The Call - Michael Grant [41]
The time had come, he decided, to attempt Grimluk’s magic spell once again. So he said, “Ret click-ur!”
That stopped the elves cold. But not because the spell worked. It didn’t.
“Dare you to use the Vargran tongue against us?” the head elf shrieked. “You worm! You pestilent malignancy! Do you imagine that you have the enlightened puissance? A foul, reeking toad like you?”
“Well…it worked once,” Mack said lamely.
“Ignorant, rock-headed, jelly-jointed, brittle-limbed sputum! If you truly had the enlightened puissance, you would know that no spell may be reused for a period of at least one full day!”
“Oh,” Mack said, crestfallen. “I didn’t know that.”
“Huh,” Stefan said.
“I heard Grimluk use another spell, but I can’t remember…,” Mack said to Stefan.
The name Grimluk drew a torrent of abuse from all the elves at once. They knew the name. And they were not fans.
“Brothers,” the lead elf said finally, signaling an end to the heaping of insults and catcalls, “we must decide. My own small wisdom whispers to me that we must honor the princess’s request and defer the killing of these mucus-smeared cretins.”
There was general agreement on that, much to Mack’s relief. But what they said next changed his outlook entirely.
“So, let us lower them down into the pit and seal up the hole after them.”
“Wait. What?” Mack said.
“Thus will the princess find them imprisoned, entombed, but still alive.”
“No. That’s a terrible idea!” Mack said.
The elves grabbed Jarrah, who was squirming and trying to kick and not accomplishing much of anything. They dragged her to the hole. One of them fired up the generator that ran the winch. They dumped her into the basket. Then they did the same with Karri.
The engine strained and whirred as the two of them slid down the shaft.
Mack counted the seconds, which stretched into minutes. How far down were they?
He couldn’t. They couldn’t. No way.
Someone was going to rescue them because that’s the way it always worked in movies. Someone would rescue him before he was buried alive, buried alive.
“Help!” he cried. “Heeeeelp!”
An elf smacked him on the head with his bowling-pin club. Mack’s vision swam, a swirl of sunset colors tinged with the extra vibrancy of sheer panic.
He thrashed and screamed for help, head spinning, until a second blow turned out the lights.
* * *
DEAR MACK,
I THINK SHRINKING MYSELF WAS A MISTAKE. I MADE MYSELF HALF AS BIG. DAD RAN TO TELL MOM. MOM SAID DAD NEEDED TO STOP DRINKING. THEY SOUNDED UPSET, SO BEFORE MOM COULD SEE, I WENT BACK TO MY REGULAR SIZE. THEN THERE WAS MORE YELLING, AND NOW DAD IS NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE BEER.
YOUR FRIEND,
GOLEM
* * *
Twenty-three
A REALLY, REALLY LONG TIME AGO…
Grimluk and the others reached the Pale Queen. And they battled her with all their powers united.
The battle raged for a day and a night.
Each of the Magnifica had his or her own areas of greatest strength. Each had mastered one of the Twelve Pairs of Potentiality. Grimluk’s greatest strength was in the Birds and Animals pair. He had summoned hundreds of creatures to the battle. And many brave hawks, lions, stags, bats, wild boars, and snakes had died.
But Grimluk also had lesser abilities in Darkness and Light, and even in Calm and Storm—though that was Miladew’s area of true genius.
When it was done, the Magnificent Twelve were the Magnificent Eight. Four of them had died fighting.
But the Pale Queen, at last worn down and defeated, lay pulsating, helpless, bound by spells and ropes and chains and heaped all around with the driest tinder and trusted men with torches.
The battle had been long and bloody and horrible beyond belief. It had aged Grimluk. He was no longer a young man with clear skin and firm muscles. There were lines in his face, aches in his body, a physical weakness that sometimes made breathing itself seem like labor. Worse still was the shadow that would forever darken his soul.
The castle walls had been shattered. Great chunks of wall lay