Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  Reaching into my Pact Lock, I activated another set of functions not used since the Pact’s inception. For such a compact system, it was amazingly robust. These functions allowed for debilitating illnesses that might be cured by removing the Pact Lock for a time. That’s what I needed. Tugging on my father’s Lock with invisible, intangible hands, it slowly lifted out of his mind, body, and soul. Its tendrils looked irritated and some were blackened by proximity to the burned areas. But most surprising was its size. Metaphysically, it was huge, but on the real, physical plane, the magic was no larger than a dime.

  Slathering metaphorical aloe gel over the tendrils, I looked up blankly trying to figure out what to do with it now that I had it out. Kieran might reject it again, not purposefully, but… Ethan, I wasn’t sure he had the right kind of soul to keep it properly fed, so that left— “Pete, would you hold this for a while for me?” I asked, already formulating the kind of geas I needed.

  “What is it?” Peter asked, reaching out to take whatever I held out. Bypassing his hand, I pushed the Pact and Lock directly into the channel in his arm, the conduit that I created weeks ago that accessed his internal center. Then I activated the temporary hold within the Library. The Pact Lock in Peter extruded simple tapers into the crux of his mind and soul and simply sat there glowing with its preternatural beauty. “What the hell is that?”

  “Kieran, would you explain?” I asked while I started searching deeper into Dad’s psyche again. I needed all the pieces for this to work right. Before, when Peter’s mind was doing something like this, there was utter stillness. Dad was utter chaos. The geas would create order and from that healing, but it had to be crafted carefully or I could break him. No, if I invade him, I will break him. He’s an old man with an old mind, older than the eight hundred we believed.

  “Seth, what are you doing to him?” Kieran asked carefully. “Why did you give Peter his Pact? I don’t understand what’s going on.”

  Adjusting the Ransé geas so that I could remove it would work, but that is going to require him to stay either with me or the Saun or to stay on Gilán for the duration. I decided that he’d live with it and that I’d talk Mother into coming over, too. I would have preferred to let him make this decision, but he was slipping further and further into his own head. With an intense flash of Daybreak, I captured my Dad in the Huri Ransé geas without taking his memory. I had the sense of his being already when I called him from the Fountain. He is Dad. I didn’t need anything else. Then I walled him off from the rest of the Ransé and the Saun. My dad needed his privacy. This was a medical necessity. He wasn’t joining the Cult of Seth permanently, after all.

  “Seth, no!” Ethan said appalled as he looked at Dad.

  “Oh, Dad,” Kieran said softly, falling on his knees beside me. “He was that bad off?” When I nodded, his head fell a few inches downward. Peter was actually ignoring the Pact to be with us. That took more self-control than I had in the beginning.

  “What the hell did you do?” Creely called, advancing a few more yards with his knife before him again. “His aura looks like a fuckin’ elf now!”

  “You should get out more, Creely,” Ethan said sadly. “The world is a much bigger place than you’re aware.”

  Shifting Dad to his bed on Gilán, I said, “Ellorn, take care of my dad, please.” Yes, Lord, immediately. Feeling Dad sense the presence of the Palace, a pervasive feeling of Daybreak all around him, I relaxed slightly as he relaxed into a more comfortable rhythm of chaos. It was a good sign. “I’ve got to talk to Mom.” I sniffled. Crap, now I was about to cry.

  “Hello in the field!” a voice called from the woods. Three men stood in single file at the end of the path to the temple waiting, scared out of their wits, forty-something men in military uniforms without national affiliations. We had the visual advantage since it was pitch dark now—wait, no, I’m wrong, one of them is a wizard—a beat-up-on but fairly strong wizard who was currently almost empty of power. Well, he’d be more so in a few moments, I’d see to that.

  “Go ahead,” I murmured to Kieran. “I’ll start easing the way so I don’t startle her by just showing up. Besides, I think I could use the support when I explain this.”

  Kieran stared hard at me. “I’m not sure I do support this, Seth.” He turned anxiously back toward the men then waved at them. “Peter, would you?” Peter trotted off quickly toward them, throwing a small light into the air ahead him. He left a small portal in the air behind with us, right at the edge of his hearing. Trifling, I thought as I created the links between us, do they forget how easy this is?

