30

This display of recklessness and high emotion coming from Cobb had me more than a little worried. Was this going to be another maneuver on his part to get me to hand off the service? He turned and walked off a short distance and stood, as if he was contemplating something. There was such a tension in the air, it almost smothered me with smell like burning paper. He straightened and the smell spiked. Then it cut off like it never existed. “My apology Ms Fatelli, for being so abrupt. Continue your service, you may take the books you choose back to your world.” He turned on me and I could smell a desperate anger, like burning pine, and a hint of lemon...desire?
“You only get to keep them for one day, then they must be back in the library.” He quirked a smile. “You can, always take them out the next day, but they will be back in the library by sundown on your world.” He turned on me and I smelled something dry and dusty like chalk. He'd walled himself up emotionally. That saddened me for some reason, and then I got angry with myself and shook the mood off. “Deal, we'll try it for a few days, but I may need a book longer than that.”
“Only for the day, Ms Fatelli. And only in your possession. That is the deal.” He walked off and was gone before I could gt a word in to argue. I wondered if a skill like that could be learned. I snarled irritably and put the glasses on, and went into the library. The glasses worked all right. EVERYTHING in the library had magick on it. But there was a little difference in some magicks and I could pick faint shades of difference. I mean it looked all pale yellow, but some of the yellow graded more towards ivory, and the shelves glowed with a richer almost saffron yellow.
I took a shelf of twelve books and laid them on the floor, much like Larry did to show me how the glasses worked. The books all glowed, but one near the left of the line seemed to glow oddly compared to the others. I chose that one and two others that seemed a different glow than the background. Whether it meant anything I'd figure out when I got them to Fawn. I think that 'only in your possession' meant that I couldn't leave them out of sight, which was fine by me. I wanted to see how they, meaning Fawn's hired wizards, would study these books. It was the perfect excuse to tag along.
I left Underhill and drove back to Halifax, and met Fawn at the police station. I was way earlier than anyone expected so I had to wait for about three hours with the books before they could set up a room the way the wizards wanted it. I walked into one of the interrogation rooms, and there was iron mesh along all the walls, and each wizard had a machete's like mine, plated with silver. There were two large tables pushed together and a piece of black paper covered the tables. Ont the paper was drawn like I did, a salt circle, and then a chalk one with the protective sigils in between the two.
One book was placed in the center of this circle and the other two were, at my insistence, placed in a second small circle in one corner away from the main circle. The wizards then began a low, slow chant. From the few words I caught, and Fawn later confirmed, they were trying to slow the magic down and unravel it whole from the book so it could be understood. As they got further into the spell, I put the glasses that Larry made back on to better see what was happening.
The spell, or magick was slowly coalescing slightly above the book, which had started to suddenly get a worn, tired look as if years of time had finally started to wear it away. As the spell extraction progressed, the book aged before my eyes, and everyone else's. There was like an echo of what the book was, and what it was becoming as the magic was pulled away from it. Fawn called a stop before the magic was completely pulled from the book, and it snapped back into place like a rubber-band, and the book looked clean and well-cared for once more.
The wizards looke at the two books, and I did with my wizard sight. The top book of the two seemed to have a slightly whiter glow to it than the other, and the wizards chose that one next to try and tease apart. The circles were checked before the the book was placed, and once the three wizards were satisfied, they began the chanting again. My magick sight I left up as it was a lot more sensitive than the glasses, and I watched as the whitish magick was slowly teased out from the book.
In Japan, I read that for their culture, white is the color of death, and looking at the whitish glow of magick in front of me, I got a very frightened chill that made me agree with that idea. If ever a spell looked lethal, it was this one. The white color pulsed as if it was pulling things in and bleaching everything it touched into a dry brittle color that would powder away into nothing.
The wizards also saw this and their cadence slowed, and each word was pronounced with more clarity and care from an already careful trio of wizards. This was one spell I instinctively never wanted to see activated. After about fourty minutes of careful teasing of the spell, it was finally free of the book and the wizards aggressively unraveled it. I understood, as everyone in the room did, that the spell would have aged the opener of the book to powder. Score one for the good guys.
The last book was like the first one, a spell to keep the book intact and clean. So of the three I believed the one with the spell on it was the one we wanted to look at as soon as possible. I thanked the wizards and gave Fawn a sisterly hug, and went back over to the entrance to Underhill and back to Cobb's library. I placed the book on the desk and began to study the pages inside. After finsihing the book I could add two more pieces of information to our list about dragons.
9. Dragons have inherent shape-shifting ability, being able to mimic anything from a large dog to another dragon. They could never go bigger than they are, but they could go obviously quite a bit smaller. Plus, while shifted, they were as vulnerable as the creature the creature they mimicked was to damage of any kind. Which meant to me that dragons didn't shift unless there was a real reason to do so. That reason was so that they could cast external spells. Dragons were magickal in their own body so magick could not be cast from them. A dragon had to change shape to make a casting like the one Anolyn did. Something really to keep in mind.

