Dead Reign

by T. A. Pratt

  “Yeah. Cole’s spending a lot of time asleep. Like, days. And he’s pretty much narcoleptic. Right in the middle of a lesson, he’ll just drop. He’s a tough old guy, Marla, but whatever spell he cast on himself to sleep the decades away, I think it’s too strong for him to shake off as easily as he’d expected. It’s trying to pull him back under.”

  “That’s rough. He’s only been teaching you a few months.”

  “I’ve learned a lot, but mostly I’ve learned how much I have left to learn. And one of these days, Cole is going to fall asleep and just not wake up again—at least, not in my lifetime. I need to figure out what I’m going to do with myself then. Susan Wellstone won’t let me be part of her organization in San Francisco because I’m friends with you. Not that I’d want to join up with her, but she’s really the only game in town. There’s not much of a magical presence in Oakland—the big honcho there is a sex magician named Delanie, and once she realized I wasn’t into girls, she lost all interest in me. She doesn’t care if I hang around, but she won’t teach me or give me work. The sorcerers in Marin are all either snooty or hippies, and neither one appeals to me. The South Bay is all half-crazy technomancers living in gutted buildings that used to be dot-com headquarters before the crash. Not my scene.” He shook his head. “I considered Hollywood—I still know some people down there, but they’re all ordinaries, and as for the SoCal sorcerers, those guys are nuts. As Cole’s apprentice, I have some status, and some options—he still carries a lot of weight around here—but when he’s gone, I’ll be an outsider again.” He sounded frustrated, and Marla’s heart went out to him. When she’d found him, he’d known there were monsters in the world, but he hadn’t known there were also people like Marla, devoted to fighting monsters. She’d shown him a whole subculture, and helped him find a place in it. Now that place was in danger. Marla could sympathize.

  “I’ll do whatever I can to help, B,” she said.

  “Great. Because I was hoping I could come out to Felport and be your apprentice.”

  Marla closed her eyes. Taking on an apprentice was an enormous responsibility, and she already had so many responsibilities that she sometimes felt them as a physical weight. She thought of all she had to do already, every day, and an image of that Rodin statue Caryatid Who Has Fallen under Her Stone appeared to her—a woman crushed beneath the weight of the stone she held. But this was B…. “Let me talk to Cole,” she said at last. “He’d damn well better wake up for me. I have ways of getting a guy’s attention that you don’t.” She paused, expecting Rondeau to make a dirty joke, but of course, Rondeau wasn’t here, and she had no idea how he was doing. She was suddenly very tired. “And we’ll see if I can even get back to Felport again. Things are bad, B. Really bad.”

  “Marla—” he began.

  “I can’t answer you yet. Please. I will, just as soon as I’m able, okay? I promise.”

  “Understood.”

  They crossed a long bridge, and Marla felt a stirring of longing for the much smaller bridges that spanned the Balsamo River in Felport. They rode into the East Bay, the hills a darker shade of night in the distance, over and under a tangle of freeway overpasses, down through a grimy downtown that reminded Marla painfully of her own city. B kept driving, finally going up into the hills, on dark and foggy roads, up and up, past redwoods and quiet dark houses, finally cresting a high ridge that gave a clear unobstructed view of the bay and San Francisco beyond. He parked the car on a little strip of gravel. “Cole doesn’t like Susan,” B explained, “so he didn’t want to stay in San Francisco. She kept bugging him constantly, even when he fled to Marin, sending him gifts, trying to get him to ‘advise’ her, which really meant telling her how great she was. He decided to come here to Oakland, but he wanted a spot with a good view of the city, and it took forever, because most of the hills are so built up. We finally got this place. Susan never bothers us now. People in San Francisco look down on Oakland. Did you know, during the 1906 earthquake and fire, when refugees had to leave San Francisco and come to the East Bay, some of them made signs that said ‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we go to Oakland’? Bastards. I like it over here.”

  “Where’s the house?” Marla said.

  “Oh, that’s the roof there.” B pointed at what Marla had assumed was some kind of observation deck. “There are stairs leading down. The house kind of clings to the side of the hill.”

