Reaching out quickly, I smacked both Ethan and Kieran on the back of their heads just as their snickers left their lips. “That will be enough from you two,” I said commandingly. “May I remind you both of the nice little snare I pulled the two of you from in Faery a few weeks ago? I don’t recall either of you laughing then. I know I wasn’t.” Properly chastised they both quieted and stared at the floor.
“Thank you, Ryan, that will be appreciated,” I said, making sure my voice was devoid of condescension. “Next stop, the Hilliard Brothers, Attorneys at Law.” Then I wrapped portals around the seven of us and moved us across London.
Chapter 56
“Hamish?” I called on our arrival at their compound. The midmorning sun shined brightly through the trees and was just beginning to burn the dew from the lush grass. We appeared just outside the single building that existed within the slip of space they held on Deighton Road, but several tents and pavilions had been erected in places along the road. At least three of their outside amphitheaters where set with chairs to accommodate at least a hundred people each.
“Yes, Arbiter?” Hamish answered, coming from the side of the building with three other druids. He was naked but standing perfectly erect. The other three were wearing a sort of white, sleeveless, pullover tunic that fell to mid-thigh and was bound at the waist with a gold cord.
“It has come to my attention that some of your natural druidic rites require the shedding of blood to complete. Is that correct?” I asked.
“Yes, Arbiter,” Hamish said, nodding. “And our haste has left our Sacred Circle open and incomplete for the next century.”
“It was not my intention to deprive you or your acolytes of the necessary transitions to protect yourselves and prosper as a people,” I said. “Give me a list of the rites that require such bindings so that I can research them with a third party. Once I am satisfied that they do not break with my intentions, I will amend the Accord compulsions to allow for them.”
Hamish stood speechless for a moment, then said quietly, “Thank you, Daybreak. A list will be prepared within the hour.”
“Is everything ready for the conference, then?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” Hamish said in a noticeably better mood. “We will have to watch carefully the amount of magical energy buildup in the demonstration areas as our sinks aren’t as good today as they were yesterday.”
“Let’s take a look, then,” I said, letting my power touch the web in my suit as I loosed my senses throughout the glen. Now I had a very pale glow and my perceptions of the valley were nearly perfect with Jimmy’s similarly enhanced because of my attention.
Hamish led us to the closest of three large directional energy sinks. Each sink had a slightly different feel and purpose than the other, a slightly different affect on magic. All three were dynamic, activated on demand so that the spell could be displayed then destroyed without hurting or contaminating the environment. We stood at the lip of the small circular depression and I read the druid spellcraft as it spiraled into the earth.
“Hamish,” Kieran said with admiration, “I must admit you do some beautiful work when you put your mind to it.”
“And in such a short time, too,” I agreed. “Is Kendrick about?”
“Yes, do you need him?” Hamish asked, beaming with pride from Kieran’s comment. I don’t even think he realized it.
“Please, I think we can fix the problem here without too much difficulty,” I said as I stepped down into the sink. Pulling a lodestone from my huge cache, I tossed it up to Peter. “Pete, would you put about a hundred marble-sized spheres in the air about twenty feet overhead, please?” I pulled the Armor on and annealed the outside, hardening it against the effects of the sink itself. Just one of Peter’s icky spheres would kill me if it hit and I didn’t feel like being corroded today. When I looked up, Pete had them flying in a six-foot circle directly above me. “Spread them out, please.” My voice cracked a little to the amusement of my brothers.
Watching the energy dissipate as I activated the sink, I could see the buildup begin then ebb away quickly. We did it again with a thousand spheres to the same affect. Kieran and Ethan threw a few spells out of a more violent cast, drawing from the lodestone each time until it was depleted. Then we carefully examined the sink. On the surface it held quite well, but we’re talking about an energy distribution matrix. It has to work everywhere equally well. As it was, with all three sinks working simultaneously, there was going to be a buildup in all three of them because they relied on the same stone substrata to bleed off the energy. Without Cornell’s voice, they weren’t able to quicken the stone’s ability to do that for the day, or to deepen the other sinks’ tapers to other substrates.
