by Jake Kerr
The staff had failed me again.
I looked at Naomi, and I don’t know how I appeared to her, but she looked frightened. “It didn’t work?” she asked. I shook my head. Naomi clenched her teeth and turned toward the sea. “Mister Ali, tell me where the biggest ship is.” Her voice was all business.
“Look out straight from the ship. No. Turn to the right a bit. That’s good. Now. Look about forty-five degrees to your left. Yes, there you go. Almost to the horizon is a cruiser. You said you saw seagulls. That is the illusion hiding the ship. If you aim for the seagulls you will hit it.”
Naomi made a few motions, and I again felt my whole body compress, as if the energy of the spell was pushing against everything around it. Naomi extended her hands, and the ball once again flew across the caps of the waves. I watched as it let loose its energy near the seagulls. There was the loud boom of an explosion, and I knew a huge wave was going to hit us, as this was a lot closer than the previous casting of the spell.
“Very good, Naomi! Your spell clipped the rear of the ship, and it is sinking!” The sound of boots filled the air, as the crew poured out of the door leading below decks. “Get out of here, you fools! We are under attack. You must tell the captain to go to maximum speed and to notify our escort!”
At that moment two sounds competed for my attention—the sound of machine gun fire from somewhere out at sea, and the sound of bullets hitting and ricocheting off the metal of the ship. Men scattered everywhere, while Mister Ali and I dove for the deck.
Naomi, however, stood tall. I glanced up at her and she waved her right arm back and forth in a wide arc, as if she were a bull fighter, and the bullets were bulls. “I can handle bullets,” she said. The sharp clang of bullets hitting the ship turned into a soft thudding sound from right beyond the ship.
“There,” Naomi said, looking down at us. “That shield will protect us for about ninety seconds.” She reached down and offered Mister Ali her hand. “Get up and show me where the other ships are. I need to destroy them within the next minute or so.”
Mister Ali took Naomi’s hand and stood up. He scanned the horizon. “Straight ahead and speeding toward us is a smaller boat, it is zig zagging but mostly approaching us.”
Naomi nodded, as she squeezed her hands into fists. She opened them again, and both palms held the bright light of a detonation spell. “I’m going to cast constantly. I’ll need you to tell me directions to hit the target like ‘closer,’ ‘further,’ ‘left,’ or ‘right.’ Okay?”
Mister Ali nodded. “Of course.”
Without any further delay, Naomi launched detonations at a speed that was otherworldly. I watched as both hands moved forward and back, balls of explosive light shooting out in a constant stream, each one a destructive spell that exploded in the distance. She cast them in a straight line, giving Mister Ali time to let her know how to adjust.
“Quite a bit closer. Left. Further left. No. A little right.” With each direction from Mister Ali came a stream of spells. I stared in awe at how quickly the spells flew from Naomi’s hands. “It is moving too fast for us to hit.” Naomi cursed, and then Mister Ali added, “They must fear your spells, they are turning away from us.”
Naomi shook her head. “Hold on.” With her left hand she made a series of movements. An orange light flickered and then she held her hand up above her head.
“Is that?” Mister Ali asked, his voice full of awe.
“Yes.” Naomi looked at me with her arm still extended above her head. “Tommy, can you at least blind them?”
I didn’t even bother to respond. I connected with the staff. It was there. It was part of me. Its light shone within me. I could have cried out in joy at its return. The understanding between us was total. I filled the entire ocean, from horizon to horizon, with the blinding light of a thousand suns, shielding only those of us on the merchant ship.
Naomi and Mister Ali were blinking their eyes. “Wow,” Naomi said, before turning to Mister Ali. “Guide me.” With her left hand in the air, she cast detonation spells with her right.
“This is impossible. You cannot be maintaining the illusion while casting another spell.” Mister Ali stared at Naomi. “It is impossible.”
“Guide me!” Naomi looked annoyed.
“They are not dodging but moving straight to the left away from us. You are too far to the right.” Naomi moved and started shooting spells to the left, adjusting her fire after every few casts.
