Chapter 13

It hit me then. It was like a blow to the back of the head, and I recognized why others, like Lady Eisenham, for instance, thought she was unfeeling. After spending so long with Doctor Atkinson and with his patients, I recognized, at least partially, what was off about Dame Matsuko! She had facial paralysis, at least partially.

When I was done reasoning it through in my head, I looked up again, realizing I must have seemed preoccupied. Dame Matsuko was staring at me, her eyes seeming to bore into me.

When I would have spoken, she knew what I was going to say and held up her hand again. She lowered her head and stared at her hands, folded calmly on the table in front of her. When she lifted her head again, I could hear pain in her voice.

“I was a third daughter of a poor potter. I was fated to be sold one way or another, and it was only luck that made me pleasant to look at. The okā-san who purchased me paid a premium, I was told. When I hit puberty, I was taken to a Shinkyūshi, an acupuncturist, and he spent a week killing the nerves that would allow me to move my face. It was excruciating torture to have to endure. The okā-san was famous for having geisha who never wrinkled, who appeared young and fresh even when they were too old to bear children.”

“I don’t know if anything can be done, and this offer is not dependent on anything else, you should still feel free to refuse what we are asking, but I might be able to undo some of the damage. I have been working with a neurosurgeon back home and was able to undo much worse damage, though it wasn’t easy.” I said quietly, for her ears only, then I sat up straight and moved back to the topic that brought us.

“We are hoping that your special abilities will allow me to capture the signature of the Mage or Mages who cast that portal so we can follow and rescue the kidnapped girls.” I said formally, laying it out on the table.

She stared at me. Nothing else, just stared, and didn’t say a word. The silence stretched for a minute, two, five. When ten minutes passed and nothing was said, I had about given up. I turned to look at Pete, to see if he had any suggestions, but he just shook his head and gestured to the door with a thumb. I nodded, dismayed that I had failed, unsure what our options were or even where to go.

I turned back to Dame Matsuko and nodded to her, then stood and pushed my chair in. When I turned to join Pete at the door, she finally spoke.

“I want to go home. I want to be released from this living hell and allowed to go home,” she said, anger infusing every syllable. “I want to see where my parents are buried and see the cherry blossoms. I want to walk in the forest of the dead and commune with the spirits. I. Want. To. Go. Home.” The last words, were bitten off so each was a complete, heartfelt and impassioned plea.

I turned back to her and waited for a moment, wanting to be sure she was done. “I can only ask, Matsuko.”

Silently, I reached out to Itsuki Ieyasu and was gratified to hear that he was available and willing to speak.

‘Hank, I half expected to hear from you. Sir David contacted me, said he got a message from an Emily Lafontaine? Told him that you would need my help, and it was important that I give you what you needed. So, what is it you need?’

I explained the situation and it turned out he knew of Dame Matsuko. She was something of a legend in the Mage community, for several reasons, and he had taken note because she was also Japanese.

“I have friends, and I am owed favors. I must speak with her though, for my own sake. Ask if I may visit, please,” he instructed.

“Matsuko, Shishō Itsuki Ieyasu asks leave to visit you here. He wishes to speak with you. Will you allow it?”

She snorted, then shook her head. “You are a Wizard, and yet they sent you here ignorant of the truth. Still they play their games. You are the first Mage of any kind, much less Wizard or Warlock, to pass that gate, in either direction, in forty-six years.”

It took me a moment to understand, to parse that claim and to examine what it meant. She had been here, trapped? Been in this house, or at least, on the grounds, for forty-six years?

“Ah, I see you understand. There is a stone in the garden, a hearthstone. It was taken from some famous castle of an equally famous Mage. It is linked to the minor ley line that runs under our property. It prevents anyone from teleporting in or out; keeps me from leaving for any reason, and until you walked through the gate today, it had kept Mages away as well, though I am not sure it is part of the spell as much as it is hate for the foreign whore.”

