The Londum Omnibus Volume Two (The Londum Series Book 12)

by Tony Rattigan

  The Arch-Mage raised his hand to throw a spell at Harlequin as Queen Eloise drew her wand. Harlequin pointed his finger at Sir Abraham’s hand which became encased in a block of ice. Then he pointed at Eloise’s wand and rotated his finger in circles. Everyone watched in amazement as the wand followed his finger and curled round and round upon itself.

  Harlequin folded his arms and smiled. ‘I believe I’ve proven by now that if I intended harm to anyone I could have easily done so.’

  ‘Yes, you’ve made your point,’ replied King Victor.

  ‘Then perhaps we can dispense with the armed threats and get down to talking?’

  ‘Very well, General, please dismiss the guards.’

  ‘But sir!’ he protested.

  ‘As our friend here pointed out, they are unable to stop him and perhaps it will make things go more smoothly if we are civilised about this.’

  The general acquiesced to the king and ordered the guards back to their posts. As they left the room they found that their rifles and bayonets were restored to their original condition. Harlequin touched the block of ice encasing the Arch-Mage’s hand and it evaporated into steam. He then ran his finger along the length of Eloise’s wand and returned it to its previous straightness.

  ‘Now then, to business,’ said the king. ‘I presume you are an emissary from the Elves, here to ... what? To offer us conditions for peace? Issue the terms of our surrender?’

  Harlequin smiled at him. ‘On the contrary, Your Majesty. In fact I have been sent by the Gods themselves to help you defeat the Elves!’

  At first there was a stunned silence then the Arch-Mage said, ‘Impossible. I don’t believe it.’

  Harlequin looked around the room. Across the other side of the long dining table at which they were standing was a side table against the wall that contained decanters of alcohol. He asked, ‘Mind if I help myself to a drink?’ Without waiting for a reply he walked through the dining table to the other side of the room, filled two glasses with brandy and then walked back through the table until he was standing in front of the king again.

  He handed one of the glasses to the king, telling him, ‘I thought you might like one as well after you saw that demonstration.’

  The king nodded, speechless, and gulped at the brandy.

  Harlequin sipped his own drink and then suggested, ‘Why don’t we make ourselves comfortable and then I can explain why I’m here. You might want to include your top people so I don’t have to repeat myself later. Bring along some scientists if you have them.’

  The king, who had regained his composure, muttered an instruction to his generals and admirals to round up everyone important and then bring them to the dining table. Harlequin made to sit at the head of the table, only recovering at the last moment and stepping aside for the king. After Victor was seated, Harlequin took his place in the seat next to him while Lord Parmesan took the seat on the other side of the king. Victor and Harlequin sipped their drinks as they waited for everyone to gather. Finally, when the top people had seated themselves at the table, King Victor indicated to Harlequin that he had the floor.

  ‘Perhaps I should start by explaining exactly who I am, why I’m here and how I can help you,’ he began. ‘Those of you that ever listened to your religious teachings will know that the one overriding rule in the Universe is Free Will. For good or ill, each living creature must be allowed to make his own choices about how to live his life. No one is allowed to break that rule and interfere, not even the Gods. They are also forbidden to force anyone to do their bidding.

  ‘Of course, as you can imagine, the Gods are not always happy with this rule. They can see into the future and they can see what could be changed for the better, if they were allowed to intervene. Wars that could be avoided, tyrants and dictators that could be stopped in their tracks, plagues that could be stopped before they start and so on. But despite the fact they cannot interfere directly, no one said that they couldn’t attempt to influence people to follow their plans.

  ‘However, you wouldn’t expect the Gods to come down here and mingle with mere humans ...’ he looked round the table and held up his hands, ‘... no offence intended. They are Gods, after all. So, they created “Agents of Change” like myself, beings with supernatural powers who can act as intermediaries. On their behalf we interact with all the important players in any story and try to convince them to make small but crucial changes to their plans, without them ever realising they’re being manipulated, so the future of the world can be kept on the correct path ... as the Gods see it. We agents are sent to the planets when there is a crisis looming and we try to head it off. A word in the right ear here, and someone doesn’t get elected. A bag of gold in the right hands there, and a ship carrying the plague is sunk before it reaches its destination. It’s all about persuasion not coercion.’

