Wilder Mage

by CD Coffelt

  Justus closed his eyes.

  The harsh beeping sound woke him, and for a moment, Justus felt disoriented, still in the past. His feet hit the floor as he stood and picked up the alarm clock he had set to give him an hour’s rest.

  He stared at it and then threw it hard against the wall of his office. The little timer smashed and went silent as he stood panting, staring at the pieces.

  What a colossal fool he was.

  He thought to send a locating element to find Sable. But she wasn’t a full wizard yet, and that made her difficult to find.

  What he needed was a person close to her, someone who was a full wizard, in command of all the elements.

  Justus pulled his ward stone from his shirt and thought of a mental request, to find and locate a wizard without them being aware of the search. Immediately, his stone moved under his hand, shivered slightly, and the magic slithered from it and arrowed away from him, like a hound on a scent trail.

  Within a minute, the search was complete and he knew where Sable was.

  At the side of the head of the Imperium.

  And everything fell into place—the reasons, the locations; Tiarra was moving back to familiar territory.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The man stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out the window of the house where the woman lived. A muscle in his cheek twitched regularly, jumping in time to the silent beat of his emotions. He combed through his gray hair with his fingers.

  Maybe the stress is finally getting to me.

  He could feel it coming, like joints complaining before a storm. He knew the juxtaposition of the players was converging. The game was about to begin. Events were moving too rapidly, and his staff was scrambling to keep up.

  There was no sound from behind him, but he knew she was there, still at the kitchen table, looking at nothing.

  “You remind me of her, you know,” he said softly without turning from the window. “Your appearance especially, that is spot on. But the mannerisms…” He shook his head but didn’t continue.

  She did not respond and, since he heard no sound, probably hadn’t even stirred or reacted to his words.

  The street was empty of traffic. At this hour just before sundown, at the end of a beautiful summer day, people usually went out for supper or went looking for entertainment. But there were few cars on this stretch of road on a normal day. And this was not a normal day. His eyes shifted to movement on the sidewalk, but whoever—or whatever—had vanished.

  His cell vibrated.

  “Yes,” he answered. “Report.”

  “The principal is still at the original site. The operatives are withdrawing from the theater.”

  “They are?”

  The gray-haired man’s brow gathered in surprise. They were leaving. But why?

  “One thing,” the voice on his cell said. “They are pulling back, but they are still in the area, arranged on an outside perimeter, a circle around the principal.” The voice paused. “A very large circle.”

  “And what about the VIP?”

  “She is still in play.”

  The man nodded absently. It made sense. The chase was over. Now the waiting and maneuvering would begin. The chess game was well along, with strategies and plans beginning to form.

  She was standing at his side, appearing out of nowhere, startling him. The matronly figure was as still as a statue, hair curled neatly, her wrinkled features the face of a woman in her seventies. As she stared out the window, her eyes narrowed as she focused on something he didn’t see.

  “We might have a situation here,” he said slowly into the cell phone. He stared, as she seemed to track movement outside the house with her eyes. “Are there any patterns, any operatives around this area?”

  “Wait a sec.”

  The voice went silent. Then: “Uh, you might have a problem.”

  “Figured.”

  He heard an electrical hiss of static on the line. “Several of the group broke off and—” Indecipherable noise made the man pull his ear away from the phone. “...you should take cover. Immediately.”

  The phone went dead.

  The man dropped the cell, and it thumped softly on the carpet. He fumbled for a black chain around his neck and reached for her hand.

  She ignored him as he pressed her index finger to the mottled stone pendant. The fixed magic’s effect was almost immediate, and he felt the cloaking and disguise settle over his body and face. It was like a chilling wind passed over him and then was gone.

  The woman at his side stirred, and she spoke for the first time that day.

  “Someone is coming, another wizard,” she said.

  A knock on the door made him jerk, even though he was expecting it. The woman followed him to the entrance and stood behind him. The man known as Paul sucked in a quick breath and opened the door.

