Mystify the Magician Read online

  We rode back the way we'd walked earlier, along the road and the incongruous telegraph line. And after a while I could see lights, torches ahead, burning eerily through the mist. We turned off the path to reach the torches.

  Lorg was laid out there, splayed on his back, with one leg stuck into a tree and his head in the stream. A platoon of fairies was on guard, holding the whispering torches that cast lurid orange shadows everywhere.

  Flat on his back, Lorg seemed as big as ever but strangely vulnerable. It was embarrassing, like walking in on someone in the bathroom. He was so nearly comical, laid out that way, with his big. Toxic Avenger face relaxed into its default expression.

  We climbed down off our horses, and Etain went straight to the giant and laid her hand on his sequoia of an arm.

  The head fairy reported, "His throat is not cut, my lady. Nor is he dismembered: All his limbs are in place."

  Etain didn't want to hear details right then; she had her eyes closed and I guess was remembering or honoring the big guy. A sort of druid prayer maybe. April made the sign of the cross and seemed to be mumbling her own prayer. When Etain opened her eyes she went first to April and took her hand and squeezed it in thanks. I felt like a jerk having done nothing during the interval but stare, but no one told me there was going to be praying.

  Now Etain was ready for business.

  "Have you found any tracks?" she asked the fairies.

  "Those of yourself and of these men," the fairy said, indicating all of us with the term "men." "And one other man's footprints. Perhaps different from these. But no armed party. No cohort of warriors. No other giants."

  "No single man could kill Lorg unless he was a warrior to rival Cu Chulainn."

  "Can I...?" It was Jalil. "Excuse me for interrupting. Can I get up on top? Up on Lorg, I mean? I think I see something."

  Etain looked dubious. She shot a questioning look at me. I nodded and said, "Maybe you should let him take a look."

  I got a slight "give me a break" eye roll from Jalil over that.

  And I think David was annoyed at the idea I was suddenly Etain's confidant.

  Jalil tried climbing up the dead giant's side but it wasn't easy. I gave him a boost and then Jalil gave me a pull and I had the flesh-creeping sensation of walking over yielding, still-warm, but definitely dead flesh.

  Jalil led the way from the giant's chest. He balanced on the loose, saggy skin of his massive neck, and peered closely at the right side of Lorg's head.

  "We need a torch," Jalil said, and a fairy leaped up to Join us. "Hold it close."

  Jalil pointed. Holes that seemed absurdly small, tiny wormholes in under the hairline. A dozen or fifteen holes in a random pattern. And another similar pattern of holes above one misshapen eye.

  Jalil took a deep breath and gave me a covert look. "Am I crazy?" he asked in a whisper.

  I shook my head. "No. I mean, I've never seen any in real life, but you know, on TV and all."

  "What is it?" David demanded.

  Jalil said, "Etain, I'd suggest you have your people scour the area, for about a hundred yards in every direction. Have them look for small cylinders made of brass." He held up his fingers to show the size.

  "What the—" David began, then he got it. “There's no way, Jalil,"

  The fairies didn't take long. "Here, my lady," one of them called out from a spot maybe fifty feet downstream. The fairy came zooming back. His hand was ful of clinking brass cylinders, half an inch long.

  Jalil started to climb down, anxious to play the part of Sherlock Holmes, I guess. I was coming down right behind him when I happened to look over and see Senna. I was looking at her as Jalil said the words, "Automatic weapon. Some kind of machine gun. Someone shot the guy. Someone shot the hell out of him."

  Chapter

  VIII

  The sun came up watery and mist-filtered on a far busier scene. Old Lorg was still dead. But now the king had come with the type of guys we'd met in passing a long time before and a long way away: Fianna.

  The Fianna, as I understood it, were knights of a sort, though they didn't go in for the whole shining-armor thing. They were the personal army of the High King. I figured the High King was like the president, with King Camulos being a governor. King Cam's fairies were the state troopers, the Fianna were the FBI and the marines all rolled into one.

