Etheric Knight

by P. J. Cherubino

  “We have had a breakthrough,” he exclaimed with bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes.

  “Have you slept?”

  “I napped,” Vinnie replied, turning back to the page. “We’ve been working nonstop since last evening when you called me to the arboretum.”

  “Arboretum?” Astrid replied in confusion.

  “That’s what we’re calling the assembly space now,” Elise replied.

  “So, what is this breakthrough?” Astrid asked.

  Vinnie waved his hand and kept scribbling.

  “He’s working on the final calculations,” Elise answered.

  “For what?” Astrid demanded. “And what is this contest?”

  Elise smiled and folded her arms across her chest. “It’s a friendly competition to see which team can get their part of the machine assembled first.”

  “But what are you building?” Astrid was getting frustrated.

  “We are building the first step to a new era!” Vinnie declared as he lifted his page from the table and waved it like a flag. “We have discovered the specific frequency of the magical energy that produces the portal. Now we’re building a machine that can calculate when the next rift will open. With more effort, we will be able to discover exactly where.”

  “You have a hundred artisans working to make a machine just for that?” Astrid asked.

  “No,” Vinnie responded. “The machine we are building will be able to do so much more. It will be able to do many more calculations. It is a general calculating device. This is but the first task we will give it.” Vinnie turned to Elise hopefully. “Are we ready to enter the formula?”

  “Not yet,” Elise answered.

  Vinnie took a deep breath and gave a strained chuckle. He set the paper down carefully on the table as if it was a leaf from a sacred text. “I must stay here with my formula until the device is ready. I fear what my excitement might do out there.”

  Astrid had mercy on them both when she spotted a pitcher of water. She poured two cups and made them sit down.

  “Drink some water and calm down, both of you,” Astrid demanded. “Have you eaten?” They both shook their heads. “Has anyone around here?” They both shrugged.

  “Astrid, have you seen Moxy and Tracker?” Vinnie asked.

  “No, why?” Astrid replied.

  “I asked them to retrieve the remains of the...disguise that the Skrim was wearing.”

  “Why would you want that?” Astrid asked, wrinkling her nose.

  “To study, of course,” Vinnie replied.

  “I’m going to go make the rounds,” Astrid announced. “I’ll be in the War Room if you need me.”

  On the way out of the workshop, she stopped by the horse stall that confined the Skrim. She found Mortsen peering through the bars at the creature inside.

  “That’s something to see before breakfast,” he remarked. “What do you plan to do with him?”

  “Him?” Astrid arched an eyebrow.

  “Anything that talks and shows fear is a him...or a her,” Mortsen stated. “But I can’t tell what that thing is. Maybe it’s neither.”

  Astrid considered Mortsen’s question as well as his statement. “It won’t matter until we know more.”

  “Always practical,” Mortsen replied with a wry smile. “So far, you’ve avoided letting me see the Arbori. How about today?”

  “Don’t read anything into it. I’m not trying to keep you away from him.”

  “Not until you make sure I’m on your side, anyway.”

  “I’m heading to the war room,” Astrid noted. “I suppose I can take you by the assembly...arboretum they’re calling it now.”

  She left the stables by a discreetly-guarded back door. The first thing Astrid noticed as she scanned the area was the change in personnel. The watch commander had placed one guard by the back door and had rerouted a double foot patrol to cover this area of the grounds. It was apparent the patrol frequency had changed as well.

  Mortsen’s keen eyes also served him well. “The New Ancients would call this ‘a high state of readiness,’” he quipped.

  “I didn’t know you were such a student of the Old World,” Astrid replied.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” Mortsen replied as they reached the inner walls and passed through the tall gates, now covered in lush vines.

  The inner courtyard was transformed. The paving stones that Charlie had placed a month ago were almost completely obscured. But where before, there was a solid wall of trees and undergrowth just fifty feet past the gates, now there was a clear and winding stone path into the forest.

