Renegade Mage (Paranoid Mage Book 2), page 6
Jissarrel returned to the ghostly memory of the scruffy man, scowling down at the hazy outline. Then he reached down, fingers plunging through the surface as he gripped the beating heart within the memory, and tore it out. The outline of the man collapsed as Jissarel held the essence in his hand, an echo of the life it represented.
Good. The memory was fresh enough, and Faerie’s touch close enough, that it had worked.
He wove a cord out of sunlight and strung the heart on it, letting it float behind him as he turned to the nearest tree. Circling it thrice, he was back in the heart of his enclave, the light and airy palace glowing above him. Jissarrel brushed past the bowing and scraping attendants as he crossed to the stables, eyeing his beasts.
“Saddle the windmare,” he commanded. “I may have to cover a great deal of ground.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the sprightling groom said, bowing and withdrawing to do just that. A windmare could cover a hundred miles in an hour, but the mundanes’ infernal contraptions could go almost that fast and the man already had several hours of lead time.
Jissarrel swung onto the windmare the moment she was saddled, wheeling her around in the direction the heart showed and letting her have her head. They were a stiff breeze racing along the ground, blowing through the nearby town and snatching hats from heads as they circled before heading off in a new direction. He followed the heart as they raced along the mundane roadway, leaving a path of frost behind them.
The trail led a surprisingly long distance before it reached its end. Or, not an end, but an annoyance that made Jissarrel snarl. It was one of those damnable mundane airports, where they unnaturally hurled themselves through the air faster and higher than birds. The heart still beat, and he could almost scent the trail going up into the air, but it would be a further journey than he had planned.
He was going to have to resort to something other than a windmare.
***
Aside from a brief bout of heartburn the plane ride was fairly relaxing. He didn’t quite drift off, but came close. The jolt of landing brought him to full wakefulness, and he reached out to the airport itself to get himself off the plane. Like Denver, it had some warding around it but nothing like what he saw around GAR offices. Unlike Denver, O’Hare seemed to have a few shifters hanging around, though whether they were staff or passengers he couldn’t tell.
It did mean he had to be a bit circumspect about his movement. He popped over to inside a bathroom, and fished around for a bit of something he could enchant to cover his tracks. It took him a moment of staring right at the door lock while he cast about to realize that it was metal too, and he could just add a little vortex enchant to it directly.
Once he started thinking about it, he really didn’t need to use any sort of metal scrap in most places. The modern world was practically made of the stuff, so there’d be something handy in most places. Screws, brackets, locks, a car chassis, all that was a potential bit of metal to use because it wasn’t like it had to be loose. Just nearby.
That didn’t mean he could completely ditch his scrap metal collection, because there would always be places without something appropriate, but it did mean that he’d be far better served by choosing his teleportation points with care. The vortex enchantment didn’t fix the residue left by glamours, though, so he turned his off for the moment to prevent the shifters from sniffing him out and wheeled his suitcase out into the terminal.
He had to exchange a bunch of cash for the appropriate currency at absolutely ruinous rates, but that was expected. It was rather unpleasant how fast the money went, even if the vampires had supplied him with a truly absurd amount. Of course, it would have been nice if he could bring his entire cache with him, but he was still lacking in the skills for that.
Then, while he waited, he had a surprisingly good but vastly overpriced meal and figured out his later connections. One of the shifters gave him a bit of a scare while he was eating by heading his way, but when the person came into view it was just a harried-looking manager in deep discussion with an off-duty pilot. The pair strode past the restaurant without even a glance.
The layover wasn’t very long, only an hour and a half, so the connecting flight arrived shortly thereafter. Since it was a triple-seven it was actually extraordinarily easy for him to stow on board by just popping into the crew rest compartment. It was a little room with bunks and not much else, and suited Callum’s purposes perfectly.
He couldn’t stay there the whole flight unless he was willing to keep the glamour up the whole time, and considering that he wanted to get some actual sleep that wasn’t the case. While the plane was loading, though, it was a nice place to hide out. Once they were in the air and the empty seats were obvious, he found a likely place to rest and settled in.
While he did so, he reflected on how absurdly easy it was to abuse magic. At least his magic. Someone with the ability to control fire probably wouldn’t get very far trying to bluff their way onto a plane, but his talents meant that he could bypass almost any barrier in the modern world. He could be the absolute best thief anyone had ever heard of, if he was of a mind to.
Considering he felt guilty simply deadheading on a jumbo jet, costing the airline tens of dollars at most, that was not really in the cards. He wasn’t the only one with such talents, though, and considering the attitude of the supernatural world toward the normal one, there was going to be someone who’d do that kind of thing. The protections of GAR just weren’t enough, since it seemed they mostly only stepped in when it was supernatural interests at issue.
He had no illusions that he’d be able to change any of that. All he could do was deal with people who were obviously preying on normal folks and keep himself safe. To do any of that, though, he needed tools, and that was what he hoped to get on his trip.
