Digital Magic (The Chronicles of Art Book 2)

by Philippa Ballantine

  And she was dancing, gently and beautifully—her eyes never leaving Bakari. Everything about her was flawless. Ronan heard his friend sigh, for he was seeing the manifestation of his dream of magic. He took a step forward and there was a rustle. When his hand came into view, it was not covered with feathers—it was his own.

  Ronan felt his distant neck prickle. Hadn’t Bakari said something about the protection of an avatar…

  “Bakari,” Ronan hissed, “this is getting very strange.”

  No reply came, though his friend moved closer to the woman, who was stepping so daintily and spinning in a light of her own.

  “’Tis is a place you said held danger,” Ronan found he was shouting now, though he didn’t know how much use that would be. “Stop!”

  He could see why Bakari was attracted, even though he was a mere piggy back. The little woman was so very beautiful and the light falling around her heartbreakingly delicate. Bakari was now only a few yards from her and each step seemed to show another beauty about her; the elegant arch of her cheekbone, the dazzling black eyes which reflected the light about her, and the lips the colour of crushed berries that were almost begging to be kissed.

  Ronan saw all that Bakari saw, but also more. The teeth those lips revealed when they smiled were sharply pointed and the light in those eyes was shadowy and malicious.

  “Go back, Bakari!” he yelled, sure his real voice was hoarse by now, but his friend took no notice. Ronan flailed about, trying to find with his disembodied hands where his head and the piggy back device were, but nothing seemed real, only the woman and the sound of the waltz. He was going to watch Bakari die.

  It was going to happen now, right at that moment when Bakari reached out for the little dark haired woman, who was nothing but a predator in disguise. For in that virtual instant she did change, as Ronan had seen many other fell creatures do in his own world. That beautiful face stretched and collapsed upon itself, becoming an arrow-like serpent head with curved teeth that dripped with poison. Bakari didn’t move. He was rapt, humming the sound of that marvelous waltz.

  Ronan’s heart lurched and his head spun with horror. He had no power here, less even than in the human world. But his unseen hand shot forward nonetheless, remembering how much Art it had once owned, the power it had once commanded. He was not the human Ronan anymore. He reclaimed his name of power. He was once again Puck the Trickster.

  Art bloomed from the end of Bakari’s hand just like it was the Fey’s own. It was the golden light Ronan remembered, the sign of his people’s might, and there it was shining forth in the human’s world of the Line. It exploded around the hissing serpent form, incinerating the menace that was leaning forward to claim the life of his friend.

  Ronan felt the heat of the light burning his face and the oddest scent of all, the explosion of jasmine in his nostrils, though both of these seemed impossible within the limits of the piggyback as Bakari had explained it. He was stunned, shocked to the ancient core by this.

  And yet Bakari was alive, apparently shaking his head and none the wiser. Instead he poked his toe in the dust; it was all that remained.

  “Must have better defenses than I thought,” he muttered proudly.

  Ronan didn’t say a thing, letting his pounding heart find its normal beat. Since he couldn’t explain it himself, he certainly wasn’t going to say anything to Bakari.

  The Liner went on in the now lightening hedge maze. And suddenly he was through into a moonlight rose garden. The blooms were everywhere, climbing over the hedges, curling along the ground; great long spikes of beauty, each one glowing with a soft green light.

  “This is it,” he hissed to Ronan. “The core of their system.”

  Ronan said nothing. His mind still whirling, he didn’t take much notice as Bakari set to work on the roses. Within an instant he had summoned up from nothing an army of bright purple ants. They fanned out from his hands, scrambling over the roses and chipping through their stems, while other, braver ones burrowed into the petals themselves. Some were destroyed, crushed by the innocent seeming petals, but others were getting through.

  Numbers began to roll in, a constant stream of vibrant blue scrolling down Bakari’s vision, but far too much for him to process now and then certainly didn’t mean anything to Ronan.

