Final magic harbinger p.., p.8
Final Magic (Harbinger P.I. Book 11), page 8
“Come on,” I said, switching on the Maglite. “Let’s see where these stairs lead.”
As we descended, I realized that my head was clear again. Whatever spell the hooded man had used to give me the vision had dissipated.
“Alec, look at the walls,” Felicity whispered.
I trained the Maglite beam on the stone. It was carved with magical symbols and glyphs.
“I guess we’re in the right place.”
We continued our descent.
The steps terminated at a wooden door that had been carved with yet more magical symbols.
“There might have been protection spells on the stairs and on this door,” Felicity said. “They would have been destroyed by the flash of anti-magic.”
The door’s handle consisted of a heavy iron ring. I lifted it and turned it. A loud click sounded and the door swung inward.
Darkness shrouded the room beyond. I aimed the Maglite beam in there and saw stone walls that were slick with moisture. I could hear water dripping from the ceiling onto the stone floor.
We both stepped inside. The room was empty.
“I think this is the original cellar,” Felicity said. “The Spear Room is probably connected to this one, somehow. Do you see any glowing doors?”
“No, we’re going to have to find it ourselves.”
I played the beam over the walls, looking for a door. I found it on the far wall, an ornately-carved piece of wood that depicted a spear that radiated lightning bolts from its blade.
“I’m guessing that’s the Spear Room,” I said.
I went over to the door, Felicity close behind me, and touched it. It swung away, revealing a room that was lost to darkness. Even though I couldn’t see the walls, I got the feeling that the room was large.
As I stepped forward, a light illuminated the space.
The room was at least fifty feet across and shaped like a regular hexagon, its six walls carved with magic circles and glyphs, as well as Templar crosses.
In the center of the room stood a stone dais that I assumed was where the Archon Seal had been.
“Alec!” Felicity pointed at a far corner of the room.
The hooded man from my vision was there, sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall. The glow that illuminated the room was coming from his hand. His head was bowed, his face lost to the shadow beneath the hood.
The Spear—plain and simple-looking, just like the one in my vision—lay on the floor in front of him.
He raised his head slowly and scrutinized us with his dark eyes. His face held no emotion. As well as the blue spiral over his right eyebrow, a blue triangle adorned his left cheek.
He reached for the Spear and used it as an aid to help him to his feet.
“I’m Alec,” I said. “Alec Harbinger. This is Felicity Lake. You showed us the way in here.”
He walked toward me and reached for my face with his left hand. His palm touched my forehead and the room disappeared in a flash of white light.
When the light receded, the hexagonal Spear Room was gone.
The hooded man, Felicity, and I were now standing in the living room of my house.
Chapter 11
I stepped back in shock, thinking for a moment that I was having another vision. But this was no vision; we were really in my house.
The hooded man staggered backward and fell onto the sofa, the Spear clattering onto the floor. His head lolled back and his body went limp.
I rushed to him and touched my fingers to his wrist. His pulse felt weak but at least it was there.
“He’s still alive,” I told Felicity.
She breathed out a sigh of relief. “Alec, what happened? Why did he bring us back to your house? How does he know where you live?”
“I think he got the information from my mind when he touched my head. I don’t know why he brought us back here.”
“What are we going to do with him? We can’t just leave him here.”
“I’ll put him on the bed in the guest bedroom. Hopefully, he’ll come round soon and tell us who he is.”
“I think it’s obvious who he is. He’s the Guardian of the Spear.”
I looked at the unconscious man on the sofa. “He’s not what I expected.”
“Nor me, but he was in the room with the Spear and he has magic, which means he must have come through to this realm when the Archon Seal was broken.”
“You think he was inside the Seal with the Spear?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense.”
She was right about that. The hooded man had magic, which meant he couldn’t have been on this realm when the Melinda Codex went nuclear.
“What about the Spear?” I said, turning my attention to the plain weapon on the floor. “It doesn’t look magical.”
“Appearances an be deceiving.”
“Yeah. I’ll get this guy upstairs. You bring the Spear.” I got my arms beneath the hooded man and lifted him. He was heavier than I’d expected.
I managed to take him upstairs to the guest room and laid him gently on the bed. Felicity placed the Spear in the corner of the room, leaning it against the wall.
We left the room and closed the door.
“I don’t understand any of this,” Felicity said as we went back downstairs.
“Me either. You want something to eat?” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, and my stomach felt hollow.
We went into the kitchen and I took a frozen pizza out of the freezer.
Beyond the window, the sky was dark. I checked the clock on the wall. 3 a.m. We were back on US time, five hours behind France.
I took two beers out of the fridge and handed one to Felicity, clinking my bottle against hers before we drank. “Here’s to a job well done.”
“Cheers.” She took a swig from the battle. “The question is, what are we going to do with the Spear? We were going to hide it, but we can’t exactly do that now there’s a man that comes with it.”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. We need to know who that guy is.”
