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‘Are you holding us up, son?’
‘The spell is, and we’d better be ready for a rude landing when it releases. I can’t keep this sphere intact and move it.’
‘Maybe I can help,’ said Miranda. She closed her eyes and the sphere slowly settled to the bottom of the crater.
Everything was still confounding to the senses as energies continued to cascade around them, every visible spectrum shifting madly outside the bubble. Pug pushed Magnus’s protective sphere gently and it expanded enough that they could all stand easily. After a few more minutes passed, details in the crater wall became recognizable. Slowly, the blinding light faded and varying hues of ivory, palest gold, a hint of blue emerged. At last the brilliance disappeared.
They blinked as their eyes adjusted to natural daylight, which was dark in comparison to what they had just endured.
Pug looked around. They were perhaps fifty feet below the surface, surrounded by what appeared to be glass.
‘What happened?’ asked Miranda.
‘Someone tried to kill us,’ answered Nakor, without his usually cheerful tone. ‘We need to get out of this hole and look around.’
‘Is it safe by now?’ asked Magnus.
‘Be ready to protect yourself and we’ll find out,’ said Nakor. ‘I think it’s going to be very hot for you two.’
Magnus studied the little man for a moment, nodded once, and glanced at his father. Pug tilted his head slightly, indicating that he understood the warning and both men encased themselves in protective spells without a word exchanged.
Magnus closed his eyes for a brief moment and the sphere around them vanished. Pug knelt and touched the glass beneath his feet. ‘Odd …’
‘What?’ asked Miranda.
‘The energy … I expected it to be more … I’m not sure.’ He looked from his son to Miranda. ‘Both of you are more adept at sensing the nature of a given spell. Does this feel like just an explosion to you?’
Miranda knelt next to Pug. ‘Feel like an explosion? We lived through it; it was massive and loud.’ She touched the glass beneath them. ‘Oh, yes, I see what you mean.’
Magnus did likewise. ‘This … the explosion was the by-product.’
Nakor looked at the three kneeling magicians and said, ‘Please?’
‘The energy released was the result of a spell that wasn’t just some spell of massive destruction,’ said Magnus, standing. ‘We need to go.’
Pug waved his hands without comment. All four rose upward and floated towards the edge of the crater.
Magnus said to Nakor, ‘As best I can tell, that spell did two things. Besides obliterating everything within a fairly large radius, it also moved us to … I’m not sure where we are, but it’s not where we were when the spell was triggered.’
They reached the lip of the crater and Pug said, ‘You are right, Magnus. We are not where we were minutes ago.’
‘Where’s the sea?’ asked Miranda.
They looked to the south and where waves had lapped the shore just minutes before, only a long, sloping plain remained. To their rear there was a rising bluff and hills beyond that roughly resembled what they would have seen on the Isle of the Snake Men, but these hills were denuded of any plant life – no trees, no brush, not even a blade of grass could be seen.
The devastation was complete: nothing moved save by force of the wind. There was sand everywhere: years past this land had turned to desert. They were at the edge of a vast, deep crater, and like the crater, the land around had been fused by the blast, its surface nothing but glass of coruscating colours, as smoke, ash, and dust swirled upward, admitting narrow shafts of sunlight. The wind was blowing the smoke northward, clearing it away quickly. On this world nothing burned, for there was nothing to burn, and the rocks and sand that had been turned molten were rapidly cooling.
‘I think we’re still in the same place,’ said Nakor. ‘I mean, an analogous place, as when we travelled to Kosidri.’ Pug, Magnus, and Nakor had discovered that on the other planes of reality the worlds were identical, or at least as much as the variant conditions of that reality permitted. So wherever they were was a world similar in geography to Midkemia. ‘But I think the energy state here is going to prove troublesome soon.’
Pug nodded.
Miranda said, ‘I feel a little odd.’
Magnus said, ‘I remember how we adapted when we travelled to the Dasati realm, father.’
‘But this time it feels … different, obverse?’ said Pug.
‘A higher state than either the demon realm or Midkemia,’ agreed Miranda. ‘As if there’s too much air?’
Nakor grimaced. ‘We could be overwhelmed by it if we do not tread cautiously.’
Each fashioned a protective spell that returned a tiny bubble of protective energy around themselves, reducing the more intense energies in this world to a level their own bodies could accommodate.
‘If it’s a higher energy state,’ said Magnus, ‘we did not go into a lower realm. But a higher one. Which means—’
‘We’re in the first realm of heaven?’ suggested Miranda.
Contemplating the desolate landscape, Nakor quipped, ‘It’s obviously overrated. There’s more to offer in the demon realm.’
They were silent for a moment as they contemplated the barren world around them.
