by R H Frye
John broke his long silence. “But why me, Grandfather? Why should I be the one to learn about this stuff?”
His Grandfather took a long moment to consider how to reply. “I don’t know John. I’ve known you were different all your life. Your dreams told me that you were different. Through all the long years that our family and our people have guarded against what’s coming, no one ever told that they had visions of the battles that came before. You’re the first. And maybe I pushed you too hard to learn because of that difference. I don’t know.
“I do have an idea about what’s happening and why you can do so much that the ancient medicine men could do. I think it’s about a balance that nature tries to maintain. I think the world gave you the abilities to fight Maraydel because there had to be a balancing force for the evil that he can do. I don’t know where the Magi learned their powers, but I know that your powers are a natural extension of the world around you.”
“But how am I supposed to use them? I mean I don’t know anything about this stuff.” These were the answers that John had been seeking, and the urgency of his quest came through in his voice.
“John, don’t you realize that you know more about this ‘stuff’ than anyone else alive? You’ve seen the things that you can do being used against Maraydel in your dream. And I have a hunch that you may be able to do even more than they could. I think you could do practically anything you could think of to do. I’ve watched your fights with your enemy already, and you seem to have the same ability to use huge amounts of power, just like he can. And you don’t get yours from raping the world around you. Everything he touches turns to dust and decay. The world seems untouched by the things you do.”
“Wait a minute here.” Something that John’s grandfather said had struck a nerve. “Are you saying that I could turn myself into an animal if I wanted to? Because that’s what I saw the shamans doing in my dream, among other things.”
“Of course, you can. You just have to figure out how.” His grandfather smiled wistfully at him. “I wish I could help you more on these things John, but you’re the first person to have these powers in thousands of years. You just need to remember this. If you can imagine it and believe in it, you can do it. For some reason, you’ve been chosen to fight for the world. It’s up to you how you do it.”
“But isn’t it pointless anyway? I mean, from what I’ve been able to discover, Maraydel is busy dying at a hospital in Asheville right now.”
“No, Maraydel is gravely injured, but this man is the same man that was a rotted corpse in the ground a few days ago. Now you would do well to go deal with him while he’s hurt, but never think for a second that he’ll be so kind as to just die and save you the problem of killing him. And the evil power that he uses has already begun to spread to the two people that woke him from his sleep. No, John, don’t you dare try to get out of dealing with this. This problem won’t go away, and you can’t run away from it. Too many people stand to be hurt or killed if the Magi are allowed to rise again. The world needs you John.”
“You realize I’m scared shitless, right?”
John’s grandfather gave him the same loving smile he had used when working with John as a child. “Being brave is really being scared and doing what you have to do anyway.” A breeze had sprung up in the woods and the light had begun to dim as if clouds were moving in. John’s grandfather noticed and with a dawning sense of urgency said, “John, it’s time for you to go. You have to get out of here now. Your enemy is close to finding you here.”
“What about you Grandfather?”
“He can’t hurt me, John. I’m already dead, remember? Now go. And know that I always loved you and always will. You’re a good man and I’m as proud of you as I can be. Now go.” John seemed on the verge of arguing again so he repeated himself more forcefully. “Go, John! Get out of here now.”
John stopped arguing and left. He turned to race back out of the woods and realized that the forest was growing so dark that he could barely see his way out to the field. He hesitated for a second and imagined that the path was brighter ahead…and suddenly it was brighter ahead. Without taking time to wonder about how he had managed this most recent trick, he sprinted back the way he had come and burst forth from the forest just as torrential rains began to lash downward from the dark roiling clouds above. The storm burst about him with such fury that he was momentarily unable to see the way ahead, but with a rapid intuition, he realized that he just needed to walk uphill. That should get him close enough to get out. He put his head down and plowed through the storm. At the top of the hill he stopped and tried to open his eyes to the small apartment at the back of the store…and was horrified to discover that he could no longer feel any connection to his body. He was trapped!
Chapter 11
Sarah knew John was in trouble.
She sensed that there was a struggle going on just beyond what she could see. She reached for John’s hand and tried to see inside his mind again and was horrified to discover that she could not feel his presence. Where the warm intellect of the man she was falling in love with had been was an angry, black, roiling cloud. Her thoughts brushed against it and she recoiled in horror. She knew this evil. She had seen it in John’s dreams and felt it in her house the previous afternoon. She shuddered in relief as her hand broke its contact with John’s hand. Her eyes darted to meet the eyes of Adam where he sat in his chair.
“What did you see? Tell me quick.” His words were a sharp slap to Sarah’s ears and they served to stem the rising tide of hysteria that was threatening to overwhelm her.
“He’s not there. He’s been locked out of his own head. My God, what can we do?” As Sarah asked the question, she noticed John’s face. His eyes were closed, and she could see them rolling under his eyelids as if he was dreaming. His breathing was shallow and slow. Perspiration trickled down the side of his face, and his skin had an unnatural pallor underneath his tanned complexion.
“I’m not sure. This has never happened before.”
