Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Read online

Valerie and Siggy stepped out of the mist behind her, bringing the rest of Lucky with them. Their feet crunched on the gravel. The three newcomers examined the landscape, taking in the bulk of the castle, the mountains rising to the left, and, through the trees, the steep cliff falling away to the right, beyond which could be heard the burble of rushing water.

  Zoë’s expression became rather odd. She peered right and left, as if scouring the countryside. Her voice dropped. “Uh-oh. That’s not good.”

  “What’s wrong?” asked Valerie.

  “There’s no one dreaming here,” replied Zoë flatly.

  “Which means?” asked Xandra.

  “That we’re stuck till someone in the surrounding countryside goes to sleep.” Zoë eyed the sun shining brightly overhead, “This might take a while.”

  • • •

  The group moved briskly down the gravel path toward the castle, eager for some protection from the chilly wind coming off the mountain.

  “What if one of us went to sleep?” the princess asked. “Would that be sufficient for you to regain the dreamlands?”

  “The rest of us could leave,” Zoë responded. “The sleeper would have to stay behind.”

  “Let’s not leave anyone behind,” Xandra murmured with glum resignation. “I already have a number of strikes against me. I can just imagine how heedlessly abandoned underclassmen in Transylvania would look on my record.”

  The elm-lined path led to the gatehouse, but the tall walls offered no protection from the wind, which blew alongside them. Sigfried and Lucky ran forward to examine the carvings. The girls, other than Rachel, huddled together, anxiously speculating about how long it might take for those back at Roanoke to notice they were missing—since there were no classes on Saturday morning. Rachel paid no attention.

  Excitement bubbled up in her, pushing aside the fatigue that accompanied magical healing. The walls of the castle she had loathed and yet longed to see for so long drew her like a siren’s call. Tumbling out here was like her birthday and Yule and the first day of school, all rolled up into one.

  Nothing could stop them from exploring!

  “Is this the same castle where we were earlier? The one that Egg was using as his secret base?” Siggy shouted over his shoulder. “Let’s go inside! Maybe there are clues! Stuff to steal!”

  “Certainly not,” the princess called, alarmed. “This is private property.”

  “Private property owned by evil!” Sigfried volleyed back. “That rotter who blasted you with phantom fire owns this castle.” He turned to Rachel. “Am I right? The guy I beaned with the apple core?”

  Rachel nodded, gripped by a cold hatred for the despicable young man who hurt her friend. “Remus Starkadder made this castle available to Egg and his evil cohorts. In return, Egg promised to kill Remus’s oldest brother, Romulus, Crown Prince of Transylvania.”

  “Did he?” Zoë raised one pink eyebrow. “How did you guys find this out?”

  “Egg…who?” asked Xandra. “Scrambled egg? Or boiled egg?”

  “He was boiled when Lucky was done with him!” quipped Siggy, ignoring Zoë’s question. He and the dragon exchanged a high-five.

  “Mortimer Egg,” explained Rachel, “a Wisecraft employee who was possessed by a demon named Azrael. He led a coven of evil sorcerers, including Dr. Mordeau.”

  “You mean this Egg character was in league with our evil math tutor? The one who turned into a dragon and tried to kill us?” asked Xandra. “I had her freshman year. She gave me a D on a paper, because I turned it in late—due to having been shanghaied by spirits, so that I could give a message to the mother of a kid who died in a boating accident. An Unwary kid, to make it worse. The mother thought I was crazy—Anyway, Mordeau’s the only tutor I’ve had who’s refused to accept my ‘shanghaied by spirits’ excuse. I worked hard on that paper, too!”

  “A paper? In math class?” Valerie Hunt lowered her camera. “The very concept is disturbing.”

  “We’re going to have to write papers?” Sigfried looked so horrified that it was comical. “I thought this was a civilized school. Don’t tell me we’re actually going to have to…work?”

  “Yes, the same tutor.” Rachel nodded to Xandra, answering her original question. “Their coven performs a terrible spell, where they sacrificed people’s entire families in front of one member, whom they keep alive.”

