Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards (2 page)

“A wizard’s work is never done,” Mr. Griffith said, nodding his head sagely. “Not going to check on Bronwyn, are you?”

I shook my head. The last thing I wanted to do was to visit the Matthew’s.

“Best I don’t. If she sees me it might trigger a memory. That’s why I took them home right after the ceremony. It’s Urda I’m going to visit.”

“Give her our best,” Mrs. Griffith said as I hopped universes and arrived back in Salice.

I materialized in the village of Trefor, a small community that nestled in a valley along the banks of the river Scown. Urda’s cottage was somewhere around here, but I hadn’t managed to fit in a visit since she moved out of the Palace so I couldn’t hop directly to it. Wizards can hop to anywhere they’ve been or can imagine, but the multiverse is a big place and using the imagine route is fraught with danger.

Fortunately, this village had been on the royal tour I’d taken around Salice with Esmeralda after the wedding. At least, I hoped this was the right village; we’d stopped at so many.

I’d arrived on the spot where we had got out of the coach to be greeted by the villager elders. The village consisted of two rows of cottages separated by an immaculately well-made road. Salice doesn’t have modern technology, but they aren’t a backward people. I often suspect they are all better educated than me.

My arrival seemed to have flustered the locals. Kids ran to cottage doors and the adults got off the street almost as fast. I was wearing faded jeans and a white tee-shirt, which shouted ‘Wizard’ as effectively as a Batman costume would have. Local fashion is more into frilly colored shirts and baggy trousers.

“My Lord Wizard Morrissey, you honor our humble village…”

I turned towards the speaker and my action stopped the man in mid flow. I thought I recognized him from our visit, but then I’d met so many people recently it was difficult to be sure.

“Call me Jake,” I said and smiled as warmly as I could. The people of Salice had lots of reasons to fear Wizards, even one married to their future queen. Maybe that made it worse, come to think of it.

“Can we be of service to you, Lor… Prince Jake?”

“A friend moved here recently. Urda Bretch. Can you point out her cottage?”

I hadn’t noticed how rigid the man held himself until he relaxed. He didn’t quite sigh out loud, but he came close.

“She and her sister have moved into the cottage nearest the river. It’s just visible through those trees.” He pointed and my eyes tracked in the direction he was pointing. Wizard’s eyes can be better than binoculars when we choose and I saw the thatched roof through the branches of a willow in the distance.

“Thank you.” To my surprise he continued to look at me expectantly, though I hadn’t got a clue why. Tact and diplomacy were not skills I possessed, but I couldn’t just turn my back on him. I struggled to remember what Esmeralda had taught me about etiquette.

“Can I be of service?” Well, come on, it was better than, ‘what do you want?’

“The fire… It destroyed the crops and winter is coming. Has…”

His voice trailed off, but I knew what he meant. There were still signs of the fire that had ravaged Salice on the other side of the river. We’d saved a lot of crops, but far from all. It seemed like it had happened ages ago, though when I did the calculations it was less than three weeks. It was not a subject that had come up in discussions with the King since the wedding.

“No one will starve,” I said confidently and let him have the full-on Morrissey smile I saved for those occasions when I didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. “The King will announce measures soon.”

He bowed so low I thought he was going to get on all fours and grovel. Then he backed away without once looking up. I made a wow that these people would not starve, even if I had to raid every supermarket in
Wales
. They were my people now, and my responsibility.
How the hell had that happened?

I walked to Urda’s cottage with my eyes fixed firmly on the ground. It was difficult enough coming to terms with being married, not to mention the girls being pregnant, now I had to worry about thousands of people I’d never met as well.
Perhaps I could spend the next few months in
Wales
, helping out at Mr. Griffith’s Woodyard? Would anybody notice?

A frightening vision of Esmeralda chasing me down the street with a toe-tapping Jenny directly in my way came to mind. Nope, the Welsh option was definitely out of the question, if I wanted to live.

My feet led me to Urda’s cottage and I lifted my eyes from them to take a good look at it. It was a simple one story affair and looked to be in immaculate condition with even the thatch trimmed incredibly evenly. A second longer look confirmed the first one. Only magic could paint the walls that evenly, remove the gaps between door and frame despite their less than square trim, keep the windows that clean. She was good, but I wondered if it was wise. To someone like me, the cottage gave rather too much away about its occupant. I lifted the brass knocker (polished and gleaming like gold) and let it fall.

A curtain flicked and then the door opened cautiously. I smiled when I saw a questing eye.

“Hi Anna, it’s Jake. Is Urda home?”

The door swung open silently and Urda’s sister beckoned me in. It was gloomy inside as the cottage’s small windows let in little light.

“Do you mind if I light the lamps?”

She shook her head hesitantly and the lamps sprang to life causing her to jump. Now I could see the girl, it was clear she still had a long way to go to fully recover. Assuming it was possible to recover from the abuse Urda rescued her from. She turned and went to the range to prepare tea. I picked a chair and settled into it. As I expected, it was extremely comfortable.

“Urda is at the Palace. She said she might be late.”

Anna’s voice was so quiet I almost missed her words. A thought occurred and I looked into her. There is a capacity in some humans to store the magic that permeates the multiverse. Those that can store enough of it can use it. Recently, I’d found out how to see that capability.

