She returned a minute later. I sat down on the floor and gestured for Miranda to sit next to me. “Pour a circle around us. Doesn’t have to be very thick, but it has to be closed.
“O … kay.” Miranda popped open the can and poured. “Will that work?”
“Yeah, that’s perfect.” I turned my palm face-up. “Give me your hand.”
She hesitated a moment, then locked her fingers inside mine. A small spark jumped between us. “Wards are pretty simple spells. They don’t need a lot of complicated focus items or sigils or anything. They’re just a wall, a wall made out of willpower. The ward I threw up around you in the basement last night? It blocks magic because it’s supposed to block magic, because I believe that it will, and my will shapes the Æther.”
“Æther?”
“The Æther is what makes magic work. Or it’s the medium through which magic works. I’m not sure. It’s a fundamental force of nature, like magnetism or gravity.”
“Okay,” Miranda said. She was watching me curiously, not sure where this was all going.
“The Æther responds to human thought. Every dream we dream, every story we tell, it all echoes in the Æther. That’s how I’m able to see Warren’s plans. He made a choice, that choice rippled through the Æther, and I saw it.
“But there’s more to it than that. The Æther doesn’t just echo our will, it conforms to it. Somewhere, somehow, every thought we have is made just a little bit real by the Æther. But if your willpower is strong enough, if you know what you’re doing, you can make your thoughts manifest.”
“So what, you just think of a wonderful thought and then you can fly?”
I smiled. “It’s not quite that simple. Well, no, it is that simple, really. But it isn’t easy. You have to summon enough willpower to make the Æther obey you, and you have to know what a spell is supposed to feel like before you can cast it.”
I released my willpower, pouring energy through my hand, through Miranda’s hand, and into the salt. A ring of blue fire raced around the circle.
Miranda pulled away from me and stared at her fingers. “Holy crap. What was that?”
“That’s what the spell feels like.” I dismissed the ward and offered her my hand again. More energy leapt between us. Miranda’s hand twitched, but this time she didn’t let go.
Again I dismissed and recreated the ward. “Can you feel that?” I asked her.
She stared at the salt. “It feels … strong. No, not just strong, confident. Like I’m a linebacker and the captain of the Asthmatic Chess League just told me he was going to kick my ass.”
“Not how I would have described it, but close enough. Okay, go ahead.”
“Go ahead and what?”
“Create a ward.”
Miranda let go of my hand. “You’re kidding, right?”
I turned her hand palm-up and touched her wrist with my fingertips. Miranda shivered. “You feel that?” I asked. She nodded. “That’s the Æther. That’s the stuff magic is made of. That’s the magic inside of you reacting to the magic inside of me.”
She grinned nervously. “We should be in a candle lit restaurant if you’re going to use lines like that.”
“I’m serious. You wanted to know how to protect yourself. This is the simplest spell you can learn, and the most important. This spell will keep you safe if the Asatru come after you. Or your grandmother. So create a ward.”
“But I don’t know how.”
I took her hand again. “Yes you do. Take that feeling, that confidence, and shape it into a thing. Make it real. Focus it on the circle. The salt will pick up the spell’s charge, make it sturdier. Here, touch the salt.”
Miranda placed her fingertips on the edge of the circle. I laid my hand over top of hers and called up the ward. Blue flames danced along the circle and over our hands. Miranda tried to pull away, but I held her hand in place. To us, the fire was harmless.
I dismissed the ward. “Did you feel that? The energy? The kind of energy?”
She stared at the salt. “Yeah.”
“Then make it happen. Make it real. Know that you can do it, know that the ward will protect you. Make your confidence into a shield.”
Miranda frowned and touched the circle, but nothing happened. “It helps to have a power word,” I said, “kind of a trigger in your mind to activate the spell.”
