by Bill Hiatt
“Do we still have enough magical protection on us to beat a surprise attack?” asked Shar.
“You haven’t had much faith lately,” said Magnus.
“Just being cautious. Someone made that sword, after all.”
“We’re well protected,” said Tal. “No one could overcome us fast enough in a surprise attack to keep us from using the staff, the lyre, and our other resources.”
We landed on the front porch, and Stan called Ceridwen so that she would open Awen to us. Once that was done, Tal opened a portal to the sitting room so that we could move as fast as possible, and we stepped through. Ceridwen was standing there, waiting to greet us. Creirwy was at her side. She was frowning, though I couldn’t sense anything specific that might be wrong.
“I’m happy to say your fears were unfounded,” said Ceridwen. “I haven’t seen a sign of trouble.”
“And Hafez?” asked Tal.
“He’s down in the dungeon, still unconscious. We wouldn’t want him getting underfoot again, now would we?”
Tal smiled. “The Awen in our world also has a dungeon. I’m having a hard time reading it, though.”
“Heavy shielding,” said Ceridwen. “I had that set up before Hafez kidnapped me. It wouldn’t do to have someone discover it. As with some of my other precautions, the magic was getting a little thin, so I renewed it. It comes in very handy, now.”
“So you agree Hafez does have magical allies, even though none of them have turned up?” asked Carla.
“I have no idea what he has. With an infinite number of parallel universes to plunder, he could conceivably have anything.
“When I get the chance, I intend to inventory his Summerland house. I think some of those antiquities of his might be more powerful than they appear.”
“Speaking of, did you come across my sword by any chance?” asked Shar. “The Khalid of your world substituted a fake for it.”
“I don’t think it’s here,” said Ceridwen. “If I recall, it has an antimagic field, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I’ve inspected the house very carefully. Artifacts such as that sword leave a blank spot in any magic scan. I couldn’t have missed it if it were here.”
“Other Khalid said he left it in this room,” said Carla. “I’m not seeing any blank spots, though, just as you said.”
“I’d say Hafez moved it, but he was occupied the whole time, wasn’t he?” asked Gordy.
“Amenirdis, you were Amy then, but you saw what happened, right?” asked Tal. “You were in the best position to watch Hafez, at least some of the time.”
“I did. Hafez was occupied the whole time and never got close to the corner where Khalid said he put the real sword.”
“Magic?” asked Tal.
“I would have noticed that. But isn’t the sword immune to magic?”
“It’s immune to hostile magic,” said Shar. “It doesn’t resist friendly magic, or I’d never be able to take it through a portal. When it isn’t being wielded by someone, I’m not sure how it could determine what was hostile and what wasn’t. As far as I know, no one has ever tried to move it by magic when it wasn’t in my hand.”
“There’s no way to determine with certainty how it was moved, but clearly it was,” said Viviane. “We need to retrieve it. It’s been invaluable on some of our earlier missions.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say it was at the Summerland house,” said Ceridwen. “Hafez stores his treasures there, rather than at the hotel, at least if what he told me while he thought I was his ally is true.”
“If I recall, there isn’t much protection there,” said Tal. “It seems an improbable place to keep valuable magic artifacts.”
“He deliberately shut down most of his security when he knew you were coming,” said Ceridwen. “Remember, at the time, he thought I was on his side. He kept the defenses low so that you’d find me.”
“It can’t hurt to look there,” said Shar.
“All right,” said Tal. “We must be cautious, though. Hafez has been missing for hours now. Someone has to have noticed he’s gone. His house would be a logical place to look.”
“I will accompany you,” said Ceridwen. “I’ve largely cleaned up here, and I’ve prepared for the meeting with my lawyer tomorrow. I might be able to help.”
“Help is always welcome,” said Viviane. “Perhaps Morfran and Nancy would like to join us.”
Ceridwen’s cheeks reddened. “Morfran and Nancy are…occupied at the moment.”
