Absolute Heart

by Michael Vance Gurley

  “How did you know…?” Landa began but was overcome with staggered breathing.

  “I guessed.”

  “Well… nice… guess… then.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” Lucas commanded. He helped her up.

  “What the…?” Landa began but stopped herself, the sight of a blood-soaked Wish being held in the arms of Masheck and another man shocking her to silence. She bit down on the back of her hand to stifle a cry before running across the deck. She grabbed Wish hard around the waist.

  “Arggh!”

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh my God,” Landa said in panic.

  A WAVE of cold, black energy rushed along the shield Orion had constructed over himself. He could feel it seeping through him down into his bones, making him ache and yearn to let go. Blaylock continued to pulse with power, trying to kill Orion, and he was nearing his goal.

  “Treacherous boy,” he said. “Did you think your little magick display, like on the training grounds, could ever stand up to the might of the leader of the Brotherhood? How dare you! I am the rightful heir to the power of the Mage.”

  Orion’s muscles began to ache, and his arms shook. He was losing the battle. He struggled to stand but couldn’t muster the strength to even speak.

  Gavin had reached the main deck and approached Orion. He had no idea what was going on. Blackness as dark as the bottom of the sea was swallowing Orion. Despair filled his chest and belly. He looked at his hands and tried to make them glow with the magick he knew was there, but could not feel it.

  “Ignorant whelp. You were supposed to bring me the Dragon Stone,” Blaylock orated. He leaned his shoulders forward, and the darkness emanating from his fingers started to pulse. “But what did I find as I looked to this smoke-filled, clockwork-powered wretchedness? You had delivered our power to the son of our sworn enemy. For that you must die. And then I will go home and finish your queen as well.”

  “No!” Orion screamed in intense agony.

  Gavin ran forward. He stopped over Orion, who writhed in pain, seemingly using all his willpower to block Blaylock’s magick. Gavin looked back and forth between them, unsure what to do.

  “We will never let you raise the Mage. We will stop you!” Gavin shouted through shaky fear, unsure.

  “You fool,” Blaylock mocked. “The Mage? He is not coming back. I will rule.”

  “But…,” Orion eked out.

  “Corigan Lorcan failed, boy. Why would I bring back a failure?” Blaylock laughed, pouring more pain down on Orion.

  “No!” Gavin shouted. “Stop.”

  “People needed a cause, and I gave them one. He had awesome power, and with that, so will I. Now I will take what I was promised.”

  Gavin had to move back from Orion, far enough away from the blackness that stripped away the wood decking, ripped metal from their bracings, and was killing Orion. His heart ached. He didn’t know whom he loved more, Lucas or Orion. That didn’t matter because he knew he had enough room in his heart for both of them and more. At the moment he wanted time to slow down for a tick or two so he could think what to do. He stepped back to look around. His foot kicked something that skidded to a stop against a barrel.

  The Dragon Stone.

  The Battle Won

  GAVIN THOUGHT of the prophecy. One prophecy told by a tortured faerie. One prophecy by a mysterious monk. Where was truth? Was there ever such a thing? If he picked up the stone and touched it again, would he be able to put it down? The last time was just a touch, and it had overwhelmed him. Did he even have a choice? Fate was fickle. He bent over and wrapped his fingers around the Knowledge Stone.

  Blinding light filled the air, stunning soldiers and warlocks alike where they were locked in battle. The light cascaded over Orion, Gavin grasping his shoulder after having walked into the blackness to protect him. It pushed the blackness off the collapsing shield back toward Blaylock.

  “How… how is this possible?” Blaylock asked, stumbling against the rush of energy.

  Gavin stood in the center of the ship, one arm raised to the sky, his hand clasped around the stone, its light illuminating what seemed like the whole of the world. People stumbled and fell in their blindness. Orion, Gavin’s power holding his frailty upright, swayed back and forth as if in a trance.

