by John Booth
[The Dragons will assist you in disposing of the Knights of Justice, should you require it.]
I remembered the slaughter the last time they assisted me and suppressed a shudder. After hunting wizards, killing dragons was the Knight’s favorite sport and the Dragons had returned the favor with interest.
[The Diamond Worlds have proved remarkably resilient. We had hoped they would take many years to reform the Knights.]
“That would be the Krake involvement. Probably this technology Bronwyn is so worried about comes from them as well.”
Fluffy snorted smoke all over the cave. [Perhaps this is another plan to kill you? That was their mission when they controlled Farolan.]
That all seemed like a lot of trouble to go to. After all, I was nothing to them.
“I think they wanted to disrupt the Conference Between the Worlds. Nothing else makes sense.”
[The Elves still owe you reparations for their role in that.]
I thought about the phrase I had been given that was supposed to bring them running. It seemed highly unlikely it would still work.
“In any case, I am going to ask Esta and Lana if they want to come along.”
I fended off more smoke and flames as Fluffy snorted in disgust.
[You plan to ask your harem to assist you?]
Fluffy has never understood my relationship with the girls. They weren’t my harem; they were my buddies… with benefits.
“I’m going. I need to catch them before they leave university. It is the start of half-term after all.”
I hopped to the university campus on Balmack.
I found them in Lana’s apartment. Esta sat on the bed while Lana was showing her a dress. It didn’t look like anything Lana would normally be seen dead in.
“Have you never heard of knocking?” Lana asked. Esta had jumped to her feet on seeing me.
“Are you two actually doing girly things together?”
Esta blushed, but Lana continued to hold the dress against her body. “Do you like it?”
Lana has a lot of bosom and the dress seemed to have been cut to accentuate that aspect of her. I wasn’t too fond of the color but I have learnt a few ‘female people’ skills over the years.
“You would look good in anything.”
“But you would prefer her naked?” Esta suggested. She knows me too well.
I smiled. “I’d prefer you both naked, and I still have to initiate you into the ancient Earth custom we call a threesome.”
Lana put the dress on the bed before speaking. “On my world we have a custom called ‘Cutting off the balls’ for the men who suggest such things. Esta, there are some scissors in the top drawer over there.”
Esta reached over to the drawer in question and pulled it open. I used magic to slide it shut it again.
“You girls can never take a joke.”
“Did you make one?” Lana stepped close to me and ran her tongue over her lips. “Do you do threesome’s with your wives?”
Time to change the subject.
“I have something for us to do. Action and adventure stuff.”
Esta shook her head, “We have plans. I am going to visit Lana’s world and she’s going to show me all the things that rich girls do there.”
“Flirt with rich boys?”
Lana poked me. “Fashion shows, wonderful restaurants, concerts, fancy dress balls, sports.” She stopped poking. “And if Esta wants to find out how real men make love, maybe some of that too.”
My mouth formed a surprised O. “You mean I’ve been doing it wrong?”
Lana’s lips fluttered at the ends.
“College boys think they know everything,” she said primly. “In any case, a few weeks on my world has to be better than whatever you have planned.”
“Knights in armor who can suck the magic right out of you with their swords? A quest to the Diamond Worlds to find out where they are getting technology that can detect a wizard from a thousands of yards away? Energy beings controlling their leader? Deadly danger and sudden death?”
Esta picked up the dress and held it to her body as she spun around.
“As opposed to dancing under the stars in the light of three moons with a handsome man?”
“Four moons,” Lana corrected.
“So are you coming?” I asked.
“Of course,” the girls said in unison.
“Great. I’ve got some things to pick up and I’ll meet you back here in half an hour?”
“Make it an hour,” Esta suggested. I’m packed for parties, not for fighting.”
I nodded. Now I had to go to Bronwyn’s and pick up that phone thing. I had a feeling she was also going to lumber me with Dren as well. But if you were to push me on the subject, I might admit a guide could be useful.
8. Briefings
The room was empty and the house sounded empty of people. Bronwyn’s parents worked so their absence was no surprise as it was the middle of the day.
“Bronwyn,” I shouted. More for the form of it than in any expectation she’d hear me. I glanced at the coffee table and saw the wizard detector sitting on it like an open invitation. It was warm to the touch though it appeared to be switched off. As I turned it in my hands looking for the on-switch, it burst into life.
Middle of the screen was a red starburst of energy. The rest of the screen was empty, confirming no other wizards were in the vicinity. It occurred to me that this gadget could be really useful in certain situations. I resolved to get one for myself before we finished with the Diamond Worlds.
I focused on my destination and began to hop.
For a couple of seconds I was blinded by the light. The space around me was filled with flashes, as though hundreds of cameras were taking my photograph.
I dropped into magic sight where I found something even more remarkable. The flashes were coming from silver balls of magic, each one no bigger than a bee. Bee was an excellent description because they were buzzing and between them they were stopping me hop.
