by Steve Vera
When they separated, she looked at him. “I do have one more question for you.”
“Just ask.”
“What happens after tonight?”
He tried not to sound grim. “If we win, we go home. If we don’t…we die.”
The two of them stared at each other, the weight of his words settling on them like a squadron of lead snowflakes, but the sinking was brief; the paper walls of the dojo slid open and out stepped Noah, magnificent in her full ensemble. Her voluminous cloak, though lifeless and unmoving without magic, flowed over sapphire mail that glittered like blue diamonds. The chest plate was adorned with inlays of pearl, and in the middle, a willow tree in flames.
“Still fits fine,” Noah said with a flushed smile. She donned the deep hood of the cloak that fell down her back and her face disappeared, dark and shadowed. “Will yours?”
The flames of levity sprung right back up, like those trick candles.
Gavin slapped his stomach two times. “Of course.”
“Now that, “ Skip said, appearing from behind them and taking a swig from the bottle of Sam Adams in his hand, “is bad ass. You look hot.”
Noah’s smile, barely visible from the depths of her hood, took on a hint of swagger. It lit up the gloom.
A breeze of hope washed through Gavin. It wasn’t over yet.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Amanda said. “Do you mind?” She reached out and touched the velvet fabric of Noah’s cloak even before being answered. It was embroidered with undertones of lazuline and topaz, interwoven by patterns of pearl. “Suits you to a T,” she said. “Mysterious, but menacing.”
Noah responded with a slight nod.
Amanda’s hand strayed to the glittering rings of metal that made up the mail, feeling them beneath her fingers. “What kind of metal is this?”
“Blue Steel from a Valisian mine back home,” Noah answered.
“You have one of these, too?” Skip asked Gavin.
Amanda turned and waited for the answer.
“We all do. I was just about to change before somebody decided to get all nosy.”
Amanda narrowed her eyes at him. “Well, why don’t you so I can have a look at you? Maybe I’ll forgive you even more?”
“Would you like to help me?”
Amanda looked at him questioningly.
“It’s easier with two people,” he added.
Amanda smiled. “I would be delighted.”
*
Their momentary buoyancy flattened. Amanda had never been around anybody who’d been burned before, but there was a distinct, unforgettable cloy stuck to the inside of her nostrils as they entered the dojo. It lingered in the air, mingling with the eddies of incense and the sterile, medicinal odor of ointments.
“It is time?” Tarsidion asked, stirring on his mattress of blankets and sleeping bags.
“Yes,” Gavin said. “Can you fight?”
“Of course,” he said with a controlled groan as he sat up.
It was hard for Amanda to look at the giant man. She had no idea how he could not be going crazy from pain, how he could be so calm.
“What about the Barrett?” Gavin asked him.
Tarsidion thought about it a second. “If I had to,” he said. “But it would be unpleasant.”
Gavin nodded.
“Before I think of such things, I’m hungry,” he continued, standing to his full height. He looked down at Amanda. “Little lady,” he said with a nod, slid open the wooden-framed paper walls, stooped his head and stepped outside. It was the first time anybody had ever called her “little” since she’d been in junior high.
When the doors closed, she turned to Gavin. “How can he even move?”
Gavin walked out to the middle of the wooden floors, and Amanda followed. “He had extensive training.”
“Like you?”
“Like me.”
“There is so much I don’t know about you now,” she said with a shake of her head, which felt like it wanted to float away from her shoulders.
“All you need to know is that I love you, and that I’m not going to let anything happen to you, all right?”
He looked like he meant it. His eyes were unblinking, his voice strong and without hesitation. Still, he’d lied rather spectacularly to her for the past two years. Then again, what choice did she have?
“Okay,” she finally whispered.
“Good. Now come with me.”
This dojo was different than the one at Gavin’s house, much bigger, and reminded her of a cross between a Zen monastery and a medieval castle. There was a tranquility within the shōji walls that soothed her nerves, made her calmer.
The biggest difference however, was the set of stairs leading down at the far wall. Their entrance was marked by a pair of sconces alight with open flame, beckoning and inviting.
“Go downstairs and wait for me there,” Gavin said to her.
She looked at him questioningly.
“I’d like to be alone with Cirena a moment,” he continued, looking at the woman’s unconscious form on the couch bed. His eyes had changed to still water, utterly unreadable.
“Of course.”
He turned and approached Cirena with reluctant yet determined steps. He kneeled beside her bed then turned his head halfway around, as if waiting for Amanda to leave. She took her cue.
The sconces continued downward, spaced directly across each other at even intervals. There were only eleven of the gray stone stairs, but she felt as if she were descending into yet another world. At the bottom was a thick, antique-looking door that was half-ajar. Soft blue luminance summoned from behind. She pushed the door open, expecting it to creak, but though heavy, the door swung easily on well-oiled hinges.
