The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “Dean Yewed,” I responded as the door closed solidly behind me.

  Though he was purportedly my boss, I’d never spoken with him outside of a few departmental functions and my initial interview for Griswald’s position. He was everything that you would expect of a wizard. He was gray-haired with a long white beard, a serious countenance, and piercing, although faded, eyes. He usually wore bright white robes, but today was wearing what I can only describe as wizardly tie-dye.

  He stood and raised a large bushy eyebrow. “Stewart!” he barked. “The hour is late! Later than you think! My note arrived at your office hours ago.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yes, I’m sorry, Dean. I can explain,” I said, although I had no idea how I was going to explain.

  He hushed me with a sharp gesture, and moved around his desk so that he was uncomfortably close. “Stewart, people think I am a traditionalist. Some of my colleagues have even called my views on student discipline backward.” He pointed to the copy of the provost’s colorful pamphlet I was holding. “I see you have been familiarizing yourself with the provost’s new guidance on creating a more welcoming campus. I too am doing my part.” He gestured to his eye-bending robes. “As you know, I have always worn white robes as tradition dictates, but I am nothing if not amenable to change. I think it is important for all men, and even fields of magic, to reflect the reality of their times. Don’t you agree?”

  “Yes. I suppose so, sir,” I said hesitantly, still feeling very uncertain about where this conversation was going.

  Fortunately, he seemed to require no further response. With a sharp nod of his head, the dean marched over to an enormous bookcase that covered the un-windowed sides of the room. The shelves were filled with the colorful spines of massive volumes, each of which I knew represented a subworld. A few were merely numbers like 1, 3, 39, 52, while others had names embossed on them. More than a few had names that included the word Earth, such as First Earth, Counter Earth, Lost Earth, Dying Earth, Front Earth, Back Earth, and a twelve-volume series on the famous Middle Earth of Tolkien, plus the original unedited text of The Silmarillion.

  “Do you know what these are?” he said as he made his way along the length of the bookcase.

  I thought that this must be a trick question, but as I could not see the trick, I gave him the obvious answer. “Books? Books about the subworlds?”

  “Books? Books?” He pulled one off the shelf labeled simply 451 and spun about. “This is no mere book. It is a true marvel, for it is a tome. Tell me, Professor Stewart, do you know how to differentiate between books and tomes?”

  I was now afraid to state the obvious, but could think of nothing else to do, so I said, “By their covers?”

  He glowered impressively, and, taking the book over to his desk, slammed it down. “Incorrect, Professor Stewart! I will instruct, as you should have been doing this morning.” He opened 451 and flipped through it. “A book is merely a set of pages, bound and made to hinge on one side. A book may contain anything: a treatise on cooking, a list of addresses and numbers for operation of a telephonic device, a set of illustrations. It may even be blank. A tome on the other hand is, by its definition, scholarly and weighty. It is a thing that must be respected. A book might be dismissed, a tome must be venerated!”

  I’m not sure how he was expecting me to respond, but I’m sure it wasn’t with what I actually found myself saying. “Isn’t the word tome usually reserved for a single volume of a multivolume work?” I began. “I think it derives from the Greek tomos or ‘section of a book,’ originally ‘a piece cut off,’ from temnein ’to cut.’”

  His mouth dropped open and he said something like, “Well . . . What?”

  As was my habit in times like this, I momentarily forgot where I was, or that the dean was in the process of chewing me out, and added, “Of course, a more modern definition might include ‘weighty’ or ‘scholarly’ works more generally, but I think it’s often used sarcastically to refer to a long or challenging book. Don’t you? Maybe there’s a better word we could use.” I reached over his desk and turned 451 around so I could get a look. It was an older work on a relatively unknown Earth reflection. As with most books from that era it was handwritten. “If you are looking for a descriptive hyponym for a book like this, I might suggest codex. While a tome by necessity should be relatively voluminous, a codex refers to books that are older and specifically handwritten.”

  “A codex . . . ?” he said uncertainly.

