From several directions and from the nearby treetops, a murder of crows rose into the air.
They came from everywhere darkening the day into night. There were so many, they momentarily blocked much of the sun light.
As the crows hovered and teemed above us, they squawked and croaked with discombobulated ebullience.
Max threw back his head howling and yowling with delight, barely able to contain his excitement.
Beside him, Connor worked up a sweat trying to keep the dog at bay with magik calming commands along with a healthy dose of tugging and yanking on the leather leash.
"Will you look at that!" Simon shouted, pointing up at the squawking cloud of crows. "I swear, I haven't seen a crow murder that thick since...since never!"
"A what?" Corwin asked with a puzzled raise of his eyebrow.
"A murder. That's the term for a flock of crows." Simon quipped with a grin.
He pointed to the roiling black mass above the treetops. "Can't you hear that harsh, raucous cry? Doesn't it sound as if they're yelling bloody murder?"
He cackled like a madman. "Man, that's just so cool!"
I heard Simon's exuberant banter, but I had no time or energy to focus on him. I re-focused all my will and might into a single clear Command.
"Shunzaotahnren!"
I shouted into the wind, arms outstretched to spread the Seek Command as far and wide as I was able.
The large black swarm of flapping wings pulsed for a moment, and then with a singular intent, the mass of black beaks and feathers flew directly at me.
Suddenly, I was covered in crows. I stood there, breathless; not because I was scared and couldn't breathe, but because crows are rather dirty creatures, and they stank.
I tried to hold still as they squawked and squabbled, moving in a kind of chaotic order as they took turns tearing into the ripped sweatshirt with their black claws and beaks. Thankfully, it was all over within a few minutes.
As soon as I could sense that they had all obtained what little information about Tory that I was able to give them, I dispersed them.
"Dajiadohlikai!" I called out, dispersing the crows with a quick wave of my hands.
The crows returned to the skies, leaving no shred of the sweatshirt behind. They had taken all the scraps with them, along with as perfect an image of Tory as I could convey to them, embedded in the Seek Command.
Once the crows had taken off, I raised my hands and shouted another Recall Command, targeting the geckos.
"Taozodirenhueilai!"
The geckos had been waiting for me. They began crawling out from every hidey hole and crevice until the ground was literally covered with thousands and thousands of geckos.
They crowded around me, their bodies blending together into a sea of mottled browns and greens.
I raised out my hands and yelled out the Seek Command.
"Shunzaotahnren!"
As I did with the crows, I sent out images of Tory and the apes into their collective consciousness, embedded in the Seek Command.
With the images I sent them, the geckos went crazy. Their voices rose in unison, clicking and chirping and barking in such a cacophonous racket that it was almost deafening.
"Dajiadohlikai!" I called out, dispersing the geckos with another flourish of my hands.
They quickly scampered away in all directions to go looking for the boy and the apes.
Within minutes, I was standing alone again in the middle of that clearing.
"Wow. That was AMAZING!" Simon shouted from the alcove where he had been pressed against. "Can we move now?"
"Yes. I'm done."
The guys emerged from the shelter of the walls, with Simon running ahead to reach me.
"That's so cool! I've got to hand it to you, Nana." Simon chattered on, oblivious to the silent exchanges of glances between the two brothers.
"I've been in classes where mages have communicated with animals before, but never hordes of them all at once. How in heck do you do something like that?"
"I'm not trying to teach them to do some fancy circus tricks and movements that their bodies aren't made to be doing very well, and I'm not trying to make them talk and communicate as if they are humans. They're not. They're animals, and I respect that."
"I see." He said, nodding. "So, you only train them to do things they can do, and talk to them at a very low level so they can understand you."
"No, Simon." I shook my head. "I didn't train them. They trained me. Magus Asada taught me how to talk to them, not at a low human level but at a high animal level, so they don't have to try and translate crude human speech to animal signals and intents."
"So what did you just tell them to do? Go look for Tory?"
"Something like that." I nodded.
"They have a good whiff of his scent, and they have a good visual of what he looks like. I have the crows covering aerial searches and I have the geckos and the mice covering the areas on the ground and under the ground.
I have the bats, to hunt for signals inside buildings and any enclosures. I'm going to keep Max with us so he can alert us of anything immediate, but he's briefed on the situation and the search as well."
"So now what do we do now?" Connor asked.
"Now we sit tight and wait for them to return with something."
"You've got lots of crows to help the bats search in the air, but you only have two rats, how are they going to cover that much ground?" Simon asked with a worried frown.
"That's why I told them to take a piece of the sweatshirt. They have friends, and they can transmit amongst themselves, the image of Tory that I embedded into their visual cortex.
Unfortunately, they aren't able to reproduce images perfectly, so every time each of them transmit an image to a fellow rat, the image gets degraded gradually until the latest transfers are blurry blobs of the original image I gave them."
I shrugged. "It's a good thing smell transfers are relatively stable. A stinky blob that smells like Torrence is most likely going to be no one but Torrence."
Simon bowed his head in deference. "I take it all back, everything I ever said about you being a terrible mage, Nana. I am so sorry. Forgive me?" He asked, his blue eyes appealing to me in his little boy way.
I smiled and gave him a wink. There was no reason to burst his bubble about my abilities, or lack thereof.
