‘Hmmm,’ mused the teacher. ‘So, continue.’
Pug took a moment to breathe deeply. ‘I need help,’ he said at last.
‘Ah,’ said Kulgan.
The cottage was not exactly as Pug remembered it, but he was at a loss to know if that was due to an imperfect replication or his own faulty memory. He asked, ‘Where are we? This is not your cottage in the woods south of the keep at Crydee.’
Kulgan shrugged again. ‘I’m not certain. For here’s the thing, Pug: my last memory is lying sick abed in Stardock, Meecham hovering like a mother hen as he always did, having said my goodbye to you. Age weighed heavily on my soul and I was tired to the core of my being. Your generosity with the healing priests was appreciated: I was free of pain, but I knew my time had come.’ He paused, a bemused expression crossing his wrinkled old visage. ‘I closed my eyes, then this odd thing … As I was drifting into darkness there was this momentary …’ He shrugged. ‘I am not sure how to describe it, but a cut, as cold as the coldest ice or stone, slicing through my being, then suddenly it was gone, the pain vanishing before it registered, but so vivid that in the fading of life, it was my first recollection as, instead of arising in the halls of Lims-Kragma, I found myself there.’ He pointed to the oversized bed in the corner of the room. ‘Apparently three or four hours ago.’
He picked up the pot and poured Pug’s tea and his own, then indicated with a wave a small pot of honey. Pug shook his head, and Kulgan went on, ‘I felt wonderful. There is no looking-glass, but I suspect I am now a great deal younger than when I died.’ He laughed. ‘It is an odd thing to say, isn’t it? My favourite robe was folded at the foot of the bed.’ He plucked at the fabric. ‘My sandals, my staff too. After I had dressed, I wandered about a little, trying to determine where I was, and shouted, but no one answered.’ He sat down opposite Pug and said, ‘When I returned, I found a lovely meal to break my fast and must admit to relishing every bite.’ He pointed to a small washbasin of stone next to the stove. A tidy pile of dishes rested within. ‘I have no idea who prepared it for me. I had a faint hope it might have been my man Meecham, but I knew by then this was not Crydee. This is not Midkemia, is it?’
Pug shook his head.
Sighing, Kulgan said, ‘I really knew that. I feel too good, Pug. I don’t mean relative to my dying or even the last few years of life. I feel invigorated here in a way I haven’t since years before I met you, and while I’ve resisted the temptation to use any of my arts, I suspect they will prove effective beyond my expectation.’
Pug smiled. Kulgan had had as quick an intuitive grasp of the underlying nature of magic as any being he had ever known. ‘There’s a heightened energy state in this world. We are in a different realm of magic, I think, than Midkemia. I suspect if you tried that trick of lighting your tabac pipe with a flame from your finger you might burn this cottage down.’
Kulgan laughed and Pug was suddenly struck by how much he had missed that sound. A bittersweet pang followed that recognition, for as certain as Pug was about anything else, he knew this visit with his old mentor would be brief. He said, his voice heavy with emotion, ‘I have lost so many beloved friends, and you were first among them. It’s so good to see you again.’
Kulgan’s blue eyes misted. He reached out and took Pug’s hand for a moment. ‘I suppose a summary of the past hundred years is impossible.’
Pug laughed.
‘So, perhaps if there’s time later we might speak of what happened after I died. Though waking up here and finding you …’ He peered at Pug for a moment, then smiled. ‘Slightly more grey than last I saw you was not something I expected.’ He reached absently for the pouch where he kept his pipe and tabac and found it absent. ‘Ah,’ he said in an aggrieved tone. ‘Not perfect!’
Pug smiled. ‘The older I get, the less I know, Kulgan.’
‘It’s always thus,’ answered the greybeard. ‘Still, our paths hardly crossed by chance, and one supposes in these circumstances that there’s little logic in having us flail about wondering why we’re here. What are you about these days and how do you require help?’
‘I am trying to save Midkemia,’ said Pug, ‘and apparently a large chunk of the universe along with it. And I am far from home and uncertain how to return there.’
Kulgan tapped his fingers absently. ‘It would be easier to think had I my pipe.’
