The Warlock

by Michael Scott

  Josh shouted, and the cloud dissolved.

  “Again,” Virginia directed. “Something you love.” The music swirled and howled.

  Josh tried to form his sister’s face in the cloud, but couldn’t see it clearly enough and the cloud ended up looking like a blob. He refocused and the blob turned into an orange, which transformed into a golden ball, which flattened to become a page covered in tiny shifting sticklike writing.…

  “Very good,” Virginia said. “Now look across the yard.”

  Josh sat up straight and looked to the wall at the far side of the recreation yard.

  “It is covered in dirt,” Virginia said. She took a deep breath and a gust of wind whistled across the open space, curling the dust in the air. “Imagine something,” she commanded.

  “Like?”

  “A snake,” she suggested.

  “I hate snakes.”

  “So you should be able to see them clearly in your imagination. We always find it easier to visualize what we fear; it’s what keeps us afraid of the dark.”

  Josh looked at the swirling twist of dust, and instantly it changed, gathering into a thick rope of grit that curled into a red-and-black-patterned garter snake. Josh remembered seeing it in the San Francisco Zoo. Instantly the snake dissolved into the distinctive animal and tree logo of the zoo.

  “You need to concentrate,” Virginia said firmly. “You created the snake, then you remembered where you saw it; that’s why the image changed.”

  Josh nodded. Focus. He needed to focus. Instantly the logo twisted back into the shape of the snake. He visualized it curling to swallow its own tail, and across the yard the coil of dust formed a perfect circle.

  “Impressive,” Virginia said. “But now let me tell you the greatest secret of air magic, which, I’ll wager, the Witch of Endor did not teach your sister.” She smiled. “And don’t tell the doctor that you know this.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  Virginia reached out and poked Josh in the chest. Paper cracked. “We all have our secrets, Josh.”

  Josh pressed his hand against his T-shirt, startled. Beneath it, in a cloth bag around his neck, he carried the last two pages from the Codex. He started to panic, wondering if Dee knew but instantly guessing that Dare must not have told him yet. “How long have you known?” he asked.

  “For a while.”

  “And you haven’t told Dee?”

  “I am sure you have good reasons for not telling him. And I am equally sure you will tell him when the time is right.”

  Josh nodded again. He still wasn’t entirely sure why he hadn’t told Dee that he had the missing pages. He just knew he wasn’t ready yet. And now he wondered why Virginia hadn’t told Dee either.

  “Close your eyes again,” Dare commanded.

  Josh squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The music had changed, becoming soft, gentle, the sound of the wind rustling through trees on a summer’s day.

  “You know how powerful the air can be,” Dare continued. “Strong enough to knock down buildings. You’ve seen hurricanes devastate cities and tornados rip apart entire towns. That is the power of the wind. You’ve seen skydivers fall from the sky and ride the thermal waves like surfers. No doubt you’ve used cans of compressed air to clean your computer keyboard.”

  With his eyes still squeezed tightly shut, Josh nodded.

  “We’re talking about air pressure.” The woman’s voice suddenly grew distant, as if she’d moved away from him. “And if you can shape and control the pressure … why then, Josh, you can do anything. Open your eyes.”

  Josh turned to Virginia, but she was gone. And then he scrambled to his feet and looked up into the air, mouth wide with shock. Virginia Dare was floating ten feet off the ground over the recreation yard. Her long hair was spread out behind her like a fan and her arms were flung wide. “Air pressure, Josh. I visualized a pocket of air pressure beneath me.”

  “Can I do that? Can I fly?”

  “It will take practice. Lots of practice,” she said, slowly drifting back down to the ground. “Floating first, then flying. But yes, you will be able to do it. Now, there is one final thing I can do for you: you need a trigger.”

  “I know what that is—Flamel and Sophie have them tattooed on their wrists.” He held up his left hand and spread his fingers wide. Burned into the flesh of his palm was the perfect imprint of an Aztec sunstone with a face in the center. “Prometheus gave this to me.”

