Council of Peacocks (34 page)

***

“What the hell was that about?” Elaine rubbed
at her neck. “Give me a reason why I’m not putting a bullet in his
head.”

If he were anyone except one of Wisdom’s
prized Anomalies, she would have. She was also furious with
herself. She should have moved faster. No matter that the kid had
somehow prevented her gun from working; it was no excuse for almost
getting herself killed. Breaking out of a hold like that should
have been second nature to her. What had stopped her from acting?
Maybe this Josh was able to affect humans the same way he did the
gun.

“You shot his mother.” Jessica stepped past
Todd and came into the room. She knelt down beside Josh’s
unconscious body and put a hand to the wound. Elaine had rammed the
butt of her submachine gun into his skull. If she was lucky, the
kid would have permanent brain damage; but she doubted it.
Anomalies were pretty quick healers.

“What are you talking about? I don’t even
know the kid’s mother.”

Jessica brought her hands back. The
fingertips were covered with blood. “I saw it. It was in Lebanon a
few years ago. You were on the roof of this building. Your hair was
a bit longer and a little blonder but it was you. I’m sure of it.
You shot a rifle of some sort through a window into a hotel
room.”

“Oh.” Elaine swallowed and kept rubbing her
throat. She would have trouble eating for weeks now. “That’s
unexpected. It’s also need-to-know.”

“Enough with the
X-Files
cloak and
dagger crap.” Todd grabbed Elaine’s arm and spun her around. “We’ve
all had enough of this
‘it’s classified’
crap. What do you
know about this guy? Why did you try to kill his mother?”

Elaine pulled her arm free. “You don’t get to
tell me when things are no longer classified. Only Wisdom can do
that. I can tell you it was about five years ago, just before
Wisdom started gathering most of you.”

“I remember that trip to Lebanon,” Garnet
said from the doorway. “I’d been with Wisdom for about six months.
You were supposed to kill the father, right?”

“Zip it, Garnet.” Elaine’s hand slipped to
her gun.

“I don’t think so,” Garnet replied. “Todd,
help me bring Josh back into the living room. Maybe you and Jessica
can do your little healing trick on him and bring him around. I
think it’s time to put together some of the pieces of this
puzzle.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Technically, Wisdom was dead. He was just too
pissed off to let his body realize it. Rage was his life-support
machine; it forced his lungs to breathe, his heart to beat and his
organs to heal. Like a sentient hologram, each particle of his body
held the blueprint for the whole of his being. His willpower
crafted tendons and tissue seemingly out of nothing. A mortal would
have bled to death. Wisdom simply grew new blood from the heat and
subtle, elemental fire that hung in the air around him. As his body
fought to regenerate, his mind traveled back through his history
and remembered.

***

“Don’t fidget, dear,” his mother said.
“Little gentleman do not fidget.”

“Who says I want to be a gentleman? I’m just
a boy.” He was six years old, walking through the candlelit
corridors of a pyramid in Egypt. His dad, an Atlantean statesman,
was part of a global initiative to construct a weather machine.
They hoped to install crystalline devices in various structures
around the world which would communicate through the magnetic
fields of the planet. It would allow them to temper the massive
hurricanes and tidal waves that had buffeted coastal regions of the
world for the last ten years. Eventually, it would be controlled by
a station in the foothills outside of Poseidus. Egypt was one of
the primary focal points of the magnetic sub-web. According to the
experts, one of the devices needed to be installed here. His father
was solidifying the deal.

“All the same, stop fidgeting.” His mother
ruffled his hair and smiled. Her face was blurred by the spanning
eons but her warmth rushed back to him easily. Her skin was a dark,
rich blue, the color of the ocean at night. She was dressed in the
style currently popular in the cities of Atlantis: a one-piece
pleated dress that hung below the ankles with a plunging neckline
barely concealing her breasts. The only jewelry she wore was a
commitment necklace: a living crystal choker that pulsed with
energy. Because she loved his father, it glowed a healthy green
with freckles of comforting red.

