“Well done, guys! Very impressive,” I said to the Honor Guard as their armor began melting into their uniforms.
“Yes, very fierce! Exactly what Lord Daybreak wanted,” Jimmy said, smiling. “Thank you, gentlemen. You’re dismissed.” Barely concealing their smiles, the eight Guardsmen snapped to attention then ran for the door along the Road. Once out of sight, their excitement at the compliments exceeded their control and we heard their shouts. They were actually joyous over a simple compliment from First and me. Part of it was the geas and Gilán, but sadly, the greater part was that over their lives, they simply hadn’t received many compliments, even of the “you did adequate” variety. Was it any wonder they felt abandoned by their previous world?
“The guys are examining Lucian now,” I said, after brushing the anchor lightly. “Let’s go have a quick look see and grab some lunch.”
Jimmy snorted. “Great! A desiccated body before a meal, and I complained about third period biology last year.”
“What happened there?” I asked, shifting us to a point near my brothers’ position in the Cahill’s cemetery.
“We dissected frogs and guinea pigs,” he answered distastefully. “Formaldehyde smells wonderful in the morning. And for the rest of the day, too.”
“You got off lucky, then,” I said as we approached the small collection of men around the casket on the ground beside the gravesite. “I had to witness a quadruple by-pass, an intestinal resection, and removal of a brain tumor.”
“On people?” Jimmy asked, aghast.
“Well, yeah, there aren’t too many by-pass surgeries done on guinea pigs, ya know,” I said with a small chuckle.
A steady breeze pushed at our backs as we approached. Shirtless and sweaty, Peter leaned against a shovel pushed into a large pile of dirt at the end of the casket housing the body of Lucian. Both Kieran and Ethan leaned over the side of the open box, dirt and grime coated the sides, proving it had been in the ground awhile. Two more shovels and another pile of dirt were at the other end. They were both dirty and sweaty, too, so at least they hadn’t taken advantage of Peter.
“Hey,” Peter and I grunted at each other as I came up beside him.
“Find out anything yet?” I asked quietly.
“Not yet, but we’ve only had it up a few minutes,” he said just as quietly. “Nothing in the dirt or on the coffin looked unusual to any of us, though.”
I was not that anxious to look, but I moved to the far side of Ethan and peered into the casket, too. There wasn’t any physical embalming done to the body. I didn’t know if that was because there was so little body left or if it was some part of the Pact or other magic-related ceremony, but there was a sigil in the inside top of the casket that should have sped the rate of biological decay. It bore Kieran’s energy signature.
Lucian looked everything but peaceful lying there on the satin pillow. Kieran dressed him in the clothes we found him in, with a replica of the happy face balloon at his feet. Kieran’s spell worked well as most of the body was a gelatinous mass around a skeleton waiting for bacteria and nature to take its course, but in a closed environment, that was taking time. The skull and most of the brain tissue was still intact, oddly. Well, oddly to me, anyway.
Ethan exhaled in a long breath. “I don’t see anything that would say the body has been tampered with.”
“Me, neither,” Kieran said, shaking his head ruefully. “And I don’t see any more evidence of mind-control spells than I did before he died, but it’s obvious he was being controlled somehow.”
Looking down at the tightly drawn skin on Lucian’s pained face, a series of thoughts occurred to me. Slipping below the surface, I looked down at his Pact and Lock and watched it turn slowly in place, suspicious of its presence. “Really?” I said. “Because I see a problem fairly quickly myself.”
Looking back at the castle, I found my father sitting alone outside a counselor’s office reading a book and waiting for my mother’s return. He seemed settled and prepared to wait, so I assumed he’d be there for some time.
Dad? I called through the key that he carried in a small pouch attached by a leather cord around his neck. Could you spare a few minutes?
Sure, son, he replied silently, closing the book. What can I do for you?
An unpleasant task, unfortunately, but it’s about the ‘family business,’ I sent through his diamond. May I bring you to us?
