Wizard's Blood [Part Two] Read online

  “I don’t know. A lot depends on how the war turns out, and what Shyar wants to do. She really wanted to visit, but to be honest, I’m inclined to stay on there. I like it, and there’s so much I can do to help the place.”

  “What else can we do to get ready?” she’d finally asked.

  “I’ve run out of ideas. There are things I need to do and other things to buy, but I’ve already got more than I’ll be able to take this trip. It doesn’t make sense to go after more until I know this is going to work. The one thing I really want that I haven’t had any luck with is finding Oscar’s stuff. Gramps told me there was a journal and a number of items he’d personally seen, but didn’t know what to do with. From his description, I think I know what one item might be, and it has a lot of potential to be useful. I’m really hoping they will be in the safe.”

  “The man said he would be here in the morning. We’ll just have to wait.”

  * * * *

  The kids were off in school and the locksmith was hard at work on the safe. While they’d been waiting for the man to arrive, he and Janie had made yet another search of the study, but nothing had turned up that he hadn’t seen before. If there was anything to lead him to Oscar’s old possessions, it had to be in the safe. While he waited he scanned the iPad to see what had been added to it by Janie’s kids. There were over a hundred Apps, many of them games, and basically useless, but there were a few items he could see coming in handy. They’d also loaded it up with more than twenty movies, something he suspected Asari would be pleased to see. Timmy had insisted that he watch a couple of specific titles that were supposedly very good. Some of the titles had been chosen because he’d told them what Asari had liked from viewing the selection on his old iPhone.

  “There,” the man said finally. He stood back and displayed an open door to the safe. “It’s a good safe, but thankfully not one of the really good ones. If you want to use it again, you will need to replace the lock mechanism.”

  “I’ll probably be calling you in a few days,” Janie said. “For now, we want to see what is in it, and then we will see about getting it fixed.” She paid the man and saw him out.

  Together they went through the contents. There were copies of their father’s will, titles to the house and property, and a variety of old financial papers. All were copies, the originals having been in the bank or with their father’s lawyer. They also found a number of photo albums, showing family members going back over a century. There were also articles that traced some of the family members, documenting some of the unexplained fires and deaths, and other family oddities. But there was nothing that had belong to Oscar, and nothing that told Randy where to look for his ancestor’s effects.

  “Dragons!” Randy exclaimed, causing Janie to look at him oddly. “I hope Dad didn’t throw it all away. He was really adamant about not letting anyone know about my abilities. Maybe he thought it best that all such traces disappear.”

  “You know that doesn’t make sense. He kept all these records, so why would he have thrown Oscar’s effects away? We just need to keep looking.”

  Glumly Randy nodded. “I was really hoping I could take them this trip. I get a feeling they are really important somehow. I guess I need to put in some thought about how to go about this systematically.”

  “So what is your plan now?”

  “I don’t know. I was going to go back tomorrow, but I can’t see why I should wait. I’ll call Gene and see what he has, and if he can bring over the hard drives. Maybe I’ll make the attempt to return to Gaea now. That would get me back here all the sooner, and time is important.”

  The more Randy thought about it, the more impatient to make the attempt he became. Gene said he could come over in a couple of hours, so Randy headed outside to start assembling the items he was planning on taking onto the small knoll. By the time Gene arrived he’d assembled everything he thought he could take, and was still getting a sense that he was below the limit. Gene arrived just as he was finishing.

  “I found your patents,” he said handing over four of the small two terabyte drives. Give me a couple of weeks and I can have a lot more useful material. Oh, and you’ll want this.” He handed Randy a couple of typed pages. “Those are the contents of the drives so you don’t have to search around wondering what is there.”

  Randy accepted the drives from Gene gratefully. “You still haven’t told me how I can repay you,” he said.

  Gene looked uncomfortable, but then said. “I’d like to watch as you leave. It would make all of this more real.”

  Randy knew that Gene still wanted a bit more proof. He couldn’t blame him. He would have more doubts than Gene had shown if the situation had been reversed.

  “Well, your timing is good. I’m going to try and leave in a few minutes. All I needed were these.”

  “I thought you were going tomorrow?”

  “I have everything I’m going to be able to take, so I decided I might as well go back. Besides, I’m now nervous that something might go wrong, so I want to find out. Everything is out back. You and Janie can both come and watch. I think it will make both of you more settled in your minds. But please, it needs to remain a secret.”

  Gene nodded and followed Randy through the house and out to the back. They latched onto Janie as they made their way towards the backyard.

  “I’m nervous,” she said suddenly.

  “Not nearly as much as I am,” Randy admitted. “A bit of warning. When the wizard made transitions in the past, I’d get this odd prickly feeling inside my head. It never did anything harmful, but it was disturbing. I don’t know if it will affect you the same way or not, since you don’t have the magical ability. Since Janie didn’t seem to notice it when I arrived, I’m guessing it won’t happen.”

  “You’re taking all that stuff?” Gene asked, noticing the odd pile stacked on the mound.

