Sons (Book 2) (29 page)

We heard a car slowly pulling up the road as Peter hung up.  I looked to see a soldier, the sniper along the road earlier, lazing on the hood of the car as it slowly pulled toward us through the field, foregoing the road.  The soldier slid off quickly when the car hit an unseen rut in the grass.  He kept walking toward us like he practiced the move.  That’s a lot harder to do than it looks.

“These guys say they’re with you?” he asked, his voice both deeper and squeakier than expected out of his short, lean frame.  It made me grin at him briefly.

“Yes, sir, unfortunately,” I answered.

“Understand that, chief,” he said, nodding.  He slung his rifle up to his shoulder and headed for the command tent.  “The blond guy’s got a serious chip on his shoulder.”

I turned back to the car as the FBI agents slammed their doors shut.  Watching them as they first assessed the situation from afar, I pretty much pegged it.  When they started moving to us, Messner had already decided that I’d let the situation get out of hand.  When they got within ten feet of us, I enclosed the seven of us in a wall of highly active energy thirty feet in a circle.  It used an incredible amount of power and would have vaporized a rhinoceros trying to run through it at full tilt.

As I stood up, I armored up, calling for all five weapons for the show, then I turned to Messner.  “Agent Messner,” I drawled in my finest Georgian accent, “I’m not terribly sure why you people have such a love of power games, but you and your team had your chance to play that earlier today.  I don’t have to play.  Period.  I don’t
want
to play.  My brothers don’t play, either, for the same reason.”  My anger rose during the tirade and my volume rose with it.

I unhooked the Day from my waist and held it out to him.  “Take this, hold this Sword by its hilt and hold a true Sword of Power in your hand, Agent Messner, then look at me.”

He gulped visibly but reached out meekly.  I held the Day’s animosity in check as his hand wrapped around the hilt, but he felt its warning all the same.

“Can you feel the Day Sword’s power, Messner?” I asked, taking hold of the scabbard and jerking it off.  The Day once again proved its name and lit my enclosed world like the sun.  “My brother, Ehran, took these from an elven assassin team the day after we met.  He was unarmed at the time.  Ethan took the elven bindings off and at Ehran’s behest gave them to me because I didn’t know enough about magic to protect myself.”  I pointed at the shield wall around us.  “That changed.”  I called the Sword back and it shot from Messner’s hand to mine, surprising him.

“Peter, would you mind loaning Agent Messner your eyes for a moment?” I asked.

Peter snickered, then looked at me.  “Oh.  You weren’t kidding?”  Then he snickered again.  Walking over to Messner, he whispered, “His father’s the only one who didn’t freak out over this.”  He threw his arm over Messner’s shoulder.  “When you’re ready, Lord.”  Peter was enjoying this too much.

“You see us as nothing, Agent, even though you know it cannot be right,” I told him, calmed considerably now.  Knowing what the Day made him feel like consoled me well enough.  “This is how we see each other.”  Peter made the minor connection to Messner, tweaking into his mind and linking his visual cortex with Messner’s.  He held it for less than two seconds.  Then he was holding Messner upright for a minute before his partner realized he passed out and took him from Peter to resuscitate him.  Peter and I were worthless with that task, seeing as we were laughing so hard about it.

I released the shield wall as unnecessary.  I’d scared the other FBI agents enough already and as Messner woke, I was certain we had Messner tamed now.  Jimmy got the chairs for us, so we lounged around while they roused him.

“You look at
that
all day?” Messner asked Peter weakly after a few minutes.

“We’re all like that, dude,” I said.  “Ehran, Ethan, Peter, and me.  Ehran likes to say that’s why you can’t see our auras, so we don’t scare everybody.  But we didn’t show you to scare you, Mr. Messner.  We showed you to try to get you to understand that we’re not playing games with you.  Ever.  And because we have gone to such lengths with you, you are now our contact with the FBI.  Our only contact, whether you like it or not.”

“Yes, sir,” Messner said.  He didn’t like it, but he accepted it and that scared the hell out of him.