“Well do something!” Sarah could feel the panic creeping into her voice again, and she fought to maintain her composure.
“I’ve got an idea. I don’t know whether it will help but let me try.” Adam stood up and rushed through the door back into his store. In a matter of seconds, he hurried back through the door. He held a bundle of sage in his hands and was fumbling with his lighter. When he reached John’s side, he finally managed to produce a flame which he quickly touched to the bundle of sage. He let the sage burn for a few seconds until a dim coal began to smolder in the center of the bundle, and then blew the flames out with a hard exhalation. As smoke continued to waft away from the coal at the center of the bundle, he began to fan the smoke onto John. John’s expression did not change, but Sarah thought that his breathing became a little deeper.
Adam turned to hand the bundle of sage to Sarah. “Keep fanning the smoke over him.” With no more explanation he hurried from the room back into his store and again returned quickly in a matter of seconds. This time he was holding a pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco.
“What’s that for?”
“Just hush a minute, okay? We’ll talk again in a few minutes, but for now just keep fanning and be quiet.” Adam stuck the pouch of tobacco into the back pocket of his faded jeans and hurried into his small kitchenette. He pawed through one of the cabinets for a minute before producing a large container of Morton’s Salt. He pried the metal spout open in the top of the container with his fingernail as he hurried back to John. When he reached the side of the inert, struggling man, he tipped the container on its side as he leaned down to draw a ring of salt around the sofa where John sat. When the ring was completed, he dropped the salt container on the end table and yanked the tobacco from his back pocket.
Sarah watched all the commotion with a worried eye, but she kept her silence and observed Adam. Adam had moved to the closest wall behind John and opened the pouch of tobacco. He reached inside and grabbed a good-sized pin
ch of the tobacco between his thumb and forefinger. He began to mutter in an unfamiliar language as he raised the hand holding the tobacco towards the ceiling. He continued to speak for a moment before opening his fingers and letting the tobacco drift to the floor of his apartment near the wall. He continued to speak in the same unknown tongue as he moved clockwise around the room and repeated the procedure he had used with the tobacco at the first wall. As the tobacco drifted to the floor at the fourth wall, John’s breathing became deeper still and his eyes ceased their rapid movements beneath his closed lids.
Adam sighed as stuffed the tobacco back into his pocket and turned to face Sarah. He produced a handkerchief from another pocket and mopped his brow as he walked back to the chair he had occupied only minutes before. “You can stop fanning the sage now. If it were going to snap him out of it, it would have by now.”
“Okay Adam, I think I’ve been patient. What’s going on here? And again, what can we do about it?” Sarah stopped fanning the smoke towards John and scanned the room for an ashtray. She spotted one on the end table beside the salt and dropped the bundle of sage into it.
“Well, as far as the first question goes, all I can do is guess.”
“Then guess.”
“Okay, here’s what I think happened. I think John was trying to come back and his enemy stopped him. That’s the only thing I can think of to explain what you saw.”
“Well what do we do about it?” Sarah’s patience was wearing thin as her fear for John began to reassert itself. “And what was all that stuff you just did.”
“Well, I hoped it would cut the connection between your man and his enemy, but I don’t think it did. I think it weakened the connection and maybe bought us some time.”
“Time to do what?”
“Well, I thought that would be obvious.” Adam captured Sarah’s gaze and held it as he said, “Someone’s going to have to try to find your man’s enemy and kill him, or at least distract him.”
Sarah returned Adam’s look for a long moment. Finally, she said, “Then I guess that someone is me, huh?”
“I don’t believe it. Just look at him.”
“Is he getting better? Is that what we’re seeing here?”
“It sure looks that way, but I’m damned if I know how.”
The voices faded away as Maraydel again turned his attention to holding the connection with his enemy. Somehow, the man had managed to hide many of his thoughts and his spirit from Maraydel, but the magus knew that eventually he would find him…and he would bathe in his enemy’s spirit once more until he was whole and once again a ruler of men.
Chapter 12
“Carol, pull over.”
“What? Why?” Carol glanced over at Danny and saw him regarding her with concern. “What is it, Danny?”
“Just pull over, please. We need to talk about something.”
“Well what do we need to talk about? And why do I need to stop the car to talk to you about it?” Annoyance was beginning to creep into Carol’s voice, but it could not be helped. Recent events had conspired to shorten the fuse on her temper. “You know He could wake up any time, and we’ve got to find the other guy before that happens.”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about Baby. You’re going the wrong way.”
“What do you mean? I’m on I-40 towards 74, right?”
“No, you just got off at the 240-bypass in Asheville. So where are we going?”
Carol was confused and suddenly scared. Was he telling the truth? This was still I-40, right? She scanned the side of the road for a street sign and realized with horror that he was right. Plain as day, the sign on the road ahead showed that they were on the Interstate 240-bypass leading into Asheville. She signaled and checked her mirrors before pulling the car to a shuddering stop in the emergency lane. “Danny, what’s happening to me? And where was I taking us?”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me.”
