Guardian Glass

by Christopher Nuttall

  A flicker of light caught my attention and I raised the Faerie Weapon just in time to deflect a bolt of fire one of the sorcerers threw at us. Vincent Faye and his family – and at least two dozen others – were standing there before us, facing the dark pool. I could feel the magic shifting and churning around them, reacting to the pool…and to our presence. I was grateful that Brother Andrew wasn't with us. The mere sight of the pool would have blinded him for life.

  “You’re under arrest,” I shouted, feeling my own powers billowing around me. I held a weapon made from magic itself. Let them all try to destroy me. They would all fail. “Throw down your weapons and…”

  “Not now,” Alassa shouted. I heard her voice and winced, again. Even in the dark chamber, with all of our words being lost in the sheer vastness of the place, her voice was still uniquely whiny. “I won’t be beaten now!”

  She snapped down her hand and…something crashed into the sword. I staggered backwards as dark flickers of light played around me, before fading away into nothingness. I cursed and threw back a general paralysis spell of my own, knowing that any sorcerer with any sense would allow it to bind them, rather than fight and deal with something more lethal. They had no sense. They all shrugged it off and started to throw their own magics at me.

  I barely noticed. I was watching Alassa as she ran forward and scooped something off the ground. It took me a second to realise that she was holding Cecelia, wrapped up in a baby’s outfit, despite her age and moving to throw her into the pool. I swore and threw a spell of my own, but Aylia threw her own at the same time, knocking Alassa off her feet and into the pool. A moment later, a wave of…something seemed to surge out of the pool and glide towards us.

  “Hold on to me,” I snapped, catching Aylia’s arm. “We need to get out of here!”

  I concentrated, trying to teleport…

  And the world went away…

  “Hello, son,” my grandfather said. “I think we should have a little talk.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Time is never a problem on the God level. Or space. Whatever needed to deceive you was provided. But no more than that. That is the conservative principle in art at the God level. While I can't do it, not being at that level, I have seen a lot of it done. A skilful Artist in shapes and appearances does no more than necessary to create His effect.

  -Robert A. Heinlein

  “You are not my grandfather,” I said, angrily. “Who are you?”

  I stared around, trying to understand where we were. I was standing in darkness, illuminated by light coming from…somewhere, with the figure of my dead grandfather standing bare meters away. He was wearing, I realised with a flash of almost supernatural awe, the face he’d worn when the Sheriff had brought me home after a particularly embarrassing incident. He’d been stern, but his eyes had twinkled, unable to hide their smile. My grandfather had always been larger than life.

  “Are you sure?” My grandfather asked. Even the voice was the same “Do you not believe in life after death?”

  “My grandfather is dead,” I said, flatly. “Who…what are you?” I hesitated. “Are you a Faerie?”

  The creature that wore the face of my grandfather smiled. “Do I look like a Faerie?” He asked. I said nothing. A Faerie could look like anything, although they always went for the inhumanly perfect look. “No, I am not a Faerie, nor am I one of the creatures you call demons. This form is…merely a way of speaking to you in a manner your mind will comprehend without either shutting down or collapsing into the multiplicity. I understand that it may cause you some pain, but this was the best way to speak to you.”

  My voice was very cold. “What are you?”

  “Our name would mean nothing to you,” he said. “You might call us the Timeless Ones, but that’s really more of a description than anything more…useful. The ones you call the Faerie, however, call us the Forsaken.”

  I stared. We knew so little about the mysterious Forsaken, save only that they were more powerful than the Faerie and that they had been driving the Faerie out of their lands. No one knew which side had started the war, or why, but the Faerie had very definitely lost. They probably told themselves that they were merely regrouping their forces for a counterattack, but I suspected that they would find themselves permanently in exile, or dead. One of their enemies was facing me now.

  “Would you like a seat?” My grandfather’s face asked. One hand reached out and indicated a table and a pair of chairs that had appeared out of the darkness. I recognised the table as well. My grandfather had been a Chess Grandmaster and he’d taught me how to play. “Perhaps something to eat or drink?”

  I smiled. “Given freely and without obligation?”

  “I am not a Faerie,” the Forsaken said, calmly. “We are standing in a single second of time, as your people measure it. When we are done, I will return you to your world and to the arms of your lady-love.” He sounded astonishingly like my grandfather, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d probably pulled it out of my mind. “You may eat and drink whatever you please, or you may remain hungry. It will not affect anything that happens here.”

  The chairs felt just like I remembered too. “Thank you, but I’ll pass,” I said. I wasn't sure if I trusted him yet, no matter what he looked like. “Why have you brought me here?”

  He sat down opposite me and tapped the black king meaningfully. “In a manner of speaking, we have not gone anywhere,” he said. “We are standing within a moment of your time. However…I brought you here to tell you a story. You – your people – will have to make a few decisions soon and you need information, information that you have no other way of obtaining. I brought you here to tell you the story of the war.”

