Separated from Yourselves

by Bill Hiatt

  “Yeah—and you saw why,” Stan replied. “Instant death.”

  “OK, and these…what do you call them? Blood doubles?” We all nodded. “Blood doubles…they’re pretty rare, aren’t they?”

  Dan laughed a little. “We seem to trip over one every time we move, but yeah, as far as we know, the spell that creates them is relatively new, and only a few people know it.”

  “Then it’s likely a blood double has never broken a tynged before, right?” Michael asked.

  “Probably not,” Shar replied. “Where are you going with this?”

  “Let me ask a couple other questions first. What about Cronus’s spell on, uh, Tal? What about the way Magnus and Atlante tried to break it? Anything like that ever happened before?”

  “You’re really asking the wrong people,” said Gordy, “but if I had to guess, I’d say the whole thing was pretty unusually. Cronus has been a prisoner in Tartarus for what, thousands of years? The kind of regression he can do can’t be that common, and I guess there aren’t that many people powerful enough to break a spell cast by an elder Olympian—or stupid enough to try if they aren’t that powerful.” Most of us snickered at the obvious dig.

  “I don’t mean to sound impatient,” said Shar, who clearly was. “OK, so a lot of unusual things happened recently. So what?”

  “Come on, tell us your theory,” prompted Eva when Michael didn’t immediately respond.

  “At some point around the time I got split from Tal…or he got split from me…whatever…I got a soul.”

  “Yeah, but…wait!” Dan said. “You don’t mean—”

  “I think Magnus has a soul now,” interrupted Michael. “I…I don’t know. I kind of feel like it as well as think it. Maybe it’s because what happened to him is in some ways similar to what happened to me.”

  “Arianrhod specifically told the imperator Magnus was just an aspect of Tal and didn’t have a soul,” said Carlos. “She can see souls. Are you saying she lied?”

  “No,” said Michael, “he didn’t have one then. He got it later.”

  “Guys, this actually makes at least as much sense as Dan’s theory,” Stan said, patting Michael on the back. “If Magnus has his own soul, it explains why he can travel to Annwn even though Tal can’t. It also explains how his mind could continue to exist after the end of the blood double spell.”

  “And how does it explain that, professor?” asked Gordy.

  Stan smiled. “Sorry, I don’t mean to make this sound like a lecture. I’ll be brief. We know that if someone breaks a tynged, the normal result is death. In this case, though, it looked more like the blood double spell ended. If Magnus had just died, wouldn’t that have killed Robin too? Instead the spell dissipated…exploded…whatever, and Robin was left standing there, unharmed.

  “Magnus told us when he was holding Jimmie’s fate over us that the end of the blood double spell makes everything vanish. He was lying about Jimmie’s trapped soul vanishing, though. Arianrhod was very clear on that point: the end of the blood double spell would not make a soul disappear, even if that soul was folded into a blood double and bound there.

  “She was talking about Jimmie’s soul, of course, but wouldn’t the same principle apply if the blood double have somehow developed a soul? Wouldn’t that soul persist even after the end of the spell? That would account for why Magnus could still be around to seek refuge in Tal. Magnus was no longer just a product of the spell. Having his own soul made him an independent being.

  “I suppose that could be true,” conceded Dan, “though I’m not sure why it’s a better theory than mine.”

  “We can’t really know for sure which idea is right—and maybe both of them are wrong,” Stan replied. “We are going to have to wait until we can reach Arianrhod or someone else who can see souls”

  The conversation was simultaneously comforting and unsettling. Maybe we weren’t dealing with some evil force disguised as Magnus. If so, that should have been good news. But how could Magnus have gotten a soul? And did that mean we’d be stuck with him now? Would Tal, already pledged to help Magnus in the quest for a body, want to adopt him as part of the group?

  “Magic is weird,” said Michael.

  What a gift for understatement the kid had!

  Chapter 27: Searching for Atlantis (Tal)

  Much as I hated having to be in combat so much, the experience was all that saved me. I spun, and from my left hand I fired a thunderbolt straight at Apollo. I didn’t wipe him out but came close enough to wound him.

