Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

“God damn it!” Johnston shouted, as the ladder vanished upward into the space warp.

The State Department man stared at the empty air.

“But he said he’d be right back,” he said. “Maybe it’ll be right back!”

The FBI man didn’t say anything; Johnston snorted.

“What the hell is going on?” Heyworth demanded.

Johnston looked around at the others, and a sudden silence fell.

Heyworth was still badgering them, trying to get a response, when the Air Force helicopter arrived a few minutes later, to fly aimlessly back and forth through empty air where the space warp had been.

* * * *

Someone was entering the fortress, Pel could sense it, but right now he was too busy to care. Susan was ready, wearing a green dress that Pel hoped wouldn’t stand out in the Empire-he had seen very few civilians at Base One, and didn’t really remember what the women had worn on Psi Cassiopeia II or Zeta Leo III.

Not that he’d seen all that many women there, either.

He did remember the passengers on Emerald Princess, though, and he thought this green dress he’d magically created from fabric he’d found in one of Shadow’s workshops was a reasonable approximation of the gowns they wore. Simpler, perhaps-he hadn’t bothered with any sequins or lace-but along the same general lines, with its high waistline and long skirt.

Susan didn’t argue about the dress-but then, Susan didn’t seem to argue about anything any shy;more. After the one burst of uncharacteristic action that had gotten her killed she seemed to have become more passive and tolerant than ever.

She stood there in her seamless new dress, purse slung on her shoulder, a blaster tucked in the purse, and said nothing at all as Pel tried to locate the spot he wanted and open a portal.

He was seated on the throne, the matrix seething about him; Susan stood before him, waiting, eyes closed against the glare. The fetch who had brought the hairbrushes from Earth stood by the back wall, motionless, dead eyes untroubled by the brilliance of the magical display.

Pel could sense the simulacrum of Nancy, still waiting in the bedroom down the stone corridor; he could sense the other fetches scattered about the fortress, and the hundreds of homunculi and other creatures with which Shadow had peopled the place. Boudicca and Athelstan were eating in a kitchen two levels below. Since Pel’s takeover a handful of the local peasants had also made themselves at home in the fortress; he could feel their presence, as well. The thousands of monster slugs in the surrounding marsh were also detectable, tiny dark sparks in the magical tracery.

The lone man who had just walked in through the front gate was no one Pel recognized from the pattern of magical energy; that meant it wasn’t Taillefer or any other wizard, nor any of the peasants who had spoken to him before. It might, he supposed, be that Imperial spy, though he wouldn’t have expected the spy to march in so openly.

Well, if it was the spy, then that was all the more reason to get on with it. The portal would form a few feet to Pel’s left, Susan’s right, and Susan could just walk right through.

Perhaps he should send the false Nancy, or Athelstan, or Boudicca, or one of the peasants-but he didn’t trust any of them, really, and he had thought of Susan first, and here she was.

He twisted the matrix, poured energy through it, and felt reality give way as the portal opened. A cool breeze blew into the throne room from somewhere in the Galactic Empire, cutting through the thick, overheated air.

“It’s open,” Pel said. “Go ahead.”

Susan straightened, adjusted her purse strap, stepped forward-and almost collided with the man stepping out of the portal.

* * * *

Samuel Best stared at the fortress.

He hadn’t expected it to be quite so ugly.

And he hadn’t expected it to be built on a sort of island at the center of a vast open marsh.

There were only two ways to approach the place, so far as he could see-openly, walking along the causeway, or by sneaking through the marsh.

He looked down and contemplated the mud, the sawgrass, the likelihood that there were leeches, ticks, and assorted other vermin, quite aside from whatever defenses Shadow or its successor might have deliberately planted.

He sighed.

“Poole,” he said, “it’s your turn. Begley and I are going to wait here for orders, because I’m not interested in either wading through a swamp or walking into somebody’s gunsights. You go back for pick-up and tell ’em what this place looks like, and that unless something unexpected turns up, we aren’t going any farther without a direct order to do so.” He glanced at Begley, and added, “If then.”

“It’s a long way back,” Poole objected.

“But it’s back home,” Best pointed out. “If you’d rather stay, maybe Begley wants to go.”

Begley smiled, and Poole shrugged. “I’ll go,” he said.

“Good,” Best said.

* * * *

“Best has hit a dead end,” Brian Hall announced. “He’s sending his man Poole back for orders.”

Markham glanced at Hall in surprise. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“Shadow’s fortress-or the Brown Magician’s, whichever it is-is surrounded by marsh, sir. The only safe approach is by a completely unsheltered causeway several miles long.”

“What about the other man, Wilkins? Has Best contacted him?”

“No, sir,” Hall answered. “Wilkins went on into the fortress, by way of the causeway.”

“Can you contact either man?”

“Not reliably, sir-neither one is expecting telepathic contact, you see, and they’re both in the area where the interference is very strong. It’s getting hard to read Best, and I can only perceive Wilkins intermittently now.”

“It’s very suspicious, that interference,” Markham said. “Why is it there?”

“I don’t know, sir. It may not be deliberate.”

“Hmm.” Markham frowned. “Well, keep me posted as best you can.”

* * * *

“Damn it,” Pel said, “strangers aren’t supposed to keep stepping out of these things!” He made no attempt to suppress the glare of the matrix as he glowered at the newcomer.

The man was squinting, shielding his face with a forearm, but he didn’t look perturbed by the brightness, nor in any way confused or frightened. He wore a black jacket of a cut that seemed peculiar and slightly archaic to Pel, but which was not all that different from some he had seen in the Galactic Empire; beneath the jacket was a purple silk vest, a pale pink cravat, and a white shirt with fancy white-on-white patterning to it-Pel couldn’t make out the details of the design past the jacket, vest, tie, and shifting light. The man’s pants were slightly flared black slacks with old-fashioned wide cuffs.

The overall effect was of a dandy from some alternate past, where fashion had followed a different route.

And in fact, that was probably just what the fellow was, Pel thought-some foppish Imperial who had wandered through the portal by accident.

But why wasn’t he dismayed by his sudden transition into another universe?

“Who the hell are you?” Pel asked. His anger filtered into the matrix, and his voice boomed from the walls as if heavily amplified, while red light flickered overhead and a pale, insubstantial mist swirled coldly around the stranger’s ankles.

The well-dressed man turned to face the throne directly, and Pel could see him blinking behind his shielding arm.

“I’m called Peter Gregory,” he said. “I take it that you aren’t Shadow, though you sit in its stead.”

“No, I’m not,” Pel said warily. “You knew Shadow?” He had his doubts about that, given Gregory’s choice of pronoun.