by Jack Heckel
“Last time was—” I struggled to put into words that there was something bigger at stake. I never did find them “—it was different.”
“But you were here,” her voice creaked. In her eyes tears were gathering.
“I was here,” I said, and I wanted to look away, to not see the pain I was causing her, but I couldn’t.
“What did you do?” she hissed. “Because you weren’t there when my father died under the blood orcs’ swords, or when Drake’s village burned from their torches, or when the thousands perished at the walls of the Dark Lord’s fortress.”
I hadn’t even been in Trelari when the blood orcs had first arisen, but the guilt for all those that had died by my hand or command welled up in me. In a better person the guilt would have turned to remorse, but I’m not a better person. I’m just Avery. Instead, it turned to anger. I’d saved this world from breaking into shards of subether dust. Everyone would have died. Everything would have been extinguished. I saved everything, I wanted to shout. But I didn’t.
My jaw clenched in the effort to stop the outburst. “I am not all-powerful, Valdara,” I said, spitting out each word in my frustration. “By now you should know that.”
“What did you do!” she shouted, the tears now rolling down her cheeks.
“I made sure that you won!” I screamed back at her. “I made sure that when you faced the Dark Lord you had everything you needed to destroy him.”
At some point Drake had ridden up to join us. “Val,” he said, and, taking hold of Valdara’s arm, tried to draw her away.
She shook his hand off without taking her eyes from mine. “Are we supposed to thank you?”
“Did I ask you to?” I said, still screaming and shaking. “All I want, all I’ve ever wanted, is to defeat the Dark Queen and go home!”
“No matter the cost?” she asked, and her voice had regained its usual steel.
“Yes,” I admitted with a shudder of emotion.
Her eyes held mine, but despite the outward appearance of defiant strength, for the first time since I’d known her, I sensed a fragility in Valdara. Perhaps she also felt it, because she looked away as she said, “Then I wish you the best of luck in your quest, Magus Avery.”
She spurred her horse away from the road and off to the west across the open country. Drake looked after her and sighed. “Sorry, kid,” he said in that now familiar gravelly growl. “I would have followed you to the end, but my course lies with her.”
He extended his arm. I took it and we shook, and then he gave his horse a nudge and soon disappeared over the crest of a hill. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring after them, wondering what I might have done or said differently, but somehow I knew that this was just the inevitable end to choices I’d made long ago.
Sam broke my depressing reverie by asking, “Now what do we do?”
I turned back to the group. He had clearly spoken for everyone. They were all staring at me with varying levels of dismay and shock. I should have said something inspirational to rally the troops and all that. Again, that isn’t me.
“My plans have not changed,” I said wearily. “I am going after Justice Cleaver and then whatever’s after that until I can find and face the Dark Queen. Anyone that wishes to join me is welcome. I will understand if you don’t.”
Without another word, I urged my horse into a slow trot and, passing through the remaining company, continued along the road to the temple. Behind me, I heard Rook growl, “Remember the marchin’ order, people,” as the others fell into line.
Chapter 24
AND THEN IT DAWNED ON ME . . .
At the end of the day, we found ourselves traveling through a steep-walled pass that Seamus said would take us through the mountains and out onto a wasteland where we would find the tomb. He knew this, and I’m not making this up, because he’d bought a map in town entitled Jennifer’s Guide to Hamlet’s Top Ten Most Hideous Dungeons. When he told me this, I knew it was time to stop for the night.
Seamus’s guide raised many questions: Who was Jennifer? Had she personally adventured in all the dungeons around Hamlet so she could make such an authoritative guide? If she had, why had we not hired her to join us? All of these questions led to my real question: Why in the name of the gods was Trelari so bizarre? And the corollary to that question: Why had I never noticed how bizarre Trelari was? And the natural follow-up to that corollary: Had it only just become this bizarre? And the obvious extension to the natural follow-up to the corollary: Was I to blame for all the strange weirdness?
With so many questions flying around my head, I wasn’t able to fall asleep. I tossed and turned for an hour or so, and then decided if I was going to be awake anyway, I might as well do something useful. Despite the awful precedent it might set, I went out and relieved Luke from watch duty.
Sitting in the dark, staring at the vast emptiness of space, I thought about Eldrin. I pulled out my communication medallion and gave it a swipe. It had been close to a week since we’d spoken, but it might have been only a couple of hours of Mysterium time. I wanted to do the calculation, but with all the shifts that had occurred, I had no clue what to use as a conversion factor. Either he would answer or he wouldn’t.
“Avery?” It was Dawn.
“Hello, Dawn.”
“Hello, Avery,” she said with a yawn. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Let’s not start that again,” I said, and then thought about the potential significance of the time to Dawn’s presence with Eldrin. “But out of curiosity, what time is it?”
“Late or early,” she said, “depending on your perspective.”
“Is Eldrin there with you?” I asked suggestively.
“Yes. He’s asleep,” she answered, and then added sharply, “And before you ask, it’s none of your business.”
“Fair enough.”