  “Gods,” Marla said. “Tempting fate much? This is earthquake country. Mudslide territory! What if the house falls off?”

  B laughed. “Come on, Marla, Sanford Cole lives here. This house isn’t going anywhere as long as he’s in it.”

  “All right. I guess he can make it safe. But the idiots who built this house need to be committed for their own safety.”

  “Earthquakes?” Pelham said nervously. “Mudslides?”

  “Also wildfires,” Marla said.

  “There hasn’t been a serious wildfire here in the hills for years,” B said. “Though it is wildfire season now. So watch where you toss your matches.” He got out of the car, and they followed him down the stairs and into the house. The living room was big, lit by antique lamps that reflected warmly from the gleaming hardwood floors, and sliding doors in the floor-to-ceiling windows gave access to a redwood deck cantilevered out over the hillside, providing an even better view of the lights of the city across the bay.

  Sanford Cole, white-whiskered and small, sat in a wooden rocking chair facing the view, head back, snoring.

  “He’s been like that for two days,” B said. “I blew an air horn at him and it didn’t wake him.”

  “I’ll make some tea.” Pelham bustled off toward the kitchen.

  B watched him go, then turned to Marla. “What’s the story with him?”

  “A long one,” Marla said. “But he’s a good guy, if a little shaky just now. Look, go ask him to fill you in on why I’m here, okay? Tell him to tell you about the Walking Death. I’m sick of even thinking about it, and I’d rather let Pelham bring you up to speed.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Wake up Cole.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  She chewed her lip for a moment. “You don’t really want to know.”

  B nodded. He knew her well enough not to press that particular line of inquiry any further.

  Marla went over to Cole. She leaned forward, putting her face close to his. “Hey, old man, I need a hand.” She jostled his arm, and pinched his nostrils shut, and slapped his cheeks, and none of it had any impact. He’d slept in some barrow somewhere for decades at a time, and a few pokes from a visiting witch wasn’t likely to rouse him. She sighed. “You’re giving me no choice here, Cole.” Leaning even closer, she put her lips to his ear. “I’m going to destroy San Francisco,” she said. She thought about all her losses, her banishment, her misery, her worry, her fear, and she fed those thoughts into a flickering flame of hate, hate casting around for a target, and it settled on Susan Wellstone, her old nemesis—the last person who’d made her feel as helpless as Death was making her feel now. It wasn’t hard to get that hate burning fiercely again. Marla had spent her entire adult life trying to make sure that she was never powerless, and now she’d been pushed into this position of helplessness again, her only hope a mad scheme to invade the underworld, a plan that was less a plan and more a desperate sort of flailing. And Susan had made her feel the same way, out of her depth, desperate. Marla had been forced to make peace with Susan, to come to a compromise, to let her leave Felport and become the queen of San Francisco, and that never sat right with Marla, that such a cowardly scheming conniver should be rewarded for her treachery, for her plan to kill Marla. Gods, Susan deserved nothing but pain, and what better way to hurt her than to destroy San Francisco, to summon earthquake, wildfire, mudslide, tsunami, economic downfall, infrastructure collapse, riots, annihilation. It would hurt Susan, and it would help Marla let off a little steam, make her feel strong, make her feel po
tent, make her feel anything but helpless. Marla thought about destroying San Francisco. She thought about it seriously. She thought about it seriously even harder.

  Sanford Cole sat upright and gripped Marla by the throat, choking her with phenomenal strength, and Marla went to one knee, gasping, barely able to break his hold, even though his attack was hardly sophisticated. Cole lunged up out of his chair, looking terrified and suddenly very old. He said, “Marla?” in a voice of infinite bewilderment.

  “Sorry, Cole,” she said, rubbing her throat, her voice a croak. “You wouldn’t wake up. I knew you could never sleep through San Francisco being threatened, so…” She shrugged and got to her feet. “I psyched myself out.”

  “You…didn’t really mean it.”

