Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (26 page)

A slap on the face brought me out of a beautiful warm dream, which involved swimming in a large lily covered pond with beautiful naked nymphs. All the nymphs had Jenny’s face.

“Jake, wake up. Look at me.” Betty slapped me harder across the face.

The world spun into focus and I remembered making love to Betty in my parents’ living room. I must have passed out. She was fully dressed and had her coat on, which was strangely disappointing.

“Look at me with your special sight. Look closely. What do you see?”

It took some effort to bring the magic sight into my eyes. When it arrived the room looked different, brighter in a way it was difficult to describe.

“Look at me. Not the furniture.” Betty sounded anxious, though I could see no reason for it.

I focused on her. She was glowing a faint blue. This must be seeing a person’s aura. I’d read about psychics would could do that. “I see a blue glow around you.”

“Humans glow blue unless they are ill. Then you might see any other color or distortions in the glow. Look closer. Can you see only blue?”

I focused and zoomed my magic vision in on her. At the very boundary where her body stopped and the blue began was something else.

“It’s like someone has outlined you with a gold pen. It’s so faint I can hardly see it.”

Betty sighed and her whole body relaxed. “That’s good. The gold tells you that I have a little Norn in me. The Norns could see the future and they disappeared from the Earth a long time ago. They weren’t human, but they sometimes bred with us. That’s how come I have the sight.”

“How do you know all this?”
Were there text books I could read?

Betty looked at me as though I was stupid. A look I was familiar with, as my wives used it on me often. “I just told you, I have the sight.”

“And will this new ability be useful against the Elves?”

“Is that who you’re facing, Elves? I didn’t know they existed.” Betty smiled when I nodded. “Listen, I have something else to tell you. Do you still have the knife from the hoard?”

I was surprised she hadn’t felt it as it was in my trouser pocket. I carried it everywhere. Patting the pocket in question I nodded my head.

“If you prick your thumb with its point and smear your blood over the blade it will help reveal the truth. I don’t know how; I only know it will. But you must only use it when all else has failed.”

“It won’t kill me then?”

Betty gave me another of those wifely looks. “It might, if you faint at the sight of your own blood. Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Something someone said.”

Betty looked at her phone. “I have to go. If I don’t get back by milking time, Dad will be mad at me.” While undoubtedly true, I got the impression she had other reasons to get out of the house. She was almost prancing with anxiety.

She turned to go, stopping at the living room door to look back at me. “You’re little man is hanging out.”

I looked down and found she was right.

“This will happen again. Don’t get all
Christian morality
over it.” She grinned. “And you’re quite good, considering your complete lack of experience.”

She left the room and a few moments later I heard the front door slam closed.

I sat on the sofa and cleaned the room as only a wizard can. The cups of tea we never drank had been knocked over and I took some time making sure the stains were completely out of the carpet. It was important my parents never found out what had happened here. Going into the hall, I checked myself out in the full length mirror. Fortunately, it only required the magical equivalent of a brush down to get my costume back into shape. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of something lunging at me in the mirror and dived to one side.

The knife in the man’s hand hit the mirror and shattered glass over the floor. There were screams behind me and I turned to see two men in togas coming at me with what looked like Mam’s kitchen knives. I scrambled away from all three of them, forgetting for vital seconds that I was a wizard. A twelve inch bread knife ripped through the air towards my stomach.

Then I remembered who I was and the knife stopped abruptly in midair. A second later all the men were disarmed and lifted into the air; arms pinned behind their backs. I clicked my fingers and the mirror reformed, every piece of glass restored to its formed place and fused together at a molecular level. Glass, I understood.

I left the men hanging in the air while I sauntered into the living room and found my wizard’s hat. The feather had broken, but that was the work of a moment to fix. Putting it on at a jaunty angle I returned to the hall and picked up Mam’s knives. The one that had hit the mirror had a bent blade and I spent a few moments straightening it before walking into the kitchen. I put them back in the wooden block they’d come from.

All this took place in silence. The men were breathing heavily, but had not cried out in any way, even when I picked up the knives.

I recognized them. The togas were a bit of a giveaway when it came right down to it. They were Alisandra’s husbands. They had no magical abilities, and yet someone had hopped them into my parents’ house so they could attack me with Mam’s kitchen knives.
Weird
did not even begin to cover it.

A wave of my hand and the men floated through the air into the kitchen and lined up in front of me. It occurred to me that they could have succeeded. I might be a wizard, but a knife in the back is still a knife in the back and I can’t spend every waking moment hiding behind a shield. Because their attack had been physical it took me precious moments to think to use magic against them. I could well have died.

“Can I ask you gentlemen exactly what you think you were doing?”

They looked at me in a baffled manner. I had asked them in English. I tried again in their language.

This time they looked guilty, but didn’t answer.

“Do you really want me to use compulsion on you?”

“We were sent,” big cock man answered. I’d forgotten their names but not their attributes. Seriously, being told that sort of thing would stick in anybody’s mind.

