by Jack Heckel
Valdara threw herself across the room and took the staff from his hand. “As long as I have breath in my body, it will be done,” she said, and kissed his brow.
It was all going exactly as I had hoped. I lessened the winds around her, letting her push toward me. Step by agonizing step she made her way across the room and up the stairs of the throne dais.
“This isn’t possible!” I roared, and widened my eyes in feigned confusion.
At last she was in front of me. I fell to my knees before the glowing staff. I held up a quavering hand and rasped, “Even if you destroy me now I will be reborn, and should your people grow weak, I will rise again.”
“We will never allow your evil to return, Dark Lord. Never!” Valdara shouted.
Make sure that you don’t, I thought.
She spun the staff and, as required by the legends I’d written, and called upon the mystic energies of the Seven Gods to help guide her blow. Her eyes burned with the fire of victory. I wanted to put on a good show for her, but found that I couldn’t muster even the fake anger necessary to glare back. It was time to go. I was tired, and it was time to go. I readied the spell of exit.
With a wordless roar Valdara thrust the staff at me. It struck me in the chest, right above my heart. There was no pain, but I screamed like a drama queen as I completed the spell of exit.
A light flashed and I watched as Valdara and Drake and then the world faded from sight. I was gone. The forces of Light had triumphed and the Dark Lord was defeated. I had saved them all, and my dissertation was complete.
Chapter 1
MYSTERIUM, MYSTERIUM!
With a flash of blinding light and a jarring sensation, best described as the feeling you might experience if your brain was yanked out through your ears, I materialized in Mysterium, or to be more specific, in experimental circle closet 12B in the basement of the Magus Nicholas Reingold Subworld Studies building on the campus of Mysterium University. I held my breath as the smoke from the ionized fazestone powder dissipated and felt the weight of true reality wrap around me like a blanket. I was home. I let out a deep and unexpectedly bittersweet sigh of relief.
What is Mysterium?
I have no idea. The truth is you would either have to be a scholar of obscure magical history or an etherspace physicist to even attempt an answer. Mysterium is and, as far as I know, always has been. I can tell you that if you think of all the infinite worlds and subworlds in the universe as points in a great spinning pinwheel, Mysterium is at its center. To be honest, that’s as much as you need to know unless you are fond of headache-inducing complexity.
Being the focal point of the universe, Mysterium’s reality is highly concentrated. For this reason, all true wizards and magi, come from Mysterium or those thirteen worlds that lay directly on its borders. People from these places are called “innerworlders” or “Mysterians.” By contrast, those worlds at the edge of my imaginary pinwheel have less concentrated realities. People from these far-flung realms are called “subworlders” and are, for the most part, never discussed in polite company—sort of like an embarrassing aunt.
I am an innerworlder from the same place you likely live, Earth. This is not because there aren’t other innerworlds you could be living in, but is more a reflection of the fact that my publisher hasn’t agreed to do an otherworld run of this volume. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
If you are from Earth you might be asking at this point, Wait, why don’t I know about Mysterium? You actually do, though you aren’t aware of it. If you have ever read great (and sometimes not so great) fantasy or science fiction literature, then you have read the echoes of works by some of Mysterium’s greatest magi: Bradbury, Zelazny, Heinlein, Wells, Clarke, Le Guin, Rowling, and, of course, Tolkien.
Their original writings on magical theory and practice, history, zoology, biography and so on have been transformed and propagated across the realities by subspace entanglement, and are usually mistaken for works of fiction. There was a Thom Briddle, and he did try to discover the secret of immortality, but splitting his soul seven times to do it? That’s nonsense. The spell he created did require him to cut off bits of his body—for some reason he picked fingers—and his friends had him institutionalized after number four. On the other hand, Pratchett’s works describing the cut-throat world of tenure at magical universities are chillingly accurate.
