Edge of Chaos Read online

  The one real problem was that it didn’t give any indication as to the hazards of leaving his body and he guessed that there would be a few. With great apprehension he chanted the new mantra that allowed him to wipe his body’s identification off his spirit.

  His senses immediately felt dulled. His sense of touch felt more like he was wearing thick gloves and his vision was more like he was inside a building looking out through a window, then remembering back to the time when he was a slime mould, he pushed out a small pseudopodium-like part of his spirit and budded it off.

  The ritual to create a construct was normally quite detailed and took a lengthy amount of time. With his new knowledge he now knew how to do it very quickly.

  ‘Hello.’ he said using mindspeak to the small part of his spirit he had separated from the main.

  ‘My name is Aquitain. You are a part of me. You are a construct. Your name is Crys. You will follow only my commands. You will keep this crystal body alive and safe. You will watch and listen. You will communicate with me by mind speak.’ And then with a series of high Draconic command words it was done.

  Aquitain wrote the crystal body identification onto the small part of his spirit called Crys then flowed the bulk of his spirit out of his crystal body into Miranda’s stone body. Slivver’s spirit was pushed back into his small body, which had also been turned to stone. He immediately felt the effect of the power that had polymorphed Miranda’s body to stone. It was like a paralysis numbing his mind and body.

  Bellen returned and using his magic wand made a stone copy of Miranda then asked what he should do with it. Yllandril told him that the Warden was busy trying to somehow preserve Miranda’s body but wasn’t quite sure how he was going to do it.

  ‘Bellen I need you to dispel the magic in Miranda’s body. Can you do that for me.’ He asked using mind speak.

  ‘I can surely do that for yer but I’m not sure what will happen if her spirit is no longer within it.’ he replied and left again.

  Twenty minutes later he returned and used his marvellous wand again this time dispelling the polymorph effect. Aquitain knew the feeling instantly. He was Newman again but now even though he thought of himself as a male his body was in reality female and he could definitely feel differences. His senses were still dulled as he hadn’t labelled his spirit with the body’s identity but otherwise everything seemed okay. He put himself into autohypnosis and used a mantra to write Miranda’s body’s identification onto his spirit.

  On dismissing the autohypnosis the body was as real as if he had lived all his life in it. It was the most wonderful feeling. This was how he had wanted to feel for ages. He had emotions and real feelings again. Now he could feel real anger at what the Mentarin had done. Now he could use his animal emotions to fight and even up with those Mentarin bastards who took Miranda’s spirit but for now it must be cool controlled anger. The beast in him would have its chance later.

  Slivver noticed the change in Miranda’s body first.

  ‘It’s really you again.’ said Slivver quite astounded. ‘You won’t harm me will you. I belong to the mistress now.’

  ‘No. Slivver. You have done a wonderful job looking after Princess Miranda’s body. I am going to look after it for a while until we can find her and give it back. You may stay with me but that means I will be watching you. I’m sure you know I have much more power now. Watch but don’t interfere or I will cast you off. You may talk occasionally if you wish. I will welcome any local knowledge that you have which may be of use to us. Do you agree?’

  Slivver agreed. Why wouldn’t he? This was an opportunity of a life time. He had the best seat in the house to see what might be history being made. Yes he agreed.

  Aquitain suddenly sat up on the trolley. Crys and the mirror slid off his abdomen and fell to the floor with a crash startling Bellen.

  ‘Oh I am sorry Crys.’ he said as he looked around to see who was present then climbed off the trolley and picked up Crys.

  ‘It’s wonderful to see yer alive again Yer Majesty.’ said Bellen.

  ‘I have made a copy of yer and we was going to stick it in the maze garden.’

  ‘Bellen, I’m not Queen Miranda. Her spirit has been stolen. I’m Aquitain. I’ve taken control of her body so that it doesn’t die. When I find her spirit I’ll give it back to her.’

  Bellen saw Crys moving its arms and with a confused look on his face asked.

  ‘How can yer be in Queen Miranda’s body and yer own at the same time?’

