by Alex Irvine
“Oh, I didn’t correct it,” she said, as though he had chosen the wrong word. “He couldn’t walk; I convinced him that he could.”
“You’re not suggesting it was psychosomatic?” Strange had seen the images. Pangborn’s spinal cord was completely severed.
“When you reattach a severed nerve, is it you who heals it back together or the body?”
“It’s the cells,” Strange said.
She nodded as if he were a bright student giving an expected answer. “And the cells are only programmed to put themselves together in very specific ways.”
“That’s right.”
“What if I told you that your own body could be convinced to put itself back together in all sorts of ways?” she asked.
Now they were getting somewhere. “You’re talking about cellular regeneration,” Strange said. “That’s… bleeding-edge medical tech. Is that why you’re working here, without a governing medical board?” He wanted to see her lab, read her research. “I mean… just how experimental is your treatment?”
With an even broader smile, she said simply, “Quite.”
“So, you figured out a way to reprogram nerve cells to self-heal?” Strange couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was Nobel Prize–level innovation, if it was real.
“No, Mister Strange,” she said, suddenly serious. “I know how to reorient the spirit to better heal the body.”
“Spirit… to heal the body.” So it was hocus-pocus. But… he’d seen the results with his own eyes. He’d seen Pangborn playing basketball. He had to give this a chance even though it went against everything he had ever learned. “Huh. All… all right. How do we do that? Where do we start?”
The Ancient One held an open book up in front of him, displaying an image of the human body with its chakras, mystical energy points. Strange stared, trying to keep his shock in check, at least to start. “Don’t like that map?” she asked when she saw his skeptical expression.
“Oh… no,” he said. “It’s… it’s very good. It’s just… you know, I’ve seen it before. In gift shops.” Strange thought chakras were one of the goofy ideas scam artists used to separate sick people from their money.
She laughed and turned the page to another diagram. “And what about this one?”
“Acupuncture, great.” Another scam as far as Strange could tell.
“Yeah? What about… that one?” She turned the page and Strange couldn’t help it. He rolled his eyes. “You’re showing me an MRI scan? I cannot believe this.” If this “Ancient One” believed that magnetic resonance imaging was the same as chakras and acupuncture, Strange was wasting his time.
“Each of those maps was drawn up by someone who could see in part, but not the whole,” she said.
The whole show was too much. Strange was tired, desperate, not to mention still frightened and in pain from the mugging. He started to raise his voice, letting all pretense of respect fall. “I spent my last dollar getting here on a one-way ticket, and you’re talking to me about healing through belief?”
“You’re a man who’s looking at the world through a keyhole, and you spent your whole life trying to widen that keyhole,” she answered, her tone still level and calm. “To see more, know more. And now, on hearing that it can be widened in ways you can’t imagine, you reject the possibility?”
“No, I reject it because I do not believe in fairy tales about chakras or energy or the power of belief,” he sneered. “There is no such thing as spirit! We are made of matter, and nothing more. We’re just another tiny, momentary speck within an indifferent universe.”
She still didn’t seem bothered by his insulting tone. “You think too little of yourself,” she said.
“Oh, you think you see through me, do you? Well, you don’t. But I see through you!” Furious, he stabbed a finger at her… and then she did react.
She caught his wrist, turned his arm, and thrust a palm into the center of his chest. Something happened. He felt a wrenching sense of dislocation, and for a moment he was outside himself, looking at his own body from across the room. He held up his hands and saw a strange glow around them, trailing wisps of light. The Ancient One held her hand still for a moment, then curled her fingers. Strange felt a tug, and a moment later the vision had passed. He twitched, feeling his body again. “What did you just do to me?”
“I pushed your astral form out of your physical form,” she said, as if it was a perfectly ordinary thing to do.
She’d drugged him. That was it. That was part of their game here. “What’s in that tea? Psilocybin? LSD?”
“Just tea,” she said calmly. “With a little honey.”
He couldn’t help himself. He believed her. Or at least he was starting to. Was there some truth to all this mumbo jumbo? He’d felt it. He’d felt himself outside his body. “What just happened?”
“For a moment, you entered the Astral Dimension,” she explained. “A place where the soul exists apart from the body.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Strange asked. He didn’t care about Astral Dimensions. He wanted his hands back.
“To show you just how much you don’t know,” she said. “Open your eye.”
For a moment he thought she was just giving him more mystical advice, but then everything around him changed. Strange was hurled up and out of Kamar-Taj, into the sky, above the clouds. He screamed, terrified by what he saw around him. He could see the curve of Earth and the bright-blue layer of the atmosphere against the infinite black of space. “This isn’t real it isn’t real it isn’t—” Suddenly, in front of him, there was a butterfly. A beautiful monarch, wings gently working. Transfixed, Strange reached to touch it… then he was flung away again, down some kind of wormhole. Colors and swirls of energy whirlpooled around him. The world was coming apart in his head.
Somewhere in his mind, Strange heard Mordo’s voice. “His heart rate is getting dangerously high.”