  “That would be my suggestion, sir,” I said, warming to the topic. “Of course, there are those that like to use more mystical-sounding titles like grimoire or libram, but I don’t think either apply. As we both know, a grimoire is restricted to a book that provides instruction on how to perform magic, whereas your library—” I gestured to the shelves “—is filled with works describing subworlds, not specific spells. Libram, on the other hand—” I gave a snort of derision “—is a purely fabricated word. It comes from the Latin libra or liber, which refers to the Roman pound. Per es et libram, and all that rubbish.”

  “Exactly! Rubbish!” he roared, and with a start I remembered where I was. I followed his eyes as he very deliberately dropped his gaze down to the book. To my horror I saw that I had pulled it all the way across the desk and was in the process of flipping through it. I swallowed hard and carefully turned the book rightway around and pushed it back toward him. “Codex indeed!” he muttered.

  With a sidelong look and a grunt of disgust, he shut 451 and went back to his wall of books. He raised a finger and ran them along the spines. “You are here because of a single tome, er, codex.” He stopped and stabbed his finger at a book bound in a dark green. “This one! The . . . codex of Trelari! He drew it from the bookcase, and I could see that the word Trelari was, indeed, written in gold on its spine. He brought it back to his desk and laid it open. “Ah, yes,” he said. “Trelari. Meticulously researched and mapped, by your former faculty sponsor and mentor, Professor Griswald. Who also discovered the world’s existence.”

  “Actually, sir, Professor Shadowswan—”

  “Did nothing!” he bellowed. “At most, Professor Shadowswan saw a dot of light among a thousand million other dots of light. She observed world 2A7C; Professor Griswald discovered Trelari. Her claim is pure nonsense. Of course, so is this . . .” With a gesture, a flame appeared at the tip of his forefinger. He touched the pages of the book and they burst into blue and green and purple fire.

  “What are you doing?” I shouted, and lunged forward to put it out.

  He stopped me with a dismissive gesture as the book continued to burn. “What of it? It’s an irrelevance.”

  I was aghast. “We are academics. We gather knowledge. We don’t burn books!”

  He ignored my outburst and started flipping through 451 again, studying its contents by the light of his burning forefinger. “Do you know what a book is called when it has no relevant information in it?”

  He gave me no chance to answer as he shouted, “Garbage, Stewart! It isn’t even useful as scrap paper because someone has scribbled nonsense in it. Thanks to you and your dissertation, the best source of information on Trelari is this.” He pulled open a drawer and held up a copy of The Dark Lord in much the way one might hold a dirty diaper. “Dwarfs? Semi-liches? Gelatinous polygons? Were they two-dimensional, Professor Stewart? Have you never in all your years at Mysterium University heard the term polyhedron before?”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “And that epilogue . . .” he cut me off. “I know you had no personal hand in its creation, Stewart, but it borders on the seditious. Did you know that the Administration has been forced to intercede with publishers across three worlds to expurgate those pages from all current and future printings? And still unedited versions are being circulated by radical subworld liberationist groups all across campus. In any event, this—” he threw the book down into the dying flames of Griswald’s codex and watched as it too caught fire “—this . . . novel is hardly
adequate. I need to understand what happened on Trelari. I need to know how to make sure it never happens again, or one day all of this—” he gestured around at the books “—all of our knowledge of the subworlds will be reduced to ash.”

  To emphasize his point, he stabbed his burning finger out on the open page of 451, leaving a smoldering scorch mark behind. An uncomfortable silence stretched on, and from his staring eyes, I got the distinct impression that he was waiting for me to say something. Unfortunately, and as usual, I had no idea what kind of response he was looking for. I settled on a direct approach. “As a condition of my employment, I have agreed not to conduct any further studies on Trelari, so I’m not sure how I can help.”

  He sat down in his chair and brought his steepled fingers beneath his nose. “Bring me the students . . . Sam and Arianna. Studying them, their minds and patterns, can fill the gaps in our knowledge.”

