by John Booth
42. Death
“Pass the toast,” I asked Esta who handed me the last slice. One of Dafydd’s servants silently left the room to get some more.
Human worlds are often similar, though the crops vary, especially if a crop needs a precise climate or is in symbiosis with a particular insect. Toast made from wheat is almost universal, though only one world makes cornflakes to my knowledge. I can live without cornflakes.
It was the second morning of out vigil and my colleagues were coming to the conclusion that I had been right. Dafydd wouldn’t come back here while we were still a threat.
Gillian smiled at me and passed the butter. The servants believed we were house guests. We had learnt the local language from Gillian and were being waited on hand and foot by the servants. It was certainly better than roughing it in the warehouse. Despite this I thought we needed to return to Bellweather.
“We should get back to the warehouse,” Jeram said in Balmack. Gillian frowned at the use of a language she couldn’t understand. She was far from comfortable in our presence as she was convinced we would kill Dafydd the first chance we got. It remained a distinct possibility.
“We can track what he is up to far better in Bellweather,” Esta agreed.
“What about her?” Lana asked.
“Would you like me to take you back to Earth?” I asked Gillian in English.
“There’s nothing for me in Bristol. Dafydd has left me enough Deforth money to run this house for fifty years. I’ll stay here.”
“Then that’s agreed,” Lana said enthusiastically. It’s back to Bellweather for us, though I would like to suggest we find a good hotel and leave the warehouse. I was brought up with servants and staying here has reminded me why I like them.”
Jeram laughed, “In my first year’s training as a scholar I had to meet all my master’s needs, including shaving his corns.”
“And you probably miss it,” Esta said smiling.
“I could grow some corns if you want to try it?” I suggested to Esta.
Bits of toast flew at me from both girls.
“I think you can take that as a no, Jake” Jeram said as he stood.
“Let’s go outside to hop,” I suggested.
The others agreed and I waved goodbye to Gillian as we made our way down the drive to the gate. Once outside the gate, I extended the anti-hop field to cover the house and grounds.
“What good will that do?” Esta asked. “He will see the field as soon as he hops in and all he has to do is walk to here to get out of it.”
I adjusted the magic and it disappeared from magical sight.
“Now he won’t see it until he tries to hop out,” I said with some satisfaction. It was a nice touch that I’d never have thought of without Esta’s needling.
I could see from Esta’s face she didn’t think much of it even now. But it might slow him down and that would have to do.
“The warehouse then?” Jeram asked and we all nodded.
As I started to hop a premonition ran through me, like a regiment walking over my grave. Lana and Esta were to my right and I swept them up in my arm, struggling to suppress their hop magic. I reached out for Jeram, but my hand went through empty air where he’d been a millisecond before.
Lana struggled in my grip. There was too much magic building up and I had to hop us somewhere. The vegetable warehouse came to mind as Lana dragged my hand to her mouth and bit me.
The world spun and we landed hard on the cobbles where I had loaded the cart a few days earlier. The ground shook and the buildings trembled. A mushroom cloud grew in the sky from the direction of our warehouse.
The girls had fallen onto their hands and knees, mouths open as the mushroom cloud was followed by a blinding hemisphere of light. We needed protection from the coming shock wave. I started to create the magic required.
Someone grabbed my shoulder and I was turned around and a fist hit my jaw. Falling backwards I used magic to avoid banging my head on the cobbles. Even so, I was dazed.
“You bastard,” Josh said. There was blood on his knuckles and anger on his face. He stepped forward.
A howling fiery wind attacked the building. Horses and people screamed. Josh watched in astonishment as a cart flew past us, his desire to hit me forgotten. The air didn’t stir around us. Then I saw Lana and Esta in crouching positions with their hands raised, deflecting the firestorm with a combination of magic and sheer will power. They didn’t have enough power to win such a contest.
I stood up and concentrated my magic. My energy shield passed through theirs and the girls collapsed in exhaustion. The shield spread outwards, nullifying the firestorm for thousands of yards. When I sank down to my knees the only sounds were of buildings burning and the collapse of roofs.
“You stopped it,” Josh said in a whisper. “Nothing human could stop that.”
“Jeram,” Esta croaked. “Find Jeram, Jake.”
I wrapped a shield around me and flew into the air towards the warehouse, putting out fires as I went.
There wasn’t much of our warehouse left. The wardrobe must have had special protection because it looked untouched, but the wall behind it was the only wall still standing. The building had been flattened and smoke wafted everywhere.
“Jeram,” I shouted. Amplifying my voice till it sounded like the voice of God.
Then I saw him, his head raised just above the wall behind the wardrobe, smoke drifting across him. He was looking at me with the saddest eyes.
The smoke cleared and I turned and vomited across the rubble.
Lana, half carrying Esta appeared in front of me.
I didn’t want them to see it, but it was too late. Jeram’s head was perched precariously on the top of the wall. There was no sign of his body. Turning away from them I stumbled across the ground to what was left of a wall and sat down. I stared at the ground.
I saw Esta’s feet first. She walked in front of me as if she expected something of me. Blood dripped down in front of her. Looking up slowly I saw she was holding Jeram’s head by his hair.
