Authors: David Sakmyster
Tags: #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
“Druids,” Mason whispered, and Solomon’s eyes widened.
“Ah, so you’re not completely clueless.”
“I didn’t say I believed any of it. All those people—just like the rainmakers in the dust bowl or snake charmers at the circus, they played on people’s gullibility. Their needs. They used some general forecasting ability, modest sensibilities of rainy seasons and typical historical behavior. Red sky at night sort of proverbs, that’s all. Spoken in the right way, with ceremony and maybe some animal sacrifice, and your followers are suddenly in awe of your powers.” Mason shook his head. “It’s not all smoke and mirrors, but as Arthur C. Clarke said: ‘Any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ Just keep the advanced tech—or knowledge—away from the common folk and they’ll believe in wizardry. Or druidism.”
Solomon gripped his staff and turned, displaying it for Mason. “You’re not wrong. But you’re not entirely correct, either. Palavar showed me that, and showed you too, before you forgot.”
“I don’t—”
“Remember, I know. But we learned, you and I. Especially what we could achieve with the right tools.” He hefted the staff, admiring every nook and twisting grain of wood. “The way to harness that power.”
“Wait,” Mason said. “Back up for a minute. Palavar brought you there, adopted.… Why? Because he thought you, even as a baby, had this innate power over weather?”
“A dangerous power, but something, for sure. He wasn’t positive, but the signs were there. A sudden violent storm out of the thin air, one that I alone survived. It could have been dumb luck, the way the carriage fell and protected me, but it could have been more. I was under extreme stress, I’m told. Reacting to my parents’ emotional state, and furious with how they were ignoring me.”
“You were a baby, for god’s sakes.”
“Exactly, not knowing any better. Trying to influence the world and get what I want, when normally the only way was through tears.”
“So okay, Palavar thinks you can do that and wants to what, train you? Or keep you out of the way so you won’t harm anyone else?”
“Both, for sure. There on that farm, away from the greater population … my outbursts, if they stirred up the weather again, could only damage the land or some cows. But it was also … a time of testing.”
“What do you mean?”
“Palavar was … not a nice man. At least, not outwardly to me. You see, he had to develop my powers, had to use me to see if I could do it again, and to what extent. And what could be controlled. To achieve that, he … beat me. Abused me.… The torments …”
For a moment, the side wall melted away into a snarling visage of a middle-aged man with a rugged beard and blazing eyes … and a belt gripped in a fist that drew back and swung down … again and again.…
The scene melted away, back to the serene circle of stones.
“It worked,” Solomon said. “My pain, my frustration and anguish … You saw, in your research …”
“The tornadoes, the wild weather over several years.”
“I brought it all, yes. Not too extreme at first. At first, it was thunderstorms and hail, wind and lightning. But oh, we harnessed it.”
“How?”
“Palavar … he was no ordinary man either.”
Mason frowned, and a flash of light in his mind lit up that familiar cottage in the mountains, then it was gone—and he was grateful that none of that showed up on the walls. He felt sure it would give away something Solomon shouldn’t know about Mason’s knowledge.
“He belonged to an order. He wasn’t the leader yet, but he would soon rise to that position. With my help. With
our
help.”
“I’m completely lost,” Mason said, feeling suddenly weary beyond belief. He thought of Lauren, of Shelby, and suddenly wanted nothing more than to be as far away from this place as possible. He thought of Channel 7 and Pamela and wished he was still at his old job, thinking about nothing more complicated than the latest prevailing wind speeds.
“Look,” said Solomon, and the walls shifted again, and this time the circle of standing stones had transplanted back into the earth at Palavar’s farm, in the same configuration that Solomon had drawn on the wall in his bedroom.
Eight figures wearing white robes and hoods …
“A KKK rally?”
Solomon laughed. “Notice the different hoods? And belts made out of mistletoe, with holly wreathes around their necks? No, quite a different group here.”
“Druids, then.”
“From a long and noble line, tracing back to the Celtic traditions and the—”
“Time of the Saxons and the invasion by Rome.”
Solomon nodded approvingly. “So you paid attention in some history classes! Not just a science boy, after all. Does this look familiar?”
