by Scott Duff
“I’ll grant that,” Ethan said, walking underneath the first projection. He reached up and started pulling it apart, separating pieces out and moving them aside. Most had a recognizable purpose, like dissecting a bug. What I couldn’t figure out still looked kind of organ-like. “What bothers me more than what we don’t see, is what we do. See this?”
“I’ve seen it before,” I said softly, moving to Ethan’s side and looking at the area he indicated.
“I didn’t expect you to say that,” Ethan said, looking sideways at me. “Do you remember where?”
I was already trying to remember. A million swirls of color blended together rapidly in my memory without anything to connect them to. It had to be buried in one of those places where things were moving fast and I just glimpsed it.
“Let me save you the struggle,” Kieran said, lightly grabbing my shoulders from behind, talking softly in my left ear. “You were with Peter in Atlanta. You shot your consciousness through a one-dimensional point onto a two-dimensional plane then onto a three-dimensional plane. You homed in on…?”
“Ethan,” I murmured, pulling the memory up and seeing the correlation, the similarity.
“Yes,” Kieran said, releasing my shoulders. “Which means that whoever cast these knew a little something about the magic that cast Ethan’s kind as well. And that should not be possible.”
“Why?” asked Peter.
“Because all that knew that kind of magic are all quite dead,” said Ethan calmly, still studying the curses.
I turned to look at the Cahills. Felix had pulled his pants back up and was sitting forward in the chair with his head face down in his hands. Gordon was sitting on an ottoman, watching us, rubbing his father’s back nervously and consoling him. I walked through Ethan’s wall to talk to them, but he collapsed the field, deciding our privacy was over for the moment.
“Mr. Cahill,” I started, “MacNamara asked us several questions when we first arrived that didn’t make sense to any of us at the time. One of those was about a ‘kovel.’” I pronounced it as MacNamara had, like hovel with a ‘k.’ “Do you have any idea to what that might refer?”
Cahill sat back in the chair, exhaling a long held breath. “Aye,” he said, “that name came up a few years back. A temple in India was found buried with markings similar to Paraguay. Had a single chamber, very small. What could be translated before the temple was lost mentioned the people of the kovel.”
“The people of the kovel?” prompted Ethan. We moved closer to the Cahill’s as a group, forming a semi-circle around them.
“That’s how the report read, yes,” answered Cahill. “I’ll have someone dig it up again for you, if you like.”
“Does this relate to the curse?” Gordon asked before any of us could respond.
“At the moment,” said Peter, “it’s just a suspicious series of coincidences. We’re just trying to see if anything relates, is all.”
“How many were in your original group in Paraguay, Felix?” Kieran asked.
“Eighteen,” he said. His eyes glazed over at the memory.
“What happened there?” Kieran asked, quietly.
“Not much to tell,” Cahill answered, glancing up at Kieran, grimacing. “We really don’t know what happened, at least in the temple. A small group of us met up with some Americans, Harris and friends actually, in Paraguay. They were at a dig in a small temple in the mountains that Harris had found in some obscure reference somewhere. We’d gone down to investigate claims of tomb robbing, but it was Harris and he had permission and his paperwork was in order. He gave us the nickel tour of the temple, terribly unimpressive for a temple, just three tiny rooms linked with a short corridor, little to no markings on the walls remained. It was more impressive that they actually found it than the temple itself was.”
Cahill sipped absently at his brandy and we took the small break to gather chairs and sit. Once we were settled, he continued, “After dinner on the second night, seven men, including one of mine, were down in the temple. The rest of us were in camp with a couple of men off to the side with a few norms in protected areas with computer equipment, trying not to fry everything. They’d setup a relay about a mile off, including a satellite telephone linkup. Harris was on the phone to the States at the time. They found something down in the temple. We all felt the rush of excitement from three of them, like the edge of a storm. Then the firestorm hit the astral. Uncontrolled magefire erupted in all of them, almost simultaneously. It ate the temple in seconds, killing everyone inside and blasting out through every hole. It shook the mountain and crashed the temple into so much rubble. Seven men died in a heartbeat.
