The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

  “What is real, really?” a spacy voice asked from above our heads.

  We looked up and saw a striped cat with spiral-pupiled eyes and an enormous smile. I pointed up at it. “This type of craziness is what I’m talking about.”

  The cat ignored me and addressed Vivian. “The white rabbit has been looking for you, Your Majesty. You know, you should really go easier on him. He tries so hard to be on time, but it’s difficult when you get your watch repaired by a hatter.”

  “Wait!” Vivian shouted. “You think I’m the Queen of Hearts?”

  Before the cat could answer, there was an explosion from above. We looked up in time to see my shield shatter. The bursting of the spell fell like a hammer blow in my head. I saw stars as pain seared through my brain. I clutched at my temples. “We have to get out of here. Moregoth is coming, and I can’t hold them again.”

  Sealer spells were already soaring down the shaft past us. Rook dodged to the left as one split our circle in two. “Can you make another portal?”

  I shook my head—mistake. It was all I could do not to vomit. “Can you?”

  “Maybe, laddie.” His palms began to glow, but that’s about as far as he got before a bolt of energy caught him in the back. He gave a cry and crumpled into a ball. Frantically, I put a hand to his neck and gasped in relief as I felt a flutter of a pulse. He was alive, but none of us would be for long if we didn’t get out of here.

  I grabbed Vivian and pulled her close. “You need to make a portal.”

  “But I’ve never made a portal. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Not true,” I said as calmly as I could, considering the circumstances. “You said so yourself. You’ve done this hundreds of times. Do exactly what you did in your travels, just hold the door for the rest of us.”

  There was fear in her eyes, and I knew it wasn’t about the spell, but about whether she would get lost again. I gripped her hand and managed a tight smile. “I promise, I will be with you this time.”

  She nodded and I felt the pull of her will as she drew in power. The spell began to build, but it was immediately clear that it was not going to be strong enough to carry the rest of us through with her. Despite my promise, if she continued she would step out of this world to somewhere else—alone. There was only one thing for it. I reached in my pocket and thrust Griswald’s toothless key into her hands. She stared at the key and asked, “What is this?”

  We ducked as a couple of spells flashed between us. “There is no time for explanation. Just focus your thoughts through the key and be careful. It can be difficult to control.” She hesitated. “It’s going to be okay,” I said in my most reassuring voice. “If you follow my lead, I’ll tell you when you’ve built up enough energy to form the gate.”

  She still looked uncertain, but nodded and focused her gaze on key. At once teeth appeared and began gyrating along the key’s shaft. I felt an immense rush of power rush flow into her. The golden rings around her pupils glowed a molten red, and I expected to see the gate begin to form. Instead, the world began to fade. On the walls of the shaft, the bric-a-brac and clutter began to vanish, and then walls themselves disappeared, and we were falling through a gray tunnel of indistinct margin.

  My heart sank. I had hoped she would draw only a little power from the key, but she had opened herself to it completely. The key had begun to unravel the world. “Vivian, you have to stop!” I shouted.

  “No! I need more!” Her voice came out as an animalistic growl.

  Beside us, Alice’s eyes went wide and she said, “Oh my!” Then she was gone.

  “Vivian, please stop,” I pleaded.

  When she didn’t respond, I tried to pry the key from her hands, but it was like a shadow attempting to wrestle a statue.

  She turned her eyes, like searchlights, on me. “It’s okay, Avery. The spell knows what to do. Can’t you see? It is glorious.” Her voice was inhuman, like a quartet of Vivians speaking at once.

  I had no idea what she was seeing. The world had turned to an indistinct gray mist. Only the five of us and the Sealers still had substantial form. The last thing I saw was the cat, which vanished gradually from the tip of his tail up, until there was only a floating smile. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  The smile tilted to one side, and said, “Curious, I thought I was the mad one.”

  I had little time to ponder his words. Our bodies melted into motes of energy, and we passed out of his world.

  Chapter 24

  Which Wardrobe?

  We materialized in a small clearing in a wintry evergreen forest, surrounded by deep shadows. A lamp atop an ornate iron post stood nearby, a gas flame flickering inside its glass-paned enclosure. Flakes of snow drifted down from a gray overcast sky, and blanketed the ground and weighed down the tree branches. Everything was quiet. I fell to my knees and said hoarsely, “Gods, Vivian, what have we done?”

  My mind was racing. Excuses pulled from the propaganda I’d been fed at the university fought with my conscience to deny what had happened: subworlds aren’t real, they are mere echoes, they are like seasons here and gone to be replaced by another. I rejected them all. We had destroyed a world to save ourselves. I ached inside, and I might have lost myself in my guilt, except that Vivian didn’t answer. She swayed silently on her feet and then collapsed to the ground.

  “Vivian?” I cried, and rushed to where she’d fallen. She was still clutching the key, and it was still glowing. I again tried to pry it out of her fingers, but they were locked around it with a grip of steel. Her eyes moved fitfully beneath her closed eyelids and her face was pale as the snow. I cradled her head in my lap and touched her forehead. She was burning with fever.

  “Drake?” I called out. “Her skin feels like fire. She needs healing!”