29

Yeah, big time powerful. The advantage is that, well dragon magic had all the advantages. I wondered how the hell I was supposed to beat that. The only way I could think of was by being sneakier, or getting lucky and stumbling onto something Anolyn overlooked when he made the barrier. Our research said that dragons used internal magic exclusively, meaning they never tried to make bargains with outsiders, nor did they borrow from the world itself.
Might be something else we could use. What bothered me was how did those shades get placed on two books that both dealt with some specific dragon information and could be used against dragons if it was known. All I could think was that someone working for a dragon must have done the job as dragons don't get that small. Which brought the question to mind, 'or do they?'
I grabbed Larry and Fawn and pulled them back into the living room, and explained about the shade and the second one and how the books were scorched when they were beaten and banished. “What if, dragons can change form? I mean you're already saying that their magick is mostly internal already. What if that's another skill they have?
Larry and Fawn looked at each other. Fawn finally asked, “Can you try and find some more books that have been warded? I think we can remove the shades or whatever the ward is if we can deal with it out here.” “I'm not sure, but I'll ask. Cobb was cut up pretty bad, and I haven't seen him since we banished the shades, so I'll start with the others that he had talked with about using their libraries.”
Larry spoke after Fawn was done. “Short stuff, I'm going to make a magic finder. I wish I'd have thought of this sooner, then you wouldn't have had to fight those two shades. But I can set it up to show you if there's magick on an item, which means we may get a lot of false alarms. I remember some of the fae I talked to made mention of having some books preserved magically.”
“It beats having to open each book and see if I get attacked again. I can put up with false alarms” I told him. “Okay, it will be a day or so. I'll see you then Fernie.” “Okay Larr. See you later.” I drove on back home, in a better mood than in a long time. We'd made some solid progress, identified some possibilities, and maybe got a device that would keep me from getting bit by magick. I sure hoped so.

