Hunger—real hunger—not your going-without-afternoon-tea, nor no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair—can, when a man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man’s mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become so unbalanced as to become socialists.
—Geoffrey Pyke,
Memoirs of a Boffin in a German Prison Camp, 1918
New York City, New York
“Rat bastards!” Francis hurled the whiskey bottle into the fireplace. It failed to shatter, so he concentrated his Power and reached out with his mind, and the bottle exploded in a properly dramatic manner. “Filthy, no-good thieves! I can’t believe this!”
“What part of this came as a shock to you? The part where you told the President of the United States you wanted to have a fight with him and that he was happy to oblige, or the part where you thought you could tell a bunch of crusading busybodies to shove off and you didn’t expect any consequences?” Ray Chandler, CFO of United Blimp & Freight and Francis’ confidante, covered his glass of whiskey protectively while Francis looked for something else to throw across the office. “Come on, Francis. You should have seen this coming a mile away.”
His office on top of the Chrysler Building was a temporary safe haven from the army of auditors, investigators, bought-off reporters, union activists, and other various teat-sucking pawns of Roosevelt’s who had been making his life a living hell, but they’d be back again tomorrow. Francis had no doubt about that. It was seventy degrees outside, so it wasn’t like he’d needed to light a fire, but throwing things at the chimney always made him feel better, especially when it was lit. As a side effect, however, he’d had to order the air conditioning turned up to compensate, but what was the point of being rich if you weren’t allowed a few idiosyncrasies?
“They’re accusing me of selling warship designs to the Imperium? Me?”
“Well, your grandfather did violate the embargos. It doesn’t take a Cog to point out that their Kaga class look suspiciously like the Super Tri-hull we’ve been trying to sell to our Navy.”
“And I put a stop to that nonsense as soon as I got back from killing a bunch of Imperium navy.” Francis picked up the evening paper. “Look at this! It’s even the same reporters who wrote all the anti-Grimnoir propaganda after the assassination attempt. Why do people still believe proven liars?”
“Are you kidding? You’ve been wearing a big target on your back all year. They probably already had these articles about what a crook you are prepped from the last time you were getting the frame job from the OCI. They just had to haul them out and dust them off when Roosevelt asked.” Chandler chuckled. “Hell, they’ll probably win the Pulitzer for their hard hitting investigative journalism.”
Francis angerily wadded the evening paper into a gigantic, ball and threw it at the fireplace too. However it hit the logs, caught fire, and then rolled out onto the floor. “Shit!” He ran over and desperately stomped out the fire before it ruined the Persian rug.
Chandler just shook his head, finished his drink, and then poured himself a refill. “I’m sorry to say, Francis, that it looks like you are the subject of a very savage public-relations campaign.”
The scorch mark wasn’t too bad. Francis used his magic and rolled the newspaper remains back into the fire. “Well, buy some newspapers, then. I’ll beat him at his own game.”
Chandler laughed hard. He’d had a bit too much to drink, but in his defense, he’d been fighting National Recovery Act auditors all day and their allegations of UBF price fixing. “Beat him? The man’s a master manipulator. That’s like Donald Duck saying he’s going to outmaneuver Black Jack Pershing on the battlefield.”
The mention of Pershing made Francis sigh. His old mentor would have known what to do. Francis was up to his eyeballs in trouble, getting attacked from every angle short of gunfire, and it was frankly overwhelming. “We’re in bad straits, Ray, but I’m not giving up those Dymaxions. I’ll burn this company down before I let those conniving bullies take them away.”
“The board may disagree about the whole burning-everything-down strategy. You’ve done well, made them buckets of money, way better than they ever expected, and they sure love making money, but they like heat even less, and they’re getting a lot of heat right now. I give it two weeks, tops, before they’re calling for your resignation.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Francis muttered. Ray was a financial wizard, and even if Francis got run out of the family business, Dymaxion was still his, and that’s what Roosevelt really wanted. Federal agents had already seized all of that little company’s assets under various legal excuses, mostly related to lies about his taxes, but they hadn’t found a single Nullifier, Nullifier part, diagram, or note on their creation. Francis had told one of the Treasury agents that, sadly, all of those items had been lost in a tragic canoe accident. “The only thing that’s really of value is what’s stored in Fuller’s brain.”
“And when Fuller gets back from holiday, do you plan to hold him hostage somewhere so the government can’t take him too?”
“If I have to. You don’t get it, Ray. The world’s changing. We’re one of the last places where Actives aren’t property. I’m not going to let my people become property.”
“Canada and England’s magical types are fairly well off . . . Okay, okay, I get you. So what do you aim to do, then?”
Francis leaned against the fireplace and studied the pattern of broken glass and curling newspaper. “I should run for president.”
“You have to be thirty-five, so twelve or so years from now, I’m sure that’ll be a fine idea.”
“What? Seriously? When did they make that a law?”
“Wow.” Chandler took a long drink. “Now there’s a testimony about the quality of our finest prep schools.”
