He spoke in a raspy voice, barely heard. “I know what you think. And you are right.”
Still holding the cross in front of him like a weapon, he waved Jeremias over to him. “It is time...let the test begin.”
With grim determination Jeremias walked over to the edge of the roof. When he reached the very end he stopped to gaze at the hard ground beneath him. It was well over sixty feet, closer to one hundred.
He turned to the brothers that were holding Michael and his friends. With a brisk wave of his hand he called them to him.
“Do it,” he said quickly.
Without ceremony the five travelers were hurled from the top of the church, with all of the church members crowding near the edge, trying to get a look at the bodies that would inevitably be smashed on the ground below.
Jeremias had acted too swiftly. The ancient leader of the church did not have time to prepare himself. His talisman was strong, but due to his advancing age he was no longer strong enough to control it effectively. He needed to be in sight of his spell or it would be broken. Jeremias had the travelers thrown from the roof before he could be moved to within sight of the crime. Now he was held captive in his chair, cut off from sight by the brothers grouped near the edge.
As Michael and his friends were tossed from the roof, the spell was broken. They tumbled end over end, limbs flailing in the empty air. From somewhere a startled cry escaped trembling lips.
Michael was quick to act, there was no time allowed to look for the best solution to their danger. With hard, strained concentration, he brought the emerald to life.
The shield he had erected in the Cruz Mountains once again surrounded them. Since they were not standing on the ground this time, the shield took the form of a complete sphere. They were floating to earth, encased in a giant emerald green bubble.
From the roof of the church came anguished cries, and quickly said prayers. Their worst fears had been realized – the travelers were magicians.
With fists raised over head, eyes afire with hatred, the churchmen swarmed from the roof and down the stairs to do battle with their unholy enemy.
CHAPTER 14
The bubble floated to earth as the brothers of the church clambered down the stairs. It was an unusually clear night. The myriad of stars reflected off the emerald green bubble. Michael waved his arms and the bubble disappeared with an audible pop. Unprepared for the release, the travelers rolled to the ground. Sarah was on her feet before any of the men.
“Come on! We’ve got to get clear from here. If that old man gets near us with that cross, we’re done for!”
Michael had scant time to marvel at her take-charge attitude before he had to begin running to catch up with the others.
“Wait a minute!” he called when he caught up with them. “I can handle this, I’m a magician!”
“Fat lot of good that did us earlier, Michael,” called back Oliver. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather try to outrun them than rely on your power.”
They continued running until they reached the beach. It extended for nearly a quarter of a mile to the north, but they arrived at the south end of the beach, where it began to merge with rough rock outcropping.
“To the rocks,” called Thomas. “We can make a stand there.”
The group dashed into the cover of the rocks. Everett was the last to arrive, running slowly, puffing and panting.
“Why didn’t you just fly over, Everett?” asked Sarah as she peered around the rock outcropping. “I’ve seen you fly before.”
“You haven’t seen me fly, child,” answered Everett between gasps for breath. “You have seen me float. That’s all that I can do, float where the wind will take me. And right now the wind is blowing inland, towards the church. I would just as soon not be over there, thank you very much.”
“You had better get your breath back in a hurry, old man,” said Michael. “Here they come, and they’re as mad as hornets.”
Everett rolled to his knees and peeked from behind the rocks. “I don’t see the old man yet, do you?”
“No,” replied Michael. “It will probably take them some time to haul that chair down the steps and out here.”
Forgetting the real or imagined powers of magicians, the brothers of the church were rushing down the dark beach toward Michael and his group. Nearly forty fanatical men, some carrying pieces of driftwood or rocks they had picked up for weapons,
The charging men were within fifty yards when Michael and Everett finally decided on a course of action. Both men came to their feet at the same time, Everett’s arms pin-wheeling and Michael’s held straight out in front of him. The concentration was evident on both of their faces.
As the church brothers ran at them, the sand from the beach began to swirl at their feet, first slowly but picking up speed. Soon the sand was blowing fiercely in their faces.
Some of the stronger members bent their heads into the storm and surged ahead. A scant ten yards from their goal they smashed up against an invisible wall, their heads snapped back from the impact and the brothers fell to the ground.
“Okay,” said Michael. “We can go now. But, we still need to hurry.”
“How long will that barrier hold, Michael?” asked Everett.
“Your guess is as good as mine. Five to ten minutes, I would guess.”
“That’s good,” offered Thomas. “We can lose them in the dark.”
They were nearly two miles south before they stopped to rest. They had tried to move quickly, but the rough conditions of this section of the coastline made travel difficult even at the best of times.
Even with the bright moonlight, vision was difficult. There were quite a few of the gnarled trees that were indigenous to this area, and the black shadows that they cast made the travel treacherous. The ground was littered with stones, large and small, that threatened to twist a carelessly placed foot.
“This place offers good cover, Michael,” said Thomas, as they descended down a rocky embankment to a secluded cove with a small beach.
