Walker

by Michael Langlois

  She reached inside and lifted it carefully from the box. The blade and handle were both the exact same matte black color, with only the gleaming edge of the blade giving up any reflected light. It was only ten inches long from tip to pommel, but somehow dreadful in its bleak, utilitarian shape and color. It spoke only of function, with no concern for ornament or style.

  “The people of Temorae may not have modern arms like you have at home, but they’ve been making knives and swords for a very long time. The Guild sells them the metal Urum, which comes from Greegis Hold on Tuote, and we get these rare blades in return. I’ve had mine for almost ten years now, and I have never managed to break or dull it. It is unmoved by the world.” She gazed at the dagger for another moment, and then gently put it back into the case.

  Saul said, “The trick is that the metal is incredibly hard, much harder than anything we have back home, until it gets to its breaking point. Then, instead of breaking, it deforms very slowly like a really stiff metal putty. When you let off the pressure, it snaps back to its original shape. Neat, huh?”

  Daniel took in these gifts of armor and weapons and wondered for the thousandth time what he had gotten himself into. He was pretty sure that if he showed up for orientation at his old office and some smiling manager had handed him a flak vest and an AK-47, he would have been out the door before his ID badge could hit the ground. But the thought was nice. Kind of.

  “Well, thanks for the scariest presents a guy could ever ask for. I appreciate it. If I were a serial killer I’d be in tears. Now, gimme a sandwich and get to the apologizing part.”

  Everyone went into the kitchen and got settled. Daniel was starving. Saul had just started talking when he was already reaching for his second sub.

  “I really am sorry, Daniel. That whole scene in your kitchen was pretty much a screw up on my part,” said Saul. “I thought up the plan the day before, and had Iyah sitting outside the door before you even woke up. By the time I realized that you were just going to join up anyway, it was too late. She came in right on schedule and went into her badass bitch routine, so I had to play along.”

  “You must realize, Daniel,” said Iyah, “that we have never had to recruit someone on his home ground before. The way it has always worked before is that a new Walker will appear in a Sanctum on some foreign world unexpectedly, having moved towards the Sanctum’s beacon. You can imagine that after experiencing a Walk through the Veil and then a brand new world first hand, you really don’t have to be convinced. Then, at this most vulnerable moment, a Guild recruiter is there to provide comfort and understanding. Sometimes they need a gentle nudge, but that’s usually all.”

  Saul resumed telling the tale and said, “Now you, on the other hand, were something of a problem. Not only did we have to contact you out of the blue, but we didn’t know if you’d believe us or not. We also didn’t know if you had suffered some kind of horrible experience when you Walked, and would think we had come to drag you back into it. Hell, we didn’t really even know if you had Walked in the first place. So this is the best plan I could come up with to get the Arc on you as quickly as possible. Sorry about that.”

  Daniel chewed without meeting anyone’s eyes while he gauged how he felt. He wanted to be angry, but if he were to be brutally honest with himself, much of the blame fell squarely on his shoulders. He had wanted to go. They hadn’t pushed him. He’d jumped.

  “I guess I can forgive you. Besides, now that I’m all tangled up in this, I need as many friends as I can get. Even crappy ones like you guys,” said Daniel, grinning.

  “Right back at you, Danny boy.”

  “There isn’t really a rival Guild out there trying to snap up Walkers and stuff, is there?”

  Iyah shrugged and said, “Not as far as anyone knows. We do know that sometimes Walkers don’t come back. We don’t know why, but it’s remotely possible that it could be another Guild.”

  Daniel nodded absently, noticing that her eyes, like her hair, were a peculiar color. They were clear as glass, and dark blue, similar to pictures he had seen of glacial ice. Pretty, and a little unreal.

  “I doubt it,” she continued. “The disappearances could just as easily be caused by the transition itself. The researchers like to pretend that they know everything about the Veil, but they are as clueless as the rest of us.”

