by GM Gambrell
Six
It took the better part of a month, but eventually his request was granted and he was given access to the Magic School’s library. He wasn’t sure whose arm his parents had had to twist in order to make it happen, but one day, while he was working on his glider in the shop, his mother blinked in and gave him the good news. He knew it before she said it just from the look on her face.
“They’ve agreed, Duncan. They’re going to let you go about your studies.”
“That’s great, Mom,” He said, excited, wondering what subject he’d be able to research first.
“There is only one condition.”
His excitement gave way to fear. “Oh?”
“Yes. You must take a job there.” The word job sounded funny coming from her mouth. They all knew what the word meant, in theory, but no one besides the Golems and Duncan worked for anything. Anything anyone wanted was simply conjured. “They’ll want you to sweep up and keep things neat and organized.”
“That’s not so bad,” Duncan said, and it wasn’t. He didn’t mind working. He actually liked keeping busy.
“No, I didn’t think it would be,” she said, hugging him tightly. “I’m so excited for you, Duncan. This is like going to school that first day all over again. You’ll get it this time. I know you will.”
He hadn’t shared his mother’s excitement, at least not in the way she had. He was excited, but not for the same reason. While she thought something in the library would jar his ability, maybe forcing the magic into his life, he only hoped that the knowledge would, somehow, allow him to better understand the world and what had happened to it—maybe even allow him to escape the bonds that the lack of magic had placed on him.
“Thanks, Mom, for the help.”
She smiled. “Just make us proud, Duncan. Just make us proud.”
Duncan literally skipped through the streets of New Dallas. The shield covering the city was letting through extra sunshine that day, and the air had a warm, comforting feel to it. The extra light, though, exposed more of the jumbled together city and Duncan found himself wondering what the original residents had been thinking when they started New Dallas. The entire city looked as if a child’s toy box had been dumped out and the various pieces put back together to make homes and buildings. He could tell where the original streets and sidewalks had been, but the buildings had been created out of just whatever was handy. He knew that Magicians, when finding materials to expand their homes, didn’t venture past the junkyards surrounding the city and figured when you put junk in, you got junk out.
And that was just what the majority of the city looked like. Junk.
He was so occupied both with what he thought the library was going to be like and the junky state of New Dallas that he nearly ran over the procession of armored dogs in the street. He tripped over a small terrier in gleaming steel plate armor and nearly landed on a St. Bernard.
The large dog growled at him, “Watch your step, Magician.”
“I’m not a Magician,” Duncan said and then wished he hadn’t. The dogs, locked in their war with the rats and the cats, wouldn’t usually involve Magicians. It was too easy for the normal populace of New Dallas to simply sweep them aside. But he’d had run-ins with them before, and once they knew he couldn’t do magic, he was often a target.
“Not a Magician, you say?” the large St. Bernard asked, slowly circling as the other dog knights joined him. “I know you. You are Duncan Cade.”
He gulped. “Yes, I am, Sir Dog.”
“And you, not even a Magician, dare interfere in the Queen’s Parade? Foolish human, now you will suffer.”
The dog knights couldn’t hold swords because they didn’t have thumbs, but their armor was equipped with spring-loaded blades that ejected on command, forming sharp and deadly rams for them to rip their opponents. The two blades jutted out beside the large dog’s head and the tips touched Duncan’s cheeks.
“I should cut you right now, human.”
“Stand down, Sir Dog,” another dog said from the center of the procession.
“But, my lady, he interrupts the procession.”
The dog knights parted and allowed their Queen to walk through. She was a small Dachshund, long and narrow, with medium length caramel-colored hair. Duncan had heard of the Queen of All Dogs, Queen Bella, but had never seen her. She was regal looking in her long purple robe. There was a tiny crown on her head, and the diamonds and jewels gleamed in the bright sunshine.
“You are Duncan Cade, correct? He who is without magic?”
“Yes, your highness.” He always felt silly talking to the dogs as if they were royalty, but it went easier if you did.
“And you are the same Duncan Cade that harbors Free Rangers in his home?”
Duncan gulped. He didn’t know if that was good or bad with the Queen. The politics of the never-ending war changed daily. One day they might be allies with the Free Rangers, enemies the next. “Yes, ma’am, I do,” he admitted.
“Stand down,” the Queen ordered her company. “This boy is no enemy of ours. He has demonstrated a fondness for non-human kind and he possesses none of the vile magic his peers do. He intends us no harm, do you, Duncan Cade?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Yes, my lady.” The large St. Bernard, head of her security force, bowed and then stepped away.
