Wilder Mage

by CD Coffelt

  He smiled down at her, but she didn’t look up.

  “And your papers?”

  “What papers?”

  “The ones in your rooms, all legal and notarized.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know you knew about them. Bert has a big mouth.”

  She waited.

  Justus shrugged. “I had to try out the new paper shredder, didn’t I? Works great, too.”

  He found he had been waiting for that small smile, and she gave it now. Then it turned impish, and she lifted one shoulder and sighed.

  “The electric bill is missing. I sure hope you didn’t shred it by mistake.”

  His laugh echoed across the clearing, and even though she resisted at first, he pulled her into his chest. Her muffled protests gave way, and she snuggled against him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

  “No hot and bothered eruptions, lady,” he murmured into her hair. “I don’t need any more confrontations for now.” She smelled of peaches or strawberries, and he wanted to nuzzle her neck, but stopped that thought before it could travel far.

  “Fine,” Sable said. “Then hold still and don’t…ah, don’t kiss my neck.” Her voice went up an octave.

  Justus decided his strength of will sucked when it came to Sable. “I know, I know.” He stepped back and held her at arm’s length, admiring her flustered look. His eyes watched hotly as she straightened the front of her shirt.

  She rolled her eyes when she saw him looking at her.

  “Did you mean it?” he said softly.

  “Huh?”

  “What you said that day in front of the shop, when the hunters showed up. Did you mean it?”

  Her face softened, and even in the dim light of the half-moon, he saw the change in her face. Sable cupped his face in her hand, and he felt the deep down shudder in his body.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  He lifted his hands and put them on either side of her face, his thumbs gently caressed the corners of her mouth.

  “As I do you,” he said and bent to touch her lips gently with his own, moving carefully.

  But he quickly forgot his resolution to be responsible. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she pressed against him, drawing him to her.

  He didn’t stop to think of repercussions. Her scent, the taste of her mouth on his tongue, the warmth of her body against his skin; for a time, his world became nothing else.

  It was the hiss and crackle of gathered energy that tore him away. Her panting breaths were in time with his gasps.

  “Sorry,” she said. Then she laughed a little, looking at him with sparkling eyes.

  “Sable,” Justus said and stopped. He closed his eyes, held himself still, and tried to control his breathing. When he opened his eyes again, she was looking unsure, her brow furrowed.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I have known since nearly the first day we met that your talents will be…massive when you come into your magic.”

  She nodded, waiting.

  “And your magic seems limited now, but you have more natural talent at this moment than many adepts who have achieved their full ability.”

  Sable gestured vaguely in the direction of the house. Her hand cut through the trails of her magic, creating small whorls of differing colors. “Did you know they can’t see the elements like we can?”

  The motion of her hand flowing through the energies made certain parts of her body move in concert. Very interesting movements. “Um, what?”

  “Dayne and Macy. They have never seen what magic looks like. When I told them that I have all five elements and that I could see their talents, they were amazed. They can’t see magic, and I can’t see it unless a mage is holding it. Why do you think that is?”

  He frowned. She had stopped moving. “It may have something to do with the bonding to the Imperium or that we have all five elements,” he said vaguely. “Possibly it has something to do with the ward stone.”

  Justus stopped.

  “They know you have all five elements,” he said flatly. “You showed them.”

  “Yes, I showed them.” Her chin lifted. “My talents, my business.”

  He clenched his jaw at the sight of her stubborn face, but gave in after a moment. “Oh, well, guess it didn’t hurt.”

  She rolled her eyes and patted his chest where the ward stone lay. “You might be right about your pendant. Maybe it not only provides a shield for you, but breaks down shields of others.”

  He tried to ignore the touch of her warm fingers on his chest or the sudden increase of his heart rate. It disrupted his thought processes, and he needed all of them right now. “She’ll use you.”

  The light faded from her eyes.

