Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Reign of the Brown Magician

“Maybe you’re just more used to them now.”

“Maybe,” Amy agreed. “Or maybe I’m not so scared. They weren’t trying to send me off to fight Shadow, after all, they just wanted me to talk to you.”

“I’m as powerful as Shadow was,” Pel remarked. “Or pretty nearly, anyway. I can’t do a lot of the stuff she did, but I can do plenty.”

“So I’ve heard.” She hesitated, then asked, “Are you upset about something?”

Pel looked away, at a door in a side wall that had stood slightly ajar; now it slammed shut, though no one had touched it.

He looked back at Amy.

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he said.

Amy glanced back at Best and Wilkins, who stepped back discreetly.

“What is it?” she asked.

Pel swallowed, and looked entirely human for a moment.

“It’s Nancy,” he said.

“Nancy’s dead?” Amy asked.

She wasn’t sure just what had happened to Nancy. She knew that the Empire had delivered her corpse to Pel, she knew that Shadow had claimed to be able to raise the dead, and Pel claimed to have all Shadow’s power, but had Pel really brought Nancy back to life?

“Yeah,” Pel said, and Amy could hear the pain in his voice, “she’s dead. She’s up and walking, but she’s still dead, as far as I’m concerned.”

“You’re sure?”

Pel slammed a fist into the back of his chair, and plumes of golden flame flared momentarily into existence on all sides, then vanished.

“Of course I’m sure, damn it!”

Amy took a step back, but then Pel burst into tears.

“Oh, God, Amy,” he said, “of course I’m sure!”

* * * *

It didn’t really matter what she said, Pel thought; it was just good to have someone he could talk to, someone he could explain it all to, someone from Earth, someone real, someone who would understand.

He hadn’t known Amy back on Earth, he had only met her at that first gathering in his house, when Raven of Stormcrack Keep and his little band of resistance fighters had led Captain Cahn and his crew, and Amy and her lawyer, and Pel and his wife and daughter and their lawyer, into Faerie.

For five minutes, Raven had said. Just to see. Just so they would know it was real.

How long had it been? Pel had lost track of time; here in the windowless depths of Shadow’s fortress, where he didn’t need to eat or sleep, he had let days slip by uncounted. The seasons were different here, the year longer than Earth’s-it was autumn here, wasn’t it? Back in Maryland winter had probably come and gone.

Five minutes, Raven had said.

And he and Amy and the others had been trapped into this adventure, this long storybook adventure that should have ended with Shadow’s destruction and Pel’s ascension, when everyone was supposed to live happily ever after.

Or with Nancy and Rachel’s resurrection, when Pel had regained what he had lost, and once again, should have lived happily ever after.

Happily?

He wept openly, he sat on the floor with Amy’s arms around him and cried miserably.

Best and Wilkins retreated to the stairs, embarrassed, and Pel had started to shut the doors, until Amy had reminded him that if he did that, the two Imperials would be in the dark.

So he had left the doors open, and he didn’t care if they heard him crying. He was the goddamned Brown Magician, he could reduce them to ash with a thought, and he would cry if he wanted.

His wife and daughter were dead to him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

* * * *

Amy held Pel and let him cry; she had to keep her eyes closed, and even so they stung with the glare of the matrix, because Pel’s control of its brilliance had slipped with his loss of control of his emotions, but she didn’t turn away or let him go. She held him and let him cry.

At last he stopped, and fought the matrix down, and she opened her eyes to find him looking up at her, his own eyes red and weary.

“Thanks,” he said. “You look awful.”

“So do you,” she said, repressing a sudden urge to giggle. It was all so ridiculous, him lying there in her arms as if he were her lover, but with his hair and beard going every which way and his silly black robe like some comic-book wizard’s cloak making him look like an ancient lunatic.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Pel sat up, and Amy released him.

“So what are you going to do?” Amy asked.

“About what?”

“Well, I meant about Nancy, but as long as you’re asking, what about the Empire? I mean, they sent me here to ask if you’d send home their hostages, and promise not to attack them again, and all that. Normalize relations, I guess you’d say.”

Pel shook his head. “I don’t want to normalize relations. I want to be left alone. As long as they do that, I won’t bother anyone. And they can have the hostages back; I don’t even remember where I put them. They’re somewhere in the fortress dungeons, I guess; I’ll let them go, and they can go back to the space-warp with Best and Wilkins.”

“You won’t open a portal for them?”

“No.” Pel shifted around to face Amy properly. “No, I’m not going to do that. I wouldn’t know where to send them; I don’t know where any of the openings into the Empire come out.” Amy doubted that that was true, but she didn’t want to argue it. “And besides,” Pel continued, “it’s too much contact with the Empire; every time I’ve dealt with them it’s been trouble. Let them take care of their own.”

Amy shrugged. “I guess that’ll have to do, then.”

“It ought to.”

“I think it will.”

For a moment the two of them sat silently; then Amy looked around, before the silence became awkward, and remarked, “It’s gotten a bit dusty in here; you’ve been letting the housekeeping go, I guess.”

Pel looked up at the hole in the ceiling. “I always was a bit of a slob,” he said.

Amy hesitated, then asked, “So what are you going to do about Nancy?”

Pel shrugged. “What can I do? She’s my wife-my responsibility. I was the one who brought her here and brought her back to life. I have to stay with her and try to go on loving her.” He sighed heavily. “I suggested that she go back to Earth without me, but she didn’t want to. She didn’t really mind, but…and besides, after what happened to Grummetty and Alella, I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.”

“So why don’t you go back to Earth?”

“Leave her?” Pel looked at Amy, startled.

“You said she was dead, Pel; if she’s dead, let her go.”

“But she’s alive, really, she’s just different.”

“If she’s not the woman you married, let her go; if Rachel’s not your daughter any shy;more, let Nancy have her.”

Pel turned away. “That’s easy for you to say.”

“Pel,” Amy said, “have I ever talked to you about my ex-husband, Stan?”

Pel didn’t answer, and Amy continued, “One day I saw that he wasn’t the man I’d thought I’d married, that I didn’t know him and didn’t love him, and I divorced him-and it was the smartest thing I could have done. Staying in a bad relationship isn’t a good thing to do.”

“This is different,” Pel said.

“Yeah, I suppose it is-but is it that different?”

Pel got up and began brushing dust and ash from his black magician’s robe.

“I can’t go back to Earth,” he said, not looking at Amy. “I’m the Brown Magician, the ruler here. I control all the magic. If I leave, the matrix will come apart and all the magic will run wild.”

“If you’re happy here,” Amy said, “then stay.”

“It’s not…I mean, I’m needed. Without me there’d be chaos.”