We stood around for awhile, chatting about the various events that had transpired during the week, but I could tell the guys were restless. The twins kept scanning the skies, searching for the corvus flock's return, and although once in awhile, a few sparrows darted past, it seemed as if whatever I did had taken out all the crows.
Corwin turned back to me. "Uncle Blackstone said we had to leave as soon as possible. How long do you think these animals are going to take?"
"I don't know," I responded with a shake of the head.
Connor tried to allay his unease. "We can't leave here without knowing where to go."
"So what do we do now?" Corwin asked me.
"We wait for the scouts to return and give us information, along with some clear direction," I responded, anxiously scanning the skies.
I did not want to alarm the twins or Simon, but my fretting was in part due to my worries that I had not done the augury Commands correctly.
The other worry I had was due to how agitated Dean Blackstone was acting.
He really wanted us to leave immediately to find the boy and the apes but realistically, it was not a mission we could embark on without some plan, half-baked though it may be.
We couldn't leave if we didn't know where to go.
In the end, it wasn't the rats, and it wasn't the bats, and it certainly wasn't the crows who broke the news first about Tory's whereabouts.
It was Tarzan.
We had pulled some chairs out from the classroom so that we could camp outside while I waited for my little scouts to return from their assignment.
It had only been about half an hour since I sent the animals on their hunt but it felt much longer than that. I was slouched over in my chair, trying hard not to fall asleep from a full stomach, combined with the wicked heat of the day.
The guys were trying to kill some time, sitting around in a circle on the ground playing gin rummy with a large stack of human paper money.
Perhaps it was because they were distracted by the game, or perhaps Tarzan wasn't as clumsy or noisy as most people thought he was.
In any case, I felt a tap on my shoulder, and before I could call out to alert the mages who where whooping and hollering at their game some distance away, a huge plastic-wrapped pot pie was shoved onto my lap.
I looked up and saw the huge grinning face of a humanoid with orange-red body hair.
Nana. Food for you.
What in heck was he doing here? I suddenly realized Max was sitting up, his ears turned towards the new visitor, a growl starting in the base of his throat.
Relax, Max. Tarzan is a friend. I reassured the dog. I did not want the two to start off fighting.
Max ceased his growling even though his tense body and sharp eyes remained on high alert.
I sat there, staring in disbelief at the orangutan's sudden appearance.
"Tarzan? What are you doing here?" I jumped up from my chair.
Immediately, the mages rushed over, their cards and winnings scattered about like so much discarded trash.
Corwin was first to reach me, his eyes full of concern, but I waved him back.
"Relax!" I told him in a calm voice.
I did not want Tarzan to be magikally mauled by some good-intentioned but overzealous mages.
"It's ok," I said. "It's just Tarzan. Looks like he missed me at lunch time and came with some food." I smiled and mentally gave Tarzan a big thank you!
Tarzan bowed and gave a sign for You're welcome.
"Wow. That big lug knows sign language." Simon looked amused at the thought.
"Don't tell me you know sign language too, Simon." Connor retorted drily.
"Of course I do!" Simon said, giving him a withering look. "I'm a genius, remember?"
Corwin rolled his eyes. "As if you'd ever let us forget it," he said through clenched teeth, but Simon was no longer listening to the twins. His entire focus was on Tarzan's reaction to me mind-talking with him.
"Wow, talk about a caring male." Simon said, chuckling. Then he glanced at the twins with a knowing grin. "You guys have a new rival," he said.
"What else are they saying?" Corwin asked, his eyes following the big red orangutan's every movement, as though he did not trust the orangutan's motives.
Simon shook his head. "I can't follow it any more." He replied. "Nana's not signing. She's mostly talking to him telepathically, you know, like how she does that silent thing with the crows and the rats."
"He's not hand-gesturing either. It looks like he's doing the full-on mental dialogue with her."
I smiled as I heard Simon chattering with the twins.
It was not well-known outside the circle of primate trainers, but primates like Tarzan had been trained to hand-sign as babies.
This was mostly to help out those Overlords who could not speak telepathically to the primates. Lately, it was more like MOST of the Overlords could not speak to the primates.
I had long ago realized that the hand signals were only for basic communication with the apes, and that much of the real dialogue and conversation needed to be via mind-meld.
Most mages thought I was faking the communication channels, quite likely because they were unable to establish a clear link between themselves and the primates.
So to be more like everyone else and less like a freak of nature, I went along with the fumbling and the bumbling of the hand gestures for the benefit of fitting in.
Unfortunately, with the more complex tasks and conversations, I found it far simpler just to push an image into the apes' brains rather than slog through long and complicated hand and body gestures.
The more intelligent primates such as Tarzan could also transmit their responses to me in moving images without having to use their hands.
At the moment, the images that Tarzan transmitted to me had made me sit up and take notice.
In his mind's eye, I saw groups of worker primates being taken away on a train by a group of black-suited mages with dark sunglasses.
The train headed through the huge mountain range in the east to wherever the other side of the mountain was.
I also saw images of apes loading huge amounts food and other magikal supplies and equipment onto the train.
In one of the cars that Tarzan entered, there was a small group of mages engaging in heated exchange.
They were all wearing black suits except for one.
I gasped as I saw his face.
It was Tory.