by John Booth
The worst thing about the rooms was that they slowed us down. Each door was a potential way out, a potential place to encounter the enemy, a potential route to the chain bridge we had come looking for. Without exception, they turned out to be empty rooms, but we still had to act as though they might be any of the others.
“Where is everybody?” Esta asked after our fiftieth attack on an empty room. There was nobody to fight, yet again. “Do you think we came here during a holiday?”
“Do girls in brothels get time off?” I asked Lana.
There was a pause that seemed to stretch to infinity. I don’t know if Esta was holding her breath, but I was.
“How would I know?” Lana said eventually. Then she gave me a slow wink. “The brothel I was talking about was staffed by men. Big hard muscled men.”
We had been walking during our conversation and were nearing another T junction. I heard voices ahead.
“In here,” Esta said. She opened a door and we ran in. Esta left the door open a crack as I took in the sights. This room was bigger than the others, but two foot square boxes filled the back of it. We had encountered our first store room. Whoopee. Good for us.
Esta signaled for us to come closer to the door. Whoever was outside was getting nearer. She silently shut the door. The door was ill fitting and I could see the corridor through the gap between door and frame.
“We captured them last night,” the man who had slammed the cell door on me told the other man. Both wore impressive robes. The other man stopped and I recognized him. He was Burder Slan, President of the Diamond Worlds. His face was my first clue, but the shadowy creature riding his head was a bigger one.
This was the nearest I’d been to a Krake since I became able to see them and it wasn’t a pretty sight. The bird like creature was covered in tubular transparent hairs and most of them seemed to be sucking blood from its victim. They penetrated his skull and delved deep into his brain. I could see it clearly in magical sight. I wished I couldn’t.
“Any dissent over keeping them alive?” Slan asked.
The other man looked troubled. “Provided we kill them in the next few days my Knights will not care. But it would be best if we kill them as soon as possible. There are traditions to observe.”
“I need to know who is spying on us. After that is established, you can do anything you want with them.”
“Then let us hurry before the Knight guarding them chooses to take matters into his own hands.”
The men set off again and were soon out of sight.
“Who were they?” Esta asked.
“The one with the monster on his head is Burder Slan.”
The girls gave me one of those ‘he’s gone crazy’ looks.
“The one who wants to know who we work for. You can’t see the Krake drinking the blood from his head, but I can.”
There was still disbelief but my ladies are practical creatures by nature.
“We need to hurry,” Lana said urgently. “They will raise the alarm when they get to our cell and find us missing.”
There was a soft thud behind me. We all turned, but there was no one to see.
A second thud and I saw a box mysteriously appear on the top of the stack.
“Did you…?”
Lana had already gone for the box. She tore a remarkably modern looking binding strip off the top of it and looked inside.
“Detectors,” she announced.
“How did that box get here?” I asked. Magical sight showed nothing, not a trace of a residual hop field.
“Magic?” Esta suggested sarcastically. I resisted the urge to smack her bottom, but only with a steely surge of will-power aided by the certain knowledge that she would punch me in the face if I did.
“High technology,” Lana said. “There are teleportation devices from my world that can do this.”
I examined the floor, lifting a rush mat. “There’s a metal base. Where would the controls be?”
Lana pushed me aside and examined the plate. “On my world these devices have virtual control panels activated either by voice or by… Got it.” A panel materialized in front of her. It looked entirely solid, but she had one hand inside it.
I heard shouts and doors banging some way off. The sounds were getting closer.
Esta looked at the door. “There’s no lock on it and no time to build a barricade.”
“Stand on the metal plate,” Lana ordered. She manipulated the control panel as though she was an expert. She somehow got the panel to follow her as she joined us on the plate.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked.
“Yes,” Lana said. “Take a deep breath.”
The door burst open and swords pointed at us. They were enough of them and they were close enough to overcome the barrier around my body. I felt my magic begin to drain.
Then there was a blinding flash of white light.
18. Home
Squeezed, compressed, expanded and robbed of oxygen are just some of the words that described the transition between one place and the next. It was as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I arrived somewhere else retching and gasping for breath.
“Didn’t you take a deep breath?” Lana asked as she stepped to my side and helped me to my feet. There was no longer anything sucking the magic out of me and I reveled in that freedom before remembering I could heal myself. That took a few more moments and then I was fine.
We were standing in a vast empty warehouse. Everything was painted a clinical white except for the metal plate we were standing on and lots of other similar plates on the floor around us. They were about twelve foot square and embedded into a white plastic floor like a chess board.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
“I reversed the polarity of the neutron flow,” Lana said. I stared at her, sure she was joking, but she appeared entirely serious. “A child of four could do it on my world. We are taught how to control tech in nursery school. It is a survival skill similar to getting dressed quickly.”
“This is your world?” Esta asked. She looked around. “And this is some kind of distribution center?”
“Dispatch Department, Killan Productions,” Lana said cheerfully. “I’ve been here before when I was a young girl. We need to leave before someone notices our arrival. I know exactly where to go.”
