by Jack Heckel
The dean’s eyebrows narrowed. “The Administration will submit a formal request to review your expense reports before midnight tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
He turned toward the door as I spoke. “Thank you for the warning, Dean Yewed. Before we finish, there is something I must know. Is Professor Griswald still alive?”
He thought about this far too long for my comfort before answering. “I honestly don’t know how to answer that, Stewart. If he is gone, though, you can be sure it was for a higher purpose.”
“If I could ask one other last question before we go back in?” He muttered something that sounded like “Gristle warned me,” but nodded. “Do you believe I ruined the field of Subworld Studies?”
The dean did not answer right away, but turned his attention to a study of the back of his hands like he might find the answer to my question there. At last he said, “I’ve given it quite a bit of thought. There are certainly many professors in this and other departments that think what you did was irresponsible and unethical. There are others, including myself, that would not censure you for your work, but do think you have irrevocably changed the field of Subworld Studies forever . . .”
It was clear he had more to say, but I didn’t want to hear more about how I’d screwed everything up. I said abruptly, “I appreciate you agreeing to help me despite your feelings.”
The dean shook a gently scolding finger. “Griswald warned me you would be only too ready to think the worst of yourself. You didn’t let me finish. I said you changed the field of Subworld Studies, and I stick by that—and I think it’s marvelous! You’ve made the field more than some obscurity to be tucked away in long-winded academic journals. Now it has the potential to be relevant to real people’s lives. You should be proud.”
The room had grown a little dusty. I turned away and ran a sleeve over my eyes. He clapped my shoulder. “No need for words. I owe Griswald more than you know. Now, let’s get back out there before my specter runs out of things to complain about.”
His finger glowed brightly and the door folded back to reveal his office. I gazed out at the dean’s translucent doppelganger, still haranguing the empty room, and suddenly the weight of what I was up against struck me. “I’m scared.”
“You’d be a fool not to be, Avery. I am utterly terrified.”
We both looked up at the ceiling, and a quiet moment of understanding passed between us. I probably should have left it there, but this is me we’re talking about and there was one more thing I needed to ask about. “One absolutely final last question, Dean Yewed?” He glanced at his pacing ghost, which was now flickering as the magic that animated it began to fade. He nodded. “You see, sir,” I said, studiously avoiding his gaze, “I have misplaced something very dear to me I’m sure you can help me find.”
“Of course, Avery. If I can. What is it you’ve lost?”
“The location of my transport circle,” I said with great gravity.
I’m not sure I can do justice to the expression of total exasperation that passed across the dean’s face as he stepped through the door with a grunted, “Stewart!”
I followed after, and it was none too soon as the ghost began to stutter and glitch. “If . . . if y-you are sug-suggesting that I would, in . . . in . . . in . . . in any way, bring h-h-ha-harm . . .”
The dean lunged across his desk and pressed the button on the cube, picking up the thread of the lecture as he did. “To any student in this university, then you are badly mistaken. Sam and Ariella are, as you yourself mentioned, the sole representatives of a new world. Yes, I would like to speak to them. Any scholar of Subworld Studies worth the name would like to talk to them, but that is all I want to do. Do I make myself clear?”
“Um . . .” I said, because I hadn’t been given the script he was obviously working from.
“Well?” He gestured impatiently for me to answer.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m glad we cleared that up, Stewart. I will let this incident pass, but remember means and motive.”
“Sir?”
“Means! Method! Mind! Motive! The four M’s, Professor Stewart!” he said, biting off each word. “I would advise you to focus your efforts on preparing lessons for your class and students. And, rest assured, we will be watching.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered. “Thank you, sir.”
“Dismissed, Stewart!” he boomed, and then ushered me to the door with a whispered, “We will be in touch. For now, get as far away from Mysterium as possible.”
I stood on the threshold and mouthed, Where? Before he could answer, a stony hand grabbed the back of my robe and flung me out into the hall. Harold followed after, landing solidly on my stomach and knocking the breath out of me. The door to the dean’s office slammed shut, but not before I heard the golem shout, “Have a nice day!”
As Harold and I clambered to our feet, the imp muttered, “You know, you should consider working on your people skills.”
Chapter 12
Trust in Me
Harold and I made our way out of the Administration building and into the night. Given that I had just learned that I was part of an intrigue that reached, literally, to the top of the Administration, and that it had also been revealed that the dean of my program was part of a secret alliance opposing that Administration, you might be forgiven for believing that I was preoccupied with these weighty matters. The truth is, as I passed through the grotesque doors of the tower and descended the stairs there was only one question running through my mind: curry or kebab?
“My vote would be for kebab,” the imp answered with a smack of his lips.
I nodded in agreement, and then missed a step and nearly tumbled headfirst down the stairs as I realized that I hadn’t actually said anything. I put my hand out and caught hold of the railing to steady myself. Knocked from my shoulder by my stumble, Harold half hopped and half flapped to sprawl awkwardly atop the newel post at the base of the stairs. “Give me a warning next time you forget how to walk,” he grunted as he pulled himself to his feet.
