by Billy Wright
The shopkeeper gestured toward the food. “You must be famished. Please.”
The family wasted no more time tucking in.
The soup smelled of onions and lentils, rich with herbs. A portly, rosy-cheeked chef dressed all in white with a towering cap wheeled out a cart laden with a covered porcelain tray. Lifting the lid, he revealed what looked like stuffed bell peppers, except they were the size of footballs. The kids’ eyes bulged. The stuffing proved to be a collection of different grains, rice, barley, quinoa, all generously seasoned with savory herbs and spices. Crystal carafes were filled with cool water. The bread was still warm from the oven, at once crusty and soft, the fruit fresh, sweet, and juicy.
The Riley family’s gustatory bliss was sufficient for the chef to trundle off with an expression of self-satisfaction.
For a while there were only the sounds of a breeze whispering through the skylights, and of chewing.
“Hunter, chew with your mouth closed, please,” Liz said.
“Yeah, use your manners!” Cassie said, chomping on a gleaming, red-and-green-striped apple the size of her head.
Hunter glowered at his sister, but obeyed his mom’s admonition.
Bob said, “A long walk like that does stoke the appetite.”
After the razor edge of their hunger had been dulled, Stewart said to the shopkeeper, “So what should we call you?”
The shopkeeper dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “My human name is Claude.”
“Clod?” Cassie said, eyes wide.
“No, my dear,” the shopkeeper said with an indulgent smile. He repeated his name, emphasizing the difference in the sound of the vowels.
“So, Claude,” Stewart said. “How did someone from…this place wind up working in an antique shop on a back street in Mesa Roja?”
“Just lucky, I suppose,” Claude said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Stewart frowned, his patience for equivocation long since gone. “Oh, come on.”
“I jest.”
Stewart sighed. “Sorry, I’m just a little keyed up. It’s been pure weirdness for two weeks.”
“For a lot longer than that, don’t you think? Your entire life, I’ll wager,” Claude said. Stewart squirmed under the old man’s intense gaze. “Seeing strange things you couldn’t be sure were real. Feeling the flow of magic coursing around you, but being unable to touch it. Sensing the vastness of how much your human picture of the universe was lacking. Am I anywhere in the ballpark?”
“Smack on the pitcher’s mound. But you haven’t answered my question.”
“Very perceptive. The short answer is that I was sent to Mesa Roja to find you, and when I did, to watch you.”
“Me? Why? I’m nobody.”
“That is your choice, up to this point. Anyone is capable of great deeds. Human history is full of unexpected heroes who rose to the demands of the time. Individuals can change the course of history, and in fact I would wager that all history’s turning points did so on the choices of motivated individuals. You can choose to be nobody. Many people do. Or you can choose to act when an important choice is presented to you.”
“I get the feeling you’re about to throw me one of those.”
“In a moment. But first I must explain some things. I trust by now your mind is sufficiently opened?” Claude gave another little smile.
“Just don’t let your brain fall out!” Cassie said.
“You are a very wise little girl,” Claude said to her.
“Why did you come to find me?” Stewart said.
“Because of your imagination. All those intense daydreams when you were a boy, they had power. You didn’t know it, but they helped shape the world around you in ways that most humans can’t manage. That kind of power draws attention, and not just from us. Just as I was sent to watch you, Baron Tyrus sent his minions not only to watch you, but to steer you away from realizing your power. You had a difficult childhood, I know. Many of those tragedies and traumas were inflicted purposefully upon you.”
The words settled upon Stewart’s shoulders and chest like bags of cement. How often had he thought that someone really was out to get him? “Why?”
“To fill your mind with doubt, pain, and distraction. To destroy your imagination, your creativity. Without imagination, you cannot hope to touch the Source. The Dark Lord placed his minions close to you, in unexpected places. Perhaps you can think of a few potential candidates?”
Stewart met Liz’s gaze, and they nodded. “No doubt.”
