by Layton Green
With Spirit Fire still dancing at his fingertips, Val raised his hands towards his brothers as if to burn them. He reached forward and Will woke in a cold sweat, opening his eyes to find Mateo sitting cross-legged beside him, gazing into the darkness.
Sweating from the nightmare, Will rolled onto his side just in time to see a man with the furry face of a jaguar climb over the eastern edge of the tower and leap straight at Mateo. Unsure if he was still dreaming, he tried to cry out, but a fur-covered hand slipped over Will’s mouth from behind.
He bucked to free himself as more hands grasped his arms and legs, holding him down. Someone shoved a root that smelled like cinnamon and diesel under his nose. Within moments, he felt woozy and his eyelids fluttered. The last thing he saw was Mateo slumping to the ground, surrounded by jaguar men with long slinky tails, tufted ears, and muscular bodies covered in yellow and black fur.
-16-
Lord Alistair brought Professor Azara, Dean Groft, and a small team of majitsu with him to Bohemian Isle. The denizens of the densely packed section of the French Quarter gaped as the bejeweled wizard carriage drifted across the dirty canal, soared above the rickety buildings, and alighted in the central square.
The Chief Thaumaturge wrinkled his nose at the smell of stagnant water commingling with garbage and spilled ale. He had long wanted to expel the hordes of artists, drifters, street urchins, and grifters who populated the isle. Half of them were gypsies, he was sure of it. Not to mention the freaks of nature trolling the streets, lepers and half-breeds and worse. A public fondness for the eccentricities and cheap pleasures of Bohemian Isle had stayed his hand, but one day he would stuff them all in the Fens.
People parted like water in a boat’s wake as the elder mages exited the carriage and floated down a decrepit side lane with gargoyles leering off of every peaked roof. Lord Alistair could feel the threads of old magic lurking far beneath the worn cobblestones, a nameless tickling in his skull.
Alrick’s phrenomancy sign was located halfway down the street. Lord Alistair climbed the short flight of steps to knock on the wooden doorway of the boarded-up structure, annoyed at the look of boredom on the phrenomancer’s face when he answered.
“Greetings, Alrick.”
Holding a battered wormwood gourd, the phrenomancer looked as disheveled as always: coarse stubble obscuring his handsome features, tangled hair spilling onto a cotton shirt, pantaloons that looked as if they had never been washed. “Alistair.”
Not Lord Alistair. The Chief Thaumaturge’s face tightened. “You refused my request to gaze.”
“I refused your request to leave Bohemian Isle.” Alrick waved a hand, his words thick with intoxication. “I prefer not to leave my palace.”
“Even at the behest of the Chief Thaumaturge, in a matter concerning the defense of the Realm?”
Alrick gave a lazy smile.
Rage fluttered in Lord Alistair’s breast. He could have forced Alrick to come to the Sanctum, but he couldn’t force him to gaze, and he didn’t want to antagonize the phrenomancer before the reading. A former spirit mage, Alrick had spent two years as an itinerant wanderer after graduating from the Abbey. He became hopelessly addicted to wormwood water in the Bavarian Kingdom, left the Congregation in disgrace, and became a gazer because he was unfit to do anything else.
At least that was the story. True or not, Alrick was the best gazer in New Albion, and notoriously difficult to corral. He had once refused to gaze for the queen during a state visit.
“I need to know if you can trace an inanimate object,” Lord Alistair asked.
“Of course not. You know this.”
“What if it were made of hardened spirit?”
Alrick’s mandarin eyes sparked with interest. “Then I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried such a thing.”
“Would you care to?” Lord Alistair said, more a command than a request.
After taking a sip from a copper straw protruding from the gourd, Alrick stepped aside and ushered them through.
All of the majitsu except Lord Alistair’s two personal attendants remained outside. Professor Azara and Dean Groft followed the Chief Thaumaturge and his bodyguards down a stone hallway lit by guttered candles and into a windowless room painted black. Two chairs on either side of a stained wooden table supported a device called an oculave: a brass stand branching into circular apertures spaced a foot apart. As Lord Alistair settled into the leather chin pad and tightened the knobs on the device, he worried about placing himself at the mercy of a soul gaze.
