The Law of Nines

11

ALEX STARED FOR A MOMENT. “You mean you’re an alien. From Mars, or something.”

Her expression darkened. “I may not know what Mars is, but your tone is all too clear. This isn’t a joke. I risked my life to come here.”

“Risked your life how?”

“That isn’t your concern.”

“What is my concern?”

“That there are people from my world, dangerous people, who are likely to come after you for reasons we don’t yet fully understand. I wouldn’t like you to be unprepared.”

He wondered how one prepared for people from some other dimension or time or twilight zone or something — he couldn’t imagine what — who were liable to come looking for one.

Alex tapped his fork on a piece of chicken in his salad as he considered her words. If there was ever a look that meant business, she was giving it to him.

Still, he just couldn’t bring himself to take seriously such talk of people coming from a different world. He wondered yet again if his lifelong worry was coming to pass: he wondered if he could be going crazy like his mother had. He knew that she believed things that weren’t real.

He pushed the thoughts aside. He wasn’t crazy. Jax was real enough. It actually made more sense for him to believe that she was crazy. Yet, despite how absurd her story was, she simply didn’t strike him as crazy.

Even if he couldn’t believe that this woman was from some other world, something seemed to be going on, and it was serious. Deadly serious, if he was to believe her.

He wanted to ask her exactly how she had traveled from this other world, but he instead checked his tone and started over. “I’m listening.”

She took a sip of tea. “Someone is meddling.”

“With my family?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Most likely because you’re a Rahl. We believe that unless you have children you will be the last in the Rahl bloodline.”

“And you think someone is interested in the Rahls?”

“If I had to guess I’d say that they may have killed your father to prevent him from getting to his twenty-seventh birthday.”

“My father died in a car accident. He wasn’t murdered.”

“Maybe not.” Jax arched an eyebrow. “But if you had been run down the other day don’t you suppose it would have looked like an accident?”

“Are you saying that was intentional? That those men were trying to kill me? Why?”

She leaned back and sighed as she dismissed the suggestion with a flick of her hand. “I’m only saying that if they had been trying to kill you it would have looked like an accident, don’t you think?”

He stabbed a piece of chicken as he recalled the murderous look the bearded man had given him. He looked up at her. She was watching him again.

“Why are these people so interested in the Rahl bloodline?”

“We’re not entirely sure, yet. Like I said, we don’t fully understand their reasons or what is going on.”

She seemed not to be sure about a lot of things. Alex didn’t know if he believed that she was as in the dark as she claimed, but he decided that since she chose not to tell him yet she must have her reasons, so he let it go.

Jax sat back a little as she went on. “When I was but a child, a few people started to get an inkling that something was going on, something nefarious. They dug into things, followed people, spied on them, and eventually, along the way, as one thing led to another, they found out that your mother was in danger. They tried to help her. In the end they weren’t able to do so. They didn’t yet know enough.”

“If twenty-seven is so important, what with the Law of Nines and all,” he asked, “then why didn’t these dangerous people do anything to my grandfather, Ben? He’s a Rahl.” There were just too many holes in her story. He gestured with his fork to make his point. “Or, for that matter, why not come after any of the previous generations?”

“Some of my friends believe that these other people simply weren’t able to get here yet.”

“But you think differently?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “I think that important elements of the prophecy weren’t yet in place. It was too soon. Up until now it had been the wrong time, the wrong Rahl, for the prophecy.”

“I don’t believe in fortune-telling.”

She shrugged. “It could be that you’re right, that it’s nothing more than some kind of baseless lunatic idea they came up with. They would hardly be the first group of people who acted on a completely deluded idea.”

He hadn’t expected her answer. “That’s true enough.”

“Whatever their reasons, some time ago they found a way to come here. These are people who, in my world, kill for the things they believe in.”

Alex again thought about the plumbing truck that had nearly run him down. He thought about the two dead officers, their necks broken. He remembered his mother saying “They break people’s necks.” He didn’t want to ask the question for fear of lending credibility to a subject he didn’t think deserved it, but he couldn’t help himself.

“What is this prophecy?”

She glanced around the empty room, checking that no one was near. The two women had already paid their check and left. The waitress was at a distant wait station, her back to them, folding a stack of black napkins for the dinner setting.

Jax leaned in and lowered her voice. “The gist of the prophecy is that only someone from this world has a chance to save our world.”

He bit back a sarcastic remark and asked instead, “Save it from what?”

“Maybe save it from these people who are coming here to make sure that the prophecy can’t come to pass.”

“Sounds like a dog chasing its own tail,” he said.