She held out a hand to each of us and she hopped us as soon as we touched her.
If I had been asked to guess where Lana would take us, her choice would not have been in my top ten. I looked at the living room of Bronwyn’s parent’s house in surprise. The room was empty and sunlight streamed in through the windows. I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and found it had just gone two o’clock.
Esta sat down on the sofa, apparently not taken aback by our destination.
“Why here?”
As if in answer to my question, Bronwyn materialized in the room. She walked up to me and stared deep into my eyes. “What have you done to Dren and Ellis?”
Lana answered for me. “They left before Jake stormed the Temple. They should have got back to the house in Dallet hours ago.”
Bronwyn spun to face her. “They didn’t. Neither of them has been seen since yesterday. What did you idiots do?”
Now that seemed unfair, given that she had sent us and that she knew my style.
“What you wanted us to. We located the source of the wizard detectors and came back here.”
Bronwyn turned back to face me and not even I could miss the anger in her eyes. “They are my people and you have put them in danger. Do you think I don’t care about every single one of them?”
“Perhaps they were delayed?” Esta said. “They closed the chain bridge earlier and Jake’s capture might have triggered some similar procedure. It was only last night.”
Bronwyn took a deep breath. Then she put her hands on her hips and shouted at Esta.
“I don’t need one of Jake’s whores to patronize me. Nor do I send my agents into
the enemy’s lair without back-up. My agents saw the five of you head towards the Temple and nobody came back.”
Esta stood up unhurriedly and then casually punched Bronwyn so hard in the nose I swear I heard her nose break.
“I am nobody’s whore.”
Magical energies flashed across the room only to be blocked by energies of my own. I saw that one coming even before the punch hit. There were enough forces bouncing around the room to vaporize the house and quite possibly the entire street.
“Calm down, ladies. Do you want to kill the neighbors?”
Esta smiled sweetly at Bronwyn and sat back on the sofa. Bronwyn held her nose and presumably healed it. It looked undamaged when she let go. Her eyes flashed red, then gold before returning to something approaching their normal color. Esta reduced her shield as Bronwyn’s forces faded to nothing.
“I won’t lose any more people,” Bronwyn said quietly. “I won’t.”
“Then perhaps you’d better listen to our story?” I suggested.
She gave me a curt nod and I launched into an account of what had happened since we saw her last.
“You are sure the detector comes from your planet?” Bronwyn asked.
“Do you have your device?” Lana asked.
Bronwyn took it from a bag and handed it to her. Lana put it on the coffee table.
“Arret il taldo.”
Her words produced an astonishing result. The device projected a hologram into the air above the coffee table. There were layers of what looked like controls, but the main feature was a three dimensional version of its screen displayed as a cube. A single dim light showed in the center of the cube.
“We are shielded,” Lana said. “Jake developed the spell to do it in a moment of crisis.”
“He always does,” Bronwyn said softly.
Lana turned to me. “We were lucky on Dallet. If the Sheriff had known how to switch on the automatic gain control you wouldn’t have been able to blind the receiver with that spell. It was reading the raw magic the spell was using, not the magic you used. That the gain control wasn’t on by default is typical of my father’s companies. No doubt they would charge extra to improve the product, if asked.”
I saw Bronwyn’s lips compress as she refrained from asking the obvious question.
“It reads the raw magic stored in our cells,” I explained to Bronwyn, deliberately ignoring the question she wanted answered.
“It is an active device,” Lana continued. “It sends out a pulse that bounces off the raw magic. I wonder if I can change the settings to detect us.”
She moved a set of sliders and the cube filled with what looked like snow. Bronwyn’s marker became incredibly bright, but Lana touched it and it dimmed. Now her icon was just a slightly bigger flake in a field of snow. Lana did something else and the cube began to slowly revolve clockwise.
That was when I saw it. There were blank volumes projected outward from three shapes.
“Our absence and the shadows that causes behind us. But I doubt anybody would think to look.” Lana pressed a green button and everything reset.
“Voldor,” she said and the display vanished. “I think that proves this is my world’s technology. Or d’Tachi technology if you want to be precise. That’s the federation my home planet is part of.”
I slapped my thigh. “So, job done. You go and sort out my wives and everybody will be happy.”
Bronwyn’s face was ice. “And my men?”
I was about to say, ‘Not really my problem’, but something stopped me. I liked Dren and Ellis. On the other hand they chose to go out and be spies, I wasn’t their keeper.
Bronwyn turned to Lana. “This device is manufactured by your father?”
Lana laughed. “Not personally. I doubt he’s even aware of the contract. My father manages a planet. The company that made this makes many other things. I didn’t know this device existed until you showed it to me.”
“He must stop.” Bronwyn’s voice was hard. “Your world’s actions are threatening mine and he has to stop.”
Lana shook her head. “I have no influence with my father. Wizards have no status among the d’Tachi and he has largely disowned me. Only my aunt and a couple of my sisters still talk to me.”
