The Dark Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “That’s awful,” I blurted out, unable to contain my horror at what he was saying, and the matter-of-fact way he was saying it.

  “We play the cards we’re dealt,” he said with a shrug. “We’re tryin’ to save a world, laddie, and that don’t come easy. It’d be best to remember that.”

  Although cruder in phrasing, it was in essence the same thing Griswald had said to me before I’d left. I knew he meant well and that it was good advice, but I was finding it harder and harder to accept.

  “As for the ball bearings,” he said, throwing up a second finger, “we have a rogue in the group. Do you, of all people, expect a rogue to go out adventurin’ without a sack full of ball bearings and a bit of string?”

  I started to answer “yes” when I recalled that I had purposefully included a number of bizarre items in the initial starting equipment requirements of my spell as control variables so I could easily recognize my “Heroes” from other random adventurers. The idea was that if I ran across a group that had members with a combination of certain items, I would know that they must be under the influence of the spell—or psychedelics. “No,” I said uncertainly as I tried to recall if ball bearings had been one of my controls.

  “Certainly not,” he said with a wheezing laugh.

  I thought about my conversation with Rook earlier about “disrupting the pattern of things.” I had to stop obsessing about the details, or I would break the spell’s hold over us and then I’d be in real trouble. I didn’t have the time to try this all again. This group . . . fellowship was my only chance. I had to get it right on the first go, which meant not interfering every time someone did something I didn’t understand.

  I left the dwarfs to their packing and retreated to my mount. If I was witnessing my reality matrix spell in action, which seemed a reasonable assumption at this point, then if taken with the proper level of detachment, the whole exercise might be quite fascinating. I gazed out over the milling group with an experimentalist’s eye looking for patterns. It did not take me long to start seeing them—they were all around.

  Some of the patterns were random in their specificity. As Drake had been saying, each of the horses, including my own, was burdened by a long pole, the purpose of which defied understanding.

  Some of the patterns were bizarre, like Seamus’s repeated attempts to press packets of incense and a little box with a coin slot in the top on Drake, and Drake’s own firm refusal to take them. Ultimately, it fell to Valdara to relieve Seamus of the items and stuff them into her own pack.

  Some of the patterns made no sense. Sam, the little fellow in the big robe, was running back and forth between Rook and Seamus asking, “What about my spell book? I need it so I can write down any spells that I learn. I forget them otherwise. I also need a pouch for my components: my pins, my feathers, my glass beads, my bat fur, my . . .” His list went on and on, and when they finally found a pouch for his “components,” he seemed satisfied with it even though it couldn’t possibly hold everything he’d mentioned.

  As I watched, I contemplated the question of free will. How much free will did the other members of my company . . . fellowship, whatever, have? Did they ever ask themselves why they were doing the things they were doing or why the things that were happening to them were happening?

  I had come to no conclusion that did not make me feel guilty when Drake asked in a loud voice, “Well, Avery, where do we go first?”

  In an instant, dozens of eyes were staring at me. I silently thanked Eldrin, because absent my talk with him I would have had no answer to the question, and I would have just sat there looking dumb. Instead, I rose in my stirrups. “Fellowship members, we begin our quest with a single focus. We must find a weapon of great power that mystic divinations have revealed to me is the one item that can destroy the Dark Queen.”

  I paused dramatically. It was a pretty good moment. I saw a few of the group members hold their breath. Then I realized I didn’t have anything else to say. That was all I knew. I stood there in my stirrups looking dumb, desperately trying to find more words.

  “What sort of weapon, laddie?” Rook asked with a tap of his foot. “I’m hangin’ on yer every word, but my grip’s startin’ to slip.”

  “It . . . it . . .” I tried to remember everything Eldrin had said, and could only remember two things. “It’s a battle-axe.” I said confidently.

  He had better be right about that, I swore to myself.

  “The . . . the twin of Death Slasher, Morgarr’s dread weapon,” I said less confidently, since it probably looked nothing like Morgarr’s weapon.

  “What is the name of this dread weapon?” someone from the back asked with a shout. He was wearing red so I figured it was okay for me not to know his name.

  “Its name?” I asked in response, and then in a flash of inspiration said, “I mean, its name is shrouded in deep mystery. To find the name of the weapon and its resting place we will first have to seek a seer who can probe the mysteries of the far ancient past. A being of such profound wisdom and—”

  “Could it be Justice Cleaver?” asked the young man I was pretty sure was named Sam.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Justice Cleaver,” he repeated.

  “You know, the ancient weapon of the mythical ranger Mythran,” said a young elven woman I may have recalled from the previous evening.

  “I’ve heard of this weapon,” Valdara said with surprise. “It was lost long ago . . .”

  “Somewhere in the wastes beyond the Vaporous Mountains!” Seamus shouted, and he looked simply thrilled to have had something to contribute .

  “Right! So we ride to the Vaporous Mountains!” I shouted, pointing dramatically down the road to the horizon.

  “Aren’t they to the west?” Drake asked.

  “Yes,” I said, and spun my arm around to point back through the village.

  With that the Company of the Fellowship, as we would later become known, began its quest to defeat the most dangerous force in Trelari, a third-year acolyte student named Vivian.

