Caller of Lightning

by Eytan Kollin

  Ben blinked, uncomfortably aware of the weight of the Key around his neck. George knew . . .

  “We need to know where the Key came from, how you came into possession of it, and if you are aware of any similar artifacts in the Colonies. It is your duty as our subject to deliver to us any information that is required for the preservation of the Crown and the defense of this Kingdom. The great and almighty God has manifested his power, stretched out His hand to shower upon us all the blessings of peace. We will take up that power and the responsibility of bearing it, for there is no one else so suited to the concern.”

  King George took a step forward and Ben took a step back. For being seventy-six, the King emanated power and control.

  “Bring us whatever star metal you can hunt down. Deliver it to Thomas Penn. If you have not brought us any more star metal in two months’ time, by the first day the comet appears, we will assume you have committed the treasonous act of refusing to obey a direct order from your King. If you attempt to leave London in that time, again, we will assume you have committed a treasonous act. In either case, we will then provide a warrant for torture and see if peine forte et dure will loosen your tongue.”

  Ben contemplated His Majesty for, again, a moment too long, and Thomas Penn stepped forward just as King George’s ire began to make itself further known. “If I may, Your Majesty.” King George waved his arm toward Ben.

  “His Majesty is prepared to ensure your success and the success of your family and friends. Assist and aid your sovereign and King in his just cause, and he has commanded that I relinquish the arguments I make for the proprietors’ absolute power over Pennsylvania and provide the Assembly the freedoms they seek. Additionally, he will assist you and your son in rising to the highest levels of society. He is prepared to grant you land for your own colony beyond the Appalachians, larger than any currently in place. All this, though he could command it as your King and offer nothing in return. He could even offer you a quick death for disloyalty should you refuse him. This is something you would do well to remember.”

  Ben appeared stunned. “I hardly know what to think about His Majesty’s offer. I don’t know how much help I can really be, but I will make the effort to locate the star metal. I appreciate His Majesty’s kind and gracious nature and value the effort he is willing to take on my and my son’s behalf, things I could never even dream of accomplishing. I have seen some of the effects of this star metal, and I agree that it is extremely dangerous.”

  “Excellent,” Thomas said carefully, “I appreciate you understanding the seriousness of the situation, and what is the correct thing to do for King and Country. You have but one question left to answer: where did you get the Key?”

  Ben had not done well against Penn before, but he gambled by once more relying on absolute simple truths to tell many lies. “It was given to me. I received a crate from London with journals as well, delivered from the Royal Society. The Key was imbued with Divine Spark when I performed my electrical methodology to pull fire from the heavens. A man broke into my house and destroyed the journal.” He glanced acerbically over to Thomas.

  “I see.” Thomas turned to King George, “Your Majesty,” he said as he bowed, “do I have your leave to return Mr. Franklin to his home?”

  The King waved absently, nodding.

  Ben also bowed to the King, then Thomas walked Ben to the closed door and, after a moment, pulled it open for him. Ben saw the hallway of his own lodgings and gratefully stepped through the doorway as quickly as he could.

  After Ben had departed, Thomas returned to the chamber and bowed to his King as he asked, “Are you certain it was wise to offer to reward him with rich lands, Your Majesty? His loyalty has not been won. He could bring you a stirrup while hiding a carriage. Much as he did while not telling us where he got the Key—or even that he still carries it.”

  “I noticed that he relied on the truth to hide what we sought, yes. He is not an unclever man. Yet,” King George turned to Thomas, “remember, what I give the father will in time pass to the son, should either of them survive what is coming. The son is far more suitable to our purposes. Sons often are.”

  Thomas Penn thought about his own father and smiled. “Your Majesty is wise in all things. Why not allow me to simply pry that information from him and take the Key?”

  “Everything in its own time, Thomas.” George the Second walked slowly to the carving and knelt before it, tracing a finger along its ridges. “Have you heard of the man who carved this star chart?”

  Thomas walked up beside him. “Only in passing. I can’t recall his name.”