  “When you come into your full potential,” he said quietly, “you will have massive abilities, in all five elements, and Tiarra will control your actions. You must know this; what you have rivals mine. The hunters do her will. They can’t help it. They are not free agents, no matter how nice they seem; we cannot allow them to get close.”

  She nodded. He gently cupped her cheek and turned her toward him. Her shining eyes glimmered in the starlight, and his lips parted to pull in a short breath when she again laid her hand on his chest.

  “Your ward stone,” she began and stopped. He noted her respiration came in bursts also. Sable fingered the new turquoise stone that hung with the brown. “Can you make a shield stone for me? One that keeps my signature from detection?”

  “No,” he said abruptly, more harshly than he intended. At her lowered brow and unspoken question, Justus stepped back and tucked the chain with the azure and its mate, the ward stone, into his shirt. “To do that, I need to use Spirit in great amounts. I don’t know why my ward stones shields me from the element. Possibly because gathering it sends up a neon sign with a ‘here I am’ signal. I can’t create a talisman for you.”

  Sable nodded, her face drawn into a worried frown. “When you make the turquoise pendant a shield from the Imperium’s locating device…?”

  “I must remove the ward stone and gather small amounts of Spirit to fix it onto it. And do all that far away from here.”

  “When? Soon?”

  He nodded without replying.

  A shadow passed over her face. “What are we going to do?” she said.

  “Beats me.”

  She grumbled irritably. “You think I’m strong, that I’ve got talent.”

  He nodded.

  “Stronger than you?”

  Justus didn’t want her playful mood to end. Dire warnings had no place under the stars with the evening breeze curling around them. He stroked her cheek to smooth the errant strands away from her eyes and chose his words carefully.

  “My love, you are very strong in your elements, and I don’t want to find out how strong.”

  He was glad when she grinned and looked away; Justus didn’t think he could hold his face still much longer. Or keep his fear in check.

  The cell phone rang once.

  “Yes?”

  “She isn’t falling for it.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Nickelback played one of his favorite songs on the car radio, and Justus kept time to the thumping beat with his fingers on the steering wheel. It gave him the impetus to keep to the plan, worry be damned.

  The Midwest churned out muggy hot mornings nearly every day of summer, and the wide planters that crowded the roads during the spring and early summer had given way to tractors pulling balers to put up their hay. The iconic picture of boys in coveralls, splitting their teeth with stems of grass was long gone, as were the days of fields dotted with small bales of hay. Now the hay scattered across the field appeared like round monsters, weighing up to a ton. The hot days of picking up a thousand little bales by muscle and wagon was over, with a single operator doing the chore in an air-conditioned cab.

  In the evenings now, the call of the mourning doves gave way to the buzz of locusts. And like swimming pools and barbeques, it was a
sign that summer was at its peak.

  Worry for Sable’s welfare gnawed at him, but he had put it off long enough and had to chance discovery by the roaming mages. Justus reluctantly left on a daytrip to gather the phantasms, though his worry for leaving her with the hunters made his skin itch in warning. But time was running out.

  Justus had closed the shop for the rest of the month, giving the McIntyres a chance to take a long driving vacation to the southwest. When Sable threatened that she would try to make the shield stone herself if he didn’t leave, Justus grudgingly made his plans and left her before dawn to create the stone. He needed to be away from the vulture-like adepts circling Sable and find a place to work the magic into the stone without bringing them to the party.

  Though Dayne and Macy seemed to be the only hunters watching Sable, Justus couldn’t be sure that others weren’t close. Maybe they didn’t feel the need to add more mages to their stakeout. Maybe they were confident their charge would turn and capitulate to the inevitable.

  Or maybe they were satisfied that he would eventually turn her for them.

  Justus remembered her hand in his, so warm and soft. He still couldn’t think of one scene in the movie they had attended, but he remembered every detail of her hand. For a time, he allowed the indulgence until he shook his mind out of the trance. He had to focus or they would all be dancing to the same tune. Now he needed all his wits about him instead of drowning his mind in thoughts of…

  No, he needed to get back to business.

