Magus

by R H Frye

  Danny struggled to free himself from the grip of the mind that was striving for control of his body. He had felt his mind drifting towards consciousness when a horribly familiar dark presence had touched his thoughts. Recognizing the invading presence for what, and who, it was, Danny struggled to assert some sort of control over his body. He strained to shout, or move, or whimper, anything that would keep his control from slipping away, but it was no use. All too soon he found himself banished to a dark, unused corner of his mind. As before, he could tell that his body was doing things, but he had no awareness of just what it was doing.

  Maraydel had latched on to the thread of Carol’s thoughts as she sent her mind seeking her former love once more. Her thoughts were a seething cauldron of anger and the threat of violent deeds lingered just under the surface of her conscious mind. The evil wizard was aware of the way his young apprentice’s mind suddenly focused as she took control of Danny’s body, and he took advantage of her single-minded purpose to slip deeper into Carol’s mind.

  Or at least, he tried to slip deeper into Carol’s mind. Unlike the previous occasions when he had delved into Carol’s thoughts, her mind was no longer open to him. Beneath the surface thoughts that were concerned with her efforts to destroy Danny, Maraydel could see only a gray wall that blocked any further access to her thoughts.

  With astonishment Maraydel realized that his apprentice’s mind was no longer an open book to him. He removed his presence from her mind and opened his eyes to look at Carol where she sat with her legs crossed and her eyes closed in the grass before him. There was a subtle difference now between the face of the girl that Maraydel had first seen in the forest, and the face of the young woman that was sitting before him. Her face was leaner, and there were dark spots underneath her closed eyes, but that was not the difference. The difference was the lack of softness and innocence that had filled the girl’s face a few days earlier. In place of the innocence, her expression was one of pain and cruelty. The face was still beautiful, but this beauty was cold and haughty where its previous beauty had been in its kindness and love.

  Considering the alternatives, the changes in Carol’s face were more or less changes that Maraydel liked, but there was something in her expression that made him cautious. And when the expression on her face was coupled with the new defenses that were in place in her mind, Maraydel’s caution grew into a distinct unease. This woman, intricate and powerful as she was becoming, would certainly bear watching. Maraydel sat watching Carol and feeling the power moving through her as nervous thoughts began to nibble at his sense of well-being.

  Carol firmly shoved Danny’s mind out of the way, and after a brief struggle she took stock of his situation.

  Through their linked minds, Carol could feel the dull throbbing of the wounds in Danny’s chest and arm. Dimly, she seemed to remember that she should feel something for his pain, but the place where those feelings once lived in her heart was dead and barren. She catalogued the pain and dismissed it as unimportant before turning her attention to solidifying her control over Danny’s body.

  When she was confident of her control, she started to open the eyes of the body she was controlling, but a faint scent on the air warned her to be cautious. The scent was faintly familiar and after a moment she remembered where she had smelled it before. It was a type of cologne that her father had used for a while. Carol congratulated herself on her caution as she realized there must be a man somewhere near to Danny. So how was she to proceed?

  For long moments, Carol strained with Danny’s ears for a clue to the man’s location. Finally, the silence was broken, and Carol was relieved to hear the rustle of newspaper pages turning. Taking a chance, she opened one of Danny’s eyes just enough to glance carefully around the room.

  An unfamiliar man was sitting comfortably with his legs crossed and a newspaper in his lap. The man’s eyes were scanning lazily over the pages of the paper and he appeared to be thinking more than reading. Carol wondered who the man could be for a moment before finally deciding that it did not matter. Whoever he was, whether he was a cop, a doctor, or some unknown friend of Danny’s family, he was in the way. And of course, that meant that he needed to be removed.

  Carol glanced around the room as much as Danny’s barely opened eye would allow her to do so. She took stock of her surroundings, noting the fact that Danny’s body did not seem to be restrained and carefully noting the position of the rolling table that was so common in hospital rooms everywhere. A pitcher of water was sitting on the table, and from the condensation line on the pitcher, she could tell that it was nearly full. A plan began to slowly form in her mind, and she allowed Danny’s eye to droop closed once more as she gathered his body’s strength to bend it to her purpose.

  Matt’s eyes snapped up from his reading to Danny’s face as he heard the young man begin to cough weakly. Danny’s eyes were open but unfocused, and his chest heaved slightly with the effort of his coughing. Matt quickly stood up and reached for the call button to alert a nurse, but the young man’s coughing abruptly ceased and a strained whisper drifted to Matt’s ear. “…so thirsty.”

  Matt paused to consider the young man’s words. Surely a sip of water would not hurt. He reached for the water pitcher where it rested on the rolling table and poured a tiny amount into a small Styrofoam cup. He would just wet the young man’s lips, and then he would call a nurse. John had told him to watch the boy closely, but the injured young man was obviously as weak as a kitten and would be no danger to anyone. Matt reached up to offer the cup to Danny and was encouraged to see the young man reach up with his left hand to help hold the cup.

