The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Four

One man had died of fright.

Pel hadn’t expected anything like that; for a few moments guilt closed his throat, and he blinked away tears.

He should have expected it-the poor sucker had been abducted without warning, captured by a pair of zombies and dragged off to the fortress of a world-conquering evil power, a power well known for hanging and disembowelling its enemies.

Nobody out there knew that Shadow was dead, that her replacement was one of the good guys-or at least, tried to be one of the good guys.

Not that he was very good at it, he thought as he wiped his eyes and tried to swallow. The storybook heroes never made such stupid mistakes, never accidentally killed innocent bystanders.

Maybe, when he had learned how to resurrect the dead, he could bring this poor fellow back, too.

“Take him to the kitchen,” he told two of the fetches when he could speak.

The other involuntary guests all shuddered, glancing at one another and at the corpse as the fetches carried it away.

Pel silently cursed himself, and his eyes teared up again, this time more with frustration than grief. “That’s where it’s easiest to preserve him until I can revive him,” he explained.

It would take some effort to always remember that these people were accustomed to assuming the worst. Under Shadow, assuming the worst was the only way to avoid disaster.

He looked the survivors over.

There were eight, so far, and more on the way-that was really a pretty promising result. None of them were wizards or Imperials; most of them were scruffy and dirty and looked like peasants, but still, this was a good start.

He looked them over, standing or crouching at the eastern end of the throne room, faces averted or eyes shielded against the glare of the matrix and blinking anyway. They obviously had no idea what was going on.

He had debated waiting for the last few, but he had already kept the first arrivals in suspense for over an hour while this group collected, and the others wouldn’t reach the fortress for some time yet; it was time to begin.

“I assume you think that I’m Shadow,” he said, and without meaning to he let the matrix amplify his voice, so that it boomed and echoed; one man clapped his hands over his ears, and others flinched, but they all turned to listen.

“I’m not,” Pel continued. “Shadow is dead. But before she died, she turned her power over to me.”

He paused, unsure what to say next; he hadn’t gotten that far in preparing a speech. He’d assumed he could just wing it, make it up as he went along-he’d done that often enough in presentations-but he’d been disconcerted by the one who died, thrown off his pace, and now he was struggling to remember what he’d planned to say. He had figured that he would tell these people that the hangings and other executions were to stop, that they were free now-but how did he get to that from the announcement that Shadow was dead?

And if they were free, how could he order them to stop hanging people, or bring him wizards, or do anything else?

And somehow he had pictured himself speaking to a group of well-dressed, dignified village elders, rather than a bunch of terrified farmers who were cowering against the wall in confusion, too scared to speak.

“Shadow is dead,” he repeated.

One of the men blinked, and ventured a whispered, “Shadow is dead; long live Shadow.”

His neighbors turned to stare at him, then quickly looked back at the blaze of color and light that was all they could see before them.

When Pel, too startled to react immediately, said nothing, about half of the men mumbled, “Shadow is dead, long live Shadow.”

Pel slammed a fist onto the arm of his throne, and outside, unheard, magically-driven winds whipped around the fortress walls; Pel could sense them through the matrix. Within the throne room his glow shifted toward reds and blues and shadows, away from the lighter and warmer colors. This was so slow and frustrating! These people didn’t understand, and he didn’t know how to explain it to them.

“No, no,” he said. “Shadow is dead; there is no more Shadow. I am not Shadow!” He fought down the light and color, so that the men could see him. “I’m just a man, a man who has Shadow’s magic.”

The peasants peered at him through the lessened glare, then glanced at one another, and after a moment one of them called unsteadily, “Who are you, then?”

“My name is Pel Brown.”

Feet shuffled and voices muttered. No one spoke.

Pel realized that his name wasn’t much of an answer.

“I came here from another world,” he said. “Shadow wanted me to help her with something, but she lied to me, and…and I killed her.”

It was surprisingly hard to admit that, and for a moment he wondered whether a trace remained of the geas Shadow had placed on him, the magical compulsion not to harm her.

But it was probably, he knew, just guilt. He didn’t like to admit to being a murderer, even if it was justified homicide, even if he hadn’t pulled the trigger himself. He’d seen Shadow kill his friends for no reason, so even though he couldn’t harm her himself, he had set up a situation where Prossie Thorpe would kill her.

He’d conspired to commit murder, and why shouldn’t he feel guilty about it? Maybe the heroes in books and movies never had any qualms about the villains they killed, but he wasn’t any hero, despite what had happened to him, and even if Shadow had been a murderer many times over and a truly evil person, he wasn’t happy about her death.

And this man who had died of terror didn’t help any; that wasn’t justified, it was just carelessness. He hadn’t meant it to happen, but it was still his fault.