Kendrick was standing beside Hamish when I climbed out of the sink, melting the Armor. I shook my head sadly at them as I said, “The three of you are fantastic at your craft. Look at what Cornell was able to do without his voice!” I sighed and tried to let go of that frustration. They were paying for their crimes and now their clan had to be rehabilitated, if possible. “Sorry, that was cruel of me. It’s because of Cornell’s work that we’ll be able to patch the sinks without starting from scratch. Five, maybe ten minutes work on each.”
“Nobody says a word to anyone about this, either,” Kieran warned, aiming the statement at Bishop and Davis. “What do you need, Seth?”
“Just Hamish and Kendrick,” I answered.
“Then I’ll take everyone else to the staff entrance,” Kieran said. “It’s getting close to time.”
“I hope to be finished by then,” I said, wondering if Jimmy noticed he’d lost the lead, first to me and now to Kieran. “Come along, gentlemen. Let’s see if we can make poetry even more poetic.” I walked down into the shallow depression with the two short, leathery druids following behind me. I didn’t bother to look at the scowls on their faces, though I could guess what their feelings were then. Pulling another lodestone out, I dropped it into the center and said, “Pull what power you need from there, please. Otherwise you’ll destroy the upper registers and we’ll have to start over.”
“A second Tear?” Hamish asked in surprise. “Legend says that there is only one!”
“I’ll ask what you mean by that later, Hamish,” I said. “Right now, let’s concentrate on the sinks, okay?”
“Yes, sir,” Hamish said and waved his hand over the stone, pulling a pale green energy away with him. Kendrick did the same with a sense of awe for the stone, it seemed to me. They came to stand on either side of me and waited. Neither of them believed that I could even read their magic, much less perform the necessary steps to manipulate it adequately. Admittedly, it took me a few seconds to get to the right tones, but when I spoke the pre-Ogham words of their dialect that would call their spell into visual range, they changed their minds quickly enough. Hamish was inclined to hold Cornell accountable for the unreliability of the sinks, but that was just wrong of him and I told him so. “You’re too static in your thinking. Change voices, change leads,” I said. Kendrick just smiled briefly.
This sink needed only three minor changes, a shoring and two smoothings. The two outer circles would reflect energy well enough, but the third inner circle, responsible for pushing it down into the spiral, needed to be shored up and strengthened. The conduits of the spiral itself that sluiced the presumably destructive energy down into the earth to be reprocessed needed smoothing out in two places. Otherwise, the power would catch on the spiral and eat it instead. This caused the buildups as energy caught on these snags.
And of course, I did something they weren’t capable of doing: I lifted the spell up out of the ground and suspended it from working.
“Is this something any faery liege could do?” Kendrick asked nervously.
“Doubt it. I didn’t use Daybreak to do this exactly,” I said, off-handedly, examining the energy signatures as they floated around us. Then I described what we needed to do. For them it wasn’t terribly difficult, just a replay of what
they did earlier this morning with me playing Cornell’s role, sort of. The passages were short so we made quick work of the first sink. I sunk the spell back into place and reanimated it, watching for snags foremost. We seemed to be successful. “Let’s move to the next one, then, but still watch them anyway, okay? Better safe than sorry.”
As we walked to the second sink, it was Kendrick that finally broke silence and asked the question on both of their minds. “Mr. McClure, how is it that a young, human man has become a Lord of Faery?”
“Well, you start with a mad, arrogant Rat Bastard who tries repeatedly to kill you then you tease and taunt him until he does something really stupid,” I said, glancing down at the withered druid. “Then you steal his power and mantle and kill him. That’s the short story, anyway. There’s a lot about whatever mechanisms that allowed it to happen that we don’t know. It shouldn’t have been possible.”
“What is a ‘Rat Bastard’?” Hamish asked as we crested the hill to the second sink.
