by Pam Uphoff
"Ah, yes. I'm . . . six months behind, aren't I?"
"At least."
Chapter Thirty-three
Late Fall 1395
King's Own Headquarters, Karista
Xen whittled down the piles of paper that had landed on his much neglected desk while he was out in the field. Most of it was enough out of date that he could toss it . . . well, perhaps in a file, just-in-case. He dated a folder and started filling it.
Found a packet from the Land Office, and opened it to find the deed to a lot . . . "Oh good grief. I forgot all about it. Ha! No more barracks. I'll build a house."
"I want to watch!" An out of sync chorus from Easterly and Yellow.
Xen grinned and called back. "OK, but first I have to measure and design something to fit the foundations and . . . stuff. And I'd better knock out a couple of reports. You know, like this is an actual job. The colonel mentioned the lack of written reports rather pointedly."
Laughter in return. He finished "filing" most of the stack, read three recent memos, then got to work. And wished for electricity and his computer, abandoned back on the One World.
"They probably dissected the poor innocent computer." He froze for a long moment. Swallowed. :: Q? Do I need to sneak back to One and rescue Herc? ::
:: No. I went and got him while you were still in the hospital. ::
:: Oh, thank you. I just realized . . . ::
:: Ha! That I might kill you? Idiot brother. I was much more worried about you than the horse! :: A wave of amused affection, then the mental contact shut down.
Xen looked back at his report. One thing handwritten reports honed was the ability to organize things mentally, to avoid rewriting. Right. That takes care of setting up the corridors and the early stages of the Earth moving back in force. Now what? Oh, right Teri's abandoned HQ and the miners who got turned into goats. Let's see . . . what spells did she apparently use . . . Crumb, I didn't think she had that much training. She's damned dangerous these days. I wonder where she's gotten to?
He knocked out three reports then quit for the day. With a large escort to his new property.
Pyrite was delighted to get out of the barn. "You've only been here two days." Xen ignored the looks the grooms were giving him as he saddled up. Pyrite made quick work of the few blocks, then happily joined the two legged people checking out the neglected half acre.
Xen racked his tack in the stable and greeting the guard on duty and then prowled around.
:: Funny rocks!::
Xen zigged over and grinned at the gargoyle Pyrite had found. "They must have had one of those fancy gardens. Or maybe it was off the roof."
Pyrite snorted and started eating the weedy mess that had once been a formal garden.
The stone half-basement of the former house was a nasty mess of leaves and water. Xen scooped it all into a bubble and lost it, and considered the results. And the neighborhood. The nice large houses were being bought and torn down, so bigger homes could be built, filling the lots from side to side. He'd always come and gone from the back alley stable entrance and hadn't realized how new and pretentiously prosperous the front street looked.
"Hmm, I don't think we're going to fit in extremely well." But the stone walls and gates that surrounded the new homes . . . "Okay. Stone walls and fancy metal gates. That we can do, and then hmm, house design . . . "
He found himself with a small crowd of spectators.
Handy. He made Staven hold one end of the tape measure and Garit take notes. Easterly looked scandalized and Yellow amused.
"Right." Xen eyed Garit's plat, and calculations. "So I need to fit that foundation. Good grief! Four thousand square feet? I could build three floors and host a small village."
Easterly snorted. "You could rent rooms to us poor bachelors stuck in barracks because we're out in the field too often to bother with a long term lease on an apartment."
"Not a bad idea. I'm rarely here more than a month at a time, myself." Xen bit his lip. "Kitchen in the basement? I suppose I could hire a cook and a maid. How much rock am I going to need?"
Yellow frowned at their calculations. "I've seen witches building before. They just use the rock that's there." She looked dubiously at the weedy neglected yard. "How deep is the soil here?"
"Several feet, and then it's sand and clay for a hundred feet. Not even much gravel in it." Xen shrugged. "It'll be much easier to just pop out to the mountains and quarry what I need." He glanced over at the neighboring houses. "I think the basement and just one floor above the ground floor will be sufficient. Granite blocks. Or something that will look like blocks, when I get done with it."