Chapter 4 – Portals
He’d been out of the country exactly once before, for his honeymoon with Selene. They’d gone down to the Caribbean, taking a cruise among the small islands there. His work had never really demanded much travel, since he was a consultant rather than an on-site type. Looking at the Swiss countryside, he wished he could have toured it with Selene. She would have enjoyed it just as much, if not more, but they’d never had the chance.
The cities were not as amazing as the brochures’ breathless endorsement, but Callum had never been a city person to begin with. Besides, Geneva had more than its fair share of supernaturals. There was a lot of disturbance from mages in various parts of the city, and he could spot a number of shifters and fae, so he got out of there as fast as possible.
While Callum stood out a little bit, it was mostly as an American tourist, and heaven knew there were enough of those about. Not that he stayed in the populated areas too long. It was easy to forget that he was on the run when he’d spent the past hours sleeping on a plane, but he couldn’t linger and see the sights.
Fortunately, the Matterhorn was less than one hundred miles away in a straight line. It was a considerable trip if he followed the roads, but he didn’t need to, and at this point each teleport was somewhere around a third of a mile. Several hundred teleports was a lot, but the hours of sleep on the plane had helped with his vis-induced strain and he was ready to go. So long as he didn’t have to transport other people or something like a car, he’d be fine.
The compass from his camp kit actually came in handy, as he mostly just had to set himself a direction and follow it. Since he just had a phone and not a proper GPS unit, he couldn’t use that to find his way, though for all he knew an active GPS device near the portal location would throw up flags somewhere. That was certainly a security precaution he would use, that or just blocking GPS like the military did.
Even the compass was barely necessary, though. The ambient mana was thicker in Switzerland than it had been in the US, and he could tell he was going in the right direction because it was somewhat like going upstream. He figured the thicker mana helped with his teleports, too, since he had more overall energy. Some of the early literature had mentioned that mage Houses had more mana locally, but he hadn’t really understood how much of a difference that made.
He only stopped once, to get out a heavier jacket, as he made his way into the Alps. It was probably for the best that he was taking the direct route through wilderness, since he couldn’t speak the language. Or read it. Sadly, he didn’t have any translation magic to hand and without an internet connection he didn’t have translation technology either.
It only took him half an hour to get to where he wanted to go, in the rugged terrain away from the trails that crisscrossed the mountains and glacial kettles. That was a pretty ridiculous speed, though not one he could keep up for long. It was a fairly tedious and grueling process, finding the point on the edge of his perceptions that he could transfer to, forming the teleport, and popping forward.
The flow of mana made it obvious when he was near his target. The ambient mana did move, but generally it was slow enough that it was barely noticeable, not that it seemed to exert any affect on the real world to begin with. On the slopes, though, it was cascading down, obviously originating from a point higher up in the mountains.
There was no visible infrastructure until suddenly there was. No power lines or roads or radio towers were in evidence, but after the next few teleports he could suddenly see a structure built into the mountain. It looked like a house had been merged with the mountainside, solid stone with windows indicating two stories and a door letting out onto a small porch.
When it came within range of his spatial perceptions he could tell that it had a number of wards surrounding it, as well as glamours, so it was effectively invisible to normal people. It also had a teleport, which was a little worrying, but he didn’t think it was likely that they’d anticipate someone entering that particular portal world. Indeed, the house was empty, though there was a bunch of active enchantment around.
He couldn’t help but appraise it from the point of view of his former profession, finding that despite the sturdiness of the construction it was clearly made by an amateur. The floors weren’t perfectly level, the hallways were too narrow, the rooms were almost perfect cubes. Which meant they had different ceiling heights, most of them too high or too low, and it was only the fact that it was made completely out of stone that kept the structure from being completely compromised. If he had to guess, some earth mage had worked it together rather than it being properly designed.
The back of the house opened into a cave, which to Callum’s inexpert eye looked coarse but not quite natural. He threaded his vis past the house wards and popped into the cave, blinking as his eyes adjusted. The mana flow was even faster in the narrow confines and he almost felt like he was walking against a current, though it was all in his head. If he pulled back his perceptions and waved his arm around, he couldn’t feel anything at all.
The portal itself came into sight and perception at about the same time, as he walked down a tunnel lit with soft white from crystals overhead. Visually, it looked no different from any of his portals, though somewhat wider. It was just a hole, a doorway to somewhere else, though one tall and wide enough to drive a big rig through. To his perceptions, it was far more complex.
His portals were basically just a ring made out of vis, tearing open a hole between the two ends. There was some structure there, but nothing fancy. The magic holding open the entrance to the portal world, by contrast, was fantastically complicated, with intricate loops and swirls and branching fractal patterns. There were different sizes of magical threads, even, with different densities of unformed vis between them, and even that was made more complex by the mana rushing through the portal.
He wanted to stay and study it, his brain tickling with ideas, but he had to remind himself that he was here to get away from any possible fae pursuit, not to gawk. The portal would be just as visible from the other side. What was better, he was pretty sure that no fae was going to want to follow him into the dragonlands, even if they could.