“That’s what I get for spending most of school chasing skirts.” Francis walked back to his desk. “Look, I may not know the finer points of constitutional law, but I damn sure know right and wrong.” There were only a few framed photos on his desk, mostly of close friends since none of his family members rated the space. Francis picked up the one portrait of Faye and sighed. He’d loved a lot of women, but he only cared about one of them. That was because Faye was special. Faye owned special. He was the only one who knew she was still alive, and he had no idea where she was, but he found himself wishing hard that she was here now. Even without any of his resources or connections, and her drastically uncomplicated view of the world, she would probably be doing a lot better than he was . . . Of course, the White House would probably be in flames and half of Congress would be dead, but Faye certainly knew how to get results.
The intercom on his desk buzzed. “Mr. Stuyvesant, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett are here to see you.”
“Send them up.”
“Grimnoir business, I presume?” Chandler asked.
“No earthly idea.”
“Then I’d better be going,” Chandler polished off his drink and got off the couch. “Dan doesn’t like when I ogle his rather lovely wife, which is remarkably difficult not to do even when sober. Tonight? He’d probably suggest I take a stroll off your balcony and I’d probably find that a brilliant idea. I think I’ve had a touch much.”
That was a lie. Chandler could outdrink a sponge, though he had been dealing with auditors all day, and if anything was an excuse to drink to excess, it was auditors. “You don’t have to leave. It isn’t like that whole secret society thing is particularly secret anymore.”
“Ha! You think I want to know? Please. Once Roosevelt has his way with you all, I’ve got to try to figure out how to include this job on my resume without mentioning our association, Mr. Blacklist . . . Either that or I’ll just embezzle a bunch of your money before Roosevelt steals it all and then retire to a beach in Cuba.”
“Night, Ray.”
“Night, Francis.”
Francis passed the time waiting for his associates to arrive by coming up with inventive new curse words. They entered a few minutes after Chandler had left. Jane immediately came over and gave him a hug, because that’s just how Jane was, and she could probably tell he was having a bad day. Chandler was right: Jane was a beauty. Francis had always thought she looked and even sounded a little bit like Marlene Dietrich. Also, Jane really was a sweet heart, just an all-around nice person to the core of her being. “I saw the papers.”
“Hard to miss that big cartoon of me on the front page, holding up the sacks labeled blood money while standing on a pile of corpses titled equality and prosperity.”
“They were never one for nuance,” Dan agreed.
“I thought the cartoon made you look cute,” Jane said. “I’ve never been famous enough to warrant a caricature. You and Dan are in the comics all the time now.”
“They don’t use you because they don’t want to put a pretty face on the Active menace. They always make me look like a troll,” Dan complained. “And fat, too.”
“I prefer to think of you as attractively plump,” Jane said as she patted her much shorter husband on the stomach. Dan did look a bit troll-like to her in Jane’s company, but in comparison, so would most men. Not that it mattered to Jane, since, as a Healer, everybody looked like see-through meat bags filled with pumping organs and blood. But she always said that one simply got used to it. “Now hurry, Francis, fetch your hat. We must be going.”
“Why? You guys taking me out for a night on the town?”
“Sadly, no.” Dan spread his hands apologetically. “I just received word from Browning. His contact inside the government gave him a heads-up. There’s been a new development on the registration front.”
“Oh, what now?” Francis grabbed his shoulder holster, threw it on, and then tossed his coat over it. The .45 sitting on top of his desk went into the holster. There had been talk about a new executive order, but he’d been too busy trying to keep his business holdings in one piece to pay much attention to the rumors. “They rounding people up already?”
“It is a special holding area for Actives, all right,” Jane answered, “but it isn’t a roundup, Actives are supposedly volunteering for this.”
“What? That’s got to be a lie. The propaganda machine isn’t even trying hard.”
“We need to head over to New Jersey to check it out.”
“New Jersey?” Francis thought about it for a second. He went back to his desk, grabbed another .45 auto and several extra loaded magazines. Jane raised an eyebrow. “Hey, don’t give me that look. It’s Jersey.”
Drew Town, New Jersey
It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. It wasn’t a prison camp. It was a town, and a rather cozy one at that, nestled in the forest, next to a serene lake, all within commuting distance from the city. The signs even said that they’d be putting in a bus line, the lake was stocked with fish, and the forest even had hiking trails. There were signs every-where, all talking about how wonderful Drew Town was and would be, and every sign had happy families on it doing happy family things. Some of the art had been stolen from the Saturday Evening Post.
The houses were nice. Most of them were still under construction, but the first two hundred were already finished in their neat orderly rows, on perfectly level streets laid out in a grid. Numbers north and south, letters east and west. Lawns were still going in, but every finished house already had a white picket fence around it.
There was no barbed-wire fence around the perimeter. No spotlights or guard towers. Sure, there was a gatehouse on the road with a couple of bored security men inside, but that was it. They’d simply gone around the gatehouse and followed a dump truck up a dirt side road. Even in the middle of the night the construction crews were working at a feverish pace, with hundreds of workers toiling away beneath the spotlights. More signs proclaimed that these men were employed because of Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration.
