Spell Shock: Merry Magic, #2

By Shelley Russell Nolan

Magic always comes with a price

 

Merry has the first charm she needs to remake the transportation spell to take her home, and four more to get. With the mage guild still after her, she knows reaching the rest of the elemental focal points will not be easy. Not even she expected to be drawn into a plot to destroy the guild.

 

On the way to the Earth focal point, Merry and her allies are caught up in a Tiranian lord's plan to wrest power from the mages. Her growing ability with Wind magic will not be enough to save them. Faced with a life of servitude, her magic bound to another's will, she will have to decide what she is fighting for. Her freedom or the fate of those already enslaved?

 

As an enemy becomes an ally, and with time running out to stop the witch hunters gaining access to Tirana, Merry must master the elemental Earth to have any hope of escape. But magic has a cost, one Merry will find hard to bear.

 

Continue the magical portal fantasy adventure with Merry and her friends now!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shelley Russell Nolan
• Release date: Aug 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393352754

Shelley Russell Nolan

Shelley Russell Nolan is an avid reader who began writing her own stories at sixteen. Her first completed manuscript featured brain eating aliens and a butt kicking teenage heroine. Since then she has spent her time creating fantasy worlds where death is only the beginning and even freaks can fall in love. The first two books in her debut adult urban fantasy series, Lost Reaper and Winged Reaper, are published by Atlas Productions Born in New Zealand, moving to Australia with her family when she was seven, Shelley currently lives in Central Queensland, Australia, with her husband and two young children. They share their home with two wrecking ball kitties, a deformed budgerigar and two dogs that are fairly normal as dogs go. Shelley loves to hear from her readers so feel free to contact her on Facebook or leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or on her website - shelleyrussellnolan.com

Book preview

Chapter 1

Merry dragged herself up from the pile of straw that had been her bed the previous night, plucking bits of it out of her hair as she yawned and blearily gazed around the draught-riddled barn. The stall where Mistress Napally’s two goats had been stabled overnight was empty. The main barn door was open, and a flock of chickens scratched among the straw strewn on the dirt floor. It had been the clacking of the chickens that woke her. Until then she had been dreaming she was back in her own bedroom.

Not that it would be her room for much longer, with the new owners of the flat she rented demanding she be out by the end of the month. She’d packed up the bulk of her belongings, while hunting for a new place to rent, but that hadn’t been easy since she had lost her job the same day she was given notice to move out. If she didn’t get back from Tirana before the deadline, what would happen to her stuff?

She’d been gone three nights, and her parents had to know she was missing by now. They would have notified the police. Merry grimaced at the thought of strangers going through her things, searching for clues as to where she had gone. That search would lead them to Belwich, and the bookshop her grandmother had left her in her will. The bookshop contained a portal to Tirana, the world many witches had fled to in the Middle Ages to escape persecution.

Sadie, if the police break into Merry Magic to look for me, will the witch hunters be able to access the portal?

Why hadn’t she thought of this earlier? Witch hunters could even now be rounding up all the magic users they could find.

Until the wards your grandmother set around the bookshop fade, the witch hunters would need to be invited inside by the owner of the premises. You. It will not hamper the police in doing their duty. Unless, of course, one of them is a witch hunter or knew of Tirana and had ill intentions.

Merry breathed a sigh of relief at the black cat’s words, until the familiar spoke again.

We must not tarry. The wards will fade with the changing of the season. We must get you back there before then, so you can do the spell of renewal on the wards.

Merry grimaced again. It was spring now, back home, but summer was fast approaching. There was a reason Huntington Inc. had given her until the end of the month to sign the contract to sell them the bookshop. If the wards weren’t renewed by then, the company they suspected was run by witch hunters would have no trouble gaining access to the portal that would lead them to Tirana.

Merry had to make sure that didn’t happen.

Ellen was already up, the witch showing no sign she’d had a troubled sleep as she rummaged in her woven pack. Sadie, having allayed some of Merry’s fears, was now chasing a small lizard in a spot of sunshine breaking through a gap in the roof. Though the familiar was quick to point out how superior she was to pet cats, she still acted like them on occasion. Merry smiled as the cat slunk low to the ground, hindquarters wiggling just before she pounced, trapping the lizard beneath her front paws. Then Sadie let it go, and it scurried off into the shadows cast by the nearest stall.

