by Hiatt, Bill
“Taliesin 1 would have died because it would never have occurred to him to redirect the fire from White Hilt in the way you did. You are not as at home on a battlefield as he would have been, yet even under the pressure of the battlefield you thought your way out of certain death. Your mind, with its modern experiences, can conceive of things Taliesin 1 could not, like lasers, for example. That is your strength. Develop that strength. And stop trying to do everything yourself. Dan will come if you call; he won’t remember most of the time, but he and I made a deal that binds him to help you in time of need. However, he is just the beginning. Arthur had his knights of the round table. Urien of Rheged, the master of Taliesin 2, was never without allies. Find people you can trust, and make a fellowship of your own. Much will be asked of you, but to stand alone will never be asked of you.”
“But the earlier Taliesins were subordinate to people like Arthur and Urien.”
The voice sighed at that. “You may find an Arthur one day, but the ways of the world are different now. A good man cannot wait for someone else to lead; sometimes he has to lead himself. Now you must go.”
“Wait! How can I contact you if I need to?”
“I will contact you if need be, perhaps through Dan, perhaps through someone else.” Abruptly, Dan’s eyes came back to life, and he glanced down at his watch.
“You got about two minutes, Tal. Maybe you should go see the nurse and just go home for the rest of the day.”
“Oh, my God! What about the body in the woods?” Yeah, I should have asked the voice that, but my mind was working very sluggishly.
“Already gone,” said Dan as matter-of-factly as if he were discussing the football team’s prospects in the upcoming game. “Ashes. Pwca bodies disintegrate pretty rapidly after death.” I didn’t even ask how he knew that. What would have been the point?
I got up and started to reach for my old clothes.
“I’ll find some place to toss them. They’re ruined; you’ll never get all that blood out.”
I shook Dan’s hand, thanked him again, and left just quickly enough to avoid the period 3 students coming in to shower after PE. I took his advice and went home. God, how much I longed to sleep. But as I walked home, I knew my mind was trying to adjust to a life changing far, far too rapidly.
Before yesterday, life had seemed simple—well, as simple as anyone’s life could be if that person remembered all his past lives. There were even moments when I thought of my abilities as being at least a little cool. Then Stan got too close to my secret, inadvertently breaking the tynged and unleashing all that had followed. I now knew that supernatural creatures were not a thing of the past; indeed, the world seemed suddenly infested with them, and a good portion of them seemed out to get me, for reasons that were not immediately apparent. I had one ally, though, an ally whose power over the human mind made mine seem puny in comparison. Yes, I could manipulate people, but I could never have gotten Dan, arguably my nemesis at school, to act like my best friend, especially for such a long period of time. That kind of work required a mojo far, far beyond what I had. But why would such a powerful…being need to remain in the shadows? And how did so many creatures, both good and evil, suddenly know every little detail about me? The pwca had known all about my interaction with Stan the night before, as well as enough of Stan’s personality to play him flawlessly, to say nothing of knowing that I was carrying White Hilt that day. The owner of the mysterious voice knew all about my previous incarnations. Was there any corner of my life, no matter how small, that was truly private anymore? I feared I knew the answer to that one.
I didn’t know whether I entirely trusted the voice yet, but it had one thing right: I needed more allies. Someone I could trust more than anonymous voices or old enemies suddenly turned into friends. When I got home, I let Mom fuss just a bit, then sang her to sleep. Then I paid a call at Stan’s house, put his mother to sleep, and told him everything, every secret, every relevant scrap of information, from the moment I could remember my past lives until today.
CHAPTER 5: LIFE CHANGES
To say that Stan was skeptical would have been a gross understatement. Even though he had proposed the reincarnation idea himself just yesterday, he had done so only because he could not think of any other rational explanation, and perhaps also because one of the students on his science Olympiad team was both scientifically minded and a firm Hindu believer in reincarnation, making the idea seem more respectable to him. But reincarnation was one thing, outright magic quite another. He did me the courtesy of not laughing in my face, though he questioned every detail. He would have made a great investigative reporter, but right now I needed my friend, not an interview.
“Stan, even you have to admit that science can’t explain everything.”
“Yet,” he added pointedly. “That doesn’t mean there is no scientific explanation for those things. It just means we haven’t found it yet.”
I sighed inwardly. I couldn’t really blame Stan for being who he was, and he was a born scientist. What would you expect from someone who finished the highest level high school math and science courses by the end of freshman year and now took special online college courses in both subjects as a result of some deal between UC Santa Barbara and Santa Brígida High School? I bet the powers that be at UC Santa Barbara thought they could recruit Stan and students like him that way; if so, they obviously didn’t know Stan’s parents.
I glanced nervously at my watch. In theory, I could keep his mother asleep for as long as I needed, but his father would be home soon. The more people involved, the more complicated keeping them asleep would become, and I was already feeling spread thin to the point of transparency. At the same time, I didn’t feel as if I could just leave Stan as things were. I wanted, no, I needed him to believe me. Well, there was not too much question about the best way to shake that skepticism.
