by Scott Duff
“He apparently did that one fairly often at bedtime,” said Ethan, grinning slightly, turning to me. “Much to his parent’s irritation.” I just looked back with a ‘Who Me?’ look on my face. I had no recollection of this as I was just a baby at the time. Kieran was grinning as he went back to reading the second page of notes.
“Would you mind telling me,” I said, “just what the big deal is?”
“You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” said Kieran quietly, still reading. Ethan and I looked at each other, then gave identical shrugs and looked back to Kieran, waiting.
When he finished the second page, he looked up and said, “Magical ability usually doesn’t start showing itself until the advent of puberty. It’s almost a hormonal effect on the brain. Generally, you start out seeing auras and ley lines, that sort of thing. Do you remember when you first started seeing auras?”
“Always,” I said, with Ethan nodding agreement.
“Huh. That’s very unusual,” he said. “At just before your fifth birthday, Father and your mother took you to the Guild to be tested. This is usually done at fourteen- or fifteen-years old so I’m thinking Father made some arrangements to do this very privately. The fact that Father and your mother were in the room at the time adds to the supposition since it’s normally done alone. That’s the picture with all the oily stuff in the background.”
He flipped the album back to a picture and tapped it. I vaguely remembered the experience from the picture. A lot of it involved making the goo on the wall do stuff like make geometric designs and move in strange ways. I remembered it as being fun and it made Mom and Dad really happy that day.
“You tested off the charts,” he said, looking intently at me.
“What does that mean?” I asked, feeling like an idiot.
“It means, little brother, that you were too powerful at five to be judged by a test,” he said. “But twelve years later, you haven’t been trained on anything. For some reason, Father has left you as tabla rasa. That power, that potential still exists, as does the question of why. And unfortunately, you have to make a decision without enough information.”
He paused. I waited. I knew he was trying to lead me into something, but I was too tired to think and too much had happened today already. He was gonna have to say it outright. He sighed and went on.
“You’re not the blank slate anymore,” he said. “For starters, you now hold a huge and powerful Pact. The magic you can learn delving into that alone is enormous. You hold five weapons heavily laden with magic. You can now see in truth and control consciously small amounts of light and sound. You called them firecrackers?” I nodded at the question in his voice. “Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but you have no intentions of sitting in this house while I go look for your parents, right?” he asked.
“Hell, no!” I said, emphatically. I’d already stayed still too long.
“Then that means I have to teach you how to protect yourself,” he said, seriously. “How to see who we’ll be dealing with. Who else is out there in the world, the Worlds, really. Because somebody is after you for something and I can only protect you so far.”
“I thought you had to re-learn things yourself,” I said, yawning.
The smile was contorted while he figured out how best to say what he wanted. “What I have to re-learn is like playing a piano concerto while I’m teaching you ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ and even that is a poor analogy.”
“All right,” I said. Looking at the shelf of financials, I decided I was too tired to go through them tonight. I pulled those off the shelf and piled them on the floor. Gesturing at the remains of the bottom shelf, I asked Kieran, “Do you want to look through any of these?”
He glanced up, saying, “No, I’m familiar with those, actually.”
I pushed down slightly on the shelf and the bottom two shelves disappeared into I don’t know where with the top three snapping back into place, yellow tint shimmering slightly. I took that to mean the spell was still in place and took half the pile of financials to the desk. Ethan followed behind with the rest.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “I’m going to bed.”
“Good night,” Kieran said, reading the third page of notes, not looking up as I left the room.
My dreams were filled with dancing puppets and cartoons that night. Much better than a nightmare of dying elves, I suppose.
Chapter 5
I woke at a more normal 6:50 a.m. to an empty house. The sun was shining through the window, promising a nice day out. Shaking the sleep out of my head, I took a quick shower and dressed in shorts and a T shirt, opting not to shave again. I could sense Kieran and Ethan down the hill in the clearing moving around quite frenetically. I couldn’t tell what they were doing, though. Shrank was flying toward the house along the trail. I grabbed some socks and trainers and headed for the kitchen.
