by E. S. "Jake" Jacobs

Something was wrong with the spell again. The whirlpool of rainbow light that slowly spun before Chorta broke apart and faded away into the sunlit workroom in which he sat. He closed his silver eyes and concentrated on drawing more energy into the mental matrix he was attempting to create, but it slipped away again, as if blown aside by a sudden breeze. A snort of puzzlement escaped him, then he frowned, deep furrows corrugating the short ebony fur of his forehead. This had never happened before. The energy evaporated, even as he worked with it. A dull ache of frustration began to throb at the back of his broad skull.

The round gray ears atop his head swiveled to and fro as a familiar noise disturbed his thoughts. The resounding hoofbeats of a team of mulats and the grinding crunch of wooden wheels announced that a wagon had arrived at his compound. He tilted his head in the direction of the door.

Curious, he stood quickly, a fluid motion of his thick, muscular form. A rapid knocking on the heavy wood of his gate began as he crossed the courtyard. He pulled it open quickly to confront the unwanted visitor.

A young bree’id, barely more than a pup, stumbled back into the leg of one of the huge draft animals, fear evident in his bright yellow eyes.

"What is it?" demanded Chorta, surveying the bedraggled stranger before him. Gray dust from the seacoast road coated the young one’s light brown fur, making him appear aged.

The stranger looked around at the barren landscape and the high stone walls of the villa, then back to Chorta. "Are you the Manipulator? The one called Chorta?" he inquired.

"Yes," Chorta growled, still irritated by his unproductive morning, and now this interruption. "Who are you? What business have you with me?"

The young one remained motionless, frozen in place by the fear of being in the presence of the legendary sorcerer. A mulat looked back over its shoulder and chuckled. He ignored it. "My … my name is Akuta. The Principat of Atalfba sent me to find you," he explained. "He said you were to come to the city immediately."

"The Principat? What need does he have of me?" snorted Chorta. "I’ve no time for rituals to bless the populace or some such nonsense." He turned to go back inside. "Tell him you could not find me," he said over his wide shoulder.

"But please… please, it is most urgent!" the youngling cried. The fear of a failed mission overcame his dread, and he ran after Chorta. "There is a Manipulator out of control at the port. He’s causing havoc everywhere… half the warehouse district is on fire!"

Chorta paused and closed his eyes to briefly test the energy currents. Nothing in the immediate area, but yes, casting further, he could sense something. It was true. This explained the failure of his spells. Another Manipulator creating great rifts within the matrix -- draining every power source within talns of here. He felt it now. What in the world was going on?

"Who is doing this?" Chorta demanded, advancing on Akuta. But the young one stood his ground.

"I know not. The Principat said he would explain all. Please, please, we must hurry!" Akuta pleaded as he scurried up onto the rough plank seat of the wagon.

For a moment Chorta considered shape-shifting to an eagre and flying the few talns to the city, but the energy currents felt too unstable to risk it. Besides, he thought ruefully, he might need all his strength to deal with this Manipulator. He glanced back at his villa. No one would dare disturb it in his absence. He leaped into the wagon beside Akuta. "Let’s see how good a driver you are. Go!" he cried. The young bree’id slapped the reins across the broad backs of the mulats and they thundered down the narrow lane that led to the seacoast highway. A curtain of dust hung across the road to mark their passage.

#

They reached the city by sundown. Thick, dark smoke lay upon the western part of Atalfba like a pall. With the bright orange sunset behind the smoke, the entire world seemed ablaze. Chorta feared the damage to be even worse than Akuta had described. But even more telling than the amount of smoke, the manipulative energies of this place were in chaos. The pulse and flow of them jarred him more than the reckless wagon ride he had endured. Major destruction reigned around him.

The plaintive wail of a hand-cranked siren ground into his senses as they drew nearer to the city’s dark towers. They encountered few pedestrians until they neared the wharves. There, bree’ids in the hundreds milled and ogled and impeded their passage until Chorta dismounted and took to foot. He left Akuta stranded in a sea of multi-colored furred bodies.

The crowd parted before him with the help of his powers, but even that small task required tremendous effort. His headache worsened. As soon as the citizens realized who he was, they moved willingly out of the way. In a few moments, he reached the site of the disturbance.

Pungent smoke drifted everywhere, clogging the narrow streets with darkness and irritating his sensitive nose. To his right, as he progressed, tall flames fattened within the storehouses, feeding greedily on their contents. Bree’id firefighters ran back and forth running hoses from the pumper wagons to the nearest fires. He reached out to try to dampen the flames with his powers, but to no avail. Whoever controlled the fires also secured all the manipulative energies.

Chorta paused and scanned the energy levels, seeking the location of the Manipulator. There, closer to the quays, farther to the right. He followed his senses down the winding streets to the waterfront.

Out of the roiling smoke, a disheveled figure in a soot-smudged green robe approached -- the Principat, followed by a number of his cohorts. The leaping flames turned their white fur to rust.

"Chorta! Thank the Gods you have come!" he gasped. "You must stop this maniac before the entire city is destroyed!" He reached to grab Chorta by the arm, then thought better of it. "Please follow me."

Chorta trotted after them into the dense smoke, the bitter pungency at times overwhelming his senses. "Who is this Manipulator?" he demanded.

"We have no idea who he is," answered the Principat. "The rumor is that a fishing boat found a damaged bark adrift at sea, and towed it into port." He stopped as they reached the polished stones of the quay. "There," he pointed to a ship moored alone to a stanchion not a hundred steps away. "The Manipulator is on board -- injured somehow. When the medics tried to revive him, he went berserk."

Chorta surveyed the small three-master. "But that’s a human ship," he said in puzzlement.

