by Jack Heckel
We explored the great room briefly, but only far enough to confirm that no stray orcs or goblins remained in the shadows. At last we were able to regroup and make sure that everyone was okay. Most of the company huddled together and compared notes on the storm and what they’d witnessed during our flight to safety. Valdara took her horse to a deep corner of the chamber and tied it to a pillar there. She stayed with it for some time, stroking its ears and whispering to it. I found myself wandering through vastness of the chamber in a fog of terrible déjà vu.
The design of this hall, and in fact the entire fortress, was almost an exact duplicate of the Dark Lord’s fortress, my old home. I recalled that I used to have a standing army of skeletons lined up between the arches in this room, and that it would have been through that large archway that my army would have marched out to meet Valdara and the Army of Light. My hand started shaking violently and I leaned against one of the pillars for support.
I was still focusing on not passing out when there was a popping in my ears. Eldrin was calling! Maybe he’d managed to find Death Slasher. If he had, then maybe I would get out of this mess, with all the Company of the Fellowship, Vivian, and Trelari intact.
I touched my medallion. “Eldrin? Please tell me you have Death Slasher. We’re in Vivian’s fortress, but reality is going to hell around us. Don’t geek out at me too much, but we were literally transported here in a T.O.R.G. storm. I’m betting it’s all because of these damned battle-axes. You were right from the start. I should never have made that thing.”
“Avery Stewart?” The voice didn’t belong to Eldrin. It belonged to Griswald. I suddenly hoped another storm would strike.
“P-Professor Griswald? What a surprise!”
“Don’t even start, Mr. Stewart!” he roared. “You may be a brilliant student, but I should flunk you back to freshman year for the stunt you’ve tried to pull. It’s one thing to not shut down your experiment correctly. Every subworld adept student has tried it at one time or another, but having Eldrin try to break into my office? What the hell were you thinking?”
“This is all my fault, Professor. Please don’t blame him,” I urged, suddenly far more worried about the trouble I may have gotten Eldrin into than the fact that I was about to confront a Mysterium magus with a reality key.
“Funny,” Griswald barked. “He said the same thing.”
Not for the first or last time, I thanked the gods for giving me such a cool friend.
“So,” he drawled. “Are you going to explain why you’re worried about battle-axes, why you’ve been studying tornadic omnidimensional rotating gyres, which are way outside of the purview of your research project, and why I found your friend ransacking my chamber?”
I knew that there was no way I had the time or wit to answer any of those questions. “It’s complicated,” I said lamely.
“Would it be helpful if I told you that it is way more complicated than you know?” he asked, with none of his usual growl or grumble.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not sure where this was going, but happy he’d stopped yelling at me.
“It would seem . . .” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “. . . that I may be partly responsible for Vivian being in your subworld.”
I am not sure what I expected him to say, but I know it wasn’t this. I lost all ability to think for at least a minute. “Avery, are you still there?” I heard Griswald ask for what I realized was the third time.
“What . . . what do you mean, you’re responsible?” I asked in a voice at least two octaves higher than normal.
“She and I are part of an organization, and she may have gotten it into her head to use your experiment to further our goals,” he said evasively.
I asked, “What kind of organization?”
“I can’t tell you everything, Stewart,” he said, reverting back to his grumbly professorial voice, “but there is more at stake in your world than just your dissertation. There is a group of professors and students here at the university that have been secretly fighting for years to win rights for subworlds: self-determination, free travel, freedom from interference, and so on. We have been stymied time and time again. One of our members in Vivian’s program had a vision that the completion of your experiment represented an opportunity to fundamentally shift the balance of power between Mysterium and the other worlds, and that getting the reality key and sending a magus into your world was the initiating event.”
“You set me up?” I asked, both angry and amazed.
“No,” he drawled. “We thought it was too dangerous, but Vivian is young, and she must have decided to go on her own. I’m not sure. Absent your roommate’s ill-advised attempt to turn burglar I never would have known what she or you had been up to.”
I didn’t want to believe him. “How could she know that my experiment ended early?”
“Regrettably, I may have let it slip,” he said, and I knew it was the closest thing to an apology I was going to get.
“How did you know?”
“Stewart,” he said sternly. “I’m a professor. I’ve dealt with hundreds of students in my day. I’ll tell you a secret. We always know. Sometimes we choose to look the other way, but we always know.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling far less clever.
“The big surprise for me is that you decided to try and deal with this problem yourself. I thought you were just playing truant. Had I known what Vivian had done, had you confided in me, I might have been able to help. Instead, you’ve managed to get you and your friend into deep trouble.”
“Deeper than you know,” I confessed.
It was his turn to say, “What do you mean?”
“Trelari, this world, is moving toward Mysterium,” I said simply, and let the full import of that statement sink in.
The “What!” that followed was deeply satisfying. He followed that up with an explosive “That’s impossible!”
“Not really,” I explained. “Eldrin can do the subject more justice, but effectively I’ve recreated the Palantir Effect. It has to do with the kernel to my reality stabilizing pattern. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t make it work purely with subworld reality . . .”
This next bit was likely going to get me expelled, but as he’d said I was in deep anyway.
