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The Darker Lord

Page 27

by Jack Heckel


  I pushed an ale in front of her and tapped the side of the mug so she would notice. She tried to smile, but it was a tired effort. “I’m fine, Avery.”

  She studied her drink, but otherwise did not touch it. “What’s troubling you?” I asked.

  She sighed. “The Sealers. So many of them have died, because of me.”

  Her thoughts mirrored my own, except I had been thinking about how they had died because of me. Moregoth had been so intent on getting at me. The irony, that we were both blaming ourselves, struck me. I laughed bitterly.

  “Avery!” she said sternly. “I know they’ve been trying to kill us, but they worked for the university. They may have been misguided, but—”

  “No, Vivian. I . . . I wasn’t laughing at them. I was laughing at us.” I stabbed a finger into my chest. “We are both blaming ourselves for their deaths, but neither of us is really to blame. Not solely. It’s true they would never have run into the things that killed them had you not cast the spell, but they wouldn’t have been chasing you at all if it weren’t for me.”

  “You can go back even further,” Rook said, draining his second tankard. “Had the Mysterians not mucked up the multiverse, Moregoth would never have existed. Fact of the matter is, most of the people at the top of the Administration are Mysterians, or had help from them. Moregoth went to the same school I did growin’ up.” He shook a finger in Vivian’s direction. “So, don’t you go hoggin’ all the blame, lass. There’s plenty of it to go around.”

  “And you guys are forgetting the person most responsible,” Drake growled. “Moregoth himself. He could have stopped. He made a choice to lead those men after us. Pushing through every barrier, every trap. It was . . . It was . . .”

  “Madness,” Valdara offered.

  We all raised our glasses and toasted. “Madness!”

  After we drank, Valdara turned to Vivian. “Do you know where we go from here?”

  Vivian shook her head. “I’m not sure. I know we’re close, but we have to wait.”

  “With Moregoth dead, shouldn’t the route be clear?” Drake asked.

  Vivian shrugged and Rook cleared his throat. “We might be a little lost,” he said, staring sadly at the dregs of his last mug of ale.

  “What do you mean, ‘lost’?” I asked. “I thought this ‘desire gateway,’ or whatever you called it, was supposed to be able to get us anywhere in the multiverse.”

  “It can!” he said with great confidence, but then began rubbing the back of his neck. “However, if you’ve stashed them in the place I think you stashed them, then where Sam and Ariella are is not exactly a place in the multiverse. It’s more of a time.”

  The innkeeper, a fat man with a florid face and sweating brow, came bustling by to clear away our empty mugs. We ordered another round of drinks and some food to go along with it. He paused, staring at us uncertainly. “You all just come into town?”

  The group went quiet, and Rook answered for all of us. “What’s it to you?”

  The innkeeper wiped his head with his cloth nervously. “Nothing! Nothing! I was only wondering if you’d need some rooms for the night.”

  We visibly relaxed, and agreed that a room would be a good idea, and that we would pay in advance, because we might be leaving unexpectedly. This puzzled him a little, but one of Rook’s glowers forestalled any further questions. After the innkeeper left, we returned to the question of Sam and Ariella.

  Rook tried unsuccessfuly to explain a number of times what he meant about the Discovery not being a place before he finally barked, “All the four of you need to know is that the Discovery is not a physical place, but a spell cast by Mysterians.”

  “How can it be a spell?” Valdara asked. “We were standing on it.”

  “And?” he replied irritably.

  “And you can’t stand on a spell. They aren’t real,” she argued.

  Rook gave a derisive snort. “Tell that to the guy that’s just been fried by a mystical lightnin’ bolt, or caught one of Sam’s conjured arrows in the throat.”

  “That’s different.”

  “No, lass, it isn’t. The Discovery is a spell—more complicated and sophisticated than most—but still a spell.”

  “What kind of spell?” I asked. “What’s its purpose?”