  He thought he was ready for whoever knocked. But whatever he expected to see, it wasn’t a gawky teenage boy. The kid took a step back, his eyebrows rounded in surprise.

  “Mrs. Aubre?” The boy’s eyes went past the man’s shoulder.

  “Bert. Why are you here?” the woman asked, her voice now a pleasant mask.

  “I told Justus I’d look in on you off and on. I just…” His voice trailed off and then his eyes sharpened. “What is wrong? And who are you?”

  “A cousin, of sorts,” the man said.

  Complications. Always complications, he thought.

  “Someone is coming,” the woman said again.

  Paul turned to her and started to speak.

  The voice startled Bert and Paul. “Well, looky here. Got us three of ’em.”

  A well-muscled man stepped from the tree line and strode arrogantly to the house entrance.

  Bert started and turned.

  “Hold on, punk. You stay put.” The muscled man spat and cursed under his breath, “Damn humans.”

  He pulled a cell from his shirt pocket and thumbed one number into the pad. “Got ’em,” he said. “Plus another.”

  Three other figures stepped onto the lawn and angled toward the house. The man known as Paul didn’t have to see them use their talents to know what they were.

  The sun was touching the horizon as Justus drove to the McIntyres’ house where Dayne and Macy waited. He had called them, asking them to remain at the house and wait for him.

  Now, as he pulled into the drive, he wondered if they should have escaped instead.

  He didn’t feel any adepts other than Dayne and Macy, but the air felt charged, like just before a rainstorm. The earth was waiting, expectant. The sun shot one last finger into the sky, a searchlight of liquid gold, and then it disappeared behind the distant horizon. The light would remain for many minutes. This time of year, the land would be in twilight for an hour or more.

  Macy met him at the porch. “He is hurting,” she said abruptly. “It’s like before, when Sable was taken.” Her face crumpled. “Can you do something?”

  But Justus was shaking his head before she finished speaking. “If I try to help him now, it wouldn’t turn out well for either of us. You remember what happened the first time, when it was so bad. I can’t. Not now. Tiarra is on her way here. Or maybe even already here. If Dayne is in that much pain, it might be that she is very close.”

  He heard the groan from behind the closed door leading to the house. If it was that bad already, he needed to hurry.

  Justus shook his head at Macy’s silent plea. “It would drop me like a stone,” he said softly. “And I have to be ready. She is bringing Sable, probably going to try to turn her using me or you. Be careful and stay away. I—”

  Whatever he was going to say was lost in a blast of ice-cold wind. It curled around him, probing with glacier fingers, looking for magic. Macy’s face paled as Dayne cried out.

  “Go now. I don’t think he will hold out if he sees you,” Macy said.

  He nodded, leaped from the top of the porch to the ground, and loped around the corner of
the house to the trail leading to the clearing.

  Zephyr was behind the house, propped up on one of the lounge chairs like a tawny sphinx. She was alert, her eyes fixed without blinking in the direction of the clearing. One ear flicked to him and then back to point toward the trail. A vicious growl slid through her white teeth.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. We got problems.” He started to trot down the path, stopped, and turned back to look at the cat. “Take care of her, okay? You know. If.”

  The cat’s eyes turned to him, and she seemed to sigh and then trilled softly.

  I will do what I can, but my power is limited.

  “I know,” Justus said softly. “At least stay with her. She really needs you.”

  He turned and walked into the tree line.

  I will. Good luck, Wizard.

  Before he could give his automatic denial, the reply trailed off. He gave a wry laugh. Cats and moonstones with their familiars, they had such a sense of humor.

  The smell of newly mown grass—reminiscent of watermelon, summer days, and cool, green earth—came to him. The cold wind was gone and everything was still. The evening birds were quiet. The crickets made no noise. Life and the earth froze into a still tableau, spectators only, in hiding. Or running away.

