Off to Be the Wizard - 2 - Spell or High Water (30 page)

Uh-oh,
Martin thought.
I don’t like this. Have we underestimated him? Has he been playing Ida all along?

Nilo said, “I have killed Brit the Younger.”

That answers that question,
Martin thought.

Ida said, “Dear, you haven’t killed Brit.”

“Yes, I have,” Nilo said. “I killed her!”

Ida said, “Okay, okay, you’re right. You killed her.” Nilo turned back to Gwen, feeling vindicated. Ida smiled at Gwen and winked.

“Why?” Gwen asked. “Why did you do it, Nilo?”

Nilo shook his head. He looked amazed at Gwen’s stupidity. He turned to Ida, who play-acted his amazement back to him. He turned back to Gwen and replied, “Because I wanted her dead, obviously.”

Ida looked as if she might laugh, but she peered up at Nilo with adoration in her eyes, like a pet owner watching her clumsy puppy trip and fall.

“Well, I knew that,” Gwen said.

“Sure you did,” Nilo said. “That’s why you had to ask. Because you knew.”

“Clearly if you were trying to kill her, you wanted her dead. That much is obvious.”

“Obvious now that I’ve told you. I suppose you also realized that killing Brit the Younger would also kill Brit the Elder, and with both of them gone, Ida is in charge.”

“Well, of course,” Gwen sputtered, “but that can’t work!”

“It has worked, and anyway, if you already knew everything, why didn’t you stop me?”

“Well,” Gwen said, “we didn’t know it was you doing it.”

Nilo laughed contemptuously. “You’re making yourself look dumb. If you didn’t know I was the one doing it, then you can’t have known what my plan was, because you didn’t know it was my plan. Think!” He pointed at his head to drive his p
oint home.

Martin felt for Gwen. She was arguing with a dumb person, which never works. For a smart person to argue with a dumb person, they have to dumb down their logic on the fly, while the dumb person thinks in dumb logic naturally, giving them an advantage. Martin decided to end Gwen’s suffering.

Martin stepped forward and asked, “Where’d you send them?”

Nilo asked, “What does it matter? You’re all so much smarter than I am, and you say my plan can’t have worked, so it can’t matter where I sent them, can it?”

Martin tightened his grip on his staff, gritted his teeth, and grunted, “Where?”

Nilo laughed, clearly unconcerned. “Okay, big man. Don’t get upset. I’ll tell you. I had two ideas. I thought I might just throw them high up in the sky over the city and then watch them fall to their deaths.”

Gwen said, “That wouldn’t have worked.”

“Could have,” Nilo replied.

“They can fly,” Gwen persisted.

Nilo shrugged. “So you say.”

“You’ve seen Phillip fly with your own eyes!” Gwen yelled.

“Eh,” Nilo said. “I don’t know. Maybe he needs to run real fast to take off. Maybe he was being held up by very thin ropes. Point is, it was worth a shot.”

“No it wasn’t!”

Nilo smiled, “Well, luckily, that’s not what I did.”

Gwen shouted, “Obviously!”

Martin put a calming hand on her shoulder, and repeated his last question. “Where did you send them, Nilo?”

Nilo said, “The middle of the ocean.”

“The middle of the ocean,” Martin repeated.

“Yes. I picked a spot far away from any land, and placed the exit portal just above the surface of the sea. As soon as your friends disappeared into the wall, they reappeared out among the waves, and immediately sank into the sea and drowned.”

Ampyx muttered, “A terrible way to go.”

Martin, Gwen, and Ida all knew that while wizards,
sorcerers
, and all other magic users were impervious to physical damage, disease, and aging, they could still die of thirst, starve,
suffocate
, or drown. Martin looked at Ida. She didn’t look angry or
horrified
. She had a slightly disgusted look on her face, like a cat owner who has found her beloved kitten playing with a freshly killed mouse.

Quietly Gwen said, “That wouldn’t work.”

Nilo asked, “What?”

Gwen said, “That would never work! You know that can’t work! You blew up Brit’s sphere when they were hundreds of feet beneath the surface and it didn’t kill them! Why should dropping Brit in from the surface be any different?”

Nilo puffed up his chest, raised his nose in the air, and revealed his master stroke, “Because those arrows that were stuck to her were tied to a very heavy rock.”

“But she has magic,” Gwen was yelling again. “Both she and Phillip can do magic!”

Martin leaned toward Gwen, and in a quiet voice, said, “Phillip couldn’t. He dropped his staff before he went through, remember? Without that, the shell wouldn’t recognize him.” Martin didn’t add that Phillip very well could have drowned. He didn’t have to.