Sadie turned around and spotted Merry watching her. The thrill is in the chase. A sense of a mental shrug accompanied the familiar’s voice. Besides, it helps to hone my hunting and scouting skills. Skills like those will be needed to get you to the remaining four elemental focal points.

As she surveyed the barn, Merry brushed straw from the long green dress Ellen had loaned her to help her blend in. They’d arrived late the night before, so she hadn’t had a good look around. Unlike all the stone buildings Merry had seen since arriving in Tirana, the barn was comprised of timber and had a thatch roof. The floor may be dirt, but the straw had been reasonably fresh if scratchy to sleep curled up in. Not that she’d slept for more than a few hours.

When she’d first lain down in her pile of straw, Merry had been too worried about being pursued by the guild to relax at first. Thanks to magical ability she had inherited from her Tiranian grandmother, a woman she had never met, she had the potential to become a mage. In Tirana, all mages were required by law to swear an oath that bound them and their magic to the guild run by Ophelia Fairweather, her grandmother’s sworn enemy. The fact Merry was from the old world, transported here by accident, didn’t matter. They would make her swear the oath, if they caught her, and destroy the portal that had brought her here, and she would never be able to return home.

As if that wasn’t enough to keep her lying awake half the night, she’d wondered what other obstacles would eventuate as she made her way to each of the remaining elemental focal points. She had four more to get to so she could find the magical charms to enable her to make a transportation spell like the one that had brought her and Sadie here.

‘Mistress Napally has kindly given us some food, in exchange for two of my salves,’ said Ellen as she put down her pack and turned to Merry. ‘She didn’t have much to spare but it will at least allow us to break our fast before we set off for Barrowton. She also gave me a map of Tirana that belonged to her late husband. I’ve never been this far from Dryton, so it will help us plan our journey to each elemental focal point.’

Ellen was a healer. Not a strong one, by her own account, but so far Merry had found her ability to increase their energy levels with her magic water and barter for goods in exchange for her magically infused medicines to be extremely helpful. As a registered field witch, one not bound to the guild, Ellen was required to wear the colour green to signify her affinity with Earth magic. Merry touched the gold embossed leaf on the front of her borrowed dress, the sign for a healer, hoping her cover as Ellen’s apprentice would not be tested.

While her new friend kept up a running commentary as they travelled, there was more to healing than simply knowing what plants were good for various ailments. Merry may have been able to call on the wind and ward off ghosts when they’d taken refuge in ruins haunted by vengeful spirits, but to think she might be in a situation where she was expected to use magic to heal someone was a daunting prospect. Luckily the apprentice cover had worked so far, and she hoped to get home before it was truly tested, and before she had to use her magic much at all.

Merry was still coming to terms with the knowledge she had the potential to become a mage. She looked to where she had placed the staff that had been a plain branch when she’d first picked it up a few days ago. She hadn’t intended to turn it into a staff, but as she’d thought about carving a pattern into the wood, to signify the movement of the wind, she had somehow turned it into a focus tool. Now it glowed when she needed light and helped her to call up wind or create a shield of air to protect herself and others.

She would like to think she would never have to use it again, but so far her time in Tirana had not been uneventful. Just the day before she had been fighting a wind golem and would have failed if a legendary and magical silver falcon hadn’t gifted her one of its feathers. After she had used the feather to destroy the wind golem, it had become the first of the five elemental charms she needed to make the transportation spell.

She looked over to where she had placed her shoulder bag the night before. The feather was nestled inside, along with the spell box that Merry had accidentally triggered to bring her to Tirana in the first place. The charms her grandmother had crafted into a brooch were jumbled inside the spell box; the magic that bound them broken. Merry had to collect new charms from the elements of Earth, Fire, Water and Spirit before she could make a new spell and get home.

‘How far is it from here to the Earth focal point?’ Merry asked as she pulled on her ankle boots. She had slept in her socks, to keep her feet warm. She joined Ellen and was handed a small portion of food wrapped in waxed paper.

She unwrapped it and found a boiled egg and a chunk of bread that was slathered in butter. The bread and the egg were still warm. She began to eat, enjoying the warm food in her belly for a change. Yesterday, after they had fled Breezeway before the guild could regroup and come after them, there had been no time to stop and find hot food. They’d made do with what Ellen could forage along the way, until it had neared nightfall and she’d bartered her services to Mistress Napally and her family to allow them to stay in the barn for the night.

