Grim Tides (Marla Mason)

by Pratt, T. A.

  “I care only for results,” Husch said.

  “I guess we’d better get started, then! Let’s meet the new recruits.”

  “I think these are the best prospects.” Husch pushed over a pile of folders, and Elsie picked them up and flung them at Nicolette, who snatched one out of the air but, lacking a second hand, got smacked in the chest with rest.

  “Read!” Elsie barked. “Summarize!”

  Nicolette sat down on the floor and scanned through the files. “Uh, Norma Nilson, the nihilomancer. She projects her emotions, making others feel what she feels, and since she thinks life is horrible and meaningless, she’s kind of a bummer to be around. Everybody in her apartment building died of starvation before she was locked up – they just stopped caring enough to eat. All the people who came to check on their friends or family who lived in the apartment got caught in the field of depression, too, until somebody with magical connections figured out what was going on. Ugly stuff.”

  “She’s a maybe,” Elsie said. “Nihilism is boring. If we could get her to project, say, Dionysian frenzy, that could be something. Might be possible. Brain chemistry can be hacked.” She sat back down on the desk and turned to Husch. “What about that other psychic, Genevieve? The one who knocked me out last time I tried to escape? She’s got some power we could use.”

  “She escaped herself,” Husch said. “Her current whereabouts are unknown.”

  “She’s friends with Marla anyway, I hear,” Nicolette chimed in. “Marla helped de-crazy her.”

  “Hmm, that could be a real challenge, if she got involved on Marla’s side,” Elsie mused. “It would be nice if this wasn’t a total one-sided blowout. Okay, who’s next?”

  “The Beast of Felport.” Nicolette opened a folder and removed a single sheet of paper. “Not a lot of info here. An animal unknown to science. Relentless killing machine, cunning, difficult to contain, apparently immortal, seems to be connected to this area somehow, though nobody’s sure why – maybe a supernatural protector? Ha, kind of like Marla was, except whatever it’s protecting isn’t the populace. Hates people, tries to kill them all, pretty indiscriminately. Wants to wipe the city off the map, it looks like. Maybe it just really like trees and mud. Currently wrapped in a dream that makes it believe it’s running around primal uninhabited Felport, all happy and unconscious.”

  “Hmm. No, I don’t think so. I like people I can talk to. Relentless killing machines don’t scheme or plot, anyway. Capital B Boring. Next.”

  “This guy calls himself Everett Malkin – claims to be the first chief sorcerer of Felport, from hundreds of years ago.” Nicolette shook her head. “He’s got some kind of magic, but it’s not clear if he’s super-powerful or anything, and apparently Marla tricked him into getting locked up here without much trouble. He really hates her, though, so he’s got that going for him.”

  “I think we have enough personal grudges against Marla in this crew already,” Elsie said. “One more and we’ll be in danger of having a quorum, far too much unity of purpose. Next!”

  “Roger Vaughn, and his reincarnation, the younger Roger Vaughn – ”

  “Vaughn? That idiot?” Elsie blew a raspberry. “He worships an evil sea-god that doesn’t even exist.. Pathetic. If I worshipped an imaginary sea-god, you’d better believe it would start existing, and quick. Next.”

  “Gustavus Lupo, the skinchanger.” Nicolette looked up from the pages in her lap. “Didn’t he make a giant body out of corpses or something once?”

  “That was just a rumor,” Dr. Husch said. “It was an unrelated flesh golem. No, Lupo is...”

  “I told Nicolette to summarize,” Elsie said and, amazingly, Husch fell silent – possibly because she was afraid the chaos witch would ugly her up again. Crapsey didn’t like the way the power dynamic was shifting here. It felt kind of like an ocean liner starting to capsize.

  “Lupo can... Ha! You ever hear of the Napoleon complex? When a crazy guy thinks he’s Napoleon?”

  “Yes. I also know about people trapped on desert islands, men lying on psychiatrist’s couches, people crawling through the desert, and other gag comic-strip clichés.”

  “Well, if Lupo thinks he’s Napoleon, he turns into Napoleon. Like, physically, it’s not just an illusory light show, he really changes. And he has the strategic and tactical knowledge that Napoleon had, and he speaks French, and all that.”

