The source of magic, p.14
The Source of Magic, page 14
“Chloe, how are you doing that?” Melanie asked with astonishment.
Chloe didn’t answer. She had a faraway look on her face, and moved as if she were sleep walking. She then raised her arms out wide and after making a series of complicated gestures spun her arms to the six and twelve positions.
A portal opened up, hanging in the air in front of her. The edges were a thick beam of white light and a dull, smokey image of a grassy field was displayed in its centre.
Without looking at the others or saying a word, she stepped through the portal and vanished. There was a second’s pause, and then Melanie and Selphie quickly followed her. They each disappeared in turn.
The guards having regained their composure, and realising that the woman who had been casting magic had just disappeared, raced with their keys to John’s cell and started fumbling with the lock. John gathered his and Chloe’s clothes, and leapt thought the portal just as it closed behind him.
Chapter 9
John landed a little unsteadily, and his naked feet sank a little into rich brown earth as soon as he had passed through the portal. The sudden onslaught of bright midday sun temporarily blinded him to the plowed field he was now in. As he continued to step forwards, not being completely cognisant of his new surroundings, he nearly tripped on a furrow in the earth, kicking the small mound of dirt running along side it.
He could feel a cool breeze on his naked body counterbalancing the warm rays of the sun. As he waited for his eyes to adjust he stood tall gripping his and Chloe’s clothes bundled in one arm. John wasn’t vain, but he wasn’t going to try and hide himself as if he were embarrassed. He knew that standing in the sun under a clear sky, his broad shoulders and well proportioned muscular physique would not be an unpleasant sight to any potential onlookers. In fact the three women, even Melanie who was intimately acquainted with John’s body, stopped for a moment and took the opportunity drink in the sight of him.
With his eyesight returning to normal, John looked around scanning a full three-sixty degree of the horizon and familiarising himself with the lay of the land.
The field they were in was plowed for farming but was devoid of any plant life. From the weather he had experienced in the days since his arrival he would have guessed that they were in the midst of a fine spring season. He would have expected there to be something growing.
The land was relatively flat, and he could see some larger hills on the horizon but nothing too demanding from a hiker’s perspective. There were trees, beginning sparsely and then growing more dense into a light patch of woods. The trees were tall, like oak and elm, and were dressed in deep green foliage, casting deep shadows in the depths of the woods. He guessed the woods to be in a northerly direction from them, which meant the cluster of buildings about a kilometre distance were due west. It was hard to make out distinct buildings, though the general feel was of a large village or possibly a small town. John could see that there were a few buildings poking up above the rest indicating that they were two or possibly three storeys in height. There were no people that he could see nearby other than the inhabitants of the village.
Melanie was standing off to one side by herself. She had her arms wrapped around herself, and John could tell by the droop in her ears and tail that she wasn’t feeling her normal happy self. It was understandable, he thought. Regardless of the necessity of the situation, he had just fucked someone else a day after they had become partners. And it was right while she was in the same room. She couldn’t help but hear every grunt and moan.
John looked over at Chloe, who was being tended to by her sister. Selphie was holding up Chloe’s hands and studying her fingertips in minute detail. Selphie moved on to peering closely into Chloe’s eyes and even pulled the eyelids back while she rolled her eyes back to look upwards. The trance-like look Chloe was in when casting spells was gone. She seemed a little confused and washed out. He stepped over, holding out her cotton dress, which she took with a nod of thanks.
They both dressed and they all turned to each other in a circle with a multitude of questions running through their minds. Not the least of which was what to do next.
“Chloe, how are you feeling?” John asked to break the silence.
She looked up at him. “Okay, now, but really worn out. I don’t remember much of what happened. My last clear memory was how good it felt to have your magic pouring into me. Then Lord Detier came in with the guards and I was frantically trying to think of what to do. We learned about the great mages wielding magic but not the specifics. I was frantically thinking of how I would go about casting a spell and was starting to panic when I saw him with the stun-spell totems and then I went into that trance.
“And anyway, they would draw on magical energies to form into spells and immediately release them. They were like a conduit. None of our lessons described what it felt like. I had the magic, your magic, sitting inside me, like it was running through my veins just waiting until it was used. When I cast those spells, I drew on that magic – I didn’t channel it from somewhere else.”
“She has no signs of corruption,” said Selphie. “When the great mages would start their training and cast their first spells there was always signs of corruption, but it would be small in the beginning, tiny black and purple pinpricks that would soon disappear. It would take years of magic use to have a lasting effect as the corruption built up in them but every spell, no matter how small, would build up and affect their bodies.
“Chloe had no pinpricks. I think she is the first person to cast a spell herself, without using a proxy like runes or totems, and not suffer corruption.”
“But why did John’s magic flow into her and not the totem that was sitting right next to them?” Asked Melanie.
There was a puzzled silence as the two acolytes searched their memories, then something occurred to John.