"Aye -- the Manipulator is a human," proclaimed the Principat. Then with his companions in tow, he vanished back into the smoke, leaving Chorta alone amidst the crackling flames and pulsing energies.

A human Manipulator! Never had he met one.

He approached the ship cautiously. With a loud crack, a dazzling bolt of blue-white energy ascended the blackened mainmast and dispersed into the low-hanging smoke. The reverse lightning illuminated everything with its actinic light. Chorta shook his head from the intense burst. His long mane stirred slightly from the electrical charges.

He stopped and reached out with his senses. Pain. Intense pain and a feeling of utter loss enveloped him. Strange emotions and thoughts, barely decipherable, swirled within his brain -- human thoughts -- alien and unfathomable. He bowed his head and forced them from his mind.

Another bolt of energy climbed the mast, but this time struck downward, vaporizing the cobblestones not a body-length away. Instantly, he threw a protective ward about him, causing the shockwave to pass through the ground and around the spot where he stood, like a rock parting the flow of a river. The dissipating energies did nothing but assault his nose with the smell of ozone.

Enough of this! He refocused his eyes to study the energy patterns. The manipulative forces swirled in a nexus centered on the ship, turning and concentrating in one spot -- a cyclone of power out of control. He studied and watched the rippling currents, and just as another bolt of energy rose from the ship, he reached out with all his skill, and turned it back.

As fast as it ascended, it reversed its direction and plunged into the ship. A loud crack of disintegrating wood reverberated above the roar of the fires around him. The mainmast of the ship slowly toppled to the foredeck, flames licking along its length. The manipulative energies immediately began to disperse, attempting to return to their normal balance. Chorta reached out, this time focusing them himself to put an end to the conflagration. The fires burning madly around him winked out in an instant, leaving only rising smoke and the pop of cooling cinders. Somewhere in the distance, bree’id voices rose in a ragged cheer.

Chorta walked across the quay to the ship. He sensed the presence of the other Manipulator. Alive? Yes. At least he had not killed him with the reversal of forces. He was unconscious and injured, but alive.

The small human bark had taken quite a bit of damage. The sails were tattered strips of cloth blowing in the hot wind. The ship listed to starboard, the result of what looked to be damage from a ram. As he neared, the taint of death assaulted him. Dark patches of human blood stained the faded decking. Ye Gods, what has descended on us? He asked himself as he measured the damage before him.

He jumped across the small space that separated the ship from the quay, digging in his clawed feet to keep upright on the slippery surface. The Manipulator lay at the base of the mainmast, buried under yards of singed sailcloth.

Chorta gathered the folds of canvas and dragged them aside, revealing the form beneath. If not for the spark of life he could detect, Chorta would have thought the human dead from the look of him.

Large for a human, at least for what Chorta knew of them, the man lay sprawled upon piles of rope and cordage. He was naked except for bloodstained breeches. A massive wound to the side of his head clotted the dark hair with even darker blood. Other wounds covered his upper torso -- sword wounds, knife cuts, scrapes, bruises -- all evidence of a great battle. A blood-encrusted shortsword lay tangled in the halyard near his bare feet.

As Chorta peered curiously, the human stirred and moaned. A bright blue aura coalesced about the man’s head, then flickered out.

"He’s still trying to Manipulate!" Chorta said aloud, incredulously. He drew in energy and wrapped it like a cocoon about the man, binding it into a repeating cycle. "We will have no more of that!" He said matter-of-factly.

Voices from the quayside disturbed his examination. The Principat and four priests of the Order, along with the young Akuta, made their way toward the ship. Chorta rose from the man’s side and motioned for the newcomers to join him.

The Principat stopped several feet away from the ship. "Have you killed him?" he cried. The Priests nodded their heads hopefully.

"No, he is not dead. But he is grievously wounded." Chorta approached the ship’s rail and looked over at Akuta. "Fetch me a medic and a litter. We need to get him elsewhere for treatment."

"I forbid it!" thundered the Principat, and grabbed Akuta by the scruff of his neck as the young one turned to obey. The Principat’s soot-stained mane rose in anger across his shoulders as he returned his attention to Chorta. "Let that creature die. Can you not see what damage he has wrought?"

Chorta, his night-black mane bristling with anger and irritation, turned angrily to the Principat. "This is a sentient being in need of help. I will not allow him to suffer," he growled.

"Then we shall put an end to his suffering. Stand aside and allow us to do our work." The Principat drew a long knife from his robes and motioned his retinue to board the ship, but Chorta did not move. The priests stood rooted before him.

Chorta smiled. His flashing teeth conveyed contempt, not congeniality. "Your work is the spiritual healing of this city, not the casual destruction of a sentient life." He gestured back at the immobile human. "This destruction was not caused with purpose. He still fights a great battle within his mind, but I have control now. No further harm can be done by him."

"But what of the harm already done?" sputtered the Principat, furious at Chorta’s display of disobedience. A growl rumbled deep in his throat and his blue eyes flared. "Look at the destruction. Think of the cost! It is a miracle that no one is dead." Exasperated, he looked about him, unable to believe that Chorta did not agree with him.

"I repeat, he is under my control and my protection," Chorta warned. His silver eyes narrowed. "I will see what I can do about the losses here," he said waving a clawed hand at the still-smoldering ruins about them. He turned to glare at Akuta. "Get me a medic," he ordered. "Now!"

The youngling took one quick glance at the furious Principat, then dashed off in the direction of the tall white tower of Sikbey. The Principat stood and stared at Chorta for a moment, their eyes locked in an ageless dance of dominance. With a snort of anger and a flash of green robes, he broke the connection and stalked off into the encroaching night. The priests followed at a respectfully safe distance. Chorta knew he had not heard the last of this.