“Seth, are we doing the same here?” Zero asked.
“Hmm?” I mumbled as I cast out a net of psychic energy to draw those furthest away closer in. “Oh, no, Zero, we’re not here to start a fight. We’re here to demoralize, to make them realize they can’t win against us.”
“They cannot win against you, Lord,” Zero said confidently. “You are Daybreak.”
Chuckling at the little huri, I said, “Unfortunately, my name doesn’t quite put the fear of God into anyone just yet. Tom? Are you ready?”
Mankiewicz shifted from Gilán beside us and answered in his deep voice, “Yes, Lord. They’re ready and eager to get started.”
Transferring my mental image of the compound to the Garrison’s Mapkeeper, I told Tom, “You have a map now, Tom. Be careful. And don’t have too much fun.”
“I’ll try, Lord, but you know them,” he said with a flash of teeth in the moonlight. Then he stole away into the silvery desert night?. It was surprising that such a large man could move so quickly and quietly, but he was a Commander of the Guard for good reasons.
“Do you play an instrument, Zero?” I asked as we headed for the main road to the front gate.
“No, sir, I haven’t learned any yet. I believe Naught can play a whistle and Nada was learning a stringed instrument at one time if you’d like me to call one of them.”
“Nah, it’s not important,” I drawled slowly. “I thought it’d be funny, though, playing the Pied Piper of Hamlin with what I’m doing. Can you make fire yet?”
“Fire, sir? By many different methods.”
“No, that’s not what I meant,” grinning at the thought of trying to light kindling in the middle of a battle. “Wizard’s Fire, like what I did before. Can you do that yet?”
“Should I be able to, sir?” he asked excitedly.
“It should be well within your abilities,” I said as we turned down a very wide sidewalk. I was getting much better with tendrils of attention in the faery, especially with the huri. Slipping into Zero’s mind so I could see his perceptions and thoughts of magic, I said, “Hold up your hand in front of you to give you a focus. Now, this is one of the first things to learn because it’s easy. The first step is based on emotion and energy, mostly frustration and anger. You should know a lot more about those two emotions in the last two days.” He scowled a little at the memory of several meaningless altercations with friends.
“Now look around us, using your eyes as well as your spirit, and sense the energy of magic around us. Unlike Gilán’s ever present mist of energy, this world has a kind of river of different kinds of energy running through it, so it’s best if you build a reservoir to work with. They’re called ‘ley lines’ and they tend to follow the landscape. There’s a nice big brown line about two miles that way.”
Zero peered out in the direction I pointed. “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t see it from this distance. Perhaps I should get closer?”
“No, I’ll be your power source,” I said, reaching into my cavern and slipping a lodestone into my palm. Then I drew a short line of red from the stone and tossed it into the air, holding the line in readiness. Zero caught sight of it immediately and stared in awe. “I’ve got enough to spare.”
“Lord, what is that?” Zero asked, advancing on the short line of ropey energy.
“It’s ley energy, held in stasis by my will. I guess you could say it’s the basic stuff that spells are made of. The stuff that actually makes magic work.”
“You’ve caught lightning in a bottle?” Zero asked, obviously intrigued by his analogy.
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. Zero seemed disappointed. “Nothing as simple as that. According to my brothers, holding a piece of a ley line like this is nearly impossible without binding the power into some other form. This seems to be a particular talent of mine. I’m showing you just to give you the energy you need, not to brag. So, you have energy available. Are you ready to try your fire?”
Zero’s grin brightened the night sky. “Yes, Lord. What do I do now?”
“Concentrate on a point about six inches above your hand, but not on your hand. Draw on the line lightly and feel your anger as heat. Feed the energy to your anger and temper it, harden it with your frustrations. Give it more power, Zero, more anger; feel the heat of it against your palm.” I felt the tumult of his mind as he directed the energy at his hand. On top of the anger and frustration he needed, he was extremely excited, thrilled, scared, and worried. His consciousness almost seemed to have a duality to it as he brought his power to the task. He was tantalizingly close to a furious burst that rivaled Mike’s in power. The question of his control was simple enough to answer, too. Beyond a second or two, no, he wasn’t going to be able to control it yet.
