by Lou Hoffmann
A knock got him up before he’d quite got comfortable, and when he opened the door, Jaffy stood there looking very sleepy. “Sir Lucky, can I stay with you? People are kind of loud around my house right now. I’m so tired and….”
Seeing Jaffy almost asleep on his feet, Lucky said, “Okay, lad,” and then stopped to wonder when he’d picked up the urge to use the term lad. He chuckled at himself and guided Jaffy over to the very comfortable love seat—perfect for a boy Jaffy’s size—and lifted him onto the cushions. Jaffy curled on his side and his eyes blinked and closed almost immediately. Lucky tossed a warm blanket over him and wedged a small pillow under his head, smiled down, and totally surprised himself by leaning over and placing a tiny kiss on his temple.
He’d forgotten to close the door after he let Jaffy in, and now he decided to leave it open a bit. If there was anywhere in the world outside Thurlock’s house where he could be safe, he had a feeling this was it, so no need to close people out. And if anyone got worried when they noticed Jaffy was missing from home—wherever that was—they might come looking. What if Lucky was sleeping so soundly he didn’t hear a knock?
PART THREE: Liar’s Laboratory, Scholar’s Library
Chapter Sixteen: Trouble in Followers Quarter
WHEN HE’D landed in Ephemera last year, Thurlock had been on the outside looking in—literally. Concrete, glass, and steel had stood between him and the horrors he saw being done. Now, without intending to, he landed squarely among the tortured and the torturers. Also different this time, his magic had not been stripped. At least, he could sense the pulse of it in the staff, sense the weight of it in the flasks and boxes he’d filled at the Oakridge. He didn’t fool himself for an instant thinking that the Terrathian Primes, here on their own turf, would be overmatched by his alien power, but he hoped he wouldn’t be completely helpless.
Oddly, it took a few moments before anyone noticed his presence at all. The orderlies moving among the cartridges—that was the best word he could think of for the metal contraptions humans were hooked into to have their life and magic drained—those orderlies moved about like robots. They walked right past Thurlock, avoiding running into him but otherwise giving no heed. It wasn’t until one of the weakened victims, being removed and loaded onto a cart, struggled to speak to him that one of the doctor-like Primes turned and saw him.
That one spoke, and though it sounded like only one weak syllable, apparently it communicated a great deal. Thurlock was swamped, then, by at least a dozen of the orderlies, and though they had narrow-headed look of the Primes, perhaps they hadn’t become quite like them, for their strength was great. Thurlock could, he knew, destroy them. But if he did, the innocents he vaguely hoped he could help would also die, and very possibly he’d destroy everything and gain no insight into the Terrathian menace at all, and that was his primary purpose. He waited, taking no action until one of the orderlies reached for his staff. At that, he allowed a pulse of magic that undoubtedly burned as the staff rejected the touch, though the owner of the injured hand showed no sign of pain except to pull his hand away.
Thurlock was held at bay there while several of the doctorly types circled and nodded and grunted to one another, until an elevator brought down a stately Prime with remnants of flowing hair neatly tied, wearing the white coat that seemed to be the standard uniform but with a dash of styling to match his behavioral aplomb. He made some hand motions and grunts, and in seconds, Thurlock was surrounded by a cloud of mist-shadow. Very much like what they had dealt with in the Behlvale and Hoenholm, this substance was thickly concentrated, and its death smell sickened Thurlock almost instantly. He could feel it slowly wearing away at his own magic, though he thought his staff and the supplies of Behl’s light he’d brought with him were proof against it.
“I’m Pahlanus,” the dignified Prime said, in a reedy but clear voice, and using the language of the Sunlands. “And you are Thurlock of the Ol’Karrigh, Premier Wizard of the Ethran Sunlands. I am glad to have an opportunity to talk with you.”
Realizing that Pahlanus could be his best avenue to investigate the Terrathians, Thurlock ignored the binding ropes of mist-shadow that wrapped themselves around his wrist, ankles, and chest, and nodded in greeting. “Could be interesting,” he said.