  The Fiannans were quiet and polite and respectful. They addressed everyone by their title, or else as "sir" or "lady." They'd ridden through the night in response to a telegram sent by the king and arrived from the distant capital. Their massive horses were wandering around the fields eating grass.

  A bunch of druids had also showed up. We had blue druids and green druids and red druids. It was a druid convention, but not what a person might picture: They were old and young, male and female, snappy dressers or old slobs. The one thing they all seemed to have in common was an incredible lack of stupidity.

  The blue druids spent quite a while going over the giant's already fragrant body, poking, probing, and finally cutting.

  There was some discussion of dissecting Lorg — dissection was all the rage with blue druids — but no one had invented the chain saw yet, so it was hard to see how they were going to carve him up.

  Still, they used handy scalpels and lancets and clunky, ornate tweezers, and pretty soon they had removed his canned ham of an eye and collected half a dozen bullets.

  Jalil was busy being cross-examined by Fios,. the only yellow druid there. I was hearing words like "firing pin" and

  "barrel" and "magazine." Fios was nodding like a psychiatrist who has just heard your sickest fantasy but doesn't want to act too grossed-out. Jalil looked embarrassed.

  One of the blue druids, a chubby, grandmotherly woman, came over to me carrying a pottery jar with six bloody lumps rolling around inside.

  "What are these called?" she asked me.

  "Those are slugs. They're made of lead. Mostly, anyway. I guess there's copper, too. The copper holds them together a little, but see, the head of the slug still spreads out, mashes up, when it hits."

  Grandma Druid gave me a funny look. "How does lead come to flatten thus? Even lead, softest of metals, is harder than flesh."

  "Well, it's going very fast. Faster than an arrow. I mean, a lot faster. It hits and... wham. The lead flattens and then it tears through the muscle or whatever and..." I was performing helpful hand gestures to illustrate.

  You know, I'd have been happy to explain bullets to Ka Anor. Or Loki. Or Hel. Or Neptune. I'd have been happy to explain bullets in the most direct, hands-on way I could, but having to stand there and explain how a bullet tore through flesh and muscle and organs, explain all that to these decent-seeming people, that wasn't easy. Hard not to feel responsible.

  "Ah," she said, and rolled the slugs back and forth.

  Just then a fairy came zooming in to report to the king.

  They'd found a small boat floating just offshore. A fishing boat, abandoned. And on the shore, wedged into the rocks, two dead fishermen who bore the same puncture wounds found in Lorg. David had rounded up Jalil and April and gathered me up and the four of us stepped off a way from the crime-scene crowd.

  "Someone's got a machine gun," David said in a low voice.

  "Do you think so, McGarrett?" I said. "What gave it away?"

  He clenched his jaw and looked like he wanted to hit me and only just restrained himself.

  "We're kind of deep in it here," David snapped. “Maybe not the time for sarcasm. None of these people is a fool: They're thinking we're responsible somehow."

  Jalil shook his head. "No. We've given the Coo-Hatch some technology to make cannons. But from muzzle-loading cannons to fully-automatic weapons, that's a couple centuries."

  "Senna's behind this," I said suddenly.

  David's head snapped up, angry. "Don't say things like that.

  You want them to hear?"

  "You know he's right," April said. "You know it's her.

  Ot
herwise why is it the four of us here talking and not Senna?

  You left her out, David. Why is that?"

  I said, "I saw her, I was watching her when Jalil started talking about guns. Not a flicker. She didn't jerk guiltily, but she didn't jerk surprised, either."

  The four of us turned slowly and stared at Senna. She stood off by herself, pacing very slowly, looking as if she were taking a slow-motion tour of the stone walls. Deep in thought.

  I noticed the head Fiannan, a guy with the excellent name of MacCool. He was watching us and watching our faces as we looked at Senna. It was a "cop" look.

  I looked back at Senna. She was gone, hidden by some wafting mist.

  MacCool wasn't so sure.

  "The witch," he said loudly. "Where is the witch?"

  A breeze blew the mist away. No Senna,

  Fairies erupted into a blur, racing here and there, fanning out. The Fiannans spread out a bit more slowly than the fairies.

