by John Booth
“Yes.”
“And was she good after three months away?”
Morgana giggled and I put her down. “Go and play,” I told her while giving Esmeralda a warning look. She ignored it.
“How many times?” she asked.
“Only once. She had to take Merlin to the zoo.”
Esmeralda went to a door and called a servant to look after Morgana. Then she took me to our bedroom.
32. Forbidden
I woke early, trying to remember what the time alignment was between Salice and the University. Balmack had a shorter day than Earth and Salice and their relative times of day shifted in a 67 day cycle.
Esmeralda was still asleep and I hopped out of bed to avoid waking her. I peered into Morgana’s room to find my daughter was wide away and staring at me.
“Daddy hug,” she said eagerly and I picked her up and gave her a cuddle.
“Do you think I’m going to catch the Bomber?” I asked as I swung her into the air and back down again.
“Daddy come home.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a request or a prediction, but it was all she was giving me. Putting her down in the cot I went back to the bedroom to get dressed. I sensed a presence behind me and turned to find Morgana hovering horizontally a few feet away.
“Back to bed,” I ordered and she reluctantly obeyed; hands behind her head and feet first.
My clothes had been neatly folded and placed on a chest. I reached for my jeans.
“Are you leaving so soon, My Lord?”
“They mustn’t find out I can hop again.”
“And your young lady will fret if you do not return soon.” It wasn’t a question.
I felt my face flush and used magic to suppress it.
“I am doubly married.”
“And a man with large appetites,” Esmeralda said quietly. “It is all right, My Lord, I have long accepted that your desires will never allow you to be faithful.”
This was unbearable. I couldn’t discuss this with my wives, or Betty for that matter.
“But I see it bothers you, Jake. Do not let it. It is who you are.” Esmeralda got out of bed and came to hug me. “And you might allow our babies to grow to term.”
“That wasn’t me it was…”
“Morgana and Merlin? Jake, how can you persist in such nonsense? The only one with the power to do such a thing is you.”
“I will find a way to stop it.” My kids weren’t going to outsmart me on this one.
Esmeralda put her head on my shoulder.
“See that you do.”
Betty was in the kitchen when I hopped to her flat. She put her head round the door as I arrived.
“Coffee will be ready in a moment. I knew that you wouldn’t want tea. You’re far too tired.”
Until the moment she mentioned it I hadn’t known I was. Now I could feel I was running on adrenaline and I slumped exhausted into a chair. Betty arrived moments later with a pot of coffee and biscuits.
“Is this your usual breakfast?”
She patted her tummy which was showing a slight bulge. “I have a hankering these days for ginger biscuits. Besides, you aren’t staying long.”
“No time for a quickie?”
She laughed. “After what you did to me last time? You’re lucky to be getting coffee.”
“Any more hassle with your mother?”
Betty’s face clouded, but there was no anger in it. “We are working it out. I see her a couple of times a week.”
“You believe her about me, and the baby?”
“I can’t not believe. The sight is in my blood, and in hers.”
There was no answer to that so I sipped my coffee and ate a biscuit. I would have eaten more, but Betty frowned when I reached out so I withdrew my hand.
“Jake, it’s all going wrong. I wasn’t supposed to get pregnant, I wasn’t supposed to reconcile with my Mum and you were supposed to have found the Bomber by now.”
“Not all those things are bad.”
She shook her head. “You have no idea what it feels like when all the futures shift. It’s like being giddy all the time. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
I moved to sit with her on the sofa. Putting my arms around her I gave her a gentle squeeze.
“That’s how the rest of us feel all the time. Never knowing what will be the consequences when we do something.”
“How do you live with it? I can’t.” Betty kissed me. “Thank you for my child though; her future is going to be special.”
We sat holding each other for a few minutes. Then Betty poked me in the ribs.
“You have to go, Jake. A blonde woman is knocking at your door and she might well knock the wall down if you don’t get there to answer it.”
Sure enough, the pounding coming through my wall suggested that Lana was getting impatient.
“Okay I’m coming,” I shouted and dropped the force field.
The door burst open and Lana strode in. Bits of the lock flew across the room like shrapnel.
“I said I was coming.”
“You don’t usually sleep that deeply,” Lana accused.
“Hard day.”
“And you don’t look any fresher this morning. We have a lecture to go to, remember?”
I did, though I’d forgotten it until she mentioned it. It was compulsory attendance and was on the subject of Forbidden Magic. The only way to tell a magic user what was forbidden was to show them how to do it, so they didn’t do it by accident. There would be over six thousand students in the lecture, which was to be held in the arena where we had the trials.
“Are we late?” I asked.
“We will be if you don’t get a move on.”
The arena had changed yet again. There was a raised stage at the far end of it and rows of chairs across the floor for the students.
“We find a seat down there.” Lana grabbed my hand and hopped us to the front row, which in fine old student tradition was completely empty.
“What was wrong with the back?”
