by John Booth
Sure, they had hit me because they were annoyed with me, but despite the pain at the time I was unharmed by the experience. When I thought about Lana and Esta I anger welled up, but what had they done to me? If anything, it should be them hating me.
Sounds of people shouting drifted up from the streets below. I couldn’t see a thing using normal vision and all magic sight told me was there were a lot of people milling about down there. I could have deduced that from the sounds alone. Whoever they were, they were very angry. Hopping to the ground floor, I made my way to the exit only to be stopped by a man in a uniform.
“I wouldn’t go out there sir, if I was you.”
“What’s going on?”
He shook his head. “The mob have caught another one. It won’t be pretty.”
He saw I was still baffled and continued his explanation.
“Witches sir, usually young girls, poor things. If she’s lucky they’ll strangle her and get it over quick.”
“And if she isn’t lucky?”
“You don’t want to know, sir.”
I’ve seen some horrible things and my imagination filled in the blanks.
“I’m going to help the witches, how about you?”
The man stood aside to let me pass. I saw the name of the building on his uniform. He wasn’t a law officer and the mob sounded very angry. There was a loud agonized female scream. I would have to move quickly or there would be no one left to save.
I had to hop to get passed the door as the street was so crowded. Careless of who might see me I hopped to a raised platform in front of a large building. Eight posts previously used for flags held girls and boys tied high at the wrists and bound again at the waist. Their clothes had been ripped from them and a man with a long whip stood poised to hit them. A girl at the far end of the flags dripped blood from stripes across her back. She might have been twelve and was slumped as if unconscious.
“Stop.”
I used a general mind control command that brought almost everybody in the street to a standstill. I was so angry that my usual repugnance for mind control was overwhelmed by the need to stop these morons.
The only sounds were heavy breathing from the crowd.
Four people continued to move and I increased the power to bring them under control. Magic users who were probably unaware they had any gifts.
I went to the girl with the whip marks and healed her. Only thin red lines remained when I’d finished and they would fade once her body completed the healing process.
It was clear from the way those tied up had responded to my command that none of them had any magical ability.
As I dissolved the ropes holding them I brought them out of the mind lock I’d put on them. Making clothes for them was easy, though some in the crowd would find their clothes lacking in material.
Looking at the frozen crowd and then looking at me, the kids seemed unable to decide who to be more frightened of.
“Do these people know you?”
The girl who had been whipped pointed at the man with the whip.
“He’s my dad.”
Some of the others pointed at people in the crowd, saying similar things. That complicated matters.
“I can make them forget what they were doing and that you were involved, but if their minds are made up, sooner or later they will attack you again.”
A boy spoke up. “I don’t want to stay. Mum and dad thinks I have the devil in me.”
Some of the kids started sobbing.
“I can take you somewhere safe, but it will be very different from living here.”
Nobody said anything so I considered it a done deal. I turned to the silent crowd.
“You will forget you ever saw me. The children are dead, you saw them die. You did this to them. Return to your homes and do not come out on the streets again until tomorrow.”
The crowd began to disperse. They would invent the scenes of death I’d told them to imagine and by the morning all traces of mind control would be gone.
I got the kids to form a circle holding hands and then I hopped us to Salice.
38. Actions
I returned to the warehouse early the next morning when it became clear the mobs had given up hunting witches. To say I was exhausted would be an understatement.
The others looked up as I arrived. I created a mattress on the floor and collapsed onto it.
“We went searching for you last night when you didn’t return. Where have you been?” Lana asked. She kicked my foot when I didn’t answer.
“Looking.”
“Did you find him?” Jeram asked.
That wasn’t what I meant, but I was too tired to explain. Magically and physically worn out was a bad place to be.
“No, no sign.”
“We found out things,” Esta said.
I waved her away as well as any man can while lying face down on a mattress.
“Leave him alone,” Lana said in disgust. “We have work to do.”
Then there was blessed silence and I fell asleep.
A hand shook me.
“Go away.”
“You have been asleep all day, Jake,” Esta said and her hand kept on shaking me.
“Okay, I’m up,” I said, using magic to clear my eyes of gunge. “Where’s the fire?”
“What fire?” Lana asked. She leapt to her feet and looked around anxiously.
“It is a figure of speech,” Esta said wearily. “He has hundreds of them.”
“It is amazing we can understand him at all,” Jeram muttered. “The way he abuses a language.”
Esta handed me a mug of whatever we had the other morning. It tasted delicious and cleared my mind.
“You said you had found out things?” I asked when the mug was empty.
“Fifteen hours ago,” Esta said. “We have found out more since then.”
“What did you do yesterday?” Lana asked softly. There was no anger in her voice, more sympathy than anything else.
“Helped some kids.” I really didn’t want to talk about it.