Gwen said, “Well, that’s always been the shell’s main design flaw. Brit doesn’t use the shell anyway. She uses the Atlantis
Interface
.”

“Yeah,” Martin said. “You use that flicking through options with your hand, right? Her arm was gummed up by the arrows.”

Gwen said, “You can use either hand, Martin.”

Martin said, “Phillip was holding on to the other hand.”

It was too terrible to think about, but also to terrible to put out of their minds. Whether out of love, or panic, or just plain stubbornness, it was possible that in trying to save Brit’s life,
Phillip
had killed them both.

Martin noted that for the first time, Ida looked genuinely concerned. “Well, there you have it,” he said. “Through a combination of dumb luck, and just dumb . . . ,” Martin trailed off,
looking
at Nilo, trying to find the perfect word. Finally, he
continued
, “Dumb, dumbness! Your boy toy may have killed two people, and you helped. What are you going to do about it?”

Ida thought for a moment, then said, “That is the question, isn’t it? I guess I do have to decide how we proceed from here, since I am the only surviving member of the council of three.”

Gwen said, “Ida, you don’t honestly think that means anything, do you? The council only existed because Brit the Elder wanted it to and even if it did mean anything at all—”

“True,” Ida said. “But Brit the Elder is gone, and so is Brit the Younger, and I was popular enough to get unanimously voted president. I think there’s a good chance the sorceresses will
follow
me now that there’s nobody else to follow.”

Gwen asked, “But what’s the point? We already have all the food, money, and security we could ever want. Why do you have to be in charge?”

Ida laughed. “So that everybody will do what I say, hang on my every word, and look up to me, like they do to Brit the Elder. Being president has given me a taste. Turns out I like it. I didn’t plan any of this, but I think we might be able to make the best of it.”

Gwen said, “There’s no way the sorceresses are going to let you stay president once they know what you two have done.”

Ida said, “I suppose that’s true.”

Nilo stretched himself to his full height. He glared down at Martin and said, “I’ll just have to stop you from telling anyone.”

Martin glared back, and said, “Try and stop us.”

Nilo cracked his knuckles, then quickly swiped his finger through the air and poked it forward, making a selection. The floor beneath Martin, Gwen, and Ampyx shattered with the sound of several champagne corks popping. The three of them fell several inches into the portal that Nilo had set up just beneath the floor in case of a situation like this.

33.

When Gwen, Martin, and Ampyx fell through the portal,
emerging
in a shower of shattered floor fragments thousands of feet in the air over the city of Atlantis, they were all surprised and angry. Ampyx was surprised and angry at Nilo for trying to kill him. Gwen and Martin were surprised and angry at themselves for allowing someone to get the drop on them again.

Of course, the last time they had been amongst twenty other wizards, and they had all been stripped of their powers. This time was not nearly as bad. Gwen was tied into the Atlantis
Interface
and the Camelot shell. She was already flying toward Ampyx with great speed.

Unfortunately, Martin’s staff had gotten hung up on the side of the portal as he fell through, and in his shock, he had let it slip from his fingers.

Martin’s eyes darted about, stinging in the wind as he reached terminal velocity
. I’m okay,
Martin thought.
Even if I don’t get my staff, the fall won’t kill me. It’ll hurt like hell, especially if I hit one of those glass and diamond buildings in the city. Those don’t look very soft. I could hit the water, but they say that’s as bad as landing on concrete.

Martin quickly decided that plan A was to get his staff and fly gently to the ground, and plan B was to aim for a grassy area in the park at the center of town. He preferred plan A.

After a moment of panicked searching, he saw his staff
tumbling
end over end as it fell, a black speck suspended between the blue expanse of the sky and the darker blue expanse of the ocean. He straightened out and pointed his body toward his staff. Progress was slow at first, but he soon started gaining on it.

Martin thought,
Why haven’t I ever made a macro that makes my staff fly into my hand on command? That’d be sweet! Like Thor’s hammer! I’m about to be attacked, I hold out my hand and yell “Santo, aqui,” and it sails through the air right into my hand, and whoever’s about to attack me then wets themselves. Of course, the shell won’t execute the macro unless I have the staff already. That’s a problem. Maybe I could sew a wand into my robe somewhere. The shell might recognize that. But then I wouldn’t need my staff in the first place. Hmm. Oh! Hey! I need my staff!

Martin snapped out of it just in time to overshoot his staff. He cursed, then arched his back and spread his arms like he’d seen skydivers do on TV. He swung around and made another attempt to reach his staff, which was now falling straight down like a spear due to the wind resistance caused by the bust at the staff’s top.

Time slowed. The wind was deafening. The light was
unbearably
bright. Colors seemed more vivid. The ground was getting unnervingly close. Martin’s fingers were inches from the staff, and closing.