Staven raised a skeptical eyebrow, and looked over Garit's shoulder as he worked out the volume of rock involved. "Are you going to move the rock magically? In one of those bubble things?"
Garit looked up. "And what about framing, and the interior walls?"
"The roof?" Easterly put in.
Xen swapped grins with Yellow. "Why don't we go collect some really big boulders before we lose all the light, and then take these sweet innocent people out to dinner in Ash."
That got him raised eyebrows from Staven. "You just go out and collect these boulders?"
"Well, I'll probably check in with the Land Grant holder, otherwise known as my dad, and make sure the high valley I'm thinking of raiding hasn't become anyone's specific property. But yes, pretty much."
An hour later they were standing in the high mountains, staring at the huge slabs of rocks the steep mountainside beyond them had shed.
Staven stared up at the boulder, twice his height. "Right. I guess no one's going to mind you taking a few of these away."
Garit was looking around. "There's Mt. Frost, seems weird to not have to look so far up . . . how high up are we?"
"Umm, probably about 13,000 feet. Mt. Frost is 2000 feet higher. And bloody steep, but there is a path that can be walked, and doesn't involve actually climbing. This place, you have to do some serious climbing to get to." Xen grinned. "Or teleport. But you have to climb the first time, to get a location."
That got him four scowls.
Yellow sighed. "I've tried. I can't keep that many things in mind all at the same time. Nil says I can learn when I stopped being an idiot."
Staven looked around at that. "I thought Nil was the Master Wizard?"
"Yeah. I have a wizard gene as well as a witch gene." Her mouth turned down. "Everyone wants me to study."
Xen glanced at Staven. "Yeah. We know all about that. Anyhow, watch this." He grabbed a bubble. Opened a hole and whipped it over the nearest chunk of rock.
"How do you find big bubbles like that?"
"Bubbles don't exist in the spacial dimension. They don't have a size until you pull them partly into our dimension. Picture them as large, and they will be. Picture them as small, and they are, until you make them bigger." He curled his fingers around one and showed her. "This is how you use them in battle. Even someone with dimensional ability won't see it, until you whip it over them."
"Damn wizard." Yellow muttered and hunched her shoulders.
Xen bubbled three more huge rocks, then teleported them down to Ash.
"Tomorrow after work, we'll start building."
They spent hours designing the perfect abode. A couple of "suites" on the ground floor, and lapping off the basement foundation so any witches would have good ground contact. A fancy parlor, a big library with a big fireplace. Large dining room. Upstairs, six more suites. And an area large enough for a pool table. Egged on by the others, he added balconies, skylights, big windows . . .
By the time he was finished, he had five lodgers.
The extra granite they brought back made a beautiful wall in front, and Xen ripped up most of the pavement in the back garden to make the back fence. With gargoyles.
By which time he'd collected a huge audience.
Colonel Janic walked around the house twice, shaking his head. "Xen, do any magicians make a living making buildi
ngs?"
"Not that I know of." He grinned. "I'll have to suggest it as a money making activity."
The witches—the Sisters from Hell and the rest of the Karista Pyramid—perked up, and started chattering about building their own homes. Xen's head turned at the mention of "Oldham Engineering."
"What?"
Beige snickered. "Q, of course. She put in all those corridors along commerce street, and she's going to be putting in all the new ones, as soon as the construction on the street is finished.'
Scarlet nodded. "I don't think she's doing houses, so maybe some of us can make some money."
"Making them and selling them." Mihaela looked wishfully up at the house. "If I can learn how to do it."
Staven grinned. "You lot could put all the builders in Karista out of business."
Zeolite snorted. "It's not ladylike."
Xen sighed. Not ladylike. Which is why Q can run circles around this lot. "Now, I still need to do the windows, and doors. Not to mention the kitchen and a copy of those lovely baths they have at the palace . . . I think I shall spend some money, at least where the kitchen is concerned, and buy a stove and oven that are known to work."
