The Trials of Lance Eliot

by M. L. Brown

  “What’s going on?” I demanded, finding my voice. I sank into the other chair and fixed the man with what I hoped was an accusing stare. “Where am I?”

  “That is what I have come to explain,” said the man. He poured tea into a china cup and pushed it across the table. “You are confused, and we owe you an explanation.”

  He was in his late fifties, with a neat beard and gray hair tied up in a topknot. His features were unmistakably Asian. He would have looked just like a samurai if his expression hadn’t been so grandfatherly.

  “Are we in Japan?” I blurted. “Korea? China?”

  The man laughed. “I have never heard of these places. Tell me, Lance Eliot, from what world have you come?”

  I hadn’t the slightest idea.

  “What kind of a question is that?” I asked.

  “A simple one, I hope. What world are you from?”

  “I—I don’t know—the world—terra firma—Planet Earth!”

  “Ah, you come from Terra,” said the man, nodding sagely.

  “Where the devil am I?”

  “You have been summoned by magic to the kingdom of Rovenia.”

  “What?!” I yelled, standing up and knocking over my chair.

  “You seem to have spilled your tea,” said the man. “Allow me to pour you another cup.”

  “Rovenia?” I whispered. “Magic?”

  The man rose and set my chair upright. “Please sit down,” he said, returning to his own chair. “I have not introduced myself. My name is Kana Shoukan. You, of course, are Lance Eliot.”

  “I—yes, but—it can’t—it can’t be,” I stammered.

  “You are wondering why you are here?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Well,” he began, stroking his beard. “It is a long story. You were summoned by Maia Lufian, a Vocomancer-in-training.”

  “Vocomancer?”

  “Vocomancy is the kind of magic by which people or things are pulled from one place or dimension to another,” he explained. “Do you have any sort of magic in Terra?”

  “No,” I said. My head had begun to ache again.

  “Then I must tell you about magic as well. You see—what is it?”

  A man in a black uniform had entered the room. He saluted, glanced at me and said to Kana, “General Shoukan, the governor is asking for you.”

  “I apologize,” said Kana, setting down his teacup. “I must go.”

  “You’re a general?” I asked. “In the military?”

  “Yes, a general in the military,” he said with a laugh. “Age may have damaged my good looks, but it has not yet impaired my ability to give orders.” He became serious. “Please stay here. I will send someone to show you around the city. Lance Eliot, we are at your service. I will return as soon as I can, and then your questions will be answered.”

  He left the room. I sat rigidly in my chair for a moment, then drank my tea and stood. My legs were already steadier than they had been. I paced the room a few times, returned to my chair and put my head in my hands.

  I couldn’t believe it. Magic? Surely not. It made no sense—but then, nothing that had happened made sense. I took a few deep breaths. If I was going to figure this out, I had to be logical. Could this be a dream? I pinched myself hard, swore and concluded I was not dreaming. Could this be an elaborate joke? It was not likely. Nothing short of intense fever or strong hallucinogens could have induced my weird journey through swirling lights and shadows.

  Some clever fellow (I think it was either Aristotle or Sherlock Holmes) once remarked that once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. What other possibilities were there? I could think of none, but could it really be magic?

  At that moment my musings were interrupted by a knock.

  I rose from the table and opened the door, expecting another military officer. It was the young woman whom I had met earlier. “It’s you,” I blurted.

  “Here to serve,” she said. “Kana asked me to show you around. Please come with me.”

  I followed her along a corridor, up some stairs, into a parlor, up more stairs and through a door into sunshine. I sneezed repeatedly. As my blinking eyes adjusted to the light, I realized we were standing on a terrace. “Take a look,” said my guide with a sweep of her arm. I gave a final sneeze and looked.

  We stood at the summit of a great hill, upon which was built a beautiful city of stone. Rows upon rows of houses reached down to a great wall. Here and there were parks and gardens, splashes of green grass and yellow autumn leaves against the gray stone. Paved streets, connected by flights of steps, ran round and round the hill from its base to its peak. A lake lay beyond the city wall. Beyond the lake, ordered fields gave way to hills, which grew until they became mountains on the horizon.

