Tremaine's Knight
1
Roland Charles checked his notes as he watched his instruments measure the vat of metal alloys he had concocted in his lab just off the Harvard campus. He had rented a small house so that he could keep his experiments to himself. The neighborhood was quiet, dull even. That was exactly what Roland wanted.
Roland stepped to where he could look down in the small vat. The color of the alloys was red-hot lava. Silver streaks formed thin threads that broke apart as the metal boiled under the simmering heat. It looked about right for pouring.
Roland pulled a mold to the vat's side. He donned protective gloves and tipped the container carefully. The liquid metal rolled into the mold until the metallurgist saw that it was nearly filled. He cut off the heating coil he had built, checking the inside of the vat. Part of the alloy still sloshed in the bottom of the cauldron.
He let the vat back to a standing position. He could reheat that small bit for the next experiment if he needed to.
Roland pulled the mold over to his worktable, careful not to let the still liquid metal splash on him. He didn't relish the idea of having a hole burned through a part of his body in a few seconds because he was a little careless.
Roland had studied the ideas of the criminal inventor, Alan Arthur. He hoped to use some of the man's ideas to create a tougher alloy to use for different industries. It would mean a small revolution in the way machines were made, girders for skyscrapers, even vehicles.
The main problem Roland had encountered was Arthur kept his methods secret, refused to talk to anyone, and was the prisoner of the Cutter Island Prison which only allowed visitors the prisoner wanted, or the authorities.
There wasn't much help for him to talk to the jailed inventor.
2
Lazarus Tremaine watched the sun rise over Boston's skyline. He smiled slightly at the sight. He had once thought he would never see the burning orb again. Now it was something he could enjoy when he took a break from his routine.
The day promised to be cool, a welcome relief from the heat wave that had afflicted the city the early months of the summer.
Tremaine walked to where he had left his motorcycle. He couldn't spend his whole day watching the day fade away. He had errands to perform during the normal business hours of the rest of humanity. Afterwards he would have to think about moving west out of the city. He had never settled too long in one place before his first death. That had carried over to this second life.
Tremaine started his cycle, and roared toward the city. He expected to be done with what he had to do before night so he could start west out of New England. He wanted to tour the Great Lakes before turning toward Arizona and New Mexico. Sheriff Savage and the Blue Feathers were probably the last people in the world who wanted to see him, but he owed them for helping him take his first few steps.
Tremaine rode quietly through the streets, glad for the chance to repay for the damage he had caused as a gatherer for the Cloak. His rebirth from his slave existence had given an ability to sense things, feelings, intents. That feeling led him on his path, calling him forward. He didn't understand it, but knew his feelings were right. Something was going to happen soon, and he needed to be there to try to interfere with whatever happened.
Tremaine paused when he reached the right place. Everything seemed normal enough to his enhanced senses. Still he felt a vibration that told him it wouldn't stay like this for much longer. It would be okay to leave it for a little while to prepare what he could. He couldn't take too long to get ready.
This would be the second time something more than the usual thing had drawn him to a spot. Boston had a lot of old ghosts wandering around, but none that had emitted the type of feeling he was picking up. He hoped he didn't need help with the event he sensed approaching.
His own skills and abilities might not be enough.
3
Roland Charles examined the plate from all sides after hanging it up in his lab. He banged on it with a hammer first. Then he tried to cut it with a torch. Finally he took a shotgun he had borrowed and shot the metal he had joined together. He had mixed feelings after that test.
The plate didn't do anything but sway on its chain from the impact, but ricochets pitted the floor and the walls on either side. Luckily none had penetrated to the neighboring rooms from the impact.
Roland knew that his alloy could be used to build safer aircraft, buildings, even protective suits of all kinds. An assembly line could do a lot of the work easily, if he could overcome the one problem he had with the alloy.
The metal could not be shaped once it cooled below its melting point. It had to be remelted, repoured into a new mold to create the new shape. The only thing he thought that might avoid this problem was to form small sections to be joined together after all of it was gathered together. That would force a more piecemeal approach to any project using his new metal.
