Into a Dark Realm (7 page)

The man held up his hand, not in defense, but in supplication. “Wait,” he said as Bek hesitated again. He reached out slowly, almost gently, and put his hand on Bek’s chest, and said again, “Wait.”

Then slowly the robed man went to his knees and in a voice that was little more than a whisper, he said, “What does our master bid us?”

The man with the amulet looked on in mute astonishment, then he, too, went to his knees, followed moments later by every other man in the room. Another half a dozen men ran into the hall from other parts of the keep, answering the alarm. Seeing their brethren on their knees, their eyes lowered, they followed suit.

Bek’s sword lowered a little. “What?”

“What does our master bid us?” asked the robed man again.

Bek tried to puzzle out what to say next, from what he had overheard Nakor, Pug, and the others say at Sorcerer’s Isle. At last he said: “Varen’s gone. He’s fled to another world.”

“Not Varen,” said the robed man. “He was highest among our master’s servants.” The man slowly reached out and touched Bek on the chest. “I can feel our master, there, inside you. He lives within you; he speaks through you.” He raised his eyes to Bek’s again, and asked once more, “What does our master bid us?”

Bek had been ready for combat, and this was beyond his ability to comprehend. Slowly, he looked around the room, rising frustration in his voice as he said, “I don’t know…” Then suddenly, he raised his sword and brought it down, shouting, “I don’t know!”

Minutes later Magnus rushed into the room with a company of Erik’s soldiers at his back, and more Kingdom soldiers entered through the same door as Bek. All of them stopped at the scene before them. Twenty-six corpses littered the floor, but there was no sign of
a struggle. Twenty-six headless bodies lay in a wash of blood. Heads still rolled on the crimson stones and blood-soaked cloaks.

The fire crackled. Bek stood beside it, covered in blood. His arms were crimson to the elbows and gore was smeared across his face. He stood like a fiend possessed by madness. Magnus could see it in his eyes. He was trembling so much he looked like a man about to go into convulsions.

Finally, Ralan Bek threw back his head and gave out a howl which rang off the stones high above. It was a primal burst of rage and frustration, and when even the echoes had passed away, he looked around the room, then directly at Magnus. Like a petulant child he pointed to the corpses, and said, “This wasn’t fun!”

He wiped his sword on the tunic of a nearby corpse, and sheathed it. Then he picked up a bucket of water which had been set near the fireplace to heat and lifted it, letting it wash down over his head, without even bothering to remove his hat, and then picked up a relatively clean cloak to use as a towel. Cleaning himself off as best he could, Bek said in a more controlled tone, “It’s not fun if they don’t fight back, Magnus.” He looked around the room and then said, “I’m hungry. Anyone got anything to eat?”

M
iranda shouted.

“Are you mad?” she cried, far louder than was necessary in the small room.

Magnus watched his mother with guarded amusement as she strode away from her husband’s desk for as far as she could in the small study, then turned with a dramatic frown. She often would vent loudly over matters that eventually would end up exactly as his father wished them to be. But Pug had over the years come to understand that his wife’s often volatile nature required a physical expression of her frustrations.

“Are you mad?” Miranda shrieked for the second time.

“No more than you were to spend almost a half-year
shadowing the Emerald Queen’s army down in Novindus,” said Pug calmly, as he rose from behind his desk.

“That was different!” shouted Miranda, still not through venting. “There was no Pantathian snake priest who could find me, let alone challenge me, and I’m the one who can transport herself without a Tsurani sphere, remember?”

Magnus saw his father begin a comment—probably on how Nakor, Pug, and Magnus were all becoming adept at the skill—but think better of it and say nothing as Miranda continued.

“You’re talking about going to an alien world! Not only an alien world, but one in a different plane of reality! Who knows what powers you may have there, if any?” She pointed her finger at Pug. “You don’t even know how to get there in the first place, and don’t tell me you’re going to use the Talnoy on Kelewan to anchor a rift there. I know enough about rifts to know that you could find yourself swimming at the bottom of some poison sea, or standing in the middle of a battlefield or any number of other deadly places! You’d be going in blind!”

“I won’t be going in blind,” said Pug, holding up his hands in supplication. “Please, we must learn more about the Dasati.”

“Why?” demanded Miranda.

“Because I’ve been to see the Oracle.” He didn’t need to tell either his wife or son which oracle.

Miranda’s anger leached away as curiosity took over. “What did she say?”

“They’re coming. There are too many uncertainties for her to say more, now—I will return to her later as events draw closer. But for now we must learn more of these people.”

“But the Talnoy down in Novindus are warded, as motionless and without magical presence as they were for the countless years they lay hidden,” countered Mirada. “If they’re warded, how could the Dasati find us?”

Pug could only shake his head. “I don’t know. The Oracle is rarely wrong when she speaks of certainties.”

Magnus sensed an argument coming and deftly changed the subject. “And again I ask, as I have many times before,” he said, like a patient schoolmaster, “who put them there?”

