The Steward and the Sorcerer

by James Peart

  Simon flinched from Daaynan’s gaze, unwilling to look at the ferocity he encountered there. Instead, with a slight unconscious movement of his head, he gave him a sign to continue.

  “In my land, my world, there is a man, the same one I spoke of earlier in our acquaintance. His name is Karsin Longfellow and before I started my training as a Druid he was of no account to anyone. Years later, upon my receiving my final instruction as sorcerer in a place called Fein Mor, he became the ruling master of the citadel of Brinemore, the largest and most prosperous city in all the Northern Earth.

  “He hunts me in that world, just as this Iridis hunts us here, and to rid myself of the threat that he presents I must confront and destroy him. To do this I shall need all the help I can get. I understand that you don’t want to fight, and your friend Christopher, he seems not to want much of anything, so I shall return you to your time and place as soon as we leave here...”

  “Why don’t we leave now?”

  “Because I have an idea.”

  Simon tried to wrest himself free of the other’s grip. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You must! I can see now that it was a mistake coming into the temple. There is another way to confront the steward of Brinemore. It is within my powers to create life, or at least an adequate version of living matter. I have not attempted it before and I am not sure what results my magic will bring, but it is worth an attempt.

  “However, I may not need to do this. Look outside. What do you see?”

  Simon turned, frowning. “A city that doesn’t exist.”

  “Oh, but it does! It is a functional city with living, breathing people. I told you it has been created from the memory of each of us- not imagination, I believe, but memory.”

  “So?”

  “So, it will house, along with parts of your London, the smaller citadel in which the steward resides. It will show us where in this citadel the steward is to be found, and what his routine is, amongst other information I can use.”

  “Do you know the steward by sight, or the inside of his citadel?”

  “I do not.”

  “Then your memory won’t be any good, will it?” He shrugged free of the bigger man, steeling himself to look in Daaynan’s eyes.

  “Do you know much of the detail of the part of London that you see here?” came the Druid’s answer.

  “No.” Simon began to rub his shoulder where the other man had held him.

  “I think this place borrows detail from our greater minds to complete what we are seeing. Our minds have been expanded here to some degree. What we are not aware of on the surface we know at a much deeper level.”

  “Our subconscious?”

  “A good word to describe it, better than any I have heard.”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you get an army of followers from here to help you as you wanted us to, confront the steward that way?”

  “Because the temple will only let me draw one person back from each world.”

  “But you drew both me and Christopher.”

  “That was using my magic and I told you it has been weakened. For the same reason I cannot conjure followers of my own making and bring them through.”

  “So, we’re stuck with your plan.”

  “If you put it like that, yes.”

  Simon shrugged, turned to his friend. “What about Christopher?”

  “We’ll have to take him with us.”

  “Why? He’s not about to go anywhere.”

  “This place is too unreliable. By the time we return these surroundings could well have changed. Also, his mind is not right with itself. Who knows what he could summon from the depths of his greater memory?”

  Simon moved toward Christopher. “No! I’ll risk this trip myself but I won’t put Christopher in harm’s way. That’s not happening!”

  “He will be in danger if he stays here, I’ll set my word and warrant on it. Do you remember what happened when Iridis approached me while you were in the temple?”

  “I was half asleep, of course I don’t remember.”

  “Let me tell you then. Knowing he could not approach me directly, he reached for both of you instead. He possesses a kind of magic that works by contact. One touch from that hand could have rendered you his puppet, your will made over to his, perhaps forever. Had I not intervened with what little power remained to me neither of you would be here now. What do you think he is doing now? He is trying to find a way into this world to confront us again. He is wary of my magic but not to the extent that he would choose to leave us alone altogether. We need to keep your friend with us. What do you think he will do if he sees him defenceless and alone?”

  “It’s easy for you to say we’re at risk from him when you can’t prove it.”

  The Druid’s face softened a little, responding to the despair in Simon’s tone. “I set my warrant on it, Englishman,” he answered quietly.

  “Kennedy made promises too and look what happened to him.” Simon was close to tears.

  Daaynan said nothing. He was not about to get drawn into a debate filled with references he didn’t understand. Just as well, Simon thought. He stared at him for a long moment which seemed to him to stretch out into eternity.

  Finally, he said “Ok. We’ll go.”

  9.

  When the Englishman finally made up his mind, Daaynan reflected with sour amusement, he acted quickly. There had been no further arguments or misgivings, he simply decided to leave right then. There were things Daaynan wanted to do first, for example prove to this young man that the world they were in operated not on one’s imagination but memory. It could have been accomplished by a simple trick yet Simon would have none of it. He had decided to trust Daaynan and in so doing put all other considerations aside. He began to talk to the Druid, about his life in England, his schooling, and his training as what he termed an ‘academic,’ which was really, he supposed, an erudite. Much of his schooling revolved around his friendship with Christopher.