  I nodded. “Go on,” I said. “What really happened?”

  “Actually, it wasn’t really a war as such,” he continued, thoughtfully. “It was one of your own military theorists who considered a particular conflict to be between a lion and a whale. Each were supreme in their own element, but barely able to act in the other’s element, making war very difficult. Something of the same could be said of the war we fought with the Faerie. But…I’ll start at the beginning.

  “Your scientists have already concluded that the universe – the entire multiverse – came into existence though a single event, a big bang.” He winked at me. “I would have called it the Horrendous Space KABLOOIE myself, but what do scientists know of drama, eh?”

  I felt cold. I had been a big Calvin and Hobbes fan when I’d been a kid and I’d even used to dress up as Calvin. The Forsaken had to have pulled them out of my mind, and if he had that, he had everything else I knew as well. We might as well have been naked before them. It was a subtle warning as well as a threat. They knew far more about us than we knew about them.

  “The universe – the universes, I should say – radiated outwards from that central point, rather like” – he made a show of grasping for a way of getting the idea across to me – “a wheel, if one imagines a wheel that exists in many dimensions at once. Some of those universes failed to stabilise and became nightmarish shadows of a reality, others stabilised in such a form as to allow intelligent life to develop. One such universe ended up being governed by what you call science. It developed races like your own. A second universe ended up being governed by magic. It developed the Faerie. A third…”

  He hesitated, just long enough to be noticeable. “Your language doesn’t really have the concepts to fully grasp what we are, or the nature of our existence,” he added. “I’ll give it to you as straight as I can manage, but there are concepts that you are not capable of understanding…”

  “I see,” I said. “What is the difference between you and the Faerie?”

  “The Faerie consider themselves Lords of Existence,” the Forsaken said, calmly. “They are literally incapable of grasping the concept that other beings, including lesser Faerie, have rights. Any truly capable life form would be able to understand other points of view; a truly adv
anced life form would be able to judge relative rights and concepts, and even communicate on a primitive level. I may not be able to tell you everything, because your language is such an imprecise tool, but I will tell you what I can.

  “You know how your universe works. The Faerie found themselves growing up in a universe where the laws of magic dictated that power went to the one who managed to take and control the magic,” he continued. “This is not incompatible with developments in your own universe. The discovery of atomic power was buried within science, but it remained merely a promise until you were able to develop nuclear science. You prospered by cooperation. The Faerie, by contrast, found themselves in a situation that demanded either endless struggle or endless submission to a more powerful mind. The Queens are merely the Faerie who have secured control over the magic to the point that they determine reality in their Mounds; the lesser Faerie, lacking that power, must submit to them.

  “And, as you have discovered, magic forced a degree of self-centeredness and overwhelming arrogance. The Queens believed implicitly that they had the right to rule because of their power over magic – indeed, that attitude explained why they were able to take and hold the power – and were unable to question that premise. The concept of empathy for lesser Faerie, far less life forms like humanity, meant nothing to them. It would have been a weakness and weakness meant certain death. The lesser Faerie are also supremely dependent upon the Queens and have therefore developed a code including the proper and acceptable way of overthrowing the government and to commit treason. If the Queen were to be disposed and not replaced quickly, the Mound would come apart at the seams.”

  He tapped the chessboard absently. “The Faerie, considering themselves the foremost race in all Creation, started to spread out into the multiverse,” he said, studying the chessboard thoughtfully. “They reached your world several thousand years ago and brought you the magic, and the terror. They regarded your people as insects – maybe not even that – and were quite willing to experiment on you for their own amusement. They created the werewolves, the vampires, and the centaurs – did you even think about how they breed? They didn’t evolve naturally.”

  I stared at him. It had been a question no one had been able to answer, until now. The centaurs were dependent on humanity – specifically, human females – to propagate. Biologically, it made little sense, as if the centaurs were an offshoot of humanity. If the Faerie had created them – and it was just the sort of sadistic concept that would appeal to some of the Faerie – it explained a great deal.

  “I see,” I said, coldly. “Why?”

  “Because it amused them, I suspect,” the Forsaken said. “They could learn nothing from you, certainly not the kind of knowledge that they were seeking. Eventually, their explorations led them into our universe.”

  He paused again. “You should know that there are universes where you would die in the moment you entered, because you are…incompatible,” he said. “The laws of that universe simply won’t allow you to exist. Our universe…the best way I can put it is to say that we are our universe; we exist as both individuals and a hive mind. We have no stars and planets, but merely energy; we simply do not have anything to fight over, or want, or need. The first Faerie intrusion into our universe cost them lives – we didn’t defend ourselves; they just couldn’t endure our universe – but they sensed our presence and believed that we were a threat. They are unable to endure or recognise the concept of anything more powerful than them.

