by GM Gambrell
Twelve
The Lord Probate teleported him to the furthest point away from his house and Duncan found himself in the north side debris field. He wasn’t scared of the place and understood that their choice of teleport location was, more than anything else, meant to annoy him. It didn’t, though, and he was comforted by the massive junk field he’d spent so much of his time exploring. He looked at it with a new light now, though, seeing the remains of many of the objects he’d seen in the books and magazines. There were car hulks by the hundreds, along with transport trucks and tankers. There were stacks of streetlights that looked like toothpicks snapped up by a giant and discarded. There were planes, trains, and stacks of the still mysterious computers. The cracked glass of the monitors glared at him.
From the debris field he could see the outline of the city, its lights shimmering like the stars in the night sky. The skyline didn’t resemble at all the skyline pictures he’d seen of Old Dallas. The two cities looked nothing like each other, but he knew that New Dallas was built on the spot of the old city. It was as if they’d destroyed the first city, used what materials they needed to build the new one, and then discarded the rest here, in the debris fields. He figured the fields might also have served as a physical barrier against invading human armies, as if they were worried about that after the Last War. As far as he knew, there were two non-magical humans on the planet and that was it. Just like the Magistrates, the defensive value of the debris field had long since outlived its usefulness.
He wasn’t even sure if the question of who actually destroyed the city mattered. Whoever had done it had killed innocent people in the process, on both sides of the battle. They were both reprehensible, as far as he was concerned.
Duncan wandered back through the field into the city proper as the sun began to rise. The only people in the streets were Golems, busy sweeping and cleaning. He thought it very sad that the Magicians had forced men and women, who, he imagined were like him, without magic, into servitude. Were the Golems like him and Jim? If they were, where did they come from? He could think of no worse fate than to serve at the whim of the Magicians, forever locked in that cold, black Void. He was, however, thankful that the city streets were empty of Magicians, as he didn’t know if he could look into their eyes now. He knew what they’d be thinking as he passed, knew they’d all seen the memory stones and think him a criminal.
He stood in front of the shattered courthouse as the sun came up and looked out over the destruction. The entire building was flattened, its debris strewn everywhere and yet to be cleaned up either by magic or by the Golems. Duncan couldn’t help but wonder why they hadn’t just put it back together. It wouldn’t be much of a spell for a powerful Magician. Instead, it stood like an open sore in the middle of the city for all to see. He felt a bit guilty about it. Though he’d had nothing to do with the destruction, his kind had. He was guilty by association.
Finally making his way home, he found his father sitting among wilted plants in his garden. Without water or constant care, the plants had begun to brown and fade. His father looked very sad sitting cross-legged among them, and he could tell the man had been crying. Duncan sat next to him and the two were silent for a long while, neither looking at each other nor speaking. When they finally did speak, it was like a mirror breaking.
“I’m sorry you’ve gone through all this, Duncan.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“No…it is my fault. It’s all my fault. I should never have listened to him, all those years ago.”
“What do you mean? Who is him?”
“It doesn’t matter now, Duncan. Jim has gone too far and implicated you in all this mess. It isn’t fair to your mother. It isn’t fair to our family.”
Duncan wanted to tell him it wasn’t fair to him, but didn’t. He wasn’t sure what all this was about and wasn’t sure why his father felt guilty about the entire thing. “You were a Magistrate, weren’t you, Father?”
“I was, Duncan, for decades. It was something that I actually enjoyed, then. We weren’t like they are now. We weren’t just thugs who cast magic and made themselves bigger just to intimidate the smaller. We were the protectors of the realm, though the only threat to the realm in nine-hundred years was Diamond Jim. Still, we stood ready for the day the humans would return to this world and exact their revenge. It was a glorious job, then, Duncan.”
“Are the humans going to return?” Duncan asked.
“They say that there are more of them out there in the stars, that some managed to leave this planet just before the Last War. My Lord Probate knew nothing of it, though, and wrote it off to superstitious rubbish. I trusted that man with my life. He would not lie to me if he actually knew anything about that. In the Wastes…yes, there are survivors. There have always been survivors.”
Duncan’s heart raced. “There are more people like me out there?”
“They aren’t like you, Duncan. They are little better than animals. They live in the ground and eat each other to get by. They aren’t civilized, Duncan, and that’s what Jim would have you go to. He’d take you away from here, where you are safe, and put you into that hellhole.”
Duncan didn’t know what to say. His father stated that there were more people like him matter-of-factly, as if it was something they’d always known despite the fact that Duncan had always assumed he was the only one. He wanted to scream and cry at the same time but he did his best to regain his composure.
“Your Lord was not this Lord?” he asked, changing the subject.
“No, of course not. My Lord Probate was already two hundred years old during my tenure, which is about the end of the line for keeping a man alive as far as magic is concerned. He died and this Lord Probate, Toole, took his place.”
“Wait…Toole? Is he related to Marissa?
“He is her father, Duncan. How can you have spent your entire life with the girl and not known who her father was?”
“I…I don’t know. I really don’t.” Marissa was the Lord Probate’s daughter? How could that be and how could she never have told him that?
“I thought you knew from all the help she’d given you since that first day in school. It was her, Duncan, that convinced the authorities to allow you to stay in school and, much later, convinced them to allow you to graduate after the debacle with Dr. Felix. She’s probably also the one who convinced the Lord Probate to allow you to roam freely while waiting for your trial.”
“That’s why he didn’t ask who teleported me home,” Duncan said. “He already knew. He has to know about the truth spell she cast, then.”
“I’m sure he does, not that it matters.”
“How can I being innocent not matter?”
“I think it’s gone beyond that now. I think he means to make an example of you to scare everyone else into submission. You see, that was the problem with the Magistrates in my time. We knew there wasn’t a threat to justify their existence. There was no reason to maintain their authority over the world, no reason even to have a Lord Probate. Why do we need a ruler, Duncan? What can a government do for us that we can’t do ourselves? We want of nothing, are not in any sort of danger from external threats. The Magistrates were maintained for a thousand years for a threat that never materialized. The Lords and the Magistrate are losing their grip on the citizens and becoming irrelevant.”
“You…you know this for a fact? You could tell someone.”
“It’s the reason I left the Magistrate. It’s the reason I helped Diamond Jim escape the day of his sentencing. It’s the reason that I will also help you escape, when the time comes. They tried this once and I knew they’d try it again. I just didn’t know they’d use my son to do it.”
Duncan sat back in silent shock. His father had helped the madman? It also sounded like he believed Diamond Jim was innocent. What else would there be to turn his world upside down today?