  “His impersonations are more convincing when the subject is living,” Husch said. “I think he establishes a sort of... psychic link, and mirrors their minds directly. For the dead, he gets the knowledge from somewhere, perhaps the minds of some scholar or relative somewhere, but the artifice is less perfect.”

  “What’s Lupo doing in here?” Crapsey said. “Sounds like he’s a crime boss’s dream. Perfect impersonations on demand.”

  Husch shrugged. “He lost control. Replicating so many minds grievously damaged his own – when he impersonated someone, he forgot almost entirely about himself and his own identity. He’d turn into people he encountered randomly on the street, sometimes. Then he would become convinced they were doppelgangers, monsters impersonating him, and he would try to murder them. Any actual identity he once had is in shreds and fragments. I’ve tried to coax out the ‘real’ Gustavus, but... it’s been a long time, and we’ve made almost no progress. His rooms are full of mirrors, so he can see his face, and remember who he is, but if he so much as sees a photograph of another person, he takes on their form, and in the absence of external reinforcement or new people to imitate, he just... blurs.”

  “So what good is he to us?” Nicolette said. “If he’s too crazy to follow orders?”

  “Oh, I can control him,” Elsie said airily. “I can’t heal him, or anyway I won’t, but I can pick a person for him to impersonate and stir in a little compulsion to lock down that shape until we want it to change, not a problem. But who should we turn him in to? Does Marla have any dead lovers? Ooh, maybe her dead apprentice?”

  “Her brother,” Nicolette said. “They’ve got some kind of messed-up history. Lupo could impersonate – ”

  “No, no, we’re going to recruit her actual brother,” Elsie said. “It’s on my to-do list for later this morning.”

  Husch frowned. “Jason Mason is just a criminal – a confidence man. He has no real knowledge of magic. You want to recruit him to your team?”

  “Of course!” Elsie said. “It’ll be a disaster. I can’t wait.” She reached out and touched Husch’s cheek. “Your skin, I swear, it’s like porcelain. Which is to say, I could shatter it with a hammer. Now, I’ll do this job for you, I’ve made an agreement, and I’ll stand by it since I haven’t figured out a way to knock down your binding spells yet, but you have to give me the good stuff, quit holding back. Who do you have locked up in here who can do some real damage?”

  Dr. Husch sighed. “Yes. I thought it might come to that. Let me show you.”

  “Elsie Jarrow and Roderick Barrow?” The chaos witch laughed. “I can’t decide if that sounds like a firm of lawyers or a vaudeville duo.” They were in a small room just off a remote hallway of the estate, a space unremarkable in most respects – except for the fact that one wall was an unbroken sheet of black volcanic glass, so imbued with magics that it made Crapsey’s wooden jaw ache.

  “He calls himself Barrow of Ulthar now,” Dr. Husch said. “Though his full title is Lord of the Maggotlands, Protector of the Ravenous Dead, Dispenser of Injustice, Bestower of Maladies, Emperor of the Cinderlands and the Megalith Isles... well, I can’t remember the rest of it. He’s a Dark Lord, basically.”

  “Of an imaginary fantasy universe,” Elsie said.

  “He is very good at imagining. Barrow was a pulp science fiction writer in the 1930s, and after he suffered a mental breakdown, he began to imagine himself living in a sword-and-sorcery world of his own devising.” Husch spread out a few photos on the desk – they showed swords, animal pelts, some kind of giant dead snake, and misshapen skulls. “These are al
l... imports, you might say, or rather apports, from his fantasy world. He is delusional, but he’s exothermically delusional. I almost tried to recruit him to run this operation, but I was afraid I might accidentally unleash his monstrous horde upon the Earth.”

  Elsie smiled. “And, what, you thought I’d be safer? I wonder about your sanity, doctor. Maybe my craziness is contagious. Though I’m feeling much better in this body. Chronic agony tends to distort your worldview.”

  “He’s also very resistant to direct communication,” Husch said. “Anyone who enters Barrow’s physical presence is pulled into his fantasy world. The results are seldom pleasant for those so absorbed. He incorporates visitors into his narrative, generally as enemies. And Barrow of Ulthar’s enemies don’t tend to live long. His fantasy alter-ego used to be a hero, actually, with a destiny, on a quest to save the universe. But I sent Marla Mason into his dreamworld in an attempt at therapy, hoping she could thwart his quest, and show him his world was an illusion. This was many years ago, back when she was just a mercenary, really...”