Which was why the Chief Thaumaturge had chosen his companions carefully. Alrick unnerved Lord Alistair, and he wanted Dean Groft and Professor Azara present in case the phrenomancer harbored any treacherous ideas. Gazing was a poorly understood activity, fraught with peril, and he didn’t want to be at Alrick’s mercy.
Alistair could have just brought Professor Azara, but he wanted Dean Groft to bear witness to the day’s event. Groft would squirm, and that was fine. The dean was soft. Perhaps he would commit treason by intervening.
Alrick lit a candle on the table and shut the door. After inserting two colored drops into Alistair’s eyes and two in his own, he secured his side of the oculave and asked Professor Azara to snuff the candle.
Darkness reigned.
As the drops took effect, Alistair experienced the weird sensation of falling towards Alrick’s leonine eyes and into a wall of blackness crisscrossed by silver filaments, weightless in his chair, a growing prickle in his brain. Alrick’s twin golden orbs rushed past him, leaving him suspended in a three-dimensional world of silver lines and endless dark.
Lord Alistair guided Alrick with his mind through the maze of filaments, concentrating on the last time he had seen the sword. Deep into the past, images rushing by with the clarity of consciousness and the power of a dream. Lord Alistair choked up as he witnessed the tragic death of his wife and the birth of his daughter, his ascension as Chief Thaumaturge, dueling a Dragon Mage in the Place Between Worlds and almost being caught by the Astral Wind, watching in agony as his younger brother took flight with their father before the late-blooming Alistair could leave his feet, the bond his father and brother had shared that would never be his, the lost inheritance that had driven Alistair into a murderous rage.
More images, coming so fast he had to slow them.
Remember the sword.
Focus.
Branches and branches and branches, swooshing down silver pathways, Lord Alistair holding Zariduke as he strode into the throne room in Londyn to confront the queen, striking down the Mayan Overlord in battle, flying an airship above the Ninth Protectorate and then across the Eastern seas, dueling a faceless warrior atop the Sanctum as a battle raged below, tearing apart the Wizard District—
No, Alistair whispered to himself. The pathways are both past and future, fact and possibility. Concentrate.
An unpracticed gazer, Lord Alistair was unable to shield all of the future probabilities. Alrick had already seen too much.
An outcome which Lord Alistair had fully anticipated.
Images whipped by in a blur. Finally he saw it, the strange world called Earth that was almost devoid of magic, full of bizarre and powerful machines.
The adopted home of Dane Blackwood.
In the past, the moment Dane had found the sword, Lord Alistair’s Spirit Ward had been triggered, and he had stepped through a dimension door to confront the gypsy mage. Though the Conclave had sent Dane on a mission to find the sword, Lord Alistair had uncovered Dane’s secret allegiance to the Revolution, and decided to accomplish two of his greatest objectives in one fell swoop.
Find Zariduke, and rid himself of the treacherous gypsy spirit mage once and for all, somewhere far from prying eyes.
They fought. Though Dane Blackwood was even stronger than Lord Alistair had realized, the Chief Thaumaturge prevailed in an epic battle. Just before Dane died, hovering high atop the ground, he used the last of his magic to force Alistair through a portal b
ack to Urfe and scramble the dimensional pathways. It had taken long decades for the Chief Thaumaturge to find Earth again, and send Zedock after the sword.
Thankfully, Lord Alistair managed to shield the battle with Dane Blackwood from Alrick. The phrenomancer would know he was doomed if he witnessed the true fate of the legendary gypsy mage.
After Dane disappeared from view, the sword hovered in darkness, and it took all of Lord Alistair’s immense mental power to slow the images and drift near the sword. He shivered with excitement. This was why he had come to gaze with Alrick.
What had happened to Zariduke?
The other phrenomancers had failed to make it past this point, unable to track the sword on its own. After a long pause, a new set of silver pathways appeared, branching out from the sword. Exultant, Alistair felt his hands clutching the table. Alrick had done it!
