Martyr (The Martyr Trilogy) (2 page)

2

Arriving
on campus, I parked as close to the philosophy building as I dared.  I jogged
across the lawn, clearing the steps two at a time.  I was only a few minutes
late when I arrived at the lecture hall, but I paused at the door, edging it open
just a crack, enough to see that class was already underway.  I waited.  A
notice board across the hall was plastered with several brightly-colored fliers
announcing one of Maitland’s pay-per-view lectures.  It was entitled, “God’s
Mistakes: How irregularities in the fabric of the universe argue against cosmic
intelligence”.  No bias there.

When
I heard one of the students ask a question, I made my move, slipping through
the door and melting into the nearest empty seat, next to an older Asian guy
named Hyung who always took notes on his laptop.  I hoped the constant tapping
would mask the sounds of my entry.  Professor Maitland was responding to the
question.  “So you would say we can’t know anything unless it is divinely
revealed?”

“Yes,
because otherwise knowledge would be subjective, and what you know may not be
the same as what I know.”  The questioner was revealed to be a bespectacled
young lady with a long braid of mousy brown hair.  I had never noticed her
before.

Maitland
answered with his customary snark.  “Then, my dear, you would be wrong,
wouldn’t you?”  This earned an approving laugh from his fan club in the first
couple of rows.  The professor waited a few seconds for the buzz to subside,
then added, “There is of course another possibility…”

The
young woman stood defiant, refusing to dignify the professor’s comment with a
response.  He continued.  “As I see it, one can grovel and beg for whatever
scraps may fall from the gods’ table, or…”  He clutched the edges of the podium
with both hands and cast his gaze around the room.  “…he can climb up there and
take it for himself, just as the great ones did eons ago.”

Instantly,
the room was abuzz with whispered conversations.  “Take it…,” the girl echoed,
incredulous, “from the gods?  You mean literally?”

“What
is a god?” asked Maitland.  “Who is a god?”  He glanced around the room,
perhaps hoping someone would be foolish enough to attempt an answer.  “A god,”
he said, “is simply one who has the will, and the ability, to rise above.  The
rest are destined to be worshippers, followers…slaves.”

The
questioner was undeterred.  “Some say we are all gods,” she said.

“And
some say we are all winners,” Maitland said.  “But it is a poor kind of victory
that is shared by all.  Likewise, godhood that is common to all is of little
value.  Uniqueness is an essential quality of deity.  Consider the Olympians. 
Of what advantage is the ability to hurl thunderbolts if your siblings are
invulnerable?”

I
should have held my tongue.  Instead I heard myself say, “And what good are
siblings, when you could have a few more slaves?”

Maitland
smirked.  If he was ruffled by my comment, he didn’t show it.   “As it happens,
I have been given students rather than slaves.  And the only god-like power I
wield is over your grades.”  A subdued chuckle.  “Oh, and the next time you
decide to come to my class late, Mayer, please close the door behind you.” 
This yielded a collective “ooh” from the class, as heads turned to see who had
just been humiliated.  “We’ll pick this discussion up tomorrow,” he said. 
“Remember to bring the abstracts for your research papers.”  He collected his
notes and slipped out the back, brushing off the three or four students hoping
for an audience with him. 

Through
the deluge of bodies pressing for the door I spotted Mana.  She was still
sitting, surrounded by some of her most trusted girlfriends.  They appeared to
be discussing a text Mana had received.  Breaching the perimeter would be no
easy task.  I had to formulate a strategy, time it perfectly, and…oh, what the
heck.  “Mana!” I said.  One of the girls stepped aside; the rest just turned to
look at me with mild amusement.  Change of plans.  “Got a minute?” I asked.

Mana
pocketed her phone, excused herself from the circle of trust.  “Sure, Justin,”
she said.

“Walk
with me,” I said.  Her eyes searched mine for some clue to my intentions, but
she smiled and came along.  The hallway was bustling with students, too noisy. 
I led her to the stairwell at the end of the hall, then down the stairs.  The
basement of the building housed the faculty offices; nobody would bother us
there.  Halfway down the hall there was a small lounge area off to one side
consisting of a couple of chairs and a table scattered with outdated
magazines.  That was where I led her. 