“Those marks on his face are Celtic.”
“A Druid, maybe?”
“It’s possible. Or, rather, impossible, since the Druids haven’t been around for over a thousand years. But if he’s been on another realm, he could be one of their order, I suppose.”
“You don’t sound too convinced.”
“I’m keeping an open mind.”
I put the pizza in the oven and leaned back against the counter, drinking my beer.
“Do you think that’s really the Spear of the New Dawn up there?” Felicity said. “It looks so ordinary. When I picked it up, I expected to feel something, but it just felt like ordinary wood and metal.”
“As you said, appearances can be deceiving.”
“Perhaps it somehow got caught by the flash of anti-magic and now it’s deactivated.”
“It’s a possibility, although the symbols we saw in that underground room were Templar, so the Spear was probably locked behind an Archon Seal.”
“Perhaps my theory was wrong, and items behind Archon Seals weren’t safe from the anti-magic after all.”
I shrugged. She could be right, although we’d seen firsthand how Archon Seals react when hit by anti-magic. The Seal goes down and the item inside falls through into this realm, unaffected. I was sure her original theory was solid.
The Spear probably looked and felt normal because that was the way it had been built; to look like any other weapon. Just because it was one of the most powerful magical items in existence didn’t mean it had to look ostentatious.
I didn’t mention that to Felicity. She seemed hopeful that the Spear had been deactivated and was now useless.
Maybe I agreed with her. If the weapon had been rendered powerless by the Melinda Configuration, then we didn’t have to worry about it falling into the wrong hands.
Jillian Duval could use it to decorate her living room, along with the Burning Glass, and there’d be nothing to worry about.
But if there was any chance at all that the Spear had retained its power, we had to decide what to do with it. And we had to choose wisely.
“You seem deep in thought,” Felicity said.
“I was just thinking that we should probably wait for the hooded man to wake up so he can tell us what’s going on. Until then, we’re just guessing.
“You’re assuming he’s going to talk to us. Why would he? If he’s the Spear’s guardian, he had no reason to trust us.”
“Yet he showed me the way into the Spear Room.”
She thought about that for a moment and then shrugged. “Well, I don’t know why he did that.”
“I didn’t feel any animosity from him. Did you?”
“No,” she admitted, “but that doesn’t mean he’s friendly. Remember Merlin.”
“How can I forget?”
“He seemed friendly at first. Then he showed his true colors.”
“Point taken.”
I took the pizza out of the oven and we took it into the living room. I turned on the TV at a low volume for some background noise and said, “Here’s my theory. The Spear was locked behind an Archon Seal all those years ago by the Templar and that guy volunteered to be sealed away with it, because he’s the guardian, or whatever. The blast of anti-magic took down the Seal and both the Spear and the guy fell into the room. He was stuck there, so he sent me a vision of the doorway. And we rescued him.”
“That theory has a number of flaws,” Felicity said picking up a slice of pizza. “First of all, why would he be stuck in the room when he obviously has magical powers, including a teleportation spell? Secondly, Fontenay Abbey is visited by tourists all the time, so why didn’t he just send the vision of the doorway to one of them, if he was so desperate to get out?”
I ate some pizza. I didn’t have the answers.
“How are you going to explain this to the Society?” Felicity asked. “One minute we were in France, and now we’re back here. They’re going to know something is up, and they’re going to suspect magic is involved.”
“We’ll use a cover story. I’ll tell them we took a commercial flight home.”
“And what happens when they find the BMW with all of our luggage sitting outside Fontenay Abbey, and then discover the hole in the wall that leads down to the Spear Room? Alec, they’re going to know what happened.”
“They’ll try to guess what happened but they won’t know for sure.”
“All I’m saying is that you can’t have that man and the Spear here when they come knocking on your door. Until we know if the Spear is deactivated or not, we have to assume it has all of its powers, and that means we have to make sure nobody gets their hands on it.”
“I agree. Our plan was always to hide it, and we should stick to that plan. Only now, we’re going to have to hide the hooded man as well.”
“That won’t be easy.”
“No, it won’t, but we can’t risk anyone getting hold of him or the Spear. As far as we know, he’s the only person on the planet with magic right now. If the Society or the Cabal learn of his existence, they’ll try to exploit his powers for their own ends.”
“Where can we hide him?”
“We’ll take him to Leon’s. At least he’ll be out of here. This is where the Society is going to come when they realize I’m not in France, although that could take them a while.”
Felicity nodded. “Okay, we’ll take him to Leon’s in the morning. I assume we’re letting him keep the Spear?”
“For now. I don’t have anywhere better to put it, and he is the Guardian, after all. At least we’ll know where it is, and that the Society or Cabal don’t have it.”
“We’ll need to keep a low profile. If Feldman, Hope, or the mystery man who is following you see us in Dearmont, the jig is up.”
I heard a noise at the top of the stairs and turned to see the hooded man standing there. I stood up and waved to him, making sure my moves were none threatening. “Hi, I’m Alec.”
