Fantasy Scroll Magazine Issue #4

by Cat Rambo

  I open my mouth to cast my ward, but mistress of magic or no, I am too slow, too off balance. He beats me. Mevlish the Mighty, High Wizard of Proximus, his incantation is flawless. If the Source had still been with us, his spell would have rent the earth, caused the ground to swallow me whole. As it is, in our world almost bereft of power, it is enough.

  I am cast into darkness.

  Magic flows around me, through me. A warm, gentle stream. Although the ground upon which I lie is rough and hard, the swirling field fills me with a pleasurable tingling sensation, somehow familiar.

  And then memory returns. And so does fear.

  I open my eyes and try to sit up. A blue glow fills the otherwise dark tunnel. Mevlish squats a few yards away, weaving magic with a gentle murmur, the spell unfamiliar. My hands are tied by the remnants of a torn black shirt. My feet too. A gag stretches tight against my lips.

  All these years, and I have never been so close to the Whorl as this. Never inside its twisting, field-formed passages and ravines. The sandstone rock curves, worn smooth, the grain shaped by the force of magic. Somewhere at the Whorl's heart, fading over time perhaps, but stronger here than most everywhere else, magic still emerges.

  It makes no difference what curse I decide to unleash. Although I can moan and groan, with the gag in place I cannot form words to speak or cast any spell.

  Mevlish stops his incantation. His eyes refocus and he looks down at me, the determined expression on his face softening. "You know, I never really enjoyed being around magic or casting spells."

  His tone is garrulous, conversational. As if he is sitting across the bar from me in The Cactus Tap and we are sharing a friendly drink. Only the faint sheen of sweat on his face betrays any tension. "Oh, I was brought up to be a wizard by my father, like his father before him. I was dutiful enough in my role and responsibilities but the field always pressed on me. Always there, oppressive. But once I woke and the Source was gone—I surely missed it. Like a part of me, taken forever."

  I don't think he hears or understands my garbled curses in reply. I strain against my makeshift bonds but they remain tight.

  "This? Here? This is nothing." He pats the rock beside him. "A fraction of the power that used to be available even at the far edge of the Near Kingdom. But compared to what we have now…?" He hunches his shoulders, breathes in the dusty air. Shudders. "It feels different, this field. Wilder. A different type of magic entirely." He smiles at me and I feel a chill down to my core. "With the right spell perhaps I can create a new Source. One where the magic will allow us to be a family again. Re-united."

  I try to kick out with my tied feet, but he edges away easily. He says, "I'm glad we met again, Kaffryn."

  And then he closes his eyes and restarts his chant. Louder. More urgent. It does not take long, then, for the ghosts to emerge.

  Slowly at first.

  Pale dragons, breathing pale flames. Before them gathers a vast army of grotesque creatures, rising from the ground. A grey city by a grey sea, somehow familiar. A young woman standing on a high balcony. Me, or some version of me. Dark haired and beautiful. And then a lonely grey tower guarding a narrow pass, tumbled rocks and mountains behind, a ridge, and a pulsating, churning blue light beyond.

  There is a small girl. Braided hair. Perhaps eight or nine years of age. Mevlish sits beside her bed, reading a child's spellbook. She climbs the narrow pass with him. She is calling beside the intense blue light. I look at her pale face and dark hair. I know who she is now. A pulse of light blinds me and when it fades, Mevlish is alone in a flattened landscape of ash and devastation. He is hunched over. He is crying.

  He is howling.

  At first I think I imagine it. A twisted shadow rises above him like greasy smoke. The flow of magic stronger. Darker. Polluted.

  "Seren!"

  Harkin's voice comes echoing from somewhere within the labyrinth of tunnels. Nearby. My heart leaps with relief. Hope. I turn, struggling awkwardly to my knees. I try to shout, but only an animal mewl escapes the thick gag, drowned out by the growing roar of the field. My name is called again. I moan as loudly as I can, fight against my bonds. I kneel up, somehow stagger to my feet, the rock wall supporting me.

