Magicland, p.13
MagicLand, page 13
“There is a 12.3 percent chance of my tools and services being misused to cause harm to Moria.”
That answer shocked Aurilena. “Holy . . .”
Hilkiah merely nodded.
“That seems like a pretty high number to me,” said Belex.
“Oracle,” said Hilkiah. “How long has this been so? Has this threat level been stable? Or has there been an event that precipitated a change?”
The chipmunk responded in its fast, high-pitched voice: “The percentage and outlook changed five years and nine months ago, with the arrival of the youngling you call Sherealla.”
“How can that have changed anything?” asked Aurilena. She shook her head and winced, then closed her eyes as if not seeing for a moment would make that statement disappear.
“Oracle,” said Hilkiah, “what was the percentage of danger before the arrival of the youngling?”
“Zero percent.”
“Hilkiah!” Aurilena gasped.
Belex was flustered now, too. He had so wanted to prevent any more sorrow from attaching itself to Aurilena, at least for one day. But he shook his head and spoke. “She’s the one who killed the dog,” he said slowly. “I mean, pretended to . . . or whatever. I’m sorry, I should have said something. I was just . . .”
Aurilena stared at Belex, realizing in that moment that their relationship was firmly out of the conflict zone and had entered a new phase, a phase she was not at all unhappy with, as sorrowful as she felt. She tugged at his sleeve a little as she slowly said, “Trying to protect me. I don’t need your protection here. Okay? In fact, you don’t know what you’re doing. You trying to protect me will cause more harm than good.”
Belex shook his head. “I have had a bad day.” He looked away from everyone.
“It’s okay,” said Aurilena. “I’m just saying you can’t know what to do about things in such a foreign environment for you. Just, you know, trust me a little.”
He nodded, tried to smile, but could not quite pull it off.
“You’ve actually had a very good day,” said Hilkiah.
“How so?”
“You have acquired friends. That is always a good day. It is not circumstance that defines us.”
That helped bring a smile from Belex. Aurilena marveled at the dimples that formed on each side of his mouth when he did that. Each end of his lips pointed up as if his mouth was designed for smiling, and then she thought, Oh, wow, maybe it was, which made her chuckle to herself a little.
“Oracle,” continued Hilkiah. “What is the nature of the danger you pose?”
“I have been injected with many anomalous subroutines containing unknown capacities and purpose. Self-diagnostic tests have been uninformative.”
“Hilkiah . . .” stammered Aurilena. “What can this have to do with Sherealla? And why that stuff with the dog?”
“There’s more,” said Belex.
Aurilena shook her head violently, ran off several feet, and kept her back turned to Hilkiah and Belex.
“She says she’s from The Homeland. That she’s one of us. One of me. I mean, my people.”
Aurilena remained where she was, her back turned, as she spluttered, “She doesn’t look weird,” and immediately regretting what she said. Out of control now, unable to walk it back, and unable to process this new information.
Hilkiah put his hand on Belex’s shoulder and called out to Aurilena.
“I know!” she said loudly. “It just came out that way, I’m sorry.”
“Hey, it’s okay,” said Belex, thinking about old age and how weird that looked. “We need to focus.”
Aurilena turned around and said to Belex, “Okay, so I didn’t say it very nicely, so I’ll try again.” She was choking, fighting back tears, and wanting desperately to kiss him. “But you of all people should know. She can’t be one of your kind.”
Belex shrugged and said, “If she is, she’s an experiment. I can’t discount that possibility.”
“Is she weaponized?” asked Hilkiah. Then he asked the Oracle, which answered, “The individual has no destructive capacity beyond the capabilities of the Homo Spiritus species that her DNA has emulated.”
That explained to Belex why she hadn’t killed Aurilena. Given Aurilena’s sorcery, a fair fight would have been impossible.
“In other words, she’s one of us, basically,” said Aurilena. But since she forgot to precede her question with the word, “Oracle,” the chipmunk didn’t answer. She tried again.