The peasants muttered among themselves. If he bothered, he could extend his senses through the matrix and hear every word they said, find out if they were blaming him for their companion’s death-but why bother? He let them mutter.

He hoped someone would step forward and speak up, ask questions, turn this into a proper conversation-but no one did. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; this world’s culture seemed pretty authoritarian, not much given to discussion.

So it would have to be a speech.

“I have all Shadow’s power,” he said, “but not her knowledge, and not her…her ambition. I’m not going to hurt any of you. I have no desire to rule your world; in fact, I want you to be free, and happy.”

One man managed to work up an almost-hopeful expression at that, but that was countered by looks of dread on other faces; Pel supposed that to most of them, any talk of change sounded threatening.

He would just have to work past that.

And he knew where to begin; he remembered his horrific walk to the fortress.

“When I came here,” he said, “I came down the road from the Low Forest in Sunderland, and I passed through several of your towns and villages, and in most of them there were dead bodies hanging. Who were they all?”

The peasants looked at one another. No one wanted to be the spokesman, obviously. Pel sighed. “You,” he said, pointing, “on the end, in the green. Step forward.”

The man hesitated, then stepped forward, placing each foot carefully; it looked as if he was having trouble breathing.

“Who were all those people who got hanged?”

“I…I know not, my lord…your Majesty. In…in my own village, the last to be hanged was a man named Norbert…”

The colors surged up, flickering orange, as Pel momentarily lost control of his emotions, his guilt and grief turning abruptly to anger as frustration got the better of him.

“Not their names, idiot!” he shouted, and the walls echoed back a dull, angry roar. “I mean, what were they hanged for?”

The men cowered back against the wall; one moved for the door, but Pel twisted at a strand of his web and the doors slammed shut.

Someone moaned, and Pel forced himself to calm down; he didn’t want any more deaths. He didn’t even want anyone to faint.

But he did want answers.

“Why were they hanged?” Pel demanded. “You, why was this Norbert hanged?”

The man in green glanced back at his companions, found no help there, and after a false start and a throat-clearing, managed to say, “’Twas said he had failed to show the village elders the respect due their station.”

Pel glared, though he doubted anyone could see his expression through the magical haze. He had expected something like that, but it was still infuriating. Death for the most trivial wrongs-that had been Shadow’s style. No wonder the men were scared. “He didn’t kill anybody?”

The man blinked, and made the chopping motion that Pel had learned was the local equivalent of shaking one’s head.

“He didn’t even steal anything?”

Another chop.

All those people, horribly dead for nothing, and it had been deliberate, not accidental like the one the fetches were taking to the kitchen; Pel felt sick. “All right, listen, all of you,” he announced. “From now on, you only hang murderers. Only murderers. You understand? You can…you can beat thieves, or flog them, or throw them in jail, or whatever seems appropriate, but you can’t kill them. Is that clear?”

Heads bobbed. That gesture was the same here-just another of those annoying situations where things were only partly different, just familiar enough to be confusing.

“And you don’t disembowel anyone, is that clear? Not unless a murderer chops people up with an axe or something, then maybe you can gut him, but nobody else.”

“The Elders…” someone began.

“To hell with the elders!” Pel shouted. “You go tell them to stop hanging people, or they’ll answer to me! If they don’t believe you, you send ’em here! And look, hey, you can take fetches back with you to prove you were here. I don’t want anyone else killed! Shadow’s dead, and you don’t do that stuff any shy;more!” He was standing in front of the throne now, pointing and yelling; magic swirled and blazed around him, actual flame flaring briefly from the air behind him as his anger sucked energy from the matrix.

The eight men all pressed flat against the wall, hands over their ears, driven back by sheer volume.

Seeing them there, Pel’s anger suddenly passed, and he flopped back into his chair.

“And you can clean up your villages, too,” he said in his normal tones. “Maybe pave the streets. Put in sewers-some of those places stank. There’s no reason you can’t live decently, can’t have indoor plumbing and all the rest of it.”

No one answered, though a few risked uncovering their ears.

“You don’t know about all that stuff,” he said, with a gesture of dismissal. “It can wait. We’ll get to it.”

“Ah…your Majesty,” the man in green said, head down, “if one could be permitted to speak…”

Pel slumped back in the throne.

“Oh, go ahead and speak,” he said. “Stand up straight and tell me all about it.”

“Majesty, we…I am but a poor cobbler,” the man said. “I know naught of governance or law, and would only go about my business. Wherefore, then, am I brought hither? Why speak to me of roads and hangings and the rest? Would it not be better to call upon the councils of the wise, the elders and those who have a say in such matters? Or perchance, to send forth your own ministers, an you are displeased with our lords?”

