by John Booth
I found a small amount of comfort in that. But it didn’t answer the question.
“Am I becoming a killer?”
“You’ve been a killer from the start. You’re not yet a murderer, if that’s what you were asking?”
I suppose I was, because a tension I’d been feeling eased.
“And am I right to visit the fleet?”
Betty shrugged and began to disrobe.
For a few seconds I was surprised, but then I felt the need surge in me.
“Take your time, lover,” Betty whispered.
But I didn’t.
The voice in my head said [Welcome back,] as if it had been expecting me. The lights were on in the cymbals shaped building. It hopped me to the fleet as it had done before.
This time I felt the distance travelled and knew that even at the impossibly high speed I was travelling, it was still taking hours to reach my destination at the farthest and oldest part of the multiverse.
When I arrived on the bridge I found the room lit up. There was a feeling of anticipation in the air. Behind me was a large swivel chair. It was the only chair in the room. I stepped back and settled into it.
The little girl was back. She radiated a sense of calm and of unfathomable wisdom. I guessed the choice of her persona was to be unthreatening and sexually neutral.
“You wish to know the capability of the fleet?” It wasn’t really a question. I nodded and then wondered if she would understand the gesture.
“The fleet consists of five classes of ship, Planetary, Solar, Galactic and Universe. Each class name refer to the size of system they are capable of destroying.”
“You can’t destroy a universe.” The idea was absurd. No ship however big could manage that.
“This ship, Armageddon, your flagship, is Universe capable. It is the only ship of its class in existence. In the war against the Diabli it destroyed five universes over a period of seven days. It’s maximum rate of fire.”
I wasn’t having that.
“The Diabli swords did that. The universes were absorbed into one and stranded outside the multiverse and are currently bleeding magic back to the multiverse as the resultant mess collapses.”
The little girl was unimpressed. “The swords created a contagion that threatened the integrity of the multiverse. This ship ended that threat. The decaying remnants of the battle are of no consequence.”
“The Dragons say this fleet took no part in the war.”
“They were not told.”
Many Dragons were trapped in the universes that were destroyed. Not telling them made a sick kind of sense. However, in the end it was irrelevant.
“I want the fleet to come to full readiness.” There was no point having a fleet if I couldn’t use it if I needed it.
“Already underway, from the moment you first came here.”
I smiled at the little girl. The Ghost Fleet appeared to be pretty smart.
“How long will it take until it you are ready?”
“In your units of time the fleet will be at full battle readiness in eleven years, four months and twelve days, approximately.”
Well that was a bit of a bummer.
51. Lord Rangot
“Daddy,” Merlin cried out as he spotted me on the sofa. He ran to me for a cuddle. It was amazing what a couple of weeks had done to my kids resolve to be mad at me. Morgana had given in days before.
Jenny poked her head around the corner. She was still in her nightie.
“You could have woken me.”
“You were sleeping so peacefully. I’ve only been home for about an hour.”
“How are Morgana and Esmeralda?”
“Much the same as three days ago. Salice is prosperous and the new tea plantations are about to provide a bumper harvest.”
“I never saw you as a farmer.”
I grinned, “Only for the important things in life. If I could find a way to grow cocoa bushes over there, Salice would be perfect.”
“And you’re staying here till when?”
I stood and embraced Jenny. “You have me until I go back to university next week.”
She pushed me away. “A whole five days? How generous of you.”
“I do my best. Speaking of which, I want to visit Malcolm today. I’ve waited far too long.”
Jenny frowned. “I’ll ring his mother as soon as I get dressed. Unless you have other plans?” Her hands strayed to the top of her nightie in a suggestive manner.
Now that was an offer I would never normally refuse, but I was feeling on edge. Maybe it was my sudden resolve to see Malcolm. All I knew was that that I felt enclosed, boxed in, threatened. I’d left Salice with a feeling that I couldn’t stay and it was the same here. I needed space.
“I’m going for a walk.”
A look of disappointment crossed Jenny’s face.
“Will you be back for breakfast?”
“I expect so.”
I hopped to remote woodland in the National Park. Snowdonia is such a beautiful place, bleak in places, but never foreboding. There was a chill in the air, so I put a layer of warm air around me and began to walk down a deer track. This track went on for miles and if that didn’t clear my head, nothing would.
