Authors: Edward Lazellari
“I only saw him as a babe, a few weeks old,” Allyn said. “He had his mother’s coloring—a touch of her olive skin, green eyes with a tinge of steely gray mixed in, dark sandy-colored hair, almost light brown like walnut wood depending on the light. It’s obvious what he inherited from Archduchess Sophia … his father, Athelstan, is blue-eyed, red-haired, and stark white of skin; tall, thin like a basketball player, with sharp bone structure—ears that stick out a bit and somewhat of a long face, but not unattractively so. He had a strong nose, and defined jaw line. Hard to know from a babe if Danel took after his father in this respect—he was pudgy ball of rolling fat when last I saw him.”
Allyn’s heart was heavy with the thought that men were trying to find and kill that baby at this very moment. He remembered Sophia suckling Danel at her breast, a tradition in Bradaan that caused much controversy among the ruling class in Aandor, where a wet nurse was traditionally used. The people of Bradaan were earthier and less inclined to tolerate the airs of the “high minded.” Sophia had a bit of a rebellious streak—she would visit her husband during council meetings with Danel at her teat, just to watch the politicians, businessmen, and battle-hardened generals squirm at the presence of a mere woman feeding an infant. The common folk of Aandor took to her quickly, and soon Sophia was more popular with them than her husband, their rightful liege. The archduke’s line needed fresh blood and a new perspective if it was going to survive to reclaim the emperor’s throne. It needed Danel.
Allyn shook out the crazy notions forming in his head. With new resolve, he said, “I don’t want to get involved with that mess up north, Rose. Don’t be too disappointed in me for keeping that violence at arm’s length.”
“Well … you can’t blame me for being curious,” she said, smiling. “There are so few princes in North Carolina. How close are you?”
Allyn took out his handkerchief and wiped his brow. “I am failing miserably,” he said.
“See, you do need help.”
“What I
need
is a personal item of Danel’s. I’ve had to resort to less dependable indirect methods.”
“Like…?”
“Determining the difference between people from Aandor and this universe. And by different, I don’t mean like a tail or horns.”
“We have tails?” she said in mock alarm. She looked at her own behind trying to find hers.
His daughter’s use of “we,” implying her own Aandoran ancestry, and her faux expression of concern, caused Allyn to break into a giggle. “Maybe college is not right for you, Rose. The comedy club circuit, perhaps.”
“Didn’t I tell you? I’m going to spend all your money to study drama,” she said, beaming. “And postmodern poetry.”
“Your mother will love that,” Allyn chuckled. As would Malcolm Robbe, whose promise to make Allyn’s help “worth his while” was the other reason he was in the basement trying to recall blessings he had not cast in thirteen years. Rosemarie’s college would be paid for and possibly the education of several other promising students. For the first time, the church could have a scholarship fund. Michelle could bemoan about witchcraft and blasphemy all she wanted; Allyn knew this was the right path to take. If he failed in this task, he’d regret it the rest of his life.
“Kidding aside,” she continued, “you know how on those science-fiction shows, like
Star Trek,
whenever people cross from other dimensions, they have a different vibration. Maybe you folks from Aandor are different like that. Like a frequency.”
“Except for the fact that I’m not a scientist or own a tricorder, that is the tack I’ve taken. We all have auras, Rose, the output of our unique specific energies. I’ve noticed that mine is brighter than, say, your mother or Uncle Theo’s. Yours is brighter than theirs, but not as intense as mine. When I reach out into the town, it’s the same—no one burns as brightly as I do. I thought this might be the way to distinguish people of Aandor from those here. But as I reach out farther and farther, I encounter others with the brightness as strong as mine.”
“There are others here from Aandor?”
“No. There are those here who if they were in Aandor, might have been sorcerers or clerics. They are wired for it, attuned to the gods’ energies, which flow through all creation. But here in this reality where science reigns, they never developed these nascent talents. This frustrates me because it underscores our similarities when what I am searching for are differences. There are hundreds of people like this along my search radius.”
