He chuckled. “You’ve got it mostly right there, though it’s not always the case. Such strength does pop up now and then, but in my case, you might say that I am royal, in a way. I happen to be your aunt’s cousin, though I was never acknowledged.” When he saw that Sean didn’t quite get it, he explained, “I’m a bastard. My mother was the cook. When my skill showed strength, my father found me a position with King Lardeain. Mostly he wanted me as far away from him as he could get me.”
Sean groaned. “One minute I want to know more about my family, and the next minute, I wish I’d kept my mouth shut,” Sean muttered embarrassed.
Darrel roared with laughter. He was still laughing when they entered the house, and by then he was dabbing at tears, winning an odd look from Marinda, but she didn’t say anything.
After lunch, once everyone else had left, Aunt Marinda and Darrel faced Sean across the table.
“He looks tired,” said Marinda.
“He’s had a hard morning,” said Darrel.
“You’re tired,” said Marinda.
“Sleep,” said Darrel with much more strength.
Sean was glad he was still sitting. He didn’t have to concentrate on keeping his feet. He managed to shake them off, but it felt like the spells left a residue. “Yeah, I’m tired, but that was a dirty trick.”
“Did you use the stones?” asked Marinda.
“I don’t think so,” said Sean, as he rubbed his shoulder.
Marinda laid her hand over Sean’s when he put it back on the table. “It’s very important that you do know. It’s important that you develop your strength before you use the stones. If you don’t, you will learn to depend on them and never really develop your own skill. All the stones do is magnify what you already have, and in some cases, it gives you access to what you don’t have.”
“So, what are you saying? Are you saying that I shouldn’t keep the stones on me? I’ve already had one person try and take them from me.”
Marinda gripped his hand and looked at him with sympathy. “Yes, I’m saying that you need to set the stones away from you. Put them wherever you wish, guard them however you want. I’m not asking you to hand them to me, or give them to anyone else here, just set them away from you for a time. You need to know the difference between your magic and what you use through the stones.”
Sean looked at them both. It’s sensible, what she said, but these people are still strangers. I think I’m safe here, but can I really relax my guard? “How far away from me do they need to be?”
“I know you keep them on you somehow, but for the life of me, I can’t tell how,” said Marinda. “All you need to do is set them far enough away from you so that you have to reach for them in order to use them.”
“I’m going upstairs to take a nap. I didn’t sleep very well last night and I am tired. I’ll think about what you’ve said. I’ll figure something out.”
Sean lie in bed thinking. “Ferris, can you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
“Why did you keep the stones apart? How come you didn’t just keep them all in a safety deposit box somewhere?”
“We did. Cisco and I kept ours in one bank. Elias and Analeace kept theirs in their bank, and Gordon kept his in another bank. Clayton kept his with him because he kept going back and forth and needed the extra power. The reason we didn’t keep them all in the same place, is because this way there was less chance of losing all of them.”
“I’ve been advised to set them away from me. I was told that it’s too easy for me to use them if they are always on me.”
“Marinda? She’s never been stingy with good advice.”
“I have a small problem with that. If I put them somewhere and shield them, I shield them from myself too.”
“You don’t need to go that far. Just hide them. Figure out some place where no one is likely to look, then ward the hiding place. With a ward, you can do a wide variety of things, anything from setting off an alarm to teleporting the stones back to you or some other prearranged spot. This farm is warded, you know.”
“How do you set a ward?”
“Sorry kid, I’m the wrong person to ask that question.”
“Thanks Ferris.”
“Any time.”
Sean brought the stones out into his hand. He had had them inside of himself for so long now that he felt strange without them. Where could he hide them where no one would look? Then he had an idea; one place no one would look would be a place that had already been searched.
He closed his eyes and…
…found himself standing in the main hall of the Sarthe manor house. He turned around and saw that the door was just as they had left it – closed. He made his way to the top floor and wandered through the different rooms. He spotted a discarded stuffed toy that looked a lot like a kangaroo without the ears. Its little pouch was suddenly a little fuller. He left the room and closed the door. He would know if that door ever opened again.
Sean went into another room. It looked like it might have been a servant’s room. Clothes and blankets were strewn all over the floor. In the corner was a white shift that had obviously been thrown there. Another stone was left deep in its folds. He closed and warded the door to that room too.
On the second floor, there was no less ransacking, just less things to strew around. In the third room, Sean saw a small figurine still on the mantle, though it was lying down. It was a little heavier now. He would know if someone touched it. Just as he’d done with the rooms upstairs, he warded the door. A thief would open closed doors, and he wanted to know of such action.
In another room, someone had painted a picture of a gray-haired man on canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Sean briefly wondered who the old gentleman was, but then he knew that it could provide another hiding place behind the canvas, on the edge of the wooden frame. He would know if someone moved the picture. He warded that door too.
Sean continued to wander through the house; he had two more stones to hide. In the far corner of the kitchen, he found a broken crock lying on the counter. He had no idea what it once was, but the pile of shards now concealed another stone. He would know if someone touched them. There was no door to the kitchen, so he created a barrier of magic in the frame. Not one to hinder any passage, merely one to alert him should someone walk through. That left one more stone.