  Unfortunately, Artemis shot me in the left hand. What memories of Zeus I had suggested a wounded hand couldn’t easily raise a thunderbolt. Not only that, but Athena’s spear came within half an inch of piercing my neck. Eros, less strategic, tried to shoot me in the chest, but my dragon armor deflected the arrow.

  Yeah, all of the Olympians had turned on me for no apparent reason. Wounded like this, even as Zeus, I wasn’t going to be able to beat them all. My only option, ego bruising as it was, was to run away.

  I raced out of the throne room, with all of them only steps behind me. With no time to do much with magic, my only option was to fly away, and as soon as I got outside, I shot straight up. In seconds I was dodging arrow fire, making moves the Zeus body was fortunately fast enough to do. I could outrun any of them except Hermes, but he chose not to pursue me alone, knowing I could take him. Instead, the Olympians stayed together, following me at a distance and keeping an eye on me. If I intended to get away and figure out my next move, I needed to become more aggressive, make them rethink following me.

  Thunderbolts would be an obvious choice, but my injured hands would still make that difficult. However, since I wasn’t trying to conceal my identity, I could pull the Tal part of my mind to the surface and use my own powers. I drew White Hilt and used my manipulation of its flame, backed by Zeus’s power level, to fling an enormous fireball in their direction.

  I had hoped to catch them by surprise, but I was at least equally surprised when someone thought to me, “Fly south as soon as you can.” When I blasted the Olympians with another fireball, a random flame shot from the side of White Hilt’s blade, and for a moment it became the face of Changó.

  “What the—” I started.

  “No time!” he thought. “Let us fly south, far south, to what the ancient Greeks thought of as the land of the Aethiopians. There is an Aethiopian Olympus where you can heal, and we can plan our next move.”

  In the seconds the Olympians were regrouping from my last attack, I wrapped us in invisibility and flew south as fast as I could. While it was true that invisibility spells didn’t normally fool supernatural beings, casting one at Zeus’s power level gave us a pretty good shot of not being seen unless the Olympians were very close. They were far-sighted, but even they would have trouble with a combination of distance and high-level invisibility.

  As we flew, I managed enough power to stop the bleeding without having to slow down. It wouldn’t have been smart to leave an ichor trail all the way to where we were going.

  That got me thinking about other ways in which I could be tracked. To my invisibility, I added a block for all other senses. I wasn’t really expecting the Olympians to smell me out, but it was possible if their other senses were as acute as their vision that they might be able to hear me as I whooshed through the air.

  After a a little more thought, I did what I could to confuse a seer like Apollo from using magical means to hunt me down. The fact that I was in Zeus form might have confused him anyway. Certainly, the presence of multiple Taliesins had confused seers earlier—but why take chances? Anyway, I wasn’t a perfect copy of Zeus. I wasn’t used to blocking seers, but some magic protection would be better than none.

  As soon as I had a few seconds to spare, I asked Changó, who with my permission had flowed from White Hilt into me, “What happened back there?”

  I felt him reach back into White Hilt, and from the sword he pulled a fiery image of his body, which flew along by
my side. I wouldn’t have expected him to be able to maintain control over shaped fire at the the speed we were traveling, but evidently he had the power and the skill to maintain cohesion.

  “Is this too…awkward?” he asked in a voice reminiscent of logs crackling in the fireplace. “I am not used to the kind of mental communication you use, and too much makes my head ache.”

  “Your fire voice is perfectly understandable,” I assured him.

  “Excellent! In answer to your question, you would know better than I what could have happened, though I have learned much from Jakuta—I mean Lucas—during the brief time we shared a body. Since you are not Zeus, is it possible they are not who they seem?”

  “The spell involved can’t duplicate an Olympian exactly; that’s why I don’t have all of Zeus’s memories. If they were flawed similarly, they couldn’t have fooled me. I’ve worked with the real Olympians before—quite closely. Up until they attacked me, they had been behaving exactly as they have in the past.”