  “Now, we file these babies away for later,” Bakari said, “and get the hell outta here while we’re still in one piece.”

  Barely were the words out of his mouth than they both heard a hissing sound, but it was no snake this time, it was a sickly green gas starting to rise out of the ground. As Bakari backed away carefully, thousands of his inquisitive ants shriveled and died. Ronan could almost smell the death in that cloud.

  “No time for anything fancy,” the Liner said calmly. He sketched the shape of an open door in the air and they were gone with an abrupt snap. Ronan’s head rang and even Bakari seemed suddenly breathless. He shook his head, which only made Ronan even more disorientated.

  The were now inside what appeared to be a metallic bubble, all chrome and stillness, the antithesis of the hedge maze.

  “Where are we?” Ronan asked.

  “This is the loading chamber. It’s where I work when I don’t want to be at risk from the Line. I construct all my bots and programs here. It’s kind of like a workshop.”

  A full length mirror, old fashioned and somewhat battered looking appeared in front of Bakari. It showed his raven form, with his human eyes staring out from it. Ronan felt a twinge of jealousy. Once he had been the true shapeshifter.

  Bakari moved his hand over the mirror and the scrolling numbers boiled over its surface, moving like oil on water.

  “Now we just have to sift through what we got.” The raven peered closer. “Looks like a lot of bio med stuff. But what we really want to see is…” he stopped abruptly, “I don’t believe it!”

  For the figure appearing in the mirror was the knife sharp image of Greer, though not in her usual ethereal earth child outfit. She wore an immaculately tailored suit, her hair confined to a bun, and her ruined eyes were concealed by stylish eye shades.

  Ronan felt comprehension beginning to dawn, but he asked the question anyway, “What’s she doing there?”

  “She’s it, my friend, the owner and founder of Infinity Rose. Looks like we’ve both got the sharp end of the stick on this one.”

  Greer as a corporate executive? Ronan tried not to be too shocked. After all, Greer had always appeared to have enough money to do her own magical research; her lair was evidence enough of that. And he’d never seen her for great lengths of time, even when they were more friendly than now. Her wealth of knowledge on most things could spring from Infinity Rose; he’d always found it odd how very well informed she was, for someone who supposedly didn’t go out at all.

  “But what about Ella?” Ronan asked. “Is there any clue why Infinity Rose, or Greer, would want her?”

  Bakari’s fingers danced across the surface of the mirror. “Not really, only a priority one attached to finding her.”

  Ronan couldn’t help grinning. “And she obviously doesn’t know Ella is right here in Penherem or she’d have got you to help her.”

  “It’s a massive coincidence that we’re all here in the village when you think about it; the Mask, Ella, you and me.”

  “I’m too old to believe in coincidence my friend—something is afoot in Penherem and it's far more than we think.” Ronan tried to pin down whether he was excited or afraid.

  “So what have we got?” Bakari’s raven cocked his head, an utterly bird like gesture. “A mask Greer wants you to steal for her, with Ella and Infinity Rose right in the middle.”

  “Don’t forget Hamish’s murder either,” Ronan reminded him. “I don’t see all the pieces, but I know one thing, Greer wants magic in the world, because it offers her more power than she can possibly hope to gain at the moment. Is that really something we want to happen?”

  Bakari dismissed the mirror but didn’t reply
. He would be torn: he too wanted magic, even if for far different reasons.

  “I’m going to go off Line now,” he said somewhat tersely.

  Ronan hadn’t time to say anything, before there was another white flash and he found himself staring across the short distance at his friend’s troubled face. Bakari busied himself removing the piggy back equipment and Ronan let him, his ancient mind trying to find the right path in this mess. But no matter the confusions of what was happening, he had at least gained one revelation.

  He’d never seen the Line, always imagined that it was a kind of mass delusion, but Bakari had changed all that and Ronan had learned something incredible. Humanity, denied its magic for hundreds of years, had somehow managed to recreate it for themselves in the Line. It was amazing, but Ronan could think of no other explanation as to how he had managed to defend Bakari there. His ancient power had worked in the Line, where it had long ago failed in the real world. And it all fitted with what he knew about Greer. If there was magic in the Line, then she would have been one of the first to find it.

