The Reign of the Brown Magician

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Was there a chamber pot there? He hoped so. And there wasn’t any food.

  “Damn,” he said. He twitched the matrix, summoning a nearby fetch.

  * * * *

  Life aboard ship was usually boring, but Best thought he’d have preferred honest boredom to the endless games of stoking Markham wanted to play. Best could handle boredom, while playing cards with the Secretary of Science was wearing on his nerves. He was never sure whether to play his honest best, or to deliberately lose, and just how badly to lose. And stoking was never one of his favorite games in the first place.

  He wished Albright or Howe or someone had come along, instead of staying at Base One; then he or she could play with Markham and give Best a break.

  “Burn,” he said, dropping the king of cups on the central pile.

  “Damp,” Markham replied, tossing the king of swords.

  Best looked at the table, and drew three.

  “I don’t know why you need me along, anyway,” he said, in an unusual moment of honesty. “I can’t tell Secretary Sheffield anything you can’t. Hell, I can’t tell him anything the telepaths haven’t already told him; I’m not sure why we’re making this trip at all.”

  “You were there,” Markham said, looking at his hand. “The General Secretary always likes to hear things first-hand, likes to talk it out before deciding. Without telepaths.” He pulled out a card and threw the eight of diamonds. “Burn.”

  With a sigh, Best played the knave of sticks. “Damp,” he said, and added three points to Markham’s score. He glanced up from the scratch pad and happened to catch the Secretary’s personal telepath watching.

  As if playing stoking wasn’t bad enough, he had to worry about the mutant reading his thoughts and telling Markham all the details of his aggravation.

  And of his cards, for that matter. Not that Markham would bother to cheat, but he might find out that Best had deliberately overlooked the nine of swords in his own hand. Best didn’t think Markham would like knowing that Best was losing intentionally.

  But he didn’t think Markham would like losing, either.

  Well, it was only two more days to Terra.

  * * * *

  “You don’t know what this mysterious project of his was?” Albright asked.

  “No, sir,” Wilkins replied. He was already over his nervousness at finding himself questioned by the Imperial Space Marshal, and was now treating Albright as just another officer.

  A good one, but just another officer.

  And he was getting tired of repeating all this.

  “It kept him from sending you home, though?”

  “Yes, sir—that’s what he said.”

  “D’you think it had anything to do with these bodies he wants?”

  “I don’t know, sir; he never mentioned them to me.”

  “But he could have just sent you to ask for them, at any time,” Albright said. “Why did he wait until Best showed up?”

  “I have no idea, sir.”

  Albright considered Wilkins silently for a moment, then turned to his telepath.

  “I don’t like the sound of it,” he said. “Tell Secretary Sheffield and Secretary Markham about this.”

  “Yes, sir,” the telepath said.

  * * * *

  “I’m going to check,” Pel said, already gathering the energies to open a portal.

  Susan and the false Nancy didn’t argue; Susan stood motionless, and Nancy smiled agreeably. And of course the fetch didn’t respond.

  Just having someone better to talk to would be a relief, Pel thought. Not that Gregory was much of an improvement.

  He reached, and twisted, and the portal opened.

  No one was there.

  “Damn,” Pel said. He picked a fetch.

  “You,” he said, “go find Peter Gregory.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  By the time Gregory emerged from the portal Pel was furious with impatience, his fingers striking blue sparks from the dark wood as he drummed on the arm of his throne.

  “Where the hell were you?” he demanded without preamble, his voice echoing unnaturally. Angry orange currents swirled through the air.

  “Down at the port,” Gregory replied, unfazed. “I was trying to get word of what’s happening at Base One.”

  “Did you?”

  “A little.”

  “And?”

  “The bodies are still under heavy guard. The Secretary of Science is on his way to Terra to confer with the General Secretary.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes, O Great One.”

  Pel glared at Gregory’s bland face, infuriated by the simulacrum’s calm.

