The Syker Key (6 page)

Nine: A Spark in the Darkness

John was starting to tire. It had been a lot more hiking than he was used to, but he refused to be showed up by a man several centuries his senior, even if he didn’t look much older than John. The beard, at least, made him look older, so that made him feel better.

"We're close," Pan said to him. "We have to be careful."

John almost laughed. Careful? Someone who's knowledge of magic amounted to a single card trick the day before, going after someone able to take out a full-on wizard?

It didn't seem too likely.

He looked up at the sky through the trees. The sun was nearing midday, and the moon was getting close.

But something caught his attention, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. He looked around, trying to find the source of his discomfort, half watching and half listening, as if he’d be able to hear whatever was bothering him.

Pan tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. "Over there," he said quietly.

They stood still for over a minute, then John could see it: Someone in the trees, a ways off. They hadn't been seen yet apparently. John led his father behind a tree and they hid, waiting for the armed individual to get closer. Pan got his attention, smiling. "Watch."

Pan peeked around the tree, looking at the mercenary as he put one hand on the tree and concentrated. Behind the mercenary a root silently rose out of the ground and reached to his belt, wrapping itself around the radio and gently lifting it out.

By the time the mercenary figured out the radio was moving away from him, John was around the tree with his service pistol leveled at he head of the mercenary. "Don't move," he said in his most threatening voice, the one they teach you to use at the academy.

The mercenary looked at him and appeared to consider his options. His gun was lowered, but at least in his hands, finger on the trigger, and John was careful to watch it's movements.

"I wouldn't if I were you," Pan said, walking out from behind the tree. A wave of his hand and the rifle went flying out of the mercenary's hands and into Pan's. Pan examined the rifle, then with a shrug threw it into the air.

It fell to the ground as dust.

John tried not to get distracted by it, since it was likely the mercenary had more than the one weapon. "Where are they?"

The mercenary just smiled at him. This wasn't going to be easy.

"Sometimes, son, you have to learn to listen to the forest."

Pan laid his hand on the tree again, and this time another root, a much larger one, came out of the ground, wrapped itself around the mercenary's legs, and promptly hiked him twenty feet into the air, upside down and screaming. Another root accompanied it and bound his arms to his sides.

“I think we can stand to wait here a few minutes,” Pan said.

***

Sam heard the scream, faintly.

"Check in," Derek said, standing nearby.

"Lookout one, clear," came the response on the radio.

Only one response. Derek walked over to Sam. "We're not alone."

"I hardly expected to be."

Derek seemed disappointed. None of his surveillance toys had been tripped. "You think it's the wizard?"

"Probably. He's not too much of a concern though. He can't move against the girl, not directly."

He remembered the legends handed down in his family. Legends from before recorded history. From a time when the crystal went missing in the first place. He knew more about it's capabilities than this foolish wizard who had chanced upon it all those centuries before. Syker may not have stolen it from his family, but it was theft nonetheless. It had been the one remaining question: Why had the key disappeared all those centuries ago? If there had been a challenge to the bearer, then why had it not returned?

They were never able to figure it out, but when it did disappear, an entire civilization crashed, and mankind was thrown nearly back to the Stone Age. Those who remained scattered, but without the support of a powerful society, the technology of the age past disappeared, never to be seen again.

Sam nearly growled when he thought about it. One of his ancestors had approached Syker once, explaining the ownership of the crystal, and Syker had rebuffed them. What may have been, he had said, was not then. At least, that's how Sam's father explained it to him. He suspected there was much more to it, and that Syker wasn't nearly as genial as the story made him out to be.

But that didn't change the fact that he knew the Key wouldn't interfere on anyone's behalf during the eclipse. It had disappeared this time because it sensed a realistic challenge to the bearer, and it was not going to give the bearer any unfair advantage.

And Sam wasn't about to let that opportunity slip. Certainly not because of some hack wizard.

"Should we send Eric to investigate?" Derek asked him.

"No. Keep him where he is." He wasn’t about to be led into the forest chasing shadows, there was too much at stake.

***

Arthur heard the scream, and turned to try to discover it's direction. He may not have been the wizard that Pan was, but he had some ability. Of course, Pan had taught him most of those things, and as incredible as bearership of the Key had been, when he gave it up it was as though he forgot almost everything he had learned.

"About two hundred yards, that way," he pointed.

Catherine looked. "Pan?"

"I think so." The trees thinned in that direction, so it's likely that the mercenaries had found a suitable clearing from which to see the eclipse.

"What are we waiting for?" his wife asked.

They walked in the direction of the scream.

***

Pan finished tying a cloth around the mouth of the mercenary, still hanging upside down from the tree. John had bound his arms and legs separately using some thin rope from his pack. "Okay, let him down."

Pan shot him a surprised glance. "You do it."

John wasn't sure if he was up to it. He looked at the tree root that had come out of ground and held the mercenary. Theory, easy. Practice, hard.

He concentrated on the root and reached over to the tree. The bark was rough under his touch, jagged as he could feel it scraping at his skin. And something else...electricity? He couldn't be sure, but there was another sensation there, one he hadn't felt before. It started like a tingling in his fingertips, and quickly warmth was rushing down his palm into his arm. He could feel the tree, feel its life energy flowing into him, through him. It frightened him briefly, but he recovered.

