"You believe in dragon visions, but not in the sorcerers? Great shadows, man, be reasonable." Sarian almost yelled at Darian.
At that moment, one of the scientists wandered back into the room. "Malory, if you have the portal ready, when can I test it? It is my turn, I know it is, and I want to send a bird through next..." the words faded away as the scientist looked up from his notes, and with a startled look on his face, scuttled back out of the room.
Darian looked at Kane and Patro, "Who exactly is Malory, and what did he fix? What is this portal? Is this someone I should know? Did someone find us a way off this dying planet and did not bother to tell me? See if you can get Gragen back in here, blasted scientists."
Sarian jogged out of the room after Gragen. After a few minutes, he came back in the room, laughing. The others looked at him and just waited, Finally Darian asked what they were all thinking. "What exactly is so funny at a time like this?"
Sarian looked around the room at his brothers—by birth, though, not by blood. With a smirk on his face, he asked the question he knew would set Darian off. "Do you remember that sorcerer last month, young, waved his hands around a lot, kept hopping around the room like he could not stay in one place?"
"That imbecile has an answer?" Darian asked incredulously.
"It would appear that not only does he have an answer, he has an answer using those legends and myths you keep shooting down." Sarian replied.
"Well if he has an answer, why isn't he in here telling me? And I thought you were suppose to bring Gragen back with you?"
"Ahhh Gragen, well, about that. It seems, well it is... you know I cannot stand to see a grown man cry. He wandered into the wrong room, but realized he had gotten turned around, and was headed to Malory when I caught him. When I told him he was needed back in here, he started talking about—well, it got confusing, to tell you the truth. And when he thought I was taking him away from the new discovery again, he started to cry. It was embarrassing to be seen in the hall with him crying. Embarrassing!"
"Again? Taking him away again? So when I had all the scientists in here just a bit ago, they knew then?" Darian asked. "Why didn't they say anything?"
Sarian started laughing again. "Seems everyone believes you are going to kill Malory, and they could not bear to lose this new discovery, so they were protecting the new discovery, and by extension, Malory. I think that was part of why Gragen started crying."
In disbelief, Darian asked, "They think I am going to kill Malory? Why in the name of all the Shadows would they think I would kill him? What gave them a crazy idea like that? Don't they understand I cannot kill without feeling it through the tapestry? These are our best and greatest, and they still don't understand we cannot kill without affecting the very fabric of our people?”
"Patro," Kane whispered. "Isn't Malory the guy Darian kept muttering ‘off with his head’ about when we had the last meeting?"
Patro leaned in closer to Kane, "Yeah, I think it is." He whispered back. "Every time the poor guy would start talking, Darian would start muttering, ‘off with his head.’ I remember that.
Both men, having reached the same conclusion at the same time, started laughing. When Darian turned to them with a furious look on his face, demanding to know how they could possibly find it funny that their own people believed they could just kill someone, the two doubled over in laughter even harder.
Patro made a couple of half hearted attempts to explain what they were laughing about, but could only gasp in laughter. Seeing he would get no answer from Patro, Darian looked at Kane. By this time, both men were holding their sides in laughter, and Darian could only feel his fury grow.
He turned back to Sarian. Unfortunately, Sarian had thought to mind-talk with the two men, something that, in his fury, Darian had neglected to do, and, having reached the same conclusion as Kane and Patro, was himself doubled over in laughter.
Finally, his patience stretched to the limit, Darian threw a fireball at the laughing men; a fireball he knew would not hurt them, could not hurt them, but would get their attention. Kane immediately countered with an ice ball, which impacted his shoulder, followed a second later by an ice ball from Patro that impacted his other shoulder. It’s not fair that my fire can pass harmlessly over them, while their ice balls hurt when they hit me, Darian thought.
As the men sobered up, Darian realized he could have already had the answer if he had not been so furious. As he thought this over, he plunged into the minds of his benyans, and realized the laughter was because the guys had reached the conclusion that Malory and the others believed he was going to kill him just because of one tiny little statement he’d made about the man. But I was justified in my statement. He hated sorcerers, and thought the world would be a better place if none of the sorcerers had their heads any longer. Well, unless this idiot Malory had found a solution to their dying world. Oh please, by all the goddesses anyone could ever believe in, please don't let it be a sorcerer who finds the answer to our problem. I want to live, I want my people to live, but let it be a scientist. Although Darian begged this of any goddess who may be listening, he knew none were listening. Everyone knew Darian did not believe in gods and goddesses.
Chapter Eighteen
By the time Gragen had reached the room with the sorcerers and all the other scientists, he had all but forgotten about the fact that he had earlier walked into a room with all of the leaders of their race, and potentially given away the information everyone was trying to hide. All he could think about was the fact that it had come to be his turn to test the portal. He wanted to send a bird through. He felt sure that sending a bird through would tell them so much about the planet they could vaguely see through the portal. The others were being totally selfish about portal time, he felt.
