The Magic Book

by Fredric Shernoff

  Gustavus smiled. “About that. I warned you numerous times about pursuing your foolish line of questioning about the world. I thought that punishing the woman for your sins would send the right message when my kindness had failed, but I’ve learned that I was wrong.”

  “Her name was Esther,” Nathaniel said. “You’ll see her face as you die.”

  Gustavus feigned shock. “Nathaniel! Such words. Such a tone you take with one who has always upheld your value as the surviving Great One!”

  The leader of the Authority pulled a low stool from the shadows. He placed it in front of Nathaniel and sat with his back to Goldman.

  “How do you feel, Nathaniel?” Gustavus asked. “I would venture that you feel weakened…nay, perhaps more than that. Perhaps you feel like a normal?”

  Nathaniel didn’t reply.

  “Aye. That’s what I thought. Your friend over there is certainly normal, though he speaks most strangely, and nobody can vouch for his identity. And I’m well aware that you’re not what you once were, but it’s good to see our little experiment worked.”

  “Experiment?” Nathaniel asked.

  “Aye! You see, we have all these delightful weapons that were left from the time before time. From that strange era when the gods created all of this. And some of them are filled with the hellfire from beyond the walls, and some of them do other things. One of them doesn’t do anything! At least not to us. I had an idea it might not be meant to harm us who are simply normal, but that it was a weapon provided by the gods to protect us against a rogue Great One. Which, naturally, is what you are.”

  “What did you do to me?” Nathaniel asked.

  “I know not what the weapon does, other than that it dropped you to the floor like a sack of flour, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “Why not just kill us?”

  “Nathaniel, shouldn’t it be obvious? To kill you in private would only accomplish the goal of having you out of my hair. But in public? In the center of the world where the Great Ones once reigned from their palace? That will make a point clearer than the water from the purest well. Even the Great One who dared cross the Authority, who dared to question the world we live in, even he was punished. Your death will keep the people in line for generations, as parents tell the story to their children. In that way, you will do one final great service to all the world.”

  “Your world is a lie,” Nathaniel said. “I have seen the other side of the wall.”

  For the first time, Gustavus hesitated. It was slight, merely a twitch of the lip before he recovered his menacing smile, but it was something.

  “Nothing exists on the other side of the wall but the endless hellfire,” Gustavus said.

  “Is that what you were told?” Nathaniel asked. “The very leader of the Authority? You talk about parents passing on stories to their children…you have been told the greatest fable of all, boy.”

  Gustavus grinned. “Very good try, Nathaniel. Very good. I applaud your efforts, but you won’t convince me of your fantasies and you won’t save yourself or your friend here.”

  He spun around to face Goldman. “You. Who are you?”

  “It’s okay,” Nathaniel said to Goldman. “You can speak to him.”

  “I’m the prophet Ronald McDonald,” Goldman said. “I’m here to spread the good word about meatless burgers. Hear me and rejoice: you need not eat of the red meat any longer!”

  Gustavus stood up. He walked across the room and slapped Goldman across the face. The crack of the blow echoed in the small room. Goldman’s lip split, and as he smiled at Gustavus a thin line of blood trickled down his chin.

  “I know not of what you speak but I know when I hear the prattle of a fool,” Gustavus said. “Both of you are going to be presented for execution in the capital in two days’ time. Someone will bring you your food in a little while.”

  With that, he walked back up the stairs. The door closed, and the locks were secured.

  “He seems nice,” Goldman said.

  “He’s drunk with power,” Nathaniel replied, “but I think his power has its limits.”

  “You shook him a little bit, didn’t you? Talking about the other side of the wall.”

  “I think so,” Nathaniel said. “It was in his face, though he tried to hide it. It confirms what we suspected when we saw the damage to the tunnel. The Authority doesn’t know there’s anything out there, or doesn’t want to know.”

