The Reign of the Brown Magician

Chapter Nineteen

Pel frowned as he looked down at the trees beneath. He remembered, a little belatedly, how Taillefer had landed at Regisvert, tumbling out of the sky onto half a dozen waiting helpers.

Pel didn’t have any helpers. And tumbling down through the forest canopy looked scratchy.

On the other hand, he had access to more power than Taillefer could ever imagine.

But Taillefer was more experienced and skilled at using his power, and this particular area was one where there were no strong natural currents of magic, so that the matrix was relatively weak.

Relatively weak, but still vastly stronger than anything Taillefer could do. And even here, Valadrakul had been able to blast Shadow’s creatures.

The power to do any sort of landing he wanted was unquestionably there, but Pel had to admit that he didn’t really know how to land, other than to simply let himself fall. And here in the forest, that might mean breaking a leg or putting his eye out on a broken branch.

He supposed he could use the matrix to protect himself from damage; Shadow had certainly taken her personal invulnerability for granted, and with good reason. It might well be that the matrix would protect him even if he did nothing consciously at all.

His instincts rebelled at the idea, though. Letting himself drop into the trees…

He couldn’t do it. At least, not from this height.

Maybe, if he lowered himself gradually…

He looked ahead, trying to judge distances, and spotted something strange, ahead and to the left. Something was sticking up out of the forest.

He had glimpsed it before, from a distance, and had taken it for an odd branch, or a dead trunk, but now he saw he had badly misjudged its size and distance.

He turned and steered for it.

It rose straight up out of the forest, straighter than anything that could naturally be there, taller and thinner than anything natural, and swaying slightly in the wind. Pel couldn’t see the top. He could see above where it stopped, but somehow he couldn’t see the exact point at which it ended; there was a blind spot.

And the matrix was kinked out of shape there, he realized.

This was the space-warp. This is what he had intended to be aiming for all along, but he’d gotten so involved in the mechanics of flying, and the view of the landscape, that he had lost track of it.

Well, there it was.

He hadn’t really expected anything visible, but there it was.

He hadn’t bothered to ask Best or his companions how they got through the warp, but now he saw. That thing was a ladder, a rope ladder that reached from a space-warp about five hundred feet up to down in the forest somewhere. It was swinging in gentle curves, swaying back and forth in a shallow sine wave.

That would be an uncomfortably long climb and a dizzy, seasick one, but obviously the Imperial spies had managed it.

And Pel could, too. He wasn’t about to go up through the warp-he’d lose control of the matrix if he left Faerie for even a second-but he could grab the ladder and climb down to the ground.

That, at least, was the theory; steering himself through the air at perhaps forty miles an hour and boarding a stationary rope ladder turned out to be much more difficult than he had expected. Instead he smacked into it and then slid on past before he could grab hold, sending the ladder into violent, twisting oscillations and drawing a nasty rope-burn across his right cheek.

He made a wide loop, rubbing his injured face and muttering obscenities, then came back for another pass, dropping so much speed that he began losing altitude rapidly.

He hit the ladder hard, and barely managed to clamp his hands onto a rung about three steps lower than he intended. His arms jarred with the impact, and he wondered if he had injured his shoulder, but he kept his grip.

* * * *

Sebastian Warner stared up at the glowing, seething thing that hung in the sky above him.

It had struck the ladder and then passed on through, and Warner had seen the ladder still there and thought he was safe, but then it had looped around and hit the ladder again, and this time it stayed there.

It looked as if the ladder was being consumed by some sort of eldritch energy cloud. Since no severed end came tumbling to the ground, Warner assumed that it was not actually being consumed, but he was still cut off from the space-warp. He wasn’t about to try climbing through that.

In fact, he was hurrying to get off the ladder and away, behind a tree, where the thing might not spot him-assuming it could see.

Once there, he turned and watched for a moment. If he hadn’t still been suited up, he’d have drawn his blaster and found out once and for all whether the things really didn’t work here.