I stopped in the middle of a small natural bowl. The trees here were sparse; though not so sparse you would think of it as a clearing. The unease had gone away and I got the strange feeling I was exactly where I was supposed to be. When I heard twigs crack behind me I wasn’t all that surprised.
A familiar feeling of magic energy being drained came over me and I applied the magic that would stop it dead. There were not enough swords involved to break my spell. When I turned to face the Knight of Justice, I could tell from his face that he knew the sword he pointed at me wasn’t working. He continued to point it at me, regardless.
Seen in daylight, he was an older man than I had originally thought, and must have be one of the few no shows at the original Dragon ambush a few years ago. I had seen him before and that was no surprise. He was the Knight that had caught me in the Temple, the one that had accompanied Burder Slan the day we escaped.
“I am Lord Rangot, wizard. Supreme Leader of the Knights of Justice.”
“I missed you the other day. You must have been out.”
Anger flashed across his face to be quickly hidden behind an impassive mask. It was at that point that I noticed the alien gun holstered to his belt. The battle was not going to be nearly as uneven as I had thought. I redoubled the magic running through my feet and out into the ground.
He stared at me as if trying to see through me.
“You murdered innocent men, women, and children. What kind of a monster are you?”
“The kind that responds to the murder of innocents in a place of worship. To atrocities carried out by your Knights.”
He looked puzzled. Of course, none of the Knights he sent had returned so he probably didn’t what had happened to them, or what they had done.
“The Lord President had been close to persuading me to stop chasing you and the Dragons. But after what happened at the Temple there cannot be peace between us.”
“Are you that eager to die?”
He was holding his sword in his left hand and drew the gun with his right.
“It is not I who will die.”
The ground gave way beneath his feet and he fell into the deep hole I had been busy creating underneath him. I couldn’t send magic through the air at him, but I had worked out that I could run magic through my feet to my trainers and on into the earth, all with the single purpose of creating a large hole beneath his feet.
I stepped towards the hole warily, which was just as well because he started using the alien gun to cut a way out. I jumped back as a section of ground exploded in front of me. Time for me to use another trick, one of my cleverest yet.
He ran up the groove he had cut in the earth, moving with a litheness that belied his age. As soon as he saw me he pointed the sword at me.
Everything was going to plan, but I needed to keep on distracting him.
“Did you wonder why I didn’t fill the hole up while you were in it?”
“I have sucked your power from you.”
There was uncertainty in his eyes. He wasn’t sure what I was up to.
“I’m tired of killing.” As soon as I said it I knew it was the truth. What good would killing this man do? It wouldn’t bring Silvia back.
“I am not. I lost my wife and daughter to you and your dragons. All that remained of them were charred bones.”
I stepped towards him hand outstretched. “You started it. But I am going to end it now.”
He pointed the alien gun at me and fired. The trees behind crashed to the ground. Screaming in anger he ran forward and pushed his sword into my stomach. But there was no resistance and he fell over. I had to run to put a hand on him and take control of his mind.
“Good trick wasn’t it?” I told him cheerfully. “What you thought was me was my image projected a hundred and eighty degrees from where I actually was. With your sword pointing at empty space it was easy to use my magic to create and maintain it. I was walking towards you all right, but from behind.”
He couldn’t move, but I allowed him speech.
“Kill me now, wizard.” He spat at me, but I deflected the spittle with the smallest spell.
“You say Burder Slan was trying to get you to stop attacking us?” I used compulsion to make him tell me the truth.
“The Lord President thinks that neither you nor the dragons are our enemies. He believes there are worse things we might face.”
“And you don’t agree?”
He didn’t need to answer. I could see it in his eyes.
I didn’t like what I was about to do, but consoled myself with the thought that at least he would still be alive at the end of it.
I put a compulsion on him to agree with Slan’s opinion. Going deep into his mind I burnt new grooves of thought into his personality. When I had finished he could no longer see either me or the Dragons as threats. I felt unclean.
He staggered as I released him. He knelt and offered me his sword in fealty.
