Jake's Women (Wizards) (22 page)

39.
      
Mistake

I woke up on the floor in the Bat Cave though I distinctly remember starting the night on the sofa. The sheet I had pulled over myself was yards away and from the state of the sofa it looked as though I had had a wrestling match with its cushions and they won.

I was hot and sticky and aching all over; especially in the groin. Fluffy has a wide neck and I spent over six hours in the saddle, except that Fluffy doesn’t have a saddle. I walked bow legged to the bathroom.

Yes, the Bat Cave has a bathroom of sorts. It used to be a toilet and basin with a modesty curtain, but in the rebuild after the fire I’d used a side bubble in the rock to make an actual room with a closable door.

[Did we really fly in space?] Fluffy asked sleepily.

“You had to put us into glim when we got too close to the International Space Station. Don’t you remember?”

[I thought I dreamed that bit.]

“I hope they didn’t take any pictures.”

I felt a surge of excitement from my dragon. [You think they might have taken pictures? Do you think we can get copies?]

“What would you do with them?” I was genuinely curious. What Fluffy did to while away the time when I wasn’t around was a mystery to me. We always ended up talking about my problems when we were together.

[I have a couple of profiles on the internet.]

Fluffy claws are bigger than the average phone, so that sounded extremely unlikely.

“How do you… enter anything?”

He was laughing. The smell of dragonfire is distinctive. I normally redo the magic to fire proof the furniture every couple of days, but I couldn’t remember whether I’d done it recently.

[Dragons are magic users, remember?]

It was surprisingly easy to forget that fact. Fluffy rarely used magic in an obvious manner, but if he wanted to type on a keyboard with it, there was no reason he couldn’t.

I checked my watch and found it was nearly ten. I had slept most of the morning away.

“Are you up for the unveiling this afternoon? Assuming Jenny is available.”

There was a short pause.

[Jenny and Merlin can be there around three o’clock. Do you think Esmeralda and Morgana will be available?]

“Let’s assume they will be. I’ll go to Salice and set it up.”

[Three o’clock on the cloisters lawn?]

I shuddered at the thought. It seems I wasn’t over my crucifixion yet.

“Fine.”

[I will see you there.]

There was strong irony in Fluffy’s words and I was even more convinced he knew the replacement eyes had failed. Still, we would find out for sure at three.

I gave myself an instant wash and brush up and hopped to Salice.

Standing in the middle of the lawn in the cloisters, I tried to settle my feelings of unease. It was a bright spring morning and all traces of snow had vanished. My palms hurt as did my feet. Phantom memories of the agony I’d suffered here washed over me. The sight of gloating Cult faces flitted across my mind. They really thought they had got me. And maybe they had, because the memories were worse than the real thing. I began to tremble and feel faint. The pain had been so great and I had been certain I was going to die. Sure of it, in my heart.

“Jake!”

I came back to reality and saw Bronwyn walking towards me with a smile on her face. Two men in Cult cloaks with the hoods down flanked her. They were hurrying across the lawn towards me. They were coming for me.

I screamed and the two men crumpled from the unconsciousness magic I threw at them. Bronwyn stopped smiling and looked puzzled, as if this wasn’t supposed to be happening. Naturally, the magic I’d thrown at them never got through to her.

“Jake, don’t you know…”

The wave of energy I threw at her drove her back like a matchstick in a waterfall. Her body hit the Palace wall with enough force to kill any normal human. I wrapped her in magical forces so great it was doubtful she would be able to breathe.

Then I sagged, having to lean on my knees as though I’d just run a race. All I could see were cultist sneering at me as they hoisted me up on the cross, the pain wracking my body, the red haze of my failure.

“This has to stop.”

I looked up, unable to believe that Bronwyn was walking towards me. There was a look on her face that seemed to be as much concern as it was anger. This little girl, with barely formed breasts, had just walked through magical energy that would have pinned a dozen dragons and her hair wasn’t even ruffled.

