by Pam Uphoff
Warric looked around the puzzled faces, and grinned. Looked at Nil and nodded.
Chapter Twenty
Home Again
Even HQ can look welcoming after a month in the field with horrible people.
Lon dismounted stiffly and handed his reins to Centauri. "He's had Joy Juice three times. You'd probably better stick him in a stall until he gets over it."
Then he spotted the woman trotting down the steps and grinned in relief. "Dr. Quicksilver. You look better than when I last saw you."
"I'll bet." She shot a glance across the plaza to where the Arbolians were dragging into the embassy. "Did they find him?"
"Well, they spotted him the first day. Did Xen tell you about that mess? Those astronomers being partly trained magicians, plus four Comet Fall witches sort of put a crimp in their nice tidy plan to ride up and put a chain on him, and get him properly hooked and under control.
Q grinned. "I imagine so."
"And not a hint of any of them since. God those priests are stubborn though. I was doling out joy juice to all the horses. Overworked, underfed, dehydrated. Colicing and lame. If Xen hadn't sent a water faucet, I suspect we'd have lost half the horses by the third day. And then inevitably the fights between former geldings and the mares carrying on like idiots. Notcher pulled a knife and killed one of them."
"Good heavens. What happened to my poor Pericles?"
"Pericles? Who names these horses? I suppose he's related to Herc? Well, first he stepped on a hot ember in the middle of a forest fire, then there was a rattlesnake, and finally a fight with another stallion. He won, of course."
"Of course. Well, welcome home. Come and see what we've been up to . . . "
Chapter Twenty-one
The School of Wizardry
"And here it is at last. The Infamous Comet Fall School of Wizardry. Ta Da!" Kevi waved at the two stone main buildings, and the sandy rutted wagon trail that ran from the gate past the buildings. Speed followed the road to the beach where it faded out into faint trails through the cluster of self-built domiciles of the students.
Cactus leaned and eyed the driftwood shacks. "Umm. Even the House of Wisdom, that flooded every spring had better rooms for the students."
"Ah, see, you're just too materialistic, as opposed to us guys, who are perfectly happy to camp on the beach in the perfect weather." Speed ambled past the buildings and into the dune field. The driftwood shacks were pretty shoddy, but Kevi didn't say that out loud.
The classes on the beach were impressive. Jek had the middle bunch tossing fireballs at the ocean, Kassidy had an all girl group using slice and levitation to build a magnificent sand castle. Luz was in a circle with a bunch of kids, doing basic power collection and dispersion. No sign of Dydit, today. Nil was down the beach with four people, and Speed headed that direction.
Nil turned as he came up, but Kevi was staring wide-eyed at the fellow beyond him. He looked like he was on fire. Bare to the waist, the backs of his arms glowed, and across his shoulders and his head. Little leaps and curves of brilliant light crowned his bald head and he had little horns sticking out around his head in a thin wreath, and two more from the corners of his jaws. Cactus dug her nails frantically into his back.
"That's an Arbolian God, we need to get out of here. Run, c'mon Speed."
The fiery guy looked up at him in surprise, side-stepped to look at his passenger and winced a bit. He picked up a wet driftwood stick and started writing in the sand. The stick steamed in his grasp.
The two guys and one girl with the fiery one looked at what he was writing.
"You're Cactus? Warric's, umm, mostly not crazy." The dark-headed boy looked defensive. "He's my brother."
"Warric?" Cactus sounded horrified, but slid and climbed and dropped. "Warric, is that really you?"
A fiery smile and nod. Kevi dismounted too. Dammit this Warric – that was the fellow she'd talked about before, wasn't it? He's tall. Well, the rest isn't very attractive. Good.
He looked at the other two. The girl was looking a bit stiff, as she watched Cactus and Warric. The other two looked at Kevi.
"Kevi Freeson and Speed. How do you do?" Politeness first.
The brunette boy eyed him. "Trace of Breesdon, my sister Trill, and Marius and Warric Menchuro."
"Kevi is also a double-sourced magic user." Master Nil informed them. "What have you brought me, Kevi?"
