Jake's Justice, Book Three of Wizards by John Booth Read Free Book Online Page B

Fluffy.
    Fluffy stopped concentrating and looked at me in astonishment. [And you defeated him?]
    “Yes… Why?”
    [Because it has never been done before.]
    I grinned.
    [ Tell me exactly how you did it.]
    That wasn’t Fluffy asking the question, “Who wants to know?”
    [The Knights have killed many dragons over the millennia. Their idea of justice is notably one sided.] It was Fluffy speaking to me this time. I could see he was shocked that his mind had been taken over so casually.
    That fitted in with my experience and I couldn’t argue with the dragons’ right to know. Though the dragons were almost as bad as the Knight in some ways, they hadn’t killed me in the end. The idea of Fluffy getting killed by a Knight swung it. I couldn’t tell him without telling them. I explained my method and the thinking behind it.
    [Ingenious; and it can be adapted. We are in your debt, Wizard Morrissey.]
    Fluffy shuddered and sat down on all fours.
    [I did not know they could do that to me.]
    “Perhaps they are watching you as closely as you are watching me?
    Fluffy laughed and I beat at the couch to put out the flames. We sat for a while without speaking, each lost in thought.
     
    [I thought you were going to be faithful to your wives?]
    “I planned to be faithful. I’m just having problems with the execution part of it.”
    [It has been barely two weeks since your marriage.]
    He had a point. I rubbed Fluffy on the back of the neck in the place he likes.
    “I know. Don’t rub it in. But girls have been all over me because my subconscious has been using magic to make them. And then when Betty threw herself at me after I turned it off…”
    Fluffy nodded sagely as if he totally understood, which is more than I did.
    [You were frightened that marriage had neutered you.] He didn’t say it as a question.
    “That’s stupid.”
    [You have the powers of a god with no one who can stop or judge you. That is why the wizards of Valhalla become evil, no one can stop them and they do not choose to judge each other. The Spirit people of the Hidden Worlds are equally powerful, but do not allow such behavior in their society. The Diamond Worlds have created the Knights to mete out justice on errant wizards. But who judges you, Jake? Who judges you?]
    I gave him a rueful look. “You do, Retnor. You, me, Jenny, and especially Esmeralda. Isn’t that enough?”
    [If Esmeralda has you skinned and made into a rug, I promise to give what is left of you a decent funeral and I will not walk over your pelt with dirty claws.]
    I thumped my friend on the scales. Not that he would notice. Dragon scales are hard and my hand throbbed afterwards.
    “Do you have any idea how the Knight found me?”
    Fluffy laughed and I extinguished the couch. I was going to have to buy a new one soon, as this one was burning through.
    [You were told your image has been posted. That means everything that you are. Enough of you for any wizard to hop to your side.]
    “They learn English?”
    [Welsh too, and all the other languages you speak. That is also part of who you are and other delegates will be expected to talk to you.]
    “I think I should go and see this notice board.”
    Fluffy stood. [Get on then.]
    I climbed onto his back and he slipped us into glim.
     
    A dragon doesn’t hop in the way of Wizards. As a species they are less connected to the multiverse than the rest of us. They can choose to dissociate themselves from the universe and at the first level of dissociation they are invisible, then they become insubstantial and then they can step outside of everything into Hop Space. They call this process glimming and it is a noun, a verb, an adjective, and largely indescribable.
    I had hopped Fluffy places in the past and glimmed with him on a planet, but this was my first experience of glimming in Hop Space. When I stop in mid hop and experience Hop Space, it looks like mist with lights that represent whole universes. Riding on Fluffy’s back, Hop Space is