This is pretty James Bond right here!
he thought.

He pictured himself grasping his staff, saying the flight spell (rather than the obvious joke), and soaring back into the sky just before he hit the ground. He wished there was a way to get a video of it to show the guys later.

His hand was getting closer. Closer. He was almost there. It was within his grasp. He stretched and closed his hand.

Martin’s fall stopped abruptly. His hand closed on thin air as the staff continued its fall. He would have cried out in anger and shock, but the wind had been knocked out of him. He could tell from the glow that surrounded him that he was being held in a force field. He groaned, and rolled onto his back. The force field was coming from Gwen, who was far above him. She had her wand in one hand, generating the field that held Martin. The other hand held Ampyx by the shoulder as he floated weightless beside her.

The force field had stopped him more gently than the ground would have, so it hurt less, but that pain was spread out over a longer deceleration, so Martin figured it was a wash.
Anyway
, he had plenty of time to recover, since Gwen and Ampyx were hundreds of feet above him, and took their time coming down to his altitude. Martin looked below. He figured he was about five hundred feet above the rim of the city; the city center was substantially farther away. From this height, the city looked like a bowl full of sugar cubes with a bad ant infestation. Martin scanned the roofs that lined the inner bowl of the city. Luckily, since the roofs were white and the staff was dark, it stood out. It had come to rest on one of the smaller buildings, just below the rim. If the wind had pushed it just a little further, it would have landed in the ocean beyond the city wall. It might have sunk and been lost forever.

Martin turned over onto his back again, and saw that Gwen and Ampyx were almost to him. He yelled up at them, “That hurt!”

Gwen yelled back, “Would you rather I let you hit the ground?”

Ampyx yelled, “My ears hurt!”

Martin said, “I wouldn’t have hit the ground. I almost had my staff.”

“No you didn’t,” Gwen said.

Ampyx asked, “It’s like they’re stuffed with something.”

“Gwen, I nearly had it. It was in my hand.”

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t know that, did I? I was all the way up there tending to him.”

Ampyx yelled, “What’s in my ears? I can’t hear so well!”

Martin said, “Okay, thanks for trying.”

“Look,” Gwen shouted, “if your heart was set on falling all the way to the ground, I can still make that happen.”

“No, no. You’re right. Thanks for catching me. Out of gratitude I won’t point out that I was right all along.”

“Yeah, thanks for not pointing that out.”

“But, I was,” Martin said. “Right, I mean. All along.”

“Yes, yes, Martin. You have a gift for understanding stupidity. Can we focus, please?”

Ampyx stuck a finger in his ear and shook it. “It’s like I’ve been swimming!”

Martin said, “My staff is down there.” He pointed to the staff.

Gwen looked down at a totally different part of the city, and said, “Uh oh.”

Martin said, “No. It’s not over there, it’s right here, be
low me.”

Gwen said, “Martin, look.” She pointed toward the
government
buildings at the center of town. Two of the tiny black dots were clearly flying toward the general location of Martin’s staff.

“Ida and Nilo?” Martin asked.

“Yes,” Gwen said. “I saw them leave from her balcony. They probably watched us fall.”

“Then they’re looking for my staff. They know I’m powerless without it. Then they’ll only have you to deal with. Gwen, I gotta get to my staff, now!”

Gwen smiled and withdrew the spell that was holding Martin in the air.

Martin shouted, “Thaaaaank youuuu!” as he streaked away toward the ground.

It won’t hurt me. It won’t hurt me. It won’t hurt me,
Martin thought, as the rooftop and his staff got larger and larger in his vision. His memories of being tossed around the courtyard of the castle Camelot by Jimmy flooded back, and he corrected himself.
It will hurt me, but it won’t kill me. It won’t kill me. It won’t . . .

Martin and Phillip had wondered about the exact makeup of the buildings in Atlantis. They knew that the outer bowl was made up of molecularly pure diamond that Brit the Elder had laid down one atom at a time, but the white buildings inside the bowl had seemed more like glass. Later, Martin would find out that all of the structural, non-decorative elements of the city were indeed made of diamond, but that walls, floors, and
ceilings
had a thin coating of white silicon, because it was quite strong, and could be made opaque (or at least mostly opaque) without weakening its structure. Also, it was easy to clean. The incredible strength and rigidity of structures made of diamond meant that when Martin hit the roof of this smallish building, the roof did not buckle or give in any noticeable way. Martin’s body, however, did both of those things. For the second time in a five-minute span, he lay groaning, trying to get his wind back. He was in the center of a radiating pattern of spider web cracks in the thin glass veneer. As he lay there, he saw Ida swoop down and deposit Nilo on the roof before rising back into the sky, turning sharply and zooming in the direction from which she had come.