#

I drove back over to Fawn and Larry's the next day after Larry called and said he wanted to have me test the new magick finder. Larry laid out four books, then handed me a pair of reading glasses with plain glass put in them instead of the magnifying lenses that normally were there. “Put 'em on and tell me what you see?” I did as he asked and looked at the four books. The one on the end to my left had a slight yellowish glow to it. “That one has a yellow glow” I pointed out to him.
“Good that's one of mine I put a screamer on. Not a big piece of magick, but a loud one” he said with a grin. He rubbed his hands together. That test worked so why don't you go back to Cobb's and see if there are any texts that have some magick on them that didn't fry in your little shady fight.” I just about punched him for the bad pun.
I went back to the Underhill entrance, and Cobb was there, waiting for me. “How'd you know I'd be coming?” I asked him as I got out of my car and shouldered my backpack. “I knew that it was time for something here, but I didn't know it would be you.” Fae, cryptic as secret codes. I really didn't like that, magick makes all sorts of wild coincidences possible, and with Cobb being here at teh exact time I should be showing up to go back to Underhill? I didn't think it was much of a coincidence. The three choices I had was a) he had me followed. b) he got lucky, or c) something got him here. I was betting it was that last choice.
Now I really didn't want to go back to Underhill. Things got messy every time magick began throwing out coincidences and portents. It hadn't been up to now, so it made me wonder why the sudden coincidence causing? I hadn't done anything except get Larry to make the glasses, which suddenly made a little more sense as I thought about it. Cobb just watched me as I stood there trying to puzzle out something that was bothering me.
“Hey Cobb, you believe in coincidence? Please say yes,” I told him. “I need a good laugh right now and that would do it for me.” He frowned as if he was trying to puzzle it out, bu after a few moments he gave up and led me back to his room with the booths.
“Any chance you'll let me take a few books back to my world for reference? It would help me a lot.” He frowned at me and said with a touch of sarcasm, “I know you remember? You can't read the texts without the desk to read them on. Cease this lying and ask me straight out what you want. It will save us both time, unless you want me to say no now and we can forget about whatever it is your lying to me about.”
Directness from a fae, well wow. “I want the books so I can have them checked to see if others have shades on them or some kind of magical trap. I want to do it out here where people I know have better skills than I do and can maybe not have the book blow up in my face or get another shade trying to do me fatally like our last little dispelling did.” He got me wound up again, how one question can do that I don't know, but I was upset with him. “Besides, how the hell did those books get in a library like yours without a spell caster such as yourself knowing about the damn things?”
“Spell caster such as myself? Great gods woman, that thing surprised me as badly as it did you! I had no knowledge of it, or the other, until you brought it to my attention!” “Why is that?” I shouted angrily back. “Don't you even know ...” and I saw pain in his eyes. It was a kind of pain that just isn't, and cannot be faked. He didn't know. He really didn't know about the shades. He started to speak, then changed his mind and ushered me into Underhill. We moved at a speed and recklessness that he had never used before, and in mere seconds we were inside his halls.

