Chapter Eighteen
New
ChrisNuttall
Well-known member
Chapter Eighteen: Glasgow, Now
“This is …”
Norris shook his head in disbelief. He had never flown before and he’d never expected he’d ever have the chance to fly, and now he was riding through the sky in a carriage that could have come straight out of a Disney movie. He half-expected a fairy godmother to pop up and announce that yes, he would be going to the ball. He’d seen a lot of magic in the last few months and yet, there was something about the flying carriage that was difficult, if not impossible, for him to wrap his head around. It was just … too much.
He forced himself to stare through the window, even though cold logic told him the lack of any glass – or anything stronger – meant he should be buffeted by the slipstream, if he didn’t have his head torn off. Glasgow lay spread out below him, a drab grey city straddling a river that flowed down to the sea. It had once been a prime shipbuilding site, if he recalled correctly, but the great shipyards were now much reduced, leaving a city that was struggling – like so many others – to reinvent itself. Glasgow reminded him of York, and not in a good way. The core of the city was wealthy, warm and welcoming as long as the guest had money, but it was surrounded by poorer suburbs, populated by people who were one bad day away from finding themselves on the streets. It was hard to imagine the city could be regenerated, certainly without massive investment. And that was lacking in the modern age.
The carriage descended sharply, coming down to land near a massive crater. Norris sucked in his breath. He’d seen devastation on the telly – it had always struck him as massively unfair the media cared more about war in foreign lands than the deprived regions in the home country – but it was the first time he’d seen such destruction in person. The crater was huge, easily big enough to swallow St Champions … he wondered, suddenly, what had happened to the remnants of the school. Crushed under Gatehouse? Or lost somewhere in an interdimensional wasteland? It couldn’t happen to a nicer place.
He gritted his teeth as they landed, the door throwing itself open. The air stank of tainted magic, the stench billowing into his nostrils and poisoning his mind. It was hard, so hard, not to stumble back and run … but then, there was nowhere to go. The Merlin placed a hand on his shoulder, offering a little comfort, as Norris stumbled down to the ground. Up close, the crater looked more like a smoking volcano. The interior was steaming, so hazy that Norris only caught glimpses of what might be inside. They were so fearsome that he was glad he couldn’t see them clearly.
Sir Pellaeon stepped down beside him, his face grim. Norris glanced at the Knight, feeling a complicated mixture of emotions he didn’t want to look at too closely. Admiration and fear, awe and resentment … Norris wanted to become a Knight himself and yet he knew he could never make it, no matter how hard he worked. Sir Pellaeon was a true leader, a hero among men, a man so certain in himself he didn’t need to raise himself up by putting everyone else down. Norris had never believed in the alpha male concept, not least because those who did believe in it insisted he was a worthless gamma male, but just looking at Sir Pellaeon made him wonder if there really were such things as alpha males. The thought was oddly amusing. The bastards who had insisted they were alpha couldn’t hold a candle to Sir Pellaeon.
He forced himself to look at the Merlin. “What did they do?”
“Good question,” the Merlin said. “Shall we go find out?”
He turned and walked towards the edge of the housing estate. Norris followed, taking in the sheer devastation. It looked as if an entire block had been blown to rubble and the surrounding buildings scorched and pitted, even if they hadn’t been knocked down. A row of burnt-out wreckage lined the street … it took him a second to realise that the rubble had once been parked cars, ignited by the blast and left to burn themselves out. The police had set up barricades at the end of the street, blue lights flashing brightly as they blocked public access. Norris winced as he saw the cameras beyond, filming the scene. The media would get it wrong – as usual – and magicians would pay the price. All magicians.
“Say nothing,” the Merlin advised, as they neared the line. “Let us do the talking.”
Sir Pellaeon stepped forward and spoke to a police officer with a strong Scottish accent, who studied Norris thoughtfully before returning his attention to Sir Pellaeon. Norris wasn’t quite sure what to make of him – in his experience, the police were worse than useless – but he couldn’t help thinking the two men had quite a bit in common. Sir Pellaeon was a policeman, in a sense. The Knights were supposed to keep the peace …
“She’s being held in there,” the policeman said, finally. Norris guessed he was a high-ranking officer, although he had no idea how to read the badges on his uniform. “I have orders to keep her in custody until we know what happened.”
