by Mike Ashley
I back away, one step at a time, until I bump up against the barrels on the other side of the aisle. The touch of that solid oak on my neck and shoulders hooks me out of the circle of its radiance. I drop the lamp (fire risk; what the hell) and run.
Outside the fresh air hits me, and my legs melt. I lean against the doorframe and slide down, like a raindrop on a windowpane. And I think.
There is a procedure. Thank God, there is a procedure. In the event that you identify an infestation, immediately contact the Warden’s office. Good, I’ll do that. I know how to do that; and then my part in this is over, and I’m free and clear.
Getting in touch with the Warden’s office is no big deal. All you need is a properly-attuned seeing-stone; and regulation 344/7c – thrice-blessed and immeasurably wonderful 344/7c – stipulates that any facility used for the storage and transhipment of bulk commodities must have a properly-attuned and regularly inspected stone no further than one hundred yards from the main gate. The boss had to pay for it, out of his own money (no grants, no subsidies; all this red tape is bleeding the economy dry) and once a month I go up to it, rub it diffidently with my rather shabby sleeve, and speak to a nice middle-aged woman who works in a building on the other side of the city, but whose face appears for a minute or so in the cloudy-brown glass of the stone. I ask her if she can hear me and she says yes, she can hear me just fine; I tell her the registration number of the stone, she ticks it off her checking list, and that’s my fleeting contact with the ruling elite over for another month. So yes, there is a stone; and yes, I know it works and how to use it; which means, in this context, yes, there will be a sunrise tomorrow and we’ll all still be here to see it.
I run. On the way, I nearly run into the boss, who grabs hold of me and snarls, “Where are you going?”
Not now, I mutter to myself, please – “Emergency,” I tell him. “Got to use the stone.”
“The what?”
God, he probably thinks I’m talking about the toilet. “The seeing-stone,” I tell him. “Got to call the Warden’s office. Emergency.”
A tiny drop of that trickles in through a crack in his wrought iron skull. “Here,” he says, tightening his grip, “what the hell’s going on? What’s the matter with my shipment?”
I could stop and explain; but the regulation uses words like “immediately” and “top priority” and “by any means necessary”, and – forgive me – I’m going to enjoy this.
“Please let go,” I say. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Not till you tell me what—”
I try and keep it gentle, just a light shove with my inner force; but I was always lousy at force modulation in third grade, always either too little or too much. This time, too much. A lot too much; the boss is lifted off his feet and shot backwards, like a man kicked by a very strong horse, and crashes up against the fence; it splinters all round him (been rotten for years, but he was too tight to have it replaced) and he flumps to the ground in a heap, covered in chunks of smashed paling. My reward, I suppose, for following regulations to the letter.
I run. Here’s the stone. It’s masked under a grubby old canvas cover, to protect it from fallen leaves and bird-poo. The string the cover’s tied on with is mouldy and the knot’s gone tight. My fingernails break on it, so I take out my knife and cut it. You can get away with that sort of thing when you’re on vital official business.
“Warden’s office.”
It’s not the nice middle-aged woman this time. It’s a thin-faced man, early fifties, big grey eyebrows. I pull myself together.
“I need to report an infestation,” I say. “I’m at the north dock, and the infestation’s in a barrel in shed fifteen, number seven quay. The barrel’s sixteen down the second aisle, that’s down from the door end, three rows up, two rows in. I can’t really describe it for you, because – well, I can’t.”
There, I’ve done it; now it’s up to them, though really it’s me who’s just saved the city. They’ll come and deal with the Thing in the barrel, but they’re the experts, it’s what they’re paid for. I’m the one who’s acted above and beyond the call – “What level would you put it at?”
For a moment, I can’t think what he’s talking about. Then I remember. They classify the horrible things by levels of destructive potential, level one to level twelve. As I recall, the one that took out Ap’Ischun was a level three.
“No idea,” I said. “You’ll be able to judge for yourself when you get here.”
He looks at me. “There’s a problem,” he says.