  They cleaned the kitchen in a comfortable silence for a while. He was just wiping crumbs off of the table when something occurred to him. He dropped his dishtowel on the counter and pointed at the table.

  “Okay, I have a question. I know Iyah’s bad attitude was just a person’s normal disposition after working with Saul for too long, but how did you throw my kitchen table across the room? That thing was solid oak and must have weighed over two hundred pounds. Oh, and by the way, you owe me a table.”

  Iyah opened a drawer and pulled out a butter knife. Like the rest of the flatware that came with Daniel’s apartment, it was made of stainless steel instead of real silver, despite its fine engraving. Grasping the thick, square handle with only the finger and thumb of each hand, she effortlessly folded the quarter-inch steel until the two halves touched. Daniel’s mouth fell open. Iyah put the mangled knife on the table.

  “Holy shit!” Daniel was pretty sure that was appropriate.

  “I’m a Channeler, and I have what’s known as a high degree of Veil affinity. Didn’t Bruce explain this to you already?”

  Daniel shook his head. He didn’t mention that the Doc had been too busy co-opting him into his band of doomed outlaws to explain the mysteries of the Veil like he was supposed to.

  “He should take more care with his duties. Listen then. Some people have the ability to touch the Veil that separates worlds, or universes, or realities, or whatever you wish to call them. Those that can manipulate the Veil outwardly, parting it to grant passage at will, are the Walkers. Others, called Channelers, harness the energy of the Veil within themselves, and in the process gain strength and vitality from it. This is my calling. I’m fortunate as well, that I have been gifted with a strong affinity, which lends me a little more strength than the average Channeler.”

  Saul snorted. “Don’t believe that humility routine for a minute, Dan. Our Iyah here is one of the strongest Channelers in the Guild. She could probably throw a Mack truck a city block if she felt like it. The only reason she got stuck with me is because I’m so damn good at Walking that nothing but the most kick-ass babysitter would do.”

  “I’ll agree you need a babysitter, anyway,” said Daniel. “Sounds like I know exactly zip about this whole Veil thing.”

  Iyah glanced at Saul, but only said, “Things will become more clear to you with training.”

  “Which will begin first thing in the morning.” The voice was deep and came from the now open doorway. Daniel frowned at the traitorous door as he began to realize that he had no more privacy in Walker Hall than a child in his parent’s home.

  A tall, thickly built man strode into Daniel’s apartment. He was dressed in an intimidatingly proper black wool suit that was at odds with his flat boxer’s face. His gaze took in the bootlegged gifts lying on the couch, the scattered mess of papers and maps on the floor, and the three guilty faces in the kitchen. Faces that perhaps only looked guilty because of the disapproving non-surprise that surrounded the man like a shroud.

  “My name is Mr. Gray. I see you’ve made yourself at home in your new quarters, which have reached a stunning degree of squalor in the one day you’ve had to soil them. I’ll try not to keep you from your redecorating any longer than I have to.”

  Daniel ignored the hot flush spreading across his cheeks and worked hard at not dropping his gaze from the man’s face.

  “I am your liaison to Mr. Keldon’s office. He received a report about you that’s pure fantasy from Dr. Wolternel. I’ve been assigned to you to see to it that you manage to find this new world of yours by any means necessary, regardless of your native ineptitude.”

  He moved into the ki
tchen and looked at Saul.

  “Since he appears to be your responsibility, you will present him to Master Giric at dawn tomorrow. The Master’s normal class has been cancelled so that he might better attempt to instruct Mr. Thorsen.”

  Mr. Gray picked up the bent knife and slowly wadded the steel utensil into a crumpled ball, eyes locked on Daniel’s. When he was done, he tossed the mangled flatware across the kitchen and into the garbage can without seeming to look, where it landed with a startlingly loud thunk. Daniel jumped in spite of himself. Mr. Gray then turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Saul grimaced and nodded towards the door. “What a fucking drama queen. All he needs is a cape and one of those silver walking canes and he’d be perfect.”