Just outside the door to council chamber, his
dad talked with three Egyptians. A native of the north of Atlantis,
his father had pale skin with a slightly yellow tinge reminiscent
of the surface of the moon. He was dressed, like the Egyptians, in
a simple robe that covered his torso and legs but left his arms
bare. With a cursory movement over his shoulder, his father waved
goodbye and walked into a brightly lit chamber filled with priests.
Wisdom would never see him again.

“Is this going to take long?” He pouted and
stared at the floor. “This place is boring.”

His mother smiled. “It won’t take too long. I
promise.”

“Yeah. You said that last time.”

“Such a cute little gentleman you are.” She
bent down and kissed him on the forehead. “Why don’t you wait over
there in that little room? As soon as we’re finished here I’ll fly
you home for supper. Anything you want. Okay?”

Begrudgingly, he smiled and watched her walk
into the priests’ chamber.

He waited.

His mother didn’t return for hours but that
wasn’t unusual. The project was important and she believed he was
safe. Egypt was nearly as civilized as Atlantis and he was
surrounded by the priests and acolytes that ruled the country. But
he got bored, as children will. At first, it was only his eyes that
wandered. Then it was his feet.

He left the cul-de-sac and walked toward the
chamber where his parents conducted their meeting. There were at
least fifty people in the room. Judging by skin color alone, most
were Egyptians but there were several other Atlanteans. In one
corner sat three Edimmu in thick cloaks made of vulture feathers.
One of them looked over and saw him standing in the doorway. She
smiled; an old female with graying scales and deep eyes. Wisdom
waved and smiled back. Back home in Poseidus, many of his teachers
were Edimmu.

He listened to the speeches for a moment but
they made him sleepy. All that talk about Ice Ages and solar
storms. Adults can be so boring. Not far from the chamber was a
thin hallway. The walls rose high above him giving the impression
of a chasm between two cliffs. No child could resist investigating
it.

The hallway ended in a small octagonal room.
The ceiling was far above him, hidden in darkness. The only light
came from small luminescent globes similar to the technology back
home. A palpable hush hung over the area. Golden statues ringed the
perimeter, some holding light globes, others holding weapons. One
held what looked like a still-beating baboon heart. At the time,
Wisdom did not recognize what the monstrosity was; he only
recognized the fear it instilled in him. Against the eastern wall
was an altar crafted from cold, bleak stone gilded with sections of
gold and emeralds. But the thing that held him, the thing that he
could not look away from was the diamond suspended in midair.

As a child of Atlantis, he’d seen the marvels
of technology: the fences of solid light that protected cities from
rampaging dinosaurs, silver disks mounted on walls that relayed
pictures from around the world, airships called Pharocai in which
they’d flown from Poseidus to the pyramids. Yet looking at the
jewel suspended in space, he knew it wasn’t science that held it in
place. Even then he could feel the dark mystery of different forces
and he knew it by name.

Magic.

“What are you doing down here?” He felt a
hand on his shoulder. His mother’s warmth and scent flowed over him
but he could not turn away. “Little gentlemen don’t snoop. Come
away.”

But he could not move. He had to touch the
gem – this thing suspended by forces he could not yet understand
but which sang in his bones. His mother’s hands pulled him out of
the room but he slid from her grasp and ran for the diamond. She
cried out in warning but it was too late. He reached out and
clutched the diamond in his hands.

Initially, he only felt the weight of it. It
was twice the size of his childhood fist but seemed to have the
weight of an entire planet within it. He marveled at how he could
keep something so heavy in his hands. Then he noticed a sound. A
hum. At first a hum, then a beating, like a slow heart. He turned
to share the joy he’d discovered with his mother.

Then he saw the Djinn.

***

The diamond was a Calling Stone, similar to
the one King Solomon would use centuries later to command an army
of Djinn. This one only summoned one being: the creature he would
learn to call father. His mother screamed for hours as the Djinn
raped her. He set her body on fire but she did not die. The Djinn
regenerated the parts of her body consumed by flame. Broken and
paralyzed, she watched as her child was stolen and taken back
through the diamond. They travelled through the jewel to the Kaz,
the city at the edge of an emerald mountain range in the world of
Djinnistan.