He glanced around the main entry hall; it was large and had several likely niches, but he continued on. The place was too close to the front door, too hard to ward. There might not be enough time to react if someone found a stone there.
He wandered into the one room he hadn’t made it into before Clayton showed up; it turned out to be a combination office and library. The center of the room was dominated by a massive, ornately-carved table that served as a desk. There was a tall-backed chair behind it. Sean smiled. There are no other chairs in here. Apparently, one stood when meeting privately with Lord Clayton. Behind the desk, hanging on the wall between two windows, was an inlaid picture of a six-petaled flower blooming out of a green field. The different kinds of glass or gems used were the appropriate color to represent what it depicted; it was quite intricate. He was surprised that such a lovely thing had been left behind, either by his aunt or by looters, but the best part was the fact that the petals were exactly the right size and shape. I should have come here first. He traded the pale blue stone in the picture for the one in his hand. Now all I need is something to ward. He looked around and saw other symbols of magic. Hanging in the center of each of the windows was a prism, and Sean noticed that they were a representation of the six different types of magic, though the shape was to refract light; I wonder why these were all left behind. Didn’t dare take any symbols of magic with them, I guess. A bookshelf took up much of one wall. The books had been shuffled around, and some of them had fallen on the floor. He selected a book at random and placed it on the otherwise empty desk, then he found a small piece of paper and marked a page in the book. Such a thing would catch the
eye of anyone who entered the room. He would know if someone touched the book, and they would touch the book before they bothered with the picture.
Before leaving the house, he left a ward on the office door, and yet another ward on the front door – anyone coming here would be ever so gently encouraged to leave.
Opening him eyes, he looked at the pale blue shard of stone from the picture; it was an amazing replica. He was confident that the stones were as safe as they could be, outside of himself. With a sigh Sean rolled over and dozed off. Before he fell all the way into dreamland, he thought about the magic itself. Where did it come from? How was it allotted? How was it decided how strong someone was, or how skilled?
The Dead Live
Sean sat in front of a computer, looking up the magic and those who had it. Thousands of files came up. Checking properties on the base file revealed that all of the magic was portioned out among the files inside. He scrolled through the files and found a few names he recognized.
He found the name of Ruhin and looked at his father’s file. Many icons appeared on the screen, organized in their different colors of the magic, but they were dimmed as if the file was a hidden file that could still be viewed, but not manipulated. Curiosity led him to look at other Ruhin names – he came by his magic honestly. The whole family was very powerful, but it leaned toward black, red and green. In Ludwyn’s case, it was a very hard lean. It looked as though he only used black. The red and green were there and respectably numbered, but they looked shriveled, as though he’d never bothered to use them at all, and the neglect had deprived him of any strength.
He looked up the Barleduc family. They were strong too, though perhaps, in general, not quite so strong. Their magic leaned the other way with white, and both blues being prominent, though the other three were represented. Overall, it appeared as though the strengths averaged about two thirds that of the Ruhin family. So, the white house had been right; merging the two bloodlines should strengthen the magic in him. In his own file, there was only a single icon’s difference between the two sides. All his icons cluttered up an entire screen. He must have upwards of fifty icons per magic, give or take, and less than a quarter of them were bright and fat – he had room to grow.
He looked at several other files and many of them were dimmed. The number and colors of the icons also varied. He soon figured out that the dimmed files belonged to people he knew to be dead, and since they were dead, nothing in their file could be changed; but if the file was active and bright, he could move the icons around. He wasn’t bold enough to try to change them, though; who was he to change the default settings?
Out of curiosity, he looked up other people he knew, both dead and alive. Some had only one or two icons, and some had several. Cisco had eight white icons. Mom – Analeace, had four dark blue icons, but they were dim. Gordon had five green icons. Ferris had eleven black ones, two red ones and one each of the blue ones.
He continued to look up other names that he knew, and saw that Mattie had only one white icon. He couldn’t find Errol; apparently they weren’t listed here if they didn’t have any magic.
Eventually he looked at Elias’s file; he didn’t know why he’d put it off for so long. He only had red icons. Sean counted twelve of them, then he counted them again and realized that they were bright. That could only mean one thing. The realization woke him with a start.
“Ferris, Dad’s alive,” said Sean, and didn’t wait for a response. He ran down stairs to find Marinda and Darrel still sitting at the table. “Dad’s alive. Help me find him.” He paced the floor frantically.
“No he’s not, dear. You father is…”
“Not him – Elias, Elias is still alive. I thought he was dead. Oh god, he’s alive.”
“How do you know?” asked Marinda.
“I don’t know. I just know,” he said in frenzied desperation. “I have to bring him here.”
“Settle down,” said Marinda. “Have you done this before?” She halted his pacing by gripping his shoulders.
“Yes, but it wasn’t so far away.”
“The hardest lesson to learn is that distance has only as much meaning as you give it,” said Marinda. “If you’ve done it before, you can do it again. You know what to do, now settle down and do it.”
