by Ann Macela
“Gathering energy,” she said, and he felt her power moving from her center up and out her arms. He pushed his up and out also.
“Ready?” She pointed the sword at the target. “One, two, three.”
He fed energy from his hands into hers. A pale silver-golden pencil beam splashed into the crystal bowl and sprayed light all over the inside of the pentagon.
“Stop and sheathe the blade on my count,” Saxt said after a minute of no change in the color of the sword or the beam. “One, two, three.”
“Interesting,” she said, “but where’s the all-gold?”
They relaxed, and he let go of her and walked around to the other side of the pedestal. She rolled her head on her neck. He stretched.
“That position is going to take some practice.” Saxt moved behind her and massaged her shoulders. “Ready to try with my hands inside?”
They repeated the same steps with reversed hands, with the same results—no solid gold.
“Yes, the beam works, but we have a glitch somewhere,” Saxt said after he let go of her. “I can feel it. My center’s agitated, like it’s angry about my casting or at me. Damn it! Our lightballs merged to pure golden. If it’s a matter of our energy production, I don’t know how we can get closer or exchange any more without being indecent. Can you think of another method to try? Maybe there’s some technique you use in teaching.”
“Let me think for a minute.” Johanna wandered around the pedestal, staring at the floor. After her second circuit, she stopped next to him and faced the center. “Let’s break the casting down into parts and examine each action. That’s one of my teaching methods. Take it slowly. First, you ready the spell in your mind.”
“Right,” he answered. “Next you bring your hands together, but don’t clasp them, while you gather energy in your center and start it moving toward your hands.”
They both held their hands out, not touching, in front of their chests.
“My energy’s moving.” He pulled the power up to his hands from his center.
“So is mine. Next we prepare the sword grip so the energy will have a place to gather and shape itself into the sword blade. Quoting the manual, ‘The grip must be secure. Your hands must not come apart with a live sword in them.’“ She locked her little right finger with her left index, lined up the thumbs, right one on top, and brought her palms to a cupping position as though holding a golf club or a sword hilt.
Saxt did the same, only with his left hand on top. His center jiggled, vibrated, and jumped around. Then it kicked him in the breastbone. Hard.
He gasped and bent over, holding his hands, still in the grip, against his solar plexus.
“Saxt? What happened?” Johanna started rubbing his back with one hand and held his arm with the other. “Are you all right?”
He slowly straightened as the pain lessened. “My center has a nasty way of communicating. It kicked me when I set my grip.”
“Hold your hands out like they were.” She scrutinized the positions of his fingers, thumbs, and palms. “It looks perfectly acceptable to me. Do you use any magical actions—gestures, grips, and the like—differently because you’re left-handed? I thought the energy movement is the same, no matter what. I’ve never been trained to teach differently to left-handed students.”
“No, outside of my left being my leading hand or on top and using it as my primary spell-casting hand, I work magic the same way you do. Here’s an interesting note, though. Each time you said ‘left-handed,’ my center hummed. Let’s try the dual casting again a step at a time and see what it does. Monitor yours.” He put his arms around her from behind and his hands on top of hers. “Nothing. My center’s simply sitting there.”
“Mine, too. Okay, let’s do the reverse,” she said.
He arranged his hands in the grip, and she covered them. “It hopped once, but that’s all.”
They let go and faced each other again.
“When I’m stuck in a business deal,” Saxt said, “I’ve found it helpful to start at the very beginning and follow the path of negotiation or explanation until I identify where the problem started. What did we do first that began all this? When we were in the bedroom?”
“We clasped hands, right to left,” she answered and help up her hands, palms facing him, fingers spread.
“My center’s humming.” He pressed their opposite palms together and intertwined their fingers. “Now it’s even happier.”
“Mine also. Maybe if we …” She wiggled the her-left-his-right hand combination from side to side. Next the her-right-his-left one. “Did your center do anything?”