Bronwyn stood. “Take me to your world.”
Lana shook her head again. “You have no business there and I will not expose my people to barbarians.”
Bronwyn turned to me. “Take your,” she hesitated, choosing her next word with care, “friends and go.”
“And my wives?”
“Not until I know Dren and Ellis are safe. And these detectors are stopped.”
“That was not our deal.” I was furious. Bronwyn was going to screw me, and not in the way she’d been hoping for.
She shouted. “Get the hell out of here!”
I felt Lana’s hand on my shoulder and we were gone.
19. Plans
We arrived at Lana’s apartment on Balmack. I pulled away from her to stalk around the room.
“How could she do that to me after her promise? It’s not my fault her people are missing.”
“She does not like me or Lana,” Esta said quietly. “I think our presence caused most of the problem.”
“It is not our fault she cannot entice Jake into her bed,” Lana said, “Though it must be said that no one else has ever had that particular problem.”
That was below the belt and two could play at that game.
“You could have taken her to see your father. What harm would it do?”
Lana glared at me. “You speak without thinking, Jake. You have no idea what the d’Tachi Federation can do. If Bronwyn is seen as a threat they might destroy her world.”
“Destroy Tydan?” I asked in shock.
“I was thinking of Earth, but yes, Tydan would inevitably follow.”
“Can they really do that?” Esta asked. “How would they find either planet?”
Lana waved her hands in the air and forces swirled around the room. “Neither of you have any idea what technology can do.”
I waved a hand, “Ahem, born and bred on a technological world.”
“Not from what I’ve seen.”
There really was no answer to that. Lana had seen Earth gadgets like my smart phone, but we had nothing like the detector. We couldn’t even come close to matching its holographic display. Maybe the Earth was primitive. Maybe the d’Tachi had Tech that could instantly find and destroy my world, who knew?
“What kind of people would kill billions of innocents?” I asked.
Lana sighed. “People who want a quiet life. They would only do it if you attacked them or their interests. The d’Tachi Lords would agonize over it for a couple of days before they made up their minds. But you know Bronwyn, she would interfere with trade and that is a capital crime on my world.”
“Is your father a Lord?” Esta asked. Lana nodded, but didn’t elaborate.
“Jenny is going to be so disappointed,” I said. “Especially as she’s friends with Bronwyn. Nobody likes to be betrayed by a friend.”
We lapsed into silence, lost in private thoughts. I decided to go to my wives and explain what had happened. But I would visit my dragon first. I knew I was just putting off the inevitable, but I didn’t wasn’t to see the look in Jenny’s eyes when I told her what had happened.
Lana’s face broke into a warm smile. “We can still go and visit my world. It has only been a couple of days and we’ll be fashionably late. No one will mind.”
“I will go and finish packing,” Esta said eagerly and vanished.
Lana came over to me. “How about you? Do you want to come and see what a high technology world looks like?” Her fingers stroked my arm down to my hand. “It could be fun.”
“I need to talk to my wives. That will take some time.”
She heard the reluctance in my voice, and gave me a sympathetic smile. “Let me show you where to go if you change your mind.”
I nodded and
she hopped me into a vast cathedral like building. The ceiling was hundreds of feet above and the top of the building was made from large pieces of colored glass arranged into intricate patterns. We stood between two fountains on a lush red carpet that led to astonishing glass doors. I could think of no words that would adequately describe them. Lana had given me the language as we hopped and when I spoke I used d’Tachi.
“What is this place?”
“Aunt Fandra’s reception room. If we stay here any longer the servants will arrive to escort us to her.” She took my hand and we returned to her apartment.
“Is she a Lord too?”
Lana laughed. “There is no sex equality at leadership level among the d’Tachi. All our Lords are men.”
“I can’t imagine you putting up with that?”
“I live on Balmack. Have you never wondered why?”
I knew of several other reasons, so I added that one to the total.
“However,” Lana continued. “Women can be rich and powerful, and my Aunt is both. She owns all the parts of Willdone that my father does not. This creates some friction between them, which is why I am always welcome in her house.”
“Are you and your father not talking to each other?” She had never explained her relationship with him, beyond saying that he didn’t want her to be a wizard.
A smile flickered around Lana’s lips.
“It is not easy to explain. I am,” she paused for dramatic effect, “a disappointment.”
I took her in my arms. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It takes little to get you hard.” Her hand proved her point with a none too gentle squeeze. “Be off with you, Jake Morrissey. Go and comfort your wives.”
I took the hint and hopped to the Bat Cave.
A sound like vast sales flapping in the wind had me diving for cover. Fluffy slid into the cave with a terrified sheep in his mouth. His landing was typically sloppy and I had to roll out of the way of massive claws cutting new grooves into the rock. My dragon tossed the sheep into the air and a burst of dragonfire roasted it before he caught it again.
[Ah Welsh lamb. The best in the multiverse.]