council for seven decades.”
"Mac!”
"Right, right. Well, Marsden cast Thurisaz on himself, and the next thing any of us knew, he was gone and there was this huge-and I mean huge-ogre standing in his place. It was so tall it had to hunch over to fit in the room, and the council chamber has ceilings almost twenty feet tall! It snatched up the council table, which was made of old oak and weighed God knows what, and hurled it the length of the chamber. When it bounced off the ward without doing any damage, the thing let out a bellow that deafened me for a good ten minutes, then charged. The ward had been set up to protect a small vase, and so far, not so much as a petal of any of the flowers had been disturbed. Less than a minute after Thurisaz was cast, the ward was down and the vase was dust.”
"How… amazing." I had raided the Senate hoping for weapons; it looked like I'd finally lucked out and found some. Knowing Tony's penchant for nasty surprises, I was going to need them.
"Yes, well, that part was all right, but then we had a rampaging ogre on our hands, didn't we? And we couldn't kill it without also killing the head of the council. Not that any of us was keen to take on that thing. We ran over each other getting out the door, then hied away like frightened rabbits. We reassembled outside and argued for almost an hour over what to do once it destroyed the wards guarding the chamber and got loose. Then old Marsden came wandering out and finally bothered to mention that the spell only lasts an hour.”
"What do the other runes do?" I asked. "Is there a book or something?”
He glanced at Pritkin. "Would Nick have anything? I don't know the individual powers, just the basic legend.”
Pritkin ignored him. "How many do you have?" he asked me. The question was quiet, but a pulse was throbbing at his temple.
I hesitated, but if I wanted to find out what these things did, I'd have to give up some information. "Three.”
"Good God." Mac dropped his etching tool. A small tornado carved on his right bicep started whirling even more enthusiastically.
"Describe them." Pritkin was looking pretty intense, but he wasn't gob smacked like his friend.
"I already did.”
"The symbols!" he said impatiently. "Which runes are they?”
Mac broke in. "If you draw them I can-”
I cut him off with a frown. They might think I was a dumb blonde, but come on. I was a clairvoyant-did they really think I didn't know my runes? "Hagalaz, Jera and Dagaz.”
"I'm on it." Mac jumped up and went into the next room and I heard him pick up the phone. It crossed my mind that he could be calling for backup, but I doubted it. They didn't know where the weapons were yet, and nobody would think that I'd drag stuff like that around in my bag. Come to think of it, I wasn't so thrilled with the idea now, either.
"Where did you get them?" Pritkin demanded.
I couldn't think of a reason not to tell him. "Same place I got the Graeae. The Senate.”
"They didn't simply hand them over.”
"Not exactly." I decided to change the subject. "Um, you wouldn't happen to know how I get the ladies back in their box, would you?" I had been wondering how to figure out the spell needed to trap Myra in their place. It would be very convenient if Pritkin would simply give it to me.
"Tell me about the runes." Damn, but he was single-minded.
“Tell me about the Graeae and I'll think about it.”
"They are required to work for you for a year and a day after their release, or until they have saved your life. Then they will be free to terrorize mankind again.”
I glared at him. “That's not what I asked. And I didn't let them out on purpose, you know!”
"You shouldn't have been able to do it at all! That is a very complex spell. How did you learn it?”
I decided not to mention that all I'd done was pick up the orb. Pritkin thought me enough of a danger already; no need to add to the impression. And maybe it didn't mean anything. The box could have been defective-there was no telling how long they'd been in there. Of course, if it wasn't working right, I couldn't use it on Myra. I wondered whether there was a way to