Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (19 page)

Those who had escaped founded the earliest incarnation of the Guild, as a pseudo-tribe whose purpose was to defend the border, as they understood it, between this world and that. Magic was more commonly known about and practiced by those tribes to which it had been exposed, and thus the ancient Guild had had no problems finding people who would be able and willing to assist in this effort.

Steward Hansill explained in another footnote how, while there had been no written records prior to around seven thousand years ago, a lot of the early histories had been preserved in the form of oral records; poetry passed from person to person, Steward to Steward. Peter looked around the library. Logically, those poems and oral histories must have been preserved in writing, and if they were they would in all likelihood be among these books. He sighed. The more he had learned, of late, the more he found he hadn’t really learned anything.

As it turned out, Steward Hansill had had something of a reputation, in his day, as an academic, which immediately made Peter want to learn more about him. There was almost no biographical information about him anywhere that Peter could find, but there were other books that he had written here and there, including the main library, and they were on a wide array of topics. Peter had even, at one point, mentioned finding his
Consolidated History of the Guild of Magicians
in the secret library to Eddie, who had smiled and said that, yes, Bart Hansill had been one of the cleverest men to have been part of the Guild.

That being said, there were massive gaps in the histories, and almost exactly nothing of magical theory. By this point, Peter had been studying in the secret library for two months, and finding anything new was becoming ever-more a grind. It reminded him of his childhood, playing role-playing computer games, where the higher the experience level he attained, the more he would have to do to attain the next. Eventually it always turned out to be asymptotic and pointless.

But now, of course, there was more at stake, if Eddie had been right about everything; Peter was working toward something infinitely more… well, just
more
…

The grinding, boring nature of his continued reading had made Peter’s mind wander more and more of late, and while he understood that there was more and more yet to do, he was going to need to occupy himself in other ways to alleviate the boredom. The interest and challenge would, he was sure, return once he had picked up enough of those old languages to be able to read the more ancient of the books in there, and then there were those written in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, but it seemed now like reading those would merely be a formality as, lo and behold, he had discovered and read translations of most of the early books by Steward Hansill.

Eventually, he realized that he was allowing his magical abilities to stagnate again. That was what the feeling of fatigue and boredom were, he decided one afternoon, and so he resolved to begin practicing in earnest again, if only to keep his abilities there. He was a magician, after all. Not only that, but he had actually started to find some descriptions of different spells that were interesting enough for Peter to want to work toward attempting; they were large, high-powered spells that were similar, apparently, to some of the spells that protected the Guild’s main headquarters, and most of their outposts. Outposts, plural: Peter couldn’t help being interested in knowing how many there were and where they were.

These spells, however, were on an order of power he would have to work toward, and even if he were able to perform them, he would probably need a large space to be able to use (practice, he corrected himself) them safely.

Thus, he found himself one Wednesday afternoon in the practice room where a lot of magicians met, deciding a “back-to-basics” approach would probably be the best way to build a good foundation for the more powerful magic he had been looking at. Not that he’d ever been particularly powerless as a magician.

He hadn’t been here in what must have been six months now. There were new people here: some he recognized from around the Guild, mostly from the refectory, and a couple of people who appeared to newbies. One was a singularly nervous-looking man of about his own age, and the other was a girl who looked like she must have been all of seventeen.

In fact, when he saw the girl he found himself unable to believe that she was a magician until she actually performed a spell. He watched as she started sparring with Caroline, and was surprised at how well she seemed to have mastered some of the more basic combat spells. She wasn’t tall, maybe five feet, and she had black hair and dark eyes, and seemed to cast with only a slight edge of concentration on her face. When he thought back to his own time as a student of Caroline’s, it seemed he always needed to apply himself as hard as he could.

He started sparring with someone else he hadn’t met before, and before long he was thinking about the spells and the strategy more than he was about the girl, or the histories, or anything. His mind was flexing muscles that he had forgotten it had, even when he had had his altercation with the Werosaians during his time away. After he had lost his first duel, his head ached slightly and his blood was pumping merrily in his veins: the exercise had woken him up a little, his magical strength was being tested.

The rest of the afternoon was spent sparring and talking to people about various techniques and spells, and when evening came, Peter felt rather refreshed. That was clearly something he should do more often; as often, perhaps, as he could. Not that it should take him away from his studies, but he should make the effort at least. As far as looking for somewhere of his own to start practicing some of the more powerful spells, he figured that wouldn’t be necessary just yet. He could keep his eyes open, but he was learning now that if he became too ambitious about something, he would invariably end up making no progress at all.

After going to the refectory for some dinner, he found that he was actually more tired than he had thought at first, and he was going to have to go to bed. On going to bed, he fell asleep almost immediately, and slept like the dead.

The following day, he found his head was still aching a little, but it eased off after a short time as the caffeine from the two mugs of strong coffee he had drunk slowly trickled into his brain, and then he was back to studying in the library. He picked up a new book from the shelf, and immediately was bowled over by what he saw there, in one of the first sentences:

Of course, it has known well among some of us that people from Werosain have stayed in our own world for reasons separate from their initial reasons for coming here. Some have sought asylum, and some have tried to remain hidden, though for obvious reasons we have always maintained a close watch on them in case they were operating under occluded motives.

That was… something of a strange notion. And exciting. He read on, but there was little detail about what occasions on which this had happened, nothing specific. He carried on reading more, forgetting the time, insatiably searching through the book for whatever more he could find about it, but there was nothing. How annoying.