  ‘But isn’t that breaking the rules?’ the king asked him. ‘You’re still manipulating human history.’

  ‘The important thing is that I cajole, I suggest, I entice, I even bribe people to get my way, but at the end of the day it’s down to the individuals concerned whether they take my advice or not, I don’t force them into anything.’

  Someone down the table who hadn’t seen Harlequin’s little table trick earlier said, ‘Preposterous! He’s trying to make fools out of us.’

  Harlequin sighed and standing up, he walked into the table and down the centre of it until he reached the heckler. ‘Now do you believe me?’ The heckler gulped and nodded as he looked down at Harlequin standing inside the table.

  Harlequin patted him on the head and said, ‘Good boy. Now be quiet and let the grown-ups talk,’ before walking back up the table and resuming his place beside the king.

  ‘Aren’t you a bit obvious though, dressed like that? A clown’s outfit. Not exactly subtle is it?’ asked the prime minister.

  ‘I can appear in any form I wish, this is merely how I choose to look when I have no reason to hide my identity, but if I were undercover ...’ his appearance changed to that of an old man, and his voice changed to the thin and reedy voice of old age, ‘I would look and sound appropriate to whom I was pretending to be. If I were here tonight incognito, I would probably look something like this.’ Once again his appearance changed, this time to that of a handsome, young Guards officer.

  ‘But today, the whole point of my visit is to reveal who I really am and to let you know exactly who you’re dealing with. Which is why ...’ he changed back to the red and white diamond outfit, ‘I look like this.’

  ‘How many of you Agents of Change are there?’ asked the prime minister.

  ‘Thousands. It’s a pretty big Multiverse out there you know and you’re not the only inhabited world.’

  ‘And you try to control all of them?’

  ‘You’ve no idea what messes they would get into if we didn’t,’ replied Harlequin, rather arrogantly, thought the prime minister.

  King Victor looked around the table and then back at Harlequin. ‘Very well, if we accept everything you’ve told us, and for the moment we have no reason not to, why have you come to us here, now?’

  ‘The Gods have decided that it’s in nobody’s interest for the Elves to take over this world. They wish you to win this fight, so they’ve sent me to assist you. Of course I cannot personally take any action to help you win the war, that would violate the non-interference rule, but I am at liberty to give you whatever information I can or suggest strategies that may be of help. That’s not breaking any rules as it’s how I normally operate, it’s just that this time I’m doing it openly and not as a subterfuge.’

  Everyone in the room was looking at the king for an indication of how to react to this information. To give himself time to think he stood up and taking Harlequin’s glass and his own to the drinks table, refilled them and then issued instructions to the stewards to give everyone a drink.

  Returning to the table he sat there deep in thought as the rest of the people muttered amongst themselves, wai
ting for him to speak.

  Eloise, queen of the witches asked, ‘May I ask a question, Your Majesty?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Listen everyone, this is no time to stand on ceremony. From now on if anyone has anything to say, just come out and say it. Don’t bother to ask for permission.’

  To Harlequin she said, ‘You say that even the Gods are bound by this “non-interference in Free Will” rule? Who makes them abide by it? Aren’t they above the rules?’

  Harlequin grimaced. He hadn’t really wanted to go into this now but he supposed it was necessary to tell them the truth. If he lied now about unimportant stuff then they might not believe him when he was telling the truth about the crucial matters.

  ‘There is one above all of us that we know of as “The Creator”; but apparently he likes to be called Jeremy. He’s the one that created the Gods and then much later ... all of you. He’s the one that made all the rules; he’s the one that even the Gods must obey.’