While each detonation ended in an explosion, I could tell from the different sound of the last one that Naomi had hit her mark. “You did it!” Mister Ali exclaimed.
Naomi looked around. “What about the third ship? You said there was another one.”
“It fled.”
Naomi dropped her hand and turned to look at me. I was shocked. Her hair was tousled mess, with strands sticking against her forehead and cheek, which were wet with perspiration. There were deep circles under her eyes. She started to sway, and I ran over and grabbed her arm.
“Not bad for a girl,” she said before fainting into my arms.
I held her while frantically looking around for a soft place to lay her. “Help!” I cried out. Mister Ali walked over and put his hand on my shoulder.
“She’ll be fine, Tommy.” I held Naomi against me, her head resting on my chest. She felt much lighter than I expected, and she smelled of sea and sun and the faint fragrance of ancient books. I was frightened, as the last time I held her like this she had been teetering on the edge of death. “The magic she just performed—” Mister Ali shook his head. “—It was beyond exhausting.”
Mister Ali put his arm around Naomi’s shoulder, and we carried her back to the door leading into the ship. “What was the spell with the orange light?” I asked.
“It was the Mirror of Anahita. Do you remember the never-ending hallway in the Citadel of London?” I nodded my head. The hall in the quarters where I stayed had an illusion on it that made it look endless. “That is the same illusion. The viewer sees a mirror of some aspect of the environment. In that hallway it mirrored the end to make it look endless. I can only assume that Naomi hid our ship by mirroring the sea and making it look endless to the men on the boat.”
“Ah, that was smart,” I replied.
Mister Ali stopped, and I looked at him with Naomi unconscious between us. His normally joyful face was intense and serious. “Tommy, I don’t believe you understand. That spell would take Cain at least a few minutes to cast with total concentration. Naomi cast it in mere seconds and then maintained it while casting other spells.”
Naomi was a better illusionist than Cain? That seemed impossible. In fact, she herself had said she wasn’t as good an illusionist as Arkady, let alone Cain.
Mister Ali nodded at my dawning comprehension. “Arkady didn’t create the illusions around that castle, Tommy. Naomi did.”
“Wow,” was all I could say, and it didn’t seem remotely adequate.
“She is the heir of Jamshid, Tommy. There can be no doubt.” Mister Ali started walking again, and said nothing more as we carried Naomi down to her quarters so she could regain her strength.
I watched her as she dozed, quiet and beautiful, even as she looked drawn and weary. She had spent two years doing nothing but studying and practicing magic, the last year in a remote Scottish castle. With her extraordinary talent and dedication, she was now the most powerful magician in the world, possibly one of the most powerful of all time.
I looked at my cane. I could not only no longer stop time, I couldn’t even bend light. Naomi had grown into the heir of Jamshid, while I was no no more than a streetlight.
PART II
ST. PETERSBURG
13
WE ARRIVE IN ST. PETERSBURG
Naomi quickly recovered her strength, and seemed more upset that she had fainted than proud over the fact that she had just achieved one of the greatest displays of magic in centuries. Mister Ali practically fawned over her, which annoyed me. He was suppos
ed to be the Eyes of the Archmage, not the Eyes of the Magician.
I was heartened by the fact that Naomi didn’t seem to care much more for the Mister Ali that respected her than the Mister Ali who disregarded her as just a girl. What she did say was that he was good to have around, as his ability to see through illusions was “extraordinary.”
My feelings for Mister Ali continued to be complex. He was my mentor, the one who betrayed me and my family, the one who asked forgiveness, the one who insulted Naomi’s abilities, and the one who declared her a great magician. In the end I had to trust my instincts, which were that Mister Ali was a good man, but one I couldn’t quite figure out.
The rest of the ship’s voyage was spent with me mostly working alone in my room below deck. Mister Ali joined Naomi on deck scanning the horizon and alerting her to possible threats. Her preferred response was to work with Arkady in casting some illusion or another that would let the ship pass through unnoticed.
