Just Cause Universe 2: The Archmage Read online

  The Archmage

  A Just Cause Universe Novel by

  Ian Thomas Healy

  Copyright 2012 Ian Thomas Healy

  Local Hero Press Edition

  Local Hero Press Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Local Hero Press and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover design by S. Bell.

  Other ebooks by Ian Thomas Healy

  Novels

  Blood on the Ice

  Hope and Undead Elvis

  Pariah's Moon

  Troubleshooters: The Longest Joke Ever told

  The Milkman: SuperSekrit Extra Cheesy Edition

  Rooftops

  Just Cause

  Collections

  Tales of the Weird Wild West, Vol. 1

  The Bulletproof Badge

  Short Stories

  Just Cause series

  Graceful Blur

  The Scent of Rose Petals

  The Steel Soldier's Gambit

  Weird Wild West series

  The Mighty Peculiar Incident at Muddy Creek

  Posse

  Professional MotorCombat series

  Last Year's Hero

  Rookie Sensation

  Harry Blaine series

  Bulletproof

  Young Guns

  Tuesday Night at Powerman's

  Standalone titles

  In His Majesty's Postal Service

  Bread and Circuses

  Footprints in the Butter

  Upon A Midnight Clear

  Dental Plan

  Nonfiction

  Action! Writing Better Action Using Cinematic Techniques

  All titles and more available wherever ebooks are sold.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Prologue

  “My official stance on magic? There’s no such thing.”

  -Dr. Grace Devereaux, interviewed in Scientific American, April 1990

  April, 2004

  Tokyo, Japan

  “More sake, Wiru-san?”

  Deep in thought, Will Kramer looked down at his clay mug, still half-full of the warm alcohol. Or half-empty, he thought. After all, I’m a pessimist. Nevertheless, he turned and smiled at his hostess, Kanayo Saito. She was petite, even for a Japanese woman, and had aged so gracefully that she didn’t look anywhere near her age of eighty. Only the deep wrinkles around her eyes and the skin of her hands gave any indication of her many decades of life. She was wrapped in a traditional kimono, delicate red with cherry blossoms printed on it. Her husband, a tall reedy man named Hotaka, sat at the low table and sipped from his own mug. He had two of his crickets out of their gilded cage and watched them frolic on a mat, if such a term as frolic could be applied to insects. Nevertheless, their shiny black carapaces almost glowed as they crawled back and forth across the tatami mat.

  “No thank you, Kanayo-san, but it is very good sake.” Will bowed. His tall purple mohawk bobbed forward with the motion. In parahuman circles, he was called Stratocaster, the superhero from America’s Lucky Seven team. He played a brilliant white custom guitar made for him by the oldest, most-skilled craftsman at the Fender company. He endorsed their products and they allowed him to use Stratocaster as his super identity. His powers, diverse and mysterious, could only be accessed when he played his instrument. He called it magic, and others laughed, because everyone believed there was no such thing.

  Only a few people knew the truth: magic was real, and he was part of the very small fraternity of wizards and witches who could bend the mystical power to their wills.

  Like Will, the Saitos were also mages. The couple had spent more than half a century in the study of magic and how to control it. Will suspected they were the most powerful mages on the planet, but for all that ability, they rarely called upon the power to do their bidding. The Saitos subscribed to the philosophy that power corrupts, and the more of it they acquired through their studies, original research, and practical application, the less they actually chose to use it. Sometimes they argued—good-naturedly, as they weren’t the sort of people to foment conflict—with Will about his persistence in continuing to put the power to use.

  Will loved using magic, whether in the service of the Lucky Seven, or simply to make aspects of his daily life simpler. For him, the thrill of the power flowing through him came on like a runner’s high. The feeling of magic as it flowed through his fingers into the guitar beat any narcotic, and Will had tried a good number of them as part of his rock-and-roll lifestyle. He carried his sake in one hand and his guitar in the other, and walked over to the window to look out upon the lights of Tokyo, smothered in pollution and drizzling rain.

  There weren’t many mages left in the world. Once, when civilizations were young, there had been hundreds, perhaps thousands, but they’d been mere dabblers and charlatans. According to the Saitos, the amount of magical energy in the world remained constant, like the mass of the universe. It could never be created anew nor destroyed; it could only be controlled by those who knew the secrets of it. As the number of mages decreased, those who remained could control a proportionately larger piece of the whole.

  And now there were seven fewer.

  Hotaka had looked stoic and impassive, his cheekbones standing out in sharp relief from his tightly-clenched jaw. Kanayo’s eyes had filled with tears and she’d bitten a knuckle to keep from crying out when Will told them the news. Seven of their fellow mages had been slain in less than two months. Their names still echoed through his head: Gendarme and Rousseau in France; the Spaniard Gomez; Turko in Finland; Shostakovich in Russia; Vishnawas in India, and Sujin in Singapore.

  Someone or something was hunting down the mages of the world.