She yawned again and made the kind of groaning sound you make when stretching. “I don’t mean to be rude, Avery, but I’m really tired. What do you need?”
I wanted to say that I just needed to talk to someone, but I didn’t know her well enough. Instead, I stuck to the facts. “I was checking in on your progress. I know you were looking into Vivian. Any news on that front?”
“Only that she’s not from around here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. It really was a meaningless statement. Almost everyone at The Mysterium University was from elsewhere.
“She’s not from Mysterium,” she began, and then added significantly, “or any of the innerworlds.”
“But that would mean . . .” I started.
“Yup, she’s a subworlder,” Dawn confirmed.
It was hard to believe. The Mysterium University has very strict rules about admission, and one of the primary requirements is that the person has to be from Mysterium itself or one of the thirteen innerworlds. And they don’t take your word for it. As part of the admission screening, they put you in a reality scale, which is a chamber that precisely measures the density of your reality. This sounds scientific, and it is, but it isn’t enlightenment scientific; it’s more medieval scientific, because if your reality isn’t dense enough the measurement can be fatal.
This all raced through my mind before I gasped out, “That’s impossible.”
“Funny,” she said with a giggle. “That’s what Eldrin said also. I’ve always thought that someone clever might manage it. Of course, the morality of keeping people out of Mysterium just because they are from more remote worlds and therefore theoretically less ‘real,’ whatever that means, is highly questionable. Professor Piers in the Department of Magical Ethics has written a fantastic monograph on the subject . . .”
I groaned. “I thought you wanted to go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” she said sullenly. “No ethics lectures.”
“I don’t know what to do about Vivian being from a subworld,” I admitted.
“Neither do we. For now we are ignoring the fact.”
; Trying to move away from this disturbing revelation, I asked, “Well, are you two any closer to tracking down Death Slasher?”
“We are,” she answered. “In fact, we know exactly where it is.”
“What?” I jumped to my feet and started pacing. “That’s great news! How?”
“Oh,” she drawled lazily. “Eldrin came up with a very clever scrying spell that can detect the peculiar magical emanations of the battle-axe by—”
“You can skip the technical details,” I said, cutting her off.
“Thank the gods,” she said with a relieved sigh. “I would have been making most of it up anyway.”
“So when will you get it?” I asked, thrilled by the idea that at least their half of the plan was going according to, well, plan.
“Well, that could be tricky,” she said cautiously.
“Why?”
“A professor has it,” she answered, and then added, without preparing me at all, the part she should have told me as soon as we started talking, “Your professor.”
“What, Griswald has . . . has . . .” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence.
“It appears so,” she said, and then added, “Sorry.”
I found myself sitting on the ground and wasn’t sure how or when I got there. Griswald had the battle-ax? What did it mean? What could it mean? Like everything else it made no sense. I sat there alone with my thoughts until I remembered that I wasn’t alone, not really, and that Dawn was still talking to me.
“. . . Eldrin says not to worry about it, Avery. He has a plan,” she said in a voice I think was meant to be calming, but that I knew it was meant to be calming only made me more nervous.
Of course he did, I thought.
“He’s very clever,” she said.
Of course he is, I thought.
“Do you know he managed to do something to the main scrying scope at the subworld observatory so that it can’t scan your sector of subspace? Don’t ask me to explain—it was all a lot of gibberish. And there’s the spell he used to sneak into the faculty lounge. Did he tell you about that? Well . . .”
She talked on and on about Eldrin, and there was a pride in the way she talked about him that confirmed more than the time of night or day that I should think of Eldrin and Dawn as Eldrin & Dawn, and not Eldrin . . . and . . . Dawn. This led me to something else I’d been considering from the first moment Eldrin had put Dawn on so many weeks ago. I realized that now was the time to stop considering and start doing. Too much was happening back in Mysterium that could turn bad for the two of them. Griswald had Death Slasher, which meant my deception was almost certainly known to him, and if even one of the things Dawn had described them doing was traced back to either one of them . . . It didn’t bear thinking on, and my academic career wasn’t worth it.
“Dawn?” I said. interrupting the very detailed description she was giving me about how Eldrin had managed to transport her into the filing room of the notoriously well-protected Records Department undetected.
“Yes, Avery?” she replied, clearly annoyed at my interruption.
“I . . . I know you don’t owe me anything,” I began hesitantly, “but can I ask you to do me a favor?”
“Depends,” she answered suspiciously, which was fair enough.
I paused briefly, and then said in a rush of words, “If you think Eldrin and you are in danger I want you to go to your advisor or Griswald or Mysterium security or whoever you feel comfortable going to, and turn me in. It’s the only way to be sure that the two of you and Vivian come out of this safely.”
“What? Why me?” she asked.
“I can’t ask Eldrin, because he won’t, but you don’t know me, and have no reason to like me or lie for me,” I answered bluntly.
“I don’t know—” she began.
I cut her off. “Dawn, we both know that Trelari—”
“Where?” she asked.
