Magician
Chapter 4

Copyright© 2014 by QM

It was a couple of years later in 1955 that I did my first solo mission for the Department, an investigation into certain activities of a group of men in the British government. The front men became quite famous at a later date, now known as the Cambridge Five, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, and John Cairncross. Though it was not these men in whom Mage Morgana was interested, rather the shadowy plot behind their treacherous activities. That was the reason they stayed undetected for so long. They were useful to the Department for Investigative Studies in tracking down the activities of our opposition in Europe.

One of my first acts was to place a series of wards around the men that would activate if another magic user approached or attempted to communicate with them and that was where the problems started.

It soon became obvious that the wards were being tampered with, though it was subtle and difficult to track down exactly how, as I’d only detect it after the event. Yet the fact that I could detect it suggested that whoever was doing it was no great shakes in the magic department. I could also discern a pattern developing, certain wards would go down at certain times, regular as clockwork, always at night and always when the subjects were alone.

It seemed simply a matter of setting a trap for whomever or whatever was interfering with the wards and so blithely I set up an invisibility spell so I could monitor the subject when the wards were supposedly being interfered with.

My first mistake was not telling Morgana what I was doing.

My second was assuming that I was the one setting up a trap ... So using my powers I set myself up in the flat in which Philby was currently residing, he was of course unaware of my presence and I made sure he never got the opportunity to approach my hiding space, a minor aversion spell saw to that. At 2am he was sleeping and the room was silent, the wards were still in place and the time was due for them to be interfered with, so far as I could tell.

It took a few minutes and then my senses told me I was not alone, though as yet I could not detect any presence. I just knew with a cold dead feeling that whoever or whatever was in the room with me was far more than I’d expected.

“You can’t hide from me that way you know,” came a cold feminine voice.

“I’d already gathered that,” I replied. “Don’t suppose you have a name though?”

“Brianna,” came the reply. “Merlin’s daughter. You’re John, that whore Morgan le Fay’s dupe.”

I kept silent, taunting and other mind games can unsettle a magician’s mind and prevent him or her from getting all their power behind a spell, though I suspected that Brianna was well ahead of me in that respect. I already had the feeling I should have started running five minutes beforehand.

“So what is it that you want?” I finally asked, whilst carefully putting just about every ounce of energy I had into various shields and other defensive mechanisms held in my mind.

“You’re interfering with matters you don’t understand. Frankly we cannot allow this,” was the reply.

“We?” I asked.

“The Coalition of the Pure.”

“Who?”

“Those who believe that magic users should not have to skulk in the shadows hiding from the religionists,” Brianna replied haughtily.

“Not exactly doing a great job so far,” I mused.

“That’s because your ‘Council’ opposes the rule of magic over mundane,” she stated.

“Having seen the abominations your ‘Coalition’ has come up with in its attempts to rule I’m not surprised,” I murmured. “Hell, if it were not for an accident of birth you could be living in your Soviet Empire as a slave.”

“I am a Mage, my father’s daughter!” Brianna raged.

“I wouldn’t boast,” I flippantly replied. “Just ask him about Mordred, your half-brother.”

“How dare you!”

I saw the hellfire emerge into the room which gave me her location and whilst dodging I tried to cast a spell of sleep back at her. Fortunately my anti spell charm worked a treat and I wasn’t quite where Brianna thought I was, though admittedly the hellfire came far too close for comfort, however as I expected my sleep spell simply did not affect her.

The fact that she’d missed seemed to astound Brianna.