  George the Second nodded. “His name was Hew Draper. He was born on the 26th of August 1531. The night of his birth, the comet was overhead, and he was born to the power. Everything I’ve read of him in the journals and communications of the early Invisible College say the man was a true sorcerer. He confessed to knowledge of magic but denied practicing sorcery. After his power was stripped mostly away, he was imprisoned here in 1561.”

  Thomas leaned down and studied the carving in the wall. “What is the purpose of it?”

  “No one knows. I believe he was attempting to predict the next passing of the comet. It is based on this that we begin the first part of the ritual at Christmas. It is rumored that he died in 1606, sitting below this carving, less than a year before he would have seen the return of his full power.” King George dug the tip of his cane into the stone floor and shook his head. “Do you understand?”

  Thomas shook his head. “I do not, Your Majesty.”

  The King peered at his protégé, then sighed. “Only a damn fool trusts in books and spells. Use people against themselves. Use your own muscles. We have three months to complete the ritual and bring the comet close enough. Until we possess it all, relying on magic for anything other than that goal only gets us where Hew Draper ended. And that’s why we will seize it all. You outthink them, then you outfight them, then when the magic is all they have left, you take that away too.”

  “I understand. We will let Mr. Franklin do our work for us, and even the act of his hiding things will reveal to us that there is something to be hidden. And with that, we can learn the truth.”

  King George the Second nodded. “Exactly.”

  1759

  The

  Collinson Home

  Ridgeway House,

  Mill Hill, Middlesex

  January 13th

  33

  The Last Passing

  of the Comet

  Him bið swā þām trēowe þe bið āplantod nēah wætera rynum, þæt selð his wæstmas tō rihtre tīde, and his lēaf and his bladu ne fealwiað ne ne sēariað; eall him cymð tō gōde þæt þæt hē dēð. Ac þā unrihtwīsan ne bēoð nā swelċe, ne him ēac swā ne limpð; ac hīe bēoð dūste ġelīcran, þonne hit wind tōblǣwð. Þȳ ne ārīsað þā unrihtwīsan on dōmes dæġ, ne þā synfullan ne bēoð on ġeþeahte þǣra rihtwīsena; for þām God wāt hwelċne weġ þā rihtwīsan ġeearnedon, ac þā unrihtwīsan cumað tō wītum. Sealm

  Ben sat in Peter Collinson’s study with those, and only those, he trusted to be included in what would now become at least a conspiracy, perhaps even a rebellion. Peter stood to the side of the of his desk, listening intently.

  Ben wished that he could have invited other members of the Royal Society, like Ferguson and Sir Pringle, but was hesitant to involve either of his two friends who lacked the knowledge his arcane experimentation. In the end, neither of them was a close enough compatriot to cross this bridge.

  And then there was Polly.

  Polly sat in a comfortable blue-upholstered oak visitor’s chair to the side of the door. She had hesitated only briefly when Ben said her mother could not be included in their discussions, but she had decided to move forward even if that meant excluding Mama. Polly, ever the pragmatist, had to admit it was unclear where her mother’s loyalties would lay.

  Her struggle with her loyalty to her mother made Ben painfully aware of t
he one person he most wished could be with him. He swiftly banished the sentiment. His son could not be trusted in this matter. Maybe someday he could be, but that day was not now. That left three people, including himself, to deal with what Ben had learned from Thomas Penn and the King in the Tower of London. After concluding his tale, Ben was greeted with bare incredulity from Peter and a curious and engaged demeanor from Polly. “As I said, he mistook his previous victory over me for me being an inferior intellect to his.”

  “This is terrible news,” Peter said at last. “I don’t see how this can be.”

  “Are you sure it was actually the King?” Polly asked. “Could it not have been a simulacra spell of some sort? Perhaps a glamour?”

  Ben smiled at the incisive question and the lack of fear the workings of her mind revealed. “I wondered much the same thing. Though I cannot say for a certainty, if it is not truly the King, perhaps Thomas Penn controls the only public-facing form of King George. If that is true, then as we unravel this conspiracy, we will find ourselves saving the King as well as the kingdom. But I do not believe this to be the case. Conspiracies rarely hold up to the light and are often dispelled by the simplest applications of research and logic. Unfortunately, there is more.”