“WPA?” Dan asked as they drove past dozens of homes under construction.
“It stands for We Poke Along,” Francis answered. “It’s a new billion-dollar agency that pays the unemployed tax money to dig holes and then fill them back in.”
“Why, Francis, I’d never known you to be so political,” Jane said.
“I’ve got a right to complain. When I get mugged, I’m not expected to thank the mugger.” There were electric lights on every corner. They’d already broken ground for several large buildings. The signs around those sites said that those would be schools, hospitals, churches, and even factories. It was like a massive, planned-out company town, only far nicer. “What the hell are they up to?”
“I’ve not heard a word from the news about this place,” Jane said. “According to Browning’s government informant, this places is supposed to hold Actives.”
“They’re expecting thousands of people to live here, that’s for certain.” Dan pulled the Packard to a stop in front of one of the finished houses. The lights were on inside. “Hang on. I’ll get us some answers.” Dan got out, and Francis and Jane followed him.
Their Mouth went up the steps and rang the doorbell. Insects were buzzing around the porch lights. Jane paused to admire the flower beds. Francis noted that there was a bronze plaque on the door. It was a floating anvil. “You see that?”
Dan scowled at the plaque. “That’s the sign they want Heavies to wear on their armbands.” He rang the bell again.
There was noise from the other side, and then the door opened to reveal a tall, extremely broad-shouldered, thick-necked man. The fellow towered over them and had callused worker’s hands that looked like they could entirely engulf Dan’s head. He certainly looked like a Heavy. “It’s late. What do you want?”
“Are you the resident?” Dan asked.
The Heavy’s beady eyes narrowed. “Huh?”
They needed to remember that most Heavies weren’t known for their smarts. Jake Sullivan was an anomaly in that respect. “Do you live here? Is this your house?”
“That’s a dumb question. Of course I live here . . . Who are you guys?”
Dan turned up his Power. “We’re friends from out of town, come by to visit.”
“Oh hey!” the Heavy grinned. “Good to see you guys. Come in! Come in! Hey, Alice, we got company!” Totally defenseless against the Mouth, his demeanor changed. “You guys want some cookies?”
“Naw, we’re good.” Dan smiled. Pushover. “We’ve only got a minute so we can’t stay.”
“Aww, but I haven’t seen you guys in forever.”
“We just wanted to know, friend, how did you end up living in this nice house in this lovely little town?”
“It is real nice, ain’t it? Lord knows I couldn’t afford this on a steelworker’s wage. The government folks sent me a letter. Alice helped read it. Said since I had magic, we could come and live here for free. Even said that if you didn’t have work, you could live here for free until they found work for you. Everybody in Drew Town’s got magic of some kind. Mr. Drew says only magical folks get invited to live here.”
“The architect,” Francis muttered as he remembered bumping into the man in the White House. “Son of a bitch.”
“Aw, he’s perfectly nice,” the Heavy said. “He just wants to keep Actives safe from the folks who don’t like us. You know how those League types can get.”
Francis knew that he was talking about the League for a Magic Free America. Like most groups of bigoted fools, they loved lynching and firebombs. It still chapped his hide that he’d gotten shot saving a bunch of those ungrateful bastards from a truck bomb. “Those hoods are nothing a tough guy like you couldn’t handle, I bet.”
The Heavy shrugged. “Yeah. I’m tough, so what? But I got a wife and little kids. Here, we don’t have to worry about nothing. My kids don’t even have to worry about getting treated different for being weird, and they can go to school like I never got to. I ain’t alone. Bunch of folks already signed up. Mr. Drew says pretty soon this town will be all filled up with magical folks and they’ll make more towns like this across the whole USA.”
“Thanks, friend,” Dan said. “Have a nice night, and forget we were ever here.”
“Okay. Buh-bye.” The Heavy closed the door.
They walked back to the Packard. Francis turned, went across the lawn, hopped the fence, and ran up the next porch. There was a Crackler plaque on that door. He crossed the street to find the crossed bones of a Shard. He pulled a flier off of one of the light poles. Beneath the Norman Rockwell painting was a reminder that Actives could get monetary bonuses for suggesting their Active friends and family for membership in Drew Town to the town administrators. Francis ran back to the car and got in. “All the houses are tagged.”
Dan was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. They were all thinking the same thing, but it was Jane that spoke first. “It appears that President Roosevelt understands that you can catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
“You can also catch flies with bullshit.” Francis held up the flier. “This is Bradford Carr’s master plan all over again, only with a happy face, a two-car garage, and a fish pond.”
“They won’t need to round up Actives if most of us volunteer,” Dan stated. “We know the OCI was making lists, and now they’ll just send invitations. I bet once this place is all beautified and full up, it’ll be all over every newspaper, magazine, billboard, and radio program. That’s how I’d do it. They’ll have every fed-up, tired of being picked on, or out-of-work Active in the country beating down their doors.”