As Lord Alistair whooshed forward down a new silver line, he realized it must take a spirit mage to gaze upon a thing of spirit. The pathways flew past, he forced his thoughts elsewhere, and then an older man with a trimmed beard and clothes from Earth was holding Zariduke, gazing upon it in wonder. The silver lines branched and the man took the sword to a city in a swamp that looked vaguely like New Victoria, and then the sword lay in darkness for many years until the same man took it out and carried it inside a motorized carriage to an alleyway and gave the sword to—
A scraping sound interrupted the gazing session. The acrid smell of sulfur. As the light from a match expanded into a sickly yellow illumination, jerking Lord Alistair back to the present, Alrick extracted himself from the oculave and said, in a husky voice, “The session is over.”
“Take me back,” Lord Alistair shrieked. “We were there!”
“No, milord. I will not.”
Alistair stamped his feet and shouted. “Who are you protecting?”
Alrick refused to answer. Professor Azara and Dean Groft looked between the two in confusion.
Lord Alistair pointed a finger at Alrick, so enraged that spittle flew from his mouth. “You will answer me!”
A slow, knowing grin crept onto the phrenomancer’s face.
“Traitor! I charge you with treason under the law and sentence you to the Wizard Vault, effectively immediately!”
“No trial?” Alrick mocked.
“You can rot in gaol until you change your mind!”
Lord Alistair waved a hand, opening a portal to a cell lined with honeycombed azantite walls. As his two majitsu rushed at Alrick, Lord Alistair stood ready to follow the phrenomancer if he fled through spirit. Just before the warrior-mages reached him, the phrenomancer whipped a needle from his pocket and jabbed himself in the arm. His mocking grin faded, and he slumped in the arms of the majitsu.
Lord Alistair took him by the collar and peeled back an eyelid. Alrick’s eyes were dull and lifeless. “Fool,” Alistair roared, shoving the phrenomancer away.
“What is it?” Professor Azara asked.
Dean Groft walked over and lifted Alrick’s slumped head by the chin. “He appears to have injected himself with a highly powerful gazer sedative, allowing instant retreat into his mind.” The dean stepped away from the phrenomancer, his eyes sad at first, and then accusing as they met Lord Alistair’s. “And I suspect he won’t be coming back.”
-17-
Drained from breaking through the wall of fog, Val found himself standing in a mossy field full of age-spotted boulders. A blue-tinged mist cloaked the landscape, making it hard to see more than a few hundred feet in any direction. Short, gnarled, windswept trees dotted the moorland like babushkas in silent contemplation. Five feet behind him, a waterfall tumbled off a steep embankment, just as it had before.
“Fascinating,” Dida said, as he absorbed his surroundings.
The air was moist and peaty. Val realized he was freezing. After toweling off with a spare cloth, he donned his woolen trousers and high-necked shirt, then wrapped his gray cloak tight. The air was a few degrees colder now.
“Here,” Adaira said, taking his hands in hers. A warm red glow spread outward from her palms, slowly infusing him.
“Thanks,” he said, after his body heat started to regulate. She smiled back.
Everyone was staring around in confusion. Val walked over and stuck his hand in the waterfall, concentrating. He felt no residual trace of the spirit barrier. “Whatever portal we just went through,” he said grimly, “is gone.”
Rucker growled. “You mean we’re trapped.”
“I mean we’re not going back the same way.”
Synne remained quiet, eyes narrow as she probed the landscape. Staying close to Val as always.
“Are we on the other side of the mist, in our world?” Dida asked, wrinkling his long forehead. “Or in another one?”
No one had an answer.
“We should find a town and figure out where in the Queen’s Blood we are,” Rucker said finally.
“I second that,” Val said.
Adaira consulted a compass. “If the geography is the same, we should aim east, towards the plains.”
Rucker led the way. Val’s feet squished into the spongy ground, and after Adaira sank to her thighs and scrambled out of the muck, they realized the brownish-green groundcover was deceiving. The whole area was one giant peat bog.
Rucker broke off a desiccated limb and snapped it into pieces. “Use these to probe.”