“I swear I don’t know. I know the way back to Cherokee. You explained it to me very carefully when we changed drivers at the rest stop. The next turn I should have made from 40 was the exit to 74. Why did I turn this way?”
Danny glanced around for a moment before his gaze settled on a sign ahead. It was a green sign and it said St. Joseph’s Hospital. Beside the hospital name was an arrow indicating that a traveler looking for the hospital should take the next exit. Understanding suddenly flooded Danny’s mind and he turned to Carol with a look of icy anger on his face. “Get out of her head you bastard.”
Danny’s words only added to Carol’s confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s him.” Danny pointed to the street sign where it waited on the side of the road ahead of them. “I guarantee you that this is the hospital they took him to. Somehow, he’s in your head and he’s making you take us to him. Don’t you see? He’s trying to get his slaves back. Us! He wants us back. And God only knows what he’ll do when he gets us. If he was a monster before when we really hadn’t done anything to him, what do you think he’ll do now that we left him to die?”
“Well what can we do? I mean, I had NO idea that I was going right to him. And if he can do something like that, how do we fight him?” A wave of utter hopelessness was threatening to sweep Carol up into its grasp. She looked to Danny and hoped that he had some idea to counter this next obstacle that Maraydel had thrown in their way.
“Well, let me drive for starters. We’ll take the loop on through Asheville and pick up I-40 on the other side. And make sure you pay attention to me and watch for any turns I make that don’t make sense, okay? All we can do is keep working together and try to fight the bastard. I just hope the guy we’re looking for can help us.”
Carol and Danny traded seats and resumed their journey. Danny had to fight a sudden urge to exit the interstate and head towards the hospital, but the urge passed after he managed to resist it long enough to pass the exit.
Maraydel moaned as he lost the tenuous connection that he had established with his slaves. The effort of sustaining the connection with the slaves and his enemy was more than he could bear, and the severing of the connection with the slaves caused a bolt of pain to blast through his head. The ache was minor compared with the agony of his skin repairing itself, but it still served to overload his senses and his mind teetered briefly on the edge of unconsciousness before he managed to clamp down tightly on his connection to the shaman. He pulled the shaman’s energy through the connection and used that energy to quiet the angry buzzing of his nerve endings repairing themselves.
He sighed and resigned himself to letting the slaves go for the time being. There would be time to deal with those two later, when he was stronger and the shaman’s spirit had been stolen completely away. For now, let the slaves run. He would find them and punish their betrayal when he was healed.
With that decision made, he returned his attention to his hunt for the shaman’s hiding place.
John struggled through a dream world that had been changed to a nightmare. He had run from the top of the hill when he realized that he was trapped. As he ran, he felt the malevolent presence of the magus seeking him. Somehow, the wounded wizard had managed to lock him out of his own body. John had no idea how that could happen, but he knew that he needed to get back. He could feel his energy draining away and had no idea what to do about it, so he concentrated his energy on hiding from the force that was seeking him.
John sped from the top of the hill in the meadow and dashed into the woods where he had talked with his grandfather. He needed somewhere to hide. Anywhere would do until he had time to regroup and come up with some idea of how to escape to his body. He plunged farther into the woods and splashed into a stream. He was just about to continue up a forested hill on the other side when he had an idea. He pivoted and raced down the stream.
Moments later John’s intuition proved correct and he splashed from the stream into the waters on the edge of a lake. The storm from the meadow was much more v
iolent here on the lake, and he momentarily questioned the wisdom of his decision to run for the water that he had somehow known was nearby. A fragment of his most recent conversation with his grandfather flashed through his mind and he suddenly knew what he had to do. The hard part would be figuring out how to do it.
John splashed out deeper into the lake as the fury of the storm crashed around him. Lightning struck the water on the far side of the lake and John knew the next strike would be close enough to harm him. Driven by the need to hide and the need to survive, he extended his arms, took a deep breath, and arched into an awkward dive into the chest deep water. He swam deeper into the lake with powerful strokes and soon the dim light from the storm-tossed skies overhead faded into a murky darkness.
When the darkness closed around him, John stopped swimming and allowed himself to sink to the bottom. He rested there for a few moments and cast his mind about for the presence that was pursuing him. The presence was still there, but it was muted considerably by the water around him. His lungs were only beginning to hint that they needed air and he was glad that he had never been a smoker.
John stopped thinking about air for a moment and his mind returned to the conversation with his grandfather. What had the old man said? Something about being able to turn into an animal if he could only figure out how? Well, what he really needed right now was to be a fish. The water was apparently serving to shield him from the mind of the magus, but eventually he would need to breathe unless he could figure out how to breathe underwater.
John pondered the problem for a moment and an idea gradually came to him. Could it really be so simple? Well there was no time like the present to find out. He fixed the image of a catfish in his mind and poured his energy into the image. He felt his body begin to shift into the shape of the catfish, and his lungs stopped begging for air. In a matter of seconds, the change was completed and a large catfish swam easily into the depths of the lake.