  “Right. They can easily make excuses for anything that doesn’t fit their paradigm. People in my world do that all the time, especially if we’re talking about matters of faith. And that’s what this is, really. This whole thing with Weber as a prophet…I don’t know what that means or how it works, but I know that it means a system was set up to keep people under control. That’s been the way my world has always worked, and President Weber exploits that shit to the extreme.”

  “We can use that to our advantage,” Nathaniel said.

  “What? That the Authority doesn’t know the truth?”

  “Aye. I don’t have it all worked out as of yet.”

  “Well, we gotta come up with something. My head is pounding, and my arms are starting to hurt like a bitch from being hogtied like this. Are you feeling anything different than before?”

  “There’s something…I don’t know. Gustavus said they did something to me. They made me weak. But I feel my power at a distance…just out of reach.”

  “Do you think you’re rebooting?” Goldman asked.

  “Rebooting?”

  “Like they shut off your powers and it takes a little time for them to turn back on.”

  “That would be most fortuitous. I don’t know.”

  “They’re going to kill us though, if they can?”

  “Aye. That they most certainly will.”

  Goldman licked at his split lip, then spat on the floor. “Fuck that, Nathaniel. We can’t let that happen.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Nathaniel asked.

  23

  A long time passed before the guard arrived with their food. In that time, Nathaniel felt the odd sensation of hunger develop deep inside, and then felt it ebb. He didn’t know if that was a thing normals experienced or not.

  In that time, he and Goldman made little conversation. It was a strange experience to be bound to a chair across from another person while sitting in silence, but somehow it seemed appropriate. There was little to say and everything at stake.

  He didn’t entirely blame himself for Goldman being caught up in his fight against the Authority. He had rescued Goldman from a similar predicament, and the man had made his own choices. Goldman didn’t seem to harbor any ill will toward Nathaniel. Still, Nathaniel was bothered at the possibility of Goldman perishing in a world that wasn’t his own, not because of the loss that would represent but because Goldman should die liberating his own world, if death was in his immediate future.

  Nathaniel thought about Gustavus, and how the wicked man had been surprised by Nathaniel’s information about the other side of the wall. It would have been good if they could have leveraged the information for their benefit, but Gustavus was both blinded by his faith in a corrupt system, as Goldman had pointed out, and filled with a personal vendetta against Nathaniel, and perhaps the Great Ones as a species.

  That left Goldman’s plan. Having one possible way forward was better than none, but to Nathaniel that was only by the smallest margin. He wished he could feel his power return. Wished that he could shred his bonds like tissue paper.

  He didn’t know if his powers were gone for good, or if they were like Goldman had predicted, and waiting for some sort of chance to kick back in. He had to go with the assumption that for whatever time he had left he would be like a normal, though even that wasn’t true. Whatever the Authority had done to him, they had rendered him painfully weak, not just normal.

  His train of thought was disrupted by the locks opening upstairs. He looked at Goldman, who nodded back at him. The young man was
calm, Nathaniel had to give him that. Perhaps a normal man broke in some way when faced with so many scenarios of almost certain doom in quick succession.

  A guard came down the stairs carrying a large tray of food. Nathaniel felt his stomach lurch a little at the sight of the food, and admonished himself for it.

  “You the Great One?” the guard asked, placing the tray on the stool where Gustavus had sat, and then nudging it until it found balance.

  “I am,” Nathaniel said.

  “You don’t seem so impressive. My Ma always said that we had to respect the Great Ones, cause ‘a they were old and strong.” He smirked. “You do look old.”

  “Are you going to untie us?” Goldman asked. “Unless you mean to spoon-feed us like babies, of course.”

  “Still your tongue,” the guard said, with a tone of mild annoyance as if he were talking to a petulant child.

  “My friend is right,” Nathaniel said. “We can’t eat tied up like this.”

  The guard looked at him with squinted eyes. “What’s your game, Great One?”

  “No game,” Nathaniel said. “Were I able to cause you harm, I would have freed my arms on my own.”