“Good,” I said, standing.  “Now, let’s go talk to the major and I’ll explain what’s happened and will happen and what I expect to happen.  Now you will have to come to an understanding with the Marshals because they agreed to listen from the beginning.  Mr. Calhoun will be Mr. Harris’ agent on site in that regard and will be arriving shortly.”

The FBI and the Marshals played nice together, at least while I was there to supervise.  If that changed, I’m sure I’d hear about it tomorrow.

If you can find a world built to your subconscious specifications with a fantastically large palace filling the top of a majestic mountain range, claim it.  Then have said palace wake you each and every morning by singing your name to you as the sun streams into your bedroom window.  There is no more exciting and energizing way to start your day.  You literally feel like the world is revolving because of you.  I strongly recommend the experience.

I’d once again awakened at dawn in my room at the Palace.  It wasn’t a surprise this time because I’d gone to sleep there last night, shortly after midnight Central time.  Near as we’ve been able to tell, time synchronized at the Palace was somewhere between New York and Dublin, so roughly a four-hour difference between Alabama and the Palace.  I felt amazing for three-and-a-half hours of sleep coming off such an awful day.

Good morning, Jimmy
, I sent to the only other waking member of the Palace at the moment.

Good morning, Seth, I wondered if I was the only one awake yet,
Jimmy sent back over the link.

Would you care to go walking around for a while?  There are a few people I should check on while we’re here.

Yes, I would, Lord.
             

I shifted to the lakeside and sent the sense of that place to Jimmy.  He is able to move with the diamond key, but if what I thought was happening, that would soon be extraneous for him, too.  Feeling his shift from his room to standing beside me, I was right—he could shift through Gilán on his own.  He probably didn’t know it yet because he had the diamond so tightly against his wrist, held in place by a wide leather band.

When I glanced up at his arrival, I did a spastic double take.  The shirt he wore looked awesome.  Solid black shoes, slacks, and a long-sleeved shirt.  The front right panel began a different motif.  In brilliant detail, the First of Gilán was woven through the fabric in the bright colors of the daybreak, with the blue of my power and Gilán being the most prevalent.  And he didn’t look emaciated anymore.  He still needed a few good meals and a few more days of actual rest, but he was looking pretty damn good.

“Good morning, Lord Daybreak!” Shrank called happily, shooting out of the trees with the Dea brothers in hot pursuit.  He almost skidded in the air as he turned around Jimmy, looping back, slowing and reading the script carefully.  Relief was his primary reaction, which rather surprised me, even more when the Dea brothers mirrored that reaction.  Then all three of them were happy for him and glad it wasn’t them.

“Should I be insulted by that?” I asked in general, grinning.  “Everybody’s happy you’re the First, Jimmy, but they’re also happy because they’re not!”

“No, Lord Daybreak, we most certainly meant no insult,” Shrank trilled merrily.  “We are relieved because we would have much greater difficulty in fulfilling the role of First.  He appears to be a much better selection and he is handling the bonding quite well.”

There were a few more sprites moving about the lakeside and the woods beyond.  Parents looking after children, collecting wood and plants of various sort.  In general everyone was playing.  Fun to watch, but these people needed to be getting along with their lives and I couldn’t help thinking they were just marking time right now.  Made me a little happier to move the date up.

“Shrank, weren’t you about to go down for your morning nap?” I asked him.  “We don’t need to keep you up if you don’t need something.”

“Actually, Lord Daybreak, I have news and a request,” Shrank said.  “I have found a smith.  Unfortunately, none of us foresaw that you would require the services of a sprite smith and he has been exercising his power in inappropriate ways that have damaged him significantly.”

“What was he doing?” I asked, wondering how a smith used power inappropriately.

“He metalcrafted without a forge,” Shrank said.  “It creates a magnificent stress on the smith.  He created a gift from his clan to you to be presented on the night of the Great Claiming.  All of the clans are planning something.  Especially the new ones.  It will be a fascinating night.  Which actually brings me to the request.”

“There are fourteen kilns in the Palace that aren’t being used,” I said, “and at least three different forges capable of working several extremely strong steels.  Why not use one of those?”