“Hmmm?” murmured Rosemarie. “Is there anything special about the prince or his family? Are they sorcerers, too? In books, characters usually have special abilities.”
Allyn stood, rubbing his creaking knees and arching backward to pop the kinks out of his back. A series of cracks brought relief to some strain in his lower lumbar region.
Too old,
he thought.
No wonder the high clerics left vespers to the young. Those stone temple floors were too hard and cold.
He left the circle, slowly rubbing blood back into his legs, and joined his daughter, taking a seat on a cardboard storage box marked
Tax Documents
. The top of the box crunched under his weight, but he didn’t care and settled in. He sipped hot cocoa and took a biscuit.
“The most remarkable thing about the royal families of Aandor is their resistance to magic,” he said. “None of the rulers of the twelve kingdoms can wield magic. It does not connect to them. Some sects had made the argument that this means they lack the gods’ graces. Those sects were, of course, outlawed and hunted down to near extinction.”
“Really?” Rosemarie said, incredulously. “That makes no sense. Can’t the wizards beat up on them and take over then?”
“You would think,” he answered, and took another sip from his mug. “It’s not as though it has never happened—we had sorcerer kings and cleric kings thousands of years ago, but they never worked out; for both the kings and the people.” He shifted his weight and settled more comfortably into the box, just now realizing how uncomfortable the floor had been.
“Magic wielders want to study magic … the universe, the meaning of life,” Allyn continued. “They are scholars and learned people who want to cast spells, not administrate the nation’s problems. The mundanity of court life, judging in trials, hearing appeals, making appointments, being diplomats, studying details of treaties, the running of armies—this is not the life a wizard seeks. Most are too smart for that. So the majority of them never seek political dominance.
“There are always a few wizards who are more ambitious than wise. We called them ‘gardener kings’ because they want to remake society the way a gardener organizes nature … using their magic to force everything according to their personal design. This never lasts, as other wizards will join together to abolish a gardener king.
“But the royal families have their own protection from such wizards. They are magic neutral. Most—almost all—spells and blessings will not affect them. A wizard could not magically take over the mind of any of the rulers in Aandor. You can’t transmogrify a prince of the realm into a frog or another person. This resistance to magic is a cornerstone to rule. It gives the duke or prince the confidence that he is his own man, and the people, too, are comforted that their rulers are protected from the whims of wizards.”
“So they’s impossible to kill by magic?” Rosemarie asked.
“Girl, you will ask that question again, properly.”
“
Are they
impossible to kill?”
“No one is impossible to kill. A wizard could send a sea monster to sink the king’s galley or cause a landslide to bury the prince’s entourage while he travels abroad. But then so could dissenters with a precarious boulder and a long stick.”
“But how can you be sure he’s protected from magic? Or even really the prince?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like on them shows Leticia watches in the afternoon … some woman always having the wrong guy’s baby … don’t know who the baby daddy is.”
“Have you been watching those shows?”
Rosemarie’s expression froze, regret plastered on her face for letting down her guard in this surreptitious moment with her dad.
“Don’t change the subject,” she said nervously.
Allyn perked up on the box and fixed a hard stare at his daughter. “Girl, I will pick any subject I want when it comes to what you are putting into that stubborn little head of yours. Don’t watch that rubbish. There are no baby daddies in your future. First school, then a boy we approve of, marriage, and then children, in that order; and no Jerry Springer or any of those other fools on the TV. You watch that nonsense again … see if I don’t restrict you to reruns of
Little House on the Prairie
for a year. Understood?”
“Yes sir,” she said, swinging her legs impatiently against the chair. “But how do you know he’s got this neutral magic thing?”
Allyn was about to lecture her more on the evils of daytime talk shows when he caught himself, realizing that hammering into Rose was a trait he picked up from Michelle. There were times when his wife even made him wince. Rose was not a bad egg; she was remarkably kind and thoughtful, earned straight As, and was choosing to help her dad at this moment instead of going to the mall with her girlfriends. And he needed all the help he could get.
