Authors: Scott V. Duff
Creating a three hundred-mile long Weirdway was going to take concentration so I went a few miles down the highway and turned down a side road till I found a turnabout I could stop at. It was a fascinating process to see, though repetitive to do, and I’m not even sure I knew why I chose to ride certain energy curves. At times it seemed counter-intuitive, but no other route was correct at that time.
“Seth? I’m sorry I failed,” Zero said in a whisper. “I’ll return to Gilán and report to Ellorn.”
“And how did you fail, Zero?” I asked carefully, only giving him part of my attention as most of it was deep in the swirls of the Weird.
“I killed my first opponent,” he said hoarsely, beginning to cry a little. “I knew you didn’t want anyone killed, but he scared me and I just reacted. I hit him too hard and he died.” He turned in his seat and I knew better than to look. I
knew better
than to look at him, but I did, and I saw those bright blue eyes welling with hurt.
Eyes are going to haunt me all my life.
Popping both sets of seatbelts open, I pulled him to me, leaning over the console as far as I could. He needed to cry it out and some simple comfort. It also gave me a few minutes more in the Weird. Still, I felt guilty wanting to stay in there, but I did want to be alone. Zero was pushed on me but that wasn’t his fault either. Damn it. Slowing my progress through the Weird, I turned my attention to Zero.
“What do you think that man would have done if he had gotten ahold of you?” I asked him quietly as I pulled back a little, wiping his face with my hands. Remembering the hand towel from earlier, I wet a broad corner and cleaned his face while he waited patiently to answer.
“From what I gleaned from his mental image and his stance of attack, he wanted to crush my windpipe,” Zero said.
My hand still caressed the back of his head in a very paternal way. “And with that image in your mind, you think I could fault you for reacting the way you did? Is that due to a low opinion of me or a low opinion of yourself?”
“Sir, though I may look it, I am not a child. That line of reasoning is a bit simplistic. The fact stands that I went in knowing that you wanted no fatalities and I killed my first opponent. Failure.”
Looking down crossly and pulsing my mantle subconsciously, I muttered, “Me, then.” I changed to a low growl, patting his shoulder as I extracted my hand. “Look, Zero, let’s leave the self-recriminations for later. We have work to do.” Zero froze in his seat, deathly afraid and carefully reconsidering every word I’d said. He would wait until I brought it up again. I sent my full attention back to the Weird and found the compound quickly enough. This method had the added benefit of giving me potential portals into most of the Sonoran Desert and three-quarters of the rest of Arizona without the need of actually committing it to memory. At least now I knew how the Queens always seem to get wherever they wanted to go on this side.
There it was, sitting in total calmness, my nest of vipers. I just needed a point on the road and that’s what I got, along with that potential of the Weird. There was almost a feeling of something, some awareness under the desert. I didn’t feel right intruding and I didn’t have time to coax it out. Time for that later, though. I pulled over again and cut the car off.
“C’mon, Zero, we’re here,” I said, getting out. We were on the north end of the complex where the least people were, mostly guards. We’d have to collect them along the way. I made my way across the road and through the sandy soil to the fence. Concentrating, I sent my senses out along the fenceline?, then over the entire compound. With a heady push of power, I walked through the fence as if it wasn’t there and when I turned to look for Zero, there was an outline of a man in the fence about a foot larger than me burned through the chain-link.
“Seth, are we doing the same here?” Zero asked.
“Hmm?” I mumbled as I cast out a net of psychic energy to draw those furthest away closer in. “Oh, no, Zero, we’re not here to start a fight. We’re here to demoralize, to make them realize they can’t win against us.”
“They cannot win against you, Lord,” Zero said confidently. “You are Daybreak.”
Chuckling at the little
huri
, I said, “Unfortunately, my name doesn’t quite put the fear of God into anyone just yet. Tom? Are you ready?”
