by Pam Uphoff
"General Morei at Fort Stag is nearing retirement age, but then they regularly rotate officers through both large and small forts."
Garit nodded. "Am I remembering correctly that there are eight small forts? I've heard Wallenton is busy. And Big Bay, just north of here."
"Yes, covering the gap between here and Fort Mendo. The naval base at Fort Rock is First Army's of course. Only the problems that crop up on land are ours. There are two more small posts to the north, then four to the south. More people, so they have regular problems with small gangs. Nothing like the Gold Gang, fortunately, or that large band they broke up last fall in Hester Mountain Province."
Garit nodded. "I was there at the time. Colonel Sommers made good use of the terrain."
"Indeed?" The colonel grinned. "I hope you realize that now you're going to get to tell us all about it."
***
Somewhat to his surprise, Xen's first orders were to go home for more special training. With a pile of old reports to read.
His mother had just grinned, and extended a glowing outline of a cube.
"Do you remember playing with these things when you were a very young child? After the comet passed, and I was a bit, umm. Well, somehow we never got to the advanced stuff, which I see you are now ready for."
Xen scooped up the cube. "I remember this, and there was a game I was always beating Uncle Havi at."
He unfolded the cube four times and it disappeared. "Sorry."
"It's supposed to do that. Can you see this?" she reached out and grabbed something so tenuous he hadn't even noticed it floating past. "It's a dimensional bubble. Very useful."
"Yeah, I've seen you stashing hay. I know about them. But I've never actually noticed them . . . just floating around." He reached out tentatively, tapped a bubble, making it jerk away. He grabbed . . . lost it. Grabbed carefully, and captured another one. "Huh. So . . . how do you turn them into those handy holding bags?"
"Once someone is old enough to manipulate them, the rest is easy."
It was indeed. He was quickly roped in to help her train the youngsters with dimensional abilities.
"Twenty-three kids between nine and sixteen." Rustle grinned up at him.
How did I get so tall?
"A few I'm a bit dubious of. But seventeen of them have definite dimensional talents."
"Mostly witches? Or have you pulled in the miscellaneous types from the Rip?"
"Yes. All witches." She grinned. "But two of them are currently at Prairie Coast, where you will also find six boys who could use a bit of training in the dimensional stuff. Well, you're four years older than the oldest of them. It wouldn't hurt my feelings any if you knocked Ricardo and Eternal around a bit. Especially Ricardo. He's dangerously arrogant. They're all attending the Wizard's school, and Nil says that once I've taught you, you should come and teach them."
Nighthawk was in the class, and he was pleased with the opportunity to spend time with her.
Nine years old, and look at her glow! Damn Swish. I ought to have tried harder to be a part of this girl's life. Not that I was here much . . . I wonder if Mother sent me away so often to keep me from running afoul of Answer. The old . . . witch would not have taken kindly to a father in the girl's life.
And then there was his little sister. At fourteen Quicksilver was still a big strong girl, but while puberty was underway, she was at that awkward stage of "might be pretty in a few years if she shapes up a bit." She had her glow mostly hidden under unwavering shields.
"It's been two years since you were here. I think I've finally got everything locked down and under control." Her eyes crinkled. "But you've grown even more. Drat. I think I'll have to try relying on intimidation from past success, and not get into fights with you."
"Good plan, Quicksilver. Now that I'm a big mean soldier, I won't go easy on you."
She grinned. "Now, when it comes to magic . . . " A delicate network of light spun in her hand.
Fear, hiccups, stun, a nice broad push . . . Huh. A flash of light. Startling, ruin your night vision, without injury . . . So multiple physical, mental and energy assaults all at the same time . . . I'd better be nice to this little sister of mine . . . Wait, that's a transformation hiding behind all the other . . . "Hey, that's my Purple Bunny spell!"
"It's always been my favorite." She eyed him. "I can't get Nil to show me the Chain. Do you know it?"