Rage and frustration ran through my mind like lava. This was the girl who had had me crucified. This was the girl who had sent men to burn me alive in the Bat Cave. My mind couldn’t contain my anger. Dragonfire spurted towards her and turned to mist as she dismissed it with a wave. She held out her hands.

“Jake, you have to calm down.”

I screamed, though it took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from me. It sounded like a child in agony. What was going on?

“Enough.” Bronwyn waved her hand and the ground beneath my feet sped away as I shot into the sky. The palace and the city looked like toys, they were so far below. I wanted to hop, but seemed to have forgotten how. The world spun as my velocity upwards slowed to a stop and then I tumbled towards the ground.

Maybe it was better this way? If I died now, I wouldn’t have to face the pain of living. I couldn’t survive being crucified again. I’d much sooner die. Closing my eyes was so much easier than saving myself.

The tumbling stopped, as did my fall. Bronwyn stood on the empty air in front of me when I opened my eyes. She was only a few feet away and the look on her face was all anxiousness and pain. She was crying. Why was Bronwyn crying?

“Jake, I won’t fight you. I was never your enemy. My dad rang your dad. Jenny and Esmeralda were supposed to tell you. What’s the matter with you?”

“Kill me. Get it over with.” Her words made no sense and the fight had gone from me. It would be so much easier to die

Bronwyn looked down at the lawn below us. We were only a few hundred feet in the sky. I noticed a crowd had gathered on the lawn. At the least there would be witnesses to my final defeat.

“It was down there, wasn’t it? Where they nailed you to the cross?” Bronwyn shook away the tears running down her face. “It had to be a credible plan. Something they could believe would work. I never expected them to get as far as…” She stopped talking, unable to go on.

“It hurt so much.”

As I spoke those words, some of the fog in my brain began to dissipate. What was I doing? Why was I so upset? Nothing made any sense.

Bronwyn stared into my eyes. She was such a pretty little girl. It was a shame to see the shadows haunting her. Nobody her age should have shadows that large. When she spoke her tone was gentle, as if talking to a little child.

“It’s the trauma affecting you. I remember the flashbacks were so much worse than the real thing.”

She reached out to touch my face. Her fingers were warm, almost hot as she stroked my cheek. Her words were as gentle as her touch.

“When they raped, tore me inside, it was terrible, but I held myself above it. It was later, when the world carried on as normal that I lost it. I went insane with rage. At how happy you were, my family were, everybody else was.”

“You saved me, Jake. After all those people I killed and tortured, you made it all go away. When my memories came back they were of someone else, not me. But I do remember.”

“I should have fixed you straight away. It was my fault.”

She was crying again. Her arms came around me and she hugged me.

“It was never your fault. Just as your magic protected you, mine pushed me into danger, into pain. But that’s all over now. Please forgive me for sending those men against you. My people needed a lesson in humility, so they could learn to live in peace. I needed the ringleaders to die and I used you as my gun.”

We both hung in the sky crying for what seemed like an age. As I let the pain go I realized how traumatised I’d been by the crucifixion. I had buried the emotions deep within me and carried on as normal, but I had not been normal. I had been defeated for the first time in my life and my mortality had scared me almost to death.

“Jake, if you don’t let go soon people will talk.” Bronwyn’s words were joking, but her voice trembled.

I let my arms relax from a death grip to gently holding and I pushed Bronwyn away to arm’s length.

“They are your people now? Barren and the rest of that planet?”

Bronwyn nodded. “They need me to protect them from the fanatics they breed. But they are going to let me go back to school on Earth next term. Not that the faithful will describe it like that to my worshippers.”

“Goddesses go to school?”

She punched me lightly on the arm. “Neither of us are just humans are we? But we’re not gods either. I need to go to school, have homework, and face school bullies to ground me.”

“I don’t think I’d want to be the kid that tried to bully you.”

Her eyes twinkled. “I never said I’d put up with it.”

