Jake's Quest - Wizards V (13 page)

22.
              
Surprises

Our combined magic was not enough. The explosion was immense and focused upwards so we were blasted into the upper atmosphere. The magic that prevented our immediate demise also held us together as a group. If I hadn’t learnt how to suppress acceleration forces we would have been turned to jelly. Despite that, only Bob and I were still conscious.

“They win,” he said unnecessarily. What I needed were ideas, not statements of the obvious.

My magic had been almost depleted in keeping us alive. All that was visible was the dark blue haze of the upper atmosphere. There was nothing to see that I could hop to.

“I should pay more attention to my premonitions,” I told Bob. My words came out in a wheeze and there didn’t seem to be any air to breathe back in. I tried to gather oxygen around us, but couldn’t tell if it was working.

“Pleasure to have known you,” Bob wheezed and then his face slackened and his head lolled back.

There was only one option left, to try and hop out of the multiverse. I gathered what little energy remained and made the effort. It wasn’t enough and we stayed where we were. It was getting difficult to stay conscious.

The good news was that we would all be dead before we fell back to our doom. The bad news was that we would be dead. Images of Jenny, Merlin and Morgana flashed in front of me. A blurred image appeared in the distance and started to grow. It was just as I recognized it that I lost consciousness.

I was riding a bony rocking horse. There was someone sitting in front of me and judging by what my hand pressed against, she was definitely female. I felt a part of my body stiffen in response. My other hand was pinioned behind my back and was being sat on by someone behind me. We were crushed together like sardines and I tried to pull my hand away to straighten up.

“How dare you?” Esta whispered sleepily in my ear from behind me. However, her tone was more surprised than indignant. I was still half asleep and relaxed my hand so she would stop complaining. She gave a little moan and I felt her chin rest on my shoulder as she went back to sleep.

Up front a hand grasped mine. I expected it to pull it away from her breast, but it pushed my fingers deeper into her flesh.

“What a wonderful way to find out I am still alive,” Lana said huskily. And I do hope that is your weapon pushing against me.”

Before I could answer Fluffy joined the conversation.

[I see you are awake. Do you approve of my seating arrangements?]

“I was just dreaming about you.”

[It took the Elders some time to negotiate my presence among the Balmack. Just in time to see you try to kill yourself.]

“You were one of the spectators?”

[On the roof. Fortunate, given the speed at which you left us.]

“It was one of my better suicide attempts. You have to give me that.”

[What happened to your gift of premonition?}

“I ignored it.”

I sensed his disapproval.

“I couldn’t hop away because of their bracelet.”

[I know. They told me.] His thoughts were icy.

“I won’t do it again.”

“You haven’t done it the first time yet,” Lana said. I realized that Fluffy thoughts had been for me alone.

“Is the dragon going to eat us?” Esta asked. This brought laughter from Jeram and Bob who sat behind her.

“I doubt he would have saved our lives first,” Jeram offered.

“This is Lord Retnor, your friend?” Bob asked. Though I don’t think it was really a question. He knew far too much about me. It was getting worrying.

[Lord Retnor, First Dragon Ambassador to the Balmack, if you don’t mind.] There was a certain smugness Fluffy brought to his thoughts.

“My apologies, and my thanks,” Bob said quickly.

“And my thanks,” Jeram added. “My wife would be most unhappy if I died in such a manner.”

“Did you arrange us on your back?” Esta asked suspiciously. She was right to be suspicious. Fluffy would have detected she was female straight away. You can’t fool a dragon with clothes, they work more on scent.

I extricated my hand from where it was lodged under Esta, bringing a gasp from her.

[Are the seating arrangements not to your liking?]

“Mine is fine. Better if I was facing Wizard Morrissey,” Lana put in.

[We will be landing soon. Fasten your seat belts.]

“I don’t have a seat belt,” Esta said in panic.

Jeram, who was behind her, put his arms around her. “I do not think Lord Retnor meant it literally.”

“You haven’t seen him land,” I pointed out.

Fluffy decided to perform a loop before swooping down towards the arena.

Lana began bouncing up and down against me, which was…interesting.

“This is fun,” she said and started giggling.

I couldn’t deny she was right; it was certainly fun for me.

Fluffy made a near perfect landing on the plaza, only skidding a dozen feet, and he missed the nearest fountain by at least six inches. By the time we got down from his back the Chancellor and the judges had appeared in front of us. A lot of other people appeared behind them, so there was quite a crowd.