“What do you mean?” Mason asked, even as the hairs at the back of his neck were standing up.
“It does, doesn’t it?”
“A drawing, on the wall upstairs in his farmhouse.”
Solomon let out a chuckle. “Knew you’d seen that. It must have pulled at your subconscious.”
“Why? Why would something you drew have made an impact on my mind?”
“Because I didn’t draw it.”
Mason blinked.
And the images flickered. Remained, but the viewpoint pulled back—up and back, through an upstairs window to where two boys were crouching, peering out through the glass, watching the ceremony outside. It was dusk, but still light enough even though there were torches beside each stone.…
And a body on the altar.
One of the boys pointed and the other nodded. He went for his crayons, looked out the window, then started to draw.…
“That’s how we learned,” Solomon said. “From the council, gathered here at Palavar’s request. He had something to show them, after all. The power of nature, harnessed by two new recruits. He offered to train us in the old ways, just as he was trained, and as most of them were. It’s a long tradition, and without such training …”
“You make it sound like Jedi school,” Mason said. “And he’s Yoda?”
“Something like that, only we weren’t the ideal students.”
“What do you mean? And what, for that matter, did we learn? Assuming I believe I was there with you. You could be making all this up. Hypnotized me maybe, into believing it. My mind … it’s …”
“Believe what you want,” Solomon said. “You were there, because that’s how you got that scar.” He pointed past the scene now, where the boys were frozen in time, again looking out the window, down into the clearing where a young woman was voluntarily stepping through the circle, shedding her robe and lying naked onto the white slab. She spread out her arms and then crossed them over her chest as one man—Palavar—came forward. Raising up a knife …
The image dissolved as he brought it down in a graceful arc, and again Mason and Solomon were alone in the dark.
“We learned,” Solomon said, “what he didn’t want us to see. Secrets we weren’t supposed to know until much, much later. Up until that night, we had been mere tools for him to experiment with. We were lightning rods in the purest sense, and he used us to call down all sorts of weather. To improve his crops, to cause drought and tornadoes, to wipe out competing farms … We gave unwilling support, but we were just as guilty.”
“But … if he was such a hotshot druid as you claim, and if they really have these powers over nature, why did he need us?”
Solomon smiled. “Fair question. But the truth is that just like the forecasting you did at Channel 7, magic is no different. You can’t do it alone. Especially as the stakes get higher and the results you want are bigger. To reach farther distances or impact whole sections of the country and not just a local park where you’re having a picnic … then you need help.” Solomon walked to the altar and set his staff upon it.
“You need … sacrifice. Blood, especially. Sometimes it’s antecedent to the effect you want, other times it’s promised in return for what you’re asking for. Or perhaps it’s the release of energy at the moment of death that does it. The sacrifice of one so connected to the natural energies of the world could certainly buy up enough potential that he who wielded the knife could control greater outcomes and call upon greater sources of energy.”
“Now you’re losing me.”
Solomon shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. You weren’t lost back then. In fact, it was all crystal clear. After that sacrifice, the one we just witnessed, we saw a tornado the likes of nothing since. The druids, with Palavar at the center of the circle, summoned that demonic thing out of thin air, spun it around like a top, dressed it up in lightning, then sent it on a massive killing spree where it decimated eighteen counties and tore up half the neighboring farms.
“So after that, after Palavar and his pals recovered and slept and drank and had some all-night parties, you and I … we saw the writing on the wall, quite literally. We put two and two together and came up with the idea that one of us, like a fattened cow, would be sacrificed next.”
“Was that it? Was that why he wanted us?”
“Perhaps,” Solomon said. “But it was too early. I found that out later. For the sacrifice to work, for it to really have power …”
“It had to be made willingly by the victim.”
Solomon again looked surprised. “How did you know that?”
Mason licked his lips, thinking of how not to give away Shelby’s theory. He pointed at the section where the images had been. “The clearing, that woman. Unless she was drugged, it looked like she was a volunteer.”
“True. We didn’t know it at the time, but she was. A martyr for the cause. Maybe brainwashed, or maybe Palavar had some leverage over her. I’m not sure. But she did it for him, for them. And you saw what happened.”
