The Reign of the Brown Magician

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  But then, he reminded himself, they didn’t know they’d been dead. Nancy had seen Rachel alive and well just minutes before the pirates hauled Nancy out of the storage locker and raped her; Rachel had been safe with her father the whole time, for all Nancy knew.

  And Rachel didn’t really understand what had happened to her, or to her mother.

  Still, he had somehow expected weeping.

  Nancy looked up, and asked, “Pel? Are you ready to explain what’s going on?”

  Pel hesitated.

  “I’d rather not, just yet,” he said.

  “If Rachel weren’t here?”

  Reluctantly, Pel nodded.

  “I’ll get Susan to keep an eye on her,” he said.

  “Susan? Susan Nguyen?”

  Pel nodded again.

  “She’s here?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the others? Ted and Raven and Amy and the rest?”

  “Ted and Amy are back home on Earth,” Pel said. “Raven is dead. Most of them are dead, and the rest have gone home; it’s just Susan and I who are still here.”

  “Why?” Nancy asked.

  “Why what?”

  “Why are the two of you still here?”

  “I had to get you two fixed up,” Pel said. “And Susan stayed to help, I guess. I offered to send her home, but she didn’t want to go.”

  “That’s odd,” Nancy said. “You offered to send her home? What about Elani?”

  “Elani’s dead,” Pel said. “I’m a wizard now.”

  Nancy stared at him. “Go get Susan,” she said. “You have a lot of explaining to do, Pel Brown.”

  Pel stepped to the doorway, but that was just for appearance’s sake; he used the matrix to summon Susan with a gentle tug.

  She had been waiting down the hall, as he had told her to do; she was there within seconds.

  “Go with Susan, Rachel,” Pel said, giving his daughter a gentle shove. “She’ll try to find you some proper clothes.”

  Rachel looked up and said nothing. She was still wrapped in the crude shroud she had been buried in.

  Together, silently, Susan and Rachel left the room, and Pel turned to his wife, who sat up in bed, wrapped in a sheet.

  “I was dead, wasn’t I?” Nancy said. “I remember that man pointing that raygun at me and pulling the trigger, and I remember this incredible pain. I wasn’t just unconscious, was I?”

  “You were dead,” Pel admitted. “For months.”

  “And Rachel?”

  Pel nodded. “She was killed a few weeks later. Strangled.”

  “And Susan?”

  “Susan, too. Shadow stopped her heart.”

  “The others?”

  Pel shook his head. “Nobody else who’s still alive.”

  “So if we died…well, what about you? Are you dead, too? Is this some sort of afterlife?”

  “No, I didn’t die,” he said. “There were a couple of times I wanted to die, or was certain I was about to, but I never did.”

  “So what happened? How can you be a wizard? Did you make a deal with the devil, or something? Or with Shadow?”

  “I’ll explain,” Pel said. He took a deep breath, and began.

  He told her how Emerald Princess had been captured by pirates under the direction of one of Shadow’s agents, how the passengers and crew had been sold as slaves on Zeta Leo III, how he had worked in the mines until the Imperial task force came and liberated them all—and found Rachel dead.

  He explained how the Empire had sent the survivors back into Shadow’s world on a suicide mission to get rid of them, how some of them had made their way cross-country to Shadow’s fortress, gradually realizing that that was what Shadow had wanted them to do, because she wanted someone to serve as a placeholder, keeping her magic for her, while she explored the Galactic Empire.

  He told Nancy how Shadow had casually killed anyone who displeased her, reducing Raven and Singer and Valadrakul to ash, and had settled on Pel as, as he bitterly put it, “her human bookmark.”

  And he described how Prossie had taken a blaster from one of the dead soldiers and had followed Shadow into the Empire and shot her dead.

  He didn’t mention that it had been his idea.

  “Shadow was just an old woman?” Nancy asked.

  “As human as I am,” Pel replied.