“Good morning, Master Seth,” squeaked Shrank merrily as he flew through the dining room door, left ajar, I assumed for that purpose.
“Morning,” I grunted, sitting down at the table to put my shoes and socks on, my hair dripping a little as it curled into ringlets. I needed a haircut; I hated it when my hair got curly. It made me look younger than I was. “What are they doing down there?”
“They called it a ‘morning workout,’” he said, cheerfully, landing on the table before me. “I’d call it a battle royale. Kieran asks that you join them when you’re ready.”
“Okay,” I said and went to the kitchen. I filled a bottle from the cupboard with filtered water and headed through the dining room and out of the house. Shrank followed me down, darting in and out of the trees as we went, buzzing around happily. I could hear them making a lot of noise as we neared the clearing. I could feel a lot of movement through the ward and a huge flow of power of some kind, but nothing really threatening. It was a strange sensation that crossed sensory bounds, like a taste that had a smell at the same time, totally incongruous with each other. I reveled in it until we broke through the trees into the clearing.
It was all-out war there. There had to be forty men on the field, all over it. Big men like Kieran, all bearing weapons and at least partial armor, some with full armor. There were two clusters of them and I caught a glimpse of Kieran waving a sword with a blue fire in the middle of the closest cluster to me. This close, I could feel Ethan on the other side moving at inhuman speed. Shrank said this was a workout, so I shouldn’t be worried. Then the man closest to me saw me, turned, and snarled. That got a few more men’s attention.
One seventeen-year-old ready to cut down, no waiting. Four men peeled off the group and started advancing on me. I dropped my bottle and made ready to run like hell, but one of my magic Swords had different ideas. Without a thought on my part, the gold and silver Sword was in my right hand flashing up to parry the first man’s downward slash. I felt the rock shift in my mind, drawing together the Sword and my body and emitting a field around me, shielding me.
My feet moved, twisting me to the left, clipping one man’s sword arm and slashing another’s throat as he tried to slip underneath the other’s advance. The Sword moved me again, turning me swiftly in a circle to impale a man fully through the gut and pull itself swiftly free. As he fell, I saw another man out of Sword’s reach readying to throw a double-bladed ax at me. I raised my left hand and fired the Crossbow, hitting him right between the eyes. He blew apart in an explosion of millions of tiny spots of light.
Then I felt the rock settle back down into the marble slab I was used to for all of a night. The clearing was quiet and I could hear nothing but my own chest heaving for breath. I stared down at the gold hilt of the Sword in shock, then looked around. There weren’t any bodies on the ground. I know I’d killed at least three men and hurt one. I had a Sword in one hand, a Crossbow in the other, and I’d used them with deadly proficiency. I could feel the adrenaline rushing through my body so hot I wanted to scream from the rush. And I wanted to puke. I turned in place until I could see Ki
eran and Ethan walking slowly to me, both bare-chested, breathing heavily, and smiling broadly.
“What do we need to show him about these weapons?” Ethan asked when they stopped at five feet away from me. That’s when I noticed that he didn’t look like me anymore. He was shorter than me now, just a little, maybe an inch, and blond. Blue eyed. And built. If I didn’t have enough of an inferiority complex with Kieran around now Ethan was in training for Mr. Universe, too. They both had sweat running down muscles I didn’t know the human body had.
“Did you use the Stone as well?” Kieran asked me.
“It was more like they used me,” I said nodding as my breathing slowed. I made a conscious effort to send the weapons back. “What’s going on here?”
“Just working out,” said Kieran, rather sheepishly.
“It may have gotten a little out of hand,” added Ethan, shuffling his feet and staring down.