“We searched for the cause for days, sifting through the rubble, piercing the astral for clues. On the third night, the first curse hit. I watched a man named John Oliver burn from the inside-out right before my eyes for absolutely no reason. Just poof. If we hadn’t been on edge and shielded, the three of us near him would have ignited with him. As it was, the curses just glowed in sympathy, but now we know we saw what was killing us. We’d all been marked and we didn’t know how. All ten of us had one of four different marks on us, but none of the few normal humans that remained, just the magically active. Two more died before we were able to come up with something to burn away the curse. In retrospect I suppose it should have been obvious that the curse still existed since we couldn’t heal the brand after the curse wasn’t visible anymore.”
Cahill sounded seriously depressed when he finished his story, tipping back the snifter and finishing his brandy in one gulp.
I asked, “So with you, Calhoun, and Harris, there are five more still with the curse?”
Cahill thought for a moment. “No,” he answered, “Only three, possibly. I know three of the five died some time ago in unrelated incidents.”
“Do you think Harris will have any more information than you?” asked Kieran.
“If he does, I’ll string him up by his balls,” said Cahill vehemently, eliciting a shocked look from Gordon, quickly hidden though. Cahill’s children kept seeing their father in a different light in our presence.
“There’s a five hour time difference between here and New York,” I said. “I’ll call and make arrangements with Harris. Have him track down the other two.”
“We have plans after your visit with Olivia,” said Kieran. I wasn’t aware of this.
“How long will we be unavailable?” I asked him. Considering the way he brought it up, I didn’t want to ask too many questions.
“Most of the afternoon,” he answered. “You and I will be visiting the Crossroads.”
“The tavern?” asked Gordon, obviously confused.
“No, lad,” answered Cahill with a guffaw, standing. “He means they’re going Underhill. They’re going to see the Queens of Faery.”
Chapter 32
Our rooms in the Cahill castle were attached to each other through a small hallway, six rooms in total. Three of them actually had secret passageways hidden behind sliding panels leading to crawl spaces to thin hallways to other parts of the castle. The mechanisms were jammed, but it was still possible to exit that way, if the need arose. There wasn’t a common room for us to gather in, but mine was the first down the hall and got that honor.
Apparently, there was an invisible fashion advisor in our group tossing dressing tips at us in our sleep: the next morning, all four of us came out of our rooms wearing MacNamara’s green silks. Ethan and Peter were going to work out while Kieran and I went on our walk-about through Faery, so it made sense. It just seemed odd in a funny way.
Peter came into my room, jumping onto my unmade bed as I searched through my suitcase. Ethan and Kieran came in a moment later.
“Whatcha lookin’ for?” Peter asked.
“My brush,” I muttered, raking my still-damp hair back. “I think I miss the brownies. At least I could find stuff with them around.” I glanced up from the suitcase at Peter as he hugged a pillow to prop himself up. His hair was cut.<
br />
“Are you cutting your own hair?” I asked.
“No, Shrank did it for me,” he said. “Did a great job, too, don’t you think?”
“Yes, he did,” I said, then called in my best sing-song voice, “Oh, Shr-ank.”
He floated leisurely through the door, bobbing slightly as if in a breeze. “Yes, Master Seth?” he asked, airily.
“You seem to be enjoying the castle,” I noticed, chuckling.
“Oh, yes, sir,” he said, a bit more firmness in his high-pitched voice. “The currents and eddies are marvelous.”
“How long would it take for you to cut my hair for me?” I asked him.
He turned in the air and looked at my hair, appraising me. “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, depending on the style you want,” he said, “though I would wait till after you came back from your visit with the Queens.”
“Really?” asked Peter before I could. “Why?”