There was nothing drastic about the hexagonal chamber, nothing overwhelming about its elegant simplicity, but the feeling of solace that embraced her, the ceremonial serenity that lived within this room, gave her a sense of peace she couldn’t ever remember experiencing.
If she had closed the door behind her, spun herself in several circles and then opened her eyes, she wouldn’t have known which door she’d walked in. Each wall of the hexagon room was identical, a thick, antique door in the middle, bracketed by twin sconces. It was a big room, with enough space to have a singles tennis match in, but still managed to feel cozy.
Perhaps it was the symmetry of the luxuriant, square carpet in the middle of the chamber. The rug created triangles and trapezoids of bare pewter stone where the carpet didn’t reach, depending on the wall. Burnished gold patterns tinged with orange-red weaved through royal blue. Like a sunrise over the sea.
How could she have not known this part of Gavin? How many times had he artfully deflected her questions or change the subject when speaking of his past? “Nothing worth mentioning,” was one of his favorite proverbs. How did a person maintain a second life so…convincingly?
The only clue he’d ever given her was that look he got in his eye when he thought she wasn’t looking, or if they ever brushed past the subject of his brother; his face got enigmatic, distant, as if he were on another…world. This was all making way too much sense.
Amanda waited in the middle of the room for several minutes, arms crossed over her chest, but as the minutes ticked past, her curiosity peeked from behind its fingers.
Each of the remaining five walls of the room stared at her, the twin sconces like eyes, the wooden door like a big, vertical mouth. They seemed official. Amanda studied them closer and realized that the door at two o’clock from her position was slightly open. Hmm.
Like a cat entering unfamiliar territory, she walked toward it, lea
ding with her head. Standing in front of it, she peeped through the crack but saw nothing. She glanced over her shoulder and wiggled her mouth uncertainly. No sign of Gavin. He never said she couldn’t take a look around. The only thing that made her nervous was running into Sikomi—she didn’t think she could handle that right now—but he wouldn’t be lurking down here, waiting in a cracked door at the bottom of the castle, lying in ambush just for her, right? She reached out, put her hand on the thick oak door and pushed.
No gargoyle lurking.
Inside was more of an alcove than a room, lit by six sconces arranged around an empty treasure chest. It was rather large, perhaps the size of a loveseat, and empty. Beside it was a simple stool. She approached.
The air was different in here, charged somehow. She sniffed, trying to identify the scents. She smelled stone, wood and an unfamiliar undercurrent given off by the blue-tinged flames of the room. She investigated closer. There was something different about these flames. And then she realized they weren’t giving off any smoke. Curious, she put her hand next to the sconce and felt no heat.
“I’m glad to see some things don’t change,” Gavin said from behind her, and she lost another year from her life. How many times did she have to tell him she hated it when he did that?
“That wasn’t very nice,” she said, bearing her teeth in an exaggerated smile.
“Ever the snooper, Amanda Casey.”
“I’m not a snooper. I’m merely curious. Those flames aren’t giving off any heat.”
“I know.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re magic flames,” he said with a light smile.
“Ever the annoying and vague…whatever your name is.” The sentence started off airy but didn’t end that way. All it did was remind her how long she’d lived a lie. It was going to take a little time for her to adjust.
“You can still call me Gavin, Amanda.”
“But it’s not your name.”
“It’s one of them, an aspect of me. Think of it as a nickname.”
Amanda nodded a few seconds later, accepting it, not wanting to pick a fight. At least not right now.
“Come on.” Gavin motioned for her to follow him back into the main chamber. He crossed over the thick carpet and stopped at an identical antique door, three down from the one they’d just left, and took out a key.
Amanda looked at Gavin closer. “Are you the leader?”
He stopped unlocking the door and turned his head half around. “Why do you ask?”
“Everybody seems to listen to you.”
Gavin regarded her so long she wondered if he was going to answer her, key still in lock. “I am now, I suppose.”
“Now?”
“My brother was our real leader.”
Click. Another piece fell into place. Gavin turned back around and unlocked the door.
This room was dark. Gavin walked in first, spoke a couple of syllables in a strange, slithery language and six sconces burst into flame. Amanda froze, eyes wide. Gavin winked at her.
“Have you always been able to do that?” she asked.
“Just here. And back home, of course.”
“Why here?”
Gavin looked around the gray-blue granite walls around them. “First things first.” He took in a very deep breath, like a karate master does before breaking twelve bricks, and then let it out slowly. The still waters returned to his eyes.
He began to take off his clothes. Amanda smiled uncertainly, caught off guard, but with ceremonious solemnity, he disrobed, folded his clothes precisely and piled them neatly next to the chest. He’d stripped down to his black boxers.
Amanda looked at his familiar scar-speckled body in a new light. Tall, lean and pleasantly muscular, the random scars across his body began to make sense…knights got scarred, right? Who knew what sights his eyes had seen?
