The Darker Lord

by Jack Heckel

Valdara walked over to the blast doors and banged her palm on them. “These look pretty solid. Could they keep out an attack?”

  Rook started to answer, but before he could, someone from the other side of the room boomed out, “Not a chance! Those are only designed to keep the bots at bay.”

  I knew the voice immediately, and spun in disbelief as Griswald materialized in all his aged, balding, and overweight glory. “Professor!” I cried with joy.

  “Stewart!” he said sharply. His face was set with its accustomed sternness, but I could see the tightening around his eyes and the slight twist at the corners of his mouth. He was happy to see me too.

  “Rook just told me you were here, but why?” I asked.

  “Why? Why? Because I’m the guardian of the spell, of course.” He said this as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Guardian?” My head swam at the implications. “Why? Why not a Mysterian? Why not him?” I asked, pointing a finger at Rook.

  The dwarf shrugged. “We usually choose a non-Mysterian. Being here too long out of stasis has a tendency to warp our patterns.”

  I glared at Rook. “Another pretty important piece of information you never thought to tell me.”

  “It is classified, Stewart,” Professor Griswald said, and Rook nodded his agreement.

  I could feel the profanity boiling up from the deepest parts of my body, but I’d worked with Griswald for nearly six years, and if I knew his tells he knew mine even better.

  “Not to interrupt whatever erudite comment you were about to make,” he growled, “but what’s going on here, Stewart? Why am I awake? Why are ED and EDIE going on about evil Mysterium mages being here?” He looked around as though they might be hiding in the corners or under some of the floating chairs.

  My anger evaporated as I realized I was going to have to confess to having messed things up again. I took a deep breath and said, “It’s true, Professor. The Administration has been after us for days, and I’m afraid they’ve caught us.”

  Griswald nodded and stroked his beard. “That’s a bit troubling,” he replied, accepting this reality-shattering revelation with remarkable nonchalance. “But why are you all here at all? You’re not supposed to be able to find this place.” His eyes fixed on Rook. “This isn’t the result of your meddling, is it, Fergus?”

  The dwarf’s face reddened. I was both comforted and worried that Griswald had the same effect on Rook as he did on me. “If you’ll remember, I’m goin’ by Rook these days.”

  “Rook. Right.” Griswald chuckled. “From the looks of things, you’d better work on your endgame.”

  Rook’s face flushed with embarrassment. There was no way I was going to let him take the fall for my screw-up. “Sir, he’s not to blame. I was trying to escape Moregoth and his Sealer goons and ended up here. I’m afraid they followed me.”

  “Moregoth,” he said sharply. “That poser is here?” At a nod from Rook, he rubbed his eyes as if cleaning the sleep out of them. “What a mess.” He looked me up and down. “And my original question still stands, how did you get here at all?”

  “I found a way to focus the power of the key you gave me to make a gateway and it brought us here.”

  “The key!” he said, exhaling loudly. “It was never supposed to be used. The whole reason I put it in the box was to keep it hidden and from being used. Opening it was supposed to be the period at the end of your revelation, and if you have used the key, then you clearly haven’t been enlightened.”

  “I haven’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m sorry, Professor. I did what you told me to do. I sat and thought. I went to the quad and watched the students. No revelation came. I still don’t know Mysterium’s flaw. The only thing I’ve managed to do is piss everyone off, get myself named public enemy number one, and put everyone in danger—again.”

  “That’s quite a trifecta, Stewart,” he said with the barest hint of a chuckle. “How did you manage it in so short a time?”

  “It’s my spell, sir. We found records at the university that seem to show that Trelari’s reality might have displaced Mysterium’s at the center of the universe.”

  “Is that true?” Valdara asked, a fraction of a second before Ariella.

  I nodded, and Sam said with his usual understatement, “Neat!”

  “It’s not neat, it’s impossible,” Rook snorted dismissively. “Mysterium’s position is immutable. We wrote it on the foundation of the world.”

