Stone Cold Mage 2: Of Witches and Gargoyles Read online

  “Steph, what’s up?” I asked.

  Instead of responding, she summoned a wraith knight. The knight appeared, sword at the ready, and turned toward the man. Sword vanishing, the knight took a step toward him, froze, and then vanished.

  “That was him, wasn’t it?” the man asked.

  “Not… you?” Steph asked.

  “My brother,” the man replied.

  Now I was starting to catch on. One of the men who had sacrificed himself so that Steph might live on, so that she might help me, was the brother of this witch-knight. And more of the story came together in my mind, including the fact that, if there was a group that helped her before, it stood to reason that there was at least one group still out there, maybe more, who were working on our side.

  “How can we help you?” I said, figuring the passive tactic was the way to go here. My hands were up, but I slowly put them down now to show I wasn’t being aggressive.

  “Much of the day, a magic block kept me from reaching this place, even after my patron was made aware of your discovery.”

  He took a step forward, hand held out. My instinct was to cut off his fucking head, but when I held out my hand and started to consider a spell, I noticed that he held a simple card in his hand. Not so simple, actually, I noticed as I made it larger in my vision—whoa, that was badass, like zooming in on a computer screen—and saw the red swirly lines, the address and time listed.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “An invitation, nothing more.” The man stopped, and I stepped forward to accept. No attack came, but when I looked back at the others, it was clear they had been expecting something more aggressive as well.

  “We’ll be in touch,” the man said.

  “That can’t be all.”

  He gave me friendly smile and nodded. “For now.”

  “And your name is?”

  “Galahad,” he replied, then vanished into a puff of smoke that was swept away as fast as he had arrived.

  “As in…?” I frowned, confused.

  “One of the Knights of the Round Table,” Steph said, nodding.

  “Like King Arthur stuff?” I chuckled. “Come on, when’s he going to step out? Maybe I can get a knighthood from this all, huh?”

  Steph shook her head, solemnly. “We don’t talk about him.” The ladies and I shared a look of concern.

  “Aerona,” I said, breaking the silence, “didn’t you say you have a lead, via Avalon? Before you returned to stone this morning, I mean.”

  Aerona nodded, eyes on the sky. “The world has changed. But yes, I have an idea or two we can start with.”

  Glad to have them back, even if my head was spinning with the new insight into the magical aspects of our world, I led the way back downstairs. At least we had the gargoyles awake again, and a plan for next steps.

  And, apparently, an invitation to a fancy D.C. style dinner from Sir Galahad himself.

  4

  “If that was Galahad,” I started as we entered the room, unable to leave it alone, “doesn’t that mean… Regarding his brother—”

  “That one of my wraith knights was one of the Knights of the Round Table?” Steph nodded. “Or more than one. Yes. All of them, perhaps.”

  “Damn.” I looked at the others, wondering what they thought about this.

  “Considering what we are,” Aerona waved at herself and her fellow gargoyles, “and the fact that you opened the magic Avalon after all this time, that doesn’t seem like the biggest of revelations.”

  I frowned, then laughed. “You’re right. Still, it’s kinda badass.”

  “We’re not actually going to the event, right?” Ebrill asked.

  “What? Why not?”

  “I mean, because it’s clearly a trap.”

  The others nodded, although Steph held up a hand, then cleared her throat.

  “You don’t think it is?” Ebrill asked.

  “It could be, for sure,” Steph replied. “But… it’s tough. My understanding is there’s a connection between the Round Table and the Order of the Mystic Moon. Galahad being the one to deliver the message makes me wonder if maybe it’s legit.”

  “And we can trust this Order?” I asked. “I mean, I was told they were set up to protect the Liahona, but it was Fatiha who told me. She hasn’t exactly proved trustworthy.”

  “The Order is legit,” Steph replied. “That much, I do know.”

  “Still, proceed with caution.” Ebrill took my hand. “Even if an organization is on the right side, that doesn’t mean all the people within it are.”