“Melanie, your grandmother told me that the Nekovolk had always used totems. Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. In none of our stories is there any mention of Nekovolk channelling magic or being corrupted like the humans. Once we discovered how to use totems, we were able to use magic, but before that we were subjugated in our homeland by those who were channelling magic in other ways," Melanie explained. She sounded dejected and moody.
“What if the same part of humans that enables them to channel magic is the same thing that allowed Chloe to absorb and store my magical energy?
“They say necessity is the mother of invention. It stands to reason that while humans were happy to channel magic and take the slow corruption and death that came with it, the Nekovolk didn’t even have that option, so they used their intelligence and ingenuity to develop the totems so they had an even playing field," John posited.
There was an eye-roll and defensive look from Selphie when John had implied that the humans were power-hungry idiots and it was the Nekovolk who were the smarter of the two. He chose to ignore it and pushed on as Melanie needed all the boosting up he could give her right now.
“Whatever the reason is, we need to test this again and see if it’s just Chloe who is affected by you or if you can do the same with me,” Selphie said.
John didn’t like her urgent tone or presumption. She was a beautiful women, no doubt, but he resented the implication that he could be dealt out and studies with less say in the matter than a sex worker would have.
“Listen here, I fuck who I want, when I want, and right now that person is Melanie. I might consider bending you over if you asked, but the first thing you are going to have to do is get Melanie’s okay on the deal.” John didn’t yell. He didn’t need to. The voice of command came back easily to him and it is a tone that says, in no uncertain terms, 'you will do what I just said'.
Melanie perked up a bit, and a small smile returned to her lips as she looked at John for the first time since coming through the portal.
Chloe was too run down to pay too much attention or care at this point, but Selphie had a shocked look on her face. She opened her mouth to say something but thought better of it and closed it again.
“Okay, now that that’s over, we need to find out where we are, figure out exactly what we are going to do and, frankly I could use a rest after the knocks I’ve taken over the last couple of days – as I imagine the two of you could as well," John said to the sisters.
John started off towards the village and the group fell in behind, first Melanie and then Selphie helping her sister along, watching for when she tripped as she dragged her feet.
The soft crenelated ground of the field made for slow going, which was exacerbated by the low energy state of the group. John was still carrying a slightly bruised rib from the day before and though the pain and stiffness from the stun spell had dissipated, his time unconscious had not been restful.
The crossing from one field to another was marked by low fences that had odd criss-crossing steps in place to assist with climbing them. Each field they crossed was fallow, just like the first. It wasn’t until they were close to the village and in the last field which abutted a dirt road that they saw signs of plants.
The village was a mix of dozens of simple wattle-and-daub, one-room houses with more advanced, larger, brick and wood affairs closer to the centre. It was from the centre of town that a bell tower rose up and a brick two-storey inn.
Crossing onto the dirt road, John could see that town acted as a hub for a crossroads, which would explain its large size and more advanced buildings.
They could already smell the village. The capital had a complex set of gutters, aqueducts, basic supers, and John would not be surprised to find totems, to deal with its waste. The village was mostly compacted dirt streets and the waste was handled by a combination of outhouses that were either emptied regularly or set over long drops and moved when the hole filled up, and chamber pots which were emptied outdoors, often in the nearest patch of clear grass or dirt.
As they walked up the road toward the inn, they were the subject of some curiosity by the inhabitants, who would stop talking and or their chores and come to windows to peer at the strangers.
John tried meeting their looks with a smile and nod, but they were having none of it. Those responses he did get were surly and more an acknowledgement of their presence rather than of greeting.
There were few men amongst the village. There were young boys running around near the houses and grabbing at their mothers’ skirts when they saw John looking, some old men, and then the rest were women.
This was a village affected by war. Without a protective shield to pump the population with feel-good mind spells, and lacking the currency required to defer conscription, the town was stripped of both its able-bodied, fighting-age men and whatever cheer they had. It also explained why so few of the fields had been sown. Those left behind had done what they could with half the village population gone.
The inn sat opposite a town hall across a cobbled village square. On market day, during peace-time, the square had the capacity to house stalls and large carts overflowing with produce from the village as well as neighbouring hamlets and homesteads. Now there were a few shopfronts open with imported and made goods, but little food was on display.
They entered the inn to little fanfare as it was empty, the villagers still hard at work in the afternoon light. The innkeeper was standing behind a bar rearranging bottles and clay cups that didn’t need rearranging. He was a big man who wore his fat like an extra layer of clothes. He had pockmarks in pale skin, a black beard and keen blue eyes.
When the innkeeper heard the door open, he turned to look at the group as they entered. John heard the slap of one hand hitting the bar as the innkeeper leaned on it and a wooden clack from his other hand.
The innkeeper had had a crude wooden prosthetic which allowed him to hold a range of objects by wedging them in between three spokes arranged in a triangular formation.
