by Mike Ashley
Tony closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Apparently there’s this little girl . . .” he began.
From her position at the back of the crowd of onlookers, Sarah couldn’t see a thing. Emma, Tracy and Matt had pushed their way through to the front, but some innate sense of self-preservation had told her that this wasn’t a very sensible place for her to be and she had kept to the rear. Bored, she turned away and began to stroll across the car park towards the river. And that was when she caught sight of little Tim Griffiths.
Tim had somehow managed to escape the attentions of his Mum (who was a big Sue Perrigo fan) and was toddling in pursuit of a butterfly as fast as his two-year-old legs could carry him. The trouble was that the butterfly had fluttered out over the river.
Sarah threw a quick glance towards the crowd but everyone was still preoccupied by the television people. She started to run, but it was too late.
Tim snatched at the butterfly, missed, and toppled into the river with the softest of splashes. Sarah reached the edge of the bank but Tim had already been swept downstream. Anxiously, she glanced again at the crowd but no-one was watching. It was up to her. She took a deep breath and concentrated.
She was Concentrating so hard that she barely noticed the scream of “TIMOTHY!” that suddenly rang out. She stood on the bank of the river, hands raised slightly and trembling a little (for Tim was heavy), and she lifted him out of the water thirty feet downstream. Then she lifted him across to the bank nearby and deposited him safely on the grass.
And that was when she became aware that, save for Tim’s whimpering, everything had gone deathly quiet. She turned to find fifty pairs of eyes staring at her in wonder. For several seconds no-one moved, and then Mrs Griffiths rushed forward, picked up little Tim and cuddled him to her.
Sue Perrigo threw a look of triumph at Paul Inkman and then began to walk towards Sarah.
“I saw what you did!” she said. “It was you, wasn’t it? How did you do it?”
Sarah gazed round at the faces staring at her and saw the astonishment and wonder on them. Suddenly she realised that, this time, she really had done it. This time there was no going back, no running away. Everyone knew. Her secret was out.
Then she looked up into Sue Perrigo’s eyes and the expression she saw there frightened her. She began to back away, but Sue followed.
“Go away!” Sarah cried. “Leave me alone!”
And screwing her eyes tight shut she slumped to the ground and clamped her hands over her face.
“Please!” she begged. “Just leave me alone!”
It was quiet. Too quiet. The only sound she could hear was her own panting. Oh, God, what had she done now? She didn’t dare to look. And then a voice spoke.
“Gee! How dumb was that?”
She opened her eyes. Matt was standing there staring down at her almost angrily.
“Using magic in front of all those people!” he continued. “I mean, duh-urrh!”
Sarah stared round. The whole crowd had frozen like statues. Sue Perrigo was the nearest, her hand static in the act of reaching out to touch Sarah, her eyes staring sightlessly at the place where Sarah had been moments before. For a second she tried to work out what had happened, but then she saw a bird hanging motionless in the act of flight and realised that the river wasn’t moving.
“You!” she gasped to Matt. “You did this! But you can’t have . . . you can’t be a witch! I’m the only one left, I know I am!”
“Of course I’m not a witch!” he said, almost scornfully. “Don’t you know anything? Witches are female. I’m a warlock, or wizard, or sorcerer. Whatever. It’s different.”
“How do you mean, different?”
“You witches, your power is all to do with people and plants and animals. Oh, what did Grampa call it? Organic, that’s it. My power is more . . .” Matt groped for the word.” . . . elemental. Yeah. To do with earth and fire and time and stuff.”
Sarah thought about that. Maybe it was the reason she’d never sensed Matt’s Presence. She reached out and there it was, clearly obvious now that he was so close, a cold blue fire in her mind that contrasted sharply with the warm, red, fuzzy glow of her own Presence.
“Here.” Matt held out a hand and helped her to her feet. “We need to talk.”
They strolled to a picnic table and sat down with their backs to the eerie ranks of motionless people. Sarah had never known such a silence.
