IMPERFECT ORB Read online

  IMPERFECT ORB

  By: K. Lorel Reid

  Cover Art By: Sanja Gombar

  www.fantasybookcoverdesign.com

  www.bookcoverforyou.com

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  PROLOGUE

  The young man stood back and watched as the new element took form. And by new element, he literally meant new element. He wasn’t an alchemist, although it was definitely the time of alchemists. No, he was so much more. He was a trained magus. One who combined science and magic and blood — the new ways and the old — to do what alchemy alone could not: combine pure elements to form something completely unique; something more than the sum of its parts.

  His chest was so heavy he could hardly breath and the heat from the flames of the fire pit in the middle of the small shack was insufferable. He thought that he might faint but knew he could not afford to do so. Not with the birth of his new creation immanent. In truth, he could hardly look away.

  Outside it was night and the tiny hovel that acted as both home and laboratory had been dim, lit only by the light of the fire before him and a few sputtering candles. Now, that dimness retreated slowly to the corners as the new element began to coalesce, becoming something corporeal before his eyes. What took shape looked to be in every respect a clear glass crystal — though in fact it was not crystal and definitely not glass. It did not just reflect the light of the flames but intensified them, so that soon every corner of the room was bathed in a clear bright light.

  He had done it. Even without testing it, he knew that he had done it. He could feel the object pulling energy towards itself from far and near. That energy was in fact knowledge and, more importantly, he could feel the energy and the knowledge flowing into himself just as fast. For that was the most important thing, the knowledge.

  Finally, after what seemed like an expansive, indeterminate amount of time the oddly geometric shape was fully formed. It hovered about six inches above the flame and out-shone the smoky fire in lux by magnitudes. The light that it provided was at once clear and filled with colour — blues, greens, yellows — at the same time. The magus held out his hand, palm up, and his new creation came spinning through the air to hover just centimetres above his open palm. The magus regarded it with a stern and steady gaze, daring bias and disbelief to tell him that what he had before him was not in fact what he had set out to create.

  The magus inhaled deeply and slowly then exhaled the same way. In part this was to settle the excitement rising within him — he felt like flinging open the door of his shack and screaming into the darkness about what he had just done — and in part to breath in more of the knowledge; for he could still sense it flowing by some invisible conduit, from his new element into himself. He could feel it running through his veins, in his blood. It was already changing him.

  This was spectacular. A truly novel element. Perhaps even a novel being. The magus wasn’t quite sure, it could just have been the type of energy that the crystal consumed and emitted, but he felt as though his new creation was on some level alive, with a consciousness of its own.

  He could not wait to show his wife. She was asleep in the adjacent room, the new babe beside her. The two had apprenticed under the same tutor and she too was a magus of great skill. The two had worked out the formulation for the knowledge globe together, though he had felt that perhaps she had not really and truly believed that it was possible. She had argued to pursue less grandiose projects. He had countered by asking why they had become magi if their only ambitions were less grandiose projects? What need had they to turn lead into gold? They were magi, their currency was knowledge. And he had done it, he had created infinite knowledge.

  He moved now quickly through the small cottage, passed walls lined with shelves cluttered with scrolls and books and jars, all of every size and shape and content, and made his way toward the tiny room off to the side where his wife now slept. Wherever he went the shape followed, casting light, now more subdued, along the way. He had to wake her. This could not wait.

  * * *

  At first Lorianna had been pleased, ecstatic that their project had actually come to fruition. That excitement soon subsided, however, when she realized what the new element was doing to her husband. It was changing him. The two seemed to be linked somehow, — her audacious husband and this creature he had brought into being — but she was unsure as to how deep the connection went and what exactly the nature of that connection was. For one thing, there was definitely a physical tether — wherever her husband went, the crystal went also — even if her husband took the precaution of hiding it or camouflaging it, as he so often did. But she felt there was a cognitive link as well; one that went beyond the flow of knowledge, in the form of energy, from the outside world, through the crystal and into her husband. At first it seemed as though her husband was mentally controlling the crystal but then, after a while, it became clear that, more and more, the crystal was controlling her husband. She tried to question him on these points but as time went by he became more and more elusive in his responses. They were no longer partners in work, nor life for that matter. She had been supplanted by her husband’s creature.

  By the time the physical changes could no longer be denied — any casual observer could see that her husband was turning into something … primitive — the paranoia had become full blown and he had packed up the most treasured of all his books and notes and possessions. He had declared that he could no longer focus on his “work” with all her yammering; he would forthwith be conducting his research in solitude.

  In fact, her husband had gotten very little done since the crystal was brought into being. Despite obviously having a great deal of knowledge at his finger-tips, the information only seemed to confound and confuse him; he was no longer able to focus on any one thing long enough to further his agenda before moving on to something else.

