by R. L. King
“So the tower here is where Argana used to be?”
“Not precisely. Argana itself is gone—vaporized during the war. The vast majority of its residents were killed, and those who survived were almost all absorbed into the other mage houses, forced to renounce allegiance to Argana and ally themselves with their new homes. All of this happened many years ago.”
“Errin said the war happened before anyone alive was born.” Stone tilted his head. “You must be a lot older than you look, then.”
When Harrison didn’t answer that, Stone studied the map again. “So you built the tower in this space between the ley lines? Did you build it, or did someone else? Errin called it ‘your tower.’”
“The area enclosed by the ley lines,” Harrison said, once again ignoring Stone’s question, “is something I am certain none of the mages in the coastal cities ever suspected. Because it is all but impossible for any of them to travel in the Wastes—as far as I have ever heard, none of them even try any longer after so many were lost during early attempts—they have no way to discover one of the side effects of their efforts.”
“Which is?”
“Put crudely—I can explain it to you in more detail if you wish, but some other time—the ley-line boundaries form a natural pool, where magic accumulates. Think of it as a section of a river where protruding rock formations disrupt the flow. The effect is that this area is even more profoundly magical than the rest of the continent. That is one of the reasons your body acclimated itself to the magic more quickly here than it would have if you had remained in Temolan. The cities’ ley-line intersection points are also powerful magical areas, but the energy here is…unique. More potent and stable than anywhere else in Calanar.”
Stone shifted to magical sight again, wondering for a moment why he hadn’t noticed the ley lines, but then the answer came to him. “So…you’re not located at a confluence of ley lines here, but in sort of a—magical pool between them?”
“Yes.” Harrison nodded approval.
“But that still doesn’t explain the tower. It looks a bit like the Obsidian—is that a coincidence, or do you just have a thing for tall black towers?”
“It is not a coincidence. They are the same place.”
Stone stopped his pacing and stared at him. “What?”
“The tower here and the Obsidian in Las Vegas are the same place, occupying space in multiple dimensions.”
“Now you are having me on. That’s impossible.”
In answer, Harrison indicated the open area. The chairs reappeared, remained for a few seconds, and then disappeared again.
Stone’s brain refused to process this new information. For several moments he alternated between gaping at the space where the chairs had been and back at Harrison. “But—you can’t—it’s not—”
“Normally, you would be correct,” Harrison said. “This location presents unique opportunities.”
“So…that’s why you call it the Nexus? Because it’s—what—sharing space in more than one physical location?”
“Yes. The tower itself exists in multiple places simultaneously. As for the interior spaces—”
“Wait,” Stone interrupted, remembering the gym. “So you’re telling me that the people I saw in the gym last night—”
“Were actually in its counterpart at the Obsidian. It is more difficult to maintain the interior locations in multiple dimensional spaces—it requires more energy, so only a few of them are permanently set up to do so. My suite is one of them. Normally even the gym is confined to its Earth location—I altered parts of it during your stay here, along with your suite, so you would have unrestricted access.”
“And…” Stone had to push to get the words out; he felt stunned, as if someone had just punched him in the gut. “You can’t do this with people, can you?”
“No. At least at my current level of magical ability, I haven’t found it possible for a living being to exist in more than one dimensional space at the same time. But it is quite possible to shift between them.”
“Aha!” Stone said in triumph, pointing at him. “So that’s how you got out of the Evil’s dimension?”
“Yes. I have attuned myself to this location, which permits me to return here from any other location—not simply one that occupies concurrent space with it on another dimension.”
Stone didn’t think he’d blinked since Harrison had dropped this bombshell. He did now, and swallowed. “This is…bloody amazing,” he said. “But what about the airship—the workshop? Surely you don’t have an airship in your garage in Las Vegas?”
“At the Obsidian, the workshop is part of the underground parking garage. The airship and other projects exist here, but not there.”
“I—I don’t know what to say.” Stone looked around the room again. It must have been a conference room back in Las Vegas. “Does anyone else know about this? Here or on Earth?”
“Errin knows in general terms, and Kira has accompanied me to Earth for a brief time. Neither of them knows precisely how the tower functions—Kira is a talented mage, but she doesn’t have the ability to travel there on her own. And Errin—she is a genius with things mechanical, but lacks the necessary magical concepts to comprehend all the nuances. She is fascinated by the technology I have brought to the tower, though, and has already made significant progress in studying electronics.”
“But she doesn’t know where you’ve brought it from.”
“Not specifically, no. That is something I don’t reveal, even to those I trust implicitly. If it should ever fall into the wrong hands, it could prove disastrous.”
“But yet you’ve revealed it to me. And you barely know me.”
“You have told me, Dr. Stone, that your objective is to learn my magical methods, at which time you will return to Earth. Is that no longer true?”
“No, no—it’s quite true. As I said before—this is all fascinating as hell, and I hope I’ll get the chance to discuss it with you at greater length…some other time. After I’ve had a chance to settle back in to my life at home and assure everyone I’m alive and well.” A thought struck him. “When I learn to handle this power—will I be able to come back here on my own?”