  “Welcome to Faurum, the Golden City,” said the woman.

  A thousand thoughts rushed into my mind, but the first thing that slipped out of my mouth was, “Why the Golden City? It’s beautiful, but definitely stone-colored.”

  “Wait till the sun sets.”

  “So tell me, er….”

  “Maia,” said the woman. “Maia Lufian, Vocomancer extraordinaire.”

  “You are the one who brought me here. Why did you summon me?”

  “It was a mistake.”

  “A mistake?”

  “It’s a long story,” she said. “Kana can tell it better than I can.” She fell silent, pink with embarrassment and apparently unsure of what to say next.

  I changed the subject. “So what’s all this about magic?”

  She turned even pinker. “What about it?”

  “It’s…real?”

  Maia gave me an odd look, as though I had asked whether water was wet, and said, “Of course it’s real.”

  I’m not in the habit of fainting, but this revelation was enough to plunge me for the second time that day into a brief lapse of consciousness. I awoke to find Maia’s face a few inches from my own. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I croaked. Gripping the terrace railing, I lifted myself up and leaned against it, mumbling, “Magic…real magic…I can’t believe it.”

  Maia seemed puzzled. “You don’t have magic in Terra? What about Merlin?”

  “How the deuce do you know about Merlin?” I asked, feeling dizzy again. “Dash it all, how do you know about Terra? I had no idea that…this place….”

  “Gea.”

  “Eh?”

  “This world is called Gea.”

  “I had no idea Gea existed. Nobody could have known about it. So how do you know about my world? How do you know about Merlin?”

  “There’s a book about him,” she said, shrugging. “I summoned it from Terra. It was a fascinating read.”

  “Hold on a moment,” I said. “You could read the book?”

  “Yes.”

  I was silent for a moment, thinking. “Maia, how am I able to understand you? You’re not speaking English.”

  “Kana touched you,” she said simply. “He’s a Linguamancer; he can bestow the gift of tongues. When he touched you, he gave you the ability to understand and to be understood. Dear me,” she added, “I should be showing you around, shouldn’t I?”

  I followed in a daze as she crossed the terrace and descended a flight of spiraling iron steps to a walled garden. “This house belongs to our benefactor,” she said.

  “Benefactor?”

  “Tamu Baba. You’ll probably meet him. He’s a kind old dear.”

  “Of what is he the benefactor?”

  “Kana will explain,” she said. She opened a gate in the wall and ushered me through into the street. A rickshaw clattered by as she shut the gate, locked it and tucked the key into her sash. “So,” she said, “what do you want to see?”

  “Everything,” I replied.

  Maia grinned. “Let’s start with the marketplace.”

  We crossed the street and turned toward the market district. I stared at passersby.
They stared back at me. A few people pointed at my legs. Denim jeans were apparently an exotic sight in Gea. As we followed the pavement, rickshaws and bicycles rattled along the street beside us.

  My guide strolled on with her hands in her sleeves. Though she said nothing, she kept glancing sideways at me. I could tell she was desperately curious—wouldn’t you be curious, my friend, if you met someone from another world?—but didn’t want to offend by staring or asking rude questions. The silence was stiff and formal, and I soon broke it.

  “Tell me about magic.”

  Maia instantly forgot formality. “There are four disciplines,” she said, her face alight with enthusiasm. “There used to be more, but they’ve died out until only four are left. Some scholars think magic might even be disappearing completely from Gea. Anyway, the first of the four disciplines is Linguamancy, which you know about. There’s Curamancy, which is healing magic. Chronomancy, foretelling the future, is pretty rare. I doubt there are any Chronomancers alive in the world today. Then there’s Vocomancy, my discipline.”

  “How did you learn to use magic?”

  “Well, I—what are you grinning about?”