Mana
was beginning to look concerned.  “Justin, what’s going on?” she asked.

“Look,
I’m really sorry for being so cryptic, Mana,” I said.  “I just needed to talk
to you alone for a minute.”

“OK,”
she said, still uncertain. 

“Can
we sit?” I asked, indicating the chairs.  She complied.  I took the other
chair, drew a slow breath.  “Mana, we’ve been friends since first year, right?”

“Yeah,”
she said.  “Ever since I first mopped the racquetball court with your sorry
butt.”  She was obviously trying to break the tension.  But was she also trying
to remind me of the strictly casual nature of our relationship? 

I
allowed myself to smile.  “Since then,” I said.  I reached out and rearranged a
couple of the magazines on the table.  “Mana, that’s what I’m trying to say. 
You have a great sense of humor.  I love that we can talk trash with each other
like that.  I would never want to do anything to jeopardize that.”

“Justin,”
she started.  I could see from her body language that she was growing uncomfortable. 
“Before you say any more, I need to…”

“You
old fool!  How dare you presume to tell me…”  It was a shout, from somewhere
down the hall.  We gaped at each other for half a second, then Mana rose and
gestured for me to follow, taking cautious steps.  As we approached a darkly
stained wooden door the voices resumed, animated but not quite so loud.  These
were the faculty offices.  The brass plate on the door was engraved with the
name, “Simon Maitland, PhD”. 

“…the
Board’s decision, ultimately,” a second voice was saying.  “They had proposed
an administrative review, in response to some of the liberties you’ve been
taking with the curriculum, but…”

“Liberties!” 
The tone was elevated again.  It was definitely Maitland.  “That curriculum
hasn’t been revised in over a decade.  The ‘liberties’ I’ve taken are the only
parts of the program that actually reflect current scholarship!”

“Current
scholarship, Dr. Maitland, or your own ideas?” said the other voice. 

“Have
you taken the time to crack open a journal in the last few years, Rackliff?”
Maitland asked.  That had to be Bruce Rackliff, Dean of the College of
Sciences.  “The two are pretty much synonymous.”

“Really? 
One of the other faculty members overheard you saying that Plato and Aristotle
aren’t even worth reading.  It’s a philosophy department, Professor!”

“What
do you know about philosophy?” asked Maitland. “This department is just
rehashing the dead ideas of dead men.  I could breathe new life into this
school, if you and the Board would stop blocking me at every turn.”

“I
don’t appreciate your tone, Simon,” said the Dean.  “Given the serious nature
of these concerns, I might have expected a more contrite response.”

“You
mean boot-licking, Dean,” said Maitland.  “You won’t get that from me.”

“No
matter.  In light of these facts I’m afraid I’m going to have to recommend an
administrative leave.  You can call it a sabbatical.”

“Sabbatical? 
You can keep your pity, Rackliff.  And you can get out of my office!”  These
last words were laced with menace.  I knew the Dean would be exiting presently,
and I knew we did not want to be seen to have been eavesdropping.  I grabbed
Mana’s hand and strode briskly toward the nook where we had begun to talk. 
Just in time, as it happened.  Dean Rackliff emerged from the office just as we
rounded the corner, and mercifully turned the opposite way, toward the nearer
stairwell.

We
waited until he had cleared the landing, then followed.  We were directly in
front of Maitland’s office when we heard a click, and the scrape of old wood
swollen by time.  I hesitated.  Mana bolted past, bounded up the stairs and out
of sight.  Too late for me to do the same, I spun and raced back down the hall,
hoping against hope that he would spend some amount of time fumbling with keys,
that he would turn the other way.  “Mayer?” I heard.  I saw a faculty washroom,
ducked inside. “Mayer!”  Curses.  Positive identification.  He would know that
I had heard something.  He would make me suffer.  There was a lock on the
inside of the door.  I turned it, heard the clunk of the bolt sliding into
place.  It might not be safe to go out, but at least he couldn’t get in.  I’d
just wait him out, and eventually…  What?  He’d stop pacing in front of the
door and go in search of easier prey?  This was ridiculous.  I wasn’t going to
hide out in the bathroom.  Maitland was just a man, and from the sounds of his
meeting with the Dean, I wouldn’t have to worry about him for a few weeks
anyway. 