Roland took the plate down, placing it in a cardboard box. The solution had to be in his notes somewhere. There had to be away to shape the new alloy after it was cold. He couldn't expect anyone to try to pour the molten stuff like they did concrete.
Maybe he should get some air. A long walk around the city would help clear his head. Maybe something gleaned from his studies would give him a solution. The obvious thing was an instrument like a welder's torch to heat the alloy so that it could be shaped to need. Then some kind of coolant to freeze it in place before it could lose the desired shape.
What could he use as that coolant? It had to be something reasonably safe to transport, light enough for one, or two men to use while another shapes the alloy. It had to be something he could manufacture cheaply to keep expenses low.
Roland returned to his house, still pondering his problem. He let himself in, pausing at the strange woman sitting in his favorite chair. She smiled at him when she saw him enter.
This is trouble, Roland thought.
"I would offer you a drink," Roland said, masking his feelings as well as he could. "But you already seemed to have made yourself at home."
"I am sorry for the intrusion, Mr. Charles," said the lady, sipping water from a cup she had found in his small kitchen. "I heard that you were working on a new type of metal, and I am interested in what you have accomplished already."
"I am afraid I haven't solved some basic problems with it," said Roland. "I thought no one knew what I was doing."
"I have wonderful sources," said the lady, smiling. She put the cup down on a coaster. "Show me what you have done."
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Roland said. "Perhaps when I have worked out all of the problems. Right now, I only have archaic notes in my chicken scratch."
"Show me," said the lady. She stood, almost as tall as Roland, fires lighting the brown of her eyes. He froze under this presence, finally moved because she wanted him to do it. Refusal was still on his lips, but he couldn't stop himself.
Roland showed his unwelcome guest his laboratory. He didn't understand how she had taken control of his body like she had. He wanted to direct his steps to the door, and boot her out. Instead he stood to one side as she inspected the piece of alloy he had retrieved from its space.
"This is very interesting," the interloper said, touching the cool plate with a finger tip.
Roland stood and watched, unable to even speak under the hypnotic control being exerted on him. He wondered how this lady had even known he had poured the plate. It surely couldn't be an accident that she was here at just the right moment. Someone must have told her.
"I want you to pour some more of this metal for me, Mr. Charles," said the lady. She made some notes on a pad on his desk. "These are the approximate dimensions. I will return to check on your progress, perhaps lend you some assistance."
Roland went to his apparatus as the lady left his rooms. He bent to the task he had been given as mechanically as the puppet he had become. Only a small amount of self control kept him from hurting himself as he prepared the molds, heated the metal together, and started to pour. He was still working hours later when the woman returned to inspect his work.
"Let's see how well you have done," she said.
Roland stood back from the cooling metal, unable to process the aches and pains his body felt, along with the dehydration he had suffered. As long as she was in control, he could feel nothing.
The lady inspected his handiwork, smiling at the cooling metal. She placed her hand on the glowing surface, stroking it without burning her fingers to a crisp. It was almost perfect, almost exactly what she had wanted.
Now she could shape it as she had shaped the smith.
The lady picked up one piece after the other, while it was still hot. Once she would have been able to shape this with the power of her will alone, but no more. She had lost most of that magic thanks to traitors and the sudden appearance of Sir Tempus at her crypt. Now she had to work through pawns to gain back some of what she had lost.
Merlin must be laughing wherever he was now.
The lady bent each of the pieces into the shape she wanted before picking up the next. It took her a few moments and the humming of words under her breath. The hot metal had cooled under her attention into a bronze suit of armor disassembled on Roland's work desk. The part of his mind still active was amazed by what he had seen.
"I think this will do for what I have in mind," the lady said. "I will make adjustments once you are wearing the armor to fit it better. Go ahead and put it on."