“They would see it as falling out of favor,” he squeaked. “As if you had done something to anger Lord Kieran.” He twisted again, this time toward the door. “Someone is coming.”
“Why would they care about the length of my hair?” I asked, ignoring the oncoming person. Whoever it was hadn’t turned down the hall to our rooms yet.
“It would mark you as lower within your caste,” said Shrank.
“Caste? We don’t have a caste system here,” I argued, finally finding my brush in the suitcase. I swore I searched the back pocket twice already.
“Yes, we do,” said Kieran, looking at me in the mirror as I fought to keep the shaggy curls out of my eyes. A man I didn’t know turned off the main hall into ours. A servant sent to get us, it seemed. Ethan was already moving to the door to intercept him.
“How do you mean?” I asked. “How are we in a caste system here?”
“At the very least, there is an economic caste of the rich and the poor,” said Kieran.
“That’s not a caste,” I said. “That barrier can be crossed.”
“In limited ways, yes, and only in certain parts of the world,” admitted Kieran, “But most wealth is hereditary. Talent for magic is, too, mostly. Sometimes it spontaneously generates in the general populous and I have to imagine that with the population as big as it currently is that there are a large number out there now who are untrained but able. But these are exceptions, not the rule.”
I tossed the brush on top of my open suitcase and went for the door, following the rest out. “That just goes against everything I believe in,” I muttered, as Shrank flitted around us.
“Why?” asked Peter as we filed out of the room. “It’s a fact of life. Everything has a place. Why would being on top bother you?”
Ethan waited in the main hall with a short man in a suit, a butler I presumed. The man nodded politely to us and headed down the hall, leading us to breakfast I hoped.
“How am I on top all of the sudden?” I asked Peter.
“’All of the sudden’?” asked Kieran, glancing back at me, grinning. We’d paired up behind the butler, Kieran and Ethan, then me and Peter.
“Really,” snorted Peter. “Have you met your parents? They put you on the high end on both the financial and magical scales. Ehran pushed you up a few levels.” Ehran? Oh, the butler. “Even if you call it a class system, you’re very high up the ladder.”
“And cutting my hair will make the Queens feel like I’m lower in the system?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” Shrank sang out as he looped around us. “The Fae hierarchy is far more rigid than the human systems. It would be wiser to not give them any reason to believe you have lost any status among your peers, even when your current class consists of only four.”
“We’re in a class of our own?” I asked.
“Most definitely, sir,” answered the butler as we descended the stairs. All four of our heads swiveled in to each other, then to the butler to gawk. The man showed absolutely no fear that we would misinterpret his comment and be insulted. We all broke out laughing at the bottom of the stairs. Our joviality lasted into the banquet room we were ushered into.
“Gentlemen,” the butler said, stepping to one side and sweeping an arm toward the buffet table against the wall. “Please help yourselves of the buffet at your leisure. The Cahills will be down directly.”
“Thank you,” we said, almost in unison. We started fixing plates of sausage, eggs, thick sliced bacon, pastries, and some sort of oatmeal. I snagged some fruit for Shrank.
“So why are we in a class by ourselves?” I asked, sitting down at the ornately set table across from Peter. The table was set for ten but looked like it could seat twenty or more.
“Partly because nobody can see you outside of the shell,” sang Shrank, then he tossed a blueberry into the air, flying after it like a hawk after a sparrow. “But mostly because you’re so strong you scare people, or at least, everybody thinks so, which is pretty much the same thing.” He dripped blueberry all over himself without concern. I tossed a napkin under him before he dripped onto the white tablecloth, glowering at him. He grinned sheepishly at me and wiped his tiny hands on the napkin.
“So where does that put you?” I asked him.
“As a servant to one of the most powerful mages in the world?” he asked, thoughtfully. “That pretty much puts me wherever you want me.”
“Why a servant?” I asked. “The waffles are excellent. Wonder what kind of syrup this is.”