  “Could I learn to use magic?”

  Maia laughed. “I’m afraid not. Only mages can use magic.”

  “What are mages?”

  “People with natural magical ability.”

  “So only those born with magic can use it?”

  “That’s right. Sorry to dash your hopes.”

  “I’ll get over it,” I sighed. “How did you learn Vocomancy?”

  “I practiced by summoning things from other places in Gea. I started small because I didn’t have a teacher.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m the only Vocomancer to be born in about a century. Practice was the only way for me to learn. That’s why I’m not very good at it.” She turned pink again. “As I got a little better, I learned to summon things from other dimensions.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “All kinds of things. For some reason, summoning things from Terra was especially hard. For a few months, no matter how I tried, all I got were socks.”

  “So that’s where my socks disappear to,” I exclaimed. “I suspected the people at the Laundromat of pinching them.”

  Maia seemed confused, so I changed the subject again. “Are you quite sure only mages can use magic?”

  “Yes, though…no, never mind.”

  “What is it?”

  “People who can’t use magic can sometimes fake it.”

  This sounded promising. If true magic was beyond my grasp, I would settle happily for fake magic. “How does one fake it?” I inquired.

  “Don’t ask,” she said. The light had gone out of her face. “Lance, it’s a terrible thing to fake magic. People have imitated magic by twisting other forces to their will, but it’s wrong. It violates the way things are supposed to be. This fake magic is called Necromancy because ancient sorcerers used it to animate corpses.”

  It was my turn to blush. “I’m sorry for asking. I didn’t know there was any harm in it.”

  “Well, you had to find out sooner or later. Magic exists in some dimensions, but not in others. From what you’ve said, I’d guess magic doesn’t occur naturally in Terra. So if you hear of magic in your world, Lance, it must be either fraud or Necromancy. Unless….”

  I couldn’t help but ask, “Unless what?”

  “Well, there’s an exception to the rule,” she said, and smiled.

  My friend, there are things that defy description. The Skeleton’s grin, for example. No words of mine can convey the chilling insincerity of that dreadful expression. It was a Moriarty grin. It made strong men tremble and weak men faint.

  As I record my memories of my adventures in Gea, there are a few things I can’t quite put into words—apart from the Skeleton’s grin, I mean. Maia’s smile is one of those things. I’m afraid to try writing about it. Writers who try to write about smiles end up sounding like silly romantic poets.

  Her smile was confident, but not smug; confiding, but not sultry; sympathetic, but not condescending. It was a paradox, full of boyish charm and womanly beauty: the sort of smile that brings to mind phrases like “All things bright and beautiful.”

  Dash it, I sound like a silly romantic poet. Allow me simply to state, for the record, that Maia had the sweetest smile I have ever seen.

  “An exception to the rule?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “Miracles.”

  “What?”

  “Miracles,” repeated Maia. “Miracles are purer than magic, but only a few seers were ever capable of them. I’ve heard miracles can occur even in dimensions where magic doesn’t exist.”

  “I’m skeptical of miracles, but that’s no matter. How the deuce do you know all this? I mean, how do you know about my world? Nobody in my world knows about Gea.”

  “It’s all in the Book of El.”

  “And what is the Book—hang it all!” I cried, interrupting myself. “What in blazes is that thing?”

  I pointed at a large furry animal pacing down the street. It looked like an enormous breed of hound.

  “It’s a hund,” said Maia.

  “A what?”

  “A hund. Don’t you have hunds in Terra?”

  “Of course not,” I said, pressing closer and gazing in fascination. “That man is riding it like a horse.”

  “A what?”

  “A horse. Don’t you have horses in Gea?”

  “I’ve never heard of them.”

  We had entered the market district. The street was lined with wooden counters overhung with canopies of bright cloth. Merchants held out their wares as we passed, entreating us to buy. My nose was assailed by strong smells from every quarter. The delicate scents of jasmine and roses wafted from a nearby perfume stand, competing with the earthier smell of onions and garlic emanating from a stall across the street.