Roland stripped off his dirty clothes at the slower rate that his mind was working. He squeezed into the metal pieces as well as he could. He felt part of his skin rub off his body as he tried to pull on the tight molding. The lady placed her hands on the suit, humming the whole time. The armor changed to fit him better.
He would have sighed happily if he could.
"There's a place that holds some things I need," the lady said, handing him an address on a slip of paper. "I need you to recover those things and bring them back here. Try to avoid being pursued as best that you can if you don't mind."
Roland nodded, then walked out of his house. His car protested at the weight he now wore when he sat down behind the wheel. He checked the address, started the car, and headed toward the local office of the Diana Foundation as fast as his mind could process how to drive.
4
Jerry Adama held the book he was reading open on the library table of the Foundation's building, while writing on a pad with the other hand. His chapter had suffered a loss with the betrayal of his aide, Red Barton. A month later, he was still trying to find everything Barton had used in his personal quest for power.
Adama put the book aside. His aides were out looking at a case for him, so he couldn't ask their assistance if he wanted to. Barton's turning his coat had left him with a degree of paranoia and suspicion.
He didn't like that he couldn't tell his assistants his true suspicions. Things were going on in Boston that he didn't understand, and that exaggerated his frustration to no end.
Something smashed into the front door of the small building the Foundation used as a headquarters. Adama stood, moving to the door of the library. Solid thumps stepped along the wooden floor from the crash he had heard. He decided that perhaps he needed a gun, so headed the other way toward his office.
Adama hopped over the top of his desk, scattering the lamp, and the piled paperwork to the floor. His knee bumped into the heavy typewriter taking up part of the desk top. That turned his action into an ungainly swan dive to the floor on the other side.
Adama groped around until he felt the center drawer's handle. He pulled the drawer to the floor beside him. His hands shook as he checked the action of the automatic pistol he seldom used.
It had been a long time since he had been out in the field.
Adama sat up, a gun pointed at the slightly open door. It had rebounded toward the closed position from his mad dash across the room. Steel stamping against wood echoed down the hall.
Whoever was out there wasn't worried about what he was doing in the office. That wasn't good.
A steel gray triangular shield filled Adama's anxious tunnel vision. He pulled the trigger until he heard a dry click after the firecracker roars he had caused. Holes appeared in things around him as the bullets rebounded from the metal shell he had fired on. Adama couldn't see a dent in the knight's armor as it rushed at him.
The station chief recoiled from the solid block of steel heading for his face. He wasn't quick enough. Everything went black as his head rebounded from the blow.
5
Roland Charles stood in one corner, encased in the armor he had helped create. His eyes were blank stones as he waited for his next order. All had gone as straightforward as he could perform with most of his mind asleep in a fog.
"Thank you for your quick work," said the lady, smiling. Her agent had acquired some valuable artifacts from the Foundation's house. It seemed fitting since one of their agents had taken most of her powers before being confined in her crypt.
The lady arranged the items before her in a pattern that only she understood. When the time was right, she would use them to regain her stolen power from Barton. Then she could try to rebuild her realm in this magicless place. She would deal with any who thought they were close to her level of power.
The likes of Merlin and Arthur were gone from this world, leaving only mundane weaklings for the most part.
She had not forgotten Sir Tempus's part in her loss. She would deal with him as painfully as she could no matter what he called himself in this modern age. It would be a pleasure.
The time wasn't quite right for her ritual. She needed a favorable alignment of the stars above to succeed. She had already spotted the place she needed to use. Her knight would protect her while she carried out her plan. All he needed was a sword and shield to be complete. He could do that while they waited for the conjunction she was going to use to get her power back.
Roland used more of his metal in molds the rough shape he wanted. He heated it, poured it, cooled it, in a trance. His active mind dreamed of things that no one had seen for centuries as he worked. His new armor protected him from the effects of his sleep walking as he worked with his precious alloy.
More than once he spilled some of the glowing metal as he tried to pour it into shape. Molten drops splattered against his breastplate and arms. His armor prevented any damage other than a feeling of heat as the spatter cooled to blemishes he would have to buff away when he devised a method to do it.