  ‘I have left a small part of my spirit in my crystal body. It will keep that body alive until I need it again. It is now like a construct and I have named it Crys. You must keep this a secret between the four of us here in the room.’

  ‘Er … which four of us Lord Warden, unless me fingers have changed, I think there’s five of us.’ said Bellen a little confused.

  ‘Sorry Bellen, I counted myself only once. You’re quite right, I should have counted myself twice.’ he said as he thought to himself.

  ‘In fact I had better be careful because there’s two more bits of me out there somewhere as well. I wonder how many bits of my spirit I can lose before I stop being me?’

  ‘This is likely to be quite confusing.’ said Yllandril huffily not sounding too pleased.

  ‘What do we call you now? You are neither Miranda nor Aquitain but something in between.’

  ‘You’re right Yllandril. It is too confusing.’ so he shape changed to his old male body shape of Rob Theolaur.

  ‘This is how I looked before when I had a Newman body. Is this better?’

  ‘By the powers!’ said Bellen. ‘Yer a shape shifter! Can you mimic other people and creatures?’

  ‘Yep’ replied Aquitain with a grin. ‘I want this to remain a secret between us okay.’

  ‘Okay, Lord Warden.’ replied Bellen but Yllandril was noticeably quiet.

  ‘Are you going to do something about Astaria now my Lady?’ asked the Rat Catcher.

  ‘What do yer want to do with the statue of Princess Miranda.’ asked Bellen.

  ‘What are we going to do about the spirit creatures?’ asked Yllandril.

  ‘Okay! Okay all of you. I know we’ve got lots of problems to sort out but I feel a little disoriented in this female body. I used to be a male you know. In fact my stomach feels unwell and my head aches.’

  ‘That’s probably because Miranda got dead drunk on Trixie brew yesterday and her, I mean your body, still hasn’t recovered yet.’ said Yllandril.

  ‘Thanks Yllandril I was tempted to think that it was somehow caused by me taking over this body. I’ll adjust my metabolism and see if that will ease the problem. Now to work!’

  ‘First I want the statue of Miranda placed in the maze garden as planned. It will be a good decoy. They will think that we believe she is dead and hopefully that will buy us some time.’

  ‘Will you look after that please Bellen? Also remember that you think she is dead so act like you believe it. Do whatever you do when someone important dies.’

  ‘Okay Lord Warden, I will do that for both of yer.’ he replied.

  ‘But first I will need to get some help to lift the statue onto the trolley.’

  ‘Wait I might be able to help.’ said Aquitain.

  ‘You sure?’ asked Bellen, ‘Yer don’t look that strong.’

  ‘My Granddad always said the body’s weak compared with the mind.’ and with a smile as he used his new telekinesis ability. The statue seemed to effortlessly pick itself up, rotate to be parallel to the ground and float over to the trolley then lower itself down onto it.

  ‘Yer sure got some good muscles in yer head Lord Warden. I’ll take her to a nice spot,’ said Bellen then he placed his hands on the statue and trolley and teleported away with them.

  Aquitain thought for a few seconds.

  ‘He’s right, my mind is definitely getting stronger. I wasn’t sure that I could lift that statue at all, let alone that easily.’ he thought.

  He c
hecked his source again. It was bigger than ever and definitely seemed to be growing. He was sure it was now as large as he remembered Granddad’s to be and he was considered a very powerful mind wizard. He thought about it for a while then decided there was much still to do and returned to the current problems.

  ‘OK, Yllandril, it’s now your turn. I’ve been thinking about the mutations among the Trixies. There has to be something causing it and I don’t think it is the throne.’

  ‘Now I remember that you told me that in your capacity as Royal Healer you were concerned about the problem and working on it prior to being possessed by that spirit Schlum. Was anyone else concerned and looking into the problem?’

  ‘Yes.’ replied Yllandril. ‘I originally became concerned after old Lord Darkmantle had a chat with me during his youngest son’s wedding to the Newman druid woman Sindel who is now known as Snowbelle. He was a kindly old Lord who spent his time hunting and breeding wyverns, dogs, coursers and other animals.’