IT WAS the left-open door that let the flickering danger out in the common area pull Lucky from sleep with a gut full of adrenaline and a racing heart….
Judging from the dark of night outside his window, he’d been sleeping at least a few hours when lights flashed behind his closed eyelids, signaling something wrong and sending his fight-or-flight response skyrocketing. An instant later, he registered the twin smells of burning and rot, and though one corner of his mind wanted to decipher why those scents were twinned, he responded only to the urge to get safe from flames. A glance out the door told him smoke thickened second by second out in the common area of the building, and flames flicked in and out of visibility. Bloodred flames riddled with electric blue flashes.
Significant.
But first things first. He bundled the still-sleeping Jaffy up in the blanket, and slid out the window, thankful he was on the ground floor. He ran for the open field, and was glad to soon meet with others. He turned Jaffy over to two men and a woman already busy keeping track of several other youngsters, took stock of the efforts being pulled together to fight the flames, and when he spotted Almirah and the Traveler who’d spoken earlier, trotted over to them.
“Oh, thank goodness you’re safe, Luccan,” Almirah said, then hid her face behind her hands for a minute. When she looked up, her eyes gleamed wetly in the strange-hued lights, and Lucky understood she’d been worried for him.
He reassured her. “I’m fine! Truly. And Jaffy came and slept on the love seat in my room, and I got him out. He’s over there with the other kids.” He pointed with his chin, then got back to what was on his mind. “I want to help however I can, but first I’m going back into that building. Just want someone to know where I am.”
He heard Almirah call out for him to stop, but the Traveler spoke in a voice strangely clear over the distance.
“Let him go, Almirah. There are others still inside and being that this is mage fire we’ve been attacked with, he stands a better chance than anyone here of getting them out safely.”
By the time Lucky climbed back through the window, his bed had begun to smolder and flash with occasional licks of red flame. The electric blue Lucky would forever associate with Mahl flickered over the couch where Jaffy had slept and created a web of crackling light in the open doorway.
Which Lucky needed to get through.
He remembered his promise not to use magic. He decided to break it. Better to save the lives and be banned forever from Followers Quarter—no matter how he loved it—than to let innocent people be a burnt offering to some dark god.
In the very next fraction of a second, he remembered the scene from outside looking back in. The mage fire had been spreading from a central point, and control efforts had been aimed at corralling it and pushing it back toward that focus.
Specifically, the origin point, the point of attack… the common just beyond my door.
That meant the Followers had come under attack because of him. Saving lives had been the most urgent thing to do before he realized that. Now that he understood that truth, getting everyone safe had gone so far beyond importance there was no word for it.
He called up Ciarrah and the Key of Behliseth, the first to guide him and push back at the light, the second to hear his Heart Wish for the safety and well-being of people who might yet be trapped in the flames. As the twin songs of his ally talismans rose, he longed to hear one more, longed for River Song. If L’Aria were here….
She isn’t.
As he stepped through his door and out into the hallway, Ciarrah’s light formed a painfully bright violet shield around him. It protected him, putting up a strong argument against the insistent blue lightning hammered at him as he passed. The
shield also lit the way, which helped a lot because somehow—impossibly, it seemed—the presence of the red flame and bolts of blue rendered the space beyond his door utterly lightless.
Breathing didn’t come easy in the thick, rotten fumes of evil-driven mage fire, and his eyes started to water fiercely. But the Key seemed to sense the problem, and soon cool, fresh air rose from the Key and settled around Lucky’s nose, mouth, and eyes. It didn’t completely rid him of the effects of the smoke, but made it so he could, at least, cope.
Though it felt hours long, his foray back into the building so far could not have taken more than a couple minutes, but already when he looked back through the door to his room, he found it almost completely engulfed in flame. Urgency notched up to a screaming level, and Lucky moved. First, the two rooms to the left of his on the ground floor. He found one vacant—clearly the occupant had fled in a hurry—but in the next an older woman stood clutching her shawl over her face near the window. Either she was unsure which way to try to escape, or she wasn’t able to climb through.