  A group of musicians in colorful clothes had settled into a niche between two stalls. Their music sounded like something from the heights of the Andes, wild and airy, with panpipes and charangos soaring above the rhythm of goatskin drums. A crowd had gathered round them. It took a couple of minutes to maneuver our way through without stepping on any feet.

  As we paused at a stall to examine a box of brass trinkets, the sunshine vanished. Dark clouds were rolling across the sky.

  We were about to move on when I was accosted—assaulted might be a better word—by a plump woman with spangled earrings. “You want a tapestry?” she asked, shaking a mass of dusty blue cloth in my face.

  “I don’t want a tapestry,” I said. “Do I look like a man who wants a tapestry?”

  “Finest quality silk,” said the plump woman.

  “Leave the poor man alone,” said Maia, trying not to laugh.

  “I have no use for a tapestry,” I said. “And no money.”

  The words no money had an instant effect on the plump woman, and she stalked—if a fat woman could be said to stalk—away.

  “I think I’ve seen enough of the market,” I said as raindrops speckled the stone at our feet. “We had better find someplace dry. Is there a pub nearby?”

  Maia made a face. “You like alcohol?”

  “I do.”

  “Would you settle for a cup of chocolate?”

  “I would.”

  We ducked into a bakery just as the rain became a downpour. The air was warm and smelled of bread and chocolate. The walls were lined with shelves crammed with bread. I saw long baguettes and fat round loaves and tiny buns dusted with sugar—bread of every size, shape and variety. Pastries were arranged on a table by the window. Their glaze shone in the light from the lamps. I began to salivate.

  I took a seat as Maia spoke with the owner of the bakery. I heard soft murmurs and the clink of coins, and then four marvelous words: “Lance, choose a pastry.”

  I shot from my chair like a stone from a sling. Selecting a single pastry was difficult. At last I
chose an apple tart, cast a longing glance over the other pastries and returned to the table. Maia was counting coins into a leather pouch.

  “May I see those coins?” I asked, holding out my hand. She placed the pouch in my outstretched palm and watched with amusement as I examined each coin.

  “The valor is our currency,” she said. “The copper coins are worth one valor; the silver, ten valores; and the gold, fifty valores.”

  The coins were about the size of American quarters, but a little thicker and a good deal heavier. Each bore an emblem on one side and an inscription on the other. “In the shadow of the throne, year seven hundred fourteen,” I read aloud. “Year seven hundred fourteen of what?”

  “Seven hundred fourteen years since the establishment of Rovenia,” said Maia. “Are you going to drink your chocolate?”

  I returned the coins and sipped my drink. “I was able to read the inscriptions on the coins,” I observed. “I suppose the spell Kana put on me lets me read Rovenian languages.”

  Maia snorted. “Spells are nonsense,” she said.

  “Then how do you use magic?”

  “The same way I raise my eyebrows or wiggle my fingers. It’s natural. It doesn’t take silly incantations.”

  I didn’t reply. A thought had just come to me like a thief in the night and robbed me of my appetite. I stared at my tart with a frown.

  “Something wrong?” she inquired.

  “I need to ask you something,” I said. “Something I should have asked the instant you opened the door to my room.”

  My friend, did you ever walk into a class in your school days and realize you had forgotten an important assignment? Do you remember that feeling of brutal shock that made your stomach turn cold and your face turn hot? As I sat in that cozy little bakery, I felt that same desperate panic.

  “What is it, Lance?”

  “Can you send me back to Terra?” I asked.

  Maia hesitated, but there was no lie in her eyes when she spoke.

  “I can.”

  “Thank God,” I said, deeply moved, and bit into my tart.

  The rain let up after twenty minutes, and the air was fresh and cool as we stepped out of the bakery. The city was even more beautiful after the rain. Afternoon sunlight gleamed on the wet stone and set it alight with sparks. “Where do you want to go next?” asked my guide.