The Four Realms (6 page)

He mulled events from the bus stop over in his mind.
 
Here he was a natural predator, a killer, and she'd turned him into a puppy dog.
 
He was too afraid to even go back to the Vampire Council.
 
No wonder, they'd just look at him and tell him what a pussy he really was.
 
But now, now he'd fed... now he felt he could face them.
 
They were a silent demon that haunted his dreams, but perhaps going to see them now would be a good idea.
 
They'd see him as their equal, they'd accept him back into their fold, they'd...

He got upset with the corpse taking up so much of the mattress, and gave it a big shove.

"Why can't you lie in the wet spot," he moaned.

CHAPTER FIVE - Maureen And The Troll

The troll was a wall of trout-mottled muscle.
 
He had to stoop to look through the doorway at Maureen, his yellow feline eyes piercing.

"I thought you'd gone out," he said with that big toothless grin of his that dissected his face from one pointed ear to another.
 
Frosted breath rose from the two tiny nasal cavities in his flat face as it met the cold air of Maureen's cellar.

"This is a bit late for you, Joseph," said Maureen.
 
She'd known him since his was a baby, his family having worked as gatekeepers for three generations now.
 
Of course, Joseph wasn't his real name.
 
He'd told it to her once, but as most troll names were unpronounceable to the human tongue, his race had made a habit of adopting human nicknames since the time they converted to Christianity.

"Sorry for taking so long," she added.
 
"Trouble with the neighbours."

As one of the few people Maureen got to speak to on a regular basis, Joseph was well versed in the on-going issues with Sally and Simon.

"Wot they done now?" he asked in that big, deep, slow voice of his.

"I think they either want to adopt me as some kind of pet, or get rid of me so Simon's incessant DIY can come right through the wall."

"Oh," said Joseph, a big three fingered hand scratching his head.

'Anyways, enough about me.
 
What can I do for you this evening?
 
If you're wondering where Ernest is, it's knee deep in snow out there so I doubt he'll be here until the morning at earliest..."

"Actually," said Joseph.
 
"It's you I wanted.
 
Well, not me, Rofen.
 
He's asked for you to come and see him."

"Rofen?" said Maureen slightly shaken.
 
"What does he want?"

This was not good.
 
In all her years, Maureen had only known her mother be called into Venefasia, the Realm of Magic, twice.
 
One was during the war when a wizard had been killed visiting London during the Blitz and the other was the day she'd resigned from her post, stepping aside to let Maureen take over.
 
Maureen had never set foot beyond the oak door she now held open.
 
It was forbidden for a gatekeeper to enter the other realm unless summoned, and a sense of duty had stopped her from ever disobeying.

In the back of her mind, she knew what this was about.
 
In her mother's day, this gateway had been the busiest in Britain, all those wizards heading out from the Friary into London.
 
But now the transport links at Luton suited visitors to this realm better and the numbers coming through Maureen's gateway continued to drop.
 
She had no children, no heir to hand the title onto and she long ago surmised that there would come a day when they'd close those big oak doors for good.

She could feel the heat coming in through the gateway.
 
The contrast made her shiver.
 
Looking over Joseph's shoulder she could see the green foliage of spring through the arches of the walkway that ran away from the door.
 
How she had longed to walk through the door and look out those arches.
 

The thought that she might never again see that solitary view she had of Venefasia mixed with the fear of what would happen to her.
 
This house technically belonged to the Friary.
 
Would they evict her?
 
A woman in her eighties?
 
In the old days she'd never have believed it, but back then the wizards had manners, not like these rebel rousers they had in charge now.
 
She'd remembered a lot of them from when they were studying, but when, on the odd occasion, they still used Maureen's gateway, they blanked her, as if she wasn't even there, let alone someone they used to talk to as excited children entering the service.

She'd shared her worries with Joseph on many occasions, and the look on his face showed he was concerned as well.
 
After all, it took two to man a gateway, one in each realm, and if they shut down this one, it would be more than Maureen who would lose their job.

"He didn't say what he wanted," Joseph said.
 
"All he said was that I was to fetch you right away and bring you to his office."

"Well, they'll have to wait," Maureen snapped.
 
"Ernest could turn up at any time."

"I did say it was very late," Joseph said sheepishly.
 
"But he was most insistent.
 
I can always say..."

"No, No, you're all right, Joseph," said Maureen.
 
In truth, whilst she did not fancy the prospect of meeting with Abbott Rofen.
 