“Okay, saying I believe all that? What are you getting at? What does any of this have to do with Solstice, with me, with … whatever you’ve been trying to do at the UN? Why do you need me?”
Solomon turned and leaned against the altar.
“I’m sad you can’t just accept that I wanted a reunion with my childhood playmate. My friend and my one-time brother.”
“Reunions aren’t my thing,” Mason said. “And I doubt they’re yours either. Especially after you tried to kill me.”
“Did I?”
Mason lifted his shirt partway. “Remember this?”
“I do,” said Solomon, “but I also remember I wasn’t the one to give it to you.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
Solomon shook his head. “Do I have to show you? Or can’t you remember? Aren’t the blocks gone yet?” He suddenly picked up the staff, took a step and slammed it down on the floor, creating a crack like a peal of thunder … and a flash of light—
And Mason was lying on the slab under the dying sunlight peeking through the gently-waving willow branches. Young Solomon approached, a scared look on his face under the hood of his sweatshirt as he held out the knife—hilt first.
Mason took it, and turned it around. Held it with both hands, pointing at his stomach. He nodded to Solomon, took a deep breath
…
And plunged it down.
Chapter 4
“You can choose what to believe, Mason control four of the wildest, but the truth is that you have within you the power to be like us.”
And, saying that, Solomon backed up and raised his staff, and suddenly there were seven others in the room. All wearing grey suits. Three women and four men, each standing by a stone. Each wearing holly wreaths around their necks and holding staves.
Solomon took a deep breath. “You lack our training, but the power in you is vast, intense and dangerous. You unwittingly called it upon your family as a boy, with tragic results.”
“What?” Mason’s head swam with the implications and the sudden guilt.
Was he right?
“It would have been much worse later, especially in puberty, had Palavar not found you and worked with you and—failing you, as he realized when he found us in the circle, you bleeding out and me trying to summon and control four of the wildest cyclones at the same time …”
“No.…” Mason shook his head and held his stomach, feeling the renewed pain. “But I survived, I … remember.”
A flash, and Palavar was there, his hands bloody and also full of dirt and some sort of green leaf, stuffing everything into Mason’s wound and muttering words of ancient power over him, barely making himself heard over the shrieking winds and the competing tornadoes pounding and demanding tribute.
Palavar stepped away from Mason, the wound patched, the blood flow ceasing.
“The sacrifice is incomplete!” he shouted—to Solomon, to the skies. And he bent low and raised a staff and stepped onto the altar, straddling Mason as Solomon cowered on his knees. The four tornadoes rocked and flayed and spat up chunks of earth. Palavar switched directions and raised his staff.
It looked like he was wavering, losing strength. His staff cracked down the middle.
“No …”
Just then, others came running out of the farmhouse. A young black man with dreadlocks, a pretty brunette, a blond man with a long pale face and spindly arms, several others. They spread out quickly, dodging debris and struggling to see through the stinging wind and dust, but they managed to get in position around the altar, and a sort of luminescent green haze formed from around the stones, connecting side to side, then diagonally and forming crisscrossing lines of shimmering power that built and built and suddenly exploded backward.
Every druid was bathed in emerald energy, and their eyes glowed like miniature green suns.
And Palavar stood tall, absorbing that power.
His staff healed and reformed and then he swung it in a huge 360-degree arc and it was as if he had reached out an impossible distance and struck the eye of each cyclone in turn.
One by one they shattered and exploded, fizzled and died out, scattering into a wind that went nowhere.
And then he collapsed, along with the others.
Solomon alone stood in the circle looking upon them all, and then turning his attention to Mason, seeing his chest rise and fall slowly although his eyes were closed.
Ever so slowly, Solomon moved closer and reached for the staff in Palavar’s grasp. Touched just the edge of it before it was snatched away.
Palavar sat up and gave him a sneer full of fury and malice, and then slapped him with the back of his hand so hard the lights went out for a long, long time.
O O O
“You were healed,” Solomon said as the images faded one last time. “And when you regained consciousness, you were far, far from Kansas.”
“But … I still don’t remember how.”