Suddenly his pipe and a bag of tabac appeared on the table.
Both Pug and Kulgan looked around the cottage. ‘We are being observed,’ Kulgan said. He opened the pouch eagerly, took a long sniff, then said in satisfied tones, ‘That’s the very thing!’
Pug watched with an unexpected pleasure as his old teacher filled the bowl, and looked around for a taper, and saw one next to the small fire he had used for heating water for the tea. He reached over and with a wave of his hand caused the taper to come flying across the room. It smacked his palm hard enough that he recoiled. ‘That hurt!’ he yelped.
‘I told you magic here would be … more intense,’ said Pug.
Leaning over to retrieve the taper, Kulgan said, ‘I’m glad I heeded you enough not to light it with my finger.’ They both laughed.
Kulgan lit his pipe and drew in a mouthful of pungent smoke, then let it out. ‘Ah!’ Taking another, quicker pull, he blew out smoke and said, ‘So, let us be about this quickly, for I suspect our time together is limited.’
Pug paused. So much was woven together in his own mind, going back to his very first encounter with the Dread when he and Tomas were searching for Macros the Black at the end of the Great Uprising. Quickly, he discarded all superfluous information and guided Kulgan through the evolution of his awareness of the various forces at play.
‘What I know and what I find highly probable is that an agency of vast destruction seeks entrance into our universe.’ He briefly recounted his discovery of the Dasati world and what he had encountered there, and what he had learned from Nakor and Miranda about the demon realm, and concluded, ‘Apparently this universe or universes is an intertwined, organic thing, but like an onion, has many layers. So, to anticipate you, Kulgan, I have far more questions than I have answers. But I do know that something for many years has been trying to neutralize threats to its plan, through agencies brutal as well as subtle, on scales that defy understanding, but all with one aim: to enter Midkemia and either conquer or destroy it.’ Pug continued his narrative, leading up to the discovery of the matrix on the Island of the Serpent Men and the trap that had apparently blown him into this world, wherever it was.
Finishing, he said, ‘At first we of the Conclave assumed it was the Nameless One behind all that was underway, but logic dictates his madness is beyond understanding if he sought to enable the Dread’s entrance into our universe.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘I’ve only heard of the Dread in legend, as some monstrous larger kind of Children of the Void.’ He shook his head. ‘And of those I’ve only encountered one, the wraith who separated Tomas from us in the Mac Mordain Cadal.’ He feigned a shiver. ‘That creature was dire enough. I can barely imagine what the Dread must be like.’
‘I’ve faced them, Kulgan. They are as bad as you fear, or worse.’ Pug spoke without bravado. ‘What we do know is that the Dread have wandered into our realm in the past, but this time it seems to be something far more coordinated and with purpose. We do not know how many Dread exist, or where they come from – save some unimaginable place within the Void – or what their purpose is, but they are coming. And they are driving an army of demons before them.’
‘Assault troops, as it were,’ supplied Kulgan.
‘It was years before we pieced together that the demons were not coming of their own volition. They were seeking either to escape and hide here, or to conquer at the bidding of false masters …’ He shrugged.
‘One thing,’ said Kulgan. He sighed. ‘I wish Tully were here. He was a wealth of knowledge on all things religious, not just his own order. He could answer this, perhaps?’
‘What?’
Kulgan looked thoughtfully at Pug. ‘Legend says that when a demon enters our realm, unconfined, one that is not summoned by a human and bound, or when a summoned demon escapes his bonds, then an opposing creature of a higher order, called an angel by some, appears somewhere on Midkemia and seeks out that demon. When they meet, they fight, and when one is triumphant,’ Kulgan clapped his hands together, ‘they cancel one another out, returning to their respective realms. But if so many demons have entered Midkemia without summons, where are the opposing angels?’
‘I come seeking answers, and you provide me with another question!’ Pug laughed.
‘Well, then, finish your narrative and I’ll see if there’s something you’ve missed.’
