a scouting trip,” he explained in a slightly muffled voice. “See you soon.”

He jumped into the water, followed by Glul, whose greater density made him sink right away. The two gradually vanished into the depths.

Cal had no trouble swimming. Glancing up, he could see his friends anxiously watching him. He waved and concentrated on going deeper. Luckily the river was shallow there, just a few yards deep.

Glul started waving excitedly. He had spotted a large rectangular outline on the riverbed, a shape much too regular to be natural. Swimming over to it, Cal realized that it was shaped like a door. They had found the portal! He signaled to Glul to go back up, but the gnome refused, preferring to stay on the river bottom. Opening a gigantic mouth to take in oxygen from the water, he seemed completely at ease.

Cal was about to swim up when he felt a slight current press against his mask and push it sideways. Somewhat surprised, he put it back in place, but the current pushed it again, harder this time. Frowning, Cal jammed the oxygenator back in position.

At that, the water became demented. Out of nowhere, seemingly solid tendrils of water attacked, trying to rip his mask off. Buglul was swimming over to help when other tendrils grabbed his throat and began to squeeze. Buglul struggled and Cal screamed with terror in his mask. Something was trying to kill them!

Above them, Tara and the others were scanning the water and quickly guessed something abnormal was going on. The water had become like a living thing and seemed to be attacking the two swimmers.

With no time to cast a spell, Tara cut to the chase.

“Bring my friends back here!” she commanded her power, stretching her hands toward Cal and Buglul.

The spell shot out, but the water merely glittered and absorbed the magic harmlessly. Then Sparrow tried with Robin's help, but was no more successful.

Suddenly, a loud
splash!
was heard. Axe in hand, Fafnir had leaped into the water to go save Cal and Buglul. Unfortunately her steel blade had no effect on the water, which let it slip harmlessly by, the better to attack again.

Despite all their efforts, their friends were drowning!

The way the water was behaving reminded Tara of something, and it suddenly came to her. The last time she'd seen a normally inanimate element come to life was when a fire elemental nearly burned down her grandmother's manor house. 
So this one must be . . .

“By the Elementus you are hereby bidden to let us see those forces hidden!” she screamed.

The water immediately gathered itself into a huge water elemental. A good fifteen feet tall, its body glittered in the sun, crowned with a wavy green thatch of weeds. On either side of the elemental the river stopped flowing, to the great surprise of a bunch of trout who bumped into an invisible barrier.

“Well, I'll be splashed!” thundered the elemental. “A little spellbinder! What can I do for you, cutie?”

“Good morning, Mister Water Elemental,” said Tara with a polite bow, unfazed to be chatting with an entity made entirely of H
₂
O. “Would you mind not drowning my friends, please?”

“Sorry, but I agreed to guard this section of the river in exchange for a nice thunderstorm that fed me and helped me grow,” the elemental gurgled with a touch of regret. “Drowning intruders is part of the agreement.”

With that, it started to flow back, threatening Cal, Fafnir, and Buglul, who were on the dry river bottom, helplessly gasping for breath.

“Wait!” shouted Tara. “We mean you no harm. Why don't you help us instead of fighting us?”

The elemental heaved a deep sigh. “I'm terribly sorry, but a deal is a deal. If we water, wind, fire, and earth elementals don't keep our word, no one would ever call on us.”

“If I can prove that my power is greater than yours, would you let us pass?”

“What can you do against me, little girl, given how much more powerful I am?”

“That's not the issue. Here's the deal I'm suggesting. If I can defeat you, you will let us pass and hold back the river long enough for us to free the wizard's prisoners. If you win, I promise to create a beautiful thunderstorm that will have you overflowing your banks.”

“Hey!” protested Fabrice. “This is my father's land! Don't be so quick to make such a high school dance + start of Istanbul = prom + is = promise!”

“Fabrice, shut up!” cried Sparrow and Tara together.

“Prisoners?” The elemental's foam brows knitted in a frown. “He didn't say anything about prisoners. I was just to keep intruders from diving here, and if they persisted, to drown them. That's all.”

Buglul, who had gotten his breath back after being choked by the water tendrils, yelled up from the river bottom: “I am Glul Buglul, King of Gnomes, Compensator of the Imperial Court of Omois, and representative of the Truth Tellers. The wizard with whom you made your agreement kidnapped my people. I came here to free them.”

