by Tuson, Mark
He did want to at least watch the proceedings, so he worked his way to the courtroom. It felt like an age since he had last been here.
There were already people filing in, sitting down, milling around. There wasn’t anything like a ceremonial or legal atmosphere in here yet; they might have been waiting for breakfast. For Peter, however, it felt deeper than that. With what Caroline had told him, he was very nervous for Lucy. Not only that, but the notion of what was going to happen here brought back memories of the beginning of his own trial. He sat next to someone and forced himself to breath slowly and carefully. In through nose. Out of mouth.
The door burst open, and Eddie practically fell through it, his robes torn and his cheek bleeding. Everyone already in the room stood up, craning their necks and holding their breath. Suddenly, the atmosphere in the room was one of tense excitement and almost fright.
Behind him, forcefully holding a screaming and clearly terrified Lucy, followed the four guards, each holding a hand or a foot in both hands, stretching her as though they were a living, walking rack. She was stiff, probably held so by a combination of fury, terror, and magic, but it looked like she had been struggling a lot before: two of the guards’ robes were torn like Eddie’s had been, as were her own pyjamas.
‘Bloody hell,’ he whispered to nobody in particular.
Eddie walked to the massive desk at the front of the room, and the guards chained Lucy into the stand, somewhat more harshly than they had to Peter – at least as far as he could remember.
Silence followed as Eddie steeled himself a little, and then assumed his official, venerable personage. He cleared his throat and banged the butt of his wand on the table, making a much louder sound than he remembered, and throwing sparks out that flew at least eighteen inches.
‘Hereby,’ Eddie said, sounding clearly stiff and furious, ‘do I call these proceedings to their open. I, Edwin Harrison, preside as Steward of the Guild of Magicians, to judge the matter at hand with the wisdom with the wisdom with which I have been trusted.
‘Who stands to accuse?’
Caroline stood, wearing a similar robe. ‘I, Caroline Sharples, stand to try the accused for taking the knowledge of magic from the Guild of Magicians, without payment.’
Peter could see her face, and that of Lucy, clearly from where he was. Lucy looked heartbroken, betrayed. He thought back to how he had felt… he must have looked just like she did now. My God, he thought, how pitiable. He felt a surge of affection for her; sorrow and understanding. Likewise, Caroline looked slightly distressed, as though she knew that she might well be sending Lucy away to die.
However, Lucy did not try to speak as Peter had. She was too busy sobbing silently.
Once again, Caroline continued. ‘The accused had attended lectures given by myself and a small number of other members of the Guild of Magicians, and has had unrestricted access to our main library for three years. She has taken our knowledge, both offered and not offered, without earning it in any way other than finding ways to absorb it into her own mind.’
Curtly, Eddie nodded. He turned to face Lucy. ‘Miss Holmes. What have you to say on the matter?’
She looked up. Her eyes were so bloodshot that Peter was half expecting an ocular haemorrhage to occur at any moment. She shook her head and blinked, sending a stream of tears down her cheek. It was a few moments before she spoke.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had to pay.’ Apparently the anger had passed.
Eddie looked somewhat satisfied that she wasn’t so angry any more; he spoke a little more kindly. ‘Do you, therefore, accept the charges of taking our knowledge, both when bidden and not?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you accept that you will be called upon to pay your debt to us?’
She nodded, with her eyes closed.
Eddie raised his wand, just as he had before. ‘In that case, I offer you on behalf of the Guild of Magicians a choice between two options. You will either leave the Guild of Magicians forever, and be reintroduced to your former life, whereupon you will find that magic no longer works for you, or you will allow yourself to be subject to a trial of survival, whereby you will need to use magic in order to not die.’ His voice cracked a little on the last few words; he cleared his throat before carrying on.
‘If you choose the latter, you will find yourself in a place where you need to create all the things you need to keep yourself alive yourself, using your magical skills. You will be alone, with no members of the Guild of Magicians to defend or assist you. You will be given no tools other than a knife. And if you survive, you will be subject to active service in whatever field you show the most aptitude in.
‘Is this all perfectly clear?’
She nodded again.
‘What is your decision?’
She sobbed openly before speaking again. ‘I feel I belong here, I couldn’t bear to leave. I want to be here, a part of… this –‘ she looked around, and Peter imagined that, had she not been chained up, she would have been holding her hands out, gesturing the room ‘– and one of you.’
‘You submit yourself to be sent into a wilderness to test your skills?’
Through another sob, she said ‘yes.’
Eddie nodded at her, and then at the guards, and then crashed the butt of his wand onto the desk again: that was that. For now.
Peter got up and left. He wanted some coffee to pacify the headache that he had found visiting him every morning for a few weeks. It wasn’t severe, but it was there; a dull, low-level ache that he associated with dehydration and residual tiredness.
And was the coffee welcome this morning – he gulped down a whole cup, almost in one mouthful. He returned immediately for another, happily forgoing his breakfast for the time being. Distantly, he was aware that Lucy was having her breakfast, a dozen or so seats away. He wished he could comfort her, tell her that it was only a ritual. But then, she had probably already worked that out for herself.