“I’m sorry for what happened just now. I don’t think I’ve ever lost control like that before.”

That was a lie. There were terrible things I’d done in the past, starting with the way I killed the man torturing Jenny. But they had been over in moments and I didn’t regret a single one of them. This had been different.

Bronwyn tapped my head with her finger.

“The wizard with self-control wired in. It’s gone now. That magic you put on yourself. I was never absolutely sure what it was doing to you.”

“Did everybody know about that, but me?”

She turned away and whispered to herself. I shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but my senses were operating at full strength just then. Her words were kind of frightening coming from a child.

“Only the ones that love you.”

When we descended to the ground, Esmeralda handed Morgana to Ella and stomped towards me. She floored me with a single punch.

“Don’t you ever do that to me again.”

I think she was creating a list of such occurrences. Esmeralda hauled me to my feet and kissed me with such enthusiasm and for such a duration that the crowd began to cheer her on. When she let me up for air, there was spontaneous applause.

“Not in front of your subjects,” I cautioned.

“It is an Heir’s duty to show her love for all her subjects,” Esmeralda replied haughtily, “Even the lower intelligence and disobedient ones.”

That brought another round of applause and I saw a royal scribe scribbling away on parchment. How come they were never there when I won a round of verbal sparring? Should such an occasion ever happen, I admitted to myself.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly two o’clock.

“We need to get a move on. Fluffy is going to be here in an hour to unveil his new eyes.”

“Have they healed?” a familiar voice asked.

I turned to find Urda and Anna behind me. I opened my arms and both stepped forward to hug me.

“I couldn’t tell you,” Urda blurted out. “If the Cult thought you knew what was going on, then it would all have been for nothing.”

“Are you visiting or staying?”

“My heart is here in Salice,” Urda replied and Anna nodded in agreement.

“Fluffy’s new eyes have grown,” I told them, “Whether they work or not is entirely another matter.”

40.
      
Sights

The women had decided that this was going to be a dress up occasion and since Fluffy was due to arrive any minute, courtiers, maids, and various hangers-on I have never got the hang of were rushing around like the end of the world was nigh.

Ella came rushing into my room carrying my Wizard suit and a message from Esmeralda.

“If you don’t wear this, Esmeralda has promised to make you keep doing it for 50 minutes. She said you would understand.”

Ella is 16 and a very attractive young girl with a cheeky grin. She managed to convey that she understood completely what Esmeralda was talking about and was dismayed that I could only keep going for 50 minutes just by the way she spoke. She laid out the dreaded Zorro Suit on the bed, somehow positioning herself so that her knickers came into view as she bent over. I suspect she regarded such teasing as fair play when dealing with her royal bosses.

“Don’t come downstairs without the hat,” she added severely as she flounced out of the room. Esmeralda knew I hated the hat more than any other part of the costume. I considered accidently stepping on it, but knew it wouldn’t work. This is one of the clear disadvantages of being a wizard. I can fix most anything.

I had just discarded my jeans when Urda walked in. She was wearing a pretty dress we had bought for her during her exile on Earth some months before. Since I was going commando just then, she stopped to take an appreciative view of my bits.

“Don’t mind me. I’ve seen bigger,” she said dismissively.

I hurriedly pulled on the skin tight black silk trousers that were the bottom half of the Zorro rig. Urda sighed in disappointment and continued her journey to Esmeralda’s room. My hearing was still unnaturally sharp since the escapade with Bronwyn and I heard her whisper, “On a horse,” as she left the room. I blushed.

Anna came in as I took off my tee shirt. Like her sister before her, she stopped to take in the view. One of the strange things I’ve noticed is that the higher up in a society you go, the less privacy there seems to be. Bronwyn walked into the room and wolf-whistled.

“Nobody told me there was going to be a viewing,” she told Anna.

“You should have been here earlier,” Urda said from the door at the other side of the room. She’d sneaked back without me noticing. “I saw the bottom half.”