  The four of us stood in my cavern in empty space, continuing in the physical world as normal. “All right, Kieran, what’s the problem? Creely said it would work. Dad said it would work. I did it the best way I could.”

  “But you’re guessing!” Kieran argued. “You used Librarian functions to remove the Pact. There are Librarian functions that can be used to heal and aid medically as well. You should have used those! They’re safer!”

  “But I don’t know those, do I?” I asked angrily. “I haven’t had the time with Gilán and the druids and the Pentagon and other Pact crap! Or the training to learn them, totally lacking any tutelage from the two people who have any knowledge of it at all! Try another lecture, brother. That dog won’t hunt.”

  “Seth,” Ethan interrupted, calmly stepping between us. “Will you show us the geas, please?”

  “Yes, of course,” I snapped, pulling on the constant buzz in my head that represented the geas in my mind. With quick hand movements, I brought up the core of the geas structure, iconically dangling Dad, the Saun, and the Commanders in the colorful swirls of faery magic between the four of us. Glancing up at Ethan, I gave a sheepish apology for snapping, then started explaining what I was showing them.

  “I was able to place the geas without invading his mind, thankfully, or I’d never be able to break it. He’s completely walled off from everybody as it is. Though it’s probable current thoughts and emotions will be felt by the Saun and me.”

  “Not that I’m complaining, but why is it good that you couldn’t invade his mind?” Ethan asked perplexed.

  “Dad is over fifteen hundred years old,” I told them, widening some eyes. “I’m basing this on brief memory fragments and the size of his memory.” The fragment played as a flicker off to the side. I pushed my memory of my encounter with Dad’s consciousness out between Kieran and Ethan, too, for comfort’s sake. “Not that it matters, even eight hundred was far too old.” I paused, watching Peter’s progress to the soldiers in the real world for a quarter-second while I tried to figure out how to explain this. “The quick answer is that the human mind is too brittle after a certain point in life to accept something like a faery geas. In humans, that’s roughly about fifty, so, yes, I did foresee some homogenization of personalities within the Guard and it does seem to have happened. With older candidates, say sixty-year-olds, there is a distinct possibility of psychosis brought on by complete sublimation to the geas. Within two years, it’s a guarantee.”

  “You don’t mean that the Guard will slowly go crazy, do you?” Peter asked, concerned for the men.

  “No,” I replied. “This regards only a new geas, not aging through it. There’s no problem with the Ransé living long and sane lives.” I looked back to Kieran expectantly, waiting for him to voice his objections. He stared at the glow around Dad that protected him from being read from the Saun and other Ransé. It hit me then, why Kieran objected so hard. He was jealous and it hurt his feelings.

  “Kieran,” I said to gain his attention. “I’m sorry, but this had to be me. You couldn’t have done it without a land to support you and people to help. Actually, I’m a bit jealous. I’m gonna have to limit my time around him while he’s recuperating. You’ll spend more time with him than I will.”

  His eyes lost some of their sharpness. “I’m being childish, aren’t I?” he asked quietly. “Expecting you to work miracles in Pact magic that I co
uldn’t do and here, you’ve gone and done one in faery magic. I’m sorry, little brother. I shouldn’t have gotten mad at you. I know you’re doing your best.”

  “Well, I shouldn’t have let Dad handle Lucian in the first place,” I said guiltily. “Or at least been quicker in figurin’ he wasn’t handling it as well as I thought he was.”

  “We were all here, Seth,” Ethan reminded me. “I thought he was doing okay, too.”

  “Pete’s up now,” Kieran said grimly. “Don’t go too hard on them.”

  Peter met them halfway up the path, giving them a little height on the incline. Kieran and Ethan watched while I waved Creely around with me to check on Murrik. Peter started simply, “The terms of your surrender are simple: you will do what we want, period. Is that understood?”

  The men were startled by Peter’s directness, expecting introductions or something, I guess. The man in the center stammered, “W-we’re n-not all convinced w-we should s-surren-d-der.” English was a second language for him, obviously.