Liz asked, “Who is this Baron Tyrus? He’s the Dark Lord you just mentioned?”
“Baron Tyrus, ah yes. If ever there was an embodiment of malice and greed, it is that creature. Queen Titania no doubt knows more of his history than I, as they are of an age, but I can tell you he is an ancient vampire, older than human civilization in the Penumbra, although direct temporal connections are difficult due to the malleability of time.”
“Malleability?” Liz said. “I thought time moves forward at the same speed for everything and everyone.”
“No, no, dear lady,” Claude said. “Haven’t you had days that fly by and others that advance at a slug’s pace?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“That is the power of the mind at work upon the locality of your universe, affecting the flow of time in your immediate vicinity. It could have been you. It could have been someone else having that effect. Allow me to say, time, space, matter, the building blocks of your reality, are not nearly so concrete and imperturbable as humans believe.”
“You’re talking about quantum theory,” Liz said.
“In a manner of speaking, but quantum theory is only a facet, a projection—”
Bob jumped in, “Like the True Name of the City.”
Claude nodded. “Bob is correct. Quantum theory is one way of looking at the universe, but it cannot encompass everything, because its forces act only at the smallest of scales. I’ve read much on the subject. Modern Penumbral physicists are seeking a Universal Equation to explain all the forces of the universe. They’ll be at it a while longer, I’ll wager. What they do not yet know is that even if they find their Universal Equation, it will only apply to the Penumbra, so it will not be ‘universal’ at all.”
Silence fell as they ruminated on this. The kids chewed their food, looking expectantly back and forth at all the adults.
Stewart finally asked, “So this Baron Tyrus. He’s been trying to hurt us, stop us, stop me. Why?”
“He wishes to hurt all of us, destroy us, for the sheer joy of it,” Claude said. “Never underestimate the allure of cruelty. He is like a vicious child who loves torturing animals, but with infinitely more power. On a grander scale, he wishes to destroy the Light so that the Dark will reign supreme. But his Darkness cannot harm us here, for the same reason that we cannot harm him.”
Bob said, “He can, however, warp minds to his will, much like that dark elf did. He is a corrupter, a malign influence, a purveyor of destruction for its own sake.”
“And worse, he has a plan to destroy us,” Claude said, “to destroy the City, to claim the Source for himself. With that power at his disposal, he could reshape the nature of the universe to his whim.”
“So what’s his plan?” Stewart asked.
A female voice boomed through the hall. “That we do not know, but it begins with my daughter.”
It was as if a sun had emerged inside the dining hall.
A female flowed like liquid sunbeams down one of the grand staircases, but she could never be mistaken as human. She was nine feet of all the feminine beauty in the universe, wrapped into one form. A thick cascade of hair hung to her waist, the color of which varied with the angle of light.
Stewart couldn’t tell if she brought the light with her or emitted it herself, but her gown sparkled and rippled like liquid diamonds, so bright she was difficult to look upon. Motes of light circled her head like tiny moons. Her skin seemed to change color like her h
air, but it was only the colors he could perceive at any given moment, that much he knew. Her eyes gleamed with yellow-white light in a face that seemed to glimmer. Her beauty made his heart ache, his knees go weak. Her existence went as far beyond the concept of woman as sunlight was to a flashlight. Her shape was beyond mere form, her grace difficult to encompass, like the sway of a willow tree in a gentle wind made flesh. She was all the mysteries of the cosmos on two long legs.
Claude and Bob stood and bowed to her.
“My esteemed Queen,” Claude said.
Stewart and his family all jumped to their feet, chair legs skidding, and they bowed as well.
The Queen’s voice boomed with the music of stars and moons, oceans and waterfalls, birdsong and the laughter of children. “You are all welcome here, humans. We are delighted to see Claude and Bob have successfully shepherded you to the Light Realm.”