Xen snickered. "Actually, no. He muttered something about me getting too dangerous, and needing something that would work on me. I'm pretty sure he didn't really mean it . . . except, well, Nil . . . What do you think? Would Mom or Dad know it? Remember Mom's story about the Arbolian priests?"
Quicksilver perked up. "I'd forgotten about that! So . . . if she can break one, surely she knows how they are constructed." She eyed her neat little web of spells. "The Chain might be a bit much. I think I'll do one version with it, and one without. So next time I can rescue you from the bandits."
Or, we just might be on the same side. Dangerous kids ought to stick together, after all. We always have before.
***
In the morning, he walked down to the herb garden, and got put to work on potions. It was rather fascinating, the packaging needed to get the right spells into the right part of the body to repair it or change the way it operated.
"Nil says potions are sissy."
The old goddess just looked amused. "Trying to get a rise out of me, young man? Nil grew up with a target on his back. And front. He needed immediacy, and he needed to drop his opponent fast. Potions allow one to take the time to do something correctly, and precisely. And you can administer small amounts at intervals, not overwhelm a weak system with demands that it put all its failing energy into one thing."
Although that might be one way to kill someone, to get around a shield.
Lady Gisele crossed her arms and frowned down at him. "I heard that, Young Man."
Xen cleared his throat. "So, this one is aimed specifically at the pancreas?"
She gave him a last glare. "Indeed. The layered packaging first gets it through the digestive system and into the bloodstream. Standard, simple proteins. Different organs need specific amounts of various minerals, for their proper operation. So they pull those out of the blood stream. The trick is to have what that organ wants, here in this layer."
"So this stuff for the pancreas is grabbed by the pancreas. Handy."
"Mind you, a lot of it does go elsewhere. So there are inefficiencies, as Nil is so fond of pointing out. But most specialized organs need certain minerals in excess. So that's a handy way to get them to take their medicine."
Xen studied the layers around the complex ribozyme at the center. "But if you are not in the middle of a battle, persuading the pancreas to make a bit more insulin can be a gradual process. And you can stop when the insulin level is about right."
"Yes. Not that we need anything like this very often. But we used to have to deal with a complete loss of insulin. Or on the other end of the process, a failure of the cells to uptake insulin. Hmm. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen diabetes of either sort for . . . several centuries."
"What about the other worlds? Earth and the Empire of the One?"
"I haven't had a patient from there. Yet. But that is one reason to keep my skills up to date." The goddess pointed at the herbs on the bench. "Do you remember enough of your organic chemistry to analyze all the odd molecules in those? Those are the starting point. You separate them, test them on animals to see what they do. Try slightly different versions."
Xen eyed the leaves. "When you find a difference that works better, do you go back up through the plant's manufacturing process, and alter the DNA to make the plant make exactly what you want?"
"I could. But generally I just back up far enough to know what sort of RNA I need."
"So you have messenger RNA to supply the blueprints. And the enzymes to make the . . . whatever. Glue them together. Voila. Info and manufacturing in one huge molecule."<
br />
"Indeed. Often though, the instructions to the enzyme are 'locate this gene and change it to match this.' Then the defective gene becomes an effective gene."
"Huh. Can I take more lessons, while the kids are in school? Mom has me roped into helping her after school."
"Of course." Her eyes twinkled. "Good thing it's the middle of winter. Sometimes my lessons involve digging up my garden."
"And weeding. I remember learning an awful lot of biology while pulling crabgrass."
The crone cackled. "So? Start analyzing. Or I'll find some snow for you to shovel."
When school let out, he was mobbed by witches.
One daughter. Zing. One sister. No zing, they'd gotten that out of the way in the morning. One Cousin. Slight zing. Two second-cousins. Tiny zing. Four nieces. Or half nieces plus some sort of fourth cousin or something. And Tern and Opalescence were both Answer's line, and so relatives of one sort or another. And Whoop's kids from Rip were here for lessons, more nieces. And . . . since he was distantly related to Harry, that meant all of Swish's kids were distant relatives, as well as Verse and her kids . . .
