Jake's Women (Wizards) (5 page)

8.
          
Cocktails

I woke instantly when Fluffy touched my shoulder. The couch had morphed into a bed; presumably Fluffy’s doing since I was powerless in this place. Clothing appeared around me when I stood. I looked down to find I was dressed like a posh waiter, penguin style. Fluffy was still wearing an orange toga.

“I watch television, Jake, remember? We are going to a formal gathering arranged by Issus and it is customary for guests to dress in the appropriate clothes from their worlds.”

“And dragons wear orange togas?”

Fluffy laughed. “To other dragons it would appear that I have polished my scales and claws. Perhaps that is how Issus will see me. She is capable of taking many forms according to her whims.”

At least he had put me in Earth clothes. Almost everywhere else I would have ended up wearing the
not-to-be-talked-about
Zorro costume. Let us not talk about it.

“Why are we going?”

Fluffy looked hurt. “Because we have been invited and it would be rude to stay away. Also, you were going to ask Farolan for help and he will be present.”

I’d forgotten that. It seemed like weeks ago.

“When does it start?”

Fluffy held out his hand. “It started yesterday, but I believe if we go now, we will be fashionably late.”

I took his hand. The mists swirled around us and when they dissipated I found myself in a most peculiar place.

Imagine a football stadium. Replace the first row of seats with a rough-hewn stone wall rising fifty feet, Ivy growing up the inside. The floor is polished marble and seems to be one single sheet.

The building is lit by yard wide opaque glass globes positioned every twenty feet in a square grid pattern. A slender gold tube runs from floor to ceiling with the globes held in the middle.

None of that seemed crazy until I looked up at the ceiling. Because the ceiling was another floor just like the one beneath my feet and was populated by guests, a dance floor and what looked like a full orchestra, except not one of the instruments in the orchestra looked right.

My floor was populated with guests and stout oak tables with all sorts of food and drink laden upon them. There were semi circles of seats where people chatted and ate. Connecting both floors were many wide staircases, unsupported by anything I could see.

Looking at the people walking up and down the stairs gave me a headache, because somehow on the way up or down they ended up the right way up for the floor they were heading for. It was like one of those Escher drawings that made sense every single place you looked, but couldn’t work in reality.

“Retnor, how good of you to bring Jake.” An unmistakable voice. Issus was among us. In point of fact, directly in front of us.

“My lady.” Fluffy gave an elegant bow.

I was tongue tied. There didn’t seem an appropriate response, though I considered and rejected ‘
Iechyd da’
which is Welsh for good health and something we say a lot to each other when the English aren’t listening.

She stepped closer and lifted my chin with her finger so I had to look in her eyes. “What you cannot do yourself can still be done for you by another, Jake.” Her lips brushed mine and then she was gone. It wasn’t that she vanished, she stepped away and I remained frozen on the spot, unable to think or utter a single word.

“She is a considerate lover, as a dragon,” Fluffy remarked. “If this were reality she would have left me with no permanent scars.”

“Going easy on you?” Words finally came to me.

Fluffy considered the matter. “No, I suspect that Issus has never gone easy on anyone, least of all herself.”

I staggered a pace forward and Fluffy put his hand upon me, steadying me.

“Let’s find Farolan,” I suggested.

Despite our best efforts, finding a specific person among the guests was far from easy. There must have been three thousand guests on our floor and the same again on the floor on the ceiling. We stopped for a breather after half an hour. I had a red colored drink in one hand and some kind of sandwich in the other. Fluffy appeared to be eating a leg of lamb, seared meat, but the wool was still on and it was unscorched.

“Is that thing you’re eating what it looks like?”

“Barely a snack. I have not seen a whole sheep since we came here.”

Fluffy appeared to be eating delicately, but already half the leg had gone, bones, flesh, wool and all.

“Can you imagine us to Farolan?” I suggested.

I got one of those ‘duh’ looks Fluffy seems to reserve just for me.

“It is what I have been trying to do since we started. Perhaps he does not wish to be found?”

“Perhaps I was with someone it would not be politic for you to meet,” Farolan said from behind me. He walked into my field of view and sat down with us.

“I believe you have caused more trouble at the conference than any previous representative,” he said, looking me over the way someone might view a badly decomposing corpse.