  “Then go back to your men and prepare to die,” Peter said and turned to walk back down the path. “You lost over four hundred men in the first attack against just two of us. Our brothers will be joining us now.”

  “Surrender, damn it! Surrender! He’s not kidding!” the wizard wheedled the center man hoarsely. “I saw them work once! I saw them at the Games. The four of them killed a hundred and fifty monsters in two minutes flat. This one got run over by a huge fucking goat-thing and lived. Then the youngest one threw the two meanest, nearly the most powerful beings in Faery over the sides of the Arena, literally over the sides—” I didn’t understand the pantomime motion he made.

  “Yes, yes, we surrender,” the center man said urgently to Peter. “Doesn’t make sense to keep dying with Murrik gone anyway.” Peter turned back and the rest of us relaxed. Waving Creely around, I knelt down beside Murrik’s body to find him alive, behind a pale shield of energy at the edge of his aura. Mostly, he was pretty battered and beaten up with a severely sprained left knee, left ankle, right elbow and wrist. The others were hurt, too, just not severely.

  “A little banged up there, Phillip?” I asked lightly as I broke through his shield and rolled him over onto his back. He yelped and groaned loudly, catching the attention of Peter’s entourage as they passed. “Come on, Phil, you’ve got a few questions to answer and I’m on a short fuse. Sit up. Creely, help him. Left side’s hurt less.” Creely lifted Murrik, griping and groaning the whole time, by his shoulder and back into a sitting position, then held him up while he huffed and adjusted to less painful positions. He looked at me fearfully, shocked.

  “Let’s make this quick, then,” I said. “Why do you have an army in your backyard, Mr. Murrik?”

  “Not protection, obviously,” he croaked. “That’s Louis’ idea. He decided we were going all the way against the councils. I thought he was just having a snit since they threw him out until we arrived here and I found my family home overrun.”

  “So you have no practical idea of what the mercenary forces are for?”

  “No, Mr. McClure,” he said with complete sincerity. “I also have very little practical idea of why I was involved with the man to begin with.”

  “Well, then,” I drawled out slowly, chuckling softly. “No doubt you developed such clarity of thought when I told you he planned to kill you. And my brother’s ‘rearrangement’ may have inadvertently removed some modifications.” I couldn’t help grinning at him. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s just learning and he’s a bit heavy-handed.”

  Murrik looked at me questioningly, gaining strength to ask but I waved him off. “Let me save you a few thousand in therapy bills,” I said and bore into his mind, taking his consciousness on a tour of his memory and showing him every modification and magical twist made to his mind. Marchand played him like a fiddle without ever picking up the bow. “He talked you into self-adjustment spells? Doesn’t that seem innately stupid?”

  “Yes, Mr. McClure,” Murrik said dazed. Reliving memories isn’t a real-time experience and disjointed as they were through time, he was dealing… well, he was dealing with it more slowly than I hoped.

  “What are you going to do now, Phillip?” I asked, listening to his mind as he churned excuses, whined, and blamed everybody else. We traded stares for a moment while he managed options. He was pretty good at laying out short odds.

  “If I live through the next ten minutes?” he asked in a rasp, blood-shot brown eyes peering up in the dark. With a small, wry grin, I tilted my head a bit in answer, the slightest nod. “Then I should probably find out what the hell’s going on in my own house and put a stop to it. I am not the person I’ve become. I don’t know who the fuck that is right now, but this isn’t it.”

  “Bishop will insist on a security force to investigate, I’m sure. Cooperate with authorities, Phillip,” I warned him. “I don’t want to come looking for you, but I believe you that this started out innocently enough on your side, a boyhood crush on an older classmate, et cetera. You were played, but you chose to make the alterations yourself, even if he sweet-talked and wheedled. You have complicity here, Phillip, whether you like it or not.”

  “Yes, sir,” he answered, groaning as he moved to stand.

  “Good. Now Peter and Kieran are telling your unit commanders what they want done. We’re leaving in a few minutes. We have other things to do today, but we will be watching, Phillip. Don’t let me down. Lucian had a second-chance and you saw how that turned out.” Okay, I lied, but the look of horror at the traitor’s demise was worth it. Maybe he’d think twice before doing something as phenomenally stupid again as active personality adjustment. It made you slow and easy to manipulate, at the very least.