  Xandra made a low sound in her throat. Her normally-olive chin looked unusually pale. “That was real? Egg was with Veltdammerung, wasn’t he? I…had hoped that was just another stupid vision. Boo. Sometimes I hate being a seer.”

  “Happened to Misty Lark,” muttered Zoë. “Her family murdered before her eyes.”

  The others were silent, not certain what to say.

  Valerie moved forward and snapped several pictures of the basalt and limestone edifice. A slight breeze and the click of her camera were the only sounds.

  “Is it really called Beaumont?” Valerie asked, as she paused to advance her film. “Hardly sounds like a Hungarian word. They do speak Hungarian in Transylvania, right?”

  “This is a Norman castle,” replied Rachel. “But, I suppose you can all tell that.”

  The others stared at her.

  Zoë twirled her braid. The feather made a thwapping noise. “Assuming, for one crazy moment, that a person didn’t know what a Norman castle looked like,” Zoë drawled, “what about this shouts ‘Norman’ to you?”

  “Do you see the towers at the six corners?” Rachel gestured upward. “Before the Crusades, the Europeans built rectangular castles, because rectangular rooms are easy to live in. And they lived in their castles with their families. When the Normans got to Byzantium, where they were fighting the forces of the worshippers of Enki and Ereshkigal, who were trying to regain the Sacred Lands, they found round towers. Round towers were much easier to defend. They didn’t have corners, which are hard to keep watch over but easy to sap. However, circular rooms were harder to live in. The Byzantines did not live in their castles. They just used them for defense.

  “So the Normans compromised. They built castles in the shape of pentagons and hexagons and put round towers where the corners would have been—trying to get the best of both designs. This is such a castle, built after the first few Crusades and before gunpowder.”

  The girls looked less than thrilled, but Siggy listened intently.

  He came over to Rachel and asked, “How did you sap a castle before gunpowder?”

  “You dug under the wall…corners were particularly vulnerable to this,” Rachel replied. “Then you set as hot a fire as you could make. Pig fat was good for this. During the siege of Rochester Castle, King John brought it down by setting the fat of forty pigs on fire beneath it.”

  “How does the fat of forty pigs defeat a tower?” Sigfried asked, fascinated.

  He gazed up at the walls, as if plotting how quickly he could take the castle.

  “It melts the mortar, I believe,” Rachel replied.

  “I could do that,” Lucky said proudly. “I bet my fire burns a lot hotter than forty pigs. Come on, Boss. Let’s start digging!”

  “Pig fat burns at about two hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit,” Rachel recited data from a memorized encyclopedia. “That’s a hundred and twenty one degrees Centigrade.”

  “You know a lot of useless information,” Zoë laughed. “You should go on a game show.”

  Rachel, who had kept her perfect recall a secret from everyone except the princess and Sigfried—and who had only the vaguest notion of what was meant by game show—just smiled.

  “Let’s go inside.” Valerie snapped another picture. “It’s freezing! Maybe there are clues as to Egg’s other cohorts. If my dad were here, he’d dust for fingerprints and other cool detectivey stuff. But sadly, I didn’t think to pack a fingerprint kit in my nightgown,” she said sardonically, patting her yellow pajamas. “Of course, if my mom were here, she would have brought a camera crew and a make-up artist. I didn’t think to pack
any of those in my jammies either.”

  “I’m sure I could find a make-out artist,” Siggy offered innocently, hands in his pockets.

  Valerie elbowed him affectionately. Joy blushed darkly and looked away.

  “She’s right!” Rachel cried enthusiastically, ignoring Sigfried. “This opportunity’s too good to miss! Let’s explore!”

  “Wait!” The princess stopped beside a stone pillar that stood next to a marble well. “We cannot enter. That would be trespassing.”

  “Would it?” Siggy turned to his girlfriend. “Goldilock, you are the repository of all things crime-related. What is the definition of trespassing?”

  “To enter the owner’s land or property without permission,” Valerie replied, rapid fire.

  “And what would the penalty be for trespassing here?” asked Sigfried. To the others, he said, “If it’s not permanent dismemberment, we can just suck it up.”

