The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  Despite myself, I giggled. Dawn glared. “It isn’t funny.” She folded the paper over so I could see the headline of the article she’d been reading: “Magical Travel in a Post-Stewartian Multiverse.” Suddenly the backs of my hands were very interesting. Dawn cleared her throat. “Whether you’ve noticed or like it, you’ve become one of the most famous mages in Mysterium. Your ‘experiment’ in Trelari resulted in half the textbooks needing rewrites. Next week there’s an entire symposium devoted to what they are calling Outerworld Tectonics, and there is talk that a new department may be created to deal with the phenomenon of subworld migration. Yet, the mage behind it all refuses to involve himself. Instead, he rarely leaves the magical backwater of New York and seems entirely content to teach entry-level Rowling Magic! You should be a rock star! What the hell is going on with you?”

  I gave her a weak smile. “I’m modest.”

  She said nothing, but fixed her monochromatic black and white eyes on mine and studied me from behind the enchanted reading lenses she used to convert the New York Times into a pan-dimensional news source. “That’s your answer?” she asked in a voice as soft as silk and as sharp as a knife.

  “I don’t have a better one.”

  “That’s not very satisfying, Avery.”

  “Or accurate,” Eldrin murmured under his breath.

  Dawn turned her penetrating gaze on Eldrin, and he clamped his lips shut. After a few seconds of silence she refocused on me. “All you’ve done this summer is sit on the couch watching bad TV, or sit in the coffee shop staring at that book.” I shrugged dismissively. “Well, Eldrin?” she huffed.

  I glanced up and saw him swiveling his head back and forth between us. “What do you want me to say?” he protested.

  “Only what you tell me nearly every night. That it’s his duty not to abandon his research. That he owes it to science and magic. That he’s being an idiot!”

  The tips of Eldrin’s ears went beet red, and I knew the words were his, if not verbatim, certainly in spirit. “Eldrin, do you really believe I’m being an idiot?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “What about the rest of it?”

  He half shrugged. “I mean, there are some good grant opportunities . . .”

  I accepted the conversational lifeline like a drowning man. “I suppose so.”

  And that was it. The silence of the moment stretched on, broken only by Harold crunching into another mouse carcass. Had it been the two of us, the topic would have died a natural death right then and there.

  “Oh gods!” Dawn exploded. “No wonder you two could never get the doorknob to your dorm room fixed. I give up.” In a clatter of dishes and a scattering of cats, Dawn stalked off to her bedroom.

  “Thanks a lot,” Eldrin said irritably, following her.

  I opened my mouth to protest that his girlfriend’s mania for honesty was hardly my fault, but the fact was, she was right. I was being an idiot. The appearance of Trelari at the gates of Mysterium had been the most significant magical development since the discovery of the water to wine transmutation. Every field of magic, from the sublime—subworld studies, etherworld physics, and the like—to the mundane—innerworld shipping, transitory real estate, and so on—had me to thank or blame for the rise or fall of their fortunes. Fame and acclaim and disdain and infamy of a magnitude few mages ever attained awaited me on my return to Mysterium, and as any of you that have read of my exploits in The Dark Lord will know, I am definitely not modest.

  As I had admitted between shivers to Eldrin a few minutes ago though, I was afraid. It was not that I feared for my own safety or reputation. Or not too much. I had long ago decided that the biggest dangers I would face would be critics and jealous colleagues. Even then, being loathed had its upsides: fewer students would come to office hours, and no one would argue grades with me. My real fear was that somehow my presence would put Trelari in danger again. Already a storm was brewing outside the magical wall Valdara had created. Academic bomb-throwers with more time and vitriol than sense were coming out of the woodwork to write half-literate screeds about how Trelarians were subpeople, not worthy of protection, and certainly not worthy of receiving grants, scholarships, or any other sort of financial aid. All it would take would be one xenophobic madman, and Trelari would go from being a novelty to a threat. And people were looking to me—stupid me, idiotic Avery Stewart—as the voice of authority on Trelari. Is it any wonder I decided the best course for all involved was for me to keep my head down and my mouth shut? But now the new semester was starting. I couldn’t avoid Mysterium any longer.

  “What am I supposed to do?” I asked the heavens.

  In answer, something thudded against the side of my head. I looked down and saw the corpse of a half-eaten mouse on the couch. Harold looked at me with expressionless eyes for a few seconds before pointing a long, sharp, taloned finger at the nearly indecipherable seven-dialed Mysterian time clock that hung crookedly on the wall. I stared at the thing for a full minute before coming to the conclusion that either it was yesterday, or I had ten minutes to get to class.

  “Damn!”

  Jumping up from the couch, I sprinted to my room, accidentally stepped on one of Eldrin’s game boards, and impaled my foot on a half dozen tiny playing pieces. I plucked a yellow camel from my skin with a curse and hopped into my room. “Camel down,” I muttered.

  Now would be an apt time to describe our apartment. It is small. How small? Well, there are camper vans with more living space. I mean that literally. You could put our entire apartment on wheels and hurtle it down a highway at seventy-five miles per hour, and no one would bat an eye. There was a bathroom, which we all share, but which Eldrin shares more than Dawn and I combined. A living room/dining room/kitchen, which made up the vast majority of the place, but to give you a scale to consider, the game map I’d stepped on took up a pretty sizable chunk of the open floor space. And two bedrooms.

  Before you get excited that Eldrin and I have separate bedrooms, this is a New York “two-bedroom.” For those of you from anywhere but New York, what a New York “two-bedroom” actually means is an apartment with one bedroom and a largish-sized closet.

  My room is that closet.

  It was about the size of my bed, which was a double, because a man can dream that one day he may have need of the extra space. When I lay down at night I could stretch my arms out and touch the walls—flat-palmed. The point being, without my piece of folded extradimensional space I’m not sure how I would have had room for myself and my clothes. Actually, I do know—I wouldn’t have had room. I would have had to build one of those absurd lofts you find in every student apartment in the city where you sleep six inches from the ceiling (talk about putting a crimp in your social life by the way) in exchange for a completely impractical space underneath the bed where you live and work in a permanent hunch.

  I was rummaging through my extradimensional fold for my lecture notes while simultaneously trying to comb my hair and pull on the traditional Mysterium professorial robes, and not doing any of these tasks particularly well, when Harold wheezed his way into the room, a half-chewed mouse dangling out of his mouth. He was carrying my lecture notes in one of his grubby little paws and a bow tie in the other. I reached for my notes. “Thank the gods you found them.”

  Harold pulled the papers away and held the bow tie out to me. It was tradition: Harold always wore a bow tie to class when Griswald lectured. “Sorry, Harold, but I don’t even know how to tie one of those. Now, give me the lecture so we can get out of here or we’re going to be late.”

  He blinked at me solemnly and chewed on the mouse. I stood up, squared my shoulders, and tried to gather as much dignity as I could. That wasn’t much as I had missed a button on my robes and looked a bit like a toddler that had tried to dress himself. “Give me the papers, Harold.”

  He mimicked my pose, though he looked a lot less ridiculous doing it, and thrust the bow tie up at me.

  “No! We don’t have ti
me!” I protested.

  Apart from the chewing, which was exceedingly disconcerting, Harold remained unmoved—eyes locked on mine, bow tie grasped in his outstretched paw. We stood there in a dignified and strained silence for a few beats, and then I lunged at him with a high-pitched shriek.

  I will not bore you with the details of the ensuing chase, but several minutes later, my lecture notes clasped in one hand and Harold perched on my shoulder, I jumped into the hall closet where the Mysterium transport circle was drawn. I was still only half-dressed, but Harold’s bow tie was perfect. It had taken me three tries.

  As the magic from the circle started to swirl around us, I noticed that Harold had Griswald’s box tucked under his arm. I tried to ask him why he was bringing it along, but my words were lost as the transport magic turned us both inside out for the trip back to Mysterium.

  Chapter 3

  Mr. Dark and Fanciful

  My ears popped as I spun through the multicolored etherspace between worlds. They popped again as Harold and I landed in the James Ward building, remarkably in Lecture Hall 2814 Q, miraculously on my feet, and amazingly right where I wanted to be. I was standing just within the doorway of a little curtained-off cloakroom to the left of the lectern.

  Considering how close I had come to being late and how little preparation I had taken, plus my battle with Harold and his bow tie, the accuracy of the transport spell was a feat. Conjuring a true portal from one of the innerworlds to a specific location in Mysterium might not be as complicated as rocket science or brain surgery, but it was at least as difficult as dusting crops.

  Or so I’ve been told. I’ve never flown a crop duster. But I digress.

  Harold and I peeked out at the class, all two hundred plus of them. I took a deep breath. “It’s showtime!”

  “Indeed, it is, Professor Stewart,” came a grave and rasping voice from behind me.

  I spun around, and as I did, I had a sudden desire to be anywhere else in the world, even if that meant leaving my body altogether. The man waiting for me in the shadows was Garth Moregoth, chief executioner of Mysterium Security, magus general of Mysterium.

  Technically, the chief executioner title meant that he executed security protocols, but everyone interpreted it literally. He did nothing to disabuse people of the notion. He was the second most powerful mage on campus. I think the list goes something like: the provost, Garth Moregoth, the group of deities who like to congregate in the commissary of the School of Relativistic Religion, everybody else. The man had an aura of self-loathing and angst that infected everyone around him. If a quad on campus were ever empty, it would be because Moregoth was brooding nearby. Everyone feared and reviled him. Puppies whimpered when he walked near, and birds fell dead from the sky. I recognized him in an instant, because no one looked like Garth Moregoth. No one would dare.

  He was a tall man, who appeared taller because of his long black trench coat and thick-soled black boots. He had a long thin nose and deep-set eyes that were made cadaverous by the heavy black eyeshadow that lined them, and the pallor of his deathly white skin. In fact, he was so pale that some people believed he was either a vampire or an albino, while everyone else knew he was, in fact, an albino vampire. Moregoth’s most striking feature was his hair, which had a studiously disheveled look highlighted by a set of dramatic bangs that swooped down to entirely obscure the left side of his face. But, more than the style, it was the color of his hair that was remarkable. It has been inadequately described as “dark as night.” In fact, it was darker than that because he mystically dyed it, creating a black that was blacker than black. Light was not so much absorbed by his hair, as it simply ceased to exist out of despair when it got too close. That is the kind of dark I’m talking about.

  Trying to focus on him as he stood in the deep shadows of the alcove was a bit like trying to focus on an object in a brightly lit room that has been thrown into a sudden darkness. My eyes kept losing where the outline of his body ended and the rest of the world began. The result was that his pale white face and hands appeared to be suspended in space.

  “I’m sorry if my presence startled you, Professor Stewart. We have not had the pleasure. I am Garth Moregoth.”

  Even though I knew who he was, hearing the name spoken aloud, by the man himself, sent a wave of dread through me, which was only heightened when one of the pale floating hands extended itself in my direction. I hesitated, and he fixed his gaze on me.

  His eyes were also black. The solid black of a man that has been studying dark magic for longer than is healthy or, strictly speaking, legal. I finally took his hand and shook it out of a mixture of habit and fear. It was like trying to shake hands with a statue: nonresponsive, cold, and hard as stone. I pulled back and reflexively rubbed my palms together. “May I help you Magus Mor-goth?”

  When I said his name, I made sure to omit the e when pronouncing it, because while he demanded that everyone spell his name with an e, he also demanded that it be pronounced without one. I must have gotten it right, because he smiled, a thin and humorless expression that showed as little of his teeth as possible between his deep purple lips. “I’m not sure anyone can help me, Professor Stewart,” he intoned gloomily. “We are, after all, merely shadows, dancing in the flickering light of eternity. Doomed to extinction. However, my colleagues and I are looking for two students of yours.”

  “C-c-colleagues?” I stammered, and peered about the alcove.

  He extended a long black-polished finger toward the rear of the lecture hall. I followed where it pointed and saw a squad of grim-faced mages lining the back wall. My blood ran cold as I recognized the distinctive crimson cloaks of the Sealers.

  The Sealers are a special militarized unit of university security. Established early in Mysterium’s history, they dealt with extradimensional and subworld threats. In the past, Sealers had stopped a Cthulhoid attempt to raise a sunken city from the depths of a Mysterium pond, multiple plots by the Demonology Department to summon avatars from various apocalyptic cults during their occasional wage protests, and no less than a half-dozen orc invasions. And those were only the incidents that were common knowledge. It is said that they are the reason dragons haven’t attacked Mysterium University in over a century, although rumors persisted about the continual disappearance of pigs. Basically, they were elite magical ninja assassins on steroids, and Moregoth was their leader.

  No, I can’t in good conscience leave you with the impression that Moregoth was merely the head of the Sealers. To say that Garth Moregoth was their leader is a bit like saying that John and Paul wrote a couple of songs for the Beatles. Garth Moregoth was the personification of everything the Sealers stood for. He was their model, the deadliest, most determined, most deranged Sealer in the many-centuries-old history of the Sealers. That they were here with him should not have been a surprise. Where he went, they followed, like an army of shadows.

  What I didn’t understand was why he, and they, were here at all. The Sealers only ever intervened in matters of utmost importance. They are authorized to kill, hence the reputation given to the chief executioner. Sending them out to look for wayward students, even wayward students that are behind on their tuition payments, seemed like overkill. It would be like sending a brigade of marines in to settle an office dispute over whose turn it was to use the microwave in the breakroom. I’m sure they could do it, but the body count would be tough to explain to Human Resources.

  Moregoth cleared his throat, a wet unhealthy sound. I managed a weak, “Students?”

  He pulled a paper from somewhere in the depths of the shadows. “Yes, an Ariella Moonsong, and a Sam No Last Name Given.” He said “No Last Name Given” as though that might, in fact, be Sam’s surname.

  The blood drained from my face. All the blood. Every drop. Seriously. The chief executioner of Mysterium Security, a universally acknowledged lunatic, was looking for two of my friends from Trelari who were not only not supposed to be in my class, but as far as I knew, were not suppose
d to be on this plane of existence. Had it been a year earlier I would have gladly told him whatever he wanted to hear, and probably volunteered to help hunt Sam and Ariella down. I had never wanted any trouble, particularly not from the Administration, and definitely not with Moregoth. After all, tenure had always been the goal. But this was a new year, tenure did not seem as important as it once had, and this was Sam and Ariella we were talking about. Good thing I was such a practiced liar.

  “Sam and Ariella? I’m . . . I’m not sure I recognize those names.”

  My voice sounded a little squeaky, but Moregoth didn’t call me on it. He simply stared, and let an awful silence stretch out between us. Predictably, my nerve broke first. I blurted a string of excuses that were entirely true, but too pathetic to be convincing. “This is my first class of the year . . . we are still in the add/drop period . . . I haven’t had a chance to review my class roster . . . I can’t be expected to know the names of every one of my students . . .”

  Moregoth’s eyes narrowed. “I think you know these particular students, Professor Stewart. You traveled with them quite extensively last year.” His hand disappeared into some deeper blackness and emerged with a book. My book. My damnable book. “You met them in Chapter Nine.” His purple lips bent into the barest of smiles. “On a personal note, I thought the semi-lich’s macabre banality was rendered with fiendish perfection, but then reading about people’s ordeals with contractors is so deliciously soul-crushing. Don’t you think?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer, and I was fairly sure any answer I did give had a better than even chance of being used against me at my inevitable Review Board hearing. Eventually, I settled on, “Yes, I suppose.”