That was four days ago, and the scientists had come to some sort of agreement that they would take turns for a few hours a day. It had taken a lot of threats to get to that agreement, and Malory and the others had actually barred the scientists from the room for hours that first day. All of the men in the hallway that day would have fit in the portal room; it was huge. But no one could really study anything with that many people in the room. An agreement had been reached to have no more than twenty-five scientists at a time in the portal room. Malory figured the scientists were really bad at math, because every time he counted he always counted at least thirty. And they came and went a lot, always bringing new things to test on the portal or, recently, throw things through. They started throwing things through when Coliten had finally told them the reason they knew a planet of some sort was on the other side was because you could see it briefly, every so often, and you could see it pretty clearly every time something was tossed in, but you could only see into the portal for as long as it took the object to travel through it.
Malory brought his thoughts back to the present, and found the other sorcerers were patiently waiting on him. The scientists, though, were still rather loudly trying to get through to the poor dog. Malory shook his head and asked the room at large, "Do you think it will wash off?"
The other sorcerers were now staring at Bowser, while his small caretaker was still crying, although he was starting to calm down a bit. At this suggestion, the young boy looked up with such hope on his face.
The other sorcerers looked back at him, then back at Bowser. Finally Coliten said, "No, but I vote we try it anyway."
At hearing Coliten say no, the young boy’s look of hope turned to despair. Malory felt so sorry for him that he offered a suggestion. "The princess may like the new look, but if she does not, well, you can always say he did it," pointing at Gragen.
The boy turned to look where Malory was pointing. Apparently the scientists could hear just fine, despite being rendered mute by one of the sorcerers, because all the scientists turned to one particular scientist, who had a look of pure shock on his face. Malory saw the look and realized that this scientist was the one called Gragen, and he was also the one who had been under a bush looking for a certain bug on that fateful day. Malory began to laugh, and turning to Coliten, said, "Guess he should have stayed under the bush that day, huh?"
Coliten laughed and said, "Or learned how to keep a secret." Turning to look at Gragen, he could not help but say, "You know, if you had kept the secret, as we had asked, you would not need to share this discovery with anyone, you would not have gotten mad, and you would not have thrown those balls through in a fit of anger—and we would not be in this mess, trying to figure out how to keep from getting fried by Darian."
While Coliten and Malory were pointing these things out to Gragen, or throwing them in his face, however you wanted to look at it, thought Malory, one of the other sorcerers had walked over to the boy holding Bowser, and motioned him to follow, walking over to a small side room with a waterfall fountain. Motioning to the water, he suggested the boy place the dog in the water and wash him.
A few minutes and one giant mess later, it turned out that not only did Bowser hate baths, but the colors did not wash off. With slumped shoulders, the sorcerers, after looking at each other in despair, decided they should at least let the scientists have their voices back. Releasing the speech back to the scientists proved a bit of a mistake, though, because they could not keep the noise level down to a manageable or understandable level. However, a few glowing hands raised in the air caused the scientists to fall silent. The sorcerers had not actually had to do anything; just the threat was enough—for now.
While he had everyone's attention, Malory decided he would take advantage of it. "This is what is going to happen, and it is not negotiable at all. If you argue, you will lose your spot completely, and you will not be allowed into the portal room. I am going to choose a few of you to start with, who will work on figuring out the portal every day. You will not bring others into the room with you," At this, the scientists broke into loud shouts, and again, golden glows filled the room but this time not as a mere threat. The noise level in the room immediately dropped to nothing. Continuing where he had left off, Malory proceeded to tell everyone in the room just how studying his portal was going to go.
"As I was saying, you will not bring others with you. You can bring their ideas, so you can brainstorm with them in your own wing, but you will not bring them without clearing it with me first. If you want to argue about it, you will be struck from ever seeing the portal again. We are getting nowhere with so many people, and I am so done with dealing with so many of you idiots." Pointing first to five random scientists, Malory said, "You, you, you, you, you, and you—" Pointing to Gragen last, "—will be the only ones allowed in the portal room from now on."
Turning to Gragen, "and you may not even live out the day to come back tomorrow, because you are going to tell the Princess…"
That was as far as Malory got before Coliten interrupted to say, "Malory, I don't know if he is the best one to explain anything to the Princess. I have an idea, but it requires everyone in the room keeping their mouths shut about what exactly happened today." He turned to the small boy, "And I do mean everyone. If the princess finds out you just let Bowser go to another planet, what do you think will happen?" Turning to Gragen, he continued, "We know you can not keep your mouth shut, but you will—or we will tell the princess you deliberately tried to sacrifice Bowser for an experiment. Deliberately! Do you both understand me?"