I had to laugh—we were supposed to be bait, but the one time we were attacked, Naomi had laid waste to the threat before our escort could even get close enough to assist. Now we were so well-hidden that we couldn’t even be considered bait at all.
For what must have been the hundredth time that hour I ran my fingers over the runes on the cane. It was like running my fingers through my hair or feeling my ribs. The staff was still part of me. I could feel the immense energy inside waiting to be tapped. I still knew how to bring forth that energy to manipulate light.
As I did all the things that were about seeing light it was as natural as breathing. Yet when I thought of more complex things like bending light or stopping it, I failed.
After days of depressing trial and error, I reached a point where I simply gave up. Instead of focusing on manipulating the flow of light, I decided to be creative. I projected light and created forms on the wall, shadow puppets I controlled with my mind. I became good enough that I felt that I could actually scare those with knowledge of the magical world by imitating Shadows. I noted this as a possible weapon and felt glad that my own creativity had provided me with something useful.
The remainder of the trip alternated between frustrating and fun. I realized that I could filter light by color. It was an epiphany that led me to creating more lifelike shadow creatures, with colorful clothing and realistic skin tones. Yet it seemed so pointless. How valuable was art like this when there were motion pictures that were infinitely more complex and exciting?
It suddenly struck me that I could finally understand what had driven Naomi her whole life—even her most powerful magic paled in comparison to the current weapons of war. Her illusions were pointless when Hollywood was creating entire worlds. Naomi’s pursuit of magic had become a noble pursuit of preserving a dying art.
I looked at the staff. Was that all I had become—someone preserving an ancient artifact that was slowly losing its power? I created a scene on the wall—the stony beach near Dunnotar Castle. I made the waves move and shimmer, while the dull gray of the rocks stood unmoving as I crashed wave after wave at them.
After a few minutes I tossed the staff on my bed. It was a pretty scene, but what use was it in the end?
We disembarked in a port that was empty with the exception of the crowds on the docks waiting for our ship to unload its cargo. While we were considered bait for the Germans and the goal for our small group was simply to get to St. Petersburg, the ship did contain goods and supplies. Thanks to Naomi, we were one of the few allied ships that had actually made it through to the city. As a result, we were surrounded by longshoreman and merchants that wanted first crack at unloading and distributing its goods.
As a native Russian, Arkady took charge of our small group, ignoring the chaos around us as he led us down a gangplank to the dock. I followed behind next to Naomi, while Mister Ali brought up the rear. Arkady set a brisk pace, and we didn’t pause until we were a few blocks closer to the center of the city.
He turned and looked at us. “We will need lodgings.”
Mister Ali stepped forward. “Yes. We need a base of operations, a place where we can both hide and plan our search.” He turned and looked at me. “Remember, the goal here is simple: We are to find this Russian Archmage and confront her about her artifact. We can then see if it has some bearing on what is happening with the staff.”
I nodded, but Naomi shook her head. “I say we just take it and give it to Tommy. He’ll have two artifacts and will be that much stronger. That may even spark the staff into working again.” I could have hugged Naomi, as that was exactly what I wanted to do.
“That may be what we eventually decide to do, but it may be too dangerous. We need to take care. These are artifacts, not books.” Mister Ali peered at Naomi, who shrugged.
“Tommy knows what he’s doing.” She turned to me. “Don’t you, Streetlight?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes. I don’t foresee any problems with another artifact. I understand the power and the nature of connecting with it.”
Before Mister Ali could say anything, Arkady interrupted. “We can discuss the details later. First we need to find lodgings. May I remind everyone it is war time?” He nodded toward the distance, and I turned to see a group of Russian soldiers carrying machine guns scanning the street as they walked toward us.
Everyone nodded, and Arkady led us away from the soldiers and down a side street. He eventually pointed out a decrepit old building with a sign out front that I couldn’t read. Not only was it written in Russian, some of its letters were missing. It dangled from a corner, swaying sadly in the wind.
