The Magician: An Epic Dark Fantasy Novel: Book One of the Rogue Portal Series (15 page)

TWENTY-ONE

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Shaking, Connor stepped out of the elevator and onto the twentieth floor. He turned down the left hallway, not sure that it was where he needed to be, but not particularly caring if it wasn't. His only goal was to get as far away from the elevator as possible.

              Fortunately, he was headed in the correct direction. The hallway leading to the room was a mirror image of the hallway downstairs. Never ending. Head twisting. Bizarrely decorated. And, of course, lit with too many chandeliers that were too large, even for the stately nature of the hotel.

              He used the room key to open the door, and stopped in his tracks. Sure, he had specified that he needed a large room, but this was...excessive. In the best possible way. Within the confines of the rooms, the carpet gave up its bizarre patterning and gave way to a beautiful, solid blue. The walls were white, although the color threatened to become ivory at the first sign of yellow, and gold accents adorned the room like stars scattered in a night sky. No chandeliers. At that he was very relieved. The last thing they needed was to pore over an ancient, possibly possessed book by what amounted to candlelight. That was the stereotypical equivalent of stupid.

              The beds were made with what appeared to be very expensive bedspreads, and both were queen sized. The bedding was white and blue with gold buttons bringing the tucks of the bedspread together in strategic places. Too many pillows with too many frills were piled in what he thought to be a designer's creation (though it wasn't necessarily a compliment), and a plate with a napkin folded into the shape of some kind of bird, possibly a swan, sat on each bed.

              He closed the door behind him and entered the room, setting his backpack to one side, and walked around. Curtains were draped over a large window directly across from him, and when he opened them, a magnificent view of the mountains greeted him. Mountains was a misnomer - it was more of a forest - but everyone called them mountains, as a half-joke. They had an incline, but that was about as mountainous as they got.

              Just as he finished opening the curtains he heard a knock at the door. Opening it, he half expected Rumsfeld to be standing there the way this day had been going. But he was happy to see Kit.

              "Hey, glad you could make it," he said with a smile.

              "Why the hell wouldn't I have been able to make it?" she asked with a half-smile.

              "Oh, I don't know. Trolls. Vampires. Mutated unicorns. At this rate we can't be sure, can we?"

              She punched his arm playfully as she entered and threw her bag unceremoniously to the side. Crossing her arms, she took in the room around her and shook her head. Connor smiled. He had a feeling Kit would be less than impressed by the decor.

              "Never understood that."

              "Understood what?" he asked, amused.

              "All the work people go through in hotels to make a bed look so fantastic when people are just going to tear it apart and sleep under it. I mean really. At the end of their stay, every bed looks the same. A crumpled mess."

              "Well. People dress up nice on dates even though their clothes might come off. You suggest we all become nudists?"

              She shrugged. "Maybe. I like your logic."

              "Oh come on, you can appreciate good design."

              "Yeah on a wall or around your neck. Not on a bed."

              "To each her own."

              She nodded with a smile.

              "So when are Hazel and Stuart supposed to be here?" he asked.

              "They just said later. Not sure what time. You live with Stuart, shouldn't you know?"

              "Perhaps. And yet, I don't."

              "Not surprising," she said, looking at him from the corner of her eye with a smirk.

              "True." He returned the look.

              A light rapping in a melodic rhythm interrupted their discussion, and Kit rolled her eyes.

              "Well, speak of the devil of holistic hell," she said.

              Connor erupted in booming laughter.

              "Hazel, I take it?" he asked.

              "Indeed."

              She went to open the door. A beaming Hazel greeted them. She was dressed in jeans, boots with heels, and a shirt that looked like it wasn't formed at all, but was rather a piece of cloth doubled over with multiple options as to where the arms could go. The white top flowed off her shoulders in a beautiful fashion, if haphazard. Her hair hung to her waist and flowed freely except for two small braids that were not fastened and threatened to come undone at any moment. As usual, she had placed a flower in her hair. He had no idea how it stayed there.

              "Hey, come on in," Kit said.

              "You know when Stuart is going to be here?" asked Connor.

              "I don't know. Why should I know? How am I supposed to know where Stuart is or when he'll be here? You should know. I don't."

              The words came pouring out of her mouth in an unmeasured torrent and she flushed a brilliant shade of red. Connor and Kit exchanged knowing glances and then tried not to laugh. He didn't know how she was faring with it but he wasn't doing so well, so instead of embarrass his friend he erupted into a violent coughing episode.

              No less than a minute later a timid knock broke the tension, and a very nervous looking Stuart appeared at the door. Hazel shot him a look that very clearly said "I told you to
wait
!” and he scurried into the room like a mouse trying to escape after being discovered.

              Connor looked at Kit, who was standing behind them, as she mouthed the word "awkward", and he gave a final cough.

              "You feeling okay?" Stuart asked.

              "Yeah, probably just a cold. Or dust. Or something." Connor looked away.

              "So should we get to studying the book?" Hazel asked, having composed herself.

              "Yeah absolutely," said Connor.

              "Good idea," Stuart replied.

              Kit just nodded.