By the time he finished, both the boy and Gragen were nodding their heads in agreement. Malory, looking at the boy, thought that pure fear alone just might keep him silent. He had no real hope that anything would keep Gragen silent, which is why he decided that Gragen should be locked in this room every night when they left. Meals could be provided; a sleeping cot could be found for him. Malory was trying to think how they could basically kidnap Gragen without it being called kidnapping. While he was planning this, he could hear Coliten continuing with his idea. Listening, Malory thought it showed promise. All they had to do was decide which sorcerer would take the fall. As the youngest, by rights it should be him, but Malory did not think the others would dare.
And he was right. Coliten was himself volunteering to tell the princess that he was testing a new way to make a light show to entertain children. He would tell her that her servant boy was watching when Bowser had jumped out of the boy’s arms to investigate what the boy was watching. As Bowser passed through the light show, it had transferred the colors to his fur. Since the experimental magic was in the beginning stages, it might take time for him to reverse it.
Malory thought it might just work, except for one tiny detail: Coliten had no children, and had never really shown any inclination to be around children that anyone knew of. Shrugging to himself, Malory decided to just go with that story.
After he had used his powers to dry the dog off, and confirmed nothing he had could remove the colors, Malory and the others decided to release the scientists one at a time—release and send away—with enough threats and promises to be allowed back once more data was compiled, so that eventually, twenty-six crying men and women had left the room headed back to the science wing. Malory really hoped they would stop crying before they reached the atrium. Looking around, he realized they still had the six scientists in the room whom he had chosen. Six plus the twenty-six, just goes to show they really cannot count, which would mean that they had snuck in an extra seven scientists today. Well, from this point until some undetermined point in the future, there would only be six scientists in the portal room at any given time.
Chapter Twenty-one
Merriam walked into the Central cafeteria, looking around. Jacron should have been back long ago with her precious Bowser. He was only supposed to take Bowser for a walk, stop by the cafeteria to get something to eat, and a snack for Bowser, and come back. He had been gone f
ar longer than normal. Maybe the cafeteria was out of Bowser Bones, the snack they made especially for her baby?
That would be unusual; the last time they had failed to make some and keep them on hand was over two years ago. She remembered she had been so upset, but her uncle Sarian had been furious. He filled the kitchen with shadows and scared the workers so badly they had never again failed to make the Bowser Bones.
Looking around the large cafeteria, she saw several government workers she recognized, but no scientists and no sorcerers. Not seeing any sorcerers was not so unusual, as there was only eight of them. Unlike her father, she liked the sorcerers. They could do some amazing things with their powers, and she would frequently sneak into their wing when she was younger and watch them practice with their magic. She remembered it had taken her a week of sneaking away and exploring their wing before she even found one, and after, that she found they each had their own portion of their wing. Being only eight of them meant they did not have to share, and could take over large sections of their wing to do whatever they wanted. Malory and Coliten even lived in the wing, but as far as she knew, no one else but her knew they had no other home to go to. They were both young, and their parents had forced them from home before they had reached their majority. Too ashamed to tell anyone, and with no support from the government, at least they believed they would get no support, they had moved into the sorcerers’ wing and eked out a living doing odd jobs for people. Usually, in the past anyway, the sorcerers were highly thought of by the government, and had no lack of work. From what Merriam had researched, that came to an abrupt halt when her grandfather had gone crazy.
Sorcerers tended to make themselves scarce when it came to eating in the Central cafeteria, though. They usually came and went through their wing, avoiding the atrium and the cafeteria because of her father's hatred of them. Her father had explained what happened to her grandparents when she was old enough to understand, and then all three of his bond brothers had explained to her, at different times, how the sorcerers were not to blame for the heinous crimes her grandfather had committed. Her father had given her the story, but it was tainted with his horror and his sorrow and his hatred. Unfortunately for the sorcerers, as long as her father's hatred was so deep, the rest of the population was not going to be very trusting of them either.
Looking around again, she still did not see Jacron or any scientist. Central had hundreds of scientists, and not a single one was in the cafeteria that she could see. Merriam narrowed her eyes, out of hundreds of scientists, not one was eating, at just after lunch. She was going to have to go exploring in the science wing, it looked like. She smiled, thinking that maybe they had a new project they were working on. Everyone knew scientists could not keep a new discovery a secret very long.
With a sudden bounce in her step, sixteen-year-old Merriam swung around, looking again for Jacron. Still not seeing him, but seeing the cafeteria manager, she dashed over to see if maybe she had seen Jacron. Brushing her long white hair out of her face, she looked up into the manager’s face and smiled. Very politely, she asked, "Has Jacron been in here today?”