“When you waved your right and my left, it picked up the tempo. Those are our dominant hands. Those are the ones we use to direct our blade. Our centers must ‘like’ them best. I think we’re making progress. Turn around. Let’s try some other combinations.”
She backed up to him, and they tried several arrangements. Their centers didn’t budge, except when his left and her right were clasped together. Then the centers hummed.
“The problems seem to be with our free hands,” Johanna said.
“All right, try this. Make the sword grip with your right and my left, yours on top. I’m going to place my right palm on the back of your right hand and my fingers over your fingers—however they’ll best fit. You do the same with your left palm on the back of my left.”
At first their arm and finger placements fit together awkwardly, due mostly to the difference in their hand sizes. With a couple of adjustments, they managed a comfortable fit. When their hands settled into place, Saxt could almost hear the click.
Their centers started humming again, with even greater vibrations. And …
“Did you feel that?” Johanna asked. “I think our centers are exchanging energy directly, right through our robes.”
“Yes, they are. Doesn’t it feel good?” He rubbed his front across her back, and she wiggled. “I’ve never heard of an exchange between centers, outside of mating. We must explore this more when we’re home and without the impediment of these robes.”
She laughed, then ordered in her teacher voice, “Get your mind on the business at hand, Falkner.”
“Yes, ma’am. Let’s try to cast a blade. If we can do it between our two hands, our energy has to come out our palms and meet at the same time.”
“That’s my reading of the casting,” she agreed.
“You direct the spell.”
“First, call the spell to the forefront of your mind and gather energy in your well,” Johanna recited. “Our hands are already together. Start the energy moving from your center to your hands. Hold for a second right there. By the way, my left hand on top of your left can feel the energy waiting in your palm.”
“Ditto on the right.” He concentrated on two items—casting the spell and preparing himself for both success and failure. He tightened every muscle, either to hold her in place if the blade was hard to handle or to snatch their hands apart if the power was too much for them. He didn’t want to do the last to dispel the sword because of the possibility of spell backfire, but he was going to be ready for all contingencies. Johanna, pro that she was, stood balanced and steady. He took a deep breath and felt her do the same.
“On three, cast the spell for a level one,” she said. “One, two, three.”
A single, glowing, blood-red longsword rose out of their hands. The power in it pulsed once and then appeared to be waiting for their command.
“Oh, wow,” she whispered.
“Holy shit,” he murmured.
“How do you feel? How’s the energy?” Johanna asked. “My center’s almost singing.”
“I’m fine. Energy well is full. Center’s happily humming the Hallelujah Chorus. Let’s see how far we can push this baby.”
“Start pumping in the power. One, two, three.”
They had no trouble syncing the rate of their energy transfer to the sword. The blade colors zipped up the spectrum and ended at a deep, solid gol
d.
“Wait until Fergus and Kendra see us,” Johanna crowed. “Let’s try a beam.”
Saxt gathered more energy and felt her do the same. Despite the fact that he’d used a lot of power last night in the bondings and that he’d had no real meal since yesterday, he could swear that his energy supply was greater than ever.
As he held his side of the blade and felt the power running through it, the oddest idea crossed his mind—what if they split the sword into two, to create one in his left hand and one in her right? Was that even possible? What did the idea mean? Where had it come from? No clue. This entire experience was one revelation—or puzzle—after another.
All he said to her, however, was, “Ready.”
“One, two, three.”
A beam the color of old gold and the thickness of the blade shot out from the tip into the bowl and filled it with golden light.
“Narrow the beam,” Saxt said. “Let’s see what it does. One, two, three.”
The beam decreased in width to about a third of what it had been. “Push more power through it. One, two, three.”
When the increased power hit the bowl, the light transformed to liquid, and the dark-yellow fluid immediately overflowed the container, slid down its pedestal, and vaporized when it hit the floor. Its glow spread throughout the pentagon. Inside the clear crystal bowl, molten gold bubbled like lava, both beautiful and terrible at the same time.