We walked in and after a hushed conversation between Arkady and the old man behind the desk, we were ensconced on the third floor. The three men shared a room, but we at least had our own place to sleep. Mister Ali and I each had a full-sized bed, while Arkady took a couch. Naomi had her own room, which was smaller than ours, but appeared to be more luxurious, if you could use that word for a room with peeling wallpaper and a torn carpet.
As I fell asleep I wondered if we would even get a chance to meet the Angel of St. Petersburg, let alone convince her to give me the Coat. She could have been anywhere in Russia by then. I finally drifted off, with the thought that I’d have to trust Arkady.
After a few days everyone was getting frustrated with the lack of progress. Naomi had to be practically restrained from just walking out into the streets shouting, “Angel, Angel, where are you?!” Arkady would walk in after a long day of searching and asking questions, shake his head at us, and then have a chat with Mister Ali. Eventually, I walked over and asked, “What's going on?”
Arkady sighed. “She is here, but she chooses not to be found.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“She is avoiding the Reds as she re-arms her militia.”
I sat down on the couch next to Arkady as Mister Ali paced. Naomi was working on some arcane spell, repeating the complex movements and cursing as she occasionally got it wrong.
“But she’s an Archmage. Why does she need a militia? She should use her own power. Doesn’t she have magicians to help her?”
Mister Ali paused. “Her artifact protects her, Tommy. She needs others to overcome opponents. I doubt there are any magicians in Russia left who can help her.” Arkady nodded. “So she enlists help from those that believe in her cause, and she has to find ways of arming them.”
“It sounds like she is a revolutionary.”
Arkady chuckled. “She is an anti-revolutionary. She wants to bring back the former Russia, the Russia defeated by the October Revolution.”
I ran my fingers through my hair. “So she is in hiding waiting for help?” Arkady and Mister Ali nodded. “Why don’t we offer to help?” I looked at Arkady. “You’re a magician. Everyone knows the Soviets are killing magicians. So all you do is cast an illusion, tell someone that you want to join her, and they’ll know you that you’ll provide a valuable contribution.”
“That’s brilliant, Streetlight.�
�� I looked over at Naomi, who was grinning. I hadn’t even realized she was eavesdropping.
Arkady tapped his chin with a finger. “That is actually a very good idea.”
“No. It is too dangerous.” Mister Ali shook his head as he talked. “You are putting Arkady’s life at risk, and there is no guarantee that he would be able to get a message back to us.”
I looked at Naomi, but she seemed more concerned with her spell. Did she not care about Arkady? After all the time on the ship I still couldn’t get a handle on their relationship. They constantly talked magic. They laughed together. They spent as much time together as she and I did. Were they friends? Colleagues? More? I couldn’t tell.
“It is a good plan.” Arkady stood up and put his hand on Mister Ali’s shoulder. “My life was at risk the moment I stepped off the ship, Ali.” Arkady walked over and grabbed his coat. “I’ve stumbled upon a bar. It is a place where foreigners and those critical of the government gather. Very quiet discussions there. I believe that if I were to lower my guard and do some magic I may find someone to take my offer of help to the Angel.” Arkady slipped his coat on and walked toward the door. “This may take a few days. Don’t worry about me.”
He walked out the door without a debate or even a goodbye.
Three days later Naomi was ready to march through the streets herself looking for Arkady. Mister Ali begged her to be patient, and just when it seemed he wouldn’t be able to stop her, Arkady walked through the hotel room door.
Naomi and I were playing cards, while Mister Ali was reading a book. I looked up and immediately knew Arkady had some good news. Naomi tossed her cards on the table and stood up.
“Where were you? I was worried about you!” As Arkady smiled, Naomi added, “Did you find her?”
He walked over and fell into a chair. “I have not heard much. There is word of magicians that have entered the city and are staying in the north.”
“Is it her?” Naomi asked.
“Who else it could be?” Arkady asked. “The Reds have rounded up every magician of note, and the rest have either fled or are so frightened they have given up magic. I did a few illusions, and the contact I made asked to see us.”