Tempt the Stars

Chapter Ten

Pritkin’s voice was strong, but it looked like that was the only thing that was. He needed an arm underneath himself in order to sit up, and it was trembling slightly. Bruises had blossomed all along his rib cage, he had a good start on a black eye, and his skin tone was a grayish white that I didn’t like at all. But he didn’t appear to be interested in his health. He appeared to be interested in my father.

“You’re Roger Palmer,” he said flatly.

It wasn’t a question. He’d had plenty of time to figure out who we were visiting, and no one had ever accused Pritkin of being slow. Including to anger, judging by his expression.

“Does he always state the obvious?” Roger asked me, pushing a fall of limp blond hair out of his face.

I didn’t answer. I was too busy tensing up. I wasn’t sure what happened when high-ranking light and dark mages met each other, but I didn’t think it was likely to be fun. Even when one had no weapons, and the other . . . Well, at least he wasn’t reaching for any.

Yet.

“This is what you’ve been working on for the Circle, isn’t it?” Pritkin demanded, not helping matters.

“I’m retired,” Roger said mildly, but failed to offer him any tea.

I passed over my mug. It didn’t have milk, because I am a barbarian. But Pritkin took it anyway. He didn’t drink it, though, being too busy staring Roger down. Which would have worked better if the man hadn’t had his long nose stuck in the cookie tin.

“And yet you have at least three of these things, perhaps more!” Pritkin rasped. “For what purpose?”

“For whatever purpose I choose, war mage.”

“For security,” I said quickly, because Pritkin’s pale face had just flushed purple. And because it was true.

I didn’t need to be told that much. My parents had been hiding with Tony the bastard because, believe it or not, there were worse things out there. Like a bunch of leftover demigods from antiquity with long lives and longer grudges. The Spartoi had been the children of Ares, left behind when the gods were kicked off earth due to their mixed blood giving them a foothold here. They’d used it to do their father’s bidding, which was to hunt down and destroy the person responsible for his exile.

My mother.

They’d failed, but not before giving it the old Olympus try. And right now Mom and her strange protector didn’t realize that Tony the petty and rotund would one day be a lot more of a problem for them than any ancient half gods. All they knew was that her power had diminished considerably over the years, and that they needed a hideout no one would expect.

Roger was looking at me, as if he knew what I was thinking. Not too hard, since we’d battled the Spartoi together once. Well, sort of.

We’d mostly run away together.

“What kind of security?” Pritkin demanded. “If you’re telling the truth, they’re nothing but ghosts—”

“You think spirits are not powerful?” Roger asked archly. “You of all people should know better.”

“And why would that be?” Pritkin asked silkily. There weren’t too many people who could guess what he was, especially after half an hour’s acquaintance. But Roger merely smirked at him.

Okay, this was going well. “I still don’t get how you made them,” I said quickly.

“The same way war mages make golems,” Roger told me.

“They’re nothing alike!” Pritkin said. And he should know. He’d had a golem once.

“Well, yes, there is the matter that your lot forces demons to power your constructs,” Roger agreed. “While my associates do it of their own free will. But other than—”

“Golems are controlled—”

“A nicer word than enslaved.”

“—so they are not free to wreak havoc—”

“Until they get loose and eat your face,” Roger said dryly.

“—unlike that thing tonight! It might have killed us!”

“With what? She wasn’t armed.”

“It did a good enough job without—” Pritkin stopped. “She?”

“Her name’s Daisy,” I informed him.

Pritkin’s mouth had been open for another retort, but at that he shut it. His eyes slid over to Roger and then back to me, as if he was trying to see the resemblance. I could feel my face heating; I didn’t know why. I damned sure didn’t see any myself.

Roger Palmer was a tall, lanky guy, a bit on the thin side, with a face, nose, and teeth that were all slightly too long. It gave him a horsey appearance, which wasn’t helped by a shock of dishwater blond hair that liked to flop in his pale blue eyes. He was dressed in an old brown suit and a tan cardigan that had started to pill. He had on threadbare purple velvet slippers, since I guess the Wellies he’d worn to tromp through the forest had needed cleaning. He didn’t look like a dangerous dark mage, despite that being the story I kept hearing. And he certainly didn’t look like somebody who ought to be married to a goddess.