Terror. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve actually felt it myself – read about it, of course, in books, enough to recognise it for what it is. Not just fear, which I know very well. Fear makes you go cold, digs fingers into your inner tubes and twists, loosens your bowels. Terror freezes you, so you don’t feel anything at all.
“Problem?” I say.
He looks at me through the cloudy glass. “How far advanced is it? Has it begun to form rudimentary wings?”
“I don’t know, I’m not a bloody scholar,” I snap. “Sorry,” I add, because he’s from the Warden’s office, and it’s entirely possible to be scared of two things at the same time. “I don’t know. I didn’t notice any wings, but—”
“They don’t look like wings to start off with,” he interrupts. “More like little purple buds, in between the seventh and eighth dorsal vertebrae.”
“Sorry,” I say. “Didn’t see.”
He frowns. His frown tells me it’s not my fault, but nevertheless I’m part of the problem. “How about the nasal membranes?” he says. “Have they started scintillating?”
“No idea. Look, what’s the problem?”
He closes his eyes, just for a moment. He looks out of his depth. Cue more terror. “This isn’t the only report we’ve received today,” he said. “In fact, we’ve had seven—”
“Seven?”
He nods. “Unprecedented,” he says. “Frankly, we haven’t got a clue what’s going on. The point is, I can’t send anybody, because there’s nobody to send. They’re all out, I’m on my own here.”
That’s not good at all. “Can you come?”
“Me?” I’m almost expecting him to burst out laughing. “Fat lot of good that’d do. I’m not a qualified man, I’m just a clerk. No, you’re a wizard, you’re going to have to deal with it,” he hesitates. “You are a wizard, aren’t you?” he asks. “I mean, you’re qualified and everything?”
“Well, yes,” I say. “But—”
“That’s all right, then. Report in as soon as the situation’s stabilised. I’ll try and send someone out as soon as anybody’s available, but I can’t even guess at when that’ll be.”
“Hang on,” I yelp. “Yes I’m qualified, but I was bottom of my year, I can’t handle something like this. I do commercial work, I scry cargo for 344/7c infringements.”
“But you’re qualified.”
“Yes, but look—”
“So you passed demonology and pest control?”
“Yes, but I only just scraped through. Forty-seven per cent in demonology, and that’s just because I happened to revise apostrophic impulses the night before it came up in the exam.” I could hear myself babbling, couldn’t stop. I had to make him understand –
“You passed, though. So you’re qualified. You know what to do.”
“Look, I knew ten years ago. But I haven’t even looked at a grimoire since. I’m just not competent to handle something like this, it’d be begging for a disaster – ” He shrugs. “It’s you or nobody,” he says. “And there’s no use getting stressed with me, there’s absolutely nothing I can do. If there was, I’d do it. You don’t think I’m happy, do you, leaving the defence of the city to you? But we haven’t got any choice, either of us, so get out there and deal with it, before it’s too late. If you leave it till it’s shed its secondary wing sheaths, you can kiss goodbye to civilisation as we know it.”
That’s me told. Accordingly, a few
minutes later, I’m back in warehouse fifteen, facing something I was never meant to face, without the faintest idea how to cope, with no support and nothing in reserve. It’s still there. I’d been hoping that when I got back there’d be nothing to see, no sign of any infestation, figment of my overheated imagination. As I walked down the quay I’d been writing the dialogue for my next chat with the clerk from the Warden’s office; the bit where he calls me a stupid, time-wasting disgrace to the Fellowship, strikes me off the roll and forbids me to practise magic ever again. I wouldn’t have minded that one little bit. Instead, here I am, still a wizard, in fact the sole representative of my craft in the battle of the millennium.
Not good.
“Hello,” I say.
He’s grown while I’ve been away. I’m not quite sure how I know this, because They don’t inhabit perceivable space in the same way we do. It’s one aspect of the fact that They don’t belong here; They come here precisely because the rules here are so much more flexible, as far as They’re concerned. It’s like when you were a kid and you played at pirates and marines with your friends. When you found you were losing, you changed the rules. “You can’t kill me,” you say, when your little chum lands one fair and square on you with his wooden sword, “I’m wearing invulnerable armour.” “Well, I’ve got an invincible sword,” your friend replies, and so it escalates, until you’re a couple of gods pelting each other with thunderbolts. You make it up as you go along, being anything you want to be; and that’s how They are, over here. Nice for them; not so good for us, when we’ve got to play with them.