Bathed in the light of her beauty and the bottomless power of her gaze, Stewart couldn’t help but remember how he had almost fallen out of the Light Realm entirely. In her presence, he felt like a jumbled wad of dust bunnies, old wasps’ nests, javelina droppings, and cobwebs piled six inches high, useless and unwholesome.
Claude cleared his throat. “It was not a foregone conclusion that we would be successful, Your Universality.”
“Indeed, my Queen,” Bob said. “A mighty powerful dark elf dogged our track through the Borderlands.”
“And there were goblins on coyotes!” Cassie said. “With spears and crossbows and—”
Hunter shushed her.
“You shush!” Cassie said with one narrowed eye and a determined lower lip. She looked back at the Queen. “It was all terribly scary, but my daddy saved us.”
“I have no doubt he is a very brave man, my child,” the Queen said, amused, her voice like the ebb and swell of tides, of wind and soft rains. “For years we have watched him grow, laying the path for him someday to come to us.”
Frustration rose up in Stewart. No one had yet answered his most fundamental question. He kept his voice as even as he could. “Uh, may I ask why, Your Universality?”
“The Dark Lord has stolen my daughter,” she said, the sound of rain turning to thunderstorm. “For fifty of your years, he has held her, keeping her close to his bosom where nothing of the Light can touch her. He is hatching a scheme to destroy the Light. He steals her power and gives it to his minions. All the time, their probes come closer and closer to the Source. Our realm shrinks and the Dark Lord’s expands. Soon, he may have a way of sending a minion directly into the realm of Light. If he somehow absorbs all of her power, he may have the strength he needs to destroy us and bring all the universes to Darkness.”
“Are you certain she’s still alive? Wouldn’t she be grown up by now?” Stewart said.
The quirk of her lips revealed her patience with his ignorance. “If she were dead, I would know. We are bound, even though I cannot touch her or speak with her, a connection can be made.”
“If Dark beings can’t come here, how did they take her?” Stewart asked.
“That remains a mystery,” she said, her gleaming eyes flashing brighter. “All I know of her is that she is still a child, and that he keeps her in a cage, surrounded by molten rock, forced to protect herself from scorching heat every moment. The effort saps her power. And always he comes to corrupt her. Your question about eating the food of the Dark side was an apt one, Stewart, because the Dark Lord tries to feed her his blood.”
“Ew! Yucky!” Cassie said, her eyes full of horror at the picture the Queen had just painted.
The Queen’s magnificent eyes transfixed Stewart again, so that he looked away. “You are our best chance for saving her.”
“I’m just a guy from Small Town, Arizona.”
“Even so, Claude has told you of the power you possess. That alone is not enough, however. What you also possess are the skills needed and...the touch of Darkness. You can enter the Dark Realm and move about just as freely as you do here.”
“If there’s that much Darkness in me, how can you trust me?”
She gave him a long look as cold as the light of distant galaxies, as penetrating as cosmic rays, with a voice to match. “I have seen many futures. I have seen enough to know I have no choice but to trust you.”
The sound of it gave him fresh chills.
Claude spoke up. “You are also a locksmith, a blade smith, a metallurgist. The Queen’s daughter is in a cage with only one key in existence, and it is carried on the person of the Dark Lord himself. Stealing it from him would be impossible. But a new key might be made.”
“So, we’re going to make a key here and someone is going to take it into the Dark Realm and open your daughter’s cage?” Stewart said.
“No,” the Queen said. “The key can only be made in the Dark Realm, and it must be made by you.”
His mind reeled with the implications of everything she had just said. He was supposed to go into the Dark Realm, make a key to fit a lock he’d never seen before, on a cage surrounded by lava. It sounded like a suicide mission.
Cassie started to cry. “They’re going to hurt my daddy!”
Stewart circled the table, picked her up, and hugged her. “Nobody is going to hurt me, sweetheart.”
She sniffled against his neck. “They already did.”
“Shh, I’m fine, I’m fine.”
Her little arms encircled his neck and squeezed. Tears filled his eyes.
