Jake's War, Book Two of Wizards (2 page)

But that was then and this is now. I needed to get out of jail and over to the hospital to fix whatever Bronwyn had done to her parents. I could hop from the cell, but the guard checked on me regularly. They'd know I was gone and then I'd be on the run. Another complication I didn't need.

My train of thought was interrupted by the cell wall shimmering. Iridescent orange and gold colors rippled across its surface.
He couldn't be trying to materialize in here could he? The cell was smaller than he was.
Did I mention I have a dragon? He lives in a cave in the mountains of Snowdonia and he recently learned how to glim. Glimming is dragon magic where they can travel without being seen or touched.

Fluffy's head solidified in front of me for a second and Jenny slid down his neck and into the cell. Then he vanished without even a
meep
. I felt disappointed and a little annoyed; he could have stayed long enough to say hello.

“Jake.”

Jenny ran to my side and put her arms around me. I wanted to hug her back but guilty thoughts stopped me. She didn't seem to notice as she held onto me and looked me in the eyes.

“Esmeralda's in trouble. It's Bronwyn. You have to come.”

There were so many impossibilities in that statement that I just stared at her.

“I've been in Salice. Retnor can travel between worlds when he's in glim.”

I could have come back with a thousand responses to that. The one I managed was somewhat on the lame side.

“When did Fluffy find he could do that?”

Jenny gave me a disapproving look and I thought she might be about to slap me. Hanging around with Esmeralda was having a bad effect on the girl. Almost as annoying as the way she insisted on using Fluffy's dragon name.

“It doesn't matter. Bronwyn has done something to Grimaldi and Esmeralda's going to banish her for it. Jake, she could get herself killed. Bronwyn's not safe.”

“Esmeralda's not that stupid.”

Though when I thought about it, Esmeralda had punched me in the face the first time we met, and she had known I was a wizard. Threatening Bronwyn could be suicidal; the girl was unstable in the extreme. The best thing I could do was to get to Salice and cool things down.

I went to the cell door and banged on it. Jenny looked for somewhere to hide but I waved her over to me. When the slot in the door opened I spoke to the guard.

“Release me and take me to Inspector Thomas. I am the only person here.”

I hate using mind control. It's a disgusting thing to do to someone, like rape of the mind. Wizards are good at it though. A short time later the Inspector signed my release forms without a murmur. He'd remember it as his idea. As I said before, mind control is evil.

“We have to go to the hospital first,” I told Jenny as we walked down the steps outside the police station.

Jenny nodded. She's nobody's fool and understood at once. I took her hand and hopped us to an alley behind the hospital. There was a back door here that I've used before. I gave Jenny a kiss, telling her to wait for me. I unlocked the door with a flick of my mind and stepped inside.

There wasn't time for subtlety. I turned off the surveillance cameras as I walked down the corridor to Reception. A quick word to find out where they were keeping Bronwyn's parents and a few minutes later I stepped into Intensive Care. The Ward Sister saw me enter and came from her station to greet me.

“Can I help you? Visiting hours are over.”

“Where are Mr. and Mrs. Matthews and what's their condition?”

I used magic to instruct the Sister to believe that I was a consultant brought in to help with the case.

“They've been unable to move or speak for weeks. Both have been severely beaten, probably with a long stick of some kind. Their wounds aren't healing. At first we thought they were in a coma, but their eyes move normally and brain scans show they are awake and in pain. We've been giving them large doses of diomorphine for that, but it doesn't seem to be helping.” The sister looked towards her patients and sighed. “It might be best if they died.”

I ordered the Sister to leave me and she went back to her station. I've never thought of myself as being particularly empathic, but I could feel the pain radiating from Mr. and Mrs. Matthews as I approached them.

Mr. Matthews's eyes bored into me as I stood over him. I saw hope and despair in them in equal measure.

“I'm going to try and put this right,” I said as reassuringly as I could.

His eyes flicked to his wife's bed and I knew what he meant.
Heal her first
. I moved over to where she lay and put a hand on her arm.