“Hello yourself,” He says, and yawns; I can hear him inside my head. “I don’t know you. What are you?”
I’m afraid to say; I’m ashamed of how small and fatuous I am. “I’m – ” Too scared to speak, is what I am. There are so many things I mustn’t say. Mustn’t tell Him my name, or He can possess me, move into my body like the bailiff’s men. Mustn’t lie to Him, or He’ll be able to read my mind. Mustn’t tell Him I’m a wizard, or He’ll raise all His shields straight away, and a surprise attack’s my only hope. Pretty well anything I tell Him, He can use against me; oh yes, and I can’t refuse to answer, or He’ll be able to answer for me, and anything He says will become true. Is it possible that that’s why He asked the question in the first place?
“Sorry,” He says, “I missed that. What are you?”
“I’m very well, thank you,” I say, and the words come out of their own accord, like the last residual twitch in a dead limb. “How about you?”
“Very comfortable, thank you,” He says. “But you didn’t answer my question. I said what, not how.”
Never thought I’d get away with it. “I’m a human mortal,” I say.
“That much I’d already guessed. Are you a wizard?”
Can’t lie. But didn’t the Senior Tutor himself once tell me I’d never make a wizard? “What a question to ask,” I say. “Do I look like one?”
He laughs; and in my mind’s eye, I see Him in the form of a huge and mighty dragon. His wings are only partly formed, but his magnificent coat of scales glitters like fire reflected in the sea, each scale a perfect mirror. I know this; across ten years of wasted time, I can hear myself patiently and painfully forcing the facts into my overflowing memory, like someone packing a very small suitcase, sitting on the lid to make it shut. I’m revising, the night before the exam; “The first trial is the ordeal by reflection,” chants that unsatisfactory young student; “he will try and subdue me by showing me myself at the precise moment when I truly was myself.”
Interesting, in a way; so that’s who I am, who I’ve always been: the student, desperately out of my depth in a station I was born to, which I never chose. Remarkably, the realisation brings me comfort rather than distress. I have no illusion about myself for Him to shatter. He can’t hurt me here, in the place where I suffered the most.
“I think you’re a wizard,” He says, “but not a very good one. Do you know who I am?”
I nod to myself. “I think you’re an infestation,” I say.
“Good heavens,” He replies. “What a thing to say. But that’s just a word. What does it mean?”
The second trial is the ordeal by definition. “You’re a leak,” I say. “Like a perforated ulcer, or a breach in the sea wall. You’re a spot where the darkness seeps through into the light, and you don’t belong here.”
He laughs. “Why ever not? Go on, that’s just what your schoolbooks say, it’s not what you really think. You think I’m beautiful and wonderful and strange. Are you going to let them make up your mind for you, or are you going to decide for yourself?”
I know the answer to that one. “I’m not worthy to decide,” I reply, with feeling. “Fortunately, my superiors in the craft know better, and they’ve taught me the truth.”
He’s not a dragon any more. In my mind’s eye he’s a deer, a young fawn with his first soft coat starting to grow through. His deep, dark eyes meet mine and we share the loneliness of the forsaken, the hunted. “I’m all alone here,” he says (the ordeal by compassion; I always had trouble remembering that one), “I’m lost and abandoned and a little bit frightened. Do you have to be my enemy? You haven’t even asked me what I’m doing here.”
Without realising it, I’m reaching out to touch his neck, where the fur is soft and deep. I pull my hand away just in time. “If you’re lonely,” I say, “why don’t you go back to where you came from?”
He acknowledges the right answer with a slight nod, respectful. “We understand each other,” He says, “that’s good. If we understand each other, we’ve got a foundation to build on. You see? We’re talking to each other like grown-ups now.”
