Light Bringer (The Young Ancients: Second Cycle Book 2) (4 page)

Dareg made himself do it back.
His relationship was a little awkward with Taman-the-real, but not with her
doubles. Not any of them so far, actually.

Real Tam took a deep breath, and
smiled at him.

"Are you here for a bit? We
can get together and have some lunch? You probably need to eat. How are you? I
mean, really? I know that you were almost dead. I was really scared that you
weren't going to make it. I'm... Still not totally certain about Tor. I haven't
been in touch with him lately. I should have been, but..."

That was a fear that he'd had
himself, knowing how close to dead he'd really been. Dare knew that he was
supposed to lie and say it would be fine, but the truth was, he hadn't been to
see the man in most of a month either. While his damage had to be greater than
Dareg's he was
also
a wizard and really powerful. Counting him out was
probably premature.

So he shrugged.

"Ask him? Or I guess I
should? I'll go visit in a bit. I need to get with Timon on a different topic
right now. Cameras for the Saturn thing? The..."

She just started nodding.
"That makes sense. You'll need to be able to operate them at a distance.
Are you willing to do all the planets? We should start a program for that. We
need to have eyes out there and right now we simply don't."

That was a real thing with these
people. The whole of the Baker family. They all came up with new work for
people to do, all the time. They did their own share and more, it looked like,
but they also generated a lot of it. Thinking about the current situation he
realized that he'd done the same thing. That probably meant it was in the
blood.

In that case he was never getting
free of it.

Tam, the real one, nodded,
seeming a bit sad, and maybe scared. For her brother of course. That she hadn't
stayed by his side meant that she probably figured he was going to die. Then,
no one had stayed by his either, which likely meant much the same thing, he
bet. That had been his choice though. These people didn't really know him, so
it had made sense for them not to compound the agony of death if he faded. Not
on top of Karen, Kolb, and even Erid.

For a moment he felt their loss
keenly. More so than he'd really earned, not knowing them long enough for that.
That fact didn't take all the pain, and guilt, away for him however.

It was clear that Taman got that
too, her eyes narrowing a bit as she watched him. Reading every move he made so
carefully that he doubted that hiding anything from her would work too well.

"Good. Meet me at Marissa's
in... Call it two hours?" Her voice was calm, but she looked away, clearly
thinking he was going to say no.

He got that. The last time they'd
been together she'd tried to force him to have sex with her, using magic. He'd
resisted it, with the help of Tor, and she'd gone off to have that fixed. Which
it should be by now, if he understood the process. It was a magical process
that changed the genetic structure of a person's body. There was more to it
than that, he thought, but no one had gone into it in any great depth with him
so far.

Probably because he'd only had
the basic education that almost everyone got in Noram, and that wasn't exactly
science heavy. Magic either, come to that, though both things had been
mentioned as existing.

"Sure. If I'm going to be
late, I'll be in touch? I'm supposed to meet Timon in... Twenty minutes? I need
to get to the magic shop. Patricia runs it?" That was his wife. Tim had
said Trice, but that was her nickname. Dare may not have been around a lot, but
he'd picked that much up.

Taman, the real one, smiled at
him.

"You should get going then. I'll
see you at the restaurant in two hours, unless you call." She didn't tell
him not to stand her up, but he wouldn't. No matter how awkward it got, she was
one of the most powerful Wizards in three worlds.

Making her mad couldn't go well
for him.

It took a bit to make sure
Tam-Comp had what she needed from him, including his handheld data, which was
just his name, but he understood that she was asking for
permission
to
contact him, not asking how to do it.

Claremont furrowed her brow at
him.

"So, the pilot thing is
real? And apparently
I'm
a jerk to my computer. Sorry about that, miss.
I..." She looked slightly upset.

On that note Dareg left, not
needing to see the woman humble herself, and started walking toward where he'd
been told to meet his uncle. There were people in the corridor, which was about
sixty feet across, and twenty high or so. It looked like pale white glass in
most places. On the ceiling there were what seemed like glowing emeralds. Giant
ones that were about the size of his head. There were also magical devices all
over the place. On the walls, as he passed, were moving pictures of people,
that if he didn't know Tam-Unit so well would have had him fleeing from the
place. They started looking at him, and tried to sell him on things. Mainly
ideas, rather than getting him to part with coin.

One of them was Alice Orange, who
was a bit taller than normal standing there, but looked like her real self. As
if he could hug her, and not hit the wall.

"Want to make a difference?
Help people and not waste your life like most do? Join space fleet. The local
recruiting office is just down the way, on the left at the end of the hall. Go
now, and beat the rush." It came out conversationally, and she was hiding
her accent well. Normally it was a bit heavier than that. Not that he could
place it.

Really, it wasn't one of the
Noram accents, or Austran. Other than that he had no clue what it could be.
There weren't that many places a person could be from, after all. She vanished
when he walked away, but there were others. One of them, rather helpfully, was
his Aunt, Patricia. She bowed, and waved toward the door next to her sign.

"Baker's Magic Shop. You can
find everything you need!" She stood there, looking at him, but in a blank
way that showed she wasn't real. Thankfully. That would be hard to explain,
when Tim got there. How his wife had ended up stuck in a wall.

The woman was pretty, in a tall,
fairly tan way. She had curly black hair, and very well balanced features. She
wasn't a stunning vision like Tiera was, or even gorgeous like Taman, but no
one would doubt her as being less than pretty. There had been a time, less than
two months before when he would have claimed her as the finest woman that he'd
ever seen, and not been lying about it.

