Witch aeolus investigati.., p.1
Witch (Aeolus Investigations Book 11), page 1
Contents
Cover
Copyright
Prologue, Out of the Rift
Chapter 1, Another Working Vacation
Chapter 2, Castle Glowing Rock
Chapter 3, Magic Camp
Chapter 4, Lesson Two
Chapter 5, Cheeseburgers
Chapter 6, Kidnap
Chapter 7, Dungeons and Spiders
Chapter 8, Lord Gordian
Chapter 9, Interrogation
Chapter 10, Fermata
Chapter 11, The King’s Council
Chapter 12, Magic, Inc
Chapter 13, Wizard War
Chapter 14, A Morning in the Garden
Chapter 15, Adoption
Chapter 16, Judgment Day
Chapter 17, Kill Them All
Chapter 18, The Citadel
Chapter 19, The Battle for Fermata
Chapter 20, Storm Gate
Author’s Note
Books by Bob Colfax
Witch
Aeolus Investigations (Episode 11)
A Lexi Stevens Adventure
by
Robert E Colfax
Cover artist: Dave Kirk
Editing/Proofreading: Dee Bullock, Rosemary Wright
Publisher: Robert C Kirk
Thank you
Copyright © 2021 Robert C Kirk
All rights reserved.
The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher is an infringement of the copyright law.
Prologue
Out of the Rift
On Storm Gate, formerly one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, now a massive starship and the home of the office of the Marshal of the Accord, Allie Stevens jolted awake. It had been almost five years since her sister, Lexi, took her mother’s place as the Rift Guardian, leaving Allie in the position of Marshal. Even with the support of her friends and family, it wasn’t an easy job.
Allie had a better understanding of the job now than she had had that first time she had temporarily held the position. At sixteen, on what was supposed to be a vacation in Peru, Lexi had been put out of commission for a time, leaving Allie as Marshal for almost two months. At that time, not understanding why the position came to her rather than one of Lexi’s team members, her husband Ron, for instance, Urania had told her, “No one wants that job, honey. It goes to whomever can do it the best.” That had been seven years ago.
Sealing the Rift behind Lexi and Ron, locking them inside another universe from which there could be no escape, to eternally battle the alien Bogeymen, had been a gut-wrenching experience. That had been her first official action and the most difficult decision as Marshal she had had to make so far.
Allie sat up in her bed with a huge smile on her face. She shook her sleeping boyfriend, Caerus. He immediately sat up and asked, “What?”
“They did it, Caerus! Somehow, they did it. Lexi’s back! Well, not exactly back, I guess. She’s not on Storm Gate. I can’t actually tell where she is but she’s definitely no longer in the Rift, although she’s too far away for me to reach her telepathically.”
“Great.”
Allie continued, “Unless someone else can get a sense of where she is, we can’t go get her. She’ll have to find us.”
“No reason to hop out of bed, yet, then, is there? It’s still early, love. Let’s get back to sleep.”
Allie poked him with a finger. “I’m reminded about your comment about the crew wanting to sleep all of the time on a ship if it was named Hypnos.”
“Humph. That was a long time ago and I was kidding.” As he lay back on his pillow, he added, “I hope she didn’t have to rip the Rift open again to get out.”
Chapter 1
Another Working Vacation
Over the roar of the wind, Lexi, with an exhilarated smile on her face, had to yell in order for Ron to hear her say, “Told you we’d get out, sweetie. No one knows where we are. We don’t even know where we are. We’ve finally got a real vacation.”
He was surprised she hadn’t spoken to him telepathically. On the other hand, they hadn’t been able to use their voices the entire time they had spent trapped in the dark void so, he supposed, maybe there was a small thrill being able to do so again. “Right, kiddo,” he yelled back. “In that case, why are we in the middle of what looks like a battle, armed with primitive weapons, mounted on flying reptiles?” Being able to use a voice again is empowering.
Swinging his weapon experimentally, he added, “I think my sword is bronze.” He banked sharply, leaned from his saddle, and beheaded one of the enemy reptiles angling toward his wife as he spoke. He wasn’t really sure how he knew which side of this battle was the enemy. Really sharp bronze.
“We’ll have to figure that one out later. Think of it as a working vacation, love.” She glanced at her arm and then over at Ron. Both had been dosed with very advanced nano-cells that gave their bodies the appearance of liquid metal prior to entering the dark space. “Ron, we don’t look like quicksilver anymore — I think our nanotech is gone. I can’t sense the cells anymore. Be careful.”
He yelled back. “Noticed that.” For the last five years, both he and Lexi had not only looked like quicksilver, they were able to shoot Zapper beams from their hands — and extrude metal claws from the knuckles of their clenched fists. Cool stuff — a small thrill in an otherwise devastatingly horrible situation. That tech had been a gift from a version of Lexi from the distant future, intended to allow them to survive, and fight, in an airless void.
