CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Taking of The Tenth Kingdom
When Mazarin and his followers stepped through Kai's mirror into Central Park, they were seen only by a passing dog walker who assumed they were actors trying to drum up business for Shakespeare in the Park. Mazarin and his followers didn't take much notice of the man and his dog either. Ordinary humans and animals weren't worth noticing. They were only good for servants, nothing more.
The evil wizard gave the signal and his followers dispersed. The majority of them sprinkled traveling dust over themselves and vanished to the edges of the city. Zafira and her group of winged fairies and elves changed themselves into pigeons and flew a few blocks down to await the next signal. Mazarin remained in the park.
The idea was to create a magic barrier over the entire island, using the water around it to anchor the spell. Mazarin watched in a small mirror, making sure that everyone was in place. His followers at the perimeter were all carrying small mirrors and they used them to affirm their whereabouts one by one.
"Now!" Mazarin commanded. And the chanting began.
It went on for several minutes as each one's powers fanned out to meet the others. The witch who had cast the sleeping spell over the griffin was at Battery Park. The few people who noticed her assumed she was a bag woman. There was a wingless fairy at the Cloisters. People who saw him assumed he was some kind religious fanatic because he was dressed in purple robes and seemed to be praying to himself. There was a winged elf at an empty dock not far from the Circle Line tourist boat on the west side of the island. He was shrunk down in size so he wouldn't be noticed. And the one Ice Fairy in their group was at Carl Shurtz park by the East River, pretending to be sunning herself. These and the others at the perimeter focused their powers into the center of the island to Mazarin, who sent it bouncing back outward again, engulfing the island in a transparent barrier that reached out into the East River almost to the shores of Brooklyn and Long Island City on one side, and into the Hudson River a respectable distance on the other.
The water on and around the island began to pulsate as the magic bubbled through it. Water towers on the top of some buildings began to break, sending sheets of water cascading to the ground. Several fire hydrants broke from the underground pressure. Zafira took that as her signal that the spell was well underway. She and her group changed into their natural shapes, but kept to a smaller size so they could move quickly above the city.
The male winged fairy who had helped steal Kai's mirror flew to the East River. Settling himself on the end of Roosevelt Island, he conjured up a vision of a giant and had it lumber up and down the river like a sentinel. The giant was a symbol that a new king had come to this kingdom and that he had the power to keep it.
Meanwhile, Mazarin's airborne followers continued their work. Some decorated the tall buildings with turrets that matched the ones back in the Nine Kingdoms. Others coated bridges and other open spaces with grass up to the magic barrier, to make it seem more homelike to some of the elves and fairies. And Zafira, she had the biggest job of all. She began the alteration of the Empire State Building. She grew a dark cloud over the building and began to build a mountain around it.
Mazarin joined Zafira at the Empire State Building as soon as the spell for the magic barrier was complete. They planned to make it their palace. Its central location worked well for maintenance of the spell. And they were building a mountain around it because Mazarin wanted to be reminded of the underground world of the Eighth Kingdom where he had grown up. "Besides," he had told Zafira, "it will be more like a fortress. I can control all access to it."
The ordinary humans living in New York didn't notice the changes right away. It was mid-morning at that point and everyone was busy in the non-magical world of work. At first they thought the exploding fire hydrants and broken water towers were isolated incidents, or something that might have been caused by underground construction. But then people saw the mountain developing around the Empire State Building, and the giant walking slowly through the water of the East River, and the cars and buses being held back by an invisible force as they tried to cross bridges and tunnels. And they knew something other-worldly was going on.
Con Edison rallied bravely to do what they could to halt the rolling black-outs. Other city officials struggled with the water issues that the beginnings of the spell had caused. Helicopters in the city suddenly found themselves held back and were forced to land. Planes trying to fly to and from LaGuardia and Kennedy saw the magic barrier on their radars and felt the magnetic push of it increase as they got closer. Pilots had to make wide detours around the island in order to maintain control of their planes. Radios played only static because the magic barrier interfered with radio waves. Cell phones shorted out as well. Land line phones still worked, but they quickly became overloaded. Rumors of all sorts raced through the streets and buildings.