28

The two pressed Cobb down on the bed gently, removed their hands and filed out of the room, pausing to escort me back out of the doorway and into the main room again. “Will he be all right?” I felt a twinge of concern. The guy did after all put his butt on the line with me, that had to count for something. Unless it was supposed to go down that way, it was quite a coincidence having a second shade hiding in the room guarding a second book. I shook my head and threw the thought away. Cobb had things so swirled up that I was getting overly paranoid.
I walked back into the library and looked at the book in the circle. I t had been scorched, and some of the pages burned from the book. I guess someone didn't want the book read by prying eyes like mine. I looked to the shelves for a similar scorch mark, figuring if the shade WAS actually guarding a book, I might see the same result when it was destroyed by Cobb. A quick scan of the room showed no scorch marks. Maybe it was my magic spell that caused it to burn? No telling at this point. Best thing that I could do was to keep researching.
I went back to the books, lacking anything else productive to do. For the next week, I went over the books, reading legends from the dim past, observations, both recent and ancient. Speculation on speculation. I have to admit, the fae have a love of forming opinions and recording them in the most long-winded, obscure, and sideways manner. I had to take breaks every ten to twenty minutes to keep my head from aching with frustration as the writers slowly approached their subject amidst flowery phrases and foggy passages.
I suppose if you wanted to say that was how they protected their information, making it so hard to read that no one would want to, maybe you might be right. I was certainly getting closer to that opinion with every book I read that fae had dictated or copied. After each day Larry, Fawn and I would go over to the police gym to do self defense with Fawn and her team, and push weights to decompress. Then it was over to Larry and Fawn's to put all our heads together and see what we had.
After four weeks of research, reading, referencing and more reading, we got what we thought was the best picture about dragons and their magick.
1. Dragons are very long-lived, possibly immortal unless felled by illness or violence.
2. Dragons are highly intelligent, and coupling this with their lifespan, they could very well be way past human genius.
3. Dragons are easy to damage and extremely hard to kill. This is because of their ability to hide the essence of their existence in concentrated somewhere in their bodies. Unless you hit the right spot, you could theoretically blow them half to pieces and they'd grow back in a matter of moments, which I'm sure is very painful, and would give the dragon a real motivation to doing unto the author of their hurt. They have scales like lizards, and in large dragons these get tough to penetrate. Bullets will do the job, but also garner the shooter a LOT of unhealthy attention.
4. Dragons have many dangerous natural weapons. Don't laugh, claws as big as your thigh in the rally big dragons, teeth straight and needle like, and long as your forearm. And, yes, they breathe fire. Their mouths are set up like a natural combustion chamber. Three chemicals come together in the mouth, fuel, oxidizer, and one that jells the mix together. and whoosh, napalm barbeque at two hundred yards.
5. Dragons are inherently magickal.. They not only can concentrate their essence, but they can work spells. The three we cataloged are mostly body control, such as hardening of their scales, and giving their teeth and claws razor sharpness. The 'fireball' magic is the scary one. The dragon works up a mouthful of two of the three chemicals, casts a squeezing and aiming spell on the material, and adds the third chemical. Reports of one-thousand yard shots of exploding dragonfire we found throughout the personal accounts.
A few modern records of Anolyn's fight with four Canadian CF-18 Hornets, resulting in a wounded pissed off dragon and four obliterated Hornets. The report went that Anolyn attacked Prince Edward island, and the Four Hornets were scrambled from Bagotville to intercept, the aircraft broke into two flights and one circled while the other attacked. Because of his lack of heat and maneuverability, the sidewinders failed to get a hit, and the Hornets went to guns and the first burst hurt Anolyn.
The dragon recovered before hitting the ground and a fireball engulfed the Hornets and obliterated one, and the other crashed when the heat caused the engine to flame out. The other two had the same difficulty with their missles, and Anolyn's fireballs tracked the maneuverable CF-18's and blew them out of the sky.
6. Dragons seem to prefer intelligent prey, and more than one ancient scholar stated that this was because the dragon saw intelligence as a threat to it, and thus killed anything showing any kind of problem-solving ability in it's territory. Others thought it was just that dragons saw intelligent creatures as more sporting to hunt.
And this is the thing's territory I was going to invade, and try to set up an underground railroad out of without turning into a burnt and crispy snack.
7. Dragons are sensitive to magick, and magickal weaponry can kill them without having to strike their essence. This was the information out of the two scorched books that the Halifax police were able to pull from the scorched and burned pages. They'd copied each page faithfully in the language it was written, and I took the pages back to Cobb's library where the desk translated them for us.
8. Dragon magic is subject to different rules than fae magic, and also from human magic. This meant that my magic might not be able to affect Anolyn's effectively unless we were able to find a way that wouldn't have me going straight at it. The plus side is that human magic affects, and is unfortunately affected by every other magic. It's kind of like human magic is the base or origin for the others. Just a guess on my part, but that turned out to be a useful observation later, who knew?
Basically, Dragon magic came from the dragon itself, and dragons had a BIG mess of magic to call from. Their spells were both devious and extremely powerful. The fae noted that taking down a spell from one dragon that had put a bubble over five fae wizards remained in place until three more fae wizards were able to join the other five in the dispelling.

27

He looked like he was ready to continue to argue, but instead he stepped back and stood there, looking at me for a moment. “All right, I will allow this once, but I assist in the preparations, and the spell, or you will not enter Underhill.” He started talking again before I could voice any objections. “This is MY house Ms Fatelli, and you work for me, not the other way around. You owe me the service, and YOU will perform it. I will not have you renege now.”
I got mad, no build up at all. Just incandescent fuckity-mad. He'd hit every attitude button dead-on. “You want it done, I'll do it, but I don't HAVE to do it your way. I just have to get the service done and fuck-all if it isn't the way you want it. Now either let me back there or call the judge and explain to him why I'm not finishing your so-fucking-precious-god-damned service!” He looked at me like one would look at a particularly disgusting piece of trash. I started to wind right up again, but he held up a hand.
“All right, I have already said that you can perform this one spell, this one, and no others. I will assist and I will be part of the spell, start to finish. It is MY house, and you will abide by the rules therein.” That was fine by me, in fact better than fine. I got to keep my eye on him and if he pulled anything devious, it would be where I had a chance to spot it before I got surprised.