  Touching Gordon’s ring to make sure he was stationary, I called out to him, Gordon, are you free?

  Just a moment, Seth… he answered, finishing whatever he was doing. I didn’t pay attention. What can I do for you?

  Are you at home? I had to ask even though I could open my perceptions through the ring enough to tell.

  Yes, I’m late to dinner, actually, he answered, moving through his offices, comfortable with speaking mentally.

  Will my mother be there? I asked.

  Usually. Seth, what’s wrong? he asked. Has something happened to your father?

  Yes, and I’ll need to talk with Mom as soon as we can get away, I answered. But if she’s having dinner, it’s probably best that she doesn’t know just yet. Can you do that for me? Not tell her, but keep her with everybody till we can get there?

  Yeah, Seth, Gordon said, the timbre of his mental voice changed dramatically. His emotions crept through now with crystal clarity. The shock and concern for Dad, even without knowing the circumstances, neared that of his own father. Is there anything I can do? Our medical facilities…

  I appreciate it, Gordon, but this is beyond a doctor’s skills, I told him. We’ll be there shortly. Thanks.

  “Ah, Mr. Murrik, so nice of you to join us,” Peter called as we crossed the grass circle. “I won’t repeat the orders. You’ll have to get them from your men. You will have company some time tonight or tomorrow to investigate and decide what to do with this mess. It’s out of our hands then. You’re Council will decide what to do with you.”

  Simultaneously, I felt the thoughts of both military men rage to the top of their thoughts behind their calm façades, Not my council! The thoughts went unvoiced from fear and shame, but the beliefs were the same. Escorting Murrik to the mages, I continued until I stood a foot away from the center man, looking him dead in the eye.

  “Not your council, eh?” I asked. “You used magic in your battle plan and now you don’t think the magical authorities hold sway? Why not?” He stared at me, too confused by the question to formulate an answer and too shocked to question it. I turned to the other guy. “What about you? You have any ideas?” He shook his head quickly, repeating the motion. I went back to my brothers. “Have we got all the magic in or
der? A compulsion and a ward? Anything thing else?”

  “We left the compulsion for you,” Kieran said. “You’re better at it than any of us, but the wards are in place.”

  “All right, then we’re going to the Cahill’s. They’re having dinner now and I asked Gordon to keep her occupied until we got there.”

  “Gentlemen,” Peter called to the five of them. He started a quick conclusion to his commandments, whatever they were, so I sent out the connections to the soldiers and began twisting the magic for the compulsions. The simplest of the compulsions I’ve yet had to lay, I let it fly as soon as it was ready. As soon as Peter was done, we were gone.

  Chapter 67

  “Dad, you need to wake up now,” I said, urging him out of his stupor. Climbing on the bed, I started shaking him as I whined. “Dad! Get up! I wanna go outside!” and “Dad! The car’s here to take you to the airport!” and “C’mon Dad, the river’s rising! Come see with me!” Anything I could think of that might jar a memory I said while I poked and prodded him, watching purely for physical responses. Finally, I gave up on the childish technique and pushed in through the thick wall around him in the geas. Here he was sitting up on his elbows groggily, looking about himself, unsure of everything.

  “Seth,” he whispered, sitting up quickly. “Where are we?”

  “This is the part of your mind held by the geas,” I said calmly. “You are the fractured personality that has to reintegrate with the body and rebuild the interface with your magic.”

  “What happened to me?” he asked shocked. I looked slowly around the room, not answering him. He was aware of his condition and its cause. What confused him was how it worked. The usual cause and effect of energy movement wasn’t working for him. His magic wasn’t working.

  “Cut the crap, Dad. You know what’s happened and you know where you are!” I said and snapped my fingers. Everything disappeared into a haze of light except Dad. We faced each other in the soft glow of the geas. “You know I’m holding you together and I don’t want to do it forever! Reintegrating your personality with your body will speed up healing immensely. Why are you stalling?”