  He went on to catalog all the ways my conclusion was flawed, but my attention was fixed on Griswald. His whole body was frozen, one eyebrow raised quizzically. It was a look I knew well, and it meant Rook’s words held a deeper meaning. Something was tickling at the back of my brain also, but I was far too busy owning up to all my failures to pay it any mind.

  After letting Rook run on for a time, Griswald hushed the dwarf with a gesture and said, “This is all fascinating, but entirely academic. It’s clear that my carefully laid plan has gone sideways, and I suspect there is an imp to blame.” He looked about, his white mane of hair turning this way and that. “Where is Harold? Sleeping as usual, I bet. Lazy bugger. I have a bone to pick with him. I gave him specific instructions to wait at least a century before opening that box for Avery.”

  My stomach sank even lower. “Harold . . .” I stared and stopped as my voice caught. “Harold is dead, Professor.”

  “Dead?” he said as though he’d never heard the word before. “That’s not possible. Imps don’t die.”

  “I’m so sorry. It was my fault. Moregoth had me trapped, and Harold sacrificed himself so I could—”

  “Moregoth!” Griswald said, his voice quivering with rage. “Moregoth, Moregoth, Moregoth. I’m sick of hearing that name. It’s time that I deal with that punk once and for all. Where is he?”

  The blue and pink lights of ED and EDIE burst into excited activity. EDIE with her pink light blinking said, “You are in module C1.”

  “The intruder has entered module X1,” ED said almost at the same time.

  “If we’re in C1 and he’s in X1, we must still have miles to go,” I said. “That’s at least . . .” I started to count the letters on my fingers. “Fourteen!” Sam said before I was halfway finished. I didn’t even bother to check his math. It couldn’t be worse than mine. “Yes, fourteen sections away, and that’s assuming that there aren’t C2’s or X0’s in between. That means that we have loads of time.”

  “You’re assumin’ that the sections are in alphabetical order,” Rook said as he hefted his ax in his hands.

  “How else would they be ordered?” I asked.

  EDIE answered first, with her pink lighting flickering. “It’s simple. Each section is designated by an alphanumeric code, with the lettered portion coming first and the numbers second . . .” That did sound simple, and I was about to say thank you, but she was not done. “However, the alphanumeric code may have multiple consecutive letters, and may be associated with any increment of numbers . . .” I had no chance to say I’d heard enough before EDIE was off again. “Although usually they end around four. However, some sections have numbers as high as fourteen.”

  “What?” I asked, because somewhere along the way I ended up more confused than I was at the beginning. “ED, can you explain?” The blue light began to turn in a circle as though the computer was thinking. The fact that it did not immediately respond told me all I needed to know. “It sounds like we don’t know where Moregoth is or how long it will take to reach him,” I said as ED continued to spin. “Professor, do you at least know where to go?”

  Before he could answer, ED’s blue circle stopped spinning. “It’s complicated,” the computer announced.

  Griswald glared at the blue light before saying, “It depends on what Moregoth intends to do. How many mages does he have with him?”

  I thought about it and realized I had no idea. Moregoth survived the kraken, which meant some of his men might have. In the end, I shrugged. “At most a handful—four o
r five.”

  “If that’s true it isn’t much of an invasion force,” Griswald said, stroking his long beard. “He may be mad, but I doubt he tries a frontal assault with so few.”

  “Could he bring in reinforcements?” I asked.

  “Pretty risky,” Rook grunted, and ticked off the complications on his fingers. “If he wants to bring in an army he will have to build a gateway. That will take time and the magical buildup would be like shootin’ off a signal flare. We would know exactly where he was, and have an excellent chance of disruptin’ the spell.”

  “On the other hand,” Griswald said in a slow drawl, “if he makes it to the Discovery’s nexus he could unweave the entire pattern of this place.”

  He and Rook looked at each other and said together, “The bridge!”

  “What does a bridge have to do with the ship?” Valdara asked.

  “Maybe we have to pass under it,” suggested Ariella. “They might drop something on top of the ship as we pass.”

