Demonhome (Champions of the Dawning Dragons Book 3)

  “Then we’l face them here. My word is final, Matthew.” His father’s tone indicated he wouldn’t be swayed.

  Matthew was used to arguing with his father, and generaly Mordecai’s opinions were flexible, if a sound argument could be found to convince him; but once in a while he would not be moved. This was clearly one of those times. Matt’s lips formed a hard line. If I keep arguing, he’ll start keeping a watch on me, he realized. “Fine,” he agreed reluctantly. “I won’t go back, but only under protest.”

  Mort nodded, “Good. I’m sure Karen wil need a friend around here to help her until she gets used to things.”

  “Anything else?” asked Matt, irritation stil showing in his voice. “I’ve had a lot of inspiration lately, and I’d like to start working on some new ideas in my workshop.”

  His father studied his face, then decided to let it go. “No, that was al.”

  Chapter 39

  “Being somewhat aware of the principles that underlie your magic, I can’t say I’m surprised,” said Gary, “but having perused countless volumes of fiction, I have to admit that your arcane laboratory is less fantastical in reality than I might have hoped.”

  Matthew had brought Gary in to his workshop to seek his advice regarding certain mathematical ideas. He hadn’t expected to have his

  workspace critiqued. “What did you expect?”

  “Wel, some glasswork, like flasks and condensers, would be a good start, or perhaps a pentagram inscribed on the floor,” answered the

  android. “This looks more like a primitive smithy.”

  Matthew bristled. “I take exception to the term ‘primitive’, but yes, this was originaly a smithy. My grandfather’s, to be exact. Dad used it for a while after grandad died, but once he built his newer shop he let me take this one.”

  “It certainly has a certain rustic charm, I suppose,” said the machine.

  The young wizard sighed, “If you’re done casting aspersions, I wanted to discuss some thoughts with you.”

  “What sort of thoughts?”

  The AGI’s ability to do complex mathematics in a fraction of the time it would take a human with paper was his main reason for inviting Gary to help. Matt was no slouch at doing sums and multiplication in his head, but some of what he was considering was difficult to even conceptualize, much less formulate. “Our discussion of teleport circle keys the other day got me to thinking you might be handy…,” he began.

  “Oh, yes!” exclaimed Gary. “I forgot to inform you. While we were in my world, I took advantage of my larger, more inteligent self to finish a proof. You were correct, that function can’t produce a duplicate output for different inputs.”

  “I realy wasn’t worried about that,” said Matt. “I just wanted to shut you up for a while.”

  The android grew stil. “I think I may be offended.”

  “It was your question about duplicate keys in circles, that got me to thinking,” continued the wizard, ignoring Gary’s statement. “I told you that that’s the basic foundation for creating a gateway, or portal, like the ones my father created for his ‘World-road’.”

  “I would stil like to see that, by the way,” interjected Gary.

  “Later,” said Matthew dismissively. “Listen. In the old days, people didn’t worry about the Dark Gods, because they lived on another plane of existence. They couldn’t travel to our world without help from a wizard on this side.”

  “One such as you,” agreed the machine.

  Matthew shook his head, “No. Not like me; any wizard would do. It’s similar to the portals my father created—the magic has to be done from both sides. His portals work because there are two matching teleportation enchantments that match up two separate points in space, from either end. The interdimensional gateway that the gods needed to come here was similar, they had to have a helper, a wizard, on this side to create the doorway.”

  “But you couldn’t do that?” questioned Gary, growing somewhat puzzled.

  “No, no, I could,” said Matthew impatiently. “My point was that any wizard could do it. What’s different about me is that my gift alows me to do something similar without having an assistant on the other side. That’s how I travel back and forth to your dimension.”

  “I’m not sure where you’re going…”

  Matthew waved a hand at him. “Get comfortable, I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Let me talk it out, and then you can tel me what you think.” He took a deep breath, “It’s also occurred to me that many of the special gifts of the She’Har do something similar; wel, at least the Prathions, the Mordan, and the Ileniels. They alow someone with their gift to do something that would take most ordinary mages a helper to accomplish. The Mordan can teleport between two points in the same dimension without having to bother with matching circles; the Ileniel can travel between two different dimensions in a similar fashion.”

  “And the Prathions?” asked Gary. “How does invisibility match up with that observation?”

  Matt smiled. “An enchanter can create a similar effect, but it takes a lot of preparation. The Prathions cause light to skip over the space they are occupying to create the effect of invisibility. In a sense, it’s like a limited type of teleportation that applies mainly to just light, or aythar. Any wizard can create an ilusion, but only they have the inherent ability to do that without creating a static enchantment.”

  “So, your analogy does not include the Centyr or the Gaelyn gifts then…”

  He pursed his lips. “Maybe, I don’t know. If it does I don’t see it, but that might just be because I don’t understand how their gifts operate.

  Back to the point—my dimensional talent, or translational magic, as I like to cal it, is only possible for me because I can reach into other places without a helper on the other side.