“Full of losers,” Lana retorted. When I zoomed in with magic sight I saw there were no spare seats back there anyway.
Esta and Jeram hopped across the arena to join us.
“We were at the back, but we thought we would rather be with you. It is standing room only back there,” Esta told us cheerfully, giving me a wink. From the way Lana’s fists clenched, they still hadn’t sorted out their issues.
Jeram stuck out his hand and I shook it.
“I am glad you have agreed to me coming with you. It is important.”
“My friends have a way of getting injured. You can still change your mind?” Maybe he would. I still didn’t understand why any of them wanted to come.
For a second Jeram wavered. It was like a dark cloud passed over his face. Then he smiled. “Sometimes there are hard things we have to do, for the good of everything.”
Well, I didn’t see how risking your life so I could catch a bad guy was for the good of everything. But it seemed his mind was made up and he was always excellent company.
When we sat down, I heard a voice whisper behind me.
“You haven’t heard why no one wants to be on the front row?”
I turned my head and found Pitre Cort behind me looking incredibly smug. Before I could ask her what she meant, loud music blared out and a force shield over the arena darkened, leaving only the stage lit by daylight.
“I am Grand Mage Torthic,” an old man in brightly colored robes told us after he appeared on the stage. “And I will guide you through Forbidden Magic. Not that you must ever use it because it is forbidden, don’t you see.” The old mage cackled with laughter as though he had just told a great joke and was met by silence from the crowd. Students can be a tough audience.
“There are five types of magic you must not use and I am certain that you already know one of them very well, but we shall save that one for later. As is customary, those on the front row have volunteere
d to be laboratory rats for our little demonstrations.”
I looked to either side of the four of us and saw we were alone. This was all Lana’s fault, as you would never normally catch me in the front row of anything.
“As we have only four volunteers today, I would ask them to hop up here with me as we shall certainly be using all of them.” Torphic cackled again as though he had said something incredibly funny. This time, a lot of the students joined in. Bastards.
We stood up and reluctantly hopped to the stage. There was a smattering of applause, though I suspected much of it was pure sarcasm.
“The first forbidden magic is the transformation of living beings. You’ll find that cats hate to be changed into dogs and if you do it the other way around it is likely the dog will have a nervous breakdown.”
Another pause for laughter, which didn’t come. Apparently torturing us was funny, but the mention of torturing animals brought silence. Well, at least we knew where we stood in the grand order of things.
“The prohibition is mainly aimed at intelligent life forms, which surprisingly includes hedge wizards like the four in front of me.”
Okay, so that’s what he thinks of us. Lana reached for the sword she wasn’t wearing. I was beginning to work out the thinking behind carrying a sword. People tend to be a lot more polite, for a start.
“Being in another shape can be damaging to the mind. Man was not meant to be in embodied as an eagle and prolonged exposure will result in permanent brain damage.”
Torphic waved his hand and Lana changed into a dog, her clothes falling around her body. She snarled with such intensity I took a step back from her. Before she could spring at Torphic he changed her back.
For a few seconds Lana crouched naked in front of the crowd before Jeram and I created distortion fields around her so she could get dressed. The students shouted, jeered and some tried to remove the distortion fields. However, Jeram and I were more than a match for them.
“As we have just seen, hedge wizards are exactly the same as us, in the flesh as it were.”
So the game was, insult and embarrass the hedge wizards. Judging from the roars of approval coming from the students this was a popular idea.
We cleared the distortion fields as soon as Lana had dressed. Judging by the look on her face, Torphic had better be going on a long vacation as soon as he finished here. A few thousand universes away might be far enough.
Lana flung a transformation spell at him that should have turned him into a monkey. Torphic absorbed her energy without difficulty and smiled at her.
“I am glad you have learned how to do it. The next time you try, you will be expelled from the university.”
Lana clenched her fists, but said nothing.
Torphic turned his attention back to the students.
“You all think you know how to do Mind Control. For a magic user, overcoming the will of a normal human is as easy as breathing. Mind control of the non-magical is forbidden on Balmack, but there is a variant that can take over the mind of the strongest magic user and its use is strictly forbidden.”
He paused for effect and to eye us up. I piled up layers of protection, including one I had learned from the Progenitors, a protection embedded into my skull.
But his eyes had fixed on Esta.
He cast something black and evil on her. It reminded me of a Krake in that it was like a magical film of black oil. Her eyes stared at him without the slightest sign of intelligence.
“Take your clothes off, young lady, and be quick about it.”
Jeram surrounded her in another distortion field, which resulted in the crowd groaning in disappointment.
“Take the mind control off her,” I said, surprisingly calmly, considering I wanted to tear his head from his body.
Torphic frowned at me. “It is just a bit of fun. The students have to learn.”
“I won’t tell you again.”
He waved at me and the world faded to grey. For a second I was lost and confused and then I recognized where I was. He had sent me into Glim.
