by M. L. Brown
“Wherever you want to take me,” I said.
After a moment of deliberation, Maia led me to the famed Academy of Faurum. Then we visited the governor’s palace, the municipal gardens, two museums and a park. Twilight fell as we meandered through the park, and by the time we stopped to rest on a bench the sky had darkened from the blue of a robin’s egg to the purple of an amethyst.
It may have been the strain of interdimensional travel, or merely the anxieties of the day taking their toll. Whatever the reason, I fell asleep within a minute of sitting down.
Maia shook me gently until I woke. “I think we’d better get back to Tamu’s house,” she said.
I yawned. “Dash it, couldn’t you have just let me sleep?”
“If I had, you’d have woken up tomorrow with a nice coating of frost. Winter’s close, you know.”
I stood and stretched. The air had turned cold. It was a relief to arrive at the house and find its windows bright with firelight.
I ought to take a moment to describe the house. It was large, almost palatial, with red roof tiles and green ivy clinging to the walls. As we faced it from the street, the terrace on which we had stood earlier jutted from its right side. There was a corresponding terrace on the left side. A garden ran around the house, cut off from the street by a wall.
As I stood gazing at the house, Maia cleared her throat. “Here you are,” she said.
“Thanks for the chocolate,” I said. “Thanks especially for the good company.”
“Goodnight,” she said. “I’ll see you again soon.” With that she strolled down the street and disappeared into the night.
3
LANCE ELIOT’S QUESTIONS ARE ANSWERED
I STEPPED UP TO the door and knocked. It was opened by an elderly servant with a gray mustache and the bushiest eyebrows I have ever seen. “You are Master Lance Eliot?” he inquired.
I nodded.
“Please come this way,” he said. “General Shoukan is expecting you in the study.”
I followed the servant into a room that had a fire blazing in the hearth. Built into the wall around the fireplace were shelves and shelves of books. A table was set with a jug of milk, a bowl of fruit and a plate of sandwiches. Kana sat near the fire, resting his feet on a cushion and reading a book bound in red leather.
“Welcome back,” he said, standing and returning the book to the shelf. “Please refresh yourself. Did you enjoy your walk?”
My mouth was already stuffed with sandwich, so I nodded.
“Your appetite has returned,” he observed as I tore into a second sandwich with the politesse of a starving wolf. “When you have finished eating, it would please me to answer any questions you may have.”
“I have three questions for you,” I said two sandwiches later. “First of all, why is the technology in this city so mixed-up?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Your technology is mixed-up, anachronistic, out of order. Some of your things seem fairly modern—clocks and bicycles and whatnot. But the rest of them are old. You’re still using swords, for heaven’s sake. This city is like something out of the Renaissance, with bits of medieval Europe and Asia sprinkled in for good measure. Why is your technology such a jumble?”
Kana didn’t have an answer, but it later occurred to me there was no reason the technology of Gea should develop along the same lines as our own. Why shouldn’t they invent bicycles before guns?
I asked my second question. “Why is your culture so eclectic? It’s more mixed-up than your technology, and it’s bizarrely familiar. I saw things while walking with Maia that made me think of a dozen different countries. It was the same with the people. The people in the marketplace looked as though they came from all over the world: Asian, European, Hispanic, African, even a fellow who looked Hawaiian.”
Kana listened politely, but it was obvious he understood hardly a word of what I was saying.
“Shouldn’t this world have developed its own cultures and ethnicities?” I asked. “Why do they seem so familiar to me?”
Kana chuckled. “I am no anthropologist, yet I may have an answer for you. We must go back to the dawn of the history of Gea.”
“Wait a moment,” I said. “If it’s a history lecture, it can wait for a time when I’m not so sleepy. But I want an answer to my third question tonight.”
“What is your third question?”
“Why am I here?”
With a groan, Kana lowered his feet from the cushion and sat upright. A melancholy had settled on him, and the firelight danced in his eyes as he pondered his answer.