              "Oh, before we get started with the book, you guys should know what happened at the library."

              "After I left?" Stuart asked, looking at Connor with eyes that begged him not to relate the events leading up to his departure.

              "Yeah, after that," Connor said casually, and Stuart's expression relaxed and he smiled.

              "What happened?" Hazel asked, a concerned look on her face.

              "I went to make copies of something in a book, and on my way back I heard voices. There was a mirror in the corridor that I hadn't seen before, and it sounded like the voices were coming out of it."

              "So what did you do?"

              "He called me over," Kit said, "and then as he was examining it the...thing it...the mirror pulled him through. He said he was in a different swampy land for quite some time, but to me it seemed like just moments. And then I pulled him back."

              "Swampy land?" Stuart asked with a skeptical look on his face.

              "Look I know how it sounds, but..."

              "At this point everything is plausible," Hazel said with a comforting smile. "Tell us everything."

              He recounted being pulled through the mirror, the woman with the alabaster double, the message, the Demafae, everything. They sat in stunned silence as he told them, and nobody questioned it. They had all been through unique and unusual things since they met. Judgment was not something that Connor had ever been concerned about receiving.

              "We all need to go see this mirror. I think it's important somehow," Hazel said, her eyes squinted in a look of contemplation and thought.

              "I agree," said Stuart, nodding.

              "Maybe we can go this weekend, since we're all together. Tomorrow, perhaps?" Hazel responded.

              "Can't. Closed on Sundays." Kit never wasted words. Connor smiled.

              "Next week, then. We'll all go together," Connor offered.

              They all agreed that would be the best course of action, and with that Hazel produced
The Alchemist's Almanac.
She looked at it and all but tossed it on the floor, warranting a glare from Kit.

              "I don't trust the thing!" she said.

              "Well I don't want to piss it off, either. Be gentle," Kit replied.

              Hazel pulled her mouth to one side and crossed her arms like a child who'd just been told not to run in the store. Connor didn't think the book cared one way or the other how it was treated. In fact, he didn't think it noticed anything at all. He thought of the book much like he thought of the Demafae. They did what they were told to do, conducted the missions they were supposed to conduct, and took whoever they were supposed to take. That was all. It wasn't personal for them, it was business; and it wasn't personal for the book, either. But he also wasn't willing to cross Kit on the matter, so instead he slipped a wink to Hazel, who softened and returned to her jovial state with the knowledge that someone else agreed with her.

              They sat in a circle, as they typically did when they got together, a ritual that they had forged in the week or so they'd known each other. Connor liked it. It felt like they were a family of sorts. That they'd been friends forever. And in some ways, perhaps they
had
been connected their entire lives, they just hadn't known it until recently. All of them had been touched by the same unnamed, unknown thing, and they were only now finding out what the thing was. That's why it was so easy to feel so close.

              Kit opened the book first, and they started flipping through to the page they last remembered studying. All of a sudden Connor saw an image that made him remember several things at once, like a series of flashbacks all vying for real estate in his brain simultaneously.

              "There!" he shouted.

              Kit went back and opened to the page he'd indicated. It was a drawing of a room, and by every indication it was the room in which Connor had been transported so many times during his sleep. The rows of books the giant hourglass, the endless shelves of smaller sized hourglasses on the wall, the desk in the center - everything was exactly as it was in the dream.

              "What is it?" Kit asked.

              "I don't know what it is specifically. But it's the room that I've seen in my dreams. Only..."

              "Only they're not dreams," Hazel finished.

              "Right. That's where I always meet up with Rumsfeld. Or where he brings me. I'm not entirely sure. All I do know is that this room is important. The Sands are stored there, and all the hourglasses of all the people in the world who are still living..."

              His voice trailed off as he thought about the weight the phrase "still living" had, both for him and for everyone else in the room. Each of them had lost someone special and important thanks to the forces that be in the realm called the Void. Stuart squirmed at the phrase, and Hazel buried her face in his arm, letting out a sob. Connor furrowed his brow, and Stuart shook his head, begging him not to question it.

              "Apparently it's called the Celestarium." Kit carried on, pointing to the wording inscribed above the pictures, several pages of pictures that appeared to be a hand-drawn scrapbook of the room.

              "That makes sense, I suppose."

              "How do you figure?"

              "Well it seems to be somewhat of an admin center for the cosmos. Celestial names would befit it."

              "True."

              "What else does it say? Anything?"

              "Just a paragraph here. Something about being the center of the center."

              "What does that even mean?"

              Hazel's furrowed her brow and stared off at an angle, looking at nothing in particular, turning the phrase over in her mind.

              "Maybe it's as simple as it sounds," she said at long last.

              "How do you mean?" asked Connor.

              "Well think about it. There are all these....Hours...whatever they're called. There was a central hub, somewhere on that map in there. I can't remember what the name was, but there was a center. It didn't say Celestarium, though. So...maybe the center is like a thirteenth region or realm in and of itself of some sort, you know? And maybe that room is like an office inside of a building. The building may very well be located in the center of the central realm. The center of the center."

              She shrugged casually as though this was blatantly obvious, even though nobody else had thought of it.