Sons (Book 2) (10 page)

“So you’re okay, now?” I asked, chuckling a little and smiling big.  He nodded slowly, peeling himself away from my leg and slowly easing away until he could dart behind his father.  “I take it physical contact, even accidental, is a big no-no?”

“So it would appear,” answered Ethan, stepping up beside me and examining the gift boxes.  “They look virtually identical on the outside.”

“Yes, Master Ethan,” said the speaker for the group, the one without a son and presenter.  “The Regent said you were splitting a batch of fruit between two parties.  We assumed you did not wish to show partiality and so made the packages as similar as possible.”

“Good thinking,” Ethan said and held out his box, creating a shelf of energy underneath to hold it up.  I called the Stone for a similar structure, opening the lid on the solid wood container.  That action shoved the bottom drawer open and released the second drawer about an inch.  Each drawer had an interior thin wooden lid and inside was completely covered in blue felt, the same blue color that was so prevalent in the Palace.  Inside each drawer was enough small flowers and grasses to nestle the
Esteleum
in very nicely.  Ethan grinned, looking first out at the brownies then at me.  “Looks like seven per drawer will work out well.  Almost like they’d planned it.”

“Shrank, what does this symbol mean?” I asked touching the emblem etched into the lid.  It was the same sigil that our buttons bore.

“That is the symbol for the name of the realm,” Shrank trilled from Ethan’s shoulder, already starting his vacation.  “You have not yet taught it to us, so we don’t know what it is, but that symbol is its name.”  On the inside, the symbols read “A Gift of Daybreak.”  Then on the lid to each drawer, it read “A gift from Seth McClure” in English.

The wood was lightly stained and lacquered, already dry, and without a single piece of metal in its working.  The drawers and lid moved effortlessly and fit flush.  And the artwork on the scripting and sigils was excellent.

“These are absolutely beautiful!” I proclaimed proudly.  “Thank you.”  A high-pitched cheer roared through the brownies and several groups within the mass of short figures were congratulating individuals, no doubt for specific tasks.  Leaving my box open, I stepped around to the trio of elders and knelt, holding out the rest of the seeds I’d collected.  I asked the speaker for the same favor as I asked of the nymphs.

As the elders split the seeds between them, I glanced up at the Palace, shining in the starlight at the top of the mountain above the waterfall.  A dense fog of blue energy pooled around it, forming an aura of its own color, separate from the other energies it created.  It was going to be fascinating when more people lived there.  I reached up and tugged a little power down out of that pool and into me, then spread a thin amount over the lakeside, intending just a happy, slightly intoxicating, good health-type feeling.  I may have overdone it.

The Stone moved the box to the ground for me as I knelt to the ground to load the box, watching the brownies begin to play and prance around the field now.  The son who had grabbed my leg for support gathered his courage again and ran forward to help me by ferrying the fruit between the ground and me.  This was well outside his normal behavior and incredibly brave for him, so I let it happen.  That, and it saved me a two-foot reach.

“Thank you, Ogdn—” I stopped, tongue-tied.  “I’m sorry, I just can’t get my tongue around that sound yet.  Give me a few more days and I’ll have it down.”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, softly, then giggled.  And giggled.  That’s when I figured I’d gone overboard.  He wasn’t the only one swaggering and off-balance.

“Um, Shrank?  Do I need to worry about them right now?” I asked the pixie as he fluttered on Ethan’s shoulder.

“Well, Lord,” sang Shrank, “Your magic is more potent than you realize, but there is no harm and it will not last the night.”

Turning to the elders, who were also swaying in the air a bit as they watched their families celebrate, I asked, “Do you think everyone is all right?  I didn’t overpower anyone?”

“Oh, no, Lord, the Regent Shrank is quite correct, we believe,” the speaker said happily, drunkenly even.

“Good, then,” I said, sliding the drawer shut and closing the lid.  “We’ll be back in the morning, Deacon, Deason.  Yell, if you need anything.”  They chirped in acknowledgment a few hundred yards away as Deacon pulled Deason out of a swan dive into the shallows of the lake.  Sending my box into my cavern for easier transport, I took Ethan’s and did the same.  Then shifted us back to Fuller’s mansion, to the dining room.  Or tried to.