Mankiewicz shifted from Gilán beside us and answered in his deep voice, “Yes, Lord. They’re ready and eager to get started.”
Transferring my mental image of the compound to the Garrison’s Mapkeeper, I told Tom, “You have a map now, Tom. Be careful. And don’t have too much fun.”
“I’ll try, Lord, but you know them,” he said with a flash of teeth in the moonlight. Then he stole away into the silvery desert night?. It was surprising that such a large man could move so quickly and quietly, but he was a Commander of the Guard for good reasons.
“Do you play an instrument, Zero?” I asked as we headed for the main road to the front gate.
“No, sir, I haven’t learned any yet. I believe Naught can play a whistle and Nada was learning a stringed instrument at one time if you’d like me to call one of them.”
“Nah, it’s not important,” I drawled slowly. “I thought it’d be funny, though, playing the Pied Piper of Hamlin with what I’m doing. Can you make fire yet?”
“Fire, sir? By many different methods.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” grinning at the thought of trying to light kindling in the middle of a battle. “Wizard’s Fire, like what I did before. Can you do that yet?”
“Should I be able to, sir?” he asked excitedly.
“It should be well within your abilities,” I said as we turned down a very wide sidewalk. I was getting much better with tendrils of attention in the faery, especially with the
huri
. Slipping into Zero’s mind so I could see his perceptions and thoughts of magic, I said, “Hold up your hand in front of you to give you a focus. Now, this is one of the first things to learn because it’s easy. The first step is based on emotion and energy, mostly frustration and anger. You should know a lot more about those two emotions in the last two days.” He scowled a little at the memory of several meaningless altercations with friends.
“Now look around us, using your eyes as well as your spirit, and sense the energy of magic around us. Unlike Gilán’s ever present mist of energy, this world has a kind of river of different kinds of energy running through it, so it’s best if you build a reservoir to work with. They’re called ‘ley lines’ and they tend to follow the landscape. There’s a nice big brown line about two miles that way.”
Zero peered out in the direction I pointed. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t see it from this distance. Perhaps I should get closer?”
“No, I’ll be your power source,” I said, reaching into my cavern and slipping a lodestone into my palm. Then I drew a short line of red from the stone and tossed it into the air, holding the line in readiness. Zero caught sight of it immediately and stared in awe. “I’ve got enough to spare.”
“Lord, what is that?” Zero asked, advancing on the short line of ropey energy.
“It’s ley energy, held in stasis by my will. I guess you could say it’s the basic stuff that spells are made of. The stuff that actually makes magic work.”
“You’ve caught lightning in a bottle?” Zero asked, obviously intrigued by his analogy.
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. Zero seemed disappointed. “Nothing as simple as that. According to my brothers, holding a piece of a ley line like this is nearly impossible without binding the power into some other form. This seems to be a particular talent of mine. I’m showing you just to give you the energy you need, not to brag. So, you have energy available. Are you ready to try your fire?”
Zero’s grin brightened the night sky. “Yes, Lord. What do I do now?”
“Concentrate on a point about six inches above your hand, but not
on
your hand. Draw on the line lightly and feel your anger as heat. Feed the energy to your anger and temper it, harden it with your frustrations. Give it more power, Zero, more anger; feel the heat of it against your palm.” I felt the tumult of his mind as he directed the energy at his hand. On top of the anger and frustration he needed, he was extremely excited, thrilled, scared, and worried. His consciousness almost seemed to have a duality to it as he brought his power to the task. He was tantalizingly close to a furious burst that rivaled Mike’s in power. The question of his control was simple enough to answer, too. Beyond a second or two, no, he wasn’t going to be able to control it yet.
“You’re almost there, Zero,” I said, then changed my tone, drawing on my aspect and getting mean. “Don’t disappoint me.”
