The Reign of the Brown Magician

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Some castles, of course, had belonged to wizards; to the unassisted eye those were built in more or less random locations and were all no more than ruins—some, in fact, more nearly resembled craters than castles. Through the matrix, however, Pel could see that these locations weren’t random at all, but carefully sited on the natural magical currents of earth and sky, currents that were now all diverted into the matrix itself, leaving shadowy ghosts of themselves in an odd sort of double image.

  Other castles, the more intact ones, tended to be built on commanding hilltops or bends in rivers—defensible positions, in short, and ones that could control a respectable territory. Those, Pel assumed, had belonged to the mundane nobility.

  Pel suspected that virtually all of the places of power had been occupied by matrix magicians at one time or another, before Shadow consolidated all the matrices into one—certainly, every one he could see as he blew across the landscape seemed to have a ruin on it.

  The matrix griped about leaving Shadow’s fortress because that was where it had been centered for so long, but if another matrix magician had won out, it might just as well have been centered in one of the dozen or so other spots he passed—or in the hundreds or thousands of others he knew lay beyond the horizon. He couldn’t see those, but he could sense them through the matrix.

  If Pel wanted a castle other than the fortress, one where the matrix would be comfortable, he supposed he could rebuild Regisvert or one of the others. If he needed to relocate, closer to the space-warp, that might be a good idea; the matrix would shift itself to fit the new location, and the present discomfort would pass.

  Or he could erect himself a new fortress out in Sunderland, if he chose, but there was little natural magic there; it wouldn’t be as suitable as a power spot, and the matrix might never accommodate itself properly.

  And it shouldn’t be necessary, anyway—he should have the bodies as soon as the Empire could take care of the paperwork, and then he’d be able to take them anywhere, back to the fortress or anywhere he wanted.

  The Low Forest was a dark green line on the horizon before him, and the overgrown ruin ahead and to the left, where the power flowed strongly just beneath the ground, was surely the ruins of Castle Regisvert. Pel adjusted his course, and blew onward.

  * * * *

  Spaceman Thomas Sawyer looked up from the pigpen and saw the glowing, seething mass of color and light tear across the sky to the south, moving eastward. The flickering lit the mud and the hogs in quick flashes of color, like a fireworks display.

  “What the hell is that?” he asked no one in particular.

  It had to be magic, of course. They didn’t have fireworks here in Faerie, did they?

  It had to be magic. So even if Shadow was really dead, there was still magic running loose, and it didn’t look like just the stuff people like Taillefer and Valadrakul did.

  Sawyer had no intention of getting involved in anything like that. It looked like he’d be staying down on the farm for awhile yet.

  * * * *

  Lieutenant Sebastian Warner checked the seals on his space suit one final time, then cycled the airlock. He waited patiently while the pressure decreased, and when the signal light came on he undogged the outer door and stepped out into the vacuum of space.

  Huge machinery surrounded him, but he closed his eyes and ignored it as he proceeded carefully toward the space-warp, moving hand-over-hand along the rope ladder. Even with his eyes tightly shut the glare was painfully bright, forcing him to work entirely by feel.

  This wasn’t his first trip through, though; he was an old hand now, and could find his way easily. He had already made almost two dozen quick trips to see how things stood on the other side, and whether anyone interesting was in the area around the base of the ladder.

  This time the job description was slightly different—he was supposed to prepare the site for an Imperial envoy, whatever that meant. As far as he was concerned, it was more of the same, and just as dull as ever.

  He’d missed the assignment when Spaceman Wilkins was picked up; dull as that was, it had been about the most exciting job anyone had had here since Warner was given his current duty. James and Butler had got that one, had met Wilkins and brought him up the ladder; Warner had never encountered anyone on the other side.

  Warner had hopes of spotting something interesting eventually. Even just one of the primitives finding the ladder while out hunting would do.

  If nothing else, it would give Warner a chance to see whether the stories were true, and blasters really didn’t work on the other side; he hadn’t wanted to test the theory without a valid reason, in case one of those damned spying mutants reported it.

  He’d spent the first twenty years of his life without ever being on the same planet as a telepath, but lately it seemed as if he couldn’t get away from the bloody freaks.

  He was through the warp; he could tell because the gravity had shifted, the ladder now led down instead of forward, and because the intense glare of the warp had faded. Without thinking, he had gotten his feet securely onto a rung.

  He opened his eyes on bright, cool sunlight and saw the green roof of the forest spread out below him, and began climbing down toward it.

  He was just passing the highest branches when a bright flicker of movement attracted his attention. He turned his head, expecting to see a wild bird or other flying creature of some kind, hoping it wasn’t even the most distant cousin of that dead giant bat-thing that lay in the clearing below.

  Instead he saw, miles away but approaching rapidly, a thing like a cloud of polychrome light.

  He froze, clinging to the ladder, and stared. He’d wished for something interesting, but this was a little more than he’d had in mind.

  And it was coming closer fast, at least as fast as an aircar at cruising speed.

  He shouldn’t stay here, exposed, he realized. He should either climb back up and give the alarm, or he should get down to the ground, take shelter, and watch, maybe wait until it had passed and then get the hell back to Base One.