I shook my head, appalled at what she was saying. They had imprisoned her here for what crime? For being used by unscrupulous men? For recording her memories and allowing them to be stolen? For jealousy, maybe, or punishment for broken hearts.

“I thought a year. Two at most. Then it was five years, and ten, and I knew they intended for me to die here. If not for my children and my grandchildren, I would have taken my own life decades ago. Now though, Mister Wizard, or Mister Warlock, or whatever sword you wear today, I just want to go home again. Let me out, and I will give you anything your heart desires that is in my power to give.”

For the first time since I arrived, I opened my mind completely, scanning the people in the room, the house, the grounds, and the town around me. I found the stone quickly, and it was placed perfectly centered on the property. It glowed faintly in my mind’s eye, a pale green like the color of new grass.

I was out the door almost before it was open, the sound of it slamming against the wall inside, shockingly loud. I heard Pete calling me, but I ignored him. He would have counseled me to wait, to check with the locals, with Sir David. He would have suggested I get what we need first, that it was more important to secure the prize than to salve wounded pride.

The hearthstone, as she called it, was indeed linked to the ley line, but it was a tiny, thready thing that barely flowed at all. A trickle at best, and I severed the link as easily as I had shredded Abigail Anders’s ability to communicate. Quickly throwing up a small shield around the stone, I drained it of energy and sent that power back into the ground, returning it to the Earth.

The courtyard had been quiet, unnaturally so, though I honestly hadn’t noticed either way. With the dissolution of the hearthstone’s hold on the property, the sounds of the town came rushing in. The traffic outside the walls, lorries and cars and motorbikes, all seemed louder than they should be, as they swarmed in and overcame the silence.

Turning back to the house, I saw Dame Matsuko standing at the front door, a hand over her mouth. When her gaze moved from the stone to me, I saw her shift, and like a shot, she was standing in front of me, bowing deeply.

The faintest change in air pressure and Itsuki was standing there. I filled him in quickly, and he helped Matsuko to stand again, leading her into the house and talking quietly with her.

“Hank, you really should have cleared that with...” Pete started to say, but the look on my face must have been enough to stop him as, when I turned to face him, he just raised his hands in surrender.

‘Sir David, I have done something that may cause some trouble, but I wouldn’t take it back if I could,’ I sent openly, allowing anyone who care to listen in hear me. I told him what I had found here, about how the woman had been imprisoned for so long, and how I had released her, bringing in Itsuki to talk with her. I informed them that I was allowing her to return to Japan, with or without agreement of those who had bound her.

‘I see, ‘ he said softly. ‘There are times when we must take a stand, Hank, and you have chosen yours. I wish I could say that this was the first time we Mages had overstepped. Our long lives lead to equally long grudges and squabbles, Hank. Remember that, as you grow older, and hopefully wiser. I will tell mother.‘

‘There is no need, David. I am not sure I know how to feel about this, Hank. I think I need time to consider further.‘ Lady Eisenham said quietly. She didn’t sound angry, just a bit bewildered by the turn of events.

The woman who had answered the door turned out to be Dame Matsuko’s granddaughter, Mary Dearborne. The young girl was her daughter Catherine, and the great-granddaughter of the lady of the house. I would have thought Mary and Matsuko were of an age had I met them somewhere else!

They came to visit for a weekend every couple of months, coming out from London where they lived. Mary was the only living grandchild and Matsuko’s children, two girls and a boy, had all passed on already. Mary loved the old woman, she confessed, but sometimes she despaired at the thought of the woman being here all alone. She knew that Matsuko was likely to outlive her and possibly her daughter as well, but still felt that she had a duty to visit and to make sure she was well.

I think, though she didn’t say so, that she was afraid if she stopped coming, that Matsuko would take that final step, and there would be no one to visit anymore. The thought of Matsuko going home again to Japan, starting over, made her a little sad at the thought of not seeing her again, but it made her happy to know that her Sobo would finally be released from this prison.