Not wanting to frighten her more, Lucky slowed his pace a little, said, “Ma’am,” then swept her up in his arms. The Key responded instantly to his Wish for her well-being and wrapped its gold comfort around her as he lifted her out the window and set her on her feet. He climbed out right behind her, took her by the hand and led her toward the safety of the gathered people. When he was sure she knew where to go, he released her, and went back to his rescue efforts.
By the time he got to the door of the fourth and last room on the ground floor, the red flames had claimed half the common area, and blue bolts and balls of lightning climbed the walls and wandered over the floor. Smoke was thick in the air and funneling, for some reason, under the door. Lucky gave a brief moment’s thought to whether it would be worse to open the door, but if someone was inside, no alternative way to get to them truly existed except to run outside around the building and come in through the window, which might or might not require breaking it. So in he went, slamming the door behind him against a hard draft that almost pulled the mage fire in.
A man and a woman crawled on the floor, inching toward the window, choking on smoke even near the ground. All at the same time, Lucky enhanced his Wish, asking the Key to expand its golden bubble to include these two, asked Ciarrah to block the flames licking around the door, and ran to the window to throw it open. That done, he quickly assessed who needed help most and decided the man was struggling hardest. He remembered the fireman’s carry Henry had long ago taught him, back when he was a happy boy living with Henry’s uncle Hank in Black Creek Ravine, and he put the lesson to good use, lifted the man over his back and carried him to the window. Once the man was seated on the sill, the fresh air seemed to revive his strength, and he wanted to go back.
“My wife!” he said. “Kahrli!”
“Don’t worry! I’ll get her. Here, swing your feet out and drop down. I’ll pass her over to you, okay?”
The man obeyed silently and Lucky went back for Kahrli, who was still in good enough shape to choke out her thanks before Lucky put her into her husband’s arms. As he did so, a strong-looking woman ran up to the window and waved for Lucky’s attention.
“Luccan? Come this way. All the people upstairs are out, and this is the only way out that’s still clear of flames.”
Lucky was about to comply when he heard a mew from inside the room, and at the same time Kahrli turned around and gave a startled shout of “the kitten!” Pets were not usual anywhere in the Sunlands, and he hadn’t seen any since coming to stay with the Followers, so the revelation startled him. He turned around to face the corner where the tiny cries were coming from, but the mage fire had invaded the space. The bed, which lay between Lucky and the kitten, was in full flame. He could get around it, but when he did, he found that—just like what he’d seen in the common—the space behind the flames was utterly lightless. He couldn’t see the tiny creature, whose cries had gotten weak and stressed. He did, for an instant, weigh the decision, but then he opened the Sight. What he Saw was ugly, and it wore what he now recognized as a signature.
Giving himself a mental shake—plenty of time to think about what that meant later—he narrowed his magical Focus, and found an energy of innocent, nonhuman life huddled in the corner. Quickly, he ducked forward past a burst of the mage-flames and came back out holding the kitten close to his chest. With help from the Key, and with Ciarrah pushing back at the red flames and meeting the blue lightning bolts power against power, he gained the window and got out, then carried the kitten to its despairing owner.
He was tired. He’d expended physical, mental, emotional, and magical energy, and to make matters worse he’d inhaled enough of the foul smoke to be coughing and wheezing. Helpful hands tried to direct him to the healers, but he knew something they didn’t: the mage-fire had descended on the Quarter because he was there. Because of that, he wouldn’t rest, couldn’t rest, until the fire was put down completely. He accepted some good, restorative cold tea, then turned to find out what else needed doing.
Shapers were hard at work attempting to turn the tainted energy from their borders. Lucky, figuring he’d already broken the magic taboo so thoroughly he’d never be allowed back in the Quarter anyway, again opened his Vision, and he Saw what they were doing. They’d created a kind of energy hollow, an empty place which, like the curved space by which Einstein explained gravity, drew the hurtful energy into it. From there they’d opened channels by which it drained back toward its origin, at least fast enough to keep the hollow from filling. It was a good plan, and the shapers had it handled. Lucky could do nothing there.