And he’d wished for something interesting to happen. He should have known better. This was something interesting, all right, and it looked like very bad news indeed.

Of course, it could get worse-and as he watched, it did get worse.

The thing started moving downward along the ladder.

* * * *

Pel’s shoulder ached, and his back felt oddly scraped and raw from the now-vanished wind pressure, and the thick, damp, hot air above the forest made his skin itch and his head hurt, but at least he’d finally gotten both hands and both feet onto the ladder.

He began descending, carefully. The ladder swayed more than he would have liked, so he moved slowly.

As he neared the treetops he noticed the light and color of the matrix flitting across the leaves, and decided he didn’t like that. It might attract unwanted attention, and besides, it made it harder for him to see whatever there might be to see around here. Shadow had apparently been able to use the matrix to enhance her senses as a regular, permanent thing, but Pel’s mastery of it wasn’t anywhere near that complete; it took an effort of will to sense anything through the matrix unless whatever he was sensing was somehow part of the matrix.

The space-warp was a part of the matrix, in a way; any attempt to use magic was, as well. Fetches and homunculi and the rest of Shadow’s servants and creatures qualified, as well, and showed up without any special effort on his part.

Trees, however, didn’t.

That was mildly interesting, actually; Pel had always thought of trees as rather magical things. Certainly they were magical in most of the fantasy stories he’d read.

Maybe some were magical, but the Low Forest wasn’t, or at least the matrix didn’t register anything special there, and the energy currents were weak. And Pel’s eyes were having some trouble seeing through the magical haze.

He suppressed it, forcing the magical radiation out of the visible spectrum, and then continued climbing.

* * * *

The instant it had started downward, Warner had taken off his space helmet and begun opening his suit. He had dragged out his blaster, pointed it, and pressed the trigger.

They were right; nothing happened. It didn’t so much as buzz.

He shoved it back in the holster, and was debating whether to turn and run when the cloud-thing vanished, revealing a rather battered-looking man climbing slowly downward.

Was that the notorious Brown Magician, perhaps? Or one of his representatives?

He didn’t look like much of a threat.

Warner backed off a few paces and found himself a hiding place in the underbrush; then he waited to see what the new arrival was up to.

* * * *

Pel was about ten feet up when he spotted the man in the space suit. He smiled, and dropped to the ground, skipping the last few rungs. “Hey, you!” he called, the matrix amplifying his voice.

The man froze.

“Come on out where I can see you!” Pel beckoned.

The man hesitated, then stepped out of the concealing foliage. He had a bubble helmet under one arm, and his free hand was on the butt of a blaster that protruded through an open seam in his vacuum armor.

“The raygun won’t work here,” Pel told him. “You can try it if you want.”

The man’s hand dropped away from the useless weapon.

“I’m Pel Brown,” Pel said. “I run this place. Who’re you?”

“Lieutenant Sebastian Warner, Imperial Fleet,” the stranger replied.

“Good!” Pel said, smiling. This was just what he had hoped-and, from the instant he first saw Warner, expected; nobody but the Galactic Empire would have sent someone here in a purple space suit. “You’re holding down the fort for your people, I take it?”

Warner blinked. “I’m sorry, I…”

“I mean, they left you in charge here? Or is there a whole installation in the next clearing? Maybe you’re using the Christopher as your headquarters. If you’re not in charge, can you take me to whoever is?”

“It’s just…listen, whoever you are, I don’t have to answer any questions!”

Pel abruptly dropped the suppression, and the matrix flared up around them both in red and orange swirls. “No,” he said, “you don’t have to answer any questions-but you might want to. My name’s Pel Brown, as I said, but I’m better known here as Pelbrun, the Brown Magician.”

Warner made a wordless noise and stared in horror at the surrounding colors.

“Now, I don’t see anyone else here, so unless you tell me otherwise I’m going to assume you’re it-in which case, Lieutenant Warner, I do have one question to ask you, and if you don’t answer it, you’re toast.” Pel stopped, caught for a moment by the sudden image his own words conjured up of Raven and Valadrakul and Singer incinerated by Shadow’s power.