  Daniel smiled weakly at the joke. No matter what Saul said, he knew a dangerous man when he saw one. He also knew when he was screwed. He didn’t dare reveal the existence of the new world before his escape, and in fact, he wasn’t even sure he could get back there even if he wanted to. On the other hand, Mr. Gray didn’t look like the kind of guy who took no or can’t for an answer.

  He wondered how long he could stall before he found out just how badly the Guild wanted access to a new world.

  7

  “Time to get up, you lazy bastard!”

  Daniel groaned at the sound of Saul’s bellow from the kitchen. He felt like he was trapped in a bad seventies cop show, where the happy partner always comes in and wakes the surly one up with witty banter and danishes. Staring at the ceiling, Daniel was cheered by the thought that in those shows, the happy guy usually got shot by the end of the episode.

  Already beginning to get excited despite himself, he lurched out of bed and steered himself towards the bathroom. He could smell coffee brewing as he went about his morning routine.

  “Is it dawn already?” called Daniel over the hiss of the shower.

  “No, we have to be at the training center to meet with Master Giric at dawn. If it were dawn now, we’d already be late. It’s bad enough the head of the whole Walker training division had to drop his classes today for some punk that the council thinks found a new world, let’s not piss him off even more by making him wait around for us. So hurry your ass up in there. You should have already been up anyway. It’s not like you come from a place with no electricity like some of these clowns, you know how to use an alarm clock.”

  “The one at my house doesn’t go up to 14 o’clock. I have no clue what to do with this one.”

  “Yeah, Olympus, named by our beloved founding father by the way, has a different rotational period than Earth. You get used to it.”

  Daniel finished his shower and started roughly drying his hair with a towel.

  “I know you’re out of clothes, so I brought you some stuff from the outfitters. I had Iyah pick it all out, since she can figure out what size clothes people wear just by looking at them, and I can’t, which is just one more item on a very long list of deficiencies that she likes to share with me at every opportunity. So if you don’t like ‘em, you know who to blame. I put all of it on your bed during the eternity you spent in the damn bathroom.”

  Now dry, Daniel hung up his towel and walked back into his bedroom. A stack of folded clothes sat on his bed, so he started hunting through it to find something to wear.

  He immediately discarded several items, mentally separating them into categories like “pirate outfit” and “circus crap.” He settled on a pair of black pants made out of a soft denim-like fabric, and the least puffy shirt he could find.

  Dressed, but feeling like a renaissance fair reject, he joined Saul in the kitchen. Saul refrained from commenting, but not from smirking, and handed Daniel a cup of coffee, something that had almost become a routine in the few days of their acquaintance.

  Daniel took in Saul’s usual flannel and jeans.

  “How come I have to wear this stuff, and you get to dress like a normal person, or at the very least a lumberjack?”

  Saul struck up an air of wounded dignity. “First of all, that’s a typically ignorant assessment made by a person who’s obviously never visited another culture. There are plenty of places where tight pants and billowy shirts are all the rage, you just need to expand your horizons. Take romance novel covers for example, or certain kinds of strip clubs.”

  Unable to contain himself any longer, Saul burst out laughing.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “Second of all, I never, ever let Iyah pick out my clothes. Especially if we’ve had a fight recently. Being a grown man, I do all my own shopping back home in New York.”

  “Forget I asked. Let’s go.”

  “You sure? We still have time to look for damsels with heaving bosoms if you want.”

  Daniel ignored him with as much dignity as his wardrobe allowed as they exited the apartment.

  The entrance to the Walker Training Facility turned out to be very close to the apartment wing, with the facility itself far below the Hall proper. Saul led Daniel down several sets of wide, polished stone stairs leading into the bowels of the building.

  Unlike the upper part of Walker Hall, where a tidal wave of money had left behind a residue of opulence, the lower levels had a reserved, museum-like quality that, if anything, bespoke an even larger expense.