We ended up ordering pizza delivered, Catherine wanted Hawaiian, of all things, and laughed when I called her an American-wanna-be. Itsuki and Matsuko finally came back and joined us at about nine that evening, both looking more than a little tired.

“She will come with me, Hank, if that is okay?” Itsuki asked, much to my surprise.

“Yeah, of course! If that is what the two of you want, of course she can come with you. You will look after her?”

“Yes. First though, she has agreed to help with your memory, Hank. Later, when things have settled, you will need to come and see me, see if we can help her with the nerve damage, yes?”

“Of course, I would do that no matter what.”

Matsuko brought out a pillow and had me sit down on it so she was standing behind me, her hands on my head. She told me to choose the memory I wanted and try to hold it in my mind, to recall how it felt when I arrived, how it smelled, what the portal tasted like.

It took less time that I had supposed before Matsuko asked me if I was ready to store the portions of the memory I needed and it occurred to me that, after all of this, I had come unprepared! I hadn’t brought a stone!

Thinking quickly, I connected with Matsuko and showed her what I wanted, the feel, the taste and smell, the signature of the portal. When she was ready, I used the large, twelve-o’clock baguette on the watch face. I absorbed the personal power there, emptying it and refilling it from the weak ley line that ran beneath the house.

That new energy, I quickly merged with the signature of the portal, syncing the essence and storing it back in the stone again, much like I had with Lady Eisenham and Emily Lafontaine. With her agreement, we did the same with the memory Yana Marenko gave me in the Ukraine, creating a second memory stone from the baguette at the six o’clock position.

When we were done, I had them. I would have to have the stones in my watch replaced, I wouldn’t want that copper taste in the back of my throat every day, but I had them!

Okay, so ... now what?

I guess someone had an idea because the next three weeks were brutal. I would get up, go to school, teleport from school to someplace ... I never knew where, and I didn’t need to. We would train, mostly focusing on teamwork, on striking together, on protecting each other. I did a lot of heavy lifting with shields, surprise, surprise!

One, two, five, then back to one huge one or a dozen small ones. Shaped, formed, bent, twisted and reformed again. Shields against the air itself and against the earth that might attack from below.

At one point, I was told to set aside my stones, my watch, and anything else that held power for me, and fight on my own. I shocked the hell out of a lot of people that day!

The more I practiced, the more power I transferred, and the more I held personally, the more I could hold. When they attacked me, five, ten, even twenty at a time, they sometimes got me to stop counter-attacking, to stop fighting back, under the sheer weight of the attacks against me. But they never pierced my shields, not completely. Yes, an air attack would go right through a magic shield but so what? There was an air shield that was keyed to me inside!

At last count, I could hold twenty-seven full-power shields without help, without outside energy. I could hold them against everything they could throw at me for one attack, half of them against their full power for ten minutes or more.

Where I was weakest was my block when it came to teleportation and my lack of offensive spells. I could light a candle, even warm up leftovers, but I couldn’t throw a fireball larger than a baseball to save my life. My lightning bolts were no better, barely enough to light a lamp.

I hadn’t yet mastered that subtle transition from pure power to projected power, and that is what these kinds of offensive spells really were. I was hitting the wall, plateaued, and no one seemed to know what to do to get me over the hump.

It would have to do.

The Over Council, the most senior Mages and the most senior ruling body, had hundreds of Mages all over the planet watching, listening, and searching for any sign of the Fae groups or encampments. They were hampered in the areas most likely to be home to the Fae, areas that smart Mages escaped from as rapidly as possible.

China had a dearth of Mages and those that remained, the ones powerful enough to rate higher than hedge-witches, were either in hiding or were co-opted by the government, working to keep the ruling junta in power.

The Soviet Union, slowly crumbling under the weight of the cold war and economic sanctions, leaked Mages like a sieve. Most ran for Europe, though some went south to Africa or even west to the US. There were rumored to be a few Mages, the bad apples that are present in every bunch, who were among the apparatchik.