Francis looked out the car window at the white picket fences and imagined them replaced with razor wire. Once again, the men in charge were trying to herd magicals into easily controlled groups . . .
But why?
Somewhere in France
Jacques had shown up the next morning with two train tickets and asked Faye to gather her things. She didn’t have much in the way of things so it hadn’t taken very long. The Grimnoir elder had been as enigmatic as ever when quizzed about their destination. Faye couldn’t read French, but it helped that there was a very rough map printed on the back of the ticket. It looked like they’d end up in Germany eventually. She didn’t know much about Germany, other than that the Kaiser had been on the other side during the Great War, and men like Mr. Sullivan had fought there until its capitol had gotten blown up by a Peace Ray. Heinrich, the only German she knew well, had made his homeland sound pretty nice, actually, except for the parts about the starvation, poverty, anarchy, and, of course, all those zombies.
“Come now, Faye. Why so sullen? You have done nothing but stare out the window all this time. You should be happy. We are traveling!”
Faye snorted. “You call this traveling?” Regular folks would never be able to understand the glorious freedom of her magic. Travelling was like pure bottled happiness.
“Admit it, my dear. You are only content when you are in motion.”
“This ain’t traveling, Jacques. This here is some rich folks took a room out of a mansion and stuck it on rails.” Faye pointed at the table between them. “Heck, we even get served cookies. What is it with you and big sugary things?”
“I am a big sugary person.” Jacques patted his belly. “Come now, perhaps this method of transportation is not as fast as you are used to, but this way we get to enjoy the scenery.”
She had to admit Jacques had a point. Europe was rather lovely. Everything she’d seen so far in France was neat and green. Very pretty. Sure, Faye was a fancy world traveler now, but that was all a recent development for her. Most of her life had been spent in two places. First was Ada, Oklahoma—and most of what she could remember about that was it being a barren, dry, horrible, mean, ugly wasteland. Then she’d gone to El Nido, California, which had been a paradise of alfalfa fields and happily chewing cows in comparison. France reminded her a lot more of California than it did Oklahoma. She’d never seen a fat person until she’d gotten to California. The sun and the wind burned the fat right off you in Oklahoma, left you hard and mean. Mr. Bolander had changed that, since his death had unlocked the rain and saved Oklahoma. Faye had heard on the radio that grass was starting to grow there again, but that wasn’t the Oklahoma she remembered. She’d been glad to get out. Didn’t miss it one bit.
“It’s nice I guess.”
“Besides, we have this all to ourselves.” Jacques picked up a cookie and used it to gesture around the luxury car. “Being a retired man of wealth has its benefits.”
“My boyfriend owns UBF.”
“Indeed. How could I forget? I am but a penniless hobo in comparison to young Francis Stuyvesant, but I reserved this car because it was the only one which gave us privacy. It will give us time to talk.”
“So I can continue my lessons?”
“I do not know if there is actually a lesson to continue. That was Whisper’s notion. I will tell you what I know of the Spellbound. Hopefully you will manage to not turn into a rampaging murder machine in the process.”
It was a little too late for that, but Faye figured she could keep her murdering and rampaging confined to just the bad folks at least. “That’s mighty hopeful of you, Jacques.”
The old man grinned. “I am by nature an optimist, my dear.”
“So where are we going?”
“Do not trouble yourself. I will tell you when we get there. Just know that we go to speak with an old friend of mine. He helped me to understand what the Spellbound was truly capable of. I hope that he will be able to do the same for you.” Jacques reached into one of his bags. “We will not be there for many hours.”
Hours? And to think that normal folks considered this Traveling . . . “I’d like to know—”
The thump of a thick stack of papers onto the table interrupted her and threatened to knock the giant plate of cookies onto the rug. The papers were bound together with string, and Jacques quickly untied it and let them spill outward in a mass of chaotic correspondence.
Faye picked up one of the old letters. This envelope was discolored with age and had been damaged by water at some point. The handwriting was very swoopy and hard to read. “What is this?”
“I told you Anand Sivaram was a prolific writer. Perhaps if you can get a glimpse into the one who first bore the mantle of the Spellbound, you will understand more about your own Power. You had best get started.”
Hours and miles flew by as Faye read about Anand Sivaram.
It was in my twenty-fifth year, while still mastering my own connection to the Power, that I received my first glimmer of understanding. I have read the words of the learned and respected, scientists and philosophers, zealots and eugenicists, and yet it was in a pathetic excuse for a hospice where I came to understand that all of them were wrong. They did not understand magic because they could not experience magic. Magic must be lived. It must be breathed. It must be part of your soul. Only through immersion into this river of magic do we truly commune with the Power.
It was during an extended convalescence, healing from an accidental misuse of my own magic, that I spent the time necessary to let my mind roam to truly formulate my understanding of magic. I had injured my back after foolishly placing myself in a precarious situation. Barely able to walk, I had been forced to lie still, with nothing else to do for days but turn my thoughts inward.
