Wizards (26 page)

I was having trouble following the logic of our conversation. I've told Jenny nothing is going to make me marry Esmeralda. For one thing, I'm not attracted to her in the slightest. She annoys the hell out of me and has done since the first time we met. She always acts so superior and so much in control.

I'm not a violent man in any way, shape or form, but the number of times I wanted to slap her came close to being the same as the number of times we've talked. She has an unsurpassable talent for annoying me.

Esmeralda had disappeared from the ballroom and I, for one, wasn't going looking for her. The King and Queen were busy talking to their guests while the dance floor was filled with couples waltzing. That seemed perfectly natural to me until I remembered the waltz had been unknown to Salice until Jenny and I demonstrated it on the dance floor. They certainly had tunes with the waltz beat, but all their dances were more intricate and formal. Our demonstration had unexpected results.

I smirked at the thought that the next ball might have the whole dance floor doing the tango. Given the nature of that particular dance, it would be a spectacular sight to say the least.

The orchestra wound to a stop and everybody turned to look at the big double doors. The guests seemed to be expecting something to happen. The doors swung outwards to a fanfare from the orchestra and thirty odd thirteen to fifteen year old girls in pretty dresses walked in to resounding applause.

I thought they looked very pretty but I couldn't figure out what the fuss was about.

"There's Urda," Bronwyn said, appearing from nowhere. She waved cheerily at one of the tallest and prettiest girls coming into the room. That was Urda? It was only when I noticed three or four boys in the group that I finally twigged what was going on. These were the children I rescued from Barren. Many of them still showed the unnatural pallor of starvation on their faces. Their makeup and pretty dresses completely fooled me. Who would have thought they would all clean up so well?

"Wizard Morrissey," Urda said very formally, as she came up to me. She curtseyed and grinned at Bronwyn. "It's good to see you again."

"Are they treating you well?"

"This is a strange place with foreign customs. Compared to Barren it is heaven. I have never seen so much green grass and running water."

"If any of you ever want to return to your home world, not necessarily anywhere near Barren, I'll take you back."

"As if any of them would ever want to go back there," Bronwyn scoffed.

"There are girls among us who were snatched from their parents and who might want to try to return to them. But I think going back would be to their deaths."

"At least WE know that none of you are witches."

"Two of us are," Urda said quietly.

"I was right. I knew I felt the power of magic that night." I said in delight. I was feeling pleased with myself. It was surprising there were as many as two wizards though. Perhaps wizards in the multiverse were more common than people thought.

"Who?" Bronwyn asked eagerly. "I've moved to Salice and it will be good to have other wizards around me."

"Wenna and me. Wenna is the small girl over in the corner." Urda pointed out a nervous looking girl at the back of the pack. She looked as though she would rather be back on Barren, though perhaps I exaggerate.

"You're both older than me," Bronwyn said irritably.

"We have to talk about you moving to Salice, Bronwyn," I said determinedly.

Bronwyn pointedly ignored me, put her arm around Urda's and dragged her away to where Wenna stood.

I looked for Jenny, but she seemed to have done a vanishing act. Given how much she'd been drinking since we danced, I wasn't surprised. What goes in has an annoying habit of wanting to come out again from one end or the other.

"I see you have lost your chaperone," Esmeralda said tartly. Her face looked freshly washed and flushed. However, with a flash of wisdom I decided not to mention it.

"Esmeralda. I'm telling you this for your own good. We're never going to marry. You have to find a way to call off this wedding, or I will."

"Am I that ugly, Jake?"

I looked at Esmeralda and the honest truth is ... she was beautiful. Her piercing green eyes were captivating and even the freckles that went with her curly red hair and creamy complexion suited her face perfectly. Most men would be more than happy with her body. It was a little full for my taste, but there was no doubt she was fit in every sense of the word.

"I've always thought you beautiful, but I'm not in love with you and an arranged marriage isn't something I could live with. It just isn't going to happen."

Esmeralda's face fell as she looked into my eyes. I think this was the first time she admitted to herself I truly didn't love her.

"Thank you for letting me down so kindly. I will tell my father and mother and we will come up with a plan that saves all our faces, but not tonight, Jake. Will you dance with me?"

"I'd be delighted."

The music had started up again and Esmeralda and I found space on the ballroom floor and began to dance. It was, naturally, a waltz, and I discovered Esmeralda was a natural dancer. We spun around on the dance floor and I slowly became aware that the other dancers were leaving the floor to give us room. By the time the music came to a halt, the dance floor was as empty as it had been when Jenny and I took the first dance.

Rather than applause, the audience around us gasped. Then a single pair of hands clapped sardonically from the stage. I turned and saw a gruesome sight. A young man with a horribly disfigured face stood clapping us. To protect the red disfigured flesh of his face from further damage he wore a tight fitting glass mask. Only his eyes, nostrils and mouth were open to air from the room.

"I see you don't recognize your own handiwork, Jake Morrissey. I am Wizard Talder Plath and I've come to punish you for what you have done to me and to my brother."

"Is it possible to hold one of these balls without a mad wizard turning up? Are the wizards of Valhalla all as stupid as the Plath family? You keep losing, remember?"

I employed the only strategy I've developed for times of great stress; prevaricate until an idea occurs to me. Moreover, while I was at it, get the enemy as angry as possible in the hope he might make a mistake.

"But my plan is so simple, Jake. Take and destroy the one you love."

Talder Plath gestured and Esmeralda was torn from my grasp. She flew through the air to land by his side. Esmeralda struggled to escape. Whatever Plath was doing to her kept her arms locked down at her side and all she could do was wriggle futilely.