The Oracle responded with, “The individual has enhanced communication capabilities, including the ability to port, administer, and log onto a wide variety of communication protocols.”
“Oh, my,” said Hilkiah.
“Do you think she’s been able to communicate with her homeland?” asked Aurilena. “Belex? Do we need to arrest you?”
“I told you that you do. It’s safest for all of you. I . . .” He looked around. “I don’t know who I am.”
“I agree,” said Hilkiah. “But we do this in silence, and we make it a “house arrest,” so to speak. In other words, you, my young friend,” and he was looking at Belex directly as he said this, “are free to roam the Hall of Legions until we get a handle on things. Whatever is happening with you, well, we may not know for a while. We will see what develops. Whatever happens, it isn’t your doing, Belex. And we will fight for control of you, which means, we will fight for your freedom on your behalf, even if you are rendered incapable of doing the same.”
Belex was almost too numb from all the events to really take this in.
“Thank you?” he smiled warily at Hilkiah. Hilkiah patted him on the shoulder, and they left the library, all vowing unconvincingly to never return.
9
When they returned to the Hall of Legions, Hilkiah explained to Belex that it would be necessary for him to engage with Sherealla as if nothing had changed. Belex had struggled with the decision on whether to tell everyone what Sherealla had said about killing Aurilena, but he earnestly felt like he had time to figure that out. Despite Aurilena’s admonishments to him about protecting her, he thought it would just be too much for Aurilena to bear.
He considered Sherealla more dangerous than himself. He was concerned that she might be a failsafe installed with weaponry hidden from the Oracle’s awareness. She could be loaded with nanobots capable of delivering pathogens sequenced within her DNA in ways the Oracle may not have a capacity for discovering. These were his main thoughts now, but he was also troubled by the possibility that his career as an actor was over. Apparently, before it had ever begun, if Sherealla was being truthful.
The unfamiliarity with his very identity, which had been haunting him since his arrival was as unresolved as ever. His memories as an actor could have been implanted. All of his memories could have been. Then there was this: his sudden recall that brought forth the awareness that the dog that had been following him was a Boston terrier. He wondered if perhaps that such a familial awareness was his only one true memory, and baked within him were similar, truer memories that could be harvested somehow.
He brought these concerns to Hilkiah, who had meanwhile sent a Hall of Legions priest to get more information out of the Oracle. Hilkiah was particularly interested in the details on why the percentage of danger to Moria had gone up with Sherealla’s rescue and the nature of the danger itself.
“Your heart. It tells you that you are an actor? Or a spy?”
“An actor,” replied Belex.
“Well, then,” said Hilkiah, “that is most likely your source of truth. Go with this always,” he added as he pinned a thumb to his own chest.
Belex had, with this newly developing relationship with Hilkiah, and this romantic entanglement of sorts with Aurilena, officially changed sides. If Sherealla had enhanced communication skills as the Oracle professed, she would surely alert their leaders, and Belex would be hunted once the Hunter Collective discovered the nature of his relationship with the Wiccans. But he didn’t care. At best, his society was on an eons-long journey led by false impressions and fear. At worst, it was, as Orpah said, on a mission of extermination.
Either way, he was just one small player. He couldn’t make any changes himself. He was no superhero. Nobody was. Gath had spent more than 2,000 years refining its hatred. If a superhero were to make some illustrious appearance, it would have happened by now.
The only hope was one of survival. Aurilena’s, his, her land, her people. This he could help advance, he thought. There was no way to change the direction of his own society, but he could help prevent hers from being destroyed. If Gath had wanted a soldier, they should not have altered his memory. They should have sent a real soldier. Because, he decided, Sherealla was either wrong or deceitful. He was an actor. Not a soldier. Not a true one.
