by James Peart
“Is this the afterlife?”
The other seemed to break from his contemplation- of what Simon could only guess- and study him as if for the first time. “It is probably the opposite, like no life I have ever before encountered.”
“Who are you? What do you want with Christopher?”
The Reaper turned to the object of his question, who had drifted from them both, gazing listlessly at a fixed point in space, the expression on his face that Simon had been used to seeing- one carrying an air of sweet yet faint hopelessness- overlaid with childlike curiosity. “Your dead friend is needed in another time and place,” he told Simon in a voice so chillingly cold that a prickle crawled up and down his spine.
“What do you mean dead?” he ventured, thinking with a sickening surety that he already knew.
“I mean his time in your world had drawn to a close,” the other said matter of factly.
Simon opened his mouth to respond, on the point of hotly disputing the Reaper’s words yet that feeling of surety crashed inside his chest, knocking the wind from it, refuting the force of any argument he could counter with. Hadn’t he agreed with this man not moments- or hours- ago, thinking that Christopher was in great trouble, he preparing to mourn his lost friend? Maybe here was a place that would serve him better.
As if in answer to this thought, the other said “I can tell you that where I shall take him will be somewhere he can begin to live again. I can supply him with a place to dwell and a purpose. There is a man I need to confront back in the world I come from. He has made repeated attempts to...put an end to me...and it is time I repaid him the favour. It will involve preparation and I need people from...outside...to help me, those not part of any community in the Northern Earth. That is the name of my land. The place we passed through to get here, the one with the pillars of light- I call it the temple- is a way station, a world between worlds, and my magic first carried me there. Each pillar represents a world unto itself...like yours, like my own. I drew Christopher from your world and I must draw another to assist me on this journey. The temple offers me people whose lives have in some way come to an end in the worlds they inhabit and your friend was chosen, I read it on the pillar that corresponds to your world. You can help me in this though I understand your reluctance to get involved.
“You should know that I have magic at my disposal. It lends me considerable strength, enough perhaps that with assistance I can overcome my adversary in the Northern Earth. In that land I am a practitioner of sorcery. My training and powers were borne out of the Brightsphere, which is a living construct that hails from a world between worlds, an elemental being with power beyond understanding. In the Northern Earth I am known as a Druid. My name is Daaynan.”
Simon took this in. For a long moment he said nothing. Finally, he asked “You said earlier ‘at least he hasn’t followed us in.’ What did you mean by that?”
“I entered another world from the temple before coming to yours. The individual selected from there revealed himself to be self-serving and dangerous. We must avoid him at all costs.”
“If you pulled him from his time and place, surely he was already dying as you said.”
Daaynan nodded slightly, as if in approval of what he said. “When I pressed the shield, the markings on the pillar of light that corresponds to his world, it breathed new life into him, or at least returned him to the way he was when he was alive in that world.”
“Why didn’t this happen with Christopher?”
“I could not find the shield in your system. I had to use my magic instead.”
“Tell me about this man. Who is he?”
“He is a King of sorts. His name is Iridis. I cannot tell you much else, only that he uses a type of magic I have not seen before, comparable in strength to my own. While my magic operates by the summoning of fire, his does so by touch. He got close to me once, while I was attempting to enter your system, and felt its nature. It- the magic- suborns the victim by capturing his will, making it over to his own.”
Simon gave him an assessing look. “And you brought him back to life.” He then asked him a question the other had posed to himself many times. “How many people are you going to draw into your Northern Earth to ‘assist’ you?” The Druid said nothing. “I mean you’ve done well so far. A psychopath and an alcoholic. I offer you my congratulations.”
“What is a psychopath?”
“They’re dangerous for one thing. Look, I don’t know what you really expect from Christopher...”
The Druid cut him short. “Where is he?”
They both looked around, and that was when they saw the house. To the Druid it looked like a tavern constructed of wooden beams and stone. The stone, however, was not like any he had ever seen before. It was not made of individual pieces but seemed one solid mass. Nor did it look like it had been carved intact from any rock face. The manner of how it was built eluded him, yet he thought the building had a certain elegance. There was a short awning and a gutter ran beneath the slightly overhanging roof, its trench made of another substance he couldn’t identify. A sign hung on metal hinges jutting out from under the awning. It displayed a picture of a turret and announcing the name of the tavern as The Elephant and Castle.
To Simon it looked like a public house, though his surprise at its design was merely limited to his recognition of it. “This is the pub we sometimes go to in London.”
“You know this place?”
“I know that building. We go there every time we want to get away from Cambridge.”
“You were displeased at the manner of its construction?”
“I’m sorry?” The big man’s manner was off-putting to Simon, yet this obtuseness flatly irked him. He still hadn’t decided what to make of him- in truth he feared him more than a little- and until he formed a definite opinion of the Druid he decided he had better keep his anger in check, as well as his doubts.
“I was asking whether you were bothered by the arrival of this bridge you mentioned.”