Pug spoke briefly of Nakor and Miranda, omitting their names; Kulgan had briefly met Nakor only days before his death, while Pug’s first wife, Katala, was still alive. He also skipped the complexity of human memories grafted onto demons, merely casting them in the role of improbable demon allies. Given that the demons were being exploited by the Dread, the notion of an intelligent demon allying with humans didn’t seem all that improbable to Kulgan. He finished the narrative with the Pantathian trap and Kulgan sat back.
At last he said, ‘Son?’ His eyes narrowed.
Pug saw that his attempt not to touch on that bit of his history had failed. ‘Years after Katala died, I met someone else. Her name was Miranda. We had two sons. She and my youngest, Caleb, were killed.’ He felt no need to touch upon the subject of the mad necromancer, Leso Varen, also called Sidi, and the demons he had summoned to serve him. ‘Magnus is my older son. He’s quite the prodigy.’
‘Prodigy?’ laughed Kulgan. ‘How old is the “lad”?’
Pug was forced to laugh in turn. ‘Very well. He’s old enough to be a grandfather, but he’s always a boy to me.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘As you were to me. Still,’ he said, ‘you’ve grown to remarkable powers and I judge it safe to assume that since my death you’ve continued to master the magic arts.’
‘I do my best. But I’m at a loss as to how to return home.’
‘I can’t be of any help there, I’m afraid,’ said Kulgan, settling back in his chair as he puffed on his pipe. ‘I’m really not sure why I’m here. Whatever agency snatched me from the brink of death and brought me here at this time must have its reason, but I am ignorant of what it is. Still, one can surmise, can’t one?’
Pug smiled. ‘You used to chide me for leaping to conclusions.’
‘True, but it seems to me there were many different choices as to who met you here to help you, so why me?’
Pug recognized that tone: after more than a few lifetimes, they were once more teacher and student. ‘There is a lesson to learn.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘Given how far you’ve come, I seriously doubt there’s anything I know that you don’t.’ He fixed Pug with the narrow gaze the magician had come to know so well when he was Kulgan’s student. ‘But I may help you to remember something you’ve forgotten.’
‘Such as?’
Kulgan blew out a cloud of smoke. ‘There’s the nub of it.’ He waved around the room. ‘We wouldn’t need all this if it was something easily recalled.’
They chatted for what seemed like an hour when Kulgan tapped out his pipe in a stone tray designed to cradle it and deposit ashes until he could dispose of them. He sat back with a heavy sigh. ‘I am enjoying this, Pug, but I have a feeling creeping up on me, a sort of foreboding. There’s no sense of terror, rather a sense of inevitability. Whatever agency took that tiny little sliver of my life and held it for this meeting ensured that I would be alert and have full command of my faculties, but it’s becoming apparent to me time is running out. We must continue our discussions with more alacrity, Pug.’
‘I’m at a loss to know what it is I’m supposed to remember.’
Kulgan glanced out the window at the failing light. ‘Let us walk, for it appears that a lovely evening is approaching and fresh air might give me that moment of brilliance we sorely require.’
They exited the cottage and began hiking up the gentle path that led to the meadow above. ‘I found myself up there,’ said Pug, pointing to the other side of the meadow.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Kulgan. ‘Let’s go take a look, just in case there is something there you missed on your arrival.’
They crossed the meadow and suddenly Kulgan stopped, tilting his head. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘Hear what?’ asked Pug, having only noticed the sound of the breeze in the branches, and the occasional forest noise – a bird call, or an animal moving through the brush.
After a moment, Kulgan said, ‘Nothing.’ He looked sad. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘What?’ asked Pug. ‘You don’t look as if it’s nothing.’
‘It’s just an old man’s imagination, but I thought I heard my name called, from far away.’ He let his voice drop. ‘I thought it was Meecham. Of all those I’ve left behind …’ His voice fell to silence.
‘You were together a very long time,’ Pug said quietly.
‘More than forty years.’ He looked at Pug. ‘What became of him after I died?’
Pug tried to be matter-of-fact. ‘He left Stardock. We never had word of him again. I assumed the memories were just too painful.’
Kulgan nodded. ‘That was so like him. I always joked he’d have to die first, because I’d be reasonable about it, but he’d go off and crawl into a cave like a wounded bear and wait to die.’
‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ said Pug, suddenly feeling guilty for not having done more to locate Kulgan’s companion. He was a franklin, a free man in service, but over the years they had become so much more than master and servant, forging a deeper bond than most Pug had seen. Pug had thought at the time that if it was Meecham’s wish to leave, it wasn’t Pug’s place to stop him. Yet now, all these years later, he wondered if he hadn’t had a duty to Kulgan’s memory at least to keep a watch over the man.
He glanced over and saw Kulgan’s expression and felt, not for the first time, that his old teacher could read his mind. ‘Perhaps nothing so grim,’ he repeated softly.
Kulgan nodded. ‘Let’s move on,’ he said in flat tones.
The silence between them highlighted the deep and oddly conflicted emotions Pug had felt since encountering Kulgan. Since his first confrontation with the demon Jakan, ending with Pug lingering at the point of death, he had been cursed with a prophecy, that he would die in futility, after having seen all he loved lost. During the Riftwar he had lost his boyhood friend, Squire Roland, killed by raiders as he tried to protect a herd of cattle. He hadn’t learned of his death until his return from Kelewan, after a dozen years of war were ended.
Since then he had lost the two women he had loved most in the world, and the appearance of the demon Child in the guise of Miranda had reopened that wound as if it were fresh. Pug’s ability to move forward with the actions necessary to preserve his world only masked the pain that echoed from years gone by. As it had been with the three children he had outlived. No one, save perhaps his son Magnus, would ever see a hint of the pain Pug bore every day.
Kulgan’s death, at least, had been a natural consequence of a mortal’s span. And he had died surrounded by those who loved him; yet now, finding himself in the presence of his old mentor, Pug again revisited that loss.
Glancing around, he realized that the beautiful vista beyond the meadow, the magnificent range of mountains above, were all indifferent reminders of how fleeting life could be and how indifferent the universe was to a single life. Pug felt diminished.
He stopped. ‘Kulgan, I think I understand.’
Kulgan stopped and said, ‘What, Pug?’
‘Perspective,’ said Pug softly. ‘This world is vast, and it is but a tiny part of a much larger universe. I feel humbled.’
Kulgan nodded. He put his hand on his former student’s shoulder. ‘Greatness, smallness, these are relative concepts, Pug, and it is im
portant to remember that. But this doesn’t change the fundamental reality that what stands before you is a challenge that seems trivial compared to the vastness of which you speak.’ He narrowed one eye in an expression Pug had seen a thousand times before, one that showed he was coming to the point of a lesson. ‘But though the task before you seems trivial, the consequences may be anything but trivial in reality.’ He nodded. ‘More than once I’ve taught you the lesson of the keystone, the one brick that when removed can bring the entire building down upon your head.’
He pulled out his unlit pipe, a long churchwarden in style, and tapped Pug on the chest with it. ‘Just be outside the building when you do it,’ he laughed.
Pug tried to enjoy the mirthful tone, but inside he felt darkness gathering. ‘What I’ve lost sight of is the fundamentals of magic.’
‘Probably not,’ suggested Kulgan, ‘but rather the simple roots of even the most complex causality; you look at a chaotic outcome, well, it’s easy to overlook that it may have begun with the simplest cause. A stray spark from this pipe I hold could eventually lead to a conflagration that would destroy this entire forest,’ he added with a sweep of his hand.
‘And amid the chaos,’ Kulgan continued, ‘it’s also easy to lose sight of multiple causes of an event. Consider a storm that lashes the Far Coast. You know from the time you were a boy that often the worst storms are not a single storm, but a convergence of two, one coming down the coast from the frigid north, the other sweeping in from the south-west where it’s warm and turbulent.’ He left his pipe dangling from his mouth as he linked both hands together, fingers intertwined, and twisted his hands in a wrenching motion. ‘Together they combine to be so much more than each was separately.’ He took his pipe from his mouth and tapped Pug on the shoulder with the tip. ‘Which then leads us back to where each storm comes from …’
‘I’m still not seeing this,’ said Pug. ‘But I’m getting a sense of it.’
‘It’s about the fundamentals of things, Pug. What is the nature of a storm?’
‘I’m not sure what you’re asking. It’s a storm?’
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