  “Surely you don’t believe it’s a coincidence, Hotaka-san?” asked Will. “Seven of us dead in as many weeks?”

  “It is no coincidence, Wiru-san,” said the elder mage at length. Neither he nor his wife could pronounce Will; Wiru was the closest they could manage. “I had hoped not to encounter an Archmage in my lifetime, but history and prophecy are against me.”

  Will sat down across the table from Hotaka, crossed his legs and laid his guitar across his lap. “I know the word, but what does it mean in this context?”

  “According to the histories, every thousand years a single mage will absorb all available magic, stealing it from those who possess it. His or her power will become virtually absolute.” Mages acted as batteries for magic, and released those energies upon death. A nearby mage could absorb those energies into his own body and become that much more powerful instead of letting the energies dissipate throughout the world or remain in is
olated pockets until found by future mages.

  “So you think that it’s a mage who’s killing the others?”

  “I do.” Kanayo hunkered down next to her husband and placed a loving hand on his shoulder. He smiled at her, sad but full of love. “And I fear he will come for us.”

  “Who is it? Is it Banks? Or maybe Williamson? I never trusted him very much.” Stirred by his strong emotions, a ghostly whine of harmonics echoed from the strings of the guitar.

  “No. Attend.” Hotaka pulled a small pouch from inside his robe and poured a sparkling powder onto the table before him. He muttered some ancient words and the powder streamed into the air before him as if guided by invisible breezes. It shaped itself into glyphs which Will couldn’t translate. He marveled at the relaxed ease with which Hotaka channeled the power. “I believe his name is… I apologize, it is a difficult name. Wufegane Feraziare.”

  “Wufegane…” said Will thoughtfully. “Wolfgang?”

  The older man smiled in relief. “Yes, that is correct.”

  “I don’t recognize the name.”

  “He has been hidden,” said Kanayo softly. “Shielded, certainly, by dark magics. Only now has he begun to draw the power to him. Surely you have noticed the pull on your own powers.”

  Will took another sip of his sake. He had indeed felt something tugging on him, like a magnet. He hadn’t understood what it meant until the Kanayo explained it. He could sense it even now, like a voice that whispered in his ear like a seductive lover. “Yes,” he said. “You said he’s coming for us?”

  Hotaka’s face became impassive, but a single tear tracked down Kanayo’s face. “He comes for all of us. He means to become the only magic user in the world. The Archmage. He can only succeed by eliminating all rivals.”

  “Meaning us.” A squeal of feedback from the guitar punctuated Will’s remark. “Can we stop him?”

  “I do not know, Wiru-san. We are very old. We may not have the strength to battle him, and he is already very powerful.”

  Kanayo laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. “You may be our best hope to stop him, Wiru-san.”

  Will choked on the mouthful of sake he’d just taken and spluttered. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes watered as the alcohol found its way into his sinuses. “Excuse me?”

  “My wife speaks the truth. You are not like other mages, Wiru-san. Your powers follow neither convention nor form. You can achieve amazing results with your instrument, and yet cannot perform the simplest incantation without it. It is this… flouting of magical standards that may prove to be the key to defeating this man.”

  “How can you say that, Hotaka-san?” Will felt a cold sweat break across his forehead. “I’ve never had any formal training. I hardly even know what I’m doing. I just kind of make things up as I go along and hope to hell it works.”

  “And that makes you unpredictable. It is as if you can think in three dimensions when the rest of us only think in two,” said Kanayo.

  “Okay, I’ll give you that. Suppose that I am such a brilliant, unpredictable mage—which I don’t believe for a second—how am I supposed to defeat someone who’s taken the magic from seven other mages? That makes him seven times as powerful as before, right?”

  “Unfortunately you are correct,” said Hotaka. “I did not say your task would be easy.”

  “There is one way we could give you our power, to make you stronger,” said Kanayo, her mouth a razor-thin line.

  Will sprang to his feet. “You mean die? Commit suicide or seppuku or whatever you call it? Or have me kill you? No way.” He flung his guitar strap over his shoulder angrily and prepared to strike the power chord that would send him away in a flash of purple light.

  “Please, Wiru-san. No offense was meant. Do not leave in anger.” Hotaka’s voice was calm and quiet, and yet it sliced through Will’s hot anger like an icy blade.

  Will bowed his head. “I’m sorry, Hotaka-san. I know you meant well. I am honored that you would offer your lives to me, but I am not worthy of such a gift.”

  Hotaka carefully lifted his crickets in the palm of his hand and whispered to them. He opened the door of the little pagoda-shaped cage to allow the crickets to walk into it where they joined several of their brethren. One began to chirp. After a moment, another joined in and soon their ghostly chorus echoed through the large apartment. It was a peaceful sound, reminiscent of Will’s childhood in rural Illinois. He felt the tension wash away from him.

  It returned a moment later full force when Kanayo spoke. “He approaches, husband. I sense him.”

  “Yes,” said Hotaka with a deep, worldly sadness. “Wiru-san, this does not yet have to be your fight. If you wish, you may leave to rejoin your friends now.”