I've never really explored the limits of my magic. Up until I met Jenny I rarely used more than my ability to hop. As I tried to fix Mrs. Matthews I realized this was a big mistake. What good is power if you don't have control?

Bronwyn had put some sort of energy field around her parents. It was there to cause them pain and stop the body's healing process. Another magic field had been put on top of the first to prevent them screaming in agony. I had to take that one off first before I could tackle the one causing the pain. It was clear why Bronwyn put it there when I removed it and Mrs. Matthews began to scream. It was a sound I won't forget in a hurry. I know what the condemned in hell sound like now.

Taking off the second field proved difficult and took me a long time. Mrs. Matthews fell back on the bed just as the Sister arrived with a crash squad. I issued a mental order for the medics to ignore me as I stepped away and moved to her husband.

I took the magic from her husband in a couple of minutes. I was quicker with practice and he didn't get the chance to scream. When it was done I turned away. He reached out and grabbed my arm.

“Is she safe?”

“You'll both recover now.”

“No, I meant Bronwyn. Is she safe?”

I didn't know what to say. I wondered if my father would ask that if I'd put him through the pain Bronwyn had inflicted on her father.

“There's almost nothing in the universe that can hurt her,” I told him as I gently pried his hand from my arm. I finished the sentence in a whisper as I strode out of the room. “Except me.”

Chapter Two: Grimaldi

Jenny took my hand as I came out of the hospital. She saw the look on my face and didn't say a word as I hopped us straight to our room in Esmeralda's father's palace.

Hopping is fine if you know where you're going. When I was a child I went wherever the stone I threw chose to go. Though looking back on it, it always took me to the places I wanted, boundary places like shores, cliffs and mountains, places far away from where anybody might find me.

If I have a personal possession of someone, I can use it to hop straight to them. But I had nothing of Esmeralda's or Bronwyn's on me. Jenny ran out the door as soon as we arrived so I followed her. She obviously knew where we had to go.

We ran through the Palace heading towards the ballroom. It was where the King held court, so that seemed logical. We turned a corner and Jenny ran straight into Esmeralda. They grabbed at each other to stop from falling over.

I was struck by how alike they are despite the obvious differences. They share a similarity of spirit. They are both attractive women, Jenny in that girl-next-door way and Esmeralda like a woman out of a fashion magazine. Esmeralda is the taller of the two and has curly red hair while Jenny's is straight and currently brunette with highlights. Come to think of it, the highlights were new.

I ought to mention that when I got the opportunity. This was a new boyfriend-skill I'd acquired recently; always tell them how good they look when they change their hairstyle. The problem I had was noticing the change in the first place.

They were staring at me with identical expressions. As though I should be doing something so obvious that they didn't expect to have to tell me what it was.

“Where's Bronwyn?” I asked, trying to avoid going red in the face and not quite succeeding.

“It is good of my betrothed to visit us somewhat after our hour of need, much as usual. As for Bronwyn, she has been banished,” Esmeralda said, though there was no satisfaction in her voice.

“She let you banish her?” I ignored the betrothed dig. That was hardly my fault, as she had invented our affair without my knowledge.

“I am the heir to the throne and it's my job to get rid of undesirable elements. After I remonstrated with her she drew a hopscotch court and departed the realm.”

“Just like that?”

“I had a guard with me.”

I didn't believe a word of it. Bronwyn wanted to stay in Salice and she could have forced Esmeralda to lick her boots if she'd wanted, just as I could. I couldn't see any way Esmeralda could have made her leave.

As an aside, I used to need a hopscotch court to hop between worlds, but these days I create the court in my head. A trick Bronwyn still hasn't learned.

Jenny gave Esmeralda a look of disbelief. Jenny knows exactly what a wizard can do. Esmeralda grinned at us and took something from her pocket and showed them to me. They were two polished pebbles that made my eyes buzz when I looked at them. I recognized them instantly despite the fact that I hadn't seen them for years.

“I took the magic off all the lucky stones.” I said in astonishment.

“All the ones I gave you back,” Esmeralda said loftily. “A wizard like you really ought to learn to count.”