  “We need not do anything so commonplace.” She tapped her flute against her chin. “Did you see the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind?”

  “Sure—it’s on TV every Christmas. And my dad has it on DVD.”

  “I guessed you did. You know the tune that’s played at the end?”

  “To communicate with the spacecraft?” He pressed his lips together and whistled the five distinctive notes.

  “Exactly,” Virginia said, mimicking the sounds on her flute, and Josh shuddered as a rush of cool sage-scented air washed over his body. “There is your trigger. Now whenever you need to call upon the Magic of Air, just give a little whistle!”

  Josh looked across the recreation yard and whistled the five notes. A discarded soda can suddenly spun up into the air and smashed against the stone wall. “That is so … cool!”

  “And remember, floating before flying.”

  Josh grinned. He’d been on the verge of trying to create a cushion of air beneath his feet at that very moment.

  “And a tip—try it sitting down first. If you sit on a small carpet or rug you can create the cushion of air beneath that, just like a hovercraft.” She smiled. “Where do you think the stories of flying carpets came from?”

  Suddenly, from within the prison block came a bloodcurdling high-pitched scream.

  “Dee,” Virginia said. Her easy grin disappeared, and before Josh could react she was already racing to the stairs.

  Josh grabbed Clarent and ran after her, the sword flickering to blazing light in his hand.

  he Rukma vimana hummed across a landscape of extraordinary beauty. A vast forest stretched as far as the eye could see. Twisting rivers meandered through trees and opened out into enormous lakes that were so clear it was possible to see deep below the surface.

  They flew over enormous herds of mammoth and watched saber-toothed tigers stalking them in the long grass. Huge black and brown bears reared up on their hind legs as the vimana droned overhead, and flocks of pterosaurs scattered as the craft appeared.

  “Truly a magical landscape,” William Shakespeare said to Palamedes. “I think I might have to rewrite A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

  The Saracen Knight nodded but then turned his friend toward one of the rear-facing portholes. “Though this world is not without its flaws,” he murmured, pointing into the skies behind them.

  “We have company,” Scathach announced, pulling away from a window. “Lots and lots of company.”

  “I know,” Prometheus said. The huge red-haired warrior pointed to a glass screen set into the floor almost directly in front of him. It was covered with racing red dots.

  Palamedes looked around the craft. “This is a warcraft. Are there weapons?”

  The big Elder grinned from the controls, teeth white against his red beard. “Oh, there are weapons, lots of weapons.”

  “I fear we are about to hear a ‘but,’ ” William Shakespeare murmured.

  “But they do not work,” Prometheus continued. “These craft are old. No one—not even Abraham—knows how to repair them. Most of them barely fly, and usually one or two drop out of the air every day.” He jerked a thumb toward a cloth-wrapped bundle in the seat beside him. “You might want to arm yourselves. I took the liberty of retrieving your weapons from the anpu.”

  “Ah, now I’m happy,” Scathach said, slipping her swords into the empty sheaths on her shoulders.

  Saint-Germain and Joan were sitting together, heads touching, both staring out of one of the circular portholes. “They’re gaining
fast,” the Frenchwoman said. “There are too many to count.”

  “The only consolation we have is that few of those will have active weapons either,” Prometheus told them.

  Palamedes looked over at Scathach. “When you say ‘few …,’ ” she began.

  “Some will be armed,” Prometheus clarified.

  “Incoming!” Saint-Germain yelled. “Two of them have launched missiles.”

  “Sit down and strap yourselves in,” Prometheus commanded. The group scrambled to get into the seats behind him, and he added, “We’re too slow to outrun them, and the smaller ones are infinitely more maneuverable.”

  “Is there good news?” Scathach demanded.

  “I am the finest flier in Danu Talis,” the Elder said.

  Scathach smiled. “If anyone else said that I would think they were boasting. But not you, Uncle.”

  Prometheus glanced quickly at the Warrior. “How many times do I have to tell you—I’m not your uncle.”

  “Not yet, anyway,” she muttered under her breath.