“Understood,” Sir Pellaeon said. “We have orders to provide assistance.”
Norris shivered as the wind shifted, blowing the stench of tainted magic over the lines. The world appeared to be shifting and changing, things flickering at the corner of his eye as they made their way to a sealed and heavily-guarded building. It felt almost fragile … the policeman on the door eyed the visitors, then stepped aside to allow them to enter. The air inside was warm, yet there was a cold edge that bothered him. The door led directly into what had once been a bedroom, he guessed. A young woman – her dark features suggested she was probably mixed-race – lay in the bed, staring at the television. The BBC announcer was babbling about strange lights being seen at Stonehenge and a drum beating remorselessly … it meant nothing to him.
Sir Pellaeon stepped up to the bed. “Young lady,” he said, calmly and firmly. “Janie. We need to discuss what happened. And why.”
The girl looked at them. Norris swallowed, hard. The girl was pretty, and exotic, and yet she was vulnerable in a way that made him feel guilty for looking at her. He could almost imagine her thoughts. Two weeks ago, two men in wizarding robes and a third wearing a suit of armour – although armour that looked weirdly liquid – would have been a joke. Now …
“You’re magic,” Janie said. She had a Scottish accent, although it was clearly tinged with something else. “Aren’t you?”
Norris nodded and looked for the remote, switching off the TV. He doubted either the Merlin or Sir Pellaeon would be able to figure out how to turn it off themselves, at least in a hurry. The girl sat upright, revealing that someone had dressed her in an ill-fitting nightgown that hid everything below her neck. Norris told himself he should be relieved. Janie had enough problems without him staring at her.
“Tell us what happened,” Sir Pellaeon said. “Please.”
“We found this ritual,” Janie said. Her eyes were wide with remembered horror. “If we took all the right steps, with the right spell components, we could get whatever we wanted. I wanted to speak to my mother, to ask her why she abandoned us … Jack wanted power.”
Norris felt himself stiffen. “Why …?”
Sir Pellaeon shot him a sharp look. Janie answered anyway.
“He was bullied at school, a loner and a loser … I was his only friend,” Janie said. “We were loners and losers together. And …”
Norris felt a hot flash of envy, mingled with bitter resentment. He hadn’t had any friends … and he’d been a loser. How much better would it have been, he asked himself, if he’d had a single friend? And a girl, at that! Perhaps he should have tried to befriend Janet … but then, that would have made her a target. The bitterness rose up within him once again … he hadn’t had any friends, because no one wanted to be close to him when the bullies came calling.
Janie kept talking, outlining the ritual. Norris felt his mood grow worse with every revelation. Janie had gotten naked for Jack … maybe it had been for a ritual, instead of the prelude to sex, but still … no one had ever done that for him. She’d been a good friend, a great friend … and look what had happened to her. Norris would have treated her better, he was sure, but instead …
“My mother told me to run,” Janie said. “And then Jack exploded with power and … it wasn’t him.”
“The ritual was booby-trapped,” Sir Pellaeon said, coldly. “Where did you find it?”
“The internet,” Janie said. “I … I thought we could make it work.”
“You used spells to break down the barrier between worlds, then asked for wishes that could be easily twisted or turned against you,” Sir Pellaeon said. “And you made your requests while in a frame of mind that could easily have led to complete disaster, even without malicious intent. Jack’s demand for power led to his entire soul being set on fire. He couldn’t control it and …”
Boom, Norris thought. It had been hard, almost impossible, to generate enough magic to kill Colin … and even then, he’d needed Norris2 to cast the fatal spell. If he’d tried that after the merge, with enough magic in the air to perform wonders and summon terrors, he’d have blown the entire school to hell. That could have happened to me.
“What you did was incredibly stupid,” Sir Pellaeon said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Janie said. “I didn’t know …”
“Playing with magic is like playing with fire,” Norris said. “Except … sometimes you’re striking that match in a room full of gas, unaware you’re about to cause an explosion until it is too late.”