“It began with the death of our king,” he said, and launched into one of the strangest stories I ever heard.
After many years of conflict and political infighting, a wise and good-hearted man named Victor Bonroi rose to the throne of Rovenia. His reign was a success and he was blessed in his old age with a son. All but one man rejoiced.
This man, a corrupt noble called Senshu, was a prominent member of the Assembly, which (as far as I understood) was something like Parliament. Using bribery, blackmail and murder, Senshu gained control of the Assembly and then—almost too quickly for anyone to react—poisoned the king. Upon securing the throne, he threatened the witnesses into silence and forced the newspapers to print a false account of the king’s death.
At this point in Kana’s story, I interrupted him to ask, “What about the son?”
“Murdered,” replied Kana. “The royal line was ended, and Senshu no longer had any rival.”
Senshu became a dictator, erecting statues of himself throughout the kingdom and forcing the newspapers to print his propaganda. When he wasn’t extorting taxes and bullying the Assembly, he could be found gorging himself at banquets and drinking himself insensible at parties. A notorious womanizer, he stirred outrage by abducting young women for his harem. Trade with neighboring kingdoms came to a standstill. The military dwindled to a band of degenerate ruffians. Rovenia languished.
Kana, a captain in the Rovenian Legion, had been commissioned to a lonely eastern outpost with a handful of men. Unwilling to disrespect the royal authority, he performed his menial duties diligently for ten years. Then he heard rumors of raids on southern towns and dispatched scouts to investigate. He was informed the Nomen were crossing the southern border and attacking isolated communities.
Once again, I broke into Kana’s story with a question: “What are Nomen?”
“I forgot you are a stranger in our world,” he said. “Forgive me. Tribes of savages dwell in the mountains between Rovenia and the southern kingdom of Weit. We call them the Nomen. If they have a name for themselves, we have not heard it. They live in mountain caves like beasts, living on whatever they can hunt or steal. Their customs are primitive, their idols bloodthirsty, their disposition cruel.”
I was indignant. “If the Nomen are trapped in poverty and primitive conditions, it’s little wonder they’re cruel and bloodthirsty. Hasn’t anyone tried to help them? Rovenia seems pretty well off. Haven’t you sent ambassadors or something?”
Kana bowed his gray head. “We sent five ambassadors many years ago. They went loaded with gifts, empowered by Linguamancy and overflowing with goodwill. They did not return. Our scouts later found their heads impaled on pikes.”
“What did you do?”
“We did nothing. We are soldiers, not butchers. An ambassador was sent to Weit to discuss the problem, and it was agreed that the mountains between our kingdoms would belong to the Nomen. No citizen of either kingdom would travel or settle there. If the Nomen asked for conciliation, we would offer conditions for a truce. If they remained in the mountains, we would leave them alone. If they attacked, they would be repelled without mercy.”
When Kana learned the Nomen were raiding Rovenia, he rode for the capital city of Valdelaus to petition Senshu for an army. He delivered his request and awaited the king’s reply. It came in the form of a dozen soldiers who broke down his door, accused him of high treaso
n and arrested him in the name of His Sovereign and Exalted Majesty King Senshu.
The soldiers marched him to the prison and left him under guard in an anteroom while they made arrangements for his imprisonment and subsequent execution. They left only two men to guard their prisoner, which was a grave oversight. I wouldn’t have made their mistake. Though old and a little stout, Kana had an air of calm power about him, like a bomb that could set itself off at any moment.
As he sat with his hands tied, he slipped off one of his boots and kicked it through a window. His captors were distracted by the shattering glass, and he managed to subdue them and escape. He sought refuge with a chap named Atticus, who smuggled him out of the city and helped him flee to Faurum. The governor of Faurum was an old friend. After much discussion, they decided to do the only reasonable thing: form a Resistance and defend the kingdom themselves.
The governor knew a retired merchant who might be willing to fund their cause. Kana met the merchant, a gentleman named Tamu Baba, and received his wholehearted support.