  ‘He asked me if I had noticed the increased number of mutants among the animals. I said a couple of other lords had asked me the same question. He told me that he had been breeding animals for over a hundred years and had kept records during the whole period. He had gone through his records and found that there had been a steady increase in mutations among his breeding animals. He had also noticed more mutant animals during his hunts. He said he was quite pleased that his son had married the druid Sindel as she might be able to work out what was happening.’

  ‘I wasn’t worried about the animals but it did make me think about whether it might be connected to the Elendari secret.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Aquitain now rather curious.

  ‘You have only been here a couple of days. If you had been here longer you would have noticed that there are almost no children. One of the reasons that the Elendari have been capturing men and women from Mudrun has been to see if they could have children with them. In some cases it has worked but mostly not. I suspect that a part of old Darkmantle’s joy was that he might get a grandson from his son’s union with the druid.’

  ‘Unfortunately he died not long later from a strange illness which neither I nor any other healer had ever seen before or since. Needless to say most people believed that Sindel was involved. I got to know her quite well and while I did suspect her for a while at the time, I now don’t believe that she was involved. She was just as shocked as anyone else as she had really liked the old fellow. She also tried to cure it but had no success.’

  ‘Considering the comments that Darkmantle made about the Mentarin spirit called Schlum that was haunting him and the large number of the Mentarin spirits that were manipulating the people here, I think that it’s likely that the Mentarin were involved in old Darkmantle’s death and possibly even the mutation and the Elendari infertility problems.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I am thinking.’ replied Aquitain.

  ‘The mutations and the Mentarin are linked somehow. What we need to do is to find out how, then we might be able to work out what to do about both problems.’

  ‘There’s one more thing. When those Mentarin left they teleported to somewhere else on this world not off it. Where could they have gone? Is there a map of this world I could look at?’

  Yllandril stood thinking for a while then replied

  ‘No. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a map of this world.’

  ‘Then how do you visit people?’

  ‘We simply teleport to their estates.’ replied Yllandril.

  ‘What about the hunts? Don’t the hunters make maps of the territory in which they hunt?’

  ‘No. I think they all do it from memory.’

  ‘Hasn’t anyone explored this world?’ asked Aquitain rather surprised.

  ‘No. Not that I’m aware of. It does seem rather strange now that you have pointed it out doesn’t it?’ replied Yllandril.

  ‘I’m beginning to think that you and the Elendari have been kept in the dark much longer than you realize. It seems that the Elendari have had no ambition to do anything other than hunt and enjoy themselves for hundreds of years.’

  ‘There’s been no improvements, no new knowledge, no change, no nothing. You just exist doing the same old things. It must get boring yet no one does anything about it. Well things have changed! I’m here now and it’s time for action. I’m going to shake things up a little. I want you to go and find out everything anyone knows about mutations and infertility.’ said Aquitain.

  ‘Get them to talk so that we can find out about how big the problem is and ask about maps. If we can find the Mentarin camp we will find Miranda and the bastard that’s behind our problems. Keep me updated and be careful as you’re probably going to stir up trouble.’

  ‘You’re right.’ replied Yllandril as the truth dawned on her.

  ‘I thought leaving the crystal was going to be wonderful. I could simply restart my old life again. Now I can see that I must have had my eyes closed before. We’ve been slaves to the Mentarin without even knowing it. It’s time to fight back. I’ll find out everything I can.’

  Yllandril was so excited she was almost trembling. She had suddenly found a new purpose in life, to liberate her people.

  ‘OK Rat Catcher, it’s your turn. Tell me about yourself.’

  Aquitain sat on the floor and the Rat Catcher came and sat next to him and began purring then after a minute or two began talking using mindspeak.

  ‘I was not always a cat. I think once I was something else. It’s been so long now that I’ve forgotten. I think I was in Astaria before Llanlorian arrived but can’t remember anything about those times. I do know Llanlorian befriended me and I have protected her as best I could.’

