Read Online Home Improvement: Undead Edition by Charlaine Harris - Free Book Online
Authors: Charlaine Harris
Ads: Link
quartz would do, so there was no point wasting money. Oh, there were subtle beneficial reasons for using a more expensive stone, but all Broahm was interested in was capturing an intruder.
Well. He’d captured himself instead. Bravo, idiot.
He stood and hobbled slowly to the quartz wall. He looked it up and down, then reached out and rubbed the cold quartz. He tapped it with his dagger. The wall was thick, solid. Even if Broahm hadn’t already expended his shatter spell, he doubted it would so much as scratch the quartz.
Brute force wasn’t going to get him out of this one.
A quick, mental inventory: a voice spell and a light spell. Not much left in his addled noggin.
Broahm had known very old wizards who could keep thirty-five or forty spells in their heads, ready for use at the click of a tongue. It took years of study and discipline to accomplish such a thing. Most wizards kept secret how many spells they could hold, but Broahm suspected his old master, Hemley, could hold as many as fifteen comfortably. Comfortably was the key. Broahm could jam eight spells in his mind in a pinch, but the buzz in his brain proved too distracting to cope with. Once he’d tried nine spells, but it had almost driven him mad. He’d had to run outside to launch a lightning bolt into the sky to make room in his head.
Anyway, someday he would study and work and be able to hold nine spells. Then if he was disciplined and worked hard, ten. But not today.
Today he was trapped in a world of blue with two nearly useless spells.
What Broahm really needed was to be rescued. If he’d bothered to memorize some kind of simple communication spell, maybe he could have called for help.
Hmmmmmm. Broahm scratched his chin. Maybe there was a way he could call for help. The point of being a wizard was not simply to know spells, but also how to be clever about using them.
So . . . be clever, moron.
THE HOUSE MAIDEN lingered over the burglar’s body long enough to make sure it wasn’t her master’s. Relief. It wasn’t Broahm. The pool of blood spread out from the body left little doubt. He was very, very dead.
She drifted up to the next level. “Milord?”
Where could he be? The intruder had obviously been vanquished, so where was her master?
She drifted though a sea of dark green fog, up the stairs past an explosion of dust and bone and old fur. Something was not right. Not right at all. She entered the master’s workshop and started suddenly at the misshapen shadow on the wall. It was huge, waving its arms like some deranged creature. She floated in a circle, looking all around at anything that could possibly cast such a shadow.
A bright glow radiated from the quartz in the center of the workshop.
This wasn’t right at all. She had to find her master, had to tell him something was amiss. She turned and floated back toward the stairs.
And stopped.
Had she just heard . . . her name?
She cast glances into every corner of the room. Nobody.
Was her imagination playing tricks on her? Since she was barely a ghost, a thing artificial, a puff of magic herself, she had to wonder if she even had an imagination. And anyway, house maiden wasn’t technically her “name.”
She hovered, waiting to see if she heard it again.
“IN HERE, YOU stupid cow!” Broahm screamed.
His magically amplified voice shook the interior of the capture gem like an earthquake.
He jumped up and down, waved his arms, and tried to imagine how it must look inside his workshop. He could see the shimmering figure of the house maiden blurred through the quartz. “Pay attention, you dumb ghostly transparent bitch!”
Broahm had used both his remaining spells.
First, the light spell. He’d taken twenty steps back from the quartz wall and had jabbed his dagger into the ground among the blades of thick blue grass. Then he’d focused on the hilt, casting the light spell with all the intensity he could muster. When he was finished casting the light
Well. He’d captured himself instead. Bravo, idiot.
He stood and hobbled slowly to the quartz wall. He looked it up and down, then reached out and rubbed the cold quartz. He tapped it with his dagger. The wall was thick, solid. Even if Broahm hadn’t already expended his shatter spell, he doubted it would so much as scratch the quartz.
Brute force wasn’t going to get him out of this one.
A quick, mental inventory: a voice spell and a light spell. Not much left in his addled noggin.
Broahm had known very old wizards who could keep thirty-five or forty spells in their heads, ready for use at the click of a tongue. It took years of study and discipline to accomplish such a thing. Most wizards kept secret how many spells they could hold, but Broahm suspected his old master, Hemley, could hold as many as fifteen comfortably. Comfortably was the key. Broahm could jam eight spells in his mind in a pinch, but the buzz in his brain proved too distracting to cope with. Once he’d tried nine spells, but it had almost driven him mad. He’d had to run outside to launch a lightning bolt into the sky to make room in his head.
Anyway, someday he would study and work and be able to hold nine spells. Then if he was disciplined and worked hard, ten. But not today.
Today he was trapped in a world of blue with two nearly useless spells.
What Broahm really needed was to be rescued. If he’d bothered to memorize some kind of simple communication spell, maybe he could have called for help.
Hmmmmmm. Broahm scratched his chin. Maybe there was a way he could call for help. The point of being a wizard was not simply to know spells, but also how to be clever about using them.
So . . . be clever, moron.
THE HOUSE MAIDEN lingered over the burglar’s body long enough to make sure it wasn’t her master’s. Relief. It wasn’t Broahm. The pool of blood spread out from the body left little doubt. He was very, very dead.
She drifted up to the next level. “Milord?”
Where could he be? The intruder had obviously been vanquished, so where was her master?
She drifted though a sea of dark green fog, up the stairs past an explosion of dust and bone and old fur. Something was not right. Not right at all. She entered the master’s workshop and started suddenly at the misshapen shadow on the wall. It was huge, waving its arms like some deranged creature. She floated in a circle, looking all around at anything that could possibly cast such a shadow.
A bright glow radiated from the quartz in the center of the workshop.
This wasn’t right at all. She had to find her master, had to tell him something was amiss. She turned and floated back toward the stairs.
And stopped.
Had she just heard . . . her name?
She cast glances into every corner of the room. Nobody.
Was her imagination playing tricks on her? Since she was barely a ghost, a thing artificial, a puff of magic herself, she had to wonder if she even had an imagination. And anyway, house maiden wasn’t technically her “name.”
She hovered, waiting to see if she heard it again.
“IN HERE, YOU stupid cow!” Broahm screamed.
His magically amplified voice shook the interior of the capture gem like an earthquake.
He jumped up and down, waved his arms, and tried to imagine how it must look inside his workshop. He could see the shimmering figure of the house maiden blurred through the quartz. “Pay attention, you dumb ghostly transparent bitch!”
Broahm had used both his remaining spells.
First, the light spell. He’d taken twenty steps back from the quartz wall and had jabbed his dagger into the ground among the blades of thick blue grass. Then he’d focused on the hilt, casting the light spell with all the intensity he could muster. When he was finished casting the light
Similar Books
The Bitter Road to Freedom: The Human Cost of Allied Victory in World War II Europe
William I. Hitchcock