“. . . so I made the kernel using a combination of Mysterium reality and subworld reality. That kernel is a battle-axe called Death Slasher that I brought back with me to Mysterium when I returned, and that Vivian stole from me and must have slipped it into your things at some point. Somehow the battle-axe is serving as a Palantir and is drawing this world toward Mysterium. I’m afraid Vivian is in real danger.”
“You both are!” he barked.
“Sorry, Professor,” I said, and I truly was.
“Quiet, Stewart! I need to think.”
He muttered to himself for a while.
“Professor?” I urged as gently as I could.
“It sounds to me,” he lectured, “that you have woven yourself too tightly into the fabric of that world. I warn students every year that simply because a reality key can do something doesn’t mean that doing it won’t have consequences. What was the primary solution to your catastrophe equation?”
“The Dark Lord needed to be destroyed,” I answered quickly.
“What is the first law of Tolkienian physics?”
“An artifact with the essence of an evil being will maintain the evil of that being unless destroyed.”
“Which means?”
“The artifact and the Dark Lord are insuperably tied to each other.”
It was like I was sitting in his office while he puffed on a pipe behind his desk and peppered me with questions. And he had fallen into the familiar pattern too. “Precisely,” he said proudly. “But you ripped the artifact out of reality. It’s like an open wound. This whole time the world has been trying to replace it and you.”
Eldrin and I had sorted out the first part of Griswald’s conclusion, but my eyes op
ened wide as I understood the significance of what he was saying about me. “So, when Vivian came with the reality key, it reactivated everything from the reality pattern, recreating Death Slasher by forging Justice Cleaver, and using her to fill the gap for me?”
“Yes,” he grunted. “It seems that Vivian may have gotten more than she bargained for when she took your place. I bet she’s had a hell of a time trying to maintain control of the situation.”
It made sense, but one oddity immediately struck me. “If the spell was trying to duplicate the two of us, why is Justice Cleaver good?”
In response he asked, “What should the result of your experiment have been?”
“Peace and stability,” I mumbled bitterly.
He thought about this for a second and then said, “Sounds like your subworld wants to reach that endpoint. In Tolkienian terms, it must destroy the last piece of the Dark Lord, and has formed a weapon to do that. Now it is moving itself toward Mysterium so a final battle can be waged. The only way to prevent a collision of realities is to get both artifacts back into your subworld.”
It fit with Eldrin’s ideas, but I couldn’t help feeling that there was a piece to this we were all missing. I started to ask him another question when a ringing boom reverberated through the keep. Something was hammering at the gates.
“Can you throw it back through the portal?” I asked.
“I could, but with the subworld moving as it is I don’t know where it would end up, or what condition it would be in when it got there,” said Griswald. “It’s a puzzler. I think a casting involving a multiworld ritual could work. It is brutally complicated, but if we triangulate the combined powers of three circles of nine magi, each spread across three equal points around the . . .”
Another shock ran through the floor as the battering continued. I heard footsteps coming rapidly toward me. I had to go. “I think I’ve got this, Professor,” I lied and then compounded that lie with another absurdity. “Don’t worry.”
“Wait, what?” he started to ask.
I broke the connection and spun about to find Valdara watching me. My heart froze. How long had she been standing there, and what had she heard? A sickening feeling of guilt more dreadful than I’d ever felt in the storm vortex roiled my stomach. Under the force of her gaze I had an urge to tell her the truth. That had been my promise: no more lies. What a joke, when the biggest lie remained. Still, my tongue clove to the roof of my mouth.
Her eyes narrowed, but she asked no questions. Finally, when I said nothing, she turned her back on me and returned to the rest of the group. She made no pause but, sword in hand, proceeded up a massive set of stairs toward a pair of arched double doors on the opposite end of the great chamber. Without a word, we followed.
Maybe she didn’t have to know, I told myself. Maybe none of them had to know. What I did know was that this wasn’t the time or place. Frankly, I wasn’t sure that there would ever be a good time or place.
“Fear is for the weak,” Justice Cleaver said, as if he could read my mind.
With that, we opened the doors and peered inside to find an elaborately vaulted entrance hall of black marble and high columns. It was identical to the one I’d had, but what really drew my attention was the rank upon rank of armored hobgoblins arrayed down the center of the hall. I had always stationed terror trolls here myself.
The front ranks of hobgoblins parted and a large reptilian figure in a black cloak and matching scaled armor stepped forward. It was General Cravock. He had clearly come up in the world and was now an imposing figure and not the cowering snake I’d recalled.
He ran his eyes up and down our group. “Lady Valdara and Ssst. Drake, ssso niccce to sssee you after ssso long. I know that you wisssh an audience with the Dark Queen, but unfortunately ssshe isss indissspossed” he hissed. “Perhapsss my men and I can entertain you until ssshe is free.”
His forked tongue darted out at his little joke and he began to laugh sibilantly. Then he froze and, turning his pointed head, regarded me. More deliberately he extended his forked tongue, tasting the air. His yellow eyes grew wide, and he started twitching. I realized that he was shaking with fear.