  He went on to explain that he had sent Amy, Ted, and Prossie to Earth, because Prossie had broken some law and couldn’t go back to the Empire. He had stayed in Faerie to see if he could restore Nancy and Rachel to life, and after various difficulties, he had managed it.

  He didn’t mention his abortive attempts to introduce democracy and social justice to Shadow’s world; he only told her he had wanted to resurrect her—and, of course, Rachel.

  Susan, he explained, had been for practice.

  “And here we are,” he said.

  “What about Raven?” she asked. “Are you going to bring him back next?”

  “I wasn’t planning to,” Pel said. “I don’t think there’s enough left.”

  “What about any of the others?”

  Pel shook his head. “I’m not God,” he said.

  “But you brought me back, and Rachel, and Susan…”

  “Susan was right there, and I needed to try, to see if I could do it,” Pel said. “And you and Rachel—I love you. I had to bring you back.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  Just that, flatly, and Pel felt slightly sick at the sound of it. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Bring back everyone who dies? I’d never have time for anything else, and I’d never keep up, anyway. It’s not my responsibility.”

  “I guess not,” she said. “So, what happens now?”

  “Whatever you want,” Pel said. “We can go home to Earth, if you like, and just forget any of this ever happened—but if we do, we can’t ever come back here. When I leave Faerie, the matrix will come apart, and I’d never be able to restore it, and there won’t be anyone here to open portals for us.”

  “Is that what you want to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Pel said. “Maybe not right away. I mean, there’s a lot we could do here first—we could see the world. It’s a big world, as big as our own, and I don’t know much about it.”

  She nodded.

  “Listen, do you want to get some clothes?” Pel asked. “I can open a portal back to Earth, and you could go get stuff for Rachel and yourself while I wait here.”

  Nancy glanced down at herself. “That might be a good idea,” she said.

  “Oh,” Pel said, remembering, “but you’d want to wear something—there’s this Air Force intelligence officer camped out in our basement.”

  “Would he let me go upstairs?” Nancy asked.

  “He ought to,” Pel said.

  Nancy considered, then said, “I guess I won’t bother, yet.”

  “All right.”

  The conversation was becoming uncomfortable, and Pel wasn’t sure why. It didn’t feel right.

  But why not? They were just talking, calmly discussing the situation…

  And that was it. How could they be so calm? He had just brought Nancy back from the dead, turned a mutilated, months-old corpse back into his living, breathing wife—shouldn’t they both be laughing and crying and screaming?

  And Nancy’s last memories…

  “You said you remember dying? Being shot?”

  Nancy nodded.

  “Do you remember what happened…just before that?” Pel asked nervously.

  “You mean being raped?”

  Pel nodded silently.

  “I remember,” she said quietly.

  “Do you…do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head. “It’s over.”

  “They’re dead,” Pel said suddenly, the words rushing from his mouth unwanted. “The Empire tracked them down and hanged them, hanged everyone involved, all the pirates, they’ve been dead for months.”

  “It doesn’t matt
er,” Nancy said.

  And that, Pel knew, just wasn’t right.

  He didn’t say anything then. He still tried to tell himself he was imagining it.

  But half an hour later the real Nancy encountered her simulacrum in the passage.

  She didn’t scream, or even start; she simply turned to Pel and asked, “Who’s this?”

  “I tried several ways to bring you back before I got it right,” Pel said.

  “Oh. Is that really what I look like?” She eyed the duplicate with mild interest.

  The duplicate looked back, complacent and smiling.

  Pel looked back and forth between the two of them.

  The real Nancy hadn’t screamed, hadn’t shouted at him, hadn’t shuddered. She didn’t even ask if he had bedded the simulacrum, either directly or merely hinting.

  Something was very, very wrong.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Why don’t you run and play?” Pel asked.

  “Don’t want to,” Rachel said.

  “Do you want to go home? Back to Earth?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “Don’t you miss Harvey, and all your friends?”