  “I hope so. Part of this trip is to see how much I can carry with me, assuming I can return at all. He looked at the two, and grinned. Here’s hoping I don’t look foolish in a couple of minutes.” He shook Gene’s hand, and gave his older sister a hug, then stepped over to the mound, where he picked up the briefcase.

  “What’ll happen?” Janie asked, her nervousness showing.

  “I should simply disappear, along with everything here. I’d stand back just a bit. That’s good. My friends were about that far back when I left.”

  If he’d been nervous when he activated the spell back on Gaea to come here, he was terrified now. Once again he reviewed the spells in his mind, careful to select the correct one, although his mind seemed to go automatically to the spell he needed. Raising his hand in a wave, he took a deep breath, and executed the spell. For the smallest fraction of a second he thought nothing was going to happen, then, just as it had on Gaea, the view seemed to fade. In the split second before they disappeared he could see the looks of surprise upon the faces of his friend and his sister. Then the dark cavern of the Nexus replaced the vision, and snapped sharply into focus. He could suddenly sense the presence of the power, and felt whole once again. Ward was sitting in a chair off to one side, and stood up suddenly, startled by his arrival.

  Chapter 108

  Initially a bit startled, Ward smiled broadly when he realized it was Jolan who had suddenly appeared on the Nexus platform surrounded by a small mountain of souvenirs. Ward hadn’t been present when Jolan had left, so his arrival must have been a bit of a shock.

  “Waiting for me?” Jolan asked, a bit playfully at first, then wondering if something had taken place here in the few days he had been absent.

  “We started a watch earlier today. You said you would be gone four or five days, and Vaen didn’t want to have you return without someone here. She’d like to see you immediately on your return.”

  “Has something happened?” Jolan asked, giving voice to his concerns.

  Ward shook his head. “Nothing, but she has been very concerned that you might not be able to get back. She will be migh
tily relieved to see you again. Dragons, is that cuprum?”

  Ward had walked over to the Nexus and had come close enough to see the large sheet that was supported vertically behind Jolan.

  Smiling, Jolan replied. “I had planned on bringing more, but I found there is a limit to what I can carry through the transition at one time. It’s considerably more than Cheurt and his friends are able to carry, but it means a number of trips will be required to get everything back.”

  “It certainly seems like you brought a lot. You gathered all of this in the few days you were gone?”

  “I had a bit of help, and the gathering is a bit hap-hazard. I wanted to test the limits, and I have to admit, like Vaen, I was a bit concerned about my ability to return. Let’s go see Vaen, and then we can see about bringing this back to the Council building.”

  “After I take you to see the Chancellor, I’ll inform the others. We can see about getting everything back while you are talking to her.”

  “That sounds great. But leave all but one can of the paint here.”

  “Paint? You brought back paint?”

  “It’s rather special paint,” Jolan said. “I’ll explain later.”

  With the camera slung over one shoulder and the attache case in his right hand, he reached down with his left and picked up a cooler. It felt good to walk away from the immediate vicinity of the Nexus, which was giving him a feeling of disquiet at the moment. From his Cheurt memories he associated this with the Nexus not being available to him at the moment for further transitions. It would be interesting to see how long the sensation lasted. It was one of the questions this trip was supposed to resolve.

  Ward reached out and took the cooler from Jolan, and then stepped across the room and took the mini-portal back to the tunnel entrance. From there they stepped into the large stone transfer portal and moments later started up the stairs to the chancellor’s office. Ward knocked and then walked right in. Vaen turned as he did so, and Jolan was certain he could see some of the concern slip away from her face. It was quite obvious that someone was glad to have him back.

  “Thank the gods,” she said, and rushed over to give him a hug. “It went okay? You made it to Earth and back without difficulty?”

  Nodding, Jolan explained briefly. “I found my sister had moved into the house on the property, so that made things go much easier than they might have otherwise. Cheurt and his people are still active, by the way. My sister has seen a man matching Ryltas’ description periodically making trips.”

  “Is that what you brought back?” asked Vaen, obviously a bit disappointed.

  Ward answered for him. “He brought back a whole mountain of stuff. It’s still at the Nexus. I need to go get the others so we can bring it back. Then he can show us what he has.”

  As Ward hurried off, Jolan and Vaen sat down and talked.

  “What about Ryltas?”

  “I didn’t have time to learn very much. As I suspected, I was declared dead, and my sister inherited all my effects. One thing she discovered was the house Cheurt had forced me to rent, and she stopped payments on it. That forced Ryltas, if he hadn’t already done so, to move elsewhere. Because of that, I don’t know where he is located at the moment. I’ll need to wait until he returns to the Nexus for his next trip.”

  “How can you know when that will be?”

  “Janie, my sister, had started marking the calendar when she saw him. Assuming she hasn’t missed a number of his visits, and I suspect there is some of her own repressed magic aiding her, then there is a pattern emerging that is somewhat logical. On the Earth calendar his visits appear random, but if you count the days between the dates, it is always eighty days. There was one case where the gap was twice that, but I suspect she simply missed seeing him. It was around the time she was moving in. Eighty days is exactly eight Gaean weeks. Given the travel times on this end, and the need for Ryltas to actually get some work done, that’s a reasonable time for them to schedule the trips.”

