Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (13 page)

It was only a few steps before he realized how grave a situation Eric must have been in to send a message like that. He stopped and looked straight ahead, frowning.

And then it hit him. His blood froze.

No way was going to run away. He needed to find his comrades. Maybe there was something he could do to assist them: he had the advantage of having not been found, attacked or captured – he was outside the situation.

But he wasn’t; a blank white Transit van stopped beside him and two short, stout-looking men picked him up, suitcase and all, and threw him into the back. The door was closed, throwing him into darkness, and then he was moving. He didn’t have time to shout, and he didn’t think that would help anyway, given how accustomed the folk of Blackpool were to shouting in the street.

There wasn’t much to do other than attempt, in the darkness, to orient himself. His case was in there with him, and his satchel was under him as he had landed. He didn’t think anything was damaged – or, at least, he hadn’t heard or felt anything break. He took out his wand and tried to come up with some sort of spell that might help him, but nothing could get any traction, though for the opposite reason to why nothing would take in the room under the Guild: it was more like there was simply no magical energy here, as though it was grounded.

‘Shit.’ He said it slowly and carefully. Some expletives have a power of their own, outside of anything preternatural. His wand wasn’t any use: back into his satchel it went.

It didn’t seem that the van was being driven terribly fast. The movement seemed, in Peter’s limited perception, to be somewhat slow and purposeful. Or else they were stuck in traffic, which, now he thought about it, was the more likely case.

Where the hell were they going, though? That was bothering him, along with who the hell had taken him. But given that the back of the van was – or at least seemed to be – magically grounded, and they had specifically picked up him and not someone else, immediately after the message that Eric had sent…

His blood ran cold again. He didn’t know where, geographically, he was going, but he knew that wherever he
was
going was likely to be the postulate Werosaian base, and that he was probably not far off seeing the other Guild members.

He lost track of time. It maybe could have been twenty minutes, or forty. Eventually, the van stopped moving, and the engine gave a shudder and then cut off. Wherever they were going, they were there. There was a feeling of inexorable doom that had an effect of surprising calm on Peter. He was possibly – or probably – going to die soon. There was nothing he could do about that. That being the case, he just had to make sure to make it a worthy death.

The door was torn open, and he was pulled out by the lapel, tearing his jacket in the process. He noticed as he fell out, into the road, that they weren’t in Blackpool any more. This was a different town. There was a pungent smell of fish in the air – ah, of course he knew this place. He kept a fast grip on his satchel as he was dragged up onto the pavement and ordered to walk. At first he refused, but then thought it best to comply after he found himself seeing stars.

He was pushed into a building that he had known – or at least thought – to be derelict since as long ago as he could remember. Everything was boarded up, door and window alike, and it was straight into one of these boarded doors that he was pushed.

And then he was in the corner of a large room. Chinks of light leaked in through cracks in and between the boards on the windows and doors, adding to the light that was issuing from a number of lamps in the room and on tables.

The room itself was massive; it must have been half of the ground floor of the building.

Nearby, the others were tied to chairs, in a circle, all facing outwards. Those who could were facing him, looks of mortified disappointment and terror etched into their faces. Eric was among them, but on his face was only despair.

‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ said Peter. He saw stars again, but quickly recovered and drew his wand again, in the blink of an eye firing a lightning bolt at the person who had hit him. It hit home perfectly, causing him to land, shaking and grunting, on the floor. He started to erect a shield around himself when someone stepped up from behind him and brought their hand down, open, palm down, and slapped the wand out of his own hand.

Well, that was a novel way of doing it.

He swung his arm wildly in an attempt to strike the person who had slapped his hand, but stopped in pure shock when he saw a small, older woman standing before him.

‘That’s enough of that,’ she said. Without seeing them, Peter felt the people behind him, near the door, receding. So, it was mother herself who dropped the bomb after all. She looked up at Peter in a way that somehow felt more like she was looking down at him, and pointed at the others. ‘We saved a seat for you.’

‘How kin– ‘ he began, but she slapped his face.

‘Sit.’

He knew he was powerless to refuse. He could kick or hit her, but Peter had no idea how many people she had following her orders here. At least three or four, including the one who had just ridden Peter’s lightning.

So he conceded. Slowly, he took a step toward the others, but the woman stopped him.

‘Bag.’ She held her hand out.

Of course. He sighed and took it off, dropping it on the floor in defiance, rather than actually relinquishing it to her. He then continued walking toward the others.

He felt ashamed of himself for allowing himself to be caught, after Eric’s warning. He should have fought. He should have found a way to take control of the situation. He bowed his head.

He sat, hands on knees, and immediately his hands and legs were locked in place. He could breathe, and move his head, and probably speak, but nothing else.

The woman followed him, holding her head high enough that it looked like she was trying to grow. When she reached the circle of chairs, she began to walk around it, with her hands clasped behind her back.

‘So,’ she said. ‘The Guild of Magicians found us.’

Silence.

They were joined by the rest of her people. There were five of them; the one who Peter had put lightning to had recovered just enough to walk and look menacing. They stood in a line, all wearing jeans and various T-shirts, by the wall nearby.

‘What were you hoping to achieve?’

Peter found himself reminded momentarily of that night, five years before, when he had first happened across Eric duelling a Werosaian. Only, now he wasn’t being asked who he worked for. He giggled.

Tim spoke up. ‘We know you’re trying to infiltrate us.’ His voice was strong; he sounded confident, even in the face of death. ‘We know you’re trying again to make the Guild fall, from the inside.’

The woman nodded slowly, exaggeratedly. Her five men sniggered openly.

