Jake's Quest - Wizards V (10 page)

16.
              
Trapped

I think I slept for a day. It was a sleep disturbed many times as I rushed to the toilet to be violently sick. My eyes couldn’t stay focused on a single point and everything would spin around at the slightest movement of my head. All my life, I’ve known exactly where I was. Now I didn’t have a clue.

It didn’t help that the room and everything in it was white. The door meshed into the wall so perfectly that I couldn’t see the join; there were no windows, no shelves, just a white bunk with white sheets, a white toilet and a white sink, perfectly color coordinated. The walls merged into a ceiling that glowed the same shade of white as the room. There was nothing to fix my eyes on to help me orient myself.

I tried scuffing the floor with my trainers, but it didn’t scuff. I hated the room and the bastards that had put me here. If this wasn’t meant as torture then they had just got lucky because it certainly felt like it. I drifted back into a fitful sleep.

I woke without vomiting. What my watch indicated was two mornings on from my arrival. I scanned the room using magical sight. The door was clearly visible but I couldn’t see beyond it or through any of the walls. A lattice of magic forces created an obstacle that masked the world beyond.

I couldn’t hop home because to do that I needed to know where I was. It was like being a satnav without a signal. I examined the bracelet on my right wrist. It appeared to be made of two pieces of silver, hinged at one side with a lock on the other. To my magic sight it appeared solid. As far as I could tell I still had access to my magic, but the bracelet was impervious to everything I tried on it.

Just to prove my magic worked, I changed the color of the walls and floor, using a primary color for each. That worked, but was painful on the eyes. I settled for making the door black, the floor grey, the toilet and sink pale blue and embossed some of my favorite Banksy graffiti on the walls, which were otherwise a soothing off white.. The place now had a student bedroom feel to it and I felt much better.

The hole where my sense of place used to be was like a missing tooth. I couldn’t stop picking at it. But not everything was gone. I still knew where the place outside the multiverse was. That was interesting and presented a possible way to escape.

However, the plan was not to escape, the plan was to win the scholarship so I could search for my cousin. But there was no doubt about it, the possibility that I might be able to escape if I wanted to, perked me up no end.

The door opened and Harlan walked in. He looked around the room in bemusement.

“Those are very strange drawings. What do they mean?”

I grinned. “Ancient magic from my home world. They provide me with protection.”

Harlan looked extremely surprised. “We mean you no harm.”

“Then you don’t have to worry about them.”

Harlan pulled himself together, though I noticed his eyes kept drifting back to the image of the soldier carrying the flowers behind me.

“You have no doubt deduced that the bracelet prevents you from using your spatial senses. You can teleport locally, anywhere you can see, but not beyond. The bracelet is to prevent you from knowing where Balmack is. I am sure you can understand why.”

I nodded.

“Good,” Harlan slapped his thigh. “Breakfast awaits and then we will go to straight on to the first trial.”

“Which is?”

Harlan smirked. “I can’t tell you. All the contestants will find out together and I have money on another candidate winning.”

“Traitor,” I said as I stood. “Breakfast had better be good, I’m starving.”

Harlan decided to take my words as a joke and put on a false smile.

I pointed at the soldier. “Bow to him before you go if you want to avoid bad luck.”

“You talk such nonsense.”

Despite his words, I saw him nod his head towards the graffiti before he turned. Score one to me.

Breakfast was good. We ate in silence in a bare room with a small table and two chairs. I spent the time magically probing the bracelet, looking for weaknesses. I didn’t find any. The bracelet projected a field through my wrist, locking it to me. When I tried forcing the field away it moved microscopically. That was promising. If I used enough force I might be able to hop away from it. If I got it wrong, I’d arrive at the other end with one hand short of a set. I was fond of my hands,

After we’d eaten, we walked down a long white featureless corridor towards a solitary guard. He opened a door as we approached and the air was suddenly alive with the sound of a thousand people cheering. Ahead of us was a balcony and as we approached I saw we were in some kind of stadium. There was only one vertical stand and the balcony was part of it, pretty much dead center from the way voices came at us from all directions.

The balcony was occupied with a motley collection of people, all of them standing and staring at me. I guessed the short bald guy in the fanciest robes was in charge. The other people in similar colorful robes were probably other officials, while the four people in different outfits were most likely my competitors. Naturally, I focused my attention on them. Especially the gorgeous girl dressed in not very much of anything.

“Harlan, you’re late,” Bald-in-charge-guy snapped as we approached. For some reason his tone of voice wasn’t quite right. Almost as if he wanted to apologize to us rather than the other way around.

“Sorry Chancellor,” Harlan said meekly.

The Chancellor gave me the kind of look someone gives when they find a slug eating their salad.