Another natural question is, Why are some people able to cross from the innerworlds into Mysterium? My honest answer is that I don’t know. Not to get all mystical, but people don’t find Mysterium; it calls to them. I myself had been three years studying in Oxford—Anthropology—and was walking down New College Lane, just passing under the Bridge of Sighs, when I noticed a little black door in the wall of a completely unremarkable red brick building. It is not that I had never seen this brick building or its black door before—there is an alley that runs along one side that leads to the Turf Tavern, which I am very familiar with—but I couldn’t say that I ever noticed the building or the door.
Whatever the reason, on this day I noticed the black door. Not only did I notice it, but I felt compelled to go up to it, open it, and go through it. And I found myself in Mysterium. More accurately, I found myself in Mysterium University’s admissions office, which is like most admissions offices in any world: puke-green walls, lots of cubicles, and filled with an atmosphere of stale paper and crushed dreams. Although the administration denies it, I think this is one of the tests for entry. If you can find the door, make it through the bureaucracy of the admissions office, and pass the requisite reality weigh-in (more on this later), then you’re in. It’s as simple as that.
Nor is the door off New College Lane the only way into Mysterium from Earth. I met a woman that found the door next to a pizza joint across the street from Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library. At least two of my friends found the door at various places along Bancroft Way in Berkeley. And one professor swears that he found the door to Mysterium in the bathroom of a bistro near the Ècole Normale Superieure in Paris. The only common threads seem to be proximity to a university and obscurity.
Now that you know how I got here and where we are in relation to where you are, I have to tell you that I’m not a big fan of my home world. I haven’t been back since winter break of my second year of novice school when I had a screaming row with my parents over my decision to piss away a perfectly respectable career in anthropology for magic, a position, which doesn’t seem unreasonable given the existence of “magicians” like David Blaine and Criss Angel. Frankly, I’m not sure that anyone in my family ever believed that Mysterium existed even though I brought home my letter of admission, my transcript, and my dirty laundry. The result is that I spend my breaks and holidays on campus or traveling the other innerworlds, and I don’t see myself returning to Earth unless compelled by a death in the family or expulsion.
And who am I?
My name is Avery Stewart, I am a fourth-year adept. An adept is the third and highest level of student at Mysterium University. And though I know a great deal of magic, I am still not a full magus, as my faculty advisor often reminds me. The magi say a novice does not know that he knows nothing, an acolyte thinks he knows everything, and an adept knows he knows nothing.
As for my major, I am a scholar of subworld evolutionary sociology, which is the study of subworld societies, and their creation and quite frequent destruction. And before you ask, I was standing in the middle of a magic circle in experimental circle closet 12B because I had just completed—successfully, I hoped—the last experiment in my dissertation study on “Subworld Self-Stabilization Through Extraworld Feedback Implantation.” Title notwithstanding, it would be a real page-turner with monsters, magic, and beautiful female warriors if not for the behavioral formulae, which really muck with the storyline.
I started to step out of the circle and stopped short, my foot inches from breaking the invisible plane of my runic cage. I considered the glowing field around me with suspicion. It would be
just like one of my “friends” to alter the circle or put some trigger spell on the floor so I would turn green for a week, or break out in weeping boils, or have my hands replaced with beer steins. (I swear that last one actually happened to a fellow I know, and it was three days before he could eat solid food.) Perhaps it isn’t fair to generalize, but, center of the universe or not, Mysterium is full of pricks—good-humored pricks, but pricks nonetheless.
Needless to say, I took a moment to study the little stone room and the magic circle that had been my umbilical to reality for the last . . . “Damn, how long have I been gone?” I asked aloud.
I tried to remember while I gazed about the room by the light of my still-glowing transport circle, and mumbled my calculations to the stale air. “I was . . . a year altering the histories and planting all the items . . . two trying to find someone as twisted as Morgarr to lead the Army of Dark . . . another five years gathering the hordes of monsters infesting Trelari together into an army . . .”
