by Lou Hoffmann
Lucky only nodded. He did understand the ideas, but if Thurlock needed to do all this preparation and instruction, he was doing complicated magic—way beyond anything Lucky could really grasp.
“Good,” Thurlock said. “I’d like you to consult your own magic now, if you will. I know the Key can help protect you, especially if you set a Wish in place. I’m not sure if your blade can help. Can you find out?”
Lucky didn’t want the Key to only protect himself. Without explaining he took a few seconds to hold the Key over his heart and compose a Wish for Thurlock’s well-being. He decided he didn’t need to add a request for himself—that seemed to be part of the Key’s permanent agenda.
Next, he went deeper inside himself where a constant awareness of Ciarrah always waited and called her name in his mind.
“Blade-keeper,” she responded.
Lucky had recently realized he didn’t have to put all his thoughts into words for Ciarrah to “hear” them, and now he simply tried to send everything he knew about the situation to her in a single package. Then he added his question, “Can you help us?”
Rather than explaining in words, she showed him what she needed and what she could do. Quietly, feeling like he was in some kind of trance, he loosened her from the sheath attached to his belt and plunged her blade into the ground, with her hilt in contact with the wizard’s staff. The hard-packed soil and stone yielded to her like so much dust.
“Oh,” Thurlock said, blinking. Then he smiled. “She is indeed a lovely spirit, isn’t she?” It was a statement of pleasant surprise rather than a question, and he didn’t wait for an answer. “So, when we’re ready to begin, take hold of my staff—like we did in Isa’s tower—and do not let go until I tell you to. You will need to open the Sight, Luccan, but do it with your physical eyes closed, and open it slowly, only as far as you need in order to See the next destination for the power I’ll be feeding back into those tendrils of darkness. I don’t understand what your Blade can do, but I believe it will boost our abilities, which means your use of the Sight can hopefully remain very limited.” He stopped, shaking his head in obvious foreboding. “I’m afraid it might cause you pain, to use the Sight. If it gets too much, speak my name, and I’ll stop the process. Otherwise, speak only if I ask you a question, and don’t, don’t let go!”
Thurlock stopped, looking Lucky directly in the eye as if checking his response to the words. Lucky thought he should say something, but he felt insulated, as if he was already falling into some kind of trance state. It didn’t frighten him—he recognized it as the gathering of his personal forces. He nodded and maybe smiled gently.
“We begin, then.”
Lucky reached out for Thurlock’s sun-metal-shod staff, but just before he made contact, he sent a message through mental channels to Han. “I love you, Uncle. Know that always.” Perhaps it was overkill, but—just in case things went poorly—he wanted Han to know. Before his fingers made contact with the staff, he had just enough time to wish he could also send a message to Rio. But… maybe, he thought, maybe I did.
Time stopped, or perhaps ceased to exist, the moment Thurlock let his magic flow. Lucky kept his eyes closed as instructed and—firmly linked to Ciarrah, the Key, and the staff—he immersed himself in the magical environment the wizard’s rune-spell created. It felt odd, at first, a climate simultaneously like the concentrated air inside a hothouse and like a rarefied high-mountain atmosphere. It would have been a heady feeling, breathing air thickened and thinned with magic, if it hadn’t been for the darkness pressing upward and trying to rise through the soles of his feet.
“When you’re ready, use the Sight the way I told you. If you can’t do it, tell me.”
Lucky hadn’t expected speech inside Thurlock’s magical dome at all, and he jumped at the sound of the wizard’s voice despite its low, measured tone. He stopped himself just in time from opening his eyes. The Key seemed to send a pulse of golden calm directly into his chest, and it helped. I can, he thought; then he did.
Recalling everything he’d learned about keeping the Sight small, he carefully limited it to sensing the reaching tendrils of magic at his feet, then allowed it to follow them to the shadow column rooted deep in the ground. His Vision stalled in its upward progress just below the anchoring sigil he’d seen nested in the column of dark magic. Lucky was afraid to Look at it, even with lidded eyes and limited Sight, sure that the blazing symbol was what burned him before.
