No Quest For The Wicked

“I may not be able to use it, but I know people who can, and, quite frankly, I think they’ll do a much better job of stirring up the kind of chaos you want than that woman would have,” Owen said.

I was sure he was bluffing. We’d been through too much together for him to have fooled me about the kind of person he was. Taking it on faith, I chimed in. “Yeah, I used to work for her, and you’d have only had a petty charity circuit power struggle. What we have planned is much, much more spectacular. You’ll get a lot more attention for saving the world this way.”

“That is, if you can defeat us,” Owen said mildly with a slight shrug. I really, really hoped he was bluffing and that the stone wasn’t working on some tiny residual trace of magic in him.

While I knew we were just trying to convince the puritans that we weren’t a threat to their plans, not everyone in what remained of the crowd did. There were a few gasps, and while some people stepped forward, ready to challenge us, others slipped away into the darkness. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Rod giving Owen a worried stare. He’d known Owen since they were kids, so surely he didn’t believe Owen could possibly go bad—or did he have a better understanding of Owen’s background than I did?

The puritan acted less convinced that Owen posed a danger than Rod did. “I would have expected you to try to destroy it,” he said. He reminded me of Merlin—a professorial type who might have been a mentor or a favorite uncle. Ideological differences aside, he, Merlin, and Owen might have gotten along pretty well. They could have geeked out over the same medieval magical texts.

“Merlin tried to destroy it soon after it was created, but nothing he tried worked,” Owen said. “There’s no magical way to destroy it, and no way to defend against it.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, my boy. Do you see us lusting for power and grabbing for the Eye?”

“You’re holding guns on us and demanding it,” I said. “So, yeah.”

“We do not desire the Eye for what it is, only for what it will allow us to do.”

“And I have my own plans for it, which don’t directly contradict yours,” Owen said. “Maybe we could work together and plan this a little better.”

The man laughed, but his laugh had a patronizing tone. It reminded me of the way I reacted when my nieces and nephews made up silly jokes they thought were hilarious but that made no sense whatsoever. It was a laugh calculated to appease a child. “You, work with us? You are the very people we oppose.”

“Do you think I’m on the same side as the people who put me on trial for being born?” Owen asked, and either he was a better actor than I could have imagined or there was a germ of truth in what he said because he spat out the words with an uncharacteristic bitterness that I found disturbingly convincing.

Not sure I liked the way the conversation was going, I jumped in with a question. “I’m curious, how will turning the Eye loose on the world purify magical society?”

“Katie!” Rod protested, sounding truly concerned.

“Well, we’re either going to hand it over to them or team up with them, and I need more information to make that decision.” Besides, as long as the puritan was talking, his people weren’t shooting.

“Ah, a very conscientious young lady you have there, Mr. Palmer,” the puritan said with a genial smile. “One must think of the consequences of one’s actions. We merely mean to demonstrate the superiority of pure magic over magic that’s been bastardized over the centuries. Then people will see what they’ve lost by forgetting the old ways. They’ll turn to us to learn how they should live.”

I had to fight to keep from grinning. I couldn’t believe my gambit had worked. I’d always thought it was a movie cliché when the villain felt the need to expound on his entire evil scheme while he had the hero in his clutches, but when you get a fanatic to talk about his object of fanaticism, it’s hard to get him to shut up. “But you’ve got something up your sleeve, right?” I said. “It’s not like any old medieval magic is any better at dealing with this thing than newer magic is.”

I must have pushed it too far because his face lost all traces of friendliness. “What is it to you?” he asked, his lips twisting into a snarl. “You aren’t magical at all. You’re an abomination. Back in the days of true magic, when a child like you was born, it was left to die rather than pollute the magical race.”

I wheeled on Owen. “Seriously? That wasn’t in any of the magical history books you gave me to read.”