They plodded through the soggy moorland for hours without a sign of civilization. The eerie blue mist hung omnipresent around them, never thinning or thickening, as if part of the air itself. They had not seen the sun since they arrived. Oddly, night had not fallen, despite the fact they had traveled through the portal in the late afternoon.
The shadows of monstrous birds could be seen soaring high above, some with wingspans as long as a bus. Whether they were demons or something else, perhaps the same inchoate forms Val had glimpsed before, no one knew.
Rucker stopped beside a series of tracks, scratching his chin as he studied a cloven hoof print with three curved, spur-like markings sticking out on each side.
“Do you recognize them?” Val asked.
With a grunt, Rucker shook his head and pushed to his feet.
Dida said, “With how many species of monster are you familiar?”
“In Albion?” Rucker said. “All of them.”
The peat bog grew more and more treacherous, until it was hard to take a step without sinking. The wizards could fly if needed, and Synne could skim atop the ground in that feathery jump-stride the majitsu used, but no one wanted to expend magical energy in such an unfamiliar setting.
Rucker planted his sword on a patch of moss. “We need a better plan.”
“It’s possible no one lives here,” Dida said philosophically, “or that it’s been decimated by demons.”
“Wherever here is.”
“If the mist would clear,” Adaira added, “one of us could fly higher, to a better vantage point.”
“I wonder if we could fly above it?” Dida asked.
Val shook his head. “Too dangerous with those things in the sky.”
The bibliomancer wagged a finger. “I could try a Tellurian Disruption.”
“A what?” Rucker said. “I’ve never heard of that spell.”
“An enchantment that sends magical energy in a shockwave along the nearest tellurian lines. If something impedes the flow, such as a town or a sizeable manmade structure, I will know.”
“What’s the range?” Val asked.
Dida stroked his narrow chin. “Perhaps twenty-five miles.”
Rucker clapped him on the back. “What are ye waiting for?”
“There is . . . complication.”
“Spit it out, mage.”
“When I cast the spell,” Dida said slowly, “a rather large magical signal will result. Any wizards or creatures attuned to tellurian disturbances within the spell’s radius will know exactly where we are.”
“What kind of wizards are attuned to a te
llurian disturbance?” Val asked. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Not many, outside of a bibliomancer or perhaps a well-learned sylvamancer,” Dida admitted. “But one class of creature in particular might notice,” he said, with a pointed look at Rucker. “One more attuned to the primeval elements.”
The adventurer grimaced. “Demons.”
“Yes.”
Rucker jerked his sword out of the muck. “Then we cast the spell and get our arses out of here. If there are demons around, they’ll find us anyway, wandering around like lost pups.”
Everyone agreed they should take the chance. Dida cast a spell that reminded Val of what he had once thought real magic would look like: hand waving, chanting, and marking symbols in the earth. Later, he planned to ask his friend if the gestures had any true effect.
After several minutes of intense concentration, Dida announced he felt a disruptive vibration almost due west of where they were headed. The party hurried off in the new direction, trying to distance themselves from the source of the signal.
Hours later, they still had seen no sign of civilization. They voted to take a quick break and keep walking. The mist and sky were unchanging, despite the fact that it should have been dark.
Val sat on a large rock and munched on a beef stick, lost in his thoughts. What was wrong with the sky? What had happened to the previous wizards who had breached the barrier? How would he and the others get home? What was this place?
As he reached for his canteen, he saw Adaira hugging her knees, also deep in thought. Dida was examining a patch of moss, and Rucker was sharpening his blade.
Where was Synne?
Val whirled, used to seeing his protector close by. Perhaps nature had called? Before he could yell out for her, he noticed a ripple in a watery patch of peat bog a few yards away. He walked over to inspect the disturbance and saw Synne submerged in the bog, fighting to free herself from two creatures with mottled green skin.
Val bellowed for help as more of the bog demons crawled out of the watery quagmires pockmarking the landscape. Once they emerged, their long muscular arms dragged the ground, and he noticed in horror that their hands, which resembled five suckered, rigid octopus tentacles ending in dagger-sharp tips, opened and closed as they advanced. A mass of short tentacles writhed around an oval maw that puckered like a fish’s mouth.