The lead finally arrived on December sixth, and it came from one of the escapees. A young man who discovered magic and was running away from the Soviets and towards freedom, told of an area almost five miles square were no human dared go. An entire small city, and several outlying towns, were paying tithe to the spirits of the mountains.

That tithe was not always in food or other staples; it was sometimes in human life.

With the help of a Mage, a slip of a girl whose specialty was simply not being noticed, the area was narrowed down and identified as Spitak, in the Caucasus Mountains of Armenia, a Soviet republic.

We were going in!

The next four hours were a whirlwind of activity, and I spent almost all of it feeding power to every person, every gem, every artifact that we could make, find, borrow, or steal. I fed power to so many people that I could never remember their names, but I did see just about every Mage I had ever met among them!

Pat was there, walking with two canes, each of them holding a fist-sized artificial ruby that I pumped full of energy. He would not be in the thick of things, but he would be there on the outskirts, preventing anything from escaping or reinforcements from coming in.

Wendy Peters was there and gave me a toe-curling kiss that promised more than I was ready for. Her mentor Melissa Gordon was there too, and she would be in the vanguard with the other naturists, using the very forest that hid the Fae, against them. Wendy would be heading to the river that ran through the valley they were in. Reports said that there was aquatic life like beavers and otters.

Nathan Atkinson and his apprentice, Chad Worthy, were there, acting as our medical staff, though I had been informed that I would be assisting if needed. Sylvia Groton, our scryer and her recently reunited beau, Nathan Hughes the fire Mage, were there as well. Nathan was the new Warlock in the Americas, even if he was from New Zealand. Their mutual friend Michael Fitzhugh, the earth Mage, was no longer hiding in the Outback and would be in the vanguard as well, raising earthen berms to both secure the area and hide the battle.

All of the warlocks from all of the councils were on hand, many I had not met. We all promised to get together more often after this, having seen these past weeks how effective we could be when we trained together.

Even Bohdana Kolisnyk and Yana Marenko were there! Bohdana, it turned out, was a seeker. She could find anything, and she would be in the scouting team to guide us to the target. Yana was a textile Mage who dreamed of designing clothes in Paris, but she could turn fallen leaves into sterile bandages in a flash, so she was with Dr. Atkinson’s team to do her part.

The Wizards were here, of course, each of them eager to contribute. They had worked and played together, for so long they were already a team, and would fight as one. I was the outlier, the new guy, but I was also the tank. My job was to draw in the Fae, to soak up everything they could throw at us. I would, where I could, capture and drain, reflect and absorb, generally wreaking havoc for as long as I could.

The general plan was pretty simple. The scouts would go first, blazing a trail for the vanguard to follow. If possible, the scouts would identify the guards and take them out if they could do so silently, marking those they could not. We had no fewer than 30 Mages who would work in concert to surround the target area and block teleportation in or out for anyone who was not one of us!

The vanguard was going to isolate the settlement further, cutting off physical, as opposed to magical, retreat and reinforcements. They would work to turn the very environment against those trapped inside. We had naturists and arborists and earth Mages. We had water Mages and fire Mages and even a Mage who worked with light, casting shadows and even blankets of darkness to confuse and hinder our enemies.

The troops, the Mages who were working in teams and the Wizards would come next, me among them. I was going to be with Bohdana, who was to return and guide me. Our job, besides shutting down any magic users I could find, was to locate the princeling, grab him if possible, and shut him down if subduing him looked to be too dangerous.

The craziest part of this whole thing was we had no idea if this was even the right group. The prevailing sentiment was, “If this is not them, they probably still deserve it, and it will be one less group to worry about in the future.”

Not so sure I liked that, but I was still a very junior Wizard with very little real say in policy.

The opening salvoes of the battle went exactly to plan, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when things went cockeyed about ten minutes in!

First a wall of earth and rock some forty feet thick and fifty or more high, was thrown up surrounding the entire encampment, making it resemble a huge caldera.

The plants Wizards had seeded, and made to flourish, massive barriers of the most wickedly barbed plants I had ever seen! Four- and six-inch thorns that fairly dripped with poison!

