by Scott Duff
“Not going to be easy,” Peter muttered, considering the task. “Finding someone that’s magically inclined, strong enough to not be intimidated by us, but willing to do some grunt work while we do whatever we need to do?” He shook his head slowly, thoughtfully.
“Have you considered ‘second sons’?” Gordon asked. We turned to him, questioningly, confused by the phrase. “Similar to a second or third prince in line for the throne, overshadowed by an older sibling but still competent.”
I was still confused. “Why is birth order important? I don’t understand.”
“You wouldn’t,” Kieran said with a chuckle. “You were raised as an only child.”
“I know several ‘second sons’ who would jump at the chance to get out of their older brother’s shadow,” Gordon said, hopefully. “I mean, not to be a servant necessarily, but an aide, perhaps.”
I still wasn’t seeing the issue with birth order, but I wasn’t sure I would get a better answer out of this group. I said, “I don’t have a problem with ‘second sons,’ Gordon, and it would end up more like an aide. We really don’t need that much underwear.”
Gordon smiled and said, “Good, I’ll set up some interviews for you then.”
“And speaking of second sons,” Cahill said to Gordon, “You need to pick up Martin from school tomorrow, remember?”
“Yes, Da, I remember,” Gordon said.
“Ooh, can I go with you?” I asked. “I’ve never actually been inside a school before.”
“Sure, Seth, I’d enjoy the company for the ride up there,” Gordon answered. “And I’m sure Marty would love to show you around.”
John the butler came back into the room, holding a silver tray with a folded sheet of paper out to Cahill. He took the note off the tray and read it while John waited.
“Escort them to the conservatory, please, John,” Cahill said. “Seth, were you able to get in touch with Harris last night?”
“No, sir, his office said he was in transit and wouldn’t be available until today,” I said, mirroring Kieran’s move and pushing my plate forward. “I’ll try again this afternoon when we get back.”
“No need,” he said, chortling, “He’s in the conservatory, asking for an audience with you and Ehran now.”
“An ‘audience’?” asked Ethan, almost giggling. “Like you’re the crowned prince now, Seth. A month ago you couldn’t get anybody to talk to you and now you can’t drive them away with two swords, a crossbow, and a giant brick wall.”
I smiled at him as I stood, waving Kieran back down in his chair. “I’ll go see what he wants. If we both go, it’ll seem like we’re at his beck and call.”
“I’ll come rescue you in a few minutes,” said Cahill, picking apart his scone.
I followed John the Butler out of the room into the hall. This was a different hall than last night and I honestly had no idea where I was in relation to the front door. I felt Shrank slip onto my shoulder and I pushed my awareness out further to cover him, too.
“I could use a map,” I muttered as I sidled up beside John. He smiled at that.
“It’s really not that difficult as old houses go,” he said, pointing to our right to another hallway juncture, one I recognized. We were in the main hall now, and the front doors were ahead of us. “The lower levels, however, are a different matter.”
“How many people does it take just to clean this place regularly?” I asked.
“The house staff is about sixty,” John said, “Mostly consisting of family retainers. When green fire starts floating through the sky, you really can’t count on temporary help to remain calm, after all.”
“Or glowing black swords just appearing in mid-air?” I asked. John gave me a lopsided smile as he indicated the conservatory door with a wave of his hand. It was the same room we were in last night. “Thanks, John.”
Shrank jumped off my shoulder and flew quietly into the room ahead of me. There were six men in the room, three pacing around the room uneasily. Two I recognized: Harris and Calhoun. Harris was one of the pacers. The other two pacers bore the brand similar to Harris, just like Calhoun had. Even from the front of the room, I could see the power of the curses glowing under the branding that had kept them crippled for years. I stayed at the front of the room for a moment, curious to see how they interacted. I felt one of the men probing the hall behind me, his attention slipping over me like quicksilver.
“I thought I felt someone coming,” muttered one of the men sitting on the couch. He went back to staring out the windows at the mountains behind the castle, which I couldn’t blame him for—it was a gorgeous view.