  Gavin felt it. True, unbridled power without judgment and with no equal. He knew now. He knew everything that needed to be done. He saw fields of blood and fire and dragons. The world would bend the knee to him. He would build gigantic engines that would run an entire world on a timetable as sure as the clockwork of Big Ben. There would be no poverty or starvation, wars or strife.

  He knew everything.

  Landa and Lucas were carrying a bleeding Wish, wincing in pain, across the ship when they were caught in a tidal wave of power surging from Gavin. The light flowed and cascaded over every ship and every person in the air over London. Wish was bathed in it.

  “Gavin, stop!” Landa shouted.

  Wish stood up and wobbled clumsily into Landa and Lucas, needing them to steady him against the onslaught. She felt his chest to find it healed completely.

  Declan, free from the soldier he had just murdered, grunted heavily while struggling to send fireball after fireball toward where Gavin was before he was blinded like everyone else. Jacobson emerged from the hold, saw a warlock attacking his son, and raised his gun and shot Declan in the center of the forehead, dropping the big man dead.

  Gavin saw this in his mind’s eye. His father. He acted heroically to be the savior his son had needed his whole life. He struggled to understand what this meant. Had his father, scarred from so many years without a wife or mother to his son, finally understood the bonds of family?

  “Join me, Gavin!” Jacobson shouted over the rumble and whine of the light. “It’s not too late. What you are doing is the most amazing thing anyone has ever seen. Think of what we can do as a family. We can rule this world together with the stone.”

  “This is not possible.” Blaylock had fallen to his knees and held up his hands to make a small but diminishing obsidian circle to protect himself from the barrage of light.

  Gavin could hear a voice speaking directly to him in his head. It told him his father had a singular mind, incapable of the love he needed. Incapable of true understanding, of deep love. It spoke of winged travel through the air. Of a time of freedom and majesty. He could feel the wind on his face. He could not feel the conglomeration of ships beneath his feet rattling and shaking apart under the immense force he was emanating.

  “Go with you, Father? So you can torture me like you did that faerie boy? Yes, I saw you. And you saw what he showed you about me. But you’re no stranger to magick, are you, Father, true ruler of Britain?”

  “Stop this nonsense right—”

  “This is what you really want, isn’t it? It was never about me. I’ve known my whole life. This stone, the Mage’s stone. You’ve been using its magick for so long it has corrupted you. Like… ungh… like it will me soon.”

  “Give it to me!” Jacobson bellowed.

  “Magick is forbidden; you know that. But it hasn’t stopped you and your inner circle from using this thing’s power to wage never-ending war and conquest. For what? Power? How can you use magick and proclaim it illegal? Your private campaign has set the world to war.”

  “You know nothing, boy,” Jacobson screamed.

  “Nothing? I know everything. I know that the Council has been oblivious of your inner circle using the heart of the last dragon to gain power and kill English boys in your war. The sons of Eíre have been trapped in your battle under the wicked ways of the false heir to a once-false god.”

  Gavin turned once again toward Blaylock. “You believe you can stand against this? When the Dark Mage himself failed? You know nothing of the power of dragons.”

  Blaylock shivered in a ball. Gavin squeezed Orion’s shoulder tightly as he held the Knowledge Stone in front of him. Blaylock exploded in a flash of light. The particles that
had made up his being were pulled into the stone itself.

  Lucas gasped.

  “That is mine,” Jacobson said. “I saved England with it. My inner circle, as you call them, will save the world with it if you are too weak and spineless to do it.”

  Gavin turned the stone on his father.

  “No, Gavin,” Orion cried. “This is not you.” He tried to yank free but couldn’t.

  Quickly Orion reached for Lucas and Landa, beckoning to them. He bade them pull, and with their combined strength, Orion slipped from Gavin’s grasp. The three of them held hands in a circle around their friend.

  Gavin could feel the weight of world, now alone with the awesome and terrible strength of eons dragging him. He felt as if he would collapse from the pain and suffering and the bloodshed. He would do anything to set the world right. He would do anything to be free to fly high above the mountains once again.

  “Gavin, we love you and want you to stop this,” Landa said, but he could barely hear her.