The next step was to assemble a military force. The king had discharged from the Rovenian Legion most of its honorable soldiers; it was a simple matter to find and recruit them. The militia of Faurum, while alleging loyalty to Senshu, also became part of the Resistance. The governor kept the Resistance hidden and informed.
“All seemed to be going well,” said Kana. “The Nomen had no more discipline than beasts and were driven easily away. Weeks became months; months stretched to years. Almost a decade passed. I began to hope the crisis was over. But I was mistaken. It had not begun.”
To the south of Rovenia lay the peaceful kingdom of Weit; to the north, the proud kingdom of Tyria. The eyes of the Resistance were turned toward the south, leaving the northern border unguarded. Its negligence cost the kingdom dear. Tyrian soldiers began to raid the north. Villages were burned, property looted and citizens abducted into slavery.
Though more civilized than the Nomen, the people of Tyria were no less savage. It was a Spartan society in which war and conquest were considered high virtues. However, there was one crucial difference between the Tyrians and the Nomen—the Tyrians could be reasoned with. Kana dispatched ambassadors to Tyria and spread his forces as carefully as he could along the northern and southern borders.
The ambassadors returned with grim news. Tyrian officials had received them hospitably, listened patiently to their grievances and told them politely to go to hell. An invasion was imminent. The Resistance could only maintain the kingdom’s frail defenses and hope. At the governor’s suggestion, couriers were sent to warn the citizens of the northern and southern regions. Few took the warning. Many died.
At that time pirates began to raid villages on the western coast. Already stretched to the breaking point, the Resistance watched in agony as the kingdom began to crumble. The king did nothing helpful, maintaining an illusion of peace in the heart of the kingdom by bribing newspapers to withhold news of the violence on the borders.
“I can hardly believe it,” I said. “The city seemed so peaceful when I was out walking with Maia. It didn’t seem like wartime.”
Kana sighed, and for a moment I glimpsed a tired old man behind the façade of the mighty general. “The city is peaceful because there is no war,” he said. “There are only dark rumors of trouble on the borders, and gossip about the wicked Resistance that has risen to oppose His Sovereign and Exalted Majesty King Senshu.”
“What happened next?”
“We clung to our last shreds of hope. Then hope failed.”
“Were you attacked by another enemy?”
“We were besieged on three sides, as you know: Tyria to the north, the pirates to the west and the Nomen to the south. There was only one side of the kingdom not under siege, and I felt a morbid premonition that some enemy would attack from the east. I was not so far wrong. I received a report of a shadow over the eastern border.”
“What do you mean?”
“Darkness, Lance Eliot: a preternatural Darkness through which one can hardly see one’s hands before one’s eyes. Where the Darkness has fallen, forests have withered. Springs and rivers that flowed with water now flow with poison. The few scouts who ventured into the Darkness returned with stories of ghastly visions and hellish noises. It is spreading slowly westward, a blight, an infection.”
“What are you doing to stop it?”
“Nothing,” said Kana. “We do not know what to do.”
I felt sick: literally, physically sick. The city with its beautiful gardens and splendid buildings was a sandcastle before a rising tide, doomed to destruction by savages or pirates or soldiers or the Darkness that withered forests and drove men mad.
My friend, when I began writing this story I resolved to tell it honestly. I can see now that it won’t be easy. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. The worst of them play a part in my story. This is a tale of confession as much as anything.
I wanted to escape. To blazes with Rovenia, to blazes with the innocent people who would die. I wanted to go back to Oxford and forget the whole thing. I would have gladly given anything, anything, to return to Terra in that moment. I was afraid, but my fear isn’t the thing of which I’m ashamed.
You see, I had always considered myself a decent bloke. A bit lazy, perhaps; slightly dishonest, maybe; an incurable tippler, certainly; but still the sort of fellow who would shine like polished gold when the world needed me. When the first hint of trouble came, however, the only thing I could think about was my own wretched skin. I saw two choices before me, cowardice and decency—and chose cowardice.