  Steph nodded, no arguments there.

  “How can you be so sure about them?” Kordelia asked Steph. “I thought you couldn’t remember much from that time.”

  “It’s been coming back,” I explained for her.

  “And if there’s trouble, the Order would come to our aid?”

  “I think they serve the purpose of trying to keep everything in order, within margins.” Steph went to the window, moving the curtains so we couldn’t be seen from outside. “Imagine a fire department that only acted if a fire was threatening to completely destroy a house.”

  “A fire…?” Ebrill asked.

  “Just—”

  “We get it,” Kordelia cut in, nudging Ebrill. “Or the point, anyway. Right?”

  “Sure.” Ebrill eyed the other, and I wondered which of them would win in a fight—they were both quite intimidating, although Kordelia was the largest of the three.

  “It’s all pretty stupid,” I said. “If there’s a fire, it’ll burn down the house if not checked.”

  “If not checked by any other influence, sure,” Steph countered. “But that’s not likely in our situation, is it?”

  “So, we think of them as a safety net,” I replied, eyes moving to the card Galahad had given me. Eyes going wide, I laughed. “This is a ticket for a dinner party. At the French Embassy.”

  “What?” Steph leaned over, looking at it. “How the fuck does that make sense?”

  “Whoever we’re supposed to meet with will be there,” Ebrill posited.

  “It’s an odd place to meet,” I said. “But… we’re in D.C., after all.”

  “When is it?” Ebrill asked.

  “In two days,” I read from the invitation in red cursive ink over black.

  Steph grinned. “I’m kind of excited. To go, I mean.”

  “We’re going? To be clear… Even if it’s a trap?”

  “Are we?” Ebrill spread her wings, as if making a point. “Doesn’t seem like the sort of party ‘we’ can all attend.”

  “The rest of us will find areas to be ready—stay perched and keep a lookout,” Kordelia offered. “If there’s a problem, we’ll be there.”

  “Guess that means we’re going,” Aerona said. “But only Steph and Jericho get to have fun.”

  “If we get to crack skulls, I’d say we’ll all be having fun.” Kordelia grinned wide, showing off her gargoyle teeth.

  “And on the note of having fun… Aerona, you’re up,” I said, ready to move on to the next topic. “I think it’s time we visit Avalon. We have time to decide on the rest of that stuff.”

  “Ah, for finding the others, yes.” Aerona eyed me with curiosity—a good reminder that we hardly knew anything of each other yet. She crossed over to Ebrill and Kordelia, taking each of their hands in hers and starting a chant.

  Both Ebrill and Kordelia looked at her anxiously and with more than a little pity. When she realized they weren’t chanting with her, she frowned, glaring at me first, then back to them.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s not going to work that way,” Ebrill explained. “Avalon has changed. It was gone, but he,” she nodded my way, “brought it back.”

  “Why should that change how it’s accessed?” I asked.

  “It’s… complicated,” Aerona said, eyes narrowing as they roamed over me. “Who are you?”

  “I explained,” Ebrill hissed. “You know who he is.”r />
  “Yes, I understand. He is the man who came back to our time, and he was a lot of help back then. He has powers that allow him to alter his surroundings, in a sense—like an alchemy of life, but not exactly. I remember him from before, but… what I don’t understand is why one man should hold so much power.”

  “It’s not like I’m that powerful,” I countered, and everyone in the room scoffed.

  “Jericho…” Ebrill stepped over to me, taking my hand and expanding her wings slightly so that I wasn’t looking past her at the others, only at her. “You silly man. Do you realize what you’re capable of? If you would allow yourself, transmutation alone is… incredibly powerful. But more than that, you restored Avalon. You have the ability to reach into its vast stores of power. Of creating access points, of deciding who comes and goes. At least, for now.”

  Not sure how to process all of that, I said, “For… now?”