“O-kay,” I started, shaking my head. “I don’t know whether to laugh at the both of you for looking like seven-year-olds owning up to dad for losing their bikes, to yell at you for siccing armed men on me, or to thank you that I don’t have to check with you before dressing each day so I don’t look like the stupid twin.”
“We did look that way, didn’t we?” Kieran said, standing up a little straighter and grinning. “You did very well, by the way. The flow between the weapons was flawless.”
“That wasn’t me,” I protested. “That was either the weapons themselves or whatever Ethan did to put them there. They moved me how and where they wanted me. I was along for the ride.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, little brother,” Kieran said. To Ethan, “The Day Sword, right?”
“Yes, The Day Sword,” Ethan said. “The Twin of Might. Said to be forged from the first gold and silver mined by the Fae. It has a hair’s breadth of iron in its core, wrapped in silver and bespelled in the old elven tongues, to guarantee death to all Fae it strikes. Sharp enough to pierce all but the strongest armors. It is rumored to know the killing strike for any opponent. And again, you saw how easily Kieran defeated it.”
He grinned and now he looked positively cherubic.
“This sounds like stuff out of a cheesy tourist magazine,” I said. “How do you know this?”
“Some of it was written into the Fae bindings before I removed them,” he said. “Then there was the pixie. He found the hummingbird feeder and got positively snockered!” He started snickering. “It only lasted for about twenty, twenty-five minutes but he was hilarious! This was while you and Kieran were looking at the albums. And the bow that never misses? Missed Kieran, what three score times? Isn’t that how they count them?” He was laughing outright now. At least he was building a personality.
Why wasn’t I mad about this?
“Well, I need another shower,” I said, pulling my tee shirt away from my body to help dry it. The heat was already pushing eighty-five degrees and it wasn’t even eight in the morning yet. “What are your plans for the day?”
“A shower, breakfast,” Kieran said, starting for the trail, “then I thought we’d look through the financial records you found last night and see what kind of trail we can find.” I thought he had a sword earlier but I didn’t see any evidence of it now as I filed in line behind them. They both wore loose fitting black silk pants, tied at the waist, and they were both bare footed. The path had been cleared of its sharp stones over night, so they were walking without wincing now. I wondered who drew the lot for that job.
In the house, I headed for my room and Kieran headed for what was technically the Master bedroom, even though the two rooms were virtually the same outside of the furnishings. Both rooms had full baths while the main house only had a half bathroom to it. Ethan hung back in the den while we cleaned up. I was a little faster in getting out than Kieran and called Ethan in and told him to pick some clothes for himself until we could get his own. I was probably a bit small for him, but the change in his looks had given me the chance to put a few thoughts together. Combined with some of the comments Kieran had made last night, I had decided that it was time we came to an understanding. I felt like I was about to alienate the only friends I had.
I went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Shrank was already there, standing on the side of a large mixing bowl filled with flour. A large wooden spoon stood in the bowl beside him.
“I do not understand what this is,” Shrank said, looking up at me.
“I don’t know what it is supposed to be,” I said, looking over him into the bowl, “So I’m not going to be much help until you tell me that much.”
“The box read ‘Pancake Mix’ and it appears to be an unleavened, slightly sweet bread with other stuff in it,” he said.
“D’you dump the whole box in?” I asked, laughing slightly.
“Yes, sir,” he said, looking up, quizzically. “Too much?”
“Yeah,” I said, grinning broadly. “Where’s the box?”
Shrank jumped off the bowl and took the air toward the trash for the box. I pulled out a measuring cup and a skillet, a frying pan and a few spatulas. Next I went to the refrigerator and pulled out the flat of eggs, butter, and a pound of bacon. When I turned around, Shrank was sitting between the now-empty mixing bowl and the now-full box of pancake mix. I didn’t ask how he did it; I just smiled and kept going.
Kieran showed up in the doorway. “Would you like any help?”
“I think we’ve got it in here,” I said, eyeing the pixie. Shrank seemed to perk up at the “we.” “You could set the table and check in on Ethan.