“Underwear?” Bronwyn asked with a sniff.

“He wasn’t wearing any.”

“Did I tell you girls that I have the Grimaldi’s paddle and know how to use it?” I said mock menacingly. Then I could have bit my tongue off when I saw Bronwyn’s reaction. She’d killed the previous Grimaldi in a particularly gruesome manner when he’d dared to spank her for her rudeness. The old Bronwyn had, that is.

I shooed the other girls out of the room and put my arm around Bronwyn. I guided her to the bed where we could sit together.

“Things from the past are bound to come up,” I said as I gave her a hug.

At first she couldn’t speak. When she did it came out as a whisper.

“It’s so many things, Jake. I should be beaten to death for them.”

I turned her round so she was facing me.

“And then who would look after the people of Tydan? How would your parents feel? How would I feel?”

“You’d be glad.”

“Never.” I hugged her tight. “Esmeralda says that wizards live by different rules, because we have so much power. You haven’t done anything half as bad as I have.”

“I’ve killed hundreds of people,” she whispered.

I felt a bleakness grow inside of me. “I’ve killed millions, beings that shepherd the stars themselves and every one of them was an innocent.”

“Why?” She sounded awestruck.

“They threatened me because they had been told a lie,
and
because I didn’t truly comprehend I was killing them.”

Bronwyn hugged me tighter than I’d hugged her.

“How many women can a wizard marry?”

I gently disentangled us and ignored the question. Looking at my watch I saw it was nearly three. I used magic to finish dressing in the blink of an eye.

“Zorro to a tee,” Bronwyn said with a grin.

“I always trip over the sword. Go and find out whether the Heir is ready, will you?”

Imagine twenty peacocks lined up at the back of a lawn and you wouldn’t be far off how we looked. Anna and Bronwyn were giggling over something and I had a horrible suspicion it was me. Fortunately there wasn’t a breeze; otherwise my floppy hat would have required magic to stay in place.

The King and Queen had joined Esmeralda and they were standing at pole position. Ella was holding Morgana just behind them, which, if my understanding of royal protocol was correct made Ella fifth in line to the throne, though I suspected that servants were automatically excluded from the list. The available Lords and Ladies of the court stood to two sides of the cloisters and behind them were the palace staff that could be spared from their duties.

We wizards were to the right of Esmeralda, our group included Bronwyn and her two Cult guards. I caught the eye of one and he smiled at me. I smiled back, which seemed to please him. It was a false smile on my part and I wondered if it was equally false on his.

I checked my watch and discovered it was ten past three. Fluffy should be making an appearance any minute now.

There was a gasp from the servants and a one pointed into the sky. I looked up to see my dragon putting on a show above us. Because dragons fly by magic and the wings are for little more than fine control on the steering, dragons can pull off some amazing stunts that would tear the wings off a plane.

Using Jenny’s eyes, Fluffy pulled off an incredible loop-de-loop and then shot a vast plume of dragonfire at us. It dissipated long before it reached us, but there was enough left to warm the air when it hit.

Fluffy glided lower and people gasped as he cleared the Palace roof by what looked like a couple of inches. And gasp they might, especially if they were familiar with my dragon’s tendency to hit things even when he had his sight. He glided over us in a circle twenty feet above us before landing in the dead center of the lawn absolutely perfectly.

I wasn’t the only one to applaud, within seconds it was everybody.

Jenny slid down his neck with Merlin held in some kind of papoose type arrangement over her breasts. I’m sure women have proper names for all the sling type things they wear, but I’m proud to remain ignorant.

She was wearing a beautiful dress I’d never seen before. I guess women know instinctively when formal dress is required for an occasion.

The King stepped forward with Queen Janti at his side.

“Welcome Lord Retnor. Let us hope this event has a happy conclusion.”

Now strictly speaking, no dragon is a lord as they don’t accept titles. But when several tons of fire breathing dragon arrives on your lawn it’s probably good etiquette to be polite to them.

