The Conservation of Magic

by Michael W. Layne

  Cara opened her eyes. She was on her knees, weeping uncontrollably. Her father’s entire life had been filled with lies, but always for a higher purpose or the safety of someone else. She had misjudged her father, especially when it came to Merrick and Eudroch. The Earth Queen had lied to her—lied to them all.

  Merrick and Eudroch weren’t Ohman’s children—they were the Queen’s.

  Nabharia was the one who had broken the clan’s most sacred of laws by mating with a man from the Fire Tribe. The Queen was the one who brought the Sons of Earth and Fire into the world, and Cara had just left Merrick to the Queen’s mercy.

  Suddenly, her mouth opened of its own accord, and a jagged noise wrenched from her throat, hung in the air and undulated on for minutes. It was a noise she had never heard before, but one which felt as familiar as her father’s hand on her shoulder. It was her father’s name.

  She did not forgive her father for all of his shortcomings, but at last she understood him. To others he had been Ohman the Great, former Master Keeper of the Earth Clan, former Ard Righ of the Earth Clan, friend, enemy, traitor, heretic. He may have been all of these, but to Cara, he was something more. As the noise from her throat ceased, silence rushed to fill the gaps in the air left by her father’s creation name. This was her father’s last and most precious gift to her—the truth of himself.

  She dried her eyes and made a silent pledge that she would make her father proud of her. Prouder than he had ever been while he lived. She would stop Eudroch from destroying the world and from killing Merrick.

  Walking back to her office, her mind started preparing for Eudroch. Now that she knew her father’s name, she was sure that he had told Eudroch nothing—it was her father’s nature to hide the truth, to lie for noble purposes. Eudroch hadn’t stood a chance against pulling information from her father that he didn’t want to be known.

  She looked down at the divinium pendant clutched in her hand. She would have to hide this treasure, perhaps once again inside the mighty yew tree. When she opened her hand, she could see that the stone had stopped pulsing. It now looked like any ordinary piece of metallic rock. Ohman had meant for the divinium to give up its secret only once.

  She walked into her office and slapped her hand on the speaker phone button.

  “Conference call. Operations. Division Chiefs. Chris. Melanie. Connect.”

  Within seconds, a crowd of voices came across the speaker, announcing their presence. She told them to meet her in the executive conference room in five minutes—no excuses. Attendance was mandatory. They were to use four of their five minutes calling whomever they had to and telling them that they would not be home tonight.

  Five minutes later, the executive conference room was packed with close to twenty people. Everyone was talking with each other, trying to guess what was going on. Cara walked into the chaos, and they all went silent.

  She stood at the front of the room with her hands on the table in front of her.

  “My father will be away for a while. Picked a hell of a time to leave, actually, because we have an emergency that we must deal with now. We are at Level 1 Alert, and I’m in charge—completely. Anyone who can’t handle that needs to leave now and give their badge to the guard at the reception desk on their way out.”

  People fidgeted in their chairs, but no one left. Cara sat down at the head of the table.

  She explained as quickly as she could about Merrick and Eudroch and the prophecy of the Sons of Earth and Fire. Most of her staff already knew about the prophecy just from the cultural background that they all had to delve into for their work. From the looks on their faces, however, they had never expected the prophecy to be real. They had certainly never suspected that they would be employed to help save the world from its fiery destruction.

  “Eudroch is trying to release Sigela, the Fire Dragon—to bring the actual sun itself, to our world. He’s already been here looking for Merrick, and he might be back. Hell, I’m assuming he will be back.”

  She turned to a young man with unruly hair at the end of the table.

  “We need a completely new ward architecture, Bill. I need you and your team to handle this, now.”

  “Something’s wrong with the wards?” he asked.

  “They didn’t even slow Eudroch down. You need to redo each spell, including the ones underground and the sentry wards in the city. And don’t just replace them. I want overlapping coverage. Put more of them out there than you think we need—do whatever you have to do, but I want this place as safe as possible. And set some alarm wards above us, out at the street—wherever. I want as much warning as possible if Eudroch shows from any direction.”

  Several of the people at the table whispered to each other, some nodding as they discussed the ward problem.

  Cara motioned for one of the digital recording devices that her father had invented to record names in Terrada’s tongue. All she had to do was speak in the dragon tongues and the device would automatically separate the language into distinct tracks so that each sound layer could be listened to and studied or memorized separately.

  When she turned the recording device on, the crowd of people in the conference room collectively became nervous. They weren’t used to someone speaking in a dragon tongue without the standard precautions, but there was no time, and Cara was fairly certain that she knew what she was doing. She grabbed hold of the divinium hanging around her neck and intoned her father’s creation name.

  Many of those in the room had never heard someone construct the multi-layered guttural tones that poured out of her mouth without using the full complement of Rune Corp’s scientific gear.

  Many of those in the room would never learn how to pronounce even the simplest of Terrada’s names without Rune Corp’s enunciator collars.