In seconds the light started to change as it had one time before. He could see hints of filaments in the air, pathways of flowing electrons creating very slight magnetic fields all around them, through them. A little manipulation was all that was required to turn those seemingly useless pathways into conduits.

He found he could talk to the tree. On its own it did not have the energy to do what he was asking, he would have to provide it. This was the trick that Pan had taught him; there was no magic, only energy, and he was only a conduit for transferring it from one form to another. With a thought John was able to absorb the energy coming from the Sun and the ground beneath him, electrical energy, not just solar heating and radiation, and transferred it to the tree. The tree listened and waited, and when it had enough, it thanked John by doing what he had asked.

The mercenary was dropped to the floor of the forest with a grunt as the roots loosened their hold.

"Wow," was all John could say as he dropped his arm to his side.

"We have guests," Pan said. John turned to see him grinning.

A rustling several feet away betrayed the intruders. John prepared to reach for the tree, defensive, until he realized he recognized the newcomers. Jessica's parents.

"Good morning Arthur, Catherine," Pan greeted. They didn't appear to be in good spirits. John frankly couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t either.

"Hello Pan, John," Arthur said. "I'm glad you're here but in Gods name your timing is shite. You should have been here months ago if you knew this was coming."

"Or at least warned us," Catherine added.

"It wasn't to be helped I'm afraid," Pan told them. "It was well hidden from me until a week ago. If I had known sooner I would have acted to stop him before they could have gotten this far. As it is I don't yet know the full extent of their knowledge, or power for that matter. I'll say this though, they almost seem to know more about that damned crystal than I do."

"That's not very encouraging," Catherine said with a frown.

"Fear not my dear, Jessica's not in trouble quite yet."

"Do you at least know where they are?" Arthur asked.

Pan pointed in South. "About two hundred yards. This is one of four, but there's only one that's of any concern. The rest are just hired thugs. Well armed hired thugs, but hardly any challenge."

"Armed or not, it's that wild card I'm concerned about." Arthur grabbed his wife's hand and squeezed. "He knew enough to take Jessica."

"It's worse than that I'm afraid," John added. "He's been keeping her drugged." The Walkers threw him confused looks. "Every once in a while she wakes just enough to reach out, and somehow she finds me."

Arthur grinned at him weakly. "Made quite an impact on our daughter you have, my boy."

"I hope I can live up to that," John answered gravely.

Ten: Threshold

For the thirteenth time in its past history, the Key was at the cusp of seeing a new bearer. The change was imminent, it could see. Certainly time was an illusion, but that did not prevent the unlimited possibilities from being possible. What was impossible was to know at any given moment which future would happen. There were only probabilities.

In this reality, it was probable that the Key was about to change hands. There were simply too many players.

Slowly, time was reducing the options.

The Key did in fact tend to prefer seeing bearers of like temperament. It was just easier, but in truth it could not, and would not, choose one over the other. Creation or entropy, the Universe did not care. Only people cared about it one way or the other.

As long as there was balance, but even that didn't truly matter, since forces more powerful than the Key would ensure it.

The Key would respect the whims of the new bearer, whether that would be to build, or to destroy.

***

It was time to act. The moon had crossed the boundary of the solar corona, and it would be less than an hour until totality.

John hadn't noticed the light change yet, but it would.

They spread out and approached the clearing. As they got nearer, John could see Pan lean down and touch the ground. "He's protecting the other ones. This will be a little tougher."

They knew what to do. They spread out even more and surrounded the second mercenary, the one "hiding" in the tree. Pan turned to his son and nodded. He would try to block the enemy powers just long enough for John to take care of the human left separated from the others.

John hid behind a tree and leaned slowly out. There he was, about 40 yards away, focused on the rustling caused by Arthur and Catherine walking on nearly opposite sides of him. John couldn’t recognize the rifle from this distance, but he could easily see it had an obscenely large scope on it. Clearly he was expecting an ambush, but perhaps not from three directions.

He crouched down slowly and touched the ground. He didn't need to touch the tree holding the mercenary, he only had to talk to it through the ground. Again he felt that warmth, the growing tingling.

But this time he wasn't fooling around with binding the hired gun. He was going to ask the tree for more help, but it required more energy, and John could sense the strain on Pan as he not only tried to block the protection from the nearby wizard, but hide that block so he wasn’t aware it was happening.

It was clear to John that Pan had the harder of the two tasks, so he tried to work quickly, gathering energy from wherever he could and directing it at the tree holding the mercenary.

There was an understandable look of shock on the mercenary’s face when the tree suddenly loosened up and threw him through the air. Screaming, he flew in a long sloping arc towards John, his rifle dropped along the way. He landed feet from John, but it wasn't pleasant. John heard a number of bones break, like twigs being crushed underfoot. His scream was cut short as he passed out.

John cringed as he thought about it, but his sympathy quickly faded when he remembered who these people were. Besides, he planned on breaking a few more bones before the hour was out.

Through the brush he could see the clearing, but it was still too far to make out clearly the three bodies at the far end of it. He could sense Pan far off to his right, Arthur and Catherine to his left. For the moment he would let Pan lead; going up against a mercenary he had no problem with, but up against another wizard, he was pretty sure he would be far overmatched.

He approached the clearing.

***

Sam looked around the clearing. They were near now. "Come on out Pan, you wouldn't want me to hurt this pretty little thing, would you?" He had been caught a little off guard. He didn’t expect Pan to be able to block him like that while they took out his last sentry.