by Unknown
pretty. I’m not insulting her…”
“Enough, Matthew,” ordered Penny. “We should have talked about this with you beforehand.” She spoke to Karen, “I apologize for my son’s
lack of tact.”
Karen stood, painfuly aware of their eyes on her. “I—may I be excused?”
Penny nodded, “Of course.” Before she could say more, Karen vanished, teleporting directly from where she stood.
“That went wel,” muttered Mordecai.
Moira rose . “It was awful, and incredibly rude. How could you put her on the spot like that?”
Penny nodded, “I agree.”
“I’m talking about you ,” exclaimed their daughter. Then she turned her eyes on her father. “And you. Matthew just made it worse, but you should have expected that.”
“Wel, I didn’t mean for it to realy go down this path exactly, but...,” began Mordecai.
Moira started for the hal. “I’m going to go find her.”
Penny left after that, and Matthew and his father were left alone in an awkward silence. Finaly, Mordecai broke it, asking, “What are you
thinking?”
“That it would be realy handy to be able to teleport like that,” said Matthew.
Mort laughed. “Ha! It would. Especialy since we’re left with the dishes.” They both grimaced at that.
Chapter 41
Karen stared down from the top of the main keep in Cameron Castle. She wasn’t sure why she had picked that place in particular . She had
only been there once before, during the tour of the castle that Gram had given her, but it had seemed like a quiet place. There were one or two guards, but they didn’t bother her when she appeared suddenly. They had seen her before, and strange doings were almost common in a castle frequented by most of the wizards in Lothion.
She knew things were different in this world, but the conversation with Matthew’s parents had been too much. I am not some prize to be auctioned off, she told herself. That wasn’t what they had realy meant, of course; but it had felt that way.
Matthew’s response to their questions had been even more embarrassing.
Then she felt a presence approaching from the direction of the closest stairwel. Unlike the guards, this was a mage. She had discovered the difference early in her stay there. Wizards had briliant auras—they fairly shone with power, compared to normal folk.
She debated relocating, but then she identified her visitor: it was Moira. How did she know I’d be up here? Karen wondered.
The other woman stopped a few feet away from her and leaned on the short ledge between the merlons, but didn’t say anything at first.
After a while, Karen spoke, “I looked like a fool back there.”
“You were fine,” said Moira. “But I’m embarrassed about how my family behaved.”
Karen didn’t respond immediately. A raven flew up from the courtyard and passed overhead, and the two of them watched it fly until it reached the forest edge. “I think they were just looking out for their son, and maybe sending me a message.”
“A message?”
“I’m a commoner,” said Karen bluntly. “Your brother explained the expectations that nobility have here.”
Moira laughed. “Both of my parents are commoners. I don’t think they give two figs for traditional expectations among the ruling class.”
Now Karen was confused. “But, they’re the count and countess, doesn’t that mean…”
“Wel, sure, now they are,” admitted Moira. “But they didn’t start out that way. Mom was a cooper’s daughter, and she used to work as a maid for the Duke of Lancaster. Dad was technicaly a noble from birth, but he wasn’t raised that way. His father, the one that raised him, was a blacksmith.
“The only message they were trying to send was to my idiot brother,” finished Moira.
“And what was that?” asked Karen.
“What you heard. They like you, and when they heard the rumors, they were worried that your reputation might be tarnished, since he hasn’t shown any sign of wanting to court you in a normal fashion. They probably thought that putting him on the spot would wake him up.
“What they failed to consider was how he would react, and how that would make you feel,” explained Moira. “If it makes any difference, they aren’t normaly that stupid, but they’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Two of their children vanished, and only recently returned. I started a revolution in a neighboring country, and before that someone kidnapped Irene and murdered several people in the house. It’s been an eventful few months.”
Karen had heard most of that previously, during her time spent with Irene and Carissa, but it did put the evening’s strange events in perspective
—somewhat. “I’m not realy worried about things like reputation. In my world things are rather different. Even more importantly, I’m not looking for a husband. Your brother and I are just friends—like we keep teling everyone.”
Moira glanced at her for a second, meeting her eyes. What Karen saw there was unsettling, almost predatory, but the moment passed when the other woman looked away. “You have terrible taste in men,” said Moira.
“What?”
“My brother,” clarified the other woman. “I can tel you like him, and not as a friend. I just can’t understand why .”
Karen shook her head. “That’s not true, didn’t you hear…”
Moira cut her off, “Didn’t they warn you? I’m a little dangerous, even for a wizard. My trip to Dunbar changed me, and for the worse. You
need to learn to shield your mind better. I can sense things from the others, even when they try their best, but you—you’re an open book.”
Karen had heard a few things about that , but Matthew hadn’t seemed to think it was as bad as his sister was now painting it.
“It’s worse than he thinks,” said Moira, replying to her unspoken thoughts. “He’s just too blind to see past his image of me. My brother is briliant in his own way, but he’s never been very sharp with regards to people.”