“I hope you all caught that spell. It is called Half-Hopping and our angry friend is currently experiencing our world as if looking through fog. He cannot touch us, or use his magic on us and it is an incredibly difficult place to get out of. Which is why its use is forbidden. I’ll let him out later, if he promises to be good.”
The students cheered. The distortion field wasn’t visible here and I saw Esta had completed her strip and stood naked. She stared ahead blankly, waiting for further orders. Meanwhile Torphic was continuing his lecture.
“The fourth magic you must never use is Energy Conversion. This is a little difficult to demonstrate safely as allows you to convert anything into a bomb.”
He grinned at Jeram. “If I was to convert you, Hedge Wizard, I could trigger you to explode with enough energy to destroy the arena. However, I think I will save you for the final demonstration.”
Torphic took a tiny glass cube from the folds of his cloak. It was smaller than a sugar cube. I could still use my magical senses from Glim and I saw what he did to it. It was the same magic that had blown Auntie May to pieces.
He threw the cube into the air and used his magic to send it through the black dome above us and high into the stratosphere. The explosion that followed was bright enough to be seen through the dome. The sound of the explosion came many seconds later.
“I think it’s clear why we don’t allow that.”
Torphic turned to Jeram. “The last forbidden magic is Mind Theft. It sucks all knowledge from a victim so there is nothing left. Are you frightened yet, hedge wizard?”
Jeram flung a wave of energy at Torphic that should have torn him to pieces. Torphic laughed and I saw magical forces pin Jeram rigid. Lana tried more of the same. But he dissipated her magic as if it was nothing. He knocked her across the stage with a flip of his hand and when she landed, she didn’t move.
What had started as a lecture had descended into something out of a horror movie and I didn’t have a clue how to get out of Glim. I’d never figured it out when Fluffy did it and I’d experienced that hundreds of time. There had to be a way to stop Torphic before he killed my friends.
Torphic must have said something because Esta stepped out of the distortion field and began to perform a series of explicit poses much to the delight of the male students.
I felt in my pockets, though I couldn’t have said why. My hand touched the knife on my belt. Though I had no idea what truth it could show, I pricked my thumb with the point of the knife and smeared blood over the blade.
My vision shuddered and I saw a layer of black film over Torphic’s head. He was under the same mind control as he’d put on Esta. Energy flowed out of the blade as a bright flash and the film vanished from Torphic and Esta’s heads. A point of normal space showed through where the tip of the blade had been. I slashed a large X in Glim and stepped through. The hole closed behind me as soon as I was back in normal space.
Torphic was holding his head and groaning. Esta put a shield of darkness around herself. Lana was waking up while Jeram collapsed as the magic around him vanished.
“Kill the bastard,” Lana shouted. She staggered across the stage, a six inch knife in her hand. She threw it at Torphic. I stopped it in mid-air.
“He was under Mind Control,” I shouted. Lana looked at me blankly and then like she was going to kill me later. Jeram was the first to take it in and he nodded.
“That would explain a great deal. How did you get it off him?”
I slipped the Knife of Truth into my pocket.
“You learn a thing or two when you live with a dragon. The dragons use Half-Hopping all the time.”
Jeram nodded as though that made sense though I was sure he knew it didn’t.
“Where am I?” Torphic asked.
Before any of us could answer, Esta strode up to him and slapped him across the face so hard I saw a tooth fly out of his mouth. Then she strode from the stage.
“Did I deserve that?” Torphic asked in a dazed voice.
“Yes,” Jeram said..
“First time in fifty years that’s happened to me and I can’t even remember why.”
“You have been under Mind Control. What’s the last thing you remember?” I asked.
“A student visited me. Daffith Smith, do you know him?”
I felt a chill run through me.
“I plan to.”
33. Permission
Manda looked up as we entered the outer office. She sniffed disdainfully at Lana and Jeram, but smiled at Esta. She gave me a look of mild approval.
“The Chancellor is waiting for you in his office.”
As we went past her she beckoned Esta over and whispered something in her ear.
The Chancellor stood as we entered and came over to shake our hands.
“Terrible business,” he said to Lana, “Though Wizard Coin bore the worst of it. I swear we will destroy every picture recorded of you or Esta.”
Esta entered the room and the Chancellor rushed over to greet her. He thought he was whispering to her, but I heard every word he said.
“The pictures are everywhere. We have issued a proclamation making possession of one an expellable offence, but young men will be young men.”
Esta’s answer was inaudible, but I saw the Chancellor flinch.
“We are doing our best. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”
Esta’s reply was again inaudible.
The Chancellor’s face flushed red.
“I can assure you they won’t.”
“If they do, I will take action myself,” Esta said coldly. “And someone will die.”
She stepped away from the Chancellor to join the rest of us. The Chancellor recovered his dignity and went to sit behind his desk.
“It’s been four days,” I said.
“It took time to search through Grand Mage Torphic’s memories and to reach conclusions. The poor man is in a state of shock.”
“And your conclusions are?”
The Chancellor picked up some papers on his desk and then put them down again.