by John Booth
Morgana wrapped her arms around my legs and didn’t look as though she was going to let go.
“Take her to Urda’s cottage,” Esmeralda screamed. There was no reason for her to be so panicked. I’d only been in the room for ten seconds.
Levitating magic brought Morgana up into my arms. She disapproved of the change.
“No magic, carry me.”
“Your wish is my command.” I kissed her cheek. “Wave bye-bye to mummy.”
From the look on Esmeralda’s face it would have to be a quick wave. I hopped us to Urda’s cottage.
There was a writing desk in one corner of the comfy little room and Urda sat at it. She turned and smiled.
“My favorite little princess.” She held out her arms.
Morgana used magic to open my arms and floated over to Urda horizontally. I couldn’t help but notice she used magic to keep her skirt close to her body. Not yet four and she already thought about such things.
Urda plucked her out of the air and pulled her close so they could rub noses.
“Eww,” my child was not amused.
Urda laughed. “You know that’s how we greet children on Tydan. Go and play in the garden, but stay close.”
Morgana wiped her nose on her skirt and ran to the door, which she opened before she got to it. She would be safe outside, though whether the world would be safe from her was entirely another question.
Urda turned to me and frowned.
“I still don’t have any answers, My Lord Wizard.”
I sighed and sat in the nearest chair. “Neither do I. No one at the University has any idea what magic could cause it. One professor told me it was impossible.” I took on a lecturing tone. “Anything that slowed down the embryo’s growth would also kill it. It isn’t just a matter of growth; the cells need to regenerate as well. Quite impossible, unless the person was inside a temporal field and in that case their existence would be slowed down as well.”
“You could stay close to Jenny and Esmeralda for a four or five months,” Urda suggested. “That would solve it.”
“I’d have to be in the same room as them all the time. And those two together for more than a few hours would probably herald the end of the world.”
“It would probably cause it,” Urda admitted. “But Anna and I could stay with them some of the time. We could take it in turns.”
I shook my head. It wasn’t practical and we both knew it. My wives lived completely separate lives on different worlds and didn’t get on. A sophisticated magic had stopped their pregnancies from developing any further, unless a wizard was in the room. The spell went into hiding as soon as one of us was close enough to detect it. There were two wizards that this rule didn’t apply to; but my wives were unwilling to concede that their children were in any way responsible for what was happening to them.
A couple of cups of tea appeared on the table along with cake.
“Nobody wants to spend longer than they have to very pregnant. You can’t blame them for throwing you out before they got that far. Esmeralda thought it would concentrate your mind.”
I nodded. Esmeralda thought everybody worked better with a stick applied to their bottoms. The trouble was, without being able to see the spell in action I couldn’t figure out how to stop it. My kids had thought of everything.
Urda sighed, “You could ask Bronwyn? She wants to see you about something else, but she could give your professors lessons on magic.”
It was a conspiracy. Everyone wanted me to talk to Bronwyn.
“She would have said if she knew anything. She owes Esmeralda a lot.”
“But she wants you. She would wait for you to ask.” Urda stared at me in a strangely compassionate way. “She wants you to be her first, just as I did.”
“I don’t want to have sex with her,” I said loudly. Then looked around to check Morgana hadn’t heard.
“Where are the scribes when you need them?” Urda asked the room. “Surely that will be the first and last time Jake Morrissey will ever utter those words. They should be taken down and recorded for posterity.”
We both laughed, because there was a measure of truth in what she said.
“It’s hard on your wives, Jake. Jenny cannot see Lord Retnor and you know how they are bonded. Bronwyn is also banned and you know she dotes on your children.”
Lord Retnor is my dragon. ‘Fluffy’. I hadn’t seen much of him myself lately. He spends a lot of time with his people these days, and with the full life I had during a university term there wasn’t much opportunity to meet up and chat.
Morgana had been surprisingly quiet. I went over to a window to check on her and Urda followed me.
The garden was in full bloom. There was a small square of neatly trimmed grass in the center of it and Morgana sat cross-legged on it. She was covered in butterflies, so much so that she was barely visible beneath them. More hovered overhead, apparently waiting their turn.
Salice is generally a quiet place and Urda’s cottage was some distance from the village. Birds sang and insects hummed and chirped. I could almost hear the slow flow of the river in the distance.
That idyll was interrupted by children’s voices getting closer. I wondered if I should go out there, just in case. Urda put a hand on my shoulder and I relaxed. Morgana needed to meet and learn to get on with other children.
A child yelled as he spotted my butterflied child. I heard them run towards her and then two boys and a girl were on the lawn staring at her. They were older, maybe somewhere between five and eight.
The butterflies detached from Morgana in a colorful storm, heading upwards. Leaving only a dozen or so on her arms and hands.
The oldest boy leaned towards her and held out his hand.
“Can I have one?”
Morgana whispered and one of the butterflies left her hand and flew to land on the palm of the boy’s hand. He stared at it for a moment and then the girl nudged him. Instinctively, his fingers closed.
I have better than human eyesight. His fingers should have crushed the butterfly, but they never touched it. The butterfly materialized a few inches above his hand and flew away.