  April left us and walked straight to Etain. She grabbed her arm. David yelled, "April!"

  Too late. "She's a shape-shifter," April said. "She could be anyone."

  Etain nodded. "MacCool! The witch can change shape."

  Etain came striding over to us, suspicious, furious at everyone except April. "You should have warned me."

  "She's one of us," David shot back.

  "The hell she is." Jalil.

  "We came here together!" David yelled, suddenly almost out of control. "We came here together, we leave together, all of us, her, too!"

  I said, "We didn't come here. General, we were dragged.

  By her." To Etain I said, "We lied to you last night. We're here because Senna dragged us here. She's some kind of gateway between the old world and Everworld and she's also a freaking nut. She's got a power. She wants to be the newer, better Ka Anor. We've been her little sockpuppets all along."

  April joined in. "She's completely ruthless. And she has powers. More power all the time." She looked right at David.

  "Don't let her touch any of your people, Etain. That's how she's strongest."

  "Why not just tell them to shoot on sight?" David demanded.

  I said, "David, she's an evil bitch who sells us out anytime it suits her. We're supposed to be loyal? To her?"

  "We stick together!" David almost screamed. "I know it looks bad. I know... but we stick together, man, that's the thing."

  Jalil stepped close to David, got right in his face. "David, there's someone over here running around with a damned Uzi.

  And we all know somehow she's behind it."

  Then suddenly Jalil grabbed David's arms, not like he was trying to control him, more like he was trying to hold himself up.

  Like someone had sucked the air out of his lungs and he needed to hold on or faint.

  "What is it?" April asked.

  "That's what she's going to do," Jalil said in a whisper.

  "That's what she's going to do. A gateway goes both ways. Of course. Oh, Jesus."

  "Shut up, Jalil," David said, but there was no conviction behind it.

  Jalil looked horrified, stared at David. "You guessed! You knew?"

  David was wringing his hands, saying, "Just shut up, Jalil."

  As messed up as I have ever seen David. He looked like someone was piling bricks on his shoulders, like some growing weight was crushing him slowly down.

  "David, you poor dumb son of a —"

  I lost patience at the same moment as April. "What?" we both yelled. "What?"

  Jalil wiped his face with his hand, wiped off the sweat and the fog condensation. "You open a door between universes, who's to say which way the traffic flows?"

  "Did you find that in a fortune cookie?"

  "Senna won't let anyone use her. She wants power. She's not going to be Loki's tool, or anyone's tool. She's the gateway, she knows that. But it’s not about whether she's going to let Loki and the others escape into the real world. The traffic's going the other way, man. She's bringing people here. She's bringing them here. Men with guns."

  It was a moment of crystalline revelation. It took my breath away. I laughed. Of course!

  Senna was in a bind: If Merlin caught her she'd be locked away in his tower forever. If Loki caught her she'd be forced to become his gateway, open an escape route to the real world.

  Neither choice exactly worked for Senna. Senna wanted it all. She knew her own magic was nowhere near powerful enough to make her a player in Everworld. Ah, but Senna with an army, an army with real-world weapons, that was a different story. Lorg the giant was dead. The perfect symbol: Everworld's Goliath versus a real-world David carrying an Uzi slingshot.

  Bye-bye, Goliath.

  Chapter

  IX

  We horsed up and headed back eventually to the town and King Cam's castle. All of us together, leaving behind some of the Fianna and a number of fairies. But MacCool rode with us. Rode right next to Etain as a matter of fact. Right alongside her. And that really should not have been tippy-top of my brain right then, what with all that had happened, what with the fact that Senna had escaped, but the brain and the body do what they want to do. Especially when the brain gets together with the body.

  It's like the body is the bad friend your mom doesn't want you to hang around with, because, man, however good your brain wants to be, however many promises old brainiac makes, body can always bring him over to the dark side of the force.