  He scratched his beard trying to figure out the best way to explain. “I suppose the best explanation is that it’s a time-travel portal. We cast it eons ago to transport all the Mysterians back to a time before we originally lost control of Mysterium. It was meant to give us a last chance to wrest control of Mysterium away from the mages if our other efforts failed. Unfortunately, most Mysterians now see it as plan A, B, and C, rather than the last worst hope it was meant to be.”

  Having grown up on the Terminator movies, my mind raced at the implications. “But if you change the past, wouldn’t that destroy everything that’s happened since?” I asked. “Including us?”

  Rook rolled his eyes in disgust. “I really wonder what you spent all that time at school doin’. From what I hear, it wasn’t chasin’ girls.” He winked at Vivian. “Not sure what else would have kept you from learnin’ so much.”

  “Can you just tell me what I’m missing?” I asked. “Or is this yet another topic you are going to find impossible to explain in a way that rational people can follow?”

  He grunted. “The problem is that you weren’t listenin’ to me . . . as usual. I didn’t say we were goin’ back to a time in Mysterium before the troubles began. That’s just silly. What I said was that we were takin’ the Mysterians back to a time before the troubles began.”

  He looked at me with a smile that said he believed he’d just explained everything. I groaned and looked to the heavens. “What’s the difference?”

  The dwarf’s smile vanished. “The difference? The difference? In one case, you’re tryin’ to do somethin’ impossible. To go back in time and try to replay events all over again is ridiculous. It’s the kind of silliness you read in those sci-fi-type novels.” He shook a finger at me. “How would it work? You’d take yourself physically back to a time in the past and try to relive it. People imagine this would mean that they’d remember everythin’ they know now. But those memories are physically written in your brain. Goin’ back in time would erase all those memories and thoughts. So, you’d be there in the past, but you’d be no wiser. You might make a different decision, but chances are you wouldn’t, because there were reasons you made certain choices in the first place, and those same reasons would still be there when you got back. Time travel!” he barked irritably.

  “So, what are you doing in the Discovery?”

  “You want the simple answer?”

  Everyone at the table said, “Yes!”

  The dwarf took a second to gather his thoughts and then said slowly, “We’re tryin’ to reset ourselves, to take our magical patterns back to a time before Mysterium was stolen. If we can do that, then we won’t be constrained by the new pattern the Usurpers placed on us.” He looked at me and raised his mug in salute. “Essentially, we are tryin’ to do on purpose what you managed to do by accident. That’s why so many of us were so excited to talk to you.”

  I thought I understood, and the implications were fascinating, but before I could ask a follow-up question, Valdara asked abruptly, “What does all of that nonsense have to do with us being lost?”

  Rook and I both started to answer. He gestured for me to give it a go. “Because Sam and Ariella aren’t in a physical location in the multiverse, Vivian’s spell might not be able to find them. It might simply keep transporting us about, or it might get us as close as it can and then park us somewhere until the Mysterians’ spell is complete.”

  “How long will that be?” Drake asked.

  “Not long,” Rook assured her. “It can’t be more than seven or eight centuries of Mysterium . . . or Trelarian . . . time now. Certainly, no more than a millennium. We would know better if that bloody computer hadn’t mucked about with the clocks
.”

  “Are you trying to tell me that we may have to wait centuries to find Sam and Ariella?” Valdara said, her voice rising to a shout. Rook and I both gestured to her to keep it down, and she dropped her head into her hands and muttered something about wizards and insanity. “Why don’t we do whatever you did to get them there in the first place, and why haven’t we done it already?”

  “We needed to lose Moregoth,” I explained.

  “And now that he’s gone?” she asked.

  I stroked my hand across my chin. “I suppose we could.”

  “Suppose? I could with that bloody key of Avery’s,” Rook said with a quick snap of his fingers. “Easy!”

  “It’s not that easy, Rook, and certainly not as consequence free as you are making it sound,” I said, not wanting us to go down this road and risk erasing another world.

  “What are you talkin’ about?” he asked. “You may not know what that thing is capable of, but I do.”