  Peter’s already troubled expression became even more sober. “More?”

  “I have a summary of the translated journals from Anthony Askew. I have let Polly read it already, and I think you need to see it as well,” Ben said, handing a letter to Peter. “Considering the contents, Anthony has had them removed to a secure location in hopes they can be protected. It has become apparent why they are so sought after.”

  Peter put down the pages and nodded grimly. Polly was not surprised when Ben spoke first. “As you can see, it is pretty clear why the King and his faction are so desperate to get their hands on these journals. And why they lied to me.”

  “I can hardly believe what they relate,” said Peter, obviously shaken.

  “I can,” replied Polly. She sounded sad. “It makes so many other things that have happened so clear.”

  “What do we actually know?” demanded Peter. “I mean, so much of this letter and your report of the King’s bargain must be taken on faith.”

  “Peter, I’m afraid we know a lot more than it may feel we do. Let me tie together what is in those papers so that you may read them later at your leisure.” Ben answered gently as he held up a hand and started ticking off points, “From Anthony: this book appears to be written by a man who has been alive since the time of the last Anglo-Saxon king of England. From the Royal Society, this man, then known as Myrddin Emræs, later became known as Merlinus Ambrosius. We thought he was millennia old but may have gotten his age wrong.”

  Ben glanced at the other two, then continued, “Per Myrddin himself, he was drunk with Geoffrey of Monmouth when they concocted the Merlin myth. Per the Society of Numbers and others: in our own time, he has adopted the monikers ‘Lord One,’ ‘Gasparini,’ and ‘Mr. Robert Overton.’ Once again, from Anthony, as well as our own observations: the handwriting is remarkably similar throughout all the journals, written by a polyglot who employed an idiosyncratic mix of Anglo-Saxon, Latin, Old French, runic Norse, Old English, Elizabethan English, and more modern usages—thus debunking the different writers idea.”

  Peter breathed deeply to calm a shaking hand and took a sip of lemon water.

  “Judging solely by appearance, the journals run the gamut from truly ancient to merely old. They can be easily dated as they incorporate known events in history, minor and major, as well as unknown events of seeming import. Our newly gained insights also explain Myrddin’s efforts to find and destroy the journals. The destructive force the comet can unleash is terrifying, and the King wants that power. Desperately. The King who, I will mention, was born just after the last passing of the comet.”

  “I know all of this.” Peter shook his head. “I am sorry for my attitude. I just don’t want to believe it.”

  “I feel so very sorry for Myrddin,” Polly interrupted. “He discovered magic before anyone in the known world. He discovered the power of the star metal that falls with every passing of the comet. He made the connection to how much danger the world would be in if that knowledge and power ever got into the wrong hands. He’s almost prophetic in how he describes what will happen and the consequences for later times. And then he apprenticed the man who would try to steal that power from the heavens.”

  “I am afraid that might have been a self-fulfilling prophecy: by describing the dangerous power of the star metal, he essentially created a manual on how to use it for evil; he taught the power-hungry how to use it to gain power,” Ben sighed. “I once commented, to much public delight, that with these pretty systems we build, it is only a matter of time before we must be called up to destroy them.”

  “We often create what we most fear,” agreed Peter. “It is poetic, even if I disapprove of the practice of quoting oneself.”

  “It’s such bad poetry, though.” Polly was indignant, as only the young can be, at the machinations of life that seem so obvious and trite to the old. “He gathered a group of people attuned to magic to help him protect the world from its abuse, and those same people and their descendants plotted to become the abusers. Myrddin created the situation where the King’s faction could hope to take advantage of the star metal’s power, unconcerned that it would destroy the countless lives. It’s rank. It’s rotten. It’s just so unfair.”

