Jake's War, Book Two of Wizards (11 page)

I knew where the cathedral was even though I'd never been in it. It blew away the Palace for sheer prettiness as it appeared to be made entirely of stained glass. As I got closer I saw the building was made of stone covered in glass cladding. It was held away from the inner walls with wrought iron bars. Mirrors lined the stonework reflecting light back and making the glass glow brightly in the sunlight.

It turned out that the inside of the building was similarly clad and the windows were big enough to fill its cavernous interior with mottled colored light. A central aisle down the rectangular bit of the building led to a circular section over which there was a large dome. Daylight must have been cleverly channeled from above because the circular dais below the dome was lit as if by multi-colored spotlights. There was a strong religious feeling to the place, a sense of mystery and awe, as if people had prayed here for centuries.

I knew nothing about the religion of Salice. I'm not the slightest bit religious and the King and Queen have never introduced me to a priest. I'd got the impression the country was secular, which was a bit stupid when you considered the time and money that must have gone into building this cathedral.

Going to the nearest wall I began to lay the magic I'd planned. This was a vast building but I intended to give each bit of it everything I could. It helped if I was touching the surface so I walked around the interior of the cathedral with my fingers lightly touching the glass wall. By the time I finished I could barely walk as I was so tired from using the magic. I went to the nearest pew and sat down to recover.

“Welcome, Wizard Morrissey, to the Church of Light.”

The voice was warm and welcoming. I turned towards it and saw a fat man dressed almost completely in white except for the shoulders of his jacket, which were embroidered with golden thread.

“Have we met?”

“I am the Bishop of Salice. Like you, I'm easy to recognize because I'm wearing my uniform.” He waved his hands across his clothes. “I will be marrying you to your brides on Quarter Day. I must say that will be a first for me in many ways.”

“Very much a first for me too,” I said with feeling.

“May I?” He indicated he wanted to sit on the bench in front of me. I nodded and he sat facing me.

“I gather you come from another world. In a way, so do I. I thought I was going to spend the rest of my days in theological debate in Alhenra when I was ordered to pack my bags and take up the role of Bishop of Salice. I only arrived this morning and have yet to meet the King.”

“You seem to be very well informed for a newcomer.”

“Urgent messages were sent when your wedding date was set. The King knew I was coming but I had to make haste to be sure to arrive in good time. The rest of my retinue and all my books are several days behind me.”

“Shouldn't someone have been here to start with?” Or at least some priests. I'd seen nobody around Salice dressed remotely like him.

The Bishop looked sad. “All the priests in Salice were put to death by the Master. I've been travelling for nearly half a year to get here. Alhenra is a long way away.”

“You've picked a dangerous time to come. We have an adolescent wizard planning to take the kingdom by force and three wizards from a world called Valhalla whose motives are beyond me.”

The Bishop looked up at the dome and then back at me.

“Do they have religion where you come from?”

“Rather too many of them for my tastes.”

“The Religion of Light is very simple. We believe that the multiverse began as pure white light. Then for reasons theologians argue over, it broke into light of uncountable colors. Look up at the stars and you can see so many colors, no two exactly alike. This disintegration allowed the light to change and grow in unexpected directions, into Humanity and Dragons, for example. It also allowed darkness to come into existence, which the light must constantly fight if it is to survive.”

“When we have explored all that it is possible for the light to be, many believe the light will merge together and the multiverse will once again become pure white light. But hopefully a better, stronger and wiser light.”

As religions go that didn't sound like a bad one, but I saw an immediate flaw.

“How do you define what darkness is?”

The bishop clapped me on the shoulder and laughed. “You missed your calling as a theologian, Jake. May I call you Jake? That question has been argued over since the dawn of time. Let me simply say that I believe the Master was an agent of Darkness and you are one of Light and leave it at that.”

“Let's hope I don't bring that fight into the cathedral on Quarter Day.”