“He’s a little rough,” Karen admitted, “but deep down he’s kinder than he lets on.”
Moira sighed, “You should give up on him. He’s not a bad person, but he’l make you miserable if you pin your hopes on him.”
Karen found Moira’s remarks about her brother more than a little irritating. “I think his actions are more important than how anyone sees him, or whether he bothers to try to sugarcoat his words for people. More than once your brother has put himself at considerable risk on my behalf.”
“Be honest—you know he can be a bit of a jerk sometimes,” said Moira, deliberately needling her.
“I’m starting to find it annoying to hear everyone pointing out his flaws. Perhaps if you were less concerned with finding fault, he’d have nicer things to say,” snapped Karen.
Moira grinned. “There it is.”
“There what is?” asked Karen.
“The fire,” stated Moira. “You’ve got a real thing for him. I just wanted to be sure.”
Karen was thrown off balance once again. “Now wait, just because…” She stopped herself as a few memories that she would rather not share
passed through her head.
Moira’s eyes widened. “No! I can’t believe it! Already? Wow!”
“Wait a minute!” demanded Karen. “What do you think you know? Or what did you see? That was just a stray moment of the imagination. It’s
not…”
“Oh no,” said Moira confidently. “I know the difference. Don’t worry, though. Your secret is safe with me.”
Karen covered her face with her hands.
“It’s al right,” soothed Moira. “I’m on your side—his too, truth be told. I love my brother, even if we do argue a lot. If anything ever comes of it, I’l support you to my parents, not that you’l need it. They realy do like you.”
***
That evening, Matthew was back at it again. His thoughts were occasio
naly troubled by the morning’s family event, but he put it out of his mind the best way he knew how—by focusing on his project.
Gary was with him at the moment , having dropped by a few minutes earlier to see what sort of progress he had made.
“Let me show you what I’ve got so far,” said Matt. Lifting the enchanted metal cubes from the table, he said a few words in Lycian, activating them. They rose in the air and took up their positions; eight cubes, one at each corner of a now larger cube that was two feet on each side. With another word, he switched them into their active state, and the sides became blacker than black. “I cal it the ‘FT’,” he declared. “The Fool’s Tesseract, since it isn’t realy a true tesseract.”
“Nonetheless, it’s fascinating,” agreed Gary. “What does it do, exactly?”
Matthew walked him through an explanation of the translation panes. There were six of them now, forming the sides of the cube. He took his time describing how they worked, and then added, “The interesting thing, is that al six of them open onto the same pocket dimension, and I can control its size.”
“Its size?”
Matt nodded. “Yeah. This is the first time I’ve activated them al at once, but while each opening is four square feet in area, they currently open into a pocket dimension that’s only one inch cubed in volume, each side of it being one inch square.”
“So, whatever enters is being compressed?”
“Precisely,” said Matt. “The idea is that whatever they throw at me wil become compressed in the much smaler pocket dimension. Then later, when I want to return the favor, I can invert the translation panes and throw everything back at them. Like this.” He uttered the phrase to switch the operating mode of the enchantment.
There was a roar and the world went white, then black.
When Matthew opened his eyes again, he was staring up at a starry sky. Turning his head, he almost lost consciousness again as a blinding
wave of pain assaulted him. Feedback sickness? he thought. How did that happen?
“Are you awake?”
It was Gary’s voice. The android was on the ground nearby, beginning to struggle to his feet.
Matthew was confused. “What happened?”
“My sensors recorded most of the event, but the simplest explanation is that your FT exploded,” said the machine.
“How did we get outside? We were in the workshop. Did you drag me out here?”
“No,” said Gary. “This is where you landed. As for your shop, there isn’t much left of it.”
Ignoring the pain, Matthew levered himself up onto his elbows and glanced around. He was in the castle’s east courtyard, but his shop was
gone. Wel, not entirely gone—there were pieces of it al over the yard. Where it had previously stood, the FT was stil hanging in the air, having changed colors, from black to a shimmering gray. “Wel, that’s interesting,” he observed.
Voices were shouting across the yard now as guards and other servants began trying to find the cause of the commotion.
***
The next day Matthew spent in bed, resting and trying to get over his feedback sickness. The force of the explosion had been great enough to
break his personal shield but hadn’t quite been enough to do him any serious harm after that, other than the scrapes and bruises he had acquired tumbling across the open ground. Thankfuly, none of the larger pieces of his workshop had landed on him after the initial blast.
He’d had to make a lengthy explanation to his parents and family earlier, and now Moira had come to visit him. She leaned over his bed, looking down with a smirk on her face.
“You blew yourself up again,” she greeted him.
“I have a gift,” he replied.
“On the bright side, you didn’t lose any arms or legs this time,” she noted.
Matthew frowned. “I didn’t blow myself up the time I cut my arm off. You’re comparing apples and oranges.”
“The head groomsman spent half the night rounding up the horses,” she added.
“I didn’t blow up the stable,” he objected.