“Heal him,” she commanded, thrusting his head in my face.
Maybe I could? I’d done impossible things before. I took the head in both hands, cringing at how the flesh felt so cold and extended my magical sight into it. A few moments later I put the head carefully on the ground.
“Well?” Esta demanded, her voice sounding close to hysterical.
“There is nothing left to heal. Jeram is gone.”
Esta began to hit me. I put my hands up to protect my face and let her carry on. She needed the release and in a strange way, so did I.
“Are we going to get this bastard, or what?” Lana asked.
Esta stopped.
“Where…”
But I had hopped before Esta could finish her sentence. There was only one logical place to look.
43. Fight
My hop took me to the master bedroom in Dafydd’s mansion. It was empty. Raised voices drifted into the room through the open door. It wasn’t possible to hop now I was in the mansion so I slid silently through the door and tiptoed to the stairs.
“I had to kill them,” a Welshman that had to be Dafydd said plaintively. “You know the Great Destroyer will kill everyone if I don’t.”
“You haven’t met him. He isn’t a killer,” Gillian replied. She sounded despondent.
“He’s going to do all those things. Farolan showed me.”
“You can’t believe all that prophesy nonsense.”
“I’m a wizard. What can be more nonsensical than that? And those prophesies were real. I could tell.”
I walked down the stairs, holding my breath as I put my weight on each stair in turn. Using any magic might reveal me and I wanted to get as close as possible before that happened.
“Are they all dead?” Gillian asked wearily.
“Yes.”
Dafydd sighed. He didn’t sound happy about it.
I had got down the stairs and was finally in a
position to peer round the open lounge door and see them. Gillian stood by to the table, her fingers tracing its edge. Dafydd, a thin, nervous looking man, stood on the other side of the table, staring at her as if seeking her approval.
He also looked a little like my mam, which was unnerving.
Gillian tensed and lifted her head. “I don’t want to know you any more, Dafydd. I don’t care if I end up back on the streets. I can’t live with a murderer.”
I would never get a better chance. According to my magical sight he had no protective spells around him. Taking a deep breath for luck, I focused my magic on his brain, intending to send him to sleep. My magic jetted at him and rebounded, though rebounded isn’t the right word. It turned straight back on me, trying to put me to sleep instead of him.
I released my breath in a loud gasp as I battled with what had been my own magic, somehow transformed to attack me with all the power I had put into it. Dafydd and Gillian turned in my direction as I staggered into the room, both hands to my head, trying desperately to keep the magic out.
“Jake,” Gillian said in surprise. She turned to Dafydd, “You told me he was dead.”
Dafydd’s face paled. He reached out for Gillian. “Hold my hand. We have to get out of here right now.”
There was a table between them and Gillian stood frozen in shock. Dafydd knocked chairs out of the way in his anxiousness to get to her. I went down on my knees and slowly and painfully dismantled the magic attacking me.
Dafydd reached Gillian and put his arms around her. For a couple of seconds they held that pose. On the magical plane I saw titanic forces attack the anti-hop spell and fail to penetrate it.
I couldn’t attack Dafydd with magic just then, but that didn’t mean I was helpless. I got up and ran to the couple, pulling Dafydd away from Gillian and punching him on the nose. Dafydd had the look of a clerk while I was a manual worker when I bothered to work at all. His nose crunched as he fell back. Blood spurted between his fingers as he clutched at it. He ended up on the floor between a couple of fallen chairs.
He screamed in agony and launched a mind control attack at me, but I brushed it aside. It was puny compared to the sleep spell I’d just fought off and I still wore the protection I’d built into my skull from the arena.
He created and launched a spinning metal blade at me. It was a huge horizontal circular saw. My force shield only slowed it down and I concentrate energy to divert it to my left. It missed me by millimeters and Gillian screamed. She had a hand on her upper arm which was dripping blood. The blade had gone past her and through the wall behind. I used a wave of force to lift her up and hold her against the far wall, hopefully out of harm’s way.
“I didn’t mean to…” Dafydd said, before he turned his attention back to me. “You are going to die.”
“Not a chance, Cousin Dafydd. I saw the pain in your mam’s eyes when she died and you are not going to kill anyone else.”
Dafydd snarled with rage, which was pretty much what I’d intended. One thing I’ve learnt in the last few years was that an angry enemy was often a stupid enemy.
He raised his hands and shot dragonfire at me. When were these people going to learn that growing up with a dragon gives you certain advantages? I couldn’t divert the dragonfire to my side without risking Gillian, so I sent it straight up instead.
The ceiling burst into flames. Those people who talk about things being inflammable have never encountered dragonfire. What it hits, it burns.
Bits of ceiling bounced on the invisible shield I’d created over my head. I put a shield over Gillian’s head when I saw flames roll towards her. When I turned back to Dafydd I found he’d got to his feet.
I had an idea how to defeat the protection around Dafydd’s mind, but I needed to gather my energies before I could try it. Stepping forward, I hit him again, this time in the midriff. Dafydd bent over double, one hand still his nose, the other across this stomach. It was what Esta had said; the one thing they didn’t teach mages on Balmack was how to fight.