That is if he survived the night with his mind intact.
The lady inspected his work after the red fire had died to gray steel. She smiled quietly as she examined the pieces. All they needed was a touch of her will to make them more than two pieces of metal waiting for the finishing touch.
"Let's be about our business," she said, handing Roland the last pieces of his alloy that existed. "We have much to do before the rising of the sun."
The lady led the sleeping Charles to a nearby street corner. The stars would point all of the energy she needed on that corner. Then she could use that to wrest back some of the power she had lost to Barton's machinations. One thought would create as many knights as she needed to do her work.
Then she would teach this modern era the meaning of magic. Not even Tempus was in the position to stop her since he thought she was dead after that debacle in England.
The lady smiled at the thought of what she would do to that particular knight errant when she was back in control. She would pull his green eyes from his skull with the points of rusty tongs.
That was something to reward herself with later after she was done, she thought as she paused at the crossroads she had selected to carry out her plan. This one night out of the year, out of the decade, maybe the century, the power of the stars would limn the plain Boston street with enough of a charge that she could reach her full magnitude again. No one would be able to interfere with her sentry on duty.
The lady wrote in the air with her finger. Symbols and lines carved themselves in the street, staying away from the curves at the edge of the asphalt. She inspected her work to make sure it was perfect.
A few more moments and she would regain her lost glory. It was going to be a beautiful night.
A man in a black jacket and pants appeared out of the shadows, Stetson pulled low over his face. He stood just outside the engraved circle, hands at his sides. Ice blue eyes pierced the dark veil of shadows over his face as he stared at the sorceress.
"Are you some interfering clown that I will have to dispose of before I can conclude my business?," the lady asked.
"Possibly," said the man in black, touching the brim of his hat. "I see that you have already deprived one man of his freedom. Why not try to take mine from me?"
"After I am done, there will be time for anything I want to do," said the lady. "I would appreciate your absence while I do what I have to do."
"I don't think that would be good for myself or the people of Boston," said the man in black, stepping forward. "The only question is whether I have to stop you, or if you will go somewhere else."
"Deal with his nuisance, Lancelot," said the Lady, making an imperious gesture with her hand.
Roland Charles charged forward, lightning quick in the armor that had been put together from his alloy. His sword sang as it sliced the air in a blind fury. The subdued rational mind bound inside his skull questioned what he was doing. That wasn't enough to stop his body from trying to commit murder.
His sword cut the air as his arm did what the woman commanded while dragging the rest of him after it. Even if he had full possession of his senses, he wouldn't have been able to keep up with the speed and ferocity of that one arm.
Still the silvery blade didn't touch the man in black as he drifted away from every cut before the sword could finish a swing. His face was blank as he stayed out of reach of the weapon. He seemed to be waiting for the right moment, and unconcerned with what the entranced Charles was trying to do to him.
The lady moved to her place at the center of the circle. Invisible waves pushed against her as she made the gestures that allowed her to reach into the veil that kept magic away from the world at large. She felt her mind reaching across to England where her power lay buried with Red Barton in her former crypt. Soon she would have it back.
Her servant kept that meddler at bay as she began to channel the power of the stars into the circle, and then the crossroads beyond. Everyone who lived along those streets would lend themselves to her spell. It was a necessary sacrifice to gain her abilities and her revenge.
The man in black waited until the moment was right, the knight's swing falling into the perfect position. Then his gloved hands caught the armored gauntlet behind the sword. One twist flung the blade loose. It landed point first in the street, quivering in the asphalt.
The lady felt all of her power drain away in an instant. She glared about her, wondering what had gone wrong. Then she saw the sword, and understood completely how she had been stopped by the interloper.
The sword had sliced through the summoning circle. That had disrupted the flow of power beyond the crossroad. That had prevented the lady from drawing her power from Barton.
The man in black smiled as he avoided another blow. Then he grabbed the knight's head with one hand. There was a flicker of blue. Charles staggered away, dazed but in control again.