  “All very true, Polly. But now we must clean up his mess or, if these journals are to be believed, perish.” Ben continued, “Myrddin has expressed a great deal of bitterness in his more recent journals, but I don’t see how he can blame anyone but himself. He trusted the wrong people. He made bad choices. Now we have to figure out how to undo the damage and prevent catastrophe.”

  Polly shifted uncomfortably. “So, if the King’s faction is merely trying to gain more power, isn’t that what nations and empires always do? They have more powerful tools, I will grant you. Any advantage they can get would always be irresistible to them.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Franklin. “What I can’t understand is why they would choose the path they have. When they use the comet to cast their dark spell, it will destroy the world as we know it. The world will know only fear and suffering. Supposedly, it will call forth monsters and creatures from other realms and worlds beyond our understanding. A return to the times of giants and fairies, dragons and mages is what he says. It will be Hell on Earth. And this will be done so the elect will be able to create what they believe will be an immortal empire, where the most evil and selfish desires of favored members of the King’s faction live forever. They believe they will be able to do as they wish, to whomever they wish, for well-nigh unto eternity.”

  “They will divorce this world from God’s creation,” shuddered Peter. “They will deny themselves, and all who dwell upon the Earth, any hope of salvation. They will create Hell so they may rule it.”

  “It is clear from those journals that Myrddin believes that without that metal, the King’s faction won’t be able to cast its spell,” Polly said. “I say we steal their hoard of star metal artifacts and make sure they can never even try to do this again.”

  “But, Polly,” said Peter, “that means we will have to move directly against the King. And steal from the King’s holdings. That’s treason. That way is madness incarnate.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir,” Polly said respectfully. “The way I see it, if I have to choose between a King who doesn’t care about me and is satisfied to let most of the world die for his personal gain, it’s not a hard choice.”

  Ben nodded in agreement. “The King’s faction’s heartfelt belief is that they are the only people who are worthy to live. I shudder to think what they will do with that much magic. Are we to simply sit back and let the world be destroyed because an evil man was crowned king?”

  “Bloody hells, this argument is pointless.” Polly slapped the desk to get their atten
tion. Peter winced at the use of profanity, but he didn’t interrupt. She grabbed the papers and quickly scanned through them. “See what Anthony says here: one percent of one percent of one percent are born with magic in their veins. That means there are what, four hundred people, maybe, who can use magic in the world? Look, here. At least a dozen mages are here in London. It’s disproportionate, but either or both of us is on that list. What’s worse is that of those that can’t, one in two will pay the price with their lives if the King casts the spell Myrddin is talking about in the journals. That is hundreds of millions of deaths across the globe. That’s half a million deaths just in this city. He isn’t a man, he’s a bloody monster.”

  “Ben, Polly, this is treason. I cannot simply agree to treason. Can you not see that? At least not without more proof. We are taking Myrddin’s story as true; we are holding that your conclusions of your experience are all there is to know about things, to understand the truth. The Truth is not usually so easily named.”

  “We must oppose evil, Mr. Collinson,” Polly said. She truly didn’t understand why he was being so cautious, so obtuse. “Surely that is what God demands of us. We see the evil. Now we must stop it. Or try our best to. Anything less is to be a part of the evil, should we refuse to stand against it.”

  “Thee has so much vigor, so much passion, Polly. But I cannot be swayed by thee. It is thy very passion that will divide thee from the Lord’s path and blind thee to the Lord’s will. I cannot so quickly discern what the Lord’s will is in this matter.” Peter Collinson rose from the table. “I am used to sitting with my fellow Quakers and having their aid in understanding the Lord’s way forward, but I cannot expose any of them to the consequences of this undertaking. I must sit in silence and wait for the Spirit to light the way to life and darken the path that leads to death. I cannot turn my back on the Truth, no matter where it leads, but first I must feel that I know the way forward in Truth. Please forgive me. I will send Mary to attend to your needs. Understand, I want to oppose this, to know more before we act in such a treasonous way, but I cannot listen only to my own wishes in this matter.” He clasped Ben’s shoulder and smiled sadly to Polly, then left quietly.