  Chapter 12

  OF MOONSONG AND MADNESS

  We put the town of Blightsbury at our back and headed into the woodland on its outskirts. I would like to tell you that it was pleasant to ride through the woods, with the murmur of the leaves on the trees and the birds chirping overhead, but I can’t. This was not to say that the leaves were not murmuring, or that the birds were not chirping. Maybe they were, but I don’t remember any of it.

  You might have wondered why it is that I didn’t know a lot about the details of Valdara and her original company’s quest against the Dark Lord, or how it is I didn’t go insane living for all those years as that selfsame Dark Lord, or why I didn’t look like I’d aged fifteen years when I returned to Mysterium. The answer is the Time Dilation Trance, and it is one of the first things they teach you when you’re preparing to go into a far distant subworld. The idea is that you place yourself into a bubble of dilated time so you don’t have to live through all the tedious years of subworld life you would otherwise experience.

  It didn’t take me long on the trail—maybe an hour or so—before I put myself into one. I know that there are those who love the idea of being atop a horse with adventure ahead, but I’m not one of them. In general, being outdoors, with the bugs and the sweating and the constant rocking motion of the horse, is not my idea of fun. Also, my companions kept trying to talk to me about the quest, which I didn’t want to do. First, I had very little idea about what we were doing or where we were going. And second, every time someone new came up to talk to me all I could think about was whether and when they were going to die, which is as depressing as it sounds. What snapped me out of my self-induced daydream was the music.

  There I was, riding along and happily ignoring everything, when I noticed that I had this song stuck in my head. It was a soft, instrumental tune that kept intruding its way into my consciousness.

  Eventually I could ignore it no longer and decided
to wake long enough to ask Valdara and Drake about it, and about whether, somewhere in the back of our overly large party, there might be a bard or a minstrel hiding. I won’t repeat what they said in reply, but after ripping me a new one for having not spoken a word for a week (time does fly in the TDT), both agreed it sounded like something Mad Jarl might once have complained about. I took that to mean that they could not hear it. This meant only one of two things: I was either going Jarl, or for some reason music was actually playing in my head. It was time to consult with Eldrin, something I’d been trying to do day and night since our last conversation with no success.

  I reined my horse to a stop and pretended to relieve myself. Okay, the relieving myself part was real, but I did plan the timing so that when I got back on my horse I was at the rear of the company. Once I was sure everyone was out of earshot, I pulled my cloak around me and hunched over the communication medallion.

  “Eldrin, can you hear me?” I whispered.

  “No, he can’t,” Dawn responded. “And why are you whispering?”

  “Because I’m not alone and I don’t want to look like a crazy person,” I answered irritably. “Where is Eldrin?”

  “He went to the little boys’ room. Do you want me to go get him?”

  “Yes,” I answered bluntly. “I need to know why I’m hearing music in my head.”

  “Riiiight, she drawled. “I’ll be right back.”

  Dawn never came back. I was beginning to worry that we were in another one of Eldrin’s communication eclipses when I realized that I was not alone, and that I was no longer in a mindless trance. The girl. The pretty elven girl. The pretty, petite elven girl with the wavy brown hair, hazel eyes, and fine features. The one with the bow on her back and the knives in her boots and whose name I could not remember. She was riding alongside me.

  I knew that I’d been introduced to her the night before we left, and based on the way she fell straight into a conversation, I assumed we had spoken, or at least she had spoken to me, at some point over the past week. I was trying to sort out how to get her to tell me her name without letting on that I was doing so when she asked, “Who were you talking to just now?”

  “What?” I said in response, not because I didn’t hear the question, but because I needed time to invent a lie to tell her. Luckily she was way ahead of me.

  “I was wondering if you were muttering spells to yourself,” she answered so brightly that it made my teeth hurt. “Sam always seems to be reading that book of his and muttering. I thought maybe it was a wizard thing.”

  “And so it is,” I answered quickly. “You know us wizards, always talking to ourselves.”

  “I do know,” she said with an understanding nod. “I’m a sorceress myself. The Moonsong family has spellcasters going back four generations to when the land was young and the trees still spoke their dreams on the wind.”

  I replied to her revelation about the Moonsong family with something innocent. “Oh, I thought you were a rogue. You got the bag of marble things from Seamus.” Out of everything I had remembered this fact, because it was too random to forget.

  Innocent as the comment seemed to me, I clearly struck a nerve. Her face fell and she said quietly, “I wasn’t supposed to be a rogue. I keep trying to do other things, but I am always drawn back into the shadows.”

  I immediately sensed a story. A story I had no intention of hearing, particularly as I assumed my spell was what kept guiding her away from magic and into thievery. “That’s interesting, but—” I began.

  “Oh yes,” she said, talking eagerly over my attempted escape. “My background is very interesting and detailed. Would you like to hear it?”

  There was something borderline maniacal in her eye as she asked. Only a fool could fail to see how eager she was for me to hear her life’s story. I was no fool. I shook my head and said, “Sorry, Moonsong, I have to go . . .”

