Return of the Paladin

by Layton Green

  Everything felt real.

  He started wading through the harem, confronted at every turn by willing women. The food became more delicious with every step, all of his favorites. Some of the women were playing board games, or poker, or drinking whiskey and reading horror novels. There was even a tennis court and a section with a movie screen and video games. He had to blink a few times at that one.

  In short, the room had everything on offer that Caleb Gideon Blackwood found desirable in life. And it didn’t appear to be a trick.

  He kept walking, just to see how far it would go, but it never seemed to end. Pleasure after pleasure after pleasure. Yet how was he supposed to leave?

  Or was this it? Was the Tower of Elarion a gateway to heaven, Caleb’s heaven, and the rest of his days would be whiled away in this pleasure palace? There were definitely worse fates. No wonder no one had ever left.

  He engaged some of the women in conversation. They spoke English and were happy to talk. He thought they would be robots, but they were knowledgeable about both worlds, and could talk about almost anything, from baseball and television shows to the price of milk in New Victoria. They talked about everything, that was, except where they actually were or the nature of the tower. When asked a direct question about these items, they would stroke his arm and coyly change the topic.

  Sometime later—he had lost track of time and felt dizzy from the effort of resisting temptation—he froze when he saw a spiral staircase in the distance. The staircase. He started walking towards it, brushing away the women that approached, and then started running. The tower itself had not reappeared, but it was the same spiral staircase, no doubt about it, ascending through the ceiling of the harem.

  Just before Caleb arrived, a woman stepped into his path who caused him to slow and then stop, catching his breath as he stared in disbelief at the slate-colored eyes and pixie-cropped auburn hair, the playful lips, the waifish face tilted up at him with a knowing expression.

  It was not Marguerite—he knew that. But it was as close as a woman could possibly resemble her. She was even dressed in her favorite attire, leather breeches and a high-necked riding shirt.

  “Stay with me, Caleb,” she said, in that low and throaty voice that haunted his dreams.

  The spiral staircase flickered. Caleb’s eyes whisked over to it, and he noticed that it looked less substantial.

  “We’ve got some catching up to do,” she said. “And we ’ave all the time in the world ’ere.”

  So that was how it is.

  This is the game.

  At first he thought it would be easy to pull away and leave this doppelganger behind, this cosmic joke of a consolation prize. The staircase grew even less substantial, and he started to walk towards it, but she caught him by the arm and stroked the back of his hand in exactly the same way Marguerite would.

  “I know I’m not her,” she said. “I’m not trying to fool ye. But I can be exactly like her, for all eternity.”

  Caleb swallowed. She gently took his chin, turned him to face her, and kissed him. She tasted and smelled just like her. He sank into the kiss, unable to resist, almost weeping when their lips parted. She held him close and stroked his cheek, lost in his eyes.

  In the corner of his vision, the staircase grew even less substantial.

  He forced himself to stare at it, and then at the woman in front of him. Did he need revenge that much? So badly that he would forsake the opportunity of a lifetime?

  “It’s not a trick,” she whispered. “Ye can stay here with me. Forever.”

  The longer he looked at this woman, the less he could tell the difference between her and Marguerite. Almost as if she was perfecting the memory from his own thoughts. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Ye know it already,” she said. “Say it for me, love.”

  The staircase had almost disappeared. Somehow, he sensed it wasn’t coming back. That this was his one chance at leaving this place and returning to Urfe.

  “Say it,” she said.

  Despite his better judgment, he mouthed the name. Her name. She smiled in response.

  “That’s a good lad,” she said. “It isn’t just me, ye know.” She swept a hand around the room. “This can all be yers. I’ll be ’ere, too, whenever ye want, but ye know I’m not the jealous type.”

  Her words caused Caleb to blink as if coming out of a dream. Whether unintentional or the final test, it was the one false step she had made. Marguerite was the jealous type. Caleb didn’t want a thousand other women, tens of thousands, and he didn’t want this imitation, this thing, standing in front of him. She might have been genetically identical to Marguerite, crafted by some arch mage just to lure him here for some reason—but it wasn’t her.