Yes, of course, he said, standing and beginning to worry. I wrapped him in a portal and brought him to the cemetery.
“Sorry about this, Dad, but we’ve had a few incidents today that have caused us to be suspicious of Lucian’s death,” I said as I stepped away from the coffin. Kieran had gone back to studying the body, looking for what I had seen so quickly.
“Damn, I should have seen that,” Kieran muttered after a few seconds. Dad was looking around quickly, taking in his surroundings and trying to figure out what was going on.
“Not having been trained in too many ways, my question is fairly simple,” I continued. “How long does the Pact stay with the body once it dies?”
He looked surprised by the question, but answered quickly. “Not long at all. It begins to implode on itself as soon as the soul and mind depart and stop feeding it the energy it requires to sustain itself. The longest I’ve seen personally is about twenty minutes, but there have been rumors of as long as thirty-five minutes. Why?”
I gestured at the casket, inviting him to look. Ethan stepped out of the way, moving over with Peter and Jimmy. Dad went to the coffin and looked in, shivering in disgust but braving the goo nonetheless. He stared at the skull for a long moment.
“That’s not possible,” he said, finally. “That should have dissipated already. Something is very wrong here. Why is his head still intact but his body has decomposed so badly?”
“My guess would be that whatever is sustaining the Pact past its normal time is also sustaining the skull,” Kieran said. “But this should not be happening at all. Where is the energy coming from? Seth, do you see it?”
“Incoming energy? No, I don’t see any,” I answered. “To me, it appears to be operating quite normally, sort of self-perpetuating.”
“Yes, I would have to agree,” Dad said. “It appears to be perfectly normal. If he were alive and well, it would be normal, but that is obviously not the case. This was Lucian?”
“Yes, sir,” Kieran said uneasily. “He’s been dead about a week. I was with him when he died. I saw his soul depart his body and his mind quit working. It was definitely Lucian. He even rang Seth’s bells once.”
Dad grimaced, ending it with a grin. “Sorry, son. Lucian was always heavy-handed on that. I’m sure it was loud.”
“Like standing in the belfry of St. Mary’s Cathedral,” I complained.
“So what’s making it stay?” Kieran asked Dad.
“I have no idea,” he answered.
“Then let’s change the question,” I said. “Is it real?”
“What do you mean?” Dad asked, perplexed but taking me seriously and studying the Pact and Lock carefully.
“Could what we’re looking at here be a fake or maybe a reflection of the real thing? Maybe Lucian is still alive somewhere and this projection never stopped,” I explained. It was a weak supposition, I knew, but it would answer a few other questions.
“That would mean this wasn’t truly Lucian,” Kieran said, considering the question carefully. “That would require a much more fundamental control on him than a mind control spell would allow.”
“Perhaps the kind that would aggravate a pixie?” I asked. “I mean, I know it’s not scientific method or anything, but Shrank didn’t complain about Gramps like he did Lucian.”
“What?” Dad asked. “You two have really got to tell me what’s happened in the past few months. Trying to catch up through picking up conversations is confusing.”
Grinning, I said, “Then why don’t you and Mom come by for dinner tonight and we’ll get started on t
hat. Ethan?” I looked over at him, knowing he was going to be uncomfortable about this.
He gave me a small smile and said, “I’ll be there, little brother.” Peter nodded when I looked to him. Of course, Jimmy would be there unless I sent him away. That meant I needed to go shopping.
“You aren’t going to invite Ehran?” Dad asked.
“When I can get more of his attention,” I said. “Look at him. Ya wanna bum money off him? Now would be a damn good time.” I waved vaguely at the vast muscular back of my brother as he leaned in closer over the casket scowling into the base of the skull on the pillow. “He’s totally intent on how that is fueled. Until he’s figured it out or somebody tells him or drags him off, which is what I’m gonna do soon since he’s helping me cook dinner.”
“I’m going to what?” Kieran asked backing away from the casket a little. “I could have sworn I heard someone around my ankles chattering about volunteering me for work. That’s what I have apprentices for, especially when some do things better than I do.” Crossing my arms on my chest, I just gawked at him for a few seconds.