  “Get someone to Terra,” he said. “Get a message to the General Secretary—or the Emperor, or whoever’s in charge. Tell him I want those bodies now. Through that space-warp out in Sunderland.”

  “Yes, O Great One.”

  “That’s all. Go on, get out of here!” He gestured angrily, waving Gregory toward the portal.

  Gregory bowed deeply, then stepped backward and vanished.

  Pel stared at the slight shimmer in the air where the portal hung. To his eyes, it was virtually invisible—if he strained, he could see the very faintest distortion. To his internal vision through the matrix, though, the portal was a gaping hole in reality, an infinite tunnel of powerful blue-black magic that somehow had no length at all, ending in the utter impenetrable darkness of non-magic space.

  He knew it came out on some planet he’d never heard of, Delta something-or-other, roughly half a day’s spaceflight from Base One. He’d never found a weak spot that would open directly into Base One; apparently Shadow hadn’t had any portals there. He could create new portals, of course, but he couldn’t aim them all that well, and trying different places in the Empire at random could take forever. Not to mention that if he ever did open a path to Base One, it might come out in the middle of a firing range or something.

  So he had no direct route, and the delays were infuriating.

  Of course, the Empire’s space-warp connected Faerie to Base One, but that was out in Sunderland, ten days’ march to the east, and he was stuck here in Shadow’s fortress…

  Wasn’t he?

  Pel blinked, and the matrix slowed into contemplative green spirals.

  Was he stuck here?

  Why should he be?

  Shadow had claimed this fortress and lived here because it was a natural focal point for the network of magical currents that permeated Faerie, so that it was easier to maintain and control the matrix here—but did that mean this was the only place the matrix could be used?

  That was silly. Shadow had talked about the early matrix wizards roaming around, taking over each other’s strongholds, absorbing each other’s matrices; they hadn’t all just sat at home like spiders in their webs.

  Why couldn’t Pel go up to Sunderland if he chose?

  And that obnoxious coward Taillefer had been able to fly, probably at a pretty good speed—sixty, seventy, maybe as much as a hundred miles an hour, and he wasn’t any matrix wizard, he was just a little hedge magician, too feeble for Shadow to have bothered hunting him down and killing him.

  And he could fly. Anything Taillefer could do, the master of the great matrix should be able to do. If Pel could do that, if he could fly, he could be in Sunderland in a matter of hours.

  Of course, he couldn’t take all his fetches and monsters along, or Susan, or the false Nancy—but so what?

  But could he go anywhere? Could he learn to fly, blown on a magical wind the way Taillefer was?

  He could damn well try. At the very least, it would give him something to do while the Empire dawdled.

  He stood up and marched for the stairs—not the huge staircase down to that absurd entrance hall, but the narrow steps up to the battlements.

  * * * *

  “A message from the General Secretary,” the telepath said suddenly, startling Best so much he almost dropped his cards.

  “
What is it?” Markham asked, looking up; at first he seemed annoyed by the interruption, but by the time he finished raising his head and pronouncing those three simple words he was calm again.

  “He wants to know if you have anything to add to what’s already been relayed telepathically. Regarding the Brown Magician.”

  “Not that I know of,” Markham replied. “Do I?”

  The telepath’s mouth quirked in a ghost of a smile. “Not that I can see, sir,” he said.

  “So why is he asking? Can you tell me?”

  The telepath nodded. “In light of the interview with Spaceman Wilkins, regarding the Magician’s secret project that prevented him from sending Wilkins home, Secretary Sheffield believes that we should cease any further delays or stalling tactics and open direct negotiations with Brown. Therefore, you’re to turn around and return to Base One forthwith; he’ll be coming out as well, along with several trained envoys.”

  “Envoys?” Best asked. “What envoys?”