“I didn’t start it.” I never do, but that never stops the trouble finding me.

“It is only day two. Perhaps the Progenitors will let you go before you bring the multiverse crashing down on their ears.”

“Jake takes at least a week to get warmed up,” Fluffy put in thoughtfully. “Do you think they are aware of his track record?”

“The Progenitors know everything,” Farolan said, his eyes twinkling. “At least, that is what they always tell us.”

“Can you help me escape?” I put in. I got the feeling that Fluffy and Farolan were enjoying their conversation a little too much.

Farolan frowned. “Leaving the Conference ahead of schedule is impossible. I know of no way it can be done.”

I sighed. I had been expecting his answer, but I had to try.

Farolan leaned forward and whispered in my ear.

“When you escape, my people can offer help. The phrase
Fadour mi delvour
will bring them to your aid.”

In Farolan’s language that phrase meant
past mistakes must be repaid.
I suppose the Elves felt that they owed me.

“Thank you.”

“I must go and mingle. The Hidden Worlds must rebuild the relationships our fight against you has soured.”

He bowed and took his leave of us.

“What did he say to you?” Fluffy asked once he was out of sight.

“He wished me luck,” I said casually. This placed was certainly bugged and I could only hope Farolan knew of ways to hide the words he’d spoken to me.

“You are supposed to be dead.” The voice was loud and familiar. I turned to face my sword wielding nemesis. It was too much to hope for that we wouldn’t meet again.

9.
          
Diabli

Jorda was about thirty feet away and there were a few people between him and me. They were pushed aside as he ran towards me, broadsword in hand. I paused for a second in the sudden realization that I actually could recognize types of swords these days. Not a skill in much demand at Griffith’s Wood Yard, but increasingly useful in the wizard part of my life.

I looked at Fluffy and saw he hadn’t worked out what was going on. If I stayed next to him we could both get skewed before he figured it out. Left with no other options, I ran.

The guests facing me moved aside as I ran towards them. Jorda was a rampaging bull and even those in deep conversation heard him as he approached and scattered. I was still some way from the wall and ran for the nearest staircase.

“Coward, infidel, murderer!”

Jorda had stopped to shout at me and I needed a breather so I stopped as well.

“Wanker,” I shouted back at him. It was not much of an insult in Wales, but apparently it went down bigger in the Diamond Worlds and Jorda looked as though he was going to blow a fuse. One of the unexpected perils of universal translation. He set off towards me with renewed vigor while I still felt knackered. I groaned and started running again.

The staircase was still forty feet away when I slipped on the floor. Someone had spilled a drink in their haste to clear a path for me. I went down hard.

“Now you are mine.”

Jorda raised his sword as he closed the last few feet between us and smashed violently into the bus shelter Fluffy materialized around me.

Welsh bus shelters are built to survive Welsh teenagers and drunks, who are often one and the same. The impact of one fat man was not going to flatten them. Jorda and I got to our feet at the same time. He was now in berserker mode and he smote the shelter in his rage. Bad move, as the tubular steel frame was the proverbial immovable object. The blade was torn from his hands and he had to pick it up. He cursed me and the shelter in colorful language.

I saw Fluffy running up behind him and pointed at my right hand with my left and mouthed the word ‘Sword’. He looked puzzled and I had no time to explain further as Jorda chose to go round the shelter rather than through it. Time for more running.

I grabbed a pitcher of something from a table and threw it at the floor between us. A quick glance over my shoulder showed that Jorda’s boots gave him superior grip to my shoes. Unfortunately, I ran into the side of the staircase while I was looking the wrong way.

Stars didn’t circle my head, but they should have. Jorda went for a stabbing stroke to my heart and hit a brick wall. The wall formed two small arches around my legs and I quickly pulled them through to my side before Jorda could chop at them.

The wall formed a semi-circle that blocked my way to the stairs. I ran the only way still available to me, but Jorda had anticipated this and was only a couple of feet behind. I heard rather than saw his sword stroke and dived like a swimmer. I landed onto a bowling alley lane and slid almost frictionlessly towards a ludicrous set of bowling pins up ahead. Buying my dragon a television had definitely been a mistake.