Janie looked down. “What … what now?”
“Good question,” Sir Pellaeon said. He was holding a small talisman in his hand. Norris guessed it was a lie detector, of sorts. There were legal rules surrounding the use of spells that compelled someone to talk, from what he’d heard, but using a talisman to confirm someone wasn’t intentionally lying was a very different matter. “Right now, we will be holding you until a final decision is reached.”
He paused. “I’m not technically sure if you’re under arrest – negotiations about jurisdiction and suchlike are going poorly, and you might escape being charged on a technicality – but I should inform you that anything you say will be extracted from my memory and might wind up being used against you.”
Janie gave him a dirty look. “Shouldn’t you have mentioned that earlier?”
Sir Pellaeon ignored her. “Furthermore, I would prefer not to compel you to accompany us, or shrink you so you can be carried in my pocket, but I will do so if you attempt to escape,” he added. “It will unleash another set of legal headaches, so please cooperate.”
“I’ll try,” Janie said. “Do I get a lawyer?”
The Merlin leaned forward. “If you were one of our children, raised in a society that discussed the dangers of such rituals from the moment you started formal education, there would be no question of your guilt. You would be lucky if you were spared a life sentence. Given that you lacked that sort of knowledge, the precise degree of guilt you hold will be difficult to determine. Your cooperation will work in your favour.”
Janie sagged. “We didn’t know …”
She forced herself to look up. “Was it really my mother?”
Sir Pellaeon cleared his throat, loudly. The Merlin shot him a sharp glance.
“It has been hotly debated over the years,” the Merlin said. “Spells to summon and speak with the dead have not always worked, and the dead themselves often appear to be very different than how they were in life. Some speak the truth, some lie, some have no interest in the affairs of the living. We do not know if the summoned shades wait until the last summoning is completed, before they go on to their just reward, or if they are plucked from Heaven or Hell to answer the call. We do not know …”
He looked compassionate, but firm. “What is important to us isn’t always what’s important to the dead. Like I said, they can be very different. It might have been your mother or it might have been something else, something wearing her face.”
Janie blinked, hard. “Is there any way to bring her back to life?”
“It doesn’t work,” the Merlin said, flatly. “I understand the urge – really I do – but attempting to raise the dead never goes well. The rituals often fail, or lead to dangerous magical surges, or simply create the walking dead. There are only two documented cases of a successful attempt to raise the dead, at a huge price, and both ended in suicide. You can no more raise the dead than you can let yourself be a child again. Innocence, once lost, can never be regained.”
Norris swallowed. He’d never thought to raise his mother from the grave … whatever had happened to her body. If he had … what would happen? Would she tell him she’d always been proud of him, or that she’d always hated him, or … would she have forgotten him? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And his father … what had happened to the bastard? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that either.
“I’m sorry,” the Merlin said. “But magic can’t do everything.”
Sir Pellaeon held out a hand. Janie took it and let him help her out of bed. Her body was unmarked, but her soul … Norris realised, in a way, that she’d made the same mistake as himself. She’d thought magic would change her life for the better, little realising it could be just as dangerous as everything else, perhaps more so. He wondered, numbly, why the Merlin had even insisted on bringing him with them … had it been to tap his knowledge, or to let him see how badly things could go wrong? Or … who knew?
The police officer was standing outside the house. “Their homes have already been searched and computer equipment seized,” he said. “The families insist they knew nothing of the planned ritual, but we’re taking them into protective custody anyway. It is only a matter of time before someone works out what happened and broadcasts the news far and wide, provoking revenge attacks. Really, we should be taking her too.”
“You don’t have the ability to hold her,” Sir Pellaeon pointed out. “We do.”
Norris frowned as a thought struck him. He nudged the Merlin, who drew him back and cast a privacy ward.
