by Bill Hiatt
I tried not to show how much his words unsettled me. He was so young, yet so arrogant. It was the blasphemy of the Israelites all over again. Did he really believe that this Allah was the only god? I longed to ask him if he thought my Amun was the same kind of disobedient servant the Greek gods were, but I couldn’t. I would be too tempted to strike him if he said yes, and I still needed these people.
Khalid had distracted me enough that I failed to notice the sand that had begun to trickle from the roof of the tunnel.
“What’s happening?” asked Gordy. In the time it took him to ask, the trickle had become a flood. Taliesin and Magnus adjusted the protection to create a bubble around us. Had they not done so, we would have been buried in a minute. As it was, the way forward and the way back were both blocked by sand. Once the tunnel was blocked completely, the sand swirled itself into sandstone. It appeared that Hafez had mastered, as these others put it, new tricks.
“Just when you think you’ve seen everything,” said Jimmie.
“Amenirdis, any thoughts?” asked Taliesin.
“I have heard that such magic was sometimes used to protect tombs,” I replied.
“Well, how do we undo it?” asked Magnus. His tone was not appropriately respectful to someone in my position, but I ignored the affront as best I could.
“This, like Hafez’s other magic, is strange to me. In an open space, I might have blown the sand aside before it could harden into stone, but such a tactic isn’t practical in a narrow tunnel.”
Magnus made no attempt to hide the contempt in the way he gazed at me. He thought I was lying—or perhaps too weak to be bothered with.
“The magic doesn’t seem that strong,” said Magnus. “Why not just blast our way through the stone?”
“It appears to be fusing with the rock in the surrounding tunnel,” said Tal. “If we attack it too aggressively, we might find ourselves buried in a cave-in.”
“Would retreat be prudent?” asked Umbra. “I can move us out through the shadows.”
“We shouldn’t leave without the staff,” said Tal. “It’s still our only way home.”
Magnus held up the lyre. “This and power sharing should give us more than enough energy to dig our way out. We can be subtle about it, work at the stone a little bit at a time so that there’s no risk of a cave-in.”
The others quickly agreed to try that, but again they didn’t invite me to join in this power sharing. Their mistrust of me hung in the air almost as palpably as the magic that surrounded us.
Only a few minutes effort sufficed to show the folly of Magnus’s plan. Like the trapdoor above, the new sandstone regenerated quickly.
“What we need is a way to hit the stone with enough power to destroy it faster than it can regenerate—but without shattering the tunnel walls in the process,” said Stan.
“Okay, Mr. Physics, how do we do that?” asked Magnus.
“We divide our efforts a little. Magnus, you’re a natural blaster, so you should hit that sandstone with the lyre and whatever strength you can pull from anyone who’s not otherwise engaged. Shar, Alex and I—with David in control—will hit the barrier with our swords. Shar’s and mine have the best chance of disrupting whatever magic is involved, and Alex’s is the best for cutting through physical obstacles. While we’re doing that, Tal, Viviane, and Carla will use their magic to reinforce the surrounding stone and prevent a cave-in. Amerirdis, can you use your mastery of wind to replenish our air supply?”
I had never done such a thing, but I nodded. Amun would provide.
“Everybody else, conserve your energy. I have the feeling we may need every last drop.”
Strange as I found the ways of this group, it worked with a discipline that would have done pharaoh’s army proud. In seconds everyone had moved to implement Stan’s suggestion. Even the irritating Magnus seemed willing to follow orders in this kind of situation.
Much to my chagrin, I was having difficulty performing my task. I had never before needed to summon wind in an enclosed space, and I found I could not do so. The air was growing stale, and the others would soon notice my failure.
“Need a hand?” Taliesin asked in my mind. No sooner had I admitted my problem than Tal sent me a flood of information, some of it from his own mind and some from Stan’s. Stan’s contribution was what Amy would have called science.
“Magic is partly a question of what the caster can visualize. Can you see now what needs to be done?”