  The pain medicine was apparently making Danny uncoordinated, however. As the cup nearly brushed his lips, the injured man’s hand bumped into Matt’s and the cup was knocked out of his hands to leave a damp trail behind as it tumbled over the bed rail and onto the floor. Instinctively, Matt bent down to pick up the cup. He was momentarily aware of the sound of rustling sheets as he started to stand up, and suddenly he felt a wet, heavy weight come crashing down on the back of his neck. The force of the blow drove Matt to his knees, and he was dimly aware of the sound of the plastic water pitcher clattering to the floor beside him.

  As Matt knelt on the floor trying to recover his senses, Carol drove Danny’s tortured body to the limits of its endurance. His right arm was in a cast and held tightly to the body by a sling. This left Danny’s uninjured left arm to work with, and with it she quickly worked the latch to drop the bedrail on the left side. The rail dropped out of the way, and she forced his body to tumble off the bed onto Matt’s stunned back. The cast on the right arm caught Matt on top of the head with Danny’s solid weight behind it, and the force of the blow served to stun Matt even more and drive his face flat against the hard hospital floor. Matt groaned as his left temple made solid contact with the hard floor, and only the cold water on the back of his neck served to keep him conscious.

  Matt moved his arms and feebly attempted to push himself up off the floor, but a malevolent voice hissed in his ear. “Don’t fucking move. You’ve made too much noise already, and I have no time to spare.” Matt stopped trying to get up and lay quietly on the floor beside the bed. “That’s better. Now tell me, where is he?”

  Confusion flooded Matt’s stunned mind, and he fumbled for an answer. “Where is who?” The question was the only answer that his addled brain could muster, but it seemed to make the angry voice even angrier.

  “The shaman.” Carol quickly sorted through Danny’s memories and finally came up with a name for her enemy. “John Raintree. Where is he?”

  Matt’s confusion was not lessening as the bizarre conversation continued. “John Raintree? I don’t know where he is.” Matt’s confusion was rapidly turning to anger as his stunned mind began to clear. “And I wouldn’t tell you if I did. Now get off me.” The councilman started to struggle with renewed vigor.

  Carol reached a rapid decision. She could hear footsteps and excited voices a
pproaching the room, and she knew she could not fight her way out of a crowded hospital with a severely damaged body, so she took one last frustrated action. She used Danny’s rapidly failing strength to push up from the back of the strange man and brought the cast crashing down with all her weight onto the base of Matt’s skull.

  The dual impact of the cast with his head and his temple with the floor sent Matt tumbling into darkness.

  Chapter 28

  Carol pulled her consciousness away from Danny and was dimly aware of his body crashing to the floor on top of Matt. She felt no regret over her mistreatment of Danny. After all, he was the one that had allowed his body to be used as the instrument of her death, and she believed it was only fitting that he should suffer in turn.

  Instead of regret Carol was filled with a smoldering anger. She had been looking for the shaman in her own way, since her teacher seemed unable to locate the man, and she had felt sure she could find him. Instead, she had gained no new information and was actually growing weary from her exertions.

  Carol took a few deep breaths and opened her eyes to her backyard. Maraydel sat regarding her thoughtfully a few feet away. Carol opened her mouth to speak to the mage, but he was faster. “So, what did you accomplish?”

  “Not much, although I did manage to tie up a few loose ends in my life.” Carol stood up and started towards the house, and Maraydel rose up to follow her. “What were you doing all this time anyway?” Carol asked as she passed her teacher.

  The wizard’s answer caused Carol to pause and face him. “I was looking for my staff.”

  “What staff?” Carol sensed somehow that the answer was important, but she could not have said why she felt that way.

  “It’s the staff that I made to help channel my powers. I had it with me during the battle all those years ago. The little savages lacked the power to destroy it, and with it I would be much stronger.”

  “So, did you find it, or not?”

  “Possibly. I saw it in a glass case somewhere far from here. It seemed to be on display.”

  “Well could you tell anything about how to get there?” Carol was not sure she wanted her master to be any more powerful, but she was curious about the staff, nonetheless.

  “I sensed a focal point of power nearby, and I felt that it was far away to the east across a large body of water. That’s all I could tell for now. It hardly matters because it’s too far away to be of any immediate use, and I feel a battle coming. We should begin making preparations. I don’t know how the shaman has learned so much so quickly, but it would not be wise to allow ourselves to be taken by surprise again.”

  Carol nodded. “I agree. I would feel better if we knew just where the man was, but I don’t have any ties to follow to him. It was easy to find Danny. He still loves me, and I could feel his love searching for me like an itch that you just can’t scratch.”

  “I’m not sure it would matter if you did have ties to the shaman. As I said, he seems to have learned much about the things he can do in a very short time…much like you. He has learned to shield his location from me very quickly. I would prefer to see his body burnt and steaming at my feet before he grows any more adept at his craft.”

  “Well, let’s go inside. I’m tired of sitting out here with the bugs. I intend to take a shower, and then we can make our plans.” Maraydel nodded his agreement and followed Carol into the house.

  The back door clicked shut just as a large crow flapped its way to a landing on a limb in the forest behind the house.