“We would not think to ask such a thing, Lord,” Deason squeaked.  “No one would think to look to the Palace for supplies or housing.”  Deacon nodded briskly beside him. 

I actually understood that, but Jimmy didn’t.  He needed more time among the Fae to understand their mindset.

“All right, take me to him then,” I said, getting it in my head that I was going to be disturbed by what I saw next.  The Fae and metal poisoning wasn’t a pretty picture.

“That brings me to their request, Lord Daybreak,” Shrank said seriously.  “The smith has finished his task but for one item.  The clans have scoured the countryside and into the mountains looking for a suitable pairing to no avail.  I believe we may find something in the Palace…”

“Okay, Jimmy can take you up there to look while I’m checking on the smith.  Will that work for you?” I asked distractedly.  Shrank nodded happily and shot off into the woods, leading us to one of three brownie villages.  This was the diurnal village, the most confused of the three—four out of ten clans here were on different cycles than the others.  It seemed like someone was always busy here when half the town was sleeping.  There was a roar of greeting out of the village, which unfortunately kept the other sixty-percent of the village up longer.  They weren’t expecting us till tomorrow when we would spend the day here, but that did not stop them from throwing a parade right then and there.  Jimmy got his own, which confused him to no end.

“Are they always like this?” Jimmy asked, wading through the excited throng of “You have to be this tall to ride” rejects.

“They are with me,” I answered, spotting the one house full of dark energy on the hillside.  It was closer to the nocturnal village, which sort of made sense for someone whose magic worked on the metals of the ground.  Shrank headed in that direction as well.  “I’m hoping they’ll calm down with time, but it’s not hurting them and it shows me that they’re happy and healthy, so I won’t complain.”

“Were they unhappy before?” Jimmy asked, which brought out the strangest reaction from the Fae that I’ve seen.  They stopped.  Some two hundred and eighty brownies and sprites all around us stopped stock-still and slowly turned to face Jimmy, to answer his seemingly innocuous question.

“Yes.”

For miles all around us, we heard an echo, serious and somber, as the rest of the Fae took up the call and answered the First’s question.  “Yes.”

Then Gilán erupted again in happy chitters and squeals as the question was forgotten and nature re-asserted itself.  “Wow,” Jimmy said, looking at me.  “You don’t do anything small, do you?”

“It was either him or me and I liked me better,” I said defensively, turning back to the unhealthy house at the base of the hill.  The brownies got a little nervous about the comment, but Jimmy chuckled, taking it as intended, and they relaxed.  That meant they had a sounding board in Jimmy, which would help me immensely.

Calling the smith’s current home a house is being generous.  Even considering this as temporary housing, it looked like a hovel to me, but to them it was merely a long vacation in paradise.  This was a lean-to in front of a few deep holes in the ground to my eyes.  Outside the front of the lean-to stood the head of the clan and two female brownies with wash basins formed from bark and clay.  They were his caretakers for this time of the day.  It struck me as odd that the clan head cared for his cousin so closely, but he had a strong emotional attachment to him.  They’d grown up together, both developing unusual talents before the crossing.

It’s an odd sensation having the kind of awareness about these Fae that I did.  I knew each and every one of them at a thought, by name, by family, by any way I wanted to think about it.  It made my dealings with the Little Folk a peculiar experience.  The clansman knew with absolute certainty that there was nothing that would help his beloved cousin this far into the throws of metal poisoning and with equal absolute certainty he knew that if anything could be done to help his cousin, it would be by me.  No pressure here, folks.  What made me feel worse was that they all felt that the smith’s sacrifice for the gift was worth it and would be perfectly willing to make whatever sacrifices that they needed to make the smith’s life as a vegetable as perfect as they could.  All for a gift to me, the man who had everything already.