Incredibly, I could. My eyes were opened, and I knew how to use my power to transform what they called carbon dioxide into what they called oxygen. Apparently, I too could learn new tricks.
As I worked, fresh air rippled around us. I could have made this happen on my own if I had weeks to study the problem, but I could never have reapplied my magic in the way Tal did. This transfer of knowledge straight from one mind to another could enable a caster to grow at a spectacular rate. No wonder Tal and his group had been able to defeat so many strong opponents in the past. Even with his powerful staff, Hafez might well become their next conquest.
Unfortunately, it was likely I would be the conquest after that. Their goals were not compatible with mine. After Hafez had been eliminated, I saw no way for us to remain allies. I’d seen enough of their power, though, to know I could not stand against them.
With a little thought, I was able to make the oxygen spell operate automatically. Everyone else was too busy to notice. Stan and Shahriyar were jolting the stone wall in front of them with alternating white and green flashes. In between their blows, Alex was digging chunks out of the rock with his sickle-shaped blade. Magnus was singing the wall back to individual grains of sand through the colossal power of the lyre. Tal, Carla, and Viviane had projected so much power into the surrounding tunnel that I could feel their magic more clearly than Hafez’s. The others remained still as energy drained from them to keep the spellcasters fully charged.
My only hope was to learn more about these people. I already knew enough about their powers to be daunted by them, but they must surely have some weaknesses.
However, their distrust was too obvious to ignore. To find their weaknesses, I would have to gain their trust. The only way to do that was to become Amy.
Of course, I wouldn’t really relinquish control. I would wear Amy like a mask, and when the time came, I would toss her aside and resume my rightful place.
With Amun’s help, they wouldn’t know what was happening until it was too late.
Blast from the Past
Khalid caught me as I fell. An image of Lucas flashed through my mind, and I found myself wishing he’d caught me.
“Tal!” Khalid hollered. “Something’s wrong with Amenirdis.”
Despite everything he was doing, Tal was at my side in a second.
“I’m…I’m Amy again,” I said slowly. The weight of what had happened to me rested on my shoulders like the great pyramid of Gizeh. “I knew what was happening around me, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I feel sick.”
Carla was at my side, too. “I know how that is. Alcina controlled me for a long time before Tal saved me. You’ll be all right, though.”
“Tunnel’s losing integrity!” yelled Magnus, which sent both Tal and Carla back to help hold it together. Khalid remained with me, though. Apparently, he didn’t have to stay completely still to let others draw power from him.
I became much more self-conscious when Lucas joined us, but his manner quickly put me at ease.
“So many things have happened to us over the last few years,” he said. “We’ve struggled with past life personas like you did, but we’ve also struggled with higher powers who wanted to use us as hosts. Letting Chango drive me wasn’t unpleasant, but it was weird. Sometime you should talk to Tal. His experiences have been weirder than anybody’s.”
“He’s pretty open about that in the group,” said Khalid. “I’ll bet he wouldn’t mind if we told Amy.”
I looked guiltily over in Tal’s direction.
He was completely wrapped up in his magic. For some reason, I really wanted to know more about him. It must have been an itch from my reporter’s curiosity.
“It might help me to know his experiences.”
“He tells it better than I do,” said Lucas, “but I’ll give it a try. I think Carla already told you about Tal’s experience with the awakening spell, but he’s had other weird things happen. He had to save Carla from Alcina by using dark magic. He thought his good purpose would protect him, but it didn’t. Unfortunately, because of the way his mind works, the effect on him was dramatically different from what it would have been on most people.
“Instead of making his inner darkness harder to control, it made that darkness into a separate persona—Dark Me was what Tal called him. He tried to take over, much as Amenirdis did with you, but Tal restrained him successfully.
“Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story. I hadn’t joined the group yet, so I don’t know all the details, but they became aware of a spell which we call the blood double spell. It’s a way to make a sorcerer into an exact duplicate of someone else—right down to the DNA. Except for the sorcerer’s original mind, which is carefully hidden beneath the mind of the double, it’s virtually impossible to tell the double from the original by any means, scientific or magical.