After the fiasco two years ago, the manager did not much like Merriam. She tried to hide it, but Merriam could tell. It caused her some disappointment because it was not really her fault her Uncle Sarian had terrorized the staff. She had not asked him to do it. She had not even known about it ‘til much later.
In spite of her thinly-veiled dislike for Merriam, the manager was still polite as she answered Merriam. "I asked him if he would run an errand for me to the sorcerers’ wing. I gave him a very detailed map of where he needed to go, so he should not have gotten lost. He should have been back long ago, though. I was about to send another on the errand instead. I thought he might have brought the dog back to you and you had kept him from coming back."
It was those snide little comments like that last one that had alerted Merriam to the fact that the manager did not really like her. They did not happen often, and she really did not want to tell her father or uncles, as they were sometimes too protective. She also worried sometimes that someone would do something bad to the Bowser Bones if she tattled. She was not much for tattling anyway, so it was rather a moot point. Her father and uncles would be surprised at how much she hid from them now that she was getting older and realized her unhappiness could result in problems for others.
She did not want to cause problems, so all she said to the manager was, "No, he never came back. I need to find him and I am free for a while, so if you want, I can go to the sorcerers’ wing and look for him. Can you tell me where he was supposed to go? I can start my search there."
The manager produced a map from underneath a counter, and circled the area of the wing where she had sent Jacron hours before. Before Merriam could leave with the map, the manager had one request for her. "Can you please see if the sorcerers actually sent the instructions for the cafeteria to start delivering to that hall? I got an odd request for eight meals a day to be delivered to that wing at every meal time. That has been going on for a few months now, which is not so unusual since there are eight sorcerers, though they have never asked for food to be delivered before. But that request changed to thirty-five just a few days ago, then today it changed again to forty-five. There are only eight sorcerers," The confusion on the manager's face was clear.
Merriam agreed to send a sorcerer back to the cafeteria to confirm the odd request. Leaving the cafeteria, her mind was not on Jacron any longer. For a brief while, she had even forgotten Bowser. Forty-five meals to the sorcerers’ wing, no scientists found in the cafeteria. What did they have going on in those two wings? she wondered. Or was it only in the sorcerers’ wing? As she was walking, she was doing some hard thinking. She had been planning to explore a little in the science wing, but it was looking like something interesting may be going on in the sorcerers’ wing. Now what could have both the sorcerers and the scientists working together?
The more she thought of it the more sure she became that the only thing that could have pulled the two wings together was the problems with the planet. Her father had not told her everything, actually he had told her exactly nothing. That did not matter though because she had become a pro at eavesdropping. Her mother was always so furious when she got caught but her father would eventually talk her mother out of her fury. She had become much better at not getting caught. She hoped she could one day find a bond-mate and be as happy as her parents.
She glanced back down at the map the cafeteria manager had given her. That hall was one of the central halls in the wing and she knew it very well. It was where Malory lived. It also had the largest room in the whole wing. The ceilings in that room were the highest she had ever seen. She had asked Malory one time how many people would fit in the room and although he was not sure he had told her three dragons would fit easily. A few minutes of thought had him adding, only two if they stretch their wings out. Malory had told her once he thought the room was made with dragons in mind. Thinking of how large the double doors were she had to agree with him.
It would take her a few minutes to get to that hall; she was rather small yet, so her steps were not that long. She decided to jog, because she really wanted to see what Malory had going on that caused such a change with the cafeteria. Sorcerers rarely ate there, and had never, to her knowledge, ordered food delivered. And so much food, too—something exciting must be happening.
As Merriam reached the area, she slowed down. She did not know exactly where everyone would be, and she did not want to miss them. She figured if she stopped every so often, she would hear them talking. If that did not work, she would start at Malory's living area and work her way down that hallway. Looking at the map again, she realized she had missed the small ‘x,’ marking one room. Oh, that made it easier. That room was directly across from the really large dragon room, as she had called it, since the day Malory told her he thought it was built because of dragons.
She planned on one day asking Irirnan i
f he would go in the room, so she could see how much space was left over. She would rather ask her uncle’s dragon than her father’s dragon, because it was guaranteed that her father’s dragon would then tell her father she was in the sorcerers’ wing.
Finally, after what seemed like forever to her, she reached the right room. When she tried to enter, though, it was locked. She could think of no reason for the door to be locked. This little quest of hers was becoming more exciting by the minute. They must be hiding something really good to be locking doors. She crossed the hall to the dragon room, and found it, too, had the doors locked. It had been some months since she had been to this particular section, but she could not remember the doors ever being locked.
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