  He didn’t respond. I looked up to see Drake and Valdara, heads bent together over a prone Rook. Initially, I was furious that they weren’t coming to help, but a terrifying dread crept through me as I realized why. They had been turned to stone.

  I took off my robe and laid it beneath Vivian’s head. Then I rose and approached the petrified trio. I touched each of them, trying to feel the nature of the spell that had done this, but there was nothing there. No pattern of transformation was woven into their beings. No residue of magic clung to them. It was as if they had always been stone.

  “It’s the White Witch’s doing.” The voice was incredibly soft, almost lost in the gentle hiss of the falling snow.

  Spinning about, I saw the vague outline of the speaker hiding among the trees at the edge of the clearing. It was a strange creature, part-human and . . . maybe part-goat? I wasn’t exactly sure. I finally decided that he was a faun.

  “Who is the White Witch?” I asked. “What did she do? Turn my other friends into statues? Can you help?”

  He pointed at Vivian. “She is the White Witch, and she turns those that displease her into statues. Your friends must have displeased her.”

  I looked down at Vivian and then back to the faun in confusion. “There’s been a mistake. This isn’t your White Witch. She’s a friend of mine and theirs.” I pointed at the statues.

  The faun shook his head. “There’s no question. She’s the White Witch. I would recognize her anywhere, but then you must know that, being a . . . a friend of hers.”

  The White Witch? Something about that name, about this place, was familiar. I looked at the faun, the snow, and the statues. “The lamppost!” I said, letting out a misty puff of breath. “This is Dr. Clive Lewis’s world.”

  “He preferred to be called Jack,” stated the faun.

  I sat back on my heels and thought about the Munchkins in Baum’s world and the cat in Carroll’s world. Both had identified Vivian as a villain. Despite my feelings for her, something was wrong. I was starting to move pieces in my mind when I realized that the faun was ever so slowly backing away from me into the forest. I snapped my fingers. “Stop! I need your help.”

  The faun hesitated. “Do not tes
t me, faun!” I shouted. “If you do not wish to end up as the others, you will help me take her somewhere safe.” I didn’t like making the threat, but if he left, Vivian was going to freeze. He stepped, trembling, away from the trees and into the small clearing around the lamppost. “I take it we aren’t far from your house?”

  He twisted his hands in the extremely long scarf that hung around his neck. “No, not far.”

  “Good, we will take her to your house. Help me carry her.”

  The faun pattered delicately over, and together we carried Vivian. As we moved through the trees, I saw dozens of other statues scattered here and there. They were the Sealers, frozen in midattack. I tried not to think about the implications.

  The faun’s house was set into a hillside. He had a painted door with a lovely polished brass knocker. It was picturesque and cozy and a vast improvement over the cold and snow. I laid Vivian on a couch before the fire while the faun made us some tea. After a few minutes, he returned with three steaming cups. He put one on the side table for Vivian and I started to take the one he offered me when I remembered the accounts of this world.

  I pointed at the cup the faun was about to sip. “Give me that.”

  “What?”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Give me your cup.” He swallowed hard and handed his tea to me with a shaking hand. I exchanged cups with him and took a sip. “Wonderful,” I said, and it really was. I hadn’t realized how cold I’d gotten.

  He put his own cup on a table next to his chair, and casually pushed it away. “I’m not thirsty.”

  I took another sip. “As I understand it, the White Witch is the most evil villain this world has ever known. But I also thought she was dead. In fact . . .” I seemed to recall that the entire world was gone, but here I was. There are many books written about subworlds that seem to be reflections of others. I felt myself slipping into what Eldrin would call navel-gazing. I had to focus. I needed to heal Vivian and revive everyone else before Moregoth found us. I shook my head to clear my jumbled thoughts. “Why do you believe my friend is so wicked?”

  “Because I am,” Vivian said in a hoarse whisper. Her eyes were open and, as a bonus, no longer glowing. “Where are we?” she asked as she sat up.

  The faun made an audible gulp sound. I shifted slightly between her and the faun. “I was going to ask you the same thing. But before we get to that, why are you the White Witch? I thought black was your color.”

  She didn’t react to my attempt at humor, which I have to admit was lousy. Instead, she very deliberately looked at the faun. He jumped to his feet and bowed. “I think I’ll set another kettle on. I am so glad that you have recovered, Your Majesty.”

  He gave a little yip and skittered out of the room. I turned back to Vivian. She was staring at Griswald’s key with an expression of fascinated horror. “Vivian, are you okay?”

  She shook her head. “The magic, it was . . . impossible.”

  “I know. That key seems to allow its holder to manipulate reality without a pattern to guide the magic. It is chaotic and—”

  “Intoxicating,” she whispered.

  I was going to say “horrible,” but decided not to argue the point. “Yes, and also very dangerous. Don’t feel guilty, but something happened during the transport. It isn’t your fault. Valdara, Drake, and Rook—”

  “I know.”

  “What do you mean you know?”

  She ran her fingers over the smooth, featureless surface of the key. “I brought us to this world because I knew the others would be frozen when we arrived.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  She looked up and the light from the fire made the gold rings about her eyes shine and sparkle. “I wanted to talk, just us, alone. My visions indicated that we’d have a chance here.”