“They took the computers,” he said. If Janie had been telling the truth about where they’d found the ritual, their computers would have copies. “If they have the ritual …”
The Merlin looked puzzled. Norris sighed. The Merlin hadn’t heard of a computer until six months ago, if Richard and Janet had told him about them, and he certainly hadn’t used one until the two worlds had merged. It was quite possible he didn’t understand the internet, or the cloud, or how a computer actually worked … Norris had seen filmmakers show bad guys shooting computer monitors, as if that were enough to erase their memory beyond hope of recovery. The Merlin knew even less than the filmmakers …
“The police could recover the data and use the ritual themselves,” Norris warned. The temptation to recall dead men and ask who killed them would be overwhelming, perhaps irresistible. “Or they could do something worse.”
“We’ll warn them,” the Merlin said. “But taking the data might prove impossible.”
He spoke briefly to Sir Pellaeon, who spoke briefly to the officer as Norris tried not to look at Janie. The girl looked shy, shy and afraid … he wanted to tell her it was going to be alright, but he knew better. He’d killed someone, and then spied on someone else, and … he shook his head as the Merlin and Sir Pellaeon led them back to the carriage. The crater didn’t look any better. It was still smouldering like a volcano that might be on the verge of erupting again.
“You’re to stay at Gatehouse,” Sir Pellaeon said, once the carriage was back in the air. “You are not to leave the school without special permission, which will not be forthcoming until we have a clear idea of just where the legal lines will be drawn, and you are to make yourself available to anyone who wishes to question you further. Beyond that, you are welcome to join the new classes and study magic properly.”
Janie shuddered. “And if I don’t want anything further to do with magic?”
“You can stay in your room, if you like,” Sir Pellaeon said. “That said, if you do attempt to leave we will be forced to resort to more stringent methods to keep you in place.”
Norris leaned forward. “I’ll take care of you,” he said, softly. “And I’ll show you around.”
“I …” Janie looked up. Her voice was strange, a mixture of pleading and bitterness that reminded Norris of himself. “How many people did I kill?”
“We don’t know,” Sir Pellaeon said. His tone was flat, too flat. “We may never know. But did you intend to kill them?”
Janie shook her head, bitterly.
“Good,” Sir Pellaeon told her. “Keep that in mind.”
“This is …”
Norris shook his head in disbelief. He had never flown before and he’d never expected he’d ever have the chance to fly, and now he was riding through the sky in a carriage that could have come straight out of a Disney movie. He half-expected a fairy godmother to pop up and announce that yes, he would be going to the ball. He’d seen a lot of magic in the last few months and yet, there was something about the flying carriage that was difficult, if not impossible, for him to wrap his head around. It was just … too much.
He forced himself to stare through the window, even though cold logic told him the lack of any glass – or anything stronger – meant he should be buffeted by the slipstream, if he didn’t have his head torn off. Glasgow lay spread out below him, a drab grey city straddling a river that flowed down to the sea. It had once been a prime shipbuilding site, if he recalled correctly, but the great shipyards were now much reduced, leaving a city that was struggling – like so many others – to reinvent itself. Glasgow reminded him of York, and not in a good way. The core of the city was wealthy, warm and welcoming as long as the guest had money, but it was surrounded by poorer suburbs, populated by people who were one bad day away from finding themselves on the streets. It was hard to imagine the city could be regenerated, certainly without massive investment. And that was lacking in the modern age.
The carriage descended sharply, coming down to land near a massive crater. Norris sucked in his breath. He’d seen devastation on the telly – it had always struck him as massively unfair the media cared more about war in foreign lands than the deprived regions in the home country – but it was the first time he’d seen such destruction in person. The crater was huge, easily big enough to swallow St Champions … he wondered, suddenly, what had happened to the remnants of the school. Crushed under Gatehouse? Or lost somewhere in an interdimensional wasteland? It couldn’t happen to a nicer place.
He gritted his teeth as they landed, the door throwing itself open. The air stank of tainted magic, the stench billowing into his nostrils and poisoning his mind. It was hard, so hard, not to stumble back and run … but then, there was nowhere to go. The Merlin placed a hand on his shoulder, offering a little comfort, as Norris stumbled down to the ground. Up close, the crater looked more like a smoking volcano. The interior was steaming, so hazy that Norris only caught glimpses of what might be inside. They were so fearsome that he was glad he couldn’t see them clearly.