“You will have to forgive my security force. The war with the cats grows direr every day. You are free to go on your way, and you will be free of attacks from dogkind.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Duncan replied.
“Before you leave, though, will you allow me to give you a piece of advice?”
“Of course,” Duncan said, wondering what advice Queen Bella could give him.
“The Magicians ignore us and think us but pesky animals, but we watch them closely as we have since the first sentient dogs were created after your Last War. We dogs have long memories, and in those memories we have none of a time when the magic has been as…” she paused, looking for the right way to describe it, “…precarious as it is now. There are more failures than the Magicians are willing to admit.”
Duncan nodded, knowing that already. “But why tell me?”
“Because when it does fail, they will look for someone to blame.”
“My lady,” the St. Bernard Captain said, rushing back to her side, “there is a large contingent of cats on the march, along with an equally large contingent of rats. We must get to a safe location at once.”
Queen Bella nodded. “Thank you, Captain.” She started to trot away from him and then turned and said, “Be careful, Duncan Cade. Life is not all it seems here in New Dallas.”
He watched the dogs leave and then ducked between two buildings as the army of cats and rats followed them down the street. Where the dogs were royal looking, even stately in their shining armor, the cats had the appearance of vagabonds. None of them wore matching uniforms, but each looked angry and deadly. The rats were even worse, and he wondered what deal had been struck this week for the two opposing groups to work together. He wouldn’t be mentioning any of it to Henrietta and the gals. It would only serve to further their fear. Cats and rats working together…who’d ever heard of such a thing?
He tried to process what the Queen meant, but couldn’t. Even with all the weirdness going on in his life, the excitement of entering the library trumped everything else. Once the cats had passed, he took off at a light jog, heading for the Magic School.
Duncan stood outside the Magic School, admiring the building he hadn’t laid eyes on in months. It was one of the few buildings in New Dallas that, constructed from scratch, had any sort of style to it. There were old, original buildings, of course, like the courthouse and the mansion of Marissa’s parents, but the majority of the buildings and homes were just one piece of junk magically glued to another. Even the houses that floated above his, going as high as he could see or imagine, were only so much debris strewn together to make some sort of living
space. Why the Magicians didn’t create themselves things of beauty to live in was something that had always bothered him.
The Magic School was a different matter altogether. The spire was eighteen stories high, one for each grade of the school. A child would enter the school at the age of three, on the first floor, and as they progressed through the grades, they would progress through the levels upwards. The rope he used to scale the outside of the building, entering classes through the many windows, still swung in the light breeze. The building itself was constructed out of dozens of different colors and styles of bricks, as if the original builders had just picked up whatever was laying around and started stacking them together. The bricks were laid in a pattern that spiraled up with the building, giving the whole thing the look of a massive drill. There were only one set of doors to the spire, and they were the doors at the base that the first year children used to gain entrance. The spire narrowed at the top until it ended in a massive spike shooting way up into the sky. Duncan appreciated that the sky around the Magic School was uncluttered with other homes and buildings, and before he went in to try and gain access to the library, he stood and soaked up the warm sunshine for awhile.
His first attempt to gain entry into the library was a problem. There were, of course, no stairs, and he couldn’t very well climb down a non-existent wall underground. He poked around the first story of the Magic School for hours, running into youngsters starting their first year at the school and generally made a pest of himself. He searched in every closet, in every nook and cranny he could find, but he simply could not locate a way down into the library. No one needed it, he knew, and watched as the first-year students learned to teleport. Magician architecture infuriated him, not just because its lack of class, but because of its lack of usefulness. Most of the homes and buildings in New Dallas were just like the school. They were constructed for people who used magic to pass through walls or floors. What would happen, he wondered, if one day the magic stopped?
“Well, Golem boy,” Dr. Felix said from behind him as he watched the kids practice, “I take it you haven’t found a way down into the library yet, have you? None of these buildings were ever created with the likes of you in mind.”
He’d hoped not to run into the Doctor, but knew that was about as likely as him suddenly being able to teleport. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
“Well, it simply won’t do for our newest Golem not to be able to perform his duties, will it?”
“No, sir, I suppose not.” His disgust at being called a Golem by the man who had, at least temporarily, turned him into one was hard to hide.
“Follow me,” Dr. Felix said blandly, as if he were showing a first year student where the restroom was.
Duncan followed with some trepidation. Did the Doctor have some nefarious plan for him since turning him into a Golem? Dr. Felix led him into the first floor cafeteria, which was packed with first-year students. “I’ve already searched here, sir.”