As he hesitated, he became aware of a gentle bump against the Sight from below. It was Thurlock’s power playing follow the leader, or maybe bumper cars, with his Sight—an odd sensation.
“Are you all right, Luccan?”
“Yes, sir, I….”
“Your hesitation to Look here is understandable. I’m going to try something, and it might feel a little weird to you. Okay?”
“This whole thing already feels plenty weird.”
Thurlock actually chuckled. “I’ll bet it does, young man. Working in tandem like this is something wizards and witches usually don’t even try until they’ve had many years of practice, and some never dare. You’re doing well. We need to defuse this thing, so to speak. Once I begin, things will happen very fast. We won’t have any more time for talk. Ready now. I’m going to advance my power to encompass yours, and then I want you to let yourself See the root of this magical structure we’re examining. Your Key and your Blade, I think, are doing something like keeping your Vision unfocused. That’s perfect. Keep the Sight open just enough to find our target. As you see it, I will—for lack of a better word—punch it with my power. Understand?”
That tickled Lucky despite everything and he said, “Punch its lights out, right?”
“Precisely.”
Lucky sensed Thurlock’s power enveloping his Sight, overtaking it a fraction of an inch at a time. As more and more of it was covered, the Sight dimmed, but got sharper, like putting on prescription sunglasses. When Thurlock’s magic had almost completely blanketed his, Lucky let his Vision rise to just above ground level where the dreaded, dangerous symbol lay.
He gasped, seeing the sigil clearly for the first time. It was a six-rayed sun, the circle formed by a scarlet serpent eating its tail, the rays red-black like molten metal. Something about it seemed the polar opposite of the Key of Behliseth, and that instrument whined and flashed as if in pain.
An instant later, the sigil flashed too bright for even Thurlock’s power to protect Luccan’s Eyes, and he screamed, his head exploding with pain. He tried to let go of the staff, but Ciarrah said, “No,” and wrapped her light around his hand, binding him to the staff. She pushed through the channels spied out by Luccan’s Vision and met Thurlock’s magic where it struggled to push through the tentacles of dark power. She added her strength to Thurlock’s and, as if in fury, gave a mighty push. The combined magics blazed through the enemy’s trap, destroying every bit of darkness in its path.
Chapter Thirteen: The Followers of the Simple Way
THEY’D WALKED the horses a short distance from the site of the magical roadblock and rested just long enough to drink some water and breathe, regaining some measure of strength. The magical work had exhausted Lucky, but he recovered quickly, and he joined Thurlock in looking around for what that dark magic had been made to protect. They found nothing more than an abandoned warehouse that was littered with animal bones and smelled like blood.
“I can smell magic here too,” Thurlock said, “and it isn’t the good kind.”
Thurlock said he’d report the place and their findings to the Watch and the Council. “But for now, I want to move on. I’d still like to get where we were going. A late lunch at my favorite café will be the perfect antidote to the creepy feeling this place has left on me.”
The character of the cityscape around them changed. They’d come to what Lucky at first thought was a park, but after a time he realized they were riding through a long-abandoned, derelict part of the city where Ethra was forcibly reclaiming the
land. Vines grew over ruined walls, and young trees broke through shattered foundations; here and there a broken cart or a child’s wagon lay rotting, half-hidden in weeds, moss, and dust.
“Why?” Lucky asked, somehow thinking Thurlock would know just what he was asking.
Thurlock’s response began with a snort. Then, with vexation Lucky knew was feigned, he said, “Why is always a good question, lad. I might even have an answer, if I knew what you were asking about.”
Lucky laughed out loud, and it felt as if he hadn’t done that for a very long time—which wasn’t true. Was it? It must be this awful city making him feel like all the shine had been taken from the sunny day. But Thurlock apparently appreciated the laughter, for he turned a genuine smile on Lucky and reached over to pat his shoulder.