  “You have the strength to fight the stone. Look at everything you have done so far,” Orion plead. “Dig into the deepest part of yourself and find your magick there. Your power, not that of the stone.”

  Gavin struggled to hear his friends and see them through the awesome whiteness and clarity. He tried to focus on them. He tried to focus on the wind rushing across his face. Through the brilliance he could see her smile. His mother. She reached out her arms and hugged him. He wept for her. He missed her so.

  “Please come back to me. I love you, Gavin. I always have,” Lucas said. “I wish that could be enough for you. For us.” Lucas raised one arm and touched Gavin’s cheek with a palm, wiping away a tear.

  The heart said something he could barely hear over the gush of wind, and he squinted through the light to see him. Lucas. Gavin’s vision cleared, and all he could see was Lucas. He dropped the stone in the pouch, and the skies returned to darkness. People fell from the shockwave.

  Lucas reached for Gavin’s hands and pulled him into a desperate hug. After a moment of ambivalence, Gavin melted into it and squeezed him as hard as he could and began to cry.

  Jacobson got up from the deck and started toward his son.

  “Have you heard enough, Councilmen?” Landa shouted, wiping away black grease from her eyes with the back of a gloved hand.

  Jacobson stiffened.

  “Indeed I have.”

  During the melee, several ships had clasped on to the growing flotilla. One of the people who boarded was Councilman Cleve Rolston, a senior member who had been at the shipyard to oversee repairs after the battle with the faeries.

  “Rolston,” Jacobson said. “It is not as he says. Look at him cavorting with warlocks, using magick.”

  “Haveland, I think I have heard enough. You and your cronies are under arrest. I will see to it that you all pay for endangering Britain, for using magick, and for treason against the people.” Rolston waved his arm at the soldiers he had come with to direct them to seize Jacobson.

  Jacobson turned to the Grenadiers who remained near and commanded them to defend him. Rifles swung high, pitting brother against brother.

  “Traitor? You think me a traitor,” said Jacobson. “I have always been willing to do whatever it takes to protect Britain. All of Britain. While you, you sat around and collected taxes and grew fat.”

  “You, sir, are a madman. Magick is forbidden for a reason.”

  “Before I used the stone, England was doomed, ripe for takeover from Irish warlocks. You’ve seen what they did here today! What they have always done. They are vicious, unholy beings that need to be stomped out and forever eradicated.

  “I’d say it is high time I take proper control. Masheck, arrest Councilman Rolston.” Jacobson turned to Masheck, standing next to Abberline. Masheck looked unsure.

  “Agent, where is your allegiance? To this warlock, or to Britain?” Rolston asked.

  The entire dock was covered with soldiers pointing weapons at one another.

  Jacobson turned to his Grenadiers and shouted, “Kill him!”

  “Tut, tut, not so fast,” Masheck called out, his arm, in full cannon form, pointed directly at Jacobson’s head. “I’m afraid, for crimes against the nation, for violating antimagick laws, and generally for being a prat, you are hereby under arrest.” He nudged Jacobson in the cheek with his weapon arm.

  “You filthy ingrate. How dare you? You’re nothing but an automaton, a failed experiment—”

  “Yes, about that…,” Masheck said before landing a hard-right fist across Jacobson’s jaw. His rusty eyes swirled with tiny mechanical movements, and Gavin could not be sure, but he thought he saw them welling.

  A Grenadier started to move forward with his rifle out, only to be stopped by Inspector Abberline’s sharp blade.

  “I think it high time for all of you gentlemen to stand down, what.”

  Rolston’s navy men stepped forward and collected rifles from the Grenadiers. Gavin slipped the stone into his pocket.

  The decks surrounding them held blood-soaked soldiers and magick wielders alike. Another large airship of Eíre stopped alongside the flotilla, its captain hailing them.

  “Who is this now?” Rolston said, motioning his soldiers to ready themselves.

  “Wait,” Orion pleaded.