“Arise, Lord Rangot. Go back to the Diamond Worlds and follow your leader.”
“Thank you, my Lord.”
He pressed something on his belt and vanished.
I tidied up the bowl as best I could. Trees that could be salvaged, I put back in place, earth slid back into its original position filling up holes. It hadn’t been a clearing before, but there was one by the time I finished.
While I was doing that I tried to make sense of what he had told me. The Krake didn’t see me as the enemy? Then why had they spent so much time trying to kill me before the Conference Between the Worlds? It didn’t make any sense.
52. Redux
The clinic that Malcolm was being kept in was more like an old people’s home than a hospital. Jenny informed me that he was in there by choice as he tried to come to terms with Silvia’s death. I had seen his flat so I understood exactly why he didn’t want to go back there. And it would be filled with Silvia’s things.
He was out in the gardens and we followed an orderly, who took us out among the rose beds and the immaculately cut grass. He sat on a wooden bench staring at the flowers.
“Malcolm, it’s Jake,” I said and immediately felt bad about it. He wasn’t senile or blind. He knew who I was.
“Silvia loved roses. The first thing we were going to do when we got a garden was plant some roses.”
“Hello, Malcolm,” Jenny said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. Mister Griffith came to visit. He says my job is waiting for me whenever I want to come back.” Malcolm looked at me and I could see tears in his eyes. “I used to resent you, Jake You were always the apple of Mister Griffith’s eye no matter what I did. But I think we’re equals now.”
“I’m so sorry.” It was difficult not to start crying myself. “If it wasn’t for me. Silvia would still be alive.”
Malcolm shook his head.
“Without you we would never have got together, never have fallen in love. We used to talk about it all the time. The Jake Effect we called it. You didn’t kill her. A man with a sword did.”
“I should have saved her.” It hurt like a knife in my chest that I failed.
“I saw you take them on. Draw them away from the congregation, away from Silvia. I thought she’d be safe in the sacristy.”
“She should have been,” Jenny said quietly.
Malcolm’s face lit up with one of those false smiles that the grieving put on.
“She’s gone to a better place.”
“I could help you. Take the pain away. I did it for Jenny.”
Malcolm shook his head. “I don’t want to lose a second of her. Not a moment of our time together, including her death. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks.”
Later that day I dropped in on the Bat Cave. Fluffy had gone to sleep on his back with his feet in the air. I tiptoed to the kettle and prepared a pot of tea.
[I’m not as asleep as I look.]
“Only a cat could sleep like that. How come it doesn’t hurt your back?”
Fluffy rolled over and looked me in the eye.
[Ancient dragon contemplation position. It is supposed to let the blood flow to our brains.]
“Have either of my young ladies shown up?”
[I thought you had come to see me. Now I know different.]
I grabbed him by the neck and rubbed the places he likes.
[It is no good trying to butter me up now. I am scorned. And your bits on the side have not come to visit. Nobody comes around these days.]
“Maybe if you tidied up a little?”
Dragonfire and smoke splattered across the cave.
“Much better,” I said when the smoke cleared.
[I think I just broke the teapot,] he said mournfully.
A few magical mends and tidies up later I poured myself some tea and told Fluffy about my encounter with Lord Rangot, and later, with Malcolm.
“Does any of this make any sense to you?”
[How did the Knight get into the sacristy?]
I shrugged. We had been in a battle. He could have slipped in at any time.
“Why do you ask?”
[I told you I was in Glim when you killed him. He smelled different from the other Knights.]
“You went around and sniffed them?”
Fluffy huffed. [I went through the church and made sure they were all dead.]
“What does that mean; that he smelled different?”
[That he might have been from another group, have come with a different objective? Possibly nothing.]
“And what do you think about the Krake?”
[The Krake did not meet the Diabli until after the conference.]
I waited for more thoughts of enlightenment, but that was all he was going to give me. We sat for some considerable time. I made another pot of tea.
Lana and Esta hopped into the Bat Cave. They looked excited
[Your concubines have arrived.]
Lana gave Fluffy a haughty look while Esta giggled.
“My Father has got the woman to talk. We know who they were working for.”
The End of Wizards VI
Jake Morrissey will return in Wizards VII