Pug knew the question was rhetorical, since they had several theories and no facts, but he thanked his son silently for diverting his wife’s ire. Their first thought had been that one of the Valheru, a Dragon Lord of fabled antiquity, had brought the Talnoy back, but there was no proof of that. Tomas, Pug’s boyhood friend, was imbued with the memories of one of the ancient Dragon Host, and had no recollection of any of his brethren returning from their ill-fated raid on the Dasati homeworld with a single Talnoy as a trophy. They had been too busy trying to keep those fiendish creations from destroying them; several dragon-riders had fallen during the incursion into the Dasati realm. In the end, there was only one inescapable conclusion.

“Macros.”

Miranda nodded in agreement. Her father, Macros the Black, had been an agent of the lost God of Magic. “Every time we turn around we bump into one of Father’s schemes.” She crossed her arms, getting a faraway look as she seemed to remember something. “I remember…once…” She looked down at the cavern floor, her face revealing flickering emotions as if what she recalled was painful. “I spent so many years being angry with him for abandoning me…”

Pug nodded sympathetically. He had been with his wife when she had last been reunited with her father and remembered her poorly hidden anger at seeing him after years of estrangement. He also remembered her grief when he had been swallowed up in the rift that closed around him as he held the Demon Lord Maarg, giving his life in a desperate act that saved this world.

Pushing aside her memories, Miranda said, “But we do end up with another of his bloody messes, don’t we?” Her tone held a hint of affectionate humor, as well as some bitterness.

Before his mother could get back into another black mood because of his grandfather, Magnus spoke. “We know of the Talnoy that
Grandfather had a hand in warding off the Dasati rifts from the one Talnoy we found, and his wards are still in place around the others.”

Both parents regarded their eldest son and Miranda said, “This we all know, Magnus. What’s your point?”

“Grandfather never did anything without a reason, and everything you have both told me about him leads me to conclude that he knew, somehow, that the day would come when one or both of you would discover the Talnoy, and that leads me to believe he also knew there would be a confrontation with the Dasati.”

Pug sighed aloud. “Your father,” he said to his wife, “knew more about time travel than anyone. Gods, all of us combined probably know only a hundredth part of what he knew. What he did with Tomas and the ancient Valheru, Ashen-Shugar, his ability to understand the time trap sprung on us by the Pantathians at the City Forever, all the rest of it. I’ve struggled to learn as much as I could about what he did, but most of it remains a mystery. However, in this I agree with Magnus. He left things as he did in Novindus for a reason, and I believe that reason involves the Conclave.”

Miranda looked unconvinced, but said nothing.

Magnus said, “Mother, if Grandfather had not wanted the Talnoy found, he had the magic to bury that cave under a mountain which it would have taken millennia to uncover. Something vast and dangerous is moving out there.” He made a sweeping gesture. “And this thing is coming no matter what we do.”

“What we can do is try to understand our enemy’s nature, to see his face,” said Pug.

“Well, I’m not ready to agree this is a good plan,” said Miranda. “But obviously you two have your minds made up. So how do you propose to get to the Dasati world, stay alive, and bring back the information, or are those details too trivial to worry about?”

Pug was forced to laugh. “Hardly trivial, my love. I plan on looking for someone who has been to that realm and can, perhaps, guide us there.”

“And where do you expect to find such a person?” asked Mi
randa. “Is there anyone in this entire world who has visited the second circle of reality?”

Pug said, “Probably not. But I’m not going to be looking on this world. I plan on visiting Honest John’s.”

Miranda froze for an instant at the mention of the establishment at the heart of the Hall of Worlds. Then she gave a sharp nod. “If there’s anywhere to find such a one, that is where I’d start looking, too.”

Magnus said, “Who will go with you, Father?”

Pug threw a warning look at his son, knowing that this was certain to set off another round of complaints from Miranda, who even now was regarding her husband with an expression of curiosity. Pug took a breath, then said, “You, Nakor, and Bek.”

Instead of the anticipated eruption from Miranda, she merely said, “Why?”

“Magnus because he is ready and I need someone as powerful as myself with me—and you need to stay here and conduct the business of the Conclave, as well as visit the Assembly and see to their progress with the Talnoy.” He waited, and when she said nothing, he continued. “Bek because…something tells me he is important; and Nakor because he is the only one who can control Bek. Besides, if anyone can get us out of an impossible situation it’s Nakor.”

Miranda said, “You’ve planned this all out, so I suppose there’s no point in continuing to argue about it. I’m not even sure you can find a safe means to visit the second plane.”

“Still, we must try.”

“When do you leave?” asked Miranda.

“For the Hall? Tomorrow. I still need to do a few things around here before I go.” To Magnus he said, “Why don’t you see how the boys are doing in Roldem, then be back here in a day or so to let your brother’s wife know how her boys are?”

Magnus nodded. “What about the Talnoy down in Novindus?”