  He wasn’t the sort to be easily controlled. He belonged to the type that weighed matters up in his own time and at his own pace and came to a decision that had been carefully worked out. Back in the Englishman’s country (he had called it Italy and said he had been there on ‘holiday’) when he had thrown himself in the path of the Druid’s green fire, he had been acting against his better nature and more out of love for his friend than anything else. His desire to leave Christopher behind in the tavern sprang from the same love: he did not want to see him hurt. There was clearly a bond between them, though Daaynan suspected it rested more on Simon’s side than it did his friend’s. They had been schooling friends, he had told him, and, at the age of twenty had swapped one school for another, known as a Universe City, although quite what they had learned there that they couldn’t have in twelve years elsewhere was a mystery to him. There, it seemed, they had grown apart, furthering individual interests. This had upset Simon more than he let on. He was embarrassed by his friend’s drinking and the sort of people he had begun to company, yet this overlaid a deeper sorrow for his friend’s passing. And it was a death. He was right to have thought it such. Christopher’s physical death, should it come soon- and Daaynan suspected he had every right to think it would- might have a devastating impact on Simon. He reflected on the nature of his love for his friend. It gave him strength of a kind. Certainly, the Englishman would not have been so confrontational toward the Druid had it not existed. It was, however, he thought, unhealthy, much of it drawn from the sense of responsibility he felt toward Christopher. As far as he could tell this sense of duty was one-sided. There was a lot of guilt there too, a self-conscious remorse at what had befallen the other. Christopher did nothing to assuage this guilt, as far as he could tell. On the contrary, he used it to feed his addiction, to further entrap himself in the prison he had made for himself with drink, and he did so blamelessly in the knowledge that Simon was somehow at fault for his disease. Daaynan had known people like this in Bottom Dell. Had
not his own cousin used his neglect as a means of distracting him from the real purpose of his visit to Fein Mor? He had nearly killed him. What would Christopher do to Simon, given time?

  Brushing all other deliberations aside, what was clear was that Simon needed Christopher and that taking one would mean taking the other. He was not in the business of protecting the self-deluded so he must return them both to this England, or Italy, or wherever it was they needed to go. As soon as he had studied the living ‘map’ of the steward’s citadel and discovered where it was Longfellow spent most of his time unguarded he would try to return the pair back to their time and place.

  Simon was talking now. When he glanced over at the younger man he discovered he was walking in lockstep alongside him, a curious expression drafted on his features. Christopher was somewhere off to his right.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You may.”

  “You used a green fire to remove us from Ita...from our world. From what you said of your powers you can summon magic to do different things. Does each of these things necessitate the use of fire with a different colour suited for each purpose?”

  “It does.”

  “Would you care to elaborate?”

  “The green flame I used to draw both you and your friend into the temple belongs to a type of magic which draws matter and energy into a world of origin from another world. In the Northern Earth I can use it to draw same from any world into what I know of as the real world.”

  “I see.” He was silent for a beat. “But why didn’t you simply ‘draw’ us from the Northern Earth to begin with? Would have been a lot easier.”

  “To begin with, I wasn’t aware of your existence. Also...”

  “And once you entered Italy didn’t that become the world of origin?”

  “As I understand it the ‘world of origin’ is not dependent on where the magic user is located, but where he hails from.”

  “But you come from the Northern Earth. How can you explain that?”

  Daaynan’s expression seemed to darken within the folds of shadow cast by his hood. “I can explain it this way: the temple holds all worlds. It is a point of origin from every world, so that the Northern Earth comes from there every bit as much as Italy or England.”

  “Yes, but how does it distinguish? You drew us into the origin, which was the temple. But Italy was equally the origin, as it is part of the temple. By drawing us from Italy, we could simply have ended up in Italy.”

  “The temple dwarfs any one world! If you are there and leave it and employ the green fire, you draw any matter back into it. Equally, if I were to go back to the Northern Earth and use it, I would drag matter from elsewhere back there, as long as I did not enter the temple at any stage, nor my magic touch it.

  “Does this answer any further questions you might have?”

  “I suppose. It’s all very probabilistic, I mean the temple.”

  “At the risk of being bombarded by even more questions, what is it you mean?”

  “No, just the nature of probable reality. It’s...it’s nothing...just something I sort of studied at college.”

  “Sort of?”

  Daaynan was not a man of half-measures. Simon went on talking, privately amused. “Well, most of it was done over a few bitters in evenings spent arguing with excitable freshmen over the true nature of reality. My point is it wasn’t a formal course I took at University but something that nevertheless captured everyone’s attention at the time. The gist of it was that what we called reality in a narrow sense was in fact open to constant change, that we were all part of something much greater than we appeared to be at any given moment in time or caught in any given type of behaviour. Sounds silly now, given all this.” He swept his arm over the backdrop of the city they were journeying through. “Who would have thought you could take it this far? I mean, here we are, walking in a place built entirely out of our memory of what we know, and that’s just the start of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are other worlds, places we can reach through this temple. How do we know that in some of them we can’t simply wish ideas into existence, not from memory but from our deepest imaginings and have them interact with each other? What would that be like, superimposing one set of fantasies onto another?”