Though the moment had lightened the weight of the world on his shoulders, Lucky still wanted an answer to his question. “Why is the city changing, Thurlock? What’s causing the… decay—is that the right word?”
“Indeed it’s a very good word, I think. Unfortunately, it turns out I do not have the answer to that question. I believe the rot is trickling down from the top, because that’s the way human calamity works.”
“So maybe the Mahros-Hehlios thing? Do you think it’s all the same—the Terrathians, like at home?”
“Maybe, and maybe. I will say, when someone purposely turns people toward fear and appeasement of a ‘god,’ as we mislabel these entities here in Ethra, it’s bound to have a negative effect. And, when bad things happen in different places at the same time, they’re generally connected. I’m not much of a believer in coincidence when it comes to such things. Are you?”
The question surprised Luccan. Since when did Thurlock ask his opinion as if he was in some way equally qualified to give one? He said, “I don’t have enough experience to know, Thurlock.”
“True,” Thurlock said, then pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. “And it is wise of you to know and admit that. But you are intuitive and magical. What does that kind of intelligence tell you?”
Lucky examined that notion, tried to get his head around what Thurlock meant, “intuitive and magical.” Quite suddenly, he felt all of a piece in a way he hadn’t ever before. Every part of him, from the hair always falling in his eyes to his Wish magic to the something in him that was connected to Ciarrah—it all gathered into one Luccan. Separate thoughts and feelings and hopes and fears—all of it tumbled into place, making the world into something that made sense in a new way.
He remembered then what he’d Seen when they were being questioned at the Watch headquarters. “Thurlock,” he said. “It is connected—the dark world my mother took me to, the Terrathians’ mist-shadows. I Saw it—the same darkness. It had touched one of the C.O.W.W. examiners this morning. The Lady Relian.”
“Yes,” Thurlock said, but that was all.
THEY RODE out of the vacant space, through a wide-open set of gates made of a golden wood like bamboo, and into an area of the city that seemed far more peaceful than any neighborhood Luccan had seen so far. Rows of houses that reminded Lucky of the ones he’d seen in San Francisco the time he went there with Hank George. Brightly colored, tall, narrow, and very close together, they occupied blocks of broad cobbled avenues lined with old trees with golden leaves that somehow seemed to cast cool shade without any darkness. A fresh breeze blew through, making the trees shimmer and crowds of poppies and roses and daisies bob and weave. Lucky and Thurlock turned down a busy boulevard with shops of various kinds, and the people they met smiled and waved at the old wizard.
“They like you here, Thurlock.”
“Makes for a nice change.”
“Why is this place so different? It’s like whatever is making people miserable all over town hasn’t touched here.”
“History has a lot to do with it, Luccan, but two particular things are true of the people living in this community that aren’t true elsewhere. They don’t use any magic, and they don’t worship any god. They live by material means and make the best of what the day offers.”
“Why do they like you, then? Or don’t they know who you are?”
“Oh, they know,” Thurlock said, laughing. “They asked a favor of me some time ago, and I obliged. They’ve appreciated that. Also, I honor their wishes and leave magic alone while I’m here. You should do the same.”
At first, Lucky thought that was the easiest thing he’d been asked to do in the last three years, but then he realized he wasn’t sure it was possible. “Thurlock, I am magic. I mean… right? What if I can’t keep it from happening?”
“Finally, you begin to understand your nature! Very good thing, that. But of course you can keep it from ‘happening.’ Your magic is you in exactly the same way your thoughts are. You can block your magic just as you block your thoughts. It won’t be gone. It just won’t show on the outside. Try your best. We’re here—this is the café—and I’m hungry.”
With no time to experiment, Lucky just tried to build a little barrier around his magic the same way he did about his thoughts. It wasn’t as easy, and he wasn’t sure it worked, mainly because he really didn’t know what the magic that was part of him looked like, but he had done his best and hoped it would suffice.