But then, I didn’t look much like a Pythia, either, so looks could be deceiving. I just didn’t know if they were in his case. I also didn’t know if he was provoking Pritkin when he was already in a mood because he thought he could handle him, or if he merely didn’t notice.

Judging by his reaction, I don’t think Pritkin knew, either.

“But ghosts can’t power anything,” I repeated, before they started up again. “Most of them barely manage to take care of themselves—”

“Nonsense,” Roger said. And for the first time, his face came alive. “Ghosts are amazing creatures, among the most versatile in existence. And powerful—”

“Powerful?” I repeated, because that hadn’t been my experience. Sure, the ones at Tony’s had wreaked some havoc, and I’d seen something similar on a few other occasions. But those were rare instances when a lot of ghosts found a reason to work together, usually in pursuit of their favorite sport—revenge—or of the power they needed so desperately. Without it, they ended up in a half existence, chained to whatever they were haunting and the tiny subsistence it afforded them until they finally faded altogether.

I’d often thought that was why so many eventually went mad. Eternity stops being a bonus when you’re effectively a prisoner. And there were certainly enough crazed spirits out there.

But powerful?

“Oh yes,”Roger insisted. “Take demons, for example. Everyone always talks about how strong they are, how difficult to control, how dangerous.” He did little finger motions around the last word, as if mocking the idea of anybody being afraid of a lowly creature like a demon. “When if they only knew—ghosts are far more so.”

“You’re mad,” Pritkin said, as if he’d finally come up with an explanation that satisfied him.

Roger sneered. “Oh yes, do let’s trot out the hoary old stereotype—”

“Which you’re currently doing your best to uphold.”

“—of the mad necromancer—”

“Is that what you are?” I asked, feeling my stomach fall. Jonas had said as much, but I’d been hoping he was wrong.

Roger shot me an impatient look. “Despite what you may have been told, it isn’t a bad word. It’s merely a name for a magic worker who specializes in the dead—all sorts of dead. The only reason it has an evil connotation is that the Circle has gone out of its way to give it one.”

“And because so many of the breed end up having to be locked away,” Pritkin added.

“Yes, I always wondered about that,” Roger said sweetly. “If we’re so powerless, why bother?”

“It’s not your power anyone questions, mage. It’s your principles.”

“Principles.” Roger huffed out a laugh. “As if the Corps would know anything about them.”

“As opposed to the Dark Circle, which has such a record for altruism.”

“Yes, let’s pretend those are the only two options.”

“The Corps is the only option that keeps the magical community safe!” Pritkin said, flushing.

“From everything but itself.”

“From those who would recklessly ignore the experience of centuries—”

“From those who resent the absurdity of stagnant magic that gets weaker every year—”

“—and attempt dangerous experiments that are almost certain to end in disaster!”

“—while our enemies get stronger! Yes! Cut off your nose to spite your face, war mage!” Roger snapped. “But don’t doom the rest of us to go down with you. There are those who would prefer a fighting chance!” And the mug came crashing down.

Daisy and I jumped. The colonel’s mustache twitched. Pritkin and Roger glared at each other. And I jumped in while I had the chance, since I might not get another.

“How are ghosts more powerful than demons?” I asked. Because if it was true, I really needed to have a chat with Billy Joe.

Roger sent me a glance, like he knew what I was doing. But after a moment, he answered anyway. “Well, for one thing, they’re less vulnerable. Take the colonel. Do you see a control gem in his forehead?”

“He doesn’t have a forehead,” Daisy said, looking disapproving. “Doesn’t even have a head—”

“I have a head, woman!” the colonel said indignantly.

“I meant on your new body.”

“So did I! The whole point was to leave ’em empty above the neck so our own heads would have a place to go!”

“But nobody sees our heads,” Daisy pointed out. “And they look so . . . odd.”

“They’re not the only thing odd around here.”