Before I could think of a suitably cutting reply she changed the subject. A skill I think princesses are born with.

“Grimaldi needs you, though I fear it may already be too late. Come quickly.”

Esmeralda set off at run and Jenny and I tried to keep up. Despite the seriousness of the situation I couldn't help admiring Esmeralda's lovely legs as I glimpsed them beneath her long skirt as she ran.

The room we entered echoed with female sobbing. I spotted Grimaldi's young assistants, Helda, and Bletty, sitting against the wall with handkerchiefs held to their faces. Esmeralda moved aside and I saw Grimaldi sitting in a wooden chair with a young woman kneeling in front of him. He sat bolt upright with one arm raised. His face was a bloody wreck as if someone had hit it repeatedly with a hammer. If it hadn't been for the U of hair around his otherwise bald head I doubt I would have recognized him. The thing that chilled me was that he sat like a statue with even the blood on his face frozen in place. Only his eyes moved and what they showed was unendurable pain.

I could only see the back of the head of the woman who knelt in front of him. She must have sensed me looking at her because she turned. It was Urda, the girl I had rescued from being burnt at the stake a few months ago. Last time I had spoken to her it had looked as though she might have magical talent.

“Wizard Morrissey,” she said, dropping her gaze from my face to the floor. “I sense some force holding him like this, but I cannot break it.”

“How did it happen?”

“The Master made Bronwyn a pretty dress and she threw it in his face, laughing and telling him that it was ugly,” Helda said from behind her handkerchief. “It was a terrible insult and he had spent
hours
on the embroidery. He put her over his knee and started to apply his hairbrush to her bottom as well she deserved. She froze him solid and then she…” Helda couldn't continue with her story and resumed her sobbing.

A red haze of anger clouded my vision. He had been like this for hours, possibly days, and nobody had done anything. I turned to Esmeralda not trying to keep the anger from my voice.

“I don't suppose you could have got Bronwyn to undo this
before
you banished her.”

Esmeralda's face turned harder than I had ever seen it.

“I pleaded with her, My Lord Wizard… On my knees.”

I should have known. I pushed Urda away more harshly than I intended as I took her place in front of my favorite tailor. I put my hands on his knees and worked a magic that was becoming easier with repetition. I'll say this for Bronwyn, once she found a magical technique she stuck with it, no matter how evil it was.

Grimaldi moaned and his warm blood began to drip onto my hands along with bits of his flesh. I had healed Fluffy some months ago when someone shot an arrow through his wing, but that was a minor injury compared to what had been done to Grimaldi. I felt my magic fail as I tried to fix the things broken inside him.

“Enough,” he whispered, his words hissing through broken teeth. “You cannot save everyone, Jake.” Grimaldi winked at me, slowly and deliberately, and then his eyes glazed over and he was dead.

“Fix him, Jake!” Jenny shouted and shook my shoulders. I slumped back against her because I knew it was hopeless, he was gone. I felt the life leave him. There was no one left to save.

Helda and Bletty began to wail. Jenny continued to shake me as if I was a rag doll. I didn't resist. I was too tired and I knew I deserved it. Three weeks I had sat in a prison cell because I was too scared to face Jenny and all that time I knew Bronwyn was a time bomb waiting to explode. This was as much my fault as if I'd killed Grimaldi myself.

The shaking stopped when Esmeralda dragged Jenny away. She held Jenny close to her. I put an arm around Urda and felt her silent sobbing. We stayed like that for some time.

Chapter Three: Searching

I woke at five in the morning. Jenny's back pressed against me as she snored lightly.

We could have slept anywhere. One advantage of being able to hop across the multiverse is that one bedroom is as close as any other. However, leaving Salice last night would have been a betrayal of Grimaldi. He would be buried as soon as his family arrived from the neighboring kingdom of Frode. Word had been sent of his injuries when he was first found. Given how small the local city states are, his family could well arrive today.

I dressed as quietly as I could. There were pressing tasks that couldn't wait. I hopped back to Wales.