"I think that stops whatever scheme you were trying to carry out," said Tremaine. "I don't know anyone that could sentence you to justice, so I am willing to let you walk away as long as you don't hurt anyone else."
"Her promise won't be good enough," said Roland Charles, shaking off the rest of his long sleep. "She'll continue to ruin things for any she crosses in her petty quest."
"She deserves a chance to make amends," said Tremaine. "That's as fair as I can be about it. The police couldn't hold her on the flimsy evidence I see, even if they had the capability."
The lady pointed her hand at the man in black. Faerie fire rushed forward, clawing for him angrily. He stepped aside as elusively as the shadow he resembled. The light display scored a nearby light pole in a cascade of sparks.
Roland charged forward behind his circular shield. His intention was to grab his sword and cleave his tormentor's skull in two. It was a murderous impulse that normally he wouldn't have entertained. St. Elmo's fire struck his shield dead center. The whole world rotated before he hit the sidewalk in a crashing heap.
The lady laughed at her pawn struggling like a turtle on its back. She turned her attention to the man in black as he walked forward. He was a slippery customer, but she had just the thing for him. She spread her hands wide, casting a net of light around him. It wouldn't hold for long, but it should be long enough for her to deliver the killing stroke.
"I am going to enjoy taking you apart like I did the Round Table," she said, pulling the sword free from the street. "I wish I had time to make you suffer like you deserve."
Roland's circular shield sliced through the air, taking the lady behind the legs. The sword leaped out of her hand. The blade scored the asphalt as it stuck in the street once more. She staggered before falling to her knees. She turned on the knight, hurling a burning piece of invective. Charles took the mystic explosion on his chest and crashed across a lawn and through a hedge.
"There's no end to the heroics," the lady said, looking around for the sword to finish what she started.
"I have to agree there," said Tremaine, holding the sword in one hand. "That's what we do."
"I suppose I must retreat to plot another day," the lady said, holding up one hand. "I salute you gentlemen. I warn you I will remember this until I settle with you both."
The lady held up one hand, light dripping from her fingers. It flared to sun-like intensity as she dropped her hand. When it had faded enough for Tremaine and Charles to see, the wizardess was gone.
Her broken circle promised revenge for their interference.
epilogue
Roland Charles examined his new armor, shield and sword. He had designed a rack to hold the equipment in storage. His mind pulsed angrily at the thought of being controlled, but the shaped alloy mollified that feeling some.
If that witch hadn't brainwashed him, he wouldn't have been able to shape the metal at all.
That man in black had freed his mind, helped him to his feet. He had told Roland that it was up to him to find his own destiny. His quick wit with the shield had been a show stopper on top of that.
Being a hero appealed to Roland. His alloy made him nearly bulletproof. The alloy was as light as a feather. He didn't know how well it would transfer heat, but the metal would take a while to heat up enough to affect whomever was wearing it.
Roland knew he wasn't a detective of any kind. It would take him days, maybe weeks, to come to the right conclusion about any mystery. And women fooled him all the time because he couldn't understand them.
Still he could help out in any emergency that might come along. The Guardians of Justice had retired for the most part, someone needed to take their place. Not to mention that the Demon Deacon did well for himself as a hero.
Others had also stepped out of the shadows to lend a hand occasionally.
Roland knew a lady called the Crimson Raven had made Boston her home. She was seen sometimes in her cowled cloak and dress protecting the city from things that no one had seen before. He should be able to handle something like fire rescues in his protective gear.
Roland closed the special door on his closet, still turning the thing over in his head. He definitely needed a name to work under to protect his real name. He didn't want reporters, cops, or angry crooks showing up at his door at all times of the day. Anonymity seemed the best course at the moment.
Roland examined his clean lab once more before he turned on the radio. Maybe some music would bring on an idea about his future career. He would also need a job other than his tinkering to cover his expenses. Being a hero couldn't be cheap.
He sat down, dropping off to sleep as he thought about what the future would bring.