  “She fucked it up?” Elsie said.

  “On the contrary, she did just as I hoped. She showed Barrow he was not a hero fated to save a world – that he was just a man, fragile and flawed and entirely capable of being defeated. Alas, he did not respond by becoming lucid and returning to this reality. Instead he decided that, if he didn’t have a destiny, he would make his own destiny, and that if he couldn’t be a hero, he would become a conqueror.”

  “I’m so over conquerors,” Crapsey muttered, running his fingers along the wall of obsidian glass that separated Barrow’s room from the rest of the Institute.

  “We could still use him,” Elsie said. “Or his power, anyway. Let me in to see him.”

  “He’ll think you’re a rival sorcerer,” Husch warned. “He’ll try to kill you.”

  “Many have tried,” Elsie said. “Few have triumphed.”

  Few? Crapsey thought. Then again, how surprising was it that Elsie had died already, and more than once?

  Husch removed her necklace, revealing the small golden key that had been hanging between her breasts all this time. Lucky key, Crapsey thought.

  “Ooh, there’s power there.” Elsie leaned forward and sniffed. “You’ve got yourself an artifact, don’t you?”

  “This object maintains Barrow’s captivity,” Husch said. “Among other things. It’s called the Key of Totality. An item of power that comes from Barrow’s own imaginary universe, actually, which might be why it’s so effective against him.” She put the key into a small hole in the black glass wall – though Crapsey wasn’t entirely convinced the hole had been there a moment ago – and gave it a twist. A rectangular section of rock slid away, revealing darkness inside. “It’s basically an airlock,” Husch said. “The door to his room will open after this door closes behind you. Are you sure you want to do this? Our Dark Lord is more powerful than you realize.”

  “I love meeting new people.” Elsie stepped into the wall of black glass, and the door slid closed after her, the whole becoming seamless and solid again.

  “I hope she doesn’t die,” Husch said. “Or... I don’t suppose she’s solipsistic enough to want to usurp Barrow’s power?”

  “Elsie’s not really a builder,” Nicolette said. “Or, if she builds something, it’s just for the joy of demolishing it later. I’ve been spending my whole life kicking over sandcastles, but Elsie likes to build the sandcastles herself and then kick them over – probably because she makes better sandcastle than your average asshole with a pail and shovel does. But she’s been trapped in a box for a long time. I doubt she’d want to be stuck in another box, even one made of imagination.”

  “Uh. How will you know when she wants to come out?” Crapsey said.

  Husch shrugged. “The spells of binding here are meant to keep Barrow and his various emanations in captivity. It should be possible for Jarrow to get out – assuming she isn’t murdered in my patient’s dreamworld. But either way, we should – ”

  A knocking sound came from beyond the obsidian wall. “Yoo hoo!” Elsie called, voice muffled but cheerful. “Open, says me!”

  Husch touched the key, which pulsed golden light, and twisted it again in the keyhole, making the door in the wall slide open again. Elsie came out, hair mussed but otherwise unchanged. She had an object the size of a soccer ball, wrapped in a brown fur, tucked under her arm. “Okay,” Elsie said, “Barrow and I made an arrangement. I’m done.”

  “You were there only moments!” Husch said.

  Elsie waved a hand. “Messing with time is a specialty of mine, and in a fantasy world? Please. The rules are so much more elastic there, you don’t even really have to break them, just stretch them a little. I spent a couple of weeks with the Dark Lord, and helped him deal with some rebellions in the provinces – I think he’s killing externalized representations of inconvenient parts of his psyche, like guilt and empathy, in the form of peasants and revolutionaries, it’s pretty interesting – and this is my payment.” She patted the object under her arm. “It should come in handy.”

  “What is it?” Husch said.

  “I know!” Elsie said. “I love surprises too! All right, it’s time to get things going. I know not much time passed here, but subjectively it feels to me like we’re running late, so you’re all on Jarrow time now. We’ve got a bit more work to do on the mainland, but there’s no reason we can’t start softening Marla up now. The road to hell wasn’t built in a day. Let’s go see Gustavus Lupo, teleport him over to Maui, and put him to work.” Elsie draped her free arm around Nicolette’s shoulder. “What were you saying before, about how most of Marla’s enemies were dead? What are their names? And do you think we could get some pictures of them?”