I’m lost; I can’t remember what comes next, after compassion, and I don’t recognise it from what He’s trying to do. Think, think; I must have remembered in the exam, or else I’d have failed and I wouldn’t be here now. Reflection, definition, compassion –
“Well?” He says. “What about it? Isn’t it better, talking to each other instead of fighting?”
Got it. The fourth trial is the ordeal by communication; and there he is, standing in front of me, a tall, slim young man with his right hand extended in a gesture of open friendship; if we can just talk things over, straight from the shoulder, surely we can settle our differences like civilised people. Can’t we?
“No,” I say.
“Up to you,” He replies. “But I think you’re making a mistake. Think about it, why don’t you? I mean, let’s just go back over what we’ve already established. Here’s me, a breach in the sea-wall was the image you used, all that force and power bursting to get through; and here’s you, the perpetual student, trapped forever in the night before your finals. Hardly a fair fight, is it?”
There are five trials, and the fifth is the hardest; beware the ordeal by truth. “No,” I say, “it’s not. I shouldn’t even be here. The rules say, all I’m supposed to do is notify the Warden’s office and they send along a special task force, with all the gear. All I’m supposed to do is check the barrels for rotten fish.”
“Absolutely,” He says. “It’s not your fault. You can’t be expected to stand up to something like me. Wizards ten times your strength just shrivel up and die when I so much as scowl at them; what the hell do they expect you to do, on your own, no backup, nothing? It’d be pointless, you’d be throwing your life away for no reason. What’ve they ever done for you that makes them deserve such devoted loyalty?”
“Nothing,” I say. “They’ve always treated me like rubbish.”
“Exactly,” He says. In my mind’s eye I see Him as a kind, gentle old man, reaching out an arm to comfort me. Nobody else understands, but He does. That’s why they taught me to hate Him; because He’s the only one who understands, who knows what I’m really like. “Exactly. They’re not on your side, so why on earth should you be on theirs? Isn’t it time you realised who your real friends are?”
Beware the ordeal by truth, because the
re’s no defence against it. But (so they taught us in fifth grade; I spent that lecture looking out of the window, because it was mid-winter, and the first snow was just beginning to fall) in the fifth trial, the best defence is no defence at all. It’s always the strongest wizards who fail the fifth trial; like knights in a bog, dragged down by the weight of their armour. The ones who survive are the ones with no armour at all.
“That’s all right,” I say. “I don’t deserve their friendship, or their respect. I’m a piss-poor wizard and a disgrace to the profession, and all I’m fit for is scrying herrings under regulation 344/7c. If I die here, it doesn’t matter, I’m no great loss. What matters is stopping you.”
The next bit I never had any trouble remembering.
He comes at me like the jaws of a vice, crushing me from all sides as the screw tightens. I can feel his unimaginable strength all about me, the strength I’d wantonly chosen to reject, when I could so easily have joined with it. I can feel the strain on my bones; if I’d only paid attention in Physics, I could probably calculate how much time I’ve got left, before the pressure exceeds the tensile strength of bone and sinew. There’s nothing I can do, I can’t push back in all directions at once. Goes without saying, He’s so much stronger than I am, and I can’t deflect Him, or throw Him like a wrestler. In fact, the only thing I’ve got going for me is a tiny, slender thread of memory that joins me to a cold, hungry, miserable young student huddled over a candle, reading the same words over and over again as the time before the exam starts dwindles away. That thread’s my lifeline, but it’s painfully brittle; if I tug too hard it’ll snap, and then I’m screwed. Instead, I’ve got to pull gently, reel it in like a giant fish, until –
“Where’s the point,” He says, in a voice as compassionate as an angel, as contemptuous as my father, as infinite in its wisdom and forgiveness as both together, “where’s the point? You’ve seen me, and you’ve seen you; you’ve got to realise it can only end one way. Why get yourself squashed when all you need to do is reach out, and I’ll take your hand and pull you through, to my side?” He smiles. “You’d like it here, things are very different. Face it, you’re a waste of time and resources on your side, but over here—”