  None of them would ever be able to pronounce her father’s name—even the throat amplifiers didn’t provide enough range and layers to do so.

  Cara suddenly closed her mouth, finished with her father’s name. She paused for a second, quiet for the first time during the meeting. She looked up at the silent people staring at her around the oval table.

  She leaned over and handed the recorder to a nervous secretary.

  “This is my father’s name. I need a half dozen copies run of this immediately.”

  The secretary handled the recorder as if it were made of fragile crystal as she hurried out of the conference room.

  “I want his name entered into the lexicon immediately. After that, no more names go in. We need to focus on what we have for now. Chris, you and Melanie make damn sure Chris’s new construct has the updated lexicon loaded and then figure out how to best use my father’s name to fight Eudroch. I need the new construct ready by morning and uploaded to all of the portable cubes. I need the cubes turned into weapons of war instead of educational devices by tomorrow night. Bill, build your wards around my father’s name as well. It might give us enough strength to hold Eudroch off for a while. Any questions?”

  “I’ve got two questions, Cara. First, I think I understand what you want, but is this guy really that tough?” Chris said.

  “I’m sure from your research you’ve heard of the Fianna, even though none of you have ever met one before. Well, I have, and they’re big and deadly—the best of the best that the Earth Clan has, picked specifically for their prowess in battle to protect the Earth Queen.”

  Cara looked around, seeing the glint of recognition in the people’s eyes. They had studied and knew who the Fianna were.

  “A band of twenty Fianna was sent out by the Earth Queen to capture Eudroch a few years ago. They chased him down all the way to the Alaskan tundra until they had him cornered. The Fianna moved in, overconfident in their abilities to take out this single Drayoom who didn’t look so harmful now that they had had him trapped.

  “Within the first two minutes, with a single word from Eudroch, the white ground was red with the blood of half the Fianna. The remaining ten Fianna found sudden respect for t
heir prey and advanced with more caution. In the next few minutes, half of them were dead, incinerated by fire from within their own bodies. The last five Fianna banded together and tried to coordinate a web spell to neutralize all magic in the area—thought they had a better chance taking him physically, with no magic at all.

  “The web worked, at first. Eudroch’s magic stopped working, but so did that of the Fianna. The Fianna drew their divinium swords and daggers and attacked with all their might, unable to use the magic of their weapons, but still able to use their sharp edges. Eudroch impaled the first man to reach him with his own sword, and threw the man’s dead body at his comrades. With that one sword, Eudroch moved so fast that the one survivor of the incident swore that Eudroch had found a way to use his magic despite their web.

  “Five minutes after the fight had started, nineteen Fianna lay dead or bleeding to death on the cold ground. The web that the Fianna had cast stopped working as their energies faded. As the one remaining Fianna fled, he looked behind him to see Eudroch leaning over the men who were still alive and whispering in their ears, presumably to elicit their creation names before they passed.”

  Chris cleared his throat.

  “That’s how dangerous Eudroch is,” Cara said.

  Cara placed her hands on the conference table and hunched over, her head bowed, exhausted from recounting Eudroch’s past.

  “Eudroch’s brother, Merrick, may be our only hope of defeating Eudroch. Right now, Merrick’s in danger at the Earth Clan. We need to make Rune Corp a fortress to protect him in case he needs to come back here and until he’s strong enough to defeat his brother.”

  Cara paused and looked up at Chris.

  “You have a second question?” she asked wearily.

  Chris swallowed dryly, and his face turned ashen. He coughed lightly before his voice finally emerged, humble and tentative.

  “I was just wondering what the deep meaning of your father’s name is. We…we need the definition and the history to use it in the lexicon and with the wards.”

  Cara sat down in her chair and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and then looked at her watch.

  “You’re right, but it’s going to take a little while to explain who my father is and what his name means.

  “To sum up, in its simplest form, as a predicative, his name means to keep something a secret for a just cause. As a noun, my father’s name translates as the concept of falsehood mixed with nobility. His name, like his life at first seems contradictory.”

  With her team sitting around her, Cara relayed all the images she had witnessed from her father’s life, how he had loved, killed, trusted, and been betrayed. She told them everything she could remember to help illustrate who he was, but she still did not mention his death.

  When she finished explaining her father’s life and the meaning of his name, she felt pride welling inside her as she herself began to understand the sacrifices of truth that her father had made throughout his life to help others. Resisting the shedding of a tear, Cara stood.

  “I’m sorry about the hours you’re all going to have to work, but it’s critical that we prepare for him now. Tomorrow, after I check the wards, I’ll leave to try and fetch Merrick.”

  Cara fought the urge to set her head upon the table and fall asleep. Instead, she stood up and quietly walked out the door, heading for her office, where she would begin to coordinate the many efforts she had just set in motion.

  From behind her, Cara could hear Chris, dependable as always, telling everyone to get going, that no one was leaving until the battle was over and Eudroch was defeated.

