The Last American Wizard

by Edward Irving

  Day of the Dragonking

  Fans of Robert Anton Wilson’s fast and loose approach to political conspiracy and Douglas Adams’s bumbling unwilling heroes will eat up Irving’s first batch of giddy, clumsy world–saving adventures, which launches the Last American Wizard series. A “mystical terrorist group” sacrifices an airplane full of innocents to a dragon and uses the deaths to power an event that wreaks magical havoc on Washington, D.C. All the wizards in the U.S. government’s employ abruptly lose access to magic, and the world’s computers and gadgets become sentient.

  Second–string journalist Steven Rowan embodies the tarot’s Fool and is forced to figure out the card’s magic on the fly. Bombshell soldier Ace Morningstar, who used her magic to disguise herself as a man so she could become a SEAL, drafts Steve and his cell phone, which contains the ghost of a Chinese factory worker who now communicates through screen animations and bad autotranslations, to help fix the mess.

  Gathering allies, including NSA supercomputer Barnaby and Ace’s BMW, Hans, the team fights off newly transformed demons, dog monsters, and ogres while trying to find out who is controlling the Illuminati before the villains embark on the next step of their world-‐domination strategy. Irving’s smart parody of Beltway life and his high–energy storytelling carry through to the end and promise to maintain momentum well into the next installment.

  — Starred Reviews – Publishers Weekly

  Mystically powered terrorists unleash volatile magic on the world, turning Washington, D.C., into a politically charged fantasyland ripe for human sacrifice.

  A trio of suicide attackers with magical abilities bring down a 747 by summoning a dragon to rip it from the sky, using the hundreds of lives lost as a sacrifice to initiate the Change. The country morphs into a new landscape of swords and sorcery. Now computers and other machines are coming to life, and regular people have started to turn into mythical creatures and forgotten deities, creating a chaotic world easily seized by whoever—or whatever—set this shift into motion.

  Hope appears in the nation’s capital where, along with transforming Democrats into potbellied elves, Republicans into cantankerous dwarves, and Tea Party members into trolls, the Change has granted struggling freelance journalist Steve Rowan the abilities of the Tarot Arcana’s Fool card, making him a powerful, yet unreliable, wizard. Realizing his potential, he is “hired” by the trivia– obsessed sentient computer Barnaby and coupled with the attractive, no–nonsense female Navy SEAL Ace Morningstar to uncover the puppet masters behind the plane crash.

  Irving (Courier, 2014, etc.), a producer of Emmy Award–winning news television and a journalist well– acquainted with the Beltway, makes good use of clichéd Washington stereotypes by mashing them together with fantasy tropes, breathing new life into political satire….

  Like many first books in a genre series, the novel foreshadows a greater enemy behind all this madness while barely hinting at its identity, offering a wonderfully bizarre consolation prize as its denouement.

  A clever, humorous fantasy…. — Kirkus Reviews

  Day of the Dragonking

  Book One of

  The Last American Wizard

  Edward B Irving

  Ronin Robot Press

  A Division of

  Rock Creek Consulting, LLC

  9715 Holmhurst Road

  Bethesda MD 20817

  www.roninrobotpress.com

  Copyright © Rock Creek Consulting LLC 2015

  Cover art by Tom Joyce/Creativewerks

  Edward B. Irving asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Third Edition – 2/4/2016

  ISBN-10: 0-9966917-4-X

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9966917-4-1

  DEDICATION

  To Emlyn Rees,

  An incredible editor who not only picked up

  my first book but gave me the encouragement

  I needed to keep writing.

  And

  As always…

  to Ann, for everything.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Since my publisher managed to evaporate only six weeks after my first novel hit the market (and I still deny any responsibility,) there are even less people to thank than usual but they’ve made up in encouragement what they lack in numbers.

  Tom Joyce was the only person who had a clue what I was writing about (and even Tom had to look up an abstruse point or two). However, he hit such a homerun with the cover art that I was forced to not only finish the book but also write it so that the text matched the quality of the insane vision of Ace Morningstar that appears on the cover. I thank all the members of the Editing Army for their comments and encouragement, Richard Shealy–copy editor to the stars–for his advice, and Don Critchfield for his endless, solid, and unquestioning support.

  Finally, my thanks to Nick Wale who, as far as I know, has never read this book but who came up with an idea for a publishing enterprise that might just enable me to write another.

  Definition of a Dragonking

  In the aftermath of 2008’s catastrophic meltdown of the world’s financial markets, statisticians scrambled to develop new models of enormously complex systems–those once referred to as “chaotic”–in the hope of controlling or at least predicting similar events in the future.