  “What she’s saying is,” Aerona cut in, “nothing lasts forever. It’s what I’m worried about, regarding my lead.” We turned to her, and she continued, “The longer we connect with Avalon, the more likely those others are to find the connection. It’s like, imagine you open a door and there’s light. The only way others will see the light is if they’re in the right place to do so, but stumble around blindly long enough, it’s likely they’ll find it.”

  “You’re saying I create some sort of magical footprint,” I replied, trying to understand. “One they could, in theory, latch onto and use to access the powers of Avalon as well?”

  “Even return to Avalon, yes,” Ebrill chimed in. “When Avalon was cut off from this world, the other side was expelled. It was… a major blow.”

  “But the simple fact is,” Kordelia added, “that without access to Avalon, we can’t hope to find the rest of our team. We can’t hope to stand against the remaining nine, including Thiten. She’ll come for us, for you, there’s no doubt about it. You have to be ready.”

  “And ready means…?”

  “Have a team. Access Avalon only when absolutely necessary. In and out. Even accessing its magical boosts—keep it to a minimum.”

  “Agreed,” I said, and then pulled the Liahona from my jacket pocket. Sometimes I felt like a doofus wearing my jacket around in the summer heat, but for the convenience of having a storage place for this magical item, it was worth it. At one point I had considered replacing the red jacket with something more subtle so as to not stand out, but then I remembered the company I kept. No point, really.

  Closing my eyes, I focused on the magic of the Liahona, on creating a portal to Avalon. When I opened my eyes again, a shimmering purple and blue oval hovered in the middle of the room. With nods all around, we entered one by one, me last.

  We emerged into the land of Avalon very much like I remembered it. Not from the chaos and destruction as we had left the place, but from the rolling hills and lush greens as I had first seen it.

  I turned to the see the portal behind us. Aerona eyed it with worry, before saying, “It’ll stay, I’m afraid. Not exactly like this, but we’ve just created a new way for others to access this land.” I grunted, annoyed that she felt the need to remind us of this as if we had a choice. Catching on, she added, “Sorry.”

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “I was stone here until you brought me back, but not… dead.”

  “You were conscious?” Ebrill asked in horror. “I wasn’t—maybe in a dream sense, but never aware of my surroundings or that I was a basically a statue.”

  “Same,” Kordelia added, eyeing Aerona with skepticism.

  “It was… different,” Aerona admitted. “But yes, I was aware at times. In and out. I imagine it was the magic of this place, but I was here all along, sensing the time passing, the flow of magic around me. I felt the moment you two were ripped away,” she made eye contact with Ebrill and Kordelia, “and it was later—some spell from the other world that pulled you from here.”

  “My aunt—er, Gertrude?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Maybe, or it could have been the enemy, but Gertrude intercepted. I wish she were here to ask. But the point is, I felt it, and there were others that I never felt leave. Such as Yennifer.”

  “There weren’t many others,” I pointed out, racking my mind.

  “Not in our little group,” she admitted. “But there were other groups, naturally. The ones with Pintras, Megha… the Princess Artian, they were all fighting, and remained. Or… kind of…”

  For the first time in her little speech, Aerona’s eyes showed doubt.

  “Kind of?” Ebrill asked.

  “It was like some were with me, others half-there, half somewhere else. Maybe they weren’t there at all, but some sort of magical imprint? I can’t be sure, because I was stuck in the stone. But now we can find answers.”

  “You still sense them?”

  “I was here so long, I remember exactly where I felt them from. In which directions.”

  “And… Rianne?” I asked. “She’s here?”

  “We can find out.”

  Setting out, we moved along the ridge, looking down over the waters that had receded and showed thick mists beyond. The wind blew but didn’t bring the smell of the sea as I expected, instead it was more of a flowery scent.

  “I thought Avalon was back?” I said. “Back… where?”

  “You opened the connection again,” Aerona said. “Brought it back to the point of being accessible. But back like it once was, actually part of your world? Rianne had never intended that. It’s too… dangerous, in a sense.”

