The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “Good point,” the dwarf conceded.

  “I only hope the afterlife is unusual,” Harold replied as he flapped off to sit again on the back of one of the chairs. “Something that makes you say, ‘Oh!’”

  He and Rook laughed, but I was annoyed at him for changing the subject. “With the way the two of you keep secrets, I’m sure you wouldn’t tell the rest of us even if you did know.”

  Rook rolled his eyes and whispered a dwarven prayer for patience. “Look, lad, I know you feel you’ve been hard-used by me and Harold. There are reasons it would have been incredibly dangerous for us to reveal everything we knew. You’ve got to trust us on this one.”

  “Trust you?” I snorted.

  “Fine. Trust us, don’t trust us,” he said, a bit of an edge creeping into his voice. “If I’d told you who I was on Trelari, what then? I had no idea what to do. Nobody did. My job was to make sure you didn’t get killed so you could do whatever it was you were doin’. And when you got back . . .” He sighed, and there was real regret there. “Frankly, a lot of us didn’t trust you.” I jerked my head up, ready to argue. He held up his hands. “Not me, but the fact is the Administration did have a pipeline into your head. It was only today we discovered how they were gettin’ to you.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, he had a point. What would the Administration have known from me about them had he revealed himself, or had Harold started talking earlier or, gods forbid, given me the key a week ago? “By the way,” Rook asked. “How did you resist her this time? I see she managed to bewitch Harold again . . .”

  “She has very kind eyes,” Harold said defensively.

  “You mean hypnotic eyes,” Rook chided. “Anyway, I expected both of you to be out cold when I got there.”

  I explained about the tattoo, and showed him the seven tally marks on my arm, now nearly faded. “I think it was me, trying to warn myself about her. I would guess the tally marks meant I’d been under her spell six previous times. It would explain my memory loss, and why I abandoned my office. Some part of me must have remembered she came there, and was trying to avoid her.”

  “Interestin’,” Rook said as he examined my arm. “I wonder if you could send yourself other messages. Might be useful. For instance, you could always know where you left your keys.”

  “That would be a nice change,” Harold remarked.

  I gave him the stink-eye before saying, “I don’t know. It’s painful as hell when the message is written, so I wouldn’t want to use it on a daily basis.”

  “On the other hand, it might sober you up when you’re drunk,” Harold offered.

  I gave the imp another sour look. “I think I was better off when you didn’t talk.”

  He stuck his tongue out at me. I returned the favor. Rook laughed at us. “You’re like an old married couple already.”

  “What do you think that makes him, Avery?” Harold asked.

  “Drunken Uncle?” I suggested.

  “Shrewish Aunt?” the imp countered.

  The dwarf bristled his brows at us. “If you two are quite finished, I think there might be a way to modify your spell to reduce the pain level. It looks like you’ve been usin’ an Umbridge pattern. That’s the influence of all that Rowling magic you’ve been studyin’ in preparation for your class. Now, if you ask me, what you should do . . .”

  The three of us discussed the merits of the spell and various methods I might use to reduce the “tattooing” sensation. After we finished our ales and beers—or in Rook’s case, his fourth ale and beer—I steered the conversation back to our current situation. “Okay, I grant you that things would have gone badly had you come right out and told me all your secrets while I was still under thrall to the Administration. Still, we are where we are. My question is, where do we go from here?”

  “I’ll tell you where we go, lad,” Rook said, leaning forward and jabbing a finger down on the table. “We get the hell out of here before—”

  “Professor Stewart?” a young woman’s voice said from over my shoulder.

  The three of us jumped like we’d been caught plotting something secret, which is exactly what we were doing. I saw Rook’s hand begin to glow with a lethal light. I caught his eye and shook my head. They were obviously students. There were three of them, two pale young men and a woman with a slight green tinge to her skin. They were probably acolytes. They had that early to mid-twenties vibrancy and easy beauty the adept years had a habit of grinding away. Whatever their ages, they appeared to be in a club or on a team together, because they were dressed in black cloaks that were trying very hard to match. Whoever they were, I needed to get rid of them. The last thing we needed was a crowd of people recognizing me.

