The Conservation of Magic

by Michael W. Layne

  “Chris, you’ve done great so far, but I still need you to get with Melanie after we finish chatting. She needs to understand what you’re doing, get it ready to download, and figure out the best way to train the rest of the staff. Did you find any good uses for my father’s name.”

  He motioned for her to sit down at the lab bench with him. Once they were both seated, he folded his hands in front of him on the bench.

  “I know how important this is to you and to the world, but after a new name is completely worked out, it still takes a couple of hours just to load its complete definition and all the proper tags into the master lexicon on the server cubes and then another hour or so to propagate the name throughout all the contextual libraries. After that, Melanie and her folks have to run a full backup of everything to make sure they have a clean copy for disaster recovery. After four or five hours, maybe, I finally get to start downloading it to my cube. I have to update my copies of the corporate libraries and then sync them to update my personalized contextual mappings—what I’m trying to say is that I don’t have time to work with Melanie on this.”

  “We need to have my father’s name in the lexicon, Chris.”

  “I’m sorry, if I wasn’t clear. It will take Melanie and her group four or five hours to get me what I need. I never said it would take me that long.”

  “Get on with it, Chris.”

  “I’ve been working with Ohman’s creation name for the last couple of hours. That’s why the room looks like it does. I used his name once in conjunction with some minor commands, and the whole room practically exploded. Best I can figure is that somehow the part of his name that relates to deception makes natural materials more vulnerable to some of our basic commands, and the effects are amplified.”

  Chris’s unorthodox method and his amazing results stunned her once again, reassuring her that he was the right choice for what she had in mind.

  She was going to have to be direct. Talking around the subject would never work with him—he was too perceptive.

  She took a breath.

  “Chris, most of the things I told everyone in the conference room were dead on. We need to prepare in case Eudroch comes here, but to tell you the truth, I don’t think he’s going to show.”

  “Then why all the fire drills and the prep?” Chris said.

  “Because he’s already been here.”

  Chris’ eyes went wide and his lips parted.

  “If he’s already been here, then what are we preparing for?”

  “Eudroch was here…and he killed my father,” she said, tearing up. “Ohman is dead, Chris. It’s just me now. I’m the only one left to stop what’s going on.”

  Chris was silent for a few moments before continuing in a soft voice.

  “I’m sorry about your dad, Cara.”

  He touched her shoulder compassionately.

  “But you have the entire company. You know we’re all dedicated to stopping Eudroch. If he succeeds, it’s our world that gets torched too, you know. Plus, you said that this Merrick guy is supposed to be able to match Eudroch’s power.”

  “He has the potential, but he won’t stand a chance against Eudroch until he has some time to learn his craft and most of all, to remember his creation name. Time is something he doesn’t have right now. I want to fortify Rune Corp and bring Merrick here to develop his power.”

  “You said that he was safe at the Earth City.”

  “I thought he was, but I believe that Eudroch and Merrick are both the Queen’s sons, even though the Queen claims that they belonged to my father. I’m going back in the morning to get Merrick because he’s not safe there with her. If I don’t make it back, you and your team may have to come in and extract Merrick yourselves. You might even have to rescue me as well.”

  “What team are you talking about?”

  “The one you’re going to form as soon as you’re done here. My only requirement is that Melanie has to be on it. You’ll need her cool head and her analytical thinking if you have to face Eudroch.”

  “Fair enough,” Chris said. “When do we move out?”

  “Just get them ready and stand by. Give me until tomorrow evening before mobilizing.”

  “Why not just take us with you in the morning? I can get a team of five, including me, together in an hour—train them to use the construct in two. We could be ready by sunrise.”

  “I don’t want to bring a team of armed humans into the Earth City unless absolutely necessary. Let me try to get him out first. I’ll be back as soon as possible, hopefully with Merrick. While I’m gone, I’m relying on you for a lot, Chris. I just wanted you to know.”

  He turned slightly red at her compliment.

  “There’s just one more thing,” she said.

  Cara reached into her pocket and pulled out five Rune Corp badges. They looked similar to the ones that every employee had to wear while in the building, but they were jet black and embedded with different, interlocking patterns. He took the badges in his hand and looked at her, his eyebrows raised in question.

  “You and your team need to wear these if you leave the building. They’ll allow you to be outside…with your memory intact.”

  It took a few seconds for even Chris’s brain to process what she had just told him.

  “What do you mean, with our memory intact?”

  “Each time you leave Rune Corp, your memory of what you’re working on, of magic, of everything you know about the other world that’s out there—your memory of these things is suppressed.”

  Chris stood up and walked a few steps away from her. He turned to face her again. His lips were moving without any sound like he was figuring out a complex equation in his head.

  “Every night, when I go home, I can’t remember what I’ve done all day long here. All my work is erased?”

  “Suppressed.”