You already told him that,” Felicity whispered. “In the Spear Room.”
“I know, but I don’t know what else to say. I’m not even sure he speaks English.”
The man came down the stairs and looked at us both from within the shadows of the hood. He reached up and pulled the hood back. His dark hair was long, and plaited in places. He didn’t have a beard, but black stubble covered his jawline and upper lip.
He spoke, but the words were like nothing I’d ever heard before.
“What language is that?” I asked Felicity.
“I don’t know. I’m hearing traces of Gaelic but most of it sounds Brythonic.”
“What does that mean?”
“The languages spoken by the ancient Celts of Britain.”
“Oh, okay.”
“I don’t recognize the words he’s using, though. I think he’s speaking a language even older than that.”
The man stopped speaking and looked at us expectantly.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t understand,” I told him.
He rubbed his chin and pointed at me. “Alec.”
I nodded. “Yes. I’m Alec.”
He looked at Felicity.
“Felicity,” she said.
“Fel-ic-ity.” He had trouble getting his mouth around the word.
Putting a hand on his chest, he said, “Feenan.”
“Feenan,” I repeated. I’d thought that had been some sort of password to open the hidden door at Fontenay Abbey, but it was obviously his name.
“Hello,” I said.
He frowned and said, “Hmmm” before sitting on the sofa.
“How are we going to communicate with him?” I asked Felicity.
“Well, he’s watching the telly. Isn’t that how mermaids, aliens, and ice-age men brought to our time learn to speak English in the movies?”
“This isn’t the movies.” I went over to Feenan and crouched in front of the sofa so I could look him in the eyes, which were currently fixed on the TV.
“How can we communicate with each other?” I gestured with my hands in an attempt to convey what I meant, but I didn’t think he’d gotten the message.
He placed a hand over my mouth. Then he placed his other hand over his own mouth and locked eyes with me.
We remained like that for a few seconds before he removed his hands.
“Now we can speak,” he said.
“Felicity and I were wondering how you came to be in that room and why you revealed the door to me.”
Felicity’s eyes widened and she took a step back. “Alec, how are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“You’re speaking to him in his own language.”
I was shocked. I’d assumed that whatever spell he’d cast had allowed him to speak English. Instead, it had allowed me to speak to him in Brythonic, or whatever Felicity had called it.”
Feenan gestured to Felicity to come closer. She did so and he repeated the hands-on-mouths spell.
“Now, we may all speak,” he said, smiling and nodding at us.
“We’re speaking your language right now?” Felicity asked him. “It sounds like English to me.”
“You will hear whatever your native tongue happens to be, but we are all speaking in the language of the trees, the birds, and the stones. Only those who have had their minds and mouths opened by the spell I just cast may understand it.”
“Are you a Druid?” she asked.
“No, I was on this Earth many years before they came along. The Druids are mere newcomers compared to the People of the Circle.”
“Is that your tribe?” I asked.
He considered that for a moment. “Yes, you could call us a tribe, although there are only four of us. We are the North, East, South, and West. Fire, air, earth, and water. The crystal, the spear, the key, and the tear.”
“I’ve never heard of such people in my study of history,” Felicity said.
“We are from what you would call pre-history. We have no written records—a practice the Druids adopted later—and the only traces of our existence are in the earthworks and standing stones we left behind.”
“So how did you get to be the Guardian of the Spear?” I asked.
“The People of the Circle are also the Guardians of Mankind. Our weapons were forged with an ancient magic that is more powerful than the magic that exists today. When they were forged, we swore to use them to protect the human race by any means possible. When calamity strikes, we are honor bound to use them to perform our duty.”
“Well, calamity has definitely struck,” I said.
“Indeed, it has. In a single moment, all magic has gone.”
“It wasn’t ideal,” I said, “but it defeated a great evil that threatened mankind.”
“Yes, it did.”
“You already know this?”
“Of course. I prophesied these events many, many years ago.”
“You wrote the prophecy that the Melinda Codex fulfilled?”
“I did not write it down, but I passed it down through word of mouth. Someone may have written it down later. And probably took credit for it, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“So you know what we’re dealing with.”
“Yes. A great sickness is about to ravage the land. And then the realms will be ripped open.”
“We were hoping that part might not happen.”
“Of course it will happen. I prophesied it. And I am never wrong.”
Chapter 12
An hour later, we were ready to leave. Feenan had watched TV while Felicity and I had taken turns to use the shower and freshen up. I’d changed my T-shirt and put a blue flannel over the top of it.
I picked up my phone to call Leon and saw that I had six missed calls from various numbers. The Society had obviously found the BMW in France.
I decided not to call Leon and to simply drive over there. The Society may not have magical surveillance at its disposable anymore, but wiretapping was still a thing.
“Feenan, we’re going to take you to a friend’s house,” I said. “It isn’t safe here.”
He stood up and nodded grimly. “Very well.”