"Cactus, Katrine, is a Princess Primus, which is I dunno, the offspring of one of their gods, I suppose. She's a double wizard. I rescued her from a fate worse than death. She hasn't killed me yet."
Nil snorted. "I see. Well, Cactus, the rules are simple. Don't attack anyone magically, don't act against me and mine, do help with the chores and I'll teach you as much as you wish to learn."
Cactus turned away from the Fiery guy and looked up at Nil. Gulped. "I . . . women who are magic are burned at the stake, at home. I can't be magic." She darted a look at Speed. "I just can't."
Nil snorted. "Perhaps you should be smarter than Warric here, and aim your can't at can't go home. Do you have family, other obligations?"
She shook her head.
"Good, less problems all around that way. Now, do you have a solid education like this lot? Good. You'll fit right in. Kevi, you staying?"
Kevi nodded. I'm not going anywhere without Cactus.
Speed pointed an ear his direction and snorted.
And as it turned out, he had nothing to worry about from the Fiery Guy. He was clearly and untouchably in love with Trill. Ouch!
Cactus and the other three had apparently never met, but knew about each other from letters the Fiery Guy had written home while he was at the same school as Cactus.
Apparently they'd been here just about a week. The Fiery Guy—Warric—was sleeping out on the beach, the others had a rough driftwood lean to. Kevi flexed his magical muscles and managed to turn dune sand into fairly solid columns, and then warped, sliced and wrestled with driftwood until he managed a pretty good roof. He promptly donated it to the girls and went to work on a couple more. "For Warric, I think I'll try a stone roof, eh?"
He got a fiery nod in return. Apparently the fellow couldn't talk, and Kevi wondered what transformations had been made to him, to produce such spectacularly useless effects.
And about a source of magic potions he knew about. Which might or might not help.
Chapter Twenty-two
Recipe for a Revolution
Kevi took a dozen bottles out of Aunt Susto's parlor and tried to analyze each one, individually. Despite Ras having drilled him and drilled him and lessons at Prairie Coast on top of it, he wasn't sure he was reading the spells right.
These should really impress Cactus. Especially when I mention what we can do with them.
All the hair colors, and eye colors, and umm, one to increase the size of the male parts . . . he put that one aside. You never knew.
But the one labeled 'Xen' looked like it would strip off the magic genes. And 'Leanna,' almost empty, felt like it would add magic genes. Those two he paid for, and Aunt Susto pulled out all the unlabeled bottles she couldn't sell and somehow managed to sell those to him as well. Most of them looked like the bottles he'd stolen from that hair lady in town, that Aunt Susto hadn't ever paid him for.
He'd been startled when he arrive to find her thin, well, thinner, and younger and brighter. And he knew better than to drink the wine she offered. She laughed good naturedly about it as he loaded his saddle bags, half her attention on the man riding down the street on a nice chestnut mare. Kevi mounted up, ignored the man, who was staring at Speed's head, bare of bridle, and trotted off.
Lizard waved, leading Beastly around the corner. Speed laid her ears back at the stallion. Kevi snickered. :: Had all the Bad Boy you can take, eh? Maybe we should take the long way home, pick up the kids. They'd love Prairie Coast.::
A bunch of wagons coming through blocked them at the Corridor. Speed sighed at the slow tangle of wagons, not clearing the path
out of the Corridors, yelling at each other . . . Speed threw up her head. :: Aunt Susto! Beastly says that man stabbed her! ::
Kevi leaned into her spin and she leaped forward and raced back the way they'd come.
He flung himself off as Speed slid to a halt. Beastly had his head through the door, and half the family was yelling at each other over the bloody body. Kevi squeezed through the warm bodies and crouched by Aunt Susto. Lizard was holding her hand, tears tracking down his face.