“Of course you have,” Felix said. He led Duncan to the rear wall that Duncan was sure only separated the school from the outside world. Felix waved his hands and quickly proved him wrong, however. The bricks in the wall separated one by one, marching into a neat pile down at the base of the wall. “You will clean that up, of course.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two stepped into the opening, which did not lead to the outside of the school but into a large room lined with dusty machines and devices that Duncan did not recognize.
“This was, at one time, a kitchen for the cafeteria. Food was prepared for those first-year students who could not, on their own, conjure food.”
Duncan couldn’t imagine such a thing. Children learned to create food even before they learned to walk. “And what are these things, sir?”
“I have no idea,” Felix admitted. “Falcon may know, or there may be some clue in the archives. I would assume, though, that since food was prepared here, they are for that purpose.”
Duncan nodded and followed him to the back of the room where there was a small closet. He opened the closet and found a ladder that led down into darkness.
“The bottom levels have been sealed for generations, but I will, of course, open them for you. I expect to see you there straightaway.”
The teacher started to blink out but Duncan interrupted him. “Sir, can I ask you a question.”
“Go ahead,” Felix replied, sounding annoyed.
“Why are you doing this for me?”
“As I said, it wouldn’t do for our newest Golem to not be able to perform his duties, would it?”
“No, sir, and,” he paused, “thank you, sir.”
Dr. Felix blinked away without saying another word, leaving Duncan wondering if the man felt just the smallest amount of guilt for what he’d done to him.
True to his word, the openings were just where Dr. Felix said they’d be. He skipped the first floor, and, out of curiosity, slid down several stories, peeking through the openings on each floor. Sliding down the old steel ladder was not unlike sliding down the pole from his house to his garden. There was a rush of excitement as he slid down the ladder, not just because of the fear of being in the dimly lit tunnel, but because of what he knew the library contained. There was unbound knowledge there, and it was his for the taking. He almost felt like he was getting away with something he shouldn’t.
He felt something furry on his hand, knocking it off the ladder, and then managed to slow and come to a stop several rungs later.
“Hey, watch it, bud,” the small, squeaky voice intoned.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t see you,” he replied, sure he was speaking to a rat.
“Well, no, of course you didn’t. It’s dark in here, isn’t it? How can a human see in the dark? What are you doing here, anyway? Felix finally making good on his threat to exterminate us?” Duncan could sense the anger and trepidation in the rat’s voice and just barely made out the gleam of its fangs in the dark.
“I can’t teleport,” Duncan told the rat. “I have to use the ladder.”
“Oh,” the rat said with sudden realization. “You’re that human.”
“I’m the only human,” Duncan told it. “Everyone else is a Magician.”
The rat laughed in his squeaky little way. “You know the cats are after you, right now? Someone saw you making an alliance with the dogs.”
“I didn’t actually make an alliance with the dogs,” Duncan replied, defending himself. “I just talked to Queen Bella.”
“The cats care not, young human. You were seen with the dogs, so you’re with the dogs. You also harbor Free Rangers. The cats don’t like that, either.”
“Aren’t your kind allied with the cats? Doesn’t that require you attacking me, or something?”
“Are we allied this week? I have a hard time keeping up. I will attack you, though, if you wish.”
“Naw,” Duncan laughed. “I think it’s all right, if you’re all right with it.”
The rat scrambled up the ladder so he was face to face with Duncan. He was an older rat, his fur streaked with gray. His teeth didn’t gleam as much as he’d thought they had. They were dull and chipped and showed many years of use. He moved slowly and he was huffing as he climbed onto the rung near Duncan.
“No, I’m fine with it. I quit keeping up with the various alliances decades ago. The rats don’t even talk to me much. I half wonder if they even know I’m alive.”
“Why is that?”
“There was a problem, years ago. It’s nothing to concern yourself with.”
“So you live here, in the Magic School?”
“Most rats won’t come here, and these tunnels are well hidden. The students often leave the remains of their meals for me. It’s not a bad life.”
Duncan couldn’t imagine living in the ladder tunnel, but he wasn’t a rat, either.
“Well,” Duncan said, “my name is Duncan Cade and it’s been my pleasure to meet you.”
“I am Arnold,” the rat s
aid, “and it has been mine as well. I hope to see you again.”
Duncan watched the old rat scurry away and then continued back up the ladder.
Marissa was waiting for him as he stepped out onto the first floor of the library, wiping the dust and cobwebs from his tunic.
“Hey there,” she said. “Long time no see.”