  “No way, Hotaka-san.” Will checked the tuning of his guitar. “I’m not about to let some asshole come in here and… and do as he pleases.”

  “You must swear an oath to us,” urged Kanayo. “Here and now, or we shall bar you from this place. Certain things must never come to pass so long as you live.”

  “Anything you like.” Will’s skin prickled. He spun all his tone and volume pots to maximum and was rewarded with a gentle whine of feedback from the air around him. His guitar produced amplified sound even though it wasn’t connected to anything, as if the very air itself became his speaker.

  “Swear that you will not let him take our power. If our defeat is inevitable, you must take our power for yourself. It is your only chance to survive.”

  “What?” Will couldn’t believe his ears. “Come on, you can’t be serious.”

  Hotaka set his cricket cage on a high shelf so it would be out of danger. His ancient paper-thin skin took on a hardened, shiny appearance. The fabric of Kanayo’s clothing moved to reshape itself around her as if it were alive.

  “Swear, or I shall banish you from this place forever. You know I have the power to do so, Wiru-san.” Hotaka raised a hand surrounded by a glowing nimbus of energy.

  “Okay, I swear,” Will grumbled.

  He had never before seen the Saitos use their magic in great quantities. Hotaka stood straighter, and somehow taller and more massive than before, as if his legs and body had lengthened. His skin transformed to shiny, black chitin, and horny blades pushed out of his arms and legs. He looks like a cricket, thought Will as he noticed the long antennae sprouting from Hotaka’s forehead.

  Meanwhile, the layers of her clothing had reshaped around Kanayo to form an approximation of ancient samurai armor. A sash whipped out, straight and hard, and she grasped it like a katana sword. Magic crackled off both of them like static electricity. They seemed almost young and vibrant as the power flowed through them.

  Lightning flared outside the windows, and thunder boomed instantly along with it. Will saw a dark figure floating in the air, backlit by the storm. He had just opened his mouth to shout a warning when all the windows facing east shattered inward. Razor-sharp slivers of glass whirled through the apartment. The shards deflected off Hotaka’s insectile armor and only cut a few threads on Kanayo’s fabric. Will barely managed to strum a chord in time to create a screen of force in front of him to keep from getting shredded.

  Will squinted through the rain that blew into the room. The figure drifted closer to the building face, illuminated by the room lighting. He was in his mid-thirties, with a slender frame and gaunt face. Male-pattern baldness had begun to show through his short black hair and gray hairs streaked his neatly-trimmed beard. Although he floated in the rain, not a drop reached his skin or his fashionable clothing. No costumes for this fellow; he wore designer jeans, a white Oxford shirt, black leather jacket, and alligator skin boots. He gazed into the Saitos’ apartment with interest.

  “How nice,” he said. “You have company. Saves me a trip. I’m Wolfgang Frazier and I’ll be killing you all this evening.” His voice was husky, as if he smoked a couple packs a day, but carried subsonic power in it that made Will’s stomach churn.

  Kanayo ra
ised her hands and a mass of sashes and ribbons shot forth like serpentine missiles. They raced through the air toward the man as if they were alive. The man countered with a spell of his own that caused the fabric to blacken and crumble into ash as it touched him.

  He stepped out of the air through a broken pane of glass, and Will let him have it with a massive, crunchy power chord. The blast of sound turned the remaining glass shards in the room into powder. Frazier flew backwards from the impact and tumbled out of the window.

  Will turned to face the Saitos with a smile and a shrug. “That didn’t seem so hard.”

  Eldritch flames spurted into the sky as Frazier rose again, borne on a column of flame. “Simpleton,” he hissed through magical amplification that parroted Will’s. “Did you really think I would be so easily defeated?”

  “I was sort of hoping, yeah.”

  Kanayo and Hotaka stepped in front of him and assumed fighting stances. “You shall not have him, monster,” rasped Hotaka through jaws better-suited to tearing steel than starting conversations.

  Will’s jaw dropped. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh, please,” Frazier snarled. “You think a couple of fossils like you can stop me?”

  Hotaka rasped his forearms together with a sound like swords being sharpened. Fabric flowed around Kanayo like living water. “Coward.” Kanayo’s voice sounded like that of a young woman, smooth and silky.

  “Fancy a melee, do you? Fine. It should be quite amusing.” Frazier extended his hands and a pair of glowing swords grew out of them. Each blade sparked and spat flames. He held one in front of him vertically, and lifted the other over his head in a mock salute. “Come on, then. I haven’t got all night.” Smoky Western-style armor appeared around his body and glowed dim purple in the gathering darkness.

  Will started to play his best speed metal attack riff. The steel girders of the high-rise vibrated in sympathetic harmony. A single word of power passed from Frazier’s lips and suddenly Will couldn’t feel his fingers. The sounds of his guitar changed from mellifluous to jarring and dissonant, and his magic became erratic and uncontrolled.