There was precious little space in here for anyone to hide. The whole room wasn’t more than ten foot to a side, and apart from the semi-pornographic graffiti that successive generations of acolytes and adepts had left on the walls, it was barren. A lopsided desk littered with half-used sticks of fazestone chalk and old diagrams of containment circles sat against one wall next to the door. From where I stood I could see that the lunch I’d been eating when I left was still there, which, along with the acrid smell of the lingering smoke, would explain much of the sour odor that seemed to fill the room.
“. . . three or maybe four years for Morgarr to capture the Eastern Hinterlands and the Amber Plains and begin his westward march toward the Golden Woods and the Jeweled Lands . . .”
Images sprang, unbidden, into my mind of what Morgarr’s armies had done to those beautiful lands and their peoples in my name. I shook them away, as I had so many times before. Experienced subworld magi will tell you that chaos and destruction in subworld is inevitable, and that allowing yourself to feel for the people is pointless and self-indulgent. They are probably right, but my hands were shaking again.
I distracted myself by considering the only other piece of furniture in the room: a much-abused wardrobe where I had stashed my regular clothes. The thought of my clothes—my boxers, jeans, and sneakers—reminded me of how uncomfortable the heavy dread cloak and six-inch platform boots were. I felt a sudden compulsion to be out of this costume and out of this room. I discarded caution and stepped out of the circle.
Despite my resolve, I tensed as I felt the brush of the containment spell pass across my body. My foot touched the floor. Nothing happened. Maybe my classmates weren’t as bad as all that. Maybe they’d taken pity on me. After all, I had been off-world for at least fifteen subworld years, which meant what in Mysterium time? I stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember the conversion factors.
Trelari, otherwise known as subworld 2A7C in standard Zelaznian coordinate space, is 10,876 worlds away from Mysterium. That meant I needed to apply a time conversion factor of . . . carry the three . . . 018, which in turn meant . . . “Three months!” I exhaled.
It had felt much longer, but the fact is I had completed my experiment with two weeks to spare. Something that might even impress my advisor, the very hard to please High Magus Eustace K. Griswald.
I crossed the room to the wardrobe and yanked open the door, feeling the warning tingle of power against my fingers too late. There was a flash of red light followed by a muted pop, and wisps of smoke began leaking out of the crack around the edge of the wardrobe door. Sighing deeply, I rested my head against the wooden cabinet.
“Damn.”
Of course they (whoever “they” were, and trust me, I would be making a list) had cursed the wardrobe. It was such an easy and obvious target. I was an idiot, a naïve idiot. I pulled the door open to inspect the damage. A cloud of dark thick smoke spilled out of the interior like vomit from a drunk. When it finally cleared, all that remained of my things was a light dusting of ash and a piece of unblemished white parchment floating in empty space on which was written:
BOW DOWN!
BOW DOWN, MYSTERIUM!
THE DARK LORD RETURNS!
Like I said before, they were pricks every one of them.
I snatched the piece of paper from the air and crumpled it into a ball. With a snarled curse, I whipped it across the room and into the circle where it disappeared in a flash of green and white light.
Had I been in my right mind, I might have contemplated the implications of this particular message making its way back to the subworld, but I was pissed, and the piece of paper, the circle, and Trelari had all been forgotten. My entire focus had turned to getting out of this damnable closet, getting back to my room, and getting drunk—and not necessarily in that order. I fumbled in my cloak for my reality fold, being careful to avoid touching Death Slasher, and pulled out the key to the solid-steel, triple-enchanted door to the closet, which has an ensorcelled lock to prevent people coming in and tampering with your experiment, but which is useless because the jerks in charge of the storeroom can be bribed to give out the spare keys for a pizza and a six-pack of beer.
I unlocked the door and stormed out, ready to unload my most colorful language at whoever was unfortunate enough to be standing there, but the hallway outside was empty. I looked up and down its dimly lit length. Nothing but gray and beige in both directions. Nobody was here.
I paused and listened.
