The Return of Maeve 5
Caipra watched with sympathetic and knowing eyes as Sinbad and the crew's faces widened in both shock and horror. She knew exactly how they were all feeling. It had been bad enough to know that Rumina and Scratch had joined forces in their effort to kill and claim their souls, Sinbad's most of all; to recognize Turok's rebirth on any level was a terrible feeling to be hampered down with.
While the crew never met the black sorcerer face to face, his dealings in trade had been felt heavily by all who made their living by trading goods at the market.
Truthfully, Turok's magic had made him a powerful merchant and a wealthy one. So wealthy in fact, he had assumed that his daughter, Rumina, would be Prince Casib's wife insuring Turok's lawful and legal control of Baghdad. When that did not happen, he kidnapped the princess to be, which brought the crew and Turok into battle against one another.
Before, the crew, individually had not been against him as Doubar had been in jail, Sinbad had been missing, Firouz had been a semi-successful inventor, Rongar had been a wandered for higher with his now deceased friend, Mustafa, and Maeve and Dermott had been living on the Isle of Dawn with DimDim.
Even then, their lives had been affected by Turok's power and magic. With his ability to control the winds of the earth, his ships made it to ports faster therefore allowing him to establish the average maximum costs for all his trading goods which in turn affected how other businesses established theirs; such as taverns, repair shops, cloth stalls, fruit venders, and blacksmiths.
With such high prices for even some of the simpler things of life, the costs of the other businesses rose significantly. This in turn, affected how men were paid and how much a family could afford to spend during a month's allowance in copper or silver.
Very rarely did a peasant make a gold coin by their own labor.
Baghdad's poor population suffered a very large increase during Turok's last few years amongst the living. Not that neither the man, nor his vengeful daughter thought about those seen as inferior to them. They loved it that those under them suffered to make them all the richer and more powerful.
In fact, only Maeve had met the man before Sinbad had beheaded him on the Isle of Tears nearly two years ago, and that was only because she had witnessed a magical battle between Turok and her dearly missed husband.
She waited patiently as the group gathered their wits back.
Sinbad felt like one of Doubar's fists had punched him in the solar plexus. He felt the air explode from his lungs, and his knees quivered with weakness.
Distantly he realized that he was not breathing, and attempted to make his lungs work once more.
As the colored stars and wavy blackness edged themselves into his sea blue vision, he blinked rapidly and took in four great lung fills of much needed, life giving air.
With some satisfaction, the black inkiness and tiny stars vanished which allowed him to see his friends eyeing him worriedly and with a barely concealed fear in their eyes.
He understood that fear that grew within their eyes.
Just thinking about Turok being alive again sent shivers of fear and cold chills down his back. It wasn't the thought of him being alive again that caused this fear within him, he knew, but it was the fact that Maeve and the crew, his friends and his family, would be in even more danger because of his actions against the evil man.
Rumina he could handle. She was such a flirt and liked to play with her food. All he had to do was act interested or play her games and all of Rumina's hard and thought out plans fell to pieces. Rumina, for all her evilness, was an honorable woman in terms and deals.
Turok on the other hand was dangerous and cold. This he had gleamed from his discussions with DimDim. Turok, once a plan was thought out, very rarely deviated from it. This made him a lot harder to defeat.
Scratch was very much like Rumina. If you played his games the way he wanted, if you won you were able to go freely. Scratch, though a devil he may be was actually honorable by his words.
Sinbad didn't want to think about what would happen if he ever lost.
He felt his breath hitch in his throat as Maeve once again came to mind. DimDim had brought her to him for protection against Rumina and Scratch. Would she even be allowed to come back once they freed her?
Maeve had barely been powerful enough to just barely defeat the majority of Rumina's conjuring; not to mention that Rumina still had enough power to mist herself away from the battle thereby alluding to the fact that she had a lot of magical strength left in her body.
Which, now that he was really thinking about it, begged the question: why did she leave?
With only a year's worth of training, would Maeve even stand a chance against the wills of those three?!?!
Freed her!
By Allah, she was trapped and he hadn't known!
What kind of man or friend was he?!
She was one of his best friends!
How is it that he hadn't felt her return to this realm?
She was in this realm, right?!
Right?!