  “I don’t know,” Daaynan said, and he sincerely wished he would not find out.

  “And what if...” Simon tried to continue but Daaynan silenced him with a gesture.

  “We’re here.”

  The citadel looked imposing from where they stood at the entrance, which was made of doors of solid oak and iron. A fortified structure built on higher ground than what lay outside its walls, it towered over the surrounding city, spying it from the heights of its turrets and steeples. Inside, it bustled with the life of its day to day inhabitants. They walked past the trio, laden with goods, towing carts of some description, or engaged in conversation with what Daaynan guessed were either merchants or buyers. Some casually glanced their way, others stopping to take a longer look, curiosity drafted on their features. They seemed less interested in either himself or Simon, the Druid noticed, than they were Christopher. Perhaps it was due to the strange dress he wore. Yet Simon wore similar garments. No, there was something else going on. They recognised him. Some approached him in greeting, even performing a little bow. Christopher offered them a careworn smile and as he did so their faces lit up in genuine delight. They offered Simon and the Druid a perfunctory nod, their eyes immediately returning to Christopher. What was happening here?

  “What’s going on?” Simon echoed his thoughts.

  “I don’t know. It could be...”

  “Could be what?”

  “It might have something to do with what you term the ‘subconscious.’” Daaynan said, then fell silent, thoughtful.

  “Yes? Believe it or not I’m still listening.”

  He was worried for his friend once more, Daaynan thought, yet he could not brush off the mild sense of irritation he felt. It was growing tiresome, this constant concern for his friend’s wellbeing, coupled with a suspicion that bordered on outright distrust of the Druid.

  “The people here were fashioned from you call the subconscious and we call the deep of our minds. It stands to reason that they would recognise us from there and respond in the way we have just seen.”

  “But why are they over-friendly to Christopher and don’t even say hello to us?”

  “Because these particular people belong to Christopher’s subconscious. They don’t do more than acknowledge us because we belong to a ‘foreign’ consciousness.”

  “But this is your part of this world. It should be populated by your subconscious.”

  “I do not have all the answers, Englishman. It could be that we have to wait before we find this out.”

  They were approaching the steward’s tower. It must have belonged to the steward as it was easily the most impressive building in the citadel, standing in an elaborate courtyard, with its colourful raked and brushed stonework, grand turrets pointing out into the sky, plus an array of flags raised behind them denoting the various regions of Brinemore.

  They mounted a set of steps carved into the rock alongside the tower, treading slowly and carefully as there was no hand rail to steady themselves. To the right was a sheer drop back into the depths of the citadel. The Druid could see that both Simon and Christopher were getting dizzy. Leading the group, he turned several times to watch them, ready to catch either or both of them should they stumble and fall. Yet somehow, they managed to keep their balance.

  At the top of the stairs there were two doors. They tried both only to find that they were locked. Standing slightly back from one of the doors, Daaynan punted it with his foot, breaking the lock. The others were about to enter the room when he held them back, doing the same with the other door. They entered the room on the right.

  Inside it was dark. He found himself wishing he had use of his powers- the orange
flame to provide illumination- yet he resigned himself to making use of the poor light provided by the open door. As their eyes adjusted they could see there was nothing in the room save for a platform with three familiar symbols etched on its flat surface.

  He turned to the others. “I recognise this,” he said to Simon, “there was one in Iridis’s world. It is how we bring whomsoever is selected from this world to go back into the temple.”

  “So, you don’t need to use your magic?”

  “No, Englishman. But the question is, whom will it bring back?”

  Simon shrugged. “Hadn’t we better discuss this later, after we’ve investigated what’s behind the other door?”

  “You are right. It is almost certainly the steward’s private chamber, but we must be sure.”

  There was a noise from behind that door now. A lantern, carried by someone, provided light which flickered into the hallway, guttering against its walls. “Who’s there?” a querulous yet commanding voice cried out.

  “Karsin Longfellow?” the Druid answered.

  “I am that, and there had better be a good reason for interrupting my slumber. Is it the Northern Army? Have they arrived?”

  The light from the lantern sputtered and went out. Its holder fiddled with the settings and stepped out into the hallway, brightness flooding the narrow landing, washing over the face of Karsin Longfellow.

  The trio stared back in disbelief. Standing before them was the tall, elegant form of the Earl of Ainsworth, Lord Christopher Went.

  He was carrying some kind of instrument, holding it at his side in one hand while the other gripped the lantern. Now he raised it, staring from Christopher to Daaynan and back again, registering Simon only with a fleeting glance.

  “Druid!” he said finally. Looking at Christopher again, unable to take his eyes off him. “What manner of sorcery is this?”