Chapter 68

I’d love to say that my life got simpler after the events in Guam and Loegria, however, as most of you who are reading this would guess, they didn’t. The events in Guam had Thea and I in front of a Council special investigation team along with Mage Liang. Every aspect of our actions and every decision made were gone over in fine detail and we all received an official censure for not recognising the signs of thaumaturgy/theurgy. Morgana naturally ‘went to bat’ for us all and, despite attempts by what was left of the Amity caucus to drag her into the mess, managed to have the verdict announced as a verbal reprimand, despite calls for Liang and Thea’s sacking based only on not calling in the help of the Council’s resident theurgists when it became obvious they were dealing with a ‘power’. As I was only a journeyman (albeit Morgana’s journeyman) my punishment was limited to Morgana’s discretion, which basically boiled down to my debriefing on the day I returned from Guam. It was the same for Thea and Liang. In this Morgana was supported by Simon, Rowenna, Julia and Cixi as well as Antonelli and Bryce, who informed the enquiry that we had been lucky to get off so lightly and no Mage was capable of dealing effectively with any encounter involving a higher or lower power.

That’s not to say that Thea and Liang forgave themselves easily, if at all. It’s more that they felt relief from their crushing self-judgment and second guessing by the enquiry’s report on the incident which cleared them of everything other than a minor failing.

My social life got very complicated too. The five ladies in my life made sure of that. I spent a lot of my time wining and dining them as well as being kept completely off balance by their comments and actions in that I could never dare take them for granted on anything. Mages being inveterate gossips meant that my groups ‘scandalous’ behaviour, in that fully qualified Mages were involved formally with a journeyman, brought us a lot of scrutiny, a little criticism (which we ignored) and a few ‘well dones’ from our friends.

If anything the ladies managed to improve upon my training, with Abi demonstrating how to weave a world around someone’s vision (even a Mage) without them knowing, which admittedly Róisín managed to grasp quickly and easily, though eventually I was able to form a more complete weave than she could, just nowhere near as quickly. Imelda took us over how to read someone’s DNA in healing them, particularly those who were not part of homo-sapiens-sapiens. This I found fascinating and spent a lot of time upon it as the subtle difference between the races produced some profound changes in the way their bodies reacted. In this I was fortunate in being able to call upon various species of man to check the differences.

Thea trained me in the art of phasing two dissimilar objects without causing a massive explosion in the process. This was the technique Róisín had used when killing the Coalition Mage in the woods of Lynch Hill. She did warn me not to use it on myself until I had it completely mastered as any mistake usually ended up killing the one affected by it. Still, again, I got very good, very quickly.

Brianna assisted Róisín to finally enable me to place information via memory engrams into a visual image; this was definitely not an area I was ever going to be ‘good’ at, competent, yes, but compared to what Róisín was learning to do, I wasn’t in the same league. I could barely spot the gaps to place a minimal amount of information leading to a basic teleport whereas she could place enough information into a visual image/memory to permit a high level teleport similar to that which the Council members used. Róisín also managed to crack the Council code embedded in the memory we’d been given without it killing her, something I was in no position to do without decades of study. Still, as Morgana told me, you can’t be good at everything straight away, but eventually, if you have time, you do get good and Mages had time to spare.

The war against the Coalition was not going well. The Council at least had lost a little of the initiative due mostly to our attempts to try and keep the Nephilim contained. Nor, despite Morgana and Julia’s warnings, did the Council expect the Coalition’s twisting of Islam to cause so many problems throughout the world. This was to cause major problems for us over the years as small groups of well financed fanatics, coupled with short sighted decisions by (presumably) sympathetic western governments in inviting non-cooperative groups to settle within their own borders meant that the Bureau’s eyes and ears had to be checking for enemies within and without. The Coalition were also going on the principal of the best defence being a good offence, were extending their influence in the politics of several Islamic nations to turn them against countries the Council had good relations with, something which had Mage Tara’s people in particular heavily involved in preventing.

We did earn even greater gratitude from the Gorgon community when Morgana (as she had promised) handed over Mage Karasu to face their judgement. No, he didn’t survive it, though the highlight for me was meeting my daughter by Elpida, a lovely little girl called Helena who seemed fascinated in meeting the man who technically sired her, something Gorgon children rarely if ever did.

Morgana also participated at the execution of Gilles de Rais as Assassin Prime, despatching him quickly and painlessly, something most Mages felt him to be let off far too lightly. The Mage Iamblichus became somewhat of a long term test case for Mage Vera’s people in that he served a sentence, but, was also having his memories overwritten by the Interrogation Office using the Artello device (as it was now known) to remove character traits and memories of his days with the Coalition in the hope of returning him to Mage society as a productive member.

It was in May of 1999 that Arch and I were working with the Department of Magic to deal with one of the more long term political issues facing Mage Tara (its head). She was trying to prevent the Coalition from advancing their cause by ‘helping’ the border disputes between India and Pakistan to get out of hand. She’d already had her hands full with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to her this was simply a new chapter in trying to deal with a very fractious region of the world. Word had come to her of a possible attempt by a Pakistani general to ignore the current ‘peace’ negotiations of the district of Kashmir, which was the source of a lot of disputes owing to its position and divided population, mostly Muslim but with large minorities of Buddhists and Hindus. With the Coalition flexing its muscles there had been an upswing of Mage activity aimed against the Council and its members who lived and worked in the region. This Tara suspected was a front to keep her people occupied and their eyes away from a hidden agenda. Both Morgana and Julia agreed with her suspicions and Morgana had tasked Arch and I to assist in rooting out what had to be a well organised Coalition cell spreading chaos in the province as well as causing turmoil within the Indian administration controlling the area.