Panic was once again settling in. He took a deep breath and slowly let it out.
First things first, talk to Caipra.
Secondly, develop a plan.
Third, go find Maeve and save her.
Anything else could wait. The whole world could go to hell for all he cared at the moment. The only thing that was important to him was finding and saving Maeve.
As he met Caipra's gaze with his own, he demanded, "Where is she?"
Doubar jumped in with wide wild eyes, "No hold on there little brother! I was under the impression that, that little witch was dead! How is it, that she is still alive?!"
Firouz nodded his curly head and pointed out as he waved his hand towards the outside in a general movement of 'her', "Point of fact, how did she survive the Griffin's blast?"
Sinbad sighed.
He didn't want to answer that.
For the simple reason, that neither he nor Maeve had mentioned it when she told him about Rumina's survival.
They didn't need to know then and he still wasn't sure they needed to know now.
Caipra raised her hand, halted Sinbad's opening mouth, and said, "I'll explain…"
Sinbad nodded, rested his body against her hearth, and tried not to think about how sadly beautiful Maeve looked that victoriously lost day. He, himself, had some theories as to why Maeve had been lost in the storm. He knew that the storm hadn't been natural. How, he knew that, he wasn't sure, but he had, and he had wanted Maeve to go down below.
Unfortunately, his stubborn Celtic sorceress hadn't been about to leave him by himself on the deck and had plainly said so.
His theory was that Rumina and Scratch feared Maeve's strength, and in an effort to kill that strength, they conjured up the storm.
Caipra's voice brought him back to the present, "Turok lives…and he lives thanks to the Gryffin's Egg."
Doubar shouted, "What?! How was that possible!"
Rongar quickly signed a few signs and then signed a sign for Maeve and one for Rumina.
Firouz equated that to mean, 'How is that possible? The Egg was good; Turok evil. I thought the egg was supposed to destroy all evil in its path.'
Caipra took a deep breath and said, "Peace…I shall explain…"
She met all their eyes and continued, "Before that battle against good and evil, Rumina had been approached by Scratch in order to make a deal. He'd help Rumina kill Sinbad if he could get Sinbad's soul. Rumina would have turned him down, except that Scratch offered her a tiny piece of his Hell Fire to nearly double her magical strength and to sweeten the deal, he reanimated Turok's head…"
She took another slow and controlled breath and said, "When Dermott delivered the Egg to Skull Mountain, it did destroy the darkness there. It rid the island of the evil influences of Rumina and Scratch. It made that devil vanish back into his underground cave, weakened Rumina to the point of death, and it took Scratch's reanimation spell, a neutral spell cast-able by both practitioners of black and white magic, and reanimated Turok's whole body by infusing it with magical energy."
She shook her head and pointed out, "It wasn't Rumina who cast the spell to make that storm that sent Maeve away, Sinbad. She was too weak thanks to the Egg; it was Turok. That is why DimDim was able to buffer Turok's spell's effects. The storm was supposed to kill her. Instead, DimDim brought her to him."
She sighed and answered their unsaid questions, "DimDim told me through images during one of our brief meetings through the realms."
Sinbad felt a jolt of guilt at that, but pushed it aside. He wasn't to blame for that, and he wasn't about to start blaming himself again for something Caipra had dissolved him from.
She nodded at him with an approving smile and ended sadly, "Unfortunately, Rumina, Scratch, and Turok are all back to full strength. About a month ago, those three cast a spell in an attempt to kill both Maeve and DimDim in their hiding place. Luckily, Maeve and DimDim were able to block their attempts by joining their magics together with their love for one another. Unfortunately, with the Hell Fire pendant Scratch gifted to Rumina, it gave her that extra bit of power needed to overcome both DimDim and Maeve's spell of protection."
Bryn spoke up for the first time and asked firmly because she knew her male friends dearly wanted to know so they could go and find her, "Where is she?"
Caipra sighed and replied, "She is in a chamber that is blocked from all physical means of getting there deep underground. I'll have to send you there magically, but you all must be forewarned: all six of you, yes six of you, Dermott is included in this, will have to undergo a test of sorts to find Maeve. Only when all six of you have passed, will you be able to move on and find the chamber."
She eyed them with a serious gleam in her eyes and finished, "If even one of you fails, Maeve dies."