All Travelers, as they have taken to calling my kind, develop some instinctive form of sensory ability relating to the area in which we are set to appear, or we die in short order. It is that simple. Despite being faithful to the methods I had developed in order to protect myself from injury while using my magic, I still found myself injured. On the day of my accident, I had done as I had taught myself, and opened my mind for any sense of foreign bodies which could potentially impact or embed themselves in me—the single greatest cause of death among young Travelers is flying insects—before Travelling. Yet in a moment of distraction I had foolishly landed and placed my feet upon slick stones, slipped, and wrenched the vertebra of my lower back.
Thus confined to bed for weeks on end, I had set myself to the mental task of improving my methodology. I meditated upon this at great length. In time, my mind seemed to expand beyond my physical presence, and for the first time in my life, I saw the Power as it really was.
My eyes were opened. My journey had begun.
Jacques chuckled, and it broke her concentration. Faye looked up from the note. “What’s so funny?”
“You move your lips when you read. I just noticed that. You really shouldn’t do that. Terrible habit to have in the field, secret messages to you won’t be very secret if there is an Imperium spy around who can read lips.”
“I’m not afraid of Imperium spies.”
“You should be. The really clever ones will seduce you and then leave you to pay the bill. Ah, never mind. That is a story best shared with more mature company. Speaking of spies reminds me, though, you have yet to spot all of my men.”
Faye scowled at him. She had never been particularly good at reading, and if it hadn’t been for Grandpa, she wouldn’t have known how to at all, so going through the letters of Anand Sivaram was a difficult, frustrating, time-consuming process.
But she simply couldn’t stop.
“Shut up and eat your cookies.” Faye picked up another paper. This one was an amazingly complex drawing of a spell. She recognized it instinctively. Faye didn’t need Buckminster Fuller’s Power to tell that all of those complicated shapes stuck together represented the part of the Power that controlled Traveling. Sivaram had been bored in a hospital and his mind had wandered until he’d first seen the Power. Faye had once followed Mr. Sullivan’s dying spirit to the place where the dead people dream in order to see the Power itself. She liked Sivaram’s way better, but it did make her wonder, did it take somebody who could Travel to actually see the Power? Without dying first and getting dragged back first like Mr. Sullivan had, at least? The Chairman had been visiting there for years, which explained how come Imperium magic sometimes seemed so much more advanced than theirs, but then again, it seemed like the Chairman had been able to do whatever he felt like.
Many of Sivaram’s letters had been dated, so she’d put them into order as best as she could. Then there were loose pages, random scribbles, doodles, old photographs, and even napkins with hasty notes scrawled on them. There were huge gaps in time, obvious spots Jacques hadn’t been able to fill in, references to things Sivaram had written that there was no record of, but despite those handicaps, she could follow his path, clear as day. Sivaram had been consumed with a desire to understand the way things worked, and it had dragged him across the whole world.
The majority of the letters were to his wife. The love there was obvious, especially in the early letters, but that began to fade as he became more and more distracted, and his devotion changed from people to magic.
Dearest Devika. I will not be returning home this month as planned. I can only hope that you can endure my continued absence. I cannot give up when I am this close. The journey must continue. This week we went even further in the jungle. When I first heard the British ambassador speaking of this man known as the wizard, I knew I had to seek him out. What manner of man could manipulate magic into all new forms? It has taken years for me to even begin to understand my own Power, yet I cannot conceive of such a skill. As a Traveler, I can catch but the tiniest glimpse at times of what magic really is. I have learned so much, but the things they attribute to this wizard, if even only true in the smallest measure, could drastically increase our understanding of magic. They say that he has learned to draw magic. Draw it? As if it is so easily manipulated! They say that he has engraved magic upon his own body, giving himself whole new types of Power. Surely this is impossible, but I simply must know for myself.
There was a quickly drawn map of a place she didn’t know, and the margins were filled with geometric doodles that were obviously Sivaram’s guesses at what the Power really looked like. It seemed that even before he went and broke his brain and went full-on murder crazy, he was already wound a little tight.
Dearest Devika. I know this letter must come as a surprise, as so much time has passed that surely you must have thought me lost and dead in the jungles, but I have prevailed. My journey to the colonies has been a success. I found the man I have been looking for. The stories about the wizard are true. All of the stories are true. It is magnificent. It is not the creation of new magic, for the magic is already there, we are simply reaching out and taking more of it for ourselves. The Power is an incredible entity, made up of thousands and thousands of intersecting nodes, each one of those capable of some small shifting of the supposedly immutable laws of the universe. I have taken new forms of magic to myself, as many as my frail mortal body can bear. With each one, the mysteries have become clearer. Reality is far more beautiful and far more terrifying than we have ever imagined.
There were dozens of letters to his wife, yet not a single one written to Sivaram in response. She wondered if Jacques had simply never found those, or if she had never bothered to respond at all. The thought made her sad, but then she delved back into the world of the Mad Traveler.