  ‘Shortly before I came here we were suddenly attacked by many of the Mentarin who just appeared out of nowhere. She and Terren tried to fight them but there were too many and they were too powerful. Just before they died she commanded me to seek you and tell you that when you became a citizen she gave you the powers of a gatekeeper. Astaria’s future now depends on you.’

  ‘By the Powers!’ thought Aquitain. That must be why my spirit aura looks different and so powerful. She imbued me with a lot of her powers but why? Asterix said that nothing ever happened there. Perhaps she wanted me to uncover the secrets of Astaria. Maybe she knew that the Mentarin were likely to attack Astaria. Perhaps it’s got something to do with my father.’

  ‘What about Asterix. Is he alive?’ asked Aquitain.

  ‘Asterix opened a gate for me to leave, so I left. He should have left close behind me but he never emerged from the gate so I don’t know his fate. He may have been caught by them, chose to hide or perhaps even escaped out another gateway.’

  ‘Why are you called Rat Catcher?’ asked Aquitain.

  ‘When Llanlorian first came and befriended me she discovered that there were many rats is Astaria. She gave me the job of eliminating them. I have managed to get all of them except for six who seem to have a charmed life. I suspect they are not what they seem. Perhaps they are Mentarin or something else I do not know.’

  ‘Interesting.’ said Aquitain. ‘May I create a mindlink with you?’

  The Rat Catcher agreed and Aquitain created a mindlink with the cat and examined her aura. It looked like the spirit aura of a cat but Aquitain was still not satisfied. Cats don’t generally use mindspeak and teleport around.

  ‘May I hypnotize you?’ asked Aquitain.

  ‘Yes if it will help you discover the truth, my Lord.’ replied the Rat Catcher.

  Aquitain hypnotized the cat and went into a state of autohypnosis so that he could use the Mantras of Yith to examine the cat’s spirit aura. He discovered very quickly that the cat’s spirit aura was totally unresponsive to his tinkering. It was sealed by magic. Someone very powerful was making sure that he didn’t learn too much and that annoyed him.

  He removed the cat from of the state of hypnosis and said.

  ‘If you were originally something els
e it’s not showing. How did you find me?’

  ‘My collar is tuned to teleport me to the Lord of Astaria. I only have to think of a special word and I am transported to your side.’

  ‘Will it also transport you back to Astaria?’

  ‘Yes. There is a second special word which will take me back to the nearest gate.’

  ‘Can you open the gate by yourself?’

  ‘No. I can only pass when someone opens it for me.’

  ‘There’s something that I’m missing here!’ thought Aquitain. ‘Llanlorian always kept the cat close to her while I was there. I wonder why?’

  ‘Did Llanlorian train you or have you do anything other than chase rats?’

  ‘Only one thing, she changed my eyes so I could see spirits.’ replied the Rat Catcher.

  ‘And you were to tell her immediately any were around.’

  ‘Yes, My Lord.’

  ‘Excellent.’ said Aquitain. ‘I want you to alert me any time you see a spirit.’

  ‘As you wish, My Lord. Is there anything more?’

  ‘Yes, may I examine your collar?’

  The cat agreed and Aquitain removed the collar and used his ability to detect magic. The collar was strongly magical. He examined it very carefully looking for signal devices that might be used to track the cat but found none. He analysed the magic spectrum and found evidence of transport magic consistent with it being used as a teleport device. There was also a trace of divine magic that seemed to be a ward of some type.

  He replaced the collar and suggested that the cat get some sleep while he stood watch and it curled up and went to sleep near his leg. The cat posed a real problem. Was it genuine or a trap of some sort? If he kept it close it could be used to find and identify him, yet if it could see the Mentarin spirit creatures then it was incredibly useful. The teleport feature of the collar also gave Aquitain quick access to the Astarian gateway, which he could open.

  ‘This has to be a trap’ said Slivver suddenly.

  ‘I tend to agree with you Slivver.’

  ‘Did Llanlorian tell you anything before she placed you on me when I was a Llanllean?’

  ‘No. I was just told to help you stay alive and make sure you returned. She was most insistent on that. I had to make sure that you return. Why I don’t know. That’s why I think it’s a trap.’