  Body was having a Harlequin kind of morning. Brain was trying real hard to be serious and focus on the fact that good old Senna had come up and kicked the chessboard all over the place so that all of a sudden no one could remember where the pieces had been before. But body was mainlining testosterone and looking to find some friendly estrogen. The Y

  chromosome wanted to go say hi to the double X's. Body had its own separate memory of Etain's nightgown. And body had been strangely excited by Etain's cool sword trick. Brain never had a chance.

  And the thing was that MacCool was putting the moves on Etain. Not that she'd notice, naturally: Girls are always prepared to believe that a guy has something else in mind. Despite roughly a million years of human experience, females persist in their belief that deep down inside, guys are girls.

  No doubt MacCool was talking about the killing. No doubt he was very professional. He looked like that kind of guy. But he was a hound, I had no doubt. He was giving her the thoughtful look, the considering nod, the old leaning-close-to-hear-better-while-inspecting-cleavage.

  I decided to demonstrate my maturity by pouting. Fine.

  Forget her. There were plenty more beautiful half-elf maidens who would jump at the chance to hook up with a penniless, cowardly minstrel from another universe.

  My horse wasn't fast and I wasn't interested in pushing him.

  So my horse moseyed and stopped to munch, and I moseyed and pouted and wondered whether it really was just coincidence that Etain had come personally to my room.

  I was at the back of the column, back behind the after guard of Fianna and fairies. Just me and some sleepy, yawning, uniformed guy from the palace, and one of the Fianna, one of MacCool's boys leading a lame horse.

  We came to a curve in the path as it went around a stand of trees, the three of us were bringing up the rear, and temporarily blocked from the view of the king and MacCool and Etain and David and the rest of the important People.

  The Fiannan decided to give up on keeping pace with his lame horse. He sighed and yanked his horse around and started back down the road from the direction we'd come.

  Taking the lame horse back to...

  Back to what? Why not lead the horse on to the village?

  I looked back just before I'd have lost sight of him entirely.

  And that's when I saw him abandon his horse and climb over a stone fence.

  I knew right away. I knew it cold: It was Senna.

  What I should do is race up the path, alert the king, who'd send MacCool pelting back after her. And if MacCool or the fairie
s caught her I'd get a nice pat on the head.

  I could see that scene, clear as day: MacCool with a sullen Senna in tow, me trotting along yelping, "I saw her! I saw her!

  I'm the one who saw her!"

  Yeah. That would have Etain throwing MacCool aside in favor of me. 'Cause if there's one thing a woman admires, it's a guy who can call for the help of a real man.

  I reined in my horse. The sleepy misinformed guy kept going, and I thought for a second of telling him what I was doing, but no, he'd just go grab MacCool.

  Screw MacCool.

  I turned my horse. I could do this. I had a horse. Senna was on foot. Besides, I knew she'd be tired. We knew that about her, that doing the magic thing wore her out. She must have been shape-shifting for half an hour at least, and she'd be beat.

  Sometimes the tiredness put her under, unconscious.

  "Come on, Christopher. You're not scared of Senna," I told myself. But here's the thing: Any time you have to deny that you're scared, you're scared.

  "It's just Senna," I told myself. "It's not like she's a troll, or a god, or something really nasty."

  No, it was just good old Senna. I had dated her. I'd kissed her. Of course, that was before I'd seen her literally shift the course of an entire river.

  "Man, you're meat," I told myself.

  I couldn't see Senna anymore. There were widely spaced trees and a slight up-slope. Maybe she was back in the trees.

  Maybe she was over the rise. Maybe she was asleep. Maybe she was gone altogether.

  I had no weapon. But now I was in it, I couldn't wimp out.

  So I urged my horse to jump the stone fence. He didn't exactly jump. More like stumbled. We kicked over some rocks and the horse complained, although not in English, which was a relief.

  I urged my horse onward and began searching

  desperately for a big stick, anything I could use as a weapon. I told myself that if I screamed the fairies would be all over us in a few seconds, but I didn't believe it. The fairies were fast but they weren't everywhere at once. And by now the king and Etain and my friends were all ten minutes farther down the path.