Harrison considered. “Potentially,” he said at last. “You did manage to find your way here before, so I have no reason to believe you could not do it again. You wouldn’t be able to come here—not to the Nexus, or anywhere else in New Argana—without my consent. The magical protections are far too formidable. But you could probably do as you did before.”
“But would I be in the same situation? Without my magic until I’m acclimated? Or does the acclimation stay effective? I wouldn’t fancy turning up in Temolan without magic—those bastards almost killed me last time, and I’ve no reason to believe I’d be that lucky a second time.”
“I don’t know the answer to that. It is something that might be worth study—but that might not be necessary.”
“Why not?”
Harrison waved off the question. “First things first, Dr. Stone. You must learn to control the power before you can experiment with it. Shall we begin?”
Stone didn’t even mind being dismissed this time. Harrison was right—as insistent as they were, the dozens of questions currently multiplying inside his head could all wait until later. The magic was the important thing. “Let’s do it. What do I need to do?”
Harrison returned to the board. With a wave of his hand, the map of Calanar disappeared. “You did an admirable job with the notes I sent you. As I said before, I didn’t expect you to.”
“Well, first I had to get past the fact that you’re the only person I’ve ever met who writes more illegibly than I do,” Stone said dryly. “After that, it was all downhill.”
“I deliberately sent you only the rudiments,” Harrison continued, ignoring Stone’s words. “If you could not comprehend those, no chance existed that you could progress further.”
“Is that how people learn magic here?” Stone l
eaned against the table, arms crossed. “That lot back in Temolan hardly seemed like they’d be willing to put in that kind of effort.”
“They would not. Most of them rarely expend effort for anything, if they can avoid it.”
Stone blinked. Had he actually heard an edge to Harrison’s normally calm tones? “You’re not fond of them, then?”
“You have seen them, Dr. Stone. What do you think?”
“Honestly, I wasn’t sure at first. Remember, I don’t know you very well—and there was that matter with those survivalists out in the desert. For a while at first, I wondered if you were somehow connected to the mages in the cities. I was afraid I might find you in Temolan, wearing one of those ridiculous outfits and terrorizing the mundanes.” Before Harrison could speak, he raised a hand. “But that didn’t last long. You can be a hard-arse, true, but I’ve never seen you show outright cruelty. And anyone who’d be willing to do what you did with that portal—well, there didn’t seem to be much common ground between you and the ‘Talented.’” He put contemptuous finger quotes around the words.
“To answer your question—no, that is not how they learn magic. Remember, they are native to this dimension, so the process of acclimation is not necessary. They are also not attempting to access the energy across dimensions. Most of the information I sent you concerned itself with how to do that. The actual magic is secondary, and has little to do with the power source. Each mage’s potential is different, and consists of a combination of inherent power level, and learned skill.”
Stone tilted his head. “So it’s a bit like cars, then: an economy car and a Ferrari both run on the same power source, but the Ferrari can do more with it.”
“And the Ferrari begins with more of it,” Harrison said. “It is a flawed analogy, but it will do as a start.” He turned back to the board and begin dashing off figures. “Where you are fortunate, though, is that I do not need to teach you magic. You already know magic—probably better than I do, since your training was more formalized and structured. What you must learn to use this energy source is how to tap it safely.” He stepped back. “Do you remember this?”
Stone studied the figures, trying to make sense of Harrison’s rapid scrawl. “Yes. That’s the gist of what you sent me in the notebook. The equations describing this dimension’s location.”
“Yes.”
“Was there something wrong with the formulae, or with how I interpreted it? Is that why I was able to reach the energy, but it burned me out when I used it?”
“No. I did make an error, but not in the formulae. I failed to account for acclimation. Remember, I have never dealt with anyone with no connection to Calanar attempting this.”
“You mentioned that,” Stone said. “If you don’t mind my asking—what’s your connection to this place? You said before you weren’t ‘fully of Earth.’ You certainly seem a lot closer to Earth people than you do to the others I’ve met here.”
“I am half Calanarian.” Harrison didn’t turn back from the board. “My mother was a native of this dimension, and my father of Earth.”
“Indeed?” Stone asked, surprised. “So someone else found this place? Or did your mum find Earth?”
Harrison seemed to tense for a moment, but then resumed writing on the board. “The lack of acclimation no doubt resulted in the issues you experienced. Because your body was unfamiliar with the energy you were asking it to channel, it overwhelmed your magical pathways. The time you spent here should alleviate that.”
“You’re not going to tell me, then. That’s fine—I shouldn’t have asked. So—why wasn’t I able to do anything when I got here? Even on Earth, without this acclimation, I could still use the energy, even if it burned me out. Here, I couldn’t even do that.”
Harrison made an adjustment to one of the equations, then wrote another one below it and stepped aside. “Based on this, can you answer your own question?”