And then one of Peter’s comrades stood up and calmly walked to the woman’s side. It was Will.

‘You fucking traitor!’ Said Eric.

Will chuckled.

‘Why?’ Tim’s voice was full of disappointment and heartbreak.

‘Because maybe they deserve a chance to make a place within our world.’

Peter couldn’t resist joining in. ‘After twenty thousand years?’ It was unbelievable. ‘That’s a fucking joke, and you know it.’

‘Aah, the scholar,’ said the woman, rounding tidily on Peter. ‘Yes, I’m aware of how curious you are about the Guild, about Werosain.’

‘I fucking bet you are.’

She slapped him hard across the face, and he felt his lip split. He sucked it and swallowed the blood. He wasn’t risking any of
that
kind of magic.

‘What’s she on about, Pete?’

Peter laughed. That was one thing he couldn’t readily forget. ‘
Ehkeir toum rechsa duea.
’

The woman frowned at him. He couldn’t make his mind up if she was scared or merely curious.

‘
Ehkeir deeia duea,
’ He continued. ‘
Ehkeir Rechsdhoubnom.
Sound familiar?’

More silence.

‘I’d like to know,’ the woman said, ‘how you know those particular words, and how to pronounce them.’

Peter felt a little warm under the collar. He wasn’t certain as to whether or not he should say anything about having found the stone under the Guild: he didn’t know, for one thing, whether his comrades would approve, and for another, how important it would be to the woman and her own group.

He resolved to say nothing, looking her straight in the eye. She met his eyes.

‘You,’ she whispered, ‘know a thing or two you haven’t let on.’

She wasn’t happy. In fact, she seemed concerned, as though in simply repeating what he had heard in that dream he was displaying some incredible out-of-place knowledge of some arcane secret. Tuff, he thought, I’m a magician. That’s what I do.

The woman aside, though, Peter could also tell that there was a lot of curiosity and concern being experienced by his own comrades. It was as though they were all holding their collective breath – which they may well have been.

‘Don’t we all?’ Being cocky seemed like a stupid idea. But it was the only idea that was occurring to him.

She slapped him again. He was really getting tired of her doing that.

He laughed. ‘When did you become my mother?’

There was a vibe of decided discomfort radiating from Peter’s comrades, as though he had suddenly become a sort of
de facto
leader of the group, for no more worthy a reason than that he was, at this moment, the more interesting and ballsy of the group.

She grabbed his jaw. ‘You heard that somewhere before. Where?’

Peter’s laughing died down, and he looked her in the eye, daring her to ask again. She leaned down toward him, and they locked in eye contact for a whole minute, neither saying anything. And then she straightened up and turned away from him.

‘Peter Iain Rutherford, of the Guild of Magicians.’

Not that he thought he needed her to tell him who he was. But it was kind of her, he supposed.

She turned back to face him again. ‘I know you’ve been researching the history of your Guild, and that you’ve developed a keen interest in some inscriptions around the tomb at its foundation.’

So, it
was
a tomb. That made sense.

‘I want to know why.’

Oh, how desperately he wanted to laugh again. He felt like a maniac, a lunatic: the phrase ‘I’ve been mad for fucking years’ came to mind, but he thought better of it. Conceding a little, he gave a more civilized answer.

‘So do I.’

She didn’t slap him this time, which came as something of a surprise; she seemed to like doing that. Instead, she leaned in again, in a movement which could, were the setting different, have been taken as the beginning of a lover’s embrace, and whispered in his ear.

‘You’re not making things any easier for yourself.’

She then stood up straight again, and suddenly Peter found his mind flooded with renewed images of the tomb under the Guild, of the writing upon it, and then of a deep, reverberating darkness. Out of the darkness there formed a new vision, of a small village… no, it wasn’t a village. It was simply a settlement.

Wait. He had seen this before. This was his dream. The flames, the young man. The dream was being forcibly relived through his mind, the memory replayed from the dark crevices of his subconscious where all memories were permanently stored, so that she could take it from him.

He felt violated, dirty, like his mind was being raped. There was a scream building inside him, but nowhere for it to go, no way out. As he watched the stone blade flash and a spurt of blood, the young man shout, he tried harder and harder to scream. No way out of it.

And then he was back in the room. He felt pale and mean, as though all the blood had drained from his face, his head, his everywhere. He was lightheaded; the same feeling he had had when he hadn’t eaten in too long. Maybe he would pass out, or maybe he would vomit. Maybe he would do both.

He looked up, his head lolling to one side. He was shaking, and he didn’t care.

Will laughed. Peter looked at him, hatred bubbling and rising in him like a mixture of bicarbonate and vinegar.

‘You pathetic traitor cunt, shut the fuck up!’ He screamed, his voice sounding cracked and alien.

The woman joined Will, the two of them laughing in genuine amusement. Peter and his comrades all were silent. Peter suspected that they were all holding together a lot better than he was himself.

In his own mind, Peter was becoming very aware that his interest in the tomb, and the writing on it, and the related subjects, must all be of extreme importance to the woman – and therefore the Fraud himself, probably – if they had warranted a reaction such as this. He couldn’t escape the notion that she was scared of what he might know, and that scared him as well. He had become interested in something which, to him, was a natural thing to become interested in, but he had been quietly discouraged, in one subtle way or another, from pursuing that interest. It was as though he had inadvertently struck a very sensitive nerve; exposed a furtive truth about Werosain, which its inhabitants – and even the Guild – had attempted to bury, with the help of the inexorable passage of time: given a big enough hour-glass, there would always be enough sand to cover whatever you wanted to hide.