Deena frowned at that. "Xen, do you need us to chip in?"
Her father snorted. "The God of War appears to know how to invest. He has done so for, no doubt, much longer than any of the Karista banks have existed. If you ever hear any financial type people talking about 'The Wolf Company', or simply 'The Underwriter', that's who they are talking about."
Xen nodded. "Dad mostly provides capital or insures trading ventures and major construction. Whatever moves civilization forward. Go see a historian about the original Agreements to form a Western Kingdom. He tends to take the long view."
"As you do?" Janic asked. "Your own investing is much the same."
"Same managers, making the same recommendations." Xen flushed a bit. "I really don't pay a lot of attention to my own account."
Janic sighed. "Yes. Now that we know about it, we've found that you've withdrawn money three times in the last seven years, and seem to live quite happily on your Army pay and Harry's larder. Everyone wants to know what you are hiding."
Deena and Easterly started laughing.
Xen crossed his arms. "Well, I don't wear jewelry, gamble, buy horses or houses until I bought this lot. My dad makes better wine than I can find in town and I rarely drink enough to get drunk, let alone plastered." Deena and Easterly were still shaking their heads at him. He sighed. "And I have a large number of children. Especially for a man who has never married."
"Right, we know about Hoon's boy, and your escapades on the One World. Are there more?"
"I have a fourteen year old daughter, and . . . " He hesitated. "When I'm in that healing sleep I wake up enough to eat and drink, but not enough to really tell the difference between dreams and reality."
A snicker from Yellow. "Oh, not the Farmer Girls! They've been after you for years. And they all had babies last month."
Xen nodded. "Two girls and two boys. And three witch daughters, too,"
"Xen . . . " Janic clutched his head. "All right. Who are the mothers?
"Walnut and Macaw, they're sisters, Ash witches, who decided to advance; one of them had twins. The other four live in Rip Crossing. Kile, Gavi, Nile and Lava. They were engineered to have the witch and wizard genes. But they were never able to do much magic."
Deena looked sharply at him. "Are those the women from Rebo's orgy . . . oh, surely they were not also in that orgy you had with the Earther spies?"
"Definitely getting a headache here." Janic slid his hands to cover his eyes.
"Yes. Being a few months pregnant doesn't seem to slow them down at all. If you'll recall, sir, I believe I mentioned something like magic users just not doing things like other people do."
"Indeed. I just had an interesting chat with Q. She wants to reverse bubble the Earthers' army. Rufi says to wait and see if they get back in touch with Earth anytime soon. And if their orders are anything but a complete withdrawal, you can go help her. "
Xen grinned. "We can start with the tanks . . . and perhaps entire barracks . . . oh, yeah. This could be fun."
Chapter Thirty-four
Late Fall 1395
Crossroads, Kingdom of the West
"I just figured there ought to be something we could do, with gates, you know." Crimson grinned. "Didn't you guys hear Beige and Yoderite?"
"We're already doing things with gates." Walnut frowned at her. "I saw Yoderite start to say something, then Beige yanked her away for a private hissy rant."
Macaw grinned. "You listened in, didn't you, Crimp?"
"Yep. They didn't want the Senior sisters to know they had opened a gate."
"Those two clothes horses? A gate? Where too?"
Crimson smirked. "A dinosaur world. 'Good thing Jaime slipped with that top before he slowed it down, or we'd have had to call for help to close it.' That's what Beige said."
Walnut eyed her. "You can do bubbles. Do you think you can make a gate?"
"Only one way to find out. I think we should go to one of the empty worlds and try it there. I don't know about alone, but maybe with the triad. . ."
They were both grinning. "Oh, if we could make our own gates we could trade anywhere."
"Well." Crimson tried to put the brakes on. "Anywhere we can find. Hopefully nowhere with dinosaurs."
"Hmm, might be a market for small dinosaurs as upscale pets . . ." Walnut giggled. "Just kidding. When can we get away for this?"
