by R. L. King
“Ah,” he said, thinking fast. “That doesn’t have anything to do with magic. Not real magic, anyway.” He smiled ruefully. “It has more to do with getting mind-numbingly drunk with some friends a few years back. When I woke up the next morning…there it was. They told me I’d done it on a dare. It’s a bit embarrassing now, but I’m stuck with it.”
She looked as if she wasn’t sure whether to believe him, but finally stood. “Anyway, I need to get back to my other patients. Someone will be by with something to eat shortly, and I’ll stop in to check on you later this evening. If you need help with anything, there’s a bell next to your bed.”
Stone glanced at it. Sure enough, an actual bell—not a buzzer or button—lay on the table along with a small water pitcher and a covered glass. “Thank you.”
She nodded. “By the way—a piece of advice for you, whoever you are.”
“Yes?”
“If you truly aren’t Talented, I’d suggest choosing another name to go by. That one will get you in trouble everywhere you go—among the Talented or us.”
“I’ll—keep that in mind.” As she turned away, he said, “Oh—Doctor?”
“What is it?”
“You didn’t answer my other question. I’m looking for a man named Harrison. Trevor Harrison. Have you heard of him?”
“No, I don’t think so. Who is he?”
Damn good question. Stone realized he had no idea who or what Harrison was here—what he did, how important he was, even what part of the world he lived in. And that was assuming the man was even here at all. “I’m not sure, exactly. I suppose he must be one of these ‘Talented,’ since I’ve seen him do magic.”
“What does he look like?”
Another good question, given that the odds were strong that the man was certainly a good enough mage to hide his true appearance under an illusionary mask. “Tall chap, about my age. Pale, slim, fit, black hair, gray eyes—dangerous looking, I suppose you’d say.”
“There are a lot of dangerous people among the Talented,” she said. “Sorry—the name doesn’t ring a bell. But if you’re not Talented, let me offer one more bit of advice: stay away from them. With very few exceptions, we’re better off staying out of their way and away from their attention.”
7
Despite his best efforts to remain awake and study his surroundings, Stone drifted in and out of deep sleep several times throughout the day. Another woman, a few years younger than the doctor he’d been talking to, woke him at one point to offer him a bowl of something that tasted like oatmeal, along with some fruit juice. He hadn’t thought he was hungry until he smelled it, but the woman had to warn him not to eat too fast as he began wolfing it down.
“Easy,” she said with a pleasant smile. “You’ll make yourself sick if you eat too fast.”
The food was filling, but simple and bland—he supposed hospital food was hospital food, no matter what dimension you were on. As he ate, his mind spun with questions he wanted to ask the young woman, but by the time he finished the fog of fatigue had settled over his head once more. He didn’t remember drifting off, but when he woke again she was gone and the lights were even dimmer than before.
He was about to try sitting up so he could get a better look at his surroundings when he heard low voices to his left. He caught the word Talented and tensed. Were they talking about him again, speculating about whether he was telling the truth? He closed his eyes and strained to listen. Normally he’d feel guilty about eavesdropping, but if they had something planned for him, he wanted to know what it was.
“—don’t know if I believe him or not,” a female voice said. It sounded like the doctor he’d talked to earlier. “He certainly doesn’t act like one of them. And the Talented wouldn’t be caught dead in those rags he was wearing.”
“It could be a trick,” a man said. Milas, the one who’d been suspicious of him before. “You know how they are, Byra. Some of them do it just for sadistic pleasure. If we trust him and he turns out to be one of those—”
“I don’t think he is,” Byra said. “You saw him when they brought him in. You heard Tanissa. Some of those injuries were magical.”
“That just means he’s got powerful enemies.” Milas’s tone was stubborn. “Do you really want them showing up here, looking for him? They’d destroy us without a second thought.”
She snorted. “Come on, Milas, don’t be stupid. Do you honestly think any of the ivory-tower Talented would dirty their spotless boots in our little corner of the slums? You heard him—the Guard dropped him here. They probably figured he’d die and they’d be rid of him.”
“From where, though? Do you think he was in Temolan?”
“He didn’t have any identification or work papers on him when he was found—I suppose they could have taken them before they dumped him. Maybe he saw something he wasn’t supposed to see.”
Milas sighed. “Still, I’m telling you: as soon as he’s able to leave, we should get him out of here. He’s a stranger, and you know as well as I do that strangers are trouble.”
“He’ll leave when he’s well enough to get by on his own,” she said firmly. Then her tone softened. “Have a little compassion—you know he’s going to have trouble if he doesn’t know anyone and he has no identification. Let’s not make it worse for him.”
“That’s not our problem. I know you like to take in strays, Byra. Normally that’s admirable, but we’re all better off letting this one go.”
The two of them drifted off in separate directions, Milas leaving the room and Byra bending over one of the beds on the other side of the ward.
Stone lay still, feigning sleep as he mulled over what the two of them had said. What was “Temolan”? Was that the city he’d appeared in, the one with the cream-colored buildings and pale streets? Was that where the Talented lived?
