Mages at Large (Wine of the Gods Book 18)

by Pam Uphoff

  Mages at Large

  Pam Uphoff

  Copyright © 2011 Pamela Uphoff

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN

  978-1-939746-06-1

  Cover Art credit

  © Sergey Khakimulin | Dreamstime.com

  File ID: 46378461

  Cover design: P.A. McWhorter

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional. Any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  About the Author

  Other Titles by the Author

  Excerpt From an Upcoming Release

  Chapter One

  October 15, 2454

  New Tokyo

  Falco Newton tried to stay in the background. Father was a well known and strong Mage. Mother was one of the female wizards that occurred occasionally. She was strong, and in this group was considered an odd sport, strong enough to garner respect, but not something Hawkin Newton should have gambled his dynasty on.

  At seventeen, Falco was just showing signs of his mage abilities. Only the semblance of 'social gathering' the hosts were trying to project had allowed his father to slide his son into this meeting.

  There were other youngsters here as well. Lady Grace, a gawky fourteen year old with worse parent problems than anyone, worked her way through the crowd. Her mother had her usual stable of admirers circling her. As far as Falco had ever heard, Mercy was the only one of the Goddesses to reproduce. Even the Gods had few children.

  "Do you know what this meeting is about?" Grace's voice was even lower than normal, and he strained to hear it over the music and conversational rumble.

  He shook his head. "I don't think Father knows. Do you?"

  She nodded. "Let's grab Dobs and Max."

  He stood on tip toes; the growth spurt was quite handy for looking around. "They're getting food, from opposite ends of the buffet. Let's stock up and then see if there's a patio or something."

  There was indeed a patio, and the four of them shut the door behind them and sighed in relief.

  Dobs shook her head at Grace. "Your mother did it again. Every time I think she's found absolutely the worst color and least flattering cut for you, she horrifies me with something like this."

  Max groaned. "Clothes! Forget fashion, just for once, please, and let Grace tell us what's going on."

  "It's the four year comets." Grace said. "One of them is going to hit the world and we're all going to die."

  The other three maintained a long silence.

  Finally Falco tendered, "Joke?"

  "No. Real. Logic did the measurements and Chance the number crunching. Ninety-nine percent chance it'll hit somewhere between Bombay and Sahara, possibly a bit south of Cairo. That's why they're getting all the most powerful people together. They're going to try a last minute deflection."

  "Why wait till the last minute?" Max shifted uneasily.

  "Because they can't even reach out to the Moon, so the most time they'll have is like maybe six hours." Grace was looking worried, and stood up to peek back in at the gathering. She had a crush on one of the old gods—the mega geezer Harry. She glared at him. "He's not a mega geezer. He just pretends, so Mother will leave him alone." She sighed. "And I don't really have a crush on him. I wish he was my father."

  Falco blushed. He usually had better mental control than that, but with his mage powers just starting up, sometimes his mental voice got a bit shrill and penetrating. Worse than his actual voice, which was settling down nicely.

  Max and Dobs snickered. Max was nineteen; everyone gushed and said he had excellent control for a young mage, and was getting so strong. Dobs was a witch; her mother and grandmother were both here.

  "So, can they, like, put shields over entire cities?" Falco asked. "If they can't deflect the comet?"

  Grace nodded. "Mother has been close with Peace and Art. They figure they'll try diverting it, and if that doesn't look like it'll work, they'll shield the biggest cities. They've given up on Cairo and are arguing about whether they should even try with Bombay and Sahara. They'd have a better chance saving Scandia and New Tokyo."

  "If it's going to hit the northern hemisphere, maybe they should go all the way down south and try to save Forest or Al Guerro." Dobs shrugged at their frowns. "I know we don't get along with them, but sheesh, we're talking about saving the human race, you know."

  "Right. Or rather, wrong. We're saving the human race on this Earth, never mind that humans either never evolved here or maybe got wiped out by a big meteor hit thousands of years ago." Max sighed. "Okay, okay. We're saving the human race. But I want to save our part of it, not make a noble sacrifice."

  They all turned their attention to mass movement inside the room.

  "All the important ones, the leaders, are being hauled off for a presentation." Grace chewed a fingernail and they all followed her glance to the corner of the building.

  Falco stepped carefully through the flowering beds and spotted the row of windows. All curtained, but there were slashes of light . . .

  So they had a ringside seat to watch a half dozen gods try to persuade and organize a hundred magic users to save a World that was fast making them obsolete.

  Falco peered around the room and counted thirty clusters of witches, and double that number of mage groups. Of course, a witches' pyramid would have at least fifteen witches, where a compass could be as few as four, and usually only had eight active members.

  But still, they probably represented close to a thousand people with power and training.

  "Is this everyone, or are they talking to more people?"