Magnus chuckled. “Making up for fifteen hundred sexless years all at once, no doubt. Good for him!”
“Creirwy will be happy to lend a hand, though. Won’t you dear?” Ceridwen took one of her hands. Creirwy’s arm muscles tightened as if she wanted to pull away, and her frown deepened, but she nodded.
I wished again that I could read minds the way Tal could. Nobody else seemed to notice the girl’s obvious discomfort. Perhaps she’d had an argument with Ceridwen while we were gone, but it would have been nice to know. Her uneasiness made me nervous.
Ceridwen opened a portal, and after a moment in Annwn, we found ourselves in Hafez’s front room.
“Security can’t be much if we could just portal in,” said Magnus.
Ceridwen looked at him without a trace of expression, as if her face had suddenly turned to stone. “Egyptian magic involves mental travel across great distances. It has no equivalent to portal magic, though Hafez did figure out a way to open portals between parallel universes, and I believe he may have created a few fixed portals from one point to another within this universe. The Egyptian gods seem to have had a few tricks that have not yet been shared with their followers.
“Speaking of gods, Magnus, I see you wield the staff now. How did that come about?”
“Amenirdis ordained me as a priest of Amun.”
Ceridwen looked surprised and glanced in my direction, but she didn’t ask me why I had done such a thing. That was just as well, for I had no wish to defend a choice I still had misgivings about.
The room, lit by midmorning light filtering in through the curtains, turned black as a moonless night in the heart of the desert. It was as if someone had flicked a switch and turned off the sun.
“Some of the security is definitely working,” said Shar.
“That’s not all,” said Carla. “The inability to sense magic very well is still in force. I can’t get a good enough reading to know whether Shar’s sword is nearby or not.”
“As pharaoh, I revoke your priesthood.” The cold words were in Ceridwen’s voice, but the tone wasn’t hers.
It was Hafez’s.
My sense of direction faltered as badly as it had in the labyrinth. Ceridwen had been right in front of me, but her voice seemed to be coming from far away, and I had no idea which direction to move. I tried to invoke Ra’s sunlight, but I got only a tiny flicker. The darkness spell squeezed even that flicker out quickly. Hafez must have set it up using the staff and built in resistance to the power of Amun-Ra.
I sensed rather than heard the arrival of the shadow assassins.
“Finish them!” commanded the voice that was both Ceridwen’s and Hafez’s.
Beware the Shadows
If not for the magical protections woven around me earlier, the dagger would have plunged straight into my back. Instead, the spell repelled it hard enough to throw the assassin off balance.
I tried to blast my attacker and the others with sunlight I knew would drive them away, but again I was answered only by a miserable flicker that died as quickly as it had flared. Amun’s wind would do me no good unless I could aim it.
As if in answer to my unspoken prayer, someone cast a night vision spell on all of us. I almost wished for unbroken darkness again. Shadow assassins were everywhere, surrounding us but also wedged among us. Their daggers gleamed darkly as they rhythmically rose and fell. So far, our protections kept those daggers at bay, but sooner or later, the weapons would wear throug
h that protection.
Lucas scorpion-kicked the one in front of him. To be able to attack us, the shadows had to become solid enough to be vulnerable to blows like that, and his assailant staggered back. Shar punched another, dropping it to the floor in one blow. Alex split a third in half with his sickle-shaped blade, and it faded into nothingness.
Tal drew his sword. Its flames were dimmer than normal, but Hafez’s spell could not extinguish them, and a shadow burned as he impaled it with his blade.
Magnus tried and failed to invoke the power of the staff. He resorted to using it as a club, cracking two shadows on the head in rapid succession.
We should have won quickly, but as each shadow fell, another took its place. If we did not find a better way to fight them, we would wear down even faster than our magical protection.
The yellow glow from Jimmie’s sword was no more than the glow of a single candle flame as he struck down a shadow with it. The silvery glow of Eva’s arrows seemed unaffected as she shot shadows down. If only one of us could have used the staff, a moon spell might have done wonders.