  Mevlish takes no notice. He is enraptured by his visions made real. Dark energy fills him, funnels through him. His whole body glows—but he seems thinner, less substantial. His eyes are rolled back. He is blind.

  Harkin barrels out of the dark tunnel. Behind him is his young deputy, the one who had tried to protect me in the Tap, his face drawn in terror. The sheriff crushes me in a brief but fierce hug before tearing off my gag. I try to cry out a warning, but it's too late. Mevlish's shadow dragon descends before he has time to react. He throws up his arm to protect me from the black flames, and we both fall, tumbling into a deep runnel beside the ledge where Mevlish stands. I hear the deputy screaming, high-pitched, but Harkin's body on top of mine blocks him from view.

  We disentangle from each other and I lurch onto my knees. My ankles and hands are still bound, but with the gag loosened I am at last free to cast magic. The field here is stronger than any place or time I can remember. It swirls around and through me, its potential intoxicating. But even as I open my mouth to speak, my words stall. What spell can I possibly cast?

  Whichever I choose, its effect will be devastating. I can crack the Whorl asunder, make the desert bloom, sweep Pangarang off the map.

  Raise Anstel from his dusty grave.

  For a moment, the temptation is so strong… to turn back time, to undo what should not be undone, to see my green-eyed love again. Our future reshaped, a daughter of our own… what bad consequence could possibly arise?

  A rag doll crushed in Harkin's hands.

  Mevlish's wild laughter penetrates through the roaring in my ears, and suddenly, for the first time ever, I am scared of the power, of using magic.

  Scared of the magic using me.

  I close my mouth—and open my eyes. I had not realized I had shut them.

  The deputy lies motionless on the ledge beside Mevlish, smoke wreathing his body. Mevlish himself appears oblivious to our presence. He continues to speak at a furious pace, his mouth moving with unnatural speed, uttering gibberish as far as I can tell. He rocks backward and forward, hands flailing, fingers stretching. They elongate, twist, follow the lines of magic. His hair whips around and dances as if alive, thousands of tiny, wispy serpents. He is… dissolving.

  Harkin grabs me. A knife glitters in his hands. He slashes down, freeing my hands, then my feet. I stand, unsteady. Harkin turns, face grim, the knife raised in his hand, ready to throw it at the wizard.

  "No!" I pull his arm, shout into his ear. "Help your deputy."

  Harkin grimaces but he puts the knife away. We scramble back onto the ledge and grab the young man. He groans and tries to bat us away as we lift him. Together we manage to heave him upright, stagger away from the growing maelstrom, round a turn. Mevlish is no longer visible, but his strange, rapid speech and the fierce blue glow intensify.

  We stumble on, fall. Pick ourselves up. Run. Above us, the rock ceiling eventually opens to reveal stars and a stark crescent moon.

  Behind us, a roaring, a building pressure. A rising scream, of terror, or perhaps of joy. A pulse of blue light.

  And then silence.

  Madeline and Old Hoots are in full flow, the Tap raucous tonight. Teja waltzes between the tables, a grin on her face, balancing pitchers and trays of glasses with practiced ease.

  Harkin spots me walk in and his sombre face lightens. I smile and nod but instead of joining him I divert to my own table. He half stands, but Teja presses a fresh-filled tumbler into her step-father's hand and whispers in his ear. He shrugs and sits down, raising the glass in wry salute before turning to watch the dancing. I see his boot tap in time to the music.

  Perhaps there is some hope for him. If he is patient and wise enough.

  For a while I just sit and watch, soaking in the atmosphere. Little has
changed in the days I've been away. Newcomers still roll into town, seeking easy magic from the Whorl. Harkin still turns them back whenever he can.

  Yet so much has changed, too.

  It has been weeks since the man who claimed to be Mevlish the Mighty disappeared into the Whorl, leaving no trace, not even a withered corpse. Not even a ghost. There has been no sign of a new Source, or even the old one re-kindled. If anything, talk of ghosts has faded. There have been no deaths or reports of strange sightings since. Whatever Mevlish had hoped to accomplish, I'm pretty sure he failed.