They sank wearily to the soft sand to catch their breath. It had been a hard journey through the darkness, and the group had received only a couple of hours sleep.
“I’m not sure I understand what happened back there,” said Oliver as he leaned back against the rock embankment. Like the rest of the travelers, he was nearing exhaustion after the near tragedy.
“What’s to understand?” asked Thomas. “That old wizard of theirs caught us when we weren’t looking. Then they threw us from the top of their church. I think that’s easy enough to understand.”
“That’s just what I mean!” replied Oliver, undaunted by Thomas’ logic. “If they think magicians are devils, what was that old man doing there?”
“That should be obvious,” answered Everett. “He is a rouge magician, hiding out where he would be least expected. That’s what he meant when he leaned over and said ‘I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right’. He has the members of the church convinced that his power is not magic, but the power of God.”
“That’s a fine line that he has drawn for himself,” interjected Michael.
“True enough,” said Everett. “But, he has obviously been very successful walking that line. He has lived long enough to become ancient.”
Sarah had been walking around their small hidden beach while they had been talking. She approached to where the men were sitting and stared down at them with her hands on her hips.
“There is no wood here to make a fire,” she said. “And if there was wood, you probably wouldn’t allow one anyway. I thought you big brave men were going to protect me! Instead, here we are in the middle of the night, on a cold little beach, with no fire.”
She leveled her best scathing look on them as she continued. “What’s more, we don’t have any of the supplies. We left them all back at the church. We didn’t even have a chance to use any of them.” With that she turned her back to them and walked the few steps that was necessary to take her t
o the far side of the cove.
The chastened men shared embarrassed glances with each other before Michael spoke. “What was that all about? I guess I had better go over and try to calm her down.”
Everett put his hand on Michael’s arm as Michael began to get to his feet. “I’m not sure she needs to be calmed down. This is a group effort, and her input is just as important as anyone else’s. And, what’s even more important, is that she is entirely correct.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” added Thomas. “We’ve been treating her like a little girl that needs protecting, without giving her any opportunity to contribute.”
“I’m as much to blame for that as anyone,” said Oliver. “All her life I’ve been looking over her shoulder, not giving her a chance to fend for herself.”
The four men looked over at Sarah’s rigid back. They made a group decision without speaking. Michael climbed to his feet and walked over to her.
He stood next to her and they both watched the waves surge gently to shore, the moon casting gentle light on the water.
“How does one go about apologizing for stupidity?” he asked.
Sarah looked up at Michael’s brilliant and smiling green eyes. They moved into each other’s arms, Sarah rested her head on his chest. Nothing further needed to be said. When a short time later they returned to the makeshift camp, Sarah’s ire had been forgotten.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked.
“I think the first order of business should be to get our supplies back,” answered Everett.
“You aren’t thinking of going back there, are you?” asked Oliver.
“No, of course not. Michael greatly needs to sharpen his abilities, and we need to be able to work as a group. So, we go back to magic.”
Everett instructed his friends on what he expected from them. He sat the group on the beach, in a small circle. With hands linked, legs crossed in front of them, and eyes closed, they concentrated on the individual cells where they had been situated.
Each member was to specifically concentrate on where they placed the supplies in the cells. With the picture of the supplies in each of their minds, Michael and Everett worked their magic to transport the packs from the cells to the center of the group.
Deep inside the church, in the basement cells, the packs were where the travelers had left them. The elders of the church had immediately sent Brother Benjamin to the cells to watch over the supplies. Should the accursed magicians return for them, he was to notify the other church elders immediately.
But Benjamin knew why he was sent here. The others considered him to be weak, and so had banished him to the cells to keep him out of their way.
He wished those devils would attempt to return. He would show the others just how brave and reliable he was. Now that the confrontation was over, Benjamin had convinced himself that he was a fearless acolyte of the faith.
Benjamin was walking from cell to cell muttering to himself about the injustice of it all. He was now in the cell of the little old man that had been so cocksure of himself when the brothers had first confronted the group. He thought of how he would teach that old man a lesson if he could get a hold of him once again. With a sigh, he kicked the supplies that had belonged to the old man, then turned and sat on the pack.
In a matter of minutes the ground in the center of the group began to shimmer with a faint green glow. Suddenly the sand exploded upward in a rush, as it was displaced by the arriving supplies. Sitting on one of the packs, with mouth agape in shocked surprise and terror, was one of the church elders. The members of Michael’s group had opened their eyes when they heard the explosion, and returned the startled church brother’s open-mouth gaze.
The brother continued to stare at all the people in the circle as the sand returned to earth in a raining shower. His hood had fallen from his head, and Michael could see that it was Benjamin, the elder that had seemed to shrink in fear at Michael’s earlier outburst.
The falling sand continued to pelt the man’s bald pate as he slowly rolled his eyes back in his head. With a soft moan escaping his lips, Brother Benjamin fainted, falling backwards from the packs into Thomas’ arms.