  “Let us say this Hecate expected you to come. Is that not possible?”

  “Given our past interactions, yes. Hecate knows as well as I do that no magic is absolute, that even a spell cast by someone as powerful as Cronus could be broken. She would have known that if someone had managed to break it, I would sooner or later come after her and her allies.”

  “Then she would have prepared for such a thing. She can use this blood spell that transforms people into duplicates of others, yes?”

  “For all I know, she may have developed it in the first place.”

  “Then perhaps she somehow corrupted the blood of Zeus that she used for the spell. If you came and saw an obviously imperfect copy, would you not assume that the spell was incapable of fully copying an Olympian?”

  “Changó, I’ve been studying this spell for some time, but you’re already five steps ahead of me. Yeah, that’s exactly what I assumed. It never even occurred to me that Hecate might alter the spell to produce a defective copy.”

  Changó gave me a sizzling chuckle. “Lucas is a good observer, and what I could not get from him I could surmise from my own experiences with magic.

  “It appears that Hecate had a plan of many layers. If you attacked Olympus when first you arrived, she could have defeated you directly. If you moved wisely and tried to free the captive Olympians before attacking Olympus, she was prepared for that with a whole group of impostors who took the place of the captives. If one of them slipped somehow and made you suspicious, she had her imperfect Zeus on display so that you would assume the other Olympians could not be copies.”

  “Actually, none of them did slip, at least not that I noticed. Their performances seemed flawless, even down to the small talk during downtime. The impostors must have been using the personalities of the originals very skillfully. You noticed something, though, didn’t you?”

  Changó smiled. “While none of you were looking, Dionysus moved the bodies of Hecate and Nicneven. I thought he was just preparing the room for cleansing, but then he sounded the alarm about their disappearance. I knew then, at least about him.”

  “Yet you didn’t try to warn us,” I pointed out.

  “There were risks,” said Changó. “Unlike the Olympians, your friends can die. Lucas can die. We had managed to survive one huge battle. I was not eager to start another without knowing what was happening. In particular, I did not want to see Lucas killed. So instead of sounding the alarm, I bided my time. When observation convinced me that the Olympians in general were frauds, I decided the best strategy would involve stealth. I had already figured out they wanted you alive, but the same could not be said for Lucas. That was why I left his body when I did, using my affinity for fire to become one with your sword in a way the Olympians would not recognize. I intended to help you fight them when the time came, but your wise decision to flee made that unnecessary. This way I can surprise them should we have to meet them in the future, as I fear we may.”

  By now we were flying over dense jungle, and I was sure I could see elephants moving about when we passed over gaps in the trees.

  “Africa?” I asked.

  “Africa as the ancient Greeks thought of it, anyway,” replied Changó, his tone sad. “The ancient Greeks never encountered the Yoruba, so none of my people are here.”

  “Why come here then? Wouldn’t a less conspicuous place than…what did you call it? Aethiopian Olympus? Wouldn’t a less conspicuous place be better?”

  “Knowing you lack most of Zeus’s memories, I doubt your enemies will expect you to know that there is an Aethiopian Olympus. I certainly would not have known but for your friend, Alexandros, who spent much time talking to Lucas about the myths of the Greeks. I have no doubt that the Olympians will search for us here eventually, but we should be safe long enough for you to heal. I am not familiar enough with this world to easily find somewhere better.”

  Sure enough, I could see a very large mountain peak towering above the others, and, using the sight of Zeus, I could discern a Greek-style palace near the summit.

  After we landed, I set to work healing my hands, again drawing my mind to the surface enough to use my own healing ability, since Zeus was not a natural healer. There was some risk the fake Apollo might more easily find me if I used my own abilities too much, but the only alternative, searching for healing supplies in this unfamiliar palace, would take longer and probably be more of a risk. Just to be on the safe side, before I started healing, I did what I could to reinforce our concealment from all senses, whether physical or magical.