“About two years ago,” Matt began, “I discovered your Presence. There had been other witches, but I guess they died. Anyway, I could sense that you were the last one. And after my Grampa died I was the last warlock. It seemed like a good idea for us to get together. But it’s taken me two years to manoeuvre my parents into moving over here without them catching on.”
“Don’t they know about you?” Sarah asked.
“Hell, no! My parents are fundamentalist Christians. If they found out I had these powers, they’d think I was, like, Satan or something. They’d probably feel they had to sacrifice me or have me exorcised or stuff. No, Grampa looked after me when I was little and made sure they never caught on.”
“And your Grampa was a . . . warlock . . . too?”
“Yep. It ran in the family. All the way back to a great great great great grampa who came from Salem. But my Grampa was the first one who combined it with modern science. He went to university and did a whole load of research. And guess what he found?”
“What?”
“It’s genetically inherited!”
“Jenny who?”
“No, I mean the power gets passed down from parents to children. But it gets weaker if only one parent has it. Grampa said that after all those witch hunts they had years ago, we all got separated and the power has waned. He said that if I found a witch and married her, we’d pass on stronger power to our kids.”
“So what do we do?”
“Well, we’re the last ones. I guess that means we’re gonna have to make some babies together.”
“What, now?”
“Jeez, no, not right away! I mean, I’m eleven and you’re ten! We’d get into real bad trouble with our parents, right? No, I mean when we’re older. For the moment, we just need to hang out together and look after each other.”
“Like friends?” suggested Sarah.
Matt looked at her and grinned again. “Yeah. Friends.”
Sarah was suddenly aware of how alone and empty she’d felt for the past ten years. All at once, that feeling had completely disappeared. She grinned back.
“Come on,” she said. “You’d better do something about all these poor people.”
They turned and looked at the motionless crowd.
“If I just fix their memories slightly,” Matt said, “they won’t remember a thing about today. That should do.”
Sarah looked at Sue Perrigo then switched her gaze to Paul Inkman. He was looking at Sue and there was a twisted scowl of pure hatred on his face.
“It’s a shame about these two,” she told Matt. “They hate each other so much. I wish I could change that and make them like each other.”
“Well, why don’t you? You’ve got the power.”
And so Sarah reached into the minds of Paul and Sue and changed their emotions just a touch. And then Matt did something that was far beyond her own abilities, and all of a sudden everything was normal. The river flowed, the birds flew and the people moved. And every one of them paused for a moment and looked around, puzzled, all thinking exactly the same thing. What was I doing? I can’t remember a thing . . .
But then Paul Inkman looked at Sue Perrigo and she looked back at him. Something between them ignited, flared and then exploded, and they ran at each other, meeting in a passionate clinch and locking instantly into an intense, hungry kiss.
Matt stared as Sue began to rip Paul’s clothes off.
“Whoa!” he muttered to Sarah. “You made them like each other all right! I don’t think you realise quiet how strong your power is.”
He gazed at her in open admiration and she looked away, embarrassed and yet pleased.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll race you!”
She leapt up and hared off across the car park, and Matt raced after her, grinning from ear to ear.
And so it began. Nobody knew it yet, but the events necessary for the next step upwards in human evolution had just taken place. Homo neanderthalis had come and gone 30,000 years ago, and now Homo sapiens was about to follow him into the dustbin of history. And blissfully unaware of their place in evolutionary history, the two sole providers of the gene pool for Homo magicus raced home laughing.
Louise Cooper
Thirty years ago I was bowled over when I stumbled across Louise Cooper’s first novel The Book of Paradox (1973). I couldn’t find anything else by her or about her, even though a few years later another astonishing novel, Lord of No Time (1977), appeared. It wasn’t until 1985, with the start of her Time Master series, with The Initiate, that Louise became better known in fantasy circles, though she had also written several horror novels, including Blood Summer (1976) and In Memory of Sarah Bailey (1977). Fortunately, since 1985, Louise Cooper (b. 1952) has produced a steady flow of fine fantasy novels including the Indigo series, starting with Nemesis (1988), the Chaos Gate series, starting with The Deceiver (1991) and the Star Shadow series. That began with Star Ascendant (1994) and the following is the opening segment to that book which stands alone as a short story and serves as a reminder of what a powerful and potent series that was.