  “Well, obviously,” the telepath explained, “the Empire hasn’t needed actual ambassadors since the Unification, but there’s apparently a staff of envoys on Terra, kept on hand in case of need. They’ve occasionally seen duty in negotiating terms of surrender with rebel worlds, and they’re theoretically ready if we ever meet intelligent extraterrestrials.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Best marveled. “They think of everything, don’t they?”

  “They try,” Markham said dryly. “Tell the captain of the change in plans.”

  As the telepath hurried out of the stateroom Markham tossed the four of cups. “Burn,” he said.

  * * * *

  The wind whipped Pel’s hair forward, slashing it back and forth across his face; it occurred to him that he hadn’t had it cut in weeks, maybe months, not since he had left Base One. And he hadn’t bothered shaving, hadn’t had a chance, since then, either; he had a full beard for the first time in his life. He must be a mess.

  He wondered if Nancy and Rachel would even recognize him like this. He hoped the beard wouldn’t frighten Rachel.

  Of course, he could shave it off, once everything was back to normal, once he had Nancy and Rachel back.

  But first he had to bring them back.

  He stepped up on a merlon—at least, he thought that was what the stone blocks along the edge of the battlement were called. Maybe the right term was crenellations.

  It didn’t matter.

  Below him the wall of the central tower was a sheer drop of a hundred feet or more, down to the roofs and walls of the next layer of the fortress; fifty feet out that, in turn, fell away, for another sixty or seventy feet, and then again and again the stone walls and slate roofs, squat ugly turrets and sinister battlements, until five hundred feet down and two hundred feet ahead lay the stagnant water and thick reeds of the surrounding marsh.

  Above him was that single line of gargoyles, and a heavy, leaden overcast.

  Around him seethed the light and shadow of the matrix.

  He was standing on a stone fifty, maybe sixty stories up, unsheltered by anything but his magic.

  Nothing built without steel had any right to be this high, he thought. It must have used magic. Why hadn’t it fallen down when Shadow died?

  Because the matrix still held, of course. And he held it.

  He reached out, down into the fortress; he couldn’t sense any specific place where magic held the stone, but surely there were some.

  The wind subsided slightly as his attention was distracted, and he shifted a foot to keep his balance.

  The merlon was carved, the corners somewhat rounded, in what appeared to be a representation of leaves. It wasn’t very well executed, and as he glanced at it through a purple swirl of magical energy Pel thought the result resembled a tooth more than anything else. The lines of the carving provided a bit of traction, but as Pel looked past the stone and past the haze of color at the drop below him he wished the corners were still solid and square.

  What was he doing, standing here on top of a tower and deliberately summoning a wind that would blow him off?

  This was insane. People couldn’t fly.

  Not on Earth, anyway, but this wasn’t Earth. He’d seen Taillefer do it, and he had Shadow’s entire matrix, where Taillefer had had only the leavings of it. Taillefer hadn’t lived in a constant shifting mass of magic the way Pel did.

  He wasn’t going to jump. He wasn’t going to step off. If he could conjure up a wind strong enough to blow him off, then he’d believe he could make one strong enough to carry him.

  He felt the matrix, felt it moving the air, and he drew more power to that movement, summoned strength from earth and sky, and the wind hit him like a wall, sweeping him off the battlements, bearing him up and away into empty space.

  * * * *

  “So how do we get a message to him?” Secretary Sheffield asked.

  “Send a messenger through the space-warp. It’s about a ten-day hike from there to the fortress,” Albright replied.

  “There isn’t anything faster?”

  Albright shook his head. “We can’t seem to relocate the warp to anywhere within five hundred miles or so of a previously-used location, so we can’t get it any closer to the fortress. Brown apparently has some way of contacting his network of spies, so he may well know our decision within a day or two, but we don’t have any way of knowing that. We haven’t been able to break the ring, or infiltrate, or even identify any members with certainty. We know Felton, and of course we know who Felton’s contact was, but that was a woman named Fielding, and she committed suicide before we could capture and interrogate her. We’re checking on her friends and associates, but so far we haven’t found anything particularly suspicious.”