  “Besides, how can you have solitude when your strange pet never leaves your side?” she had said to herself but had declined to say anything of the sort to her husband directly. What would have been the point? Such an obvious and rhetorical question would have only sent him off faster, if in fact such thing could have been possible.

  When she heard of a strange hermit occupying the caves at the lowest part of the gully, she knew it was him. When she heard of a strange creature attacking locals at dusk, she knew it was time to act. She too was a magus of great power. She had helped her husband create the crystal and had lived with it after its birth. She knew of its properties and had a few ideas of how to counter them.

  With magic, science and blood she created her own new element. It was heavy and dense and dark like some tropical wood. But the properties for which she had fashioned it were not durable like wood, so she fashioned another element that would act as both catalyst and stabilizer when the two were in physical contact and so would be able to do what was required. She fashioned the ‘wood’ into a small box — fortifying it further by branding it with ancient runes — the metal she fashi
oned into a key. A seemingly beguile disguise and yet a literal one as well. When she was done, she went to the caves, in search of the thing that had once been her husband and, more importantly, his ever-present familiar.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The sun had risen. It had pulled itself above the jagged landscape with as much anticipation as horizontal stage curtains beginning a slow, steady climb. The birds were up and announced this to all of Ceedon’s Valley. Like, David had thought, they did all over the world. He liked their high cries. Each one sounding like the excited chatter of News. Each one belonging to that bird only. At five in the morning it was the birds that kept him company, always entertaining him with a new tune. If the songs they sang were the same-old, same-old David had yet to tire of them.

  What he thought was a crow threw back its head and let loose the most peculiar of calls. Carrion bird. What could it mean? David didn’t stop though, he didn’t even glance up or wonder what had caused the bird to let out such a peculiar sound. He was too busy concentrating on his pace. The coach had told him, bluntly, that if he didn’t learn to keep a half decent pace he wouldn’t be able to make it around the block more than once.

  Last year David had successfully represented his high school track team in various short distance events. Then, having conquered that domain, his attention was directed towards the longer distance runs. Not only did he want to run the Ceedon’s Valley Marathon, he wanted to win. If anyone had suggested it was for the money, he would have denied it. If anyone had suggested that it was to secure his position on next year’s track team, he would have denied that too. David didn’t know this — some said he wasn’t very bright; little did they know they had yet to spark his interest — but it was a motivating combination of both.

  Ever since that night when the distant lights in the sky had captured his attention he had taken a subdued interest — or perhaps more of an unquenched curiosity — in the nature of the cosmos. Nothing extreme. On his way back from Riley’s two nights ago he had turned to Mike and, with as much nonchalance as he could muster, asked him what he knew about the stars. Mike had admitted that he didn’t know much about them but, with the same surprise that always came over his face, the more Mike said the more he found to say.

  David hadn’t been surprised. He knew and accepted the fact that Mike had a way of…of…well, just knowing things. It was weird, he knew, but it was true. The two had never spoken about this amazing gift that Mike had suddenly acquired a couple years back. David felt quite strongly that Mike had yet to admit it, even to himself. Maybe it had something to do with an unconscious photographic memory. That would have been David’s guess. He had no idea what Mike’s guesses were. His friend didn’t offer up any explanations and David didn’t ask. Mike had the type of guarded personality which prevented such intrusions.

  The only thing David knew for sure was that if he won the Ceedon’s Valley Marathon cash grand prize he would add the money to his savings and put himself in a position to buy a pretty sweet telescope.

  Still running at pace, the young man now cast a gaze toward the sky, not really expecting to see the scattered eyes twinkling back his way but still disappointed when greeted only with the clear, unblemished powdery blue and the sun, still climbing, promising another sweltering day. He would never admit it, that was for sure, but the stars had definitely peaked his interest.

  As David braced himself for the uphill part of his run he picked up on something strange. Something pungent mingled in the air, barely perceptible, beneath the fresh aroma of dirt and pines. That something had now taken his attention, for in addition to being a native, as opposed to a tourist, of Ceedon’s Valley, he had jogged this route daily for the past two weeks. Never in that time, nor any other, had he gotten whiff of what he was smelling now. It was not that it was an obvious smell, nothing that a casual passerby would pick up, but to David it was undeniably there. It was unnatural. It made him want to turn and bolt in the direction from which he had come.