She opened her hands in an empathetic gesture. “For all we know, it could be that they don’t believe you’re a part of this prophecy. Maybe they want something else from you.”

“But you think I’m involved in this in some way.”

She laid her fingers on the sunlit place in the painting beside her before looking up at him. “You may live in this world, be a part of this world, but you have links, no matter how insubstantial, to our world. You proved it by painting a place in my world.”

Or so she said. “It could just be a place that resembles it.”

She remained mute, but the look she gave him was answer enough.

Alex ran his fingers back through his hair. “Your world, my world. Jax, I hope you can understand that when all is said and done I can’t really believe what you’re telling me.”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it when I first came here and saw what looked like huge metal things floating in the air, or carriages moving without horses, or any of a dozen other things that to me are impossible. It’s not easy for me to reconcile it all in my own head. This will not be easy for you, either, Alex, but I know of no other way if there is to be a chance to save our world.”

He felt as if he had just seen a sliver of light through the door she had opened a crack. This was a mission of desperation as far as she was concerned. She meant for him to help her save her world.

He wasn’t sure if she had intended for him to see that brief glimpse of her purpose. Rather than try to pry at that door and have her slam it shut in his face, he asked something else, hoping to put her at ease.

“How is your world different from mine? Is it that they don’t have advances like airplanes, cars, and the technology we have?” Were he not sitting with a woman who seemed deadly serious, he doubted that he could have asked such questions with a straight face. “What makes the people there, what makes you, a different kind of human?”

“This is a world without magic,” she said without a trace of humor.

“So. . you mean to imply that there is magic in your world? Real magic?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve seen it? Seen real magic.”

She studied his eyes for a moment before a slight but intimidating smile grew at the corners of her mouth.

“Among other abilities, I am a sorceress.”

“A sorceress who can’t make tea.”

“A sorceress who in my world can do a great deal more than make tea.”

“But not in this world?”

“No,” she finally admitted, her daunting smile fading. “Not in this world. This is a world without magic. I have no power here.”

He found that to be rather convenient.

“So, we come from very different worlds, then.”

“Not so different,” Jax said in a way that sounded like it was somehow meant to be comforting.

Alex studied her placid expression. “We don’t have magic. You say your world does. How much different could our worlds be?”

“Not so different,” she repeated. “We have magic, but so do you, after a fashion. It’s just that it manifests itself in a different way. You do the very same things we do, if with different methods.”

“Like what?”

“Well, that thing in your pocket.”

“The phone?”

She nodded as she leaned back and pulled something out of a pocket near her waist. She held up a small black book.

“This is a journey book. It works much like that phone you get messages on. Like your phone, we use this to get messages from people and to convey information to others. I write in my journey book and through magic the words appear at the same time in its twin. You say words on your phone device and words come out somewhere else. I am accustomed to writing messages, not speaking them. But you can also make your phone device function as a journey book, make words appear in it, am I right?”

Bethany’s text messages sprang to mind. “Yes, but that’s all done through technology.”

She shrugged. “We do the same things you do. You do it by means of technology, we use magic. The words may be different but they do basically the same thing. They both implement intent and that’s all that really matters. They both accomplish the same tasks.”

“Technology is nothing at all like magic,” Alex insisted.

“Technology itself is not what’s important, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you really know any better than I do how a phone device works? Can you explain to me how the message gets from one place to another”—she waggled her fingers across in front of them—“how the words come invisibly through the air and end up here, in the device in your pocket, in a way that you can understand them? Do you really know what makes all that technology work? Can you explain all the unseeable things that happen, the things that you take for granted?”

“I guess not,” he admitted.

“Nor can I explain how a journey book works. What’s important is that the people here used their minds to create this technology in order to accomplish their ends, much like those where I come from think up ways to create things using magic to accomplish what we need to accomplish. It’s as simple as that. It’s second nature to both of us. We both use what has been created. For all you know, your phone really could work through magic and you would never know the difference.”

“But there are people here who understand the technology and can describe exactly how all of the parts work, how the phone works, how the words appear.”

“I know people who can describe exactly how a journey book works. I’ve even sat through long lectures on the subject, but while I get the general nature of it I still can’t tell you exactly how to align the fibers within the paper with Additive and Subtractive elements to give them the sympathetic harmony needed to make words appear. It’s not my area of expertise. What matters most to me is that someone somehow did create it and I can use it to help me accomplish the things I need to do.

“We simply say that it works by magic and leave it at that. How it works isn’t so important to me. That it does work is what matters.