I
reached for the lock.  The lights flickered.  I turned the knob, and heard it
click.  Another flicker, and then the lights went out entirely.  There was no
window, the room was completely dark.  The power must have been out in the hallway
as well, because I couldn’t detect even a sliver of light around the edges of
the door.  I had seen that the door had a large lever style handle, it wouldn’t
be hard to find.  I reached for the handle, but it wasn’t where it should have
been.  Perhaps in the darkness I had taken a step back.  I reached further, but
encountered nothing.  Palms forward now, I advanced a step at a time – three,
four, five steps – and still nothing.  Panic was beginning to set in.  I took
one big, lurching step forward, and saw a flash of white light in the darkness
as my head met with unyielding stone.  The world began to spin, a feeling made
worse by the total lack of visual cues.  Tumbling, falling, my head met stone a
second time, and I slept.

3

Had
I imagined it?  I would have thought so, were it not for the unfamiliarity of
my waking surroundings.  Not just unfamiliar, but in fact quite unpleasant.  As
I gradually regained the use of my senses, I felt overwhelmingly cold, and
realized I was lying naked on damp stone.  There was an odor of mildew and
urine that caused me to gag as I inhaled deeply.  I was unable to determine if
my eyesight was impaired, or if there was simply no light in this place.  I
started to turn in an attempt to raise myself from the cold floor, and felt an
intense, throbbing pain in my head, and aches all over.  Gritting my teeth
against the pain, I forced myself onto my side and managed to get my right arm
underneath me.  I rose onto hands and knees, then to a seated position.  The
throb in my head intensified briefly, resisting the change to a vertical
posture.  I held steady until the pain subsided somewhat, then attempted to
stand.  I held a hand over my head as I rose, unsure of the dimensions of my
current abode.  I inched forward, shuffling my feet so I wouldn’t encounter any
unexpected obstruction and topple in the dark.  But the floor appeared to be
composed of fairly level cobbling, and the only thing I felt was a wall a few
feet forward.  A memory was triggered.  Maitland…the washroom; what had really
happened?  I planted both hands on the wall, slid them upward as far as I could
– no ceiling that I could reach.  I worked my way along the wall to my left,
discovered a corner, then an adjacent wall.  The stones here were moist and
slippery – some sort of fungal growth?  Bringing my fingertips near to my nose
there could be no doubt: blood.  Fresh, not coagulated.  I touched my forehead
with my other hand and felt, along with the resurging pain, the same moist
stickiness.  My blood on the wall?  Maybe.  Probably. 

Continuing
my exploration of the wall, I came to a line of division.  To the left of the
line what felt like cold steel, heavily corroded but solid.  Sliding my hands
up and down along the edge, I found no hinges.  I began to slide my hands in
large circles over the surface, and found no handle or latch.  What I did find,
just below eye level, was a narrow, rectangular slit, apparently open and
unobstructed.  I strained to detect any distant light source through that
opening, but saw nothing but the all-consuming blackness.  I focused my
hearing, but no sound met my ear.  Everything about my surroundings suggested a
cell of some sort, but there were no clanking chains, no scurrying rodents, no
flickering torches – nothing that my lifetime of movie-watching had led me to
expect from a proper dungeon.  Then, suddenly I did feel something.  I felt a
warm breath on my ear, accompanied by the unmistakable scent of freshly baked
bread.  The breath was followed by a sharp, audible inhalation, still inches
from my ear. 

“Who’s
there?”, I demanded.  “Is someone there?”

…Silence…

“Please! 
I don’t know what’s going on.  I don’t know where I am.  Won’t you…”

“Wait!” 
A whispered command.

I
waited.  Before long, muffled footsteps.  Not just beyond the door, but close. 
The sound stopped for a moment, then resumed, receding slowly over a span of
seconds that seemed like hours.  I wanted to ask again, but heeded the voice
that had spoken and kept silent. 