He looked winded and temporarily out of action. Now was my chance. I focused a mind control command into a funnel pointing at his head. There should be too much power behind it for his counter-spell to protect him. At least, that was my theory.
It was a close. I think if the pain in his stomach and his nose hadn’t been distracting him he might have resisted me. As it was his eyes glazed over and I knew the battle was won.
The flames on the ceiling were spreading. I captured the heat in the materials and the air itself and sent it into the stratosphere. Without heat to sustain it the fire went out.
The room became quiet. The only sound I could hear was Gillian’s sobbing. I figured she could wait a few minutes and approached Dafydd. I touched his nose and healed it along with his stomach, though I left his face covered in blood. He stared up at me, completely in my power.
I thought I’d be angry with him, but Jeram’s death had killed the rage in me. Killing always made the multiverse a poorer place. I would never see Jeram again. You can’t take death back, can you?
However, there was a question I had to ask.
“Why? Why kill all those people?”
“Farolan said it was worth it, to rid the multiverse of you.”
To be attacked by monsters is one thing; to be attacked by a pathetic middle aged man who looked as if a child could beat him in a fair fight was altogether more disturbing.
“I was family. Your Mam was family. What could Farolan possibly say to make you do such things?”
He held out his hand in answer.
I touched his fingers and saw universes crumble, men, women and children explode, babies minced by energy blasts, cities turned to dust, dragons vaporized in midflight, Elves defending the trees they worshipped, falling to dust in blasts of fire that destroyed the ancient trees.
My hand fell away from his and the visions stopped.
“I suppose that would be a valid reason, if it were true,” I said to his blank face. But how could I know it wouldn’t be? I had already killed so many people.
I got him to stand up while I went to sort out Gillian. She had lost a lot of blood and would have fallen to the floor had my magic not pinned her upright. By my standards, healing a slashed arm is nothing and in seconds she was physically better, though still suffering from shock. I’d never figured out how to completely heal the shock.
Guiding her to a chair, I got her to sit down. There was a sound of people running and I turned to see Lana and Esta enter the room with their guns drawn.
“I’ve got him under mind control,” I told them. “You can relax.”
Turning back to Gillian I saw her eyes open in horror at the sound of a small explosion. I looked around and saw Dafydd begin to fall. A fist sized hole showed the wall behind him where his heart used to be.
Lana stood a few feet from him with her gun pointing at him and a look of grim satisfaction on her face.
I can still save him. Most of his body is still intact. Taking a step forward I saw Esta bring up her gun and fire. She was a good three yards from her target and the intelligent bullet shattered Dafydd’s head into a million pieces, covering the room with a fine patina of gore and bone.
“Try saving him now, Jake,” Esta said, dropping her gun on the floor.
I didn’t know what to say. Gillian was screaming and I felt like joining her. Justice had lost out to vengeance in the end, despite my best efforts.
44. Letting Go
As the minutes passed since Dafydd’s death I found myself getting angry with Lana and Esta. Gillian was still sobbing uncontrollably, so I found the servants and put them to work looking after her. I spent some time fixing the damage to the mansion and cleaning the blood off the walls. I knew it was displacement activity. Something to do while taking in the disaster of Jeram’s death and the pointlessness of Dafydd’s demise.
I took the shield off the house so hopping was possible again.
What was left of Dafydd’s
body went into a simple coffin I created from the firewood pile at the back of the house. I lined the coffin with the lead from a bucket to keep the blood from running out.
Lana and Esta were avoiding me. When I walked into a room they walked out. When I finally attempted to talk to them they hopped out of the mansion to who knows where.
“How do you bury your dead around here?” I asked a middle aged servant who was in charge of the house. His name was Kipper, which had made me smile when I first heard it used a few days before.
“Master Dafydd expressed the wish to be buried in the grounds, sir. He was not a member of the church.” His voice was neutral. I suspected Kipper hated me, but he gave no visible sign of it. I was surprised he and the other servants hadn’t made a run for it. If I was them I would have run. Part of me wanted to run.
“Do you think Gillian will be up to seeing Dafydd buried today?”
He shrugged. “She loved the Master. He was good to her… and to us.”
It seemed pointless to say I hadn’t wanted him dead, probably because I wasn’t sure it was true. Dead in battle would have been fine. Death by firing squad didn’t seem right, especially as they hadn’t seen his defense.
“I think she will stay.”
“I hope so, sir. Mistress Gillian has also been good to us.”
“Get her ready. I’ll prepare things outside for the burial.”
Kipper bowed and headed for Gillian’s room.
There was a plot of land to the side of the house that looked suitable for a grave. I found a block of stone that I could use to create a headstone and robbed bricks from the ground’s boundary wall to edge the grave. Cutting the grave was a few seconds work as I just moved a six foot deep block of earth into the air.
By the time I finished, Gillian came into view, supported by Kipper and an older woman. The other servants walked behind them in pairs. It was a surprisingly solemn procession.
