“That’s one,” Rafe said.
Our next stop was near the summit of Pikes Peak. We stayed far away from the parking lot and observation building that overlooked the Springs. It was a lot colder above fourteen thousand feet, and a strong wind blew the ground snow around us. Rafe repeated the actions from the top of Cheyenne Mountain while I joined in by observing and studying his technique in casting the spells.
We finished up there, mounted our familiars, and flew northward, descending as we flew. We passed over some kind of amusement park in the forest at the base of Pikes Peak and then over the four-lane Highway 24 that connected Colorado Springs with Woodland Park, a small town just west of Ute Pass.
Still traveling north, we soon came to a peak that Rafe identified as Ormes Peak, a tree covered mountain that didn’t extend above the tree line. All sides of the mountain were blackened from a burn scar that covered many square miles. The peak itself was an island of green in a sea of desolation. I had asked Rafe about the burn scar when I first spotted it at Garden of the Gods. He’d said it was a few years old, but he didn’t know much about it. Once down on Ormes Peak, Rafe used the last of the posts, copper, and brass rods to set up one more antenna. He hadn’t called his devices antenna, but since he hadn’t had a name for them and that it was Tesla who had given him the idea, I decided they had to be antennae of some sort.
We were just finishing when I had a thought.
“Rafe, that spell you used on the stone to cut a hole.”
“What about it?” he asked.
“What do you call it?”
He shrugged and looked a little sheepish. It was a strange look on him.
“I call it rock eater,” he said.
“Rock eater?” I repeated.
“Yes, I guess I could call it disintegrating touch, but that sounds silly.”
I laughed lightly. “Yeah, that sounds more like something out of D&D. Have you ever tried it as a weapon?”
He frowned a little in thought and then shook his head. “No, I haven’t. I have to be nearly touching the object I’m using it on for it to work. Most of my offensive spells are ranged, meaning I cast them from a distance. It’s smart when you’re dealing with some of the things we have to tackle.”
“But could it be used offensively?” I persisted.
“I guess I could, but there’d still be the problem of range.”
“You couldn’t modify it to work over a distance? I mean anything that can vaporize rock would pretty much take out anything if you cast it on a person, a weapon, or even a vehicle. Hell, even if it didn’t have a range capability, imagine using it against anything you could touch. You could take out a tank,” I said excitedly.
Rafe nodded and grinned. “I don’t usually go up against tanks, but you do have a good suggestion. If I could stretch it out to even a dozen or more feet, I could take out weapons that were being used against us. I tell you what. I’ll give your suggestion some more thought, and you keep thinking. Even if this one doesn’t pan out, your next idea might.”
I was grinning, and I felt more elated than I could understand at first. Then I realized that Rafe had accepted my idea as valid for study and encouraged me to mention anything else I thought up. Now that was a big plus. I was just an apprentice, and I couldn’t do much magic yet, but I still had a mind. If I applied myself, maybe I could be a greater help than just an apprentice.
Chapter 19
Raphael
It was still light when we got back to Joe’s cabin, but shadows were sliding down the mountain like some dark force. I shook my head at the thought. I didn’t need to psych myself out before a fight. We landed beside Joe’s pickup and dismounted.
I noticed that Tess took a moment to stroke Maia’s head and say something to her before she joined me. She unzipped her jacket until the generous swells of her pale breasts were obvious. I cocked an eyebrow, and she acted as if she hadn’t noticed me looking.
We walked up the drive toward the cabin. We’d only gotten a few steps when the front door opened, and Joe stepped out holding three beers.
“Now that’s what I call service,” I called.
“I felt you coming and figured you might have worked up a thirst,” Joe called back.
“How does he do that?” Tess asked.
“What?”
“Know before we show up. Is he psychic or something?”
“Could be or it could be that some little bird told him we were coming,” I answered.
“A bird? Seriously?”
I laughed.
“Damn it, Rafe. I never know if you’re pulling my leg or making an honest statement. Come on, which is it?” Tess complained.
I checked my laughing. “It could be either. I know he can talk to some animals, I’ve seen him do it, but he may also be psychic. You’ll have to get the skinny directly from him if you want the absolute truth, but why bother? Does it matter?”
Tess shook her head. “It doesn’t really matter, but I’m the student here. I’m trying to learn everything I can about your world so I feel I need to know. It doesn’t matter, now, but I don’t know what might be important for me to know five or ten years down the road. I have to learn everything if I’m going to survive.”
I stopped short and took a good look at my apprentice. She had seriousness written all over her face, and her stance echoed that as she stopped and met my gaze.
I frowned and nodded. “You’re right, Tess. It is important for you to learn as much as you can as soon as possible. You ask Joe about it. I’m sure he’ll tell you.”
I motioned toward the cabin with a sweep of my hand; Tess nodded and hurried up the steps. She reached him, relieved him of one of the beers, and took a long swig as I joined them on the porch. I took Joe’s extraneous beer; if I didn’t take it soon, I was sure he’d drink it.