  “Or they might collapse the bridge so that we crash into it,” Valdara said with a snap.

  “What kind of bridge is it?” Sam asked. “Stone, wood . . .”

  Rook massaged his temples. “Not a bridge like that, like the bridge on a ship. You know, a command center.” They looked at him blankly. “Oh, never mind.”

  “Which way do we go?” I asked.

  Griswald pointed to a closed blast door on the right labeled G1. “Rook and I go that way to the command center, through combined modules G1, G2, and G3, then through the D series, and finally to Q! The rest of you need to transport to safety at once!”

  “To hell with that,” Sam said. “We’re staying.” We all nodded in agreement, even Valdara and Drake.

  Griswald smiled, but sadly. “I can’t let you do that. If Moregoth gains control of the command center there’ll be no way to stop him destroying everything. You might all be killed, Besides, I’m the guardian. This is my job. I don’t feel right having other people fight my battles.”

  “Well, that sounds like a personal problem you need to deal with on your own time, Guardian,” Valdara said, loosening her sword.

  “Face it, we aren’t going to abandon you,” I said. “It is one of the consequences of having friends. You have to get used to the fact that people will want to help you even if it puts their lives in danger.”

  He smiled, but then his mouth twisted downward into a frown. He pointed at Ariella. “At least she should go. She can’t be more than fourteen!”

  “I’m almost sixteen!” Ariella protested.

  There was a pregnant pause. I had to admit I felt uncomfortable about bringing Ariella into a fight now that I knew her elven age. On the other hand, she had proven herself repeatedly. And who am I to tell someone that three hundred and fifty years is not long enough to be able to make your own decisions. I had no idea what state I would be in in three hundred years, but I had a feeling it was not going to be good. foot on the ground. “She is a member of the Company of the Fellowship. No one gets left behind.” I could not argue with that, and apparently no one else could either. Although Griswald asked, “What’s the Company of the Fellowship?”

  Rook just growled, “It doesn’t matter. She’s comin’ with us.”

  “Fine, but if we don’t have the proper parental authorization forms it’ll be on your heads!” Griswald said, and ordered the blast doors open.

  Blue lights blinked in a strange pattern along the floor and the wall. ED spoke. “I have completed the calculations. The odds that you will be able to mount a successful defense are approximately 113.7 to—”

  “Never tell me the odds.” I interrupted.

  “Why not?” Sam asked. “Is it bad luck? Are you afraid it will demoralize us?”

  “No. I’ve just always wanted to use that line.”

  He was still scratching his head at my answer when Griswald started forward. As we began to move I had a feeling we were forgetting something. When I realized what it was, I began to laugh.

  “I don’t see what’s so funny about us bein’ attacked by Moregoth,” Rook growled.

  “Or what’s funny about your odds,” ED said. “Although without an Instinctual Emotitron it might be funny and I wouldn’t know. Is it funny?”

  “I’m not laughing at Moregoth, and I’m certainly not laughing at our odds. I’m laughing at the fact that this is the first time in the history of the Company of the Fellowship that we started going somewhere without first arguing about the marching order.”

  The Trelarians all looked at each other. Valdara said, “He’s got a point.”

  The argument that ensued over the marching order took five agonizing minutes to resolve.

  Chapter 29

  Revelations: Chapter 1

  As we moved through the blast doors into section G1, the roof vaulted upward. Tiers of levels marched up the sides of the great chamber, and each tier was filled with row upon row of identical tubular pods. Each one had a little window in the side, and through the glass we could see figures sleeping. It had the quiet air of a cathedral, and we all flinched at the loud echoing sounds our footsteps made.

  Sam whispered to Rook, “Why are there so many people in here? Is this where the Mysterians bury their dead?”

  Rook chuckled. “They’re not dead, lad. They’re sleepin’.”

  “Could we wake them?” Sam asked, and spun about, taking in all the pods. “With this many, we could have an army of our own.”

  The dwarf gave a sad shake of his head. “No, lad. They are not sleepin’ like that. This ship is a spell the Mysterians cast a long time ago. Everyone you see here has tied their patterns to that spell. They can’t wake until the spell is complete.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “A spell? What does it do?”