POWER!
Potent, profound, immense magic poured out of the bowl, saturating everything in their fortress. It was all around them, in the beam, in the blade, in the air. It was inside them, in their centers, in their nerves, in their blood. It flowed between them, between their centers, between their hands.
Saxt knew in his bones that this fearsome power granted them the ability to create, to enchant, to destroy.
Why they had it, what they were supposed to do with it, was a total mystery. But it was wondrous and frightful to behold. He held on to Johanna, and she held on to him, as though for dear life.
They maintained the beam and watched its results for a long time. He noticed that his energy didn’t seem to be diminishing, despite the strain of producing such a beam. Finally, he said softly in Johanna’s ear, “Cancel the beam. One, two, three.”
The golden stream vanished, and the fluid in the bowl dissipated slowly. When it was gone completely, the glow inside the fortress faded. Saxt said, “Cancel the blade. One, two, three.”
When the sword disappeared, they slowly spread their hands apart.
She quickly swiveled in his arms and hugged him. “Oh, Saxt.”
He reciprocated and held her close. They were both shaking slightly. After a little while, they separated and looked into each other’s eyes.
“Are you all right?” they asked in unison.
She nodded, and he nodded.
“There was so much going on,” Johanna exclaimed. “All that power going through us, all that light. I’ve never felt so much, not when we spin the ring, not even when we were all together fighting the Cataclysm Stone. If we’d been practicing with an item, we surely would have killed it, no matter how strong it was.”
Saxt glanced over her shoulder at the bowl on the pedestal. “Uh-oh.”
“What?” She turned slightly. “Oh, my goodness.”
Arm in arm, they stepped closer to inspect the crystal bowl. Its inner surface was etched with fine lines, in a golden bubbles imprint. The edges captured the glow of the shimmering pentagon and scattered rainbow colors throughout the enclosure.
“I think,” Saxt said, “that we owe the Defender Office a new bowl.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
With the etched bowl wrapped in his robe, Saxt and Johanna walked into the HeatherRidge restaurant, intent on feeding the enormous hunger that had afflicted them after they dispelled their fortress. All that energy expenditure had caught up with them, with a vengeance. Saxt was not surprised to see it was almost ten.
Before they could even greet the hostess, however, Jake almost ran up behind them. “Thank God, here you are. We’ve been trying to reach you.”
“We were practicing,” Saxt said, “and had our phones off and the door locked. What’s the matter?”
“Come with me. We’re meeting in one of the private dining rooms.” He started off.
“Just a minute,” Johanna said and spoke to the restaurant hostess. “Gail, we need some food and quickly. I’ll have steak, rare, and eggs, scrambled, along with a fruit bowl and French toast. Grapefruit juice, too.”
“Ditto on the steak and eggs, with biscuits and orange juice, and lots of coffee,” Saxt said. “Okay, Jake, where to?”
In the private room, several members of her team—Clyde and his wife Anne, Dorothy and husband Dick, Pat and his wife Trudy—greeted them.
Miriam sat at the head of a long rectangular table, with a man and a woman Saxt did not know on either side. The head of the Defender Council waved Saxt and Johanna to seats.
“What’s going on?” Saxt asked.
“We have a serious situation,” Miriam answered and pointed to the strangers. “These are Dave Thalberg, Keeper of the Vault for evil items, and Lucy Allenby, head of Security at the Center. Someone broke into the vault last night. Dave, you explain.”
Thalberg, a ruddy-faced fellow with thinning brown hair and an exasperated expression, leaned forward. “At some point in the early hours of the morning, probably between two and three, someone breached the vault. They knew the correct spells to open the doors. The only reason we know it was an unauthorized entry—not by a present keeper—is that they didn’t dispel the enchantments we installed last year. These new spells indicate when someone either attempts to or succeeds in entering. We employed them when a couple of youngsters kept fooling around with the locks.”
