The Keeper

Viginti novem: Adieu

“Delph!” I gasped.

He bent down and pocketed Archie’s wand, which had rolled across the floor.

“Bloke can’t do much without that,” he said.

“He was going to kill me,” I said.

“I reckon he was.” He looked at the dead garm. “Your doing, I ’spect.”

“I used the Rigamorte curse, the same one Archie was going to use on me.”

I stared down at the unconscious Archie and shook my head in disbelief.

As he started to stir, I pulled my wand, aimed it at him and said, “Ensnario.”

Thick ropes appeared out of the air and wrapped themselves around Archie.

When he came fully around and realized what had happened, he looked up at me and unleashed a torrent of foul language.

“Mutado,” I snapped, and my spell hit him full in the mouth, silencing him. Then I picked up my flask, while Delph easily lifted Archie off the floor and slung him over his shoulder. “We best get on with the potion making,” he said. “But we need something called Breath of a Dominici.”

“Breath of a Dominici? What’s a Dominici and how do we get its breath?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” said Delph as we walked down the hall together with Harry Two at our heels. Archie had struggled at first but now just lay slumped over Delph’s massive shoulder.

When we reached the kitchen, Delph set Archie on the floor. Harry Two sat next to him, guarding the bloke.

Delph took me over to a table where he had lined up a row of bottles and other objects. There was a piece of parchment tacked to the wall. I set the flask of garm blood down next to the bowl of jabbit venom.

“It’s all here,” said Delph. “ ’Cept the breath thing.” He tapped the parchment. “Took this outta that journal. Tells you how to make it. Steps you got to do. Figgered you’d be good at that, like at Stacks. I heated up some water, ’cause we’ll need to mix some of it hot.”

I looked over the parchment. “Okay, the Breath of a Dominici goes in last. Why don’t I start putting it all together and you can try and figure out this breath thing?”

Delph set off while I turned to making the elixir of youth. I took my time because I was afraid of making a mistake. There was a lot of heating up of ingredients at just the right temperature and then letting them cool down for exact times. I had brought in an old timekeeper from Astrea’s desk and used it as my timer.

The mixing and grinding and cutting and stirring were exhausting. When I poured in the jabbit venom, a huge ball of smoke shot up from the pot I was using to hold the potion. Luckily, I got out of the way in time. When the smoke hit the ceiling, a hole opened up there, which I quickly repaired with my wand.

Now the mixture had to stew for a bit. Then I would add the blood of the garm, a handful of something called tendrils of tawny, which looked like frozen worms, and a small jar of liquid labeled PETRIROOT PUSCLES.

I would rather die than drink this mess. Eternal youth couldn’t be worth it.

Twenty slivers after that would come the Breath of a Dominici. If Delph managed to find it somehow.

I turned and looked at Archie, who was staring across the room at me.

I pulled up a chair and sat across from him.

“If I let you speak, will you promise not to scream foul things at me?” He looked surly but slowly nodded. I did the reverse spell but kept my wand ready.

“I know you set the jabbit and garm on me. And then you were going to kill me. Why?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Not to me, it’s not.”

“Well, then you’re clearly not very bright. You’ll probably perish in the First Circle.”

“Maybe I will. But at least I’m going to try.”

“Exactly,” he roared. “For eight hundred bloody sessions, my dear mum has been saying that no one can cross this place. No one! We sacrificed our lives for that. When I learned what you were going to do and that the old bat was going to help you do it, I thought she must be mad. I took the elixir and then threw the rest away.”

“But why couldn’t she make more?” I asked.

“Because I cast a befuddlement hex on her.”

“So you wanted her to die.”

He screamed, “I wanted to make sure that you did not cross the Quag!” He grew silent and drew several deep breaths. “And over eight hundred sessions is long enough to live, don’t you think?” he added quietly.

A minute later, Delph came charging in with Seamus in his wake.

“Do you have it? The Breath of a Dominici?”

“I don’t but Seamus here does.”

I looked at the hob. “Seamus? How can you have it?”

“Ms. Prine sent me out for it, before she became, well, old.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a long-stemmed flower that had a bloodred bloom as large as my fist.

“That’s it? A flower?”

He wrinkled his nose at my abrupt comment. “Well, it might be just a flower, but the only place it grows is in a nest of vipers that don’t much like to part with it.”