Kai the Selkie had been working in the Manhattan offices of Magic Beer for the last couple of months, down near the Brooklyn Bridge. He'd been handling some backed up paper work and hoping that sometime soon Matilde and her uncle would come through the mirror and release the Murray family from the slave spell. If they didn't come soon he planned to journey back to the Nine Kingdoms to get them. He knew of a way to find the entrance to the one connected to Wendell's castle. All he would have to do is wait for it to be turned on.
He was rummaging through some file boxes in a windowless room when he noticed the lights flashing, but since they didn't stay out, he kept working. He was vaguely aware that there were murmurs of gathering Murrays outside the door, but he ignored them until their whisperings turned into screams. Then he came running. He found everyone clustered in one corner at the windows that ran the length of the room, looking at something upriver.
"What is it?" Kai asked.
But no one responded, they just kept looking upriver, fear and amazement etched into their faces.
Kai walked quickly to the window. He couldn't believe it. There was a giant walking down the East River toward the Brooklyn Bridge. He had brown hair that was a little lighter than his brown leather vest and high leather boots. The Murrays instinctively moved back from the window as the giant got closer, giving Kai a better look.
What was a giant doing in the East River, Kai asked himself. It would take an incredible amount of power to transport one across the dimensions. The only people in the Nine Kingdoms who could do it alone were Prince Brutus and Queen Matilde. But why would they do that? Then Kai noticed that the giant's leather boots looked dry, even though he was hiking through a splashing river. Was the giant real? Or was it an illusion?
Another Murray ran into the room. "The Empire State Building!" he called. "My brother called from our brewing facility in Brooklyn. He says there's a mountain growing around the Empire State Building! He can see it from his office."
"What??" the other Murrays exclaimed.
"He said he's been listening to the radio and the authorities are reporting that there seems to be some kind of force field around the island. I tried to get something on the radio here about it, but all I get is static. My brother says only the non-Manhattan stations are working on his end."
"My cell phone doesn't work!" one of the lady Murrays said, holding up the tiny dead item.
"I was talking to my brother on a regular phone. The connection was bad, but at least it was working."
The Murrays immediately started clustering and buzzing in confusion. Kai stood off by himself at the window, watching the giant move back up the river as if he were patrolling it.
This is magic, Kai said to himself. Criminal magic! But who would do such a thing? Had some new criminal escaped from the Nine Kingdoms into his adopted world?
"Good morning, everyone!" a voice boomed out jovially, as if from everywhere. "Or is it afternoon?"
The Murrays pulled out of their cluster and looked around to see where the strange voice was coming from. In every reflective surface in the room, there was a face with a long beard and red eyes.
"My name is Mazarin…the Great and Powerful! I am your new master. I have claimed this kingdom for my own! Henceforth, it shall be known as the Tenth Kingdom!"
"The Tenth what?" some Murray asked out loud.
"You are all my subjects!" Mazarin continued.
"He looks a little like our Master," one Murray woman said.
"But he's not," another pointed out. "Look at those eyes. And the hair and the mouth. That's NOT our beloved Master."
"How dare he look like our Master!" one of the Murray men said indignantly.
"We don't serve anybody but our Master," another Murray said.
"I have placed our kingdom in a protective sphere of magic," Mazarin went on, "to keep out any would-be conquerors. And we've made some new renovations to make the place more homey. My palace will be in the center of you all, deep within what I am going to call Mazarin's Mountain! Some of my ministers are gathering servants from it now, organizing them into labor teams. You will be meeting more of my ministers as the days go on. Many of them will be living within the Silver Wand Castle, which a couple of them have been working on. Others will be living at various places at the edge of our kingdom. Worship them as you would me and your lives will go easy. Give them a hard time and you won't live to regret it. I don't have time for disobedient human servants. I will be watching!" And with that, Mazarin was gone.
"Who does he think he is?" one of the Murrays asked. And they all started buzzing amongst themselves again.
Mazarin. It was Mazarin, Kai thought. Hadn't Wolf and Virginia said he was locked away somewhere? Well, evidently he'd gotten out and come through one of Kai's mirrors. Was it the one in the Northern Sea, or the one in young Wendell's castle that Virginia and Wolf had used? Were things all right in the Nine Kingdoms?