My mouth fell open. What I had just seen was impossible. You could hop something touching something else if you hopped them both. There had to be a direct line of contact between a wizard and anything they hopped.
I was brought back to the real world by the sound of a slap. The little girl who had nudged the boy screamed and grabbed at her bottom. No one was near enough to have hit her, but I saw Morgana grin wolfishly.
The three kids decided that they should be somewhere else and ran off.
“Learning to be a princess,” Urda said with delight as she stepped back from the window.
The butterflies were still above Morgana and I focused in on them with magic sight. To my surprise they weren’t under any kind of mind control. They were there because they wanted to be.
I zoomed back out and saw the thick ropes of magic that danced around my daughter. There was also a translucent cord attached to her head that I knew connected to her brother through hop space. It was an astonishing sight and quite unlike anything like I had ever seen around normal wizards.
“You need to go and see Bronwyn,” Urda said.
She had a point. I knew she would get Morgana back to the palace so I braced myself and hopped to Bronwyn’s home, back on Earth.
4. Dragon’s Den
Bronwyn lived with her parents in a house not far from my own. I hadn’t seen her since she turned sixteen a few months ago. This was far from accidental. I tried to remember that I was the adult and she the child.
I pressed the doorbell and chimes tinkled somewhere deep in the house. The door opened as I reached for the button for a second time.
“Jake,” Brian Matthews said in surprise. “How very… unexpected. Please come in.”
Brian was Bronwyn’s father. He looked harassed.
“I was hoping to see Bronwyn.”
Brian s
hook his head. “She’s in conference with those people. The ones from the other place. They get upset if we disturb them.”
Bronwyn was the absolute ruler of Tydan, a world that needed an absolute ruler. Whether they deserved Bronwyn was something that only time would tell.
I smiled. “I’ll take a chance. What’s the worse they can do? Crucify me?”
Brian didn’t see that as funny and shook his head despondently as he led me through the house towards the living room.
“I’ll be with Gwyneth in the kitchen if she doesn’t let you in.”
He slunk off towards the kitchen and I resolved to have words with Bronwyn about how she was treating her parents when I got the chance.
I thought about knocking, but then thought, ‘what the hell’ and strode into the room.
At least twenty hands reached for swords, staffs or knives. Bronwyn’s followers were all young men and women, not one over thirty, and they weren’t pleased to see me.
They made a collective intake of breath that sounded like a disturbed nest of snakes. Bronwyn turned to look at me and it was my turn to gasp. That girl would turn heads in a crowd of eunuchs these days. She smiled warmly.
“Why Jake, how good of you to knock before entering.”
Several of her followers had drawn their swords and they moved to encircle Bronwyn to protect her. She laughed.
“Back off everybody. Jake is here at my invitation. We had concluded our business anyway. So if you could all head back to Tydan except for Dren, I’d be most grateful.”
A young man I thought I recognized stepped closer to her.
“But My Lady, you cannot trust him.”
Bronwyn giggled and for a second I saw her as a young Welsh lass surrounded by admirers. Then her face hardened.
“Don’t annoy me, Ida.”
He snapped to attention and vanished. Once he was gone we were alone. Bronwyn, me and a spy of hers I’d met once before on the Diamond Worlds. He saved my life that time, so I liked him.
“Refreshments?” Dren vanished and returned carrying a silver tray with several small handle-less metal cups on it. Each cup was filled to the brim with translucent blue liquid.
Bronwyn made a gesture and Dren sighed. “Drugging Jake will not be necessary, Bren. Go and ask my mum to make a pot of tea.”
Dren smiled apologetically at me and walked out of the room still carrying the tray. There followed an awkward silence.
“You didn’t come to my birthday party.”
I looked away. “It was the start of term. I had things to get sorted.”
Bronwyn stepped closer. Her scent was breath-taking and her skin flawless. She turned her head to look at me quizzically. “Are you blushing?”
I magicked the evidence away. “Of course not.”
She turned away. “You must be frustrated with both wives refusing to see you. But then, you always have other places to turn. How is Betty?”
“Well.”
“And Lana and Esta, not forgetting Alisandra? Have you had any more affairs of state?”
I shrugged. She was well informed, as always.
“Can you cure my wives?” I asked, using magic to ensure my voice didn’t squeak.
“Always to the point,” she turned to face me and looked me in the eyes. “Yes I can.”
She showed a remarkable insight into my mind with her next words.
“Without hurting your children or making them leave their mothers.”
“How come you know and everybody else laughs at me?”
“Esmeralda has known for some time, but she chooses not to believe. Jenny is much better at self-deception.”
Dren re-entered the room carrying a much less elegant tray than the one he had taken with him. It bore cups of tea and a plate of bourbon biscuits.
“Do I need to make him taste it?” I asked.
“Dren always obeys his Mistress.”
“Even when she’s wrong,” Dren said with a half-smile playing across his lips. I wondered if they were lovers. Then remembered what Urda had told me. Perhaps he wanted me drugged so there was no risk I might fulfil Bronwyn’s desires.