“BENETAN LISS.”
The flat, toneless voice speaking his name penetrated through the layers of a bizarre dream, and he turned in his bed, instinctively pulling the heavy covering up over his ears.
“Benetan. Stir yourself; wake up.”
This time it wasn’t a whisper but a command, and urgent. The two-mouthed thing that had been crawling across Benetan’s dream landscape shivered and faded, and he awoke to blackness broken only by a small, unsteady pinpoint of light. Above the light two eyes gleamed in the darkness; then as his own pupils dilated he made out the indistinct shape behind the eyes; a ghost of a human figure.
“Wh . . .” Benetan swallowed the question unasked as his mind began to function. A hand loomed out of the dark to cup the candle; the flame reflected on thin fingers, then his visitor blew gently on the flame and it burned brighter, illuminating a narrow face etched in black and silver shadow.
“Savrinor . . .” The last traces of sleep fell away and Benetan Liss was suddenly wide awake. “What is it? What’s the hour?”
“Second moonrise.” Savrinor, whose official title was historian but whose functions ranged much further afield, moved towards the window and drew back the curtain. Cold grey light slanted in, turning the ragged strands of his long, fair hair to grey and sharply defining the hawkish profile with its narrow, handsome nose, and he touched the candle to the small lamp at Benetan’s bedside.
“You’d better get dressed, my friend. There’ll be no more sleep for any of us tonight.” His eyes, pale blue and feline, met Benetan’s in the gloom that the lamplight and moonlight did little to relieve. “The First Magus is dying at last.”
Benetan sat up. “Tonight? How can you be sure?”
Savrinor shrugged, the gesture spare but eloquent. “I have ears, and I use them. There’s movement below; the castle’s bones are shifting, and there are already rumours of the Chaos Gate being opened from the far side. Something’s coming through uninvited, and you know as well as I do that that can only mean one thing.”
“An emissary?”
“To take his soul.” Savrinor smiled a small, unemotional smile that didn’t extend as far as his eyes. “Before dawn, I’d hazard. So you’ll please our masters by pre-empting their order and being ready when they send for you.”
Benetan started to say, “If you’re right –” then thought better of it. Savrinor was never wrong. On the narrow path he trod between one faction and another, he couldn’t afford to be.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. “I owe you a debt.”
“No, no.” Savrinor watched with something approaching detached admiration faintly tinged with envy as Benetan reached for his clothes. “I’m still indebted to you for that little dark girl you found for me on your last sortie.”
Benetan’s head turned sharply, eyes narrowed, looking for sarcasm. “You tired of her in four days.”
“Maybe so; but it was a pleasant diversion while it lasted. So this is a favour for a favour, so to speak.” The smile again. “To even the slate.”
Savrinor maintained a tally of favours granted and favours received and, by his devious and often unfathomable code of ethics, could always be relied on to give or exact payment in kind to a scrupulous degree. Benetan nodded curtly. “Very well. The slate’s evened.”
He began to dress, grimacing with distaste at the clammy touch of his clothing against bare skin. His ceremonial accoutrements were slung carelessly on a chair; he clipped the heavy silver flashes with their seven quartz pendants to the shoulders of his tunic, then cinched the tunic with a wide black leather belt on which seven more gems of differing colours glowed like bizarre eyes in the dark. As he secured the complex buckle, Savrinor said, “Our masters will want an extra tally tonight, I think.”
Benetan paused and looked up, but Savrinor’s face gave nothing away beyond that small, sly smile, which was beginning to irritate him.
“Extra?” His voice was terse. “Why?”