“God, I wish they’d hurry up. What’s taking them so long!” grumbled one of the pacing men. He beat on a bookcase with a fist, which apparently aggravated Shrank a bit. He was sitting on the top shelf at the time and on the last bang of the man’s fist, Shrank made a rather large tome shift and fall, hitting the man on the left side of his head and shoulder. Shrank was well away from the shelves when the book hit the man. I have to admit I had a hard time not busting a gut right then.
“Markham, sit down and shut up!” snapped Harris through clinched teeth. With a minor pulse of power from Harris, the book flew back onto the shelf. “We are barging in on them at eight in the morning and we’ve only been waiting ten minutes. Learn patience,” Harris said more calmly. He sat down in the Cahill’s chair from last night, massaging his head. He was tired, frustrated, and aggravated, but he seemed to be maintaining his composure, if just barely.
“Bill, how has your practice been going?” Harris asked, quietly.
“Not particularly well,” one of the men on the couch answered. “It is totally counterintuitive, after all.”
Harris sighed heavily. “Let’s see how well you can do, then,” he said.
“Here?” Bill asked, complaining, “But there are like, seven convergent ley lines within a couple a hundred feet of us.”
“The boy did it for seven straight hours in an airplane,” Calhoun said softly.
That irked me a bit, “the boy.” I looked for Shrank and found him sitting on a lampshade reading over the shoulder of one of the men I didn’t know. Bill started pushing his energies out of his body in a haphazard way. I saw why he was having difficulty with the process: he was trying to save key parts of his power without annealing a shell around them first, letting them bleed out. It would have been easier on him if he’d protect his own aura first then push away the energy from everywhere else. But if that’s the way he wanted to do it, I could help him out a little.
I pushed into his aura and slowly started pushing the magic out of his body. He gasped when he was completely empty—he wasn’t expecting it. The other men in the room were staring at him, amazed at his sudden success. Shrank looked up at me suddenly, alarmed. Waving him over to me, I started slowly increasing the size of the bubble around Bill as he poked and prodded feebly with his talent.
“That’s good, Bill,” said Harris, “How big can you make the envelope?”
“I… don’t know,” he stuttered. “I’ve never gotten this far.” No, I don’t suppose he has. Shrank lit on my shoulder, giggling softly in my ear. I stepped farther into the room, but the men’s attention was so rapt on Bill that they still didn’t notice me. My interest was waning and I had a busy day ahead of me, so I pushed the envelope around Bill quickly outward to encompass the group of them.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said cheerfully as I stepped into the envelope. “Mr. Calhoun, I would greatly appreciate it if you would stop referring to me as ‘the boy.’ I do have a name.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. McClure,” Calhoun said, blanching to near elven paleness.
“Thank you,” I responded, nodding and smiling. Turning to Harris, “Mr. Harris, I tried to call you last night. Your office said you were in transit. To here, it would seem. What can I do for you?”
“I imagine our visit and your phone call share the same purpose, Seth,” said Harris, rising from his chair
and smoothing his vest and slacks out. “Glen called from the airport and said that you found the curse still under the brand on his hip. You drew a far more detailed picture of the curse in the astral than we were able to discern. You had to be looking at the real thing. We were hoping you would remove the others and you did say that it looked like the curse could flare at any moment, right?”
“Yes,” I said, nodding in agreement. “And I see that Mr. Cahill’s assessment of two others is correct.” I turned to the closer of the two men with the curse. He was medium height, forty-ish, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes. Totally average looking. He might have even studied how to look average. “Would you mind removing your jacket and shirt?” He obliged without commenting, revealing a better-than-average physique. The brand was along the muscle ridge on his right side. The curse sat below it in the scar tissue, pale for the lack of magical energy flowing through its conduits. Cahill’s was much brighter and easier to see.
“This one looks just like Calhoun’s,” I said, pushing against the man’s side gently to look at the brand in the light better. “It is harder to see without the energy flow. The brand obscures them well. Why was Bill trying to purge all the magic from the room?”