“You.” He pointed a clawed finger at me. “I have not tasssted your ssscent in a long time. Asss you can sssee thingsss have changed.”
Damn lizards. He knew exactly who I was. My appearance may have changed, but my scent had not. The only way I was going to get through this was to be the Dark Lord. I made myself as tall as I could, fixed my gaze on him, and used the voice I had practiced for so long. “Take me to the Dark Queen. Now, General Cravock!”
He thought about it, hissing and sputtering to himself. I raised Justice Cleaver and let the reflection from its blade strike his eyes. That was too much for him. He nearly squealed in terror, and bent his body over almost in half. Suddenly, he was my Cravock again. I winced as I realized that the pathetic subservience I had remembered had been as much a performance as was the commanding general he was playing at now.
He turned back to his soldiers and commanded, “We take him and hisss companionsss to her now. No quessstionsss if you value your soulsss.”
The army of hobgoblins seemed shocked, but General Cravock was undeniably their leader. The army parted down the middle, forming a passage to another even more ornate door at the far end of the hall. No one moved and I stepped forward. Cravock’s gaze fell on me again. I nodded my approval, even as I felt the eyes of my group on my back.
“No lies?” whispered Valdara from right behind my right ear.
“It is the only way,” I said softly in response. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know whether I was apologizing for the danger I’d led her into, or the lies, or the pain I knew the inevitable truth was going to cause, or all of them. I was past certainties.
“It’s just like I remember,” mused Drake on my other side. “Except now we have an escort.”
General Cravock led us through the ornate door and then stepped aside. We were in the innermost chamber of the fortress. Before us stood a throne of skulls—my throne of skulls—and on the throne sat Vivian. She was clad in a long black gown with a crown of spiked black iron atop her head. In her hand she held a long elegant staff of iron that was cleverly shaped to look like the braided tendrils of a rosebush. She had foregone make-up, which I wished I had done as the stuff used to make me break out in the worst way. Still, the contrast between the black dress and her pale skin and corn-silk hair was stunning. She looked every inch the Dark Queen.
“Vivian . . .” I began, but she interrupted me.
“Welcome, Avery,” she said in a voice that was more commanding than I remembered. She rose elegantly, almost sensuously, and extended a hand in greeting. “I was wondering when you would finally get here. I’ve been having simply the worst time trying to figure out all this Dark Queen nonsense. Now that you’re here, Dark Lord, you can help me.”
My heart stopped beating.
Chapter 30
THE DARK QUEEN
“Oh, I’m sorry, Avery,” Vivian said, placing a theatrically dainty hand in front of her lips. “Had you not told them that you are the Dark Lord?”
Is she insane? was my first thought. My second thought is unprintable. My third thought was She must have a plan.
Whatever her game, I could not believe that the woman I knew, okay, the woman I had met, the woman Griswald had confided in, would purposefully expose me as the Dark Lord for no reason. Perhaps she was being threatened or held captive. The way she was lounging so languidly on the throne seemed to belie the idea that she felt unsafe, but perhaps she was a drama double-major. She had certainly fooled me back in Mysterium. The only course was to go along with her and see where it led.
“I had not,” I said stiffly.
“Well, I always think it’s important to get these little things—” she raised a pale hand and wiggled her fingers at my companions “—out of the way. Don’t you?”
“No!” Luke shouted. “That’s not true
! It’s impossible.”
She laughed and it had some of the warmth that I remembered, but was tinged with something else. Something like madness. A chill ran over my body as I realized that I might be dealing with a crazy person.
“It’s true,” tittered Vivian. “He was the Dark Lord. Isn’t it marvelous?”
“Say she’s lying, Avery,” Luke said with a gasp.
I didn’t have the words to say anything so I stayed silent, and searched her face for some sign of sanity. Didn’t she understand the danger she was putting me in? Didn’t she see the pain she was causing my companions? Was this all a joke to her? Anger welled up inside of me. Well, anger may not be a strong enough word. Rage, blinding rage, filled me as I began to suspect that it would not be me rescuing Vivian from a situation that had spun out of her control, but me trying to keep Vivian from destroying everything I’d worked so hard to create.
A rumble of thunder echoed through the fortress. The storm was building again. There was no time for this. I had to get the key. I had to summon Death Slasher.
“Enough!” I shouted, which only made her laugh all the more.
Beside me my companions finally seemed to understand what I was confessing. I turned my back on Vivian and faced them. I saw a kaleidoscope of emotions from confusion to disbelief to anger. Only Drake and Rook could I not get a read on. Drake because he wore the same bored expression he’d had since I met him in the sty in Blightsbury, and Rook because he was looking down at his boots, muttering and shaking his head. But it was the disappointment in Valdara’s eyes that hurt the most.
“Why?”
She only said the one word. It felt more like a command than a question. Maybe she thought this was part of my plan and that I was pretending to be the Dark Lord to deceive Vivian. Maybe she knew I was the Dark Lord but wanted to hear me say it before she cut me to ribbons.
I started to say something and stopped. No lies. I owed her that. I worked up just enough courage to look her in the eye and told her the truth. “Good intentions.”