For four thousand years (give or take a
decade), he lived in the Kaz. He grew to maturity a slave of the
creature who had abducted him. The Djinn taught him just enough
magic to survive the fiery environment of the elemental plane. On
Earth, all matter is a combination of five basic elements – earth,
air, fire, water and divine spirit – but in the Kaz everything
solid was fire and spirit. As he learned to filter out oxygen from
the toxic air, his body evolved into something that was no longer
flesh and blood. His skin turned from blue to black. Once he
reached 30, the Djinn stopped his body from aging. Although he
would never be a true Djinn, he was something close.

As a slave, he wasn’t allowed friends, nor
could he find a mate and raise a family. The only relationship he
had was with his father. Then, twenty years or so before he finally
escaped, he stumbled upon another room he was not supposed to see.
Unlike the chamber in Egypt, this room was not one of ceremony. It
was a vault.

While scrubbing the floor in the foyer of his
father’s villa, his eyes strayed to the cascading molten stream
that fell from the ceiling down a carefully crafted path to a lava
pond. Sulfurous fumes rose from the sizable pond and small
fish-like creatures swam through the lava. It was a pretty thing -
a conversation piece for the Djinn’s many visitors. It was the sort
of thing you only really saw the first time; after that it blended
into the background like a painting or plush carpet. Something on
this day made him look at it with fresh eyes. His jaw dropped.

After thousands of years submersed in subtle
fiery air, eating the flesh of animals suffused with magic and the
taste of flame, he saw a new level to it. On the other side of the
molten stream was a door. He stood up from where he knelt on the
floor, dropped his scrub brush and moved to the edge of the pool.
Yes, there was definitely a doorway there. The more he stared at
it, the clearer it became. His eyes could see the tendrils of magic
wrapped around the edge of the door, effectively locking it. The
weave was complicated, far from anything his limited skills could
open.

At least at first.

For months he studied the door while going
through the motions of cleaning. Then, when he knew he had the
skill to open the door, he waited until the Djinn had left for the
Senate to conduct his affairs. Then he made his move. He waded
through the lava pool, a feat that would have disintegrated a human
in seconds. Bit by bit, he unfurled the magic tendrils from the
door.

The room was filled with treasures from
Earth: piles of gold coins and chalices, tubs and bowls of gems and
bits of technology from Atlantis. There were a dozen swords, a few
shields and suit of armor built of a material that he couldn’t
identify. The air was different in the vault, too. He breathed it
in deeply and realized there was more to it than fire. There was
water and earth in this air: the same atmosphere as on Earth.
Breathing it in, he felt a strength return to him. Strength and
anger.

He did not spend long in the room that first
time, but he returned at every available moment. He never thought
of stealing anything. What would he do with gold? It was worthless
amongst the Djinn and, if he was caught with it, there would be no
doubt of its source. He did not go to take. He went to look.

After a year or so of looking, he started to
see something else in the room. In the presence of other elements,
his mind saw more than one layer of reality. Thus, he slowly began
to see the Akashic Realm. Engraved in this higher level of reality
was every moment of history, every thought, and every experience in
creation. Mystics call this engraving the Akashic Records. He saw
what happened to his mother, where he really was now, and what had
happened to his home world since he had left it. He saw the
destruction of Atlantis and the second Stone Age of Earth. He
watched the enslavement of the Edimmu and the rise of the
Orpheans.

Over twenty years, he learned what it meant
to be human. The more of it he saw, the more determined he was to
be free again. Wisdom decided to do more than watch. The Akashic
Records revealed that escape from Djinnistan was only possible
through refractory surfaces – like gems. He studied and practiced
for months until, one day, he succeeded.

***

The Djinn was at the Senate, brokering a
trade treaty with the Marid, creatures from a water elemental
plane, when Wisdom made his move. Inside the vault was an emerald
brooch in the shape of a scarab. It was small enough to fit easily
in his palm, but it was large enough to create a portal. He could
not escape alone. He needed someone from Earth to ground him. So he
focused his desire through the gem and found his benefactor in a
young princess from China.