  “Everyone strapped in?” Prometheus asked. Without waiting for an answer, he brought the triangular vimana straight up into the air, then flipped it back, so that the ground was directly overhead and the sky below them, before he leveled it off and the earth and sky resumed their normal positions.

  “I’m going to throw up,” Scatty muttered.

  “That would be very unfortunate,” Shakespeare said. “Especially since I am sitting directly behind you.”

  Joan reached over and caught her friend’s hand. “You just need to focus on other things,” she said in French.

  “Like what?” Scathach pressed a hand against her mouth and swallowed hard.

  Joan pointed.

  Scatty looked directly ahead and instantly all her nausea vanished. They were facing at least a hundred vimanas. Most of them were the small circular craft they had seen earlier, but others were large oblong shapes, and Scatty could spot two Rukma vimanas.

  And Prometheus was flying directly toward them.

  William Shakespeare shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Now, I’ve never been a warrior, and I know little about tactics, but shouldn’t we be flying in the other direction?” They were close enough now to see the wide-eyed anpu in the nearest craft.

  “We will,” Prometheus said. “Just as soon as the missiles explode.”

  “Which missiles?” Shakespeare asked.

  “The two just behind us.” Prometheus hauled back on the vimana’s controls and it once again reared straight up into the air and back in the other direction, earth and sky flipping. Scathach groaned.

  And the two missiles, which had been on their tail, shot past the craft, straight into the two nearest vimana. They exploded in balls of fire. Streamers of flame washed over another three craft, while two more crashed into one another.

  “Seven down,” Palamedes announced, instantly becoming a warrior again, reporting the fallen enemy to his commander.

  “Ninety-three to go,” Saint-Germain finished, winking at his wife. Joan reached out and caught his hand in hers. She turned it over and tapped the back of his wrist, where a dozen tiny butterflies were tattooed onto his flesh. She raised a pencil-thin eyebrow in a silent question.

  “I have a proposal,” Saint-Germain called up to Prometheus. “I am a Master of Fire. Why don’t we just open the door and I’ll draw down a little lightning?”

  Prometheus grunted a laugh. “Try it,” he said. “Try to call up your aura.”

  Saint-Germain snapped his fingers. His party trick was to bring his index finger alight. But nothing happened. He brushed at the butterfly trigger on the back of his wrist and tried again. A wisp of black smoke curled out from under his fingernail.

  “Whatever process keeps the vimanas in the air negates your aura,” Prometheus said. “In fact, Abraham believes they fly because they draw a trickle of their power from the pilot’s aura.”

  “So we can’t use our auras,” Saint-Germain said, “we have no weapons and we cannot outrun them. What can we do?”

  “We can outfly them.”

  The Rukma vimana dropped out of the sky. Palamedes and Saint-Germain whooped, while Shakespeare and Scathach screamed. Only Joan remained calm and composed.

  Ten vimanas peeled off the larger fleet and followed it down.

  Prometheus took the Rukma low, humming over the ground close enough to behead flowers and flatten grass. One vimana closed in and they could see the anpu within readying a weapon. Prometheus sent the craft over a stand of trees. He deliberately drove it into one young sapling, but tilted the nose up at the last moment so that the tree didn’t break but bent—and then snapped back, straight into the trailing vimana. Startled, the pilot lost control. The craft wobbled and plowed into the ground.

  “Another one down,” Palamedes said.

  “A neat trick,” Saint-Germain agreed, “but I’m not sure you can repeat it.”

  The nine remaining vimanas closed in fast.

  “The tops have opened,” Saint-Germain reported. “They’re fixing what look like rifles to the roofs.”

  “Tonbogiri,” Prometheus said, shifting the craft left, then right as two of the rifles fired. “They’re also called cutters.” Metal screamed off the Rukma, and then there was a solid bang as something punched a hole in the side of the craft close to Scathach. A misshapen ball rolled to her feet. “Don’t touch it,” Prometheus warned as the Warrior bent over. “The balls are razor sharp. If you dropped it in your hand, it would sink in one side of your flesh and be out the other side before you even felt it.”