Along with giving them the new nano-cells, future-Lexi had warned them about the issue of creating a fairly massive time paradox if they managed to get out of the void with the cells still incorporated in their bodies. She warned them that the cells had been programmed with a failsafe to exit their bodies if they did. That other Lexi thought the exit process might kill them and, as far as Ron could tell, hadn’t really cared whether it did or not. The facts were, he and Lexi were still alive, they were no longer in the dark space, and the nano-cells were gone. He had no idea how they got out. He wondered if Lexi did.
Lexi called back, “It looks like our side is losing. Go after the little boy and get him out. I’m going for the girl.”
He had to guide his mount down a hundred feet to get to the boy, flying solo on one of the fliers. Good. At least both of us are fighting for the same side. Who are these people? Maneuvering his reptile close enough to grab the kid was almost impossible. Ron had a tense moment as he almost fell out of his saddle. The ground was a long way below him.
Lexi stood up on her saddle, balancing on the back of the fast-moving flier and shot three arrows into the heads of the three war-beasts angling toward the little girl, sending them, along with their riders, plummeting to the ground several hundred feet below. She grimly noted that no one wore anything remotely like a parachute. She was forced to drop to a squat as an arrow soared toward her chest. That wasn’t exactly easy to do on the back of the rapidly-moving flier, but she managed it. As she ducked, the arrow passed over her head. She thought it might have been fired by a warrior on the side they were assisting. For reasons she wasn’t fully conscious of, she knew they were fighting for the “right” side — the side they would have chosen if they knew what the hell was happening.
Shortly after joining and taking lead of their investigative team thirty years ago, Lexi had been forced into a Helgan Honor Challenge — a fight to the death with swords. Since becoming Marshal, she put a stop to that nonsense. If the Helgans wanted to hack each other to pieces, that was fine, but they were no longer permitted to challenge non-Helgans.
It had been just luck, or hell, maybe it had been Violet — she tended to credit her alien mother with a good deal of the unlikely things she had learned to do — that she had already been an expert with a sword. So, she had survived the Helgan encounter and, afterward, insisted Ron and Geena become experts with edged weapons. It had been Geena, Ron’s mother and now also her mother-in-law, who had been responsible for their learning archery skills, fulfilling a childhood fantasy she had had of being an archer. I never really expected that particular training to come in handy. We just took it up to make Geena happy.
The girl looked young. Somewhere between four and six, Lexi estimated. She was hanging on to the flying reptile’s saddle for dear life, her hands tightly woven in the bindings — scared, but coping. Probably not her first time riding on the back of one of these creatures.
The reptiles were about the size of small ponies. They seemed remarkably sturdy for flying creatures with large bat-like wingspans. They looked somewhat like pterodactyls, or illustrations of dragons. Their hides were mottled shades of green although their faces were red or, in some cases, bright orange. Interesting, I’ve seen these creatures before — when Allie and I were in Peru and my nano-cells went wacky, locking me inside my own mind. The rider I visualized then was wearing armor like this, too.
She surged upward from her squat, springing from her mount in favor of the one bearing the child. The child’s reptile was no more than fifteen feet in front of Lexi’s and thirty feet lower, moving at the same speed as hers. An easy jump. As she landed behind the very nervous child, the reptile grunted and glanced over its shoulder at her with a “you’ve got to be kidding” expression on its leathery face
As the beast faltered, Lexi grabbed hold of the suddenly screaming child and said, keeping her voice gentle and — despite the situation — calming, “I’ve got you, honey. Let’s have some fun.” That’s convenient. I’m assimilating new languages instantly now. Leaving the arrow in place, she mentally sent, Take us forty feet to the right. Once we jump, glide to the ground. Good luck, my friend. It had the intelligence of a dog and was in pain. Nevertheless, it followed her instructions. She supposed it had the intelligence of a smart dog.
It was next to impossible sending the telepathic instructions, even that short distance. Really, she was only able to send mental images of what she wanted rather than verbalization. To the girl, as she stood with her arm around the child in preparation for another jump, she said, “She’s hurt, so we’re changing fliers. I have you and won’t drop you. Trust me. Ready? Here we go.”
Despite Lexi’s assurances, the girl screamed as the two of them flew through the air. As they landed with a thump on the back of a riderless flier that was keeping pace with the others, Lexi said, “See, I didn’t drop you. Try to calm down. I’m protecting you. I won’t let you be hurt.” She noticed she did get a dirty look from this beast too.
The girl nodded. “That was scary.” She paused and glanced over her shoulder into Lexi’s face. “Maybe kind of fun too. Can we do it again?”
Lexi smiled. “Maybe. What’s your name?”
“Fermata.”
“Fermata,” Lexi repeated. “I like your name. My name’s Lexi.”
“Ooooh. That’s a pretty name!”