  It was obvious that he was still holding a grudge that I hadn’t given him the key when he asked for it. “You mistake me, Rook, I know exactly what this thing is capable of,” I said, and my disapproval must have come out in my tone, because the dwarf bristled.

  “What’s your sudden beef with Mysterians?”

  “I don’t have a problem with Mysterians . . .” I answered, and realized as I was saying it that I might actually have a problem with Mysterians. “It’s just—”

  Valdara interrupted. “Look, Avery, unless there is a risk of this thing blowing us to the semi-lich, I vote we use it. I would like to see Sam and Ariella and Trelari again before I die.”

  “Amen!” said Drake as he slammed a tankard of water down on the table.

  “You only say that because you don’t know the danger—” I started to say, but this time Rook interrupted me.

  “There is no danger, laddie, unless you’re an amateur.”

  “Let’s resolve this once and for all,” Drake growled. “Avery, pull out the key.”

  “Here?”

  “I’m not asking you to do anything indecent, kid,” he rasped under his breath. “Just let Rook give it a try.”

  I understood why he asked, but all I could remember was the look on the little girl in blue’s face, and the cat’s final smile, and the faun’s beautiful brass door handle. “This isn’t a game, Drake. We can’t use the key.”

  Rook asked quietly, “Can’t you trust me?”

  I turned and looked at the dwarf. “I could ask you the same question.”

  We stared at each other, neither of us sure what to say, until Valdara banged her mug down, making both of us jump. “Enough of this nonsense. All I want to know is whether we can use Avery’s magic key to get back to Sam and Ariella.”

  It was in the silence that followed her question that the innkeeper came back with our food and drinks. He kept up a constant patter as he laid out the food. I looked at the heaping platters with distaste. I had never been less hungry. No one was really listening to what the man said until he remarked, “I happened to overhear you folks talking. Do you know Sam and Ariella?”

  I am not sure who drew the first dagger, but in the time it took the innkeeper to say, “Oh!” Valdara had pulled him down into a chair beside her, and Rook had the point of a dirk pressed against the innkeeper’s ribs.

  “Okay, laddie,” Rook said in an impressive growl. “Who are you, and what do you know about our friends?”

  “I . . . I don’t know anything, e-e-except that they . . . they left a message,” he spluttered. “They said that some friends would come in looking for them and that I was to give them a message.”

  “Well, you’ve found us,” Rook said.

  “I suppose I have at that,” he said with a strained smile. “I should have given it to you as soon as you came in, but one thing and another happens. You know how it is. Always busy—”

  “The message!” we all said at once.

  “Oh, here it is,” he said, and mopped his brow with his handkerchief.

  The world stuttered around us. Across the room the dancing halfling leapt high and flickered out of view. Then the world stuttered again, the halfling flickered back into view, and the communicator coin in my pocket buzzed. As the other bar patrons eyed the halfling in silent suspicion, I pulled the coin out and activated the connection. “Sam?”

  “Ariella,” she said. “But close.”

  “Is that your friend?” the innkeeper asked with a smile.

  “Yes, thanks.” I nodded for Rook and Valdara to let him go.

  He bowed several times, but remained, hovering over our table expectantly. I was about to wave him away and then thought the common room of an inn was probably not the best place to have this conversation. “We could use that private room now,” I said.

  “A room, of course! Right away! I’ll have my boy show you the way.”

  A minute later, we were sitting in a little room overlooking a back garden. Our supper was laid on a table, but none of us was eating. Instead, everyone clustered around as I talked to Sam and Ariella.

  Ariella was not happy. “Where are you? It has been at least two days since you talked to us. Do you know how much class we’re missing? If you get me expelled, Avery Stewart, I will never forgive you.”

  “Tell him about our practice sessions!” I heard Sam say from somewhere behind her.

  Ariella sighed. “We did find a place to practice spells, like you asked. Um, what’s happening to us? Sam tried his sleep spell on me and I didn’t wake up for twelve hours!”