  The dark, polished granite floors were inlaid with a lighter colored stone, and spiraling designs and artistic whorls were seamlessly worked into the floor with the kind of precision and elegance that only patience and craftsmanship could produce. The pale, cream-colored marble walls were streaked with fine gold threads that sparkled like quartz veins.

  Midway up the walls glowed stylized scenes and landscapes done all in black marble, running in an endless ribbon down the corridors. Daniel couldn’t begin to imagine how much time and effort were required to build something like that.

  Enormous carved wooden planters sat in the corner of the reception area they passed through, looking like six-foot-tall pineapples containing thirty-foot-tall trees. The leaves on the trees were so dark a green that they appeared black where shadows fell across them, and their undersides were speckled with brightly luminescent green flecks. They smelled faintly of peppermint. Daniel felt positively jaded when he walked past them with only the faintest amazement.

  They eventually left the stonework behind and entered a vast square room whose floor was made of amber colored, fine-grained wooden boards, their finish worn smooth by centuries of polishing and foot traffic.

  The center of the room, which was the half the size of a football field, was clear of furniture. There were rings of a much lighter wood inlaid into the floor, separating it into a dozen large circular areas surrounding an even larger one in the center. Towards each corner and along the walls were large leather chairs and sofas, as well as tables and bookshelves. The room smelled like incense, with a faint undercurrent of sweat.

  On the walls hung tapestries depicting various landscape and city scenes, with names like Alde and Temorae boldly stitched across their tops. Glancing around, Daniel saw that one of them was marked “Earth.” The woven images on that one showed city skylines, tanker ships on an embroidered sea, and airplanes soaring high overhead.

  “Ah, I see you’re admiring our tapestries. Our latest one, hung only a few years ago, represents the very first world to be known to the Guild. Strange, isn’t it?”

  A short, powerfully built man came striding across the floor towards Daniel and Saul. He was bald as a circus strongman, with the exception of a fringe of closely cropped white hair over his ears.

  His approach would have been alarming, given his scarred knuckles and the massively corded arms protruding from the loose, short-sleeved shirt he wore, but his tranquil expression immediately put Daniel at ease. His voice was warm and full of good humor, and each of his massive wrists bore a solid black Arc. Politely ignoring Daniel’s scrutiny, he turned to the tapestry and continued with his tale.

  “You see, the Guild was founde
d by an Englishman named Calvin Burchard. As he expanded his empire and discovered more worlds, he added scenes from them to this hall in the form of these tapestries. After all the known worlds were depicted, someone noticed that in his zeal to add new banners to the Hall, Lord Burchard had forgotten to place a tapestry for his own world. It had never occurred to him, since the land of his birth hardly qualified as a new world in his eyes. It is perhaps unfortunate that being woven long after the Founder’s departure, it depicts a place that he would not have recognized as his home.”

  Daniel gazed up at the tapestry for another few moments, and then turned to the man and extended his hand.

  “Daniel Thorsen, sir.”

  “You may call me Master Giric, Daniel. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance.”

  Master Giric’s handshake was firm and dry. Daniel looked back up at the tapestry.

  “So the Guild was founded by someone from Earth?”

  It struck Daniel as particularly odd that such an otherworldly enterprise could have been founded by a regular guy from back home.

  “Oh, yes. The Founder was from Earth’s London, and very proud of it. Haven’t you wondered why everyone here speaks English? Lord Burchard insisted that it be the common tongue of the Guild. I suspect that he didn’t want to appear foolish in front of his subordinates, trying to puzzle out conversations and giving orders in broken phrases, but I could be wrong.”

  The Master turned and clasped hands with Saul.

  “It’s good to see you again, Saul. I was pleased to hear of your promotion to First Tracker. Pleased, but not surprised,” he said with a smile.

  “Thank you, sir. I know there were times that you didn’t think I’d make a tracker at all, much less First.”