“We
must move now.”  A dull clunk, then I felt the door receding from my hands. 
“Put this on.”  Something soft was thrown over my shoulders; I felt my way into
sleeves and found a belt at the waist – a robe of some sort, a welcome defense
against the cold.  Something warm was pressed into my hand.  “I’ve brought
bread.  Eat it quickly.”

I
didn’t need to be told twice.  Suddenly aware of a gnawing hunger that had
seemed secondary to the pain in my head, I tore into the tough, small loaf.  I
wasn’t about to complain about the texture.  “Who are you?  What is this
place?”

“Not
yet.”

I
had to blink as a blade of light defined the edge of another door.  I could see
now that the reason I had seen no light was this airtight outer door.  It too
locked from the outside.  That made sense if this was indeed a prison; in the
event that the inner door were compromised, the captive would make it no
farther.  Normally, there would be another guard on the outside door, with a
separate key.  But it appeared that protocol was not being followed in this
case. 

As
my eyes adjusted, I could make out a dim silhouette of my savior.  It was a
woman, or more properly a girl, fully two heads shorter than I and
dressed…well, not as I expected.  In keeping with the dungeon theme, I’d have
thought to find her in the simple frock of a scullery maid or serving wench. 
Instead, she wore faded jeans and a torn, filthy hooded sweatshirt.  She had
long, wispy, dirty-blond hair, brown eyes, and slightly chubby cheeks.  There
was something vaguely familiar about her, though I couldn’t place it.  She took
me by the hand and coaxed me into the candle-lit passageway.  She pushed the
door closed behind us, then led me around a corner where I saw four more doors
like the last.  The first on the right was ajar, and she guided me toward it. 
When we entered, she pulled the outer door to within a couple inches of
closing, but left it that way.   

“A
little information, please?” I said.

“Not
yet.  Quiet.”

“Please!”
I said.  “I don’t know what’s going on!  Who are you, at least?”

A
slow, irritated sigh…

“OK,”
she said, “but we don’t have much time.  My name is Maaike.  I’m not
important.  You are.  You’ve been a captive of lord Magus.  Sorry, ‘Magus’.  I
heard them say they just found you in the cell one morning.  I don’t know why you’re
alive, and they seem as shocked as I was.  I think they are unsure what to do
with you, but whatever they decide, it won’t be good.  We have to go now!  A
reconnaissance party is waiting to meet us, if I can get you to the east gate. 
But the sun’s nearly up.”

“Wait,
Maaike, who is Magus?  Why am I so important?  And why does everyone seem to
think I’m supposed to be dead?”

She
stared at me for a moment, clearly perplexed.  “You…don’t remember anything? 
OK, look, it’s not my place to give you those answers.  The time will come. 
But right now, there’s really no time for this.”

“What’s
going on?!?”  We both froze.  A third voice, but not from the hallway.  It came
from the cell at our backs. 

Maaike
answered.  “Nothing!  Be quiet, you’ll alert the guards.”

“Guards? 
Who are you then?  Oh my God, this is an escape!  You’re taking me with you!”

“No! 
I mean, we can’t, not now.  I’ll come for you another time.”

“No,
you’ll take me now, or I’ll alert the guards!”

Another
sigh.  “Fine.  All right.  Just be quiet!”  Maaike nimbly unlocked the cell.  A
gaunt man with a sparse goatee joined our party.  He was dressed in brown
corduroys and a striped jersey.  He looked older than he probably was.

“OK,
let’s go.  Be advised, we actually have to pass through the lord’s chambers in
order to get out.  I drugged the dogs, but he will still be in there.  It’s the
only part of the plan that is subject to chance.  We’ll just have to be swift,
silent, and hope he’s preoccupied.”

“Not
exactly a fool-proof escape plan, huh?”  That from our uninvited guest.

“Yeah,
well I didn’t exactly have a lot of time to plan.  Nobody foresaw this.”  I
wasn’t sure what she was referring to, but opted not to further stall the
operation.