  The evening star was shining in the west, a fitful sparkle at best. Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, he began automatically. But even as he watched, the night grew darker and the dim glimmer of light was gone, covered by increasing pall from the east. No wishes for him. There weren’t enough wishes in the world for him anyway, not tonight.

  A rumble of distant thunder rolled over the land.

  Justus augmented his vision with the fixed magic of his ward stone, giving him all the light he needed to see. The ropey dull clouds looked more like muddy water than the cirrus clouds they were supposed to imitate. Some adept will have to work on their technique, he thought absently. But then again, maybe that was the point, give the clouds an unsettling dirty-towel appearance, and the humans would stay away from the area. The undersurface boiled and flashes of light from something that was not lightning highlighted the still leaves on the trees.

  He felt the approach of adepts. Dayne and Macy were closest. She could do nothing more than hold her husband’s hand and try to talk to him, probably, but Macy would keep trying until the end.

  Other adepts were closing their huge concentric circle, narrowing any escape. It was a moot point anyway. To run, to escape was not in his mind.

  Justus stood still, his head bowed. The prickling of his skin, like bees trapped, buzzing, crawling. He lifted his face to the sky, straightened his back and spine, and breathed in the warm summer air, pulling it into his lungs in slow, deep draughts. He extended his arms, his palms and splayed fingers turned up, and he reached for the swirling magic. As if impatient, the elements responded eagerly.

  Hiding, avoidance, running; that game was played out.

  Time for a new game, one with his rules. He settled his heels to the ground and allowed the final acceptance of his inheritance. He lifted his chin.

  “I am a wizard,” he said softly.

  He released the gathered elements of Fire, Air, Water, and Earth.

  Fire shot into the sky from around him, splashing the undersides of the cloud with ebony. Earth joined him, thundering in the deep mantle of the ground, and the trees swayed in time to the music of the wind, Air. Light bathed the clearing, and Water sang in the deep bowels of the ground, ready to come to him.

  Through the tumult, he heard the feminine laughter, delighted like a child at a puppet show. But in that sound, he heard the order given, and Justus dropped his hands. An echoing thunderclap reverberated over the clearing.

  The bubble appeared as he envisioned it, but not an iridescent, fragile soap bubble of fear and avoidance. This was made of adamant, hard as diamonds and will. It grew outward, extending away from him into a soaring black circle, shot with glittering veins of gold and brilliant silver.

  Reaching into the dull clouds, it pressed them back. It enveloped the trees and leaves and then left the growing things unharmed as it passed. The bubble was made of exclusion and forged of necessity; the elements chose the form. It noticed nothing of the world, harmed nothing of earth, air, fire, or water. All these, it ignored.

  But the magic of the dull boiling clouds pulled away from it, and a concave dome formed in the surface overhead. A shout came from behind him in the direction of the house and then a delighted chuckle. But they could come no nearer.

  The approach of the adepts from every direction halted with some flares of their weak, puny elements hitting the shield of his will with no effect. He tied it off and waited. For one slim moment, he hoped the bubble had separated Tiarra from her captive, but she was not a fool. In the flashes of light from the mages testing his circle of his clear steel, he could see Sable was under restraint. Tiarra’s hand was on her shoulder. Sable was kneeling, her luminous eyes on him. He could see no message in them or divine any emotion. Her face was alive, and in that small measure of time, he saw that Tiarra did not control her, not yet. She was not a full wizard, but the effort to hold her emotions in check was eating into her soul. The fight was plain to his eye. He saw her body shiver with sporadic trembling, but her face remained smooth, emotionless. Justus looked away to the one standing behind Sable.

  They were in the center of the clearing, on the crown of the land, exactly where Justus had kissed Sable the first time, he noticed dispassionately. Tiarra stood with her head cocked, smiling, as if discovering something unexpected, something humorous. Her hair flowed over her shoulders, as if alive. The locks appeared like the darkest shadows of the night, but her face was glowing in the flashes of light from her frustrated adepts. Reflecting the magic like the pale imitation of a multi-colored neon sign, now red, now green, her lips curled up and she again laughed.