Byra, the female doctor, had mentioned “our little corner of the slums”—it certainly made sense that the Talented and the non-magical people lived in different areas, especially given the clear social stratification between the two. She’d also mentioned “work papers,” so perhaps that meant at least some of the non-magical class worked among the Talented. Judging by the way Stone’s small test sample of the Talented treated anyone without magic power, coupled with the way Byra and Milas had spoken of them, it probably meant that anyone without magic who was allowed in the Talented’s cities fulfilled menial roles. Did the haughty mages clean their own toilets or collect their own rubbish? Probably not—unless they’d figured out a way to do it with magic.
He rolled over, trying to get comfortable against the low-grade aches that still plagued him. Their healer had done a good job, but she hadn’t taken care of everything. He’d still have to heal some of this the old-fashioned way, and that would take time.
Another thought struck him: if he was in the right place, if he hadn’t buggered up the ritual and sent himself off gods knew where, that meant Trevor Harrison was here somewhere. When Stone had met him, he’d certainly seemed to be powerful—probably the most powerful mage he’d ever encountered, even more than William Desmond or Madame Huan or Stefan Kolinsky. But how did he stack up against the others here? Were all the mages as potent as he was? More so, even?
That was a frightening thought: a whole world full of arrogant sadists who did what they pleased without consequences? Stone was suddenly reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode he’d watched as a child—he used to be quite a fan of the show during his boarding-school days—where the terrified residents of a small town were all at the mercy of a young boy with unimaginable powers. A boy whose every capricious whim had to be followed to keep him from growing angry and sending anyone who displeased him “to the cornfield.”
Were they all like that here? Was Harrison? Stone remembered when he’d first met the man, back in Las Vegas—when he, Jason, Verity, and Harrison had traveled in the Obsidian’s helicopter out to an abandoned military base where the Evil had holed up with a collection of school
children they’d planned to sacrifice. Harrison had, without a second thought or any apparent remorse, waved his hand and wiped out nearly a dozen Evil-possessed survivalists. What would he do here, where mages apparently had free rein to do what they liked without consequences? Had Stone misjudged him, thinking the man would be willing to help if only he could find him?
He rolled over again. It was possible, but he didn’t think so. Why would Harrison send him the notebook containing the rudiments of his magical techniques if he didn’t intend him to study them? Why would he tell Verity what he’d said, if he hadn’t thought Stone might use that information to locate him?
No, Stone decided. Harrison was a lot of things, but he’d never given any indication of cruelty or sadism. He was arrogant, sure, but it wasn’t the same kind of arrogance that the three young men in Temolan displayed. Stone had seen enough of both types to know the difference—one was the province of those who’d been born and raised in privilege, where every person and circumstance in their lives had convinced them they were better than the rest of the world. The other came from inner confidence, from the certainty that the person could handle anything life threw at them. Both could be dangerous—the second moreso than the first sometimes, and worse still when both appeared in the same person—but Stone respected the second while having nothing but contempt for the first.
None of that mattered, though, if he couldn’t find Harrison. If he was here, did he live among the Talented? Was he perhaps even one of their leaders? Byra hadn’t heard of him, or at least claimed not to—but how familiar were the non-magical with the doings of the Talented? Did Harrison even use the same name here? If the Talented took elaborate, multi-syllable names, was “Trevor Harrison” simply the name he went by when he was on Earth?
He sighed and settled into the pillow. This was pointless. He likely didn’t know Harrison’s name here, what he looked like, or where he spent his time. With none of that information, he had no hope of finding the man—and if he couldn’t find him, then without his magic he had no way of getting home. Right now, if someone had offered him the chance to return home, return to his life of black magic and taking unsatisfying power from Jason, he’d have accepted in a heartbeat. He’d taken a big chance coming here. Usually his big chances worked, or at least he could make them work. This time, though, he’d failed.
“Are you all right?” a soft voice asked. “Did you need something? Some pain medication, or something to help you sleep?”
He opened his eyes to see the faintly backlit form of the young woman who’d brought his meal earlier that day. “Sorry. Didn’t realize I was thrashing around quite so much.”
She chuckled. “It’s all right. I saw you when they brought you in. You were in bad shape. You’ve made a lot of progress, but you’ve got to still be in some pain.”
“I suppose I am,” he admitted. One of the things he’d noticed earlier in the day was that the hospital seemed to be operating at a technology level somewhere in the area of the nineteen-fifties or –sixties on Earth. Something had seemed off to him until he realized what it was: there were no beeping monitors, digital displays, or any of the other kinds of ubiquitous electronic background gadgets you came to expect in a modern medical facility.
She fluffed his pillow, then gripped his wrist to take his pulse. After noting down the result on the chart at the foot of his bed, she returned to his side. “Is there anything I can bring you?”
“No, thank you. But—”
“Yes?”
He glanced around. During one of his previous periods of wakefulness, he’d determined that aside from himself, two of the other beds in the six-bed ward were occupied. One of the patients appeared to be deeply unconscious, and the other was snoring. “Would you have time to sit with me for a few minutes? I’ve got some questions I’d like to have answered, and the doctors seem quite busy.”