"Bye, bye Jake," Plath said and the grotesque thing that was his face tightened in an attempt to smile. I could see some of the skin of his face crack under the effort and begin to leak blood. He vanished, taking Esmeralda with him.

I stood on the dance floor stunned immobile. He was supposed to give me a chance to find a way to defeat him and now he was gone with Esmeralda.

"Jake. Get onto the stage and follow him before his path disappears."

I turned to see Jenny standing behind me.

"You heard me! Go Jake! Go now!"

The trance state vanished and I realized Jenny was right. I ran at the stage deciding that climbing up it would take too long. I dived onto it. I found myself sliding along its polished surface to where Plath had been standing. I hopped without thinking about where I was going, hoping I would follow his trail. I'd never tried this trick before and had no idea whether it would work.

I slid into hop space, literally and figuratively. The grey mist I experienced when being taken to Valhalla enveloped and overwhelmed me. It wasn't uniformly grey though. I could see a swirling in the mist of a lighter color and I followed that distortion without an act of conscious thought.

It was easier to go that way than not to, and it felt a little like following water down a plughole. I caught a glimpse of my target ahead. Like a kaleidoscope, Esmeralda's red hair showed distortedly against the grey some way ahead of me. In all my times of hopping between dimensions, I'd only seen the space in-between when I hopped a ride with the younger Plath. Now I was spending what seemed like minutes or possibly hours within this space, willing myself closer to Esmeralda and Talder Plath.

A dot of light flashed and they were gone. As I followed that flash into the real world, I felt another, closer flash and knew instinctively Plath had hopped back out again.

I re-entered the universe at the top of a crumbling pile of smoking rock. Lava cascaded from a volcano below me. The air would probably have burnt my lungs to carbon dust had I breathed any of it in, but I never fully entered that place. It was more as if I bounced off it like a ping-pong ball, only touching its surface.

The space between the universes was distorted with echoes of mine and Plath's previous journeys swirling back and forth. They made the mist look a bit like paints being mixed in a pot. It took either a second or an eternity for me to figure out which of the many swirls around me was Plath's most recent trail. In the end, it was the distinct orange and red of Esmeralda's passage that gave it away. I shot forward after them, slighter further away than I was when I almost entered the lava world, but closer than I'd been when I first entered the mist. Plath was losing this game whether he was aware of it or not.

Plath bounced off another two worlds, one so deep below water the only light was from the fins of enormous bioluminescent fish, the second felt like the surface of the moon, empty, barren and airless. As they say, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me. My mind had found the trick of avoiding any physical contact with these worlds while observing their reality from the misty space we travelled through. By the time Plath materialized in the world he was aiming for, I had learnt to perceive its dangers even as I chose to follow him.

I emerged on the same foot-wide path that Plath was standing on about ten feet further along it. We were on a trail cut into the side of a mountain. I didn't need to look down to see the thousand foot drop to my right. Stones crumbled under my right foot and I subtly shifted my weight onto my left so I wouldn't fall.

Plath held Esmeralda in front of him and the girl looked terrified. She was making no attempt to escape and given their precarious position on the cliff face I didn't blame her.

If Esmeralda wasn't looking the most calm and collected I'd ever seen her, she still had the edge on Talder Plath. He was breathing heavily and the cracks in his face were seeping a lot of blood, which formed little red pools against his mask. His eyes had the look of a cornered wild animal.

Since he didn't look like the one who was going to start the conversation I thought I'd better try. I wasn't feeling all that calm myself. I collected my thoughts despite the adrenaline coursing through me. It was making my fingers twitch uncontrollably.

"Hi Talder, guess who?” Okay, I admit it, I'll never match Spiderman for repartee with villains, but his writers have ages to come up with good opening lines.

"You cannot be here. Even the best magician in the universe would have fallen into the traps I laid along the way."

"Of course, I'm an illusion, Talder. You can release Esmeralda and let her walk to me. After all, she's nowhere to go and I'm not real, am I?"

For a second I thought he was going to fall for it. I saw his hands release their death grip on Esmeralda's shoulders. Then they tightened again and I saw the pain in her eyes as he squeezed his fingers into her.

"I'm here to kill her, not release her. She can fall to her death. It's a long way down, long enough for her to suffer and know the full measure of my revenge."

"You got the wrong girl, Talder. I don't even like Esmeralda. Why don't you let her go? This is between you and me, not her."

I may have blown it because Talder twitched like a puppet whose controller has sneezed. He pulled Esmeralda closer to his body.

"I saw how you two were dancing together. Even a blind man could see the love between you. She is your betrothed!"

This was getting us nowhere and I suddenly felt very angry with this idiot. How dare he suggest Esmeralda and I were in love? I gestured and Talder found invisible hands gripping his throat, squeezing at his windpipe. He gurgled and coughed, his head pushed backwards at the strength of the magic I was using. I meant to strangle him there and now. I'd protect Esmeralda if I had to snap his neck and hold his limp body up on the path with magical hands.

Talder found magical strength from somewhere deep within.

"I win," he croaked and he pushed Esmeralda over the edge. She screamed as she disappeared down the face of the mountain.

The last time I felt such anger was when I crushed Jenny's kidnapper inches deep into solid concrete. I snapped my fingers and Plath's neck snapped in perfect unison with them. Then I dived off the cliff after Esmeralda.

All I could see was a small smudge in the distance falling away from me as I fell. I hopped in mid-air and she was closer, but still going much faster than I was. Her arms and legs flailed as she missed the sharp edges of the cliff by inches. I hopped again and she fell away from my grasp. She was in free fall and I hadn't been falling for long enough to build up the same speed. The cliff below us was no longer sheer and she would soon hit with enough force to crush every bone in her body.