“Okay.” She stared hard at the salt, her eyebrows knit together, her lips pursed. I laid my hand on top of hers again, but it was just to give her confidence; I didn’t add any of my own energy to her spell. But I could feel the Æther stirring, feel it responding to her …
Miranda whispered the word protect, and a trace of flame danced around the circle, then disappeared. Unlike the spell I wove, Miranda’s fire was a soft, emerald green, just like her eyes.
“Holy shit!” Miranda said, jerking her hand away.
“Good job,” I said, smiling.
Miranda passed her hand over the circle. “But it didn’t work. There’s no ward.”
“I think you were just too surprised. You got distracted and the spell got away from you.”
“Is that dangerous?”
“Well, if you were calling up a fireball or something, yeah. This is a defensive spell. The worst thing that’s going to happen is it doesn’t defend you. That’s another reason it’s a good beginner’s spell. Try again.”
She touched the salt again, and after staring at it for a moment, jade flame raced around the edge. It stayed in place this time, flickering without burning, but it faded the moment she pulled her hand away.
“It’s still not sticking around,” she said, scowling.
“But you’re getting there. Try again, but don’t stop when you see the fire. Keep pushing your will into it until you feel it, um, pop.”
“Pop?”
“Yeah. Like when you’ve got a crick in your neck, and it just won’t go away, so you grab your jaw and you push on it and push on it and push on it, and finally it pops and everything’s better? But with magic fire instead of tendons.”
“I don’t have all of the medical issues you do, but I think I get it.” She closed her eyes and placed both sets of fingertips in the salt, then called up the ward. It responded more quickly this time, both because she was getting more confident and because the salt had started to absorb the charge of her spell, making it easier to cast each time. Miranda kept her eyes closed for about fifteen seconds, the fire dancing around her the whole time, then slowly pulled her hands away.
The fire continued to burn.
“Holy crap,” she said when she opened her eyes.
“Nice.”
“Why doesn’t the fire stick around when you, um, cast it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t tell it to. You expected it to keep burning, so it did.”
“Oh. Um, how do I … uncast it? Break it down? Dismiss it?”
“You can call it any of that. I’m not like an Oxford scholar about this stuff, I just use words that make sense to me. And you dismiss a ward the same way you call it up; you decide to.”
“Okay.” Miranda stared at the ward for a second, then waved her hand at it. The emerald fire flickered, then evaporated. “Was that right?”
I waved my hand over the salt; the ward was gone. “It worked, so yeah, that was right.”
“Well damn,” Miranda muttered.
I stepped across the circle and faced her. “Okay, I want to show you something else. Call up the ward again.”
She did, closing her eyes and touching the salt. I felt the energy ripple through the air as her willpower condensed into heatless flame. Miranda looked at me expectantly. “Okay, now what?”
I threw a fireball at her.
Okay, so I’m exaggerating a little. But just a little. I called up a sphere of light, the same general kind of stuff that I threw around as my primary offensive weapon, but set to stun instead of kill, and gently lobbed it across the room. Miranda shrieked and skittered backwards. The glowing globe hit
her ward and sunk in like a bullet fired into water. The air around her vibrated and filled with ozone. The circle’s flames reached up to the ceiling … but they held.
“What the fuck!?” Miranda shouted.
“I just wanted to prove that the spell worked,” I said. “I wanted to prove that your spell worked to protect you.”
Miranda sat back up and crossed her legs. “You could have warned me, jerk.”
“That would have defeated the purpose. The bad guys never call ahead. They don’t wait to make sure you’re ready, and they certainly don’t give you time to cast a ward, make sure it’s perfect, and reinforce its weak points. You have to be ready anyway.”
“Asshole.”
“Yep. But it still worked.”
Miranda glowered at me, but after a few seconds she shimmied her shoulders a bit and straightened her posture. “Okay, try it again.”
I gathered another sphere of light, this one around my left hand, just for variety, and tossed it at her. The ward crackled again, and again withstood my barrage.