“Anyway, they were working with a faerie named Robin Goodfellow—”
“What a screwup!” said Khalid.
“Yeah, he’s not exactly the most accomplished faerie, but he knew how to cast the blood double spell. He’d learned it by watching his master, Oberon, king of the English faeries. He came to us seeking our help because Oberon had the spell turned against him and was replaced by his double.
“While Tal was investigating, he needed a double of himself—this was before he developed our current method of bilocating—and so Robin used a drop of Tal’s blood to become him.
“Duplicating Tal’s mind also duplicated Dark Me, who overcame Robin, took control of the duplicate body, imprisoned the real Tal, and generally raised Hell until we figured out who he was.
“He was a fugitive for a long time, and luckily for us, he began to develop a good side, become a little more like the real Tal. When we were in a tight spot, he came back to help. He had a hidden agenda, but he rescued us nonetheless. He even died trying to save Eva. Well, not died exactly. Somehow, he had developed a soul of his own, and Tal managed to rescue it before death claimed it.”
“How did that happen?” I asked. Even with these folks, it hardly sounded like an everyday occurrence.
“We don’t have a clue. I guess God decided Dark Me was worth taking a chance on. Anyway, Tal hosted Dark Me’s soul in his own body until we could get a new one for him. Even with magic, creating a whole human body from scratch is challenging. We ended up getting Prometheus to help us out on one of our visits to the Olympian plane. Tal insisted on the changes in eye color and hair color.
“You mean—”
“Yeah, Dark Me became Magnus. Tal gets the experience of hanging out with his evil twin all the time. Well, now his not-so-evil twin, but still—”
“It would be trying,” I agreed.
“That’s not the only weird thing, either.”
“Oh, let me tell this part,” said Khalid. Without waiting for an answer, he continued, “The reason Magnus had to come help that time was that we were under attack by Hecate and her allies. Anyway, one of them had regressed Tal back to his twelve-year-old state—right before his past life memories awakened. Tal was also locked that way so he couldn’t age. The only plus was that his body also resisted most other changes. Injuries healed at a fantastic rate, and hostile magic had to be constantly renewed to retain any power over him.
“At one point the sorcerer Atlante—who turned out to be not much better at complicated magic than Robin Goodfellow—tried to help us put Tal back the way he was. Instead, he split Tal into two people—the one frozen at twelve years old, and a sixteen-year-old one with no memory of anything that had happened earlier in his life. Eventually, we found our way to Arianrhod, who restored the sixteen-year-old version to normal. She intended to merge them back together, but by that time, the twelve-year-old had developed a soul—go figure. Anyway—”
“Michael is the twelve-year-old version,” I said.
“Good guess. Arianrhod unlocked him so he could age normally, which is why he’s seventeen now, but he can still heal really fast and resist long-term enchantments.”
Now the eerily similar looking “cousins” made perfect sense. Magnus and Michael were different clones of the original—but the cloning was magical, not scientific.
Magnus had tried to sacrifice himself for Eva. Tal was said to have loved Eva. Michael was making puppy-dog eyes at her. Because they started out as the same person, they all loved the same woman—who wasn’t with any of them. Awkward!
Weakness.
What was that? I looked around as if expecting to see someone else, but all the others were still wrapped up in freeing us from the sandstone. Lucas and Khalid were the only ones close enough to have whispered to me, and the voice didn’t belong to either one of them.
“It’s sure a good thing we figured out how to beat the blood double spell,” said Khalid. “Otherwise, we’d have had doubles of ourselves trying to infiltrate us all the time.”
“We’re about to break through!” yelled Tal. “Get ready to move fast!”
The ground shook beneath our feet as the last remnants of the blockage disintegrated. Sand still swirled in the tunnel as if it would reform into stone if given half a chance.
“Run!” yelled Tal. “And hold your breath,”
We hurried through the miniature sandstorm and ran a short distance down the tunnel and into a large, stone chamber. Aside from the tunnel entrance, the only break in the walls was directly across from the entrance—a barred door reminiscent of a prison.