The aerial dogfight continued for another fifteen minutes. By the time the enemy broke off and retreated, they were down to five manned fliers. The side Lexi and Ron had joined still had sixteen men and nineteen fliers in the air. Lexi saw no women flying for either side.
There had been some confusion and consternation on her side when she and Ron had appeared out of nowhere on the backs of two riderless fliers and almost immediately went after the children. True, they weren’t clad in the uniforms of the enemy, but neither were they clad in the uniforms of any other kingdom the airmen on her side knew of. Lexi was wearing the sexy black leather outfit she and Geena designed decades ago on a job that took them to Naragene Nine. Ron had on a matching male version of the same outfit. In and of itself, that was interesting — they had never made one for him.
Even riding with the children, the two continued pressing the attack against the enemy. The other airmen noted that the large man was deadly with his sword and that the woman’s technique was, well, different. Even when the flight group discussed it over beer in a pub that evening, that was the best term they could come up with. Different.
Many of the men saw her leap from her mount, leaving the princess to again hang on by herself. They also observed the woman spin in the air, firing the last five arrows in her quiver through the necks of five of the enemy warriors while dropping twenty-some feet onto the back of a flier ridden by a sixth enemy. That man had the misfortune to be flying almost directly beneath her. She reloaded her quiver from his an instant before she knocked him out and lashed him to his mount with the reins.
Immediately, her newly acquired mount began gaining altitude and within moments she was above the battle. Another jump and she was again on the flier with the princess and four more dead men wearing the colors of the enemy were plunging to the ground below. That was what broke them. They had started with forty men, twice the number Lexi’s side had tasked for escorting the children.
Ron guided his flier closer to Lexi’s. The wing leader of the squadron drew his mount in close to the two of them. After executing what was clearly a salute, the man called, “Will you follow us back to our base?” Clearly he couldn’t quite believe that this wasn’t a second attempt to kidnap the two children. If he had to lead his men against these two, he didn’t expect a joyous outcome. And they already had the children.
Ron yelled back, “Lead the way.”
Lexi yelled, “I’ll probably change fliers another time or two. Fermata seems to be a thrill seeker.” They did change fliers twice more with Fermata squealing with excitement and delight each time.
The boy Ron was holding onto watched Lexi’s antics with his eyes wide. Ron said, “Sorry, son, I weigh too much to jump onto another flier. If you want to do that, you’ll have to wait until the lady can take you flying.”
The boy shook his head. “That’s OK. I think I’d rather just watch. She’s really good, though, isn’t she?”
Chapter 2
Castle Glowing Rock
It was somewhat more than another hour’s flight to get to their base. They flew over fields and forests, not seeing any signs of human habitation more obtrusive than something that was clearly a dirt road, occasional small collections of rustic-looking buildings and a stone bridge over a small stream. The fliers followed the course of the stream as it got larger and in time came to a castle that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a plain in Europe as recently as six or seven hundred years ago.
They descended to a large field enclosed by the rough-hewn, stone walls of the castle — walls designed for defense, although against men mounted on these flying reptiles, their utility would be next to nil. Stable hands rushed out to handle the mounts. There were quite a few of the reptiles, twice the number they had left with, as Lexi brought all of the riderless ones able to make the flight along with them.
The animals listened to her and followed her instructions, as long as she kept them clear and simple. She wasn’t able to verbalize her thoughts to them at all through the tremendous static inhibiting her telepathy but they responded to the mental pictures she sent. She was still unable to reach Ron telepathically at all.
She even managed to get the girl’s original, injured mount airborne. With one of the riderless fliers supporting it from below and a second clamped on to the straps of its harness from above, they more or less carried the injured beast. That was a spectacle unlike any the other riders had seen before. Different. There was a lot of chatter about that and the battle itself among the airmen as they set down in the courtyard.
Once they were all grounded and the men dismounted, the leader introduced himself as Wing Captain Armain. Lexi and Ron provided their names. Armain said, “I want to hear how you joined our fight but so will my king. That conversation may as well wait until we meet him. Please come with me.”
Leaving his squad to deal with the fliers and to care for two of his men who had taken arrows pending the arrival of healers, he tried to rush Lexi and Ron to the King’s offices inside the castle. Lexi held them up for a few minutes while she checked on the injured. One had an arrow through an upper arm and the other an arrow protruding from his thigh. Neither wound was serious. Whatever they had for healers here should be able to cope. They picked up a number of additional guardsmen as escorts along the way. Ron still carried the boy, who said his name was Carlin. Lexi again held Fermata.
They set the kids down once they entered the office. The children raced to the two adults at the far end of the room. After listening intently for a few moments to the children, the man gestured to the woman to talk to them separately so he could talk to his military man. Lexi and Ron were invited to rest on a sofa near the doorway while Wing Captain Armain strode forward to brief his king. Large guards flanked them on either side. Lexi mentally shrugged. At least they were all being polite about it.
