No Quest For The Wicked

“But the brooch doesn’t work for me,” I protested.

“Still, try it.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Rod added. “I’m torn between trying to take the brooch away from you and worshiping you, myself.”

I whirled to him, waving my fist. I would have lost my balance on the rock if Owen hadn’t steadied me. “Don’t even think about it!”

“And now I no longer want to worship you. See, it works! Now, try it on them.”

“Okay, then,” I muttered as I thought of what to say. I’d never been good at speeches. “Um, thank you all for coming,” I said. “It’s very kind of you. But you don’t need to worship me. You can run along now.”

Nothing happened. They just kept up that whispering and glowing. I never thought I’d be irritated with being worshipped.

“You don’t have to be nice to them,” Owen said. “They think you’re their queen. Queens aren’t nice. Pretend you’re Mimi.”

“If I do that, they’ll shoot me with their tiny bows and arrows.”

“No, they won’t. Remember, you’re their queen. You have power over them.”

“Okay, then. Your homage is noted,” I said as pompously as I could while keeping a straight face. “Now, be gone! Leave me!” That wasn’t any more effective. I turned to Owen. “Maybe I should give you the brooch and let you try.”

He flinched. “I don’t want to touch that thing.”

“It can’t be any more dangerous for you than it is for me.” I studied him for a moment, trying to read what I could see of his face in the eerie glow of all the little magical creatures on the ground. “Or are you feeling something from it? I know you want your powers back, but this would be really bad timing.”

“No, but if I ever even act like I want the Eye, with or without powers, there will be plenty of people who think I’m trying to take over the world.”

I gestured around us. “There’s nobody here but us!”

“That we know of. I’m pretty sure I’m being watched, all the time, by officials and by other people, and the moment I show any sign of doing anything even remotely suspicious, they’ll probably just shoot me without asking questions.”

“You’re being paranoid.”

“Not really,” Rod said. “He is being watched.”

“Then if they won’t listen to me, what do we do? If anyone’s searching for us by air, they’ll have found us by now.”

Granny banged her cane on the ground and shouted, “Oh, get out of here! Shoo!” The glow receded rapidly, flowing away from us until there was no sign it had ever been there. When the rest of us turned to look at Granny, she shrugged and said, “It’s all in the tone of voice. I deal with these folk all the time, though yours aren’t as sophisticated as the ones we’ve got back home. Ours would have argued with me for a while or demanded a gift instead of just leaving.”

I laughed. “You know, that may be the first time someone called something from a small Texas town more sophisticated—” I broke off as something came at me out of the sky, knocking me off the rock. I hit the ground hard, landing on the brooch, and that caused such a sharp pain that I cried out. The fall had knocked the wind out of me, though, so my cry came out as a mere gasp.

I was so dazed that I only got a vague sense of the others running around and shouting. I felt the ground shake slightly and heard a loud thud as something hit the ground hard, as though from a great height, nearby.

Then someone took me by the shoulders and shouted my name. I started to fight off my assailant, then realized it was Owen. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“I landed on the brooch,” I said, wincing and shifting my weight so the brooch wasn’t pressed against my hip. “I have a feeling I’ll have a very interesting bruise in the morning.”

He chuckled and started to help me to my feet, but then Rod shouted, “Incoming! They didn’t just send the one.”

“I hate these things,” I muttered into Owen’s shoulder as he pressed me back into the ground, sheltering me from the attacking zombie gargoyles.

“You two find cover,” Rod ordered. “We’ll deal with them.”

We moved in a crouch toward a cluster of trees, weaving our way across the clearing like we were crossing a battlefield. I had the strangest feeling that we were being followed. When I turned to look, I saw that Rod was right behind us.

“Rod!” I shouted. “You’re supposed to be fighting them, not following us!”