The elemental seemed to be thinking this over. Then it shrugged its wavy shoulders.

“All right, I accept the new agreement: my power against the little spellbinder's. But if you try the slightest dirty trick, I'll drown you without pity. Is that clear?”

“As clear as spring water,” Tara said.

The elemental smiled, its teeth of solidified water gleaming like so many diamond daggers in its huge mouth. Then it moved aside, so the three victims could climb back up the bank.

Cal glowered at the elemental, spit out a final mouthful of water, and struggled to his feet on the muddy river bottom, leaning on Fafnir. The dwarf grabbed Buglul by the collar and lifted both of them onto the dock.

Everyone cautiously backed away, and the duel began.

The elemental filled its cheeks and squirted a waterspout at Tara. Anticipating this, she conjured a strong wall that easily deflected the jet of water.

The wall disappeared, and Tara now shot a blast of fire. The elemental avoided it by making a hole in its body through which the fire passed harmlessly.

First set. Score 0-0.

The elemental then created a gigantic tsunami wave high enough to overtop any wall. Tara countered by conjuring a huge funnel that sent it flooding back at its creator. The elemental didn't have the time to dodge, but stumbled and fell, hit by its own wave. When it arose, it was clearly displeased.

With a gesture, it raised an enormous hammer that came crashing down on Tara. To her friends' distress, she didn't budge. The hammer splashed apart when it hit the waterproof protection bubble she had improvised.

Tara was now thinking furiously.
My first jet of flame wasn't enough, but if . . .

Giving her opponent no time to react, she skillfully conjured a gigantic magnifying glass that focused the sun's rays on the elemental. Taken by surprise, it started to evaporate in the burning heat. It countered by splitting its body to avoid the glass's hot beam. But as it did, icy rays shot from Tara's hands, freezing it under the rays of the sun. It was trapped! Concentrated by the magnifying glass, the sunlight was so strong that the elemental started to sublimate, going directly from a solid to a gas without passing through the liquid state. Under those conditions it was unable to launch any kind of attack.

With a gesture, Tara suspended the action of the magnifying glass, but without making it disappear. The sublimation stopped for a moment, long enough for the elemental to melt a little, and its face and mouth to reform.

“Do you admit defeat?” Tara asked harshly.

“Yes, yes, but stop that torture!”

“Do you agree to let us pass?”

“Yes! I swear it by the Great Elemental of the Four Elements. And may my spirit return to the Great Ocean if I'm lying. But please, release me!”

Tara glanced questioningly at Manitou, who nodded. The formula was correct. She made the magnifying glasses disappear and unfroze the elemental. Half of it had evaporated and its attitude was now much more accommodating.

“Ow,” it lamented, “I'm back to my original weight! I should never have made that deal!”

Cal grinned. “Good! Let's go open that door on the river bottom.”

Fafnir kept a wary eye on the elemental as they clambered down the slippery banks. Prince Bandiou clearly hadn't imagined that anyone would find the portal, much less open it, because Cal located the lock without any trouble. It wasn't a magic seal, and he was able to pick it using his tools like any earthly lock. The door opened with a creak of rusty hinges, and they found themselves in an airlock from which the water was draining. A second door also yielded to Cal's skilled fingers.

The opening led to a row of jail cells in which King Buglul's people were imprisoned. He rushed to them with a joyous shout. But the moment he touched the bars, a brilliant spark crackled, and he was flung against the opposite wall, unconscious.

A pretty blue gnome cried: “Don't touch the bars! They're protected by a magic spell! Glul! Glul! Answer me!”

“He's okay,” Robin informed her. “He's just been knocked out and burned a little. I'll take care of him.”

“We've got to hurry,” said Sparrow anxiously. “The wizard could come back at any moment! Let me try something.”

Shape-shifting into the beast, she grasped the bars. She resisted the pain as long as she could, but it became too strong, and she let them go with a howl of suffering. When she opened her paws, they could see they were badly burned. Tara immediately chanted: “By Healus, let the pain be gone, and Sparrow's wound be cured anon!” The burns disappeared.

“It won't do any good to cast a spell, either,” explained the pretty gnome. “Bandiou has made the whole prison magic proof.”