  “It’s the same thing, Cara. I knew you and your dad had this thing about keeping everything secret, but I didn’t know you took it this far. That’s unethical, and you’re only leveling with me now because you need my help. I should walk out of here and not come back.”

  “I know you’re mad,” she said. “My father came up with the idea to suppress employees’ memories because it was safer for them and the rest of society that way. We couldn’t have a whole work force walking around in the outside world, talking about what we doing here, with no safeguards. There’s no way we could depend on every employee to keep his or her mouth shut all the time. Not about this. Eventually, our secret would get out. You know the trouble that would cause. Like you said, it’s your world, too.”

  Chris started to talk, then shoved his hands into his pockets and exhaled slowly.

  “What you’re saying makes sense, Cara, but I’m still angry.”

  He walked to the door and wrapped his hand around the doorknob.

  “I know you can’t trust every employee with keeping those kinds of secrets. I get that. What pisses me off is that you couldn’t trust me with them. And by the way, if Eudroch comes back and has to fight his way into this place, he’s not going to care about the rest of Tysons Corner finding out. Everyone will know about magic and all your deceit will be for nothing.”

  She watched silently as he opened the door and left, slamming it behind him.

  “If Eudroch is successful,” Cara whispered, “it won’t matter what people know.”

  #

  Chris slammed his office door and slid into his leather desk chair. He understood why Cara and Ohman had to deceive their employees. Rune Corp’s work couldn’t be leaked to the human world. He wasn’t angry—just embarrassed for thinking that he was more than just an employee to Cara. In fact, she had entrusted him with more of the company’s secrets than any other employee—all of them except the fact that his memory, along with everyone else’s, was being constantly suppressed and refreshed every time he entered or exited the building.

  He held up his Rune Corp badge in front of his face. He took out one of the spe
cial badges Cara had just given him and compared them.

  By angling them so that the overhead lights struck them just right, he could see faint lines etched into the stone of the cards. The rune markings on the badges couldn’t mean anything special. Chris knew that no one had yet figured out how to put the words from the dragon tongues into simple shapes like runes. The difference in their power had to rest in the stone itself and the combinations of names that Ohman or Cara had used to initialize or enchant each of the badges.

  Every employee except Ohman and Cara probably had the same kind of badge that he had. Now he knew that it probably activated a pre-recorded spell every time one of them went through the security doors. The lengthy security warnings everyone was forced to listen to whenever entering or exiting the building were the perfect cover, while the enchantment was played in the background probably beyond the normal range of human hearing.

  He tried to recall a time when he was at home or away from the office but still thinking about work. He felt like he thought about work all the time when he was away from the building. He could remember telling friends about his good days and his bad ones and even how well or poorly his presentations had gone. But now that he tried, he couldn’t remember discussing any details with anyone. He had certainly never taken any work home with him before. Unlike normal laptops, cubes were clearly not allowed outside the building. Even if someone smuggled a cube out successfully, turns out they wouldn’t remember what it was or how to use it anyway.

  He hated what they had done, but he had to admit that it was brilliant in its own way.

  Chris looked again at the new badge Cara had given him. For now at least, he could come and go as he pleased with his memory in tact. But as soon as Eudroch was taken care of, Cara would want the badges back, and he had no way of making a copy of one of them for later use.

  Helping Cara stop Eudroch was all well and good. He knew he had to do his best, but he didn’t want to go back to being one of Cara’s sheep afterwards.

  He had to figure a way to get an extra cube and all of its accessories out, unnoticed, while he still had the badge. He’d have to stash the cube somewhere safe along with detailed instructions on how to use it and about Rune Corp. The first steps would be easy enough, but he had to figure out a way to make sure that he would find the cube after his memory had been washed away again.

  First, he’d have to do all he could to help Cara and even Merrick until Eudroch was stopped. To do that, he needed a team. Cara had given him five badges in total—enough for him and four others. He leaned back in his chair and searched his mind for candidates. Cara said that Melanie was a must, so she was in. That was okay with him. She was an order freak and all about process and following the rules, but besides him, she was the most experienced at using the cubes and was good at training other people. He was also sure she could be counted on if things started heating up.

  Working in the lab all day, Chris socialized mainly with Melanie and Cara, but he needed three more people who were naturals at the cubes. He slipped on his headset and brought up the company’s Human Resources database stored in his cube. It seemed strange to be using the cube for such a menial task, but Rune Corp didn’t own a single real computer. Everything was run through their system of cubes, providing everything from cafeteria menus to workshops on how to pronounce creation names with the help of the throat enunciators.

  Employee aptitude scores were normally kept confidential, but one of the advantages of building the construct for the whole company was being able to access any information whenever he needed it. He brought up the scores and sorted from highest to lowest and then by hire date until he had narrowed his search to five people who were relatively new hires. He could have gone for some of the employees who had been here longer, but he wanted lots of energy and enthusiasm. More importantly, he wanted a team that would actually follow his orders.

