Story Thieves (29 page)

“He's a mad scientist,” Owen said with a shrug. “This is the mad part.”

Kiel just gritted his teeth, struggling against his bonds, so the doctor shrugged and stuck the First Key into the lock. “Ah, fresh from a dragon's hoard,” he said, sniffing the key. “Mmm . . . you can really smell the fact that this dragon's not going to exist in about two minutes!”

“I know forbidden magic, Verity,” Kiel said. “I'll use it if I have to.”

“Ah ah ah,” Dr. Verity said, holding up what looked like a tiny box with a large red button on it. “Remember, you're the one with a robot heart. Shouldn't make a deal with the devil if you can't pay the price, boy.” He laughed. “I added a little part of my own during surgery. If I even hear a word of magic, just
one
word, I'll push this button, and your new little heart goes BOOM.”

“Wait,
what
?” Owen said. “The robot heart is in
my
chest, not in the actual real Kiel's! If he pushes it, will my heart explode out here?”

“Of course not,” Bethany said. “Maybe he won't push it?”

“Oh, he's gonna push it,” Owen said, then shouted into the pages. “Kiel, stop him!”

“You know he can't hear you, right?”

“I'm the one whose heart might explode, so he'd
better
hear me.”

“You wouldn't dare,” Kiel said to Dr. Verity as the scientist turned the Second Key. “We had a
deal
.”

“This key was hidden in the future, wasn't it?” Dr. Verity said, ignoring Kiel. “I hear there are interesting news reports there. Something about how you died of a broken heart?”

Kiel screamed in frustration. “I won't let this happen!”

The Third Key clicked in the lock. “Oh, but you already did. You've done this
all
for me. Finding the keys, playing the role of dangerous criminal to convince the Quanterians that Magisteria was on
the verge of revolt. Everything I needed, you did!” He glanced between the the Third and Fourth Keys. “Now which one was melted, then hidden in the ice in the lair of the Ice Giants? I can never remember.”

Kiel closed his eyes and began to cast a spell.

“NO!” Owen shouted, then grabbed his heart protectively.

“What did I say?” Dr. Verity screamed, then pushed his button over and over. “Die, Kiel Gnomenfoot! DIE!”

But nothing happened.

Bethany grinned and patted the now breathing Owen on his shoulder.

Kiel laughed, and his bindings burned in a green fire, releasing him. “Oh, are things not going as planned?”

Dr. Verity raised an eyebrow, then pushed the button several more times. “What's wrong with this thing?” he said, banging it against a nearby robot.

Kiel mumbled the rest of his spell, and the Science Soldiers fell apart at their joints.

“How did you do that?” Dr. Verity said, his eyes wide. “You've never been able to use magic against science that easily before!”

“Oh, I can do a
lot
of things I've never done before,” Kiel said, his eyes burning a cold green. He held out his hands, and the robotic parts of the Science Soldiers slowly pulled back together. Soon, the robots rose, zombielike, and turned toward Dr. Verity.

“Oh, come on,” the scientist said, and made a cutting motion with his hand. Instantly, the zombified robots crumbled to the ground. “Not that old trick. I haven't seen that for a thousand years, but I've got these things programmed to stop at a signal. You'll have to do better than that.”

Kiel mumbled another spell, and green energy shot straight for Dr. Verity. The scientist just snorted, and the spell splayed off an invisible bubble surrounding him. “Really? Magic? On me? Don't you get it, Kiel? I came from Magisteria too!
I have all the protection I could ever need! Charm spells, protection spells, everything a growing boy could want, all to keep idiots like you from coming anywhere close to me.”

“What about idiots like me?” said a voice from behind Dr. Verity.

A metal Science Soldier arm slammed into Dr. Verity, knocking him to the ground. The doctor looked up with a dazed expression to find a second Kiel Gnomenfoot standing behind him with a big grin on his face, and just one energy band left on the vault door. “The Seventh Key,” this new Kiel said, holding up a large red key. “It had to come from a heart given selflessly, which mine wasn't. You remember that deal we made, the one where I gave up the key to save my life? That's pretty much the definition of selfish, isn't it? Your key never would have worked.” He glanced at the key in his hand. “This one, though, comes from a friend of mine who wasn't using his heart for much longer, after it'd just started beating again today. He offered—selflessly, I might add—and I figured, why not?”

