Sorcerer Rising (A Virgil McDane Novel) (36 page)

Dorne took it from me frowning. “I have never seen anything like this,” he said. “It is some type of crystal, but I do not recognize these runes. Perhaps some type of relic from Solomon’s time.”

I shook my head. “That’s not Hebrew, at least not any dialect I know.”

Diana rolled her eyes. “That is because it is
not magic.” She plucked the cylinder out of his hand. “It is a data rod.”

“What’s a data rod?”

Dorne shrugged and she ignored us both. “Arne, please process this.”

His eyes lit up, literally, upon seeing the object. “Where ever did you find it?”

“I made a wish to a genie,” I said. “Good to see you’ve been listening.”

“Fine,” he said. “You do not have to tell me.” He took the rod from Lambros and slid
it into a hole in the side of his head. “Allow me a moment. There is a great deal of information within the glass.” There was a whirring sound from his head.

Suddenly, his head snapped back, light pouring from his eyes. A whole world played out above the table, an illusion of light and motion.

“Conrad!” Lambros shouted. “Hold Arne still, he’s synthesizing the data. We have to record the hologram.” She sat down at the table, furiously scribbling things down.

Numbers and formula played out in the image, swirling in a maelstrom of information. The spun around, faster and fast
er until the symbols formed a cohesive image.

It was the ocean, the Arcus burning brightly in the blue sky. The image followed the band through cloud cover and storm, through all kinds of unidentifiable aerial wonders. Always the Arcus fell just over the horizon, the image speeding up until it had followed its course to the end.

It slammed to a halt, revolving around a small speck, in which the center lay the resting spot of the Arcus.

Rainbow’s end.

Finally, Arne spoke again. “Do not worry, Diana. This is a recording, the data is saved. This will take me some time to compute, but from a cursory glance it contains several calibrations for detecting, measuring, and analyzing the Arcus.”

“Do you recognize the island?”
she asked, ignoring Arne as she sketched the island in detail.

“Doesn’t look familiar,” I said.

“No,” Dorne said simply.

“But we have a heading,” I said. “You have everything you need?”

“Yes,” Arne replied. “This data fits perfectly with the readings I took in the Walter Cloud as well as those I took here in Africa. I must ask again, where did you find this information?”

“Numbers must be like opium to machines,” I laughed. “You sound like an addict.”

Lambros was still sketching the island. “And I’ll feed him whatever he needs to get us to this island.”

We made it out of the jungle two days later. It took us little time to make it out of Gwaumbala and into the coast. The steamship departed Africa as soon as everything was ready. That was fine by me. I retired to my cabin and caught up on my rest.

Or I tried to. I had other things I needed to do first.

I plucked another one of the pods from the trees branches and dropped it into a jar. Over my shoulder, Al was spraying smoke on the tree through a pump sprayer. I coughed, waving him away. We were both wearing breathing masks but the smoke was stronger.

I reached up with my tongs and plucked the last visible pod from the tree. The smoke had knocked out most of them so that all we had to do was sweep them up, but a few had hung on.

Ten large jars stood in a row, the bugs angrily buzzing behind the glass, gnashing and stinging. Thick, green venom had pooled in the bottom of the jar and small cracks had formed in the glass. I tightened my concentration and the cracks sealed themselves.

“Alright,” I said to Al, removing the gas mask from my face. “Let’s take a look at this.”

After two failed attempts at meditation, and one successful one, we were in a vault within my keep. Part of the function of my partition was to keep all my most important qualities protected. That included keeping whatever I brought into my head quarantined, lest it interfere with my mind, or even worse, escape the keep and into my subconscious.

The tree was in a pile of its own native soil within a pot that had been formed in the ground. This was my garden vault, I brought anything here that needed to be planted.

The tree quivered, its branches throbbing and twitching as the smoke began to lose its effect. The first thing I had tried was to communicate with it. I used every technique I knew; sight, sound, scent, touch, psionics; nothing got through. As far as I could tell, there was nothing to get through to.

I drew my scalpel from my leather apron and went to work.

Hours later, in my head anyway, I took a step back and cleaned my hands. “You owe me ten,” I said. “It’s a bug.”

He was messing with the bugs, cataloguing their differences. “The tree?”

“It’s not a tree,” I said. “Look,” I pointed into one of my incisions. “It has ten hearts, insectoid in design.” I pointed to the bark, where the dimples were. “I thought these were just texture, they’re spiracles. Sort of. I think it also doubles as an entryway for the drones.”

“Drones?” he asked.

“It’s the queen,” I said. “That’s why Sam was burying them. For whatever reason, he was planting the future queens so that they could grow into…this.” I pointed at the tree. “I found an egg chamber, filled with eggs. The tree is just a big queen, the drones its seeds. Probably hunt for it, feed it, defend it. Then when the hive gets too big or whatever, just like a real hive, it sends them out and they start a new one.”

“So what happened to the doctor?” Al asked.

“Hard to say,” I said, shuddering at the thought. “It could be this is how these things reproduce. Maybe they need a host to spread themselves.”

“That wouldn’t explain the changes,” Al said. “They weren’t eating him. They were living in him.”

“I know,” I said, trying not to see that. “I think it’s more likely that the whole thing grew from his sudden contact. Who knows how long it was to him.” I clenched my jaw. “If I ever see that lycanthrope again, he’ll pay.”

The keep shook, dust falling form the ceiling. I frowned. Someone was trying to wake me.

“You clean up,” I said. “How is the chamber holding up?”

“Better than ever,” Al replied. “You’re stronger by far.”