Khalid’s arrows exploded with their usual quadruple bursts of light, but each was so muted that they were hardly visible. The arrows did their job regardless.
The relatively cramped space in the room inhibited our warriors. It takes more space to swing a sword than wield a dagger, and Tal was unable to use his sword like a flamethrower with so many people in the way. That, together with the continuous flow of new opponents, would doom us eventually.
For a while, Umbra held back the tide. She had enough space to use her dagger, and she knew enough about the shadow assassins to use their own tactics against them. However, once they realized that, they aimed more of their attacks at her—too many for her to keep evading indefinitely.
I wished I had a weapon of some kind and knew how to use it. I couldn’t use a decent wind attack with so many of my own people in the way any more than Tal could use a fire attack.
I tried to summon Chango. His wrath would have been better than the endless, cold waves of assassins. I tried, but that magic was no longer there. It was a part of being a god’s wife of Amun.
I had to think. The occasional thud of knives against me made it difficult to concentrate. I knew enough about magic that I should be able to find a way to counter Hafez’s—assuming I lived long enough.
Haunted House
David’s sword flared with white light the darkness could not diminish. I felt the silent screams of the shadow assassins as they scrambled to get away from that glow.
He moved toward Magnus and reached for the staff. Magnus held it out to him, but when David’s fingers were inches away from it, he faltered. His arm dropped, the light from his sword faded, and he fell to his knees.
The shadows surged at him the moment the light was extinguished. The reinforcements were arriving so fast now that their numbers were increasing.
Magnus dropped the staff and strummed the lyre to repel the assassins closest to him. As soon as he had breathing space, I felt him start to weave a complex spell. Shar, Alex, and Umbra, who had moved in his direction during the confusion caused by David’s light, circled him as best they could in such a confined space and kept the assassins back from him. Tal started casting as well to keep the assassins from focusing exclusively on Magnus. Carla and Viviane did the same. The dark ones hesitated as magic built all around them.
The lyre began to glow. At first, its light was little more than a firefly’s, but as the melody continued, the light spread and brightened. The shadow assassins fell back. The light surged to the brightness of a noon sun, and they dissolved in one final burst of screams.
“Have we vanquished them?” I asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” said Tal. “We can keep them out as long as we can maintain the light, but it doesn’t kill them. It just drives them back to Erebus. The moment the light dims, more of them can come. Even the ones the light destroyed can return as soon as they can become physical again.”
“And the light won’t last forever,” said Magnus, his brow shiny with sweat. “Even with the lyre’s ability to amplify the strength of the magic, it’s taking everything I’ve got to overcome whatever is generating that darkness. Power sharing will let me hold out a little longer, but there’s no way I can keep this going for more than half an hour.”
“Then we have to move fast,” said Tal. “Stan, you OK?”
“I am—but David isn’t.” Stan pulled himself up off the floor with a little help from Gordy. “He was going to use the staff the way he did in the labyrinth—to shut down Hafez’s security measures. He got shut down instead.”
“How is that possible?” asked Carla. “David’s normally highly resistant to magic while that blessed glow is working.”
Viviane walked over and examined Stan closely. “Celtic magic. Not as strong as what Arianrhod did, but the same general idea—and cast with great skill. I doubt someone could have woven a hostile spell successfully, but whoever did this made a slight adjustment in the spell of Hermes that was already there. David is blocked from manifesting—which means he can’t use his ability to wield the staff.”
“Reversible?” asked Tal.
“You could probably do it, but the spell, though cast quickly, seems to have been planned carefully. I feel all the twists and turns of a Celtic knot. It would take power and time to free David.”
“I hate to say it, but we need to withdraw and regroup.”
Silver sparks shot from Carla’s fingers, but no portal opened. “I’d say portals are blocked.”
Tal raised an eyebrow. “Hafez didn’t know how to do that before.”