As he walked in, he immediately started demanding to be allowed to send a bird though. The other scientists began to argue about whose turn it actually was. They had been sending items through the portal for the last few days, but other than brief glances, the portal gave them no real idea of what the conditions were like on the other side. Maybe if they just tossed someone through, they wondered. Surely there had to be someone no one liked, who would not be missed.
Before the scientists could get completely carried away, the sorcerers again started trying to reason with them. The general agreement of the sorcerers was that reasoning with scientists over a new discovery was like trying to herd two-year-olds. This was becoming both a joke and a massive headache to the sorcerers. Usually, the sorcerers and scientists kept to their own sections in Central, the building that housed not only the government, but also the greatest scientific minds of their people. The sorcerers also had a massive wing in the building, even though there were only eight of them versus hundreds of scientists. The few sorcerers were feeling vastly outnumbered, and worried that their invention, creation, whatever word you wanted to use, was getting a bit out of their control.
Malory did not know all or even half of the scientists, but one of them—he thought that one's name was Gragon or Gregon or something—had become frustrated, and in a fit of rage threw yet another ball into the portal. Screaming at the other scientists about never learning anything about life on the planet if all they ever tossed in was inanimate objects, he threw a second ball, without really watching either ball go into the portal. By this time, the argument was beyond the sorcerers’ ability to calm without using magic, and magic against each other was strictly forbidden.
Unknown to the scientists and sorcerers, who were too involved in the argument to notice any thing else, a young servant boy, sent on an errand, had just entered the room. Unfortunately for the boy, the sorcerers, and the scientists, the boy had the princess’ dog with him. Merriam was not a real princess, but as Darian's only daughter, she was as close as the race had to a princess until the next Lyra was born. Darian and his birth sibs all doted on Merriam. No one, absolutely no one, messed with Merriam, not physically, emotionally, or mentally. Darian would forgo
all his vows and training and rain down fire upon anyone hurting his only child, and his birth sibs would not be far behind with their weapons of ice and shadows. And Merriam loved her dog only second to her father, mother, and birth uncles.
Now everyone knows dogs love to chase balls, and Merriam's dog was no different, as everyone was about to learn. As soon as Gragen released the second ball in his fit of rage, the dog, having seen the first ball just vanish, had to have that second ball. No one but the young servant boy saw the dog leap up and into the portal after the ball. Not quick enough to stop the dog, and knowing Merriam would certainly be upset—and her father, well, her father would then kill him. Knowing this, the boy screamed and then began to cry. Heartbreaking sobs of terror and fear caused the young boy's body to shake. The scream, and the crying which followed, caused all attention in the room to shift to him.
While one of the scientists tried earnestly to get the young boy to stop crying, assuring him the scary-looking lights would not hurt him, the sorcerers looked around the room at what could have hurt the boy. Being the creation of the sorcerers, they did not see the portal as the least bit scary, so their thought was that obviously the boy could not be crying in fear. The scientist finally was able to get the boy calm enough to stutter over and over, "Bowser's gone, Bowser's gone." Everyone knew Bowser; you could not know Merriam and not know Bowser.
The talking in the room resumed at low mutters as everyone discussed how to get the young boy to leave. Losing Merriam's dog was not something they wanted to get involved in. Just then, the boy pointed toward the portal, and again cried, "Bowser's gone." At that pronouncement, all noise in the room ceased, with the exception of every single item held by anyone in the room, from books to pens, hitting the floor. For several minutes, the only sound in the room was the boy's heartbreaking sobs as each person tried to recover from the shock of finding that Merriam's dog had gone through the portal—the portal which no one could be sure had a planet able to sustain life on the other side. As one, the group turned to look at the portal.
Chaos ensued as each person rushed to throw blame on others. No one wanted to bring down Darian's ire by causing Merriam to cry, and losing her dog would cause her to cry. That small, fluffy, long-haired white dog was her heart. Finally Gragen came up with a brilliant idea. "Toss the boy through."
The others turned on him for such a heartless suggestion, while he stood there in confusion. Finally he realized they thought he just wanted to experiment on the boy.
"No, no," he finally got a word in, "if the dog is there, the boy can bring him back. If the dog is gone, well, if the boy disappears, too, no one will know where he went. They will think he ran away. We will be in the clear, and maybe we can learn more about the other side." Gragen defended his suggestion.
After hearing this, the boy turned to run, but he was vastly outnumbered by the scientists, who cut off his escape route through the large double doors. Seeing this, but before they could take such as asinine action, Timeron, one of the more senior sorcerers, stepped in to save the boy and explain, again, how stupid the scientists were.
"You do realize that he is just as woven into the tapestry of our people as each of you are, right? Which means that the Lyra would know it the moment he disappeared. And if the soul strings can be felt through the portal, in which case, when he does not return with the dog, and Merriam tells her father the dog is missing, he will look for the boy, and that may lead him straight to us. You remember the Lyra right? Darian, Patro, Kane, and Sarian, the men who can step to anyone, at any time, just by tracing their soul strings in the tapestry? Remember them?" Timeron questioned.