“In reality, he worked on you for three weeks. Keeping you drugged, sedated while he tinkered in your mind. Creating images like we’ve been doing here. Over and over, reinforcing memories that never were. Giving you a past you never had, writing over the real events of the past two years, just like you do when you record over existing songs on a cassette tape.”
“But the initial ones were still there, somewhere.”
Solomon nodded. “Palavar called a vote, and you were out. Too dangerous to be trusted, too powerful to be trained successfully.”
“But if I had really done … that …” Mason pointed at the wall again. “Tried to sacrifice myself … Wasn’t that what they wanted me for?”
“Yes and no.” Solomon sighed. “In the end, no one wanted to relive what had happened. We were too young for that sort of sacrifice. Nature … the energy our forefathers thought were gods … it didn’t want the blood of kids. Souls not developed enough yet maybe, or else it’s the free will factor that’s most important. And at that age, it’s just not there. In fact, it’s almost a sacrilege to attempt it. That’s what we discovered.”
“So I was cast out.”
“Yes, but he didn’t send you out without sufficient guarantees. He toned you down, so to speak. Made you much more mellow a fellow, if I might take verbal license.”
“To stop me from what—more inadvertent tornadoes?”
“Emotional states can be tricky. We don’t know what exactly causes such outbursts, but you are obviously deeply in tune with meteorological conditions.” His eyes twinkled. “And, some might even say, your forecasting ability is so uncannily good as to indicate that maybe you have a hand in
making
the weather rather than merely predicting it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? After everything you’ve learned about yourself and others today?”
Mason was silent, still absorbing it all; but like an over-soaked sponge, he had no room left for another drop of unreality. Instead, he looked around at the others, settling on Solomon, and brought the discussion back to ground. “And you remained with him?”
“Palavar still wanted a pupil. Needed a successor. Apparently you can’t be an arch-druid without some apprentices in tow. Doesn’t look good on your resume.”
Mason cocked his head. “And is Gabriel your … apprentice?”
Solomon smiled. “Now we get to the good part.”
“What’s that?”
“Your children.”
Mason bristled. “What about them? Gabriel I understand. He’s cut from the same mold, with the same intentions, but Shelby … Why her?”
“Because,” said Solomon, “they’re you’re children. Because sometimes it’s hereditary. And because of what happened on that Colorado highway when you weren’t there. The freak storm, Lauren’s accident …”
“You think … it was Shelby? That she did what you and I had done as kids?”
“Either her or Gabriel.” Solomon shrugged. “We’ll never know, but what I can tell you is that if one has it …”
And then Mason remembered. The legends, the talk with Pamela about the most powerful shamans and magic users, always being …
“Twins
…”
O O O
Mason advanced on Solomon, fists clenched. “This is far enough. You’ve threatened my daughter, kidnapped her—and yes, cured her, but now I have to wonder. About Lauren, about the timing of her hemorrhage …”
A restraining hand caught his shoulder, making him wince in almost debilitating agony. Victor had returned, and pulled him back, holding his arms in check. Not that it mattered, Mason was going nowhere.
Solomon took his place at the cornerstone, near the head of the altar. “Don’t be alarmed. The time for sacrifice is not upon us yet. We have another day until the Solstice. Until the alignment and the reckoning will come. For more than two thousand years we druids have worked behind the scenes, guiding humanity, striving to allow it to coexist in a natural world where it had no right to belong.”
“No right, according to whom?”
“According to our weaknesses. Our genes. The only thing we have going for us is stubborn perseverance. We get knocked down by a volcano here, a tsunami there, hurricanes, earthquakes and firestorms, lightning and tornadoes. Brutal ice and persistent subzero temperatures or non-stop heat waves. And then the survivors get back up and we do it all again. Rebuild on the same shore or at the foot of the same volcano, expecting different results this time. Yes, it’s insanity, and that’s what humanity is. Certifiable. And yet …” Solomon looked around at the smiling faces. “We support them anyway. We do what we can, always from behind the scenes. It’s been our way for millennia. Never gaining credit, and sometimes rightfully so. For we haven’t always acted in the best interests of humanity. Sometimes, civilizations just had to go.”
