by C L Walker
“Roman.” She pulled out her phone and tapped at the screen, frowning. “I’m going to need more information than that, big guy.”
I told her the address he’d been living at, where I’d taken my former master to get a gunshot wound looked at. The master had been an arrogant and stupid man but I suspected Roman was better than that, smarter. If he’d continued in his profession, and if he’d survived, he might be useful now.
“Found him,” Bec said, practically bouncing out of her chair in triumph. “He wrote a book and mentioned the shitty building he used to live in. Ooh, he’s a professor at the university.”
She tapped on her screen in silence for a few minutes, holding her hand up whenever I tried to speak. She was already too comfortable with ordering me around and it made me anxious; with a normal master I’d simply work out some way to kill them or have them killed, but I wasn’t sure how I felt about this one. She hadn’t summoned me herself and my presence wasn’t her fault, and she hadn’t given me any reason to think she wanted me to take over the world or destroy her enemies. I didn’t know what to think yet.
“There’s a cab coming,” she said at last, looking up from her phone. The glow from the screen cast her face in a sickly light. “We’ll have to hang around outside the university until he gets there in the morning but I’ve got some cash on me. We’ll see what we can find.”
It would be strange seeing Roman again; though we’d only spoken for a few minutes in a tense situation, he was a person I’d known in a previous summoning. It had happened before – everything had happened before in my long life – but it was rare and novel. Whether he was able to help me or not, at least it would be interesting.
When the car came I sat beside my new master in the back and pretended to watch the city go by outside. Really I was watching her reflection in the window. She was excited and anxious to get where we were going. She had a plan and she was executing it, and I didn’t think I was going to like where it all ended up.
I realized another thing that worried me: she still hadn’t mourned her father, hadn’t even brought it up for conversation or looked into it on her phone. It was like it didn’t matter to her, and while I appreciated strength and reserve I could think of another reason she would behave that way. I had seen it before in countless masters who had gone on to be tyrants and mass murderers.
She gripped the locket through her red top and stared out the window without seeing anything. I wished I could see the thoughts in her head; I hoped they were of revenge for her father or safety for herself, and not of seeing the buildings outside reduced to rubble.
Chapter 8
When I was born the largest center of learning in the world had been on another continent and off-limits to commoners. Things had gotten worse over the millennia as civilizations rose and fell, with the one truth being maintained that no matter how much knowledge there was it meant power for the elites.
Grantham University was one of two large centers of learning in Fairbridge alone, and the ramifications astounded me. In my home kingdom the wisest men of my youth had traveled thousands of miles for the smallest part of the education that could be had by anyone in this future.
Furthermore, despite the wealth of knowledge available and the concentration of wise men roaming the halls of the grand buildings, I could not see a single armed guard.
“This place is a wonder,” I said as we walked up the drive from the street. We’d waited in another bar and had coffee and now the sun shone and students were making their way to lectures. Trees provided shade and despite the rushing of young men and women there was a sense of calm about the place that in my experience was more common in temples.
“Overpriced and pointless in the modern world,” Bec replied instantly. “You’d have to be an idiot to waste all the time and money.”
“True, when serving drinks in a bar requires no higher learning.”
She glared at me but let it go. It was a reply her father had used on her when she refused to do as she was told and learn something useful, and I’d known it would strike a chord.
We entered and I waited out of sight of the main office while Bec asked for details on Roman. We’d managed to get most of the blood out of my clothes but she worried that simply seeing my size would make the establishment wary of helping us. She was probably right.
I followed Bec when she returned and we began the long walk to Roman’s class. He taught religion and was in another building. I didn’t mind; I was happy just experiencing the school. I rarely got a chance to spend time in the worlds I was summoned to but when I had I’d never seen anything so amazing.
We arrived at the closed wooden doors and Bec stopped and looked at her phone.
“I have his schedule but the class won’t be out for another half hour.”
“You propose we wait in the hall and beg for an audience?”
“Got a better idea?”
I pushed the doors open and stepped inside. None of the young people listening to the lecture looked my way, but Roman – now a middle-aged man – did. It took a moment for him to register what he was seeing and I couldn’t help but smile at the range of emotions crossing his face. Confusion, realization, fear, resignation, confusion again.
I remained silent and let my presence do the talking for me. He had been a smart young man and I suspected he was now a smart old one. He’d know what to do.
“Listen, um, guys,” he said. His hand rested on the back of a high chair. I could see it shaking. “I’m going to have to call it a day. We’ll pick this up next time.”
The young people didn’t seem to mind, and a few bolted from their chairs and headed for the exit, only pausing when they saw Bec and I standing near the door. Well, probably just me, anyway.
Roman sat and waited in silence, ignoring his students, his eyes locked on the floor as though praying. There was a tension in his lanky frame, every muscle pulled tight, ready for trouble. His clothes seemed too big for him, as though he was shrinking in my presence.
I was starting to feel sorry for him. I’d come to him because he knew who I was but I hadn’t meant to terrify him. It was normally the right response to a visit from me, but I almost liked the hedge-mage.