John checked his pockets. His purse with money was missing, taken by the guards.
“Grab a table, I’m going to see what I can sort out," John said to the women.
John took of his jacket and tried to flatten out some of the wrinkles in the sleeves with some swats with his hand. It was a little creased but still clean and looked close enough to brand new.
“Hello there, I’m John,” he said as he approached the bar.
“Malcolm.”
“We were robbed trying to take a shortcut through the woods. We have no money but we need food and somewhere safe to stay. Will you take this jacket in trade?”
Malcolm the innkeeper picked up a sleeve and rubbed the fabric between his fingers.
“A day and a night of food and a room for the four of you.”
“Thank you, then we’ll have lunch," John said, relieved.
He joined the women at the table and explained their situation: “We have a day. We need to come up with a plan and get back on our feet.”
Their table was near a window, not glass, just an opening with wooden shutters pinned open. He kept an eye on the passing villagers while he listened in on the three-way conversation. Lunch came in four wooden bowls. John was trying to decide if it was a thick soup or a thin porridge. It consisted of undefined parts, mostly vegetable, or at least some part of a plant. But at least it was hot, and it gave enough nourishment for them all to restore a bit of energy.
Chloe was looking far more like herself, and was contributing to the conversation with her normal gusto.
More of a surprise to John was that Melanie had lost the meekness and deference towards to the human sisters that she displayed on his first encounter with the trio.
“We might be out of the capital but it is still under attack and my grandmother and the other Nekovolk are still inside the Egg. We need to get them out. The savages think whatever the wizards stole is in there, and they are only getting closer and closer to breaking through. They won’t stop until they have killed everyone," Melanie said.
“Hey, don’t lump all wizards in with that arsehole Lord Detier and the others in charge of the Academy. They started this war – not us. We were busy going to classes when all this happened. We need to go back to the capital, get inside the Egg, and confront them, get them to give back whatever they took. I bet the king doesn’t know what they did.” Chloe was thumping the table as she spoke to drive her points home.
“Whatever Lord Detier took, he thinks it is the source of the savages’ magic, but they can’t figure it out. We might have a better chance at it. Melanie seems to know more about totems than any of the instructors at the Academy. Their ego has blinded them to the knowledge they could be gaining by just asking a Nekovolk totem witch to share their secrets. And we have John’s, ah, ability, which has never been seen anywhere in the world before. It’s like he is as much a source of magic as the ley lines and convergences are. If we can get the source from the Grey School, we might be able to succeed where they failed and have the magic of the savages as well. Then we could win the war,” Selphie avoided looking at Melanie when she spoke about John, instead playing with the end of her blond plait, twisting it between her fingers.
They looked to John to hear his thoughts, and there was silence at the table while he stared off out the window at a woman outside her house vainly trying to herd five chickens, three toddlers, and a cat into some semblance of order. Her face was dirt streaked and moved with an odd painful gait that spoke of insufficient nutrition and too much work.
“This war has to end. The people in the capital have magic to keep them happy, healthy and safe, but I’d bet good money every village and town in the kingdom is like this one. They don’t have any men or food or anything else because it’s all going to the war effort. On my world, in the past when we had technology at this level, a war that went on for years was often only fought a few months out of each year. The rest of the time there was either too much snow, or the men had to go home for harvest and to work the land.
“Here, the savages don’t care about going home to harvest, if they have farms at all, because you’ve stolen something that’s important to them. And because they won’t stop attacking, your armies can’t stop, either. And we know that most of the army is held up protecting the source somewhere other than the capital on the off chance the savages stumble upon it. In the meantime the country is slowly starving to death.
“The only way the savages go home is if they get their trinket back, and the Grey School and the army aren’t going to do that, so we need to get it and give it back to them.
“If you go charging back to the capital, Lord Detier will just make you disappear again, and for good this time. And if you try to figure out how to use the source of the savages’ power for yourself, you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of history fighting a war against people who believe in their cause more than you.”
They couldn’t fault his logic and he was betting they weren’t willing to try anything on their own. He knew Melanie was with him. Selphie was too interested in his magical ability to just wander off, even if she did know where the savages’ source of magic was. Chloe was headstrong but she stuck with her sister, and as much as she hated Lord Detier and the other head wizards, she wasn’t about to try and take them on by herself.
“We need time. Time to rest and stock up on provisions and weapons. Right now we only have a day before we are out living off the land, and the land doesn’t seem that inviting right now. Melanie, are you able to find a stone you can carve a totem out of around here?”
She thought for a moment. "It’s possible. You can make a totem out of just about anything, but to cast a spell worth anything it might take some looking.”
“Okay then. First thing tomorrow we try and find a rock you can carve into a decent totem. If we can create a spell from it, we should be able to sell it for money or trade it for room and board.”