“Are you ready?” he asked softly.
“For what?”
Gavin didn’t respond, just waited.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m ready…for whatever.”
“Then come here.”
*
Piece by piece, Amanda participated in Gavin’s metamorphosis. Although she’d never done any of this before, his gentle words and instructions made her feel as if she knew exactly what to do. There was something very ceremonious about it, poignant and personal, and emotion brimmed in her throat.
The first thing she pulled out of the chest was something called an aketon. It was a sort of doublet with a banded collar, and felt as if it had a layer of goose in between the quilted fabric. It was of a material she’d never seen before; a deep royal blue with pearl and silver embroidery, beautiful and somehow official, like a uniform. She held the aketon in front of her, but before she slipped it over his head, she kissed the back of his neck and was rewarded by a shudder. Then she slid it over him. She took a step back and smiled. It fit him perfectly, and the transformation began.
The trousers seemed to be a combination of supple leather on top, satin on the inside. He pulled them on in one graceful movement, somehow making even that mundane motion ritualistic.
His boots were black, handmade and of very high quality. She stared right in his eyes as she encircled his waist with a studded leather belt, kissed the corner of his mouth as she buckled it against the middle of his hips, gliding her fingers slightly south and then flowed to what was next in the chest—an armful of blue diamonds.
It was called a habergeon, and it was armor. It was heavy, though not as heavy as it should have been, and splashed light from the sconces around the room. He kneeled before her and she slid it over his head with a jingle of metal, and like a shirt it covered his chest, shoulders and arms, right past his elbows.
Like a knight of old, she fastened greaves to his shins and a cuisses to each thigh. The blue metal plate that protected his knee was called a poleyn, and his forearms were covered by metal bracers. And then came the breastplate.
If she’d thought the aketon had been beautiful, this work of art was exquisite. She slid her fingers across the intricate etchings and embossed patterns engraved in it, ran her fingertips over the willow tree in the middle and rubbed the coarse texture of the myriads of tiny jewels that set the willow branches on fire. It opened up, and like a steel trap she encased his torso in blue-steel protection. A fauld of three lames, or layers of plate metal, spread down his upper legs from the breast plate and covered his groin. She smiled. That was a good thing.
On the bottom of the chest was a deep-hooded cloak, folded immaculately. She picked it up, noted its luxuriant thickness and stared admiringly as it fell open between her hands. The fragrance of the wooden chest mingled with the scent of something distinct, yet indescribable within the fabric. A cousin to electricity, perhaps. She donned it over his shoulders and fastened it to his neck with a silver-blue brooch with the same willow tree in flames. The cloak flowed down his shoulders and back like a cape. It was the final touch, the frame to a Picasso, and the man she’d known for the last two years no longer stood before her.
Her boyfriend, a knight in shining armor.
“What do I call you?” she whispered.
“I told you, I will always be Gavin to you.”
“You don’t look like Gavin anymore.”
Gavin closed the distance between their faces so that his breath tickled her cheek. “I am Gavin,” he said gently, but with a chord of seriousness that was only now becoming familiar to her. “And I am more. I am a Magi, and I am a Knight of the Shard.”
Chapter Thirty
Science had made an offering to magic.
About
nine years ago, Cirena had dated the CEO of Starlight Industry Semiconductors. It just so happened that this company dealt extensively with all sorts of liquid crystal. In the semiconductor industry, liquid crystal sheets were used to test prototypes, indicating heat failure by a change in color, and Noah got it in her head that if liquid crystal was such a good conductor of energy in LCD monitors, televisions, digital clocks and a half thousand other applications in modern-day America, maybe it could conduct magic. Energy was energy, right?
As it turned out…
Though by themselves the trace amount of magic radiated by each of their Quaranai was insignificant, combined there was something that could be pooled and collected. That was the theory, at least. After fourteen months, seven weeks and two days of experimenting with different LCs and gemstones, that theory manifested into scientific fact.
“Would you like to do the honors, Noah?” Gavin’s mouth was dry and his palms were clammy. What happened here would decide whether or not they lived or died because if this didn’t work, they had no magic, and no magic meant Deos would feast on their souls. Even half-conscious Cirena realized the gravity of this moment. She’d roused herself from her self-induced trance, donned her armor and stood stoically with the rest of them, her face an inscrutable mask of alabaster pain.
Noah looked up, lifted her foot and pressed her boot heel directly in the middle of a cluster of willow leaves on fire woven into the carpet. From above there was a grating noise, two smooth stones riding against each other. What emerged from the ceiling was impressive enough to draw a gasp from Amanda, who observed from behind with Skip against the wall, between two sconces and in front of one of six closed doors.
With a stony whisper an octahedral slat of white crystal slid down and stopped in front of the five assembled Shardyn like a stalactite. It was about four feet long, with a circumference roughly to that of a volleyball.