  “Felton didn’t know any other names?”

  “Not for certain. The telepaths are still digging.”

  “So our only way of contacting Brown is through our own space-warps, and the only one we currently have is ten days march from Brown’s fortress—but can’t we get some sort of vehicle through there?”

  Albright shook his head. “Anti-gravity doesn’t work in…well, we call it Faerie. The telepaths picked up that name for it somewhere, and it seems to fit. Anyway, anti-gravity won’t work—ships and aircars just fall to the ground and sit there.”

  “What about wheeled vehicles? Or is there a water route?”

  Albright hesitated. “We don’t have any wheeled vehicles,” he pointed out. “And I suspect the roads aren’t good enough. The warp comes out in a forest, and the pathway out is just that, a path. As for a water route, again, our entry point is in the middle of a forest, with no navigable rivers in the areas we’ve seen.” He glanced at Best, who was seated at one corner of the table, trying hard to be unobtrusive.

  “No rivers,” Best confirmed. “And there aren’t any roads in the forest.”

  “What about opening a new warp over the sea somewhere?” Sheffield suggested. “It would have to be farther away, but it might be faster all the same. Is this fortress accessible by sea?”

  Albright rubbed his noes thoughtfully. “I don’t know,” he said. “You understand, sir, I haven’t seen it myself, and we haven’t done any photoreconnaissance. I understand it’s in the middle of a marsh, but I don’t know any more than that—whether a small boat could get across the marsh is an excellent question.” He turned to Best again. “You were there,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Best admitted.

  “You think a boat could reach this fortress?”

  “I don’t know much about boats,” Best said, “but no, I don’t think so. It’s a pretty nasty marsh, and I didn’t see where it connected to anything better. Besides, how would you power a boat? If you’re rowing, that’s no better than walking, is it?”

  Sheffield acknowledged that with a nod.

  “All right, then,” he said, “we’ll send an envoy to this forest and let him walk from there, and one of the demands will be to find a better way for future communi
cations.”

  Demands?

  This was the first mention Best had heard of demands. He tried to imagine what the Empire might be demanding of the Brown Magician.

  And he tried to imagine how Brown would react to any such demands.

  He didn’t like what he came up with.

  * * * *

  Riding the wind was a very strange sensation, something like swimming in a very strong current. And of course, he could steer the current by manipulating the matrix.

  And the matrix added to the strangeness, because he could feel that he was simultaneously riding and pulling it. It didn’t want to have its center dragged away from the fortress.

  Pel began to understand why Shadow had sat waiting in her fortress, rather than coming out to collect her visitors; it was uncomfortable being out here. He was stretching his web, forcing the patterns to shift and distort.

  He rebelled at any thought of going back, though. He could operate out here, and he would—he wouldn’t be held prisoner by his own power!

  Besides, he could sense that the matrix would restructure itself with time; the patterns would slide and shift until they settled into new positions, and the discomfort would pass. It wasn’t so much that he was restricted to one spot as that the matrix resisted moving about.

  Of course, it would work best and be most comfortable in one of the natural places of power—Shadowmarsh was one, probably the strongest, but Castle Regisvert would work, too, or any number of other places.

  He looked down.

  He was not at airplane altitudes—he’d started at about five hundred feet, and hadn’t risen much above that. He didn’t see any need to go higher. From this height he could follow the road without difficulty, from the causeway across the marsh back past the berry fields and plains to the villages, one after another, strung out across the ridges and valleys of the Starlinshire Downs.

  The roads branched, the towns held forks and crossroads, but Pel simply remembered that he and his party had traveled almost due west; he kept his bearings and headed eastward.

  From this altitude, low as it was, he could see far more of the countryside than he had from the ground. Farms and villages stretched off in all directions; castles were scattered about, but all of them looked abandoned, and most were outright ruins—Shadow had not been kind to the conquered nobility.