David Wells - Cursed Bones

“For what it’s worth, I won’t harm Isabel. She may yet prove useful, provided she survives the swamp.”

Alexander faded from sight but remained to watch. He wanted to shout, to rage against the witch, to threaten her, but he was afraid of what she might do to Isabel.

So he simply watched.

Isabel woke, lying in the mud, shrouded in fog. She sat up sleepily at first before she realized where she was and then she scrambled to her feet, looking around in near panic. She was in the swamp, alone, without her weapons or pack. She focused on breathing, calming her racing heart while she thought about her situation, trying to find a scrap of hope she might leverage into survival.

Alexander appeared a few feet away.

“What happened?” Isabel asked.

“Hazel left you in the swamp without even a knife and took everyone else with her,” Alexander said. “It looks like they’re headed for the mountain.”

“What would she want there?” Isabel asked. “She made the place out to be a death trap.”

“Maybe there’s something there she doesn’t want anyone to know about,” Alexander said. “Her plan seems to hinge on your traveling companions.”

“I really thought Ayela was coming around,” Isabel said, getting to her feet and wiping the mud from her pants.

“Hazel cast some kind of spell over her involving a charm that Ayela is now wearing around her neck,” Alexander said. “She’s just as obedient as Hector and Horace.”

Isabel surveyed the swamp, still and quiet as a tomb. “I’m in trouble here,” she said.

“I know. Let’s start by getting your weapons and equipment back. Maybe we’ll find some answers along the way.”

“I don’t even know which way to go,” Isabel said, feeling helpless.

“I do,” Alexander said, transforming into a ball of light and bobbling away into the mist.

Isabel followed, more afraid of the swamp than ever before. He led her along a path that became familiar when she reached the tree with notches cut into the side like the rungs of a ladder. Once across the rope bridge and down again, she found the place in the stone wall that was a cave entrance when last she came this way.

“It’s right here,” Alexander said, transforming back into an image of himself and pointing. “The wall is about a foot thick. She controls it with a few words in a language I don’t understand, so you’ll have to burn your way through.”

Isabel nodded, reaching for her rage but finding only the numbing sensation of the malaise weed in its place.

“She’s been drugging my food. I’ll have to wait for the effects to wear off before I can cast a spell.”

“How long?”

“Could be hours, could be tomorrow.”

“I want to stay with you but I can’t hold an illusion for that long,” Alexander said.

“I know, just check on me now and then,” Isabel said. “I’ll need your help once I get into her valley.”

“Be strong, we’ll get through this,” he said, fading from sight.

Isabel waited, attempting every hour or so to build her anger into a rage sufficient to cast her light-lance spell. As night fell, her fear grew. It was so dark. She listened to the deathly quiet of the swamp, expecting some horrible monster to come for her in the darkness, but nothing did. She woke the next morning shivering and hungry … but more importantly, she was angry. Her rage bloomed into fury easily, almost too easily, but she fed it as she spoke the words of her spell.

The hole she burned clean through the stone wall revealed the passage beyond. It took her dozens of castings to cut an opening large enough for her to crawl through. By the time she was done, her rage was spent and she was exhausted from the effort.

Alexander appeared not long after, finding her facing the darkness of the cave with no way to make light. “I see your magic is back,” he said with a smile.

She nodded wearily.

“Fortunately, I think the wall on the inside of the valley is just an illusion,” he said, transforming into a ball of light to guide her way.

A few minutes later, she reached the wall on the other end of the tunnel only to discover that it felt solid. Emotionally spent, she sat down with her back against the side of the tunnel and closed her eyes.

“I don’t have the strength to burn my way through right now.”

“Try pushing against it,” Alexander said. “It doesn’t look entirely solid to me.”

More to humor him than anything else, she reached out and put a hand against the wall, leaning into it with halfhearted effort. To her amazement, her hand sank into the stone. There was still resistance, but the farther she passed through, the more it gave. Getting to her feet, she pushed through the wall to the other side, stepping into the little clearing on the edge of Hazel’s valley and a clear winter morning.

“I would never have guessed,” she said, feeling the wall on the other side. It felt solid until she made an effort to pass through. “Well, that’s a pretty effective secret door.”

After placing a few stones in front of the door to mark its location, she headed for the cottage under a bright sunny sky. “I don’t get this place. I couldn’t find it with Slyder, yet it’s obviously open to the sky.”

“I’m not so sure,” Alexander said. “I couldn’t find it either and I searched pretty extensively.”

“So … what, then? A variation on a Wizard’s Den?” Isabel asked.

“No, I think it’s really a cavern with an elaborate illusion that looks like a sky.”

Isabel stopped in her tracks, looking up. “Is that really possible?”

Alexander spread out his hands and shrugged. “I’m lying in a bed on Tyr.”

“Good point,” she said, continuing on toward the cottage.

Before searching for her things, she found some food and ate a quick breakfast. Once her gnawing hunger was sated, she started looking for her equipment. After more than an hour, she found a hidden panel in the back of Hazel’s armoire that opened to a staircase leading below the cottage into a small stone room that looked like it had been magically carved into the bedrock.

Isabel’s pack and weapons sat atop a trunk at the bottom of the stairs. The room appeared to be Hazel’s workspace. Dozens of jars of green glowing lichen hung from the ceiling, casting an eerie glow over the room. There were many shelves of books and a table covered with glassware. A large cauldron sat over a cold fire pit in one corner and several shelves contained a plethora of ingredients, some Isabel recognized, but most were unfamiliar. One shelf held a number of powder-filled jars with labels that read: sleep, henbane, poison, smoke, and concealment . Below that were several vials filled with liquids of various colors and consistencies. They were labeled as well: healing draught, blackwort and invisibility .

“Do you think these are potions?” Isabel asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Alexander said. “The healing draught has the same colors as the ones Lucky gave us. The others all contain magic, except the blackwort and it’s the only one with dangerous-looking colors.”

“Should I take them?” Isabel asked.

“Absolutely,” Alexander said. “Hazel drugged you and left you for dead in the swamp without any of your equipment, then abducted Hector, Horace, and Ayela. Take everything of use that you can carry, then light this place on fire. We’re at war with that old witch.”

“When you put it that way,” Isabel said, going to a bookshelf and looking at the titles on the spines. “Most of these are in languages I don’t understand, but these two I can read.” She carefully opened the first book. It was small and bound in leather and written in the common tongue. The next was similar in size and binding except it contained many more pages.