Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I (22 page)

He shook his mind back on-topic.

‘I’m here to see Adam Richards,’ he said. She looked puzzled. ‘He’s my uncle,’ he improvised, ‘I’m Martin.’

He knew the lie would be shattered the moment she looked anything up or asked anyone, but he had that in hand: raising his hand in a gesture that he intended to be taken as him straightening his sleeve, he tossed a spell at her that made her simply accept what he had said.

She led him inside to the reception area, from where he could clearly see the single computer they used to track who was who and who had which relatives. His mind’s eye conjured a momentary image of a mechanic rubbing his greasy hands together in excitement: this was easy shit.

He flicked the wand, magically feigning a connection to the computer’s network port. He worked as fast as lightning, talking to the computer in its own language – which, luckily, he knew from his time as a computer programmer – and updated the records relating to ‘RICHARDS, MR. ADAM’ to include himself, under a false name, address, and telephone number, as a relative. This took slightly less than a second, after which he ended the connection and slipped his wand into his trouser pocket. Job done, simple as that.

The young carer stepped behind the desk and leaned down to check on the computer, immediately putting Peter’s work to the test. He tensed for a moment, but relaxed when she nodded and straightened herself. She didn’t look happy about the idea of someone coming in to see the resident she knew as Mr Richards, which Peter couldn’t blame her for.

‘OK, Martin,’ she said, ‘this way.’

He laughed inwardly at how easy that had been, and followed her as she led him a short way to a door. She unlocked it and stood aside, exposing a small room which was all painted a creamy colour, with a bed, a cabinet, and an armchair within, sideways on to the door and facing the bed. Right next to the chair was a small window through which some anaemic rays of sunlight entered the room. There was a man sunk into the armchair.

She hesitated. She did not, apparently, want to go in there.

Peter hesitated also.

‘Mr Richards,’ she called into the room. ‘Your nephew’s here to see you. Martin,’ she added. She nodded at Peter to enter, and he did, quietly pulling the door closed behind him. The man was just cut out of sight by the angle of the chair.

‘Hello,’ Peter said. No reaction. The man looked, from what he could see, like he could either be asleep, or else dear – or else simply inanimate.

‘Mr Richards,’ he said. Still nothing. ‘Adam?’

Not a peep.

But that wasn’t a surprise. Adam Richards wasn’t this man’s name, and it never had been.

‘Atlosreg,’ he whispered, ‘I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.’

Atlosreg raised his hand and pushed against the arm of the chair so that he was sat up. Peter was shocked to see that the old man didn’t look anything like his own age, which must have been his late nineties, at the youngest. No – he looked like he might be sixty. Bloody hell.

The old man’s face was very slightly olive-coloured, with sunken black eyes and dark grey stubble, and short hair of the same colour.

‘
Eg eiko me gheuso werjome en sem dhlung wetos
…’ an absent-minded mutter.

Peter cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry. Do you speak English?’

A slow nod.

‘Why are you here?’

Atlosreg smiled. After a moment, he spoke in English, with only the merest trace of the accent Peter had heard in other Werosaians. ‘Because I am mad.’

Peter was sickened. There was something so… self-aware in the way those four words had been said. Something which gave Peter the feeling that he might have just submitted himself for use as a playing piece in some magnificent game.

‘How come you’re mad?’ He asked, trying to retain some degree of neutrality in his voice. It was hard, but he didn’t think he was failing too hard.

Atlosreg chuckled. ‘Why else would I be here? First I was in a…’ he searched for the phrase, casting his eyes around the room as if looking for a prompt ‘… a mental home. I was told I was mad there. I believed them, might be proof that they were right.’

He could obviously sense how uncomfortable Peter was, trying to not look at him. ‘You think I’m mad too, don’t you?’

‘No,’ said Peter carefully. ‘I think you’re Werosaian.’

‘Am I?’

‘You came from Werosain to here.’

‘But I didn’t accept any help from your Guild. I didn’t join forces with them like I hear many have before me.’

Peter knew that, and he couldn’t help being curious. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I did not want to owe my allegiances to anyone. That is why I left Werosain, where my existence alone was a pledge of fealty to Rechsdhoubnom.’ He spat the name out as if it was the vilest profanity.

Atlosreg’s English was, Peter noticed, far better than he would have expected. Especially given Atlosreg had never spent any significant time interacting with normal people. But then, there will have been people talking, and probably radios and television.

‘You would rather live like this?’ Peter said.

‘Yes. Life in Werosain was meaningless. There was no freedom.’ Atlosreg looked around and then met Peter’s eyes. ‘Even in this place, I have more freedom than I did back there. Here I have the freedom to not fight.’

‘But not to admit who you are.’

‘I never lied about that. That is why they thought I was mad in the first place.’

That made sense to Peter, in its way.

But this conversation wasn’t going anywhere useful. Not that Peter had really known what would count as “useful” when he had set out. He felt like he had put a lot of effort into something for almost no real return.

Then again… maybe there was a return. A simple fact, but maybe a useful one: Atlosreg left Werosain because he wanted the right thing for himself: there hadn’t been anything wrong or ignoble about his intention, from what he had said. Even if – as Peter suspected – he could have been valuable to the Guild had he joined all those years before.

He became aware that Atlosreg’s attention was drifting.

‘Atlosreg,’ he said.

He looked at Peter again.

‘I’m going to leave now. But thank you for talking to me.’ Peter turned away and opened the door to walk out of the room, but at the last moment paused and turned round to face the other. ‘Maybe I’ll come back some time.’

A nod. Neither a positive or negative reaction; simply an acknowledgement.