  “Ariella, sir,” I corrected, both to buy time and to calm the sudden thundering of my heart. Also, I was annoyed on Ariella’s behalf that he didn’t have the common decency to use her real name while plotting against her.

  “Irrelevant,” he snapped. “Trelari is dangerous. Principles that are at the very foundations of our institution are being threatened. It is time to choose sides. You are either on the side of Mysterium, or you are its enemy.”

  The interview had taken a sudden ominous turn. It seemed clear that the dean was either behind Moregoth, or was in league with the mages who were. It also seemed that by answering his summons, I had placed myself in their hands. I considered my options. None of them were good. I was not a skilled enough liar to bluff my way out of this, and I didn’t like my chances if it came down to a magical conflict. First, the dean was a legend. Whether he was related to Prospero or not, the man had survived at the highest levels of Mysterium’s notoriously vicious power structure for nearly a century. And that was ignoring Nabilac, which probably wasn’t wise. Even if the golem was nice at parties, I’m sure he would gladly yank off my limbs at a word from the dean. Given that this conversation seemed destined to end badly for me, I decided I’d rather get to the end as soon as possible. I put as much steel as I could muster into my voice. “Did you send the Sealers into my class this morning?”

  “And if I did? How could two students, two subworlders, possibly be worth your career?”

  I slammed my hands down on the top of his desk and leaned forward. We were close enough that I could smell the whiskey on his breath. “I must tell you, sir, that I find this entire conversation disturbing. Today two of my pupils were threatened, and the head of my department may have been involved. And for what purpose? What are you proposing to do with them? Invade their minds? Put them into study tanks and let the subworld butchers dissect them? I do not know where the Trelarians are, but even if I did I would not willingly tell you.”

  I expected him to lash out. Maybe to call in Nabilac to give me a lesson in courtesy. At least to fire me. Instead, a broad smile curved across the dean’s face. From one of his desk drawers he pulled a small crystalline cube and set it between us. He put a finger to his lips to silence my question and pressed the top of the cube. A flash of blue power illuminated the device, and an instant later, a ghostly image of his body appeared and began pacing about the room. “How dare you question me, Stewart!” it boomed. “I will have you know that in all my time at this university I have never been spoken to in such a manner. I have half a mind to call a review board to examine . . .”

  In a day of bizarre occurrences, this was one too many. I needed answers, but the dean once again pressed a finger to his lips and pointed up. I was beginning to hate the ceilings in this place. He rose from his desk and gestured for me to follow. We crossed the room to the bookcase. His finger illuminated again, and he touched it to the spine of a book embossed with the word Wisdom. As he did, the bookcase bent back on itself in an alarmingly non-Euclidean manner. A doorway appeared. I stepped through after him and found myself inside a solid stone chamber about ten feet across. The walls were decorated with spiraling energy patterns like those inscribed on Nabilac’s body. In fact, they appeared to be identical. I had the sudden, unnerving thought that we might actually be inside the golem. I didn’t ask if we were, and to this day I don’t regret the decision, because I’m pretty sure I would not have handled it well if he had said yes.

  Chapter 11

  A Really, Really Secret Council

  As the door to the strange stone chamber closed, the dean visibly relaxed. “It’s okay, Professor Stewart, we can speak freely here.”

  I asked the obvious question. “What the hell is going on?” He blinked at me, possibly surprised, which I took as permission to continue. “First you’re threatening me, and then leading me into your inner sanctum? If this is some kind of bizarre initiation ritual, I have to tell you that I have a policy against joining secret societies. Unless this is a multiverse version of Bilderberg, because that would be pretty sweet.”

  He waved a dismissive hand. “Nothing like that, Professor Stewart. Nothing like that. I’m sorry for all the cloak-and-dagger, but paranoia is essential this close to the center of Mysterium, and never more than since your return from Trelari. The provost’s spies are everywhere, and they are focused on my department. Our every move is being watched. After your actions this morning, running from Moregoth, I was fairly confident you could be trusted, but I still had to test you.”

  “So, you didn’t send Moregoth after Sam and Ariella?”

  “No, Professor Stewart, I did not.”