The café’s customers sat outside in a paved courtyard full of fragrant flowers, all the tables and planters surrounding a fountain marked with a plaque that identified it as “The Well of the World.” Thurlock chose a small round table in the shade of a broad, striped canvas awning and sat down with a weary sigh. Of the two additional chairs at the table, Lucky chose the one that would situate him so he could watch the other patrons. These people interested him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen people without magic before—he’d lived in Earth. But something was different here, and he wanted to know what it was. If he could have the kind of joy that seemed to shine from the eyes of the people he saw here, he wanted to know how to get it.
“Thurlock!”
The exclamation came from a stout, dark-haired woman with bright gray eyes, who came toward them from the kitchen, wiping her hands vigorously on her apron on the way.
“Almirah!” Thurlock erupted in joy—that’s the only way Lucky could think of it. He’d never seen the wizard so purely full of happiness as at that moment when he rose to return this woman’s embrace.
When they released each other, he pulled out the extra chair for her and she sat, looking excitedly at Lucky.
“And is this fine young man who I think he is?”
“If you believe you are looking at the next Suth Chiell of the Sunlands, then yes,” Thurlock said. “Meet Luccan Elieth, son of Lohen Chiell, of the Drakhonic, and Liliana, the Lady Grace of the Ol’Karrigh. Luccan, greet your distant cousin from your mother’s mother’s line, the Lady Almirah, Matriarch of the Followers of the Simple Way, and Deputy Mayor for Followers Quarter.”
“Uh, pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Lucky said, reminding himself of the polite young men in the old western movies Hank George used to like to watch on his black-and-white TV.
“Oh, and I am delighted to meet you, Luccan. We Followers have been looking forward to your coming for quite a long time. Thurlock, dear, let me get all your favorite dishes for you—any special requests?”
“Not for me,” Thurlock said. “I trust you to feed me well. What about you, Luccan?”
As Lucky had no idea what was available, and also was busy trying to figure out why they would have been waiting for him when they didn’t like magic, he just said, “No requests. I’ll be happy with whatever you bring. Thank you.”
They ate meat pies and tiny sandwiches, crispy cold vegetables, fruit, and cookies that melted in Lucky’s mouth, periodically washing it down with sweet tea and fresh, cold water. While they ate, Thurlock and Almirah carried on gossiping about people Lucky had never heard of—the only exception being when Almirah mentioned she’d heard Han had a sweetheart, and Thurlock cagily skirted the issue in a way that made it clear
the rumor was exactly true. Just as they finished the last crumbs of food and a waiter came to whisk away the dishes and utensils, Almirah sobered for an instant.
“Now you must tell me honestly, Thurlock. News has come that perhaps things at the Sisterhold are not all as they should be.”
Thurlock sighed. Blinked a few times. “Almirah, I love to come here because it washes my heart of all the worry and fear and anger that builds up when things happen that are not as I would hope. Allow me to simply confirm that yes, there is some darkness there. I wish I didn’t have to speak of it at all.”
Almirah took Thurlock’s hand and squeezed it. “Of course, dear one,” she said. “I’m sorry to dampen your mood. You do know that, insomuch as we of the Followers are able with our simple ways, we will stand in support of you and what is right and good.” She allowed a moment of silence, then said, “My dears, will you stay for the evening? We could have a bit of an impromptu celebration?”
“Thank you,” Thurlock said, smiling again. “But sadly, no. I have all these ridiculous things to do that are supposedly important. One in particular. I suppose you’ve heard about the Terrathian threat?”
Lucky was surprised to see Almirah nod. A cloud passed over her cheerful expression as she did.
“Of course,” she said. “As much as many of us here would wish to be separate from all that goes on in the rest of the world, we’re well informed. Would it surprise you to know that we have a network of informants in the city?”
“Nothing surprises me when you have your hand in it, Almirah!” Thurlock said it with a tease in his tone and a chuckle. “But the thing is, I find I need to investigate them further… on their own turf if possible. I understand they’re currently based in what they regard as a temporary world. They call it Ephemera, from what I’ve been able to gather. I mean to go there.”