She’d had to spend so much time studying for her finals over the previous few weeks that they hadn’t had much chance to visit. Now that she was graduated, though, her time was her own, and she, like he, was spending that time in the library, as many Magicians did. When you could have anything you wanted simply by wishing it, people tended to find simpler things to occupy their minds with.
“It’s good to see you too. How did finals go?”
“As well as can be expected. Dr. Felix’s was the hardest, of course. We had to summon a Golem and enchant it. I couldn’t stand it, Duncan, I just couldn’t. It was like watching you wipe those chalkboards all over again. I didn’t know what had happened to you then. I was scared you were going to be like that forever.”
“You did it, though,” Duncan said. “You passed.”
“Of course I did. If I hadn’t, well…” she looked away, embarrassed, “…I’d have failed. I’ve spent too long here to fail. Now I’m free of the teachers and allowed to pursue whatever I want.”
“I’m glad you did it, Marissa. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to see you here.”
She turned back to him, beaming. “I’m happy to see you too. I didn’t know if they were going to grant you access or not, but I’m glad they did. There’s a lot to learn here and I think you’ll be happy. The library is beyond awesome.”
“It is,” he said, looking at the shelves and shelves of memory stones. “I was hoping there would be more books, though.”
“Oh there are, silly,” she said, joining his gaze at the racks of rocks. “This is just one floor, and this library is a thousand years old. I’m sure there are thousands of books around here somewhere. Where, I don’t know, but we’ll find them.”
The library floor, like the spire above, was circular in shape. The shelves started along the walls and spiraled inward where they ended at an open area with desks, benches, and thick couches where the information from the library was studied. It was wider than he’d expected, much wider than the actual school above. The shelves themselves were packed in a seemingly random nature, with stacks upon stacks of memory stones. None had any sort of label on them, nor were there any sort of labels on the shelves themselves.
Duncan generally liked memory stones. The objects themselves were enchanted, so they required no magic skill on Duncan’s part to read. You simply picked the stone up, told it to activate, and then sat and watched the three dimensional display it showed. The stones were common and in no way mysterious. His family had crates and crates of them from family vacations, birthdays, and other holiday celebrations. He’d often watched the ones of his parent’s trip to New Atlantis before he was born, and marvel at the sheer beauty of the place with its pristine forests, magical creatures, and magnificent buildings. The city of New Atlantis, unlike New Dallas, was all about style. The buildings were magnificent and often covered in jewels and shingles of pure gold. Also unlike New Dallas, the city streets were pristine and all of the clutter and trash that he was used to at home was gone. He’d go there one day, he knew, and looked forward to spending days just exploring the grand architecture.
The library reminded him of the New Dallas streets. It was a cluttered mess. “How do you ever sort through any of this?” Duncan asked in amazement, “I mean…there’s no order to anything. There’s no way to tell one rock from the other.”
“You have to ask the Fairies for help,” Marissa told him, pointing up to the ceiling where the dozens of small winged people circled. “They know where everything is at.”
Fairies were uncommon enough throughout the city that he openly stared at them. He’d seen them in the school, on occasion, but knew that they were a reclusive bunch, preferring to keep to themselves. The often came out at night where their trails of sparkling dust floated in the wind. They loved to dance and laugh, he’d heard, and wondered why they’d be working in the library. of all places. He wasn’t sure why the Magicians had created the small Fairies during the Last War. Most of the magical species they’d introduced to the world were, in some form or fashion, combat troops. The Fairies didn’t seem to meet that qualification.
“You just whistle, or holler, or whatever, and one will come to you. Tell them what you’re looking for and they’ll go find it. Sometimes it takes awhile, sometimes it’s quick. If it’s on another floor they will tell you that and you’ll have to go there and repeat the process.”
“I see,” he said, a bit disappointed. He’d been hoping for some sort of order to the mess, maybe a catalogue of books and subjects. As it was, you had to actually know what you were looking for. You had to know the right questions to ask. “Well, that’s not so bad, I guess.”
“No, it’s not the worst way to run it, but it could be a lot better. There isn’t much simple browsing, like there was in Mr. Falcon’s class. You can, of course, pick something up at random, but that’s exactly what you’re going to get…randomness. That can be fun too, at times.”
“Well, I guess I have a lot of work to do, then,” he told his friend. “I…I don’t even know where to start.”
“I’m sure you’ll work it out, Duncan. You’re smart like that. Would you like to get together for lunch?”
“You bet,” he told her and then they hugged once more before she went back to her studies. If he was lucky, Marissa would conjure something interesting for lunch. Not that he didn’t love the food his garden provided, he was just excited about having something different.