The pins scattered across the floor as I hit them and I stood up feeling that the game was over. I was too tired to run anymore and had no weapons. I hadn’t seen Fluffy since the bus shelter, and though it was clear he was doing his best, his best just wasn’t good enough. The other thing that was clear was that the Progenitors were not going to interfere. They must want me dead as much as Jorda.

I was now imagining an Uzi sub machine gun in my hand. I’d seen enough in films. However, the Progenitors were not going to give me an even chance. Hundreds of guests were watching; they had formed a wide circle around us. Not wanting to miss my death, while wanting to stay well out of range of any actual combat.

Jorda was talking his time getting to me. He knew he had won and wanted to savor the moment.

“So Wizard. No defenses left?”

“I don’t need defenses to take you. I just wanted us to get to clear ground so I don’t kill too many bystanders.”

Some of the bystanders decided that discretion was the better part of valor and departed on hearing my words. I have a certain reputation, though it was proving difficult to live up to this time.

Jorda laughed. “I know the Progenitors have stripped you of power.”

Damn, they must have posted a notice. Even bluffing was denied me.

Fluffy’s voice drifted from somewhere at the back of the crowd.

“I believe you wanted a sword, Jake. The Dragons have a history longer than almost anyone present and we choose to give you this one.”

I felt a tingle in my hand that didn’t stop when the sword appeared. I held it aloft and some of the crowd gasped. About a half of those remaining vanished in the space of a few seconds.

It was a cool sword. Long and thin, the blade glowed a blue so deep it could almost have been black. It looked and felt evil.

“It is a Diabli sword. Take this as a warning.” Fluffy said from behind me. I couldn’t look around because Jorda was close enough to strike, but I wondered why he’d changed his position.

To say there was panic in the remaining crowd was an understatement. Most forgot they could wish themselves away and there was a lot of fighting and pushing. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to be anywhere near to that sword.

Jorda looked stricken and then he pulled himself together.

“Myth and legend. Just another bluff. This is not reality and so a Diabli sword could not cut through it, even were you to know enough to be able to imagine one here.”

“Why don’t we find out?” I swung the sword in a couple of pretend cutting strokes.

Reality tore in front of me like it was made out of paper. The strokes had cut an X in front of me and the edges of reality started to peel out. Jorda split into four as a darkness formed in the X and got wider and wider. He screamed. It was as if the space in front of me had been projected like in a cinema and the cut in the screen affected the people in the film. Blood splattered and dripped through the blackness to reappear in the lower quadrants. Jorda’s quartered body fell into the floppy bit of reality by his severed legs.

An alarm sounded and the sword was wrench out of my grasp and lifted into the air. Then it faded out, pulsing as if it was fighting whoever was trying to make it disappear.

The tear appeared to be trying to heal itself. The four pieces stretched to try and get together, but failed. The room vanished to be replaced by white nothingness and the open tear in reality remained in front of me. The tear then slowly closed and the space was once again a uniform pristine white.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to find Fluffy had come up behind me. There was a look of wonder in his eyes.

“Who would have thought…?” he whispered.

“You created it.”

“In the ancient times, Diabli swords tore reality apart. Multiple universes slowly became inaccessible, and all who could escaped them before they disappeared. Uncountable billions didn’t make it and died.”

Fluffy paused to get his thoughts together.

“Their manufacture is known only to the Dragons, as those who created them in the first place are long gone. It took time to tap into my people’s memories to create one in this place. But I did not expect it to work here as it had in reality. The intention was to scare and deter Jorda, not to kill him”

I tried to take that in and failed. Dragons have a race memory that they can access, it also provides them with telepathic contact a bit like the internet. Fluffy had imagined a hell sword, and somehow it became real, even here where we were trapped in some sort of video game. How could that be?

The Progenitor announcer spoke.

“Twenty two Representatives lost their lives when the fabric of the Conference was damaged. Messages of condolence have been conveyed to their worlds. A new Conference has been constructed for you. Please take care over the next few hours as desires may be incorrectly realized. Diabli artefacts may not be imagined within the Conference. This rule change has immediate effect.”

I figured it out. What Issus had been trying to tell me earlier. There was a way out.

Grinning at Fluffy, I put my arm over his shoulder.

“Did I ever tell you what a great friend you are?”

Fluffy frowned. “Only when you want something, as I recall.”

I told you he was clever.