  I quietly acknowledge the gradual procession of subtle nods, meeting of glances, touches on my shoulder. This is my first visit to the Tap since the dragonrider's disappearance. Various folk who think I have helped them, cured their minor ailments or those of their livestock, people whose babes I have blessed or who just wanted to know tomorrow's weather (which I have never managed to predict with any accuracy, truth be known). Sometimes I have been nothing more than someone they feel they can talk to. Yet here they are, almost queuing up, wishing me well in their own little ways. It is almost too much, and I consider standing and leaving, but suddenly Teja is there, pushing people away, filling my tumbler to overflowing.

  "Glad to see you back, old witch," she says, breezy as ever.

  I stare at her pale face, so like my younger self, suddenly unable to speak. I have asked around. Nobody knows who her real father is. Nobody can remember her mother giving birth to her, only that she came back one day with a grown child daughter. They assume there was some scandal, the father a philandering noble or rootless desert trader who tired of his charge. Teja herself never talks about her childhood.

  "We've missed you, Seren," she says.

  Before she can move away I catch hold of her hand. "Did I ever tell you how pretty you are, Teja?"

  "Yes. All the time."

  "We should talk. You and me."

  She gives me a bemused smile. "Any time. You know where I am."

  Before I can say more she is away, dancing with Harkin's young deputy to the sound of Old Hoots' furious sawing. I really must find out his name.

  I rub my eyes, sip my dreamwine and watch the couple dancing. How wrong I have been all along.

  There is still a little magic left in the world.

  If you know where to look.

  © 2014 by Henry Szabranski

  * * *

  Henry Szabranski's fiction has appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Daily Science Fiction, amongst other places. He studied Astronomy & Astrophysics at Newcastle upon Tyne University before graduating with a degree in Theoretical Physics. Henry lives in Buckinghamshire, UK, with his wife and two young sons.

  Restart

  William Reid

  I wanted to break my brother's face again. My knuckles burned from my previous efforts.

  Dark mascara ribbons streaked down Bridgette's cheeks. Roger's smooth features, darkened with fury, no longer bore a single scrape. The bruises he'd left on my body throbbed.

  This time I had to fix things without getting hurt. More than that, I had to do it without killing Bridgette.

  The activity in the lounge concealed Roger's rage and Bridgette's sobbing. Romantic and fast-tempo music thrummed, with laser ribbons etching the air above the diners and dancers. Waiters weaved among private tables filled by lovers in every stage of intimacy. All but me seemed oblivious to the lone exception I stared at, my brother and his now fiancée. My former lover.

  Veins throbbed on Roger's thick neck as he screamed without sound. The low lighting edged his brow and shaved head in shadow, heightening his uncontrolled rage. Bridgette shrank as if each word crushed her further into her chair.

  My fingers flew over the network grid keypad suspended in front of me. My anger seethed. Thick nicotine-stick vapor stung my eyes, further curdling my mood. I sent it scattering with a wave of my hand. The fumes scoured my throat whether they were safe second-hand or not.

  The code I wrote flashed complete. I stabbed the green button in the grid to activate the program. The network node on Roger's belt blinked with an incoming call. His enraged eyes darted across the lounge as he answered. I raised the opacity of my grid to block his view. He'd spotted me before and the memory still ached. After a few moments, I dialed the opacity down and watched him through the sea of scrolling grid data that tracked my virus.

  Without my interference, Bridgette would hurl her glass at him, a curl of icy water freezing his rage in place. A few seconds later he would slap her and haul her out of her chair by the arm. The memory of them struggling in the vapor haze burned indelible in my mind.

  Disrupting the thread to confront him had gotten me an ever-progressing tally of damage. The little I managed in return disappeared with each restart. His assaults silenced the lounge each time. Luckily, they never tangled the threads too much for me to displace for a different approach. Hopefully a smarter one this time.

  The fly, the same goddamn fly, landed on the lip of my coffee mug, jittering its legs over its bulbous eyes. It came back every time I displaced, no matter what I did to it. Little things always stayed the same, like this fly landing on my mug. I let it wander across the rim and dart away.