  “I think you may have me mistaken for someone else,” I said.

  They exchanged glances and came to some unspoken agreement. The young woman leaned in close. “It’s okay, Professor Stewart. We’re with the Resistance.” All three shot their hands forward. I could see the words Avery Lives! written on their wrists in magic marker.

  I rubbed my hand across my face and groaned, “Oh gods!”

  One of the pale young men stepped forward. “Professor, there isn’t time for explanation.” He paused, affected a strange Eastern European accent, and added, “Come with us if you want to live.”

  He and the other pasty-skinned fellow exchanged a high five. Rook, Harold, and I sat in confused silence. I was beginning to think I’d been wrong to stop the dwarf from taking them out earlier. Thankfully, before I could tell Rook to unload a bit of higher-level magic on them, the green woman punched both of them in the arm. “You promised, no movie quotes.”

  One of the boys—it was kind of hard to tell them apart—whined, “Come on, it was too good to pass up, Susan.”

  We had gone way past enough. “Look, I’m sorry if you were in my class this morning. I promise you we will catch up with the material on the syllabus next session.”

  “Oh, we aren’t in your class,” Susan said with a laugh. “That’s for novices.”

  “I don’t really go in for Rowling magic anyway,” one of the young men said.

  “Yeah, too much silly wand waving,” the other added.

  Susan gave the two boys a ferocious glare and they shut up. She turned back to me and said, “I’m sorry, Professor Stewart, but give me a chance to explain. We aren’t in your class. But we are on your side against the—” she looked around and lowered her voice conspiratorially “—You Know What.”

  “I do?”

  “He does?” Rook asked.

  “Yes,” she said with far more confidence than she should have. “And we wanted to warn you that Eldrin and Dawn are in trouble!”

  “How could you possibly know Dawn and Eldrin?” I spluttered.

  All of them reached into their cloaks and produced extremely battered copies of The Dark Lord. For the thousandth time, I silently cursed Jack Heckel and all his offspring.

  “Okay,” Rook said, bristling his brows sternly at them. “We’ll grant you Professor Stewart’s life is an open book, but how could you possibly know Dawn and Eldrin are in trouble?”

  One of the pale men pulled a small disc of metal from his ear and held it out to us. “We’ve been monitoring the Mysterium Security ether-wave network in case the You Know What tries to make a move against you.”

  I inspected the little device and smiled. It was a crude one-directional iteration of the type of communication device Eldrin had made. I’d built something similar when I was an acolyte, although I used it for far less noble purposes. I handed it back and said, “We used to use something like this to monitor the component storerooms so we could raid them for magical spirits.”

  “Cool!” he said with an enthusiasm that made me instantly guilty. I quickly adopted a serious air. “Look, I appreciate your concern, but I happen to know that Dawn and Eldrin are perfectly safe.”

  Rook was not as confident. “Exactly where are they, lad?”

  “They went to
Student Records,” I said. “I want to get copies of Sam’s and Ariella’s admissions and financial aid records.”

  My confidence evaporated as Rook’s face went pale. “You sent them to Student Records?”

  “Yes. What’s wrong with that?” I asked, trying to keep my fear in check.

  “What’s wrong?” Rook said with an incredulous rasp. “I take it they don’t have authorization to get these files?” I shook my head. “Lad, when all you’re tryin’ to do is get a transcript or add/drop a class, Student Records is fine place . . .”

  “Although the shade of beige they paint the walls is soul-destroying,” one of the pale-faced men said.

  “True,” Rook agreed, “but that’s only if you are exposed to it over an extended period of time. The more immediate concern is the other enchantments that have been put in place to prevent people doin’ exactly what Eldrin and Dawn are tryin’ to do.”

  “What kind . . . kind of enchantments?” I asked in a voice that broke with anxiety.