The arborists had the trees bending down and thrashing the largest of the Fae, the ones we called trolls and ogres. Roots were reaching up and tripping others, wrapping around limbs and making even the simplest task more difficult.

The Fae themselves seemed almost immune to direct attack, shrugging off magical damage as if it were a mere inconvenience, but it was all I could do to keep spitting out shield after shield to protect our Mages. Bohdana found me again after we breached the outer perimeter, the fearsome thorns bending away to give us a free path.

‘This way, Wizard. They grow thicker this way, and I feel the pull of the leader.‘ Closing my eyes for a moment to taste the magic, I could feel it too. There was a pretty major ley line running under this valley, and it led to a wellspring at the head, where the majority of the Fae magic was pouring from!

‘Hank, they outnumber us four or five to one, are you going to be able to reach the princeling?‘ Sir David’s mental voice sounded stressed, and for the first time since I had met him, a bit unsure.

It turned out that the point was rendered temporarily moot. The Fae had been retreating in good order, slowly condensing their perimeter until a highly visible shield sprang up between our forces and theirs. The shield was a slightly gold colored dome over the very center of the valley, and it covered the area where we had determined the princeling waited.

There was a collective feeling of relief, now that the fighting had ceased, even temporarily, and folks could catch their breath. A quick survey done by Dr. Atkinson and his medical helpers told us that, improbable or not, we had only minor injuries among the Mages!

It seemed the Fae had been fighting to delay, not to really hurt us. We, on the other hand, had reports coming in that we had definitely captured about twenty of the Fae, mostly sentries, and the only deaths so far had been two ogres and a troll who waded into our massed troops with clubs swinging. An amazing lack of real mayhem, considering the massed power available!

I was summoned to a small clearing near the edge of the golden shield where the Wizards, the Warlocks, and the representatives of the various Councils were meeting. Around the clearing there was a fearsome set of shields that fascinated me, and I had to be physically pulled inside when I paused to consider the various types and styles being cast. I think everyone inside the circle had cast at least one of them!

Sir David seemed to be the man in charge of this assembly, and he raised his hand for quiet.

He quickly outlined what we had done and how effectively the Fae had thwarted most of our attacks, turning them and retreating in good order.

“They appear to have been trying to minimize our casualties, a most unusual turn of events,” a tall man said. He was so pale he was almost albino, if not for his bright blue eyes.

“Aye, and I don ken any reason for being squeamish, they had thirty or more of those big ogre bastards!” a bearded man said, shaking a fist the size of a large ham.

“Can we talk with them?” Pete asked the group, getting a few scornful glances from the gathered dignitaries.

“Warlock Gill has a point.” A short Mage, with a very high-pitched voice said calmly. She had to be using some magic that projected her voice to us, as she was almost completely hidden among the much taller Mages gathered around her. “We attacked first, relying on old stories and old prejudices. While I agree that surrounding them and cutting them off was a good strategy, I think we should step back, now that we have them contained.”

That was quickly followed by a loud, prolonged, and very heated exchange that seemed to draw a very clear dividing line between those present. Some thought we should strike while we had the upper hand, the other side saying we should at least give them a chance to talk, or surrender, before inviting more battle.

Sir David had been, mostly silent during the debate, watching and listening to both sides. When it appeared that things were not going to wind down any time soon, he pulled me aside and asked if I had taken time to examine the shield over the Fae encampment.”

“Do you recognize it, Hank? Could you breach it if needed?” he asked me, his eyes on the golden dome.

‘I have an idea, but we would have to coordinate. I would need Michael Fitzhugh, and we could try to divert the ley line that runs under the camp. It is massive, easily a dozen times larger than my own wellspring back home, and it is not down very deep here and is easily accessible. Probably why they settled here. That Mage, and I think it is the prince, is pouring so much magic out, if I cut off his supply, he will quickly exhaust what he has, even if he has diamonds the size of my head!”