“Shrank, what do you eat?” I asked as I cracked several eggs into a small mixing bowl, whisking them with a fork.
“Oh, pixies eat seasonally,” he squeaked at me, reading the back of the box. “Are two cups enough?”
“Yes, that’s plenty,” I answered. “What do you mean by ‘seasonally’?”
“Flowers, plants, bugs, pollen,” he said casually, flying to the top of the box. “Whatever is in season.” He spun in a lazy loop over the open box, then faster than I could follow, he flew in a circle several times. The powder siphoned out of the box and into the measuring cup in a tight vortex, stopping at exactly two cups. Suddenly Shrank was beside the cup eyeing the two cup line. Then he was flying circles at the top, a blur, creating another vortex that flew the powder into the mixing bowl. I added the two eggs I’d mixed and headed to the refrigerator for milk.
“Nice trick,” I said, “Can you do that with the liquid?”
“Oh, sure!” he squeaked, grinning back at me.
“Cool.” I added a half-cup of milk to the mix and stirred. I set the flat skillet on the stovetop on a low heat and plopped some butter on it. Then put the other skillet on with bacon and turned the heat on. Pulling two plates down from the cupboard, I said to Shrank, “Okay, we’ve never done this so we’re gonna have to play with it some. What we need is the batter slowly added to the flattop so it won’t splash the butter. And we need it about yay big.” I held my hands out in about a five-inch circle. “Do you need a spoon or anything?”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully, “But we want to do it before the butter burns, right?”
“Go for it,” I chuckled as I said it, moving the butter around with the spatula. A thin spout of the batter flowed out of the bowl through the air onto the flattop creating a slow forming cake on the griddle.
“That is so awesome,” I said enthusiastically. He stopped at just about the right size and stood next to the stove, looking up at me. He was just too cute with the over-sized eyes and brightly colored wings. I started turning the bacon before I opened the windows and found bluebirds flying in with ribbons in their beaks. I flashed on the picture of me with the cartoon characters and wondered if I was capable of doing that.
“Is that hard to do?” I asked him.
“No, sir, not at all,” he said. “Is that acceptable?”
“Oh, yes,” I said, turning his first try. “You could probably go at half again
as fast, if it’s not tiring to you, if you want.” He went three times as fast, starting two spouts this time. Yeah, I laughed at it and, yeah, I knew he was showing off, especially when he started the helix on the second set. I didn’t care. I was enjoying myself. Shrank was a fun distraction. And I like my bacon well done sometimes. Clean up was a breeze even with the grease splatters. Mainly because I didn’t do any of it. I don’t know how he did it, but every time I moved to clean something it was already done. How he moved the mixing bowl to the sink and washed it without me seeing was outside my understanding. I suspect I could have watched him more carefully as we worked and chatted idly about what we were doing, I would have caught the tricks, but I didn’t want to read anything into what he was doing. I’d had enough of that already. And more to come.
I carried two plates out to the dining room, surprised at the spread Kieran had managed. I’d only seen him in the door of the kitchen once and he’d managed marmalade, two jellies, maple syrup, yesterday’s muffins, and some mixed fruit in a bowl in the middle of the table. I slipped the plates down onto the table and went back in the kitchen for three glasses of water.
“Shrank, would you like something to drink?” I asked the pixie as he flew in behind me.
“No, thank you,” he piped, “Just watching. You’re a very curious person, Seth McClure.”
“Really? Why?” I asked, filling the second glass.
“From your lineage alone, you should be living like a prince,” he said shrugging his tiny shoulders, making his wings ruffle prismatically. “Your parents are quite highly placed within their respective circles, yet they have managed to keep you sheltered from it and it from you. You recently used three very powerful weapons with skill without ever having used them before. The previous owners of which had tried to ransom you yesterday. If you were my kind, you’d be screaming for more guards while behind fifty. And you’re in cooking breakfast. Curious, yes?”