“My name for the elf-lord I killed,” I said, looking down into the second sink. “He was commonly known as MacNamara in other circles.” There were several druids close by and a few on the edge of the sink waiting. Raising my voice, I yelled, “Guys, y’all need to clear out of here for ten minutes or so. We need at least two hundred feet of clearance.”
“You killed the Modred?” Hamish asked quietly, shaking slightly.
“The enemy of King Arthur? Son of Morgana le Fey?” I asked as we walked into the sink. This one had a wider “barrel” and was able to catch bigger chunks of spells. The downside was, it wasn’t as strong as the more cylindrical form of the first. Cornell worked harder here, but it still wasn’t enough. Similar problems fell in, but they were still fixable.
“Should’ve never let Mallory learn to read,” Kendrick muttered.
“No, not quite, sir,” Hamish said. “Though he has some basis in that tale as the true Satanspawn that Merlin was named to be. Of course, that was much later—after the Romans. He was the first of the elves to torment us. He was a cruel, vile creature of the evilest intent. It took Merlin’s life to banish him from the earth.”
“How long did that last?” I asked curious.
“It should have lasted forever,” Kendrick said. “From your question, it did not?”
“No, assuming we’re talking about the same elf,” I answered. Not really wanting to do it, I projected an image of MacNamara behind me, so I wouldn’t have to see it. “Is that him?”
“Yes,” the Hilliard brothers said in unison. I’ve never heard one word hold so much hatred and contempt and I hoped I never would again. It made me shiver.
Dissolving the image and turning to face them, I said, “Well, then, let me show you my two favorite pictures of the Rat Bastard. The first one is when he’s a second away from killing me with my own sword and I made a desperate attempt at salvation.” Pushing the memory out and giving it life, Dad appeared from nowhere again, grabbed the Rat Bastard’s sword arm, and knocked out a few front teeth. The Hilliards both howled with laughter and glee.
“Who is the man?” Hamish asked between fits, pointing at my father.
“My Dad,” I said, smiling down at the two laughing druids. We didn’t have time for this, but I honestly don’t think either of them had laughed like that for quite a few decades. It wouldn’t hurt them to remember the feeling. “My second favorite is more gruesome and comes shortly after that. Damned elf just wouldn’t stay down.” Starting the memory at the point he lurched up, I played it through until the Crossbow ran out of Bolts, stopping on the image of the Rat Bastard as a tiny forest of green fletching. Neither Hamish nor Kendrick breathed while they watched, which scared me. “Guys, you still have to breathe, y’know.”
Without an inkling of warning from the Sword of Day, both druids were suddenly on me, hugging me tightly just above the waist. And they were… crying. This, I had not expected. Touching their minds lightly, I found the relief they felt overwhelming to them. The hatred that they had felt and curried for MacNamara for centuries, literally centuries, could be released. Unsure if they could even feel it anymore, I gently rubbed their backs and let them cry it out. I could fix the sinks alone if I had to. Everybody could just damn well wait.
~ ~ ~
They let me out of their stranglehold after fifteen minutes and came back to their senses slowly. Jimmy brought me a box of tissues for them and walked the outside of the sink to keep everyone away. I knew it was for me and not them but I couldn’t blame him for it—I knew what they were better than he did.
“C’mon, guys, we need to get this finished,” I said, encouraging them to move off of me. I kept a constant vigil against anything they could sneak onto me. Paranoid, I know, but these two weren’t cub scouts.
“Thank you, Lord Daybreak,” Hamish stammered quietly, using my title for the first time. “For showing us that.”
“Yes, thank you, Lord Daybreak,” Kendrick said. “That was the best picture we have seen in all of our lives. Our fondest wish come true.”
“You were not alone there. Even among the elves, he was the most despised,” I said, wiping my suit as best I could with the tissues.
“What of the Morgana?” Hamish asked. “What happened to it?”
“What is it and maybe I can tell you,” I said moving to the center of the sink and lifting the spell out of the ground.