  “You turned them into statues? Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?”

  She nodded. “Yes, but it was the only path I could see.”

  “You know I trust you, Vivian, but . . .” I gestured helplessly back in the direction where we’d left the others. “Rook and Valdara and Drake . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Avery. If there had been any other way . . .” She twisted the key in her hands.

  I didn’t like this, but considering everything she had been through, I kept my mind open. “Well, what do you need to talk to me about so badly?”

  “I need to give you a choice, Avery.” The gold in her eyes burned brightly to life again.

  “This is about the vision you had in the last world?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  I swallowed. “And you are certain of the truth of this vision?”

  “I’m as sure of it as I have ever been of anything.”

  “Tell me, then,” I said.

  Vivian picked up the cup of tea beside her, and turned away to look at the fire. She sat in silence for several minutes, sipping her tea. When at last she spoke, it was as though she were reading from a book. “Close to where we entered this world is a passage. It has the power to take us back to Earth of an earlier time. Moregoth and the others would not be able to follow. It is a path of ease and peace, of quiet days and children, of long life and happiness. Memories of our prior lives would fade, and the events of these days would unspool without us. Neither you nor I will ever be what we might have become.”

  I knew at once that it would also mean abandoning Rook, Valdara, and Drake to Moregoth. It would mean leaving Sam and Ariella to the whims of chance and fate. It would mean leaving Trelari to defend itself alone against whatever machinations the Administration had planned for it. There was an emptiness in the pit of my stomach, because I knew it was the path Vivian wished I would take.

  “What’s the other option?” I asked.

  Her shoulders drooped. “We save your friends and take a path back to Sam and Ariella. In this future, I see death and war, realities thrown into violent conflict, a race destroyed, and life as we know it reordered.”

  “And what happens to us?”

  “Nothing is certain, but there is every chance that we will end up reviled and hated. That our names will become curses. And our stories the bogeymen of children’s nightmares.”

  “Does it mean that we will find Sam and Ariella without leading Moregoth to them?”

  She shrugged and stared into the dregs of her tea. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if that’s possible.”

  Even with the danger of Moregoth hovering in the background, there was no question which course I had to take, and Vivian knew it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I can’t abandon the others.”

  She smiled sadly at me. “I know. Give me a little time to rest and I can make a new gate.”

  That Vivian was proposing to form the new gate gave me considerable pause. It was not just that I was concerned she couldn’t cast the spell, but even if she could I wasn’t sure she could control the gate once formed. Her last attempt was her first conscious attempt, and it could have killed her. “Why can’t I do it?” I asked.

  She gave me her most impish smile. “Because the gate needs to be guided by the vision, and you never took divination, Avery Stewart.”

  “Too squishy,” I said.

  She snorted in good-natured disgust. “I will remind you that divination brought us together.”

  I knew she meant it as a joke, but the circumstances of our first meeting had bothered me since I woke up with a hangover without her. I listened to the crackle of the fire.

  “Avery? What is it?”

  Unable to look her in the eye, I asked my teacup, “Was it always about the key?”

  There was a long pause before she answered, “Yes . . .”

  “I see.” I set my teacup down and stood.

  “Sit down, and let me finish!” she said sharply.

  I turned on her, intending to say, No, but the intensity of her gaze made me hesitate. “What?”

  “Yes . . . at the beginning. As soon as Griswald and his little cabal let slip what you were up to, I beg
an plotting to insert myself in the equation. I was angry, Avery. As the child of a subworlder, I couldn’t even apply to the university. I had to lie and cheat, and do all manner of things that would disgust you, simply to get through the door. You don’t know what it’s like to have to hide what you are, and to know if you’re ever discovered banishment is the best you can hope for. So yes, I saw you as a means and damn the cost.”

  I didn’t really know what to say so said nothing, but I remained standing while she continued. “I wish I’d been a less angry person, a stronger person, a braver person. Since then I have lived a thousand lives through my visions. So many possible futures and the only constant is you. And in each one, no matter how terribly they ended, you were funny and kind, and good to me. I know to you I’m basically a stranger, but I’ve lived lifetimes with you and I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Avery Stewart.”

  I still didn’t know what to say, but I sat down.

  She smiled. “I really do wish I’d just been a girl in a bar looking for a pleasant night with a boy the first time we met.”

  “Me too.”

  For a long time, neither of us spoke. We both stared at the fire. At some point our hands entwined. She leaned her head against my shoulder, and we sat together lost in our thoughts. The faun never returned. When the fire had died to embers, Vivian laughed. “While I would love to stay here with you, time is passing outside. If you want to keep going, we need to move.”

  “Five more minutes.” I replied.

  We sat together until, in unspoken agreement, we rose and walked out of the house into the cold. When we were back in the clearing, Vivian pulled the key from some hidden pocket in her dress and held it in both hands. She seemed to hesitate. “Before I begin, I have to tell you that there is another price to the course we’ve chosen. One that you will not like. All I ask is that you remember all the good and noble reasons you have for doing it. Okay?”

  I tried to nod, but my neck seemed stiff with the cold and so I mumbled, “Tell me.”