  The road signs of a Dairy Queen and filling station looked familiar, and soon, the black top road he followed led to a lazy curve to the left, and he knew it was not far. Justus slowed his car and turned onto a graveled road, kicking up a dusty cloud behind him.

  Half a mile later, he saw the overgrown drive leading into the brush. He stopped the car and turned off the engine. For a moment, he augmented his hearing, listening. For miles around, he heard nothing but the sounds of birds and insects. Justus flicked his hand into a scooping motion and created a round shield, covering the car and himself with a bubble of bent Air. Then he extended the gathered magic. Reaching into Earth, he pulled from the soil the elements he needed. With swirls of careful energies, he sent them to the overgrown drive, and the brush and weeds parted. He looked at the results, nodded, started the car, and drove into the now-cleared path. The bubble of Air formed a screen that allowed the branches to slide by without snagging. He maneuvered down the drive to the abandoned farmstead and glanced at his rearview mirror. The brush settled back into its previous riotous growth, unchanged by his passage. It looked as if no one had driven this forgotten lane in many years.

  An old farmhouse stood with empty windows and a swayback roof, the sad remnants of its better days. A wide-branched maple tree stood in the yard, ancient by any standards. By the amount of broken branches lying at the base, it did not have many years left; a strong wind or ice storm would end its days soon. A lazily moving swing hung from one of its thick branches, and Justus could almost hear the high-pitched laughter of the long-ago children who had enjoyed the cool shade.

  The barn was in somewhat better shape. The roof was intact and the blue barn swallows wheeled around the open door leading to the haymow.

  Justus killed the engine and allowed the shield bubble to collapse. He walked up the slope leading to the breezeway running down the middle of the barn, the granaries, and storage areas on one side, stanchions and mangers on his left—a typical barn used for all livestock. The middle of the barn was clear of obstructions, and he walked to the side, where a large wooden manger bordered the center alleyway.

  Made for horses, dairy cows, and wagons full of hay, it was part of a lost time. An age that was more romantic than easy living. He stopped at the manger and closed his eyes.

  Justus slowly and carefully extended his senses in all directions, feeling again for anyone, human or mage, who may be close. The area was empty of people and he was alone. He dropped the Air he wrought, satisfied with his solitude. Time to work some magic.

  He ignored the swallows and wasps flitting around him, opened his arms away from his body, his hands palms-up, and reached for the swirling energies that soared and swooped around him. Justus let his senses flow out and away from him, touching and gathering the surging phantasms into a convergence of glitter. The sparkling energies left comet trails around him, manifesting into hissing, colored streams of orange Fire, blue Air, and green Earth. He never understood why Water was red, but there it was, playing in the mix. Like streams of glimmering stars, they swirled around him, twining and braiding into separate paths, and as always, he marveled at the show. But he couldn’t let it go on for long without calling every mage in the five-county area to his location. After only a few seconds, he directed the streams into the turquoise stone hanging on the chain around his neck. And the magic quickly obliged, cascading one after another into the pendant like whispering shooting stars. The stone accepted the influx of magic with a tiny shudder.

  Before Justus dropped his hands, he once again sent his senses out into the land to check for the magic signatures of adepts. Nothing.

  The colors of the elements were a manifestation of their choosing, not his, and as always, he was awestruck by the vibrant colors. Spirit was the mystery, since he never risked working with the element in large amounts. Curious, he held the pendant in his left hand and slid the black chain over his head. Again, he sent his senses outward, feeling for adepts. Still nothing.

  The waist-high manger stood broad at the edge where he set the stone and chain. He held his hand over it for a moment longer, then splayed his fingers and released it, withdrawing his hand as he did. It sat on the ancient wooden beam, looking like nothing more than a mud-colored stone with a hole in the middle for the fine, black chain, its mate the blue stone. Justus hesitated and then slowly lifted his arms again.