From what Merry had deduced, Tirana was an island nation with large forested areas and small communities scattered throughout. She had no idea if more countries existed in this parallel world and was just thankful it wouldn’t take weeks of journeying to get to each elemental focal point as it would if this place was as big as her home country of Australia. The people of Tirana may have had magic, but the only form of transportation was by foot or horse, making the going much slower. Merry missed her little purple hatchback, just a shade darker than the coloured hair she had to keep out of sight as it made her stand out in a world where people without magic wore drab browns and greys, and those with magic were dressed according to their ability.

After she finished her bread and egg, she finger-combed her long hair and then twisted it into a bun at the nape of her neck. Then she retrieved her flimsy black wrap and used it to hide her hair as much as possible. She was lucky she’d had it on when she’d landed in Tirana. The other clothes she had been wearing at the time, black shorts and a shirt, were now tucked away in her bag. In a world where the women wore long dresses or skirts, the skimpy attire would attract even more attention than her hair.

‘I’ll see if I can find something to dye your hair with, when we reach Barrowton,’ said Ellen as she twisted her dark brown hair into a thick braid.

Merry gave a nod, and a smile of thanks, and then headed outside to use the rudimentary facilities. Another thing she missed from home was the modern plumbing. She longed for a hot shower, a full wardrobe so she didn’t have to wear the same dress, and a coffee machine. She appreciated the surge in energy Ellen’s magic water supplied but would kill for a good cup of coffee.

Pushing thoughts of all the modern conveniences she was missing out on aside, Merry splashed cold water on her face before using the minty tooth powder that was the Tiranian equivalent of toothpaste. Then she shivered in the cool morning air as she hurried back to the barn.

‘Ready to go?’ Ellen asked when she appeared.

‘Yes.’ The sooner they got to the next focal point the better.

Earth was closest, on the eastern side of the island. Water was to the north and Fire in the west. The hardest one to get to would be Spirit. It was in the centre of Tirana, with the guild tower built on top of it, so they were leaving that one for last. That was also where they would meet Ellen’s mentor, Debra, so she could instruct Merry on how to create the transportation spell.

Merry picked up her shoulder bag and then scooped up her staff. The wood warmed beneath her palms, and a surge of wellbeing washed through her. She always felt so much better, more equipped, when she held her staff. She wasn’t sure if that was part of it being a focal tool, or that she could use it to clobber anyone who got in her way.

She winced, remembering the time she had used it on Gabriel Fairweather. He had been trying to arrest her, but she still hadn’t liked doing it. He’d help her to fight the wind golem and saved her life when she’d almost plummeted to the bottom of the chasm. He was also easy on the eyes and seemed like a nice guy when he wasn’t trying to arrest her. But she’d left him behind in Breezeway, unconscious, though that was from Ellen using her magic to put him to sleep, not from Merry hitting him with her staff. She had to hope they would not meet again, under the circumstances, though part of her was sad about the possibility of never seeing him again before she left Tirana for good.

‘Mistress Napally said we may be able to find a farmer headed for Barrowton and get a lift with them,’ said Ellen, as she shouldered her pack and secured her healer’s pouch at her waist. ‘Master Rooney has the next farm along, and she said today is when he delivers a wagon load of fresh vegetables to the inn there.’

‘That would be great,’ said Merry, as she followed Ellen out of the barn.

Sadie sauntered ahead of them as they made their way towards the dirt road that ran past Mistress Napally’s small cottage. All the roads out in the rural areas had been dirt. Only the towns she had visited had cobbled roads. The air was fresh and crisp, the sun warming the day, birds chirping in the trees and a gentle breeze blowing. There were no exhaust fumes, traffic noise or anything else to disturb the peace.

As much as she was coming to enjoy a world without cars and trucks clogging the roadways, Merry hoped Mistress Napally was right, and Master Rooney would give them a lift. Ellen had given her a salve for the blisters she’d garnered from the previous days of walking, but while it dulled the pain it didn’t remove it completely. With every step, the irritation increased.

She looked enviously at Sadie, who showed no sign days of walking had either tired her or caused any aches and pains. Indeed, the cat seemed to be enjoying herself, occasionally bounding forward to chase a bug or sniff at plants. If Merry hadn’t known better, she