  She looked him up and down. “Hello, lover,” Tiarra said.

  He did not speak.

  Without taking her eyes from him, she nodded at his dome. “Good work, that. It isn’t often I am outsmarted.” Her smile widened, her teeth white. The eyes were different, though. Hard. Furious.

  She gestured at the bubble with her free hand. “That is rather clever.”

  Inadvertently, his eyes flicked to the surface of the bubble, and a radiance of silver light hit his chest and threw him backward.

  He twisted as he fell, throwing his arm back to stop him from rolling, and flung his left arm up, palm outward to Tiarra. Black molten Fire, a bar of seething element, shot from his hand. It met the silver of her Fire element, and the conflagration was of an electrical storm.

  His hip struck the ground, but his eyes never left her crazed ones, and his left hand held steady as he regained his feet. The elements spat and hissed as they met at their intersecting point. His Air element had shielded and deflected her Fire element, but the impact was the same as a hammer to his chest, and breathing in and out took on a new meaning when pain stabbed his side. Justus felt something shift in his chest and wondered if it was a broken rib.

  No. No pain. He couldn’t, wouldn’t have it now. Later. When there was time.

  He silenced the agony and gripped the Fire element firmly in his other hand.

  “First law of dueling: Don’t take your eyes off the opponent,” Tiarra said. She shrugged one shoulder, and her silver Fire wobbled from the line that arrowed straight to his heart. “Your warding must be with you still. How intriguing. But as much as I would love to hear the story behind that acquisition, I am afraid you will not have the chance to tell the tale.”

  “Why is that, Tiarra? Do you have to leave so soon?” Justus’s bar of black Fire increased until it began to beat the silver back. It gained in increments, the juncture where the elements met, and it was getting closer to the woman. “You aren’t as strong as I am. You know that. And your little army cannot get through the shielding.”

  Her eyes flickered and there was a small tight
ening around her mouth. “True. As I said, very clever, your shielding is. And it is staff, not an army. Well-chosen staff, of course. There are ways other than strength. You may have a warding shield, but I do as well.”

  She angled behind Sable’s body and dropped her Fire element at the same instant. Justus threw his hand out and his element snuffed out. In the same motion, he clawed in front of his chest and Air shimmered around him. Earth rumbled in deep basso tones, but did not make him waver. Thick layers of Air formed a shield under him, cushioning him from the ground as it heaved and shook like a dog.

  She released her Earth element. “Why do you care so much?” Tiarra asked. When he stared at her, she jerked her chin at Sable’s bowed head. “What is there about this tener unus that makes you wish to save her?”

  He held his reply and did not answer her, but saw the first reaction from Sable. Her mouth parted and he saw her scrunch her eyelids down hard. Something flickered in Tiarra’s face, and her fingers bore into the shoulder of the younger woman.

  “Your heart rate, my sweetling. You should learn to control it better.”

  She gave a husky laugh and lightly caressed Sable’s neck. A shudder passed through the young woman’s shoulders. She did not speak, but clamped her lips together hard.

  “Give it up, dear. You see, you will not win,” Tiarra said. With a small shock, he realized she spoke not to him, but to Sable. “It will go badly with him if you do not. He will die and it will be your fault. Give in, turn, and we will spare him.” She laughed again. “He will be yours forever.”

  “Don’t give in, Sable. You know what she is and how she’ll use you. She’ll control you. She’ll control everyone.” Justus spoke in a low voice, but his eyes never left Tiarra. “Ultimate power in her hands will create a beast. An insane beast.”

  Tiarra’s eyes gleamed at last, a glitter of emotion that made him wonder if even he could control her reaction. The light in her eyes whirled madly, but then settled again, shifted briefly to a point behind him.