  That shocked everyone. Finding out that everything you had ever believed in was not exactly the way you had been told. What you knew wasn’t a lie, it was just that there was much more to the story than anyone on Earth knew. Everyone that drank (and a few that didn’t) attacked their glasses with gusto, fearing what new revelations might be forthcoming before the day was through.

  All of this sounded fantastic (in the true sense of the word) to King Victor but he tried to hold onto the nub of the matter, if it were true ... then the Gods wanted them to win the war! That meant that his beloved Grand Briton had a chance after all.

  He spoke to Harlequin but loud enough for the rest of the table to hear, ‘Very well, for the moment we will suspend our disbelief and accept that what you say is true and not some elaborate trick of the Elves. Tell me then, how exactly can you help us?’

  ‘I’ll answer that in a moment, Your Majesty, but let me ask a question first. Did the Elves ever tell you how they powered the machine that opened the portal between Universes?’

  Victor looked around the group and one of the scientists further down the table replied, ‘Not really. They were going to explain it to us when they had moved all their people through to this side. They say it’s powered by something called “Livarium” but we don’t know exactly what that is.’

  ‘I see,’ said Harlequin. ‘Well, it’s actually powered by Dark Matter.’

  ‘Dark Matter?’ queried the scientist. ‘But that’s only theoretical.’

  ‘No, it’s a fact. It does exist and that’s what they are using as a power source.’

  ‘Dark Matter?’ asked Victor. ‘What does that mean? Is it significant?’

  Harlequin took a deep breath. ‘I’ll try to explain. Have you all heard of the “The Great Blast” theory, I believe your scientists call it? How something exploded and created the Universe, closely followed by a second Great Blast that created the Multiverse?’ He looked around the table. Some of them shook their heads, baffled, others nodded, clearly aware of the theory.

  ‘Well, I can tell you it’s more than just a theory, it’s a fact. Let me repeat it for those who aren’t familiar with it. Way back at the beginning of time an amount of Dark Matter exploded. That was what created the Universe. Everything that goes to make up stars, planets ... even people, was created in that Great Blast. A millisecond later there was another explosion which split that new Universe into parallel, matching Universes, the Multiverse. Your scientists are aware of this phenomenon. For years you’ve recorded examples of temporary doorways opening between the different Universes or dimensions, some people call them. And now the Elves have proved it.’ Some of the scientists and the Magicians around the table nodded agreement.

  ‘Now, apparently when the first explosion occurred, not all of the Dark Matter was destroyed,’ continued Harlequin. ‘Bits of it were scattered throughout the Multiverse. Since the beginning of time we agents have been on the lookout for these particles of Dark Matter because they’re incredibly dangerous.’

  ‘How so?’ asked the Arch-Mage.

  ‘Think of it like this, in its pure state it’s incredibly powerful, after all, it created a Universe. But now it is spread thinly throughout space and time in a weakened form. Compare a rock to a handful of sand, they’re made of the same stuff but try breaking a window by throwing sand at it.

  ‘Now, imagine what you could do against that weakened force by having a concentrated piece of it in your possession. You have a rock and the Universe is made of sand. You could use it to control the weaker version of itself. You could control space and time, bend matter to your will, you would be unstoppable. That, unfortunately, is what the Elves are using to power the portal.’

  ‘Then we’re doomed,’ said King Victor.

  ‘Not yet,’ Harlequin assured him. ‘The good side of all this is that the Elves don’t realise what they’ve got. They think it’s merely some mineral that gives them an unending source of power, like a super-strength battery. They’re not aware of the full potential of the Dark Matter they hold. They’ve never bothered to try to do anything with it other than power the portal and their weapons. That’s all that’s saved you from complete destruction so far.’

  ‘But why?’ asked one of the scientists. ‘The Elves aren’t stupid, why haven’t they examined it?’

  ‘Hard to say. Probably because they are using it all the time to maintain contact between the worlds. They’ve never taken the time to research it properly,’ Harlequin told him.