“How many?” Jeram asked. He was staring at me intently and I looked away from his gaze.
“A couple. Here and there.”
There seemed to be a lot of tension in the room.
“Tell Jake what we have found,” Esta suggested and it seemed to me that the room sighed collectively and everyone relaxed. Jeram sat on a box and the others did likewise. I pulled up a box and we sat in a small circle. I stared at the empty mug in my hands.
“The Bomber has been out in the world,” Jeram said triumphantly. “He is so obvious in his actions that even the local authorities have noticed, and that may be his undoing.”
“There are two continents on Whydar,” Lana said, “This one is newly populated from the other, the first has been populated for thousands of years and is densely populated with a lot of countries.”
Jeram sighed, “I thought I was telling this?”
“Then do a better job and get on with it,” Lana said tartly.
I held up a hand. “Let Jeram tell it.”
Jeram waited to see if the girls were going to object and was met by silence, grumpy silence on Lana’s part.
“The Bomber has been attacking each continent in turn. It’s almost as though he wants to be found. On the other continent he attacks magic, mainly chain bridges because there are so many of them. On this continent it is always technology, probably because there are more big projects like the bridge over here. This is a dynamic country with a lot of building work in progress.”
“I noticed. So he will attack the other continent next?” I asked.
Jeram shook his head. “He attacked there today. If he follows his pattern he will attack Bellweather tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t make sense.” There was a whole continent to attack, why come here again?
Lana answered. “He always attacks same city a second time, always on the third day, so he will be here tomorrow.”
Esta c
ontinued. “It gets the population frightened. Everybody will be avoiding tall buildings, bridges, and tunnels tomorrow. The police and vigilantes will be out in force through the day, armed to the teeth. It will be, shoot first ask questions later over any incident. If anybody even bothers to ask a question later. The people are frightened.”
“So tomorrow is our chance?” I asked.
Everybody nodded.
“But he could strike anywhere?”
Jeram opened a map and leaned forward over it. “We have a chance. He is so arrogant that he has become predictable. His last attack was a bridge competing with a chain bridge. His next attack will be a railway tunnel doing the same. There is only one that is doing more business than its chain bridge competitor. This is where he will strike.”
Jeram placed his thumb in the middle of a river on the map. There was a dotted line running across it which I took to be the railway tunnel.
“How can a railway outperform a chain bridge?” I know that wasn’t the right question, but it was the one I wanted to know the answer to.
Only Lana offered an answer. “Because they would need thirty chain bridges to go to all the places the railway goes. They can load the carriages at one depot and then drop off the right packages along the way. They would need thirty wagons to achieve the same with chain bridges and some of the loads they delivered would be uneconomic.”
I was impressed and it must have shown on my face.
“It happens on my world all the time,” she said, suddenly embarrassed.
I slapped my thighs, causing dust to rise as my jeans were covered in dirt.
“So all we need to do is wait at both ends of the tunnel until he strikes,” I said enthusiastically. “He’s as good as caught.”
“If he follows his pattern it will be about the same time of day as the bridge attack,” Jeram said.
“We had best not rely on that,” Lana said.
“We should eat and then get some rest,” Esta suggested.
“But I’m not tired,” I pointed out.
Lana came to my side and rested her arm on my shoulder. “Then I have another use for you.”
Lana stayed with me when I constructed my room for the night. A whim took me and I created something out of the Arabian Nights. Silk drapes turned the four-poster double bed I created into a fantasy tent. Large cushions littered the floor along with Persian rugs while ancient looking lanterns lit the room through colored gauze.
Lana laughed and twirled around taking in the room.
“Is this from your world?”
“One part of it, a long, long time ago, and then maybe only in fantasy.”
I had transformed my clothes into an Aladdin costume when she had twirled. She pointed at my bared chest and giggled.
“You really should pluck out all that hair.”
I grabbed her hand and spun her round, changing her clothes to the appropriate princess clothing.
“This isn’t very practical, is it?”
She stumbled as the dress restricted her movement. “Girls in this world couldn’t run away, could they?”
A rug beneath her feet lifted her into the air causing her to fall onto it.
“Has a man never swept you away on a magic carpet ride?”
The carpet swung low and I ended up on top of her as it picked me up.
“Has it been called that before?”
They carpet bowed, thrusting her groin into mine.
“I expect so.”
She pulled my head lower and kissed me.
“Tell me about your childhood?” I asked softly.
We were still on the carpet, floating a few feet off the floor. Lana was on top and twisting my chest hair playfully. She stopped and for a time I didn’t think she was going to answer.
“I was brought up in incredible wealth. My father owns half the planet, literally. Farms, cities, airports, theatres and brothels, are all in the family name.”
“Sounds nice,” I ventured.