We
turned another corner, and Maaike listened against a heavy-looking wooden
door.  After a pause, she unlocked it and we proceeded past it, up a short
flight of concrete steps, through another door, and into a maroon-carpeted
hallway.  I heard footsteps.  Maaike turned white.  She pushed us back through
the door and closed it, remaining on the other side.  There was silence for a
few seconds, then the rumble of a man’s voice.  It was followed by a female
voice; it sounded like Maaike.  The man spoke again, and Maaike apparently
responded.  Then a long pause…

The
male voice again.  Then light footsteps, receding.  Oh no!  Maaike had been
sent away.  I hadn’t heard the heavier tread – was he still there?  There was
silence for a long time.  My companion started to say something, but I silenced
him with a quick hand.  Then the worst thing I had imagined - the rattle of the
latch.  He was about to descend into the dungeon!  I thought of running to the
nearest open cell, but knew we’d never make it, would be heard if we did.  Then
the rattling stopped as quickly as it had started.  It seemed he had changed
his mind.  The next sound was that of heavy footsteps, mercifully receding. 

We
waited.  I had to shush my tag-along once more, but nothing else happened. 
Maaike didn’t come back.  But neither did the guard.  After a time I made a
choice.  I cracked open the door.  The hallway ran straight ahead, and straight
to the right.  It appeared to skirt a columned central area.  There were no
walls on that side, only scarlet curtains that ran floor to ceiling between the
columns.  There were doors at the ends of the hallway in each direction, but
instead I ducked through a gap in the curtain.  This appeared to be a sort of
lounge, with a bar on one wall and several couches covered with an obscene
number of gold-embroidered pillows.  There was a full wall on one side, hung
with photos of idyllic landscapes, impossibly green and inviting.  Adjacent to
that wall, another partial wall was interrupted by an arched door.  I peeked
around the edge of the doorway, and saw a wider hall leading into a similar,
but larger, lounge.  I motioned my new friend forward.  

In
the bigger lounge three beasts lay on the floor.  I took these to be the “dogs”
Maaike had referred to, though they looked like no species I had ever seen. 
For one thing they were absurdly massive.  Lying on their sides as they were,
their rib cages rose to the height of my knees at least.  They also had a
grotesquely exaggerated underbite, which housed four tusk-like canines that the
mouth could not contain.  They looked to be sleeping, but I knew better.  And I
was grateful.  At one side of this lounge was a big set of double doors.  They
were not shut completely.  I approached them, and as I drew near, I heard the
male voice we had heard through the door earlier.  I could make out the words
of a conversation, and when the other party responded, I was sure it was not a
human voice I heard.  That wasn’t what really caught my attention, though.  The
man’s voice…I knew it, had heard it before somewhere…recently.   I tried to
listen closer. 

“But
how is this possible?  I watched him die!”

You
watched someone die, not him.

“How
can this be?  I know that face.  It has haunted my dreams for three years now.”

The
face is the same.  The man is not.  Tal-Makai is dead.  Truly do you say you
watched him die.

“I
don’t understand.”

Then
I shall try to explain it in terms you will understand.  Do you know of
genetics?

“I
have read of the matter.”

Strands
of DNA, like the coils of a serpent, define each of your traits.  Normally,
each strand defines its own trait.

“Yes,
I understand the concept, but…”

But
occasionally, a piece of one strand is exchanged with a piece of another.  The
results can dramatically alter the resultant organism.

“Are
you suggesting that Tal was altered in this way?”

Try
to stay with me, mortal…we are talking about worlds.  Worlds are like this –
disparate strands that are not supposed to cross.  But rarely, there is a
crossing, an exchange in the substance of reality itself.

Silence…a
blank stare…

This
is what must have occurred.  Tal-Makai is dead in this world.  But there has
been an intersection of worlds.  The Tal-Makai of that other world has come to
us.  There is no reason for it.  It was not anticipated, much less planned. 
Let’s just say the Deity has made a mistake.  The only question is, what do we
do about it?

“I
thought it would be over when I killed him.  Even without this, his death has
only served to increase his legacy.  ‘Martyr’, they call him.  Like it’s a
badge of honor!  He died, I prevailed, and somehow he is the victor!  Smirking
at me from beyond the grave.  Gods!  What should I do?”