“The subworld I’m on,” I snapped, and then inhaled deeply to calm my uncalled for irritation at her question. “The point I’m trying to make is that if Eldrin’s calculations are correct, and it is always a bad idea to bet against Eldrin’s calculations, this world is moving closer to Mysterium. That means that reality here is going to get stronger and stronger, which means that I am going to get proportionately weaker and weaker.” I took in another breath and let it out in a stuttering hiss. “I . . . I am not sure I’m in control of the situation anymore, and I will be progressively less and less in control as things move along.”
What I didn’t say was that this had been happening for some time. The drink at the Badger should never have affected me so much. Conjuring the gold in Hamlet should have been a snap, and not something that nearly made me pass out. In the mines I should have been able to lift Barth’s body with ease. At some point, I was going to become a liability to the group.
“I understand that,” she said. “What I don’t understand is why you don’t come back now and turn yourself in.”
I had been hoping to avoid this question, because I knew that returning to Mysterium is exactly what I should have done almost as soon as I got to Trelari. One doesn’t travel through a world as long as I have and not know the feeling when things aren’t right, and things with me hadn’t been right here from day one. I felt weaker than I ever had before and I had lost the sort of detachment a magi needed to make clear-headed decisions. But having lost my ability to remain aloof I also couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if I did go back—to me, but more importantly to Valdara and Drake and the others.
All I said to Dawn was, “I can’t.”
“You mean the return spell won’t work?”
“No,” I said in a voice that was almost a whisper, “I mean I can’t bring myself to do it. I know what returning will mean for Trelari, and I can’t. That’s why I need your help. Please promise me you will do this, and that you won’t tell Eldrin.”
She paused before saying, “I promise.”
I knew I had her, because she was a student of magical ethics, and that meant that she had to be ethical. Her word was her bond. It was only much later that I learned that studying ethics and being ethical are two totally different things.
Chapter 25
THE TOMB OF TERRORS
By this point in my chronicle, I would hope that you, the reader, would see the manifest and many reasons why I would make a terrible leader. Well, add to those the fact that I had grown increasingly impatient to get to Vivian, while at the same time becoming increasingly more pessimistic about our chances to take her down when we got there, and that I had become even more sullen and ill-mannered as a result, and I think you will begin to see why three days into the journey I stopped speaking altogether. This forced Rook to take command. When you also hear that he did this without any complaint and that everyone accepted the new situation without protest, you will have the full picture of why I was so out of sorts.
Almost.
There was one more reason that I was in such a pensive and foul mood: there were Hooded Riders following us. (Yes, I know I capitalized Hooded Riders even though a few chapters ago I derided the fact that everyone was so afraid of riders simply because they wore hoods. What can I tell you? I’m a fickle storyteller.) My opinion changed the moment I saw one of them.
It happened at the end of another long day. The road we’d been following was climbing through a series of sharply rolling hills that lay in a low point in the mountains. As we crested a particularly burdensome rise, I happened to look back. Atop a far distant ridge, silhouetted against the evening sky, was the dark, distorted shape of a Hooded Rider. I only saw it for a moment and then it was gone. When I told the rest of the company about it they chalked it up to a trick of the light, but that one glance put a fear in me that I couldn’t shake. From that day on I felt that there were always eyes at my back, and I kept imagining the sound of hoofbeats coming along the trail behind us. I was seriously creeping everyone out.
I think in this one inst
ance I would have been happier if I had been going crazy—gods know I had my reasons to go crazy. Unfortunately, three days later, as we were breaking camp, we saw “it” again and another “it” for good measure. They were sitting motionless atop their horses several leagues away. At a distance they looked like little more than shadowy fingers—an unfortunate bit of imagery that I shared with the rest of the company, and which made everyone jumpy.
This explained why seven days out of Hamlet I found myself crouching next to Rook behind a pile of rocks, staring at a rather nondescript pile of earth that rose out of the blasted wasteland of a valley to which the road had led us. The mound was no more than half a mile from where we sat. By all rights it should have taken fifteen minutes at most to get there even on foot, but deciding on how we were going to get across the waste had already consumed three hours.
“There it is,” said Rook, stroking his beard.
That was the third time he’d said it. I was beginning to suspect that he wanted me to say something back. I decided to humor him. “Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“Well, what’s the plan?” he asked, still staring at the low mound and still stroking his beard.
“I guess we go out to it?” I said, but made it a question because it seemed too obvious.
“We could do that,” he said doubtfully. “But we’ll be exposed out there.”
At this point Seamus popped out of nowhere and said, “Sitting ducks for the Hooded Riders!”
I jumped with fright and my heart followed suit, skittering a bit before settling back into a chest-pounding rhythm. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, Seamus!” I shouted.
“Quiet, laddie,” Rook cautioned with a stern bristle of his brow. “You keep makin’ noise like that and it’ll be the riders that sneak up on us. It’s like a game of chess with these mysterious Hooded Rider types. Cool heads and clear thinkin’, that’s what’ll win the day.” Had I mentioned that everyone was really nervy?