“The royals’ resistance to magic is what modern science would call a recessive trait. Less than a quarter of one percent of all people have it and all of them are descended from royalty. When babies are born to the royal families they are given a test for this trait before their naming day celebrations. It doubles as a paternity test. Both parents must have the gene for it.
“The test is administered by both a cleric and a wizard. A protective sheath is placed around the infant’s shoulder with a sticky paste underneath to adhere it to the skin. In the middle of the sheath is a design cut out in the shape of the father’s sigil, like a stencil leaving that portion of skin bare. The wizard and cleric create a special elixir, infusing it with hair or nail clippings of the father and deadly magical poisons, which they then enchant. A ceremony is performed with some readings and a small degree of pomp to hide what everyone knows is really a very dangerous ritual. The brew is boiled to a sludge, which is then poured over bare skin of the cutout. If the child has the resistance, the skin will burn and bubble, leaving the wailing child with a birthmark of its house sigil and confirmation that he or she is a true royal. The burn will then settle into the banner color of the house to confirm that the father is true, and not possibly another royal who would also have the resistance.”
“Wait! If the kid has this protection from magic, why does the liquid burn? Wouldn’t it do nothing?”
“The death magic in the potion is extremely powerful. It takes both a cleric and wizard to make it. If the mother were untrue to her lord, the elixir would seep into the child and raze it from within, leaving a smoldering heap of ash where the baby once lay. It’s a gruesome and intensely painful death. The mother would then be put to death. Depending on her parents—who would never attend such a ceremony for obvious reasons—there might or might not be a war afterwards.”
Rosemarie’s eyes were two big saucers under arched black caterpillars and her mouth was round like a doughnut. “That’s messed up!” she said.
“That’s Aandor. But there are good things about my society, too. No Jerry Springer or Maury Povich. Someone would run a sword through them inside of a day.”
Allyn and Rosemarie laughed until they heard a creaking on the stairs.
“Is that what you’re teaching your daughter now?” Michelle said, refusing to take the last step onto the basement floor. “Burning babies and running people through with swords?”
“It’s not like that, mama,” Rosemarie said.
“I told you not to come down here,” Michelle scolded. “Not to be around this sacrilege. Pagan prayers in our house—next to our church.”
Michelle aimed that barb at their daughter, but it was meant for Allyn. He wanted to tell his wife that Rose was his daughter, too, and he had every right to her company, but realized it would throw gasoline on a smoldering flame. The sooner he found the prince and got Aandor out of his life for good, the quicker he could heal the rift in his marriage.
“Upstairs, Rose!” Michelle ordered.
Rose went to give her father a hug. While they embraced, she whispered in his ear, “Good luck finding someone that magic bounces off of.” She kissed him and went up the stairs. Michelle threw Allyn a disapproving glance and followed her up. Dinner tonight would be interesting.
Allyn stared at his henge and revisited the problem of finding the prince … someone whom spells bounce off of. Bounce off …
Wait.
He’d been going about the search from the wrong direction. How many people in this world would have a resistance to magic? A resistance to something they’d barely encountered because of its lack of presence in this reality. When Europeans first came to the new world, they decimated the Native American populations with smallpox and influenza because the natives had never encountered strains of the diseases the English and Spanish brought with them. Virtually everyone on this earth should be susceptible to magic … except for Prince Danel. Resistance had been built in the child’s blood over generations. Allyn looked at the puny circle in his basement and realized—he was going to need a bigger henge.
2
“You’re doing what?” Theo asked as he lugged a hundred pounds of iron weights to the henge behind the church.
Something absolutely crazy,
Allyn thought, as he struggled with a pair of cinder blocks. He’d expanded the circle of the outer henge and brought in bigger stones. The weights were for increasing the iron content in specific areas of the wheel. For as long as he could remember, Allyn always had a gift for constructing circles. It was as though the gods had intended for him to be their superintendent of energy—tightening a nut here, putting a screw there to keep the engine of the universe running smoothly. The flow of energy to this henge increased threefold. He hoped it would be enough.