Kai had only seen Mazarin once long long ago when he had visited Matilde's mother one afternoon. Mazarin had come in, all full of youthful fury, complaining that Matilde had turned down his proposal of marriage. He wanted Sabirah to order Matilde to marry him at once because he was of the opinion that he was the only suitable suitor for her.
Sabirah had said that she couldn't do such a thing, that her daughter had to find her own destiny. And anyway Matilde had just gone away on an extended trip, to visit a number of different dimensions. At that, Mazarin's face had grown crimson red and his hands had snapped his cane in two. He marched out of the room vowing that they would all regret this. Kai never saw Mazarin again, but he'd heard things from Sabirah, especially the rumors about him being behind her granddaughter's death.
To Kai, Mazarin still looked a lot like Tony Lewis, but of course he'd never met Virginia's father and he'd only seen Mazarin briefly over four hundred years before. The Murrays seemed convinced that the man appearing on their computer screens and in the reflection of the windows was not their beloved Master. Even the Murrays who'd come to New York from the Midwest after Tony had fled to the Nine Kingdoms seemed to be sure. It had to be because of the spell they were under. It must have had a sort of "accept no imitations" clause.
"We've got to stop him!" one of the Murray women exclaimed. "We can't let him go around impersonating the Master."
"I agree," Kai said. "And lucky for us, I have a plan. It may not stop him completely. But it will surely give him trouble."
- - - - - - - - - -
The mayor of New York City happened to be out of town that day. So the police chief decided to take things into his own hands. Early in the afternoon he launched an attack on the new mountain that had engulfed the Empire State Building, not knowing that Mazarin and Zafira had already prepared for this.
During her undercover visit to the city, Zafira had learned about the primary weapons of the humans on this side of the mirror. She had watched television through a couple of apartment windows in her guise as a pigeon and she had seen a couple of "police actions" in progress. She didn't have time to learn about guns in depth, but she was afraid they might have the power to kill Mazarin and his followers. They couldn't afford to lose any of their number because the magic holding the Tenth Kingdom was stretched to the limit. If even one of them were incapacitated, their control might fail. So they had to trump the human weapons with magic, doing something flashy, but not too draining.
When the police cars and SWAT teams started rolling against Mazarin's Mountain, they were ready. One of their team, an elf, had brought a small Mirror of Forgetfulness. She handed it to Zafira as the swarm of determined humans advanced on the mountain. They and another fairy reflected their magic into the mirror and out over the area around them. To the people on the ground, there was a flash of light, a moment of unconsciousness, and then confusion. The police and SWAT teams came wandering out of their vehicles, wide-eyed and bewildered. They didn't know who they were or why they were there. It was easy for Zafira's team to sprinkle them with traveling dust and transport them into the depth of the mountain to become servants to Mazarin. Since they had no real memory of anything else, they were easy to control. And Mazarin was sure that word of what had happened would spread and act as a deterrent to anyone who thought to go against them. At least, that's what he thought.
While the police chief had been amassing his attack, Kai was preparing his. Luckily Kai had begun preparing for something like this the first time he'd seen Tony Lewis's picture. He went from the offices of Magic Beer to the East Village to meet the witches and warlocks that he knew would be gathering. Most of them weren't as powerful as Snow White's Stepmother, but Kai was pretty sure their magic would be enough to cause trouble.
"I need to know what pattern their magic is taking," Kai told his group of followers.
"I can see it," a young woman with dyed black hair, black eye-shadow, and filmy black clothing said. She pulled a crystal ball out of her black shoulder bag and laid it on her lap.
Kai waited patiently as the girl concentrated and stared into her crystal. He knew the ball wasn't anything like Matilde's. It didn't have any magic within itself. It only acted to help focus the young woman's power.
"They're spread out over the perimeter of the island," the young seer said. "I can see their energy traveling to the mountain and circling back out again to the water. That's what's causing the barrier around the island."
"It's doubling in on itself. That makes it pretty strong, especially with an older wizard standing at the center controlling it. The first thing we have to do is hamper the flow of energy. We need to gather at least thirteen and have them chant the spell I gave you once that can take down a magic barrier."