He stopped counting the zings. I have a lot larger family than I'd realized.
The older witches eyed Xen with disfavor, and split up the group. Rustle led the girls who had shown some dimensional talent up to the winery. Xen followed.
And spent the afternoon carefully batting watermelon sized, soap bubble thin spheres that he could barely see, back to the girls. They all ran back and forth, trying to bat the bubbles back to him. He kept track of Answer, and took care to duck out of the games when she came to check on their group.
His mother had had enough run-ins with Answer to understand.
In a busy two weeks he learned to catch bubbles, attach them to something so they didn't float away with whatever one had put into it, attach handles so anyone could use them, and adjust the time difference between the inside and the outside. He learned how to form corridors both brief and long lasting, and had been told how to create a dimensional gate between worlds. He'd teleported. All by himself. Short distances were easy, even away from the easily located hot springs and Gods' abodes.
***
At the wizard's school, he talked to Nil about the white haired woman. And wound up with a few bruises, learning how to raise shields quickly and then how to drive a physical push a hundred feet by narrowing the cross section down to about a square foot.
Nil curled his lip. "That's just fine if you don't want to hurt anyone. Get it down to pencil lead thin and you can stab them. Rustle can kill from a quarter mile away."
Xen blinked, an old memory . . . "Yeah. I was there. I only saw her do that once. Everything else was close range. Ten, maybe twenty feet."
"It is energy intensive." Nil shrugged and hit him with another spell. Mental this time.
Xen thought bad words as he let his physical shield go and focused on taking apart the spin spell. Tripped and fell down and still tried to keep spinning. Snapped it, raised the energy shield, got rolled by the push spell, got his physical shield up, anchored. Slid an extension downward and through the sand . . . hit Nil's solid shield and jarred his brain so hard he could feel it in his teeth . . .
The other master wizard at the school was his maternal grandfather. Dydit was sympathetic, and gave him some pointers. But refused to help him ambush the archwizard, or whatever Nil was.
"No. Absolutely not. He retaliates automatically, and there's no telling if it'll be reversible. Do not attack him unless you are in a clearly designated training session."
Xen thought it over, and decided to accept that warning without testing it.
There was a group of youngsters at the Wizard's School for a couple of weeks of training. They were younger than Xen, and the Sheep Man treated them a little easier. Six boys between sixteen and eighteen years of age. And two half moon witches with a wizard gene, here to learn how to use it, specifically and separately from the witch gene. Fuchsia and Jade were both seventeen. Scandalously young to be the mothers of two and three year old daughters. Fuchsia was ambitious. Jade . . . had probably been raped. The man hadn't survived to tell his side of the story. Xen had heard all the rumors from both sides. Her cold hungry gaze had him suddenly wondering which side he ought to believe . . .
He showed them all the basic dimensional games. Four of the boys and both women could see the dimensional cubes. Jade could see bubbles, and rather to his shock, so could her three year old. Fuchsia was irate over her inability to see them. The boys couldn't see them either. Or claimed not to. But Xen spotted Ricardo's eyes following a few, when he thought himself unobserved.
Likes his secrets, doesn't he? Ricardo and Eternal were generally found together, opposites in color but both beautiful young men. Ricardo, with his black hair and blue eyes, led and tawny skinned, blonde Eternal followed.
He worked with them all. It was nice to know some other young wizards.
And he read lots of reports.
The reports on the One were interesting.
Nil glanced at the first page. "Oscar Harryson and Bran Butcher were both mages. Bran was an Ash Mage, Oscar an orphan, probably from the Cove Islands who'd washed up on Harry's doorstep, like so many other lost and wandering people." His brow crinkled. "We never did find out what happened to them."
Their eyewitness reports of the Oners' alliance with the Amma of Auralia, their training the Amma's army at a post outside of Discordia, and the presence of a second gate down there certainly filled in a lot of holes.
