Reverence

Taylor had mixed a nickel-tungsten alloy into his silver, for durability, and the stolen magic he'd used to strengthen it had made it impossible to reshape with prayer. He could probably stand a gurantor on the pyramid and it wouldn't budge. That discovery went straight into his little notebook, but it left him with a problem: His portable anti-summoning kit was no longer portable. He would need a proper forge to break the pyramid of magic circles into its constituent beads.

The carbon residue from the magic CO2 scrubber was scattered to the wind. Everything except the pyramid was put away. Taylor cleaned himself with prayer and waited: a mob of people had emerged from the garden, with his followers in the lead. Milo was crying, bless his heart. The spike-haired young man was the first to arrive and grabbed Taylor in a spirit-enhanced embrace.

"I'm fine," he laughed, "better than fine. I'm great! Honestly."

Mila, Inez, and the Tabuas soon joined them, with the rest of Pashtuk far behind. Magnificent Ben stuck his trunk in Taylor's pockets to search for treats. The jimala bounded around, sniffed delicately at the cage, then ran circles around the perimeter left behind by the fiery hurricane.

Alice gave Taylor a hard once-over. "You don't seem hurt at all. You're not even mussed." She tidied him anyway. "We were afraid we'd lose you."

"Stop it," Taylor practically whined, "there's people watching."

"Yes. People are definitely watching." Anisca arrived, mounted so she could get ahead of the crowd of Pashtuk. "What was that, and what do you want me to tell the circle?"

"Personal business," said Milo in his defense, "outsiders can just butt out."

"Perhaps they would, if someone had been discrete. But no! Someone, I will not name who, while looking at you, Sir Taylor, but someone tossed rainbows into the sky, sounded a note that startled babies awake in their cribs, in their houses," she pointed towards the distant garden, "and then, just in case nobody had noticed him, set the desert on fire!" She stood in her stirrups to get a better view of the ground. "You sintered the ground here! What is this design?"

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

"It's supposed to be a flower. Can't you tell?"

"That's not the point," scolded Anisca. "People will need to be told something and personal business is not an answer. It's an invitation to wild rumors. We need to tell them something more solid. Please, trust me on this."

"Ah, fair enough! Another world tried to summon me, and I resisted. The light show was because they used so much spirit I couldn't handle it all. It had to go somewhere." Taylor turned to Inez and the cousins, who had been with him the last time it happened. "It was the same people, but they were serious this time. They used massive amounts of power, really emptied their stones at me. I sent them a plasma bomb. They should get the message."

"This has happened before? Why didn't you tell me?"

"Yes, princess, this has happened before. It happened last winter. I wasn't prepared, and it nearly killed me." Taylor was assailed by sudden anger. "And it happened the spring before that, when your father had me summoned because he was bored. Did you think that, in a universe with thousands of inhabited worlds, Tenobre was the only one with a summoning room? The blasted things are all over the place, and kings and conquerors think nothing, nothing, of calling people away from their homes, and their families, and the lives they had planned, and stranding them in backward worlds, and then claiming they've done you a favor! Of course this has happened before! And it will keep happening until I figure out a way to stop it! Until then, I'll do whatever it takes to keep from being jerked all over the cosmos. Is that all right with Your Highness?"

Taylor's jubilant mood was gone. He didn't feel bad; he was lighter than he'd been in days, but the excitement was gone. He should probably sleep now that he was able, and tend to work after the day's heat.

"I'm getting some real rest. Otavio, let them gawk at it a while, then bring the frame. Find a good place to store it until we can get it to a forge. Anisca, tell them other worlds may try to summon me, but I won't abandon Tenobre."

The crowd parted for him as he walked to the garden, the bricktown cousins drafting proudly in his wake. Several of the Pashtuk Calique gave him reverence as he passed, hands pressed together, fingertips pressed against their painted lips. Taylor didn't know them or what they were revering him for, but the gesture raised a mess of emotions. As they feared him, they wouldn't cross his purposes. As they admired him, they would aid his endeavors. As they believed in him, they would expect great things. As he disappointed them, they would surely tear him down.

Taylor wanted their acceptance. He was more hungry for their friendship than he would admit out loud to any of his followers. But if the best he could manage with these people was reverence, then he'd have to work with it.