At this reminder, the men barred the door with the boy inside and began to plan, or plot, Timeron thought, depends on how you looked at it. Meanwhile the boy had retreated to a far corner and was huddled, sitting with his bony arms wrapped around his legs and his back pressed into the corner, as tightly wedged as he could manage.
Whispers could be heard from different men, offering different plans, ranging from tossing him through the portal anyway, as a volunteer test subject, to sticking him on a boat leaving the harbor, hoping no one would look for him. Finally Gragen suggested an idea that met with everyone's approval, even the ones who did not think it would work, which was virtually everyone.
"I say we tie a string to a ball, toss it through the portal, and drag it back out. We will toss it until the dog follows it back."
Despite the belief from the others that it would not work, the men grabbed a ball, and after finding some string, proceeded to tie the string onto the ball. Gragen volunteered to be the one to throw the ball, and everyone agreed. Gragen tossed the ball through the portal and immediately jerked it back out, without giving it a chance to even settle on the ground on the other side. As the ball came flying back at the men gathered around the portal, everyone scattered, but not before they noticed the white ball was now a kaleidoscope of colors matching the colors of the portal. When the ball came to rest on the floor, the scientists gathered around it, immediately forgetting about the boy, the dog, the Lyra, everything but the colorful ball resting on the floor in front of them. They gathered notebooks and pens and rulers and began to poke and prod the ball. They were fascinated by the ball, as they had not thought to toss something through with a string attached to bring it back before.
The sorcerers, with Timeron at the front, approached the idiots on the floor. Timeron could not help but shake his head that these were considered the brightest of the bright in their race. Timeron had a two year old niece, and her attention span was longer than the scientists. Well, Timeron qualified, their attention will be on the ball for the rest of the day if I do not do something.
The scientists jumped when Timeron, whom no one had noticed approach, asked, "So, who is telling Merriam her dog is lost?"
When the scientists looked up in dismay, Timeron took pity on them—a little—to say, "We have plenty of balls and string, you know. Just toss another one." Before the word ‘toss’ had left his mouth, he knew he had already lost their attention.
How ‘bout that, he thought, they really will get so involved in their work that death and possible torture does not even keep their attention. He turned to the other sorcerers and said, "Grab some string and another ball, looks like we are fishing for dog today."
While the thirty or so idiots—Malory had decided rather than try to learn their names he would just go with idiots from now on—were kneeling on the floor probing the ball, he and the other sorcerers played fetch with a dog they could not see. At least they really hoped they were playing fetch with the dog. If he would just fetch and come back without bringing anything with him, that would be great. After the fourth ‘toss, leave a few seconds and haul it back’ tactic, the eight men around the portal gave a startled shout of alarm and jumped back.
The sudden, startled shout of the sorcerers drew the attention of the thirty or so scientists, who turned as one to see a brightly-multi-colored dog standing in front of the portal, with a multi-colored ball in its mouth, attached to a string one of the sorcerers still held. The men looked back at the brightly-colored ball they had been studying, while fighting for space around it on the floor, and then looking back to the dog. The men began to push and shove each other to be the first one to reach the dog, which of course scared the dog into retreating—right back into the portal. As the scientists gave shouts of dismay, the sorcerers just stood looking at each other. Soon they had been elbowed out of the way by the scientists, fighting over who would throw the ball through to catch the dog again. At this rate, Malory thought, we will never see the dog again. I wonder if the princess would like a colorful dog instead of a plain white one? If we can get it back, who is going to explain it to her? Malory shook his head. First things first, get the dog. Maybe washing it will get the color out. Shaking his head again, he tried to push his way back to a spot in front of the portal. Sadly outnumbered, he looked at his fellow sorcerers, who just shrugged. Well, he thought
, might as well go all the way. Darian is gonna kill us anyway when this gets back to him. I can only die once.
Malory laughed a little to himself as his hands began to glow a golden color. Maybe it is time the scientists remember what sorcerers can do. With that thought, he began to 'push' the men away from the portal. As the scientists began to slide across the floor and away from the portal, being pushed by the power Malory wielded, they gave shouts of protest. Not the least concerned about their shouts, Malory nodded to his fellow sorcerers. They had to get another ball, because the dog still had the last ball, and the scientists had been so busy fighting over who would throw another ball they had neglected to get a new ball.
While the others tied a string and began to ‘Fish for Dog’ again, Malory used the time to 'push' the scientists even further away. He was trying to push and simultaneously build a shield around them so that maybe, just maybe, if they could get the be-damns dog back, no one would scare it away this time. He turned toward the other side of the room while holding the men in place, and finally found the person he was searching for. "Boy, when Bowser comes back out, you call him. We need him away from the portal, can you do that?" Mallory asked.
He sighed when the young boy started frantically shaking his head, then nodding, then shaking it again. Can't really blame him, we do not know what the portal did to the dog, but he knows he doesn't dare go back without it. Trying to reassure the boy, Malory called out, "Don't worry, the dog is not hurt just, just—" not finding the words to reassure the boy, he decided to take a page from Gragen the idiot. "Call him, or go in with him next time—your choice."
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