Free The Archimage Wars: Wizard of Abal by Philip Blood Page A

get us here?”
    “ A mage of sufficient power
may Five Point travel to any place they can easily picture in their
mind. Of course, it has to have stone to arrive on, and you must
have the time and available power to make a Star on stone to begin
with. I picked this place because I remembered it, and I haven’t
seen many other places on Earth yet. The only other places I had
been to recently would have taken us back into the pub main room,
and that didn’t seem like much of an escape; Stonehenge just came
to mind, so I went with it.”
    “ So, where should I go
now?”
    “ I hear Paris is a hoot,”
he exclaimed.
    “ You are coming with me?” I
asked, “Even after you know this Dragon person is after
me?”
    He grinned, “Well sure, that makes it
all the more entertaining! Besides, I want to see that big metal
coat hanger thing.”
    “ The Eiffel
Tower?”
    He nodded enthusiastically, “Yeah,
that’s the place. Some Fourth did himself proud there! What a
complete waste of magic and time; I definitely approve!”
    “ Gustave Eiffel was a
wizard?”
    “ Gustave Eiffel Sivaeral,
one of your House. We often drop the House name and use one of our
middle names as a last name while on Earth. What is the saying
here, when you roam…”
    “ No, it’s when ‘in Rome’,”
I said absently.
    Hydan shrugged.
    I shook my head, “I meant, where
should we go to find Fiona again?”
    “ Oh, no idea,” he said, but
then added, “If you want I can try to track her name, if she, or
someone near her, says it in the near future I could get a fix.
Wait, she is a Second, so that might make it hard,” he added, in
almost an afterthought.
    Then I said, “Maybe we can just go to
Camington Castle, that’s supposed to be her home.”
    “ OK, but it’s probably
glamoured.”
    “ Glamoured?”
    “ Hidden, so you can’t find
it unless you’ve been there.”
    I thought back and found I could
recall what Pox had said, even though I’d ignored it at the time.
So I said, “Pox told me to follow my feelings.”
    Hydan’s face brightened, “That means
you were there before! OK, which way?”
    I shrugged, “I have no
idea.”
    “ Trust your feelings, just
go toward where you THINK you should go,” he replied.
    I thought about that, and then headed
down the road away from Amesbury, but I stopped a moment later.
“This is ridiculous, I’m just guessing.”
    “ That’s good enough for me,
come on, and keep guessing at every turn.”
    I set out, grumbling about stupid
ideas and odd folk with blind faith as we walked down the road.
Hydan was busy finishing his beer, as cheerful as a school boy in
the girl’s locker room.
     
    A few miles later, I decided to turn
up a simple country road. Hydan didn’t say a word, he just followed
me.
    We came out of some trees, and could
see for some distance. The sun was just starting to come up in the
east. I came to an abrupt stop.
    “ Why are you stopping?”
Hydan wanted to know. “Let’s keep moving; I’m out of
beer!”
    I gestured ahead of us, angry for even
listening to this whole ‘trust your feelings, Luke’ nonsense.
“Listen, Jedi Plastered, I’m stopping because we can see for miles
ahead of us, and there is no castle in sight! I’ve led us on a wild
goose chase!”
    “ What are gooses?” he
inquired.
    “ In a group they are called
Geese; they are a big kind of bird.”
    “ Like a chicken?” he asked
brightly.
    “ Sort of, but
bigger.”
    “ How grand!”
    I scowled at his exuberance. “I’d give
you a grand if you could get us to that castle.”
    “ Well, if you could
remember the look of the place, we could Five Point travel
there!”
    “ I don’t remember anything
about it,” I answered.
    He shrugged, and said, “Then we should
keep walking.”
    “ For untold miles?” I said
in exasperation.
    “ For as far as it takes to
find it,” he answered, without a worry.
    I snarled something ugly, which he
ignored, and then started forward, only to run into a