  Olympian bodies were much different from human ones, but fortunately I’d had a lot of recent experiences healing Olympians, so it didn’t take me too long to repair the injuries to my Zeus form. Even that short time made me nervous. Changó, to judge by his flickering, must have felt the same.

  “To make a good plan, it would help if we could figure out what Hecate’s goal is,” I said to Changó after I had finished the healing. While we talked, I couldn’t help staring off into the distance. Not only was it hard to look too long at Changó’s ever-shifting fire body, but I couldn’t help checking every few minutes to make sure the sky was not filling with fake Olympians.

  “From Lucas I got the impression that someone wanted your double, Magnus, very badly.”

  “That’s true. In the beginning, Hecate, assuming she’s the ringleader, wanted Magnus. We figured that was because she needed something only Magnus or I could provide, and he would be more willing to make a deal with her than I would be. If we were correct, then the obvious problems in Santa Brígida were intended to lure him out. We never did figure out what she needed from him, though.”

  “My instinct would be to look to the strange and powerful blood magic for an explanation. Could it have anything to do with that?”

  I considered for a minute. “We thought Magnus was adapting a blood-magic ring created by Hermes. He wanted to artificially manufacture the blood he needed for the spell and free him of dependence on me. He hadn’t actually done that, though.”

  “Clever idea,” thought Changó. “Such a ring could be quite valuable—if Hecate wanted to kill the Olympians instead of holding them prisoner. The problem with that theory is—”

  “That she can’t kill them anyway,” I finished for him. “Perhaps we’re wrong, and Hecate didn’t really want Magnus. After all, Nicneven destroyed him.”

  “I saw,” replied Changó, “but that was not her intent. She seemed as shocked as anybody when he refused to obey an order he was bound to obey.”

  “Well, let’s assume for the sake of argument that Hecate and her allies wanted Magnus for something else,” I said. “Does that theory really explain what happened? There are still a lot of things that don’t make sense. For instance, when we freed the false Olympians in Tartarus, they could easily have taken us by surprise once they recovered their equipment. Why go through a full-scale, fake battle?”

  “I know not,” Changó admitted. “Perhaps they needed to de
lay until Nicneven arrived to make sure she could still command Magnus. If the tynged still bound him, they could obtain whatever they wanted with ease.”

  I frowned. “There must have been less dangerous ways to stall until Nicneven arrived, though.”

  “Ah, but you and your warriors are very perceptive,” Changó pointed out. “You all would have expected the real Olympians to exploit the element of surprise and hit the usurpers as quickly as possible. That is what any experienced warrior would do. A long delay might have made some of you suspicious.”

  “They could easily have kept us in Tartarus trying to figure out how to escape. It was Hades—his double, anyway—who proposed the way to free us.”

  “From what I have learned from Lucas, you and your warriors have quite a reputation for ingenuity. Perhaps the impostors feared you might find a way out of Tartarus yourselves. Having Hades, who was supposed to know more about Tartarus than anyone else, be the one to figure out a way to escape would have been more…in character, would it not?”

  “Possibly, but taking that chance seems a lot less risky than staging a battle, especially at Olympian power levels.”

  “It was risky, but any riskier than attempting to conquer Olympus in the first place?” asked Changó. “This Hecate does not seem reluctant to gamble. You are also thinking of risk too much in mortal terms. The Olympian impostors cannot die any more than their originals can; how risky was the battle for them?

  “The biggest risk would have been getting Magnus, assuming he really was their target, killed in the course of the battle. Taliesin, I was far too busy to examine all of Lucas’s memories and my own observations in the middle of combat, but I wouldn’t be much of a dancer if I did not recognize choreography, nor much of a fighter if I could not tell a punch was being pulled.”

  “You mean…they let us win?”

  Changó chuckled. “I mean they planned very carefully. Who won really wasn’t an issue for them, since they were fighting on both sides. Whichever side won, they could still have controlled the situation…but they needed Magnus alive, so I believe they managed events to make the encounter less deadly than it appeared.