“Great,” said Gordy. “All that effort—to break into the dungeon!”
“Who’s there?” asked a voice from inside the cell. “Are you…are you here to rescue me?”
“That voice sounds familiar,” I said.
“Yeah,” said Tal. “Too familiar.”
The whole group walked across the room and clustered in front of the cell door to see who was inside, but I could tell from their expressions they were not surprised.
Chained to the wall was a pale and emaciated woman blinking at the sudden light. Despite what she must have been through, she was still recognizable—as Carrie Winn.
Unexpected Twist
“I know you probably don’t know who I am,” said the prisoner. “I’ve got plenty of money, though. I can reward you if you get me out of here.”
“I recognize you all too well—Ceridwen,” said Tal. The woman flinched as if he had struck her.
“That’s…that’s not right. My name is Carrie Winn. Amen Hafez abducted me about…oh, I didn’t even know how long ago it was now. Years, it must be. What year is this?” Her eyes shifted back and forth as if trying to find at least one familiar face in the crowd. She trembled as if we had come to kill her.
I couldn’t help staring. Could this really be the Ceridwen I’d been told about? I had pictured a sinister figure, not this frail woman on the verge of breaking.
“Carrie Winn is the identity you created,” said Tal. “Ceridwen is who you really are.”
“Is there a point to this?” asked Magnus, scowling as if the woman’s existence were a personal affront to him. “It’s not a big surprise Ceridwen exists in this universe. Stan told us there was a Carrie Winn who disappeared in 1997. So what? We need the staff, not her.”
“Yes, it was 1997,” said Ceridwen slowly. “What year is it now?”
“2018,” said Stan.
“Twenty-one years? Could it really be so long?” Her trembling worsened. “I knew it was long. I just…I just didn’t know how long?”
“Let’s get going,” said Magnus. He stepped toward the exit, pou
nding his feet on the stone floor as if he expected the drumbeat of his footfalls to magically draw everyone after him.
For all I knew, maybe he could.
“Not so fast,” said Tal.
“What?” asked Magnus. “So you can gloat over her being locked up? In our world, she’s dead. You beat her. Now can we get back to business?”
“Your world?” asked Ceridwen. “Is there truly more than one?”
“Magnus has a point,” said Shar. “We don’t have time to waste.”
“You wouldn’t…you wouldn’t just leave me here?” Her eyes widened in horror. “Please, please, I’ll give you anything you want. I am…was…very wealthy, but I’m sure the money must be somewhere. You can have it all. Just get me out of here!”
“We couldn’t trust you,” said Tal. “In the world I come from, you tried to trap my soul forever.”
Ceridwen looked at him as if she were seeing a ghost. “Taliesin Weaver?”
Tal nodded. “If you know who I am, you know I’m the last person you should be asking for help.”
“But…but you’ve got it all wrong,” said Ceridwen. She spoke so rapidly her words sometimes ran together. “I admit, I admit it. I was going to kill your body and trap your soul so that it wouldn’t reincarnate and I could finally, after a millennium and a half, retrieve the knowledge and wisdom you stole from my potion. I admit I had the plan. I worked it all out. Your parents had already moved into the town I created. All I needed was the patience to wait until you were old enough that I could awaken your past lives and begin the process.”
“That sounds like a confession to me,” said Shar. “You’re just like the Ceridwen in our world.”
“No, no, I haven’t finished. You still don’t understand. The reason I wanted to take the knowledge back was for my son, Morfran. I wanted it to compensate for his hideous ugliness.”
“So what?” asked Magnus. “He suddenly became handsome?”
“No…he suddenly died. It made me…it made me realize how empty my life was. I should have spent those centuries loving him, Taliesin, not trying to take back what you had accidentally received. I squandered all that time. Once I’d realized that, I knew I should leave you to live your life—this life—and I should find a way to atone for neglecting the son I had to pursue the son I created in my imagination.”