  “Take this pouch for example,” said Matthew, holding up one of his specialy enchanted bags. “When I create the enchantment for these, I have to reach through and create a duplicate enchantment from the other side, from this dimension and from the pocket dimension I’m connecting it to.”

  Gary couldn’t show expressions, but his tone was easy to read, “You’re losing me now.”

  “My father makes bags that are similar, but he does it by creating an enchantment in two places: the bag, and the place or object, such as a chest, that he’s connecting it to. He can do that because both places are in the same dimension. He can reach both. The bags I make connect

  between this dimension and some other dimension. Only I can do that because I can reach the other side to complete the magic without having someone on the other side to help,” explained Matthew.

  “Okay,” agreed Gary.

  “Stay with me,” said Matthew. “I’m stil covering the background information. Something else I’ve done is create a spel that creates a

  contemporaneous planar connection, to be used as a weapon. I did that when Gram and I fought one of the Dark Gods.”

  “Huh?”

  “It was a triangular gateway between dimensions. I was able to hurl it at the enemy and use it to bisect him.”

  “That sounds particularly deadly. A dimensional—I don’t know what to cal it—something like that could slice through literaly anything couldn’t it?” observed the machine.

  Matthew smiled. “It could, and it did. During one of my experiments I accidentaly cut my own arm off.”

  The machine glanced pointedly at his stil-connected limbs.

  “Moira fixed it for me,” he replied. “And she never misses an opportunity to remind me about it, but that’s beside the point.”

  “It sounds as if you already know whatever it is you want to know,” observed Gary.

  “Have you ever heard of a tesseract?” asked Matthew suddenly.

  That brought the android up short. “Are you talking about a four-dimensional cube, or did I mishear you?”

  “Yes, exactly that,” he replied. “I’m having difficulty envisioning them. I thought you might b
e able to help explain a few things to me about them.”

  “Imagining higher-dimensional objects is naturaly difficult for three dimensional entities,” said Gary. “Even I have difficulty with it, though thankfuly this android body has significantly more processing power than the PM I was using when I came here before.”

  “If you’re inside a tesseract, and you try to walk out one side, you wind up re-entering from the other side, right?”

  “That’s not technicaly correct,” said Gary. “Though if you move in the wrong direction it can seem that way, and being a three-dimensional being it’s impossible to perceive it correctly while inside.”

  Matthew frowned.

  Gary leaned against the worktable. “I take it that isn’t what you wanted to hear.”

  “No,” said Matthew simply, without explanation.

  “Instead of worrying about what a tesseract is, why not describe what it is that you’re actualy trying to do?” suggested the machine. “That might be more helpful than trying to relate it to hypercubes.”

  “Al right, this is what I’m thinking of trying…”

  ***

  He spent the next two weeks primarily in his workshop, sometimes going so far as to take his meals there. It was the sort of thing that Moira had once caled ‘voluntary self-confinement,’ but it was Matthew’s preferred way to spend his time.

  He only saw Karen occasionaly, something that might have caused him a smal amount of guilt, but his enthusiastic youngest sister, Irene had taken an interest in the newcomer and spent countless hours entertaining her, or as Matthew caled it, ‘badgering her with endless questions.’ He was doubly grateful for it, since it both relieved his guilt at being absent so much and kept Irene out of his hair.

  Gram’s sister Carissa was almost always with Irene at these times, and the two of them did an admirable job of making certain that Karen’s hours were rarely dul. Moira was notably absent from their gatherings, for she continued to keep mainly to herself, which concerned her mother greatly and bothered Matthew not at al, though he did notice on some level.

  Since his father’s initial warning not to return to Karen’s homeworld , Matthew saw little of either of his two parents. The upheaval that Moira had precipitated in Dunbar was occupying much of their time, and they were constantly busy managing arrangements for assisting the neighboring country in their time of need.

  It was early morning when Matthew stuck his head out the door of his workshop. There were dark circles under his eyes. He was hoping to

  make it back to his bed without encountering anyone or having to answer awkward questions. Lately everyone seemed to think he was losing

  weight, which wasn’t a good observation since he was already a fairly lean young man. He just needed sleep.

  If anyone did see him, they might be surprised, since he was known as a late-riser, but in fact he had not yet been to bed.

  He was almost to the door in the castle that led to the portal that would take him to his family’s home in the mountains when he stumbled into his youngest sister.

  “There you are!” she exclaimed. She was brightly clad in a yelow dress with matching ribbons braided into her hair. It was something of a

  fashion among the young ladies of the castle these days, largely started by Irene and Carissa themselves.

  He groaned. This was not how he wanted to end his day—err, morning. Ignoring her he shuffled past, hoping she would let him go without a

  struggle. If she had something more interesting in her head she might not bother trying to coax him into conversation.

  “Have you seen Karen?” she asked, catching him by the sleeve.

  Dammit. “No.”

  Irene pursed her lips. “Me either. She wasn’t in her room earlier, and I didn’t see her at al yesterday.”

  “That’s terrible,” he intoned vaguely.

  Her bright eyes focused on him intently. “You could sound a little more worried—she is your girlfriend, after al, not that you show the slightest interest in anyone.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  Irene wasn’t ready to give up. “She said the same, but no one believes it.”