The Bishop looked at me and I saw unexpected resolve in his eyes.

“If the fight comes to the Church we will not shirk our duty, regardless of the outcome. Why do you think the Master killed all our priests?”

I offered the Bishop my hand and he took it and gripped it tightly. Normally I don't have a lot of time for priests, but this one seemed to be something special.

Chapter Seventeen: Sparse

I found an excellent pie shop outside the cathedral. Not that I had any money on me, but they knew who I was and were more than happy to charge it to the Palace. I suppose this shows the advantage of me wearing the wizard costume. I still felt uncomfortable in it though and hopped to my room as soon as I finished eating.

My clothes were waiting for me, pressed and neatly folded on my bed. Jeans with neat creases aren't everybody's cup of tea, but I was more than happy to settle for them. Jenny wasn't in her room when I looked and I didn't fancy trying to find her so I hopped to Urda's door and knocked.

She was dressed in her wizard costume and wearing subtle makeup. She wanted to impress someone when we got there, that was for certain.

“I didn't think I'd need to ask you to help me. I've lived there all my life. You'd think I'd be able to hop back without help.” Urda's enquiring look showed she expected me to explain why she couldn't find her home world.

“I think wizards make a mental note of where they are,” I told her, willing to have a go. “Before I learned to hop my parents took me on holidays to seaside resorts. But I can't hop to them because I don't really
know
where they are.”

“You hopped to Salice and Barren without having been there.”

“You can hop to random places or you can follow someone. I used to think wizards hopped to boundary places like mountains, shores or rivers because that's where I always ended up. Now I'm not so sure. Bronwyn hopped to the edge of a volcano and then to a desert on your world. The only thing they have in common was that they were dangerous places.”

I felt I was stumbling on the verge of an insight into Bronwyn when Urda interrupted my thoughts.

“The desert was east of Barren?”

I had hopped across the desert following the setting sun so it seemed likely. I nodded.

“That's where we should start. I don't want to go to Barren. I want to go home to Sparse.”

You have to hand it to the people of Urda's world. They picked names for their towns with consummate skill. I was willing to bet they also have towns called Nothing and Despair.

Urda carried on talking, blithely unaware of my insights into her people's minds. “It's a small town, little more than a village really. It might take some time to walk there though.”

“I have other skills at my disposal,” I said in my best enigmatic voice. I took hold of her hand and we hopped.

A moment later we stood in a bleak, almost featureless desert many miles from Barren. It was unpleasantly hot and dry and the temperature change took my breath away. Using the position of the sun as a guide I looked east and spotted a rocky outcrop on the horizon. Urda stood silently beside me, lost in thought. I took her hand and hopped us to the outcrop.

“I didn't know we could do that,” she said delightedly as we dropped a couple of feet through the air to the ground.

“It's not an exact science.” I brushed dust off my jeans, having fallen onto my knees when we landed. Annoyingly, Urda landed lightly and stayed on her feet.

We weren't quite at the top of the hill so we walked east for a while. Gradually a valley came into sight. A small river wound through its heart. There were signs the river had once been much bigger, but not for many years. A hamlet of dour flat roofed buildings huddled together on both sides of the river’s meager water. A bridge, far too big for the river, provided a crossing point, though I suspected you could walk across the river without getting the tops of your shoes wet.

“That's it, that's Sparse.” Urda sounded excited. Had I come across the place on my own I would have hopped straight home. It didn't look the slightest bit inviting. It was three or four miles away and I looked for a good spot to hop to. A long dead, massive tree stripped of its lower branches dominated the landscape about half a mile from the town. I took Urda's hand and hopped us to it.

“This is the Wishing Tree,” Urda said happily. “It's said if you put a hand on its trunk and make a wish it will come true.”

“And in all these years, nobody's wished for rain?”

Urda gave me a disapproving look and I did my impression of 'Happy Jake' giving her a broad smile. She pushed me onto the track beside the tree before smiling at me.