Miranda sat placidly in the center of the circle. I could see her reaching out with her senses, testing the ward’s strength. Damn, she was a natural. If I spent a year or two with her, she would–but that was stupid. I’d be gone in a couple of weeks, and Miranda would go back to her normal, boring, I’m-not-going-to-get-killed-by-a-demon-because-a-douchebag-college-professor-summoned-a-hell-beast life.
Miranda opened her eyes to look at me. “Okay, again.” We repeated the experiment another half-dozen times. The only strain Miranda showed was a thin sheen of sweat across her brow.
“That’s enough for now,” I said.
“But I want to keep practicing,” Miranda said. “You use a different spell when you’re fighting. It’s more like a laser beam than a fireball. You’re holding back on me, aren’t you? Worried you’re going to hurt me? Afraid the spell you taught me isn’t good enough?”
“Huh,” I muttered.
“What?”
“You’re too damn smart for your own good. Yes, I’m holding back, but I’m not worried about the spell, I’m worried about you. I’ve been doing this for years, and I taught you that ward. I know how to break it, if I want to. And furthermore, I think I’ve done enough damage to your grandmother’s house for one day.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean if I really tried to hit you, wouldn’t have any windows anymore. And a wall or two might go missing.”
“Oh. So let’s go outside. There’s plenty of woods back there.”
“Later,” I said. “I can show you the ritual space, and I can show you how to deal with a real assault. But not now.”
“Getting tired?”
“Getting late. There’s gonna be a fight tonight, and I need some time to prepare.”
Miranda stood, put her hands on the small of her back, and stretched her spine. She looked at the pile of salt and chewed her lip. “I hope the vacuum can handle this.”
“I’ll sweep up.”
Miranda walked to the door, but glanced back at me. “Caden? You said when you ignored your visions, people died?”
“Yeah.”
She hesitated, then asked, “That ring you wear?”
My face clouded over and I looked away from her. “Her name was Erin.”
“I’m sorry,” Miranda said, and closed the door.
***
I spent the rest of the day in the woods, working on the sigils I had designed. I carved them into the dirt around the Asatru’s clearing, forming a triangle around the entire ritual site. The sigils were each nearly ten feet across and filled with intricate details. Rune-marked lines connected all three. Finally, I carved a circle in the dirt around the bonfire, added markings to its circumference, and connected it to the sigils with three lines.
This was a good site to use the sigils. First, the ley lines would give me added power. Second, the spell work the Asatru had performed here would make my spells easier to perform. And finally, if I didn’t manage to stop the Asatru before they summoned Wotan, I wanted the sigils close by.
The sigils were hidden by brush, but I walked around the clearing anyway, just to make sure they weren’t obvious. I wasn’t worried about the Asatru detecting them magically; I hadn’t used them yet, so they didn’t give off an Ætheric charge.
I filled the sigils, runes, and lines with salt–about a hundred dollar’s worth. The girl at the Handy Mart was really starting to wonder about me. I stretched my hands out and summoned the Æther, and fire raced across the sigils. Molten salt ran like water, then solidified into glass. That part wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made the sigil more real to me, which made it more likely to work, and I would use any edge I could get.
I took one last look around the clearing, reassuring myself that everything was ready, and headed back inside.
“Funny thing,” Miranda said. “Guy who fixed the windows just packed up his stuff and went away. Didn’t even mention how much it was going to cost.”
“Maybe he’s just a good Samaritan,” I said.
Miranda’s emerald eyes twinkled. “Maybe. So, ready to save the world?”
I shrugged “Probably.”
“Your confidence is inspiring.”
“Sorry,” I said. “This isn’t exactly a science. I’ve got a strategy, and I’m pretty sure the ley lines will give me enough power to pull it off.”
“You know, nearby sources of occult power were not on the disclosure sheet,” Miranda said.
“Damn realtors.”
“So what now?” Miranda asked.