Simon gave himself time to ruminate on this statement, then he finally understood. “Cambridge is the name of a town, not a bridge. It’s full of students most of the year. When we got tired of their company we used to escape to London, which is a much larger town, a city. You can do pretty much what you want there, there’s room for every activity.”
He looked sad as he spoke those last words and the Druid picked up on it. “Something about you and your friend in this in this city disturbs you. Judging by your expression it is a recent thing.”
“You’re right and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Let’s go in and find your friend Christopher.”
Simon considered Daaynan as they approached The Elephant and Castle. There was a brutal pragmatism about the man that in another he would have thought of as oafish. Yet he got the impression that this quality sat beside other, more virtuous traits, some of which he was quite sure lay beyond his understanding. He believed his story about where he had come from, detecting no false note either in his recounting of it or in his explanation of why he needed Christopher. He had a formidable aura about him that was almost Byronic, past that really, the sort of type his University fellows would make fun of behind his back yet be afraid to confront themselves. He felt oddly sure that no one was safe from this man.
Simon’s impression of him spoke of a truth that ran deep inside him. And he could do magic. He had seen that for himself. That green flame he had witnessed issue from the Druid’s fingers when running to save Christopher had been no chemical dust or explosive powder. His uncle had a small laboratory once, strictly amateur stuff to amuse himself for a hobby but where a young Simon had learned first-hand what happens when you mix the right combination of elements to produce an explosion. The result was almost always exciting- the more unstable the blast the better- but it was short lasting. This green fire was controlled. It was sent from its issuer in a long, continuous streak that never faltered. It seemed alive, like an exte
nsion of its user, and when it swallowed you it did not burn, or not in a way that was unbearable. His uncle had told him about flame throwers, farmers used them on their land to burn off the heath. But those things were large, not able to be concealed on your person, up a sleeve, say. Simon accepted what he had seen. Like that famous quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s favourite character Sherlock Holmes he and his fellows stayed up late to ironically deconstruct: ‘when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth.’
The pub was gaily decorated inside, with bunting draped from one side to the other of each window and commemorative plaques and trophies stood on the bar counter. “There must be a match on,” Simon explained to Daaynan. Football. I was never much of a fan.” The Druid nodded vaguely, taking in his new surroundings and Simon did not know how much he understood of what he had just told him. The bar ran half the length of the room and disappeared under an arch into the next. There were wooden chairs made of thick oak loosely arranged around tables and plush, crescent shaped couches pulled up against one wall and in the corners. Daaynan was staring at the bar, at the taps with their different logos.
“These dispense drink?”
“Yeah.”
“Each one different from the next, brewed by a different agency?”
“Sure. What is it?” Simon asked him.
“I have never seen such a variety of drinks. Are they all available right now?”
“You’ve got the cash, yeah.”
“Cash?”
“Money. You’re not still using the barter system in your Northern Earth?”
“We are not.”
“Actually, I could do with a pint now, and seeing as there’s nobody about I may as well help myself.” He leaned over the counter, balancing on his toes, lifted an upturned glass from a draining board and was about to pour himself a drink when he was suddenly seized from behind and dragged back to an upright position.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“This is no time to drink mead.”
“I don’t want mead,” he said testily, “I want a bitter. Why’d you do that?”
“This is not your tavern in London. At best it is a copy and we don’t know yet why it is here.”
“I don’t care.”
“You are a fool! For all you know that mead has been laced with poison.”
A disembodied voice floated across the bar from the adjoining room. “It hasn’t. It’s quite delicious.”
“Christopher!”
Sitting on a bench, huddled over the bar, nursing a glass of beer was his friend. On the counter beside him stood an array of empty glasses of varying size and shape and one panel glass half filled with bitter. Christopher sat over it, warding it as the two approached.
“How did you get here?” Simon asked, a touch of hilarity in his voice.
“I thought of it and there it was,” was his simple answer.
“It’s amazing. It’s an exact reproduction of The Castle. There’s not a single detail in it that doesn’t belong to the original. Is the beer cold?”
Christopher shifted away from his friend, the flat of his hands encircling his glass as if to guard it. His head arched back from the rest of his frame, his nose sniffing imperiously at him. “You can find some for yourself, I can’t stop you.”
“Christopher! I only want to find out what’s going on. We’re probably light years from any kind of civilisation we know or have heard of and what do we find but surroundings that are not only familiar but familiar to us. We’ve ended up here of all places!”
“Quite” the Druid added, “and have either of you wondered why the tavern is empty?”
“Who’s that?” Christopher enquired of no one in particular.
“Don’t you know?” Simon answered with indignant irony. “This is our universal travel guide in this little trip of ours, whatever sort of Tolkienesque nightmare it is, only he seems to only take us where he wants to go.”
“I remember light...everywhere...it was so beautiful.” Christopher’s hand loosened on his beer, his face adopting a dreamlike cast.
“Don’t you remember? You were taken from our holiday in Italy, we both were.”
“I want to go back.”