"Where shall we meet?" a middle-aged man with blond hair and a goatee asked.
"It needs to be someplace centrally located, so that it can interfere with the magic center. I think Tony Lewis's apartment will do nicely. I'll tell the Murrays to expect us there this evening."
"Tony Lewis's?" the blond man asked. "Are you sure he's not Mazarin? I mean, you were so sure he was….and then you said he wasn't….and now…."
"Mazarin and Tony Lewis aren't the same person. Even if I have trouble telling the difference, the Murrays knew it at a glance. Since they're tied to him by a spell, I'm sure they'd know if he were the same person. Tony Lewis is probably related to Mazarin somehow, somewhere. It doesn't matter. Mazarin is the one we need to worry about. While you're chanting, I'll be going around town with the Murrays, circulating the charms we've made and leaving some scattered underground through various tunnels. The Murrays will keep making them till the whole island is overrun with them. With any luck, we'll be able to shoot some holes in their magic and make it unstable."
"And then what?"
"Then, if we're lucky, we can throw them off balance. The authorities outside will no doubt launch an attack of some kind to defend us. But anything they try will probably fail, unless we can weaken the barrier."
"You don't think they can bomb their way through without us helping?"
"Not unless they use something strong enough to destroy the island. Not with the magic doubled in on itself. So we're going to try and help them."
- - - - - - - - - -
There was already a sizable group at Tony's when Kai arrived later that evening. He'd been setting up teams of Murrays to handle the charms. When he arrived, the chanting was already well under way, lead by a heavyset black woman named Nyota, sitting at the center of a circle.
"Inso eli todop ry," they chanted.
"Inso talla edep ry
Inpa tola hida so,
Etop efra kado ro."
Of course none of them knew what the words meant. But they trusted Kai. Even though he didn't have any magic of his own, he seemed to have great knowledge of it.
Virginia's grandmother was also at Tony's apartment. She'd been trying to watch one of her soap opera's when Mazarin's magic had interfered. She'd been incensed at Mazarin's resemblance to her son-in-law. She'd never liked Tony much, but he certainly had better manners than this madman who called himself a wizard. What would her friends say? Would they assume that this mad Mazarin was connected to her family because he looked like her son-in-law? The horror of it! When Mr. Murray came to her apartment to see if she was OK, he told her that his family would do everything in their power to fight this man who looked so much like his Master. (Virginia's Grandmother never thought it was weird that the Mr. Murray called Tony Master. She thought Tony was merely maintaining proper employer/employee relations. Christine didn't get all of her delusions of grandeur from her father, after all.)
And so, Grandma had joined with the Murrays and was now staying at Tony's apartment under the protective eye of Mr. Murray. She didn't seem bothered by the chanting and she had her stun gun at the ready in case this man who looked like her son-in-law dared come any where near her.
"Can you imagine the nerve!" Virginia's grandmother asked Kai. "Taking over New York like that, without even notifying any of the important people! We've got to do everything we can to send him back where he came from. Right, Roland?" she asked turning to her dog.
The dog barked energetically.
One of Kai's younger protégé's nodded. She was sitting out the chanting at that point. "What frightens me is the spell I heard they used on the police today."
"They must have used a Mirror of Forgetfulness," Kai said. "They aren't hard to use if you have enough magic. Nyota could do the same thing, if she were only dealing with one person. It can be used for many things, like on oneself to lose painful memories." He had once considered using such a mirror, to make himself forget his long lost love. But he hadn't been able to do it. "They can also be used for evil. Some from the old days used those mirrors to control slaves. That's what Mazarin seems to be doing."
"Well after today, not many are likely to try and stand against him."
"Except for us," Kai said. "And I think we can talk a lot of people into carrying our harmless looking charms."
"Don't forget, there are a lot of people in my family," Mr. Murray chimed in proudly. "We can cover a lot of ground just by ourselves."
At that, the electric lights in the room failed and the flickering candles they'd had at the ready took over.
"Just let him try and use that forgetfulness mirror on me," Virginia's grandmother said, holding up her stun gun. "I'll give him a shock he'll never forget!"