“Wizard Morrissey, Representative for Valhalla, I take it.”

Harlan gave me a shocked look. Though like with the Chancellor earlier he reaction seemed a little off. I suspected he’d known who I was all the time. It was most likely some kind of office politics where you had to pretend you didn’t know what you actually knew. Harlan didn’t fool me for a second.

“And you are?” I asked.

“Saul Landow, Chancellor of Haldor University.”

“Pleased to meet you.” I proffered my hand and wasn’t the least bit surprised when he ignored it.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said, his voice booming out with magical amplification. “We are gathered here this morning to witness the first trial in the four thousand and twenty seventh contest for special scholarship to the university.”

There was a roar of approval with only a few voices shouting ‘Get on with it.”

“We have five contestants this year.” There was a louder roar to this news and I wondered why.

“I will now introduce them to you.” He indicated that the young man with the bow and knives strapped to his waist should step closer. “Wizard Estan Coin from Prion.”

The youth gave a stiff bow and there was a roar of approval. Estan glared at me as though we had met before and I had insulted him. I wondered what he thought I’d done. I had killed so many people by accident it was entirely possible he had an actual reason to hate me.

The Chancellor pushed Estan away and urged an old man in monk’s robes forward. The man carried a silver headed walking stick which he seemed to need.

“Wizard Jeram Wist of Notton.”

Another round of applause, along with a few catcalls. Someone shouted ‘Go home old man.’

Wist stepped back as soon as the applause stopped. The Chancellor indicated the small man in black should step forward. He looked like a ninja straight out of the movies to me, complete with curved sword He walked like a ninja too.

“Bob.” The Chancellor said and a roar of approval rang out. It looked like this guy must be the favorite, though I wondered at the shortness of his introduction. Still, it was an easy name to remember.

It was me or the girl next. She was dressed like an Amazon might be dressed for a porn film. She was young, blonde, blue eyed and exuding sex appeal like it was going out of fashion. The short sword sheathed on her back just reinforced the image. She was smiling at me in a very come hither way. The competition was looking up.

“Wizard Lana d’Fallon, from Willdone.” The Chancellor proclaimed to whistles and a scattering of obscene suggestions. The Chancellor chose to ignore the latter.

I stepped forward as Lana turned and stepped into me. Her breasts pressed against my chest and I felt a hand squeezing my buttock.

“Apologies, my mistake,” she said as she gave me an outrageous wink.

I surreptitiously adjusted my jeans, which had become over-tight.

The Chancellor glared at me as I stepped up to stand by him.

“Our last nomination, the infamous murderer, Wizard Jake Morrissey of Valhalla.”

There were loud boos from the crowd. It didn’t look like I had any supporters.

When the crowd quieted we followed the Chancellor to the edge of the box. Two hundred feet below us was a small lake and beyond that a jungle. The lake and jungle were enclosed by a high boundary wall with a diameter of about half a mile.

He waved a large old fashioned looking key in the air.

“The first trial is to recover a golden key like this one from the jungle below. There are five such keys and they have been carefully hidden. The applicants will be judged on the time taken to recover a key, among other things.”

“What other things?” Lana asked.

“That is for us to know, young lady,” the Chancellor said, clearly irritated by the interruption.

He waited to see if any of the rest of us were going to interrupt him. We all decided against it.

“The contest ground is set with traps for the unwary and there are dangerous creatures below. Your time starts now.”

17.
              
Transformations

As the crowd roared with anticipation Lana hopped into the arena, and Bob and Estan flew across the lake towards the jungle, I ignored them and used my magic sight to investigate the key the Chancellor still held aloft. Esmeralda claims I’ve learned nothing in the last few years, but I have acquired a strong sense of caution and something about this trial seemed wrong.

The key was solid metal, but giving off a lot of magical energy. When I looked closer, zooming in to look at its surface, I saw runes. A purple aura surrounded it. It was a distinctive magical object. And why was he still holding it up like that anyway?

I stepped closer to the edge of the balcony where Jeram stood. He seemed equally reluctant to join the competition.

“Wizard Morrissey, I have heard much about you.”

“Was any of it good?”

He laughed. “I am sure some of it was good. But you must give me time to remember them if you want a list.”

“You don’t seem eager to join the trial?”

Jeram surveyed the arena. “Best to look before you leap.”

I nodded.

I turned my attention to the jungle below. The five keys were easy to spot on the magical plane because of the large amounts of energy they were giving off. The one Estan had chosen was twenty feet underwater in the middle of the lake. He hovered six feet above the surface and tried to bring it to him using magic.

I magnified the scene around the key. Dirt swirled, caught in the magic Estan used and the key rose up about an inch before settling back on the mud. Magical forces slid through it as though it wasn’t there. The key looked very much like the one in the Chancellor’s hand, except that the aura around it was red and not purple.