  His top five choices had all scored close to one another and well above the rest of the new hires from the last six months. He could only take three of them and didn’t have time for lengthy interviews, so he started at the top of the list and called the first three in turn. Then he called Melanie. Within minutes, four anxious faces were sitting in his office, waiting for him to explain how they were supposed to defend Rune Corp from the mighty Eudroch and possibly rescue Merrick and even Cara from the Earth City itself.

  CHAPTER 21

  THE RUSH HOUR was winding down on the toll road as Mona and Eudroch left Tysons Corner. At least she had convinced him that sometimes it was practical, and comfortable, to use cars to travel around the area. Mona felt like a piece of her memory was missing—as if nothing had been real for days, but the man reclining in the seat next to her was indisputable. She was sure she had entered the Rune Corp building just a couple of days ago but couldn’t remember anything that had happened while inside. She briefly glanced at Eudroch before looking back at the road in front of her. It seemed like they had been driving around since they left Rune Corp, with Eudroch acting almost like a bloodhound, trying to detect the faintest trace of Merrick in the air. They had gone back to the hospital, the bars in Old Town, and even his apartment, but still no sign of Merrick. Mona was beginning to lose hope of ever seeing him again.

  “I know you told me what happened at Rune Corp, how we were lucky to escape with our lives, but I still don’t understand why I can’t remember anything,” she said.

  “The traitor enchanted the doors to his fortress to keep the truth from the humans who work there. It makes them forget what they do at work every time they leave the building, and it restores their memories every time they enter. Unfortunately, the same precautions caused you to lose your recollection of what happened inside as well.”

  “I don’t have much of a choice except to believe you about that, but I don’t care how much lightning you summon with those noises you make, before I go anywhere else, you need to tell me who the hell you are and why you want to find Merrick so badly.”

  Eudroch pursed his lips and made a deliberate sound of controlling his breathing.

  “I’ll answer your questions this one time, but I won’t make a habit of it,” he said, turning slightly toward her, while she drove. “Those noises I make are words from the original creation language.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You don’t have to understand a dragon’s tongue to be controlled by it any more than you have to understand genetics and DNA, there were words, and the words were…well before Zoroaster, before your cave dwelling ancestors, before the first monkey grunted for a stick…there were dragons. They brought this world into existence with their words, and even today, their languages contain the keys to everything that has ever been and will ever be.”

  “Dragons,” she said with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “That’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t explain anything I’m concerned about.”

  “Patience,” he said. “There is no difference between something’s true name and the thing itself. Each of the four Drayoom families is trying to recreate the creation language of their patron dragon—the words that their dragon used to help create the world. The families guard the names they’ve collected with their lives, passing down their knowledge orally to each new generation. The words in the Fire Dragon lexicon have been passed down to me as one of the Fire Keepers, but compared to a dragon, I know nothing. That’s still a good bit more than you know, however. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  Mona nodded her head, staring out the front window at the taillights of the car in front of her.

  “You’re threatening me.”

  “Exactly.”

  They drove on in silence for a few minutes before Eudroch turned to her again.

  “I still want your assistance, because having you along will give me a better chance of saving Merrick’s life. He might trust me more readily, if you are with me when we meet. Make no mistake, however, I will find him, and I will save him, with
or without your help. You are dispensable…but preferable.”

  Mona nodded. She could have made a break for it several times over the last couple of days, but she had believed that she retained some degree of leverage with Eudroch, because he needed her help. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Eudroch stared out the front window of the car. Slowly, he started to speak again.

  “We’ve existed much longer than your species, you know—since the beginning of the world. The first of my kind was created from the elements by the four dragons. We have existed for so long. Even a few thousand years ago we were still one family, but our people started to divide, creating their own families, each worshiping a different dragon with their own legends and prophecies. Our once great family was soon torn asunder. After the first Great War, the four families dispersed to different parts of the globe, fighting sporadically over the years, but tolerating each other’s presence essentially in peace. Merrick and I were born on the last day of a hundred years of peace…a harmony that our births ended.”

  “The families went to war just because you two were born?”

  “Since the first war, the mixing of blood between families has been outlawed. The Earth Clan, the MacKervals, and the Fire Tribe, the Viracocha, see each other and their dragons as dire enemies, and for thousands of years, the family bloodlines remained pure.”

  “You’re kidding me, right? I don’t know how big these families are, but with a small enough gene pool…”

  “Of course the lack of genetic diversity gradually weakened the intelligence and the magic of the families, but family purity was still more important. They held onto that belief until the birth defects began.”

  “That’s what happens when you love your family a little too much,” she said.

  Eudroch grunted and glared at her briefly.

  “Children started to be born with abnormally low levels of magical energy and with physical deformities that no Drayoom had ever seen before. It was this that brought the families together again to discuss the survival of our species. They sent out scouts to your world to learn about your science. As a result, individual Drayoom were handpicked to mix with members from other families in the hope that their children would be born stronger and more robust. That’s when the true problems began.”