When the time for her ceremonial expulsion to the island came, Peter stood further back, not listening as intently as he had earlier. He didn’t want to relive that moment as well. Though he felt a short rush of air at the moment at which she must have vanished.
Everyone was stood still, in an almost funereal way. That was it: done, at least for now. He hoped to see her – alive and well – again. And he knew the sentiment was shared by everyone else in the room.
He didn’t stand around to talk to anyone, however. He had work of his own to do.
Nine: Knifestone
Sitting down at the table in the secret library a short while later, Peter thought to himself: magic itself was a whole other world to what pathetes knew. So was the island, where everyone from the Guild had had their trials. And then there was Werosain. It was like something Plato had once written, about many worlds in many layers. Like an onion.
The rest of the day was as fruitless as it had been the previous day, and the day before. He went and ate his lunch – and in so doing noticed that nobody was behaving as though they had sent a youngster away to a possible hell for a year – and then returned to the library. That was the only break he took.
It looked, right until the last moment, like he wasn’t going to find anything. But then:
… person who turned up around 1935 in Oxford, making contact with a number of pathetes. Thankfully there was no incident, but he never sought to join with the Guild or instigate any form of military action.
Peter’s heart stopped. The book was dated only twenty years ago.
He read on, and in a few different books found more references to who was obviously the same person: a Werosaian soldier who, apparently, was called Atlosreg. This was interesting… very interesting. And there were more recent references to him as well, all of which made it seem that he was still alive. It was hard to believe; first that this had happened so recently, and second that Atlosreg would still be alive after so long.
It was getting late, and he knew that too. But h
e didn’t want to give up, now that he had found something that he could actually pursue; going to bed right now would feel a little like giving up. Conversely, however, he knew he wouldn’t be able to work at anything like his optimum if he was tired from staying up all night. His eyes hurt, and he already felt as though he had stayed up through the night. Reluctantly, he retired.
The next day yielded nothing, much to Peter’s infuriation: having left the book open on the table when he left for bed the previous night, he returned to the secret library after breakfast and reread the page he had left it open on, and then turned it. The text abruptly shifted to some scribbling about the drainage and irrigation of the Guild.
‘Of course,’ he said to the book in disgust. ‘You’re taking the piss out of me.’
He shelved it and looked at the cover of the next book on the shelf. The title was in Runes, and right now he didn’t have the patience to try and tackle Runes. Instead, he sat for a moment and then decided that he should talk to Eddie, see if he knew anything.
It didn’t feel fair that he had to get up so soon after sitting down. Though, he supposed, that was life. He left the library again and briskly walked to Eddie’s office.
Eddie took a moment to let Peter in, and when he did he seemed a little short-tempered – Lucy, he guessed, had left him worried. As she had everyone, even though nobody was outwardly showing it.
‘Peter, that was nearly eighty years ago,’ explained Eddie, once Peter had told him about finding the brief description of Atlosreg. ‘What makes you think that he’ll even be alive now?’
‘Nothing,’ said Peter patiently. ‘Nothing at all. I just want to see if he is.’
Eddie huffed, an exasperated sound which somehow reverberated off the walls of the office back to them.
‘Don’t you think I have enough to think about right now?’
‘I’m not trying to add to your burden.’
‘Pull the other one, Peter.’ He closed his eyes, screwing them up as if in pain. ‘You’re asking if an enemy agent –‘
‘Defected enemy agent,’ Peter interrupted.
‘You don’t know that he defected. He might have got injured and not been able to return home. He might have decided to stay long-term to try and find out more about our world from within.’
‘He could have joined the Guild to do that.’
Eddie shook his head. ‘No, he couldn’t. Our induction for former Werosaians is different to how it is for natives of our own world. Part of it involves removing the knowledge of certain magical skills from their minds, so that they can’t contact Werosain or return there, and they don’t have to undergo the island trial.’
‘Maybe he wanted to live as a civilian?’
‘Bollocks, Peter.’
‘Why else would he come to live in this world and not join the Guild?’
Eddie’s hand struck the table, making Peter jump. ‘Fine!’ He shouted. He stood up and located a small file from a collection of similar files on a shelf behind his chair. He slapped it down onto the table, red of face and scalp. He sat and opened it, and read.
‘Atlosreg of Werosain. Recorded to have been first seen in our world, separated from other Werosaian forces on the twenty-second of October, 1935, in Oxford. Arrest by the Guild commuted because no particular threat noted. However, pathete authorities believe him to be mentally deficient.’
There was obviously more on that page, but Eddie flicked to the end of the file.
‘Surveillance continued. Apparently healthy, though mental deterioration is definite. Now in care with suspect dementia.’ He closed the file. ‘That was last year,’ Eddie said. ‘I can’t see what more you might want to know.’
Peter felt his eyebrows raise so high that he was wondering if they might still even be attached to his face. He took a moment to compose himself and said, ‘I want to talk to him.’