“BUT . . . ,” Dr. Verity said, then glanced behind him, only to find that the first Kiel now resembled a half-fleshed skeleton wearing a lab coat.

“Nice to meet you,” the First Magician said.

“The First Magician?” Owen said, his eyes wide. “But . . . that was me in there! Then you took me out, and put Kiel in. When did—”

“It was a plot hole,” Bethany told him. “Jonathan Porterhouse told me about it. You get the First Magician's heart beating and then don't use it, before he falls apart anyway? It just seemed wasteful. So I went back, grabbed the First Magician, and brought him forward, after a quick disguise spell.”

Owen just stared at her. “So just so I'm clear on this: You let me get a
robotic
heart . . . when I could have just asked the First Magician to give up his heart instead?”

“Seems to be working okay,” Bethany said, tapping his chest. “Besides, it's like a thousand times stronger, I bet. You'll live for way longer with that thing!”

Owen just stared at her openmouthed.

She winked.

“Kiel, this fun has taken far too much out of me,” the First Magician said wearily. “I wish you all the best, but I've done all I can. It was nice meeting you, the robotic girl, and that other girl, the one who—”

“Right!” Kiel interrupted quickly. “Me and the robotic girl. We enjoyed meeting you, too. Thank you for your service, my friend.” Kiel saluted him, and the First Magician smiled back, then crumpled to the ground, disappearing into dust.

“So much for you not getting mentioned in the books,” Owen pointed out.

“Don't think I missed you saying my name already,” Bethany said.

Owen sighed. “Saw that, did you?”

“NO!” screamed Dr. Verity. “You can't do this! There's something you don't know about the Magister! If you give him the Source of Magic, he'll use it to—”

“Destroy Quanterium?” Kiel said, tossing the
Seventh Key from hand to hand. “I know. I figured that out
months
ago. Who didn't see
that
coming?”

Dr. Verity blinked. “. . . What? You
knew
?”

“I know
everything
,” Kiel said. “Just like I know you tried to kill him, but failed.”

“You can't know that!” Dr. Verity screamed. “You weren't there!”

“Part of knowing everything,” Kiel said, tapping his head. “Don't worry. He's fine. And I've got it on good authority that he won't be hurting anyone, no more than you will. Now, let's see what we've got here.” He inserted the Seventh Key and clicked the final lock. The ground began to rumble as the enormous vault door began to slowly pull away from the wall, opening to reveal the Source of Magic, the origin of all unnatural power in the entire universe. . . .

Which apparently looked just like a small pile of books.

“NO!” Dr. Verity screamed from the floor. “Where is my power source? It
has
to be there!”

Kiel stepped forward, picking up the pile of books and carefully carrying them out of the vault. “Books?” he said, his eyes full of wonder and curiosity. “Honestly? Books? That's what was in there this whole time? After all of this, there are
books
in the Vault of Containment?” He began to laugh, harder and harder. “That's amazing. I can't wait until she reads this!”

“I wonder who he's talking about there?” Owen said with a wide grin. “Sounds like you two are pretty close friends.”

“Shh, we're almost done,” Bethany told him, her face turning red like a strawberry.

“That can't be it!” Dr. Verity shouted, and pushed himself to his feet, then past Kiel into the vault. He frantically felt around the empty metal room, searching and scratching the walls for any sign of power. “It has to be here somewhere! The histories all promised a power greater than any other! I
need
it!”

Kiel watched the doctor bang his fists against the wall in frustration, then held out a hand. “It's over, Dr. Verity,” he said. “End this. Call off your Science Soldiers. Bring them home. There's still time to stop the war.”

Dr. Verity looked up as if noticing Kiel was there for the first time. “Oh, no, there isn't,” he said. He pulled open his coat and took out a small cylindrical green device as he stepped out of the vault. “I might not have the Source of Magic, but I can still have Magisteria destroyed. That infinite army has to be good for something, right? And now, as an added bonus, I can kill you, too!”

