The Fragile Tower - Book 1 of the No.1 magical fantasy series

The Fragile Tower Chapter 25 - The Living Spell

Grace felt it when the Queen's gaze fell on her. There was so much pain and hatred in her expression that her beauty seemed to vanish in an instant, leaving her smooth skin and large eyes haggard and vile.

But there was a sound, too, that crept into Grace's ears and then seemed to overtake everything. It was a soft, desperately sad cry which made the ache inside her chest grow.

Please don't take me away from her. Please don't. She needs me. She loves me.

Her hand went to the wand before she had even understood the words, and as she drew it her hand was already finding the shapes for a symbol she hadn't realised that she knew. It was a wandering, lazy movement but she seemed to have time enough for anything now.

She saw the Queen's hand lift, gathering a cloud of vari-coloured light around it as it went, and she saw Afi step forwards to stop her, but Grace said, "Wait," and she finished the symbol in the air in front of her.

And suddenly there was silence. No howl of wolves, no rumble of magics. The Queen stood there unmoving, that hand lifted towards Grace and the awful rage frozen in her eyes. Afi was still beside Grace, the muscles in his legs tensed ready to leap. Only the gleaming light and fire of the spell within the Queen's arms continued to move and pulse.

She held her empty hand out, and the cluster of lights moved towards her in a rolling haze that was like mist coming down over the mountains back at home. It came to hover over her hand. Then it moved downwards, always shifting and changing, until it rested on her open palm, turning it a misty green and yellow and red.

As it touched her skin, she felt a surge of happiness, as if those gleaming lights had read the most hidden yearning in her heart and granted it.

But when Grace smiled, it was still sad.

"I know you could pretend to be Benjamin, if I wanted. But it isn't the illusion of Benjamin that I want," she whispered. "I want to take him away from here and stop him from being afraid. I can't be happy while he's still here."

But if you take him and undo the web, I won't be her little boy any more.

Grace looked at those lights and frowned. "What will you be?"

Just a spell. A spell without a body, not a boy. Not Ori.

"You won't... vanish?"

Grace felt a wash of confusion for a moment, and then a sense of understanding.

No, I'll still be... something. I'm more than their magic now.

Grace nodded, thinking about the book again, and the spells the ancient riezehn had kept in the Spell Palace for so many years that they seemed to be able to think. They learned every time they touched a human mind. The spell that had created the illusion of a child for the Queen had been in constant connection with twenty or thirty boys for more than fifteen years.

But she knew what she had to say to this strange spell that was almost a child.

"I can't break the bond. The Cold have come and we need the Queen. But with you here, she can't help anyone. She pours everything into you, I think."

Grace felt a rush of rebellion, of denial, and it was frightening how much force there was behind it. It possessed her mind until she could barely remember what her own thoughts were.

"You know she does," she said, fighting the urge to agree with him and to comfort him. "You're the reason she started gathering all the boys, aren't you? She thought they could bring her son back, but as soon as they stopped linking, you vanished again. Didn't you?"

The rebellion gave way to doubt. I don't remember... I don't... I just want her to love me, the plaintive voice said, sounding so much like a helpless child that it almost broke Grace's heart. You can't take me away. She can't love a spell.

"No," Grace said, trying to force down the building lump in her throat. "She can't."

The feeling that ran through her from the touch on her palm became momentarily angry, and then as that faded, nothing but endlessly, endlessly sad.

She loves him. Gregori. Not me...But I love her...

The gleaming, moving lights drifted away from her, taking with them the force of those feelings. They returned to the Queen, frozen in time.

"Then you have to save her," Grace told the spell. "Please, save her."

The lights returned to their place in the Queen's arms, and pressed close to her chest as if they were listening for her heart.

Who will look after me if I leave her? The spell asked Grace, and she searched around for an answer, hearing in the question that this almost-child was willing to do it if only she could find one.

"Are there other spells here?" She asked.

There was silence as the spell continued to gleam, and she realised that it was thinking, perhaps searching somehow.

Not spells like me, it said. Not here. Only help hands and lights and silly spells. But there were other ones. They were born here, like me, but they left. They went... to be together. All in one place.

"Can you go there?" Grace asked, wondering whether this place was in the Cold Lands or in another world entirely. Was he talking about the Palace of Spells, perhaps? Or something else?

Yes, the spell told her. But I won't go yet. I'll stop being Ori, but I'll stay, out of her sight.

Grace felt a rush of doubt. "Why? If she can't see you, how can you help her?"

The Cold are here, you said, the spell-voice said in her mind, sounding a little older for a moment. When they come, I can help, maybe. Maybe I can help her just once more.

And then Grace felt the spell she had cast fading, and her hold on time slipping. The gleaming symbol of halting she had drawn in the air was starting to fragment and blur, and time began to pass again, visible in slowly rising hand of the Queen and Afi's crouching preparation to spring.

She put a hand out to stop him as she heard that spell-voice say, No, Mommy!

Afi snapped his head around to look at her. Then the Queen's spell died, and she turned her face towards the gleaming cluster of lights within her arms. She looked confused, and young and vulnerable again, and she was as beautiful as she had been when Grace first saw her.

Grace realised that she didn't want to see the spell now; for a moment, she wanted to see the boy again. She lifted the wand to her neck and used the tip of it to hook the leather strap until the stone left her skin.

And there was Ori, his hands up to his mother's face and tears running down his cheeks.

"Don't hurt them, Mommy," he said. "They're going to save you."

The Queen looked over at Grace, the large eyes wide with confusion. Grace saw the young woman in the snow all over again, and she nodded.

"The Cold has come, and it's going to win without us."

The lovely face wrinkled into a frown. She was fighting with doubt, but Ori's head went to rest against her shoulder, his tousled hair gleaming through the light that surrounded him, and Grace saw the Queen's expression soften.

"It's true, Mommy," he whispered. "And I don't want them to hurt you."

"What can they do?" she asked, and Grace smiled slightly at the depth of her disregard for her and Afi.

I thought I was a threat? she thought.

"They can fight it, and so can you." Ori sighed, and Grace found it hard to keep that smile. "But you can't do it with me to look after."

Grace saw the awful expression on the Queen's face, and she knew that she'd remember it for as long as she managed to survive this place.

"What do you mean?" she asked, even though it was clear from the way her arms tightened around him that she knew.

"I love you, Mommy," he said, and he kissed her, and then with a flicker, he vanished.