Then he fell back into his body to find The Ancient One studying his face and putting a calming hand on his shoulder. “He looks all right to me,” she said. Panting, Strange started to feel relieved that it was over. Then she took her hand and everything splintered again.
“You think you know how the world works?” She spoke in his mind as Strange tumbled through a shifting landscape of incredible shapes and colors. Were those cells? Were they worlds? He could not tell. He felt his body come apart and come back together, once, twice, a thousand times in the blink of an eye. “You think that this material universe is all there is? What is real? What mysteries lie beyond the reach of your senses? At the root of existence, mind and matter meet. Thoughts shape reality.” Everything shifted again as he fell through a giant, staring eye into a vast space filled with crystal structures. Far away he saw other versions of himself, staring and frightened. “This universe is only one of an infinite number. Worlds without end. Some benevolent and life-giving…” He began to fall toward one world. “Others filled with malice and hunger. Dark places, where powers older than time lie, ravenous… and waiting.” The world was not a world. It was a face, with eyes full of power and hate. Strange started to scream as it saw him… and then it was gone. Light surrounded him; he blazed across the emptiness again, faster and faster. “Who are you in this vast Multiverse, Mister Strange?”
He crashed back into the world. Actually crashed, falling from the ceiling of the Kamar-Taj sanctuary and smashing a chair. “Have you seen that before in a gift shop?” The Ancient One asked as he trembled on the floor. Her voice was gentle, but her meaning was clear.
Slowly, Strange got himself up to his knees. He held his hands out to her, shaking and overwhelmed. Now he believed. He had seen it. He had felt it. Mordo was right. He was ready to forget what he had thought he knew. “Teach me,” he begged.
For a long moment she looked at him.
Then, softly, she said, “No.”
Mordo dragged Strange to the door and threw him out into the street. The door shut. Strange banged on
it, not caring about the searing pain in his hands. “No! No, no, no! Open the door! Please!”
But no one answered.
CHAPTER 4
Inside Kamar-Taj, The Ancient One consulted with some of her fellow Masters of the mystic arts. The debate was calm, but clearly the group had strong opinions.
Many came seeking Kamar-Taj. Few found it. Even fewer were worth learning its secrets… and even fewer of those were worthy of the teaching she could offer. That was why she wished to consult—there was often wisdom in other perspectives. But now the conversation was over. “Thank you, Masters,” she said as they vanished through portals back to their homes away from Kamar-Taj. She could feel Mordo watching her. “You think I’m wrong to cast him out?”
“Five hours later, he’s still on your doorstep,” Mordo said. “There’s a strength to him.”
“Stubbornness, arrogance, ambition…” The Ancient One stood at a pedestal. A small instrument set atop it gave her a view of the different planes of reality, projected as a fiery globe above her. “I’ve seen it all before.”
Mordo knew what she was thinking. “He reminds you of Kaecilius?”
“I cannot lead another gifted student to power, only to lose him to the darkness,” The Ancient One said.
“You didn’t lose me,” Mordo pointed out. “I wanted the power to defeat my enemies. You gave me the power to defeat my demons. And to live within the natural law.”
“We never lose our demons, Mordo. We only learn to live above them.”
He understood the warning in her words. As soon as one started to believe demons were defeated, one stopped looking for them. He decided to change the subject. “Kaecilius still has the stolen pages. If he deciphers them, he could bring ruin upon us all. There may be dark days ahead. Perhaps… Kamar-Taj could use a man like Strange.”
“Don’t shut me out,” Strange begged. “I have nowhere else to go.” He said it over and over, and no one answered. Eventually, he sank down and sat, back to the door. He was done.
Just then, the door opened and Mordo hauled him inside. Strange scrambled to his feet. “Thank you,” he said, on the verge of tears. Without a word, Mordo led him through the temple to a room. It was dim and small, but clean, and Strange felt something he wasn’t used to feeling: gratitude. “Thank you,” he said again, not just to be polite. The Ancient One’s vision had shaken something loose in him. He was seeing things he had never seen before. He had hope.
“Bed,” Mordo said as he lit a stick of incense to freshen up the room’s musty air. “Rest. Meditate… if you can. The Ancient One will send for you.”
He handed Strange a slip of paper with the word Shamballa written on it.
“Uh, what’s this? My mantra?”
“The Wi-Fi password,” Mordo said from the door. He cracked a smile, just barely. “We’re not savages.”
Wi-Fi, Strange thought. He could contact Christine, tell her what he had seen. Looking at the watch she had given him when they were together, he turned it over. It was all he had left from the day he’d left New York. It was all he had left from his time with her. On the back was her inscription: TIME WILL TELL HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU.
He set the watch down. Time, he thought. He wanted to talk to her, but for one of the few times in his life, he wasn’t sure what to say. He was still thinking about it when The Ancient One called for him and began his studies.
