by Layton Green
“This is the prototype. Without the missing pages.”
“Where did it come from?”
“No one knows.”
Val whistled.
She opened one of the doors, revealing a room full of file cabinets, desks with reading lamps, and a bank of computers. “We’re extremely serious about our research.”
“I can see that.”
He had so many questions. What was the connection between the two worlds? Were there any other real wizards involved?
“I’d like to see what my father left me.”
“There’s one more thing, if you’ll indulge me,” she said. She moved to a corner of the file room that contained a few dozen safes set into the wall, each secured with a keypad. She selected a safe near the center, entered a code, and the door popped open with a release of pressurized air. She extracted a folder containing a stack of photos and documents.
The first photo depicted a man with wispy gray hair and silver eyes sitting at Caleb’s bar, cradling a cup of coffee while he watched Will from across the room. It was the same man Val had seen in the cemetery the night they fought Zedock, watching events unfold as if he were eating popcorn at the local cinema.
Salomon.
Val looked up, his voice sharp. “Who took this? Charlie?”
She waved a hand at the documents. “Keep going.”
Val ran through a few more photos of the same man in various places: Walking into the British Museum in London, standing next to the Astronomical Clock in Prague, peering up at the Taj Mahal. In one black and white photo, Salomon—looking the exact same age—was seated in the corner of a café with Albert Einstein. Val started. “Is this real?”
“The next photo is with Nikola Tesla. The one after that, a daguerreotype with Faraday. We also have an eyewitness account describing an old man fitting this description talking to the Italian scientist Ettore Majorana the day before he disappeared off the face of the earth. Oppenheimer, Schrödinger, Heisenberg—our people have spotted this man chatting with virtually every important theoretical physicist since photography was invented.”
“You think he’s learning from them?”
“That or he’s teaching them.” She leaned into him. “Who is this man, Val? Why doesn’t he age? He’s a wizard, isn’t he?”
Val shuffled through the remaining documents, photographs, and write-ups of the various encounters. “I wish I knew,” he said slowly.
Mari’s gaze lingered on him before she replaced the contents of the safe, locked it, and took him by the arm. “This way,” she said. Her normally modulated voice was thick and sticky, as if coated in molasses.
She led him back into the main room, through one of the other doors, and into a sprawling stone-walled chamber that reminded Val of a medieval country club. Tapestries and rugs and buttery leather furniture filled the room. There was even a fireplace, though Val had no idea how the ventilation functioned this far underground.
Against the far wall, he saw a series of oak-paneled lockers, each with a bronze nameplate. Near the middle was a plaque engraved with the name Dane Maurice Blackwood.
Dad.
Val could feel Mari’s eyes on his back as he stood in front of his father’s locker. He had dealt with those emotions long ago, but this hidden piece of his father’s puzzle sent a shiver of both grief and anticipation coursing through him.
“We’ve never understood the lock on your father’s door,” she said.
At first her words confused him. Then he looked down and understood. Unlike the other lockers, secured by padlock or keypad, the only apparent ingress to Dane Blackwood’s locker was a curved sliver of space in the center of the door. Val stared at it for a long moment, uncomprehending, before holding his staff lengthwise and inserting the inverted crescent moon of azantite into the slot.
The two ends of the staff clicked into place. Val turned it left and then right. On the second try, there was another click and the door swung open. As Val extracted the staff and peered inside the locker, Mari gripped his arm and hovered over his shoulder.
Resting on top of a footstool was an ornamental wooden box. Inside he found a gilt-edged letter, a sack of gold coins bearing the stamp of the Realm, and a crescent moon sliver of azantite similar to the one on Val’s staff.
Val stood for a long moment, fighting his emotions. While Mari looked at the coins in awe and let them slide through her fingers, Val took the azantite token and the letter and walked to the center of the room.
Dearest Valjean,
If you have read my journal and opened my locker, then I fear the worst has come to pass. I’ve been pursued across the ether. You should know that except for Charlie, no one in the society knows the truth. Take care what you reveal. The two worlds are not ready to collide, and perhaps they never shall be.
The crescent moon is a portal formed of spirit. Connecting it to my staff will transport you to Urfe, my home world. If you need to protect the family, use the portal as a last resort, and be sure to consult my journal at every step. The situation on Urfe is complicated. I detailed the names of those who can help you survive and how to find them. I also left basic supplies in my lodging in New Victoria.
A note of warning: the azantite portal, as they say on Earth, is a one-way ticket. There are other ways to reach Urfe, but they are exceedingly difficult and, at this point, far beyond your reach. I can only hope that you will follow in my footsteps, unlock your power, and one day manage to return on your own.
And finally, in the unimaginable event that this letter must serve as our goodbye, you should know that while I have traversed the cosmos, I have never come as close to understanding the reason for existence as the day I gazed upon my firstborn son.
Dad
“Mari,” Val asked, his voice thick with emotion, “could I get a glass of water?”
“Sure,” she murmured, squeezing his arm as she passed. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
Mari walked to a corner of the room and opened a wooden cabinet. As soon as her back was to him, Val strode to his father’s locker, picked up the sack of gold coins, and touched the crescent moon token to the top of his staff.