“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ What would science have to say about this?” With that, I pulled out White Hilt, realizing with a sickening jolt that I had forgotten to clean the blood off. The blood… No, I wasn’t going to let myself be distracted by anything. I grasped the hilt firmly, and the blade was engulfed in flames.
Stan’s eyes widened in shock, and he pulled back as far as he could.
“Tal, damn, are you trying to burn my house down?!” I hadn’t meant to frighten him, but I had never seen him look so scared. I got another jolt when I realized his face looked almost like that of the pwca as it had been burning. I willed the blade to return to normal, and it did.
“What the hell!” exclaimed Stan, his voice shaking in a way that suggested he might be close to tears. Okay, so I had picked the wrong demonstration.
“Are you crazy? We could both have been burned.”
“Stan, we were never in any danger, I swear,” I said patiently. “You have been the scientist all afternoon. I need you to be the scientist again. Take the sword yourself.” I held it out to him, and at first I thought he would refuse, but curiosity got the better of him, and he grasped the hilt, moving the blade slowly in his direction and looking at it carefully. Then he smelled it.
“I don’t smell anything combustible.”
“What did you think I did to get it to burn like that, pour gasoline on it? Do you really think I’m nuts? More to the point, do you really think I would do anything to hurt you?”
“Well, no, but…”
“No buts. Stan, you can see for yourself there is no physical reason for the sword to burst into flames like that. It just does when it is in the right hands.”
Stan spent a good twenty minutes examining the sword, making me more and more nervous about the time. My dad would be home soon, too, and he would find my mom asleep and be unable to wake her. I needed to get back home.
Finally, he handed the sword back to me. “Do it again,” he said hoarsely, almost like a command.
“Are you sure?”
“Do it again,”
he said in a voice marginally more like his normal one. I held up the sword, and once more it burst into flames.
Stan clearly longed to be in a lab, but he made do with what observations he could make, viewing the sword from all angles, putting his hand close enough to feel the heat, that kind of thing.
“Show me how you can reshape the flame.” I obliged, causing the flame to jut up toward the ceiling, though I was careful to make sure it didn’t actually get too close.
“Well, I can’t explain it. Will you let me take it to a friend at UC Santa Barbara?”
At that I snapped. “Stan, I came here to share something important with my friend, not be a lab rat.” The intensity of my tone made him cringe away from me. “Dude, I almost died today. And I could be dead tomorrow. I need you to be my friend, Stan, not make me your project for the science fair.” To my horror, I realized I was crying again, tears of exhaustion and frustration, tears of fear that I might lose his friendship. Stan started crying too, but I wasn’t at first sure if he wept because he felt for me or because he thought he was alone with a dangerous lunatic. Then he hugged me, and for a few awkward moments I wept in his arms as his body shook with his own weeping.
Eventually we both pulled ourselves together. “I’m sorry, Tal, I’m so, so sorry for not just believing you.”
“Hell, Stan, I was there, and I hardly believe it myself. But now that you know the truth, maybe you can help me.”
“Sure. Anything. What kind of help do you need?”
I wouldn’t have thought it possible for such a simple question to flumox me, but it did. What exactly did I want from Stan? I had to suppress a snicker as I visualized Stan stabbing a shifter with his protractor. As potential knights of the round table went, Stan was definitely going to be combat challenged.
“Ah, I think I know,” he said thoughtfully. You had to give the kid credit for resilience. Just a few minutes ago his emotions had been riding roughshod over him. Now he was back in control and evidently several steps ahead of me.
“Yes, I know exactly what to do.”
Well, you tell me, and we’ll both know.
“Didn’t that voice tell you that your strength was being able to conceptualize things differently from the way your ancestors did, and so come up with new solutions?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“So what advantage does that give you that your ancestors didn’t have?” I started to formulate an answer, but the question was evidently rhetorical, since Stan continued almost immediately. “The voice referred to lasers. Your ancestors didn’t have to deal with modern technology. It wasn’t part of their worldview, but it is part of yours. Well, a little anyway…”
“Is that a cheap shot about my computer skills?”
“Pretty much. Anyway, you can do a lot, but can you, let’s say, erase a computer hard drive by singing to the computer?”
“I have never tried.”
“Well, let’s try, then.” Stan got out of bed and walked over to his desk. His computer, sleek, fast, and new as hell, booted up quickly. “I just made a backup earlier today.”
That’s sure not what I what have been doing on a “sick” day, but Stan really had been sick.
“Okay, go ahead and erase the hard drive,” Stan continued. I tried for a while, but aside from entertaining Stan, who enjoyed listening to me sing in Welsh, I couldn’t get as much as a momentary screen flicker from his computer, much less erase its hard drive.
Stan shook his head after a while. “This isn’t working. And yet you can manipulate the human brain, a far more sophisticated computer than this.”
“But if I wanted to erase the data, I could just as easily pull out White Hilt and burn the whole thing up.”
“Sure, but there are some situations where subtlety would be better. What if your only option when dealing with people was to cut off their heads with White Hilt? How would that work out?” As usual, he made a compelling point. “So what then is the solution? You need to be able to interact with technology directly. If you could manipulate the digital universe as easily as you can manipulate the natural one, your power, and with it your ability to get results in modern society, would increase exponentially, and sometimes you could get those results more covertly. You came to me so that I could help you learn how to do that.”