“How?” she exclaimed, before loosing another one at where she thought I was, again missing. In return I tried an air displacement spell activating an expanding bubble of highly compressed air which created an area effect throwing her against a wall giving me time to activate a teleport spell attached to a bracelet on my wrist. The spell was tied to a specific location, though Brianna also hit me almost full on with hellfire as I was just phasing out and the amount of free energy in the room gave it an unexpected twist as I arrived in the vicinity of my flat with a velocity of about twenty miles per hour straight upward encompassed in a diminishing hellfire spell. Fortunately in this case gravity was on my side and other than being rather disorientated and feeling a bit parboiled from Brianna’s parting shot I felt relieved to have gotten away mostly unscathed. I really should have known better however as unfortunately Brianna hitchhiked along with the spell to finish off the job. The velocity change appeared to catch her just as much by surprise and I at least recovered quicker. Chanting out a series of syllables I was able to use my mind to activate the room’s defences and rolled behind a sofa to try and get my breath and wits back. It soon became obvious that the defences were giving Brianna a few problems. I’d spent years on some of them and as is my wont, I’d opted for subtle rather than in your face. When dealing with people who rely on the mind to control their environment and needs, disorientation works far better than a direct attack, particularly if they don’t realise what’s going on. Rather than shields and attack spells I’d opted for deflection and reflection measures, which meant that Brianna was pretty much getting a taste of her own medicine, though not directly bounced back in her face, but from unexpected angles and directions. If she’d relaxed she’d have figured them out quickly enough, as it was she thought she was being attacked by some fairly impressive spells built into the room, rather than her own attempts to get at me. Finally though I was able to clear my mind and thought through and activated the glyphs and sigils in my flat for a state of Null before leaping over the sofa and launched a physical attack on Brianna.

Null as the name implies is a spell dampener, it makes it impossible to cast spells at all as it puts the magical equivalent of a lightning rod right under the area it covers. It requires years of practice and a pretty specific set of conditions to apply it, but even the masters of magic fear it as it puts them into the same position in life as a mundane and I was far closer in years to being a mundane than Brianna was. I was in a lot of pain with several first and second degree burns over my body but knew it was me or her so pushed myself to what I thought then were my limits. Brianna looked stunned as her magic failed and hadn’t the wit as yet to try anything else, a classic case of knowing what worked and keep trying until it does, rather than adapting to new conditions. I have sort of been conditioned against hitting women, but in a case of life or death I’ll make an exception and I managed a quick blow to Brianna’s solar plexus followed by a right hook to her jaw, which I suspect hurt me far more than it did her as she was knocked out and I realised I now had several broken knuckles to add to my burns. Going into my bedroom I unlocked a small cabinet and pulled out a set of handcuffs, these were designed to prevent anyone using magic by disrupting their thoughts as well as restraining the captive physically, though had the disadvantage of making a Mages mind unreadable too. Putting them on Brianna I then phoned Morgana via the office as there was no way in hell I was going to turn off the Null spell in my current condition if Brianna had back up of some sort.

Within two minutes of answering my call Morgana teleported to the edge of the Null field and let herself in.

“Oh, John!” she exclaimed, looking at me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, my Mage.” I replied, “Just a little crispy on the outside. I’ll put it right when I turn Null off.”

“I have another team on the way. We’ve only had hints that Merlin had another daughter and a bit of a lack of imagination when it comes to names too,” Morgana mused. “Well done on capturing her, but really, John, you should have called in help long before this. You’re nowhere near able enough to stand against a fully trained Mage. You’ve barely got the basics of being a journeyman under your belt!”

All I could do was give her a pained grin as she shook her head at me.

“Still,” she said. “At least now we know who was operating Philby. We’ll allow the cabal to fall apart now. Elymas’ people will probably withdraw their attempts to infiltrate the establishment at this level at least and think again.”

“What about the spy ring?” I asked.

“Not important,” she said, “The regular security forces will clean it up, or not, as is their remit, some may even escape notice. Our job was to prevent the cabal from being able to influence policy to remove our office from the levers of power in the British government.”

A team from the Security Section of the office had arrived and took the still groggy Brianna into custody. A small van with a set of industrial strength wards to avoid detection and a shackled chair to act as the cuffs did would suffice to get her to a safe house where interrogations could begin.