  “But if you didn’t send him, who did?”

  He hesitated before whispering, “Not everything I said before was false. The hour is late. The eye of the provost of Mysterium University himself is turned on us, and against you personally. His patience is almost at an end.”

  The dean glanced up in the direction of the provost’s office at the top of the tower. I now understood why everyone kept pointing at the ceilings. “So the provost sent the Sealers after Sam and Ariella. What does the provost want with them?”

  “We don’t know, but we have some suspicions.” He crossed his arms behind his back and began pacing. “Trelari is the first and only subworld to ever shift its reality closer to that of Mysterium and become an innerworld, but now the possibility exists that it might not be the last. Other near-orbit subworlds are urging recognition of subworld rights and clamoring to be promoted to innerworld status.”

  “Promoted? But Mysterium had nothing to do with Trelari becoming an innerworld.”

  “But we did. Or more specifically, you did. No one, not even the provost, knows how to duplicate your feat. Your academic papers only describe the early stages of your experiment, and The Dark Lord . . .” A sour expression crossed his face.

  “Is light on details?”

  “Exactly. It’s impossible to understand from the text how to work the magic. I mean, there are dozens of bizarre rules. Which ones are important and which are unnecessary? Then there is that evil battle-ax and the good battle-ax, and so many other complexities to consider, such as that poor semi-lich and his misguided necromancy, plus the lizard creature . . .” He took a deep breath. “The point is, there is only one person who has ever shifted a subworld closer to Mysterium.”

  “Me.”

  He smiled sadly. “Yes, you, Professor Stewart.”

  The thought that my experiment might be putting my friends at risk again angered me. “Why go after Sam and Ariella? Why not simply snatch me and extract everything I know?”

  “They’ve tried. Have you noticed any strange gaps in your memory?” I was too stunned by the idea that the school I loved might have been damaging my brain trying to get information out of it to answer. Apparently, my silence was all the confirmation the dean needed. “We don’t know whether they couldn’t get enough out of you, or if they learned something from you that led them to attempt to capture actual Trelarians.”

  “You’ve said ‘we’ several times now. Who exactly
are ‘we,’ and what are ‘we’ going to do about Trelari, and Sam and Ariella, and me for that matter?”

  He straightened, put his hands on the lapels of his robes, and announced, “We are the Triflers.”

  It took me a second to remember this was the name Griswald had given to a secret society of subworld activists. “Is Professor Stonehammer in the . . . Tipplers also?”

  “Triflers.”

  “Right.”

  “I can’t reveal our members to you. Not yet. But we have our agents, and we will help you where we can.” He put a hand on my shoulder and directed me to the door. “I know you have more questions, but my illusionary self only has enough programming for about ten minutes of use, and I have one other not so good piece of news.”

  I couldn’t imagine what could be worse than learning that beings at the center of power in the multiverse are out to get you, but people have told me that I can have a stunning lack of imagination. By people, I mean Eldrin. Anyway, I braced myself.

  “You have an imp?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, sir. I inherited Professor Griswald’s imp.”

  “I thought so,” he said, and pulled out a translucently thin piece of paper. “The Administration has laid its hands on a purchase order you processed for imp food this summer.”

  “Yes, sir. It was my understanding that expenses for care of a familiar are covered under a professor’s per diem.”

  “True, if the familiar is registered to you, but you never reregistered Harold. Technically, he is still Griswald’s.” He sighed and handed me the page. “I’m afraid this could cause you some trouble. Normally, I might be able to smooth this over, but with the extra scrutiny our department is under I can do little.”

  “But that means . . .”

  “Accounts Payable is involved.”

  I shuddered. No one messed with Accounts Payable. Rumor had it the lower levels of their office building were stocked with devils that focused on nothing but the details of your expense reports. They wouldn’t listen to excuses. It wasn’t that they would physically hurt you, but they would make you reconcile your entire financial history. With my memory, the questionable sources I’d used to fund some of my experiments, and my own disastrous student loan situation, an audit might take the rest of my life.