  Griswald answered. “It’s meant to take all the Mysterians’ patterns to a single moment in time. A moment before the original Mysterian pattern was . . .” He paused picking his next word carefully. “Corrupted.”

  Rook took up the answer in a voice about as animated and excited as I’d ever heard the dwarf get. “Sam, when the Discovery’s mission ends, all will be as it was in the beginnin’. Mysterium will be cleansed of the Administration filth, and true Mysterians will, once again, be the masters of their own land. It will be the beginnin’ of another golden age of civilization . . .”

  Sam looked around in wonder as Rook began to extol the wonders that awaited the world when the Mysterians reclaimed their birthright, but I was troubled, and the more he talked, the more troubled I became. I let the others walk ahead so I could think. This whole time I’d been focused on reuniting with Sam and Ariella. I had not thought much about the next steps. How could I tell Rook that I wasn’t sure I liked the idea of the Mysterians being the power at the center of the universe? They might be more benevolent than the Administration, but in the end the Mysterians were only offering a different flavor of subjugation.

  Griswald must have dropped back with me, because moments later when he barked, “Rook!” I realized he was standing just beside me.

  The dwarf was crossing into the next section, which was labeled G2, and appeared to be another vast chamber of sleeping Mysterians. He spun about. “Guardian?”

  “Hold up for a moment,” Griswald said sharply. “ED, EDIE, what is status of the interloper?”

  A pink light flashed on the floor. “Good news, even as we speak he is being offered a wide variety of delectable treats and tasty beverages, by a squad of crack hospitality robots.”

  “Where is he, you overgrown abacus?” Rook barked.

  The blue light came on. “The bringer of doom is in section C2!”

  “Just as I feared,” Griswald mumbled. “Moregoth is catching up with us. He’s at the C sections, and those lead straight to these levels.”

  “That’s good,” the dwarf said, his eyes focused on the door to G2. “It means there’s no way he can get to the command center first.”

  Griswald put up a hand to stop
him. “You don’t understand. If Moregoth finds these pods unprotected, there is no telling what he might do. He may not need to get to the command module to destroy our people.”

  The dwarf stopped short of the G2 blast door. “I hadn’t thought of that, but we need to get to the command center. What would you propose?”

  The professor stroked his beard as if in thought, but something about the way his eyes kept darting to me told me he already had a very specific plan in mind. After a few seconds of apparent deliberation, he said, “We need to hold the door to section G1.” He glanced about at the group as though weighing his decision. “You take Sam, Ariella, Drake, and Valdara, and go to the command center. The rest of us will make a stand here until you have activated our defenses.”

  “I don’t like the idea of leavin’ the three of you alone against Moregoth,” Rook said after a long pause.

  “Neither do I,” said Valdara.

  “This isn’t a matter for discussion,” Griswald said sharply. “Our best hope to save the ship is to get the defenses up as soon as possible. To do that, Rook will need all the hands he can get. I would send Avery and Vivian with you, but I don’t want to risk Moregoth taking me out with a lucky shot and getting his sadistic hands on the Mysterians. These two will be my insurance.” He clapped Vivian and me on the shoulders. “We’ll hold down the fort until you get things set, but you need to get to the command center, Rook. That’s an order.”

  Rook sighed, “Fine, but we won’t be long.”

  “I’m counting on it,” Griswald said, and then as Rook turned to leave he added, “Oh, and make sure you prepare for all eventualities, Rook.” I had no idea what this meant, but the dwarf’s eyes widened and his usually ruddy face went pale. “Yes, Guardian,” he replied very quietly.

  With many backward glances, the others continued into the next section. As soon as the blast doors closed, Griswald motioned for us to follow him. We walked back toward section C in silence. When we were through, he shut and locked the door to G1. We found ourselves in the relaxation center again.

  Griswald looked about. “I guess we’ll wait for Moregoth here. He shouldn’t be long.”