Their descriptions of "Princess Rior" raised his eyebrows. Pale blonde, nearly white hair, but a tanned—or naturally darkish—skin. Like the witch on the cliffs. Like the dancers at the River of Sand. Coincidence? Hoon's hair grew back darkish brown, and anyhow, I really don't think she went from magical protector of the Gold Gang to dancing prostitute inside of a month.
He finished the reports, and started wondering what had happened to the young officers. Oscar Harryson—the name adopted by many of Harry's orphans. Bran Butcher—he'd be a mage from before Beck Butcher took his mages across to their new world. They can't have just disappeared. Were they killed? Retired? They'd be . . . in their fifties. Why haven't I ever heard of them? Nil said he doesn't know what happened to them. And that takes some doing.
And while he had the reports on the Oners, Janic hadn't sent the reports on the Earthers to him. His grandfather just grinned at his muttering and sent him back to the village with a list of eye witnesses.
He caught the right trio—or rather triad—of witches on the porch of Answer's house and asked about Oscar and Bran.
Particular winced. "Pax stole the Earthers' gate anchor, for an attempted invasion of Earth."
Catti scowled. "And the mages and their . . . women didn't get out fast enough. There was a hole, where our building had been. Lefty said they broke out of the area-for-area part of the traveling spell, but he had no idea where they went. Pax, the God of Peace, traveled the gate to Fascia. And the next time it opened, Pax, the Amma, the Oners and the Army all went through and were never seen again."
Particular nodded. "And Oscar and Bran have never been seen since, either. I just hate to admit that they're dead. Oscar was so cute!" She glanced across the street at the former site of Harry's tavern. "And Oners . . . before the Dragon Girls took care of them, three of them scouted us out. They seemed so nice. I, umm, well, one of them is Vulperite's father, and she's a perfectly good witch."
"Dragon Girls . . . " Xen tried to pull together some vague tales . . . He knew Primo, now, but his mother had never said much about any of the other dragon children.
The three witches snickered when he asked them.
"Go ask your mother!" A sharp, snapping, voice.
Xen startled, turned and nodded politely to Answer. His great great grandmother frowned down at him from the doorway. She was more than a foot shorter than he was—and pulled it off effortlessly.
"Thank you for the eyewitness account." H
e smiled at the triad as he eased off the porch. He gave a second polite nod to Answer. And headed for the Grange Barn. His mother was in Rip today, and if she was busy, no doubt the rest of that child cohort would know the tale as well.
He got mobbed by dogs this time. His old mutts, half sheepdog, big, hairy, and starting to show their age. They're half hell hound, good for another decade, easily. Really.
His Uncle Havi laughed. "Your little pets are still the top wolf killers around. Even the 'little' one."
"Thought you didn't have any wolves over here?"
His mother snorted. "They come through the gate. We should never have added rabbits and squirrels, although I suppose they'd have gotten through on their own, eventually. We even get adventuresome water lizards, now and then. Fortunately the winters here are brutal, and there aren't any hotsprings for them to winter over in."
"Yikes! Now about these people from other worlds?" Xen prompted the group gathering around. "The only Earthers I've met seem nice enough, individually. But as a whole, they're probably going to cause more problem than the Oners."
Whoop scowled. "The Oners were a pack of murderers."
"Yeah, but why? You and Dad didn't say why those eighteen men attacked us."
Rustle shrugged. "Who knows? Those worlds both want what we have, and that's something we need to remember, no matter how 'nice' they are. No matter 'why.' And where did you meet Earthers? I thought they were all marooned in Asia or Fascia?"
Xen nodded. "They mostly are, but there are three moles in Karista. One of them, Damien Malder, comes to Ash once or twice a year."
"Mihaela's Uncle Damien? Why didn't you tell us?"
"I figured you knew. Don't let on, we need to keep an eye on them as well."