That was the problem with the library all being on paper, bound in books: as beautiful as a book is, having information digitized and readily searchable using a computer, or the Internet, turned looking for what he wanted from a month-long task into a five-minute one.

He read the whole volume in one sitting, which took him until a little after the end of lunchtime – thankfully, there would still be something there when he got there – and after having still found nothing, he returned the book to its place and left the library.

This was something of a new direction; something new to search for, a definite outcome he could achieve, at least in theory. If he could find out about any people who had stayed in our own world following traveling from Werosain, he could maybe talk to them and find out if they knew anything that was worthwhile. That was, however, something of a long-shot: the book Peter had first found that reference in made it seem as though this only happened once in every handful of generations, and thus was more likely than not that it wouldn’t have happened within his lifetime, and wouldn’t happen again until his lifetime was spent.

There was another thing that piqued Peter’s interest also. If people were coming and staying, that must surely mean that there would be some sort of doorway that could be opened and closed, more or less
ad libitum
. Were that the case, would it be possible that he could, at some point, travel to Werosain himself and find out what he could there? Of course, the doorway must be two-way, or else none of the Werosaian militias that occasionally travelled to our world would be able to return to their own.

After taking a break for lunch, his thoughts were drawn back to the previous day, when he had been practicing and sparring with the other magicians. He walked slowly to the Guild’s main library, where he started slowly looking through physical maps of Great Britain, wondering if there was anywhere that wasn’t populated; anywhere he could colonise himself eventually and practice the skills he was intending to try and learn. This was something of a break from the robotic reading and thumbing through the books in the secret library, and he looked slowly, almost leisurely, knowing that he probably wasn’t going to find anywhere in anything like a short time.

And he didn’t. He did, however, allow his mind to drift into something more of a relaxed state than it had been a few hours ago, when he had been in a frenzy of excitement at the notion of being able to meet a Werosaian who wasn’t going to try to torture or kill (or both) him. When evening came, he returned to the refectory an ate his dinner with the rest of the Guild – something which, due to Peter’s immersive level of dedication and concentration, very seldom had happened in the couple of months since he had returned from Blackpool.

As he was delivering his plate back to the counter, he saw Caroline sitting at a table nearby. He called to her.

‘Caroline, hi!’

She must have been drifting herself; it took Peter calling again for her to notice him. She did, however, and he went and sat next to her.

‘How are you doing nowadays?’ He said.

‘Oh, alright. Got another student – Lucy – and she’s been keeping me busy.’ She did look rather tired.

‘No rest for the wicked, eh?’

‘Something like that. What about you, nobody’s seen you around much for a while. I think yesterday was the first time I’ve seen you since you got back.’

‘No, well… I’ve been doing a research project.’ He noted the patient look on her face. ‘With Eddie’s approval, this time. In fact, he assigned it to me.’

She pursed her lips and then sighed. ‘You’ll spend your whole life in libraries.’

‘Probably,’ Peter laughed. ‘What about your new student, then, she looks very young to be a magician.’

Caroline straightened, donning the maternal look with which he was very familiar. ‘She was a truant from school, and a drug addict. She ended up here after having a near-miss with a mixed dose of heroin and cocaine. We’ve cleaned her up and given her… well, a bit of a new motive. She’s really startlingly bright, absorbs information like you wouldn’t believe. She had a bit of a crude magical ability before, which she hadn’t been really aware of, and it seems that it was that that had driven her to using drugs. She couldn’t identify it but it was there, and it upset her and she wanted to escape.’

Peter stared blankly at her. What she had said reminded him of something. Sherlock Holmes, and his seven-percent solution. And also of a novel he had once read, years ago, by a friend of his back in Blackpool, about a girl who had been addicted to
being
addicted.

‘Wow,’ he said finally. ‘That’s really… something. How long has she been here?’

‘Just under three years.’ She looked round, toward the door, and Peter followed her gaze until he saw Lucy, finishing off her own food. ‘In a week it’ll be time for her trial.’

Of course. The trial. He felt sorry for her, that she was going to have to go through that. But he supposed it was something they all had gone through. They were all so much the stronger for it – as magicians, and all-round as people – and she would be too. ‘Do you think she’ll cope?’

Caroline looked down at the table, and then closed her eyes. ‘I can’t tell. She could go feral out there, given her past as a depressive and a drug user. But on the other hand she could become the strongest of us.’

Peter nodded gravely. ‘I suppose that’s what it’s all about.’

‘Exactly. Every candidate magician will either get killed out there, or else come back stronger than they could have imagined. You… you were a big concern when you left. And yet you came back without a scratch, more or less.’

Peter looked down humbly. He had hardly ever stopped to think just
how
lucky he had been to survive as well as he had out there, and thus how hard it must be for people who maybe weren’t as lucky as him.

Peter spent the rest of that evening walking around in the darkness outside. It was quite windy, for which he was rather grateful. There was a power in the wind. As he walked, he thought about how much his life had changed since joining the Guild.

There was a lot happening. There always had been, but when he had been at the point Lucy was at now, everything seemed to be so much more big and scary. Once he had learned how normal this kind of life was to everyone here who lived it, he rather promptly accepted it, retreating as he always had into his own mind. But now he had been dragged out once again into a place where what life really was like here was a Real Thing – capital R, capital T – and had to be taken notice of, paid attention to, and lived.