"Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you God?"

The bailiff acted a bit surprised when I didn't place my hand on the bible and say "I do", but anybody who really knew me would have been more surprised if I had. "Your honor," I said as I turned my head to face him, "I understand the intention of this, but since I don't happen to believe in the God associated with that book, I'd be swearing a false oath. I intend to tell the truth, and I'll swear a different oath to that effect if you wish, but I can't swear the one you normally require."

As I expected, they had alternatives of their own, I was hardly the first person to take a witness stand who didn't believe in the Christian God. A few minutes later they accepted my oath on my own honor as valid and I sat down in the chair.

"Mr. Antoine?"

"Yes," I answered.

"Mr. Brian Wayne Antoine, the self proclaimed ArchMage of Earth?" asked the attorney.

"No," which made him pause.

"Isn't that your name?"

"It is."

"Are you the ArchMage of this planet?"

"Yes, I am."

"Then why did you deny it just now?"

"I didn't deny either my name or the fact I'm the current ArchMage of Earth," I told him with a grin that I hoped made it clear what I thought of him. "I am not however, self proclaimed, I was given that title by the previous holder of it, as that person was given it by every ArchMage that came before them."

"And who gave you that title?"

Yeah, right, like I was suddenly going to answer a question that I'd been refusing to answer for years, just because I was on the witness stand. Instead, I made a point of cleaning one of my fingernails.

"Mr. Antoine, are you refusing to answer my question?"

"Yes, I am. I took an oath to tell the truth, but I did not say I'd answer every question put to me."

"Your honor, the witness is ..."

"Refusing to compromise the safety of innocent people," I finished for him as I turned again to face the judge.

The judge looked at me like he'd like to throw me in jail for contempt, and truth be told I actually did feel a bit of contempt for the whole proceeding I'd been talked into participating in, but he held his tongue. "Mr. Antoine, what do you mean by 'compromise the safety'?"

I thought about trying his patience further, but decided not to. "Your honor, it is a well established fact that any Mage who reveals their identity becomes the target of religious extremists. The whole point of this trial is about whether the defendant sitting over there is guilty of the murder of several innocent bystanders who were standing too close to me when the bomb he intended to kill me with was detonated."

Yeah, both attorneys came unglued at that point. They yelled at the judge, each other, the defense attorney yelled at me a couple of times, I just sat there and waited for them to settle what ever meaningless legal point they wanted to fight about.

"Mr. Antoine," the judge said with a scowl when the arguing had quieted down. "You will confine yourself to answering the questions asked of you and will refrain from offering unsubstantiated opinions."

"Only the truth?"

"And nothing but the Truth," he told me.

"Ok then, as a point of truth I point out that this court has allowed two members of the religious group known as 'Purity Through Fire' into this court while armed, which proves my point about Mages becoming targets if their identity is known." My defensive shields, which had actually be there since I'd walked into the courthouse, flared into the visible light range. "That person in the brown jacket in the back of the room carried a handgun in with the knowledge of the guard outside, though he hasn't realized yet that the firing pin is missing." I held out my hand and dropped the firing pin onto the floor in front of the witness stand. "The lady in the rather garish hat in the second row has a bomb in her purse, although if she tries to detonate it, the only person she'll kill is herself."

Suffice to say that all hell broke loose in the courtroom. The idiot in back apparently didn't believe me about the firing pin and stood up, pulled his gun and tried to fire at me. The gun barely cleared his jacket before he vanished with a loud *pop*. The lady didn't believe me either, but the shield I'd thrown around her confined the blast and the resulting gore to an area slightly larger than she was. The photographers had a field day, but then they always did where I was concerned.

I doubt the judge heard me when I glanced his direction through the chaos around us and said, "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you."

It was three days before the trial resumed. There were federal guards outside the courtroom now, the crowd was much smaller and one juror had been replaced by an alternate. The prosecuting attorney and I had exchanged a few words as well. He'd been the one that had talked me into testifying, and hadn't been real happy with how I'd acted. I explained quite clearly that his expectations were his problem, not mine.

"Mr. Antoine, do you recognize either of the women in these photos?"

I looked at the exhibits to make sure nobody had switched pictures, then told him, "Yes, I do."

"Where do you recognize them from?"

"They were the two women standing near me when the bomb was detonated."

"Do you know them from anyplace else?"

"No."

The prosecutor paused for a moment, and I knew he was grinning inside as he continued. "You were not hurt by that detonation, where you?"

"No, I wasn't," I confirmed.

"Why is that?"

"My defenses protected me from the blast."

"Defenses?"

"The magical defenses I have against the continuing attempts to assassinate me."

"And those defenses are?"

It was my turn to pause, and I gave thought to standing up and walking out of the courtroom. I'd warned him that I would not answer questions that compromised the security or privacy of another Mage, or my own, and he'd deliberately asked anyway. I could see him starting to worry as I finally answered, "Obviously adequate to the task."

"Could those defenses have saved those two women as well?"

Given that I wasn't happy with him again, I decided to make him work for the answer and information he wanted. "No." He almost started to ask the next question he'd had in mind before my answer sank in.

"You couldn't have saved those women?" asked the prosecutor while he pulled his thoughts together.

"No," I told him again.

"Could you have saved one of them?"

Ok, he'd figured it out. "Yes."

"Why didn't you save one of them then?"

"Because in the time between my defenses activating and the time between the bomb detonating, I was unable to determine which of them was acting with the defendant in the attempt to assassinate me." Yep, the defense attorney jumped to his feet screaming objections. The defendant just sat there and glared at me, since he and the organization he worked for had really hoped I didn't know how many layers there had been to their attempt on my life.

It took a couple of minutes for the legal bits to get settled, then the prosecuting attorney started in again.

"How do you know one of the women was involved?"

"Something about the whole setup seemed a bit too convenient afterward and I started digging deeper. In my research, I uncovered the fact that Miss Hill had been a member of the same organization the defendant belongs to up until two years ago, then her name vanishes from their membership roles. When I dug into her background, I discovered where she'd been trained for her part in the attempt on my life, and I confirmed her intent by magical analysis of the attack site and her remains."

The defense attorney was on his feet again, and the judge was just reaching for his gavel to begin pounding it in an attempt to bring order to his court as I finished my statement. "The other women was an innocent bystander. Miss Hill hoped I'd try to save both of them from the blast set off by her partner. That would have left her inside my defenses where she could have poisoned me while I was distracted."

A mis-trial was declared later that day, since nobody was sure just how many crimes had been committed by whom and the judge agreed that my testimony, which the defense attorney convinced him to disallow, had probably tainted the jury beyond hope.

What I hadn't told any of them though was that my research had uncovered much more than they'd been told. As I left the courtroom that day, I grinned at the defendant. I'd found the clue I'd been missing until now and I'd followed it. I now knew exactly who the people behind the fear campaign against Mages were and the next move was mine.