When the two pieces of azantite connected, Val felt a mild electric shock. There was a prolonged flash of blue-silver light as his body seemed both to vibrate and dissolve. During that moment, Mari turned and dropped the pitcher, ran across the room, and flung herself at Val.
Just as they collided, he had the familiar sensation of the molecules in his body disconnecting and then being jerked forward by an impossibly strong force, and then
the world
went
black
-5-
A flash of red, then a starburst of color.
Colors so deep and profound they made all the colors Mala had known before, the splendid colors of the normal world, seem muted, monochrome.
She blinked and realized these otherworldly hues were not flashes of light but were all around her, preserved in solid state. Bridges and loops and pathways of color. Honeycombed archipelagos of color, floating grottoes of color, spiral tunnels of color, polyhedra of color. Shapes and pigments for which she had no name. There was no sky or ground, no up or down, no left or right—just dimensions of color, stitched into the fabric of this place.
But there was something else, too. Flat, one-dimensional circles of darkness loomed in the distance like suns during an eclipse, dozens of them, pockmarking the palette of color. Some primal instinct told her that there she must not go.
She realized she was drifting slowly through this dreamscape, and had a moment of panic. Where was she? How had she arrived?
Then she remembered.
Fighting the majitsu outside Zedock’s obelisk.
Quaffing the Potion of Movement to try to even the odds, give herself a fighting chance.
Still unable to hurt the warrior-mage.
Forced to use an Amulet of the Spheres she had recovered from an ice fortress i
n Lapland, right under the nose of a powerful Snow Mage, she had wrapped her arms around the majitsu in a desperate attempt to take him with her, fulfilling her debt to Will by giving him and his companions a chance to escape.
Majitsu.
She spun and saw him drifting twenty feet behind her. Shaved head, black robe cinched at the waist with a silver belt. Part of an elite order of martial artists who supplemented their craft with low-level magic and served as personal attendants to the Realm’s wizards.
After blinking his eyes in wonder at the Place Between Worlds, the majitsu’s eyes found Mala and narrowed. Tightened even further when he saw the circular blue amulet looped around her neck, pulsating with jagged streaks of silver. She clutched it tighter. The amulet had never throbbed before.
The majitsu snarled and came for her. One hand grasping the amulet, the other reaching for her sash, Mala tried to swim backwards to get away, flailing her arms and legs.
She went nowhere.
Panicking, with the majitsu rapidly closing the gap, Mala took a good look at him and realized he didn’t even seem to be trying. Arms extended, he drew towards her as if gliding.
She tried the same thing, and realized she could fly.
She couldn’t describe the odd sensation any other way. It wasn’t exactly flying, but neither was it anything else. When she extended her arms and willed herself to go in one direction, there she went, drifting through the vortex of color like a gnat flitting across a rainbow.
Terrified of getting lost, she turned her head and saw, a short ways behind the majitsu, something that resembled a cave mouth lurking underneath a vivid pink and fuchsia overhang. The filmy opening was a black semi-circle streaked with mahogany and blue and green, and it was less substantial than its surroundings, as if she could slip right into it.
This, she sensed, was the doorway back to her world. Whether she could access it without the amulet, she had no idea.
Mala tried to circle back, but the majitsu cut her off, forcing her deeper into the honeycomb. She noticed more of the gauzy black cave mouths as she flew, dozens more. Hundreds. The kaleidoscopic landscape extended as far as she could see, and her mind cringed at the implications.
She had to think of something fast. Whether because he was heavier or because her potion of movement was wearing off, the majitsu was gaining ground. If he caught her, she knew he would kill her, strip the amulet, and return through the doorway to their world.
Of course, were she in his position, she would do the same thing.
A shadow appeared and disappeared to her left, something long and fluttery and ominous. She started. Is there something in here with us? She had heard stories of wraiths floating through the Place Between Worlds, devouring the souls of travelers.
She grimaced and willed herself forward. She had plenty of tricks left, but nothing that would stop a majitsu. He was ten feet behind her, palms open at his sides, mouth cruel and relaxed.
They drifted through a curving corridor of splattered hues, exiting into a gold and violet canyon with walls so high she couldn’t see the top. Dozens more of the insubstantial cave mouths were scattered about the canyon, at varying heights.
A keening erupted out of the silence, a high-pitched rush of air that sounded like a tea kettle starting to boil.
Mala paled. The fabled astral wind, buffeter of souls.
If it caught her, so the legend went, it would fling her through the Place Between Worlds like a sheaf of paper in a hurricane. Even if she managed to survive the wraiths and the majitsu, she would lose her world forever. It was said that spirit mages prepared for years to navigate the Place Between Worlds, and here she was, floating through it like a babe set adrift in the ocean.
As the howling wind drew closer, stray gusts buffeting them forward, the majitsu drew within seven feet, then five, then three.