Sir Pellaeon stepped down beside him, his face grim. Norris glanced at the Knight, feeling a complicated mixture of emotions he didn’t want to look at too closely. Admiration and fear, awe and resentment … Norris wanted to become a Knight himself and yet he knew he could never make it, no matter how hard he worked. Sir Pellaeon was a true leader, a hero among men, a man so certain in himself he didn’t need to raise himself up by putting everyone else down. Norris had never believed in the alpha male concept, not least because those who did believe in it insisted he was a worthless gamma male, but just looking at Sir Pellaeon made him wonder if there really were such things as alpha males. The thought was oddly amusing. The bastards who had insisted they were alpha couldn’t hold a candle to Sir Pellaeon.
He forced himself to look at the Merlin. “What did they do?”
“Good question,” the Merlin said. “Shall we go find out?”
He turned and walked towards the edge of the housing estate. Norris followed, taking in the sheer devastation. It looked as if an entire block had been blown to rubble and the surrounding buildings scorched and pitted, even if they hadn’t been knocked down. A row of burnt-out wreckage lined the street … it took him a second to realise that the rubble had once been parked cars, ignited by the blast and left to burn themselves out. The police had set up barricades at the end of the street, blue lights flashing brightly as they blocked public access. Norris winced as he saw the cameras beyond, filming the scene. The media would get it wrong – as usual – and magicians would pay the price. All magicians.
“Say nothing,” the Merlin advised, as they neared the line. “Let us do the talking.”
Sir Pellaeon stepped forward and spoke to a police officer with a strong Scottish accent, who studied Norris thoughtfully before returning his attention to Sir Pellaeon. Norris wasn’t quite sure what to make of him – in his experience, the police were worse than useless – but he couldn’t help thinking the two men had quite a bit in common. Sir Pellaeon was a policeman, in a sense. The Knights were supposed to keep the peace …
“She’s being held in there,” the policeman said, finally. Norris guessed he was a high-ranking officer, although he had no idea how to read the badges on his uniform. “I have orders to keep her in custody until we know what happened.”
“Understood,” Sir Pellaeon said. “We have orders to provide assistance.”
Norris shivered as the wind shifted, blowing the stench of tainted magic over the lines. The world appeared to be shifting and changing, things flickering at the corner of his eye as they made their way to a sealed and heavily-guarded building. It felt almost fragile … the policeman on the door eyed the visitors, then stepped aside to allow them to enter. The air inside was warm, yet there was a cold edge that bothered him. The door led directly into what had once been a bedroom, he guessed. A young woman – her dark features suggested she was probably mixed-race – lay in the bed, staring at the television. The BBC announcer was babbling about strange lights being seen at Stonehenge and a drum beating remorselessly … it meant nothing to him.
Sir Pellaeon stepped up to the bed. “Young lady,” he said, calmly and firmly. “Janie. We need to discuss what happened. And why.”
The girl looked at them. Norris swallowed, hard. The girl was pretty, and exotic, and yet she was vulnerable in a way that made him feel guilty for looking at her. He could almost imagine her thoughts. Two weeks ago, two men in wizarding robes and a third wearing a suit of armour – although armour that looked weirdly liquid – would have been a joke. Now …
“You’re magic,” Janie said. She had a Scottish accent, although it was clearly tinged with something else. “Aren’t you?”
Norris nodded and looked for the remote, switching off the TV. He doubted either the Merlin or Sir Pellaeon would be able to figure out how to turn it off themselves, at least in a hurry. The girl sat upright, revealing that someone had dressed her in an ill-fitting nightgown that hid everything below her neck. Norris told himself he should be relieved. Janie had enough problems without him staring at her.
“Tell us what happened,” Sir Pellaeon said. “Please.”
“We found this ritual,” Janie said. Her eyes were wide with remembered horror. “If we took all the right steps, with the right spell components, we could get whatever we wanted. I wanted to speak to my mother, to ask her why she abandoned us … Jack wanted power.”
