Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (25 page)

As he closed the portal behind him, back at the entrance, there was someone waiting for him. It was Caroline. She looked grave and somewhat angry.

‘Rutherford,’ she spat, ‘what have you been doing?’

‘Oh hi Caroline, how are you?’

‘What the hell have you been doing?’ She clearly wasn’t in the mood for small-talk.

Peter squared up to her. ‘If you want to know, ask Eddie.’ He turned to walk to the refectory for something to eat, but she put a hand on his shoulder. Her grip was a lot firmer than he would have expected.

‘I have talked to Eddie. He didn’t want to talk about it, other than to say you’re working for him on something related to what happened in Blackpool. He says he trusts you.’

That was quite gratifying to hear. He hadn’t thought people would stick up for him in any way, let alone say that they trusted him in the same breath.

‘If he trusts me,’ he said, ‘what’s your problem?’

She pursed her lips for a moment. ‘I don’t know whether I do. All I do know is that you’re doing something that could turn very dangerous. Single-handedly casting a spell to expand space? When we built the base in Scotland, we had six people working on it: four casting in tandem, and two checking. It’s a
dangerous
spell. Not only that, but you’ve put a lot of protection and stealth spells on
something
.’ She paused and looked at Peter, dead in the eye. As if to acknowledge what he was thinking, she continued, ‘we can detect that kind of magic, you know.’

‘And?’

‘
And
, if you’re up to something, I’m not the only person who is going to be concerned about it. I know better, but there are people who
could
get worried that you’ve become a double-agent.’

‘That’s up to them. Eddie and I know that I’m not.’ He continued in a slow whisper, not wanting anybody else to overhear them. ‘If you really must know, I’m working on a project to try and understand Werosaian magic. If I can understand it, I can possibly figure out how to block it better.’

Caroline’s face conveyed no emotion at all. After a moment, however, she nodded. ‘Alright. I believe you. Just be careful. You don’t need trouble.’

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I don’t. But don’t you worry. I am being careful.’

Caroline looked at him appraisingly for a few more seconds. He couldn’t work out whether she actually believed him or not; whether she was trying to convince herself he could be trusted.

She walked away briskly.

Whatever, thought Peter. He was hungry, so he went to the refectory and ate a large piece of cheese and onion pie.

After he had eaten, he went to his own room, rather than returning to Knifestone. He wanted to think more about how he could work out how to make the magic he had been reading about actually work. Not that he thought that magic would actually be any use, other than – with a bit of luck – giving him a glimpse of what Werosaian magic might be like.

But then he realized: he had made contact with a Werosaian, whom he might be able to persuade to show him a few things, in return for a degree of freedom.

If he did get in contact with Atlosreg, however, could he be sure he would cooperate? That was something he wasn’t at all certain he could be confident in, however much he wanted to be.

Even if Peter could persuade Atlosreg to teach him what he could, there wouldn’t be any way to openly discuss and share magical techniques at the home. So, if he was to try to persuade Atlosreg to do that, Peter would have to bring him out of the home first – and the only place they could go to would be Knifestone.

Taking Atlosreg to Knifestone wouldn’t be all that difficult, when Peter thought about it. The most difficult thing about it would most likely be taking Atlosreg away from the home. Apart from that, all he needed to do was prepare the Second Hovel to have a second, permanent, resident.

He looked up at the clock, which read half past seven, just starting to think about getting dark. He sighed, slightly disappointed: it was too late to start doing any work on the island to make the house better-suited to having another resident. He would just have to wait until morning.

When the morning came, Peter rose early and, before traveling to Knifestone, bought enough wood from a workshop on the mainland to build a partition within the Second Hovel, and other things such as metal pipes: he would have to implement some sort of plumbing system for the house, to facilitate various hygienic functions. It irritated him now that he hadn’t thought to include things like a shower and toilet in there when he built the place, but of course when he had built it in the first place, he hadn’t intended for anyone to live there permanently. He just hoped the Second Hovel would live up to the job.

The magic involved in altering the house was, thankfully, not quite as involved as it could have been, which meant the job only took three days. Nonetheless, they were still three days which Peter was glad were over, once they were.

He stayed there for a further three days, without returning to the Guild at all, to make sure it had everything it needed to comfortably support a permanent resident, and then, once he was satisfied it did, he decided that everything was ready.

Stopping back at the Guild only to shave and put on a fresh suit, Peter silently set out on his journey. This time, he was going to crossing a barrier for certain, and was putting himself at risk not only with the Guild, but potentially with the law and the civil authorities as well. His heart pounded against his ribs, which made him feel sick and lightheaded, as he jumped through the portal back to Knifestone, and then immediately again straight through to Oxford.

It was raining, which immediately made Peter feel not only lightheaded and shaky with nerves, but also wet and pissed off. He paused for a moment to compose himself, and then rounded the corner to go into the home.

This time, when he went in, he didn’t bother to introduce himself. Instead, he cast a cloaking spell on himself as he walked, so that as he walked through the door he faded out of view of anyone who might have seen him. He took a moment to crack through the network port into the computer they used, as he had before, but this time he removed all records of Mr Adam Richards from the system, and for good measure nudged the temperature of the computer just above the threshold at which a computer ceases to be comfortable, with the result that it simply turned itself off.

When the network connection died, he felt a momentary electric shock in the back of his skull, like the piezoelectric clicker from a stove lighter, which he knew would happen.