  When she got to her office, she closed and locked the door, allowing herself to settle down in the cot that Merrick had used when he was here. She needed to rest while she had the chance, before she would have to check the wards—just long enough to build back enough of her strength to rescue Merrick.

  #

  Chris sat alone in the Rune Corp main development lab. He felt bad about ditching Melanie, but if Cara needed the construct ready in time, he had to work it alone.

  His cube was locked into the square depression that acted like a network port on the arm of his chair, automatically linking it into the massive array of cubes in the rack behind him. He placed his left hand on his cube while adjusting his throat enunciator with his right. Out of learned instinct, he checked his ears for the equalizers that would let him hear the tonal subtleties inherent in the creation language. Satisfied that he was equipped as well as any human could be, he made a visual check of his jerry-rigged targets. Throughout the testing lab, he had fastened various pieces of wood, stone, plastic, and plants to the walls and floor and even hanging from the ceiling. He had also placed a glass of water, a butane torch, and a rotating floor fan in the room. He knew that Eudroch had studied all of the dragon tongues. He wasn’t taking any chances with his tests by focusing on combating only one element.

  Chris leaned back and tried to clear his head. He started the deep breathing exercises he had learned from Cara. The trick was to relax the body and mind almost to the point of sleep, but not to cross over the chasm into complete unconsciousness. First, however, he had to rid himself of some mental flotsam.

  He had never seen Cara as intense and angry as she had been in the meeting. It was obvious that whatever was happening was of dire consequence, and he knew that she needed his help. Still, he couldn’t help feeling hurt by the way she had bossed him around just like he was one of her normal worker bees.

  Chris closed his eyes, ignoring the visual data interface flashing against the back of his retina and imagined a black box opening in his mind. He placed his thoughts about Cara inside and closed the lid. He searched through his head for other distractions, but found none. Slowly, his body began to untangle, muscle by muscle, until his heart rate drifted to fifty beats per minute.

  Ready to begin, he suddenly thought of Merrick. Chris’s heart started to beat faster as adrenaline oozed into his veins. It was obvious that Merrick was the man Cara had spent the night with in her office and it was clear to anyone watching her in the meeting that she had fallen for him. The intensity in her eyes and the way her emotions flowed across her face like clouds when she talked about him were dead giveaways.

  Chris reopened his little black box and shoved his thoughts about Merrick deep inside as well. Eventually, his heart rate slowed. Finally, he was ready to begin work on the construct.

  He visualized pulling the cube inside his body through his stomach where it could feed off of his own internal power, converting it to radiant magic coursing through his body. As the magic swelled, the blackness behind his closed eyes was replaced by a light aqua field crisscrossed with lines and objects and patterns at seemingly random locations. This was his construct—no labeled menus or words, just symbols that spoke directly to images and memories in his head. He took a deep breath and slowly opened his eyes. The construct in his mind seemed to float in front of him ready for his touch. He checked to make sure his latest version of the lexicon was loaded—he didn’t have time to wait for the others to go through all their procedures just to update the list with Ohman’s name. Before he had begun, Chris had already loaded Ohman’s name from one of the copies of the digital recording Cara had made. He recalled an image of Ohman to the forefront of his mental screen. The data from Ohman’s creation name was there, brilliantly represented by sharp angular peaks and what looked to be at least seven, maybe more layers of sound. Even with his new construct, he could barely take in Ohman’s complete name at one time. He had never seen a name that was so complex and interwoven. He began to doubt whether he would be able to do what Cara had asked of him.

  But, like his own father had always said, no time like the present to find out.

  Without thinking, he mouthed the word shatter. The shifting patterns on the screen floating in front of him changed their shapes, forming new connections with other creation names at the speed of thought. Before he had finished thinking that he shoul
d be more careful using Ohman’s name, he heard a single loud crack like a dried tree being split in half. He looked up to see that most of the targets set up in the lab no longer existed. With only a single phrase, amped up by the sheer power of Oman’s name, the targets had all been disintegrated at once.

  Chris looked at his cube in awe. He had just turned one of the greatest knowledge repositories into one of the most lethal weapons in history.

  CHAPTER 18

  MERRICK AND BALACH followed Fenton out of the center of the city, back down the same winding stone road that Merrick and Cara had arrived on. As they passed, the Drayoom went about their duties, noticing Merrick less now that he was dressed like one of them. Merrick’s normal life from only a few days ago seemed to recede further with each footstep he took into this strange land.

  Then there was Mona. Even though he was occupied by his passion for Cara, he still missed Mona and wished that they had parted last under better circumstances. He was angry with himself for leaving her alone at the hospital. His desire for Mona had never come as easily as it had for Cara, but there was something else between Mona and him that he remembered as being…right. Maybe it was familiarity or the comfort that came from it, but when he thought of Mona he felt a low ache in his chest instead of the stomach full of butterflies he felt for Cara.