  “That path wasn’t here yesterday,” Astrid remarked. She followed it with Mortsen by her side.

  The trees had fully matured, and more than a few extended twice as high as the courtyard walls.

  The place felt different as well. The air was humid, and it smelled slightly of ozone. The path wound about the trunks of the tallest trees and stopped where the portal had appeared. It seemed fitting that they had buried the dead remnant there after Vinnie was done with them.

  They found Charlie there busy with a pile of rocks. He plopped onto the jumbled pile when he saw the two approach. He wiped the sweat off his brow and leaned back casually against his handiwork.

  “For once, you seem at a loss for words,” Astrid teased.

  “I’d heard only rumors over the years,” Mortsen uttered, finally able to speak past his astonishment. “I thought they were just that. But now that I see him…”

  “He is something very special,” Astrid asserted. “But what? When we’re sure he’s safe, we need to bring him back to his home.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  On the Road Again

  “Won’t be too far from dawn when we get to the mess,” Moxy observed halfway down the switchback road to the Wards.

  “Mess…” Gormer groaned. “No...we’re not going back for that, are we? That’s our mission?”

  “What?” Jiri asked.

  Gormer considered his answer for a long moment. “You’ll see when you get there,” he finally answered. “It’ll be like a surprise party.”

  “It’s not a surprise party if I know it’s coming,” Jiri replied.

  “Don’t worry,” Gormer answered. “There’s plenty of surprise in store for you.”

  Moxy was right. Dawn was fast approaching, and the moon had nearly set.

  By this hour, nearly everyone in the quarter was asleep or passed out. They passed a few people slumped over in doorways. A few curled peacefully where the gutters were dry. The lucky ones cradled bottles for their breakfast.

  Gormer drove the wagon expertly through the narrow streets to the pier district.

  “Don’t want to get the wagon bogged down. We’ll have to drag the...surprise party…back to the wagon on the tarps. You do see tarps back there, don’t you?”

  They nodded.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Gormer grumbled, hopping down from the driver’s seat.

  They crossed the soggy ground to where they had their fight with the Skrim. It occurred to Gormer that it was strange the thing should run this way. Usually, when people are chased, they tried to reach something that might give them hope of escape.

  “Hey,” Moxy said. “What’s wrong?”

  Gormer realized he had stopped. “Why did he come this way?”

  “Who?” Jiri asked.

  He didn’t know about the Skrim. “We caught our man. The one who hired the mercenaries to capture Charlie.”

  “First I’ve heard of it,” Jiri replied.

  “Yeah, we didn’t really have time to give everyone a full report. We caught the guy, but he ran. I wonder why he ran away from town and toward the other pier. Nobody’s usually over that way.”

  Gormer started walking again toward the lumpy pile that lay in the shadows among the hearty water grass.

  A few steps later, the nature of their mission came into focus. “What did you do to that man!” the Petran exclaim
ed.

  “Not a man,” Gormer replied. “It called itself a Skrim, and it was wearing this human flesh as a disguise. It was inside all that meat, somehow operating it to move like you or me. When we caught up to it, the thing cut its way through and left this flesh pudding behind.”

  Jiri just stood there shaking his head. Gormer unfolded the tarp and found five sets of canvas gloves inside.

  “They thought of everything,” he observed and passed the gloves around. They were amusingly large for the pixies, but they did the trick.

  “I dreaded touching that with my hands,” Jiri confessed.

  “We’ll burn everything when we’re done with it,” Gormer decided.

  They loaded the scraps of meat onto the tarp and had just started to drag it across the ground when Tracker stopped dead in his tracks. He lifted his nose to the air and sniffed. The hair stood up on Gormer’s arms and the back of his neck. There was a crackling sound.

  “There!” Gormer shouted. He pointed to something glowing in the grass.

  Static electricity crackled along the ground, radiating toward them like cracks in a mirror. Jiri dropped his end of the tarp, even as Gormer shouted, “Run!”