  First, they identified the “black swan” event. This was a cause so completely out of the norm that it could not have been predicted and could be identified only in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. This let Wall Street’s mathematical analysts, or “quants,” off the hook.

  Next, the analysts developed the theory of the “dragonking.” A dragonking is an enormous disruption so powerful that it is outside all standard parameters (a king) and acts according to rules so mysterious that they resemble nothing else (a dragon). Unfortunately for the quants, unlike a black swan, they can be predicted.

  Dragonking events have been identified in such enormously complex systems as financial markets, forest fires, earthquakes, epileptic seizures in the human brain, climate change, and the extinction of species.

  A dragonking comes without warning, causes immense destruction, and leaves unforeseeable changes in its wake.

  Prologue

  The soft tone sounded and the Fasten Seatbelt signs winked out over the 418 passengers on American International’s flight 1143, the airline’s morning flight from New York to Los Angeles.

  The two men and one woman in seats 17A, 17B, and 17C unhooked and pulled down their folding tables. They were all wearing the classic uniform of young information workers on the way up–blue or white button-down shirts with ties with the stripes of fictional British clubs for the men, and a white button-down shirt with a floppy green bow tie for the woman.

  The older woman in 17D across the aisle glanced at them as she was settling in and instantly identified them as accountants or consultants or some equally tedious species of young professional. S
he lost herself in the romance novel in her electronic reader and forgot them.

  The man in 17A–short and a bit overweight with the pale chin and cheeks of someone who just shaved off a beard–bent down and unzipped the front pocket of the leather backpack he had placed under the seat in front of him. From this pocket, he slid out a metal box with an air of reverence. It was silver and about the right size and shape for carrying a bar of soap. At some point, there had been an engraving on the top, but careful handling had worn it so smooth that only faint curves, a curlicue, and a straight line along the bottom remained.

  The man handled the box with extreme care–holding it with both hands and making sure that the hinge faced away from him. Swiveling from the waist, he handed the box to the dark-haired woman in the middle seat. She took it from him with crossed hands so that the hinge continued to face away from her.

  She had to flip her brown bangs out of the way so that she could see as she swiveled and passed the box on in the same reverential manner to the taller man seated on the aisle. He had darker skin and a close-cropped beard. Once again, he took the box with crossed hands and placed it in his lap. Throughout the process, they had all moved with the precision and grace that come from endless repetition.

  None of them said anything as a second metal box was removed from the backpack and handed with equal care to the woman, who placed it on her gray pinstriped skirt. She kept both hands on it–not hiding it from sight but making sure it was safe.

  The man in the window seat pulled out a third metal box and then, holding the box with his left hand, leaned down and unzipped a pocket on the side of his pack. From this, he removed a folded square of green fabric and proceeded to pass it to the woman. He was careful to use his right hand–his left remained on the box in his lap.

  Again, using her right hand, she passed the material along to the dark-skinned man in the aisle seat, who unfolded one fold of the cloth and covered the box in his lap. Then she received her own green cloth and covered the box in her lap.

  The stewardess in charge of the front economy section came down the aisle on her way back to prepare the drinks cart. As she had been taught, she glanced at each passenger in turn–not actually studying him or her but giving herself time so that anything off or odd would trigger a subconscious sense of danger. As she approached the 17th row, the three young people began to talk together, smiles and mock grimaces appearing on their faces as they discussed plans for an imaginary convention they were to attend in Los Angeles. The woman and the man on the aisle began to use both of their hands–she dabbed at the corner of her lipsticked mouth with a napkin, and he emphasized a good-natured argument by energetically pointing at the man in the window seat. It might have looked suspicious if all three had kept both hands folded in their laps.

  The stewardess passed by. Nothing had triggered an internal alarm; she went on to the mid-cabin galley to get the ice and sodas ready.

  The three let the conversation die down over a couple of minutes. A conversation that stopped abruptly might be noticed. For a while, they just sat, their eyes open but unfocused, each with a protective hand on the box and cloth in their lap.

  Without a signal, all three used their left hand to bring their green cloth up to the tiny table and unfold it once more to reveal a very fine green silk with symbols embroidered in multicolored embroidery in a swirling pattern radiating out from the center. In the center of each cloth was a rectangular space–empty of any decoration or ornament.

  The man on the aisle smoothed a slight crease out of his cloth.

  The others waited until he finished.