Stone once again studied the scrawls. Harrison might claim not to be a teacher, but it was exactly the way he himself would have treated an apprentice. It was always easier to impart information to someone if you made them figure it out themselves than if you told them directly. “Wait…” he said slowly. “I think I see it. The first formula shows how to reach this dimension from Earth. It’s a bit like a map. But I still don’t quite see—”
“You are close, Dr. Stone. Think of it more as a switchboard than a map.”
“Ah!” Stone grinned in triumph. “I see it now. The notebook you sent me showed me the direct connection between my dimension and this one. It was sort of—hard-wired. So when I used the same principle to try reaching Calanar’s energy from Calanar, it didn’t work because my starting point was wrong.”
“Well done.” Harrison pointed at the second formula. “And this one?”
It looked similar to the first one, with a couple of significant differences. Stone pushed off the table and moved in closer, restless with anticipation. “Yes…yes! You’ve altered the variables—instead of Earth’s dimensional space pointing at Calanar’s, this one is Calanar-specific.”
“Yes.”
Stone could hardly bear to hope. “Bloody hell…that’s all it is? That’s all I need?”
“Try it.” Harrison swept a hand and the cover lifted off the table, revealing a number of items: a large rock, a book, a stack of papers, a couple of heavy dumbbells from the gym, and a basket of various-sized metal spheres. “Begin by levitating the book.”
Stone drew a couple of centering breaths, took one more look at the equation, and then, heart pounding, faced the book on the table. He visualized the pattern in his mind, the same way he did as second nature back on Earth when he did magic, but updated it using the new information Harrison had given him.
“Here goes…” he muttered, and released the power.
The book lifted neatly off the table.
Stone sagged back, momentarily overwhelmed. Yes! After nearly two months without it, he was doing proper magic again, and it felt wonderful! He didn’t even care that as soon as he lost concentration, the book crashed back to the table.
He grinned at Harrison, likewise not caring whether he looked as giddy as the most callow of apprentices after his first successful spellcasting.
But then he sobered. Sure, he’d done magic using the Calanarian energy source—once. But he’d done that before, and every other time the single effort had burned him out. Holding his breath, he faced the book again and focused.
Once more, it rose from the table and hovered there.
“Oh, that’s brilliant…” he whispered. This time he managed to hold it in place. The power came easily, effortlessly.
“Take it slowly,” Harrison said. “Your body is still getting used to the power.”
“Will it burn me out again if I use too much?” Now that he had his power back, the thought of losing it again was more than he could handle.
“Unlikely, but I suggest moderation, at least at first. Think of this in the same way as your workouts: you have to build the muscles before putting them under load. The healing machine can’t help you in this area.”
“Got it. Take it easy for a while. I can do that.”
“Judging by your current performance, I don’t think it will take you long.” Harrison moved to the end of the table. “Try a shield.”
It took Stone a moment—using the new power source for anything but ‘spray things with a firehose’ while simultaneously calling up the pattern for a spell was still a bit like trying to juggle chainsaws—but after a moment his usual shimmering shield flared around him. Maintaining it seemed to take less effort than it had on Earth; he wondered if it was because Calanar was so much more magical, or because this energy source was inherently more efficient than either black or white magic.
Something slammed into the shield. Startled, he barely held it firm as a second missile hit it. Harrison was using magic to fling the metal spheres from the bowl at him at high speed.
Now that he wa
s expecting it, Stone had no trouble keeping the shield at full strength. “Throw the rock,” he challenged, pointing at it on the table. The thing looked like it weighed at least twenty pounds—it would either be a good test for him or he’d have to allow time for another session with the healing machine.
Harrison didn’t hesitate. The rock lifted from the table and rocketed toward the shield.
And bounced off.
Harrison caught it before it reached the floor, but Stone barely noticed. He was staring in wonder at the spot where it had hit.
That rock might not have demolished his shield back on Earth—at least not the black-magic version. After all, he’d managed to use one to contain the detonation of a small bomb only a couple of months ago. But even that had been at a cost: the psychic feedback had nearly wiped him out. Now, as Harrison sent the rock back to its place on the table, Stone didn’t even feel a faint warning pain.
“This is amazing…” he said, shaking his head.
Harrison put him through several more exercises: manipulating the various spheres independently while keeping them afloat; using delicate control to page through the book; lifting the dumbbells and moving them around the room; vaporizing the sheaf of papers with a blast of fire. They kept at it for over two hours, and each time Stone performed the requested action with little effort. He grinned the whole time, feeling like a child who’d just gotten all his favorite toys restored after losing them to a long-term punishment.
“Are you experiencing any fatigue?” Harrison asked at one point.
“A bit,” he admitted. “But nowhere near what I’d have on Earth, at this level of sustained magical expenditure.” It was true—black and white magic both had their advantages, but both eventually tired him if he used too much without resting. Now, after two hours of near-constant casting, he felt about as tired as he might if he’d walked a few blocks at a brisk pace. It was exhilarating.