[Thank you, your Majesty. I wasn’t expecting quite so many people to attend, but all are welcome.]

I heard Morgana start to cry and Ella passed her to Esmeralda. From the way Ella’s arms were waving, it was Fluffy she was after.

“And welcome Lady Jennifer and Prince Merlin,” the King continued.

Jenny curtseyed, a difficult trick with a baby throwing you off balance. She came to my side and we kissed.

“You’re late,” I whispered.

“Retnor wanted me to check him out to make sure he looked his best. It’s difficult to groom when you’re blind.”

Urda moved closer. “Do you want me to inspect his eyes?”

I waved a hand to hush her. There would be time to do that later, if it was needed.

The King stepped back and I saw that all eyes were now on me. I considered creating a magical drum roll, but decided against it.

I walked up to Fluffy and put a hand on his neck.

[It’s all right, Jake. I know my eyes do not work, but it feels good to have them.]

From the lack of reaction in the crowd it was clear that thought had been sent exclusively to me. From the way that Jenny’s eyes were glistening, she already knew.

“It’s never over till the fat lady sings,” I whispered back.

[There is a fat female singer present?]

I could have just removed the caps over his eyes, but that seemed a bit of an anti-climax given the crowd’s expectations. So I created brightly colored swirling mists that formed like a whirlpool above my friend’s head and slowly dropped to completely cover it.

[That is cool. Jenny is giving me an excellent view of the proceedings.]

I kept the mists going even though I had already removed the caps. Fluffy was right. The muscles in his eyes were working and his eyes were moving from side as he tried to see, but nothing was getting through to the optic nerve. Despite the advanced neurological knowledge I’d absorbed I couldn’t figure out why.

[It has defeated you. Let the mist dissipate, Jake. At least I now have eyes rather than holes in my head.]

He was right. The mists headed upward again and then burst above him like a firework. Shards of colored light bounced off the cloister walls before vanishing.

There was a wave of applause from the crowd as they saw Fluffy’s eyes were whole. The applause petered out as it dawned on people that I wasn’t smiling.

Urda and Bronwyn stepped towards us.

“May we try, Lord Retnor?” Urda asked and Fluffy nodded.

Swirls of magic, invisible to the crowd flowed from both of them. The time for showmanship had passed and this was pure business. Minute followed minute for what seemed like forever before the girls stepped back a pace.

“There is nothing we can do,” Bronwyn said sadly.

It was difficult to hear her because Merlin and Morgana were screaming in what sounded like frustration. I turned to see them being held by their mothers and both were reaching out towards Fluffy.

“My kids want to come to you, old friend.”

[It would be my pleasure.] There was sadness in his words and I knew he had broadcast them to the crowd.

Jenny and Esmeralda brought my children forward and they immediately quieted. Little baby hands reaching out to touch my dragon’s enormous face; I had difficulty keeping tears from my eyes.

In a surprisingly synchronized way, my wives took my children to left and right of Fluffy’s head. They held the children aloft so they could touch his face inches from his eyes.

As their hands touched his flesh, his skin glowed bright. Always iridescent in sunlight, his scales shone with an inner light. For a few seconds my dragon blazed like a star and I had to look away. Then the light faded and my babies gurgled with happy laughter.

[I can see again.] Fluffy sounded awestruck, and believe me when I tell you he wasn’t the only one of us.

The crowd went wild with cheers so loud I wanted to cover my ears. When it finally subsided the King stepped forward to join me.

“Let the Kingdom rejoice, for not only has Lord Retnor’s sight been restored, but it is clear our princess and her brother are powerful wizards.”

The crowd went wild again. The way I saw it, my children had already surpassed me as wizards before they had learnt to crawl. God only knows what they were going to grow up to be.

[And so another prophesy is fulfilled,] my dragon said in a message meant only for me.

That didn’t surprise me in the least.