  Yet, he’d always assumed that technology was the antithesis of Art, and it would take a lot of readjustment for him to fit this new reality into his world view. This was human magic, something that they’d help destroy hundreds of years ago, but recreated right here, in a world he’d never even known existed. And he could only speculate wildly how this could change things. Ronan even dared think that perhaps this new Art the humans had made, could realign the Fey world again.

  The very idea that he might be able to return to the Fey made his heart race and he could not stop the mad cascade of images that followed after that thought. He ground his teeth to stop himself exclaiming.

  He couldn’t say anything to Bakari—for one thing, he didn’t quite believe it, himself.

  13

  Linger

  The Master of Water and Land. Aroha repeated the name to herself, trying to remember what the correct form of address would be. Nana had never told her such things, and what she had learned from the Folk had not been enough. She knew that there would be a challenge, there always had been. But what came after that? Why were the Folk sending her here, and worst of all, what would the final price of Daniel’s life be.

  They walked towards the hill, up deserted streets, until they reached a bare and exposed section of gorse covered rock. Laying her palm flat against the raw earth, Aroha called. It was like knocking on a stranger's door, only this was a very frightening stranger.

  An almighty crack, the sound of rock torn loose from its bindings, the rumble of displaced soil, made them both leap back. Beside her, Daniel said a bad word under his breath.

  A long grim passage had opened up, and if she listened closely Aroha could hear the sound of the Master’s heart, a slowly playing drum; it almost drowned out the sound of her own, yammering like a tom-tom.

  “In there?” Daniel growled. “You can’t go in there! I’ve lived all my life in Wellington and I’ve never heard of caves under Mount Victoria.”

  “He’s lived here longer,” Aroha replied, “And we do have to go.”

  The look on her face must have convinced him, because he found a chem-stick, and after breaking it to produce an eerie green glow, he was first to take a step into the passageway.

  Aroha followed after, ready for anything, she told herself. The walls around them were close and rich with the scent of wet earth—not a comfortable smell. Aroha tried not to think of his favor being withdrawn and them caving in, even though her imagination painted vivid pictures of it. And the further they went, the louder the sound became; the sound of his heart.

  But she could not stop this, not even with the scent of danger and a man who called her friend now in peril. Especially not when they broke out of the narrow confines of the tunnel and saw the true enormous reality of the Master of Land and Sea.

  It was impossible to ignore the looming head, which was curved in a great arch like some ancient gothic building. The sweeping length of bone passed between eyes the colour of bright green leaves and curved up like an enormous shovel—for in essence that was what it was. But the body could not be seen, not even if you stood open- mouthed with your head craning up, like Daniel did. The bulk of the taniwha curled away and was swallowed up into the earth.

  In the time before magic had left the world, there had been no harbor here, only a lake in which two massive taniwha lived. They were brothers and rivals; the aggressive and energetic Ngake and his slower quieter brother Whataitai. One day Ngake had heard the ocean just on the other side of the mountains and his heart longed to swim there in the currents of the deep. He had curled his massive body up like a steel spring and charged across the harbor. With that powerful head and all the strength of a taniwha he had stormed his way out of the lake, plowing all the earth before him, breaking the walls that held him and the lake back.

  The quieter Whataitai had suffered as the meek often do. He’d become trapped in the shallow mud created by the loss of the lake. First the water had dried up, and then in time the magic of the world withdrew as well. Whataitai finally called to the other Fey, his cousins, but there was no rescue for him. Their time had passed and their world had moved beyond the reach of the human realm. So he was stuck in every way.

  But taniwhas do not die. Like the other Fey who had managed to flee, they remained immortal. So he was buried, hidden from view, still full with power, but awaiting a time when the way home was clear.