  The Elder brought the Rukma down over a lake and then deliberately dipped it in the water. An ice-cold spume fountained up behind the craft and washed into the open top of the closest vimana. Shocked, the pilot jerked away from the controls. The craft wobbled directly in front of the one behind it, just as the anpu sniper fired. The tonbogiri ball sliced straight through the vimana’s control box and the craft dipped and plunged into the lake.

  “Only about ninety-two to go,” the Saracen Knight said.

  Prometheus carved a perfect circle in the lake, churning up the water. A vimana drew up alongside them and the anpu leveled its tonbogiri. Prometheus cut the power and the Rukma dropped like a stone. It hit the water in an explosion of foam and sank in a cloud of bubbles. Instantly water started to seep in around the window and door seals, and rushed through the hole left by the tonbogiri. The Elder hissed in frustration. “Never done that before. Used to be you could fly these into space,” he muttered.

  Metal clinked off the roof and they looked up through the water. They could see the shadow of the circular vimana overhead. It was joined by a second and then a third. Tonbogiri balls started to fall into the lake, trailing streams of bubbles, only to lose velocity in the water’s drag. They slowly spiraled downward, some landing with a light thud on the vehicle’s roof, others drifting past to the bottom of the lake.

  Suddenly there was a pop and a panel rose from the floor. Icy water flooded in around Joan’s feet. “We are leaking!”

  “Up!” the Saracen Knight yelled. “We need to go up before we become too heavy to rise.”

  “In a minute,” Prometheus said. He nodded to the screen at his feet. Two red dots were approaching fast.

  “How did they get behind us?” Saint-Germain asked.

  “Below us,” Prometheus corrected him. “And they didn’t. We’ve awakened something from the depths.”

  “You did that deliberately,” Scathach accused the Elder, “that’s why you churned up the water.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s closing fast … very fast.…” Palamedes pointed to the screen. “And more coming.”

  “I can see something outside—moving in the water,” Saint-Germain said urgently. “Something …” He stopped, temporarily speechless. “Big … with teeth … lots of teeth.”

  Prometheus hit the controls and the Rukma surged upward. It exploded out of the water, followed by two enormous
sharklike creatures. The first smashed into two of the circling vimanas, sending them spinning into the lake, while the second actually bit into the third craft, almost snapping it in two, and dragged it down.

  Three more of the monstrous creatures broke the surface, teeth gnashing. “Sharks,” Scathach said.

  “Megalodons,” Prometheus announced, pulling the Rukma higher and higher, little fountains of water spilling from the leaks in its sides.

  “They were at least thirty feet long!” Scathach said.

  “I know,” replied the Elder. “They must have been babies.”

  here are those who will tell you,” Tsagaglalal began, “that the Magic of Fire or Water or even Air is the most powerful magic of all. Some would disagree—would say that the Magic of Earth surpasses all others. They are wrong.”

  Sophie was still sitting with her back to the apple tree, the palms of her hands flat against the grass.

  Tsagaglalal sighed. “In truth,” the old woman continued, “I think all magics are equal and identical. A lifetime of study has led me to believe that they are all the same.”

  “But the elements,” Sophie pressed, “air, water, fire and earth are different.”

  Tsagaglalal nodded. “But the same forces control those elements. The energy you use to control fire is the same energy you use to shape water and mold air.” She patted the ground. “And the earth, too. That energy comes from within: it is the power of your aura.”

  The garden filled with the odor of jasmine, and Tsagaglalal rubbed the palm of her hand across the earth. A speckling of brightly colored daisies appeared. “Now, was that earth magic?” she asked.

  Sophie was a bit unsure, but she nodded. “Yes …”

  Tsagaglalal smiled. “Are you sure? Why not water magic? These plants need water to survive. Or maybe it was air magic—they need oxygen, too, don’t they?”

  “And fire?” Sophie asked with a little smile.

  “They do need warmth to grow,” Tsagaglalal said.

  “I’m confused. What’s the Magic of Earth, then? Are you saying that there’s no such thing?”