“You would be wrong. I am a talented wizard in a world in which wizards are treated like scum. Magic is just a tool to build bridges between continents and worlds. My father thinks it is his right to control everything in his domain, including me.”
“Like Esta’s father?”
Lana snorted in amusement. “Oh not that bad. If Esta returned to her world she would need to take a bride price with her to save her life.”
“Bride price?”
“The value you lost her father when you took her virginity. My father wants to treat me as his property, but Esta’s father is quite different. Under their laws she is his property and you dropped her value through the floor.”
I lifted myself onto my elbows and she fell back to a position astride me.
“I didn’t knowingly do that.”
“Did you ask?” Lana lifted her body a little and guided me into her. She began to rock sending tingling sensations through me.
“You are a good lay, Jake Morrissey, but I don’t think Esta got her money’s worth. You never ask, do you?”
I was too overwhelmed with sensations to answer.
As she rode me to her climax she panted out.
“But…there…is…good…in…you. We…learnt…that…today.”
39. Skirmish
We held a council of war using the map the next morning.
Jeram chaired the meeting, though I was not sure how he had taken charge. I didn’t remember a vote on the subject and this was supposed to be my mission. However, I had to admit that without his research out chances of finding Dafydd would have been close to zero. He had been right to come. We needed him.
“We need to split up into teams to cover both sides of the river.”
I didn’t like that. “The Bomber is a final year student, who has already shown he can mind control a Grand Mage. How do you plan to stop him with only two of us?”
Jeram gave me a wolfish grin. “How do you plan to stop him?”
“I’ll think of something when it’s needed.”
“And so will we,” Esta said before Jeram could respond.
“I’ll take the west bank with Jake,” Lana said.
“Provided you don’t get distracted,” Esta again. She made some graphic movements with her hands to suggest how that might happen.
“I wore him out last night.” Lana winked. “He’ll take some time to recover.”
Jeram slapped the table. “Can we get on with the meeting?”
“Me and you will take the east side. Jake and Lana will take the west. What else is there to decide?” Esta asked. She had a point, but I still didn’t think Jeram and Esta could take Dafydd should they get lucky enough to spot him.”
“Make the sky flash purple when anybody sees him,” I suggested.
“If we have the time,” Jeram agreed. “Has anybody been to either side of the river near the tunnel?”
A wizard can’t hop to somewhere he hasn’t been, but in this case I had a solution.
“Grab hold.”
I hopped them to the viewing platform, which had excellent views of the river when it wasn’t smoggy. Fortunately the winds had blown the smog away that morning and visibility was excellent.
However, it’s quite difficult to find a tunnel and the railway lines leading to them were hidden by buildings. Jeram peered at the map and finally led us to the other side of the building. The river wound around the city center on its way to the sea and gained in width once it passed what remained of the bridge.
“Do you see that island?” Jeram asked.
Only by using the zoom facility my magic gave me. Even so, the dirty air made it difficult to see.
“Yes,” Lana said for the rest of us.
“That’s a vent for the tunnel. You can see the smokestack.”
Once pointed out, it was obvious.
Jeram folded his map. “We can see well enough to hop.” He offered his hand to Esta and they vanished.
“What about it, lover?” Lana asked.
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“I assure you I am fully recovered, but I think we should scope out the lay of the land first.”
“I am the lay of the land, but I take your point.”
I kissed her on the cheek and whispered, “If only we weren’t busy.”
Taking her hand, I hopped us a few hundred feet in the air above the west bank of the river. Magic held us in position.
“I think we may be a little conspicuous up here,” Lana said looking down.
I had located the railway line and the cutting that led to the tunnel. I hopped us again.
“There you go,” I said. We had hopped to the roof of the tunnel where it disappeared underground. “Not conspicuous now.”
A bullet whistled over my head and Lana pulled me to the ground as a hail of bullets rattled into the small stone wall edging the tunnel mouth.
“That can’t be Dafydd,” I said, putting a shield some way in front of me and raising my head above the wall. Bullets bounced off the shield and Lana pulled me back down again.
“The authorities spotted the Bomber’s pattern and now they think we are the ones doing it,” Lana said.
“Perhaps the top of the tunnel entrance wasn’t a sensible place to hop?”
Lana stared incredulously at me. “You think so?”
Despite my blunder this should be easy to fix.
“Stop shooting!” I shouted as I stood up again. A barrage of bullets flew over my head as I instinctively dived for cover. Shields are effective enough, but a brick wall is much more comforting.
“Mind Control didn’t work. Why didn’t it work?”
“The police on the world use stainless steel in their helmets.”
I continued to stare blankly at her.
“Did you sleep through Mage Bronowski’s lecture? Stainless steel blocks mind control.”
Mage Bronowski was a bore. I thought everybody slept through his lectures.
“We should hop away,” I suggested.