  THE DEAD, WALKING ON THE BEACH

  Marla found Arachne seated on a broad, flat stone beside a pool of water fed by a stream that plummeted off a higher cliff, and could have been called a waterfall by someone feeling sufficiently generous. The kahuna was weaving together a mat of vines and leaves and grasses. That was how she worked her magic, apparently, though Marla didn’t know the details – she’d never been much of a maker, so it wasn’t a discipline she favored. “Aloha,” she said, leaning against a tree, after making sure there weren’t any bugs or lizards on the trunk. Hawai’i was too damned fecund by half.

  Arachne ignored Marla until she’d finished plaiting together a few more bits of plant fiber, then looked up. She was in her forties, probably, with long black hair woven into intricate (and, doubtless, magically significant) braids, dressed in a skirt of ti leaves. She was topless, apart from a cascade of shell necklaces, which was actually more modest than the swimsuits a lot of the tourists wore on beaches. She looked at Marla, her face expressionless. “Aloha,” she said after a long moment. “What can I do for you, Marla Mason?”

  “I was wondering if you know anything about a pack of surfers, led by a guy named Glyph?”

  “They have no ‘leader,’” Arachne said. “They are a collective. Glyph is more connected to the secular world than some of the others, so he is often their spokesman. I suppose they showed a certain deference to their eldest member, Ronin. He has, sadly, passed away.”

  “I know. He was murdered, and they’ve hired me to find out who did it. Any ideas?”

  “Why ask me?” Arachne said.

  Marla thought about that, and decided she might as well go with honesty. “I don’t know anybody to ask. The locals haven’t gone out of their way to make me feel welcome..”

  Arachne half-smiled. “All right. You did me a good turn, and you have been discreet about our dealings, so I am willing to help. I fear I cannot offer much: the wave-mages have no enemies, as far as I know. They spend most of their time in the water, drawing their power from the sea – its motion, its depths, the life that teems within it, the deaths that sink down. They use their power to help the very sea that gives them that power. They have no goals – they just want to be connected to the ocean
, which they know is their mother, and their father, and their confessor, and their grave. How can people with no goals make enemies?”

  “Good question.” Marla crouched down and leaned her back against the tree. “I guess that’s been my problem all along – too many goals. What can you tell me about Ronin?”

  “He was old. Older than I am, and I am older than I seem. He came from Japan, originally, though he has lived here for a long time. Do you know what the name he chose means?”

  “Ronin? It’s some kind of samurai, right? My friend Rondeau made me watch a movie called Ronin once, but it was just some crime thing.”

  “A Ronin is a masterless samurai,” Arachne said. “It means ‘wave man,’ which is appropriate for a sorcerer devoted to the sea, but more specifically it means someone carried by the waves. Someone given over to the waves, and taken wherever those waves take him. I met him a few times. I gather he had a dark past, that he had performed terrible acts, and that he had chosen to give up his own personal agency in favor of letting the sea guide his actions.” She shrugged, and began weaving again. “How can a man who makes no decisions make an enemy? A mystery.”

  “It couldn’t have been a random attack, though. Whoever did this has big magic, and used it to cover their tracks.”

  “Perhaps a dark sorcerer hoped to steal his power?” Arachne said. “We’ve had experience with such people before, as you know. Everyone who comes to Hawai’i wants something, it seems. Our fish. Our soil. To own the beauty of our islands, and make them ugly in the process.”

  “Right. So it must have been an out-of-towner, then.” Marla had read enough mystery novels to know that people always wanted to blame atrocities on outsiders.

  “I suppose it’s more likely it was someone close to him,” she said. “Aren’t most murders committed by those who know the victim? Though I hate to think so. One of the others in the collective, perhaps? It is hard to imagine any of them striking against Ronin, but they are certainly powerful, and probably capable of hiding the signs of such a crime. As I said, they aren’t hierarchical, so there couldn’t have been much of an advantage in killing Ronin... but there may be currents and schisms and conflicts in their group that are unknown to me. It’s hard to know how close they are, truly – if they’re more like a family, or more like a nest of ants.”