“Oops,” I said, under my breath as I tried creating a portal this time, but creating the endpoint through the ward was not working.

“Oops, what?” Ethan said, now paying attention to the work I was performing.

“I may have fixed Fuller’s wards a little too well,” I answered, trying to slip past the thin layering of the magic, so far to no avail.  “It looks like I can get us back, but not without damaging Fuller’s mansion.”

Kir du’Ahn
,
Ethan called through the universe to Kieran,
we have a problem.

Kieran linked the four of us together as Ethan explained the problem to him, pulling me in last since I knew already.  I was distracted by the brownies traipsing across the field.  It was like watching a huge elementary school get drunk then play in the playground.  And I swear I saw a few of them grow right in front of me.

How close to the house do you think you can open a portal? Maybe we can send a car. 
Kieran asked us.

The closest I can get is the last point on the highway that we jumped the van,
Ethan told him. 
I wasn’t paying enough attention elsewhere
.  That made me think about how it felt to try the endpoint under the wards.  It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t make it, but that it slipped away from me.  If I pushed harder, I would tear the wards to shreds.  It was a hell of a powerful push, one I wasn’t sure I could have made a few days ago.

I think I can get us there without opening a portal if I can get a little help,
I said through the link.

How?
Kieran asked.

Reversing the closets, a knowe, I believe you called it?
I said.

And what do you need?
he asked.  Kieran seemed eager but I couldn’t tell exactly why.  I was glad, though, that we had this conversation through a mental link because I didn’t have the words for the concepts for what I needed for Kieran and Peter to do for me.  Simply put, I needed them to mutually pick a plane and make that plane resonate between them with some energy pattern not common to the wards.  We picked the Fae word for Daybreak for simplicity’s sake since they both knew it well enough to project onto the plane.  Kieran and Peter both needed to clear some space to work but a few minutes later we were ready to go.

Daybreak pushed out on the plane in front of me, bowing it out like a soap bubble and distending it to its closest dimensional neighbor.  It shifted us a tiny step closer to the plane that resonated in my name but seemed so far away.  Then I reached around and pushed that dimension just a little, moving it away from my bubble and expanding it a little further.  I needed to go faster, though, or the dimensions I was trying to manipulate would snap back into place, severing the connections.  I twisted this dimension slightly, to hold it in place while I crinkled that one to the left and fluff
ed another
one up.  Faster, I needed to go faster. 

There were hundreds of tiny, looped dimensions to use, as hooks and ties, hundreds more to turn back and push away.  Thousands more that had to be bent and crinkled.  Still that one plane that sang my name in Peter and Kieran’s voices was ahead of me.  I needed to go faster.  Furiously, I bent and crinkled and twisted at dimensional vertices, confident that I hadn’t disturbed any populated realms.  The sound of my name was getting louder until finally, the brighter lighting of the dining room overtook the starry night and I was done.

Fuller’s wards activated.  I felt the pressure as if I was an invader. 
No, little guardian, I am invited
, I thought, calming the excited little bit of magical intent.  My realm flooded out into the bubble I’d created, mixing with natural space in the most peculiar way, becoming both yet dominated by mine only by my force of will.  Ethan followed me up onto the dais, casting out feelers again to find the edges of the dimensional rift, like he had with the closet.

The room was quiet as a tomb as the wizards and magicians looked into my world for the first time.  Looking back over my shoulder, I could see the lake, the surface shimmering in the starlight, the forest on the other side dark and ominous, and roughly forty brownies romping drunkenly through the grass.  Gasps to my right drew my attention where Kieran stood against the wall, just then breaking away from creating the resonance for me. 

Fuller, Peraza, Harris, everyone who sat on my right was looking up into my realm, far too high to be looking at the brownies.  Shocked darkened their auras immediately, then intense curiosity lit them up brightly and the seekings started to push through.