When the room had cleared Bec closed the door and hurried to the front. Roman stayed where he was and didn’t look up.
“Professor?” Bec said, and got no response. “Roman, we need to talk to you.”
“I’ve done nothing,” he replied in a whisper. I approached and he ducked his head lower to avoid seeing even my boots. “Whatever happened it has nothing to do with me.”
“I need your help, hedge-mage.” My words made him flinch. I couldn’t remember hurting him but apparently my visit twenty years before had done some damage to him that I hadn’t been aware of.
“I don’t know anything, alright?” His hands were clasped together before him but his fingers were active, twisting and moving in odd patterns on the back of his hands.
I knew what he was doing; I’d thought he was praying when really he was buying himself time to come up with some kind of magic. It wouldn’t have done anything to me when the tattoos were active but he might do some harm now.
“Bec, tell me not to harm him. Ever.” Roman knew the rules of my life and I hoped this would help.
“It doesn’t matter,” Roman said, finally looking up. His eyes were red. “You can’t bind him with words and they’re the only thing that have any power over him.”
“I’m his master,” Bec said.
“Every master he’s had for ten thousand years died after summoning him. He can bend your words to mean whatever he wants them to.” He looked at Bec with an intensity I didn’t think the young woman had ever experienced. His fear made her step back. “Put him back in his cage and throw it away.”
“We have work to do,” Bec said. I still had a bad feeling about her intentions, but it was possible she simply meant protecting her.
“Your father was smarter than
you,” Roman said. He cast his gaze at the floor again. “He knew not to meddle with something he couldn’t control.”
“I didn’t kill her father, Roman.” I moved closer and crouched before him, trying to make myself as small as possible. “A hollow man did, which shouldn’t be possible because I locked them in their heavens before your history started. Now they walk the streets and I am without power, and I need your help to understand why.”
“Someone is trying to kill me,” Bec added. “I need Agmundr.”
Seconds passed in silence and I let them. Bec stepped forward, about to start yelling, but I held my hand up and this time she went quiet. I wanted to give the hedge-mage time to process what was going on. We could resort to yelling and violence after, if we had to.
He looked up eventually. Some of the tension was gone from his shoulders but his eyes were still red.
“I thought you were dead,” he said in a low whisper. “I finally thought I could stop looking over my shoulder because there was no way you would be there.”
“I’ve lived a long time, Roman, and I will live a lot longer. You know that.”
His head was shaking, almost imperceptibly. “You don’t know, do you?”
A bad feeling washed over me; I was sure I didn’t want to hear what he was about to say. My hands itched to shut him up.
“It happened,” he said, suddenly urgent. “She came and they killed her.”
I almost fell over backwards. He hadn’t mentioned specifics but he didn’t have to. I knew what he was saying and it was impossible.
I stood and backed away, suddenly feeling the lifeless tattoos coating my body like a death veil. What he said couldn’t be true and yet I had the evidence etched into my skin, dormant, dead.
“What’s happening?” Bec said to Roman. “Who is ‘she’ and why did it break Agmundr?”
“The end of days happened,” Roman said, his voice almost lost to me in the rushing of blood in my ears. “The elder god Ohm returned and was defeated.”
“So?”
“Ohm inhabited a mortal body when she was on earth, a beautiful princess named Erindis. His wife.”
I collided with a table and smashed it aside. I cast about for something else to focus on, anything but the thought of her, dead. I lifted a table and broke it in half. I kicked a chair across the hall to smash into a glass case against the wall. I was lost to the images flooding my mind, of an eternity of waiting for nothing, of a future denied me, of a beautiful blonde woman who had never done anyone any harm lying dead on the field of battle.
“You should calm down,” Bec said, approaching me with her hand out before her. I reached out to her, intending to tear her arm off, but the tattoos stopped me. My hand lowered against my will.
I returned to destroying Roman’s classroom. She couldn’t be dead, or what was it all for? Accepting the curse and living the life of a slave was meant to keep her alive forever; it was meant to ensure that my beloved never had to experience death. For her to be dead meant everything was a lie and I was a fool.
“Stop moving, Agmundr.”
Bec’s voice was the greatest power in the universe to me and her order locked every muscle in my body. I froze in place, straining against the inevitable, trying desperately to disobey.
“Calm down,” she said, intending it as an order.
“You don’t control his mind,” Roman said softly. “Just his body.”
Then it hit me: she still controlled me. I remained bound to the rules of the summoning. The tattoos had no access to the power of the elder god Ohm but they had power over me.
I wanted to smile but Bec’s order wouldn’t let me. I wanted to cry but it was something I hadn’t done in thousands of years.
She was alive. Erindis lived, because if she was dead then my curse would be over and I would be free. My curse was bound to her as much as her life was bound to me. She had to be alive.
“You can move,” Bec said. She stepped back and prepared for anything I might do.
“You have to put me back in my prison,” I said immediately. “I need to return, now.”