I sat in the chair beside Joe and Tess dropped to the porch cross-legged at Joe’s feet.
“Joe, may I ask you a question?” Tess said.
The old man took another swallow of beer and then studied my apprentice. After a few moments, he nodded. “You may always ask, young one. If the question is worthy, I will answer truthfully.”
“Thank you, Joe. I was wondering how you know before we arrive. Yesterday you said you were expecting us and just now, you said you knew we were coming and would be thirsty. Is this some power you have or what?”
Joe gazed out to the east at the Springs for a full minute before replying. “It could be just that I knew how long it would take you to set those three rods and get back here.”
Tess frowned, and Joe held up a hand.
“I said it could be. In truth, I can foresee the future, but not very far. When someone is coming to see me, like the two of you, I sometimes dream of the visit beforehand. Other times, especially when it’s an old friend such as Raphael, I can almost picture him riding up the drive and getting off of Beast. In either of those cases, I believe it’s a vision that the great bear spirit sends me. Just as he warned me of the coming fight, he drops me a hint when something important is about to happen.”
Tess nodded, at least partially satisfied. “And today, Joe? How did you know we were almost here and that we’d be thirsty?”
Joe chuckled. “As for that, well young one. I may be old, but I can still see through a glamour and when I see a manticore and a hippogriff carrying passengers flying toward me, I can guess that it’s my friends coming back. And as for the thirst, well, I’ve never known Raphael to show up and not be thirsty.”
I covered my own grin with my hand by raising the bottle to my lips and taking another long pull.
Tess, bless her heart, actually colored, the blush spreading down her throat and to the swell of her breasts.
“So, Raphael, how did your work go?” Joe asked, turning away from Tess and facing me.
I forced my eyes off of Tess’s spreading blush and met Joe’s gaze. “Everything went smoothly, no problems. Now if it’ll just work.”
“I believe what you’ve done is well within your powers. You shouldn’t have a problem. But will it be enough?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I have another idea, but I’m not sure I can make it work. Joe, you can open portals. How good are you with them?”
“How good? What’s that mean? I want a portal, I open a portal, there’s no good or bad in my technique,” Joe said.
I shook my head. “What I want to know is whether you can open a portal from one place to other places that don’t necessarily line up on the other plane?”
“Not line up? Oh, I see. You always cross over to the identical spot in another dimension. You don’t ever adjust the point that the portal opens?”
“Is that possible?” I asked.
“Certainly. Why haven’t you ever asked me about it before?”
“Because I didn’t know it was possible. The subject hasn’t come up, and Walt never got that far in his instructions. I have never spent much time in the other worlds and only rarely open portals. Usually, I just close and lock portals that I find to keep others from stumbling into them or something coming through that doesn’t belong here.”
Joe shook his head sadly. “I should have realized. There were clues that your training was lacking, but I didn’t realize it was that serious.”
“What do you mean, Joe? What kind of clues?” Tess interjected.
“Raphael has always traveled on that big beast of his. I’ve never seen him come or go anyway but on Beast. I thought it was just an affectation of the Wanderers that they always ride their familiars wherever they were going. It never seemed to be an issue to worry over since Fate always gives you time to get wherever you are needed. But portals can be opened from one spot in our world to another in our world, just as they can be opened from our world to one of the other worlds. Granted it’s more difficult to open one to another physical location in the same world, but it can be done. It’s just a matter of technique.”
I sat back in my rocker and stared out across the vista toward Kansas. I’d been such a fool. Why hadn’t I asked Walt or any of the other Wanderers I’d come across or helped out over the years? I really didn’t need to ask myself that question. Because I knew the answer to it. I’ve always been self-reliant. So much so that I wouldn’t ask for help with anything unless there was no other option. Walt had been the only person I could ever ask anything, and I’d only had him around for five years.
“Well, hell,” I said at last. “Joe, do you think you could give me a few pointers on how to go about it?”
Joe nodded slowly. “I can help, but it’s not something you could put in one of those tattoos of yours. You need to cast the spell while concentrating on the location you want. If you’ve never been there before, it’s infinitely more difficult, but it can still be done. The easy way to get a portal open is to mark the two locations in your mind with a spell of remembrance and then you can go between those two points with relative ease.”
“A spell of remembrance?” Tess asked. “What’s that, Joe?”
“The spell is to help you remember a location or event. I guess to use modern terms, it stores everything about a particular place and time in your long-term memory. Cast it before reading a spell, and you will find it nearly impossible to forget the spell. Cast it while staring out over a vista like this…” Joe waved a hand indicating the view to the north and east “…and you’ll never forget this moment in time. You’ll always be able to remember how things looked, how the wind felt on your face, sounds and smells all as if you were back here at this particular instance.”
“That would be helpful in my studying spells,” Tess said.
“It’s a crutch, a cheat,” I said. “You should learn the spells the way I taught you.”