The magic is wasted. It grows so strong while we live, but then it is all lost when we perish. If only there was a way to save this, to keep it, to nurture it and mold it across the generations. All that I have learned, all that I have gained, it cannot be learned through a book or through lecture or pathetic human language, it can only be mastered through immersion in the river of magic. But why must this precious river flow? It must be dammed. It must be stopped. I will not die like this. Pointless.
Faye’s journey continued. Notes and alchemical solutions, chemistry diagrams and mathematical notations that were far over her head, yet each one became increasingly erratic. Now the geometric representations of the Power had become darker, uglier, harsher. Where they’d been elegant before, these lines seemed twisted, the paper had often torn beneath the fury of Sivaram’s quill. There were long dried droplets of blood on the pages, as if he’d gotten a nosebleed and not noticed because of the intensity of the concentration needed for his calculations.
Jacques came back from lunch. She had not realized that he had left, nor had she heard him ask if she wanted anything. He placed some meat, cheese, and bread next to her, and she ate it without tasting it.
The next letter was addressed to no one. His handwriting had been shakier, harder to read.
I am close to a breakthrough. The wall between our world and the Power is thin here. My mind is unable to comprehend that which must be done. I am weak. No one else understands. Their Power is wasted. Fools. They stumble blindly, not understanding what must be done. I will take their Power, take it and use it as it should be used.
I do not believe in gods. Gods have never helped me. Everything I have done, I have done through my own intellect. Yet now as my mind fails me, I have prayed for help.
I think something has answered.
Faye did not understand the next drawing at all. It was half math, half shapes, and it made her head hurt just looking at it. She had to force her eyes away and let loose an audible groan.
Jacques was sitting across from her, watching, sipping from a glass of wine “Yes. I see you found the rough draft of the spell which would become your curse.”
“Is that what it is?”
He took a sip. “I believe so. Do not feel bad. It has that effect on everyone.” There was a sharp knock on the door. Jacques spoke loudly in French. A coachman stuck his head in and asked Jacques a question she couldn’t understand. She did understand that Jacques’ answer of oui meant yes, and then the man left.
“What was that about?” Faye asked.
“He merely wanted to make sure we had all of our windows closed for our safety. Do not worry.” Jacques took the bottle out of the bucket of ice and poured himself some more wine. “Please, continue.”
Dearest Devika. I have succeeded where all others have failed. They called me mad, but I have confirmed the truth. The Power is alive. What we call magic is the means by which it feeds. It grants a piece of itself to some few of us, and as we exercise that connection through every manipulation of the physical world, the magic grows. Upon our death, that increase returns to the Power. It is a symbiotic parasite. Grown fat upon us, the process repeats, more Actives are created, the cycle continues. The Power itself has a certain measure of awareness. Aware? Yes. I do not know yet if it knows that I have stolen from it, and if so, how it will react to my petty thievery. As the Power is using us, I intend to use it. I beg your forgiveness for what I must now become.
There was an old, badly damaged photograph of a very young woman. Nobody could smile in photographs back then because your face muscles would get worn out before the picture took, but she was still rather pretty.
“That was when I became involved,” Jacques said softly. “She was one of us. A knight and a . . . friend . . . Sivaram was a vulture at first. When people died around him, he would snatch up their magic. Even those who are considered normal are not without some small touch of magic, for the Power would often touch them, find them wanting, and then move on. The Spellbound would steal even that, but it was not nearly enough. He needed more, and the stronger the Active, the better.”
As the stack of papers dwindled, there were fewer notes and letters, but it was made up for with newspaper clippings, and Faye read every single one. Murder. Murder. Murder. Accidental Death. Mass Murder. Drowning. Plane Crash. Theater Fire. Ship Lost at Sea. It went on and on and on . . .
“There were more. Many, many more. Travel in, cause something awful, Travel back out. I suspect that many of the assassinations that helped speed along the Great War were his doing, his insatiable hunger for chaos, and the hope that a great modern war would bring tremendous death with it. That’s finally how we caught him. I set a trap. I simply went to the greatest slaughter the world had ever seen and waited for him to show up. Normally I would ask if you had any idea how deadly an assassin a motivated and highly skilled Traveler could be . . . but you know, Faye. You know very well.”
Faye could only nod. She tried to only used her Power to do good things, but for her, killing folks was a snap. But this . . . she flipped through the newspaper clippings. This was unimaginable.
“Yet even then we underestimated him. Sivaram was no longer a mere mortal Traveler. The spell he’d carved into himself saw to that. He was hard to catch, even harder to kill. He massacred my men and anyone around him. I believe the Spellbound became our greatest threat.”
“More than the Chairman?”
“It was arguable, but I was in the minority. There was at least a cold logic to everything Okubo Tokugawa did, and yes, I know he killed far, far more people that Sivaram ever dreamed of, by an order of magnitude. The Chairman’s Imperium has made butchery and slavery into a bloody, emotionless trade, mechanized, unfeeling, something only an all-powerful government can do. Sivaram was alone, most of the elders saw him only as a mad dog that needed to be put down. However, after studying the man and following him for years, I came to understand the true threat. Read his last letter. It had never been posted. Read, Faye.”