Pug looked at his son and said quietly, ‘I neglected to say thank you. Had you not returned …’
Magnus embraced him. ‘You’re my father. No matter how much I may disagree with … what we talked about … I will never leave you when you need me.’
Father and son held each other for a moment, then separated, returning their attention to the moment. Glancing at Miranda, they saw she had tears on her cheeks. She reached up and wiped them away and in an angry tone they both knew well, said, ‘Damn these memories. I know they are not mine! I know it!’ She crossed her arms across her chest. A bitter chuckle was followed by her observing, ‘Part of me remembers a time I’d have happily torn your heads from your shoulders and devoured your still-beating hearts.’ Then she glanced up and in softer tones said, ‘And part of me feels that I’ve never loved anyone more than I’ve loved you two. Only Caleb was your equal.’ This last came out a hoarse whisper.
Magnus understood his father well enough to know Pug was fighting an impulse to reach out and embrace the form of his former wife, to comfort a person who wasn’t really there. Softly he said, ‘I can’t call you Mother.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘But I never understood until now just how difficult this must be for you.’ In what was an impulsive act for the usually stoic magician, he took a step, slipped his arms around the demon in human form and held her closely for a brief moment.
When he stepped away, he saw more tears streaming down the face of the first person in life he had beheld. Powerful emotions tore through him, and he fought back the urge to say more. No matter how much he wished his mother back, alive and before him, it was nothing compared to what his father must feel. He put his hand on Pug’s shoulder and said, ‘We must make the best of a terribly confusing and awkward situation, and if we focus on what is before us, perhaps what is behind us will distance itself enough that we may develop new ways of seeing each other.’
Nakor grinned. ‘That’s very nice, but have you noticed someone is coming towards us?’
All looked in the direction Nakor indicated and saw the landscape was starting to resolve itself. Approaching them was a familiar figure clad in a black robe, wearing sandals bound upon his legs with whipcord, and using a staff as a walking stick. His hair was black, his posture youthful and his stride vigorous, as he had been in his prime.
All four were momentarily stunned and finally Pug put voice to their incredulity. ‘Macros!’
The figure held up his hand. ‘No, though I resemble him, no doubt.’
Miranda and Nakor exchanged glances and the short gambler asked, ‘You have Macros’s memories?’
‘No,’ said the figure.
‘Who are you?’ asked Magnus.
‘I have no name. You may think of me as a guide.’
‘Why do you look like my father?’ asked Miranda.
The guide shrugged slightly, in a perfect mimicry of Macros. ‘That is a mystery, for I am by nature formless in the mortal realm. I can only speculate, but my conclusion is that I appear to be who you expected me to be. I am sent by One whose Will is Action, but I needed to be in a form with which you could converse.’
The four exchanged quick glances, then Nakor laughed. ‘It is true that for most of the last hundred or more years I’ve expected to see that rascal’s hand behind every turn and twist of our existence.’
The others nodded slowly. Pug said, ‘Well, then, guide. What should we call you?’
‘Guide serves well enough,’ he answered.
‘Where exactly are we?’ asked Magnus.
‘The world of Kolgen.’ Guide pointed to the south. ‘Once a majestic ocean lapped these shores, now there is only blight and desolation.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Pug.
‘Walk, for we have a long journey if you are ever to return home,’ said the likeness of Macros.
‘Before we begin,’ said Miranda, ‘can you explain how you resemble my father down to the tiniest detail?’
Guide paused, and smiled exactly as the now-dead Black Sorcerer had in life. ‘Certainly,’ he said with another pause, again exactly as Macros would have. ‘We exist in a realm of energy, we who serve the One. We are forever in the Bliss, part of the One until we are needed and we are then given form and substance, given an identity commensurate with our purpose; to ensure efficiency, all memories of previous service in that role are returned. So, currently, I think of myself as “I”, a single entity, but that will dissipate when I rejoin the One in the Bliss.
‘I am only an abstraction of energy, a being of light and heat if you will, a thing of mind alone. Hence, the One gives me the ability to … suggest to your mortal minds any shape and quality suitable to sustain communications.’
‘But we are not mortal,’ said Nakor, indicating Miranda and himself.
‘You are more mortal than you might guess,’ returned Guide, ‘for it is of the mind I speak, and while your fundamental being is demonic, your minds are human, more so each day. Moreover, your demonic bodies are things of flux energy, imperfect imitations of beings of the higher plane.
‘And you are becoming that which you appear to me, with limits, of course. You would never mate with humans and produce offspring, nor would you be subject to their illnesses and injuries, and those who battle demon-kind can still destroy you, returning your essence to the Fifth Circle.’ He lowered his voice and seemed to be attempting kindness. ‘Nor do you have a mortal soul. Those beings whose memories you possess have travelled on to the place where they have been judged and are now on their path to the next state of existence, or have returned to the Wheel of Life for another turn.