  He had no idea what the thing was—some weird natural phenomenon peculiar to this strange world? Some sort of creature? A weapon, sent by the so-called Brown Magician, or maybe Shadow? They said Shadow was dead; he wasn’t convinced. Maybe Shadow and the Magician were still fighting this out, and the thing coming toward him was involved in that.

  Whatever it was, he had to move.

  He looked up, at those long yards of ladder exposed in the open air, then down at the shelter of the trees, and he began descending as rapidly and silently as he could.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Pel frowned as he looked down at the trees beneath. He remembered, a little belatedly, how Taillefer had landed at Regisvert, tumbling out of the sky onto half a dozen waiting helpers.

  Pel didn’t have any helpers. And tumbling down through the forest canopy looked scratchy.

  On the other hand, he had access to more power than Taillefer could ever imagine.

  But Taillefer was more experienced and skilled at using his power, and this particular area was one where there were no strong natural currents of magic, so that the matrix was relatively weak.

  Relatively weak, but still vastly stronger than anything Taillefer could do. And even here, Valadrakul had been able to blast Shadow’s creatures.

  The power to do any sort of landing he wanted was unquestionably there, but Pel had to admit that he didn’t really know how to land, other than to simply let himself fall. And here in the forest, that might mean breaking a leg or putting his eye out on a broken branch.

  He supposed he could use the matrix to protect himself from damage; Shadow had certainly taken her personal invulnerability for granted, and with good reason. It might well be that the matrix would protect him even if he did nothing consciously at all.

  His instincts rebelled at the idea, though. Letting himself drop into the trees…

  He couldn’t do it. At least, not from this height.

>   Maybe, if he lowered himself gradually…

  He looked ahead, trying to judge distances, and spotted something strange, ahead and to the left. Something was sticking up out of the forest.

  He had glimpsed it before, from a distance, and had taken it for an odd branch, or a dead trunk, but now he saw he had badly misjudged its size and distance.

  He turned and steered for it.

  It rose straight up out of the forest, straighter than anything that could naturally be there, taller and thinner than anything natural, and swaying slightly in the wind. Pel couldn’t see the top. He could see above where it stopped, but somehow he couldn’t see the exact point at which it ended; there was a blind spot.

  And the matrix was kinked out of shape there, he realized.

  This was the space-warp. This is what he had intended to be aiming for all along, but he’d gotten so involved in the mechanics of flying, and the view of the landscape, that he had lost track of it.

  Well, there it was.

  He hadn’t really expected anything visible, but there it was.

  He hadn’t bothered to ask Best or his companions how they got through the warp, but now he saw. That thing was a ladder, a rope ladder that reached from a space-warp about five hundred feet up to down in the forest somewhere. It was swinging in gentle curves, swaying back and forth in a shallow sine wave.

  That would be an uncomfortably long climb and a dizzy, seasick one, but obviously the Imperial spies had managed it.

  And Pel could, too. He wasn’t about to go up through the warp—he’d lose control of the matrix if he left Faerie for even a second—but he could grab the ladder and climb down to the ground.

  That, at least, was the theory; steering himself through the air at perhaps forty miles an hour and boarding a stationary rope ladder turned out to be much more difficult than he had expected. Instead he smacked into it and then slid on past before he could grab hold, sending the ladder into violent, twisting oscillations and drawing a nasty rope-burn across his right cheek.

  He made a wide loop, rubbing his injured face and muttering obscenities, then came back for another pass, dropping so much speed that he began losing altitude rapidly.

  He hit the ladder hard, and barely managed to clamp his hands onto a rung about three steps lower than he intended. His arms jarred with the impact, and he wondered if he had injured his shoulder, but he kept his grip.

  * * * *

  Sebastian Warner stared up at the glowing, seething thing that hung in the sky above him.

  It had struck the ladder and then passed on through, and Warner had seen the ladder still there and thought he was safe, but then it had looped around and hit the ladder again, and this time it stayed there.

  It looked as if the ladder was being consumed by some sort of eldritch energy cloud. Since no severed end came tumbling to the ground, Warner assumed that it was not actually being consumed, but he was still cut off from the space-warp. He wasn’t about to try climbing through that.

  In fact, he was hurrying to get off the ladder and away, behind a tree, where the thing might not spot him—assuming it could see.

  Once there, he turned and watched for a moment. If he hadn’t still been suited up, he’d have drawn his blaster and found out once and for all whether the things really didn’t work here.

  And he’d wished for something interesting to happen. He should have known better. This was something interesting, all right, and it looked like very bad news indeed.

  Of course, it could get worse—and as he watched, it did get worse.

  The thing started moving downward along the ladder.

  * * * *

  Pel’s shoulder ached, and his back felt oddly scraped and raw from the now-vanished wind pressure, and the thick, damp, hot air above the forest made his skin itch and his head hurt, but at least he’d finally gotten both hands and both feet onto the ladder.

  He began descending, carefully. The ladder swayed more than he would have liked, so he moved slowly.