“Boysenberry,” said Peter. “What’s wrong with being a servant? It’s not like we’re making him lick our boots or anything.”
“Yes,” Shrank piped in. “Everyone has a place in the world. We Fae just know ours much better than humans.”
“It’s more strictly codified in them,” said Kieran, “in their magic, almost in their blood itself. I admit I had not considered the idea that our appearance may affect their opinions of us, though, I mean over such a short period of time. Everyone makes judgments based on appearances.”
“Good morning, sirs,” said Gordon as he came into the dining room. We chorused our good mornings as he came in slowly, nervous around us especially without his father. He loaded up a plate and I wondered where at the table he would choose to sit. We’d chosen to sit dead center so there were empty chairs on either side of each of us.
“I don’t know if I have a problem with someone being a servant, I suppose,” I said, responding to Peter’s question. “I think it’s more that I have a problem with someone being forced to be a servant or to think that’s all they’re good enough to be, something so menial as to cart my bags around or do my laundry just because I’m too lazy to do it myself.”
“Yeah,” agreed Peter, drizzling honey over a biscuit, “That’s one of the reasons I liked staying at your house back then. Pretty much why I took an instant liking to you, too.” I looked up at him, puzzled and chewing on a tasty cinnamon bun. “Your whole household staff felt like one big family. And I thought, at first, that it was your parents. I mean, your mom and dad are really nice people, really—”
“Wait!” Kieran interrupted him. “You are talking about Robert McClure, right? Nice? Don’t let him hear you say that.” He grinned as he stirred his oatmeal concoction. I still had no idea what it was, but I had no desire to experiment with it, even in small amounts.
“Actually, that’s the point,” Peter said seriously. “The whole staff did defer to your parents just like any hired staff and they were adequately to well paid for their services. But where you were concerned, everybody there considered you a part of their family and had some bond, some affection for you, like a little brother to most. That Je ne sais quoi quality ran through the whole house and centered around you.”
“Was it in the warding of the house?” asked Gordon, taking an interest in the conversation. “Many parents will build that sort of au pair binding into their wards to help keep their children safe, or any children. The castle has several areas like that.”
“No, Father would not have used such a gen
eralized form on that landscape,” answered Kieran. “Besides, either Olivia or Robert was there with Seth at all times during his childhood, until just recently.”
“I didn’t see any bindings,” agreed Peter.
“I’m not sure what you’re saying here,” I said to Peter, confused. “How does some people liking me relate to class and caste systems?”
Ethan answered, “I think he’s trying to say that you don’t understand them because you’ve never seen yourself as being in one even though you are. And since you’re pretty much at the top and don’t present yourself to everyone that way, it’s easy to forget that around you. You see value in everybody. Because of that, the people you are with tend to see the value in themselves. The exceptions seem to be the truly class conscious among us.”
“Which is why you rally against the Fae caste systems,” added Kieran. “The upper tiers of that hold little life dear but their own.”
“There’s truth in that,” sang Shrank, slicing up a strawberry with a knife as long as his arm. I have no idea where he kept that knife but he made quick work of the berry that was half his size with it.
Felix Cahill strode into the room then. “Morning, all!” he proclaimed as he sat down at the table next to Kieran. The butler we’d followed down stairs was a second behind him with a cup of coffee for him. “I seemed to have interrupted a serious discussion.”
Kieran grinned, pushing his empty plate forward slightly, “Not at all. We were discussing class and caste systems and why Seth seems to break through them.”
Cahill arched his eyebrows, looking at me as his butler placed a large cinnamon scone in front of him. “Thank you, John,” he said softly, then to me with a twinkle in his eye, “Not planning a coup in the castle, I trust.”
Chortles and chuckles ran softly across the table. “How’s that for twisting a conversation,” said Peter, grinning. “From wanting a haircut to storming the parapets in half an hour.”
“Speaking of servants,” Ethan said, grimacing. “We need to hire someone. I keep running out of underwear.” We grimaced with him.