“Now I’m going to go lock myself in my room and prepare. Tonight’s going to be interesting, and I want to be ready.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“I don’t think so. This is one of those don’t bring a knife to a magic missile fight things.”
Miranda scrunched up her face. “I really don’t like this whole passive thing.”
“I know, and I’m sorry. But this, what’s going to happen tonight …”
“I know,” Miranda said. “But I still don’t like it. Maybe when this is all over you can teach me how to set things on fire by staring at them.”
“Maybe,” I said, smiling, and headed upstairs.
I sat quietly, calming myself, until eleven PM. The spell I cast took a while to complete–nearly twenty minutes–so I needed to start early, but I also couldn’t keep it going forever, so I couldn’t start too early.
Plenty of mythologies talk about warriors touched by the gods. The Norse religions had the Berserkers, men overtaken by Wotan’s spirit. They fought in a wild frenzy, as likely to kill friend as foe, and they were supposedly immune to blades and fire. The Irish have Cu Chulainn, a demigod who owned a spear made from the bone of a sea monster. The Greeks wrote songs about Achilles, a man nearly invincible in battle.
Jehovah created the Judges and the Prophets. The Judges were the champions of his people. Samson is the most famous, and when the spirit of his god came over him he became superhuman. He could defeat entire armies single handedly and rip the gates off a city wall. The Prophets, on the other hand, were less physical and more mystical, calling down fire and casting curses.
The Mashiach combined both of these effects when he created The Seventy-Two. These men and women, who traveled two-by-two, had the physical power of a Judge and the magical talent of a Prophet. They could flatten a phalanx with a punch or call down fire from the sky, all depending on their mood and the challenge at hand. That mantel had been passed down through the centuries; every time one of the Mashiach’s warriors died, another was called.
The Hebrew Scriptures said things like “the Spirit of the Lord came upon him.” That was a second-hand description of the fact that Jehovah, and the Mashiach after him, fought on behalf of their champions, fought through them. When a Saint weaves armor from the Æther, performs fantastic feats of strength, or summons fire, it’s actually their god doing the work behind the scenes.
I’d figured out how to work all of the Saint’s spells and then some, but I wasn’t not as powerful as I was when I served the Mashiach.
With enough time to prepare, though, I could get close. I sat cross-legged on the floor and summoned the Æther. I was wreathed in blue energy, like a Buddha in a mandala, shrouded in something that was neither mist nor flame but quietly evocative of both. I drew in energies from all around me, from the earth, from the air, from the Ley lines running through the woods. As the energy swirled it began to solidify, forming a protective shell around my skin. In my mind I saw it as a suit of armor, a Knight’s battle dress, breastplate and gauntlets and grieves, but that was only a touchstone for my own mind.
The Æther pressed down on me like a heavy blanket and began to seep into me, filling my muscles, permeating my sinews, and seeping into my bones. It made me durable, fast, strong.
When the spell was complete I all but released it from my mind, holding onto it with a thin thread of consciousness. The Æther faded from view, but its gentle hum, the way it tingled against my skin, told me it was still there, still protecting me.
The armor was weightless and invisible, but impervious to all but the strongest assault. It also acted as a battery and a lens. The shell of Æther contained a titanic amount of power, condensed and confined, waiting to be released, begging to be molded. And when I did, when my thoughts touched the Æther and sent it on its way, I could level a building. When this spell was active, I was one of the most formidable opponents in the world.
Which was good, because I was about to go toe-to-toe with an old, cranky god.
Miranda was sitting by the fireplace when I went downstairs, clutching a mug of tea. “Caden?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why?”
“You look … I don’t know. It must be the light. You looked kind of like you were glowing.”
“You shouldn’t be able to see that yet.” Most people are working with the Æther for months before it starts to speak to them.
“So you’re off to battle?” she asked. “Going to slay some giants or murder some ogres or something?” She was trying to be light, but her voice was strained.
The Wild Hunt Page 9