  John perched quietly on the limb where he had landed. He had flown to his current location just in time to see the girl and the wizard go inside. He made a mental note to thank Sarah for her directions. From the air, the path that she had given him to follow had been easy to spot, and he had made good time on his flight over the mountains and into the foothills of North Carolina. With any luck, Mike and Sarah would be arriving at the house in a half hour or so, which would give John plenty of time to put his plans into motion.

  John fluffed his wings and let the warm afternoon sun soothe the muscles of his tired wings. He thought briefly of winging quietly to the forest floor and resuming his true shape, but he thought the form of the crow would probably be more discreet, and therefore safer, than his true form. Besides, he could do the things he needed to do from the form of a crow as easily as he could from his human form.

  The shaman let his thoughts drift slowly out through the surrounding forest. He was attempting something that had not been done since the time of the battle between his ancestors and Maraydel, but he took faith in the words of his grandfather. What had the old man told him in the vision? If you can imagine it and believe in it, you can do it. John held firmly to that thought as he sent his mind looking for allies.

  Come to me and come quietly. The thought was both a delicate request and an undeniable command. The first to answer the call was a curious squirrel. It poked its head from its nest in an oak tree nearby and glanced around quickly before running out on a limb and leaping to another. In a matter of seconds, the squirrel was sitting on the limb with John. It peered at the crow for a moment before producing a nut from somewhere and nibbling on it patiently.

  John looked carefully through the forest and saw things happening that he would have considered impossible only a few days earlier. A large gray tomcat strolled lazily through the forest and sat down to quietly take a bath beside a small family of rabbits. The rabbits eyed the cat nervously for a few moments, but the large tom studiously ignored the rabbits and continued its bath as if the whole situation was the most natural thing in the world.

  Several foxes darted through the forest and dashed beneath the bellies of a nervous buck and his small herd. A few wild dogs ambled noisily through the forest, and John even saw two scrawny black bears and their cubs moving implacably towards the tree where he was perched. Within fifteen minutes, a large, quiet throng of animals was spread beneath John on the forest floor.

  The furry animals were not the only ones to answer John’s silent call. Majestic hawks, soft doves, pigeons, owls, turkeys, ravens, and buzzards by the dozen responded to John’s cry for help until the limbs of the trees near John were bowed under the weight of all the fowl.

  As John’s call moved deeper and deeper into the rural areas of Alexander County, he felt more and more animals responding. Finally satisfied that help was on its way and that his helpers could be counted on to be as quiet as possible, John returned his attention to the house. He was just in time to see a large Cadillac pull into the drive behind the house and park behind the battered Dodge Shadow that was blocking the entrance to the garage.

  Carol had just stepped out of the shower when she was startled to hear the sound of a familiar engine pulling into the driveway. She raced to the living room window and parted the Venetian blinds enough to get a look at the front yard. The young magus felt a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach because of what she saw there.

  Her father and mother were getting out of their Cadillac and walking towards the front door. “Damn, they’re early.” Her mind raced as she tried to think of some way to get them to leave without hurting them. Her parents had always been good to her, and they were not responsible for the unbelievable turn that her life had taken. Because of her lingering affection for her parents, Carol had hoped to spare them from being sucked into her fate, but here they were, back early from their vacation and in imminent danger of death or enslavement by her master.

  Carol let the slit in the blinds slip closed and turned to face Maraydel. “I need you to hide. Just slip out the back door of the house and wait for me there.”

  “You’ve obviously lost your mind. I have no intention of cowering in fear from anyone. Who is it anyway?”

  “It’s my parents, and I don’t intend to let you hurt them. If you try, you’ll be forced to fight me, and I don’t think you want that with the shaman still out there somewhere.”

  Maraydel hesitated, but the sound of a key rattlin
g in the lock of the front door decided him. Without further argument, he turned and slipped quietly out the back door of the house. He even managed to close the door behind him with a minimum of noise.

  Carol was relieved that he was gone but panicked to figure a way out of the mess she was in. She was naked and dripping on her mother’s favorite area rug, and her parents were just about to step through the door. She turned and dashed from the living room into her bedroom. She grabbed the nearest robe that was handy and scrounged a dirty towel from the floor of her room. She took the towel, twisted it quickly around the damp mess of her hair and turned towards the door to her room just in time to see her mother start to walk through the door.

  “Mom!” Carol squealed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Carol’s mother answered. “I thought you were hiking in the mountains with Danny.”

  “Well we were, but Danny got a call saying his grandmother died, so we came home early.” Carol leaned forward and gave her mother a quick hug. “What are you doing back so soon?”

  “Never mind that now. Why is the house such a wreck? And just who has been sleeping in our bed? Have you been having parties while we were gone? Was that the plan all along, for you and Danny to wait until we were gone and then shack up here?” Carol’s mother put her hands on her hips and frowned at her daughter. “Well, let’s hear it young lady. What’s been going on here? Or should I just call Danny’s mom and ask her?”

  Carol was still trying to figure out how to respond to her mother’s questions when she heard another car pulling into the driveway outside the house. Dropping all pretenses, she shoved past her mother, careened off her father where he was leaning against the wall in the short hallway outside of her room, and rushed back to the living room window. She ignored the angry sounds of protest from her parents as she looked through the blinds once more and saw two unfamiliar people getting out of the car.