  Rachel shrugged.

  He turned to Susan. “Damn it, what’s wrong with her?”

  “She was dead,” Susan said.

  “She was dead too long, that’s what it is,” Pel said, turning back to stare at Rachel.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the throne room, watching the changing colors of the matrix, and seemed quite content to do so indefinitely.

  “They were both dead too long,” Pel said angrily. “It’s all because the goddamned Empire had to play their stupid games, and wouldn’t just hand them over! I mean, what the hell is wrong with them? You aren’t any different!”

  “You didn’t know me back on Earth,” Susan said, but Pel didn’t notice; he was working himself into a rage. Rachel watched quietly as the matrix became saturated with angry reds and began to seethe in tight little claw-shaped curls.

  “The Empire had to play their fucking little power games,” Pel said through gritted teeth. He turned to Susan. “I want fetches,” he said. “With blasters.”

  * * * *

  “Fifteen dead,” the telepath said. “That’s not counting the attackers.”

  The Emperor drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Three of them, we believe?”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” the telepath replied.

  The Emperor shot a quick glance at Sheffield, who said nothing; the telepath said, “Yes, your Majesty, he is thinking that he told you so, that he warned you this would happen. He is also remembering that we haven’t gotten back the hostages the Brown Magician claimed to have—roughly a hundred and fifty in all, he believes there were—but at least we’ve presumably recovered three blasters, and the others must be running low on charge, which will make it impossible for these raids to continue indefinitely.”

  Sheffield’s expression was resigned, with no trace of self-righteousness that the Emperor could see. “He can always get more blasters,” the Emperor said. “He started out with just three or four, didn’t he, Bucky?”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” Sheffield admitted.

  “We wish we knew what he wants,” the Emperor said, drumming his fingers again. “We gave him the bodies, and he hasn’t made any other demands.” He gazed thoughtfully at Sheffield, then at the telepath, and at last he shrugged.

  “The simplest way is probably the best,” he said. “Send that envoy, Curran, through the warp, and have him ask Brown what he wants.”

  “Yes, your Majesty,” the telepath said, bowing.

  * * * *

  The matrix kinked suddenly, startling Pel so that he almost dropped Rachel.

  He was lifting her over his head, bouncing her up and down, trying to make her laugh—and failing. He was trying to keep a smile and a good attitude, to have fun, but Rachel’s solemn little face wasn’t helping at all.

  And now the Empire had opened another warp.

  “Screw ’em,” Pel said to Rachel. “Let ’em burn villages if they want to. I don’t care any­more.”

  He didn’t mean to pay any attention, but as he lowered Rachel to the floor he couldn’t help noticing that the warp was in the Low Forest, in Sunderland.

  They probably wanted to talk, then.

  Screw ’em.

  * * * *

  Curran explored the treehouse thoroughly, evicting a squirrel and several birds in the process; the strange little servants, creatures like furry, misshapen dwarves, stood aside and let him search. None of them could speak—or at least, none of them did speak, so they could not tell him anything.

  It was quite clear, even without confirmation from the servants, that the Brown Magician was not here, and had not been here in some time. He did not appear to have been near the shipwreck, either.

  That left Curran in something of a quandary. How could he negotiate with someone who wasn’t there?

  The only solution seemed to be to go where Brown was, and while he didn’t know for certain, the best guess was that fortress, in the place called Shadowmarsh—two hundred miles to the west.

  And the only way to get there was by walking.

  Curran sighed. He really didn’t have any choice; his orders had come directly from the Emperor himself.

  He started walking.

  * * * *

  “Where do you want to live?” Pel bellowed.

  “I don’t care,” Nancy repeated.

  “You have to care!” Pel shouted at her. “Think about it, for God’s sake! You can live here, where I have all the magic in the world and we can probably use it to live forever, or you can go back to Earth, where we can go back to a normal life, see your folks, all your friends, where I can talk to my mother and my sisters on the phone—where you’d have phones, and indoor plumbing, and books and TV and radio and we have a goddamn VCR, instead of magic! How can you not care?”