“I’m sorry, no,” I told them lightly, closing the plane off from outside magic.  “My realm is in too much upheaval still to allow outside magics in just yet.”  Pushing against that same plane again with just enough pressure to dampen the resonance, I let the forced connection fade from existence, immediately feeling the loss of my realm and regretting its dismissal.  The wall reappeared immediately.  Shrank dove off of Ethan’s shoulder, flying straight for Kieran chirping happily in the common tongue.

“My Lord,” he said, bobbing in the air in front of Kieran.  “Lord Daybreak has required that I take a break for the rest of the night.”

“That was your realm?” Harris asked as the dais refilled, mostly in a circle around us.

“Yes, Mr. Harris,” I said.

“And that… that palace?” Fuller stuttered.

“Yes, Mr. Fuller?” I asked, unsure of what he was asking me.

“That’s yours, too?” Fuller finally managed to spit out.

Looking to Kieran with arched eyebrows, he shrugged, laughing lightly, and said, “I would hope no one else has built something so large in your kingdom and you not know.”

“I didn’t realize I’d made the perspective so wide,” I said.  “If there is a next time, I will remember.”

“
That
is your home?” Fuller asked wide-eyed.

“What were those creatures?” Peraza asked in Spanish.  “What were they doing?

“The brownies were celebrating,” I told him, honoring his switch to Spanish and smiling broadly.  “It’s not something they are used to doing.  And while we’re on that subject, I have a gift for each council.”

That got them centered quickly.  Fuller and Peraza stood up straighter and mutually ushered me back to my chair at the dais.  The rest of the room was still enraptured with me, making me wonder how far out my realm and the spell-laced space extruded here.  Ethan and Peter sidled up behind me on either side.  Kieran stood behind Fuller and Peraza.  Shrank perched on his shoulder, watching each person attentively.  Even a few moments with Kieran and away from responsibilities had perked him up significantly.

Switching back to English, I announced to the room, “As Señor Peraza was asking, my brownies were celebrating along the lakeside.  I asked them to make me two baskets or two boxes to carry some fruit we found.  My expectations were very low considering it’s the middle of the night and I gave them ten minutes.  Basically, I was thinking a quickly woven basket.  What I got from them outshines the gift it holds and I am quite proud of them for it.”

Sliding the first box down my arms and into my hands, both men were surprised to see it pop into existence as I handed it to Peraza.  It took him a second to realize what was going on.  The same motion to Fuller yielded a faster response.  I tossed one of the extra
Esteleum
to Kieran who caught it deftly without crushing it.  Then I handed one to Peter.

“Ethan and I found these after Shrank showed us his concern,” I explained.  “These are very close to
Esteleum
, even down to the genetic level, though there seems to be an issue with the seeds that I can’t explain immediately.  Rather than risk any side effects that we couldn’t foresee, I decided to simply remove them completely.”

“These were made in ten minutes?” Fuller whispered as he ran his fingers along the edges of the pristine box on the table before him.  “What is this symbol?”

“That is my realm,” I said with a smile.  “Inside the lid is my name and on the drawers it’s written in English.  They did all three beautifully!”

“I agree,” muttered Fuller, lifting the lid and unlatching the drawers below.  He peered into the lid at the complicated symbol embellished in platinum thread on the blue felt.  Then lightly touched the penned English words on the drawer lid before lifting it, too.  A rush of the scents of wildflowers permeated through the room as both Councils opened a drawer and let the smells of the field free.  It packed a wallop for such innocuous flora.

Each man lifted an oblong fruit out of a different drawer and compared them, virtually identical.  They examined them carefully, turning them up in the air dramatically for everyone to see.  Whispered conversation filled the air briefly. 

“From what Ethan and I can tell, there are three differences here,” I explained.  “Coloration, taste, and potency.  The coloration issue is related to the seed problem, and to a lesser degree, for the taste.  This does not taste like dirt.  And lastly, the potency of these could be due… well, there are a number of issues that would explain it.  I have much to learn and I’ve only had a day.”

“You’re doing fine, little brother,” Peter said, slapping my back and picking up a knife from the table.  Stealing the plate from under the teacup at my setting, he cut the
Esteleum
in half, leaving half on the plate, and studied it in the light.  It was a lighter green under the fluorescents than under natural light, solid throughout, still very reminiscent of a kiwi in texture and look.