There was a stillness that bespoke either a Mysterium-wide apocalypse, or the week before final exams. I turned to look at the chronometer mounted on the wall next to my door. It counted down the days, hours, and minutes left till my experiment was officially overdue, at which point Griswald would have had to come down into the bowels of the Subworld Studies building and yank me back into reality. Which, by the way, would also have been the moment my hopes of being raised to a magus would have officially ended. The glowing dials indicated seventeen days, six hours, and thirty-seven minutes remained. For a back of the hand calculation, I hadn’t been that far off, and it meant that I’d returned smack in the middle of exams.
“What a lucky break,” I announced to the empty hall.
Exams meant that all the novices and acolytes would be locked in their rooms feverishly studying and praying that they would be able to advance a year, and all the adepts, like myself, would be at the bars complaining about all the whiny novices and acolytes that were pestering them at study hall. In other words, as long as I avoided the libraries and bars, the grounds would be deserted.
“Who knows,” I mused aloud, “I might make it across campus with minimal humiliation.”
I reached out to zero the clock, which would signal that I had returned, but my hand froze in place. I drew it back and considered. If I was officially logged back into Mysterium, Gristle (we all call Griswald that if we think he’s not around) would want to go over my matrix implantation experiment right away. His interworld grant was up for renewal in a few weeks and he would be waiting on my results to complete his report. This would mean days spent sitting in his office going over my notes and having to listen to his asthmatic imp, Harold, wheezing away.
It would also mean reliving my time as the Dark Lord in detail, perhaps even under the compulsion of one of Gristle’s searingly thorough memory recall spells. For some reason, the thought of the inquisition to come made my insides churn and the gorge rise in my throat. I took a couple of deep breaths and let my stomach settle while I considered my alternatives. I could take a few days to go over my notes, maybe deal with the ax, and revive myself with some much needed diversion.
“What would be the harm?” I asked aloud to the empty hall. “And who would be the wiser?”
The decision was made in the time it took me to relock the closet. I tucked the key in my reality fold, and snuck out a little used side door and into the cool dark of a lovely fall evening.
Once outside, I dispensed with stealth in favor of s
peed and aggression. I decided that a six-foot-five man (remember I still had those damned boots on) wearing, conservatively, twenty yards of dread cloak, and sporting a face that can only be described as equal parts hideous and gruesome would be noticed less if he was striding purposefully down the middle of the sidewalk than he would be skulking around the shadows.
I needn’t have worried. The grounds of the university were nearly deserted. The few people I did pass were either too engrossed in their books or too drunk to notice me. I used the unexpected solitude to enjoy the sights by the light of Mysterium’s triple moons.
I suppose I should take this opportunity to try to describe the world I call my home. Mysterium rises out of the mists of a folded rocky land of indeterminate dimension. It is difficult to say where the university ends and the countryside begins, or, for that matter, where the countryside ends and another reality begins. All that one can say for certain is that at the heart of Mysterium lies the university: a chaotic jumble of buildings and towers and campanulas and plazas and amphitheaters and statutes of every imaginable size and shape, crisscrossed by a dizzying maze of broad avenues and narrow cobbled alleys and dead ends and tunnels and bridges, and woven through with galleries of ancient, soaring trees and vast lawns and sweet-smelling gardens, and hidden courtyards with trickling fountains. It really is a remarkable place.
When was it built? Who built it? I can’t say. I have never seen a building under construction or undergoing repairs. Perhaps they grow out of the land itself. An organic origin would make the most sense, because the architecture of the place defies rational explanation and good taste. This is not to say that the buildings lack traditional form. In fact, nearly every architectural school from any era is represented, but no matter what “style” of building, every one of them incorporates certain Gothic elements, even where those elements are wildly inappropriate. Take for instance the gargoyles that sprout wart-like from the otherwise clean lines of the art deco Novice Health Center, or the stained-glass windows that sheathe the twenty-story steel tower of the Theoretical Metaphysics building, or the absurd flying wings that unnecessarily buttress the severely modernist concrete block that is my own Subworld Studies building. Still, even when a building seems hideous, everything fits into the tapestry of the whole so admirably that one cannot imagine replacing the monstrosity with anything else.