  She shrugged. “It just doesn’t matter to me.”

  Pel stared at her, frustrated beyond all control.

  She had been alive again for a week, and all the initial euphoria was gone.

  She didn’t argue. She didn’t complain. She didn’t laugh. She never seemed to do anything on the spur of the moment, or show any real enthusiasm for anything.

  She wasn’t as obedient and agreeable as the simulacra; this was a different thing altogether. Instead, Nancy and Rachel seemed as closed and impervious as Susan.

  But it had seemed natural in Susan, because she had always been quiet and reserved and calm, all the time Pel had known her.

  Nancy hadn’t. Nancy had had spirit.

  But she didn’t now.

  And worse, neither did Rachel.

  Pel couldn’t stand it.

  He raised both arms over his head and blasted a hole in the ceiling.

  It didn’t matter; he could repair it later. But the boom and the shower of dust and debris were oddly satisfying.

  For a moment.

  * * * *

  Curran staggered along the causeway, hoping that he could make it to the fortress before he collapsed.

  His fancy coat was long gone, stolen in the first village he had passed through; the cummerbund had been traded for a meal, the silk sash for a night’s lodging. The hat had fallen off in a storm, and never been recovered.

  The soles of his shiny black boots were worn paper-thin, but still intact, though one of the nails holding the right heel had worked its way up through the sole and was now poking into his foot, so that he limped slightly.

  The ruffles on his white shirt were stained, torn, and flattened; the shirt itself was more brown than white now.

  His velvet pants had shredded, and been replaced with a stolen pair of soft leather breeches.

  He hadn’t shaved in almost a fortnight, his hair was shaggy and uncombed, and he had developed a nasty cough that he hoped wasn’t anything serious.

  Mostly, though, he was simply ex
hausted. A two-hundred-mile walk through a hostile country was no joke, and this country had definitely turned out to be hostile.

  In fact, it had appeared to be on the verge of anarchy. His clothing had marked him as a figure of fun, not someone to be taken seriously as a threat, which had probably saved his life, as several groups he had encountered had seemed prone to strike first and ask questions later.

  The Brown Magician did not appear to be a strong ruler. There were apparently several factions claiming to act in his name, and he had done nothing to settle the disputes.

  As several people mentioned, Shadow had never allowed this sort of thing.

  All the same, the Brown Magician was the ruler, as everyone agreed, and he was undoubtedly the one behind the raids into Imperial space, so he, and no one else, was who Curran had to speak to.

  The causeway really seemed unreasonably long; why had Shadow, or whoever it was, built that fortress so far out in the marsh?

  Curran staggered again, and decided he really needed to just sit down for a moment and rest, he wouldn’t go to sleep or anything, he would just sit down, maybe close his eyes for a second…

  * * * *

  At first, Pel didn’t recognize the bedraggled figure the fetches held upright before him.

  Then the ruffled shirt caught his attention, and something clicked.

  “Ambrose Curran?” he asked. “The Imperial envoy?”

  Curran, still not entirely conscious, nodded weakly.

  “Good heavens,” Pel said. “What happened to you?”

  Curran managed to mutter, “It’s a long walk.”

  “So it is,” Pel agreed, amused. “You came through the warp in the Low Forest? That was almost two weeks ago!”

  Curran nodded again.

  “Here, take him somewhere and feed him and get him rested up,” Pel ordered the fetches. “Mr. Curran, you take your time, and come back when you feel up to talking. And don’t worry, I haven’t been launching any more raids lately.”

  He watched as the fetches dragged the semi-conscious envoy away, and shook his head in amazement.

  Were all those other warps delivering envoys and ambassadors? The Empire had been opening space-warps every day or two, in various places, and then shutting them down again after one or two people had come through; Pel had assumed that they were all spies.