Wicked As You Wish (A Hundred Names for Magic #1) - Rin Chupeco Page 0,60

door awaited them at the top of the stairs; slightly decayed, it looked to Tala like it could crumble any second. The smell of mildew grew stronger. “The looking glass is inside,” Ken said. “Protected by enchantments.” He winced when another tremor rocked the place. “As you can probably guess by now. The invulnerable and invisibility spells help keeps ogren and other uglies from getting near the place.”

“Has an ogre ever gotten inside a sanctuary?” Alex asked warily.

“None that’s been successful, to our knowledge. We’re safe inside. When anything attacks the sanctuary for too long, it triggers a spell that’ll turn the whole rock from outside into flames. And then it’s ogre flambé, usually.”

“Doesn’t sound very safe for the Cassim,” West said.

Tala glanced around at the old stone walls and at the unkempt conditions of the place. It didn’t look like a place that had a lot of spells to its name.

The room they entered was simply furnished. There was a lumpy-looking cot at one end, and a rickety wooden table at the center, gray from disuse. A tiny window looked out over the grounds, one not even large enough for a small child to fit through, and crisscrossed by metal frames.

A worn world map hung from the farthest wall—an outdated world map, torn and drawn in faded ink, with the country of Wonderland still intact on its yellowing paper. A large floor-length mirror stood several feet away, as golden and as ornate as the rest of the room was not.

“I can understand why all the Cassims turn violent,” Ken said. “This isn’t exactly a five-star hotel. There’s barely enough room here to swing a cat.”

“Why?” Loki asked.

“Why what?”

“Why would you want to swing a cat?”

“That’s a mean thing to do, Ken,” West said, reproving.

“It’s called a figure of speech, Loki,” Ken said resignedly. “We’ve talked about this before.”

He made a beeline for the golden mirror. Tita Teejay and Tita Chedeng followed after him, both tsking and shaking out handkerchiefs to start cleaning the centuries of dust and grime that marked its surface, almost from impulse. Cole leaned back against the door and crossed his arms, grim and impassive. General Luna very gently set the still-unconscious Lumina down on the small cot. “She’ll be all right,” Tita Baby promised Tala gently. “But she needs some rest. Let Urduja work her magic.”

Tala wanted to crawl into the cot with her mother, but knew she was right. After some hesitation, she approached the decrepit-looking map instead, trying to distract herself. Strange names were scrawled across it, labeled in fading ink.

“Albion,” she read aloud, tracing marked areas with a finger. “Altai. Scythis. Esopia.”

“They’re the four main regions of Avalon,” her father said quietly from behind her. Tala stiffened. “Each location has its own kind of magic. Almost like a regional flavor, if they could be compared to food. Lyonesse’s the capital over here at Albion, where Maidenkeep is. Tala…”

“Stay away from me,” Tala said.

Her father’s hand dropped. “I just want to say that I—”

“I said stay away!” Tala screamed, not caring when all eyes in the room turned to her. “You! You’re the Scourge of Buyan! And the Snow Queen! You were her…!” She couldn’t even force the word out without feeling like it might choke her. Kay, the Snow Queen’s consort, her most ruthless right-hand man. Kay had invaded countries at her command. Historians had lost count of just how many had died because of him. The Winter Scourge. The Butcher of Neverland.

And he was her father.

“Tala,” Lola Urduja said. “It’s much more complicated than that.”

“How?” He’d betrayed her. And her mother had lied to her too, for all her talk about honor. They couldn’t leave Invierno, but not because she was crap at negating magic. They couldn’t leave because her father was the world’s most wanted man and for good reason, and her mother and Lola Urduja and everyone else were helping to hide him when they should have taken him to the International Criminal Court and hanged him with the rest of the terrorists. How could anyone else in this room stand to be here with him? Tala felt sick to her stomach. “What can he possibly do to make any of this better? Offer an apology? I’m sorry for masterminding the genocide of millions of people around the world? Is that enough to unmake everything else he’s done?”

There was a pause, no one able to answer. It was her father who finally spoke again, sounding defeated. “No,” he said.