“My point,” Roger said, talking over them, “was that the colonel doesn’t have to worry about someone erasing a spell on his forehead or pulling a scroll out of his mouth—”

“Which would be easy enough since it’s usually open,” Daisy put in.

“—or any of the other typical ways of immobilizing a construct like a golem. Because they’re not constructs; they’re just using them.”

“Like driving a car,” Daisy told me. “It gets totaled, but you walk away.”

“Can’t a demon walk away?” I asked.

“Yes, but it’s not going to come back, then, is it?” Roger countered. “Once the golem—its prison, essentially—is destroyed, its sentence is over. And it doesn’t usually waste any time getting out of there. Unless it decides to get . . . testy . . . with its former master. But either way, you’ve lost your servant.”

Pritkin glowered at him, but he didn’t refute it. Which I supposed meant Roger’s account was pretty accurate. He enjoyed an argument even when he liked someone, and I didn’t think he liked Roger.

“And then there’s the way they feed,” Roger continued, oblivious. “Ghosts and demons are both spirits, yes?”

“Well, some demons . . ”

“And they both gain strength by feeding off living energy.”

I nodded.

“The difference is that demons can only hold so much. They’re like humans that way, or vampires. They feed to satisfy their current needs, and to store up power for later. And, of course, with the elder demons, the amount they can hold can be very, very large. But even they have limits, although they don’t like to admit it. Whereas ghosts . . ”

“What about ghosts?”

“They’re eternal sponges: they never get full. You can feed them and feed them and feed them, and they just . . . soak it up.”

Daisy nodded her substitute for a head, and the eyelash fell off again.

I frowned. “How do you know? No ghost has access to that kind of power.” For most of the ghosts I’d known, the problem was finding enough energy to keep going, not in seeing how much they could store up.

“They do if someone provides it.”

“But why would anyone—”

“You’re making indestructible soldiers!” Pritkin accused.

I looked at him, faintly surprised, but not as much as Roger. Who seemed amazed that a magical jock could put two and two together. But he shook his head.

“Not indestructible. You discovered that much tonight. Not that that model was designed for combat, mind you, but any of them can be destroyed under the right circumstances. But that isn’t really the issue.”

“Then what is?”

Roger looked thoughtful. “I suppose the best analogy would be your Spitfires in the Second World War.”

Judging by his confused expression, that didn’t clear up much for Pritkin. It didn’t for me, either, but I was a little distracted by the sick feeling that had opened up in the pit of my stomach. Because it wasn’t the why of Roger’s weird hobby that interested me.

It was the how.

“During World War Two, the Nazis planned to invade the British Isles,” he told me. “But to do so, they first needed control of the skies, and that meant wiping out the RAF—that’s the British Royal Air Force.”

I nodded numbly.

“But the RAF held on, mainly because their airplanes, the Spitfires, were damned good little planes, and because their factories could churn them out in a seemingly endless supply. Every time a plane went down, there were two more waiting to replace it. There was just one problem.”

“Factories couldn’t churn out pilots, too,” Pritkin said, narrowing his eyes at Daisy. Who was poking around in her apron for the lost lash.

“Exactly,” Roger said. “The RAF kept running out of pilots, and couldn’t train more fast enough to meet the demand. They only held out because of an influx of qualified personnel from abroad. And even then, it was a close thing. But imagine if you could train someone once, yet use him over and over. Imagine if, when one’s vehicle was destroyed, one’s body remained unharmed and could merely flit back and pick up another. And another after that, and another after that—”

“You’d never run out,” I said, watching Pritkin. Who’d started out angry and was closing in on furious.

Roger nodded. “Think of it: an army of soldiers who can’t die—they already did. Or be captured and forced to answer questions by their enemies. Or be prevented from returning to base. After all, what can trap a ghost?”

I could think of something, I didn’t say, because Pritkin had reached apoplectic. Maybe he was thinking about the destruction such a force could wreak on the Corps. Or maybe it was Roger’s attitude that bothered him. It was like he’d forgotten who his audience was and was happily holding forth on his favorite subject.