  At first, nothing happened, and he wondered if the ward stone still exerted a shield around the Spirit element. He pulled and called to it, cajoled the element to do his bidding. It felt unlike the other elements: cold. He increased his focus, strengthened his will. Still nothing. But Justus felt his skin tighten, and like the charged atmosphere before a summer storm, anticipation sliced into his mental awareness and his senses tingled.

  Then the air shimmered as crystalline specks appeared from every part of the barn’s alleyway like fireflies. White, as colorless as clear glass, as brilliant as the sun reflected from water, it gathered into a comet tail as the other elements had, spiraling around him. But where the other elements gave him the feeling of warmth and heat, Spirit was glacier-cold.

  And it did not whisper like grains of sand.

  It screamed in frozen crystals.

  The stream curled in on itself and swirled in lazy circles around him. Justus felt none of the fascination with Spirit that he had with the manifestation of the other elements. This element was something more, something alive. Alarm mounted and his heart thudded.

  The Spirit jumped to life, the languid whirling trails turned faster, and the cry of the crystals tore around his head. They formed and then coalesced into a shape, a sparkling white dragon. Justus stepped back. It moved as if alive, twitching into consciousness. It grew and soared, the trails feeding into it until its form took up nearly the width of the barn alleyway. It shuddered, seemed to inhale. The eyes of the dragon opened and revolved in sparkling bits of light. Blindly, its eyes wheeled, then settled on him. Intelligence and awareness were in them. The eyes widened as they fell on him, then contracted in malevolence. The glittering beast opened its mouth wide, and Justus saw its razor-crystal maw as it advanced.

  Justus gasped, but stood firm, clenching his teeth. He raised his hand and poured his will and strength into it. With a clawing motion, he scooped the air before the dragon could reach him, and it eddied into swirls of small white trails. It dodged and shrank back, then narrowed its glistening eyes and came at him again, faster. This time, Justus stepped forward to meet it
and again brought his hand through the crystals. His hoarse scream of defiance cut into the air with his hand.

  The seething vortexes increased in volume and speed, and while the streams churned into confused trails, Justus took that moment to direct the element into the ward stone as he had the other energies. It hesitated, seemed to buck and ripple, then answered to his will and streamed into the stone. But the fires of Spirit did not go quietly. Bits of crystalline sparks spat at him and the stone trembled. A smell of char permeated the air around the wooden manger.

  Justus drew his lips away from his teeth and snarled, forcing compliance from the element. For a few seconds longer, it resisted. Then, as an arrow from a bow, it hissed into the ward stone.

  The brown-flecked stone rocked, and the black chain slithered into the cobwebby hay of the manger, pulling the stone with it. Justus leaped to catch it, but it disappeared into the dusty, ancient hay.

  He scrabbled in the old hay, and a dusty cloud puffed out as he stirred it with his hands. Justus sneezed and the swallows came to life again, warning him to keep away from their young ones. For a fleeting moment, Justus saw the humor in the sight he made, one arm up to his shoulder, stuck in the dirty remains of ancient cattle fodder, and the dark blue birds swooping and diving at his head, hollering at him.

  In the next moment, Justus lost any thought of laughter. He felt something different on his consciousness. His senses came alive and he could feel emotions. Astonishment, surprise, horror. And triumph.

  None of the emotions were his.

  Hazy faces gathered around him. Hundreds of wizards, strangers from all parts of the globe, wearing sneakers and jeans, pinstriped suits, robes, and dresses. As if peering through a hole in a wall, he caught a glimpse of each incorporeal figure, their actions caught at that moment, frozen in time and movement.

  The misty forms jerked, became animated. As one, their attention snapped to him, their ghostly faces stunned. They stumbled. Some dropped what was in their hands. Others were startled into full wakefulness. Mouths agape, their eyes searched for the danger, as if it were close. But it wasn’t. The magic they felt was many miles away in a barn in Iowa.