  "There's more." Grace whispered back. "They've talked to the Bombay and Scandia people already. Day after tomorrow we'll go to Sahara, and then we'll see if the Fories or Al Guerros will talk to us."

  Falco nodded. Four thousand magic users, most likely. They had another six months to organize everyone. Surely they could shove a comet around. Nothing to really worry about.

  Pity it was so soon. He wouldn't get to help.

  ***

  He spent the next few weeks alternating between working on his car and reading news.

  Max tended to laugh at his project. He had the parts of three wrecked steamers spread out over the empty half of the carriage house.

  His parents considered it beneath him, but an excellent way to get him out from underfoot without getting into trouble. He considered the car the best excuse yet to get away from their constant monitoring. And it represented freedom. When it was done, when he was eighteen, graduated and possibly even employed . . . No. Squash that dream. They were already trying to choose his college for him. Because even a powerful mage needed a job, income. There were a number of fields where magical ability helped. Medicine. Weather forecasting and manipulation. Microbiology. Agriculture. Chemistry.

  He'd been told that he might not be very powerful, with such an odd mother. Male wizards were weak, barely more able than someone with no power gathering ability at all. There was even a theory that having a wizard for a mother would interfere with his mage power collection.
>
  So he needed a fall back education, not just one that all the rest of the stronger mages were competing for. He sat and looked thoughtfully at his steamer. Electricity seemed to be the up and coming thing. Did wizards have a natural touch with electricity like they did with fire? That was something he really ought to look into.

  Pity he hadn't thought about that before he'd bought the steamers.

  But he had a carriage all back together, sanded, stained, painted and polished. All he had to do was figure out these linkages between piston and flywheel. He had the transmission working properly and the flywheel axle attached there . . . then get all the steam pipes and the boiler installed and pressured up for leaks.

  "I could finish this in a couple of weeks."

  "And then we'll all get blown up." Max walked in, all dressed up, he even wore a tie.

  "Date?"

  "Dad is taking me to the Compass meeting. It's going to be awkward. No one has the faintest intention of retiring."

  "Good. Then you and I just need to find two other mages and start our own Compass."

  "The guild won't sanction another one."

  "That's because jobs are so thin on the ground." Falco told him. "But I'm going to major in something completely different in college, and I just want some friends to magic around with for the sheer pleasure of it."

  Max gawped at him. "My dad would explode if I dared suggest that I wasn't going to be a professional. He already says I shouldn't hang out with you."

  "Has he ever found out about you and Dobs?"

  "Hell, no! He'd beat me to within an inch of my life. I keep complaining that I just can't get Grace alone. He approves of her."

  "Or at least her connections. You can blame Dobs on me, if it'll help. I can look my dad straight in the eye and say I have no romantic or even sexual interests there."

  Max glared.

  "Not that Dobs isn't totally good looking." Falco shook his head at his friend. "You know she'll never leave the Pyramid."

  "I know. But that doesn't mean we can't live together."

  "No sons."

  "Only Dad would care. And Paul can continue 'The Dynasty' for him."

  Falco nodded sympathetically. "All you have to do is keep it undercover till you're out of college and admitted to a Compass. Have you settled on a field?"

  "Dad is insisting that I major in weather control. So I'll fit in his Compass. I'd rather do medicine, myself, but they say that in the future, magic won't have any place in medicine any more."

  A whistle from outside summoned Max.

  "Good luck." Falco called back. He wondered what their fathers had had to say to each other. They'd never socialized casually before. He hoped it didn't have anything to do with Dobs, and wondered if it was about the comet. The science article in the newspaper claimed it was naked eye bright, now, but he hadn't spotted it. And no word of impending doom in the article.

  His father's Compass operated a profitable pharmaceuticals company, producing antibiotics for livestock. And occasionally for people, on the rare occasions someone's immune system wasn't up to par. They said that before the Exile, people had been just as prone to infections as animals.

  His mother's car hissed down the carriageway, and he stepped over to open the other garage doors for her. She waved cheerfully, and took a moment to compliment his progress on his steamer. She was pretty good, as mothers went. She had her own jewelry shop up in the heights, and came home late most days.

  Falco waited until he heard the back door slam, and then followed her quietly, easing the door shut.

  ". . . getting together with Art and Peace tomorrow to talk politics. We don't, any of us, want to wind up saving only those Fories who want to outlaw magic. Personally I'm wondering about that Church of the Creator. We don't want people panicking and flocking there begging to be saved, and then not giving us the credit when we do save them."

  "That would be . . . all too likely, wouldn't it?" his mother replied. "Well, is it all business, or are we still pretending we just like to party?"

  "All business, the time is getting short."

  Falco chewed his lip. Would Grace be there? Or maybe he'd better plan on eavesdropping when his parents got home. Politics, when they were facing the end of the World? Insane.