Peter left the room and muttered his thanks to the young woman at the desk, and then briskly walked out of, and then away from, the building. He looked around to make sure of his solitude, and then slipped through the portal, back to the Guild.

‘Well, what did you expect?’ said Eddie. Peter had come to his office to return the file on Atlosreg, and while he was there, he had decided to tell Eddie about what had happened at the home. His reaction had been one of amused resignation: Peter was still a bit of a rookie, and was still bound, pretty much, to make judgments in something of a naïve way. Or, at least, that was the impression Eddie was giving.

What he had said, though, was pretty much what Peter had been thinking.

‘I know,’ Peter said, ‘I know.’

But Peter still thought that the conversation he had had with Atlosreg had been a little enlightening, though not in any way that he could imagine would be practical just yet.

‘Why,’ he started, ‘would he have been so open with everyone about being from another world?’

Eddie shook his head. ‘No idea.’

‘Unless he’d stopped caring, as long as he wasn’t in Werosain any more...?’ It was a bit of a childish thought to entertain, and Peter knew that. But it was still a thought, and from what he could see, a valid one.

‘Possibly.’ Eddie seemed to agree. Peter wasn’t quite sure how to read him; he seemed interested, though only nominally.

Eddie didn’t really seem to want to talk about it, beyond what he had already said. Peter picked up on this immediately, and, slightly reluctantly, let it drop.

He returned to his own room soon after, and thought for a while about what he needed to do – what he
could
do – with what little he knew. And why he could have even thought he needed to talk to Atlosreg, aside from satisfying his own curiosity. He supposed he simply wanted to understand Werosain. To understand the core reasons for its existence, and exactly
how
a work of magic that magnificent could have been built by a mortal. Not that he expected there to be anything like gods – but conversely, he supposed there might be: if there was magic and if there were other worlds... logic couldn’t rule out the existence of beings with god-like powers. Just like a human living on Earth would logically conclude that in a universe of approximately forty-five billion light years’ radius, there
must
be other planets which can – and do – support alien intelligent life.

Either way, Rechsdhoubnom had performed a spell which had created a world, or a
system of nature
, as Eddie had put it, and the level of power it must have taken made Peter’s head spin in several directions at once.

Before long, it was time to eat, and while he would normally have not remembered to feel hungry when his head was too busy spinning, he made himself think about food. He could think about whatever he wanted, but he was going to eat first.

What Peter liked most about food at the Guild was that it was always good food. It made him think of small cafés and school dinners, when school dinners had been good food. Pies, soups, curries, pastas, everything he liked, all lovingly created with the intention of nourishing the person who was eating them, rather than tickling their taste-buds and stopping them from feeling hungry.

He thought about this as he walked to the refectory, and by the time he got there he was very much ready to eat pretty much whatever might be put in front of him. When he got there, he was given a healthy portion of some kind of curry. It was a very angry colour, and looked like it would distract him pretty well from thinking about Werosain for a time, and he was right: once he had started eating it, he shocked at how hot it was. By the time he had finished it his scalp was sweating, and he was thinking about beer. He also somewhat suspected that if he held a lit match in front of his mouth and burped, large flames would follow.

That mental image was suddenly hilarious, and as he left the refectory, he laughed openly.

Returning, however, to his previous train of thought was inevitable; by the time he had reached the secret library in which he had been spending so much time of late, he was unable to think about anything else.

It was an anticlimactic feeling, with more than a passing kinship to the unfulfilled promise of a spectacular thunderstorm. Fizzle, pop, fart – ‘that’s all, folks!’

He didn’t bother to pick up a book. Instead, he sat down at the table and rested his forehead on the cold wooden surface.

Maybe he drifted, or possibly entered a trance-like state for a while. Either way, it must have been a couple of hours when he came back to his senses.

‘Is it worth bothering?’ He asked the table. ‘Is there any way I can get from this world to Werosain?’

In his mind, the table answered, though he knew it was still his own voice. ‘Why do you want to go to Werosain?’

‘Because I want to
understand
.’

‘
Understand
what, exactly?’

‘That’s part of the question.’ Not even the blasted
table
understood him.

He gave up. Maybe he should go for a walk. That might be slightly better for clearing his head than eating hot curry and talking to a table.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m glad we had this talk.’

In response – or, more likely, under his weight as he leaned on it to stand up – the table creaked.

He was bored of going out to walk when his mind was getting to be full of fluff, as often it did. He needed something to actually
do
, something to properly engage his attention. So bored was he of walking that he turned and returned to the Guild only a hundred or so yards out. He was curious and restless, and there was nothing more he seemed to be able to find out from books
or
from people. It was the essence of frustration.

But at the end of the day, he did need to carry on finding out what he could. It wasn’t a mere hobby, something he could relegate to the back-burner once it got to be too much of a pain, and resume later. It was his assignment, his role within the Guild. Thus, making excuses – even privately, within his own mind – for not applying himself the best he could was, ironically enough, inexcusable.

The following month felt more to Peter like several; each day was a grind, consisting of getting up, eating, and sitting for endless hours trying to find out more about how he might be able to travel to Werosain. However, just about the only thing that had happened and had been of any use to him at all was the realization of the obvious reason why he wanted to go to Werosain in the first place: he wanted to learn more of its history, possibly even learn more about their own point of view, and to see what weaknesses he could find there.

But there was nothing at all written in the library about how people could travel to Werosain; it was as though it was a secret too big even to be allowed into the place where the Guild’s secrets were kept. All this secrecy was getting to be more than a little bit irritating.