“I don’t think he’s buying it, Ehran,” Dad said, laughing. “I’ve seen that look before. His mother has one just like it. Whatever you do, don’t turn around. If you turn around, you’re a lost cause.”
“I didn’t think it would, Dad,” Kieran said, laughing lightly, not an easy task with your head and shoulders shoved into a coffin. “There’s a stubborn streak that runs through this family that’s about ten miles wide. I should know, sharing in it.”
“I’ll say,” Dad said, laughing harder.
“Sounds like you should have agreed to an exchange, Seth,” Ethan called, grinning. “There must be a good story or two in there somewhere.”
“Ten or twelve,” Dad commented dryly, smiling.
“I can’t see what’s doing it,” Kieran said, frustrated. I moved in beside him and looked again. Dad moved in beside me.
Examining the sigil at the top, Dad said, “It looks like you buried him correctly. I wonder why the skull and brain tissue are still intact.”
“Kieran, does it look a little weaker than Dad’s to you?” I asked. “Maybe ‘weaker’ isn’t the right word, I don’t know…”
“No, I see what you mean. It’s paler. I would expect that compared to yours, but Dad and Lucian should be roughly comparable in strength,” Kieran answered.
“Ehh, not really,” Dad disagreed. “Lucian was barely a pup to me. He was only about a hundred, hundred and ten years old. He was good, I admit, but I’m better.”
“And just how did you turn out humble?” Peter asked me, leaning over my shoulder. I shrugged the other shoulder so I wouldn’t hit his chin, not knowing if he was kidding or not. Humility hadn’t been a strong suit lately.
“Here, everybody stand back and let me try something,” I said, calling the Stone forward in my cavern.
“Crap!” Peter exclaimed, turning quickly and nearly running ten yards away. “Hurry up, you two. His last two tries at something were quite successful, but violent.”
I chuckled as Kieran and Dad strolled over to Peter. Ethan and First moved over with them. Every being on the planet should have known I didn’t want to do this, but I had to try it. Reading a dead man’s mind is not something I would suggest, especially one who died violently and suffered such trauma beforehand. It was useful, though, in telling me how the Loa hid in him and how the damage wasn’t obvious.
“The first Loa entered this universe from a point just inside the Pact Lock,” I murmured. “Lucian didn’t know they were there.”
Working with the Stone’s energy, first I tried simply isolating the casket from the outside energy sources, specifically the ley lines. There was no affect on the Pact. Casting a Faraday cage around the casket had similar affect. Sending my senses into the foam of reality, I roamed the body quickly, finding the goo of forced decay unappealing but noting a few irregularities that made me wonder. The Lock wasn’t breached at the Loa’s entry point, but there were tears in the tissue along the edges where it would hold physical presence when the gateway between worlds was enacted. It was almost a gentle invasion from that perspective, but ragged bites in the skeleton told a different story.
“Kieran, do you know when the Loa started attacking Lucian?” I asked as I probed into the Lock further.
“I couldn’t say for certain,” he answered. “There was too much going on at the time. It looked to me that they were being indiscriminate in their violence.”
I nodded as I watched the energy flow through the Lock to hold the Pact in place, seeing the lines of force so unlike anything else in the universe wrap around that huge expanse of knowledge and experience. The Stone hummed slightly so I let it do as it wished while I watched. First it channeled more power through its current field, then it projected a second field inside the first that pushed against it and the Pact magic. Slowly the Stone began changing the energy signature of the second field until it hit a point of resonance that caused the Pact magic to vibrate slightly. The Stone continued changing the signatures, finding two more resonance points. Once it hit a range of extremely high energy output and the resonance grew out of reach, the Stone collapsed the second field and emitted a disappointed sound in my head.