  She pulled him in for another kiss. He took her face in his hands, closed his eyes and thought of the real Marguerite, and kissed her, long and passionately, one final time.

  It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, but as tears blurred his eyes, he turned and sprinted for the staircase, leaping onto it just as it began to disappear.

  The world swirled around him.

  A long, disembodied moan was the first thing Caleb heard. It sounded like a prolonged groan from one of the horror movies he had loved so much back on Earth. A voice full of pathos, desperate and angry, hungry for warm-bodied souls.

  After shuddering away the touch of the quasi-Marguerite, he blinked to re-orient himself and realized he was standing in a large, open-walled dungeon. Skeletons hung from manacles along the perimeter of the rough stone walls. The air felt damp, and puddles of water pooled in the corners.

  He closed his eyes and willed away the image of Marguerite. Simple. I just have to resist temptation to get through this. A few months ago, I never would have made it out of that harem. But whoever made this tower doesn’t know me as well as they think they do. In the past, boredom was my greatest fear. But once I found Marguerite, all I wanted to do was grow old and gray with her—and only her.

  My greatest fear was losing her.

  So what else do I have to fear?

  When Caleb opened his eyes, he noticed two corridors leading out of the room, and a wooden door that looked exactly like the one at the base of the tower. He went over to it. Locked. He pulled on the iron pull ring as hard as he could, then kicked and shook the door. It wouldn’t budge.

  There was one difference with this door. It had a keyhole, while the real door to the tower did not.

  This was the exit, he could feel it.

  And the test was to find the key.

  A long moan sounded down one of the corridors. Caleb turned one way and then the other, trying to discern the source.

  Okay. So this scenario isn’t as tempting.

  He chose the passage on the right. Except for the intermittent light of a glow orb, set high on the wall in clawed sconces, the corridor was similar to the room in which he had landed. Damp stone walls splattered with spooky dark stains. A musty odor laced with the putrid stench of the dead.

  The hallway spilled into an intersection with decaying corpses hanging on the walls. Caleb shuddered and continued forward as another prolonged groan came from one of the side corridors. This time he broke into a run.

  The dungeon was a maze of moldy corridors, hanging skeletons, darkened pits he had to jump over, and torture devices. At last he found a set of spiral stairs, dull white like the tower, and he shivered with relief as he dashed up them. They led through a trapdoor and into a room that resembled the parlor of a Victorian aristocrat in an old horror movie. The lair of a vampire.

  Except Caleb knew this room, and its previous owner was far more dangerous than a simple bloodsucking nosferatu. He recognized the stone floor and the spiral staircase, made of iron and much narrower than the one inside the tower, in the middle of the room. He noticed the same standing candelabra and medieval tapestries and black-upholstered furniture from his previous visit, the familiar vertical shaft leading to the higher levels.


  A wizard’s shaft.

  Somehow, Caleb was inside Zedock’s stronghold.

  Things were different, though. Aged. The tapestries were more faded, the upholstery in tatters. Where the air had once smelled faintly of cloves, an odor Caleb would never forget, it now smelled of formaldehyde and decay, as if someone had tried to mask the stench of death.

  Zedock’s Obelisk, a hundred years in the future? What the hell?

  As Caleb tried to decide what to do, he heard voices from the levels above. Two he recognized. One was the majitsu Will had killed, though it sounded softer, the voice of an older man.

  The other voice was Zedock, and it had barely aged.

  As he glimpsed the high-collared shirt of the necromancer floating down the wizard chute, Caleb scurried out of their line of sight. Those men are dead. This can’t be.

  He debated climbing back into the dungeon, then discarded the idea. The trapdoor was right below the staircase. They would see him for sure.

  Left with little choice, he fled into the spooky swamp surrounding the obelisk, heaving a sigh of relief when he didn’t find the other majitsu standing guard by the door. Caleb breathed in the cloying humid air and examined the outside of the stronghold. It looked much as it had before, a huge black obelisk surrounded by water the color of chocolate. Stands of bald cypress ringed the lake, ghostly tendrils of Spanish moss dipping into the water.