“Ambassador Retnor, please accept my apologies.”

“And do you apologize to us, for trying to kill us?” Bob asked softly. If I’d have been the Chancellor I’d be worried, but he waved Bob’s words away as though they were meaningless.

“There was no attempt to kill you. Merely a small technical malfunction of the Globe; probably caused by you all touching it at once.”

“And cutting off Wizard d’Fallon’s leg?” I asked. Lana blew me a kiss with her left hand, her right hand never moved from its grip on her sword.

The Chancellor waved his hand as though he couldn’t believe I was asking the question.

“The mechanism must be faulty. It is not supposed to do that.”

“And the poison gas?” Jeram asked. He was tapping his cane against the marble floor. I wondered how he had managed to retain it through all we’d been through. Perhaps it was magically fastened to him?

The Chancellor laughed. “It was only sleeping gas.”

One of the judges moved closer to the Chancellor and whispered something in his ear.

“Really?” the Chancellor looked astonished. “But how is that possible?”

I stepped forward and faced the Chancellor and the judges.

“Your trials have been set to kill us from the beginning. Estan would have died from that monster on the first trial, and one misstep could have killed any of us on the second.”

The Chancellor shook his head in disbelief. “There had to be the appearance of danger to make the trials worthwhile, but our finest mages’ were watching over you and Wizard Coin would have been rescued if you hadn’t saved him. The mines were set to non-lethal levels in the second trial. There was never any meaningful danger.”

Lana stepped forward on my right side and drew her sword. Jeram moved to my left, where his cane became a thin sword. Estan drew her bow and cocked an arrow, and Bob just stood and looked menacing. Even Fluffy moved forward, his long neck stretching out over me.

“And all this,” I waved at the ruined pyramid, “Was just one big accident?”

The Chancellor stiffened and changed from a fussy old man to something much more dangerous. “The Balmack do not kill their students.”

Bob laughed. He walked past me to stand nose to nose with the Chancellor.

“I am the Bob of the Brethren. I charge the Balmack with killing the contestants of these fake contests. How else do you account for the fact that many have applied through this contest, but none have ever returned?”

“Stop.”

The voice was familiar but the tone was not. Harlan strode towards us and the Chancellor backed away.

“This trial was sabotaged. Sophisticated magic was put in play.” Harlan stepped in front of me and looked me in the eye. I looked back and saw resolve and power. He wasn’t at all the man I’d been eating with.

“The magic was far too sophisticated for any of the applicants to be responsible. Even you, Jake Morrissey.”

[Lord President?]

Harlan looked up to Fluffy. “My thanks to you, Lord Retnor, for saving these unworthy hedge wizards.”

[Jake is my friend.]

“Indeed, Jake Morrissey is something special. You have no idea how many of the multiverse’s finest have told me that. But all warned me that trouble follows his every step. The Balmack Accord do their best to avoid trouble, but this particular trouble kept knocking at our door.”

Bob advanced on Harlan. “Can you deny you have disposed of those who came here?”

Harlan seemed to grow in stature. “Yes, Bob of the Brethren, I deny it. All who apply are accepted. The trials are merely to determine what faculty should take them, and to have a little fun. Those who join the university are required to stay here for four years, and few choose to return to their home world at the end of it. Those who return do so quietly.”

“Why would they hide their return?” Bob sounded half-convinced.

“The friends and family of a Balmack trained Mage become a significant blackmail risk. There are many in the multiverse who would kill to force a trained mage to do their will.”

“And this?” I asked, waving my hand at what remained of the pyramid.

Harlan sighed. “Someone wanted you dead. Now I can dispense with my junior lecturer disguise I suppose we will have to work together to find out who.”

Lana sheathed her sword and walked over to put her arm in mine.

“Since it looks increasingly likely we are not going to kill anybody in the next few hours, I need to take Wizard Morrissey away and properly thank him for saving my life.”

[Good grief. You don’t even have to seduce them, do you?]

I waggled a finger at Fluffy. “Wizard d’Fallon must follow the customs of her people, and you, as a career diplomat should know that, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Your place or mine?” Lana asked, giving my arm a squeeze.

“I am no longer your guide,” Harlan said quickly, stepping back.

I saw the girl that usually guided Lana towards the back of the group that had gathered around us.

“Your place then.”