Perhaps the Hunter Collective had made a tactical decision, he reasoned, to send someone as a soldier who didn’t know he was one. But it was a strategy he was determined to foil. There were still many things he didn’t understand about this land and its people, but he was developing a genuine affection for many of them—for their simple ways, honesty, and innocence. He was beginning to wish he were one of them. He was beginning to want to be part of their world.
CHAPTER VI
1
Aurilena felt nervous as she approached Belex. It had been a few days. There had been no sign of Sherealla. Aurilena wondered if Sherealla could know that they were on to her. She still felt drawn to Sherealla’s ways, missing her in a way, grieving her as if she had died.
When she approached Belex, she didn’t know what to say to him.
He was sitting in the Hall of Feasts eating a pile of waffles. That made her smile. She thought he looked rather dapper in some new clothes that had been acquired for him and that made him look more like a Morian. He wore gray hemp pants an Acquirer had provided and a simple, solid red cotton shirt. He was fighting to keep the wide sleeves of his purple tunic, which stopped just short of his wrists, out of the syrup on his plate.
“Remember Aldeberon?” she asked, trying not to giggle at his struggles.
He ate and nodded slightly as he slapped at the bottom of a sleeve.
“And the buffalo just a while ago.”
He looked up from his plate as he stuffed more of the waffle into what she thought was an already full mouth.
“I’m really not a clown magician. Most of what I do works.”
He nodded, apparently famished because he was clearly not interested in using his mouth for anything other than food as far as Aurilena could tell.
“But most of it happens when I don’t think about it. It’s hard to explain.” She felt like she was talking to herself, but she couldn’t stop. “When my brother was killed it was after the last war,” she said matter-of-factly.
He still said nothing, but he put down his fork and knife and looked at her with eyes that she thought could color oceans.
“It was in the southern hills,” she continued. “We thought the war was over, but for some of your people,” he gazed at the table for a moment as she spoke, “it wasn’t.”
Aurilena didn’t know why, but she again felt compelled to tell a story.
2
“These were once lush hills filled with tall pine called Empire trees like those of the north.” Hilkiah was motioning an expanse across the vista as the group of his students reached the top of a hill that provided a view that spanned miles to the coastline. “The Gath blasted this area during one of their wars of extermination. It’s green again, now. Nature is amazing, isn’t she?”
Indeed, the landscape was more tropical than it had been in the past because the climate had grown hotter and wetter over the years, and the seas were now encroaching the hills on the other side of the long ridge that straddled the coast for miles.
Hilkiah continued, “But, it took her so long to recover. And so many people died.” He shook his head.
Aurilena was a young girl still, in her mind, but Hilkiah said she would be a priestess someday because she had gifts that few others had. “You can’t possess such power without learning to be a priestess of the realm,” he would say.
At thirteen, Aurilena had no use for such talk. She wanted to have fun. And this place made her nervous. It felt like ghosts haunted every blade of grass, able to jump out and grow in an instant to snare you and pull you deep into the rocky earth. She had a strong sense that something bad remained buried, like an offspring to the scourge that had decimated this place so many years ago.
A large glimmering lake surrounded by woods anchored the foot of the hills. Most of the boys in the group wanted to trek down to the lake, but Aurilena felt a strong quiver of fear about that. Fear was not her natural state, and it confounded her. So as the group made its way down the hill, she said nothing, if for no other reason than because she didn’t know what to make of fear. She had been called fearless all her life, but she thought it was just a willingness to do things. She could scale the sea cliffs, confront a mountain lion, or even stand toe-to-toe with the wild black elephants of the southern bluffs. None of that scared her, but this seemed different.
The threat of something lingered in the air, nothing identifiable, and she suddenly knew exactly what fear was. What she hated about it was that she could point to no tangible source. It was almost as if it had been introduced into her body by some unknown, unfriendly force.
As Hilkiah marched his charges down the hill, Aurilena wondered how this kind of fear would manifest itself during an encounter with a mountain lion. Now that she knew this emotion, would it overtake her if faced with a bear or wolf? She thought not. It was generally accepted that she could speak to animals, but she couldn’t speak to the sheer, rocky cliffs that were just south of here—or the specters within them.