At the Crossroads, they headed for the second gate to the north. A bland boring prairie . . . although it was looking like the scant plant life was whatever had blown through the gate from their world.
Walnut leaned and eyed the worn tracks in the dirt. "They get quite a bit of traffic here . . . "
"Where to, though?" Crimson frowned. "Doing a gate here might not be a very good idea. But who knows, maybe there's people to trade with, out there."
They followed the tracks for about ten miles. To another gate.
The world on the other side had ferns and tall trees with straight trunks up to foliage at the very top.
Crimson looked around, recognition dawning. "This is where the maze to the One World starts. They used to have it run through this arctic island practically covered in ice. Guess they decided they didn't need to be that cautious."
Macaw frowned around. "But where did they go from here?"
Crimson closed her eyes. "There's a corridor right there. It's got an illusion over it. They figured if we were being chased, we could collapse the corridors behind us, which is quick and easy. That would give us time . . . well, they didn't actually know how to close the gates, then, which is why they made this maze between so many worlds. I'm surprised they still use it."
They both frowned and concentrated.
"Ha! I see the illusion." Walnut looked smug. "And through it. Pine forest on the other side."
Macaw scowled, but didn't admit she couldn't see through it.
Crimson didn't say anything. I just see the corridor energies.
"So . . . we can go see some dinosaurs without having to open a gate?" Macaw grinned. "Don't look at me like that. You know you want to see them yourself."
Walnut nodded. "We'll have to think about how to open a gate some other time, from some place else. Right now, let's find one of those dino worlds. I want to pet a dinosaur."
"They're wild animals, Walnut. You can't pet one."
"I can if I stun it first."
Crimson mutter a curse under her breath. I'm going to regret this!
The fourth gate gave out to a lovely green world populated with deer sporting improbably huge antlers. And no fear of humans. They oooed and ahhhed over them for a long moment, giggled about how they could mount one of those heads, but it wouldn't fit over Answer's fireplace. They turn away and trotted through the corridor to the next gate in the line.
Ember trotted right into a tent, shie
d back . . . Crimson steered him away from the cussing occupants of the tent. Macaw and Walnut's horses followed her lead. It was dark, the waning gibbous moon low in the west, predawn flush in the east . . . an entire encampment, stirring now with the fuss.
Crimson thought unnoticeable thoughts, the horses had their charms on . . . She walked Ember out to the outskirts of the camp. Motorized vehicles. "The One," she whispered. Then leaned and peered in the dim light, at the logo on the vehicles. Blue rectangle, white design of a globe and feathers . . . "No. It's more Earthers. Have they found our route to the One World?"
Walnut looked back at the camp. "This is all new. The grass is crushed, they haven't even worn paths in it yet."
"What's that?" Macaw pointed across the vehicle parking area. A big circle, metal and glass, red lights lit.
"I think that's their kind of gate. They must have just gotten here. Damn, I wish I was still in the Army. Then I'd know what was going on."
"But you wouldn't be here." Macaw looked back at the corridor. "The corridors have illusions over them, and the way that tent was set up, I don't think they knew it was there. We could slide back through and warn someone . . . "
Walnut scowled. "Who would want to know what we were doing out here. We should . . . we ought to be able to get them to leave. We're witches, after all. We can control them. Or maybe just scare them away."
They all studied the camp. The two men whose tent had been trampled were bitching about deer, and how they ought to go hunting. Other men were stirring. Mostly in uniform, but one fellow in more scruffy clothes walked over to the gate and started looking at the boxes in front of it.
"That one's a scientist. Those instruments are probably telling them all sorts of things about the gate." Crimson scowled at the men. "These are our gates. Our worlds, and they don't belong here. Maybe . . . maybe we can poison them? Find some mushrooms or something."
Macaw giggled. "I've got some potions I traded for, they change your hair color and eye color and some other really funny effects . . . I'll bet we can scare the hell out of them."