23.
              
Lana

“Satisfied?” Lana asked.

It took me a few moments to get my breath back sufficiently to answer her. The girl had moves like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Her use of magic during sex was stunning, not to mention heart-attack inducing.

“Better than your wives give you?”

There was a sly grin on her face and there was a short struggle as I tried to smack her on the bottom, but she was far too fast and wriggly.

“You knew I was married?” I said when it became clear I had been outmaneuvered.

“Not until I got you into bed. Masculine guilt is easy to spot. How many wives do you have? Four…five?”

“Is that normal where you come from?”

Lana plonked herself on top of me and pushed my arms to the bed. Then she began to play with my chest hair.

“You should get rid of this unsightly body hair, especially lower down. Do you want me to do it for you?”

I grabbed her waist and this time used magic to force her across my lap. She struggled and applied magical forces of her own, but I was much stronger.

“It’s time we established who’s in charge in this relationship.”

She turned her head to look at me and grinned. “I am, and that will remain the same whatever you should do to me.”

“Yet you’re the one in the vulnerable position.”

“Am I?” She positioned her bottom to give me the clearest target and challenged me. “Do your worst.”

So I let her go. What else could I do?

She slid back on top of me and kissed my forehead.

“You are such a mixed up man. On many worlds a man with your power would be feared. He would have a dozen wives and a hundred concubines ready to meet his slightest whims for fear of the whip or worse. Princes and generals would bow down at his feet and offer him their armies. Yet you cannot keep one slip of a girl from wrapping you around her fingers.”

I rolled over, pushing Lana away. She tried to grab me, but I forced her hands away. I stood up and grabbed my jeans from the floor.

“We will have years together while we study here. Do you think you will be able to keep me at bay forever?”

“I didn’t come here to study. I needed access to the Balmack Accord and their records.”

Lana looked shocked. “This place will teach us how to use our powers properly. Then worlds will bow down before us.”

“You came here for power?” I was surprised by that. Lana gave me the impression she had more than enough power to do whatever she wanted.

Her face blanked. “I came here to prove something.”

“What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing a pretty boy like you should worry his head about. What is so important about Balmack that you would risk your life to come here?”

“The man who planted the bomb in the pyramid. He and I have unfinished business.”

“If he doesn’t kill you first.” Lana hit the bed with both fists, but I suspected it was acting as a substitute for me..

“There is always that.”

“All you came here for was revenge? I thought better of you than that.”

I knocked on the door and it opened to let me out. The man on the other side gave me a wink as he slid the door shut behind me.

Harlan was all business when I was ushered into his office. Two men with ceremonial swords stood at either side of his desk.

“Jake Morrissey. Your first classes have been organized.” He handed me a piece of paper. As I touched it the images on it moved and I flipped through the contents with a flick of my finger.

“You plan to keep me busy studying?”

“That is the purpose of a University.”

I leaned over the desk and the guards shifted their positions. I felt strong magical energies barely kept in check to either side of me.

“I came here to find the man that set the bomb in the pyramid.”

Harlan sighed. “No man from Earth has ever been trained here, let along graduated. We checked two years ago when you first made your request. Other than that, over twenty thousand students from outside the Balmack Accord gained entry in the two year period you gave us. How do you plan to find this man among them?”

Twenty thousand? I had been hoping for less than ten, not ten thousand, but ten. However many there were, it didn’t change anything.

“One to one interviews with them all, if I can’t think of anything better.”

“Then you will need a place to stay and meals to eat. Study at the university and both will be given to you.”

I held out my arm with the bracelet on. “Or you could take this off me and I can visit here whenever I please.”

Harlan looked down at the table for some time before finally looking up at me.

“You are a barbarian, Jake Morrissey. Without that bracelet you could spy on every one of our worlds and learn our strengths and weaknesses. Wearing it you will be unable to attack us later, except via the location given in the Temple in Hop Space. That place is well guarded.”

“You are saying you won’t take it off?”

“There are chain bridges between our cities and worlds. You will have a student stipend, which will supply you with enough money to use them, provided you maintain your studies. Otherwise you may return to Valhalla and the bracelet will be removed at the other end. We will find your bomber in time and bring him to justice.”

Harlan looked resolute, but those were lousy options as far as I was concerned.

“That’s your best offer?”

“It is your choice. Study at the university or leave.”

Damn, damn, damn
.