  “Probably a labyrinth ward of some kind,” the dwarf said with a fierce tug of his beard.

  Susan nodded vigorously. “It’s a good guess. The place is chock-full of them.”

  “Labyrinth ward?” I scoffed. “I’ve been to the place dozens of times over the years, and apart from the line, which does wind about a bit, there’s nothing like a labyrinth there.”

  “It’s not a physical maze, you dunderhead!” Rook growled. “The wards in Student Records are bound to be based on Clarke fairy magic. It’ll be some sort of red-tape labyrinth.”

  I chuckled. “Red-tape labyrinth? What, do you get buried in paperwork?”

  The laughter died on my lips at the grim set of Rook’s face. I was on my feet, Harold positioned atop my shoulder, heading toward the Student Records building at a slow run. Rook fell in beside me, huffing. Behind us trailed the three students from the Resistance.

  “Laddie,” Rook said as he ran to keep up with my long legs. “I know you want to help your friends, but goin’ after them yourself is a mistake. Come back with me to Earth. We can have a team assembled in a few hours . . .”

  “Not going to happen, Rook,” I said without breaking stride. “Eldrin and Dawn went to Student Records at my request. I can’t leave them. If you were to come with me I’m sure we could handle anything the Administration and Moregoth might throw at us.”

  The dwarf stopped suddenly. “I . . . I can’t come, lad.”

  “What are you talking about, Rook?” I asked, skidding to a halt. “I thought . . .”

  “I know, Avery, but me goin’ would only make things more dangerous. In fact, even bein’ this close to . . .” He licked his lips nervously and glanced up.

  We were standing near the entrance to the central quad. The tower of the Administration building loomed over to the left, its shining red orb glaring down at us. I had never seen Rook look this anxious. “What’s going on, Rook?”

  The path we’d been on was bathed in the red glow from the Provost’s Tower. He pressed his body up against a light pole. “I have to go, Avery. I’ve been here too long already.”

  “But . . .”

  He walked away off the path and deeper into the shadows beneath the trees. I followed and when we were out of earshot of the students he said, “Lad, I know I owe you a lot of answers. When you get your friends, come straight back to Earth. There’s a coffee shop there. It’s on the corner of—”

  I held up a hand to stop him, a vision of the group of cosplay fanatics that frequented my regular morning hangout playing in my mind. “Let me guess. In Greenwich Village, on Bleecker between Leroy and Carmine?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”

  “It’s just the way my life works, Rook,” I said with a bitter smile.

  “What?”

  “If you can’t come with me, then I don’t have time to explain. All I’ll say is it’s nice to know that, for once, I’m not the only one who doesn’t understand what’s happening.”

  He clapped his hand in mine. “Join me when you’re done, Avery, and we can talk until we have all the answers.”

  I watched him jog away toward the edge of campus. As he went, he passed through islands of light cast by one streetlight and then another and then another, and then he stepped into a shadow and did not emerge again. “I’m glad you’re still with me,” I said to Harold.

  He put his paw back on my head. “Always, Avery.”

  I returned to the students and gave a short bow. “Thank you for the information. I appreciate it, but this is where I leave you.”

  They looked at each other, and then back at me. “We’re coming with you,” Susan said. The others nodded in agreement.

  “Out of the question. It’s far too dangerous.”

  “Danger is my middle name,” one of the pale men said with a grin.

  “Stop that!” Susan snapped, and then turned back to me. “I know you think we’re nothing but a pack of silly students, but we aren’t.” She glanced at the two men and added, “Mostly. But we can help you. I worked in Student Records, and as goofy as Trevor and Tanner seem, they are actually quite clever.”

  It was a good speech, but I was not persuaded. “Sorry . . .”

  “Please, Avery,” she said, fixing her green eyes on mine. “I came to Mysterium to study subworlds, but after reading your work I can’t be content with only observing. I want to help save them—and that means helping you.”