  “There’s something wrong with the times,” Vaen said, picking up on the same discrepancy that had been bothering Jolan.

  “The eighty days is too long,” Jolan said.

  She nodded. “I thought our experts said that twenty four days was the upper limit. If they are using the one-way spell, they should be returning to the real Nexus.”

  “Or, they know something about the spells we don’t,” Jolan suggested.

  “My, wouldn’t that be a surprise,” observed Vaen dryly. “Do you think they have learned how to extend the time allowed before returning?”

  “It seems like they must have. From what Buris says about the power crystals, they can’t carry enough that way to trigger the Nexus, and as you pointed out, they aren’t returning where we would expect if they were using the one-way spell.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  For now, I’m going to plan on his reappearing on that schedule.”

  “Then what?”

  “First I plan on following him, to see where he is staying. Then I need to be sure he is the only wizard from Gaea that is on Earth. I might hire a detective to watch him for me.”

  “And once you establish whether he is alone?”

  “Then I’ll figure out the best way to kill him,” Jolan said simply.

  “Cheurt will simply send another,” she said.

  “Even so, it would disrupt them significantly, but I think I know a way to stop that as well. I brought back some paint that might help.”

  Vaen looked at him oddly.

  Jolan smiled. “There is a special paint used on boats back home. It is heavily loaded with copper. It prevents the growth of plants and such on the hulls. I want to build a structure to place over the Nexus when we are done with my trips this winter. If the structure is painted with the copper loaded paint, I suspect we can stop the leakage of the Nexus up to the point where Cheurt is intercepting it. It should appear as if the Nexus simply disappeared. Hopefully he will think it has shut down, or perhaps moved. Either way, he should no longer be able to make the trips. I don’t want to do this until the end of winter when we are done making trips for a while, just in case it causes some disturbance we don’t anticipate. For this reason, I don’t want Ryltas to miss a meeting until shortly before I plan on taking away their Nexus.”

  “You have an interesting mind,” she said smiling. “You think this will work?”

  “I can’t see any reason for it not to. I also want to paint your office as well.”

  “Why my office?”

  “I get the feeling there are spells documented out there that do things we have never considered. What if there is something that allows a person to remotely monitor another location?” Jolan explained about the hidden trail monitors up in Trailways that allowed one to see who was on each of the paths from considerable distance.

  “I think it prudent to try and set up an area, perhaps several, which are as protected as possible against such a possibility. You can put another layer of normal paint back over the stuff I brought so no one can tell.”

  * * * *

  The conference room was filled with the small team. Everyone who knew about the portals and the Nexus was there, even Rifod and Nerila, who had put off their research at Ygooro in anticipation of his return. Jolan was warmed by the smiles directed his way.

  “First, we had best get to this before it is too late,” he said, and lifted the small cooler from the floor and set it on the chair next to him. “It’s nowhere near as good as a Mage’s Box.” He opened it, and reaching inside lifted out a small stack of paper cups and a number of heavy-duty plastic spoons. Then he lifted out two containers of ice cream.

  “This is Tishe’s request. “At least an answer to one of her requests.”

  He dished out a scoop from each container, and passed it over to the girl, who looked at it uncertainly.

  “It’s called ice cream,” he said. “Try it. I think you’ll like it.”

  While she hesitantly dipped he
r spoon into one of the cool mounds, Jolan dished out ice cream for the rest, and handed the small dishes around. He was gratified to see the smile of pure delight when Tishe finally found the will to taste the substance. The others followed suit, and the supply was soon exhausted.

  “I was surprised how good it tasted after so long, and I couldn’t remember anything like it here, so it seemed it might meet Tishe’s requirements. It’s not that hard to make by the way.”

  Tishe nodded enthusiastically, and the group turned back to business.

  For the next half-hour, Jolan summarized what he had experienced using the Nexus and what he had found back on Earth. Explaining that he had brought back what he could quickly put his hands on, and not necessarily the best items for their needs, he went through the various items, showing their function.

  “Most of you have already noted the copper. I suspect we now have more copper than the whole of the Settled Lands combined. In addition to the large sheet, I have several large spools of solid copper wire in various sizes. It seemed that the wire was a convenient form to select smaller amounts and carry it. It could easily be wrapped around something, or inlaid into patterns, etc. We’ll put it in Buris’ shop for now, and I’d like an assessment of whether more would be useful. I had another nine sheets like the one here, but I wasn’t able to bring them all at once. They are waiting at my home on Earth, and I can bring them when we want or need them.”

  He reached over and pulled the largest of the rifle cases towards him. Sliding the zipper, he reached in and pulled out the .300 magnum rifle.

  “This is one of my old rifles. It is quite powerful, and it has a telescopic sight on the top. For those of you who have looked through Asari’s binoculars, the scope does the same thing, and has a special sight inside. The advantages of this rifle include no large clouds of white smoke to give the shooter’s position away, and the accuracy to be able to consistently hit a man-sized target at more than five hundred yards. I have several hundred rounds of ammunition for this.”