But at the same time, the thought of a little girl much like this one trapped in such a cage for fifty years, half-broiled by the heat of lava, filled him with the kind of anger that wouldn’t go away, the kind that built and built and built until he set it loose. People who abused kids deserved nothing but destruction.
Maybe the Queen had chosen the right guy for this job after all.
He put Cassie down and faced the Queen. “I have a great big pile of questions I need answered first. But I’ll do it.”
“Stewart!” Liz said. “Shouldn’t we talk about this?”
He nodded. “Yes, we should, but it won’t affect the decision.”
Moments passed as their eyes met. Then resolve settled behind hers. She nodded with understanding, recognition, knowing him better than anyone, but there was no acquiescence in it. “You’re right. And we have to come with you.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“You’re kidding, right?” Stewart said.
Liz shook her head gravely.
“I can’t take you and the kids!” he exclaimed. “Didn’t you hear anything they said?”
“I heard everything they said.” Liz kept her voice incredibly even. He knew that tone, used when she was exerting incredible self-control to remain steady while he was flying off the handle. “My love, my sweet Viking, you wouldn’t even be sitting here right now if it weren’t for me and the kids.”
“But—!” Then it hit him. He leaned against the table to support himself. Without her centering, calming, uplifting presence, he would have fallen out of the Light Realm, to be stuck in the mortal world—the Penumbra—without them.
The moment stretched and stretched, trapping him. He couldn’t take her and the kids into that kind of danger.
He straightened and looked up at the Queen—doing so directly took an effort of powerful will. “I am sorry, uh, Your Universality, but the deal’s off. I can’t do it.”
“Stewart—!” Liz said.
But he kept talking. “Liz is right. Without them, I couldn’t have gotten to the City at all. And I’m not going to walk up to Baron Tyrus’s doorstep with them. No way.”
The Queen’s voice rumbled like distant surf. “I see.”
“We’ll to have find another way,” Stewart said into an utter, interminable silence.
After a long, tense pause, Claude cleared his throat. “For fifty of your years, there has been Darkness growing in your world. The forces of greed and ambition turn the Earth into a wasteland, acre by acre. Goodness feels as if it is passing a
way into nostalgic memory. Kindness and compassion disappear under waves of hate, bigotry, and greed. A handful of people hoard wealth for themselves while the planet burns and millions starve. Mankind’s worst impulses are fueled and stoked and given rein by people positioned to profit from the rage.”
“So, you’re saying that this downhill slide began when the Princess was kidnapped,” Stewart said.
“Her very existence brings Light to all the Universes,” Bob said with a rhapsodic lilt to his voice. “Now, she is like a candle under a jar, slowly dimming, starving, until her light goes out forever. That will be soon.”
Claude went on, “If the Dark Lord is successful in siphoning all the power away from the Princess until she ceases to exist, your world will fall into an abyss of war and blood and degradation the likes of which has never been seen. Desperate men do desperate things, and enough nuclear weapons exist now to render the surface of the planet uninhabitable to life of any kind. Someone will use them first, sparking the final conflagration.”
The Queen’s voice rolled over them. “I have seen many futures where the Penumbral Earth is reduced to a poisonous cinder. Most of them, in fact, end this way. All of those possible futures are the result of my daughter’s cessation. The only way to prevent it is to save her. I have searched many, many timelines for others who might accomplish this. Only you have a chance. Others lack the skills, or the affinity for magic, or the force of will.”
“You think I have an affinity for magic?” Stewart asked.
“It is foolish of you to ask the question,” the Queen said. “Have you learned nothing?”
Stewart looked at his children, both staring at him with their innocent eyes and hopeful angelic faces. A bit of adventure in the mountains was one thing. But how could he knowingly take them into deadly peril?
Claude said, “We will protect you all for as long as we can.”
“Aye,” Bob said, “ye won’t be alone. Pooh has already agreed to—”