The dragonlands were theoretically off-limits to GAR, which was why it only had a little outpost and not a full complex. His choice had been made by default, since he wasn’t going to go to Faerie or the Deep Wilds, and wandering around the Night Lands seemed particularly foolhardy. He couldn’t breathe underwater, and the supposedly empty portal world was in a nasty part of South America and he’d stand out there far more than Europe. Besides, that one just smacked of military-grade secrets.
Dragonblooded didn’t come through the portal often, though, so it was essentially unused. If it weren’t for the fact that humans were absolutely forbidden from going through, it’d be completely perfect. He figured it was a calculated risk; even if something was off-limits, if nobody was around to actually check he wasn’t going to get into trouble.
Without any further rumination, he popped himself right up to the portal and walked through. Given that the center was basically just open space, he probably could have teleported through instead, but he didn’t know for certain and it wasn’t like he had to be sneaky. Besides, he could see through to the other side and there was certainly nothing worth speaking of there, just bare rock and moss. It was only when he stepped through that he realized what an alien place it was.
The rock and moss was mundane enough, but the view was that of sky. The portal was set into a cliff, but one of such scope that the mind boggled. Looking out from the ledge he couldn’t see a bottom or a top, with blue sky in both directions. There was just an uninterrupted length of near vertical rock slope, dotted here and there with straggles of green.
It was enough that he took several steps back from the edge just to stop the vertigo. The space beyond the cliff was an absolutely enormous expanse of nothing, and it was completely impossible. He had known intellectually that the portal worlds were a bit weird, but that was a far cry from seeing something so staggering.
Nor was it just the visuals that were astounding. With his spatial perceptions he could tell that the fundamental nature of space itself, perhaps the underlying reality of the portal world, was different. He couldn’t articulate exactly how, and he hadn’t really ever noticed the flavor of space on Earth, but then, he’d never much thought about the color of sunlight either.
Along with the change in flavor, for lack of a better term, was an absolutely massive amount of mana. It was no wonder it was pouring from the portal on the other side. He felt energized and suppressed at the same time, unused to the amount of ambient energy.
After a moment he focused on the actual cliff face rather than the general sensation of weirdness he was getting from his surroundings. It was considerably more difficult to push his perceptions through the rock there than it was back home, and the cliff face seemed to be solid, anyway. There were just lots of protrusions or dents, one of which held the portal. There were another few places he would trust his footing within range, so he popped himself up to a little niche about two hundred feet above the portal itself.
That way he was gone if anyone poked their head through the portal, and what was better, he could still inspect the portal structure itself. It looked like it might be more difficult than he’d thought to find enchanting materials in this portal world, since there wasn’t anything approaching normal terrain nor any civilization he could use as a guide to find the raw materials. He’d do some surveying himself, but between the dimensional portal and ditching any fae tail, he definitely didn’t count it as a wasted trip.
Callum pulled out his laptop and booted it up, only belatedly realizing he was lucky that electronics worked at all. He could tell that space was different, and it might well have affected his computer, or fried it. Since it worked, he pulled up his CAD program and started transcribing the portal.
***
King Jissarrell of the Moiral Enclave growled in frustration as the heart he’d been following suddenly evaporated in a puff of mana. The spell had only a few hours left in it anyway, but it was still an affront. It had been irksome enough to track it to one of the big human cities, and then the trail had gone over the ocean and he’d had to call in a favor to travel across the waters.
The fae of the Old Country thought themselves as far above King Jissarrell as they did their own subjects, but they did respect his pursuit. Revenge was one of the most time-honored traditions, after all. There was some scoffing about him pursuing a mere human, but only some. They did know what human mages could do, after all.
He reigned in the zephraim he’d been using to follow the trail from the Black Forest. All he knew was that his target had vanished somewhere in the south of Europe. Which was more than he’d known before, but he had been so looking forward to tracking the man down and peeling his skin off his body. Now, that pleasure would have to be delayed.
There weren’t many things that could break that tracking spell, but any sufficiently powerful fae, like another king, certainly could. Even would, given sufficient inducement or simply knowledge that they’d be irritating another powerful fae without any risk. Spite was another one of those time-honored traditions.
He wheeled around in the air and headed back north, the zephraim stomping on the air, jagged antlers of lightning crackling as it made its displeasure known. He kept a firm hand on the reins, however, and steered it back to its home. Jissarrell dropped it off at the stables and proceeded further into the enclave.
The scent of proper fae magic was rich this close to Faerie, tempting him to cross back over, but he resisted. That would just put him under the control of the great faerie lords, and he was quite happy being his own monarch with his own land. The magic was weaker on Earth, and the mortals annoying, but it was better, as one wit had put it, to reign in hell than serve in heaven.
Instead, he made his way to the Door of Glass, pricking his finger and letting the blood drip onto the frame. The transparent crystal drank in the offering, red spreading up and out to cover the entire door. Once it had sucked in the appropriate amount of magic, the Door swung open, and Jissarrell stepped into the Ways.