  All this Aroha knew, but also she realized that this was no pet, no creature to be tamed, cuddled and made friends with. His eyes were fixed on her and she felt the regard as if pinned to the spot.

  “Ko wai e whakararuraru ana i ahau?” He spoke in the language of the land, the language that had been born out of the mountains and lakes, Maori. Both Daniel and Aroha understood, for it was one of the two languages taught to children. This was fortunate, for taniwha could be quick to anger and not happy to give translation for the benefit of smaller beings.

  “Sky dwellers, why do you break my solitude?” the thunderous voice rumbled through rock and soil.

  Aroha knew this question was fraught with danger: there were a thousand wrong things to say to a taniwha. So she began carefully. “Great Whataitai, child of Taane Nui a Rangi,” it never hurt to mention the taniwha’s illustrious ancestry; they tended to like being reminded that they were descendants of gods, “I was sent here by the Forest Folk.”

  “The patupaiarehe? What do those pale faced meddlers want?” The taniwha shifted and its smallest claw, taller and longer than Daniel, came remarkably close.

  “I don’t think he likes them much,” the soldier whispered in English to her. She wished he hadn’t.

  “Cease your twitterings,” Whataitai’s head lowered closer, while his breath nearly knocked them over. It grew very warm in the tunnel.

  Aroha choked back panic. “I asked a favor of the Folk, and the price, they said, was to come to you.”

  A silence descended. All that could be heard was the monstrous breathing and heartbeat of Whataitai, but all the time that terrible green glare was fixed on Aroha.

  “You are no child of this land,” he finally said. “You wear the face of one like a mask, but your beginnings were not here. Perhaps that is why the patupaiarehe sent you to me.”

  “I do not know, great Whataitai, where I began. My grandmother will never speak of it.”

  Whataitai laughed, “A wise guardian indeed and from I, the greatest protector of all, that is high praise. But I think the time has come for your flowering, young Fey.”

  Aroha frowned. She’d heard that word, but only from her Nana when she thought she was alone, quietly weeping in her bedroom. It had no real meaning to Aroha, but still something stirred inside her on hearing it.

  “Do you not know the story of the Three Realms?” Whataitai’s head bumped against her body, the smell of salty ocean and warm earth wrapping itself around her.

  She shook her head silently, too overwhe
lmed to speak.

  “Then you have been denied your heritage. Titiro whakamiharo ki nga tamariki a Tane. Listen to me then, last living descendant of Taane of the forest, greatest child of Papatuanuku, Earth Mother.

  “In the time before time, when the earth was new, she was not alone; for no thing is alone, like no person is alone, however much they feel it. She had two sisters, each alike in beauty; the Fey realm where all was magic and the Other Realm, where all was stillness. No one walked in that place, for it was set aside for the gods and creatures of grace. In the Fey where all magic came from, there was beauty and music and laughter. And their kind never died except by accident or murder. It was a place that humans dreamed of and could sometimes touch in their music and fair words.”

  Whataitai paused, his green eyes glistening with a great gleaming taniwha tear.

  “But there arose in the Other Realm, that place of stillness, a great hunger and great desire for destruction that was even beyond the order of death that ruled in human realm. It was clever and quiet in the nature of that place and it was a long time before it ate that world, turning all of its beauty to darkness. But it had a terrible hunger, not sated even by a realm. It turned its intent to the other sister worlds. First of all in beauty, it looked to the Fey.

  “But that realm’s children wouldn’t go quietly, for they had the gift of power and they fought against that which they named The Unmaker. Yet against such hate they could not triumph, so they sought help in the human world. For humans were not without their own kind of magic, wild though it was. And when the Fey mated with them, their children became masters of both magics. And so it was that only together were they able to contain the Unmaker’s desire for destruction. They managed to lock away the Shattered realm from their own and for a while that was enough. And there was peace for a while, though the Fey and the humans distanced themselves from one another, fearing what they did not know.