  “Who is ‘no one’?” he asked, interested in spite of himself.

  “Probably everyone in the castle,” said Irene bluntly, “but Carissa and me for certain. Honestly, it’s shameful how you’ve treated her.”

  Defensively, he put up his hands. “What did I do?”

  “Nothing,” said his sister. “That’s the point.” Studying him again, she added, “What’s wrong with your face? Are you il?”

  “Just tired.”

  “That’s most of your problem,” she advised him. “You never sleep. You would probably be a lot more pleasant to people if you weren’t

  perpetualy exhausted.”

  He sighed, “That’s what I was trying to do when you assaulted me.”

  She shook her head in amazement, probably bewildered at the thought of anyone going to bed in the morning. As he turned to go, she added,

  “If you run into Karen later, let her know I was looking for her.”

  “Sure,” he muttered and continued on without looking back.

  As Irene got farther away, he heard her muttering, “I wonder if she’s avoiding me?”

  He was about to open the enchanted door, the one that activated a portal to his family home, when he sensed a presence in the apartments

  behind it. Officialy, those apartments were where his family was supposed to reside, but they served mainly as a decoy. When most people opened the door before him, it opened into those rooms.

  After a second, he realized it was Karen. What’s she doing in there? he wondered. He was so tired he considered pretending he hadn’t noticed her and just going to bed, but he knew she had likely sensed him as wel. Trying to force himself to seem more awake, he opened the door without activating the enchantment, and entered the front room of the mostly unused Cameron suite.

  Karen was farther back in one of the bedrooms, so he passed through two doors and down a short hal until he reached it. “Karen?” he asked, knocking lightly.

  “You can already see I’m dressed—come on in,” she answered.

  He did, and found her sitting beside the bed, holding the PM in her hands. She was wearing a somber blue dress that had probably belonged to one of his sisters at one time. “Are you talking to Gary?”

  “No, just reading a book,” she replied. “Quietly—by myself.”

  It hadn’t occurred to him that she might be reading. He had always associated the device with her virtual father. “Oh,” he said simply.

  “Why don’t you lie down?” she suggested. “You look like you might fal over at the slightest breeze.”

  That sounded like an excelent idea. If he was going to be forced to have a conversation, doing it while prone would be a great way to conserve energy. People should do more things lying down, like eating, he thought drunkenly. Sleep deprivation was definitely making his thoughts haphazard.

  “Irene was wondering where you were,” he said absently, as he got comfortable.

  “You didn’t tel her, did you?” said Karen worriedly.

  “No, I didn’t notice you were in here until I got to the door,” he mumbled.

  Karen put the PM down. “Good. I like your sister, and Carissa, but the past week has been overwhelming. I just need some time alone.”

  “Sorry to intrude,” he apologized.

  She smiled. “No, you don’t count. Besides, you’re half-asleep. As soon as I let you, you’l be snoring.”

  “What’s overwhelming?” he asked.

  Karen rubbed her face. “Everything. Some of it is just the newness of it al, but there’s also the difference in people, and the language… it’s exhausting. You know, in my world, everyone is connected, al the time, but we ignore one another for the most part.”

  He listened silently.

  “Here, it’s completely different,” Karen went on. “Th
ere’s no network, no computers, no implants or PM’s. People are accustomed to talking face to face, all the time. I feel like I’m drowning in a sea of people and chatter. Don’t get me wrong, it’s fun, and I love it, but I was an only child growing up in a place where you didn’t see many people to begin with. Now I feel as though I’m being constantly bombarded.

  “That’s why I thought I’d find a quiet place to read for a while,” she finished. “And there’s no better place for solitude than your parents’ fake

  residence. You don’t think they’d mind, do you?”

  He didn’t reply, and when she leaned over to look at his face, she found him fast asleep.

  She stared at him thoughtfuly before opening the chest at the foot of the bed and removing a coverlet to spread over him, and then she went back to her book.

  The rest of the morning was thankfuly quiet and peaceful, for both of them .

  Chapter 40

  Another week passed, and stil he kept up his obsessive routine, spending almost every waking hour at his workbench. It was sometime in the evening now, though Matthew couldn’t have been bothered to know what exact hour it was. His magesight alerted him to someone approaching

  the door, but he didn’t pause. It was his father, so he kept working until the door opened.

  “Son,” said Mordecai.

  He glanced up. “Hi Dad.”

  “You missed dinner again,” said his father.

  “I ate earlier. Cook was kind enough to send lunch to the shop for me.”

  Mort frowned. “I spoke to Cook. He wanted to know if he should send your evening meal over. Lunch was almost ten hours ago. Have you

  eaten since then?”

  Now that he let his thoughts drift a little, Matt realized his stomach had a painful ache in it; it simply hadn’t become demanding enough to break his concentration yet. “Oh,” said Matt with some surprise. “I guess I am hungry. I kind of lose track of time when I’m working.”

  Mordecai grinned. “Like father like son I suppose. Your mother always says she’s a w…”

  “Workshop widow, I know, Dad,” finished Matthew.