The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister Landon Wark (free e books to read .txt) 📖

this. It's impossible to separate out the warmth and food parts from the fire and brimstone parts. It's like ammonium nitrat—"

"Well, while you're trying to grow crops I'm worried that we're making bombs for revolutionaries. And this—" She motioned to the tablet sitting on the sofa. "Is not making things any better."

"Do you know the guy in the video?" Jonah asked.

"No. It might be one of Tom's recruits."

"Huhn." The grunt came out matter-of-factly as Jonah stood from his stool at the workbench lining the wall.

"You're not worried?"

"About what?"

"About things getting out of hand!" Aegera said in exasperation. "About what happened at the house happening again! That guy said your name! Why the hell are we still using your actual name? Call yourself anything! Fucking... Gandalf! Fucking Harry Potter! I don't know!"

Jonah paused mid-step. "I shouldn't need to use anything else. And I can't change human nature. If we keep doing what we're doing, keep bringing in more recruits, get the word out... Eventually, they'll have to understand."

He started back towards the room in the back where he slept.

Aegera watched after him for a moment. "And if they don't want to understand?"

"Just stick to the plan and they'll have to understand," he said before disappearing through the door.

The plan was:

After receiving a demonstration on the street, in a back alley or wherever, was out of the way of prying former Eastern bloc eyes; a person would be offered a complimentary book filled with the basics of the art they were trying to teach; how to create food, clothing, duplicate the basic items, etc. Inside this book there was stamped a time and a place to come for a more in-depth journey through the methods and such. This phase was known as the Initiate phase. Within this phase, on Jonah’s instruction, Aegera had designed a series of interviews and trials (of questionable effectiveness) to weed out certain undesirables such as investigative reporters and officers of the law as well as to determine who was fit to move on to the next phase. Of any given group about seventy to eighty percent were told they would not be admitted to the next phase, but told to return anyway for some further instruction and to try again, though it was already certain that they would not be allowed to advance.

They turned out to be mostly okay with that, only being interested in a way out of their humdrum existences. A little magic in the world went a long way Aegera supposed and any further questioning of the mechanics of the universe just raised problems for them.

Fair enough.

The next phase was known as the Adept phase and it comprised the bulk of the training, including words and phrases for attack and defense as well as travel and stealth. If she had to guess at the purpose of this rank Aegera would have called them the technicians, those chosen to explore the mechanics of the words and to keep an eye on the Initiates. And finally there were the first rank, the so-called Acolytes (the name still confused her), those who mastered not only the words, but also the ideas behind them, the ones capable of improvisation and originality. These were hand chosen from the ranks of the Adepts by Jonah McAllister himself. Out of the hundred or so Initiates Aegera had collected from the streets, bars and universities in their journey across Europe, only she and Tom had been declared of appropriate skill and even then they were split in two. Those who dealt primarily with the new finds, in this case Tom, were known as the Outer Assembly and those who had the ear of Jonah McAllister, who received his orders and carried them out, were known as the Inner Assembly. The Inner Assembly consisted of Aegera alone.

She was responsible for all those underneath her, for checking and rechecking, for making sure that, by the time any outsider joined their ranks, he was already in full awe of the things they were capable of, that he would not report back to his superiors without showing his full respect for the abilities of Jonah’s Adepts and Acolytes and then coming back into the fold. Anyone who joined was to be theirs and theirs alone.

For the most part she was satisfied. There was only one person she did not trust entirely, and that was Tom Nightshade.

“Anyone who takes the writings of the Great Jonah McAllister will never want for food,” he announced to a crowd assembled in a back alley. “Nor for wealth, nor for anything in the material world.”

Several hands went up and he shoved the thin books at them.

Aegera folded her arms. Part religious sermon, part self-help seminar the demonstration had all the promises of a late night infomercial and all the idol worship of a tent revival. If Tom was good at one thing it was getting (and holding) people’s attention.

She passed out books to some attendees in the back, including some she had brought in herself from a nearby tavern, without taking her eye off the stage. Perhaps it was the way he plucked his eyebrows that caused her to distrust him. Men never did that sort of thing back home. Nor did they wear make-up. Maybe it was the leather he dressed in or the piercings through his ears.

He had come to them Thomas Bergeson from their efforts three months earlier and while his personal appearance was somewhat odd (at least to her); his flamboyance had made for an excellent display. Originally from England he had surpassed the rankings even before they had been fully formed and Aegera had not been able to thoroughly check him before Jonah had appointed him as a recruiter. Recruitment had gone up since he had joined, but his habits caused her some concern.

She had followed him several times, under a cloak