“Who are you asking?” the bent over man said, gruffly.
“Anybody that’ll answer, I guess,” I said, then with excellent timing, I called to the Night and it came, testament to while they were without power, I was not. Pushing my senses tighter into the foam around the curse, the Night Sword pierced his skin lightly, insinuating the tip between the brand and the curse. The sword was more brutish now than with the last two. Once the curse was isolated, the sword just ate it, then the core of the brand itself, too. When I’d pulled the sword free, the man fell onto the couch, breathing hard, adrenaline flooding his system. A fear reaction, I decided.
“Bill,” said Harris calmly, “Stop straining yourself. You’re not doing anything. It’s Seth’s doing, not yours.” I turned to see Bill almost purple with exertion, though what he was exerting I couldn’t tell. “Why didn’t Ehran come with you, Seth?”
“He’s busy,” I said, noncommittally, turning to the second man, the one Shrank dropped the book on. “And quite frankly considering the times you’ve tried to murder him, I thought it best to keep you two apart as much as possible. You haven’t answered my question.”
He sighed again. That was getting a bit irritating. “It’s a very good tactical weapon, you’ve got to admit,” he said in what I assumed he thought of as a soothing tone. “If we can master the technique, it would prove extremely useful in the coming war.” That comment spiked surprise through the other men’s auras.
I chuckled at the man in front of me. “Are you surprised because he thinks there’s a war coming or that he admitted it to me?” I asked. “Or does the boy with the big knife still scare you?”
“The last two, I think,” he answered. “He doesn’t normally talk about the war to outsiders and frankly that ‘knife’ would scare me regardless of who wielded it.”
“Yeah, I’m afraid I’d have t’agree with ya’ on that one,” I said with probably the thickest drawl I’ve ever had. “It sure is a gorgeous piece of work, though. Now if you wouldn’t mind dropping your pants, please?” A smile split my face when I realized how badly timed those two sentences were. I heard at least one snicker to my left—ah well, can’t win ‘em all.
“Who are supposed to be the participants of this war, Mr. Harris?” I asked as I waited for the man to drop trou. I really wasn’t paying attention to Harris anyway. I couldn’t trust anything he said. Maybe he’d say something of interest, but I wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
“The Fae against us,” Harris said calmly. “It’s been building for many years now.”
I turned to Harris with raised eyebrows and asked, “And how would pushing all the magic out of a room help against the Fae?”
He shrugged, clearly not understanding my confusion. “Cut them off from magic and they can’t use it against us.”
I turned back to look at the curse on the man’s inner right thigh, just above his knee, shaking my head. Kneeling down, I let my awareness push down tightly into the foam of reality until I could feel the conduits of the energy flow of the powerless curse. This is one I hadn’t seen before, the third of Cahill’s four.
“Mr. Harris, I think I can explain why that’s not a particularly smart direction of research with two questions,” I said. I mapped the curse out onto the astral plane for everyone to see and set copies of the other two on either side it. “First, what magical defenses do you have available to you at this moment?” I asked. “No need to be particularly specific. I’m not fishing for holes in your security to attack you. Just think of it this way, you’re in a battle against an equivalent force and your team just blew all the magic out of the vicinity. What can you do now?”
“Guns, knives, explosives,” he answered. “Whatever we can get our hands on.”
I cradled the rapier’s blade through my right hand with the tip just below the brand. Fascinated that the blade didn’t bite into my skin, I tapped the man’s leg and whispered, “You be still now.”
More loudly to Harris, I said, “Second question, what makes you think your opponent would be similarly disadvantaged?” I didn’t have to see the question confuse him, I just knew it would. The Night’s influence seeped in underneath the curse, wrapping itself around the tendrils of receptors the curse used to gather its power so slowly. It was so like a natural thing, a bug, that it was uncanny. But so like its namesake, the Night held sway and sucked the creature in and I slid the blade free of the man’s skin. He collapsed, panting but conscious, on the couch with his pants still around his ankles. He’d felt the Night’s influence even if he didn’t feel the curse, and it scared him.