Nilo sprinted across the roof, snatched up the staff, kicked Martin in the head, and jumped down to the street. Martin
scurried
to the edge of the roof, not bothering to get to his feet, and leapt down after Nilo. By the time Martin had his
bearings
, Nilo was already running away, down the narrow, crowded
footpath
between the rows of shiny white buildings. Martin gave chase.

It did not take long for Martin to realize that he was not
gaining
on Nilo. Even with the traffic slowing him down, Nilo moved fast enough that Martin was struggling to keep up.
Actually
catching him did not seem realistic. Martin shouted, “Gwen! Little help here?!” He didn’t know that she was within hearing range, but he suspected she was, and was relieved when he heard her reply from overhead.

“I’ve gotta go after Ida,” Gwen said. “Here’s some help though.”

In his peripheral vision, he saw Gwen gently lower Ampyx to the ground at running speed. As soon as the guard’s feet were on the ground, she was gone, off to deal with the president of Atlantis.

Far from being disappointed, Martin was delighted to have Ampyx on his side.
He might not be the smartest guy,
Martin thought,
but I trust him, and he’s just as big and strong as Nilo.

His spirits buoyed by not being in this alone, Martin found some extra speed. He might have gained slightly on Nilo; it was hard to tell at this distance. What he could tell instantly was that he was outrunning Ampyx. Martin slowed slightly, looked over, and could plainly see that the big guard was already winded.

“What’s wrong?” Martin asked.

“I . . . don’t . . . run . . . very . . . often,” Ampyx answered.

“What?” Martin couldn’t believe it. “Look at you! You’re a walking wall of muscle and tan! How can you be in such terrible shape?!”

Ampyx said, “I . . . don’t . . . know . . . I’m just . . . lucky . . . I guess . . . I don’t . . . even . . . exercise.”

“Clearly,” Martin said.

Martin looked toward Nilo, still in the distance, gracefully weaving through the pedestrians with his staff.
I’m not going to catch him on foot,
Martin thought
, and neither is Ampyx. Come on, Martin. You’ve seen plenty of movies. What does the chaser usually do in these situations?

He cursed quietly, then shouted, “Stop! Thief! Somebody stop that man!”

Martin thought,
These battles are never quite as epic as you hope they’re gonna be.

Ida flew at a fairly relaxed pace, clearly not concerned that anyone might be following her. As such, Gwen did not have to follow her for long, and was soon flying next to her.

“Gwen,” Ida said. “I’m surprised to see you. I figured you’d want to help Martin get his ugly stick back.”

Gwen said, “Nah. I figured I’d let him and Ampyx take care of it.”

Ida smiled. “Nilo’s gonna beat Martin like a drum. You know that, right?”

“Oh, I dunno, Martin can take . . .” Gwen’s mind quickly flashed back to Martin’s famous battle with Jimmy. She reformulated the end of her sentence. “ . . . a beating pretty well.”

The two stared at each other for a moment and slowly came to a halt, high above the park that marked the center of Atlantis. Gwen broke the silence.

“What are you going to do, Ida?”

“What are you going to do, Gwen?”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

Gwen said, “On what you do, because if you do anything other than go to a public place, admit what you’ve done, and beg for forgiveness, I’ll have to try to stop you.”

Ida seemed galled by the unfairness of the situation. “I haven’t done anything, Gwen.”

“You gave your servant powers!”

“Limited powers.”

Now Gwen was galled. “Limited to only things that could do people harm, and why? Because he wanted to kill Brit.”

“No,” Ida said. “I didn’t give him powers because he wanted to kill Brit. I gave him powers because I loved him, and wanted him to be happy, and he wanted to kill Brit because he loves me and wants to see me happy.”

“Has killing Brit and Phillip has made either of you happy?”

Ida rolled her eyes. “Gwen, I never would have given him the powers if I thought he had any chance of succeeding! Logic says that he couldn’t, and hasn’t. He hasn’t killed anybody.”

Gwen shouted, “We don’t know that!”

Quietly, Ida replied, “We don’t know that he has. Do we?”

Another icy silence passed, then Gwen said, “You’re not going to apologize and you’re not going to give up, are you?”

Ida answered, “I don’t see why I should.”

They continued to hover in mid-air, staring each other down. Ida pondered her next logical move. Gwen also pondered Ida’s next logical move. Gwen considered her best response. Ida also considered Gwen’s best response. They were both as still as statues, trying desperately not to let slip any hint of what they intended to do next. An eternity seemed to pass, then, almost in unison, they each made identical swiping motions in the air and disappeared.