The method they were using was novel. Each flash warped space like a pebble dropped in a pond. Ripples of distorted space-time washed over me, changing where I was. There are two things a wizard needs to hop; the location of his destination, and the knowledge of where he was. The second of those was so unstable I couldn’t make progress. It was like trying to jump in mud.
Bronwyn must have booby-trapped the device. I felt a momentary stab of injustice at her labelling me a thief, before conceding that I had been trying to leave with it without her permission.
I threw the device onto the sofa in the hope that would get the bees off me, but no such luck. Left with no choice, I closed my eyes and thought the problem through.
Then I concentrated and pushed raw magic out of me in all directions. Raw magic has no form; it floats around the multiverse like a mist. It takes a mind to make it do anything. But it never concentrates in the air as it was doing now. When I was sure it immersed all the little silver balls I put a shield around myself and changed it to dragonfire.
There was a loud whoosh. When I opened my eyes the silver balls were gone and everything flammable in the room was burning merrily.
“Jake!” Bronwyn materialized and all the fires went out. A second later the room was back to normal except for a residual smell of burning.
“Not satisfied with stealing from me, you try and burn my house down?”
It was amazing how much like Esmeralda she sounded. All the indignation a sixteen year old could manage; coated with a layer of verbal acid that could be used to strip paint.
“It was you who trapped me. What was I supposed to do?”
Bronwyn picked up the device and wiped the soot off it. Two lights showed on the screen and she sighed with relief.
“Not take things that don’t belong to you,” she suggested. “Still, no harm done; all things considered.”
“I was only going to borrow it. I would have brought it back.”
Okay, I may have sounded a
bit like a child caught stealing sweets.”
Bronwyn looked away. “Two of my people lost their lives getting this thing. This isn’t a game.”
“I didn’t…”
“You never do. There are three hundred and forty-two planets in the Diamond Worlds and the only place within its boundaries you have ever been is the Empire Arena in the capital. No doubt that is where you and your friends would arrive, because it would never occur to you to ask for help.”
Okay, I had considered all that. But not being lumbered with Dren had its advantages too. It was immaterial now that she had stopped me.
“Which is why you will come back here at… ” she consulted the clock on the mantelpiece, “…midnight. Dren will hop you to one of our safe houses in the Diamond Worlds and will escort you to where you need to go.”
I nodded.
She tossed me the device, which I caught awkwardly.
“Off you go then,” she said in the way a teacher dismisses a naughty child.
I resisted the strong urge to wipe that smug look from her face by grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her. Instead, I took her in my arms and kissed her full on the mouth. She struggled for a few seconds and then she leaned into me so hard that I was the only thing holding her up. That was when I hopped to Balmack.
“You look a bit flushed,” Lana told me when I materialized, “Last minute hug from one of your wives?”
“No,” I said and used magic to remove the excess blood from my face.
“Are these clothes suitable?” Esta asked. She was back in the male ‘Robin Hood’ clothes I’d first seen her in, complete with bow, arrows and knives at her belt. The disguise had fooled me once upon a time, but I had been far too intimate with her to ever mistake her for a man again.
That was when I noticed that Lana was wearing a trouser suit. She flashed open her jacket to reveal a gun in a shoulder holster. I’d seen that gun in action, it made Earth guns look like toys.
“Not wearing a sword?”
She grinned. “I hoped it would fool you.”
I dropped into magic sight and saw the sword strapped to her back. She was using a visible spectrum folding spell to keep it hidden.
“Clever, I always miss a bit when I use that magic.”
Esta put her arm around me. “That is because you are hopeless. I cannot imagine why we continue to associate with possibly the worst mage in the university.”
“Because I’m so good in bed?” I said hopefully.
The girls collapsed in laughter.
9. Preparations
“Do you know how to do this?” Lana asked. I dropped into magic sight to watch. She formed a ball of raw magic in her hands and threw it like a snowball at Esta. Esta absorbed it and then threw one back to Lana.
“You girls have been researching the Knights of Justice?”
Lana gave me one of those looks the girls use on me so often.
“This is a university of magic in one of the most erudite empires in the multiverse. When you mentioned the ‘Diamond Worlds,’ of course we went looking.”
“The Knight’s armor and swords are impregnated with some kind of anti-magic,” I started, but was rudely interrupted.
“Exotic Magic,” Esta told me. “Anti-magic is something entirely different.”
These two may have learnt more than me, so I covered up my ignorance with a clever stratagem.
“If you two know so much, you tell me.” Genius eh?
Esta took up the challenge. “The Knights are proto wizards. The Diamond Worlds were plagued with hedge wizards, so a mage came up with a way to stop them. He found a way to drain Exotic Magic from Hop Space and put it into their chain mail and swords. People with some control of magic can use it to defeat wizards. They can hop to wizards because exotic magic is drawn to strong sources of magic and they can hop back because their temples have magic homing beacons built into them.”
Lana took up the story, “According to Professor Delor, exotic magic forms the boundary layer that keeps the universes separate from each other in Hop Space. It’s not a good idea to extract exotic magic from Hop Space, but there are so few Knights and so little exotic magic involved that none of the other worlds can be bothered to stop them. And you know how the Balmack Accord feels about hedge wizards.”