If Mala had to, she would take her chances and throw the amulet into the void, then try to double back to her world when the majitsu went for it. But she was wary. Would her body whisk into the nearest world if she removed the amulet, like a jinn sucked into a bottle? Would her soul separate and float forever in this place, a lost and formless thing? Would one of the wraiths come for her? Would she simply cease to be?
She decided she didn’t want to take the chance with either the astral wind or losing the amulet.
Which left only one option.
Just before the majitsu reached her, Mala darted a few feet to her left, diving with fingertips extended into a cave mouth the color of morning fog, set into the side of the canyon.
Another flash of red light, and then she was falling.
-6-
Mari crashed into Val, her momentum sending them both sprawling across the room.
Only it wasn’t the same room anymore, Val thought. Or the same city.
Or even the same world.
They stumbled into a knee-high table that splintered on impact. Dishes shattered, shouts filled the air. Val’s face ended up pressed against a stained wooden floor that reeked of stale beer and vomit.
He pushed to his knees, whipped around, and saw a room full of people with tattered clothing and grime-streaked faces. Soiled bed sheets spread over reed mats took up half the room. A cane rat peered down from a hole in the ceiling.
Dripping bits of gruel and foul-smelling ale, Val pulled Mari off the floor. Her eyes looked twice as big as normal and she was unsteady on her feet.
The shouting ceased when the people in the room stopped moving and got a good look at Val and Mari. He thought they would be in a fight for their lives, but then he noticed the downcast eyes, stooped shoulders, and furtive glances at his staff. The piece of blue-white azantite he had connected to the top of the staff had disappeared, leaving the original upturned crescent moon.
Two people in strange clothing teleporting out of nowhere. An azantite-tipped staff.
These people thought they were wizards.
Which, he thought with a grimace, he supposed he was. Just not a very good one.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered to the crowd of indigents as his eyes found the door on the opposite side of the hovel. “I’m really sorry.”
He took Mari by the hand, staff held high, and backed towards the exit. No one moved or uttered a sound, afraid to be singled out. Two children scuttled away from the door like lizards, then returned to scratching the bright red sores covering their bodies.
Val left the room and strode down the darkened hallway without a backwards glance, his heart slapping against his chest. Mari was clutching his arm, fingernails digging into his flesh.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”
Not until they reached a staircase, descended two flights to ground level, and stepped outside into the tepid night air did Val exhale. Then he saw where they were, and sucked in his breath again.
“I guess Dad’s neighborhood has seen better days.”
Mari didn’t seem to care about the crumbling tenements lining both sides of the empty street, or the preternatural calm that exists in neighborhoods where people are afraid to go out after dark, or the two hunched figures that eyed them and slunk into a recessed doorway. The intense light had returned to her eyes, brighter than ever, glowing at a fever pitch.
“We’re here,” she said in a daze, head swiveling to take it all in. “It’s real.”
Val grabbed her by the arm and led her down the street. If she hadn’t jumped through the portal, he could have at least slipped on the Ring of Shadows until he made it out of this slum. If he used it now, she would appear alone to any observers, and they would be in even more danger. “Keep it together, Mari. You have no idea what a stupid thing you’ve done.”
Val stepped as quietly as he could through the mud and potholes pockmarking the cobblestone street. Assuming this was New Victoria, he had no idea in which section of the city Dad had once lived. He just knew they had to get out of it.
Once again, the loss of his father’s journal was a blow that lef
t him reeling.
“Tell me all about it,” she gushed. “I want to see the magic, Val. The magic.”
“Mari,” he said, his voice tight but soft, “surely you can grasp what a dangerous place this is.”
She lowered her voice as some of the initial shock and hunger drained from her eyes. “Of course. But I saw the way those people looked at your staff. You’re some kind of wizard here, aren’t you?”
Val ran a hand through the cowlicks in his normally trimmed brown hair, which had grown to his eyes over the last few months. “I don’t know what I am,” he said, “except that I’m as lost and helpless as you are.”
She looped an arm through his as they walked. “Somehow I doubt that.”
Val crouched behind an abandoned cart at the next intersection, peering around the corner as a rat clambered through a pile of garbage. “You’re not getting it,” he said. “Wizards, real wizards, rule this place, and if they find you, they’ll squash you like a roach or throw you in the Fens, a place which makes this slum look like Disneyland.”
“Is that who we’re trying to avoid?” she said, a secret excitement creeping back into her voice. “The wizards?”
“Right now we’re trying to avoid the thieves and murderers who no doubt prowl this area and would love to have their way with you.”
Mari blanched, then regained her composure as quickly as if a jury were watching. “I need knowledge to survive, right? So educate me.”
They hurried to the next intersection. Again the scenery looked uniform: moonless streets, decaying architecture, weeds and vines arcing out of cracks between the potholes.
“My guess is we’ve landed in the slums of New Victoria. This world’s version of New Orleans.
“Which explains the humidity,” she said, unzipping her jacket. “What time period are we talking?”
“It’s not an exact correlation, and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. But for starters, think Victorian era mixed with Medieval. There are parts of the city that are surprisingly sophisticated—these buildings are blocking the view of the Wizard District.”