‘Out of the question,’ said Eddie, sternly. ‘He isn’t posing a threat at the moment, but that might only be because we’ve maintained a strict rule of no contact since he arrived. Yes, we have used magic to… tweak things a little, so that he would be able to, for instance, live in a care home, in relative comfort. But we haven’t ever actually made contact – and nor do we want to.
‘To do so might be incredibly dangerous for everyone.’
Peter laughed. ‘Come on, he must be a hundred years old by now. What danger could he pose that I couldn’t contain, if I needed to?’
‘Eighty years to be cast aside as a madman is a hell of a long time. More time than a lot of people get altogether. You are crackers if you think he’s going to be sane at all now, even if you think he might have been to begin with.’
Peter set his jaw. This was going rather less well than he had intended or hoped.
‘What if,’ he said eventually, taking care not to sound insubordinate, ‘it was important to my work?’
Eddie raised an eyebrow.
‘He might be able to tell me things about Werosain – military tactics, how their magic works, hell even their culture – that could help me work out how to better defend us against them.’
Eddie considered. ‘You really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into,’ he said.
‘Neither do you,’ said Peter in an attempt to be humorous.
‘Neither do I,’ Eddie repeated, deadpan. ‘And that’s why I’m being so cautious.’
Peter nodded. He could understand that, of course. A position of caution was obviously a very wise position to adopt, especially when one was acting as a military commander, as Eddie was.
That didn’t stop Peter from finding it infuriating, though. He wanted to find and meet Atlosreg, and to talk to him, see if there was anything he could find out from him.
‘Look,’ Eddie said. ‘Just have a bit of sense. The chance he might be able tell you anything like what you want to know is remote to non-existent.’
‘I know. But, however remote it is, it’s going to be there, isn’t it?’
‘I suppose so, but it would take a lot of weeding to get what you want.’
Peter laughed, openly. ‘Remember what I’ve been doing here.’
Eddie looked impatient, but he conceded. ‘True.’
‘So can you please tell me where I can find him?’
‘You just want to talk to a real-life Werosaian, don’t you?’
Peter nodded. ‘Even talking might teach me something about these people. And if he’s old – and in a home – he’s not as likely to pose a threat.’
‘Don’t let age fool you in magicians.’ Eddie said it simply, and then handed the file over. ‘Just bear in mind that if you get in trouble, nobody’s coming to save you. It’s on your head.’
‘I can accept that.’ Peter picked the file up, which he assumed would contain all the details the Guild held on Atlosreg. ‘Thank you.’ He inclined his head in a half-bow, and then left.
Rather than returning to the secret library with the file, Peter went to his own room to read it. As he had expected, it was a full dossier on Atlosreg, including what they knew about his character, and where he had been while he had been in our world. What he had not expected, however, was how little detail there was. Mostly, the file consisted of a list of places and dates; which mental institution he had been moved to and when, and later which nursing home – including, at the bottom of the last page, his current place of residence, where he had now lived, without incident, for twelve years.
Excellent, thought Peter. To Oxford I go.
The place Peter was to be looking for Atlosreg was a little to the east of Oxford, but getting there was no more difficult than getting to the University itself: he found out from Eddie the following day how portals were to be set up, which in itself was an interesting bit of magical knowledge.
As it turned out, portals were just as obvious as Peter would have thought they would be: in many magical legends and stories, portals from one place to another were not so much a wormhole, as Peter and anyone else with more th
an the merest scientific knowledge would have guessed, but paths along a magical substrate or co-dimension. This wasn’t true, however; they were magically-sustained wormholes after all, anchored not to space or time but between solid landmarks. The home-end of the portal, the side which went out from – and back toward – the Guild, was always anchored to the entryway, and the outward-end of the portal was generally anchored to a permanent feature of the place to which the traveller was going: a lamp-post, a gatepost, a particularly long-lived tree.
He sat in the refectory with a bowl of porridge, poring over the file again. There was the address of the nursing home he was at, a broad physical description (short, stocky, slightly dark-skinned, long black hair, sunken eyes), and the name under which he had been placed in the home, which was Adam Richards. He amused himself for a moment at the idea of old Guild members trying to come up with an English-sounding name that sounded enough like his original Werosaian one to be recognizable.
There wasn't much written there about any character traits he might or might not have. But then, he supposed, there wouldn’t be; if he had been in any kind of mad-house, it was more than likely that a lot of his personality could have been drugged or electrocuted out of him.
So, Peter thought, whatever there was to find out about Atlosreg, he would have to find out for himself. That should be fun.
This was a slightly uncountable notion for him, because on every occasion he had done field-work for or with the Guild, some sort of disaster had ensued. He was loath to do it, but in the end the whole point of this was that he knew he had to do a certain amount of legwork, leaving the safe confines of the Guild, from time to time.
So, there wasn’t anything for it now but to actually create the portal and depart. He returned the file to his room for the time being, and then went to the entryway and performed the spell to open the portal. To his slight surprise, it opened perfectly, first time. He stepped through.