#

It took us a few minutes to get set up. Cobb was all over everything, and the book was placed unopened on the floor beyond the new circle of protection that just circled the desk. Cobb finished the salt circle, and drew the chalk one about a handspan's width out side it, then scrawled the proper marks inside the ring the two circles made. I set the candles, one black, one white on the north and south axis of the circle.
I lit the white one and left the black one unlit, and started the chant. It was in Latin so I have no idea what I was saying, but I have a good memory and Larry had made me memorize the spell before he let me pack off back here. As the chant built, The shade wisped from between the pages of the book and solidified in the circle . It tore at the barrier, but could not harm it, or escape.
As we got to the midway point of the spell, the shade started frantically throwing itself against the walls of the barrier, and pieces started breaking off of it and dissipating like smoke. We reached the midway point and the shade was throwing itself madly and powerfully at the barrier, which had taken to flaring a whitish black color as the shade attacked it. There was a sudden flare to one side of our protection circle, and Cobb swore as we saw a second shade, this one outside the circle, flicker into view momentarily, then disappear into the shelves. I did not falter, but two shades was a surprise and our situation had changed.
If I had followed through on going alone on this, I'd have been up to my eyeballs in trouble. As It was, both Cobb and I were in trouble, but only about chest high in trouble. I kept the chant up, and the trapped shade began unraveling faster, pieces drifting away like smoke. he other shade, whom the spell was also affecting, redoubled it's efforts to breach our protective circle. It's efforts were starting to show some effect.
There were areas where what looked like wind had partly blown on the chalk outer circle of our barrier. The shade had been worrying that point consistently, and the circle was weakening. You can fight a shade, and come out on top if you're prepared to do it, but my experience made me think even if you were prepared, you're still going to get hurt badly beating one.
“Do not stop the chant”, Cobb growled at me, watching the second shade attack the barrier again. “I can deal with this. Just make sure you finish that chant or we're fighting both of these creatures, not just the one.” I heard him start up a chant of his own and I kept at mine. The shade in the circle was weakening rapidly, and would soon be gone, but I almost faltered when Cobb cursed in fae, and I felt the barrier go down.
One thing about spells like the one I was casting. They take time, and they take time because you have to get the pacing right so that the magick works effectively. Too fast and it starts expending itself before you have it focused. Too slow and it doesn't build up properly and begins to dissipate before you're finished. So I had to keep cadence exact or the spell would unravel.
I saw Cobb step out of the circle in the corner of my eye, and turn away from me to face something. It had to be the shade. Since it was in the room, it was being affected by the spell also. What was being done to the trapped shade I couldn't do to the other shade, but the spell could, and was affecting it. Hopefully wakening it and hurting it.
As I chanted, I caught quick glimpses of the fight. Cobb braced up and threw himself at smoke, mumbling some chant as he did. I saw the flicker freeze for a moment and Cobb slashed a silver sword through some thing that gave off a scream that I couldn't hear, but feel. I felt blind, hungry rage. They disappeared out of view, which for me was worse than if Cobb had stayed in it, as I didn't know at all who was winning that fight.
I finished the chant with the proper flourish and the last of the the trapped shade sublimated away. As I finished, I heard a muttered curse and a thud as something solid hit the floor. I turned around, rising to a half-crouch and ready to dodge if the shade came at me. I saw Cobb, on his knees dripping blood from deep cuts all over him. I scrambled over to him and looked for the shade.
Cobb caught my look and mumbled “Don' worry, it's.... gone back where was call from....”, and he fell forward, smacking the floor and not moving, and no sound except for the irregular wheezing breaths. I tried to drag Cobb out into the main room, but I couldn't budge him.
I stepped into the main room and yelled for assistance, and two fae came and had me help bandage the worst of Cobb's wounds. Then the two of them joined one pair of hands while standing on either side of Cobb and touched him with their others. Cobb lifted off the ground like he weighed nothing and they moved him out into the hall and down to another phone booth. I followed and found myself back in the long hallway that led to the hexagonal infirmary/bedroom.

