Wen Spencer - Wolf Who Rules

"You understand this?" Jin asked.

"Yes, yes. The roots of elfin magic is here, but taken to another order of understanding. This is recognizing the quantum nature of magic and its effects across boundaries of realities. My god, I really screwed up. I never considered that I could warp the fabric of space and time on this kind of scale."

"What?" Jin cried in surprise. " You made this mess?"

"I had help. Okay, here's what happened." She found a marker in her pocket and drew a planet on the nearest wall. "The oni forced me to build a down-sized gate on Elfhome. I set up a resonance between my gate and the orbital gate." She drew both gates in their proper positions and the wavy resonance line between them. "Now Leo's gate was flawed. The time coordinate was never set." She drew the ships entering the orbital gate. "So the default time coordinate became the moment of the gate's destruction - or around midnight eastern standard time, seven-eight days ago."

She totally lost track of space since she landed on the spaceship.

Jin understood the result. "Thus the collision."

"Yeah. Old news. This is the important part - all the ships, when they passed through the gate, must have picked up the resonance signature." She drew a ship on the other side of the gate, labeled it Dahe Hao and continued the wavy line to it. "As long as there are objects in orbit, the resonance will continue, which is why the discontinuity hasn't collapsed. It's because of this link, that when I fell into the Ghostlands, I ended up onboard. For every action, though, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Basically the power spike originates here on Elfhome and travels in this direction." She drew an arrow parallel to the wavy line through the planet. "The multi-universe is trying to drag the Dahe Hao back along this line." She drew a second arrow from the ship running beside the resonance path toward the planet. "Again, as long as the discontinuity continues, the Dahe Hao will be affected by this force."

She turned and was startled to find her audience had grown from Jin to about twenty crew members. "Um, well, this isn't all bad. We can use this force to our advantage. The entire ship and everyone on it is keyed to this location." She underlined Turtle Creek. "Now if you look at this section of the text." She pointed to the screen. "This is a spell. It creates a sphere of hyperphase. All we need to do is cast this spell which will step the ship into hyperphase and follow the line of force back to Pittsburgh."

"That's all?" Esme said.

Tinker turned back and found her audience had grown again. Esme and another twenty crewmembers crowded the small area. "My biggest concern is power. If the amount of magic we feed into the spell is too small, it will just punch a hole in the middle of the ship. We need enough power that we can guarantee that the entire ship goes. Even if we think we have sufficient magic, we probably should gather everyone close to the spell, and close all the hatches between the sections of the ship."

"What we've collected isn't enough?" Esme asked.

"I don't think so and access time on it is slow. The spell is set up to mimic how the dragons cast magic with their mane. With elf magic, there's a timing ring around the spell that controls the power coming in. It makes the magic a slow steady burn. This spell takes all the free magic and converts it in one burst." Tinker sketched the ship and put an 'x' roughly center of the ship. "It's kind of like dropping a stone into a pool of water. Splash!" She drew in the initial impact in a large circle around the 'x'. "That's the rock hitting the surface. There seems to be some resulting ripples in the fabric of space." She added larger circles around the first, and then shaded in the space between the circles. "I'm not sure what the ripples will do, but I can't imagine the delay factor will be good for the structural integrity of the ship."

"In other words," Jin sought to clarify what she said. "Part the ship returns to Pittsburgh seconds before the next section goes?"

"Yes. Leo's gate, however flawed, did transfer all the ship to the same second. These ripples would have a different time coordinate, so probably we're looking at pieces of the ship arriving in Pittsburgh - unless we hit it with a damn big rock."

"So where do we get it?"

"I don't know. If we could tap the spring under Turtle Creek, that would work, but I don't see any evidence that power is seeping through."

There was no sign of Malice in Oakland when Wolf and the others returned to the enclaves. Maynard had set up a command center in the building across the street from Poppymeadow's. He and the NSA agents had set up lookout posts across the city, linked by radio.

"Unless it can go invisible, it hasn't appeared in the city yet," Maynard tapped three points on the map. "Between the Cathedral of Learning, the USX building and Mount Washington, we can see for miles - and Stormsong said that this thing was huge."

Wolf nodded. "Unfortunately, it will be dark soon."

Someone was hammering upstairs. The hammering stopped, and something large moved overhead accompanied with odd rhythmic clicking noise.

Wolf cocked his head, trying to place the sound. "What is that?"

Stormsong glanced toward Earth Son standing in the street, just outside the open door, and lowered her voice. " Domi's nagarou brought the little dragon, so the humans can see what we're fighting."

Interesting how one afternoon could change your perspective on size.

Maynard had caught Stormsong's caution and spoke quietly in English. "Briggs and Durrack are seeing what works against it."

Wolf couldn't decide if this was ingenious or unwise. He found the stairs leading up to the one large open room taking up the entire second story. The windows had been boarded shut and mattresses leaned against the walls. The dragon and others were in the far corner, standing around a computer set up on the floor. While Oilcan and Durrack were focused on the screen, Briggs and Little Horse and Cloudwalker were standing back and watching the dragon.

All beings - dragon, humans and elves - looked up when he arrived with his Hand.

" Domou." Little Horse acknowledged his arrival.

"What are you doing here?" Wolf thought he had sent his blade brother back to the enclaves.

"There is nothing I can do for domi, but she would want her nagarou safe. Surely, the oni will try and take back the little dragon."

Wolf glanced at his domi's nagarou. There was so much of Tinker in his appearance that it hurt - her mouth, her eyes, and her haphazard haircut. In the hectic last two months, he'd not spoken once to the young man. Wolf realized now that Tinker was Oilcan's only family; he was now quite alone. Wolf could not imagine it; an elf only found himself alone if he was exiled from his clan. Clans were so vast, that natural disaster would lay low entire households and families and there would still be someone left to be responsible for the orphans.

Wolf had been lax toward Oilcan because he was an adult - if he was an elf, Oilcan would have chosen a clan that superseded all family responsibilities. That had been wrong of Wolf. Even if he lifted Tinker out of her species, it did not completely free her of her culture's obligations - and as her domou, her responsibilities was his own. But beyond that, it been wrong of him to be a stranger to the one person that Tinker loved as much as life.

Oilcan cautiously separated himself from the dragon, as if he didn't fully trust either the dragon or the warriors from either race. "Wolf Who Rules." Oilcan gave a proper bow. "I heard about Malice on the scanner," he said in High Tongue. Sorrow filled his eyes as he spoke, and then was firmly put aside. "I thought we might learn something from Impatience."