  I never got a chance to finish my apology as she began what would turn out to be a two-hour monologue about herself. And it all began with, “My name is Ariella Moonsong . . .”

  That is how I learned Ariella’s name, and it’s about the only thing I remember from her story apart from the fact that through a series of the most bizarre incidents and coincidences she kept finding herself needing to pilfer this or that, and always for the best of reasons. Afterward, I put myself back into a trance to avoid hearing, or at least remembering, any more stories. I know it sounds cowardly, because it is, but I also know that it would have driven me mad to have become fully aware of the extent to which I had mucked with these people’s lives.

  I was still in my Moonsong-induced trance when Eldrin called back. “Avery?”

  “Eldrin!” I shouted, and awoke to the fact that the better part of a day had passed. It was evening and we were all seated around a fire in a lovely glade.

  Every head spun to look at me and I heard Ariella whisper something to Sam about the eccentricities of wizards. I made a quick apology and sprinted for the darkness of the surrounding trees. When I was far enough away, I hissed, “Eldrin? Where the hell have you been?”

  “In the bathroom,” he answered. “Why?”

  “What are you talking about? That was hours ago,” I protested.

  “No, it wasn’t. I . . .” he began to say, and then I think we both realized that with the different rates of time, minutes for him would of course be hours for me. Simultaneously we muttered, “Damn.”

  “Looking on the bright side,” he said, “we can use this to give us a rough measurement of how far your world has slipped toward Mysterium. What time is it there?”

  I saw that the shadows under the trees had grown considerably darker, and that what light there was had taken on a distinctly evening colored pallet. “It’s almost sunset.”

  “Great,” he said, and I heard the scratching of a pencil on paper. “I left for the bathroom right after you hung up on me, which you should stop doing by the way. That was twenty minutes ago, which means—” I heard more scratching “—Trelari has slipped again, I’m afraid.”

  I started to respond and then something he’d said struck me. “Wait, you were in the bathroom for twenty minutes? What the hell were you doing in there? Let me guess, you were doing your hair.”

  He said nothing, which confirmed it. There was only one reason for Eldrin to do his hair. “Are you trying to put the moves on Dawn?” I asked incredulously.

  “We’re just going to dinner,” he mumbled, and then added more confidently, “to talk about the best way to find your battle-axe.”

  This was too good to be true. “Dinner?” I said with enough melodrama for a Mexican novella. “I can’t believe you’re trying to hook up with the friend of the woman that is currently in the process of ruining my life. Have you no shame?”

  “I will hang up on you.”

  “Don’t get your elven knickers in a twist,” I said, and then added suggestively, “Let her do that for you.”

  “I’m going now.”

  “Wait. I’ll be good,” I promised, and meant it. I was actually excited that he might be interested in someone. He usually refused to do anything social unless I forced him.

  “Dawn told me you were concerned about hearing music?”

  I started to say “yes” when an even more bizarre paradox struck me. “Wait, if twenty minutes Mysterium time equals hours and hours here, how are we having this conversation at all? It should either take me forever to answer you, or you would have to be talking to me at an impossible speed?”

  “Remember when I said transtemporal communication?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The answer is technical.”

  “How technical?” I asked.

  He took a deep breath and said rapidly, “Well, it depends on how technical you think L’Engle tesseract constructs are, and whether you would find it complicated to use such a construct to create a five-dimensional link between your subworld and Mysterium through our medallions such that the space and tim
e between those items no longer followed strict rules of Zelaznian subworld physics.”

  “So fairly technical,” I replied in one of the great understatements of all time. “Let’s skip it and assume that I either know enough, or am incapable of knowing enough.”

  “Agreed,” Eldrin said dryly. “Can we get back to why you called me?”

  “The music?” I asked.

  “The music,” he answered. “I don’t think it’s anything to worry about,” he said, shifting into his lecturing mode. I could almost see him sitting in his swivel chair, feet up on his desk, rotating back and forth as he talked. “When you overlaid your reality pattern—”

  “I call it an Averian matrix.”

  A pregnant pause followed this comment that let me know in no uncertain terms what he thought of that. “As I was saying,” he continued, and I actually heard the sound of his feet hitting his desk as he picked up his lecture where he’d left off, “when your reality pattern is activated to stabilize the subworld it sets up a magical field that creates a cascading series of pattern altering events. Some of these are subtle and some not so subtle. Perhaps a king decides to invade this country and not that one, or a baker decides to make a cake and not a pie, but everyone on the subworld will be affected to a greater or lesser extent such that the combined actions of everyone in the subworld work to alter its destiny.”

  “I know that. I did write a book on the subject.”

  “A badly indexed book,” Eldrin pointed out.

  “Are you going to explain the music or continue to plagiarize my dissertation?”

  “Good one,” he said, and clapped in appreciation.

  We both laughed. I couldn’t believe how much I missed these friendly arguments.

  I heard Dawn say something in the background. “Be right there,” Eldrin replied, and then in rapid fire to me said, “The point is, this magical field sets up a resonance in the fabric of the subworld’s reality. You can imagine it like ringing a bell. Anyway, the music you’re hearing is the sound of the resonance in your local area.”