Ferris burst into the house followed closely by Clayton and Larry. Sean stared at him, but he wasn’t seeing him anymore. He raked through his memories. Elias, sitting in his favorite chair, reading a book. Elias, sitting at the head of the table, playing ‘dungeon master’. Elias, wrapping his black pistol belt around his waist before leaving for work. Elias’s hands showing the boy, Sean, how to hold reins. Elias’s voice as he taught Sean how to aim and shoot his pistol. Elias’s smile when Sean showed him his first trophy.
Elias appeared between Ferris and Sean. He collapsed to the floor like a rag doll when he was no longer supported by a chair. Ferris lifted his shoulders and supported his head. Marinda reached for a cup of something on the table. Sean knelt in front of him and took up his swollen hands; they were blue and cold from too tight bindings that had been left behind.
Elias frowned and opened his eyes, struggling to bring them into focus, then he started to laugh. It was a ragged laugh with no humor in it. “Crazy. I’ve finally gone nuts.”
“No Dad, you’re not crazy. You’re here. I brought you here,” said Sean.
“There’s something wrong with him,” said Marinda. “I don’t know what it is. It’s like a poison.”
Elias looked toward the new voice. He focused hard – squinting – disbelieving. “M…Marinda?”
Sean concentrated on Elias’s puzzling condition. He had been tied to a chair for some time. His wrists carried the marks of cruel bindings made worse by his struggles. Then he noticed that his cuffs were unbuttoned, so he pushed one sleeve up and saw what could only be needle tracks on his arms. “Heroin?” He looked deeper and felt the churn of his magic.
“Yeah,” he said. “Discovered that things blew up if I was high enough. Killed a man the first time. Wanted to control it.”
He’s powerful enough to bring the whole house down without breaking a sweat. Sean pushed the churning magic down and watched as Elias faded as well.
Sean didn’t know very much about drugs. He never saw the logic of their abuse. Maybe it was somewhat funny watching someone else make an idiot out of themselves, but mostly he thought it was stupid.
“He’s going to be real sick for several days,” said Ferris.
“Let’s get him upstairs to a bed,” said Marinda. “Larry, you’ll have to move in with the men.”
As he watched over his father, he had plenty of time to wonder what had happened. He was shot more than two months ago. The funeral was a closed casket affair. But if he is here now, what had been in the casket? Wouldn’t the pallbearers have known the difference? Was there a different body in that casket? Had they been in on the whole thing?
Elias wallowed in delirium for three days, and for three days, Sean got no sleep; he was the only one around stronger than Elias. The girls moved to one of the other farmhouses, turning their room over to Darrel and Ferris so they could be near if needed. Elias would go from a dead sleep, to screaming hallucinations, with no rhyme or reason, and at any time during the day or night. He might have been able to touch only one of the magics, but he was easily twice as strong as any one else; he was even stronger than Darrel, though not by much. Sean couldn’t afford to doze.
The third night was the first that Elias was quiet all night long, and he woke with the dawn to drink a cup of tea before falling back to sleep again. The nightmare wasn’t over yet, but it looked like he was finally over the hump.
Two days later, Elias made his way downstairs for the first time, though he leaned heavily on Sean’s arm. Everyone at the table cheered and greeted him warmly. Then again, most everyone at the table knew of him like they had known of Ferris, and of course the rumor of the deathly-ill man Sean had brought from elsewhere had quic
kly spread throughout the community.
Sean sat him at the table in the nearest vacant chair and Marinda set a plate of food in front of him. He couldn’t eat it all, but he ate, and he talked, though his voice was hoarse and quiet.
All through the meal he looked around repeatedly – Marinda’s house was so un-New York-like, and more than once his eyes would find Sean and he’d say, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe you brought me…home.”
By the time Marinda shooed everyone out, he was showing signs of exhaustion. He told them what had happened, though. He needed to talk about it, to get it out in the open where it could be examined, and then put away.
“There was a standoff between some gang members and the car cops on the edge of the Park. My partner and I were in the area, so they called us in to create a diversion and thus break up the standoff. I think someone was waiting for my arrival because I was scarcely in sight when my horse was shot out from under me. That was the last thing I remember until I woke up in some basement. I never learned where that place was.
“I was mostly unhurt; I think I had a couple broken ribs and maybe a slight concussion, but I was scarcely awake when they shot me up the first time. I didn’t know my abuser, but I did know who he worked for; he made sure I knew that much. Obviously, he thought it gave him some advantage. I didn’t see it. Maybe he was just proud of it.
“From what I gathered, I was set up because I wasn’t on the take; some of my investigations must have been getting a little too close for comfort. I guess they wanted to turn me into a junky and ruin my career.”
He chuckled sadly. “What they didn’t expect was what affect the high would have on me. It took them a few times to figure out what was happening. At first, they thought it must have been a case of spontaneous combustion; there wasn’t much left of him. Eventually they figured out that every time they shot me up, things caught on fire. I couldn’t help it. I regret not being able to make better use of the fire, but that’s what heroin does – I didn’t care. I was having so much fun making things burn, I didn’t care what they were, and I really don’t like making people burn. I should have though; I should have burned every one of them.”
The Making of a Mage King: Prince in Hiding Page 14