Stan must have known he was at least fourteen steps ahead of me now, and that I was awed by the sheer brilliance of his suggestion. A hybrid of magic and science! If we could do it, we could certainly surprise whatever bad guys came my way.
“That’s a great idea, Stan, but I don’t really know where to begin.”
“Oh, I do, but we will both have to work very hard—and you will have to pay my price.” The last part sounded oddly ominous.
“Okay, so what’s your price?”
“Get me a girl.” Gee, maybe I should get one for myself first!
“I can try, but dude, you need to lose those Star Trek pajamas.”
“You should talk.” I had been so engrossed in spilling my guts, I forgot about my trend-setting wardrobe from the Santa Brígida High School lost and found. The purple sweater, about three sizes too big for me—now there was a bold fashion statement if ever there was one.
“But at least my room…” I began, glancing around at a unique collection of science fiction paraphernalia that might have been a turn-on if Stan’s perspective sweetheart was from Vulcan, but otherwise seemed more like a massive turn-off.
“Your room? Yeah, come to think of it, maybe I’d better ask someone else to help me get a girl. Tal, your room looks like you’re plotting to seduce the queen of the faeries.” Yeah, unfortunately, that’s what my dad thought, though in a somewhat different way than Stan meant it.
Stan and I traded friendly insults for a while, our exchange ending as it often did, with me on top of him, tickling him unmercifully. Stan was too scrawny to put up a good fight against me, but I had to give him credit; he always tried.
Being with him reminded me of just how much he had filled the “little brother” niche in my life. Maybe the “little” label wasn’t fair and would even hurt his feelings if I said it to him, since we were about the same age, but as I’ve mentioned, he looked a lot younger, and I had a hard time remembering he wasn’t. We were both only children, and in my experience, at least as far as guys were concerned, that meant each of us had a brother-sized hole in our lives. Unrelated by blood, we had become brothers by friendship. I had come to him for that reason, not to have him refine my abilities, but his idea was good, and at least now he believed me. Whatever happened next, at least I would not be alone.
That night after I went home, I managed to gag down dinner, but I couldn’t sleep at all. I don’t know if I was waiting for the Gwrach y Rhibyn to start scratching at the windows, or dreading some nightmare about having to kill—and this time a real person. Whatever was going through my head kept my nerves as tight as if they were being stretched on a rack. It was almost a relief when my alarm went off. A guy can only do so much tossing and turning in the dark, waiting for God knows what kind of horror to manifest itself.
Much to my surprise, the next day, the next week, in fact the next several weeks went well. I was still on edge most of the time, and probably I would have been even worse if I hadn’t learned how to use my music to calm myself. But there was no mass attack on the high school by supernatural beings; hell, there wasn’t even any unnatural fog in the mornings, just bright August sun, shifting imperceptibly as the days shortened. During this time of year, I used to go to the beach when I was younger, but since my “awakening” I had always been too busy, and now I was that kind of busy squared.
However idyllic the end of August seemed, I always felt the watchful eyes of both allies and enemies. The latter had probably not expected me to thwart the pwca’s attempt to steal White Hilt, much less actually beat the pwca in combat and kill it. Perhaps they figured they had underestimated me and wanted to plan their next move carefully, so I could jus
t be experiencing the calm before the storm. Regardless, I had underestimated the shifter and overestimated my own preparedness. I didn’t dare make that mistake again, so every day I worked on my defense preparedness to-do list.
First, I needed to build stamina. I had always considered myself to be in pretty good shape, but real combat wore me down too fast. I kept up fencing (and occasional covert long sword) practice, but I added much more running. Stan bicycled part of the way with me at first, then most of the way. Then, much to my surprise, he started running too. In the beginning he couldn’t keep up with me at all, but I gave him props for trying so hard. I thought he was just keeping me company, but it didn’t take me long to realize he had an ulterior motive: he had figured out, doubtless through very scientific observation, that girls like you better if you are buff. His mother wasn’t keen on his spending so much time out running, fearing it would compromise his schoolwork, but he could use the running to get PE credit on a contract basis, and that mollified her a little, since it opened up a slot for yet another course that would build his credentials with the Stanford admissions people.
Second, I needed to build muscle. Sure, I could handle White Hilt, but not as well as I would like. I could have infinite stamina in general, but it wouldn’t do me much good in combat if my arm muscles gave out from all the rapid sword swinging. In that area I got help from an unexpected source: Dan Stevens.
Ever since the day when Dan became the pawn of some anonymous ally of mine, he had been, well, if not exactly friendly, then at least not contemptuous, and almost every day he surprised me in some way, but never more than on the day he invited me to work out with the football team. He explained that during weight training sessions, non-football players, like team managers and athletes from off-season sports, could join in if they wanted. Though there was no fencing team on campus, I did fence competitively, so technically I was a “non-football athlete,” and thus qualified to join weight training if I’d like.