  The guard considered the point, and nodded to himself. “Very well. I’ll untie you while you eat. You’d do well to remember that there are two others like me at the top of those stairs. If you create a problem for me, I’ll have them down here in a hurry.”

  “Understood,” Nathaniel said.

  “And you?” the guard asked Goldman. “Does that register with you?”

  “Yeah, man,” Goldman said. “I’m foreign, I’m not braindead.”

  The guard scowled, then set about undoing the bands around Nathaniel’s body. When he finished, he turned toward Goldman, then snapped his head back around to watch Nathaniel. Nathaniel waited in the chair, simply shaking out his arms.

  “It’s your turn, loudmouth,” the guard said to Goldman. He knelt down and untied Goldman’s arms.

  “You really are the one who’s unimpressive,” Nathaniel called from his chair.

  “What did you say to me?” the guard asked as he turned around.

  “I said, you’re unimpressive. Fancy accoutrements on a simple normal. Nay. Worse than unimpressive. You’re a joke.”

  “You’ve forgotten your situation, Great One,” the guard spat. He pulled his weapon from its holster. “I think there’s a good chance this right here might kill you. If not, it will still burn you with hellfire, and that’s good enough for me.”

  “You lack the willpower to take action against me,” Nathaniel goaded. “You fear what I can do to you.”

  “Nay, fallen hero. You can’t do a damned thing to me.”

  “Is that so?” Nathaniel asked.

  “He did start looking much healthier in the last hour or so,” Goldman said. “I don’t know if you want to mess with him.”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” the guard said. “Least of all either of you. Only reason I don’t want to shoot you is Gustavus wants you alive for the public execution.”

  “Gustavus is a fraud,” Nathaniel said. “You ought to reconsider your allegiance to him.”

  “My allegiance is to the Authority where it belongs!” the guard yelled.

  “I will crush the Authority beneath my boots,” Nathaniel said, and he sprang from the chair and leapt at the guard.

  “Stay back!” the guard cried. He fired his weapon. Nathaniel fell backward into the chair, which tipped over, spilling him awkwardly to the floor. Smoke rose from his chest.

  “I warned you!” the guard said. “So much for the Great—”

  There was a crack and then a thud as the guard fell to the floor.

  Nathaniel couldn’t move. He saw only the low ceiling of the room, then suddenly Goldman was standing over him.

  “Are you okay?” Goldman asked.

  “No,” Nathaniel said. “But I’ll live.”

  “I was getting ready to hit him with the chair,” Goldman said. “You didn’t have to get yourself shot! That wasn’t the plan we discussed.”

  “It made the ruse more convincing,” Nathaniel said as Goldman helped him to his feet. “And I wanted to test my limits. You were right about the ‘rebooting.’”

  “Your powers are back?”

  “A portion of them, I think.”

  “But you didn’t know. You were willing to risk getting killed? Just to free me?”

  “You want what I want, Goldman, and I know you would continue the fight as long as you were able. But truthfully, I had a very good feeling about it.”

  “A very good feeling. Awesome. Let me in on your very good feelings next time, will you?”

  They heard steps running down the stairs. Goldman grabbed the weapon from the guard’s outstretched hand and waited. Two other guards appeared, one behind the other. Goldman waited until they were both fully visible, then fired the weapon twice. The guard closest to the floor was knocked backwards into the wall, then tumbled down the stairs. The other shot went wide and the guard reached for his own weapon, but Goldman fired again and this time his shot found its mark.

  “You’re a good shot,” Nathaniel commented.

  “I was lucky, and it’s a short distance,” Goldman said. “I think you should get one of those other weapons and maybe grab the food. We’re just getting started.”

  The guards had taken comfortable liberties with their two prisoners, and so the door was not only unlocked but open when Nathaniel and Goldman reached the top of the stairs.