“The tree will keep for now. Keep the bugs jarred and try to keep them alive as long as possible. I don’t know what I’m going to do with them yet.”

He waved me a fake salute and I ignored him.

Then I closed my eyes and woke up.

The boat lurched, throwing me from the bunk. I ignored the dull pain in my side (just one more color in the tapestry of bruises running along my body) and shook my head, trying to clear it. Something was wrong. The deck was at a slant and we weren’t moving.

I climbed to my feet and made my way up the stairs. Up top, everything was chaos. The whole ship was listing to its side and men were hastily tying down anything that wasn’t already bolted to the deck. I looked for the storm, for whatever had thrown everything into chaos. I frowned. The sky was blue and the deck was dry.

And I did not hear the sea.

I went to the edge of the ship and looked out.

We were on land, and not like we had struck land. We had not crashed, we were not marooned, we were surrounded by waves of undulating stone, dotted with odd plants and other sea matter. The smell of salt and rank fish was thick in the air, but there was no sign of the ocean, sight nor sound.

James was speaking with the captain, a tall gangly African.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Captain says the first mate was at the helm when it happened.” James said, frowning out at the expanse of stone. “Wildest thing I’ve ever seen. Says one moment it was all calm ocean, the next we were on land.”

“We could have passed into a cloud,” Dorne said.

“Might be,” I said, “but I don’t see a gateway. If we drifted into a cloud then we’re deep in.”

James was sweating. “That’s bad,” he said. He was sweating, his hands shaking. “You mean we…we made this? L-like in Africa?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Don’t jump to any conclusions.”
             

Me, Dorne, and several of James’s men scaled a rope ladder down to the ground. James stayed on board. He wasn’t taking this well. He was good, better than most really, but the orchard had really taken the edge out of him. The idea of trekking around another unknown world, it was too much.

The ground was wet and slimy, mostly hard coral-like stone. It rose and fell in sharp and shallow undulations, like sand dunes. The ship was lodged deep in a wrinkle of stone. Dark, briny seawater filled the crevice but the ship was locked in tight.

“It looks like we just landed in the middle of it,” I said. “Could be a volcanic disruption, maybe a piece of the seafloor rose up and we
just got caught in the middle. We may have discovered a whole new island.”

Dorne nodded. “Could be,” he said. “But this isn’t stone.” He tapped the ground with his staff. “It’s s
omething else. Something I cannot get a feel for.”

We made our way north.

“How is the Sorcerer?” Dorne asked me as we walked.

“Fine,” I replied. “He doesn’t know how long he was with her. It really messed with his head.”

“He could become dangerous,” Dorne said.

Instinctively, I wanted to argue. Of course Dorne would think a Sorcerer would become dangerous, but that wasn’t what he was saying and I knew it. The stress of having such a powerful enchantment influence one’s mind, for any amount of time, was a heavy burden to bear. Throw in Fay magic and the duration of the charm and there was no telling what the inside of his head looked like.

I had tried looking Deeper into him, poking around in his head, but it had been like touching a live wire. A surge of raw, bleeding emotion mixed with all the elements of a mind trying to recover. The last thing he needed was outside influence, and honestly, I didn’t know if I could survive it.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” I said.

“Will you be willing to do what is necessary?” he asked.

I stopped. “I put Sam down and he was a friend. Simon’s a stranger.”

He dropped it.

We spent the next hour or so heading north, trying to get a lay of the land. It was an odd island. Strange, rubbery plant life sprouted everywhere, reaching out with fleshy branches that undulated in the salty air. We didn’t see any life, but dead fish and all kinds of other odd matter littered the ground.

An hour into the hike, one of James’s men shouted. We perched on the edge of a small canyon and watched a sea serpent, half the thickness of our ship and three times the length, crawl through the crevice. I summoned Al and he recorded the sight. They were rare, if not unheard of, but I didn’t recognize the particular species.

We walked for hours before we reached the edge. The ground abruptly sloped into the sea. No sand, no beach, no signs of any form of tide.

“My money’s still on volcano,” I said.

“The
earth doesn’t behave like that.” He tapped his staff softly against the ground, studying the shoreline. “And this still isn’t earth. Earth doesn’t feel like this.”

Back on the ship, we reported our findings.

Lambros sat back, letting out a deep breath. “Please explain to me why it is your professions command such high prices.”

I rolled my eyes, but I heard Dorne’s jaw pop.

“No one wanted to be out there in the dark,” I said. “There’s no way of knowing what’s living out there. We ran out of time.”

“
You’re right, we
are
running out of time!” she replied. “Arne, tell them.”

Arne spoke up. “The Arcus seems to have shifted once again. Though the destination has not ch
anged and I am able to track its trajectory, it has landed elsewhere. Furthermore, it is weakening. Its signatures is fading. At this rate, I fear that it will dissipate entirely within the month.”

“We are running out of time, gentlemen,” Lambros said. “And I am stuck on a boulder in the middle of the ocean!”

“So how do you propose we get off this thing?” I asked.

Dorne shrugged over his dinner, an oddly informal gesture from the ordinarily proper man. We were eating on the deck of the ship, looking out over the landscape. James had set his men to making sure spotlights illuminated the exterior. He wasn’t going to be surprised again on this trip. I had my feet kicked up on the rail, my ration sitting in my lap.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “There are a few possibilities, nothing makes sense. It’s not natural, but I can’t see anything about it magical. We could be in the Aether, but there’s no gateway and none of us have been affected.”

“Meanwhile,” I said, chewing on a strip of particularly tough jerky, “the Arcus is fading, and we are losing time.”

We sat in awkward silence, looking out over the bow of the ship while James’s men worked.