  The world seemed to split open with a roar. Gormer stumbled, blinded by a blue-white flash.

  The portal opened just ten feet from them. For a moment, Gormer stared into a black more perfect than any subterranean tomb. An instant later, a hole ripped between two points in space.

  The first remnant jumped through and headed right for Tracker, who whipped the blowpipe from his back and used it as a staff to knock the remnant off its feet. Moxy stabbed it in the chest with her claws until it laid still.

  A second remnant jumped through, then a third inside two seconds. Jiri had his sword out in an instant. His eyes turned from steel-gray to black, and the sword glowed white-hot, then burst into flames.

  As suddenly as it opened, the portal closed.

  Whoosh-clang! The flaming sword clashed with the heavy, curved blade wielded by the remnant.

  “Shit!” Gormer exclaimed. The third remnant charged him. He reached into his sleeve for his dagger, then remembered the pistol in his waistband.

  He pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger.

  “Fucking goat shit motherfucking—” Gormer shouted, looking stupidly at what might as well have been his own limp cock in his hand.

  It was then he recalled the little lever on the side. He flicked it down with his thumb and realized that his finger was still on the trigger.

  Crack! A bolt of blue energy hit the remnant in the left cheek and removed it completely. It kept coming even though its eyeball hung down by its chin.

  Gormer danced away and pulled the trigger again. Another bolt of energy missed completely and nearly hit Jiri in the shoulder.

  “Watch it!” he yelped, and still managed to take his opponent’s arm off and stab it through the chest.

  Two more shots went wild before Moxy and Tracker killed the last remnant with their claws. It fell at Gormer’s feet with half a head oozing black blood into the dirt.

  “Vinnie can shove this damn thing straight up his ass!” Gormer shouted.

  He moved to throw the weapon as far as he could, but Jiri stayed his hand. “Keep it,” he admonished. “You can give it back to Vinnie later. A weapon is only as good as the hand that wields it.”

  Gormer checked the safety lever, then carefully slipped the pistol back into his waistband. It took him a moment to catch his breath, then he walked toward the place where he had seen the glow.

  “What are you looking for?” Jiri asked.

  “Didn’t you see that glow? I think it came from this thing.”

  He stopped next to a red object shaped like a smooth ear of corn. He kicked it with his toe. “It looks like that thing that opened and put its feelers on me.”

  “Feelers, huh? Bet that’s the most attention you’ve had in months,” Jiri quipped.

  Gormer found himself in the rare position of being on the point of a sharp comment. A flash of anger crossed his face but broke quickly with much-needed laughter.

  “Good one,” Gormer acknowledged. “I taught you well.”

  “But what is that thing?” Moxy asked.

  Tracker used his gloves to pick it up. “Let’s take it back to your shaman, the man-mountain.”

  Gormer chuckled. “Why does Vinnie have so many names?”

  “They’re more like titles,” Jiri responded.

  Tracker tossed the red object onto the tarp with the rest of the collection while Gormer and Jiri dragged everything back to the wagon and loaded it.

  “Wait,” Jiri called when Gormer tried to climb into the wagon. Gormer stared back bleary-eyed. He was finally worn out. The lack of sleep and the final action laid him low. “What now?”

  “Help me gather kindling. We should burn the bodies.”

  They gathered dry grass and driftwood and even managed to find a pile of discarded scraps of wood closer to town. By the time they finished their impromptu pyre, the sun was rising.

  “Stand back and mind the wind,” Jiri warned.

  With a dramatic shrug of his shoulders, he aimed his palms toward the pile. Two streams of fire flowed down his arms and burst from his palms like water from a hose. He kept up the flames until his magic was spent. The sun and the fire reflected in the black marble of his eyes.

  “Good idea,” Gormer acknowledged as he climbed back into the driver’s seat. “We should have brought sausages to cook, though.”

