Indigo Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

OLONY . T HE GROUND THERE IS MADE OF IRON ORE . N O MAGIC IS POSSIBLE, INCLUDING PORTALS TO E ARTH . A NY ENCHANTMENTS BECOME NULL AND VOID FOR THE DURATION OF A STAY IN THE I RON L ANDS .
    Orville Gold, genie historian of Feyland
    THE CROWD OUTSIDE was gone, even the injured. Not so much as a single gnome remained.
    I found it odd that none of my neighbours came by to ask after me. My father had built this home in a secluded spot but it wasn’t secluded enough to be truly isolated. Had Lily used more radia to throw forgetting spells on those who might have seen the attack? It seemed unlikely, but why else would everyone in Galena ignore what had happened?
    I shrugged off my gloom as my friends and I made plans. While Meteor went to the Crown Library, Leona and Andalonus were going to explore Oberon City to see what was happening there. We agreed to meet the following evening in my mother’s room.
    Alone, I picked up the indigo bottle. The glass felt bland and cool, as if it held nothing more than sand. Appearances could be so deceiving. Wasn’t that often shown in the stories humans told their children? The frog is really a prince. The beauty has a cruel heart. The crippled old woman asks for shelter and, when turned away, proves to be a powerful fairy with a curse on her lips.
    ‘We’re going on a journey,’ I told the bottle, and wrapped it in a yellow scarf that had belonged to my mother. I too would research the powder, but my way would be different to Meteor’s.
    I took the plainest woven bag I could find – black with a grey border. Placing the bottle inside it, I stuffed more scarves around it before I slung the long strap around my neck. Then I created a spell of disguise to change my colouring. I turned myself from a lavender fairy with purple eyes and wings into a green-skinned fairy with black eyes and hair, and grey wings. The spell would last till I reversed it. It cost me twenty-five radia.
    I brought to mind a certain sleazy café. ‘Transport me to the Ugly Mug,’ I said.
    In less than an instant, I arrived. The Ugly Mug looked the same as it had the last time I’d been there only a few days before. Rough gravel paved the ground around a building made of unmatched stones and sloppy mortar. The copper door was so tarnished that not a bit of it shone, not even the grimy knob.
    Meteor would be angry if he knew I was here. The owner of the place was none other than Banburus Lazuli – known as Laz – who had trussed me inside the troll cloak and turned me over to Lily Morganite for a reward of 50,000 radia.
    Laz didn’t have much in his favour, but he did have two things. One, he had never received that reward. Lily double-crossed him, which made him hate her. And two, he had turned the Ugly Mug into a place where endless streams of secrets trickled into his long ears. As I had tried to convince Meteor, Laz
knew
things, and I wanted answers.
    I moved the bag holding the indigo bottle to my hand. Clutching it firmly, I opened the café door. Sagging hinges squealed. Inside, the place was dimly lit by wax candles burning in globes half covered in soot. No fey lights here, but the aroma was heady – a mix of the forbidden flavours of cocoa and coffee from Earth.
    I made my way past tables crammed with customers, ignoring brazen genies asking me to share their mugs of cocoa. Laz was in the back playing cards with four genies and a gnarled leprechaun who wore a crumpled old cap with a pitiful red feather. When I came close to their table, Laz looked up. His eyes narrowed for an instant. Then he went back to the game.
    I wondered what the leprechaun was using to back up his bets. It couldn’t be radia. Unlike fairies and genies, leprechauns could not transfer their magic. If they could, Lily Morganite would never have left them in the Iron Lands. She would have mined them like rubies.
    But if not radia, then what could Laz be hoping to win?
    He showed all his blue teeth in a smile, and made his bet: