The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “Of course,” I groaned.

  I lifted myself to my feet, gestured at the dwarf with an open palm, and . . . nothing. I knew him. I knew that I knew him. I knew he sat in the cubicle next to mine. I knew I’d spoken with him several times. I could almost recall a conversation we’d had where he suggested that he’d been consigned to this cubicle hovel because the people in power had a grudge against dwarfs. I knew all this, but I couldn’t remember his name for the life of me.

  Dawn sighed as I hesitated. “Professor Stonehammer? It’s so good to meet you. I have your class this afternoon. I’m looking forward to studying the role of cross-reality literature in shaping our understanding of magic.”

  The dwarf raised a bushy eyebrow and tsked. “You must be Dawn Stardust. I’m sorry, young lady, but I’ve already given my lecture for the day.”

  “I don’t understand. Your class isn’t scheduled until this afternoon.”

  “You should be better organized. Class ended three hours ago.” Stonehammer reached into the folds of his robe with his free hand and drew out an elaborate pocket watch. He held the timepiece out for her to see. Eldrin did the same with his watch. There was more than a five-hour time difference between them. Eldrin shook his and held it to his ear.

  “Eldrin?” I said plaintively.

  “It’s working,” he said, staring at his watch in disbelief, and then he murmured half to himself, “The time dilation must have gone in reverse.”

  My heart caught as the implication of his words struck me. That the rate of time’s passage differs between worlds, flowing more quickly on worlds that are less real (farther from Mysterium) and more slowly on worlds that are more real (closer to Mysterium), is a fact known to every first-year student who has ever snuck off-world to do a week’s worth of cramming the night before an exam. The subether astrologers on Mysterium even update and publish Standard Time Values, or STVs, for every known world every annum. Mysterium has an STV of 1, and all other worlds have STVs that are based on that value. For example, Earth, being very real and very close to Mysterium has a value of 1.01, so time flows only fractionally faster there. Out at the edges of subworld, STV values in the thousands have been measured. Most mages avoid worlds with STVs higher than three or four hundred, where a year in subworld passes for every day on Mysterium. It’s simply too disorienting to return home after having gone through a midlife crisis or two, maybe having experimented with some ill-advised facial hair, to find you have a dental appointment on Tuesday and your significant other is still mad about the argument you had the night before.

  But while faster subworlds were common, Eldrin was saying that on the Discovery time was moving slower, not faster. That meant the Discovery had a higher STV than Mysterium, which meant it was more real than Mysterium. Nothing was supposed to be more real than Mysterium. It would throw any number of theories of subworld mechanics into dispute. It would also make the campus bus schedules even harder to navigate. My head was pounding. “That’s not possible.”

  “I assure you it is, Professor Stewart,” Stonehammer said. “Ms. Stardust missed class.” He wagged a finger at Dawn. “Now, it being the first day, I’ll let it pass, but let’s not make this sort of thing a habit. And next time, no reason for all the theatrics. I’m always available between seven and eight-thirty on Tuesdays and Thursdays. If you ever need to talk to me, make an appointment with my assistant . . .”

  While Professor Stonehammer lectured Dawn, she fixed a murderous glare over the top of the dwarf’s head at Eldrin. He shifted uncomfortably under the weight of her gaze. I took pity on him, and pulled him through the hole we’d made in the wall and into my own cubicle. “What does this reverse time dilation mean about the Discovery?” I asked under my breath. “Could it be a more fundamental reality than Mysterium? Should we be worried about Sam and Ariella?”

  “I don’t know,” Eldrin said with an uncertainty so uncharacteristic it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. “There are a lot of things I don’t understand. How did you transport into and out of a building—my building—that is designed to prevent exactly that from happening? What is going on with that key? Why are we here?”

  The first two questions mirrored my own thoughts, but the last left me confused. “This was the plan,” I said irritably. “Remember, we were going to search for answers to our—” I glanced at Stonehammer to make sure he was still lecturing Dawn before saying “—problems at the university.”

  “No, no, no,” Eldrin said angrily. “That’s not what I’m asking. Why are we here?”

  Stonehammer spoke up. “Do you mean that metaphysically?”

  Eldrin and I looked up with unwarranted surprise at the dwarf’s question. It turns out that standing a few feet away on the other side of a half-collapsed cubicle wall doesn’t provide much privacy.

  Stonehammer leaned back in his chair, ignoring our discomfort. “There are those who believe our purpose is to make other people’s lives better, and that the value of any being can only be judged by the good they bring into the world. One might call this a Lewisian world view. Others, like Adams, would tell you that searching for the meaning of life is pointless. We are here, we live, we die, and there is as much meaning in an arbitrary number as there is in a life well lived.” He took a sip from his coffee and raised a significant eyebrow. “But if you ask my opinion, I think it has something to do with free will.”

  “No! Why are we here, in the basement?” Eldrin snapped. He gestured around at the warren of cubicles spread from wall to wall in the dimly lit, low-roofed chamber.

  I cleared my throat uncomfortably. “This is my office.”

  “This is your office?” asked Dawn. “I thought you had Griswald’s old space.”

  “He does,” said Eldrin. “I was there last week. It still has his name on the door, and all of his things are still inside.”

  “You broke into my office?” I asked indignantly. He didn’t bother to answer, but looked at me as if I was an idiot for asking. “Fair enough,” I muttered.

  “If Avery still has an office on the second floor, what’s this?” Dawn asked.

  “This is where my research assistant is supposed to sit,” I said with a sigh, and dropped into my chair.

  “It is?” Stonehammer asked. He put his coffee cup to one side and shook a finger at me. “You told me . . .”

  I waved a hand for him to be quiet, and surprisingly he stopped talking. They all stared at me while I composed my thoughts. The silence was nearly complete. This late at night, we were the only ones in the basement, and the only sound to be heard was Harold wheezing. “I’ve been using the cubicle for the last six months, because . . .”

  That’s as far as I could go without speculating. I knew there was a reason, but every time I tried to focus on the question, it slipped away. “I remember deciding to move out of my office, but not why. After Harold led me back to my townhome I remembered abandoning it, but I’m not sure I would have recognized it on my own. I have half remembrances of an afternoon on the bench with Harold, but I can’t be sure if the memories are real. I knew at once how to use the key, but I couldn’t tell any of you how or why it works. It’s possible I’m losing my mind.”

  Everyone stared at me with mixed expressions of fear, pity, and curiosity. Stonehammer spoke first. “Sounds to me like you’ve already lost your mind.”

  “Professor!” Dawn said indignantly. “You know as well as anyone that Avery’s memory loss may simply be the result of magical disorientation brought on by his time in subworld. It’s not an unknown phenomenon.” She cleared her throat. “When was your last checkup?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “You have been stressed. It could be your blood sugar or blood pressure or allergies or lack of sleep or generalized anxiety.”

  Eldrin shook his head. “I slip him a vitality potion once a week.”

  I sat up. “You what?”

  “Oh, don’t act so offended.” He said it dismissive
ly. “If left to your own devices you would live on rice and bouillon cubes, and probably die of renal failure from excessive salt consumption.”

  I started to argue, but then stopped. I did have pretty terrible eating habits. At last I said, “Whatever. If you room with a Hylar I suppose you have to expect them to meddle.”

  Dawn looked between us until she was convinced we were done squabbling and then nodded. “Okay, we will put that aside for now, although if Eldrin has been slipping you one of his home brews you should probably get a physical sooner rather than later. I’ve seen what goes into some of those.” I started to ask her what she meant, but she was already off on another topic. “Getting back to my previous point, I think Avery’s memory loss is the result of a space-time dilation effect from having lived in subworld for such an extended period of time. What do you think, Professor?”

  Stonehammer stroked his beard a few times before grunting, “Could be, but regardless of how or why he lost a part of his mind, Avery seems to be recovering.”

  “I’m still sitting in a cubicle with no idea why I moved here,” I pointed out.

  “True. But it’s better than not knowing you don’t know,” he countered.

  “You say that, but I was happy before I knew a cronut was a thing, and now—”

  “I’m being serious, Professor Stewart!”

  “So am I!” I said with an exaggerated sense of wonder. “I haven’t been the same since I ate the morello cherry with toasted almond cream.”

  The dwarf glowered at me. “Joke if you want, Professor Stewart, but at least now you have a choice.”

  “Which is?”

  “Stay down here in the basement, or go upstairs and try to dig up more of the bits of your mind you’ve lost.”

  “What if I don’t like what I find?”

  “Such as what?”

  What I wanted to say was, Such as I’m a fraud. Such as the piece of magic I’m being celebrated for was in large part a mistake. Such as I don’t deserve the recognition, the position, or the perks that go with being a famous magus. However, I said none of this. Admitting to losing your mind is one thing, but admitting to fears that are both petty and deeply personal is a whole other level of honesty. I shrugged. “I suppose I worry that I will let everyone down.”

  “Of course you’re going to let people down,” Stonehammer said.

  “Professor!” Dawn protested.

  He waved away her protest with his coffee mug. “It’s inevitable. No sequel can live up to the hype of the original. There are some people who think he’s some sort of messiah. For them to be satisfied he would have to walk into the center of campus and start plucking subworlds from the sky and landing them, on command, at the doorstep of Mysterium. When he can’t meet the outlandish expectations of his admirers, it will provide an opening for the skeptics. I’ve heard rumblings at faculty meetings suggesting that you are either a fraud or an academic heretic.”

  Eldrin sighed deeply, blowing his bangs back away from his eyes. “He’s right, Avery. Your findings changed our understanding of subworlds. The movement of Trelari has shattered theories and reputations. There are a number of academic controversies brewing around you. Professor Xanderson says that his dimensional magnetron pulled Trelari out of its suborbital and claims you were merely in the right place at the right time. Professor Shadowswan claims that she discovered Trelari first.”

  “She might have. I never claimed to have discovered Trelari.”

  “Maybe technically,” Eldrin retorted.

  “Subworld astronomy is the study of categorization, nomenclature, and technicalities,” I replied, quoting almost word for word from one of Eldrin’s more readable papers.

  “You read that?”

  “I read everything you write.” It was true. I didn’t understand all of Eldrin’s theories, but I always made a point to read every word.

  Eldrin grew quiet and sat heavily on my desk, a funny little smile frozen on his face. I put his reaction down to sheer disbelief, and was preparing to defend myself when Stonehammer barked, “I’m not talking about disputes over minor things like who gets credit for this theory or that discovery. That kind of mild envy can be hashed out in the Letters to the Editor section of any major journal. No, I’m talking about things that really matter to the other professors: Avery’s dedicated transport space.”

  “Wait! I have a dedicated transport space?”

  He nodded.

  In a day of stunning revelations, this was the most mind-blowing. A dedicated room that only I could use for transport on-and off-world was the most sought-after perk on campus. They were reserved only for the most prestigious of professors. To my knowledge, Griswald had never had one. For a moment, a warm glow of accomplishment washed over me, but the buzz was killed when I realized that I had no idea where it was. I followed Eldrin’s lead, and sat back in my chair, speechless.

  “How far back do these memory lapses go?” Stonehammer asked. “If we could find the origin, we could narrow down the cause. When did you start forgetting things?”

  “How can I possibly know that?” I asked in exasperation. “You’re basically asking me to remember the first thing I forgot, which would be great except, by definition, I can’t remember it.”

  “Well, do you remember seeing Rook running about campus or what your epiphany was?”

  I shook my head. “Wait! How do you know about that?”

  Professor Stonehammer smiled and reached into his robes before pulling out a dog-eared copy of The Dark Lord. “It’s a signed copy. You gave it to me. Fascinating read. I’m setting aside a couple of lectures to devote to it.”

  I laughed. “I appreciate it, Professor, but I’m not sure how much your students will get from studying that text.”

  “No? Don’t you think a student might learn about the dangers of power wielded unwisely from your story?”

  “I think they will, and maybe a bit more than they should,” Eldrin said emphatically. “It is well accepted that books reflected out of Mysterium, whether Zelazny or Donaldson or Rowling or even Tolkien, present abstracted versions of those mages’ histories and philosophies. What’s disturbing about Avery’s tale is that it is so accurate on even mundane points, including specific conversations. It’s almost a journal.”

  “You think it is so different?” Stonehammer said with an enigmatic smile.

  “Come on. Dark towers with all-seeing eyes?” Eldrin said with a harsh laugh.

  Something about Stonehammer’s face spoke volumes about how seriously he took these “abstract” books. He shook a finger at him. “You may be Hylar, but you are still too young to be so cynical. You would both do well to sign up for my class.” With a stern bristling of his brows at Dawn, he added, “And make sure you make it to class if you do.”

  Stonehammer set his mug down, shooed Harold off of his desk, and shuffled through the pile of papers the imp had been sitting on. He pulled a parchment from somewhere near the bottom and handed it to Dawn. “My syllabus, Ms. Stardust.” She tried to take it, but he held on and said in a gravelly undertone very reminiscent of Rook, “Make sure you read it carefully.”

  “I will, Professor Stonehammer.”

  “Great!” he said brightly. “Well, I better be off.” He hopped down from his chair and shook my hand. “I’m glad that you are getting your memory back, Professor Stewart. At the same time, it’s a shame. I rather liked sitting near you, even if your imp does sound like an elephant with a deviated septum.”

  “Thanks for all your help, Professor Stonehammer.”

  He smiled. “That’s Bishop to you.” I stared at him blankly. “It’s a joke. Rook? Settling things the ‘old-fashioned way’? I’m a dwarf? You know, from your book? You did read it?” I had no good response. Stonehammer sighed. “Anyway, I’ll see you on Thursday, Ms. Stardust.” He grabbed an armful of papers off his desk. “Good luck, Professor Stewart. I hope if your current experiences are ever published, they are more than a rickety literary bridge to th
e final volume of a trilogy. Second books can be so tricky: trying to heighten the drama and provide a sort of closure without resolving the main arcs. It would be a real bummer if any of the main characters died.” Having said this, he bowed and stalked out of the cubicle.

  “Thanks,” I said, and then followed that almost immediately by, “Wait! What?” There was no answer. I poked my head out into the narrow hall, but Stonehammer was gone. “That guy can move,” I said as I returned to Eldrin and Dawn.

  “Funny thing,” she said. “I was looking over his syllabus for our reading assignment. His office isn’t even in this building.”

  We were still discussing this new oddity when a low rumbling issued from the far end of the basement. A bright radiance, like a floodlight, came streaming across the room. All three of us turned to look. A glowing face about five feet tall appeared in the far wall, and began advancing on us over the tops of the cubicle walls. It opened its mouth and a voice, deep as a mountain and vast as a thundercloud, issued forth. “Professor Stewart! Professor Stewart!”

  “Avery?” Eldrin said.

  “I have no idea.”

  “I do,” Dawn shouted. “Run!”

  And we did. We went scrambling down the hall toward the exit, Harold leading the way. As in the woods, the imp moved like a ninja on Red Bull. I definitely needed to have a talk with him about loyalty and courage under fire. At the moment, there was no time. The disembodied face was right behind us. “Professor Stewart! Professor Stewart!” it roared.

  We were moving as quickly as we could, but the hallway twisted and turned as it made its way, mazelike, through the cubicles. Normally, the winding layout of the half walls was only mildly irritating in an amusement park line sort of way, but this time it might prove lethal as the face simply flew over the warren of desks. Gauging the distance between us and the door, I realized that it would cut us off before we could escape.

  “This way!” I screamed, and, lowering my shoulder, ran right through one of the partitions.

  Eldrin and Dawn caught on and we plowed through and over the flimsy walls, knocking them aside and leaving a trail of ruined cubicles, scattered papers, and collapsed partitions in our wake. Still the face came on. “Professor Stewart! Professor Stewart!”