I pointed an accusing finger at him and croaked, “You can read my mind?”
The imp calmly straightened his bow tie before answering, “Naturally.”
“But how?”
He rolled his eyes and wheezed one of his all too common gasps of disgust. “Did you miss the entire class on familiar magic?”
“I never took Familiar Magic.”
“Never took Familiar Magic?” he said incredulously. “What do they teach you these days? There used to be standards.”
“Stop trying to change the subject. How can you read my mind?”
His whole body slumped as he gave a sigh of resignation. “Strictly speaking, it’s our mind. That is the entire point of a mage/familiar connection. We can share thoughts and experiences. You can summon me across existence. I am your emissary in magic, an extension of you.”
My head spun at the implications. If he knew everything I was thinking, then he knew everything I had ever thought. If he experienced everything I experienced, then he had experienced everything I had ever done. I sat down heavily on the stairs as a multitude of embarrassing images flashed through my mind. Harold mirrored my action, and sat with a grunt on the stone ball atop the newel post. He let me silently ponder a highlight reel of my many humiliations for a minute or so before he said, “Would you stop it? It was bad enough having to live through all that the first time.”
I blushed and tried to think of something else—anything else. But as much as I wanted to focus on meaningless things like where I had left the keys to my office (somehow, I’d mislaid them months ago), or why the Mets sucked so much, my mind would inevitably turn to drunken escapades where I’d made a fool of myself, nights with girls, nights alone—”
“Dammit, Avery!” Harold coughed.
I buried my head in my hands and groaned. “I want to stop. Don’t you think I want to stop? I can’t. I don’t know how.” I looked up at him, and as silly as it sounds wi
th everything else that was going on, I felt utterly adrift. “I don’t know what to do. Everything’s been in such a muddle since I got back from Trelari. I’m . . . I’m sorry you’re stuck in my head with me, Harold. If I knew how . . . if I weren’t such a crap mage, I would release whatever bond Griswald made between us so you could go free.”
The imp stood and walked with remarkable grace up the rail to where I was sitting. He clambered onto my shoulder and put a paw on my head. Somehow his touch lifted a little of the sadness, and a tightness in my shoulders I hadn’t known I was carrying melted away. “Griswald did not bind us,” he said softly.
“Who . . . who did?” I asked, hopeful that it was someone that could also set Harold free.
He answered my silent wish with a sad sigh. “It doesn’t work like that, Avery. No one bound us.”
“Then how?”
“I did it, you daft prick!” he shouted. “I chose you!”
My head swam again. None of this made any sense, and my frustration boiled out in my question. “Why in the world would you do that? I’m nothing special. How often do you tell me that my abilities are substandard?”
“Codswallop!” he said angrily, and stepped off my shoulder and began pacing up and down along the stair rail. “I never said any such thing. I have told you that the standards at this university have fallen, because they have. Mages are no longer instructed in how to cast spells, they’re taught to wield power. It’s lazy and it’s dangerous. But you, Avery Stewart, are not a lazy mage. You spent years building one of the most intricate spell patterns existence has ever seen, and you did it specifically to avoid the need to use power to solve your problems. That is why I picked you, because no matter what you tell yourself, you have the makings of a great mage. Better still, you have the makings of a good mage.”
It was a moment that called out for eloquence. Instead, I asked, “Did you say codswallop?”
He glowered at me. It was nice to hear he thought I was a good mage, but it was not something I was ready to believe. And yet, at that moment, I could see across the quad a group of three darkly cloaked students in the process of spray painting avery lives! on the statue of a stern-looking magus. Like it or not, there were some in Mysterium who believed in me. Even if individuals seemed to have a total disregard for private property.
Harold and I both sighed. I smiled at our mutual reaction. Despite being unsettled by my connection with the imp, I had to admit it gave me a warm feeling to know Harold had chosen to be with me. I felt humbled. Harold had tied himself to me because he thought I could be a force for good. It made me realize what a putz I’d been for the last several months. I stood and held out my arm. With a great huffing, Harold clambered from the rail back onto my shoulder. “Where are we going?” he asked.
“I was going to ask you the same question,” I said, and reaching into my pocket I retrieved a butterscotch candy and handed it to him. “I know I’m missing time and memories. You’ve been in my mind. Maybe you can make better sense of it than I can.”
He unwrapped the candy and popped it in his mouth. He sucked on the hard candy and considered. At last he said, “We need to go to our office.”
“Really? But we just came from there.”
“Not that broom closet,” he grunted. “Your actual office.”
“Why now?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I don’t know why we have been avoiding the place. Maybe because every time I think about the office my mind sort of skips off of it like a flat stone on a calm pond.”
I knew the sensation he was describing, because I was experiencing it too. As soon as he’d mentioned the office, my mind had latched on to the question of whether the four M’s had been purposefully arranged in alphabetical order, or if it was only coincidence. Having never given even a third thought to the four M’s before, I strongly suspected my brain’s motives.
“Pros and cons,” I said without preamble.