  But secret meetings or not, this was his last year of high school, and he had to work at it, make sure of his acceptance at a top college – if there were any left to apply to after the winter holidays.

  He closed up the garage and returned to the house, slamming the back door. His homework was done, but he had some long term projects . . . he worked on them, and swore he would finish them quickly, and blitz his homework from here on. He needed to be free to follow the developing situation.

  School lasted forever the next day, and he used his spare time to whittle away at math and writing homework.

  Both his parents were home when he got there. He called a greeting, said he'd be in the carriage house and slammed the back door, staying inside.

  After a moment, he heard their voices, and eased up closer.

  ". . . so if he can get all the bleeding hearts assigned to specific city protection, we ought to be able to pull this off. Magic will once again be preeminent in the World, and we'll get the respect we ought to have."

  "So long as they really can protect New Tokyo." His mother said.

  "We'll have Art, Mercy and one of the Sigma brothers. Peace is probably going to be in Scandia with the other twin, and probably Eternal Youth and Just Deserts. And Edmund said he'd try and persuade Abrams to be in their group, so we may have Logic.

  "Then War and the Traveler can watch the southern hemisphere. If they want to save a bunch of people who'd as soon burn them at the stake, they can do it alone. Gisele is worried about the western hemisphere, and no doubt Love will join her. Chance? Who knows. The man isn't reliable."

  "That's what Art wants to do, whether he can is something else altogether." His mother pointed out. "And . . . can we really trust him? This is too important to screw up, for mere politics."

  "Were you there when Jack asked about families and extra protection? Art said he'd take a bunch of people in his museum, and that they'd set up strong points all over, where the families would be safe under extra layers of shields."

  His mother was quiet for a bit. "They really aren't sure they can divert it, are they?"

  "No. Not at all. So we need to be in tight with Art, and get Falco some extra protection."

  Their conversation lagged then, and Falco opened and slammed the back door. "Hey, what's for dinner? I'm starving!"

  ***

  Max looked around the dome in relief. There were mages from at least twelve different Compasses, so Dad wouldn't be pressuring old Mr. Jeffers to retire. This time. It turned, instead into a discussion of shield spells, and the amount of area that could be covered.

  Representatives had come from most of the official compasses in the region. The outlying Compasses wanted to protect their own small towns, so about half the evening was spent on single-compass shields. The areas covered were not impressive, and the anxiety level ratcheted up.

  "Relax!" His dad's voice boomed over the dome. "We have two months to practice. Then you will have to get everyone inside that radius for about twelve hours. The worst of the danger will be past, then, and everyone can go home and check for damage."

  "If the comet is deflected." Max recognized Miles Gardener, the North of a suburban Compass.

  "Yes. The Compasses from the city proper will be backing up the Gods for that. All of you, or representatives, were at the meeting with Art, you know the matter is serious."

  "Why was there no government representative at that meeting?"

  "I understand that the God of War is working with the Government, about the deflection. And Logic and Chance with the scientists and so on. Art is taking it upon himself to look beyond the deflection to the thousands of small chunks that will impact, and if large enough, endanger our families and ne
ighbors.

  "War will be running the deflection. All the other Gods will assist, and we will assist the gods.

  "And once the deflection is successful then we will shield our families from the smaller debris." Marcus Olson smiled. "This is a sensible precaution, and you who are out, away from the cities, should be in good shape to protect your towns."

  "What about these rumors that the anti-magic cities in the south will be left unprotected?"

  "Deflecting the comet will protect them too. These are secondary precautions that we can take, but they can't. It may be that we are being over cautious. Or it may be that they should have nurtured magic instead of murdered magicians. That is out of our hands. We are merely local Compasses, helping as much as we can."

  Max hunched his shoulders, but had to agree. If you couldn't shield everyone, then you shielded your own first.

  He was still thinking about it two nights later, when the City Compasses met to coordinate with Art and with each other. His older brother Paul drove up from college for this meeting. He was majoring in microbiology, Dad was already bragging about how he'd be leading his own Compass soon enough. Max hoped Falco's dad's Compass wasn't being targeted. Speaking of whom . . . There was Hawkin Newton, with seven other men. No sign of Falco.

  Could Falco be right? Was it time for magic users to look at other professions and keep magic for a hobby?

  There were several gaps in Compasses, mages who couldn't get away tonight, so he and Paul both were pulled in to fill spots. He was able to complete a circle, so the other mages could practice the spells for combined shields. They traded mages around – a very rare practice – and he ended in the Lanier Heights Compass.

  "Good job, Max." Falco's dad thumped him on the shoulder. "You didn't break the circuit once. Another year and your powers will be fully in and you'll have learned the foundation spells. All the Compasses will be recruiting you."

  "Thank you, sir." Max tried not to grin too hard. I was good? I was good!