  “Oh, I meant it,” Marla said. “Right then, at that moment, destroying San Francisco was my one and only goal. But I don’t mean it anymore. I just needed you to wake up.”

  “That’s clever.” Cole sat down again. “Nasty, mean, rather unconscionable…but clever.”

  “Pelham, make some coffee, too!” Marla shouted. She knelt before Cole. “Good to see you again, old fella. I hear you’re having some trouble staying awake.”

  He sighed, and looked stricken. “It’s hard to remain conscious. I want to train Bradley, I promised you I would, but after sleeping for so long, wakefulness is hard, when my city isn’t being threatened.” He looked longingly toward San Francisco. “And it’s changed so much, it saddens me. Susan Wellstone is a perfectly adequate leader, don’t misunderstand me, but…she’s self-righteous. Smug. Elitist. When San Francisco began, it was a jostling boomtown, high and low culture mingled. Oh, there was always a world of difference between Nob Hill and the Barbary Coast, but the divisions didn’t seem quite so unbridgeable back then. Or perhaps I’m only a sentimental old fool, viewing the present through a lens of nostalgia.”

  “B asked me if he could be my apprentice if you went back to sleep,” Marla said.

  Cole’s eyes widened. “He’s a seer, Marla. A wizard of perception, of finding oracles and magic, of looking-in. You are…a different sort of sorcerer.”

  “I know,” Marla said. “You study things, and I kick them. I’d teach him in your tradition as best I can, but some of my flavor is bound to rub off on him. Still…”

  “A somewhat incompatible teacher is better than no teacher at all,” Cole said.

  Marla nodded.

  “I wish…I think…” He winced. “I think that might be best. If you took over as his teacher.”

  “Okay,” Marla said, and it was decided. Sanford Cole was one of the wisest and most powerful sorcerers on Earth, and if he said it was for the best, Marla would go along with it, however inconvenient it might prove to be.

  Pelham entered bearing a silver tray, a pot each of coffee and tea, and several cups. “I didn’t even know we had a full tea service,” B said. “Where did you find that?” He noticed his conscious master. “Cole! So good to see you! Has Marla told you why she’s here?”

  Cole frowned. “I assumed you called her because you were concerned about me.”

  B shook his head. “No. I mean, I did mention you were having trouble staying awake, but that’s not why she’s here. It’s…quite a story.” He glanced at Marla. “May I?”

  She nodded, and B told Cole about Death’s demands, and Marla’s banishment, succinctly and accurately enough that Marla only felt compelled to butt in and clarify half a dozen points. When B was done, Cole frowned. “I see. Well. That certainly doesn’t sound like the Death I know.”

  “You know Death?” Marla said.

  “I should,” Cole said. “I’m the man who won the dagger from him.”

  9

  Y ou won Death’s dagger?” Marla waved away the cup of coffee Pelham brought to her side.

  “Yes, in a Senet game in Egypt, just before I came to America in the early 1700s.” Cole accepted a cup of tea, and his eyes took on a faraway look. “I gave it to one of my apprentices, a man named Malkin, before he went off to seek his fortune.”

  “Everett Malkin?” Marla said. “He was the first chief sorcerer of Felport, back when it was barely just a city!”

  “Yes,” Cole said, nodding. “He did well for himself.”

  Marla was stunned. “Why did you never tell me one of your guys founded my city?”

  “You must understand, he was only one of countless apprentices I brought with me to the New World,” Cole said. “Many of the early chief sorcerers were my men, in New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Norfolk, Savannah, Detroit…. All dead now, of course, or immortal and mad.”

  Marla nodded. Cole was partly legendary for his involvement in helping European sorcerers get a foothold in America during the early settlements, sometimes clashing with the local totemic and shamanistic magic in the process. “So you won the knife off Death, and just gave it away?”