“So how did you manage it, then?” I asked.

“The vipers don’t much like fire either, do they?” His face crinkled into a smile. “So’s a little blue ball of it just happened to fall into their midsts and then it just happened to become a big blue ball of flames that they wanted no part of.”

“Brilliant, Seamus, absolutely brilliant. Well done.”

Looking happy with my praise, he handed over the flower. I put my nose close to it, took a whiff and nearly gagged. It smelled like slep dung.

“Holy Steeples,” I said, rubbing my nose.

“Aye, you don’t want to stick your nose in that thing,” Delph said. “Seamus says it reeks.”

“Thanks, Delph,” I replied crossly. “Next time, why don’t you tell me something like that before I do it?”

I cut up the flower petals according to the parchment, waited five slivers and then threw it into the steaming pot. The resulting smell was beyond horrid.

“Bloody Hel,” exclaimed Delph, lifting his shirt to cover his face. Seamus had run from the room. Harry Two put his paws over his snout. But I had to stir the thing in precise motions, so I stood there, two fingers pinching my nose, my eyes running with the stink of it. A few slivers later, it was done. I poured a flask of it, corked it and then we bolted down the hall and into Astrea’s room. She was so small and frail-looking now that I feared she was already dead.

“Astrea, I’ve got it, the youth elixir.”

She made no response.

We tiptoed over to the bed and looked down at her. She had faded incredibly fast. Her hair was stark white, her skin translucent and covered with large spots, and her features elongated and craggy.

“How do we do this?” I asked Delph.

“When I was little and me dad wanted to get some medicine in me, he just opened my mouth, pinched me nose and poured it in.”

And that’s what we ended up doing. I got the contents of the flask down Astrea’s throat, and then stepped back. At first, there was nothing and my spirits plummeted to my boots. Then she gave an almighty gag, sat straight up in the bed, and her eyes opened. And, as though the sessions were being peeled away like the skin of an onion, all the elements of old age gave way. Her hair darkened, her skin grew firm, the features shortened and tightened, the body filled out. It was like I was watching her entire life in reverse.

Finally, she sat there looking as she had before.

She drew a long breath. “Thank you,” she said. And in her voice I could tell that she knew exactly what had happened.

“Where is my son?” she asked wearily.

“We have him tied up. He used a befuddlement hex on you. And he tried to kill me.”

She nodded slowly and rose from her bed. “It’s entirely my fault,” she said. “How did you manage the potion?”

“Seamus got the Breath of a Dominici. The rest of the ingredients were here.”

“But surely the garm and jabbit?” she began.

Delph answered. “Vega Jane got those all right. They were no match for her, even when Archie let them loose on her.”

“Archie let them loose?” she exclaimed. But then her expression calmed. “Of course. He would have been jealous. And confused. And angry.”

I said, “I had to kill the garm. It was going to kill Harry Two. So I killed it. And I had no problem doing so,” I added firmly.

Astrea looked at me pointedly. “I see, Vega. I see.”

And I could tell that she really did see.

She patted my arm. “In bad times, wisdom is so often born, Vega. Now I need to go and see Archie.”

The door opened a bit later and Astrea appeared. When I saw an unbound Archie behind her, I leapt off the bed and pulled my wand.

“There is no need, Vega,” she said, her voice strong and firm.

I looked at Archie. His features were docile, ambivalent even.

“What happened to him?” I asked.

She drew close to me. “The Subservio spell. He is quite harmless now. But I did speak with him before I did the incantation. I tried to make him see my side of things. But I’m not sure we’re there yet.”

“About the Fifth Circle,” I began. “Since Archie placed a befuddlement hex on you, you didn’t tell us all you knew of it.”

“Oh, but I did tell you everything I know of it. Not even my Seer-See will allow me to glimpse the Fifth Circle.“

“Blimey,” muttered Delph.

“Now it is time for you to be on your way,” she said.

“On our way... where?” I asked warily.

“To cross the Five Circles of course,” she said.

“What, now? Right now?” exclaimed Delph.

“But you need to know that escaping from here will come with a price.”

I shook my head. “A price?”

“To put it simply, escaping the Quag means imprisonment forever.”

I shot Delph a glance just at the same moment he looked at me.

I turned back to Astrea in time to see her wave her wand.

“Good luck,” she said.

I felt my eyes roll back in my head.

And then everything went black.