  Roger slammed his node on the table. His voice rose enough for me to hear this time, anger without coherency. Bridgette flinched in her seat. She reached for her water glass—no god damn it, don't backtrack on me—but she lifted it to her lips instead of throwing it. I slid my finger off the displacement toggle with relief.

  Roger threw his napkin over his plate and stood up. He stormed toward the door in such a fury that he forgot his node on the table. Her eyes followed him as he left, a conflict of fear and relief mixing across her face.

  Bridgette looked beautiful, just like she had a year ago when I'd left her. Tight curves and toned muscle under a smoky black dress and rich auburn hair. She lifted a nic-stick to her lips and lit it with a twist. Smoking was new for her. The electric glow flared red and highlighted the haunted shadows under her eyes. Those were new too, but no surprise with Roger still around. I choked down a last mouthful of bitter coffee and weaved through the crowd to her table.

  "Nick." Bridgette's breath caught when I sat down across from her. Her eyes flashed with anger. Tears carved furrows through her makeup, exposing the discolored skin of old bruises underneath. "What are you—"

  "My mother told me the news."

  Her mouth became a colorless line. White vapor streamed from her lips. "That's what got you to come back?"

  "She expected me to be happy for you and Roger."

  She took the nic-stick from her lips and let it dangle from the crook of her fingers. Forefinger and thumb spun her gold engagement ring by its glittering diamond, obscene in its size. "What else was she supposed to expect?"

  "That I'd be the asshole's best man. She's delusional."

  Bridgette dropped her hand as if realizing what she was doing. She picked up her napkin and dabbed at her eyes. "Roger will probably ask just to see if you'll show—Jesus, what happened to your face?"

  "A fight. Doesn't matter. Bridge, you can't be serious. He left you in tears for a work call. You never smoked or had to cover up bruises before. He's destroying you."

  Bridgette frowned. She took another pull from her nic-stick and blew it in my face. "How did you know work called him?"

  I struggled against a cough. "He's a cop, I'm a grid programmer. He runs for a homicide call. I know how to fake a dispatch."

  "That's very brave of you, standing up to him like that."

  "Dammit, that's not the point. Why are you marrying him?"

  She shrugged. "For as bad as the bad times are, the good times are just as good."

  Same conversation, this time not from a restart. I picked up his scotch without thinking and drained it. "I've never seen these mythical good times, but they must be stellar."

  "Of course you haven't seen them. You've been gone a year. You haven't seen anything. What gives you the right t
o sit down with me after walking out like you did?"

  "Nice. You find a spine when he isn't around."

  She ran a fingertip along the rim of her water glass, nic-stick still dangling. I tensed for a moment, expecting her to fling the glass at me this time.

  "I could say the same thing about you," she said.

  "He's not the kind of guy you go toe-to-toe with."

  Her eyes fixed on my bruised face and darkened with realization. "You know, Roger was a boxer at the Academy."

  "Damn it, fine. He beat the shit out of me when I confronted him before. How someone as smart as you stays with a guy like him I'll never know."

  "You displacers never stop messing with things, do you?"

  I winced at the unintended reproach her words held. "I am not going to let him treat you like this. You can't stay with him."

  "You aren't going to let him treat me like this," she mocked. "I can take care of myself. I don't need saving."

  I started to speak, then snapped my teeth shut. I remembered having this conversation with her too, a year ago. Backtracking myself.

  "This isn't just about you, Bridge. I can't stand you being with him."

  "So this is about you," Bridgette looked sideways at me for a moment through the swirls of vapor. "You don't get to decide to have me just because you find out I'm engaged. You shouldn't have left in the first place."

  "I had to. When he found out we were having an affair—"

  "You ran. He found out, and you disappeared. You never said anything or even contacted me. How can you expect to walk in and start right where we left off? You just left."

  "I didn't have a choice."

  "You're a displacer! All you have are choices, as many as you want. You didn't even try."

  "He killed you, Bridgette."

  She stopped talking. I tried to make out her expression through the blur that started to coat the world.