26

She shrugged her shoulders and looked at the kitchen archway, from which some savory odors had started to waft out of. She turned back to me and said “It's not much of a stretch to think you were specifically targeted with the shade by someone. But I don't see why.” “You think he tried to put a hurt on me to get to you and Larry? That would really be the pits Fawn.”
She looked off into thin air momentarily as she thought about that. After a moment she shook her head. “I don't think so short stuff, if you are hurt or killed while on his grounds, he is responsible for your death, and if I'm remembering right, he would owe Larry and I something for your dying” she finished. “So I die he gets screwed?” I mused. A situation like that sure didn't make Cobb a very like person to have called up the shade. If I had been a bit slower to the door, it would have gutted me.
“Comes back to the question, why? What's the motive? who would want the whole service screwed up?” That made me think back to Judge Kaddas and his little conversation - I do not like ..... Mr. Cobb. We have crossed in the past, and now I find I have an opportunity to ruin a plan of his. Your knowing changes the situation beyond his ability to control, and he hates losing control of anything.”
Pretty thin to my thinking, but I told Fawn about it and she decided to look in on the Judge. Me, I got to go back to the books, but with a little equalizer. I can do spells of my own and one I do know is the circle of protection. I don't like casting spells as it takes me a long time to set up and invoke them, but now the time was worthwhile as I did not want another set of razor cuts along my back.
I ran a circuit of salt around the whole edge of the room, and then sat to focus and invoke. For charms I had a small piece of glass and a flashlight. My ability to concentrate was crap so it took me about thirty minutes to do a five minute spell. But once I was done, I felt the fuzzy hum of the spell. I went back to my books and started in on the one I had opened just before I got attacked.
I took a deep breath and placed the book back on the desk, and waited a moment. Nothing happened and I let my breath go. I had thought the shade might have been with the book, and if it had, my picking it up ought to have called it forth. The book was on dragon life-cycles, and some of the things I had read had been paraphrased from this text.
Dragons, it began, were conceived outside of the magic, and yet part of it. Zagyg speculated that dragons were the source, but later experiments.. and my ward suddenly pressed on me as the shade tried to get through. It's source was the book and when it materialized, the ward thrust it bodily out of the protected area, pushing it into the bookshelves. The shade struggled and pressed against the ward, but could not work its way to me, and if I left the circle or someone stepped in, it would break the enchantment and the shade would be free again in the room.
I sat for a moment and tried to decide what to do at this point. It couldn't get to me, so I took a moment to figure what to do. Running out into the room would break the enchantment and leave the shade free to continue guarding the book. Taking the book with me and reading it out in the main room was out of the question, and the shade would probably follow the book. Dispelling the shade would be the best solution, and although it would take time, I had time to use. I closed the book and threw it flat like a flying disc. It rotated and landed on the floor and skidded towards the corner furthest away from the room. The shade started for the book and I bolted for the door. I dove through the entrance and came up shaking, the shade was at the doorway, and I could feel it's focused gaze upon me. Then, like before, it vanished into the shadows.
I went and talked to Larry about dispelling the shade, and he showed me how to set the circle around the book, the incantations, and the finish. “You sure you want to do that alone short stuff? I'd be more than glad to help you, and shades can be pretty tough to handle alone, even when you know what you're doing.” “You saying that I don't Larry?” I asked him. He held up his hands in mock-surrender. “Okay, okay, I won't go with you. Just please be careful Fernie, I want you around to watch your niece or nephew grow up.”
I went and got the items I needed and went back to the Underhill entrance. Cobb was waiting for me again at the entrance and when he saw what I had in the backpack this time, his eyebrows went up and said “No, this will not be allowed.” “What won't be allowed?”, I asked him. He gestured at my backpack. “This, all of your items in where will not be allowed in. I will not have you casting human spells in my house.” “I already did that Cobb, and I plan on doing it again to get rid of that damned shade.”