Chapter 1

Jack Scatter crept through the dark woods, concentrating on the spell that guided his feet to where they would make the least noise. His opponents, unseen but nearby, were skilled and potentially lethal. One was a martial artist armed with a magical Bo staff, the other could predict the future and had a penchant for throwing fireballs.

He stepped over a fallen branch. His foot was only inches above the ground when a ghostly footprint appeared two inches to the left. The spell wasn’t perfect, but it was only giving him one choice. He shifted his weight to land directly on the pale mark, and sunk into a carpet of leaves without a sound.

Forty yards. He could see the cache now: a barely camouflaged tarp strung between two trees. He eased the other foot over the branch but no marker appeared. They’re close. Time for another spell.

He twirled his wand in a circle near his ear and the music of distant crickets became a thunderous orchestra. Filter. The insects faded and were replaced by a chorus of tree frogs. Filter. He silently repeated that command until the only sounds were of grass and twigs stirred by the evening breeze. Of course, that’s exactly what someone approaching would sound like.

Back to the first spell, Jack willed the forest floor to show a safe path. A flicker of motion caught his attention. He glanced ahead but saw nothing. When he looked down again he had a dozen footprints to choose from.Too many possible futures. But then they started dancing. It's a trick.

He’d opened his mind to the AI and one of his foes had slipped in an illusion. That was the downside of ongoing spells, they left the caster vulnerable. He guarded his thoughts and the footprints disappeared. But had he been seen? Or heard? One thing was certain, he couldn’t stand there forever. He lowered his foot gently. A twig snapped under his shoe.

Intense light illuminated the forest as a ball of blue plasma sped through the trees. Jack created a shield and crouched low before the caged lightning splashed against his invisible barrier. Even so, he felt its heat and smelled ozone.

He dove and rolled for cover behind a tree. Hugging the trunk, he pointed his wand and spelled a whirlwind. An expanding cone of leaves, bark, and soil hurtled through the forest. It had almost reached the spot where he thought his attacker hid when another plasma ball erupted from his left, so close he had to neglect his own attack and raise a new shield. But instead of scattering, the glowing ball passed through his defense without slowing. He threw himself backwards, narrowly avoiding a serious burn.

No, wait. The plasma attack had carried no heat, no ozone. Another illusion. “That does it,” he bellowed.

More angry at himself than his assailant, Jack abandoned guided attacks and highjacked the portal of a snowmaking machine. Instead of glazing the slopes of a luxury resort somewhere on Earth, its ice crystals were diverted to his wand, where he used the wormhole’s energy field to compress them into solid pellets. He sprayed them in a ruthless hail without aiming as he ran. The pellets wouldn’t seriously harm anyone, but they’d keep his attacker busy. More importantly, he didn’t have to focus on the task or risk another intrusion into his thoughts.

The cache was only steps away. He hurdled a stump and threw the tarp aside, eager to capture his prize.

“What the …?” The only object in the shelter was a twenty-pound quivering mass of lime gelatin in the shape of a flag. He shouted, “That’s cheating, Ethan. I can’t carry that.”

Jack’s cousin, Ethan Marke, laughed and stepped out of the darkness. “Sure you can. You could freeze it, or—”

“The whole point of three-way capture the flag is to get both our opponents flags. We should be able to carry them, not have to use another spell to deal with them.”

“The only rule was that we hide a flag. What’s yours made of?”

“It’s an actual flag, made of cloth.”

“What about the pole?”

“It’s real wood.”

Ethan narrowed his eyes. “How long?”

Jack couldn’t pretend anymore. He laughed, then said, “About sixteen feet.”

Ethan threw up his hands. “How is that any better?”

Jack curbed his laughter. “Where’d you get the jelly from?”

“Sarah helped me find it. She think it’s from a hospital cafeteria. They’ll never miss it.” Ethan shuffled his feet, mimicking a popular dance move. “What did you think of the extra footprints?”

Jack frowned. “I should have noticed how big and clumsy they were.” He looked towards the lake. “Do you think I can still get past Sarah?”

“I doubt it,” Sarah said as she stepped out from behind a tree.

“Gah.” Jack stumbled as he spun away from her.

“I’m sorry.” Sarah stifled a laugh. “I couldn’t help it. I tried to ignore my intuition but I still remembered what path you took.”