Dearest Devika. Much time has passed since I have written. I have been consumed by my work. I write this letter in a brief moment of lucidity. I do not know how many more I will have, as they are becoming fewer by the day. Do not let my sons listen to the rumors of what I have become. The rumors are true but they must never know of the evil created by my hand. I was blinded by pride. One does not steal from the Power without paying a price. It is more intelligent than I suspected and it is learning. Though I thought I was using it, I was truly the one being used. Human emotions are not sufficient to describe the Power, but it was not upset when it discovered my theft. My resourcefulness gave it hope. The Power tried to prepare me for a task, but I was unworthy of its gifts. I have failed the test. Now all that remains is the hunger.
The failure of understanding the Power’s true nature is upon my head. Though incomprehensible to our pathetic minds, it has its own mysterious desires and purposes. It is using mankind for something, developing and steering us in the hopes of accomplishing its goals.
When I was young and naïve, I thought to master the Power by toying with geometries beyond human understanding. I was nothing, but I stepped before the Power and presented myself as a sacrifice, as a science experiment. The Power utilized me, and though I have failed, it will try again, for I surprised it. I showed it what mankind is capable of. This spell burned into my flesh is too strong to die now. The Power will find a new subject to toy with.
What an interesting phenomenon. Look at the laboratory rat. What a clever thing. This rat’s pathetic mind discerned new avenues that the observer, even with its far superior intellect, could never see. Of course not, it is hard to see when you are on such a lofty perch. Behold the rat’s tricks. The rat dies, but the experiment is incomplete. We will train more. The experiment will begin again. There will be more rats. The rats must be fed.
The madness I have wrought is nothing compared to what will come. Please forgive me for what I have done.
The ink had run in spots, as if his tears had watered the paper as he’d been writing. Faye slowly returned the letter to the stack. “I don’t get it,” she lied. Not understanding everything was not the same as not understanding anything at all.
“Very few members of the Society ever saw that, and among those who did, most dismissed it as the ravings of a madman. I disagreed.” Jacques put his glass on the table between them. The usual affable, pleasant demeanor he tended to wear was gone, having been replaced with the face of a very cold, very discerning investigator. “Mad? Perhaps, but driven mad because he understood just what he had unleashed upon mankind. I see in that letter the same thing I saw in the letters of criminals giving their deathbed confessions, a stark realization that actions have consequences.”
“You ain’t really worried about what the Spellbound does . . .” Faye muttered. “You’re worried about what the Power is up to.”
”Sivaram thought his actions, killing in order to steal magic, pleased the intelligence behind the Power. We are talking about a being which feeds off of us, uses us, changes us, gives blessings and takes them away without a shred of anything we recognize as logic or decency. It would appear that Power is an advocate of evolution, let the strongest survive, and let the weakest perish. Magicals were a new step in evolution, one brought about by the Power. The Spellbound was one of those magicals taking evolution into his own hands, and it seems that the Power approved. Sivaram said he did not believe in gods.” Jacques snorted. “Heh. It seems to me he found one that believed in him. And it is neither a merciful nor wrathful god, but rather an ambivalent intelligence that cares only about itself.”
Faye had never thought of the Power that way, and it made her a little uncomfortable. “I’m gonna stick with Jesus, thanks.”
“I ask you, Faye, what happens to us if the Power decides to take this experiment to the next stage? What happens if you, the second generation of this spell, continue to further its goals?”
“I don’t—”
“It will create more like you, probably many more. And they will steal magic from anyone who is weaker than they are. At least the Chairman is an orderly form of destruction. This other path is one of utter chaos. We can contend against the enemy with understandable goals, but it is nearly impossible to fight one that exists only to cause chaos. Now do you understand why I voted the way that I did?”
Maybe. Yes, but Faye still didn’t like that one bit. Anybody else who voted to kill her would have to deal with her veto power, which would probably consist of a round of 12-gauge buckshot to their face. “And what if you’re wrong, and the Power is right? I told y’all what the Chairman said about the Enemy coming to eat the Power. I can feel it myself once in a while, like a big weight hanging over us all. Maybe the Power was trying to save both us and it.”
“So we should tolerate a known risk in order to protect against a risk that may not even exist? The Chairman was the king of lies. Why should I expect him to be any more truthful in death than when he was in life? You wish to risk this because it is your life which is at stake. You are biased. Perhaps you can control the Spellbound curse, perhaps not. That still remains to be seen. You have been in this world for such a short time. Those letters you read from Sivaram span over thirty years. It took decades to wear him down and turn him into the monster that he became.”
“But I won’t do that.”