Kevi put his hand on the wound. The knife, expertly wielded, had pierced her heart. It fluttered weakly, and he could see it trying to heal. She's had that wine recently. His telekinesis was weak and sloppy, according to Nil. He reached in carefully and tried to pull the edges of the sliced heart muscle together. The muscle kept trying to contract, and didn't co-operate. Kevi gritted his teeth and pulled harder. Relax, relax, until you are together, heal, fasten together. Bit by bit he teased the hole almost closed. Then through the last bit he herded all the blood around the outside of the heart back into it, and sealed the last bit. It was still fluttery, and the blood was getting dark. He squeezed the heart gently a couple of times, then mentally pressed up and pulled back on her diaphragm. Heart three time, diaphragm once, heart three times, diaphragm . . . the heart tensed, relaxed, tensed, it was beating, and she took a deep breath.
"She's alive." Lizard whispered. "You brought her back."
Kevi shook his head. "Dead isn't something that happens all at once, although Aunt Susto was sure going fast. I dunno if she'll be all right or not."
"Why would someone want to kill Aunt Susto?" Eddy frowned. "What did that guy look like, anyway?"
Marylu dropped to her knees beside her mother. "Horrible man. When we catch him, we ought to dump every potion mamma's got down his throat."
"He was pretty tall, black haired, riding a chestnut mare." Kevi said. "I've never seen him before."
Lizard growled. "I have. Remember those people with their own Corridor to a mansion on the hills over the ocean? It was that black-haired fellow that was ordering everyone around."
"He had his own Corridor?" Kevi asked.
"Yeah, he moved it after we all went through and had a proper orgy with all their women." Lizard was scowling.
Eddy chuckled. "Oh, them. Old Gods! Those women knew a few tricks, eh?"
"Yeah. But I think I'm going to go find Mortimer, and see if he can find the guy. Or the Corridor. I'll go look for him." Lizard looked steamed.
Kevi nodded, that thought leading to another. "We should put Aunt Susto to bed." Under cover of all the bustling about he slipped out and he and Speed were away before the Authorities arrived. Not that he had anything to hide, but he didn't need to be associated with Aunt Susto's 'pawn shop'. They corridored to Karista, took the Temple corridor to Ash, to Rip Crossing, to Rip World where they were greeted enthusiastically by Little Beast, who was taller than his dam, Brat who was not there yet, but still quite big for a nine-month-old filly, and the Hell Hounds. His sisters wished them a farewell that was more relieved than fond. And then Speed got to stretch out and run the whole ten miles from Ash to the Wizard's Gate. The kids weren't far behind, and even the hounds kept up pretty good.
The hounds weren't at all sure what to make of Warric, but they took to the rest of the gang just fine. Especially Cactus.
"What do you mean you haven't given them names?" Cactus looked up at him in astonishment. "How long have you had them?"
"Umm. Two years? Almost three?"
"Kevi! You are impossible!" She rumpled the hounds' ears and they quickly became Carbon (mostly black, except for the red and grey areas) Copper (lots of red, except for the black and grey areas) Cobalt (plenty of slatey blue grey except where he was red or black) and Lithium (who clearly needed mental treatment).
"What does lithium have to do with the hound being crazy?"
Warric managed a snicker.
Cactus sniffed. "Arbolian medicine is advanced over yours. We experiment scientifically."
"Huh. If I were a different sort of Bad Guy I'd ply you with the Wine of the Gods."
"I rest my case. You don't even know what medicine is."
"Huh. Well, I've had a brilliant idea, and so I'm going to go get Nil to teach me what I need for it."
They all followed him through the dunes, and found Nil chatting with Speed and the Little Black Beast. The Brat was being uncharacteristically shy, hiding behind Speed.
"That colt's enough to make me want to import mares. And what are you lot up to today?"
"I got these potions, and I've been analyzing them. I was wondering if you could coach me on that."
The old wizard curled a lip. "Potions! Bah. Canned spells. Much better to throw them yourself, made specifically for each problem. Let's see them."
They followed the old wizard into the dining hall and Kevi produced about half of what Aunt Susto had somehow convinced him to pay for.
"Old Gods! This must be Teri's stash."
"Whoa. I wonder how . . . Oh yeah." They got there because the God of Thieves took them there.
Kevi picked out two of the more interesting ones. "Well, this one looked like it would add power genes, and this one remove them, and both of them are all tangled up in hair colors and then there's this one's stupidity spells."