In the eight months since they’d discovered the technology they now called magic, Sarah Rogers had mastered a range of skills. Like Jack, she could tap distant portals for their resources, but the Traveller Effect also supplied glimpses of her future in a form indistinguishable from her own memories.

Ethan stretched an arm to help Jack stand. “You know, we’ll never be able to do this fairly. Sarah will always know weeks or months ahead of time what path either of us will take, and you can come up with new spells on demand. Or just sense our crystals unless we’re constantly shielded.”

“Your two-second warning will eventually be better than my two weeks,” Sarah said. “The more often we practice, the more paths I have to remember.”

Jack brushed himself off. “Well, the next time we do this, we’ll—” A snapping noise interrupted. Something was falling through the branches nearby.

Ethan raised his staff to a defensive posture. The large crystal mounted at its center brightened. “What was that?”

Jack reached out. “It’s a portal crystal, for sure.” He pointed his wand. “That way.”

Sarah summoned a fireball, holding it ready to launch from the tip of her own wand. It illuminated the forest with an orange glow as it burned. Jack kept his wand at the ready but had a good idea what they would find. His portal-sense led them directly to the fallen object: a gold-plated disc with a shiny central gem.

Ethan picked it up and spelled a light from one of the four gemstones on his ring. “It’s a coin portal.” He flipped it over to expose a tracery of delicate lines that looked more like geometric art than circuitry. “One of Pieter’s.”

Coin-mounting was the most common format for portal crystals. They’d been used that way for decades in everything from power cells to phones. This one was different, though. It was one of Pieter Reynard’s Third-Eye crystals, which was entangled with an identical pair on Earth. He’d intended to use them to monitor and control high-level government officials remotely, but Simon, his chief engineer, had destroyed the cargo and launched the coins into orbit around Cirrus.

“How long do you think they’ll be falling for?” Sarah asked.

Jack shrugged. “Years, probably. There were five million on the shuttle when it disintegrated. That’s like one for every … roughly three square miles on Cirrus.”

“Should we keep it?”

“Are you serious? Dragons can sense these as far away as I can. There’s nowhere in the village they won’t find it.”

He scoffed. “How often is a dragon going to come near Icarus?”

“They’re obsessed with those coins. I sensed one circling the village last week.”

Ethan paled. “And you didn’t you tell us?”

“I would have liked to meet another dragon,” Sarah said.

Jack gestured to the lake. “They swam over to the island.”

Ethan shivered; he didn’t even like snakes. “Actually, I’m glad you didn’t tell us. I wouldn’t be able to sleep knowing it was near.”

“They,” Sarah said. “Not it. Dragons are intelligent, and they don’t have gender.”

“How do you know that?”

“Anders told me. They don’t breed, either. They’re grown.”

“Fine, I’m not a fan of them.”

“They won’t bother us as long as we don’t bother them,” Jack said.

“Says the only person who can talk to them. Is that why Dusty was so anxious the other day? Did she know they were around?”

“I’m sure she knew a few hours before they showed up.”

Dusty, Ethan’s golden retriever, was psychic. At least that’s how the three friends liked to think of it. She was, in fact, the canine version of a Traveller—someone who could remember their own future through a portal-enabled interaction with an Artificial Intelligence. For humans, those AI memories served as warnings or guides. Dusty used them to sneak up on squirrels.

“So, what should we do with the coin?” Sarah asked.

Jack levitated it with his wand. “I’ll get rid of it.”

He flew it at eye level to fifty feet away, near the limits of his control. Then, shifting to line up with a break in the trees, he swung his arm over his head in a smooth arc. The coin—at the end of a fifty-foot invisible tether—followed his movement. By the time Jack released it, the golden disc was moving at supersonic speed. A whip-like crack signaled the beginning of a miles-long flight away from the village.

“Should we play again tomorrow night?” Ethan turned to Sarah when they resumed walking. “What’s the weather going to be like?”

“I’m not your personal weather forecaster. And we can’t tomorrow because of Priya, remember?” She registered his surprise. “Oh, sorry—Traveller memory. Priya’s going to call tomorrow.”

Jack didn’t doubt that Sarah was right. “What about?”

A worried looked crossed her face. “I don’t think even she knows yet. But it’ll be important.”

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