Several bars of the cage came free. Vale lifted it, and Ivy crawled underneath them and started yanking at the malblossom ropes.
“I need something sharp,” she told Vale.
He grunted with the effort of holding the cage up. Then he lifted one hand off and snapped a claw from his thumb.
“Thanks,” Ivy whispered, and went back to work.
It did not take much sawing for Zax to snap the rest of the ropes and stumble up.
“Thankyou,” he told Ivy, still sounding much too delighted for a creature with his eye swollen shut and burns over most of his body.
They crawled out from under the cage. Vale let the bars drop back into the ground. His knees wobbled, and Ivy touched his shoulder worriedly.
“I am fine,” he assured her. But he was breathing hard, sweat pricking his pale skin as he stared over Ivy’s shoulder and pointed.
Ivy turned. Her uncle had produced the top half of his staff, broken from his last encounter with Vale, and he was thrusting it in the air. Tied to the top of the broken staff, dangling and gleaming in the firelight, was?—
“The antidote,” Ivy hissed. “We need to find some way to get it off of him without alerting the others! We could… We could make a noise to lead him away?”
“He would send his followers,” Vale argued.
Ivy sighed, crouching behind the cage, her mind churning. The vial was rightthere. If they could only…
Something curled over her bare foot.
Ivy barely held back a yelp. She looked down and was shocked to spot a line of ivy working over her toes.
Zax made a strange chirping noise. “Areyoudoing that?”
Ivy looked up at Vale. He inclined his head as if to say,Well, I’M not doing it.
“I guess so,” Ivy whispered.
Zax cocked his head, his remaining eye squinting down at the ivy as it slid over Ivy’s foot. “We could tiehimup. How much ivy do you have? How fast can you—oh!Ivy! It has your name! Is that why you command it?”
“Um, sort of,” Ivy whispered, and turned back to the group crowded around the fire. Her uncle dropped his staff to his side, the antidote hanging perilously close to the ground.
Ivy took a deep breath. Then she extended a hand out to the ivy and willed it forward.
The ivy climbed over the forest floor, growing at a rate Ivy gaped at. Every moment brought a new stretch of vine, more leaves sprouting as it neared the Circle.
“Do not go straight through,” Vale said.
“I have it,” Ivy replied. The ivy was already curving around the group, edging around the campfire light before approaching Christopher from the side.
“Slowly,” Vale said.
“Ihaveit,” Ivy repeated.
She flexed her fingers. The ivy crept up toward her uncle, his staff still dangling at his side as he yelled.
“Everyone,” he called. “It’s time to cast the evocation! Prepare yourselves to receive my magic.”
“What is it?” Zax asked.
“He’s—” Ivy frowned. “He’s casting a spell onthem? Why would he do that?”
“Ivy,” Vale said.