“And why would you not? Strength of character? Love for your fellow man?” Jacques gave a bitter laugh. “Sivaram loved his family and his people with all of his heart, but the curse wore him down eventually. It cut him to the soul, stole his humanity, and soon everyone around him, especially those with magic, were in danger. They were mere vessels holding the Power he sought . . . And he took that Power, oh, did he take so very many lives.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt my friends!” but even as the words left her mouth, she felt the sting of doubt.
“The Spellbound does not get to have friends, or family, or comrades, or lovers. The Spellbound is alone. The Spellbound is a force. Sivaram started out as a pacifist and a scholar and look where he wound up. You have been known to us for only a short time, but already look how many other Actives you have killed.”
“And every one of them deserved, it too.” Faye snapped. “You can think I’m dangerous all you want, but I’m also the best we’ve got. If it hadn’t been for me, the Chairman would still be around. If it hadn’t been for me, Washington D.C. would’ve gotten squished by a demon. You think I’m dangerous, Jacques? Well, so is a gun.” She gestured rudely at his coat. Of course, she hadn’t bothered to check, but she assumed he had one on, as any properly attired gentlemen should. “Being dangerous is their job. Ain’t much call for one that’s not dangerous, now is there?”
Jacques looked her square in the eye. “Look out the window.”
Faye did, and it nearly took her breath away. The beautiful farmland they had been passing through was gone, and now as far as her eye could see was nothing but a swath of sick, grey dirt. An odd, uncomfortable feeling settled into the pit of her stomach. “What is this?”
“This was part of the battlefield left over from the battle which you have heard referred to as Second Somme. A geographic misnomer, to be sure, but that is the name which has stuck.”
Of course Faye had heard of Second Somme. She’d even seen a glimpse of it, since that was the personal hell which Mr. Sullivan had consigned himself to after she’d shot him in the heart. “It’s lifeless.”
“Worse than Oklahoma was?”
“Yeah. That was a drought. Sure it was a drought caused by magic, but this is different.” Faye shivered. There wasn’t even a breeze that could blow a tumbleweed across that grey bit of hell. Not that a tumbleweed could’ve grown there, either.
“It has been a generation, but look at it still. This land was defiled by magic, utterly ruined. The eastern half of my country was a muddy wasteland of trenches and barbed wire as far as the eye could see, but all of that, other than the occasional unexploded artillery shell that some poor farmer still occasionally turns over with a plow, has gone back to normal. This place, it never has, and never will. Too much magical energy was used here. Too much Active blood was spilled. The land was changed.”
She could feel the cold in her bones. There weren’t even buzzards, and the only thing close to plant life were broken, petrified tree stumps that had been that way since she’d been a baby. “It’s just dead, ain’t it?”
“Not quite. There are horrors which roam the wastes. A few living things were changed, warped. That much magic usage always has consequences. It twists the very fabric of our bodies. Even breathing this dust will make you sick. It is best to pass through here quickly.”
Faye had thought she’d seen ugly before. The blackened circle that had been Mar Pacifica had been ugly, but it had been a fresh wound. This was an old scar a scrar that had never fully healed.
“You have not seen real war, Faye. You have seen skirmishes. This is what happens when magic truly goes to war against magic. You have not seen the utter savagery that comes from something of this magnitude. Second Somme was one of the largest battles in history, and it was the greatest loss of Active lives ever. Day after day they killed each other, magic being flung back and forth like nothing you could possibly imagine. The laws of physics were broken. Men became something more, and sometimes something less, and afterwards the land was so blighted that we could not even stay long enough to bury the dead without growing ill. We gathered what we could, and most of the rest were left to sink into the mud.”
“I’ve heard it was real bad.”
“If it had not been for General Roosevelt sacrificing his American Volunteers, then my country would have been conquered by the Kaiser’s undead hordes. It was only through a combination of luck, courage, and tenacity that this line held. Oh, how the Power must have grown fat on us.” Jacques sounded tired. Bitter and tired. “It must have been a feast.”
In the distance, Faye could see hills with living plants on them, so thankfully the battleground didn’t go on forever. All scars had to end somewhere. “You were here?”
Jacques was staring out the window. “For part of it, but I was drawn away when I received word of the Spellbound’s whereabouts. I missed the final offensive because I was a few miles away hunting Sivaram. He had been difficult to track during the war. With all of that death to choose from, there had been little need for him to strike out on his own, so this opportunity could not be missed. I was not alone. Knights from both sides deserted in order to assist me. All of us put aside our war in order to stop the greater danger. I was the only survivor, so perhaps in some sad way, Sivaram saved my life.”
“Because you missed this?”
“Yes. We caught him minutes after he had murdered Whisper’s entire family. She had no one else, so I took her in and raised her as my own.” Jacques wiped his eyes. “I loved her very much.”
“I didn’t know all that,” Faye said.
“All you need to know is that it is only because of Whisper you are still alive. You see that, Faye? If you are wrong, if the Power decides that the Spellbound is the next step in its relationship with mankind, then it will be Active against Active, killing and taking, no better than animals. It will reduce us to predator and prey.” Jacques glared out the window at the tainted wasteland. “If you are wrong, then that is our future.”