“The language of the mystic arts is as old as civilization,” she began. They were kneeling, facing each other in her study. “The sorcerers of antiquity called the use of this language spells. But if that word offends your modern sensibilities, you can call it a program.” With a gesture she drew a line of energy in the air, bright-orange and sparking. The line rotated, opening into a circle. She flicked her wrist and a square appeared around the circle, then smaller circles in its corners. “The source code that shapes reality. We harness energy drawn from other dimensions of the Multiverse, to cast spells, conjure shields and weapons to make magic.” The center circle began to turn, as if the entire figure was not just a symbol but a magical machine of some kind. With a small push, she made the floating symbol expand into three dimensions, bulging toward Strange. He watched, astonished. Then she let it fall away.
“But… even if my fingers could do that, my hands would just be waving in the air. I mean, how do I get from here to there?”
“How did you get to reattach severed nerves, and put a human spine back together bone by bone?”
“Study and practice. Years of it.”
From her look he understood that he had just answered his own question. Study and practice, Strange thought. He could do that.
The first thing she did was turn him loose in Kamar-Taj’s library. Strange read what she suggested, and that led him to other books. When he had finished one armload, he brought them back to the library and got more. The second time he made the trip, a blocky Asian man stood at a reading table near the library entrance. Behind him was another door, magically guarded. Strange didn’t know what was on the other side, but he hoped to find out soon.
“Hey,” he said, and set the books down.
The librarian—that’s what Strange figured he must be—looked up. “Mister Strange,” he said.
That was weird, how everyone knew him here even though he didn’t know any of them. “Uh… Stephen, please. And you are?”
“Wong.”
“Wong,” Strange repeated. “Just Wong?” Wong did not look impressed at his joke. Strange tried another single-named person. “Or… Aristotle.” Still no reaction.
Wong waited for Strange to run out of steam. Then he turned his attention to the books. “The Book of the Invisible Sun. Astronomia Nova. Codex Imperium. Key of Solomon. You finished all of this?”
“Yup,” Strange said. He was a fast reader, and a fast learner.
After another long, considering look, Wong said, “Come with me.”
Strange followed him into another part of the library. “This section is for Masters only. But at my discretion, others may use it.” He pulled a book from the shelf. “We should start with Maxim’s Primer. How is your Sanskrit?”
“I’m fluent in online translators.”
Wong handed him the book. “Read it. Classical Sanskrit.”
Strange saw a row of books high on the wall. Each had a sigil on the cover that glowed with power. “What are those?”
“The Ancient One’s private collection.”
“So they’re forbidden?”
“No knowledge in Kamar-Taj is forbidden. Only certain practices. Those books are far too advanced for anyone other than the Sorcerer Supreme.”
Strange went to the books and opened one. He did not understand the alphabet it was written in, let alone the language. It had fallen open to a gap where he could see pages torn out. “This one’s got pages missing.”
“That’s The Book of Cagliostro. The study of time. One of the rituals was stolen by a former Master. A Zealot called Kaecilius. Just after he strung up the former librarian and relieved him of his head.” Wong paused for that to sink in. Then he took another book from a nearby shelf. “I’m now the guardian of these books. So if a volume from this collection should be stolen again, I’d know it. And you’d be dead before you ever left the compound.” His point made, he handed the book to Strange.
“What if it’s just overdue? You know? Any… late fees I should know about? Maybe, perhaps, um…” He gave up. “You know, people used to think that I was funny.”
Still completely deadpan, Wong said, “Did they work for you?”
Ouch, Strange thought. “All right.” He gathered up the stack of books Wong had chosen for him. “Well, it’s been lovely talking to you—thank you for the books and for the horrifying story and for the threat upon my life.”
Kaecilius and his Zealots stood in the sanctuary of a London cathedral. He unfolded a leather case containing the pages he had taken from The Book of Cagliostro and selected one showing an ominous run
e. He and the Zealots all had the same rune on their foreheads now, a symbol of their devotion to their task. “Now we receive the power to destroy the one who betrayed us,” Kaecilius said as he set the page on the floor. He drew the rune in the air above it, bloodred and pulsing. “The one who betrays the world.”
When he had completed the rune, he and the Zealots chanted the ritual, repeating the phrase of power that would draw the dark being whose rune they watched, and tell him they were devoted to him. Across the barrier between his world and the Dark Dimension, Kaecilius felt a response. Power flowed through him, and the floor around the page began to fold itself into a mystical pattern. He looked up and swept his arms through gestures he had learned from The Ancient One—gestures that he would soon use to destroy her. The cathedral’s walls and stained-glass windows folded and twisted into new shapes, strange geometries no human had ever seen. Yes, Kaecilius thought. The ritual was working. Dormammu had heard their call for aid, and answered.
CHAPTER 5
Mordo and Wong walked among the trainees as they worked through exercises designed to develop the basic powers that were common to all magical orders. Strange had learned the gestures, but he could not create the lines of energy that seemed to come so easily to the other apprentices. None of the others helped him—Stephen Strange was still not used to asking for help from his peers.
After the exercises, Mordo brought out a case and opened it, revealing rows of two-finger rings. “Mastery of the sling ring is essential to the mystic arts,” he said as each student took one. They fit over the index and middle fingers, with a flat surface like half a set of brass knuckles. “They allow us to travel throughout the Multiverse.” The students began to create crackling orange portals, but again Strange made the motions and got nothing, only a few sparks.