“You're a rat, Jake Morrissey.”

I gestured towards the hamlet ahead. “Perhaps my Lady Urda would care to lead the way?”

Urda led me through the maze of huddled homes. It would be unfair to call the dust tracks we trod streets or alleys, they were simply barren ground between the buildings. We saw no one. A few dogs and goats lay listlessly in what shade they could find, but there were no people in sight. Nor did we hear any human activity. If it hadn't been that the goats were tethered and not starving I would have concluded that the town had been deserted.

Urda stopped besides a squat ugly baked-mud house and tried the door. It was locked so she banged on it. There was no response.

It takes time to learn what you can do as a wizard. I gently moved her to one side and used magic to lift the three internal bars locking the door. They fell heavily to the floor and the door only half opened before they blocked it. Halfway open was good enough and Urda slipped through the gap. I followed her, breathing in to get through. I stopped just inside the door as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. The room was much hotter than outside, not surprising as all the windows were shuttered.

Two adults cowered in the far corner. They had their backs to us and I could make out little more than there were two of them.

“Mother, Father? It's me, Urda.”

The larger of the two waved an arm behind him as though warding off something.

“We have done nothing. Take someone else.”

It was a man's voice and he sounded desperate.

Urda put a hand on his shoulder and he cringed away from her.

“It is your daughter, Urda.”

A muffled female voice screeched at us. “Father Drog took Urda. It wasn't our fault. He said the Lord would punish us if we didn't and we believed. You shall not suffer a witch to live.” The woman cackled insanely. It was all beyond me and I hoped Urda would give up soon and we could go home.

“Where's Anna?”

The couple started moaning and huddled closer together. Urda's temper seemed to be rising as she looked around the hovel. She stared down at the floor of rotting wooden boards covered by a small threadbare rug.

“Is she in the cellar?”

The woman started shrieking as though someone was stabbing her. I flinched because it was a horrible sound.

Urda went down on her knees and flung the rug at her parents. A crude hatch was underneath with a rope handle. She pulled at the rope but the hatch didn't move.

“Help me, Jake!”

I took the rope and used magic to free it. It came completely away as there were no hinges, revealing a cellar beneath the floor.

Urda's parents struggled to their feet as they heard the hatch bounce on the floorboards. They stood with their backs to the wall, still cringing and keeping their eyes focused on the ground.

I took a small flashlight from my pocket and switched in on. I'd picked it up from home after the episode on the Dragon World. I had vowed to myself that never again would my boxers remain hidden in the dark at a critical moment.

“Just point it where you want to see,” I said, handing it to Urda. She moved the narrow beam of light around the cellar. She stopped and held it on a bundle of rags someone had thrown in a corner.

“Anna, it's me.”

The rags moved and I saw a couple of eyes appear. Urda moved the light so it wasn't blinding the girl and she stood to reveal an emaciated child of ten or eleven. She was filthy and I thought I could see bruises under the dirt on her face.

As soon as she stood it was clear that Anna couldn't get out of the cellar as she would be unable to reach the hatch. Urda lay on the floor and offered a hand to the girl. I don't think it took her any effort at all for Urda to lift her out of the cellar.

“Don't take her. She's all we've got,” Urda's mother pleaded. When I looked at her she shied away in terror.

Urda wiped the hair away from Anna's face and kissed her forehead. Then she rounded on her parents.

“Still beating up your children to show you're a man, Father.”

The man cringed away from her.

“Don't torture us. We meant no harm.”

“I'm taking my sister and you'll never see me or her again.”

“Take her. Just don't hurt us,” he begged. He dropped to his knees and put his arms up in supplication. “Please don't hurt us.”

Urda stared at her parents in contempt.

“I used to look up to you. Hop us back, Jake.”

There was something not quite right about this whole situation. Things were moving too fast and I wanted to take a few moments to try to work out exactly what the wrongness was.

“You take her. I'll be along in a few minutes.”