Nil picked up the one that would remove power genes. He chuckled at the label. "Xen? Oh Teri hated Xen all right. This would remove wizard, witch and mage genes, reduce intelligence and change sexual orientation."
Kevi gulped at the thought of Xen as a stupid fag with no magic and shivered a bit. "They don't all seem like essential transformations. Some are just morphological, right?"
"Right. The morphological spells start with specific sorts of combinations. See how this looks a lot like a healing spell specifically for bones? It searches out specific bones and changes their shape. Same for muscles." Nil looked thoughtfully at Warric. "Arbolians do things a bit differently. You're an interesting study, and we will get you back to normal. Once we figure out how to turn off your heat before we touch anything that might turn off the protective spells. Rustle said she was going to go talk to Xen—who is Quicksilver's brother—about it. He's been good at transformations since he was . . . too damned young."
The old wizard turned back to the potions. "And this one would add a witch gene to one X chromosome and a wizard to the other, turn the hair blond, the eyes green and boobs large. Can you see the five different spells?"
"Yes. This would be the Witch gene spell alone, right?" Kevi held up a glittery string.
"Yep. And from this potion, the removal spell. See how they have identical location and detection paths?"
Cactus, Warric, Trace and Marius were staring hard. Trill looked a bit woebegone and left out.
Kevi slipped the Xen bottle into his pocket left-handed while his right picked up another. "Orion? Ha! Thought everyone loved Orion. Let's see . . . Right, so given this as the mage gene removal . . . Is this how you would insert the gene?"
"Very nice, Kevi. And technically it's a major gene complex, no matter that we get sloppy and just say 'gene' as if it were simple."
Kevi nodded.
Indeed. Not simple . . . but once made, delivery was easy. He packed the addition and removal spells carefully away in mental boxes. "Umm, but there are lots of different mage genes, right? Would this remove Blood and Storm and Sea King and even Arbolian Leech kinds of magery?"
Warric's firey arches suddenly fountained and flared.
"Yep. The framework is all the same, just a few chemicals that make a huge difference. The removal gene finds what they all have in common, and removes the whole interconnected gene complex."
Kevi looked at his hands. "And licking my fingers after handling all these wouldn't be a good idea, right?"
"Heh. Yes. Not that some fools don't deserve to receive what they were planning to give. This is a variation of a physical shield. Study the vibration. It will break most large molecules that contact it.
Not living cells though, so you can still touch people or piss without dissolving something you'd miss."
All the guys winced. Trill and Cactus looked amused. Girls just didn't understand.
But back to business. "I don't understand how to put a spell into a potion."
"Bah. Not that you shouldn't know how to do it, but don't let me catch any of you getting lazy and not being alert and ready to fight, 'cause you've got potions." Nil sniffed. "Look at the difference, between say, this potion for brown hair, and a spell for brown hair. Here's the essence of the spell, what does the work, setting the amounts of which pigments the cells of the hair follicles will manufacture. A cast sends the spells straight to the cells. If you're friendly with the victim, just to the scalp follicles. A potion has to be wrapped up to survive being digested, but be small enough and coated with something food-like to get it into the bloodstream like it was food, and finally get taken up into the cells – and it'll get taken up by every single cell, even though your liver doesn't make hair. Three times the work, three times the time to create it, and you need a massive overdose."
Warric nodded and picked up a stick and scratched out Poison water supply.
Nil nodded and eyed him thoughtfully. "Yes. Potions do have that advantage. But I advise against it. Too random. You miss some of your enemies and hit some of your friends. " He turned back to Kevi's array of bottles. "Now, tell me about this one."
They handed it around and Kevi ventured that he thought there was a male to female transformation, black hair and brown eyes and Teri had obviously had a big breast fixation, because that was in this one too.
Trace didn't even want to handle the bottle after that, and grabbed the next in line. "I thought these were beauty potions? What does this one do?"
Kevi took it and felt the spells. "It promotes fast skin growth and slows skin cell obsolescence. Oh, and gray hair too."