“You couldn’t surround the shield with a larger one ... no, no, that wouldn’t work, would it? The ley line runs beneath and how much power could your shield actually absorb? It is theorized that you could actually stop time within a sufficiently dense and powerful shield,” Sir David mused thoughtfully, still gazing at the dome.

That thought bounced around in my head. I had read the same thing in that magic for dummies book, though it had been written as more of a joke. Could it work? Could a shield be so dense and so powerful that it could actually stop time within it? Then what? We would have a big circle of timelessness, just miles from a human city.

We would have to erect massive misdirection and aversion spells, find ways to keep it invisible from the air and even from space. I think we would be asking for more trouble than it would solve!

When I explained all of this to Sir David, he looked surprised for a moment, then thoughtful. He mostly agreed with my assessment but asked me to keep that thought in the back of my head. While it would be next to impossible to use as a long-term effort on something so large as this entire valley, it might be a solution to intractable problems elsewhere!

Fitzhugh arrived and was passed into the center of the Council shields. Sir David and I got with him to discuss what I wanted and see if he thought it would work.

“I think it will, though before we did something similar in your New Mexico, I would have bet against it. This will take more power, but we have the ley line right here to use if you can divert that power to me” he mused, as much thinking out loud as actually discussing things.

When he was done, and had convinced himself that this was doable, we got the attention of the other council representatives, Warlocks, and Wizards present. We outlined our plan, stressing that this was a contingency and not something we would use unless needed, and asked for the others to poke holes in it.

The discussion was lively, and each of the objections was discussed, then batted down in turn. We still couldn’t know for sure what we would face inside once the shield was down, but we were all relatively certain that we would have a better chance if the princeling was without access to the ley line!

When agreement was reached, the rest turned back to their previous arguments with a new purpose and determination. I think they were just having fun now, and I couldn’t help but roll my eyes.

The discussions were halted when a Mage appeared at the outer shield with a scroll! An actual scroll, of all things.

“This was pushed through the golden shield!”

‘Messiers et Madams,

His Highness Hyth’rolten’arnon’metion’lyt of Meron, first of his line, Lord of the Dolman Wastes and Protector of the Faithful... ‘ <this bit went on and on for a while!>’... bids you to set aside your arms, and you will be granted the boon of appearing in His august presence for the purpose of treating with his representative.’

It went on in that vein for a bit, with flowery language more suited to a movie script than a battlefield, but the gist of the scroll was that he wanted to parley. This, of course, caused the entire group to practically foam at the mouth as they began to argue again, this time about whether or not we were going to accept or not. These people were crazy!

I was quickly bored and annoyed, so I turned inward instead, watching the massive river of power that flowed under this valley. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. If I had to guess its size, I would have to say it was to my wellspring as the Mississippi river is to a small creek bed.

In actual numbers, it was about two hundred and fifty meters wide. It completely covered the center portion of the valley for its entire length, then dove deep into the earth again as it went under the mountains at the far end. There was so much power down there that it made me a little dizzy contemplating it!

Back home, I had slowly been testing and increasing my ability to handle the power from my wellspring. Even so, I wouldn’t dare open myself up to its full flow, scared I would be washed away! This, this was unbelievably more powerful, and that much scarier as well! I had no idea how much power the princeling could handle, but I think he had to be at least at my level, maybe more.

‘Hank, my boy, if you would be so kind?’ Sir David’s tone was that of a teacher who caught a student daydreaming. He wasn’t far wrong!

When I looked up, I saw that every face in the clearing was watching me. Some with tolerant amusement, some with interest and some with dislike.

“Yes, sir?” I asked, pretending not to have noticed.

“A consensus has been reached. We will treat with the Fae, if only to see if this can be concluded peacefully. We would like you to accompany Cécile Henrard, our Over Council representative for Europe. She will be the primary negotiator, and you my young Wizard, will be her primary protection though, for the sake of both appearances and subterfuge, she is going to treat you like an apprentice.” He watched me closely, looking for what, I don’t know. Objections? Disagreement?