Norris felt himself stiffen. “Why …?”
Sir Pellaeon shot him a sharp look. Janie answered anyway.
“He was bullied at school, a loner and a loser … I was his only friend,” Janie said. “We were loners and losers together. And …”
Norris felt a hot flash of envy, mingled with bitter resentment. He hadn’t had any friends … and he’d been a loser. How much better would it have been, he asked himself, if he’d had a single friend? And a girl, at that! Perhaps he should have tried to befriend Janet … but then, that would have made her a target. The bitterness rose up within him once again … he hadn’t had any friends, because no one wanted to be close to him when the bullies came calling.
Janie kept talking, outlining the ritual. Norris felt his mood grow worse with every revelation. Janie had gotten naked for Jack … maybe it had been for a ritual, instead of the prelude to sex, but still … no one had ever done that for him. She’d been a good friend, a great friend … and look what had happened to her. Norris would have treated her better, he was sure, but instead …
“My mother told me to run,” Janie said. “And then Jack exploded with power and … it wasn’t him.”
“The ritual was booby-trapped,” Sir Pellaeon said, coldly. “Where did you find it?”
“The internet,” Janie said. “I … I thought we could make it work.”
“You used spells to break down the barrier between worlds, then asked for wishes that could be easily twisted or turned against you,” Sir Pellaeon said. “And you made your requests while in a frame of mind that could easily have led to complete disaster, even without malicious intent. Jack’s demand for power led to his entire soul being set on fire. He couldn’t control it and …”
Boom, Norris thought. It had been hard, almost impossible, to generate enough magic to kill Colin … and even then, he’d needed Norris2 to cast the fatal spell. If he’d tried that after the merge, with enough magic in the air to perform wonders and summon terrors, he’d have blown the entire school to hell. That could have happened to me.
“What you did was incredibly stupid,” Sir Pellaeon said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Janie said. “I didn’t know …”
“Playing with magic is like playing with fire,” Norris said. “Except … sometimes you’re striking that match in a room full of gas, unaware you’re about to cause an explosion until it is too late.”
Janie looked down. “What … what now?”
“Good question,” Sir Pellaeon said. He was holding a small talisman in his hand. Norris guessed it was a lie detector, of sorts. There were legal rules surrounding the use of spells that compelled someone to talk, from what he’d heard, but using a talisman to confirm someone wasn’t intentionally lying was a very different matter. “Right now, we will be holding you until a final decision is reached.”
He paused. “I’m not technically sure if you’re under arrest – negotiations about jurisdiction and suchlike are going poorly, and you might escape being charged on a technicality – but I should inform you that anything you say will be extracted from my memory and might wind up being used against you.”
Janie gave him a dirty look. “Shouldn’t you have mentioned that earlier?”
Sir Pellaeon ignored her. “Furthermore, I would prefer not to compel you to accompany us, or shrink you so you can be carried in my pocket, but I will do so if you attempt to escape,” he added. “It will unleash another set of legal headaches, so please cooperate.”
“I’ll try,” Janie said. “Do I get a lawyer?”
The Merlin leaned forward. “If you were one of our children, raised in a society that discussed the dangers of such rituals from the moment you started formal education, there would be no question of your guilt. You would be lucky if you were spared a life sentence. Given that you lacked that sort of knowledge, the precise degree of guilt you hold will be difficult to determine. Your cooperation will work in your favour.”
Janie sagged. “We didn’t know …”
She forced herself to look up. “Was it really my mother?”
Sir Pellaeon cleared his throat, loudly. The Merlin shot him a sharp glance.
“It has been hotly debated over the years,” the Merlin said. “Spells to summon and speak with the dead have not always worked, and the dead themselves often appear to be very different than how they were in life. Some speak the truth, some lie, some have no interest in the affairs of the living. We do not know if the summoned shades wait until the last summoning is completed, before they go on to their just reward, or if they are plucked from Heaven or Hell to answer the call. We do not know …”
He looked compassionate, but firm. “What is important to us isn’t always what’s important to the dead. Like I said, they can be very different. It might have been your mother or it might have been something else, something wearing her face.”