Savrinor shrugged. “You know who the chosen successor is?”
No, I don’t. I’m not privy to the inner dealings of the magi.”
“None of us are. But some of us pick up a snippet here and a snippet there, and when we’re alone in our solitary chambers we amuse ourselves by making a pattern of those snippets, and the pattern sometimes forms a picture.” The smile became a leer. “Your greatest defect, Benetan my friend, is that you have no curiosity beyond the demands of your duties.”
“In this place, it’s safer to keep matters that way,” Benetan retorted sharply.
“Safer, maybe. But far less interesting.” Savrinor picked his way delicately across the cluttered room towards the door as though about to leave, then stopped and looked back. “So your admirable prudence precludes you from wanting to know the name of the man who will step into the shoes of our First Magus. A pity.”
He reached for the door latch. Benetan sighed. Games were a favourite pastime with Savrinor; if one wanted more than the most cursory information, one had to learn to become a player and abide by his rules.
“All right,” he said wearily. “Tell me.”
“Tush!” Savrinor raised a long finger. The weak lamplight barely touched him, and his face looked cadaverous and not quite human. “I wouldn’t dream of compromising you against your will.”
Not for the first time in their long acquaintance Benetan felt an urge to strike Savrinor. It would have been the work of less than a minute to extort the information he wanted; he was twelve years younger and several inches taller, and the historian was, besides, a notorious physical coward. But whatever Benetan’s personal view of the value of Savrinor’s friendship, he would make a very dangerous enemy.
He forced his shoulders to relax. “Please, Savrinor. I haven’t the time or the skill to fence with you. Tell me.”
Savrinor inclined his head with a gracious smile. Then his expression changed, and he met Benetan’s gaze and said: “Vordegh.”
A cold worm moved in Benetan’s gut. He mouthed the syllables of the name, though no sound emerged from his throat, then swallowed. “You’re certain?”
“As certain as it’s ever possible to be without official confirmation.”
“But he’s—”
Savrinor held up a warning hand, forestalling him. “Don’t say it. Not in jest, not in heat; not under any circumstances.” All trace of banter was gone from his voice. “You’d be well advised
not to even think it again, if you’ve any concern for your own future.”
He was right. Benetan knew Vordegh’s skills and temperament, although to his eternal relief he had never been a target for the magus’s displeasure.
Yet, said a formless voice within him, and, hardly realising that he did so, Benetan touched the small, star-shaped amulet that hung on an iron chain about his neck.
“So,” Savrinor continued, quite softly, “you’ll appreciate, I think, my anxiety that all should go smoothly tonight.”
“Yes. And I’m doubly grateful to you for forewarning me.”
“Ah!” Again the warning gesture, but now the sly humour was back. “Be careful. I might take you at your word and alter the slate of our mutual indebtedness in my favour.”
It wasn’t always possible to tell when Savrinor was joking and when he was serious. After a moment, learning nothing from the historian’s expression, Benetan shrugged, smiled thinly and followed Savrinor out of the room.
In darkness relieved only by the faint eye of Savrinor’s candle the two men made their way via the castle’s mind-numbing maze of passages and stairways towards the stables. A small door admitted them to the courtyard, and Benetan paused for a moment to breathe the chilly night air and take in his surroundings. He would never become inured to the effect the castle had on him when seen in anything like its entirety; and at night the atmosphere that seemed to ooze from the stones was doubly and unsettlingly enhanced. Grim black walls, their angularity a perverse joke on the part of the architects and their supernatural inspirers, rose foursquare to each side of him, reflecting no light, absorbing the gaze like dark vortices. At the cardinal quarters stood four titanic black spires, spearing savagely into a cloud-wracked sky and lit by fitful shafts of moonlight. Fighting the drag of vertigo to look towards their summits, Benetan saw that a high window in each spire was lit by a dim, uneasy glow, a sign that someone there watched and waited. He looked away again, quickly.