Duncan whistled down a Fairy and the tiny little man hovered in front of him, his little wings kicking up trails of Fairy dust.
“I don’t know where to start,” he told the Fairy who looked at him quizzically. “I can think of only one thing for now.”
The Fairy buzzed around impatiently. He had other things to do, as well.
“Okay,” Duncan said, “bring me everything you have on Diamond Jim.”
He didn’t actually leave the library for the first three days. There was simply too much to learn. He watched memory stones for hours, interrupted only by Marissa insisting that he eat. She reminded him of his mother sometimes like that.
The Fairy had brought him at least a hundred memory stones dealing with Diamond Jim. What his parents had said about the man was mostly true, according to the records. He watched images of multiple bombings, mostly around New Chicago, and other acts of destruction attributed to Diamond Jim. Fires ravaged the city after Jim’s work, buildings destroyed, and homes lost. A few people were even killed in the bombings, caught off guard by the sudden explosions, their bodies so destroyed that other Magicians couldn’t put them back together again. There were the assassinations, the most well known being the Lord Probate of New Boston. Jim always managed to kill the men so they couldn’t be resurrected, destroying their bodies completely. There were dozens of robberies, and as Duncan watched these, he wondered how a non-magical human managed to rob a Magician. Much of the memory stones just didn’t make any sense. He remembered Timmy Toole throwing the fireball through his window, and how quickly his father’s protection spell had worked in getting rid of it. How did a non-magical human do any harm to Magicians?
The same theme, that the evil human man was terrorizing the Magicians, ran through all the memory stones. Jim managed to blow up a building and kill the people inside, yet none of the myriad of protections spells—everything from weather protection to atmospheric control, seemed to stop him. And how had the buildings been “utterly and permanently destroyed” in a world of magic where one man could conjure a building out of thin air? The assassinations were the weirdest. How had one non-magical man managed to destroy a Magician whose powers were li
mitless to the point that no trace of his body was ever found?
One news-type memory stone surprised him as it discussed a fading of magical powers around New London and blamed Jim for those events. It listed some relatively minor occurrences, along with a few major ones, and even showed a supposed note left by Jim claiming he was going to destroy the source of magic. The narrator couldn’t help but laugh, as everyone knew magic worked on an individual basis and there was no source, but it stirred Duncan’s thoughts. First off, he was surprised that there was an official recording with someone discussing the fading of magic. People just didn’t talk about it. It was like a shadow over the land that people ignored.
The most interesting stones he saw about Diamond Jim were the oldest ones, when he was still known by his given name of Jim Douglas. These memory stones were of Jim’s childhood, which was much like Duncan’s. He had been born without magic to loving, magical parents. He had, like Duncan, attended Magic School despite his lack of abilities, and just like Duncan, he hadn’t finished the school, though he was listed as a graduate. After school he’d began fiddling with machinery and designed a machine that would safely carry him into the Wastes. The machine, described as an “All Terrain Vehicle” or ATV for short, carried air for him to breathe and food stores for him to sustain him as he explored.
The Restorers sanctioned the trip and sent Jim off a hero with a grand party. He’d launch the Restoration, and though he was not of Magic, he was the hope of a new, reborn earth. Duncan avidly watched the memory stone of his send-off, watching as the much younger Diamond Jim entered his vehicle, waving to the crowd, and departed.
He was gone for three years.
He wouldn’t speak of what he’d seen when he’d returned, and it became a great scandal in the Restorer community. He became a recluse, hiding from the public and constantly tinkering with his machines. When he finally emerged from his self-induced exile, it was with tales of madness and destruction, claiming that magic was sucking the life out of what was left of the world. After an unexplained explosion in his shop, he was charged with committing acts of science.
“Science?” Duncan said aloud, and the several students around him looked at him in an absolute panic.
“What did you say?” a young man asked angrily. “What did you say?”
“I’m sorry.” Duncan said meekly, not understanding how the word could stir such ire. “I misheard something in the stone.”
The other students nodded, unsure of their own anger and satisfied with his explanation, and returned to their own studies.
The memory stone went on to show his trial by the Lord Probate and the execution of his sentence, preserved indefinitely in a block of ice until his madness could be cured. Something happened, though, at the sentencing, and Jim disappeared into the Wastes, his career of mayhem and murder starting soon after.
Duncan took the memory stones to the return bin for the Fairies to sort back into their spots and went home, to his garden, his mind full of the implications of what he’d learned in his first few days in the library.