That did it. The combination of shock and anger at himself that he might actually fail at something I said was elementary turned into rage and he poured, no, pounded power into the air. And it blazed into plasma, the color of his eyes, a little bigger than a basketball. The Stone reacted immediately, erecting multiple shields around the wavering magic walled within the sphere, then more shielding to sluice the heat back into sphere or skyward when it couldn’t take the heat. When Zero lost control of the miniature sun, I seized it and made the Stone’s job much easier.
“Well done, son!” I exclaimed, clapping Zero on the shoulder with one arm while pushing the huge ball of wizard’s fire up and away from us with the other—well, figuratively. “Excellent first try, I did not expect such strength! It’ll be a lot easier next time we work on it. I won’t have to scare the crap out of you, for instance, but you won’t get the same wave of euphoria, either.”
“Euphoria, sir?” Zero asked with perfect timing. The wave hit, compounding his already jubilant feeling of great success. It took a moment because it was a chemical change—endorphins. He started giggling uncontrollably, wobbling on his feet and splaying his arms about for balance. I caught an arm and a shoulder and gently guided him down to the sidewalk.
“Just settle back and enjoy it, Zero,” I said in good humor, still wearing my mantle so he definitely heard me. “You earned it.”
Now it was my turn to do a little magic. First I needed the Pied Piper spell I alluded to earlier. I decided to attach it to Zero’s fire and cast a strong fascination around the sphere, shaping it to fall to the ground once the sphere exploded. It started drawing attention immediately, but I didn’t think it was enough so I added a little energy from the output of Zero’s fire to the fascination’s input. Glancing down at Zero still giggling on the sidewalk, I stepped out into the road with his wizard’s fire in tow, picking a target in my head far from our current position. This was magical artillery fire without the spotter, except that I did have a three-dimensional sense of where I wanted my missile to land. And an unerring targeting system.
There was a viewing stand on the parade grounds just down from four sets of barracks where a majority of the men, roughly four hundred and eighty, were currently spending their off-time. Others were in more distant barracks or engaged in other activities, like working out. There were guards and security everywhere. Of course, none of the faery was showing up on their cameras. The viewing stand was central enough and the area big enough for everyone to stand in.
Tom, I’m going to blow up the parade ground viewing stand and draw the men there. That should be a big enough diversion for you, right?
I sent through the geas.
Yes, Lord, I would think so
, Tom responded.
We’re going to be difficult to detect regardless.
“Are you all right now, Zero?” I asked, looking over at the lazing
huri
. He started to get up. “No, no, stay put. I’m going to show you something that’s far away so it’ll be disorienting, especially the first time. Ready? Just keep an eye on your wizard’s fire.” I reached out through the Stone’s shields and grabbed the roiling mass of unearthly power. It was already under my control so there was no danger to me as I targeted in the distance. Turning in two big, lopsided circles, I launched his sphere at an impossible speed compared to mine. Attaching Zero’s perspective to the missile, high and behind, he watched it fly briefly through the air then fall to the ground just as fast and collide in a huge burst of flames on the reviewing stand. The explosion was tremendous; the ground shook a second later.
Zero stood up, staring at me in awe as I walked back to him. Bursts of energy were lighting the night sky like fireworks. “Lord Daybreak, you’re glowing!” Zero whispered hoarsely, grinning at me.
“Well, I’m proud of you, Zero! Look at the damage your fire has done! Excellent diversion for Tom and attraction for me. Well done, indeed.”
“You didn’t burn your hands when you touched it?” he asked, looking intently at my bare hands as he asked.
“I can protect myself, Zero,” I said lightly, still smiling. I released my mantle and settled into the kid from southern Georgia again. As if that would ever happen standing next to a blue-haired faery that I created. We started up the sidewalk again, this time at a pretty good clip. The fire wouldn’t last long without one of us sustaining it, which was good. The stand itself was mostly metal and concrete. The only consumables were some decorations, seat padding, and electronics. That went fast. But even I blinked when the fascination hit me, not that I was inclined to follow it. Yeah, that was strong enough to wake the sleeping, too.