  Cole shrugged. “In human hands, though useful, it is essentially a weapon, and weapons are not my forte. Malkin was the most accomplished martial magician under my tutelage—indeed, I was a poor fit for him as a teacher.” He glanced at B, and then at Marla, but didn’t comment further. “I thought he could use it more effectively than I could. I was building a nation in those days, you see, and I tried to make sure everyone had tools to suit them. Felport was a haunted place in those days—‘the fel port’ the first settlers called it, and an early attempt to make a permanent home there ended with all the inhabitants vanished or dead. Even the natives shunned that place by the bay. Malkin cleaned up the bad element, drove away the dark spirits that dwelt there, and the knife helped him do it. He worked a great magic to make sure the blade would stay forever in that city.” Cole shook his head. “But Death would not return for his weapon, not after losing it fairly. He was an honorable god.”

  “I think that particular Death retired,” Marla said. “There’s a new god, calling himself the Walking Death.”

  “Heavens,” Cole said. “I’d heard tell of such things, that long ago there was a different Death…it makes a certain amount of sense. Death is tied to life, and birth, and rebirth, to the harvest and the tides and the seasons and cyclical things. So the old Death is gone.” Cole bowed his head. “He was no crueler than he needed to be, that one, and he was a gracious loser. I’m sorry his son, or heir, or new incarnation, is such a sad replacement.”

  “What on earth did you wager against his dagger?”

  “It was not a dagger then, but a sword,” Cole said. “Death’s terrible sword. It can cut through anything. Dreams. Hopes. Memories. Ideas. Certainties. In human hands, its powers are greatly diminished. Imagine a child trying to lift a two-handed broadsword—it never could. But a small knife, yes. We mortals are as children to the gods, in strength, at least, and I could not wield the sword, and so it transformed into a dagger when the hilt touched my hand, and a dagger it has remained.”

  “Interesting,” Marla said. “But, again, what did you bet?”

  “A gemstone, mined from the depths of Hades, according to legend, reportedly the most beautiful jewel in Hell. Death wanted it very much, and I agreed to play a game of chance with him.” He shook his head. “I don’t have the jewel anymore. I gave it to another of my protégés, to help him found a settlement in the Pacific Northwest. I was so bold in those days, Marla. Nearly as bold as you are now. Invading the underworld.” He chuckled. “Good show.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?” Marla said.

  “Possible, yes. Possible for you? I don’t know. The journey will be perilous, even if Bradley can find an entry point for you. How exactly it will prove perilous, I don’t know. I’ve never been to the underworld. But from the hints Death dropped during our long game, I understand it is a mutable place, shaping itself to fit the unconscious expectations of the soul that enters. As malleable as the medicine lands. What do you think Hell will be like, Marla?”

  “I don’t know,” she said honestly. “When I was a kid I was generic Protestant, but once I got old eno
ugh to think about it I became an atheist. Nowadays I know there are gods, or things so much more powerful than people that we might as well call them gods, but I don’t especially worship them—most of them are just as fucked up as people, with no more moral or ethical sense than a jackal.”

  “They have morals and ethics,” Cole said. “Very strict codes, in fact. Just not human ones. There’s no telling what Hell will look like for you. But when you get there, fight your way forward, always forward. The direction doesn’t matter—direction is a convenience there, a conceit. Just don’t backtrack. Eventually, after who knows how long, you should reach the center of that realm, and there you will find a throne. It seems that throne is likely to be empty now, as its rightful ruler is playing house in Felport. All you have to do is sit on the throne, and Hell will be yours to command.”

  Marla grunted. “That’s all it takes? Then why doesn’t some dead guy sit on the throne?”

  “The dead may not. They cannot sit on that throne any more than you could sit on a throne of water or smoke. And as for the demons and administrators and tormentors who staff Hell, they would never dare. They are merely the fingernail cuttings and stray hairs of Death, and he can dispel them with a glance, with a thought. Death himself could kill you, of course, and then you would be in his realm, at his mercy. He would have killed you already, I’m sure, but the dagger would just pass to your successor, so your death does him little good. Assuming you survive long enough to sit on his chair, however, you will become like a god, too—and, I suspect, the knife will change to a sword in your hand.” He paused. “You will have great power then. Promise me you will only use that power to make Death return your city to you, and trouble you no longer.”