“You’re almost there, Zero,” I said, then changed my tone, drawing on my aspect and getting mean. “Don’t disappoint me.”
That did it. The combination of shock and anger at himself that he might actually fail at something I said was elementary turned into rage and he poured, no, pounded power into the air. And it blazed into plasma, the color of his eyes, a little bigger than a basketball. The Stone reacted immediately, erecting multiple shields around the wavering magic walled within the sphere, then more shielding to sluice the heat back into sphere or skyward when it couldn’t take the heat. When Zero lost control of the miniature sun, I seized it and made the Stone’s job much easier.
“Well done, son!” I exclaimed, clapping Zero on the shoulder with one arm while pushing the huge ball of wizard’s fire up and away from us with the other—well, figuratively. “Excellent first try, I did not expect such strength! It’ll be a lot easier next time we work on it. I won’t have to scare the crap out of you, for instance, but you won’t get the same wave of euphoria, either.”
“Euphoria, sir?” Zero asked with perfect timing. The wave hit, compounding his already jubilant feeling of great success. It took a moment because it was a chemical change—endorphins. He started giggling uncontrollably, wobbling on his feet and splaying his arms about for balance. I caught an arm and a shoulder and gently guided him down to the sidewalk.
“Just settle back and enjoy it, Zero,” I said in good humor, still wearing my mantle so he definitely heard me. “You earned it.”
Now it was my turn to do a little magic. First I needed the Pied Piper spell I alluded to earlier. I decided to attach it to Zero’s fire and cast a strong fascination around the sphere, shaping it to fall to the ground once the sphere exploded. It started drawing attention immediately, but I didn’t think it was enough so I added a little energy from the output of Zero’s fire to the fascination’s input. Glancing down at Zero still giggling on the sidewalk, I stepped out into the road with his wizard’s fire in tow, picking a target in my head far from our current position. This was magical artillery fire without the spotter, except that I did have a three-dimensional sense of where I wanted my missile to land. And an unerring targeting system.
There was a viewing stand on the parade grounds just down from four sets of barracks where a majority of the men, roughly four hundred and eighty, were currently spending their off-time. Others were in more distant barracks or engaged in other activities, like working out. There were guards and security everywhere. Of course, none of the faery was showing up on their cameras. The viewing stand was central enough and the area big enough for everyone to stand in.
Tom, I’m going to blow up the parade ground viewing stand and draw the men there. That should be a big enough diversion for you, right? I sent through the geas.
Yes, Lord, I would think so, Tom responded. We’re going to be difficult to detect regardless.
“Are you all right now, Zero?” I asked, looking over at the lazing huri. He started to get up. “No, no, stay put. I’m going to show you something that’s far away so it’ll be disorienting, especially the first time. Ready? Just keep an eye on your wizard’s fire.” I reached out through the Stone’s shields and grabbed the roiling mass of unearthly
power. It was already under my control so there was no danger to me as I targeted in the distance. Turning in two big, lopsided circles, I launched his sphere at an impossible speed compared to mine. Attaching Zero’s perspective to the missile, high and behind, he watched it fly briefly through the air then fall to the ground just as fast and collide in a huge burst of flames on the reviewing stand. The explosion was tremendous; the ground shook a second later.
Zero stood up, staring at me in awe as I walked back to him. Bursts of energy were lighting the night sky like fireworks. “Lord Daybreak, you’re glowing!” Zero whispered hoarsely, grinning at me.
“Well, I’m proud of you, Zero! Look at the damage your fire has done! Excellent diversion for Tom and attraction for me. Well done, indeed.”
“You didn’t burn your hands when you touched it?” he asked, looking intently at my bare hands as he asked.
“I can protect myself, Zero,” I said lightly, still smiling. I released my mantle and settled into the kid from southern Georgia again. As if that would ever happen standing next to a blue-haired faery that I created. We started up the sidewalk again, this time at a pretty good clip. The fire wouldn’t last long without one of us sustaining it, which was good. The stand itself was mostly metal and concrete. The only consumables were some decorations, seat padding, and electronics. That went fast. But even I blinked when the fascination hit me, not that I was inclined to follow it. Yeah, that was strong enough to wake the sleeping, too.