Yeah, the Sword was a real work of the Arts. I turned back to Harris, who still seemed to be struggling with the question.
“Let me help you out there,” I said moving closer. “There is nothing that says your opponent will be disadvantaged at all, especially if it’s against the Fae. Shrank, would you mind showing everyone where you are right now?”
“Yes, Master Seth,” said Shrank from Harris right shoulder, shimmering into view for the rest of the room. He stayed attached to Harris’ collar when Harris jumped at the sudden high pitched voice so close to him.
“See?” I asked. “Now, I don’t really understand the whole hierarchy of power thing, but from what I do understand, an elf or a troll would be significantly more able to deal with a lack of available external magic than a pixie. Yet this pixie was able to sneak up on you and sit on your shoulder without your knowledge.”
I felt Cahill enter the hall, coming to my “rescue” as he said earlier. As he got closer to the Observatory, he felt the bottleneck of energy around the room where I was pushing back against it and became alarmed. He gathered power, shielded himself, and pushed through the barrier and into the “magic free zone.”
“Furthermore,” I said, “I am not powerless either.” I sent out several small flash-bangs that were more like twinkle lights from a Christmas tree than firecrackers to prove my point. Cahill rushed into the room, then, taking in the situation. I’m sure it was difficult to read, me with the Night sword slung on my left shoulder rather casually, standing in front of a very nervous Harris, everyone else totally powerless and nervous, chewing on the ideas I’d just fed them. With me invisible, he was the brightest man in the room.
“Seth,” Cahill said slowly, coming up behind me carefully, “Is everything okay?”
I turned to him, smiling, “Yes, sir, Mr. Cahill. Just proving a point to Mr. Harris, here. Nothing wrong at all. Are we ready to go?”
“Yes,” he answered. “Gordon is waiting with Ehran. He’ll take you up to Enid and your mother.”
“Cool,” I said, turning back to Harris, “If there’s nothing else…?” Knowing full well there was still his curse to deal with.
“A few things, a
ctually,” he said, embarrassment running through his aura. “There is the matter of my curse…”
“On your ass, I believe,” I supplied for him happily. “I am a bit confused on why you would ask for my help when you have tried to hurt me and mine so often in recent history, but in an effort to get you out of Mr. Cahill’s hair faster…”
Using the Stone’s power, I twisted Harris around backward and “pantsed” him, then shoved his face down into the chair he had been sitting in. I shoved the Night sword into the bottom of the brand rather unceremoniously. I didn’t bother presenting this one to everyone like the first three, but Harris had the final version of Cahill’s four. Filing the image away, I pulled the curse out on the tip instead of letting the Sword devour it right away. Harris fainted dead away, slumping first into the chair, then falling out onto the floor. Two of his men rushed over to help him.
“Mr. Cahill,” I said, bringing the tip closer to look at the curse sitting there. “Please keep your shields up. I’m curious about something.”
I felt several of the men back away from me, a simple precaution that wouldn’t have been much use if what I thought would happen actually did. They’d still be in the blast radius. Cahill’s shields felt strong enough and the Stone would augment them if necessary. I let the energy flood back into the room. The curse immediately started gathering energy at an alarming rate, very much unlike Calhoun’s had done. Within five seconds, the curse ruptured its power cells sending enormous amounts of energy outward spherically. I let the Night have its breakfast before the sphere grew more than a foot. It hummed as it pulled the power of the curse into its black depths, sated from its morning’s work.
“Yeah,” I said, sending the happy Sword home with a flourish. “I was afraid the first pull had changed it.”
I looked around the room. Mr. Cahill was still the brightest, but a few of the men were struggling to control some of their defensive magics that came quite suddenly to fully active status. Bill was wrong when he said there were seven convergent ley lines. There were twelve—he just couldn’t see the other five through the house. Cahill’s family had built their family home here for generations for good reason. Power wasn’t simply suddenly available; they were battered with it.