“What’s that?” Harold asked. “Some kind of game? Is it like checkers or Parcheesi? I like Parcheesi!”
“No, I mean, let’s go over the good and bad points of going back to my office.”
“Oh,” Harold said with a sigh of disappointment. Then he brightened up. “Pro: there’s a Parcheesi board in Griswald’s desk; third drawer down, right side.”
“Con: Moregoth may be waiting to ambush us,” I said. “And the interest in Sam and Ariella, and me, runs all the way to the top of the provost’s tower!”
“Pro: we could stop doing this.”
“Be serious,” I scolded.
Harold looked aggrieved. “I am giving this game all the seriousness it deserves.” I stared at him until he gave in. “Fine! Pro: it’s probably safer than standing in the shadow of said Administration building waiting for Moregoth to show up for work!”
An excellent point, and it deserved an answer equal to it. I lowered my voice and said, “Con: I’m afraid.”
“Pro: so am I,” the imp whispered back.
“Con: it’s nowhere near the kebab stand.”
“Pro: you have no money.”
I held the imp out so I could look him in the eye. “Wait a minute! How is that a pro?”
Harold leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Pro: Griswald always kept a secret stash of money tucked among the student dissertations on the shelf by the door.”
“Why there?”
The imp shrugged. “Safest place in the world. No one ever reads them.”
I wanted to argue, but he was right, and I soon found myself laughing as we made our way across campus to the Subworld Studies building. Harold had put me in such a buoyant mood that as we climbed the stairs to my old, new office, I wondered what had possessed me to camp out in a cubicle in the basement in the first place. “What was the point, Harold? If the Administration had wanted to find me I’m sure they could have.”
“Truth!” he grunted. “Based on all the junk piled on your desk nearly half your class managed to track you to your basement hideaway.”
He may have been exaggerating, but a pile of gifts had been accumulating in my cubicle for the past couple of weeks. In fact, my desk was a testament to my class’s tenacity and lack of fair play. I had two drawers stuffed with the usual tokens of appreciation: candies, apples, colorful balls of twine, and the souls of the damned. I was still pondering what use the Cthulhoids thought one could make of a damned soul when we arrived at my office. I started to open the door when I noticed light streaming from beneath it. A cold chill passed through my body. “Harold, look!” I hissed. “Do you think someone is in there?”
“Maybe,” Harold whispered back. “Or maybe Eldrin left the light on when he broke in.”
“Or maybe we left it on when we were last here and we’ve forgotten,” I suggested.
We pressed our ears to the door. The office sounded utterly silent. We drew away again and Harold asked, “What do we do now?”
I set my shoulders. “We go in.”
“But it could be Moregoth,” Harold offered.
“If it is, then it is time for us to have it out.”
Despite my brave words, it was with a shaking hand that I turned the knob. The room appeared empty, but a set of candles cast a wavering light across the room. We stood at the door, waiting for something to happen. Nothing did. “This is stupid,” I said, and, stepping into the room, closed the door behind us. “Harold, do you feel any flash of insight?”
Harold grunted and flapped across the room to settle on his perch with a sigh of contentment. Following his lead, I shrugged out of my formal robes and hung them on the stand beside the door. I turned back to my desk. The candles were strange—out of place. “What do you think those are doing here, Harold?”
“Mood lighting?” he grumbled.
“I put them there.” A woman stepped out of the shadows behind my desk.
Harold said something like, “Avery! Look out! It’s a—” and then his head fell forward and he was asleep.
“Haro
ld?”
“Hello, Avery,” the woman said. Her voice resonated through the room, trembling with power.
Backlit by the candles, I couldn’t make out her features, but I could see the glow of her emerald eyes . . . her serpentine eyes. As their gaze fixed on me, an electric shock ran through my left arm. Memories came rushing back in a flood. This woman was the reason I’d abandoned my office. “Who are you? What have you done to Harold?” I gasped, trying to give my mind time to assemble my rediscovered knowledge into a coherent whole.
“It’s okay, Avery, we are old friends.”
I wanted to believe her, but there was something about her hair. I couldn’t focus on it. The buzzing in my arm was growing more intense, almost painful, making it impossible to concentrate. I slid back my sleeve and to my alarm saw words tattooed along my wrist in my own handwriting: Don’t look at the snakes! And, beneath that, six marks like a tally. Even as I was marveling at them, the words began to fade. The pain disappeared along with them. Only the tally remained and a seventh mark was added to the line.
“It is time to begin, Avery.” Her voice was soft and inviting.
I saw her gliding toward me. As she advanced, she began unwrapping the crimson scarf about her head, revealing dozens of writhing snakes like strands of hair. Their collective eyes caught mine. I tried to turn away, but she spoke again, and the snakes’ eyes scintillated and spun, and my thoughts became her thoughts. “Lie down on the couch, Avery.” Her voice was a commandment. I needed to lie down. And I did, draping myself over the large couch where Griswald once took his infamous afternoon naps. She smiled. “Now, don’t you feel better?”