Confident now in his invisibility, Peter strolled to Atlosreg’s room, and cast a spell on him that put him into a deep sleep: the old man never saw or heard him coming. At this point, Peter was grateful that he had a strong back, because the only chance he stood of getting Atlosreg out of the room – let alone out of the building and back to Knifestone – was to pick him up and carry him.

He paused to look around the room. There were no personal effects in here that he could see, either on the tables or bed, or in any of the drawers. Not even a set of clothes: the staff here must keep clothes elsewhere, Peter thought. Or Atlosreg had tried to do stupid things like escape or hang himself – or someone else.

The old man himself was slumped back on his armchair, with his head rolled back and his arms straight out at his sides. Peter threw another invisibility spell at him and then picked him up in a fireman’s lift, taking care to not hit anything with either of their invisible bodies.

Holding Atlosreg steady with his left hand, Peter sidestepped out of the room and back toward the reception desk, where a number of the staff were huddled around the computer station, apparently trying to get it to turn back on. Oops, Peter thought, stifling a chuckle: he must have warmed it up a little too much. While they were there, he removed all memories of Atlosreg and himself from their minds, and left a trace of the spell there to filter through to the rest of them through contact with the building, so that within forty-eight hours none of them would have a clue who either of them were. After that time, the spell would evaporate.

This had been almost too easy. He strolled out of the door and around the corner and waved away the invisibility spells from both Atlosreg and himself as he walked through the portal, which he had left dormant to await them both.

A few steps later, there they were, back on Knifestone. Once again, Peter felt this operation had been almost too easy to believe he had executed it as fluidly as he had.

Peter carried Atlosreg in a fireman’s lift, still unconscious, into the house. Once inside, he put him down on a bed in one of the two small bedrooms he had prepared and retreated to the doorway and ended the spell that had been holding Atlosreg in a state of sleep.

Slowly, Atlosreg opened his eyes. ‘
Qoi en eibho…
’ he started. Peter didn’t know what it meant, but something about the rough way in which he enunciated the last word made him think it wasn’t exactly pleasant.

His heart was hammering in his chest again, thinking about what kind of trouble he was liable to get into if anyone found out about this. He hoped against hope that he had gone about this little operation in a way that couldn’t be detected easily, but he supposed that only time – and a lack of someone banging on the door – would tell whether or not that was the case.

Peter stood there for a long while, probably fifteen minutes, locked in some strange sort of staring contest with Atlosreg, but Atlosreg wouldn’t yield. It appeared that, for now at least, there was a sort of stalemate between them: Peter couldn’t get Atlosreg to say anything other than what sounded like profanities. Peter’s gaze was met with a calm look of passive non-cooperation, and eventually, he decided to give up, at least for the time being.

The following few days seemed equally futile to the first, and eventually Peter began to wonder if there had been any point in this exercise in the first place. It was infuriating: on some level Atlosreg must have known why Peter had brought him here. He was being purposefully uncooperative.

On the evening of the fifth day after Peter brought Atlosreg over to Knifestone, there was a bang on the door. It was raining quite heavily, and initially Peter wondered if it was possible that something heavy had been caught in the wind and blown into the door. But no: it happened again. He looked round through a window near the door, and saw a person standing there, wearing a long coat which looked like a cassock, and holding a wand.

Shit, he thought: they must have found him.

Gingerly, Peter opened the door to see Eddie standing there, with a look on his face like the wrath of God himself. The wand slashed through the air and Peter was thrown back against the wall. Peter scrambled for his own wand and checked the defences on the island; they should have prevented this from happening – but they weren’t there. Eddie made a jabbing motion with his wand and Peter was pinned against the wall, held there by some inexorable force.

‘Your defences are gone.’ Eddie said simply, in response to Peter checking them.

‘So I see,’ wheezed Peter defiantly.

‘Did you honestly think you’d get away with
stealing
somebody?’

It seemed childish to admit now, even to himself, that he had thought anything like that.

‘I don’t suppose I did,’ he said quietly, after a moment’s pause.

‘Was that why you wanted to take an island for yourself?’

‘No.’ It was the truth, though whether Eddie would believe him or not was another question. ‘I thought Atlosreg might be able to help me learn about Werosaian magic, but that was after spending quite a while trying to figure it out for myself.’

‘Why do you want to learn about Werosaian magic anyway?’ It seemed a perfectly reasonable question, though Peter wasn’t actually sure he had an answer ready, other than…

‘Know your enemy? I figured that if I knew about their magic, I could defend against it better.’

Eddie raised an eyebrow: he wasn’t satisfied with that. ‘I think there’s more to it than that,’ he said, matter-of-factly.

Peter relaxed into his bond against the wall. ‘Either way, I don’t believe I’m doing any harm here, with Atlosreg in this house. Up until a few minutes ago the place was well-protected, and that meant he was too. I brought him here because I thought he might know things that could help me – help
us
, even – and I figured it would be better for him being in a place where he was allowed to be who he was without anyone thinking his brain was addled. Or at least, in the way
they
think it is,’ he corrected himself.

‘Has he had anything to say about it, himself?’ Asked Eddie.

‘He has refused to speak at all. He just sits in his room, picking at food that I give him, but not saying anything or doing anything.’

‘So what makes you think he wants to be here?’

‘What makes
you
think he wanted to be in a home?’

Eddie snorted. ‘He wasn’t there by choice. He was there because it was the one place where he wouldn’t be in danger.’

Peter closed his eyes and groaned. What was the point?

Suddenly, the force which was holding him pinned to the wall gave way, and he slumped to the floor, landing awkwardly with his legs folded under him and his shoulders pushed against the wall in an uncomfortable position. He rolled onto his side and slowly stood up.