  Valerie chuckled. “Even I, the repository of all things crime-related…in America, don’t know the penalty for trespassing on royal property in Transylvania. Actually, I’m pretty sure that no one knows it—ahead of time. It’s up to the whim of the king.”

  “The penalty is of no significance,” the princess stated calmly. “Trespassing, as Miss Hunt ahs so kindly reminded us, is a crime.”

  “So,” shrugged Zoë. “What? Do you think this is a D&D game, and you are playing Lawful Good? You don’t have to always be goody-goody, you know.”

  “And it’s crazy cold!” Joy jumped up and down, chafing her arms. “Let’s go in. Please!”

  “Trespassing is wrong,” the princess drew herself up. “I shall not go in. And I forbid my knight to behave so basely.”

  Siggy called back. “You can’t actually expect us to stand here in the cold until dark! There’s exploring to be done! I can besiege and conquer it for you! Then it will be yours. I can start by sapping. Lucky, find pigs to burn!” Drawing his gem-tipped fulgurator’s wand and waving it over his head, as if it were a sword, he charged through the gatehouse, followed by the gold and red streak that was Lucky. “FOR THE PRINCESS!!”

  Valerie, Zoë, and Xandra ran after him. Joy paused in the archway, torn between the handsome Sigfried and her idol, Nastasia, who was not the least bit amused by Siggy’s antics.

  “Um. I’ll check on the others and come back,” called Joy, blushing as she rushed inside.

  The princess sighed and pulled a chair, a winter parka, and a book out of her purse. She placed the chair beside the trunk of a venerable elm.

  Rachel hesitated, torn. She never knew what to do when Siggy and Nastasia did not see eye to eye. She had secretly vowed to support Siggy. She hated the idea that the orphan boy was alone in the world, with no one on his side but Lucky.

  The princess, on the other hand, was her dearest girlfriend. She hated to desert her, too.

  “Come on, Nastasia!” Rachel called, hoping if she did not confront the matter directly, the princess might change her mind. “We could use you inside. You’re a better sorceress than everyone here, except for Sigfried. What if we need help?”

  Nastasia opened her book in her lap without looking up. It was a book Rachel had read. “You will not need my help inside, if you do not go inside.”

  Rachel swallowed.

  She wanted so much to be a good friend, but she never seemed to do the right thing. She had such little experience with friendship. When she had read about it in books, it had sounded easy. You met the right friend, and you were instantly bosom buddies. She had not realized that friendship was a thing that one had to practice to be good at, like vaulting, or broom flying, or playing the flute.

  She hated playing the flute.

  A little nagging voice in the back of her head wondered: To what lengths should she be required to go? Her desire to explore Beaumont burned her like an acetylene torch. The basalt walls, vast and gray, mocked her with their hidden secrets. Must she deny years of longing, because of Nastasia’s qualms?

  Must she sit beside the princess, while the others explored, just as she sat beside the princess at every meal, secretly wishing she could sit next to Gaius Valiant?

  She had wanted to invite her boyfriend on their outing tonight, too. After all, Siggy brought his girlfriend. Gaius’s insight and clever wit—not to mention his talent as a duelist, should they get into trouble—might have come in useful. But Nastasia refused. Rachel understood that the princess did not want Gaius to know about her dreamfaring talent. Nastasia was afraid he might tell his boss, the Prince of Bavaria, whom the princess did not trust.

  Still, Rachel missed him.

  Nastasia might have qualms about entering the castle, but Rachel herself had none. During the first week of school, when the adults had given her instructions that would have led to the death of people she loved, she had lost her ability to blindly obey rules. She was not rebellious. In fact, she felt quite humble. But she would not let pointless rules stand in the way of keeping those she loved alive.

  If rebellion was like turning a crank against the gears, Rachel’s crank now spun without engaging any gears at all.

  But for Nastasia, if the adults told her something, then it was written in stone. Still, if Rachel wanted to be a good friend, she could not just rush off and leave the princess as the others had done. She would have to make some effort to explain.

  She walked over and knelt on one knee beside the chair. “I want to tell you why I am so keen to go in.” She spoke very seriously, which, oddly, made her feel younger and more vulnerable. “I realize to you, this is some random castle we just happened to drop out of the sky next to. But this is Beaumont! I’ve wanted to come here my whole life…to see if there are any clues left. I…can’t let this opportunity get away. I may never have a chance to come again.”