  In unison, all three opened their boxes. Inside each was a deck of cards. There were no creases or tears in the cards, even though they were so worn by age and constant use that they felt like a delicate tissue rather than stiff card stock. The woman slid the top card off her deck and placed it facedown in the empty space at the center of the cloth in front of her. It fit precisely–no card touched the embroidered edge of the square. Both men followed suit–first the man on the aisle and then the one next to the window.

  The big plane banked left to bring it into the Red-15-South corridor–which would take it to the westbound intersection with Blue-95-High and the straight shot to LAX. The turn brought the morning sun spilling into the windows all along the left side.

  The man in 17A pulled down the plastic shade on his window. Then he and his companions reached up, switched on the reading lights inset into the plastic overhead, and adjusted them to illuminate the cards in front of them.

  The woman in 17D broke away from the steamy scene between the Baroness and her kidnapper long enough to brighten the reader’s screen to compensate for the change in light. Glancing to the left, she wondered if they were playing some sort of card game.

  “One of those silly dungeon games like Angela’s kids play,” she thought. She snorted and shook her head in exasperation, thinking. “Californians. They’re all just big children.”

  Then she returned to the Baroness.

  Switching hands, the three young people reached for the cards in the center of the ritual cloths in front of them with their right hands and, again without any visible signal, turned them face up.

  Chaos erupted.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The airplane crash woke Steven Rowan. To be entirely accurate, it wasn’t a crash.

  It was the insane screaming of four of the world’s largest jet engines being pushed twenty percent past their factory- recommended maximum thrust only thirty feet over his head.

  In addition, awake wasn’t really the correct term for his state of consciousness at that point.

  Steve was standing stark naked in the center of the room, jerking back and forth in the classic fight-or-flight reflex–his mind frantically spinning between possibilities, developing and rejecting dozens of possible threats every second, and running through as many options for escape. A small part of his mind was simultaneously working on the less-important questions of who he was, where he was, and what he’d done to himself the night before.

  The pulsating howl of the jet began to diminish, but the screaming only grew louder and more intense. Suddenly, Steve fell to his knees, slamming clenched fists into his temples over and over, and screaming at the top of his lungs.

  Tears flew from his eyes as he crawled forward and began to pound his head against the glass door to the balcony. A small rational part of his mind wondered that he could be driven to such desperation that he would fill his mind with self-inflicted pain in the vain hope that it would expel the shocking sound, the sheer terror, and the infinite grief.

  He felt a sharp spark of agony as the glass cracked.

  Suddenly, as blood began to stream down his face, the terrible pain diminished. The confusion and terror, the immense waves of emotions, all of that continued to pour through him, but the anguish had ceased. The massive assault of sound began to break down into hundreds of what he could only think of as voices.

  Men and women were screaming, a mother was kissing the top of a tiny head and whispering soothing sounds, a man on a cell phone was frantically dialing and redialing–desperate to leave a message. In contrast, two men were running through a checklist with professional calm, but curses tickled at their throats, fighting to get out.

  In the center, he heard a steady sound. A quiet chanting– young voices tinged with success and anticipation.

  The glass door exploded.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was going to be a lousy morning, his head hurt even worse than usual, and his head usually hurt like someone dying from alcohol poisoning.

  Steve opened his eyes at the sound of someone singing about hiding in Honduras and needing “lawyers, guns, and money.”

  OK, that was Warren Zevon, so it was probably his phone ringing. On Mondays, he set it to Afroman’s Because I Got High just to irritate any senior editorial staff he might run into, but this song pretty well summed up his mood every other day.

 
He waited patiently until the late Mr. Zevon finished singing about how “the shit has hit the fan” and then listened for the Asian gong that would indicate a phone message.

  Instead, Max Weinberg’s driving drumbeat pounded out the syncopated SOS that began Bruce Springsteen’s We Take Care of Our Own. Since every journalist knew (but would never report) that this song raised the dead whenever the Boss played within a mile of a graveyard, Steve figured someone was truly serious about talking to him.

  In addition, he was curious because he’d deleted it from his phone over a month ago, exhausted by its contrast between the American ideal of “help your neighbor” and the reality of greed and selfishness that was currently sweeping the nation.

  “Hello?”

  There was a series of clicks and several of those odd changes in the quality of silence that indicate a call is being bounced from machine to machine or area code to area code. Of course, these were also the sounds that you heard when a telemarketer’s robot war dialer realized it had a fish on the line and switched in the human voice to make the sale.

  “Is this a freaking robot?” he said, sharply.

  There was a short pause without any clicks. For some reason, Steve thought the caller was thinking.

  “Mr. Rowan?” It was a man–the deep and authoritative voice of someone used to giving commands.

  “Who the hell wants to know?” Steve hated people with that kind of voice.