“Of course, there were problems,” Roger told me. “Most annoyingly that the ghosts said the bodies didn’t feel like theirs.”

“I kept drifting up out of it,” Daisy said. “And that was before I tried to move the thing!”

“And practice didn’t help much,” Roger added. “I finally realized that I had merely created a vehicle, when what they needed was a body. So I did some research and discovered that the binding spell for a golem has similarities to the way zombies are made, and once I understood that, well, things began popping.”

“I’ll say,” Daisy put in.

“Of course, I still had to figure out an enchantment to lighten the weight of the bodies, so they weren’t burning through power like a 747. And ghosts can’t do magic. Therefore all their spells had to be transformed into a potion form that could be carried—”

“But you managed,” I said, because obviously.

“Well . . . more or less.” He patted Daisy’s massive thigh. “And unlike living soldiers, mine don’t get tired. They can’t be wounded. They don’t need sleep. As long as there are bodies to house them and energy to supply them, they can go on and on and—”

He cut off because Pritkin had finally had enough. A wash of power suddenly filled the room, reminding me that Pritkin didn’t need weapons. He was one. He was a war mage.

But then, so was Roger.

Pritkin launched himself off the table and into the air, with something in his hand I couldn’t see but knew damned well he couldn’t use. It’s over, I wanted to yell. He can’t hurt anyone! He’s already dead!

But I never got the chance.

I was half out of my seat, hand outstretched and words forming on my lips, when Pritkin suddenly wasn’t there anymore. But a second later, something hit the far wall with a crack. I looked over to see him peeling off the paint behind the table—and the plaster and the bricks—having been knocked across the room and partly through the wall by something that had moved so fast it had been only a blur.

And still was, because I was too busy running to look for it. I shoved a chair aside and knelt by the crumpled body, the one with an unexploded potion grenade falling out of one hand. Pritkin must have stayed conscious long enough to steal one off Big Red while being carried back, and shoved it down his boot.

And damn it! I should have thought of that. But I hadn’t thought it necessary to frisk a naked man.

“That’ll teach him not to bother with shields!” someone said, and I turned to see the creature itself standing in the doorway. The rain was blowing through a ghostly image of the colonel’s head rising out of the neck and looking smug.

“It won’t teach him anything if he’s dead!”

“Would you prefer your father dead, girl?” the colonel demanded.

I picked up the golden grenade and threw it at him. “He was going to trap him—not kill him!”

The colonel dodged back out the door, avoiding the sticky strands that hit the jamb and spread over the opening, like a giant web. “Well, how was I to know that?” he demanded, glaring at me through a gap. “And what good would trappin’ him do? This isn’t your time!”

“It might force him to tell the truth! How many of you does the Black Circle have? Where are they keeping you—”

“I should have anticipated that,” Roger said testily, coming over. He glanced at the colonel. “Next time, allow me to ask for assistance before you intervene.”

“He’s a war mage. You wouldn’t have had time to ask,” the colonel protested—to no one, because no one was listening to him anymore.

“Do something!” I told Roger, who had knelt beside Pritkin and was checking for a pulse for the second time that night.

He looked up at Big Red. “Flashlight.”

The giant snagged one out of a tool belt with one of the hooks it used for hands, and pushed it through a gap in the net. From the look of what else was hanging around its waist, it was plain that Red’s primary use wasn’t gardening. He could have hit Pritkin with something far worse than the flat of his hand, although that might have been enough.

Roger retrieved the flashlight and pried up Pritkin’s left eyelid, careful not to move the head. “Normal dilation,” he told me, after a second. “And his heartbeat is strong. He should be all right, but we won’t know for certain until he comes around.”

“If he comes around!”

“You worry too much. He’s half demon—”

“He’s half human, too!”

“Well, what would you have me do?” he asked impatiently. “I’m not a doctor and he isn’t a vampire. I can manipulate dead flesh any way you like, but I don’t have power over the living.”

Maybe not, but I knew someone who did.

He caught my arm as I jumped up. “She isn’t there. She—”

“Like hell she isn’t!” I broke away and ran for the stairs.