Bronwyn let his comment slide, which I found interesting. She wasn’t one to tolerate dissent.
“There will be a price for restoring the Morrissey family bliss,” Bronwyn said quietly. She sat down on a sofa and I on the one across from it. Having a coffee table between us calmed me down. Dren put the tray on the table and served us. I noticed his hands were trembling
“Will I enjoy paying this price?”
Dren dropped the plate with the biscuits on.
Bronwyn giggled. “When we make love it will be because you want to, not because I blackmailed you into it.”
I saw the tension drain from Dren. It drained from me as well. There was a sly smile on Bronwyn’s face. “But I promise you this, you will enjoy it.”
Dren turned away and I stopped the blood rushing to my face again.
“So what is your price?”
Bronwyn seemed in no hurry to answer. I had drained my cup before she spoke again.
“Do they teach Web Theory at that university on Balmack?”
“Only as a fallacy.”
“Then they aren’t very bright. Web Theory proposes that worlds that are physically close, both across normal and hop space are more likely to interact with each other.”
“Our professor says that once a magic user has been to a place it takes the same effort and time to hop to it, no matter how far away it is.”
Bronwyn grinned. “And yet the worlds of empires are always closely spaced, even if they are in different universes.”
I opened my hands in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t see how it makes any difference whether the theory is true or not.”
Bronwyn pounced. “And that is a mistake I shall not make. The Diamond Worlds form a tight mesh in the multiverse and Tydan is right in the middle of it. While we were a starving desert world killing our wizards out of misguided piety, they chose to ignore us. Now we are rich, prosperous, and honor our wizards, it’s only a matter of time before they come after us.”
“Have they threatened you?”
Bronwyn dismissed my question with a shrug. “They have built a new army of the Knights of Justice and their only role is to kill wizards and dragons. They attacked you on Earth a year or two ago because the Earth is on the edge of their sphere of influence.”
“They attacked me because the Krake pointed them at me.”
“Because they were close.”
I gave up. If the Knights bothered me again I’d take care of them. Even the Krake using them wasn’t too big a threat. Life was too short to go looking for trouble.
“I need you to find out where they are getting these from,” Bronwyn threw a white smart phone at me.
“Apple is selling to the Diamond Worlds?”
Bronwyn hissed. She reached over the table and swiped the screen, a map appeared. It showed the room we were in an outline and the image covered the neighborhood. Two red dots and a ball of fire showed on the screen.
“Is that me?” I asked pointing at the ball.
“You’re always leaking magic,” Bronwyn complained. “See if you can tone it down a bit.”
I concentrated and the ball of fire reduced to a red dot, albeit brighter than the other two.
Bronwyn patted me on the shoulder in a patronizing way.
“The Diamond Worlds have acquired hundreds of these. We need to find out where they’re getting them from and stop the supply. No wizard will be safe from them if they attack us.”
“The Diamond Worlds are in the bronze age, well iron age at best. They can’t make this kind of thing. It’s technological.”
Dren applauded my thinking by clapping slowly and sardonically.
“I want you to go and sort it out for me,” Bronwyn said. “Then I will solve your family problem.”
Dren shook his head. “This is a foolish idea, forgive me My Lady. Wizard Mor
rissey is not in the slightest bit subtle.”
Bronwyn grinned. “That’s what I’m counting on. Put the bull in the china shop and see what happens.”
I thought about it. There was nothing I could say or do that would make the Knights of Justice hate me any more than they already did. So there wasn’t much on the negative side of the argument. On the positive side, Lana and Esta might enjoy a bit of action during half term.
“I’ll do it,” I said. “But I have to do a bit of dragon hunting first. I haven’t seen Fluffy in ages.”
Bronwyn leaned over the table and kissed my forehead. I felt an unwelcome stirring in my groin, which I used magic to still.
“You’ll need this,” Bronwyn said as she took the wizard detector back from me. “Come here when you’re ready. I want you to take Dren with you.”
I wasn’t sure I was going to allow that to happen, but it could wait until after I had found Fluffy.
I hopped to the Bat Cave.
5. Jenny
The Bat Cave was cold and lifeless. I illuminated the cave with white light and was surprised at how neat and tidy it was. Dragons are not noted for their cleaning habits and I usually had to dispose of the remnants of sheep carcasses and worse whenever I visited. Fluffy’s laptop was on the coffee table. I opened it up and typed ‘Jennifer’ at the password prompt. Even though Fluffy’s smallest claw would cover a half-dozen keys he was really into technology and magic solves a lot of problems, such as how to type on a keyboard.
Pulling up his calendar, I found the last entry was from six weeks ago. ‘Off to find the Krake,’ it said. Fat lot of use that was, nobody knew where the Krake came from.
Finding Fluffy by trying to hop to him had proved ineffective in the past so I gave that option a miss. However, the Dragons had a meeting place on a small planet. It was a good place to start.
I hopped across the multiverse. Dragonfire blasted at me as I materialized, but I was no longer an amateur and the wave of destruction slid across my shield without getting me even slightly warm. A second wave blasted across me and I could almost feel the irritation of the dragon who had caused it.