I searched through the lot of them, just to make certain no one else was doing something so stupid.  Pushing into the hill, I seeped into the tiny creature there, tormented at the moment by the twisted heat of his own abilities.  I had to ‘seep,’ though.  If I just pushed into him, he would have ruptured like a blister of pus.  That’s what he looked like anyway, a giant blister, a burn victim, seared by incredible heat that couldn’t exist here.  There just wasn’t a fire hot enough near enough to have caused that kind of a burn.  This wasn’t a physical burn or ‘real’ pain and he wasn’t feeling it—he entire family took that for him.  They were in immense pain, each person as bad as Felix was during his heart attack, yet not one complaint.  Damn, the Fae are weird.

Jimmy and Shrank left and returned while I worked on Ilan yi Braedon in his little hole in the hill.  While I’m sure I could have asked about what they wanted in the Palace, I didn’t, choosing instead to be surprised at the proper time.  I was more worried about the smith than their gift.  His blood was nearly boiled away in his tiny body and his heart labored furiously to pump what little that was left through his body.  His breathing was heavy and slow when I started.

I bathed the area in a pale blue healing energy and pulled back on Gilán in his house, removing its exuberance somewhat but keeping the elan, the vigor of life, present.  He first needed a place conducive to healing.  Instantly there were two more spots on the countryside that developed similar energy signatures, none quite so drastic.  Gilán was learning from me.  Then I started working on the heat waves through his tiny body, his power freaking out on him.

Drawing the heat away was easy.  Watching him wracked in pain wasn’t, but I had to move slowly or risk burning him like magma through a box of tissues.  The metal he worked wasn’t magnetic, but I still had to get it out of him.  It was spread so thoroughly in his system that it was destroying him cell by cell.  That was the paradox of his crafting power: it wanted to pull the poison directly to him.  It was a slower process removing metal from him without hurting him further.  But it cut his pain in half. 

Now to the damage it had caused.  That was more difficult.  There was just so much of it.  My attention stayed the longest in his heart, first on the muscle itself and then on what pumped through it.  Healing takes a great deal of concentration and I suppose it was a testament to my concentration that when I pulled back from Ilan yi Braedon that I was startled by how many of his family had come to surround the hill in concern for him.  It was a very sweet situation and one that worked out extremely well for me.  It gave me an avenue I didn’t have a few moments before.  They wanted to help him, so I used them to help him.

Braedon himself was the most help, merely for being the closest kin; he was my map, both to and from the tiny sprite.  His entire clan had diverged from the brownies already, moving to the smaller, squatter dwarfish lines.  Though still within the woodland sphere, it looked like they would likely migrate upward in the mountains rather than the forests.  While none of his family shared his metalcrafting talents, some had shown an affinity to stonecrafting already, which fit with Braedon’s talents.  They were similar abilities.

So I used Braedon and his family to help his cousin by stealing cells from their organs, changing them ever so slightly to match him and slowly rebuilt a majority of his insides.  A sort of reverse evisceration spread out over close to seven hundred sprites.  I wasn’t going for a ‘Jack-in-the-box’-style, instant healing, though.  They needed to remember this, to remember the pain, the heat.  They needed to remember my dissatisfaction with them over this.  I didn’t want them hurting themselves for me.  He would heal by Wednesday, but neither he nor they would be eager to do something this foolhardy again.

This time when I pulled away from Ilan, his little green eyes were open and watching me.  Physically, I was outside on the hill kneeling in the grass with my hands on my thighs and staring blankly at the hill with the aura of Daybreak around me.  And I was also in his home, a form of pure blue light, streaming energy at him like a mad marionette hopped up on meth.  He watched in awe as I pulled back out of his home and out of the hillside.

Braedon was convinced I’d pulled off another miracle, saving his cousin from such a baneful death.  It would only have been worse if the metal had been iron.  I wanted to smack them both.  Just smack some sense into both of them, as if that would work.

“Braedon, no more crafting for him until we can get a forge for him,” I said forcefully.  “I won’t have you hurting yourselves unnecessarily.  There are several forges in the Palace that are not in use that are suitable for him if he desires, as well as different studios for stonecrafters as well.”

“You would allow us to use the Palace?” Braedon asked in shock.

“Why else would they be there if not to be used?” I asked.  “I wouldn’t imagine there’d be any competition for forge time for years to come, probably centuries.  The Palace is huge.”