“You don’t have a say?” Pel asked.

“Nay, surely not,” the cobbler said. “I’m neither prince nor councilor.”

“You’re a person, aren’t you?”

The cobbler blinked. “Aye, but…”

“Well, then you have a say,” Pel proclaimed. “Everybody has a say. It’s time you people got rid of your lords and ladies and learned some democracy.” Blue streaked through the matrix for a moment. “Listen, all of you,” Pel said. “From now on, I want things to be run democratically around here. I want you to elect your leaders, not just let them happen. Vote for ’em.”

“Majesty, I understand this not a whit.”

“I mean I want you to choose your own leaders by getting everyone to vote-each person says who he wants, and whoever gets the most votes wins.”

The men stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“It’s simple,” Pel insisted. “Look, suppose the eight of you were somewhere together and needed a leader. Each of you would say who you wanted to be the leader, and whoever got five or more votes would win.”

“But…’tis all very well, but how to know who shall vote?” the cobbler asked.

“Everybody votes!” Pel said, waving his hands to include all the world.

“Let everyone have a say?” one of the other men protested. “The fools, the children, women? People bearing grudges?”

The others murmured agreement, and Pel stared at them just as uncomprehendingly as they had stared at him a moment before.

It was at that point that Pel realized he didn’t care. If they didn’t want to be democratic, what business was it of his? If they didn’t want to build sewers, why should he care? He didn’t have to live in their stinking villages.

He didn’t really care whether they cleaned up their villages, he discovered. He had told them to stop hanging and disembowelling anyone who argued with the village elders, and they had agreed, and that was the really important change. Death mattered. Death was important. The rest of it, elections and building sewers and aqueducts and so on, that could wait, or they could figure it out for themselves.

He had had an idea, when he sent the others back to Earth but chose to stay here, that he might play the great leader, that he might show the people of this world the way to a more modern, more civilized lifestyle, but if they weren’t interested, it wasn’t his problem.

“Suit yourselves,” he said, his hands dropping.

His problem was getting his wife and daughter back.

“All right,” he said, “forget all that. But no more hangings, no more eviscerations, no torture-none of that stuff. Be good to each other. Shadow’s dead. You tell everyone she’s dead, and that Pel Brown is running things now.” He hoped that that name would reach Wilkins and Sawyer and other Imperials who were still alive, and they could come and find him and he could send them home. “No hangings, and the name’s Pel Brown. You understand?”

Heads nodded.

“And there’s something else. Something important.”

He could see them tense, he could, through the matrix, hear them drawing quick breaths and holding them; he could sense muscles tightening, pupils dilating.

“I want wizards,” he said. “I want every wizard you can find, I want every wizard there is. Send word out through all the world-every wizard must come to me, here in my fortress.” He stood up and pointed nowhere in particular, to emphasize his words. “All the wizards. Especially Taillefer. They come here, or they’re in deep shit. I can find them if I have to, and they know it.” This last wasn’t as certainly true as he made it sound; he was sure that he could locate anyone who dared to use magic, since all magic was linked into a single network and he controlled that network, and he thought he could tell someone experienced in wizardry by the patterning in their own tiny bit of matrix, but he did not yet really know how to interpret the data, how to convert a sensation in the matrix into a place in the real world.

But that didn’t matter.

The important thing was what they believed.

He thought for a moment about telling them to find Imperials, too, but then he dismissed the idea. They didn’t seem all that bright, and he wanted to keep it as simple as he possibly could. The creatures he had sent out to fetch this bunch hadn’t come across anyone wearing purple; probably Sawyer and Wilkins were hundreds of miles away.

“You find wizards. You tell your village elders, you tell everybody. Any wizard doesn’t come here might as well cut his own throat and be done with it, you understand?”

They were cowering back against the wall, and Pel realized that intangible clouds of dark gray were rolling around the throne room, interspersed with gouts of flame and vivid flashes of crimson-the matrix was picking up his insistence and interpreting it. His guests, or captives, or whatever they were, were probably scared half to death.

He dropped his pointing finger and calmed the roiling currents of magic.

“You get the idea,” he said. “No more hangings, and find wizards, and send them here. Now, get out of here, go home, tell everyone.” He made the twist in the web of power that would link him to the fetches, and ordered them, “You go with these men, you make sure people believe them about the hangings and the wizards. Take a week, that should do it, then come back here.” He waved in dismissal. “Get out of here, all of you.”

He slumped back into the throne and watched as the eight men fled, the fetches trudging stolidly after them.

He hoped none of them tripped and fell down the stairs on the way out.

* * * *

Johnston peered warily down the basement stairs.