Retrieving a foil-wrapped hunk of dark chocolate from my pocket, I broke a piece off and handed it to Zero, then popped a piece in my mouth to melt. “Peter gave me chocolate after my first burn. Much different circumstances, thankfully, but it commonly helps with the fatigue and depression that follows a tremendous uncontrolled power burn.”
Zero bit the piece in half and asked, “So there is a difference between a ‘burn’ and a ‘burnout’, Lord?”
“Yes, a big difference,” I said, sighing heavily. “A burn is normal, especially for you, exercising young muscles, as it were. It will lessen with time and practice. A ‘burnout’ is much more extreme. With a ‘burnout,’ the wizard has poured so much power through his mind and body that there’s a good chance he’ll never touch magic again. Considering how little I knew at the time and how much energy I was tossing around, it’s surprising that didn’t happen.”
“Is that what’s happened with Mr. McClure, Lord?” he asked cautiously, worriedly. That my dad was ill was well known but we hadn’t released the cause of the illness.
“Yes and no, Zero,” I said very quietly. “My dad is a very old man for a human, far older than he appears to be. Men aren’t like the elves and especially the High Elves. Men don’t have the extremely long lives that elves do. A powerful wizard can expect to live maybe three or four hundred years on the outside, most live two hundred to two-fifty. Certainly a respectable extension of their lifetimes, tripling or quadrupling them. My dad somehow far exceeded that and is having difficulties because of it.”
“How old is Mr. McClure, then?” Zero asked.
“A little under two thousand years, I think,” I answered, noticing where the fascination finally ended outside the fence line. Being bowed, it exceeded the outside fences by a mile on the east and west, but no one lived on those sides.
“Two thousand years,” Zero echoed, astonished. “That is a long life indeed, sir. As ransé, he could live at least as long as that.”
“Not if he doesn’t survive the month,” I said, sighing. “He’s dying, Zero, and I’m not sure there’s anything I can do about it.”
Zero gaped at me as we walked, shocked at my pronouncement. Here I was, a veritable god to them and I could do nothing to save one man, a very important man to me. He didn’t have a clue as to what to say.
“I’m terribly sorry, Lord,” he said meekly, looking at the sidewalk. “If there is anything, anything at all, that we can do to help…”
Smiling wanly, I said, “Of course, Zero, I’ll let you know, but my brothers and I are working on it. If there’s a solution, we’ll do our best to find it.”
A crowd started to accrue on the parade grounds as the four nearby barracks emptied. Streams of men and women from the other two barracks came through the darkness around the buildings, not following the sidewalks or roads, to see the conflagration, even though the fire was out. Tom was on the move at last and at a furious pace from the scratches of transits I felt. It was the transits back that would be the telltale though.
“Zero, stick close and remember that this isn’t about fighting,” I murmured as we approached the parade grounds. A troop of twelve men ran up the road behind us and into the crowd without paying the least attention to us. They would soon enough. Our pace was close to the troop’s running speed so we made it to the crowd quickly, skirting around the edges, and listening. I wanted the brass there before I intervened in the spell and the good Colonel Juan Almareda left his house with his lieutenants moments ago. They had about a mile to drive yet.
I searched the crowd for magical talent while I waited. I found only twenty-one capable of manipulating magic with enough strength to do any damage, not wizards or magicians exactly, more like one or two-trick ponies. There was still a Faraday cage in their future, just to contain any heroics. Tagging them on the Map allowed me to forget about them for the moment and count everyone. It was easier to count the stars in the sky than a throbbing mass of six hundred and eighty men and women. Only ten were missing and six of them were in the car on the way. That left only four unaccounted for. Searching the compound, I found them locked in a room with one door in the Colonel’s house. Well, that should be easy enough to remedy.
A large van inched its way through the crowd of men toward the demolished viewing stand, horn blaring. It had a hundred and twenty feet to go and they’d probably make better time on foot, but it gave me time. Putting my hand on Zero’s shoulder, I moved us outside that locked door in Almareda’s house. Touching the doorjamb and throwing a sensing into the wall, I found that the door was merely a double-key bolt lock on a steel-reinforced door. Slipping force into the locking mechanism and turning the bolt back into the lock, I opened the door slowly, reaching to grasp it near its frame at the same time.