“The Knights also go out of their way to kill dragons,” I put in.
“Why?” Esta asked.
I shrugged. It just seemed to be a thing the Knights did.
“We also asked about energy beings taking people over and Professor Delor laughed at us,” Esta said. She sounded hurt.
“Believe me, the Krake are real. I met some earlier today.”
The girls looked at me and I knew they wouldn’t believe until they came face to face with one, possibly not even then.
Esta threw the wizard finding device across the room and I caught it magically before it hit anything. “It cannot be done,” she complained.
I was beginning to think she was right. Despite our best efforts, none of us had managed to cloak our existence from the damned thing. The best we could do was reduce our visibility to pale white circles and I wasn’t sure how we were doing that.
“There must be a way,” Lana said, but she offered no suggestions.
My watch was set on British Summer Time and it showed we had only ten minutes before we had to go and meet with Bronwyn and Dren. They couldn’t come to Balmack. The Accord keeps its worlds off the map for hedge wizards and we would be in deep trouble if we showed any of them the way in.
I needed to say goodbye to Jenny before we left. She’d never forgive me if I didn’t.
“I’ll be back in a minute.” I hopped to our living room in Wales, taking the device with me.
Merlin jumped into my arms as I arrived and I had to use magic to keep from falling over.
“Silly phone,” he said staring at the wizard detector. “No games.”
The phone showed the two of us as bright white lights. The device also showed a blue light moving towards us.
I turned in the direction of the light and smiled as Jenny entered the room. She hasn’t got the slightest trace of magic, but the baby inside her was glowing with it.
“Just dropped in to say goodbye before you go galloping off, have you?”
“At least I came.” I put Merlin down and hugged my wife. “This probably won’t take long.”
“You said that when you went to the Conference and I’d practically had Merlin before you got back.”
This was true, so I just hugged her harder.
I looked at my watch and it was time to go. As I disengaged from Jenny, Merlin made me look at the screen of the detector.
“Peek a boo, Daddy.” His light disappeared from the screen.
I looked at my watch again. It was nearly five passed midnight. I had to go. No time to find out how my son had managed that particular trick
“See you soon,” I said and hopped.
Bronwyn was not in the best of moods. Dren stood behind her and it looked as though he was trying his very best to become one with the furniture.
“You’re late,” she snarled. She flicked glances at Lana and Esta that reminded me off a lioness about to protect her cubs from predators.
“It’s not like we have a fixed timetable,” I pointed out.
“Don’t you say a word to me. Not a word.”
I flinched back. She really had the angry Esmeralda impersonation off pat.
“Take them, Dren.” She took the detector from my unresisting fingers. “You won’t be needing this.”
Dren stepped forward, giving every impression that he would rather be anywhere else. He held out his hands and I took one, while the girls grasped the other.
The world blinked out. We were under a starlit sky and the constellations were not familiar. I felt the multiverse spin as I orientated myself. We were not in the same universe as Earth, but on the other hand, we were still near. We stood on a wide dirt road in sparse woodl
and. The light of the stars was bright enough to allow us to see each other, just.
Dren let out a long breath, loudly. He turned to face me.
“What did you do to the Goddess? I’ve never seen her that angry.”
Esta grinned. “Jake has that effect on women. Have you never noticed it before?”
Lana put her arm around my waist in a proprietorial manner. “Never mind. We have him under control most of the time.”
Dren shook himself as if checking if he was awake. “I need to teach you the local languages. We should have done it before we left, but I was worried the Goddess might kill someone if we stayed.”
We put hands on him and information flowed into us. This world was called Langon, a small and neglected part of the Diamond Worlds. It provided fresh food and iron ore to other worlds in the empire and the Knights generally stayed away. Like most of the Diamond Worlds its level of civilization was medieval at best. A brutal rural world where the peasants were treated like dirt and a few got to enjoy the spoils of their labor.
“We have to get to the house as quickly as possible,” Dren said quietly. “There is a curfew in place and we are breaking it.”
“Why didn’t we hop straight there?” Esta asked.
“Several reasons, the first being that locals might notice if the house was suddenly full of people. Best we arrive on foot. They’ll spot us coming, they always do. But they won’t say anything to the authorities. And by the way, don’t use any magic while you’re here.”
“What?” That question was mine. Did Dren want to hobble us?
Dren looked pained. “I was supposed to brief you properly before we left. But with the Goddess ready to bite off someone’s head, I decided getting out of there was more important.” He looked pointedly at me and I strived to look innocent. He turned away in disgust and continued.
“The Knights protect the Diamond Worlds against wizards. To do that, they have to be able to find them. They can detect significant use of magic anywhere in their empire, but hops only show up faintly and arriving here is pretty safe. That was another reason for arriving in the middle of nowhere. Just in case they were looking for magic on this world and were ready to hop after us. I trust you have shielded yourself against the detectors?”