If Pel wanted it, in an instant this Warner really could be nothing but burnt toast-but the idea sickened Pel. Murder him for failing to answer a question?

But he hadn’t really meant the threat, Pel told himself. He just wanted his answer.

Then he admitted to himself that maybe he wanted it enough that he had meant the threat seriously, when he made it.

He didn’t now; he had no intention of harming this poor jerk.

But he didn’t want Warner to know that.

“Are they going to give me what I asked for?” Pel demanded.

“I…I don’t know,” Warner stammered. “What did you ask for?”

“They know,” Pel said. “You don’t? Okay, fine, you don’t-then I want you to carry a message for me. You go back up that ladder and tell them I want those bodies now. They have…” He glanced at Faerie’s pale sun. “They have until dawn. Maybe fifteen hours. I’m being generous.”

Warner glanced up at the setting sun, as well, then swallowed.

“Now, you get back up that ladder and tell them!” Pel shouted.

Quickly, Warner started to set his helmet in place, then realized that the sealing buckles and latches along the side-seam weren’t closed. He dropped the helmet and began clamping them shut as quickly as he could, as the apparition he had taken for an ordinary man stared at him from a boiling cloud of violet smoke.

A moment later he was suited up and climbing. Pel watched him ascend a few feet; then he sat down on the dirt of the forest floor and sighed.

Warner glanced down, but kept moving.

Pel watched Warner clamber up into the treetops, then out into the sky beyond.

He had given them until dawn, which meant he would be spending the night here, in the woods. He looked about.

The matrix would provide light and heat without any effort at all, but shelter…well, he could make it easily enough, but wasn’t the wreck of the Christopher just over that way?

And seeing what remained of the giant bat-thing would be interesting, too.

Pel got up, dusted off the seat of his pants, and after a final glance at Warner’s distant form, he strolled off into the trees.

* * * *

“It’s all clear, I suppose?” Warner’s captain said; then he got a look at the lieutenant’s face as Warner stepped out of the airlock, his helmet already off and dangling from one hand, and the captain realized that something was wrong.

“He’s down there!” Warner said, addressing his superior and ignoring the Imperial envoy who stood, half-in and half-out of a space suit, to one side.

“Who is?” the captain asked, glancing at the array of Imperial brass up in the observation area.

“Pelbrun! The Brown Magician!” Warner answered, ignoring the glance.

“Where?” the envoy asked. “He’s supposed to be in his fortress, I…”

“He’s right there! At the foot of the ladder! He came out of a cloud and found me there!”

The captain looked up again, and caught Albright’s signal.

“Wait here,” he said.

* * * *

“The telepaths say it’s possible,” Markham told the others. “Apparently they don’t have a very good grasp of the geography there, especially now that both our contacts have returned to Imperial space, but Brown does appear to have moved out of his fortress somehow.”

“So he’s waiting for us to deliver the bodies,” Sheffield said. “He said he wanted them there, now, and he’s come to collect them.”

“And he’s given us a specific deadline this time,” Albright commented.

“Which we don’t know exactly, since your lieutenant neglected to check his watch,” Markham pointed out.

“We wouldn’t know it exactly in any case, since none of your people have ever bothered to calibrate the local cycles there,” Albright retorted. “Besides, how does this Earthman define dawn? First light? Semicircle at true horizon? Sun clear of the visible horizon?”

“Not much of a horizon in the middle of a forest,” Markham answered.

“I don’t think we want to wait for his deadline in any case,” Sheffield said. “I think we go ahead with our original plan, and send the envoy-the only difference is that he’ll be negotiating right now, instead of days from now. Does either of you gentlemen see any reason we shouldn’t proceed thus?”

Markham and Albright glanced quickly at one another, but neither spoke.