  “That’s going to require a lot of explanation,” I said. “Maybe we can go into it when we get there.”

  “Which takes me back to my first question,” she said, and there was no mistaking the frustration in her voice. “Where are you and when are you going to be here?”

  Before I could answer, my coin made a clicking noise in my head, just like when someone was trying to call me. I asked Ariella to wait a second and tapped the coin again.

  “Don’t hang up!” Eldrin said.

  “Is that Eldrin?” Ariella asked. “Hi, Eldrin, nice to hear your voice. Did you find anything out about our tuition?”

  “We paid!” Sam shouted in the background.

  There was a strained silence as I realized that, somehow, I had managed to connect to both Eldrin and Ariella at the same time.

  “Eldrin?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Ariella?” I asked.

  “Yes, Avery.”

  “How is this happening?” I asked.

  Ariella said, “What are you talking about? You gave us the coins to do just this. Although Sam did think of a clever trick. We kept trying to call you, but you wouldn’t answer so he set up a spell that would find you as soon as your Coin of Farspeaking was reachable.”

  “Coin of Farspeaking?” Eldrin said with a snort. “It’s a Transtemporal Subworld Communicator.”

  “That’s a ridiculous name,” she said. “Coin of Farspeaking tells you what it does and what form it takes, whereas your name is confusing, difficult to say, and not pretty.”

  They began to argue over the relative merits of the different names, and how they did or did not adequately describe the magic being used in the device, and whether precision was really very important in naming a magical device, and so on. I think they would have quite happily gone on the rest of the night, but Valdara kept gesturing at me to give her news, and I had nothing to tell her except that they were being very elvish. I did glean from the back and forth that Eldrin had created a new “coin” and somehow tied it to the spell patterns of the other two so the next time they were used it would also connect to him. In other words, he had tapped my phone.

  Having learned everything I needed, I cut in. “Why don’t we save this debate for a time when we aren’t on three different planes of existence?”

  They both stopped talking for a second, and then Ariella asked, “What do you mean three? Isn’t Eldrin on Mysterium with you?”
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  Neither of us answered.

  “Hello? Is this thing working?” she asked, and there was a loud popping noise that made my brain hurt as she metaphysically tapped the coin.

  “Stop that,” I said. “Yes, it is working. No, we are not both on Mysterium.”

  “Why not?”

  Another silence followed.

  Have you ever had a moment when you realized that you have two sets of friends who do not cross? I was surrounded by my old group from Trelari, and yet none of them really knew anything about Eldrin, my best friend in the world. And those that did know him had only heard about how he had potentially betrayed me. What would they say about me reconnecting with him now?

  What I wanted to do was separate the calls, but I knew whatever Eldrin and I had to say to each other was going to have to include Ariella. I refused to disconnect from her, because I owed her an explanation and I was worried the coins did not seem to be entirely reliable, at least between here and the Discovery. On the other hand, I needed to speak to Eldrin for my own sanity. His absence had been weighing more and more heavily on my mind every day that slipped by. I needed to know whether I would ever be able to trust him again.

  I was still trying to decide what to say to them both when I heard Ariella say to Sam, “Are you sure you want them to do that?”

  We heard Sam’s reply as an indistinct, “Wah wah, wah wah wah.”

  “They’re your feet,” she said, again still talking to him. “Just remember they are supposed to do what you want, not the other way around.”

  “Sorry, back to you,” she said much more distinctly. “Anyway, why are you two being so mysterious? It doesn’t matter where you are. We are getting bored and want to know if you found anything at Student Records and if so when we can come back.”

  Eldrin answered. “You may not be able to go back, Ariella.” He paused and added, “None of us may ever be able to go back.”

  His answer kindled a flicker of hope in me. “Do you mean you’ve left Mysterium?”

  “Dawn and I both have,” he said. “We left a few hours after you. We tried to track you in New York, but the coffee shop was already gone.”

 

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