  ‘Worlds?’ asked the prime minister. ‘What worlds? They told us they only came here because all other worlds were uninhabitable.’

  Harlequin looked at him and raised his eyebrows. ‘Would you believe they lied?’ he said, sarcastically. ‘Since they discovered the Dark Matter millennia ago they’ve been using it to open portals to hundreds of worlds and then conquer them. If they find something useful there they take over the planet, claim whatever it is they want and then start exporting it to their Home world. If there’s nothing there they need, then they just enslave the population. They live the high life while everyone else has to serve them. They have a huge empire spanning the Multiverse.’

  A general spoke up, ‘But we’ve been to their Home world, as you call it. It was a bleak, barren place. As they told us, it’s a dying planet.’

  ‘The world you saw was merely a staging post. They’re too clever to have the portal device on their own planet, so no one can attack Home world directly. It also allows them to fool new worlds when they first meet. Just as they did with you, they show off a rocky, fetid world and claim that they will die unless they are allowed to move to your world for salvation. Then once they get a foothold they send in the troops.’

  ‘So, that’s what they have planned for us, is it?’ asked the king.

  ‘To be honest, I’m not so sure about this Earth. They told the truth when they said it’s the original Earth from which they were driven, maybe they really want to come home or maybe they just want to destroy it in revenge for what your ancestors did to them. Who knows? Either way, if they win, life as you know it is over.’

  Everyone at the table fell silent as they stared around the room or at their hands or drank their alcohol. No one wanted to catch anyone else’s eye.

  Finally, Eloise broke the silence. ‘So why are the Gods helping us? I mean if what you say is true they have stood by and let hundreds of other worlds fall to the Elves, why help now, why help us?’

  ‘Well,’ replied Harlequin, choosing his words carefully, ‘I’m not privy to all their decisions you understand, I am after all just one of their minions, but it seems to me that they are getting more and more wary of the Elves. If they discover what the Dark Matter really is and what they can do with it, then no one would be able to stand against them. They could even challenge the Gods themselves. I suppose they reasoned it was best to finally put a stop to them now, before the Elves have them with their backs against the wall.’

  ‘But do we have any chance of stopping them?�
�� asked one of the generals. ‘Could we even match them in military terms?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. What you’ve seen come through the portal so far is just a fraction of the army they have at their command. After all, they have the manpower of over a hundred worlds to call upon. No general, you will never defeat them by strength.’

  ‘Then how can we defeat them?’ the general asked.

  ‘By cunning and stealth.’

  ‘I thought you said “bravery and daring”,’ said Victor.

  ‘Cunning and stealth and bravery and daring.’

  ‘Well how?’ said Victor. ‘You’ve just said that we can’t match their armies. How do we defeat them?’

  ‘You send in a small team to steal the Dark Matter. Once you have that in your hands and it’s back on your side of the portal, they can no longer come through to conquer you, and it has the added advantage of cutting the Elves off from ever again journeying to any of the other worlds they’ve enslaved. Once the inhabitants of those worlds realise that, they’ll revolt. As soon as the Elven troops see that they’re cut off from any reinforcement from Home world, it won’t take them long to capitulate. You see, Your Majesty; you’ll be saving hundreds of worlds, not just this one.’

  ‘Excellent plan, if only we could make it work,’ replied the king. ‘But how do we get to the other side of the portal? It’s surrounded by their troops.’

  ‘You’ll have to go in another way.’

  One of the scientists at the table joined in, ‘Well that plan’s off the table then. We don’t have the knowledge to create our own portal, let alone any of this Livarium to power it.’

  Everyone looked at Harlequin for an answer. ‘Well?’ said King Victor. ‘Could you go over there and steal the Dark Matter for us?’

  ‘Alas no. That would be me directly interfering and would break the rules.’ There were a few groans around the table. ‘I might know a man that can do it for you though. Someone from this Earth.’