“No, my friend, that was more telling than you realize,” I murmured to the Stone and called for the Night. Then more loudly to my family, I said, “This isn’t Lucian and that is not a Pact. There are pesticides in the decaying goo of his body that shouldn’t exist there.” I slipped the point of the Night into the base of the skull and cut the bindings on the image of the Pact, releasing it from the body of the fake Lucian. “And if this were real, I shouldn’t be able to just lift it out.”
It took a great deal of willpower from me to stop the Night from devouring the massive magic of the fake Pact, but I managed it. Pulling the Sword free of the skull, the Pact glowed in surreal colors but was deceptively small, about half the size of an index card and only three times as thick.
“That would kill him and cause the Pact to implode,” Dad said, alarmed.
“First, you are not to repeat anything you hear here,” I said severely. “This is a family secret that I wasn’t planning on telling you and I don’t plan on explaining anything, either.”
“Yes, Seth,” Jimmy said, accepting the situation at face value.
“It’s definitely not being fed by a soul now,” Kieran said.
“Actually, I think it is,” I said, peering at it. “I think we’re seeing a reflection of it, of sorts, and a very good one at that, especially considering it’s coming from the inside. The Stone found three resonance points at high energy levels that shouldn’t have existed. I think I can break it, but I won’t be able to follow it back to its source. Or we can lock it up for now and when we want we can set up another resonance at a greater frequency and cause the sender a great deal of pain, I think.”
“I vote for the second,” Dad said immediately, angry suddenly.
“I rather like the sound of that myself,” Kieran said with a smile.
Chapter 54
Um, Mr. McClure? Are you there? Ryan Davis called through the diamond I gave him.
Yes, Mr. Davis, what can I do for you? I asked. “Do you have twenty-five pork chops that size?”
“No, sir, I’d have to cut sum more,” the butcher replied.
“Good, make it thirty, then, please,” I said, smiling.
I have news on the house, sir, Davis said nervously.
“Do you have any prosciutto?” I asked the butcher. Your tone doesn’t sound good, Mr. Davis. Have they declined?
“Yes, sir, down three cases on the second shelf on the righ’,” the butcher replied.
Yes, sir, I’m afraid there were a few minor items we didn’t take into account, Davis said. It’s quite reasonable, unfortunately, but it will raise the cost over your bid by one hundred fifty thousand pounds.
“That sounds like the taxes I have to pay,” I said
and sent across the link. “Are you in touch with them now?”
Yes, sir, I am.
“Offer another two hundred, then,” I said. “I’ve had a bad day and want something to go right. There’s enough in that account to cover the difference. Just get copies of receipts for all taxes so I don’t pay anything twice. Okay?”
That’s very generous, sir, Davis said, feeling confused. Just a moment and I’ll speak with them. He put the diamond down on a desk blotter and picked up a desk phone. He didn’t realize how far my perceptions went through it, though, thinking the gem required physical contact. I only half-listened to the conversation while I looked for the Italian ham I wanted.
“Nothing makes you feel more like a sot than carrying liquor around on a cart,” Kieran said as he walked up pulling a six-wheeled cart laden with cartons of wine, beer, and liquor. “Did you decide on a main course?”
“Yep, stuffed pork chops,” I said cheerfully. “The butcher is cutting them now. And providing I can find the cheeses. This is a confusing market.”
“It’s over in that corner,” Kieran said pointing at the opposite corner of the store. “I passed it looking for the beer and wine. Is that all we’re going to feed everyone? Pork chops?”
“No,” I said laughing lightly. “But vegetables aren’t too much of a problem.”
Mr. McClure? Davis called again, picking up the diamond. They have agreed to the sale.
“Very good, Mr. Davis,” I said. “How long will it take for the paperwork to go through?”
I should have everything ready for your signature on Thursday morning, I think, Davis said.
“Cool, thank you, Mr. Davis, I’ll see you on Thursday, then,” I said.
“I think the butcher is trying to get your attention,” Kieran said. “That, or he’s planning on throwing a cleaver at us.”
“With what they’re charging, you’d think they’d come out from behind their counters,” I muttered as I turned my buggy around and headed back.
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