She, too, looked around the ward. “I could stay for a little while,” she said. “We’ll have to talk quietly, though, so we don’t wake the other patients up. Let me check on them now, and I’ll come back.”
“Thank you.”
He sensed she was as curious about him as he was about her and about this world—she did a thorough but quick job of looking in on the other two patients and returned a few minutes later with a chair. “There,” she said, switching on a faint light next to his bed. “My name is Jena, by the way.”
He shifted to his side, where he could get a better look at her. She appeared to be in her early twenties, with light brown skin, short dark hair in loose curls, and kind eyes. Instead of the white coats the doctors wore, she was clad in what resembled old-fashioned pale-blue scrubs. “It’s a pleasure, Jena. They tell me my name isn’t doing me any favors here, so I suppose I should find something else to go by.”
“So you’re really not Talented?”
He chuckled. “I’ve been told I am in some areas, but—no. Not the way you seem to use that term here. I don’t have any magical abilities.” He’d tested this again last time he’d awakened—still no sign of anything. “I suppose you can just call me Stone. Could that be a proper name around here?”
“It’s unusual,” she said, tilting her head. “But at least no one will accuse you of impersonating the Talented.”
“Stone it is, then.” He shifted again; his body still ached too much to remain in one position for too long. “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions that might sound very stupid? The sorts of things you’d think everyone would know?”
“I’ll try to answer them. They did say your mind might be slow coming back after your injuries.”
Stone didn’t contradict her; if having her think he’d addled his brains was what it took to get his questions answered, then so be it. “Right, then. First one: I get the impression that these ‘Talented’ you speak of live somewhere else. Is that correct?”
“Yes. They live in the floating cities.”
“Floating cities?” Stone couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his voice. Did these people have enough magical punch to raise cities? He might be in more trouble than he thought.
“Of course. Temolan is the closest one to us here. That’s where they think you might have been attacked.”
“How many of these cities are there?”
“Five. I don’t know much about how the Talented do things—it’s really better not to—but there are five of them.”
“So all the Talented live in five cities?”
“Most of them do, yes. Some split their time between the cities and living among us, supervising work operations. A few live here full-time and help out, like Tanissa does.”
“She’s the healer who worked on me? I’d like to thank her, if I could.”
“You’ll probably be out of here before she comes back,” Jena said. “There aren’t many like her, so she travels around a lot. You were lucky she was nearby when you were brought in, or you’d probably have died. Your injuries were beyond what we could treat here without magic.”
“Yes, that was what I heard the doctors say earlier. So it’s rare for the Talented to help out here?”
She looked at him like he’d gone crazy. “Oh, yes. They rarely want anything to do with us. The ones who come here to supervise usually have the lowest power, so they choose to work with us so they have someone to feel superior to.” Bitterness crept into her voice, but then she cast Stone a fearful glance. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry.”
“Why not?” He narrowed his eyes. “You act as if you’re afraid of me, Jena. Why is that?” He raised his hands, indicating his bandages and obvious condition. “It’s not as if I could attack you if I wanted to.”
She gave an uncomfortable chuckle. “I’m sorry. You learn not to speak against the Talented, even when they aren’t around. You never know when they might be listening.”
Once again, Stone thought of the little Twilight Zone boy sending people to the cornfield. “So I take it they aren’t kind to you lot.”
“Most of them aren’t, no. Why should they be? They’ve got all that power, and we’re nothing but the Dim.” This time, the bitterness in her voice was obvious and undiluted.
Stone tensed. “The Dim?”
“That’s what they call us. The people who don’t have any magic.”
He remembered one of the bullies referring to him as a “dim pig.” “I see. Bit pretentious, aren’t they?”
“That’s an understatement. Mostly, we just avoid them. Except for the people who work where they supervise—on the big farms, the factories, that kind of thing—we usually don’t even see them. The more powerful ones don’t get their shoes dirty coming down here among us.”
Stone pondered. Some of this didn’t make sense. “Please bear with me—I know this is going to sound like a very stupid and insensitive question. But if they’re so powerful and cruel, why don’t they just kill you all?”
“They need us,” she said. “They may not like it, but there are a lot more of us than there are of them. We do all the jobs they won’t lower themselves to. We run the farms—well, except for their small luxury farms in their cities. We make a lot of the things they use and perform a lot of services they don’t want to do. If they killed us, all that would go away, and they’d have to do it themselves.”
“But if they can raise cities into the sky, aren’t they powerful enough to use magic to do all these menial tasks?”
She snorted. “Maybe, if they wanted to make the effort.” Glancing up at him, she added, “Besides, they’re not all cruel. Most of them are like us—they just want to be left alone to do what they want. They don’t want to be involved with us any more than we want to be with them.”
“You could have fooled me,” Stone said. “You didn’t see the three who attacked me.”
“The young can be the worst.” Jena glanced around the ward. “All that power, and they haven’t been given much responsibility yet. Most of them grow up eventually.”