“Kana,” I said, standing. “I want to go back to Terra. Where’s Maia? She said she could send me back. I want to go back.”
“Lance Eliot,” said Kana very gently, “please sit down. There is something you must know.”
“What, dash it?” I cried, flinging myself back into my chair.
“Maia does not have enough magic to send you back.”
How can I convey my desolation at these words? I was too devastated to be angry. I could only hold my head in my hands, babbling, “This can’t be—send me back—dash it all to blazes—this isn’t my home—I don’t belong here.”
“Lance Eliot.”
I realized with a shock that Kana was smiling.
“I fear you have misunderstood,” he said. “Forgive me for not speaking clearly. What I meant is that Maia does not have enough magic to send you back yet. She exhausted her power when she brought you here, but in a month she will have recovered the strength to return you to Terra.”
“So I’m not stuck here?” I asked, hardly daring to hope.
“Not at all,” said Kana. “You are only waylaid a short while.”
I suddenly felt very, very tired.
Leaning back in my chair, I took several deep breaths and said, “You still haven’t answered my question. Why the devil am I here?”
“You needed to know our situation before I could answer that,” said Kana, folding his hands like a statue of the Buddha. “One day a young lady marched into my office and asked to see General Shoukan. I introduced myself and asked how I could be of service. ‘My name is Maia Lufian,’ she declared, ‘Vocomancer extraordinaire. I have heard of your Resistance and want to help.’
“I was skeptical. To the best of my knowledge, Vocomancy had died out more than a century before. I told my visitor that her services were not needed and dismissed her. But she did not go. ‘What is your favorite food?’ she inquired. I told her to leave, but she stood unmoved and repeated the question. Exasperated, I told her the food I liked most was fresh bread.
“A loaf of bread materialized before my very eyes. ‘Would you like some honey?’ she asked, and a pot of honey appeared upon my desk beside the bread. ‘Or some jam?’ A jam jar joined the picnic. I was persuaded. Maia Lufian joined our Resistance.”
“But how was she going to help?” I asked. “What did you hope to summon?”
“Not what, Lance Eliot, bu
t whom. Our plan was to summon heroes, men of renown and valor, whose power we might use.”
“So whom did you summon?”
Kana blushed, and his resemblance to the Buddha vanished. He looked more like a schoolboy caught smoking in the loo.
“Maia and I discussed whom we might summon,” he said, hesitating. “I gave her the gift of tongues through my magic so that she might read books from other worlds in search of heroes. She proposed a noble knight from a land called La Mancha.”
My breath caught in my throat. “You—you didn’t try to summon Don Quixote.”
Kana said nothing, but his expression was eloquent. I burst into laughter. “Let me guess what happened,” I said when I had recovered my breath. “The great Quixote was a senile fool.”
“Maia sent the man back to La Mancha. Her magic was almost exhausted, but she insisted she was strong enough for a final attempt.”
I no longer felt like laughing. “You tried to summon Lancelot, didn’t you?”
“You are correct.”
“But Maia summoned me. Not Lancelot. Why did she—wait a moment.” I felt the blood rush from my head as the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. “No, you can’t be serious.”
“Lance Eliot sounds rather like Lancelot, does it not? When she tried to summon the one, the other came instead. You were brought here by mistake.”
All was silent for a moment.
“Are you well?” asked Kana. “You are pale.”
“I’ll be fine,” I mumbled. “What will happen to me now?”
“If it is agreeable to you, you will remain in Faurum until Maia has recovered enough magic to send you back to your own world. Tamu Baba has offered you a bedroom in this house and a weekly stipend of five hundred valores. Consider it an unworthy compensation for the inconvenience we have put upon you.”
It’s amazing, truly astounding, how quickly a chap can bounce from the depths of despair to the heights of happiness. My wish for a long holiday was granted. I would enjoy a month of comfort, entertainment and good food before returning to Oxford and resuming life where I had left off. As the dangers besetting Rovenia no longer affected me, I’m ashamed to confess, I didn’t give them a second thought.