Taking a deep breath, not knowing
what to expect, he walked in, opening the door firmly. It was made of heavy
stone. Glasslike and creamy in color, which was very normal for this place. At
least if the others along the way represented the whole city, and not just that
hallway. The action on it was smooth and while it did make some noise it was
clear that the place, at least the door hinges, were well cared for. He caught
a hint of oil scent as he passed, and noticed that the place was nearly empty
inside. There were a few people, who were just looking at products, which were
openly sitting on display tables. They weren't hidden behind glass or anything.
There wasn't a guard either, that he could see.

To the left, sitting behind a
counter, like many shops had, was Patricia herself. She was busily looking at a
small screen in her hand, but glanced up when he approached. It took a second,
but her face lit up when she got who he was.

"Dare!" She didn't add
more, probably not knowing what to say yet. Instead she came around the counter
and hugged him. He was short enough still, only being about five-eight or so,
that her breasts pushed against his upper chest firmly. It was fun, so he
didn't pull away. After all, he wasn't related to this lady in particular. Not
that he, or anyone else, knew about.

Finally she pulled back, her
hands still on his upper arms.

"Are you all right?"

He had a feeling that was going
to be the new question of the week. Possibly for longer.

Yawning again, the question
reminding him how he felt, he nodded.

"Tired. As in no energy at
all. Well enough now, other than that. Timon is meeting me here? He has some
magics for me. So the crew can take pictures of Saturn."

Saying that meant two things. The
first one was that he had to explain the whole thing to his Aunt, and that a
man, one who he didn't know, but who was clearly from Austra, what with his
green hair and jump suit, moved about five feet away, and started taking his
words and image down with a camera. It wasn't just his handheld, either, since
the thing floated in the air, and was clearly on focus stone. A magical camera,
much like what he was there to get for people.

Trice glared a bit and then
sighed.

"Albright. I didn't notice
you lurking there for hours, waiting for something to happen."

The man, who looked to be in his
forties, nodded. The floating device moved toward Dare, so he smiled at it,
feeling out of place. He always did when people watched him too closely.

The man, whatever his job was, focused
on him, and was pointing a device at him, which looked enough like a weapon
that Dare tapped his shield on, just in case it didn't engage on its own. Trice
smirked at that a bit, but didn't tell him he
shouldn't
.

"You're involved with the
Saturn Project? I saw that a notice went up for serving crew. Did you get your
name on the list already?
That's
luck, isn't it?" A second device
floated toward him, which was probably there to pick up any sounds he made.

Patricia laughed then.

"This is Prince Dareg. Of
Harmony. Dareg Canton? Tor's son? He's in
charge
of that mission. You
and Karina got the photos of Saturn the first time, right? You piloted? More to
the point, you're the only ones that have made that trip?"

He nodded, glad for the help,
since handling nosey people wasn't his best skill yet.

"Right. We were on a date,
so went there, when she came up with the idea of taking a science crew out.
Tomas Early and his crew are going to be doing a live feed of the mission, so
people here and in Austra will be able to see it all. That, and the possible
crew positions are all I have right now on that." He smiled, since it was
true, but apparently there were going to be questions.

Austrans
loved
questions.
Possibly more than they enjoyed answers.

"Are you going to be doing
other planets? Is it possible for civilians to buy in?" The man was
looking at his off hand, which was, as it turned out feeding him things to ask
about, since, naturally, the whole thing was live in Austra. The only saving
grace there was that it still had to be incredibly early, so most wouldn't be
awake yet. "Oh... Also, how do you answer charges that you're simply using
Tor and his family connections for credits? There's been a suggestion that
you've somehow managed to rig the DNA tests, in order to gain access to his
family fortune..."

The thing was, as annoying as the
man was being, asking things like that, Dareg just didn't
care
now. That
would take energy, and he really didn't have enough of it for that sort of
thing at the moment. Not that anything he said, low ebb or not, wasn't going to
be played a thousand times and parsed for flaws.

"Nope. I'm just who I am. I
don't even really know anything about all those tests, except that they were
done. So faking them is kind of beyond me. I suppose Tor
could
have done
that, or one of his family members, but honestly... Why? The same would be true
of anyone else going through the trouble. Yes, I can see that I might stand to
gain from it, but I lack the skills needed to fake the twenty tests of
different kinds that have been run. I mean, literally, if I had the magical
skill to fake being Tor's son, to the Wizard Timon, and to Tor himself... Well,
then
coin
wouldn't be an issue for me. I could just make my own. I mean
out of thin air. It's probably close to that for any of the other tests, too.
If I had the needed skills for
that
, doing it wouldn't be needed."
He snapped his fingers and opened his palm, hoping for gold, but nothing
happened, so he sighed. There was a put upon head shake to go with it.

Patricia cleared her throat.

"Those are real points.
Especially since the Baker family found
him
, not the other way around.
This wasn't a blind claim, but part of a long running search effort. I...
Didn't you all know that? Tor was searching for Dareg for over ten years. One
of the port machines in Noram located him and set everything in motion. Really,
there was a lot of luck involved, but
not
going the way you seem to
think." She spread her hands delicately, as the camera looked at her. That
meant the man and his magical eye missed Timon walking through the door.

He was about seven and a half
feet tall, and held enough muscle to seem strong. The man was also great
looking, and there was an obvious family resemblance between them that probably
had a few people wondering if Tim was his real father. Tor had suggested that
was because
he'd
felt a little too girly looking when he was younger,
and that had set the subconscious magic on a certain course when he was born.
Created really, by force of will.