“And you’re saying you helped?”
“We can’t claim complete credit, but yes. The Mayans. The Aztecs. Egypt even, going farther back. It once thrived in a lush climate at the banks of the Nile, with steady rainfall and abundant crops. Easy enough to shift them out of such a zone, to bring the drought, spoil the earth and poison the air. Civilizations like theirs had run their course, and much like today, the world’s so called great powers have run amok, unchecked in their greed. They have become too arrogant, believing themselves above nature. The earth isn’t their plaything.”
Sounding just like Gabriel. No wonder he’s found a kindred spirit.
“And so you’re going to knock them back down to size?”
“More or less. It’s past time, and would have happened years ago if not for … divergent feelings on the matter from some of our members. Those with much less daring visions.”
“Palavar?” Solomon asked. “Is that what happened?”
A coup …
“He was old,” Solomon said. “And had nothing left to give to the cause but his blood and his … staff.” Smiling, he held up the arch-druid’s weapon of choice.
“He didn’t think big enough, content to mold the impressionable young minds with Hollywood drivel and Twitter feeds and other social media claptrap. As if that would stop the juggernaut of devastation, deforestation, and resource destruction the world over.”
“I thought all that global warming stuff was political bullshit to you?”
Solomon shrugged. “True, in the overall scheme of things, Nature will win out and man will go the way of countless other extinct species, but I would be negligent in my role as caretaker if I didn’t do all in my power to … hasten things along. Wipe the slate clean, if you will.”
“And what is it this time? Let loose the tornadoes and the hail, your own unique dogs of war?”
“Think bigger. As you’ve seen in the past few weeks, it’s already begun. We’ve softened up the world, set the primer, so to speak, with tsunamis and hurricanes, earthquakes and violent storms. The sacrifices have been taken and the stage is set for more. Appetites have been stoked, and the main course is ready.”
Now the images formed, the earth in the air over the altar, with twelve red spheres circling it, getting in alignment.…
Just like the standing stones.
Mason saw it now. “So we are here to finish the job, and you think these satellites will direct what … your energies and powers?”
Solomon smiled. “I don’t
think
. I know what they can do. Magic, sorcery … it’s all indistinguishable from advanced technology—or from bits and bytes. Ones and zeroes. We upload the code in the same way we’d chant over a geographical position, the same way the druids of old focused their efforts on a cloud or mountaintop, or how Genghis Khan sent storms upon the enemy. Only now, with this technology and our strongest magic, we can do it on a global scale.”
“Eat your heart out, Genghis.” Mason motioned with his chin to the altar. “And am I to be the sacrifice again?”
Still smiling, Solomon said nothing.
“I won’t do it willingly, not this time,” Mason said. “I’m not some five year-old kid anymore.”
“No,” Solomon agreed. “Now you’re a husband. And a parent.”
And there it is …
Mason swallowed hard. “Shelby …”
“And your dear wife. You were right of course.” Solomon waved his staff and the section over the right shoulder vanished, like a planetarium surface, creating an image of a familiar hospital room where nurses rushed in, and Lauren was there, convulsing in the bed as the monitor spiked out a warning in a high pitched alarm.
“Lauren!”
The image vanished, replaced by an airport lounge, where Gabriel and three men in black coats approached the arrival gate, zeroing in on Shelby, who had just deplaned, still with her headphones on, oblivious to her welcomers.
The scene vanished, leaving Mason to lower his head in defeat.
Solomon let out a sigh. “I think you’ll do the right thing. The only thing.”
The others turned and began to file out of the room. Victor released Mason. Solomon followed him out. “You’ll have plenty of time to think about it when you are locked in here. One more day, Mason, and it will all be over. Do what you must, and your children, your wife—they’ll all be cared for, ushered into the next golden age of humanity. Down in our bunker in the lower levels, the members of Solstice I’ve handpicked … we will emerge and start again upon a world wiped clean of corruption, a world restored to natural order.”
With that, he left and the door closed in, seamlessly blending with the night, and the cacophony of insects and the wind rose and sang as one as Mason fell to his knees and turned onto his back, staring up at the heartless constellations.