Arch and I were rooting around the Kargil district of Kashmir, trying to track down what had at first been suspected of a series of lone wolf attacks on Mages throughout India and in this case, of a young Mage fresh out of her journeymanship and who had been working for Kashmir University. We had tracked her attacker back to Kargil and were currently searching the area to see where they were heading next, possibly to a (presumed) safe house. I have to admit we got lucky in that both Arch and I were very close to the home of the Mage when the attack happened and had got to her door before her attacker had managed to hurt her seriously. In the confusion ensuing our arrival the attacker had slipped our grasp with a very neat phasing trick which had given us a great deal of trouble to breach in order for us to begin following their retreat out of the grounds and away from us. Arch reckoned and I had to agree that the attacker was probably not aware that they were being tracked as only a High Mage would have the ability to breach the phasing concealment and none of the Bureau of Magic High Mages were known to be close.

Still, we resolved to be careful as whoever had used the phasing was clearly a very resourceful Mage and might have any number of nasty surprises for us yet.

“We’ll have to be careful John,” Arch stated as we cautiously tracked our prey. “I suspect this is all part of some plan to keep the Department of Magic pre-occupied and distracted from what is probably some form of Coalition operation. That means they’ll have a heavy duty Mage ready to counter-attack and keep us away from their team. They learned a few valuable lessons from Buenos Aires on that score.”

“Wonder what they’re up to? Mage Tara is just about tearing her hair out. It’s far too random not to be a plan of some sort,” I replied with a frown.

“Whatever it is, her Mages are just too spread out and probably not looking in the right direction,” Arch acknowledged.

We both came to a halt as we detected our quarry entering a dwelling that was to our senses very heavily shielded.

“Think we’ve found the safe house, but it’s going to take more than our regular Null amulets to bring that ward down,” Arch mused.

“Yes, even my heavy duty ward breaker would take a minute or so,” I replied. “By then they’d probably be gone as they’ll have an open portal somewhere.”

“Yep, I think we’ve been teaching them too well,” Arch replied with a grin.

“That and I think they have to be careful with the numbers. Plus Gilles is not around to push the fanatics into acts of idiocy,” I added.

“Yes, Morgana was fuming that he didn’t know anything about Landulf either, or rather he did, but there was that missing memory space similar to what Ímar Ua Donnubáin has,” Arch chuckled remembering Morgana’s language at discovering that little titbit.

“She has a grand command of invective,” I replied with a grin.

“Doesn’t she just,” Arch replied. “Normally as cool as a cucumber, but there’s a lot of anger going on there at the moment from various things interfering with her karma.”

“Was training for nearly fifty years until I finally heard her swear,” I chuckled. “Didn’t think anything could faze her.”

“Just thank God for Judas. He’s irritating the hell out of her in the best possible manner,” Arch said with a grin.

“I like him and you’re right, he’s distracting her away from the job related stress issues,” I nodded.

“Has she figured out the flower thing yet?” Arch asked.

“No, it’s driving her mad as she can’t figure out how Judas is getting them into her office and she knows it’s not theurgy either,” I laughed.

“You realise that when she catches you, Thea, Róisín and Abi that the payback will be legendary?” Arch added.

“Abi has the Seers group helping, they tell us just the right moment to place the rose when Morgana is ... distracted and because it’s not magic just simple sleight of hand as well as not being just one of us, but several, she’s more often than not watching the wrong one at the wrong time,” I chuckled.

“She hasn’t attempted to scan you?” Arch asked eyebrow raised.

“Not yet, I think she thinks it would be rude, same with using a time mirror too, though sooner or later...” I chuckled.

“God, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when she finally figures it out,” Arch chuckled as he probed the wards surrounding the safe house looking for a weak point.

“I think I’d rather be on another planet,” I replied with a grin.

“Me too, come to that. Ah got it, check out this variance on the lower phase bandings,” Arch replied giving me a mental guide as to where the ward was fluctuating against what appeared to be an internal portal presumably for escape purposes.

“I see it, but how can we breach it?” I asked.

“We don’t, but we use the portal to bypass it as they haven’t encrypted the channel they are using otherwise it would register on ‘this’ frequency when reacting to the ward,” Arch demonstrated mentally whilst talking to me.

“Sneaky,” I congratulated him.

“Beats trying to smash it down. That said, hope you’re ready to go in fighting,” Arch replied with a grin.

I prepared all my defensive and offensive spells and shields as going in and then nulling up was no longer a safe option with the Coalition. Instead of spells they had a tendency to open up with kinetic pellets or occasionally gunfire. Arch was carefully tapping into the channel that the portal had to be using and preparing to open up a gateway until finally he nodded and opened the gateway.

Pandemonium ensued as we stepped through. For one thing we were blocking the only easy way out and secondly the Coalition were totally unprepared for our swift attack. Still, it didn’t stop them from hosing us down with a couple of Uzi sub-machine pistols to no real effect as both Arch and I hit what appeared to be a four man team with a variety of non-lethal spells.

Two of the Coalition went down almost immediately; they were the ones using the guns and had forgotten to establish even a basic magical defence, probably expecting that any trouble would come through and Null up. Arch immediately went after the Coalition High Mage whilst I took on the troublemaking would-be assassin only to have him immediately move out of phase to prevent me landing a solid blow on him. I was then put immediately on the defensive as he hit me with various lethal spells by coming into phase for a split second causing me to have my shield raised all the time as other than spotting him by normal sight in that time I was having to use my magical senses to try and keep a monitor on his position.