  “Clues as to what?” asked the princess.

  “What became of Daring Northwest.”

  “The librarian adventurer who wrote The Not-so-Long-Ago Dream Time: A Comprehensive Study of the Bunyip, right?” The princess pinched the top of her nose as she thought. “You once mentioned that he died here.”

  Rachel nodded. “He went in and never came out. His body was never found.”

  “But that was over a hundred and fifty years ago, wasn’t it? If there were clues, would not they have been found by now?”

  “Found by whom? The Starkadders? I’m not sure they ever looked properly,” Rachel gave a dramatic sigh and stood up. “You are probably right. But one cannot help wishing to try.”

  “I commend your desire to learn the fate of your hero,” Nastasia said, smiling gently.

  “Mortimer Egg and his cohorts may have left clues as well. To their activities. Or other members of their cabal.”

  “Shouldn’t we leave that to the Agents of the Wisecraft? Aren’t we interfering with an investigation, if we go within?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Do you think King Adolphus of Transylvania will let the Agents poke around?”

  “The Wisecraft is an international organization.”

  “True, but not all countries are equally cooperative. Transylvania has not thrown out the Wisecraft, the way King Ludwig IV of Bavaria has, but they usually handle their own matters. I would lay good money that King Adolphus will come up with some excuse as to why the Agents are not welcome.”

  “Even though they saved the world here last night?” asked the princess. “Assuming that that Azrael fellow actually had the power to destroy the world…which I, for one, doubt.”

  Rachel stared at her, her teeth sinking slowly into her lip.

  She thought of the tenebrous mundi—giant shadow-beings in the shape of great dragons—looming above her, as they waited for Rachel to kill her father and sister and Sigfried and Nastasia herself, to fuel the spell that would allow them to obey the instructions of Azrael to dismantle the Wall that protected the Earth from the forces of chaos Outside. She recalled gazing into the horrible eyes of the demon, as she spoke the masterword that caused the spell h
er grandfather had cast over a hundred years before to bind Azrael back into the body of the poor hapless clerk, Mortimer Egg.

  But Nastasia remembered none of this. The princess merely recalled that she had been taken captive, geased, and then rescued.

  Had the princess been the kind of friend Rachel could trust with secrets, she would have told her the whole story right then. She was dying to tell someone, anyone. She hated secrets. In fact, telling secrets was her greatest joy in life.

  But the dean was a friend of the princess’s family, and the princess had made it painfully clear that her loyalty to the dean was greater than her loyalty to Rachel. Chances were, if Rachel told Nastasia, the dean would know the next day. The dean would then tell the Wisecraft, which was not a chance Rachel was willing to take.

  What was the point of having friends, if you could not share secrets with them?

  “I wish I could go inside. It sounds as if it might be a valuable experience.” Nastasia sighed. “But…I cannot.”

  Rachel’s head snapped around. “Why not?”

  “You are a private citizen, Rachel,” Nastasia said slowly, “even if you are nobility. If you and the others are caught trespassing in Transylvania, nothing will come of it. It will be considered a harmless childhood prank. But I am a princess of Magical Australia. If I am caught on the grounds of a royal Transylvania residence, it will create an international incident.”

  “Oh,” whispered Rachel.

  The princess was right.

  “The others don’t understand this,” continued Nastasia. “But you are a duke’s daughter. You know what duty and responsibility mean.”

  Grimly, Rachel nodded her head. “It would be terrible, if you were caught here. Your kingdom would be put in a very difficult position.”

  “I might be thought to be a spy. Some nations still execute spies.” Nastasia lay a hand on Rachel’s arm. “You go inside. I will be fine out here.”

  Rachel’s heart lifted. Nastasia did understand.

  “Call us on our calling cards if you need us.” Rachel squeezed the princess’s hand, where it lay on her arm. “May I have my broom?”

  Without a word, Nastasia pulled Rachel’s bristleless from her bag and handed it to her. Rachel leapt onto the leather seat and zoomed toward the door.