But on the physical front, two bucket brigades had gone into action. The block of buildings in which the fire had erupted sat within the curve of a good-sized creek, so it was within reasonable reach at each end of the building. The buckets were passed in from the creek and had already soaked the outside ends of the block. The line was expanding as more people joined in, so that the soaking was moving toward the center building—the one where Lucky had been sleeping, and where the fire had rooted. Lucky ran toward the line that seemed to be struggling most and slipped in between a young boy and an older woman. There he disappeared into the single entity of humanity fighting fire with water and back-breaking work.
Light but steady rain came in on a dawn no brighter than a memory of daylight, and the entire community breathed a collective sigh of relief as the fire quelled and the twisted magic was pushed back on itself in a closed circuit. Exhausted, Lucky let himself be herded toward a meal of hot, hearty oatmeal sweetened with fruit and laced with butter and cream. After a bowl of that, a glass of water and a cup of hot tea, he could almost breathe again. The hot bath that followed warmed and soothed his muscles but almost ended with him drowning in the tub.
“Sir Lucky?”
Lucky startled awake at Jaffy’s voice to find his nose just above the water line.
“I brought you some clean clothes, and you’re set up in a new room so you can sleep. I’ll show you the way, okay?”
Lucky could only nod and smile—anything else required too much coordination and effort—and he hoped Jaffy understood how much appreciation stood behind his expression. Lucky had a little trouble keeping his eyes from crossing and his feet from stumbling, and Jaffy ended up leading him by the hand to his new room. It was nearly identical to the last one, which gave him a moment of uncomfortable déjà vu. He remained too tired to care, though, and fell onto the bed and into sleep, barely aware of Jaffy maneuvering a blanket out from under him and covering him with it.
“Sleep well, Sir Lucky,” he whispered. The door closed behind him with a quiet whoosh.
Chapter Seventeen: Lay Fear to One Side and Find Your True Wish
A SENSE of urgency rushed Lucky the instant he woke from a long, dreamless sleep. A glance out the window told him daylight was fading as he rushed through simple ablutions, spared a thought that he should shave sometime soon, and dragged
on the clothes he found laid out for him—clothes he’d never seen before. The events of the previous night stood whole in his mind, every moment from waking to the smoke to the relief of sleep, all together, all clear. And although he had questions, one thing he knew for sure.
I was the target.
As long as I’m here, Followers Quarter is at risk.
Now that I’ve used magic, I have no place here.
I need to leave.
Now.
He couldn’t wait for Thurlock, and he couldn’t risk getting waylaid and held here by Almirah or any of the others. He wrote three quick notes using a quill, ink, and parchments he found in a drawer under the bedside table.
Dear Jaffy,
You have been such a great friend to me while I was here at the Quarter. I may never be able to visit, but please know I will always be happy to see you. If you ever get a chance to visit the Sisterhold, look me up. Thank you for everything.
Yours truly,
(Sir) Lucky
Almirah,
Please accept this apology for my leaving without a goodbye. I must leave. Not only do I firmly believe my presence puts the Quarter at risk, but in light of what I saw last night in regard to the source of the fire, I have some work to do. I would discuss it with you, but I am afraid that given Thurlock’s instruction to care for me, you might try to hold me here. I have learned much from the Followers of the Simple Way, and I will always treasure those lessons and my very pleasant time here. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Luccan Elieth Perdhro, S. C.
Thurlock,
When you get this, you will certainly be angry with me. I will explain if you allow me to live when you see me. After I have done what I need to do, I will go to your apartment in the residence hall. If they let me in, I’ll stay there. If not, I’ll try to go back to the Sisterhold the same way we came so you can catch up to me, maybe. I’m sorry. I know this will frighten you and make you angry, but I can’t stay here now, and I must deal with a problem. If I wait, it could be too late.