  As he neared the treetops he noticed the light and color of the matrix flitting across the leaves, and decided he didn’t like that. It might attract unwanted attention, and besides, it made it harder for him to see whatever there might be to see around here. Shadow had apparently been able to use the matrix to enhance her senses as a regular, permanent thing, but Pel’s mastery of it wasn’t anywhere near that complete; it took an effort of will to sense anything through the matrix unless whatever he was sensing was somehow part of the matrix.

  The space-warp was a part of the matrix, in a way; any attempt to use magic was, as well. Fetches and homunculi and the rest of Shadow’s servants and creatures qualified, as well, and showed up without any special effort on his part.

  Trees, however, didn’t.

  That was mildly interesting, actually; Pel had always thought of trees as rather magical things. Certainly they were magical in most of the fantasy stories he’d read.

  Maybe some were magical, but the Low Forest wasn’t, or at least the matrix didn’t register anything special there, and the energy currents were weak. And Pel’s eyes were having some trouble seeing through the magical haze.

  He suppressed it, forcing the magical radiation out of the visible spectrum, and then continued climbing.

  * * * *

  The instant it had started downward, Warner had taken off his space helmet and begun opening his suit. He had dragged out his blaster, pointed it, and pressed the trigger.

  They were right; nothing happened. It didn’t so much as buzz.

  He shoved it back in the holster, and was debating whether to turn and run when the cloud-thing vanished, revealing a rather battered-looking man climbing slowly downward.

  Was that the notorious Brown Magician, perhaps? Or one of his representatives?

  He didn’t look like much of a threat.

  Warner backed off a few paces and found himself a hiding place in the underbrush; then he waited to see what the new arrival was up to.

  * * * *

  Pel was about ten feet up when he spotted the man in the space suit. He smiled, and dropped to the ground, skipping the last few rungs. “Hey, you!” he called, the matrix amplifying his voice.

  The man froze.

  “Come on out where I can see you!” Pel beckoned.

  The man hesitated, then stepped out of the concealing foliage. He had a bubble helmet under one arm, and his free hand was on the butt of a blaster that protruded through an open seam in his vacuum armor.

  “The raygun won’t work here,” Pel told him. “You can try it if you want.”

  The man’s hand dropped away from the useless weapon.

  “I’m Pel Brown,” Pel said. “I run this place. Who’re you?”

  “Lieutenant Sebastian Warner, Imperial Fleet,” the stranger replied.

  “Good!” Pel said, smiling. This was just what he had hoped—and, from the instant he first saw Warner, expected; nobody but the Galactic Empire would have sent someone here in a purple space suit. “You’re holding down the fort for your people, I take it?”

  Warner blinked. “I’m sorry, I…”

  “I mean, they left you in charge here? Or is there a whole installation in the next clearing? Maybe you’re using the Christopher as your headquarters. If you’re not in charge, can you take me to whoever is?”

  “It’s just…listen, whoever you are, I don’t have to answer any questions!”

  Pel abruptly dropped the suppression, and the matrix flared up around them both in red and orange swirls. “No,” he said, “you don’t have to answer any questions—but you might want to. My name’s Pel Brown, as I said, but I’m better known here as Pelbrun, the Brown Magician.”

  Warner made a wordless noise and stared in horror at the surrounding colors.

  “Now, I don’t see anyone else here, so unless you tell me otherwise I’m going to assume you’re it—in which case, Lieutenant Warner, I do have one question to ask you, and if you don’t answer it, you’r
e toast.” Pel stopped, caught for a moment by the sudden image his own words conjured up of Raven and Valadrakul and Singer incinerated by Shadow’s power.

  If Pel wanted it, in an instant this Warner really could be nothing but burnt toast—but the idea sickened Pel. Murder him for failing to answer a question?

  But he hadn’t really meant the threat, Pel told himself. He just wanted his answer.

  Then he admitted to himself that maybe he wanted it enough that he had meant the threat seriously, when he made it.

  He didn’t now; he had no intention of harming this poor jerk.

  But he didn’t want Warner to know that.

  “Are they going to give me what I asked for?” Pel demanded.

  “I…I don’t know,” Warner stammered. “What did you ask for?”

  “They know,” Pel said. “You don’t? Okay, fine, you don’t—then I want you to carry a message for me. You go back up that ladder and tell them I want those bodies now. They have…” He glanced at Faerie’s pale sun. “They have until dawn. Maybe fifteen hours. I’m being generous.”

  Warner glanced up at the setting sun, as well, then swallowed.

  “Now, you get back up that ladder and tell them!” Pel shouted.

  Quickly, Warner started to set his helmet in place, then realized that the sealing buckles and latches along the side-seam weren’t closed. He dropped the helmet and began clamping them shut as quickly as he could, as the apparition he had taken for an ordinary man stared at him from a boiling cloud of violet smoke.

  A moment later he was suited up and climbing. Pel watched him ascend a few feet; then he sat down on the dirt of the forest floor and sighed.

  Warner glanced down, but kept moving.

  Pel watched Warner clamber up into the treetops, then out into the sky beyond.

  He had given them until dawn, which meant he would be spending the night here, in the woods. He looked about.

  The matrix would provide light and heat without any effort at all, but shelter…well, he could make it easily enough, but wasn’t the wreck of the Christopher just over that way?