How it actually looked is impossible to describe as it isn’t using sight in the usual sense, but in Anna’s case think of a crumpled metallic balloon. Anna would have the same capability as her sister if I was to sort that balloon out. As it was at the moment, she wouldn’t be able to store the magic to light a match. I straightened it out without thinking and then wondered about what I’d done. I had made her a wizard without asking her first.

Anna came over with a tray and poured me a cup of tea.

“If you’ve come to grant Urda her birthday wish, I can go up into the loft.”

It took me a couple of seconds to understand what Anna meant, and then I choked on my tea. They have some strange customs on the world Anna and Urda come from, especially what they expect of a chosen man when a girl comes of age.

“My wives would kill me,” I said and smiled weakly. Not many men get to say something like that. I had a feeling I might be saying it a lot from now on.

“Oh, then why did you…?”

“I haven’t seen either of you for a couple of weeks. I wanted to check you were all right.”

Anna blushed and bent over in her chair so I couldn’t see her face.

“Would you like to be a wizard, like your sister?” I might as well ask since I’d already done it. She nodded, to my immense relief.

Time was getting on. My wives would expect me back in our quarters in the Palace and I didn’t want to give them any further excuses to be mad at me.

“I have to go. Tell Urda that…”

“Tell Urda what?” Urda asked from behind.
Is it too much to ask that other wizards should materialize in front of me rather than behind? I think not.

“Urda,” I said as I swiveled in the chair to face her.

“My Lord Wizard, Prince Jake.” She sounded angry. Maybe exasperated.

Never get into that kind of conversation with a woman, they always win. I prepared my ‘call me Jake’ response with added Anglo-Saxon, but she interrupted before I could get started.

“You are needed at the Palace. They have unexpected guests.”

“The Valhallans?”

She shook her head. “Much worse than that, and they are angry with you.”

So why wasn’t she telling me who they were?

“And they are?” I asked. Urda frowned.

“Everybody is searching for you. I have just been to Barren to see if you were there. It’s… changed.”

“No clues then?”

Urda shook her head. “It’s best you go before they get any angrier.”

I hopped.

2.
          
Betrayal

I arrived into darkness. I had teleported to the large rectangle of grass that the cloisters bounded. There should have been blue skies above me. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom I saw lights in windows, but that wasn’t enough to illuminate the darkness I landed in.

[WIZARD MORRISSEY!]

The voice that boomed in my head was so loud that I clapped my hands over my ears, (not that it helped) and fell to my knees. An impossible jet of flame shot straight at me from above. I instinctively created a reflective shield. Those flames weren’t just fire, they possessed a magic that beat against my shield and started to eat it away.

“Stop! How dare you attack a prince of Salice?”

There was only one woman in the multiverse that could sound that indignant and so sure of herself at the same time. The flames stopped abruptly and I looked up into the furious eyes of Princess Esmeralda, heir apparent to the throne of Salice and one of my two wives. She held some sort of square glass jar up in the air as though it was a weapon. The reason I could see her at all was that Jenny stood by her side holding a lamp. She is my other wife and she was glaring at me.

[HE HAS BETRAYED US ALL.]

The voice in my head was angry, but now I recognized it, or rather, its type. This was a dragon talking to us using telepathy.

I stood up and brushed grass off my jeans. My hair felt a little singed, but it was certain the flames had never reached me. I knew that because I was still alive. Dragonfire is about as lethal as it gets, except when they use it to cook sheep before eating. Even then, it’s always lethal for the sheep.

Esmeralda looked up into the darkness as if she could see something I couldn’t. “Jake is many things and often acts like a fool, but he would never betray anyone. It is not in his nature.”

Well thanks for the vote of confidence, Esmeralda. Talk about damning with faint praise.

[HE HAS CONSENTED TO REPRESENT THE VALHALLANS AT THE
CONFERENCE BETWEEN THE WORLDS
.]

How the hell did they find that out? The only people who knew were the Valhallans, my wives and my pet dragon. Not that he thinks of himself as a pet, but I’ve had him since he was an egg. He’s very young in dragon terms and doesn’t do the voice in capital letters thing. But the fact remained that I’d been betrayed by my own dragon.

“Fluffy told you. That sneaky underhanded son of a flying reptile.”

[IT DOES NOT MATTER HOW WE KNOW. DO YOU DENY IT?]
The ground shook; there was so much energy in his question.

I stood straighter. If I was going to be condemned, I planned to go out fighting. Creating a halo of light above my head I expanded it and raised it upwards, making it shine brighter. Red eyes like burning rubies shone across the sky. Only it wasn’t the sky. A hemisphere of dragons, their wings spread wide, blocked the sky from sight. They were tightly interlaced together.
 

I knew, intellectually, that no dragon flew using their wings; they were far too heavy for that to be possible. Their wings helped with the steering, but little else. However, to see them hanging in the air forming a leathery hemisphere was unnerving. The only parts of their bodies moving were their heads and they were all turning to face me. None of them looked the least bit friendly.

“What is his crime?” Esmeralda asked in what could only be described as icy Imperial tones. I don’t know about the Dragons, but she often scares
me
.

[HE KNOWS WHAT HE HAS DONE.]