“You won’t see her, Agmundr,” Roman said. “She’s dead.”
“She lives, hedge-mage. I know it.”
“Why ask to go back in the locket?” Bec said. She watched me still, alert for any sign I might be about to attack.
“He gets to see her, wherever she is in the world, but only when he returns to the locket and only for a moment.”
“So you want to check on her?”
“She lives,” I said. I had been delirious but I knew I was right. “I would be free or dead if she did not.”
Roman looked at the ceiling high above us and thought on my words for a moment. When he returned his gaze to me he seemed less frightened.
“I think he’s right. I don’t know everything about his…situation, but I know enough. I was sure he wouldn’t come back, but here he is.”
“They killed Ohm,” I said, running through the problem. “But perhaps they only killed Ohm and the woman possessed survived. Erindis lives. She must.”
“I’m not putting you back,” Bec said. Her voice was soft but it was like she’d punched me in the face. “Unless you can guarantee you’ll be able to come back out if I call you.”
“Of course I’ll come. I have to.”
“Do you, though? Are you sure?”
I could have lied to her and told her I was sure. I could have constructed a plausible story to allay her fears. I decided to be honest, however, trusting her humanity to give me what I wanted.
“I don’t know all the limits of my curse anymore,” I admitted. I took a slow step toward her and put my hands together, begging her to listen. “I know that I remain yours and that I came when your father called. I believe I will come again if summoned.”
She didn’t spend a moment thinking about it before answering. “No.”
My face twisted in anger but she held her place and stared me down. She was afraid but she was confident, and she knew who the master was.
“I need to know if she lives. Please, Rebecca. Return me to the locket.”
“I’ve answered already.” She turned back to Roman. “How do we get him powered up again?”
“I will destroy you, bitch,” I said, launching toward her with every intention of tearing her to pieces.
I fell to the floor, wracked with nausea, the pain of my healed wounds returning in full force. I kept my mouth shut and held the agony within but I was helpless before the power of my curse.
“Professor,” Bec said, her voice a vague impression in the face of my torment. “I need to know how to get him back in working order. I need your help.”
“You don’t want to make him an enemy,” Roman replied. “He will kill you. Or he’ll put you in a position where someone else will. It’s what he does.”
“I’m smart. I’ll be careful.”
I was laughing before I knew it. Her words were the same as those spoken by masters in a hundred languages over thousands of years. They were the blind confidence of the stupid and I was stuck in the same position as always. I had given her the benefit of the doubt and she had proven herself as hopeless as all the others.
“You’re a fool,” Roman said. “I’m not sticking around to find out what happens to you.”
I was regaining my senses. The pain was fading and the nausea I could ignore. I dragged myself up and took a breath to calm myself. I was going to need it if I planned on ending the little girl’s life.
“Professor,” Bec said. She grabbed his chin and dragged his attention from the bag he was packing on his desk. “If you try and leave I’ll have him hurt you.”
It was Roman’s turn to go silent. He glared at her, his hands shaking on his leather bag.
“She is as pathetic as the others, Roman,” I said. I was done treating her with respect. “She will come to the same fate.”
“Sure,” Roman said without breaking eye contact with my master. “But
I’m a little worried I’ll be there when it happens.”
“Then you will be my new master. I trust you’ll be smarter than the others.”
“Shut up,” Bec snapped. “Both of you be quiet. Agmundr isn’t going to do shit to me. And you, Professor, are going to help me make sure of it.”
“I don’t want to be your master,” Roman said, ignoring the young woman who held his life in her hands. “No offense, my lord, but I want nothing to do with you.”
“That’s because you’re a smart man, Roman.”
“Ms. Fletcher,” Roman said as he finished packing his bag. “What do you need from me?”
I watched them talk, playing with the puzzle that was my life as I stood to the side and imagined what it would be like to see Bec dead. Satisfying, I imagined. It would feel as it always did, as though I’d righted a wrong.
In the back of my mind, behind the rage and the pain, all I wanted to do was check on Erindis. Then again, that was often all I wanted to do.
Chapter 9
We used Roman’s beat-up station wagon to get to the small apartment he rented twenty minutes away. It was better than the rundown place I’d first met him in, on a clean street with trees on the sidewalk. Inside, the apartment was tidy and well appointed, with none of the magical paraphernalia he used to adorn his living quarters with.
“You have done well for yourself, hedge-mage.”
I entered last and shut the door behind us, then moved to the small living room and collapsed on the couch. I’m a big guy and it meant the others would have to take the smaller chairs.
“I tried to put it all behind me after you and Phil stopped by back then.” He went to a kitchen cabinet and fetched an unlabeled bottle, which he proceeded to drink as quickly as he could.
“Who is Phil?” Bec said. She leaned against his tiny kitchen table and watched Roman down the mysterious liquid.
“A dead man,” I said. Roman spluttered and slammed the bottle on the table. The fear had returned when he looked at me. “What?” I said in response. “He is.”