“What is that thing?” Kiel asked, backing away a step.

“Just a portable nuclear light,” Verity said, then twisted off the cap. “Kind of like the ones on the walls all over the palace, only this one's been rigged to blow us up in the next ten seconds.” He grinned. “Yes, yes, I'll die too. But
my
mind is backed up on computer and will transfer to a new clone the
moment this body sends a signal that it perished. What's
your
backup plan, Kiel Gnomenfoot?”

Kiel paused, then returned Dr. Verity's smile. “I don't know. I guess I've always kept
my
important things locked away in a vault.”

And with that, he pushed Dr. Verity and the bomb into the Vault of Containment and slammed the door shut.

“NO—” Verity screamed before the closing door cut off all sound. Kiel quickly turned the first key in the lock, then stepped back and waited.

The Vault of Containment had held the Source of Magic all these years, completely cut off from any outside forces. Either it was strong enough to contain a nuclear explosion, and Kiel (not to mention the entire capital city of Quanterium) would live, or he'd have some complaints to make when he next ran into the First Magician.

Ten seconds passed, and not even a sound escaped the vault.

For a moment Kiel wondered if Verity had been telling the truth about another clone. The doctor
had
survived for thousands of years, after all, and had no magic like the Magister's to keep him alive. Still, if a signal had to be sent out to have a new clone download the doctor's memories, and the vault contained all signals, maybe this really would be the end of Dr. Verity.

That thought sent Kiel falling back against the vault, almost trembling with exhaustion. It was over. Magisteria was safe, finally. No more Dr. Verity. No more Science Soldiers attacking—

Whoops. Dr. Verity hadn't called them off, had he?

Kiel groaned, pushing back to his feet. He had to stop the attacking robots, but how? He had no spell book, and Magisteria was an entire space-travel trip away. If only there really had been a power source in the vault, maybe—

He glanced at the books he'd taken out of the vault, then grabbed the top one. Why hide these if they weren't actually a Source of Magic? And if they were, somehow, then they had to contain
some
power, right? After all, books were the truest form of
magic that existed, in a lot of ways. If he'd learned nothing else in the last day or so, it'd been that.

“Oh, come
on
,” Owen said, rolling his eyes.

Kiel quickly paged through each book one by one, a disbelieving look gradually spreading over his face. The books
did
contain power, one that Kiel never would have dreamed existed. Could they be true? Had magic actually begun this way? And if it had, did that mean he could—

Kiel carefully set the current book down and picked up the nearest Science Soldier robot head. As he read aloud from the page he'd left open, he focused the magic out from the book and into the robot, lighting both up with a different form of magic than he'd ever felt. The robot's eyes flickered, then slowly powered up, glowing a bright red.

Kiel grinned in spite of himself. “RETURN TO QUANTERIUM,” he said, planting the order in this Science Soldier's head. “ALL SCIENCE SOLDIERS
OF EVERY MAKE AND MODEL, THIS IS AN ORDER. RETURN TO QUANTERIUM, THEN POWER DOWN!”

This new form of magic filled the robot's head until it practically burst at the seams, then separated into a million rays of light, each firing off in a different direction. Since the Science Soldiers could communicate between one another, the magic just followed the same paths, delivering Kiel's magical command to Dr. Verity's infinite armies. Even the soldiers on the floor in front of him powered up briefly with the red magical energy, took in the command, then powered right back down again.

Kiel dropped the again-silent Science Soldier head, not believing what he'd just done. Using magic to manipulate science? Who would have believed it?

Apparently, the first magic-users had, the ones who'd begun as scientists themselves. There was more to read in these books, much more. These
scientists had experimented with the very foundation of science, and discovered magic entirely by mistake. Even just that idea opened so many doors. And the books contained so much more!

But this wasn't the time to read them. There was something far more important for Kiel still to do. He quickly left the hidden vault behind, making his way out into the Presidential Palace. The fact that he found multiple Science Soldier robots lying depowered throughout the hallways seemed to confirm that his science-spell had worked.