  “I see.”

  At a point where the rocks and grassy slopes converged below, I saw what had once been the Heart of the Mountain—the spot where we had been led into a curse. Where I had taken the Liahona, left this land and time for mine, and in so doing exiled the dark forces that had been aligned against us.

  Now, it was nothing more than a mound of rocks with a lone tree growing from the top, moss and patches of grass on one side, the other bare. Beyond, the hills rose high in jagged formations, wisps of clouds swirling over them and a lake at their base.

  “It’s more beautiful than I remember,” I noted, watching the clouds move gently toward us.

  “It can never be as beautiful as I remember,” Ebrill replied, voice deep with sorrow. Her fellow gargoyles’ expressions conveyed that same emotion.

  “Come,” Aerona said, leading the way down toward the Heart. We descended the rocky hillside, finally coming to the end and pausing to look around again. I sensed it now, too, the reason for their sorrow. This place was like a graveyard to them. While some had made it and others, like them, had been turned into gargoyles, many had been lost. The enemy, who one could always hope might come over to your side in the end if left alive long enough, had suffered a large defeat that day.

  We found that the ground had been carved up in patterns that spiraled outward from the center where I had been. Maybe from the water, or perhaps it was the magic that had caused the deep grooves in the stone. Walking among them, we came to a spot where Aerona knelt, indicating clawed footprints in the stone.

  “Some sort of…” I started.

  “Animal?” She grinned, looking up at me. I had already realized my mistake halfway through the sentence, which is why I had stopped. With a shake of her head, she let it go. “Only if you consider me one. This was my spot. Which means,” she stood, eyes scouring the surrounding area. “Come.”

  Going along the channel and turning right, we crossed several more before finding a spot that dipped into a cavern below, the water lapping at slick stone. The gargoyles couldn’t fit in there with their wings, but I lowered myself, almost falling in.

  “Do you see anyone?” Ebrill asked, face appearing in the opening above. “Anything?”

  “No,” I said, eyes moving along the stone wall, the way it curved down and then broke off into the water. Nothing else. Kneeling at the stone’s edge, I looked over to see if it was any different down there.
/>   Turquoise water, dark. Movement like a shadow… then eyes flashing red and robes flowing. I stumbled back, landing on my ass and cursing. When I looked again, though, it was gone.

  “What was it?” Ebrill asked.

  “I thought I saw something, but… it’s gone.”

  “Might not be,” Aerona’s voice chimed in. “In the water?”

  “That’s right.”

  “This was one of the energies that I felt but in a disconnected way.” She appeared now, nudging Ebrill aside. “Can you… make contact?”

  “You mean go into the water?”

  “Touch it, at any rate.”

  I groaned. “You’re saying there’s something in the water… and you want me to put my hand in there to see what happens?”

  “Magic works in specific ways. If you can make a connection, you might be able to channel some energy that lets you communicate with whoever it is or—”

  “Okay, okay.” I sighed, hating that I had to get wet by lying down on the rocks to do this. A moment later though, I had my hand over the side, reaching to feel the water. Warm, pleasant. At first. A surge of cold ran through it and then up my arm, which I withdrew immediately.

  “I await your visit,” a voice said in a whisper, the chill leaving me.

  “It’s gone,” Aerona said. “What’d you do?”

  “A voice,” I told her, repeating the words.

  She growled, then moved out of the way so Kordelia could help me back up.

  “What do you make of it?” Ebrill asked Aerona.

  “Part of someone stayed behind, but they moved on,” Aerona said. “Might be like splitting a soul, or might be that they knew something was summoning them, so left only a small part in hopes of us coming along and using that as a clue. I don’t know.”

  The other locations where Aerona had felt a presence were empty, not even offering us as much as whatever it was that had been in the water. At least one more stone set of footprints had been there, meaning another gargoyle had been pulled from this place, although we didn’t know where he or she would be or whether the enemy had managed to wake it.