  “These guns are really crazy,” Goldman said. “Pack a fucking wallop but with almost no recoil. How do I know how many shots are left?” He rotated the gun different directions, studying the details.

  “I wasn’t aware there was a limit,” Nathaniel said. “In my limited experience, they always seem to have enough energy when shooting at me.”

  “Well this time we can shoot back, Nate. Plus, you’re all juiced up again. Let’s go kick some ass!”

  They exited the basement and Nathaniel looked around at a familiar lobby, which was eerily vacant.

  “We’re in the same inn where they apprehended us,” he said.

  “So we’re still in the enclave. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

  “Depends,” Nathaniel said. He took a position on one side of the front door and motioned for Goldman to mirror him on the other side of the door.

  “Depends on what?” Goldman asked.

  “On if all the people here have been manipulated against me the way the innkeeper was.”

  “You think that’s what it was? That Gustavus turned her against you? I still think I freaked her out.”

  “I don’t know. Things are troubling here in this enclave. Maybe in the whole world…the whole territory. The Authority made an example of my friends, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve destroyed my reputation as well.”

  “I know the truth, Nate. And the others will as well.”

  They nodded at each other and pushed through the doors into the dark of a night that had gone on too long. A crowd surrounded the building. Some held clubs or knives, others held torches. All of them looked furious.

  “The prisoners have escaped!” someone yelled.

  “It’s true!” another said. “The Great One has turned against us all!”

  “They were all bad to begin with,” said yet another voice.

  “Please,” Nathaniel said to the crowd, “my friend and I simply want safe and clear passage out of your enclave. We mean you no harm.”

  “Look at their weapons!” a woman near the front said. Nathaniel turned toward her voice and saw it was the innkeeper. “What have they done to the Authority’s guards?”

  “Nate, this isn’t going well,” Goldman said.

  “Good people,” Nathaniel said, “the Authority has misled you about a great many things. I am fighting to set things right for you. Please just let us pass.”

  “The Authority protects us!” a man shouted. He wore a dark
brown shirt with a hood pulled over his head, so that little was visible beyond his long beard. In his hand, he waved a torch in hypnotic loops.

  “The Authority keeps you prisoner!” Nathaniel said.

  “Bullshit!” the man yelled back. “Gustavus helped us see it was the Great Ones who held us all down! Thinking you’re so much better than us. Where are your brethren now, Great One? Aye, that’s right. Dead and gone, as you shall be.”

  “Nate,” Goldman said. “Let’s go back inside and regroup before—”

  A buzzing sound caught Nathaniel’s attention. “A guard’s firing!” he yelled. He grabbed Goldman and pulled them both down to the front porch of the inn. He saw a brief flash overhead and heard a scream.

  “They hurt ‘em!” someone cried. “Fuckers got Barnaby!”

  Nathaniel looked and saw three of the townspeople holding a man whose head was smoldering. It made him think of Esther, and he felt dark rage bubbling up to the surface.

  There was a guard out there, or maybe more, readying to fire at them again. The crowd was turning rabid. He pulled Goldman up and ran into the inn.

  “There must be a rear door to this place,” Nathaniel said.

  “We have to find it fast,” Goldman said. “They’re coming in.”

  The men and women were jostling for position, trying to fit through the doorway. They streamed in and gave chase as Nathaniel and Goldman ran for the opposite side of the room.

  There was a small door along the back wall. It was made of the same wood as the walls next to it and stained the same color, so it was barely visible. Nathaniel pushed it open, and saw more of the mob spread all along the back of the building.

  “Gustavus did this,” he said. “We have no way out.”

  He heard Goldman cry out and saw that two burly men had taken hold of Goldman’s arms. The weapon was still in Goldman’s hand, but it was useless while he was being held. Nathaniel grabbed the men and pulled them from Goldman with all his force. He threw both men across the room. One of them landed on the floor, the other crashed into the innkeeper’s desk.

  “They are attacking!” someone yelled. The people charged toward Nathaniel and Goldman.