Elgin

  *Nothing, as I said the Djin loves to play games and in its insane phase it is no one’s ally.*

  There was a buzz from his jacket pocket, he pulled out his phone, “Kitty?”

  “Elgin get downtown right away, something bad happened. The Great Bear Den planning committee building is on fire and so is one of the sheriff’s cruisers. There was shooting before it all went up. And there was magic involved, I felt it from the hospital, my stores a wreck, my guardians destroyed, the cauldron gone. You need to get here.”

  -o-

  The volunteer fire department had the fires out by the time Elgin reached the downtown. Most of it was blocked off by sheriffs cars, fire trucks or ambulances. He motored around till he found his way to Kitty’s storefront and parked. Kitty was looking distraught, from outside nothing was wrong inside the pattern of destruction was strange, the truth seeing crystals had apparently blown up like little grenades, their crystal fragments, shredding or marring whatever had been nearby . In the four corners of the main space there were burn and blast marks, where much larger articles had come apart in much the same way.

  Kitty waved him in, “This way.” He followed her along a trail of damaged displays and deep scores in the wooden floor to a doorway leading to a basement. She stopped at the top of the stairs, the heavy center and sides supported two by ten treads, splintered and bowed, nearly broken, “What did this?” she whispered.

  “What cauldron?” Elgin asked as he looked at the steps. Whatever had come up those steps had weighed tons.

  “Something found here when the first white men came, up near the Great Bear’s Den, a cauldron chipped out of solid stone. No one had ever seen its like before. When the town was built someone moved it down here, then a rather intolerant pastor though it was some heathen object and had it buried. A decade or so later an occultist had it dug up and it’s been in ‘our’ keeping since.”

  An image floated into Elgin’s mind, men and women milling on a rocky ledge looking down over the Den’s crater. Bronze faced, black haired and eyed, men and women in leathers and complex beadwork, bright and cheerful, a few young men stalking about, their pride hot on their faces but their weapons bound by peace thongs to their belts. Game hung from trees, hides were argued over, in the center of the scene was a large piece of carved and polished black rock. Three legs stood it above the fire, and the hollow had to be three feet across. A couple of women kept watch over it, tossing herbs, vegetables, chunks of meat in, doling stew out into hollow dried gourds.