* * * *

Pel had worked his way through the mummified remnants of Shadow’s flying monster, studying the bones and skin with interest, puzzling out just why the Imperials had cut away the parts they did while leaving the rest, and was just starting a look through the wreck of I.S.S. Christopher when he heard a human voice calling.

He hesitated. It was obvious that the Imperials had used the ship and clearing as a temporary base during their ventures into Faerie, and he was curious about just how they had set it up, and how many of them had been here-and for that matter, whether anyone might still be here.

No, he could tell, magically, that no one was in the ship.

He did want to see the inside-he’d felt a twinge of nostalgia when he first saw the familiar purple paint, now somewhat marred by weather and abuse. He had only been on the ship for perhaps an hour, but it had, after all, been a fairly important hour, the one that brought him to Faerie, where he had a chance to revive his family.

But that voice was probably the Empire’s representatives, delivering the bodies, and if he had a choice between thinking about his wife and child as they were, or bringing them back from the dead, he’d be a fool to settle for memories.

Anyone who wanted to find him here could do so readily enough, since the glow of the matrix was probably visible for miles, but still, it wouldn’t hurt to let whoever it was know that he was welcome.

“Hello!” Pel called, stepping out of the hatchway. “Over here!”

Perhaps two minutes later he and the Imperial envoy came face to face on the narrow track Imperial traffic had worn between ladder and clearing; Pel stopped dead at the sight of him.

The man was wearing the most outlandish outfit Pel had encountered since leaving Earth, somewhat the worse for having been stuffed inside a space suit for the climb through the warp. The pants were black velvet with broad purple silk stripes down either side, stuffed into shiny black jackboots; the shirt was white silk with elaborate lace ruffles down the front, artfully fluffed up around a diagonal purple silk sash that combined with a purple silk cummerbund to make a bizarre imitation of a Sam Browne belt. Over this, the stranger wore a bright red cutaway jacket with gold braid on the cuffs and shoulders, and the Imperial seal on the breast-a lion and unicorn rampant against a sunburst, a seal that Pel had first seen on the door of an aircar on Psi Cassiopeia II.

Pel couldn’t tell whether the gold-and-white ruffled lace collar that flared out from the man’s neck was part of the shirt, the jacket, or neither.

The crowning glory of this comic-opera outfit was undoubtedly the hat, a curling, almost brimless, vaguely conical thing of red velvet and white and purple ostrich plumes.

That the sunlight was gone and the only illumination came from the shifting colors of the matrix made this costume all the more bizarre. Pel tried to shift the light toward white, so as to see this thing better, and belatedly thought to make sure that the matrix was transparent, so that this character could see him, as well.

Why on Earth had they sent this person to deliver the bodies, instead of just a soldier or two?

“My Lord Pelbrun?” the man asked, standing straight and snapping his heels together.

“Yeah,” Pel managed.

The apparition took off his hat and bowed, with a flourish. After a moment of frozen formal subordination, he rose, reached into an inside pocket, and pulled out a packet roughly the size of a business envelope, which he proffered to Pel. “My credentials, sir.”

Too dazed to even laugh, and feeling a twinge of dread, Pel reached out with a tendril of magic and took the packet; it felt like parchment, and was sealed with gold leaf and purple sealing wax. He pulled it open and tugged out a large sheet of paper-or more likely parchment-which he unfolded and glanced at.

It was in elaborate old-fashioned script, and Pel didn’t care to bother reading it by matrixlight, but he did notice the signature and elaborate blue seal at the bottom.

Georgius VIII Imperator et Rex.

That sounded pretty official.

“Okay,” Pel said, “the Emperor sent you. Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Ambrose Curran, my lord, and I am an accredited Imperial envoy. His Imperial Majesty has sent me to negotiate the terms under which he will yield to you the mortal remains of Nancy and Rachel Brown.”

“Terms?” Pel needed a second or two to absorb that; he was still bemused by Curran’s appearance.

Then it sank in, and the matrix turned angry red as he repeated, “Terms?” His voice rang and echoed, and tree-branches creaked warningly.