“Alisandra needs you to return,” endurance man continued.

“She is distraught,” masseur man told me tearfully.

Yeah, well, fine except…

“She wants me dead
and
to return to her?”

The men wriggled against their invisible bonds, struggling to get free.

“Do not tell her,” masseur man said desperately.

“It was our idea, we hate you,” endurance man continued.

“We were jealous,” big cock man sniveled. “You don’t know what it is like to love a goddess.”

Okay, I got the picture. That lust magic I’d put on Alisandra must still be working and she’d sent the three stooges here on a mission to ask me to come back to her. They decided to eliminate the competition instead, hence Mam’s kitchen knives. I should be more careful with magic. Leaving it on her was cruel, but I honestly thought she’d be able to remove it in minutes after I’d gone. That, at least, was something I could put right.

“Let’s go and stop your goddess lusting after me, if that’s all right with you?”

The men nodded eagerly. I released them and they staggered to stay upright as they hit the floor.

“I have a spell,” endurance man said, but I ignored him.

Their images flew across my hopscotch court and I followed them back to Alisandra’s home.

Which turned out to be a white marble palace in Greek god style, you know the sort of thing, all carved columns and plinths. Alisandra sat on a stone throne that must have been very uncomfortable, not to mention cold on the nether regions. She wore her usual, not-very-much. Her head was down and shoulders slumped. Not a happy lady by any stretch of the imagination.

As her husbands appeared in front of her they took up kneeling positions. She looked up, saw them and then me. Her eyes were red and she looked as though she hadn’t slept since we last met. As soon as she saw me she attempted to smile and then she started crying.

This had gone far enough. I switched to magic sight preparing to remove the spell. The trouble was, when I looked, it wasn’t there. There was no magic about her at all, though her otherwise blue aura was speckled with flecks of orange near her head.

“I removed the magic you put on me as soon as you left,” Alisandra said between sobs. “It is my heart you have taken, Wizard Morrissey.”

Several replies ran through my head.

“Don’t be silly, we’ve hardly met,” was the one that reached my mouth.
As if I don’t have enough problems, I’ve now got a love sick representative.

She slid off the throne and rushed over to me, sinking to her knees as she took my hand. I took a half-step back because her head was in danger of burying itself into my crotch. She looked up at me longingly.

“Men in my world do as they are told. We talk of being as foolish as a man. As hopeless as one. You have shown me what a true barbarian man can be like and I want to be your slave.”

I had a sudden feeling that Esmeralda was behind me and turned to look. If she ever heard anyone say that to me I’d never hear the last of it.

“I’m already taken, Alisandra, but I think you’ll find the multiverse is full of men that will treat you as a bit of rough.”
Cardiff
sprang to mind.

She scowled up at me. “And do any of them possess your magic? I think not, Wizard. It is you I want, not some posturing fool.”

I could almost hear Esmeralda’s voice replying to that, ‘well, make up your mind, he is both after all.’ This woman must never ever meet Esmeralda. I made a mental note to remind myself.

“Get up.” I lifted her to her feet and she pressed her ample breasts against my chest. I couldn’t look down at her face without seeing them. “This has to stop.”

“Am I not pleasing to you?” she said, looking for all the world like a crestfallen little girl. A little girl with enormous compelling breasts. I shook my head to clear it.

“You are very pleasing to the eye, but I’m otherwise engaged at the moment.”
God, did that sentence come out wrong.

She smiled. “Then there is hope. May I see you at the conference?”

I nodded. It seemed safer as my mouth had developed a mind of its own.

“Then farewell, Wizard Morrissey, until we meet again.”

I hopped to the
Bat
Cave
, as her almost non-existent clothing began to fall from her shoulders.

[Five minutes you said, three hours ago.] There was a long pause as my dragon looked me over. [And you smell of
two
women, neither of them your wives.]

There are some secrets you can’t keep from your dragon. I could only hope that Jenny’s link with him didn’t get any better, or I was going to be in real trouble.

“It’s complicated,” I said as I fell into the nearest chair.

The Temple of Representatives had not changed since we last visited. A seemingly infinite set of columns as far as the eye could see.

“How do we find Farolan?”

[Simply think of him. This place is not real and who you see between the pillars is largely who you expect to see.]

Well that was entirely as clear as mud. I thought of Farolan and looked between the nearest pillars.

His image appeared before me and then all sorts of knowledge about the man flowed into my head. He was incredibly old, at least ten thousand years. He had spoken for the Elf Worlds since the first ever Conferences and been elected by the representatives to Chair the proceedings many times. There were hints of great battles in his youth, though who he was fighting with or for was not clear.

[Have you seen enough?]

“Yes, but I’ve been thinking about this. As we are going to confront him, we have to assume he will be prepared.”

[That is a certainty. I would not be surprised if he was watching us closely.]

“I’m going to put a shield around us before we hop. The shield is going to allow dragonfire out so you can defend yourself.”

My dragon nodded. [And your magic?]