By the time Brother Benjamin came back to his senses, the circle had been broken, and packs stowed against the embankment.
Sarah was chosen to speak to the faint-hearted man in hopes that he would not feel as threatened.
“What were you doing sitting on the packs?” she asked softly, as she knelt down beside him.
“Ohhhhh....,” he said.
“You have to help me if I’m going to help you. What is your name?”
“Ohhhhh....,” he answered.
“My name is Sarah. We are not here to hurt you, you know. We are just passing through. All we want to do is continue our journey in peace.”
“Then why did you bring me here?” he finally asked. “I was minding my own business and you ensorcelled me.”
He looked quickly around the camp at the men, as though he feared he had said too much, perhaps offending the magicians.
“We didn’t mean to bring you here,” Michael told him. “We were just retrieving our supplies, you happened to be in the way.”
“I didn’t mean to get in your way,” Benjamin whined. “I was instructed to guard your belongings. The other elders of the church felt I would not be a hindrance to them if they could keep me out of the way.” He shuddered. “Now look at me! I’ve been captured by the Devil’s minions. I’ll probably be condemned to Hell for eternity!”
Brother Benjamin was nearly wringing his hands as he contemplated his dim future.
“We have no intention of harming you, or keeping you here,” Michael assured him.
“Then what do you want from me?”
“We don’t want anything from you,” answered Everett, as he moved over to join the conversation. “We do have some questions that we would like answered, but you will be free to go whether you answer them or not.”
Benjamin looked at his captors as though he could not quite believe that one of his lifelong enemies, a magician, would be willing to let him live after getting him alone.
“What? What do you want to know?”
“That old man in the chair, who is he?” asked Everett.
“Father Samuel? Well, he is the father of our church.”
“We figured he was your leader,” said Michael. “We wanted to know where he came from, and how long he has been at the church.”
“He has always been at the church,” answered Benjamin, with a quizzical look on his face. “When I say he is the father of our church, I don’t just mean the leader, I mean he is the very founder of our religion.”
Everett was taken aback with this revelation. His understanding was that the Church of the Second Millennium was founded around the time of the Magicians’ War.
“How is that possible, Brother Benjamin? That would make him nearly two-hundred years old!”
“Yes,” replied Benjamin, with chest visibly inflated. “It is the Power of God that makes it possible.”
“For God’s sake, man!” Thomas implored. “Can’t you see that your church father is a magician? Even I can see that, and I hadn’t been exposed to magicians until a couple of months ago.”
Benjamin visibly flinched from Thomas’ tone. Proud of his church father as he was, he was still badly frightened to be under the control of this nest of magicians.
“I have answered your question, may I please go now?”
“Michael, do you still remember the spell of forgetfulness that I taught you so many years ago?”
“Yes. By the time he gets back to his church he won’t remember why he was outside.”
After Benjamin was allowed to leave -- his memory of the last hour wiped clean – Michael cast a spell to hide their camp. Sarah was even given the benefit of her campfire, not the traditional wood fire she expected, but one of magic that burned smoke-free and warm.
The questions of where Father Samuel had come f
rom, and why he had formed the church, would have to wait. Everett was enthralled by the thought of a rouge magician hiding among the people that hated magicians the most. He could scarcely believe the old man had been around since the Magicians’ War.
He would need to seek an answer to this in the future. But more pressing matters were at hand. In the morning Michael’s group would once again strike south.
CHAPTER 15
Feeling a need to be as far from the Church of the Second Millennium as possible, the decision was made to break camp at first light. By mid-afternoon they were over five miles away from the church. They had reached a rugged area of the coast that was heavily overgrown with foliage on the left side of the old road, and had steep rocky drop-offs to the ocean on the right.
After the storm of the previous day, the air carried a cleanliness they could almost taste. The ocean, nearly two-hundred feet below them, was a brilliant, clear blue. It was calm and smooth, more like a large pond than the powerful mass that it was.
They were forced to walk along the old coast road rather than along the shoreline as there were no beaches along this stretch of shore, only huge seaweed-encrusted boulders. The weeds were constantly sprayed by the waves that came crashing into rocks, making them treacherous to walk upon.
As they had only a couple hours of sleep to separate two full days of travel, the group was nearing exhaustion. They decided to take a lengthy rest break in a shaded spot along the road. The shade was not provided by natural vegetation, rather by what was left of an ancient metal box. Its former condition was barely recognizable. It was rusted nearly through, and was collapsing in upon itself, but was still substantial enough to provide shelter from the afternoon sun.
“As big as this is -- and you still say that it was one of the ancient’s wagons that traveled the roads under its own power?” asked Thomas as he looked over the relic.
“That’s right,” answered Michael. “See that big lump of metal in front of the box? That’s the part of the machine that powered it.”
Thomas looked at the mass of neglected metal as he slowly shook his head in awe. “It’s amazing what they were able to do.”
The Enchanted Emerald (The Enchanted Stones Book 1) Page 12