  And, same as before, a pirogue was secured to a small dock at the end of a long wooden walkway leading away from the obelisk.

  The same pirogue he and his brothers had used.

  Except it was still here.

  The dock was missing some boards, and looked much more weathered. Caleb rushed to the end of it, hoping to untie the boat in time to escape.

  Halfway down the walkway, the door to the obelisk opened, forcing Caleb to slip quietly off the platform and into the algae and scum coating the top of the water. The swamp full of zombified humans and animals that Zedock kept for his experiments. A morass of horrors that haunted Caleb’s dreams to this day.

  He couldn’t risk confronting Zedock, who would snuff Caleb’s life as easily as pinching an ant. Even if this was a test, Caleb had the sense it was all very real, and his choices were life or death. Choking back his disgust, he held his breath and sank beneath the fetid water, hiding among the cypress knees that rose like the stumps of severed limbs from the bottom.

  He saw them at once, the pale and bloated bodies floating by in various stages of decomposition, the grasping fingers hungry for life. The lidless eyes of a kethropi, the gills of its cheeks flapping in a useless rhythm. Though nothing attacked, they brushed against him, the spongy touch of their skin causing him to recoil.

  Caleb gritted his teeth and swam towards the rear of the obelisk, hoping to put distance between him and Zedock. To take his mind off the loathsome swamp, he thought about what he had seen. Either this was some kind of trick, or he was in an alternate universe or dimension, one where Zedock was still alive. As the import of that thought hit him, he looked down and found himself staring right at Val.

  Caleb thrashed in the water, unable to believe his eyes. Biting off the bile surging into his throat, he grasped the thing by the arm and pulled it towards him.

  No recognition in the eyes.

  But it was Val.

  Caleb had been hoping the appearance of Zedock meant that he and his brothers had never been here, but now he had to face the awful truth of the alternative scenario.

  They had been here—and failed in their attempt to kill him.

  Which meant he and Will were dead, too.

  Somehow, Caleb knew what he was supposed to do. Where the last test had been one of temptation, this was facing his worst fear, the most gruesome thing imaginable, and fighting through it.

  Caleb had a good guess as to where the key was, and after surfacing for a quick unseen breath, he dove down to find it.

  Resurfacing whenever he needed air, it took him long, torturous minutes of swimming through the muck and zombified bodies, his soul shrinking at his task, until he found what he was looking for just off the pier, right near the base of the obelisk.

  He found himself: a twin Caleb, bloated and decomposing on the bottom of the lake. Lying right next to Will. With a shudder, Caleb swam closer and saw a leather cord hanging from his own neck, with the end of it in his mouth.

  He gagged as he plunged his hand inside the putrefying mouth of the corpse, fished around as the teeth fell off, and lifted the key out. None of it made any sense. Why did he have the key? Who had put it there? Had he put it there himself, in this other world? If so, why?

  Trying not to look into his or Will’s eyes, Caleb rose to the surface and huddled in the trees behind the obelisk until nightfall, wet and miserable. The mosquitos eviscerated him, but he didn’t dare cry out. When the moon rose, he crept back to the main door, eased it open, and peered inside.

  No one.

  Using the stealthy movements Marguerite had taught him, Caleb crept to the trap door and opened it. A voice shouted from above. The majitsu’s voice. With a surge of adrenaline, Caleb threw himself through the opening and bounded down the staircase. Gasping, he sprinted back into the dungeon, hoping he remembered the way.

  He heard the majitsu enter the corridor behind him, followed by Zedock calling out for Caleb to stop. He pressed forward, his skin on fire from mosquito bites, running harder than he ever had. He rounded a corner of the dungeon and saw the wooden door. His hand shook as he inserted the key, and someone grabbed his shoulder. Trying not to scream, he turned the key in the lock as he felt the strength of magic-hardened fingers digging into him, tearing him away from the door.