Calling the Stone to reinforce the door, I glanced back to make sure Zero was behind me while we waited for the man to pick up his gun and fire. It seemed an eternity before the bullets, a burst of three, pierced the steel and released my tension. I wrenched the door from the frame as another burst hit. The shooter’s placement was excellent, chest-high, in a triangle, on the first, then a diagonal downsweep on the second. I tossed the door to the right and Zero was a blur as he ran past me around the shield. The shooter followed the door for a split second, long enough for Zero to rush in and hit—not him but his gun. The huri fieldstripped the weapon, a SOCOM-16, while the man attempted to aim and fire! I didn’t think that was possible, but then, why not?
I busted a gut when the assault rifle flew into pieces around the man. The surprise on his face was priceless and the hesitation it caused him allowed Zero time for a leisurely punch in the stomach. Then Zero kneed his head as it came down, driving the man back through a door into the next room. Still laughing, I followed Zero into the room where the other three men sat frozen in their seats, hands mid-stroke at keyboards. Zero poked the middle man, peering around him, curious.
“Zero, that was glorious!” I said, clapping him on the shoulder as he moved away from the man. Looking back at the review stand, Almareda and crew finally made it and were poking around the ruins and eyeing the crowd anxiously. The pull, the desire to be there was the peculiar thing, they knew. “Now, let me show you a little about controlling magefire…” I said, grinning, and willed a marble-sized sphere of fire into the air. “Follow the golden ball carefully now.” Gesturing for performance sake, I made the ball fly through the wall. Zero looked over his shoulder with a raised eyebrow. I couldn’t quite tell if it was questioning or sarca
stic and that made me laugh again.
Nodding back to the wall, I projected a perspective of the marble from ten feet back for Zero to watch. It flew across the grounds, dodging tree limbs, bushes, and building eaves, and slowly grew larger. When it came out over the parade grounds, I threw the perspective high over the crowd to encompass everyone, then let it fall back to my now yard-wide ball of fire bouncing above the crowd of men in front of the van. They started backing away, speeding up as they realized what was above them. A ten foot circle cleared, so I wrapped my three frozen men in portals and dropped them there, along with the rousing man that Zero thoroughly embarrassed. Then I moved the ball a few yards off to clear another circle. The men were faster to clear away this time, but I wanted more room.
When the circle was at twenty feet and climbing, I moved us to the center, holding us fifteen feet above the ground. The Stone provided a platform under our feet. With a wave of my hand, I sent the fireball higher into the air. With a crack like thunder, I snapped my fingers. The sphere rippled along the surface like a computer-generated supernova and a thick ring exploded from the equator of the ball, expanding outward and thinning. I snapped again, and again and again, until the sphere was gone and four concentric rings expanded and slowed, lighting the entire parade grounds.
The next step was the Faraday cages. Those were simple and fast, all twenty-one of them, unseen but definitely felt by those encompassed within. By then it was time to turn my attention to the men yelling at us from the front of the van. Zero waved at them politely since there was little chance of communication with the background noise. Men stared at the rings glowing almost fluorescently in the night sky and murmured about what was going on.
“Hello, everyone!” I said loudly, projecting my voice over the sea of people around us. “So glad you could make it, as if you had a choice. I’m Seth McClure and, among other things, I’m a magician.” Zero giggled at me, making me pause. I wasn’t exactly used to making threatening speeches, after all. “Just this morning, a team of my men, highly trained and remarkably effective, infiltrated the headquarters of a known illegal arms dealer and fixer for mercenary work. His entire store was turned over to the FBI, along with copies of his computer systems. Copies. This person was known as ‘The Russian’ and was being investigated by us because his name has been attached to many attacks on me and other wizards and magicians in what has become an all out war against us.” My mood had gotten progressively more stern. Not angry, just stern, though admittedly there was more than a small touch of Daybreak protruding around the edges. I started ranging over the men as I spoke, not thinking of the platform as necessary.
Sons (Book 2) Page 129