“If you wish to describe what we do in our world as merely a different form of technology rather than use the word ‘magic,’ if that makes it easier for you to accept, then call it by that name. The name makes no difference.

“Magic and technology are merely tools of mankind. If you called that phone a magic talking box, would you use it any differently?”

“I concede the point.” Alex gestured. “So, do something. Show me.”

She leaned back and slipped the little black book back where she kept it. “I told you, this is a world without magic. I can’t use magic here. Magic doesn’t work here. Believe me, I wish it did, because it would make this a lot easier.”

“I hope you realize how convenient that excuse sounds.”

She leaned in again with that deadly serious look she had. “I’m not here to prove anything to you, Alex. I’m here to find out what’s going on so I can try to stop it. You just happen to be in the middle of it and I’d not like to see you get hurt.”

That reminded him of what he’d said when he had pulled her back from getting run over by pirate plumbers — that he’d not like to see her get hurt.

“A little difficult, isn’t it, if you can’t use your sorceress powers, considering that you don’t know how this world works. I mean, no offense, but you didn’t even know how to make tea.”

“I didn’t come here thinking it would be easy. I came out of desperation. There is a saying in our world that sometimes there is magic in acts of desperation. We were desperate.”

Alex scratched his temple, unable to contain his sarcasm. “Don’t tell me, the people who sent you are sorcerers. A whole coven of sorcerers.”

She stared into his eyes for a moment. Tears welled up.

“I didn’t risk eternity in the black depths of the underworld to come here for this.”

She set down her napkin, picked up the painting, and stood. “Thank you for the beautiful painting. I hope you heed my warnings, Alex. Since you don’t seem to need my help, I’ll attend to other concerns.”

She stopped and turned back. “By the way, covens have to do with witches — thirteen of them — not sorcerers. I’d not like to even contemplate thirteen witch women all together in one place at once. They’re known for their rather rash temperament. Be glad they can’t get here; they’d simply gut you and be done with it.”

She marched away without a further word.

Alex knew that he’d blown it. He’d crossed a line he hadn’t known was there. Or maybe he crossed a line that he should have known was there. She had wanted him to listen, to try to understand, to trust her. But how could he be expected to believe such a preposterous story?

The waitress had seen Jax leaving and headed for the table. Alex pulled out a hundred-dollar bill — the only kind of cash he had — threw it on the table, and told the waitress to keep the change. It was the biggest tip he’d ever left in his life. He rushed across the quiet room, weaving among the tables.

“Jax, wait. Please?”

Without slowing she glided through the door and out into the halls, her black dress flowing out behind like dark fire.

“Jax, I’m sorry. Look, I don’t know anything about it. I admit it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be so flippant — it’s one of my faults — but how would you react if the situation were reversed, if before today I told you how we make tea?”

She ignored his words.

“Jax, please, don’t go.”

He broke into a trot trying to catch up with her. Without looking back she turned down a small, dimly lit hall toward a side exit. Long skeins of wavy blond hair trailed out behind her like flags of fury. An exit sign cast the hall in hazy red, otherworldly light.

Jax reached the door before he could catch up with her. She stopped abruptly and turned to him in a way that made him stop dead in his tracks. He was almost close enough to reach out and touch her. Something warned him to stay where he was.

“Do you know the meaning of the name Alexander?”

Alex wanted to say something to her, to apologize, to talk her into staying, but he knew without a doubt that he had better answer her question and no more or he would cross a line. . forever.

“It means ‘defender of man, warrior.’ ”

She smiled to herself just a little. “That’s right. And do you value your name, its meaning?”

“Why do you think I sign my work, my passion, ‘Alexander’?”

She gazed at him a long moment, her features softening just a bit. “Maybe there is hope for you. Maybe there is yet hope for all of us.”

She abruptly turned and threw open the door. Without looking back she said over her shoulder, “Heed my words, Alexander, defender of man: Trouble will find you.”

Harsh afternoon light flared into the hall, turning her figure into nothing more than a harsh fragment of silhouette twisting the shafts of light.

Alex reached the door just as it slammed shut. He threw it open again and ran out into an empty side parking lot. Trees grew in a green band close to the building. Beyond grassy hillocks waited parked cars that in the flat gray light of the overcast afternoon no longer looked nearly so lustrous.

Jax was nowhere to be seen.

Alex stood staring around at the quiet, empty surroundings.

She’d been out of his sight for only a few seconds. She couldn’t have been more than a half-dozen steps ahead of him. It seemed crazy, but she had vanished. The woman had just vanished into thin air.

Just like she had vanished the last time.

He wondered if this was how it had been for his mother.