“His chained goddess,” Kendrick said. “He kept her in some sort of energy flow and forced her to sing to him.”
“Oh, the binding on the Fountain,” I said, finally understanding. “It no longer exists. I used it to create Gilán.”
“You gave up such power for a realm?” Hamish asked in disbelief.
“Yep, smartest move I ever made,” I said with absolute conviction. Gilán was a helluva lot stronger than the Fountain was and Daybreak would get nothing but more powerful as its population grew.
“Hmm, but to be so attached to the land in Faery,” Kendrick mumbled.
“Gilán isn’t in Faery, though it is a faery land,” I said.
“How does that happen?” Hamish asked.
“Beats me. Probably the same way Faery started, what, one hundred, two hundred-thirty thousand years ago?” I answered. “Let’s talk on the way to the sink, okay? There’s work to be done here.”
There were thirteen areas of interest here. I really didn’t have time to explain the changes that needed to be made, but they were very happy and eager to please now. With the spell floating in the air around us, I filtered the signatures into the Ogham runes that they read so easily. It had no flow for me in that form. It was an imagery thing that they equated with power so I used it. Frankly, all I had to do was point at the region that I needed them to repeat and I would sing Cornell’s part then insert the tonal building blocks into the real spell. During one “measure” I had Hamish and Kendrick switch parts while I pulled a faery trick and spoke two parts, adding a fourth voice briefly. It strengthened a conduit and removed the need for six different power structures. Physics and math are everywhere.
“Cornell really did excellent work here,” I said, picking up the lodestone. It was pretty much depleted from charging the sink. Yeah, I know, seems oxymoronic to have to charge something that pulls energy away, but there ya’ have it. “This could have been a lot harder. How is he?” Jimmy joined us quietly, waving for the white-tuniced druids to come on.
“He’s resting now,” Kendrick said. “This morning’s bindings were quite an effort for him.”
“No doubt,” I said, waiting for the druids to get closer, but they were scared of us and slow or I was impatient. Surely not the latter… “First, would you have them bring some food and water for their masters to the third sink, please? This is taking more out of them than they realize. Then you can join us.” Then turning back to Hamish and Kendrick, I said, “Shall we go to the third, gentlemen?”
The Hilliard brothers were almost skipping with eagerness. Jimmy didn’t wait for
the druids to come; he went to one of them. The druid he spoke to moved far more quickly in response to my request, but I had a feeling they would all be moving more quickly for us very soon.
“Lord, where did you find the second Tear?” Hamish asked once we were out of earshot.
“I didn’t. I made those two and many more,” I said. “Though a friend of mine was given what looked like a piece of one of mine at the Rat Bastard’s last Games.”
“Merlin worked in secret for decades perfecting the mineral and magical content of the vessel. It obviously didn’t take you that long,” Kendrick said.
“No, it didn’t,” I answered. And I didn’t tell them it was an accident either. “What exactly was Merlin, anyway? A druid? A wizard?”
“Yes, and much more,” Hamish said. “In the beginning, Merlin simply was. He roamed the British Isles, all of them, helping people to live and survive, learning the ways of the land and the sea and the wind. He began to teach the ways before we were born, but we were among the first. Merlin made bargains with others to learn the ways of power to fight the elves. He didn’t teach us everything he learned, though, before he passed on. He said some things were just too dreadful to know.”
“He was right about that,” I said mildly, recalling some of the things I saw in the Rat Bastard’s mind and in theirs. “Some things are just too terrible.”
“How is it made?” Kendrick asked, turning the stone over in his hands repeatedly, feeling the surface for imperfections.
“Well, I take eight different kinds of magical energy and form the strands into six cohesive boxes of power that really don’t like each other,” I said, glancing down at the withered little man. “Then I squoosh them, each in a different way, and snap them together into another box until they look like a milkcan and let go.”
“There are eight kinds of magic?” Kendrick asked.
Sons (Book 2) Page 104