“The blast scared them so badly some of them kicked down the stal doors,” his sister explained. “You realy have a talent for mayhem. I’m
starting to wish you had gone to Dunbar with me. The whole thing would have been over lot quicker if you had blown up the city.”
He laughed. “I hear you did just fine on your own. I’m not sure the world could handle it if we both got rowdy in the same geographic region at the same time.”
“Try to be more careful next time,” she told him, as her face became serious, “at least until I can figure out how to make a copy of you.” Then her eyes darted off to one side. “Father’s coming. I think he wants to discuss your design. I’l be going.”
She rose and opened the door as just as their father reached it. He stepped in and gave her a hug before letting her leave, as was his habit.
Then he turned serious eyes on his son.
“What happened?”
Matthew recounted what he knew of the event before adding, “It was what I wanted to happen with the final version, but what I don’t
understand is where the force of the explosion came from. Nothing was directed at it before I inverted it. There shouldn’t have been anything inside to produce that kind of result, other than some air.”
“Did you notice anything before you turned it inside out?” asked Mordecai.
“There was a draft in the shop, but it wasn’t enough to realy make me wonder about it,” said Matthew.
“So, it was probably drawing air into it the whole time it was active.”
“Maybe,” Matt admitted, “but what would cause that? There was no attractive force.”
“Air pressure,” declared Mort. “The interface of your… what did you cal it before?”
“Fool’s Tesseract.”
His father chuckled. “The name was a self-fulfiling prophecy. Anyway, the interface of your translation pane was unidirectional, so it served as if it were effectively a vacuum, even though the space inside it was filing with compressed gas. The ambient pressure was driving air into it. How long was it active?”
“A few minutes at most.”
“If it had been longer, you might not have survived. It goes without saying, but you can’t test this thing at Castle Cameron any more. In fact, I’m not sure if you should continue working on it at al. It seems extremely dangerous.”
Matt’s face grew stubborn. “I’m not giving up on it. Besides, the idea is I’l be inside it, between the translation panes, when it’s inverted. Any destruction wil occur outside, while the user is completely protected.”
“Are you that merciless, son?” said his father. “It sounds as if you intend to offer these people no quarter.”
“I won’t be using it on people,” insisted Matthew. “Just against those metal android soldiers—hopefuly.”
“Gary says that most of those machines contain the souls of real people,” observed Mordecai. “If you destroy them, won’t it be the same thing?
Is there no chance you can talk to them, offer them an opportunity to return the egg without resorting to violence?”
“Every time I’ve been there, I was attacked. Without warning, without any attempt at communication. They’ve never shown any compunction
about kiling me. They did kil Karen’s aunt, and her dog. Then they took Karen, and who knows what they planned to do with her. They’ve forfeited any right to negotiation,” said Matthew. “If you want me to make it back alive, you shouldn’t suggest I try deal-making. Al the evidence so far shows that they can’t be trusted.”
Mordecai sighed, “You’re probably right, but I wanted to spare you the worst if I could.”
“The worst?”
“The greatest strength alows you to obtain what you want without hurting others. Too often I’ve been weak, and forced to use powers that
were il-suited to the task at hand. As a result, a
lot of people have died, and their deaths are my responsibility. It weighs on you, like a heavy stone, and the weight of it can crush your soul. The last thing I ever wanted was for you to experience that. Yet it’s already happened to your sister.”
“Was what happened in Dunbar realy that bad?” asked Matthew. “Moira seems different.”
His father looked down, uncomfortable. “What happened was unfortunate. She did what she had to, but half a city died for it. The enemy had backed her into a corner. I’m afraid that in your case, this is unnecessary. You’re putting yourself in the corner. Whatever happens wil be entirely due to your decisions.”
“They started it,” protested Matt. “They took Desacus. I won’t alow that.”
Mordecai looked sad. “Then you’d better be prepared to deal with the consequences. Violence marks the soul, even when done in self-defense. In this case, you’l bear the burden without even that to expiate your actions.”
“You’ve realy cheered me up,” Matthew answered sarcasticaly.
His father shook his head. “I wasn’t trying to.”
Chapter 42
Gary was studying the parchment in his metal hands. On it were runes, laid out in elaborate triangular patterns, with occasional notes in Barion beside them explaining their function. It was the enchantment Matthew had created for his Fool’s Tesseract. The android pointed to one portion.
“These are numbers?”
Matthew nodded. He had already explained each symbol to the AGI in careful detail.
“Why not just write them as standard numbers?” asked Gary. “Why the need to create a separate set of symbols? What makes these figures
special, such that they control or focus your magic?”
“Technicaly, you’re correct,” said the young wizard. “The runes were created to symbolize different things, but we use them independently of normal words and numbers to help keep things separate in our minds. Otherwise, mages might find themselves performing magic unintentionaly, while speaking or writing.”
“But if you, or someone else, created the runes, what gives them power?”
“I do, or whatever wizard uses them does.”
Gary shook his head. “But what if that other person doesn’t know your symbols? Does it stil work, then?”