  I was about to refuse again when I noticed her eyes were beginning to fade—the telltale mark of an emerging subworld traveler. She was not that much younger than me, and seemed a lot more mature than I had been at her age. I mean, who am I to say someone isn’t ready to do something really stupid.

  I nodded and looked over her head at the two men behind her. “What about you two?”

  They exchanged a glance, and the first said, “If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.” He bowed his head and added, “You have my sword.”

  “And you have my bow,” the second man affirmed, also bowing.

  A profound silence followed this. I thought from the depth of anger in her expression that Susan might murder the two of them on the spot. But before she could say anything, there was a deep sigh from atop my shoulder and Harold said, “And my ax.”

  I didn’t respond. There was really nothing to say. I turned and marched across the quad toward the Student Records building, an imp on my shoulder and three acolytes of the Resistance beside me. If I had learned one thing on Trelari, it was the value of friendship, and I wasn’t about to let my friends down—old or new.

  Chapter 14

  Khaaaaan!

  According to the campus clocks, it was a little before midnight when the four of us marched across the quad, up the stairs, and through the front doors of the Student Records building. A question that might occur to you is why, given the clandestine nature of our mission, we weren’t trying to sneak into the building. I did consider the idea briefly, but black cloaks aside, my new followers were not the fleetest of foot. Trevor and Tanner were eager, but out of shape, a bit clumsy, and utterly untrained at sneaking. Susan was a different matter. She was a Dryadine, which meant she was lithe and graceful, and strongly resembled an Orion woman from Star Trek, but she also was dressed like what she must have imagined a member of a resistance would dress like. She was wearing baggy, ill-fitted clothing and a pair of thick-soled combat boots. She did not so much glide along as stomp about.

  There was another reason I chose the direct route: the sheer number of people gathered on the quad in front of the building. Acolytes don’t keep anything close to normal hours, and the Necromancy Department, for obvious reasons, conducts nearly all its activities at night. As a result, the undead and the un-undead were out in numbers. They were floating, shambling, and drinking their way across the grounds. A group of Cthulhoids had erected an altar where they were performing a dark ritual, probably trying to submerge Mysterium beneath a sea or something. In a
less apocalyptic vein, an astromancer had assembled his class at the far end of the quad and was explaining star patterns to them in a circle of mammoth standing stones he had materialized for the purpose. Students exchanged notes and ghostwritten term papers. They flirted. They ate pizza. In other words, there would be dozens of witnesses to whatever we did.

  Besides, we were not technically doing anything illegal. All we wanted was to retrieve Eldrin and Dawn from Student Records . . .

  Then meet up with Rook and find out what he knew about the provost that was too dangerous to say in Mysterium . . .

  And then hope I could use that knowledge to prevent the Administration from doing horrible things to Sam and Ariella . . .

  And Trelari . . .

  And save my job . . .

  And my sanity . . .

  And . . .

  The thoughts circled on and on, but I kept returning to one: Rook. Who was he, really? Why had he been on Trelari? How had he known so much about the world? If he was a Mysterian mage, how had he been able to remain behind after Valdara sealed the world off? “Too many questions,” I murmured.

  “Is there a problem, sir?” Susan asked.

  I had stopped in middle of the doorway to the Student Records building. Trevor and Tanner stood inside the soaring lobby looking about nervously. I shook my head and followed them in. “Sorry about that, I was thinking about things that don’t make sense.”

  “That’s okay, sir,” Susan said, and Trevor and Tanner, or Tanner and Trevor, nodded in agreement.

  They seemed to be excited just to be a part of whatever it was I was doing. An uncomfortable feeling of guilt started creeping from my stomach and up my throat. I recognized it immediately, because it was how I’d felt pretty much the entire time I’d been on Trelari.

  I herded them over to the side of the lobby. We stood between two enormous columns carved in the images of gods from somewhere in the multiverse, but rather than the traditional lightning bolts or swords gods were typically shown wielding, both statues were gazing in a somewhat mystified manner at the various sheets of marble paper they had clutched in their stony grips.