“This is good!” Mike exclaimed.  While everyone was watching Peter, Kieran and Mike had progressed a little faster.  He chewed on what appeared to be a quarter of a piece quite happily till the magic hit.  Then the faint blue color that said Daybreak washed over him briefly.  “Whoa!  I gotta sit down!”

Kieran tried a quarter, watching Mike grinning in his chair like a drunken sailor at a strip club waiting for his first lap dance.  He grinned at me when the affects hit, groaning a little in appreciation.  Kieran gave the other quarters to Harris and Phillips.

“Damn, that
is
good!” exclaimed Peter with Peraza and Fuller watching.  They couldn’t see the rush of vague excitement in them, just as Ethan had and more than likely I had.  “Really sweet and tangy, like mango, banana, and strawberry all rolled together.”

“Whew, you definitely don’t need a whole one,” Mike remarked as Peter passed by me, handing his plate to Fuller to pass out as samples on the dais.

“This was all the ripe fruit the field had or we would have brought enough for everyone to try,” I announced to the room, apologetically.  “But these should be enough to test and review against the purple variety you’re used to.”

“It’s got quite a kick,” Fuller said, his eyes bright and eager as he rode the endorphin high.  Nothing unusual happened with them as the fruit worked its magic, except the trace of my magic that floated through their auras, fading slowly, unused.  Neither Harris’ nor Phillips’ was quite so unused, though, and they both had more of the fruit.  Made me wonder what Phillips had been up to lately.

“Esteemed guests and colleagues,” Fuller called to the room loudly.  “Let us adjourn to the patio once more for coffee and cordials while I arrange for a proper display for Lord Daybreak’s gifts.  When we return, please remember that there are far more of us than them.  We will announce when the displays are ready and everyone can get a closer look.  Thank you.”  He hefted the box off the table, then, glancing over his shoulder, turned back to me and said, “Gentlemen, if you would follow me…”

Fuller walked around Ethan, down the dais with Peraza in tow.  Kieran motioned for me to fall in behind them.  I motioned back, bowing slightly.  He rolled his eyes and followed.

“Age before beauty,” I murmured as he passed me.

“The stench before the turd,” he muttered in retort, which shocked me.  I barked out a laugh in surprise at the comment.  Shrank laughed, too, uncontrollably.  He lost his grip on Kieran’s silk jacket and rolled down his back.  I caught the pixie at waist level, cupping him in both hands, and let him finish his fit, still grinning at the unexpected joke.

“You could have picked a better metaphor,” I whispered hoarsely to Kieran, still grinning as the pixie started to wind down.  By the time we made it to the hall, he’d collected himself enough to leap out of my hands with a cheerful “thank you.”  He changed almost immediately, switching on the amazing pixie power of camouflage and turning nearly invisible to those around him.  Except, now he wasn’t nearly as clear, as un-seeable, as he was before.  He rose up in front of Mike, changing his coloration again to be seen.

“Hello, Mr. Ferrin,” Shrank squealed.  “I see they talked you into taking the position.  I was unsure this morning.  Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Mike replied, eyeing the pixie uneasily.  He hadn’t spent much time around Shrank at all and barely knew his counterpart’s name.

Our die pattern reformed in the hall, Ethan beside Kieran in front of me and Mike beside Peter behind me as we trooped past the ballroom, through the foyer and around the sweeping staircase.  Fuller ended the journey by turning left into the library.

“Seward, so nice of you to finally join us,” Fuller said to the security chief as he rose from his chair.  Fuller’s tone was casual and light in timbre, but his aura showed his aggravation.  “There is a glass display case in the back hallway on the third floor.  Have it cleared out and moved to the dining room immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” Seward answered curtly and left the room again.  Fuller moved us farther back in the room and set his box on a table, Peraza following suit and sitting on the same couch at the other end.  They split into camps, examining the boxes and the fruit.  We took the opposite couch with Peter and Kieran taking a keener interest in the boxes as they’d not seen them as closely as Ethan and I.  The scents of wildflowers and fresh grasses wafted through the room when Fuller lifted his lid, sliding the bottom drawer completely open and releasing the middle one.