As soon as she was out of the building I collapsed the Null field, by removing a hidden pre-placed ward sigil and collapsed into a chair as the magical effects of Brianna’s accumulated spells overwhelmed me when I could safely relax.

“You’d better let me see to your injuries,” said Morgana with a smile. “Your concentration will no doubt not be at its best and we don’t want you growing an extra head.”

Morgana simply stared at me for a minute as new strength and healing flowed over me. That’s where the more experienced Mages show off their talents, they don’t need words, they use the full power of their minds, seeing what’s really there, not just what’s on the surface. It’s also why Morgana will allow me to heal myself, but no-one else; I simply don’t understand the complexities involved and could end up doing some severe damage in cell regeneration.

“You’ll have to move,” stated Morgana. “Too many traces of what happened here to make it safe for you and it’s unlikely that this ‘Coalition of the Pure’ is going to take this lying down.”

Moving in London was quite simple in those days; well, a lot cheaper anyway. I temporarily moved to my old rooms in Morgana’s Manse and sold my flat via an estate agent. Morgana loaned me the deposit on a new flat whilst the paperwork was being sorted and I moved in to my new home a few days later after a Security Section team from the Department had put a full set of attuned wards down for me, any tweaking after that was down to me. The same team also stripped all magical traces from my old flat and Philby’s flat too.

Later that month he was exonerated by the then Prime Minister as a Russian spy but removed from MI6, he later absconded to the Soviet Union a few years later from Beirut, a broken man.

It was a week later that I accompanied Morgana to the special facility where Brianna was being held. It was the first time I’d gotten a clear look at her. She was tall at 5’9”, slim and striking in appearance though not conventionally beautiful by the standards of those days (think Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield).

“She wants to talk to you,” said Morgana. “In fact you’re the only one she’ll talk to without putting her under duress.”

“Would we use duress?” I asked.

“No, but she doesn’t know that,” replied Morgana. “She’ll be handed over to the Council in a few days and they’ll deal with her. Don’t worry,” said Morgana at my alarmed look. “She’ll be fine though her memories and personality will be adjusted no doubt. We don’t waste magical talent if we can avoid it. And don’t forget, she was perfectly prepared to kill you.”

I wandered into a large room where Brianna had been sat at a table; despite the Null field she was still wearing the anti-casting restraints.

“So John, you took me down,” she said bitterly in Russian accented English.

“You didn’t leave me much choice,” I said.

“I’ll never live this down, I’m over 400 years old and you, you’re just a journeyman. My father will disown me.”

“I doubt you’ll be seeing him again or will recognise him if you do,” I finally replied.

Brianna looked at me in surprise.

“You mean I won’t be killed?”

“Depends on what you’ve done,” I replied. “But from what I can tell you aren’t first division, not like Elymas or Gilles de Rais who, along with your father, run this Coalition of the Pure.”

Brianna shuddered at the last two names.

“I’ve always been creeped out by those two; I suspect that if I were not my father’s daughter I would have vanished like a lot of the other Coalition female Mages,” Brianna stated miserably. “They said they were captured, but it was always women and always no real enquiry afterwards. Yet when the Council finally took down Djadjamankh there were meetings and debates for months.”

“I have to admit you’re the first female magician I’ve run across from your side. I’ve never read of any others save in the older histories where another Brianna, daughter of Uiuiane and Merlin is mentioned. Though as far as I know she wasn’t a Mage.”

Brianna looked stunned.

“I’m not the first?” she asked.

“Not the first Brianna,” I replied.

“I can’t remember my mother or my original name. Merlin, my father, never mentions her and once threatened to strike me down if I asked again,” Brianna almost sobbed. “There seems so much I don’t know.”

“So it seems,” I replied. “Though you do appear to know something of Morgana, Mordred and myself.”

“Mordred is held up as the deranged son of the arch nemesis Morgan le Fay who destroyed the realm of Camelot. The Coalition believes you to be Mordred reborn.”