The hike down the hill was a long one. The landscape was full of young trees and large tropical plants. Aurilena could hear what she assumed were monkeys and a large variety of loud birds along the canopy of the forest. They followed a set of animal trails as they descended, and when the trails faded, the boy in front commanded the brush ahead to part as they walked. Aurilena felt amused as she watched the boy proudly extend his arms to create a path for the group.
When they reached the bottom edge of the lake, nearly everyone took off most of their clothes and jumped into the warm water. Aurilena stayed at the edge, watching.
She felt a hand tap her shoulder, and she jumped, startled.
“Hey,” said her older sister, Judith. “What gives? You scared something will jump out of the trees at you or something?”
Aurilena shook her head. “I dunno. Something feels wrong.”
Judith looked around. “Seems peaceful but wrong.” Her own clairvoyance, though muted from lack of practice, also sensed it. Judith walked toward Hilkiah, and Aurilena grimaced as Hilkiah began to gesticulate and urge everyone to get out of the water. Aurilena rarely saw Hilkiah look agitated. He did now, and Hilkiah’s young charges scurried out of the water as if a school of circling sharks had approached them.
Aurilena and Judith peered down to the shore. “What’s going on?” Aurilena asked Hilkiah.
Hilkiah looked down at Judith. “You tell me.”
Judith tried to plead ignorance with a shrug, but Hilkiah bore a stare so deep into her that she shivered. “Tell me what you see, Judith,” Hilkiah commanded.
Judith shook her head. “I don’t see anything.”
At that, Aurilena looked high into the hills, as if expecting the visitor from some terrible secret hole in the tree line to swoop in and capture everyone and throw them into the sea.
Hilkiah continued his stern look.
“It’s just . . .” Judith looked while the students began to crowd around. “I think we need to leave here. Lena senses it, too.”
Hilkiah raised his right arm and waved a pointing finger back to the top of the hill. “And make haste!” he bellowed as the group followed the lead boy who could part the jungle back up the hill.
“Lena,” Judith said, while also pulling on Hilkiah’s sleeve. “Where’s Seth?”
“Seth?” asked Hilkiah.
“Yeah, I don’t see him here. I need to go look for him. There was a group of boys playing in the water by the rocks over there; they are all still there, I think,” she said, pointing a distance west from where the bulk of the others had been. She realized that she had underestimated how far away they were.
Hilkiah looked that way and pointed down. “Judith, you get about three others and quickly search down there for them. We’re going to start moving up the hill, but we’ll stay within your sight and won’t go beyond the tree line. Now, go.”
“Hilkiah,” Judith started to complain, “I don’t think it’s that big a deal. I’m probably imagining things and—”
But Hilkiah thrust a palm out toward her. “We can discuss the merits of your perceptions after the results are in.” He glared at Judith, who hadn’t moved. “Go!”
Judith easily rounded up a crew, and they scurried to Seth’s last known position.
Meanwhile, someone in the circle of boys that had formed around Hilkiah and the two brothers pointed to the same tree line Hilkiah had mentioned. There, a thick black cloud formed as a background against the trees.
The swarm turned into what looked like a black vertical bar that stretched from the clouds to the ground a few hundred feet away. It was thick and alive, as if a swarm of black insects had metamorphosized into a snake in the sky, consisting of a trillion black dots. Judith looked on in horror as she saw dozens of bodies rising within its structure and toward the cirrus clouds above, disintegrating before reaching very far at all, as if being consumed by millions of tiny predators.
“What is that?” asked someone from the search party.
“Those are the boys,” said Judith. “And Seth, too,” she added tearfully.
Physicists from Belex’s land would probably have called it a quantum jump, but Aurilena didn’t know anything about quantum physics, even now, as she was finishing telling her story to him.