“Good. We both do.” He turned and faced Daaynan, summoning courage from out of his obvious fear of the man. “We don’t want to stay here. We want to go home.”
The Druid faced him down, standing at least a foot taller than the younger man, his cowl half raised, setting much of his face in shadow, all hard planes and angles. He appeared to consider what Simon was saying, but when he spoke next the other realised his mind was elsewhere.
“I have lost much of my power,” he stated plainly.
Simon stared at him wordlessly for a beat. “You mean you can’t take us? When did this happen?”
“While you were only partially conscious back in the temple. I confronted Iridis, and in our conflict he brushed up against me, not touching my skin, you understand- if he had done that he might have suborned me completely- but he grabbed hold of my cloak. I was able to shrug him off, my magic protects me this way, but it has been weakened, I now fear, by my exposure to the atmosphere inside the temple. I was unable to prevent some of it from being siphoned from my being. It has left me weak.”
“Then we’re in trouble. That monster will look for us and it’s only a matter of time before he finds us here.”
“I don’t think he will. The temple has worked its effect on him too, and I don’t believe he possesses the strength necessary to carry himself into this world. Yet aside from that I think the nature of this place will conceal our whereabouts.”
“But all he has to do is walk into one of those beams of light. He’ll find us for sure.”
“You’re not listening to me.” The Druid moved closer to Simon, his towering form casting a shadow over the smaller man’s face. “He has been incapacitated. Remember he has not use of the veil of magic which surrounds me and protects me from losing consciousness. Our only problem remains, namely I cannot draw us back to the world of the Northern Earth as I have lost use of the green fire.”
“We don’t want to go to your world, we want to go home, back to Italy and England.”
“I cannot take us there either.”
Simon stared at the other man. “That’s great. Just great. What do you suggest we do here then?”
“All is not quite lost. This place might be able to help us in a way I could not have previously imagined.”
“What do you mean, apart from drinking ourselves to death?”
The tall man gestured to one of the windows beside the entrance to the bar. “Look outside.”
They did and Simon’s breath hitched in his throat. There were buildings of all manner and design, some of which he recognised and some which were utterly alien to him. They rolled back as far as the view permitted to form a seemingly endless cityscape. There were people walking between the buildings, some of them scaling the heights of half-completed structures, engaged in their creation. Others were visible inside the edifices, sitting at desks and talking and writing, some on the telephone. Other buildings were in the early stages of assembly, housing no one.
They were looking at a city in the midst of its construction.
“But this isn’t London,” he said finally, “it’s like no other city I’ve seen.”
“That’s because you haven’t,” the Druid said softly. “It’s an amalgam of cities, a cross between whatever you and Christopher thought would be outside the tavern and a city in the Northern Earth called Brinemore, where I spent some time before training to become what I am.”
“What does it mean?”
“Haven’t you worked it out? In this place, whatever you think of or imagine will come to pass.”
“So,” Simon said slowly, “Christopher thought of the Elephant and Castle and it materialised, while I naturally concluded that London would lie outside its walls and you, you thought of G
od knows where and this is where we’re at.”
“You understand.”
“Yes, but why is the city only half finished?”
“The Brinemore I left was still being built. No doubt there are parts of your London being torn down and rebuilt.”
“The war ended over twenty years ago. The Royal Festival Hall opened in 1951. That was fifteen years ago. Abercrombie and his proposals had been well under way.”
“What war are you speaking of?”
“The second great war. I don’t think about it much. My generation, my friends, are much more concerned with the social revolution that’s going on now. War is a thing of the past. It belongs to my father’s generation. They call us members of the ‘counterculture.’ The Beatles changed music, John F. Kennedy, when he was still alive, changed politics...”
“In this revolution,” Daaynan cut him off, “did you take up arms against your aggressor?”
“No, we don’t, that’s the point. It’s about peace, about protecting those who can’t stand up for themselves.”
“I see.”
“Do you, I wonder?”
“What do you mean?” the Druid enquired, but his expression was black.
“Only that you don’t seem to be the peace-loving type. I’ve known people like you- well, not quite like you but as far as war and aggression goes you’re all bedfellows- and you’re uncompromising. You’re devoted to a cause and nothing will distract you from it, not even innocent lives that might be harmed by your actions. You ignore those consequences, or talk them away, all in the name of some pointless crusade that never would have happened if people like you hadn’t taken up arms.”
Daaynan reached out and grasped Simon’s arm, gripping it tight near the shoulder. “Listen to me as you have never listened before in your life.” Simon flinched and tried to move away but the other held him fast, his hold tightening. He turned to Christopher but his friend was staring at the city beyond the walls of the Elephant and Castle, lost in his own private world.
“Whatever situation you found yourself in in the past, that is over now. The fact is that you are both trapped here and may be so for some time. I do not know for how long but I know I will try to return you to your land when the opportunity presents itself, and I have never failed yet in delivering on my promises. In the meantime, I need your help, so let me explain why.”