  David’s training route put him no more than half a foot from Break Neck Drop — no kidding, that was the official name. Attempts to cordon off the Drop from the rest of the well-travelled path by a low guard rail had been mostly ignored and in fact an alternative well-worn path ran hazardously parallel to the scenic precipice. “The Drop” was where the grass came to a sudden end and there was nothing to replace it except tightly packed tree trunks. It wasn’t a hill. It was more like a straight fall of about fifty or so feet until it bottomed out into a wild overgrowth of plants, tangle of roots and large tree trunks that travelled the distance up in search of sunlight for their leaves. Climbing up the steep hill and looking at the Drop from straight ahead was a view worth remembering. Something one might be lucky enough to find on the front of a post card. The mountainous terrain off in the distance and the woods on the other side only complimented the scene. Jogging alongside the Drop at a good pace, unfortunately, was nothing but terrifying. It required nerves of steel, a firm concentration and great attention to where one stepped. To slip and fall there… could only end badly.

  Squinting as much as he dared into the steadily strengthening glare of the sun, David tried to block out the memory of his first run along the path. It had been early last week. He was making good time up the hill when he had turned his head to the left to look in the direction of the Drop. Unfortunately his forward momentum, combined with the vertical movement of his body, had made him dizzy with the sight. Without so much as a warning his legs had buckled, causing him to stumble over the guard rail. The sick feeling that he had been awfully close to falling over the edge always came to him when he thought back on the events of that morning. How far down the steep slope he would have fallen before coming to a stop was a matter of pure speculation: trees, like wide, round fence posts stood guard just inside its edge. Still, it seemed inevitable that some bone or the other would have been broken.

  Now, as he ran along the dirt path David toyed with the idea of stopping to look down the Drop to see exactly what was below, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it and frankly felt all the safer knowing so. Reminding himself to focus on his pace, he continued up the hill, looking straight ahead, never to his left, until he was sure his legs had taken him back onto what he considered safe ground.

  The classroom was empty. Until the teacher arrived it always was. The door was open but for some reason the students preferred milling about the halls and dawdling just outside the entrance rather than going in, sitting down, and getting ready to learn. For David the empty classroom was a pleasant and very welcomed sight. Entering the classroom late for the second day in a row, considering that it was only the second day of summer school, wasn’t the greatest impression a desperate student could make. It wasn’t that he was trying to impress anybody. No, he was just trying to pass, that was all. Taking grade eleven science in July had not been on David’s summer agenda but then again an unsupervised weekend in cottage country hadn’t exactly been scheduled a year in advance either. A friend of his had mentioned it late in June but by that time it had already been too late. If David had been told about the trip say… some time in May, he would have handed in the last two assignments. If he had known about Milton’s Resort earlier he might have even given the final project a decent try. But he hadn’t.

  It didn’t seem to matter to the school guidance counsellor that all his friends were going — with the exception of Mike of course, whose mother would rather have him deployed to war than watch him go off with a bunch of rowdy teenagers to do Only-God-Knows-What in the middle of nowhere. The counsellor also seemed oblivious to the fact that eleventh grade science would still be there in September. For his part David eloquently pointed out that he could easily drop one of the optional subjects and in its place take the obligatory course, maybe delay grade twelve science until next summer or just not take it at all. It wasn’t like grade twelve Science was mandatory, was it? David hadn’t been sure whether he was making any headway with the counsellor o
r not but that soon became a mute point. His mother got involved.

  Mrs. Ryan swore she had no idea her son was failing science. True. She also had no idea that her son had been planning a vacation. Also true. That was about the time David said farewell to Milton’s Resort and started praying it would still be there next summer. He had told himself, in a half-hearted way, that the place couldn’t be nearly as awesome as the pictures made it seem, — those places never were — and that for every forty-eight hours his friends were gone, it would probably rain for twenty-four.

  So knowing how he had arrived at this particular place at this particular point in time, there should have been no surprise in finding David standing outside the science room with a grim, somewhat pained look on his face. The look did something strange to his features. It twisted them into weird shapes which added even weirder contours to the surface of his face. No doubt David looked like something out of a horror show; one of those creatures uncertain as to whether it was dead or alive and so took on a caricature of both. He looked like he was in the throws of some kind of torturous agony. So engrossed was he in the internal battle of the wills that pitted staying versus ditching — just this once — that he was completely unaware that Samantha had been standing to his right for an unknown amount of time.

  “If you’re about to have a stroke,” she spoke at last, “you may as well hand over that seat right now. No sense in leaving it up for grabs.”

  David started slightly, but Samantha didn’t move. He replaced the scowl on his face with a devious half smile and said, “There is no way you’re getting that seat.”

  David stood head and shoulders above her despite the fact that she was wearing heels. Regardless of the way David was looking down at her, Samantha seemed unnerved. She showed this by cocking an eyebrow above a huge pair of dark glasses and daring a step closer. Now as she looked up into his face their noses nearly touched and David was so taken by the flowery scent of her perfume that he was slow to note the fact that Samantha had taken off in a run, headed for his seat. There was a moment when it seemed like perhaps she’d make it, but David’s trained, long athletic legs didn’t let him down.