  “Well,” Jiri replied, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a pile of ground meat in the back.”

  Gormer feigned retching and laughed uncomfortably. “Now that I know you have a sick sense of humor, I like you even better.”

  Flip the Switch

  Vinnie checked and double-checked his formula. The figures looked just as solid as they did five examinations ago. He scolded himself for looking at his pocket watch. The sun would be up soon.

  The entire workshop staff had not slept since the night before when Astrid had informed him about the magical arboretum in the inner courtyard. It was that discovery that allowed them to compare and differentiate the various frequencies that magical energy produced. From there, it was just a matter of crunching numbers.

  For weeks Elise had painstakingly calculated the various iterations from the data Vinnie gathered. The girl’s mathematical skills came as a pleasant surprise. Her experience making complex designs for weaving in her loom had given her all the skill she needed. All it took for her to excel was for Vinnie to explain the mathematical principles she used to weave.

  It was Elise who thought of combining the principles of a music box, a clock, and a loom to create the mechanical computer. The rest of the workshop adopted the idea and expanded upon it.

  Vinnie was like a conductor. He waved one baton to keep the work pace consistent and the other to direct the sections of artisans, technicians, and scribes to come in at the right moment to play their opus.

  His lids were drooping when a wild cheer erupted in the workshop. For once, the ground shook without Vinnie’s weight. Everyone was jumping up and down, hugging and congratulating one another.

  Vinnie hopped to his feet, formula in hand.

  “Well, who won?” Vinnie demanded, beaming like a new father.

  “The power distribution team beat us,” Cole shouted in feigned anger. “And we nearly had you, dammit!”

  He shook his fist, and the leader of the other team returned the gesture. “You keep tryin’. We have plenty more where that came from!”

  That made people laugh even harder. The excitement peaked, then ran out slowly. Everyone turned to Vinnie.

  Finally, Elise spoke. “Teacher, would you like to turn on the machine?”

  Vinnie considered the question as his eyes scanned across the ten benches, each holding a specific component of the device. He had asked much of both the machine and the workshop itself. The first test would be a
real-world problem for which they needed an answer. They had no idea if it would work.

  “Take your places, everyone,” Vinnie ordered solemnly.

  The teams returned to their individual benches and gave their work one final look. Each called out when they were ready.

  Vinnie strode down to the last bench where the power module sat with its dozens of glowing amphoralds installed in a one-foot-square lattice. He marveled at the dozens of copper filaments that branched their way to the various components all the way down the line of benches.

  Vinnie scanned the expectant faces and for once struggled to find the words. He kept it short and to the point. “Our work is just beginning. I could not feel prouder of what you’ve accomplished here today. I am honored to work among such brilliant, creative people.”

  Vinnie grabbed a lever on the side of the power unit and pulled it firmly toward the bench until it clicked.

  For a few seconds, nothing happened. The room strained under the silence of a hundred people holding their breath. Vinnie glanced at the power unit team leader, who seemed unaware of the streams of sweat that ran down his forehead and spilled onto his cheeks.

  The machine began to tick, then it hummed, then it whirred. Three seconds later, the shop was filled with a cacophony of metered clicking, clacking, and mechanical pinging.

  Vinnie hurried back to Elise and her team. “Is the head ready?”

  “You’re damn right it’s ready,” Cole blurted before anyone could answer.

  Vinnie clapped him on the shoulder and handed him the formula. “Read these numbers off to me,” he ordered.

  As Cole read him the digits, Vinnie turned the clock hands on sixteen dials fastened to the top. He pulled a spring-loaded lever after each sequence until the formula was complete.

  “Is the gathering mast set?” Vinnie asked. He traced the path of a copper cable as thick as his pinky that led from one of the components and out the door.

  The workers relayed the question down the line and out the door. The answer came back a resounding ‘yes.’

  Vinnie took a deep breath and pulled the final lever. Activating the head added even more mechanical rattling to the air.