  The key clicked once, and the dungeon disappeared.

  -16-

  Fleeing the dhampyr, Mala rode hard through the Shoehorn Pass, pushing her mount to the limits. The brown rocks and succulent-strewn landscape of the Karaxi Desert awaited on the other side, and further on into that forbidding wasteland, through a narrow crevasse in the sandstone, lay the anomaly that was the Crater of the Snow Moon.

  The pass was aptly named, a tongue of sun-blasted scrubland that ran as flat as a shoehorn between two isolated, snow-capped ranges. At times, the sheer walls of the pass rose thousands of feet into the air, making Mala feel like a mouse trapped inside a gargantuan hallway, pursued by the demon behind her.

  She wasn’t worried about Nagiro catching her during the day, while on foot. He was no match for equine legs. What she feared was the descent of the sun and Nagiro’s transformation, the howl of the hyena wolf piercing the silence of the desert as it loped through the night.

  The pass broke and the desert widened. As the sun began its descent, the valley transformed into an uneven, golden-brown terrain pockmarked with cacti, aloe, and creosote bush. Mala checked her spyglass. No sign of animal life in any direction, though she knew bands of native Cahuilla people were nearby, hidden in the nooks and crannies of the desert. She did not think the peaceful tribe would accost her, but one never knew.

  Yet another worry.

  The temperature, as hot as mage-fire just a few short hours ago, had plunged. Mala shivered and took a fur-lined cloak out of her Pouch of Possession. The horse had slowed to a fast trot, exhausted. She stopped to water him, every passing second feeling like the edge of a blade sliding along her skin. She estimated she would reach the Crater of the Snow Moon just before nightfall. Once the moon rose, the dhampyr would find her, and she had to gain the shaman’s help before then.

  The landscape changed again, the wide-open vistas of the desert contracting into a region of beige soil and standing stones carved by erosion into mythic sentinels of another age. Mala did not consider herself a spiritual person, but the solemn presence of the stones and the blush of dying light left her in awe at the grandeur of creation. The distinctive flora of the region, trees with stunted, upward-facing branches that ended in tufts of spiky green needles, reminded her of the shaman who lived nearby,
working his charms with arms raised to the heavens.

  The body of the horse started to droop. His labored breathing had become worrisome. Unlike humans, horses did not know when to stop, and Mala knew her mount was approaching a danger zone. After consulting her map and her compass for the hundredth time, she exhaled in relief when she spotted the distinctive white peaks jutting upward like swords, marking the border of the Crater of the Snow Moon.

  A barrier of jagged rock that ran for miles and averaged a hundred feet in height, the massif was thought by most travelers to be impenetrable, formed by a geological hiccup. That still didn’t explain the bizarre whiteness of the rocks, and Mala thought the entire formation, including the ancient crater hidden from view on the other side, had been created by some long ago battle waged with magic.

  She also knew the rock face, almost sheer and running all the way around the crater, was not impenetrable. On her first and only visit to consult the shaman, led by a Cahuilla guide in exchange for five sacks of Mayan chocolate, she had carefully marked the entrance on her map. As before, she rode alongside the barrier rocks until she spotted the distinctive three points, thrusting upward like a trident.

  What mattered now was finding the shaman—and convincing him to help in time.

  If he could at all.

  Mala debated leaving the limping horse behind. Fearing the dhampyr would just slaughter it, she dismounted and led him around the lip of sandstone that obscured the narrow passage through the rock. The walls of the pass hid the declining sun from view, and Mala pressed forward, eager to escape the claustrophobic passage.

  She emerged to find a giant depression surrounded by a wall of serrated rock. Except for an oasis of rainwater in the center, the crater looked similar to tales of the surface of the moon from spiritmancer legend, pockmarked and barren. The only difference was the brilliant white color of the sand, as if whatever force had bleached the rock had whitened the crater as well. During the day, she remembered the reflection of the sun on the sand being so blinding white that she could barely see.