“Now that’s just silly,” I mused. “As far as I know the historical Mordred was not a magic user and Morgana does not treat me as family.”

“Yet you defeated my father at Nuremburg,” Brianna stated. “He’s put a death mark on you since then.”

“I got lucky,” I replied. “He was too caught up fighting to hold off Morgana to take note of how sneaky I can be.”

“He said the spell he cast should have killed you,” Brianna mused.

“He was wrong,” I replied.

At this point Morgana entered the room.

“We have to go, John,” She stated.

“I’d like to request asylum,” said Brianna to Morgana’s evident shock. “I’ll tell all willingly even under truth spells to the Council for sanctuary and safety.”

“Oh, you do?” said Morgana.

“I do,” said Brianna.

“Well, that was unexpected,” said Morgana as we left Brianna under the care of a Council guardian.

“How so?” I asked.

“We know a lot about the Coalition of the Pure though until last week we never had confirmation of what the higher ups called themselves these days as they often change it. Certainly not from the captured low level Mages who simply called themselves the Cabal and are mostly told as little as possible. We’ve never captured a female Mage and never one so high up and certainly never willingly; in fact we’ve never captured a female Mage from their side at all,” Morgana stated.

I told Morgana what Brianna had told me.

“Oh my,” she sighed. “I never suspected. I just assumed they were kept apart or in seclusion. Elymas, Merlin and a lot of the rest of his Coalition are definitely psychopathic misogynists through and through and a lot of our female Mages have committed suicide rather than fall into their hands.”

“I was wondering if I could have access to the files we have on the Coalition and perhaps access to Brianna when the Council have finished with her,” I asked diffidently.

“Fresh set of eyes you mean?” asked Morgana.

“Yes, that and I do feel a sense of responsibility for her.”

“Careful John,” warned Morgana. “Trust has to be earned and we don’t know yet how deep her ‘conversion’ has gone.”

“I’m patient,” I stated. “Besides I also want to do some work on a specific Null field that can be aimed, rather than an area effect, turning a Mage into a magical no go area.”

“Good luck with that one,” chuckled Morgana. “You won’t be the first and you won’t be the last no doubt. But worth a lot to see if you can do anything other than bounce off it like other Mages, you have an unusual turn of mind for a Mage-to-be John.”

“Well, I don’t have anything like the raw power available to me yet, so preventing others from using it seems like a good idea,” I mused.

“Null is complex, overlapping energy fields that absorb and redirect what we think of as magical energy. This transference element to the formulae is to divert the energy streams to various fixed locations around the globe,” Morgana said. “So far all anyone’s been able to do is set an area of limitations specific to a location. There is no aiming, it is simply setting wards, sigils, glyphs and creating ley lines between fixed points.”

“Same with electricity,” I said. “Until you’ve seen what lightning can do.”

“I’ll give you access to what research we’ve done on it John. As for the other, well patience is a virtue.”

“Thank you,” I replied with a smile.

The next few years were a bit of a blur, the formulae for Null field dynamics were, as Morgana mentioned, very obscure at times, but I did make some progress with micro particles carrying their own very limited Null field. They tended to attract magical fields and turned into red hot particles for about half a second as they activated which after a few false starts on various test subjects turned into one of our Departments standard defence or run away options. Particularly when Morgana insisted on our people learning hand to hand as well as armed combat. This gave us quite the edge over the Coalition, whose first and seemingly only option always revolved around power spells and it’s difficult to concentrate when the very air around you turns scalding hot when you try to cast. We managed to take down over forty of the Coalitions minor operatives in this time. Though again, the major ones had drifted into the background and the Soviet Empire was far too big to go around looking for them when we had no clues as to where they were.

Merlin himself seemed to not be interested as to what happened to Brianna. The Cabal were having problems maintaining control over the upper echelons of the Soviet Union, particularly Nikita Khruschev, the then Soviet Premier, which led directly to the Cuban missile crisis.

Chapter 5 »

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