  “They put together a weapon and attempted to attack our realm. The weapon was designed to…contaminate the fabric of our universe, causing us instant pain and shock. We had not felt pain or shock before. Indeed, we had sensed their first intrusion and believed that it was a mission of exploration. The concept of war and conquest, let alone genocide, meant nothing to us. We moved instantly to seal off the breach, expel the contamination, and that was when we discovered the Faerie. They were dying and so we absorbed them into our multiplicities. It was than that we discovered what they had intended.”

  “Hang on a minute,” I said, holding up a hand. “You didn’t have any concept of war?”

  “There was nothing for us to fight over,” the Forsaken said. “You humans fight over items that are in limited supply, merely because you want so much and have so little. We had everything we could ever want at our disposal, nor did we have your vast spectrum of desires. The concept of owning property was unknown to us. The other travellers we had met from the multiverse had been friendly. Why should we have expected a war?

  “The Faerie didn’t understand why they had failed, so they tried again,” he continued. “This time, we extended…fragments of ourselves back through their paths and into the space between universes, deflecting their attack before they could poison our universe completely. This time, we absorbed enough of their people to gain a link back to Faerie itself and had reluctantly decided to take over their universe. Unlike your kind, we are unable to wallow in self-delusion. There was no way to talk peace to them. It was the only way of preventing further attacks.

  “We extended further fragments into Faerie itself and started to absorb magical power. One of our…gifts is the ability to adapt quickly to another universe, although because of the nature of Faerie, our ability to control our environment and manifest fully in their world was weakened. Even so, they sensed our presence and attempted to strike back, to drive us out of their world. It failed. We were so…different that it was as if they were trying to fight shadows. Their heaviest weapons, including the one they gave you, just slid right past us. The Faerie who attempted to attack us directly were simply absorbed into us. They became part of us.”

  Another hesitation. “You can think of it, as you like, as taking control of the background of the universe,” the Forsaken said. “One of your magicians once likened magic to possessing the cheat codes in a computer game. The war wasn't over physical territory, but over control of the magic itself. Once we held the sources of magic, we could render the Faerie forever harmless. They wouldn’t be able to threaten us again.”

  I winced. “Tell me something,” I said. “What would have happened to the Faerie?”

  “We would have permitted them enough magic to live,” the Forsaken said, dispassionately. “They would not have been able to threaten us again.”

  “How long did this take?” I asked. I wanted some sense of time. “How long did it take you to beat them?”

  “Time means little to them, or us,” he said. “I couldn’t give you an accurate answer. Years, or seconds, or perhaps the war is still being fought, or perhaps it hasn’t started yet…the gradient of time in each universe is different, after all…

  “But in due course the Faerie understood the nature of the threat and came out to do battle, with nine of their Queens leading the struggle to regain control of their universe. They might have won the battle if they had worked together, but even admitting that they had equals, and superiors, was a dreadful weakness for them. Their ability to channel their power was blunted, their links to each other were frayed by mutual mistrust and incomprehension…the battle was lost and we spread onwards. It was at that point that one of their Kings, who had once been human, remembered your world and reopened the doors to Earth. The supernatural started to flood back to your planet and brought back the magic.

  “We didn’t realise that that was what they were doing at first, until it was almost too late. The war had settled down into the systematic conquest of Mound after Mound, trapping and absorbing the Queens to take their control of magic and hence the Mound, when we realised that some of the Mounds were vanishing. Our first thought was that they had collapsed under the contradictions embodied in their society, but when more Mounds vanished, we investigated and discovered the links to your world. One particular Mound – this one – was on the verge of crossing over to your world when we slipped a fragment inside, but it was too late to prevent the transition. As the Mound settled into your reality, the fragment – th
is fragment – killed and absorbed the Queen, then usurped control of the Mound. It found itself within your world, and dreadfully weakened. This world is not suitable for our life.”

  “The silent Mound in New York,” I realised. I peered into the darkness. Things were moving there, all the more disturbing for being only half-seen. I had the sense of great powers building up for the final confrontation, vast machines moving in the shadows, preparing for war. “That's where we are.”

  “Quite,” my grandfather said. “I remained here, building up my understanding of your world while planning to complete my mission, until I was woken by one of you, Vincent Faye. I extruded a fragment of a fragment of a fragment and sent it into him, bending him to my will. His mind was strong and threatened to break under the strain of my control, so I extended a second fragment into his daughter, who was a far more willing host. The fragment merged with her and directed her to act towards my end, creating the…bootstrap I could use to awaken the fragment and complete my mission.”

  I shivered again. “What is your mission?”

  My grandfather’s face smiled. “I am here to completely destroy the Faerie on this world,” he said. “I am unable to interact directly with the universal…operating system, so I shall be forced to use more…direct methods, including direct confrontation. I shall shortly be commencing the first stage of my mission.