WIZARD AT LARGE. Terry Brooks

She took hold of the handle and pulled. The wall eased back, and the rush of stale, fetid air caused Willow to gasp. Nausea washed through her, but she swallowed against it and waited for the feeling to pass.

“Willow, are you all right?” Elizabeth asked urgently, her brightly colored clown’s face bent close.

“Yes, Elizabeth,” Willow whispered. She couldn’t give in now. Just a little longer, she promised herself. Just a little.

She peered through the opening in the wall. Cages lined a passageway, shadowed cells of rock and iron bars. There was movement in one. Something lay there twitching.

“That’s Abernathy!” Elizabeth confirmed in a small, frightened voice.

Willow took a moment longer to check the corridor beyond for other signs of movement. There were none. “Are there guards?” she asked softly.

Elizabeth pointed. “Down there, beyond that door. Just one, usually.”

Willow pushed her way out into the cellar passage, feeling the nausea and weakness surge through her once more. She went to the cage that held Abernathy and peered in. The dog lay on a pile of straw, his fur matted and soiled, his clothes torn. He had been sick, and the discharge clung to him. He smelled awful. There was a chain fastened about his neck.

The medallion hung there as well.

Abernathy was mumbling incoherently. He was talking about everything and nothing all at once, his speech slurred, his words fragments of witless chatter. He has been drugged, Willow thought.

Elizabeth was handing her something. “This is the key to the cage door, Willow,” she whispered. She looked very frightened. “I don’t know if it fits the chain on his neck!”

Her clown nose fell off, and she picked it up hurriedly and pushed it back into place. Willow took the key from her and started to insert it into the cage door lock.

It was at that same moment that they heard the latch on the door at the end of the corridor begin to turn.

* * *

Michel Ard Rhi came down the front hallway past the entry and paused momentarily as he saw the gorilla and the shaggy dog sitting there on the waiting bench. It was apparent that he wasn’t sure what to make of them. He looked at them, and they looked back. No one said anything.

Ben held his breath and waited. He could feel Miles go rigid beside him. Suddenly, Michel seemed to realize what they were doing there. “Oh, yes,” he said. “The Halloween party at the school. You must be here for Elizabeth.”

A phone rang somewhere down the hall.

Michel hesitated, as if he might say something more, men turned and walked away quickly to answer it. The shaggy dog and the gorilla glanced at each other in silent relief.

* * *

The guard pushed his way wearily through the cellar door and came down the corridor of iron cages, boots clumping heavily on the stone block. He was dressed in black and wore an automatic weapon and a ring of keys at his belt. Elizabeth shrank further into the darkness behind the hidden section of wall where she was concealed, peering out through the tiny crack she had left open.

Willow was still out there in the corridor. But where? Why couldn’t she see her?

She watched the guard pause at Abernathy’s cage, check the door perfunctorily to make certain it was locked, men turn and walk back again the way he had come. As he passed her hiding place, the keys at his belt suddenly came free. Elizabeth blinked in disbelief. The snap that held them seemed to loosen of its own accord and all at once the keys were gone. The guard completed his walk down the corridor, pushed back through the metal door, and disappeared.

Elizabeth slipped quickly from her hiding place. “Willow!” she called in a muffled hiss.

The sylph appeared out of nowhere at her side, the ring of keys in one hand. “Hurry, now,” she whispered. “We do not have much time.”

They went back to Abernathy’s cage, and Willow opened the door with the key Elizabeth had given her earlier. They hastened inside, moving to the incoherent dog and kneeling beside him. Willow bent close. The scribe’s eyes were dilated and his breathing was rapid. When she tried to lift him, he sagged helplessly against her.