  Rolston turned to look for once at the boy in the artificer’s clothes that did not quite fit properly. “Who are you, boy? An Irish spy? Your manner of dress has not fooled me. I’ve seen what you do.”

  “Councilman, this is Orion, nephew of Queen Siobhán,” Gavin said. “Without his help, all of England could have been lost today. Hear him out.”

  “That captain is my stepfather, Rory Brody,” Orion explained. “He has been coerced, as have many of my countrymen, by the Brotherhood of the Mage. With Blaylock gone, he is now free to take our fleet back to Ireland in peace, which is all we really want.”

  “Ha,” Jacobson said. “Then why did they sail here if not to attack and wage war? Destroy them all now while we have the chance. They are weakened.”

  Gavin turned to look at his father with loathing and pity. “No. There has been enough bloodshed today because of your orchestrations. They are only here because you know nothing of peace and fell right into the Brotherhood’s hands.”

  Gavin turned away from his father to Councilman Rolston, the old man looking weary from battle. “We have a ban on magick, but it is based on something that happened long, long ago. Without this warlock,” Gavin said, pointing at Orion, “the war would be over. And you, me, all of us might be prisoners of the Brotherhood of the Mage. Not the Irish people, sir, but the Brotherhood.”

  Rolston nodded, signifying changes to come. “And where is this stone now?”

  “Gone,” Gavin said.

  “What do you mean? How is it gone?”

  “Magick?” Gavin said. Rolston eyed him until Orion broke the tension.

  “And as of today, the Brotherhood of the Mage is no more,” Orion proclaimed. “When I return to Ireland and restore our queen, the memories of the Mage and all of his Brotherhood ilk will be banished. This I swear to you as a member of the royal court.”

  The sky burst open above their heads, and the crowd gasped and stumbled backward. A gray billow of smoke preceded Drake of Faerie appearing as if out of nowhere and landing on the deck. Surprise gave way to practice, and guns were leveled.

  “Stop where you are!” Rolston commanded.

  “I will honor your request,” Drake said with a silky smoothness that seemed to provide a modicum of relief to the battle-weary crowd.

  “Wait, sir,” Gavin asked. “This man protected us in the battle at Marble Arch. He has earned my trust.”

  “Thank you, little warrior. I have come with a warning and with an offer of solution.”

  “Let’s hear it, then,” Rolston directed him.

  “My brother, Kailen of Faerie, prepares to continue his war with your nation. I am afraid Queen Titania shares his bloodt
hirst.”

  “We will handle that if what you say is true,” boasted Rolston.

  “Look around you, councilman,” Landa implored. Countless weary soldiers surrounded them, as well as a decimated navy with ships burning in the air and on the ground and a divided Council. “Please hear him out.”

  Rolston surveyed the scene before nodding for Drake to continue.

  “That man,” Drake accused, pointing at Jacobson, who was currently in handcuffs being held by Masheck, “is responsible for all of this. If I bring him back to Faerie as my prisoner and deliver him to my queen….”

  “This could all be over,” Gavin whispered. Even after all his father had done to ruin his life and bring hatred and violence to England, he was still family. Lucas subtly leaned closer to Gavin and brushed his fingers against Gavin’s arm.

  “It is the only way,” Lucas said quietly. Gavin nodded.

  “Agent Granville,” Rolston said. “Please transfer custody of that traitor to the Faerie envoy. As his prisoner.”

  Consequences and Repercussions

  HIGH ABOVE the Irish Sea, a small, beleaguered British naval vessel sailed amidst an equally embattled fleet of warlock-powered airships. The armada headed home immediately after the war ceased and Orion’s stepfather Rory called for cessation of hostilities. As the ranking representative of Eíre left alive to negotiate, he made a hasty retreat from a war he had no true interest in to begin with.

  The clockwork-powered airship, sails unfurled, engines clanking away at full power, drove them forward toward the unknown. The sky was clear and blue, full of promise. Gavin manned the wheel, letting the wind push through the broken cabin windows and enwrap him. He let his goggles dangle across his neck and squinted. He felt meant for this.