“But aren’t we fighting Ceridwen right now?” asked Jimmie. “Hafez couldn’t have cast the spell to block David, either.”
“Didn’t you hear her call herself a pharaoh and use a pharaoh’s authority to keep Magnus from using the staff?” asked Tal. “Ceridwen could never have done that—unless that wasn’t Ceridwen, but a copy created by the blood double spell. We know it exists in this world.”
“So Hafez got it from Nicneven?” asked Gordy.
“Or one of her allies, probably some time ago. In our world, Nicneven recruited Ceridwen. Here, with Ceridwen not around, it would have been logical for Nicneven to try to recruit Hafez. No doubt he didn’t tell her what his end game was.”
“We know Ceridwen was still herself when Magnus and I scanned her. I don’t know how Hafez could have gotten loose, but somehow, he escaped while we were gone, overcame Ceridwen, and used the spell to make himself an exact duplicate of her. We didn’t think to check her when we got back.
“Clever, if you think about it. Without the staff, Hafez couldn’t beat us with a direct attack. He had to lead us into a trap.”
“Then let’s haul ass out of here,” said Gordy.
“Easier said than done,” said Viviane. “I can’t be sure about other rooms because of all the obscuring magic, but the windows in this room are definitely magically sealed. We could break through, but it would require a lot of power.”
“How about countering the blood double spell?” asked Stan.
“Waste of energy,” said Magnus. It took him effort to force the words out. “He needed to be Ceridwen to lead us here, and that also came in handy to block David, but now…”
“He might just as well be himself,” said Tal. “Anyway, we can’t be sure he’s even in the house any longer. We haven’t faced any new attack from him.”
Tal drew White Hilt, which flamed furiously. “Normally, I wouldn’t risk burning down the house, but if there’s no one else here—”
“Hold it,” said Shar. “What about Creirwy? She was with us. Cer—Hafez made a point of bringing her along.”
“She must have helped break him out,” said Stan. “He would have needed an accomplice. She also has the kind of Celtic magic that replicated Shar’s sword. Why didn’t I see that earlier?”
“I don’t think that’s what happened,” I
said. “Creirwy looked unhappy the last time we saw her. If she’s an ally, I doubt she’s a willing one. I also think Hafez started coercing her relatively recently, or we would have noticed.”
“The false sword would have to have been created a while ago,” said Stan.
“Yes, but now that we know Hafez can become a copy of Ceridwen and probably had that ability for some time, he could have been the one to counterfeit the sword. He would have been able to use Celtic magic—”
We were close enough to the front door to hear it open, but the atmosphere blocked any attempt to tell who it was.
“We’re still invisible and inaudible to others,” said Tal. “I doubt this is just some random passerby, though. Viviane, Carla, let’s reinforce—”
Three men dress the way Hafez’s security men in New Karnak were ran through the door and shot at us. Their eyes didn’t suggest they saw us, but the room was small enough, and we were numerous enough to make a good target for random firing.
Tal was hit in the right hand and lost his grip on his sword, which fell to the floor, its flames extinguished. Gordy took a hit in the neck and fell, clutching at his throat in an effort to stop the bleeding.
“Magic aim!” yelled Shar. “They’re hitting spots not protected by armor!”
If the security men had machine guns, they would likely have wounded or killed us all. By the time they got off a second shot, we were all on the floor, except for Khalid, who floated just below ceiling level, and Magnus, who had to crouch to keep playing the lyre.
A bullet struck Eva in the arm while she was trying to position herself to fire an arrow. Jimmie scrambled to her side, heedless of the danger. Khalid returned fire. His arrow hit one of the security men in his shooting hand. He dropped the gun and yelled in pain.
The other two kept firing. To my horror, Lucas, blurring from his fast movement, zig-zagged his way toward them. I was uncomfortably aware that I had never returned the Patua of Bessouro to him, and he wore no armor, so a bullet could kill him.