Pug paused at the door of the study. “Rosenvar and Jacob will keep an eye on things. If anything out of the ordinary occurs, Nakor
or myself can be back here quickly enough. It’ll be some time before we leave for the Dasati world. I am going to make one more quick trip to Kelewan and see if there’s any hint of Varen’s presence there.”

“You think he’ll be foolish enough to reveal himself?” asked Magnus.

“He’s a clever man,” said Pug. “Brilliant in a twisted fashion, but he’s also driven. His madness has made him more impulsive over the years. The duration between his attacks lessens each time. He will either do something rash over there, or he will return to Midkemia. Either way, eventually we will find him out, and this time he has no easy way to seize a new body.”

“What about a hard way?” asked Miranda.

“What do you mean?”

“You said he has no easy way to take over a new body. I understand that, since you destroyed his soul jar, but he still has the knowledge of how to inhabit another’s body, and might there not be other means, perhaps less convenient, but equally effective?”

Pug said, “I hadn’t thought of that.”

Miranda could barely contain her smug expression.

“Then we must be both meticulous and stealthy,” said Pug, ignoring his wife’s superior expression. “I shall make inquiries of some less than highborn sources in Kelewan, and you see what you can find out in the Assembly while I travel to the Hall. Trust only Alenca.”

“How can I trust anyone?” asked Miranda. “After he took possession of the Emperor of Kesh, I think it safe to argue that Varen can be anyone on Kelewan, including their Emperor.”

“I think not,” said Pug. “Consider how he placed his soul jar in the sewers near the Emperor’s palace. I suspect location has much to do with who he can reach. In any event, without the jar, I think he had to leap blind and inhabit the body of whoever was closest. As his ‘death rift’ acted in many ways like normal rifts, I would expect it propelled him to a point near the Assembly, if not within its halls. As he would have been a disembodied spirit, the Assembly’s usual defenses would have been useless—that’s the reason, by the way, I
think it unlikely he would ever be able to occupy a high-level cleric on either world; wards against spirits are common in temples.”

“Very well,” said Miranda. “I’ll speak with Alenca when I go. Now, one more question.”

“Yes?” said Pug, obviously impatient to be under way.

“If you’re going to visit Kelewan without the Assembly being aware, just how do you propose to go through the rift without being noticed?”

Pug smiled, and years seemed to fall away from him. “A trick, as Nakor would call it.”

He left the room and Magnus started laughing at the consternation on his mother’s face.

Miranda glared at her older son. “That annoying little man is such a bad influence around here!”

Magnus laughed even harder.

Pug crept down a side street, his face hidden beneath a deep hood. Beards were rare in the Tsurani Empire among freemen, being worn for the most part by those of Midkemian birth and a few rebellious youths. Being out late at night and sporting facial hair was likely to mean being stopped by any patrolling city watch, and while his rank as a member of the Assembly of Magicians meant instant obedience from any soldier or constable, Pug wished to avoid drawing attention to his clandestine visit.

The domicile he sought was modest, off a side street in a section of the city of Jamar that was only a slight improvement over the slums and docks. The houses here were modest, the whitewash traditional to the Tsurani home kept somewhat clean, and the streets not too littered with refuse. There was even a street lamp some way behind him.

Pug reach the desired house and knocked loudly on the wooden door. From within a voice said, “Come in, Milamber.”

Pug pushed his way into the small house, which was barely more than a one-room hut, and said, “Greetings, Sinboya.”

The old man sat on a rush mat on the floor behind a small, low
table upon which rested a single lamp, its flame barely illuminating the room. A small woodstove in the corner provided heat for cooking—the weather in the Empire rarely got cold enough for anyone to worry about heating the house. A curtain sectioned off a sleeping pallet, and a rear door led to what Pug knew to be a small vegetable garden and an outhouse.

The old man behind the table was rake-thin, looking every minute of his eighty-plus years of age. His wispy hair was white and his blue eyes were covered with film, yet Pug knew his wits were as sharp as they had been thirty years before when they had first met.

“You knew I was coming?” asked Pug.

“I may lack your prodigious powers, Milamber,” he said, using Pug’s Tsurani name, “but I am a master of my craft, and my spells of warding are second to none. I can detect the approach of friends as well as enemies.” There were two porcelain cups on the table and he poured hot water out of a precious metal pot. “Chocha?”

“Thank you,” replied Pug.

“Then sit, please.”

Pug sat upon the floor, arranging his travel clothing, a nondescript light blue robe, over which a hooded cloak had been thrown.

The old man’s eyesight was failing, but he was still alert enough to take notice of Pug’s manner of dress. “Traveling incognito?”

“I do not wish others of the Assembly to know I’m here,” Pug replied.

The wizened magician chuckled. “You have a colorful history with the Assembly. I believe you were even once cast out and branded as a traitor to the Empire.”

“Nothing quite that extreme, but there is a matter of grave concern that places me at a disadvantage with the Assembly; in short, I can’t trust any member of it.”

“What can I do to help you, old friend?”

“There is now loose within the Empire a fugitive from my world, a magician of exceptional cunning and danger, and he may be impossible to find.”