Janie blinked, hard. “Is there any way to bring her back to life?”
“It doesn’t work,” the Merlin said, flatly. “I understand the urge – really I do – but attempting to raise the dead never goes well. The rituals often fail, or lead to dangerous magical surges, or simply create the walking dead. There are only two documented cases of a successful attempt to raise the dead, at a huge price, and both ended in suicide. You can no more raise the dead than you can let yourself be a child again. Innocence, once lost, can never be regained.”
Norris swallowed. He’d never thought to raise his mother from the grave … whatever had happened to her body. If he had … what would happen? Would she tell him she’d always been proud of him, or that she’d always hated him, or … would she have forgotten him? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know. And his father … what had happened to the bastard? He wasn’t sure he wanted to know that either.
“I’m sorry,” the Merlin said. “But magic can’t do everything.”
Sir Pellaeon held out a hand. Janie took it and let him help her out of bed. Her body was unmarked, but her soul … Norris realised, in a way, that she’d made the same mistake as himself. She’d thought magic would change her life for the better, little realising it could be just as dangerous as everything else, perhaps more so. He wondered, numbly, why the Merlin had even insisted on bringing him with them … had it been to tap his knowledge, or to let him see how badly things could go wrong? Or … who knew?
The police officer was standing outside the house. “Their homes have already been searched and computer equipment seized,” he said. “The families insist they knew nothing of the planned ritual, but we’re taking them into protective custody anyway. It is only a matter of time before someone works out what happened and broadcasts the news far and wide, provoking revenge attacks. Really, we should be taking her too.”
“You don’t have the ability to hold her,” Sir Pellaeon pointed out. “We do.”
Norris frowned as a thought struck him. He nudged the Merlin, who drew him back and cast a privacy ward.
“They took the computers,” he said. If Janie had been telling the truth about where they’d found the ritual, their computers would have copies. “If they have the ritual …”
The Merlin looked puzzled. Norris sighed. The Merlin hadn’t heard of a computer until six months ago, if Richard and Janet had told him about them, and he certainly hadn’t used one until the two worlds had merged. It was quite possible he didn’t understand the internet, or the cloud, or how a computer actually worked … Norris had seen filmmakers show bad guys shooting computer monitors, as if that were enough to erase their memory beyond hope of recovery. The Merlin knew even less than the filmmakers …
“The police could recover the data and use the ritual themselves,” Norris warned. The temptation to recall dead men and ask who killed them would be overwhelming, perhaps irresistible. “Or they could do something worse.”
“We’ll warn them,” the Merlin said. “But taking the data might prove impossible.”
He spoke briefly to Sir Pellaeon, who spoke briefly to the officer as Norris tried not to look at Janie. The girl looked shy, shy and afraid … he wanted to tell her it was going to be alright, but he knew better. He’d killed someone, and then spied on someone else, and … he shook his head as the Merlin and Sir Pellaeon led them back to the carriage. The crater didn’t look any better. It was still smouldering like a volcano that might be on the verge of erupting again.
“You’re to stay at Gatehouse,” Sir Pellaeon said, once the carriage was back in the air. “You are not to leave the school without special permission, which will not be forthcoming until we have a clear idea of just where the legal lines will be drawn, and you are to make yourself available to anyone who wishes to question you further. Beyond that, you are welcome to join the new classes and study magic properly.”
Janie shuddered. “And if I don’t want anything further to do with magic?”
“You can stay in your room, if you like,” Sir Pellaeon said. “That said, if you do attempt to leave we will be forced to resort to more stringent methods to keep you in place.”
Norris leaned forward. “I’ll take care of you,” he said, softly. “And I’ll show you around.”
“I …” Janie looked up. Her voice was strange, a mixture of pleading and bitterness that reminded Norris of himself. “How many people did I kill?”
“We don’t know,” Sir Pellaeon said. His tone was flat, too flat. “We may never know. But did you intend to kill them?”
Janie shook her head, bitterly.
“Good,” Sir Pellaeon told her. “Keep that in mind.”