Except for being unusually dusty, which came from being shut up and neglected all summer, the place looked perfectly ordinary. It was hard to believe that the doorway to another universe had appeared in this house.

Well, maybe it hadn’t-but the house didn’t look much like part of an incredibly-elaborate hoax, either.

Carefully, he trudged down the steps. Behind him came a heavily-loaded Air Force lieutenant, struggling to maneuver two cases of equipment safely.

“You’ll want to change those lightbulbs,” Johnston said, pointing. “The Jewell woman says they’re burnt out.”

“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant agreed, looking up.

“That’s the wall, right there, according to the description both the women gave,” Johnston said, indicating the bare concrete. “Poke at it if you like, do anything you want that won’t damage it-take pictures, measure it, whatever.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Set the radio up first.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We don’t really expect anything to happen, you understand-but if it does, it could be anything, any shy;time.”

“Yes, sir.” The lieutenant set the cases on the basement floor.

“Any questions?”

The lieutenant looked around, then shrugged. “No, sir.”

Johnston nodded. “Your relief will be here at 1800.”

“Yes, sir.”

Johnston hesitated, then crossed to the blank wall. He stared at the gray blocks, reached up and tapped one.

Just concrete. His hand didn’t vanish into a chilly medieval forest, nor a bare white desert, nor any of the other places Jewell and Thorpe had described and Deranian had babbled about.

“Be careful,” he said as he turned to go.

* * * *

There were advantages, Amy decided, to having vanished in a manner sufficiently mysterious that it attracted the attention of Air Force intelligence. They hadn’t paid her bills, but at least they’d collected her mail and kept the post office from returning it all. Their patrols had scared off burglars. And they’d made sure none of the utilities were shut off.

It was too bad they hadn’t bothered to answer her phone or explain to any of her clients what had happened. The tape on the answering machine had filled up the first week, mostly with ever-more-angry complaints from the Fosters.

After calling to make her doctor’s appointment she had tried to phone all of her clients. Some, including the Fosters, didn’t answer; one had moved; one hung up on her. Prema Chatterji was still interested in a consultation, but the others were pretty clearly a total loss. Being called away without warning on “personal matters” for more than three months was not good business.

And after going through the mountain of mail and matching the unpaid bills against her bank balance and the undeposited checks, she knew she was broke, or nearly so-if nothing bounced and she hadn’t missed anything and she could transfer from her savings account, she would wind up with a balance of about eighteen dollars.

That wouldn’t even pay for groceries to replace what had gone bad. She sighed.

“Is it bad?” Prossie asked.

“Yeah, but it could certainly be worse,” Amy said. She looked up, out the living room window at the Air Force car parked out front.

Those people wouldn’t let them starve, she was sure. And they were back on Earth, and alive and well.

“It could be a lot worse,” she said.

* * * *

“I want agents on Earth and on Shadow’s world,” Bascombe said. “You tell me how to get them there.”

The scientist glanced at the telepath, then shrugged. “We can get them through the warp,” he said, “but anti-gravity doesn’t work in either of those realities, so getting them down safely is…well, it’s an engineering problem. And getting them back is tougher.”

The telepath, a man named Brian Hall, Carrie Hall’s brother, whom Bascombe had not dealt with before, said, “You want to use someone who’s already there. On Earth, our only possible contacts are Prossie Thorpe and the five we contacted before…”

Bascombe interrupted, “I thought there were six.”

“Yes, sir; one of them has died.”

Bascombe nodded. “Go on,” he said.

“Yes, sir. Well, none of those contacts were very satisfactory. Carleton Miletti apparently could only transmit, not receive; though he was aware of our attempts at contact, none of our messages got through. Oram Blaisdell and Ray Aldridge…well, frankly, sir, I’m not sure either of them was entirely sane. And the other two, Angela Thompson and Gwenyth-we never got her last name-are both under-age females, which limits their usefulness.”

“What about Shadow?”

“We can’t read Shadow’s mind, sir; we tried, and the telepath who made the attempt died. As for other people in Shadow’s universe, we’ve never managed a solid contact; we don’t know why.”

“What about our people who went there?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Bascombe glared at him.

“I mean, sir,” Hall said, “I don’t know if any of them are still alive, and no attempt has been made to contact any of them. I doubt any attempt at contact will succeed, but I don’t know that.”

“Try it,” Bascombe ordered him. “And get your sister going on contacts on Earth.” Then he turned back to the scientist. “And I want your department to figure out how we can get agents safely to Earth and Shadow. Don’t worry about getting them back yet; we can take care of that when the time comes.”

“Yes, sir.” The scientist glanced at the telepath; the telepath carefully avoided the man’s gaze.

“Go on,” Bascombe said. “Both of you. Get on with it.”

“Yes, sir.”