“We set a trap that scared the bejesus out of them,” Jake interjected. “They were suitably punished. That was a prank. This wasn’t.”
“We removed the trap and left the basic spells in place as an added precaution,” Thalberg continued. He stopped talking when waiters entered with food for Saxt and Johanna.
“Forgive us,” Johanna said. “Our energy is really low. We’ll tell you why later.”
“Were items taken?” Saxt asked when the waiters left. He applied himself to the meal. From the gravity of the situation, it appeared he needed to regain his energy as quickly as possible. Damn. Every time he and Johanna tried to be alone, another crisis blew up.
“We’re looking,” Thalberg answered. “In the first two rooms, the miscreant pulled a number of the lead-lined boxes out of their drawers and dumped the evil contents on the floor. We’re clearing a path, but it’s taking time, as you can imagine, to make certain we have all the tiny pieces. I have no reports yet about the third and fourth rooms. Like most of our vaults, the deeper you go, the more powerful are the items stored there.”
“Where are the Cataclysm Stone remnants?” Johanna asked.
“In the fifth,” Thalberg said with a grimace. “We’re all afraid they were the targets of the raid.”
“No idea who did this?” Saxt could easily think of one suspect.
“Possibly, although without absolute proof.” Allenby took up the explanation. A sturdy woman with iron-gray hair and a steely gaze, she was almost the embodiment of a watchdog—alert and deadly. “The vault is at the lowest level of the Defender Building, below the small arena. That’s where all the magic in the building concentrates. Electronic gadgets like cameras or locks don’t work in that location. In fact, we don’t employ cameras past the gate and the public areas on the outside and at the entrance to the underground parking.”
“What do those cameras show?”
“Several people coming and going from midnight to six this morning. Here’s the list.” She handed a sheet of paper to Saxt.
His gaze went immediately to the third in line, coming into the garage at one and leaving at four. Phil Bellman, of course. “Did Bellman have anyone with
him?”
“A couple of his friends. Their names follow his,” Allenby answered.
“So, how did you discover the break-in?” Saxt noted the names—two low-level Defenders.
“An unauthorized entry causes a signal light to go on in the anteroom, behind the counter where you request an item,” the security chief said. “Its placement is not conspicuous. The thief or thieves probably didn’t see it. Our regular patrol does not check for that light—although it will from now on. At seven, one of Dave’s people came in to catch up on paperwork from all the increased demand for practice items lately, saw it, and notified us.”
“We were practicing down in one of the D rooms from seven thirty to now,” Johanna said. “We didn’t see anyone or even know of the break-in.”
“We’re keeping it as quiet as possible, and you were at the other end of the building,” Thalberg said.
“While we’re waiting for information,” Miriam interjected, “what were you two doing down there?”
Saxt leaned over, picked the bowl out of his robe, and slid it down the table to Miriam. The etched lines caught the overhead lights and sent rainbows around the room. “This.”
It took him and Johanna about thirty minutes to explain their discovery and answer all the questions. Of course, everyone wanted to see their new blade, but Johanna said, in her teacher voice, “Not until we’ve replenished our energy.”
While Miriam, Jake, and Clyde grumbled, Saxt kept his face straight and ordered more food.
They were almost finished with big pieces of apple pie when a weary-looking man with a clipboard trudged in.
“This is Ernesto Martinez, one of my staff,” Thalberg announced. “What’s the news, Ernesto?”
“Disastrous.” Martinez collapsed into a chair. “All the large and some of the smaller pieces of the Cataclysm Stone are missing.”
Several people swore, and Miriam said only, “Go on.”
“We cleared a path to the back,” Martinez continued. “The thieves also littered the third room with items. The fourth and fifth were clear. They must have known how to handle evil items because they made off with the entire lead-lined, wooden box from each drawer, not simply the item from it. There had to be at least two of them to carry the boxes, or one big carton if they brought one to use. Though the boxes are not large, they are pretty heavy.”