“Why? Because that’s how you learned them?” Tess asked.
“You shouldn’t depend on magic to help you learn other magic. You don’t know whether you actually remember the spell correctly if you rely on a spell rather than memorization.”
Tess frowned at me. “That doesn’t sound right.”
“There’s an old axiom about the value of things are directly related to the effort it takes to learn them. Magic is like that. The more power you want to control, the more effort you have to put into learning it.”
“Like learning to shoot a gun as comparing to learning to sword fight?” Tess asked.
“What?”
“You know how easy it is to train troops to use a rifle compared to back when they had to learn swordplay? Just because it took soldiers years to learn to properly fight with a sword didn’t mean that they could best the people who had learned to use a rifle in a couple of days.”
I frowned at her analogy. So she thought of an example that didn’t match my conclusion. What was one example compared to years of experience? “Who’s the mentor here?”
“You are, of course,” Tess answered.
“Then you should follow my lead.”
“You said I should question everything I don’t understand,” Tess groused.
“Yes, I did. I’m not saying you shouldn’t question what I’m telling you when we’re training or any other time, as long as it’s not while we’re facing a threat. That spell takes time to learn, just like the other spells. I need you to concentrate on learning the ones I tell you.”
“Even if this one would speed up my learning of the other spells?”
“Even so,” I said.
“You sound like my father. Do it my way. That’s the way it’s always worked, and there’s no point in trying something new. Come on, Rafe. You’re better than that. I expect that sort of response from an old man, no offense Joe, but not from my mentor.”
“None taken,” Joe said with a chuckle.
I stared at my apprentice, thinking once again that Walt didn’t know how easy he had it with me as his apprentice. I never gave him that kind of lip.
Chapter 20
Raphael
Beast opened the portal while I watched to see how it was done. It’d been a long time since my familiar had shown me something I hadn’t known how to do. The portal he created was wide enough for all of us to step through and a strong blast of cold air flowed into our faces from the other side. Tess was on Maia and I on Beast. We moved into the portal from the front of Joe’s cabin and emerged in a frozen river valley. My ears popped with the change of pressure and Beast closed the portal behind us. The gale force wind ceased immediately.
“Wow, I’d forgotten how cold it was here,” Tess shouted to be heard over the tumultuous cacophony of the waterfall.
I had forgotten too, but I didn’t bother with stating the obvious.
“Beast, that was a good trick, but I think I’m going to need to see it done again before I’m sure about trying it,” I shouted gazing around the frozen landscape.
“Just once more?” Beast growled.
“Don’t be smart; I can do it if I see it done once more.”
“As you wish,” he replied.
A portal opened in front of us and I could see Joe’s cabin through the shimmering opening between the worlds.
I nodded more to myself than to anyone else. I did see what he had done, and I believed I could duplicate the feat. “Thanks now close it before it collapses on itself.”
Portals are not capable of existing for any length of time. You open one when you need it, and you have time to get through it without rushing, but you can’t dawdle. Nature doesn’t like having a hole torn between dimensions, and it will slam the portal shut before anything untoward happens. When you open one at different air pressures, the wind can be furious, and if nature didn’t close the rip, the pressures would continue to try and equalize. I wasn’t sure what the end result would be, I’d never seen one at different pressures that lasted more than a dozen seconds.
As the portal winked out of existence, I looked around for where I wanted to open one. The place should have been obvious. With magic’s issues with flowing water, I needed to be careful or
the river would cancel out my portal as soon as it opened.
“So what now?” Tess asked.
“I’m going to try to open a portal from here to there,” I said indicating a spot not more than one hundred yards farther down the river.
She followed my gaze and then shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Me either,” growled Beast. “I can walk there as fast as you can open the portal.”
“It’s not about moving to that spot, it’s a proof of concept.” I flipped a leg over Beast’s neck and slid down his left side.
“What’s the concept you’re going to prove, that you can do it?” Tess asked as she joined me in front of Beast and Maia.
“Exactly,” I said and popped the cork from my little bottle of salt. I tossed it in the air and spoke the proper spell. The salt fell into a circle surrounding all four of us. I held out a hand to my apprentice. “Mesh with me.”
She took my left hand in her right and in a few seconds, I felt her aura, emotions, and thoughts merging with mine.
“Now what?” Tess asked.
“Hush and pay attention. We’re doing this together so that you can learn what I’m doing. Like everything else I’ve shown you, someday you may have need of the technique.”
“I’m always ready to learn a new spell,” Tess said.
She was anxious to learn, but I hadn’t even taught her to open a portal yet, much less an attempt to teach her something I hadn’t even tried out yet. Oh, well, as my father used to say, “You can’t learn no younger.” His use of improper English was an accent on the statement. His grammar had always been better than mine.
Together we activated the circle around us while I triggered my senses tat. Now we could both see the flickering shield of energy that surrounded the four of us.
Wanderers 3: Garden of The Gods (The Wanderers) Page 23