A quick check of the key buried a couple of feet underground below where Lana hovered confirmed my suspicion.

“The keys are fakes.”

Jeram gave me a sharp look and nodded. “Intriguing, isn’t it?”

It happened so fast my eyes had trouble registering it. A creature that looked like the front end of a shark and the back three quarters of a crocodile leapt out of the water below where Estan hovered. The boy had magic shields in place, but the creature sailed through them as though they didn’t exist. One moment the boy was standing in the air. The next he was up to his chest in crocoshark with razor sharp teeth closed in around him.

Then he was gone. The crocoshark’s teeth crashed against each other in frustration as it continued to rise through the air.

“Look.”

Jeram pointed up and I saw Estan’s body falling through the sky. He had hopped high into the air but it looked as though the crocoshark had injured him.

“See you later,” I said to Jeram. Hopping into the air, I matched velocity with Estan and brought us to a halt in mid-air. The kid was unconscious and a small amount of blood was seeping through his shirt. He didn’t seem to be injured enough to have been knocked out.

I sent my magical senses into him to start the healing process. The wounds around his chest were superficial. He had a cloth wrapped around him and that had protected him, or should I say
her
. Estan was a girl with the cloth used to flatten her breasts. I probed her bloodstream and found poison flowing through it. Not enough to kill, but more than enough to paralyze.

It took me some time to get most of it out of her. She started to groan and opened her eyes discovering that she was in my arms. I let her go and she slipped gently down to sit on the surface I’d created in the air. Stepping back, I extended the force field into a cup shape that she wouldn’t fall out of. Then I looked around to see how the other applicants were doing.

It looked like Lana and Bob had been busy. Amazon girl looked down on the writing body of a massive snake. It had lost its head and her sword was bloody. She appeared to be breathing hard, but was otherwise unhurt.

Bob had fought some kind of lion come wolf beast. It was difficult to tell exactly what it had been because it had been sliced neatly in two, starting at the head. That sword of his must be incredibly sharp, given that I was certain none of these creatures could be harmed using magic.

The crowd was silent. I glanced at their faces and saw disgust mixed with contempt. Apparently the Balmack Accord didn’t hold with violence even though their trial encouraged it. As far as I was concerned, I would avoid killing any of their animals unless it was them or me. I had a strong interest in me.

I needed to get a closer look at one of the fake keys and the one Estan had been after was the easiest target. It took a few seconds to freeze a twelve foot diameter cylinder of lake all the way down to the key. I used the heat I’d removed from the ice to warm the water round the iceberg driving the crocoshark away without hurting it.

Landing on top end of the ice cylinder, I cut a plug of ice down to the mud and raised it slowly. The key came with it, neatly frozen to the bottom of the plug. With the plug hovering a few feet in the air, I pulled the key free and let the plug slide back into its hole. A solitary person in the audience clapped loud enough for me to hear.

The key was warm to the touch and was a dark silvery color, not at all like the gold key the Chancellor had held aloft. It felt alive, not like any kind of metal. Probing its surface I discovered it was being held in its current shape by a strong transformation spell. The work involved in creating it was incredible and well beyond any magic I could formulate. That was when I knew what it was.

I looked up towards the balcony to see Jeram cheerfully salute me and vanish. That meant I didn’t have much time. Bob and Lana had recovered their keys and found they were cut into pieces. It wouldn’t take them long to figure it out either. When I looked up to where I’d left her, I couldn’t see Estan in the sky, which meant that all of my opponents were back in the race.

I dissolved the ice in the lake, mixing water temperatures so it wouldn’t endanger the crocoshark. It and I had a destiny together. Lifting my body to eight feet above the water I waited for the inevitable attack.

There was only a split second in which to act. As the beast flew out of the water, I hopped to what I hoped was its blind side. The gaping maw of the creature missed me by inches as it sped upwards, but then, it was essential to be close.

Dodging a flailing croc leg I touched the key to the flank of the beast and then threw it away. Only just in time as the mouth forming from the key snapped viciously at me.

The crocoshark restored from its transformation as a key toppled backwards into the water and I reached for the key which was all that remained of its doppelganger. The key was still rising and I nearly missed it.

Hopping to the balcony I stumbled into the Chancellor, key in hand with Estan and Jeram arriving only milliseconds behind me with their keys.

Lana and Bob arrived with their broken keys a few seconds later. Once the whole keys had been grabbed they had no other choice but to come back with what they had.

The Chancellor took my key from me with a look of distain on his face.

“The murderer has arrived back first. Scores will be announced later.

The crowd booed, which I thought was distinctly unsporting of them. I gave them a bow, which raised the noise even louder.