‘In short, you will never truly be Miranda and Nakor. But you’re as close as any being will ever get.’
Turning, he began to walk away. ‘Please, we must travel far and while time here is not measured as it is in the mortal realm, it is still passing and the longer you are away from Midkemia, the more the One’s Adversary stands to gain.’
Pug and the others fell in next to Guide and Pug said, ‘Then I believe you had best tell us in your own fashion what it is we need to know, but could you begin with why we are here?’
‘That’s the simple part,’ said Guide. ‘You fell into a trap. The Adversary has been waiting a very long time to rid Midkemia of the four of you. To do it in one moment, that approaches genius.’
‘This Adversary you speak of,’ said Nakor. ‘Who or what is it?’
The guide paused. ‘It will be easier if we wait on questions until I finish explaining to you what has befallen you. You are vital to what transpires, but still just a tiny part of the whole. To leap to attempting the larger picture might confuse.
‘You are stranded in a reality that is not your own, and have no easy means of returning. You are, not to put too fine a point on it, marooned here.’
He kept walking and as the four companions glanced at one another, they hurried to keep up with his brisk pace. Pug overtook him in three strides and said, ‘If we are marooned, where are we going?’
‘To find one who may facilitate your release from this place.’
‘But I thought you said this world was naught but blight and desolation?’
In a perfect duplication of Macros’s smile, Guide said, ‘This is true, but that doesn’t mean it’s unoccupied.’
Pug considered that for a moment, but decided that among the thousands of questions demanding answers, the meaning of that riddle was one he could wait for.
They forged across the bed of a long-absent sea. As they trudged across the rough channels and gullies, Miranda asked, ‘Why are we walking?’
Guide said, ‘You have a better alternative?’
With an all-too-familiar smug smile, she glanced at Pug, then vanished.
A hundred yards ahead they heard her scream.
Scrambling as best they could across the broken, sun-baked sands of the dry sea bottom, they reached her quickly, finding her sitting up, a look of confusion on her face as she held her hands to her temples.
‘That which you call magic,’ said Guide, ‘does not respond here as it would in your own world.’
‘But what of the protective spells we employed?’ asked Magnus.
‘Did it not occur to you that it was surprisingly easy to create those protections against this world’s energy states?’
Magnus nodded. ‘Now that you mention it, it was easy.’
Nakor chuckled as he and Pug helped Miranda to her feet. ‘Different energy states, my friends,’ said the bandy-legged little man. ‘If you light a small pot of oil, you get a flame to read by. If you refine and distil that same oil and light it, you get a really big, hot flame.’
‘In time you should be able to learn to temper your arts to transport yourself from place to place,’ said Guide. ‘But we do not have the time for you to learn. Rather, you do not have that time. So, we walk.’ With that he began walking again.
Pug asked Miranda, ‘Are you all right?’
‘Besides feeling supremely foolish, yes.’ She glanced up and saw the concern in his eyes. ‘Sorry.’
Pug felt conflicting urges to say different things at once, paused, then nodded.
Time passed and they forged on. Guide provided illumination as they traversed the broken seabed. He created bridges as they crossed massive trenches in the former ocean’s floor, and seemingly kept them alive by some magic that rid them of need for food or water.
But they did need to rest, even if only for short periods, while they regained strength rapidly in this high-energy-state universe.
During one such rest, Pug asked, ‘Are we to know why you’re here?’
Guide answered, ‘I am here as willed by One.’
Pug couldn’t help but laugh. ‘When I was a Tsurani Great One on Kelewan, my every command was answered by “Your Will, Great One”, ah … for some reason this strikes me as humorous.’
A great wave of sadness swept over Pug as he remembered Kelewan. Since his actions had destroyed that world and countless lives on it, he had effectively walled off the profoundly deep sorrow and guilt associated with that terrible decision. Yet from time to time, usually when he was alone, it would return to haunt him.
‘How are you able to keep hunger and thirst at bay for us?’ asked Nakor. ‘It’s a very good trick.’
Guide shrugged. ‘The universe is aware, on many levels. My perceptions and knowledge are vastly different to your own. What I need to know, I know. What I do not know, I do not know.’ He shrugged. ‘You are mortals, and in need of food and water, so I provide such …’ He waved his hand as if the concept was alien to him and difficult to explain. ‘I just make it so, you are fed; you have drunk … what is needed.’ Then he opened his eyes slightly and said, ‘Ah, curiosity!’
‘You have none?’ asked Magnus.
‘I am created for a purpose,’ said Guide.