He was a weasel of a man who had thought he was better than others even when he was a child. However the opportunity to finally step through the gateway and enter into Venefasia was one too tempting to resist, even at this time of night.
 
She might never get the opportunity again.

"I'll just need to get my bag and feed the cats," she said.

In the end, she not only needed to get her bag and feed the cats, but dress, ensure the fire guard was in place - less a log fall and burn the house down in her absence - and check the house was locked... three times.

Joseph showed no signs of impatience, instead content to stand on his side of the gateway waiting for her.

"Right then," she finally said, ensuring there were tissues in her handbag, "I'm ready."

Joseph stepped back from the door, and Maureen tentatively stepped through, then turned, shut her own door and locked it.

"What you doing that for?" asked Joseph.

"So no-one sneaks in whilst we're gone?" Maureen replied.
 

Joseph laughed a deep hearty laugh.
 
"I don't think you have to worry.
 
Anyone wanting to get through would need to get through the entire Friary.
 
Although I hear from some of the students that if you keep to the right, it is possible to sneak out the building without alerting attention."

He winked at Maureen.

"We're still supposed to protect the borders between the Realms," she said curtly, unimpressed by Joseph's tardiness.
 
His father would never have stood for it, God rest his soul.

Joseph shrugged.
 
"I lost my key three years ago, my door's been unlocked ever since."

Maureen looked at him disapprovingly, put the big iron key in her handbag and stepped past him and into Venefasia.

The first thing she noticed was the change of climate.
 
The cold chill of the cellar was replaced by the freshness of spring.
 
She walked over to the edge of the walkway, put her hands on the shallow wall at the bottom of the open arches and looked out over the city, several stories below.

"I've always wanted to look out over here," she said forgetting her earlier anger at Joseph.

In honesty, there wasn't much of the actual city to see.
 
It was mostly a sea of foliage, with the odd spire poking up in the distance.
 
Further away though, she could make out the flat lands, make out what must be the fields and the farms, and beyond that snow-capped mountains.

"Is that Klarstrom?" she asked Joseph pointing to the highest peak.

"No," laughed Joseph, "That's just Pak Stone.
 
The dwarven capital is nearly a thousand miles away."

Maureen stared up at the mountain.
 
"It's still impressive though."

She felt like she was eight again, lost in a dream of venturing into a land of magic.
 
She wanted to dance, to twirl, to visit the Orob-nraf Falls, to see real magic performed.
 
She took a deep breath, conscience that she was breathing the air of a world where magic really existed.
 
She tingled with excitement and for a minute all her fears and worries disappeared.

"It's as beautiful as I imagined it would be," she smiled.

Joseph laughed.
 
"You've obviously not been here long enough then.
 
Shall we see if Rofen can sour your mood?"

Maureen lent in close, as if she was sharing a secret with the troll.
 
"Let him try!"

There then followed a maze of passageways and courtyards.
 
Maureen wanted the troll to slow down, but his huge strides meant she had trouble keeping up with him, and had no time to admire the paintings, statues and suits of armour that lined the various hallways.
 
In truth she could have spent all day, many days even, investigating the various artworks around the Friary.
 

Of course, it wasn't a friary, not any more.
 
The wizarding community had broken with the church some hundred and sixty years ago, but still the names remained, even if they were in decline:
 
acolytes, friars and of course, Rofen who, as head of the wizarding community, was known as the Abbott.
 
Gone were the days when they studied magic for the glory of God, now they only served themselves, trying to expand their knowledge beyond what little the elves had taught them.

As they progressed, Maureen began to notice something peculiar.
 
The stone floors gave way to linoleum, stone walls turned to brick, paintings became more modern, and as they entered one corridor she noticed a coffee machine and overhead strip lightning.

They were now beginning to run into other people, fresh-faced acolytes in their tell-tale crimson robes to denote they were a wizard in training.
 
Whilst they paid Joseph no attention, they eyed Maureen suspiciously.

"It's very rare we see a woman in here," Joseph conceded.
 
Ah yes
, thought Maureen.
 
For some reason, whilst elven women could perform magic, human women couldn't, and given how the elves still accused the humans of stealing magic from them, it was unlikely she'd run into any of those in here.
 
They had witches, of course, but they were little more than glorified chemists mixing pastes and creating salves, who studied their craft far beyond the walls of the Friary.

What did surprise Maureen was the number of faces she didn't recognise.
 
Friars, full-blown wizards, in their blue robes who'd never once set foot through her gateway.
 
Perhaps they'd never taken a field trip to London, or perhaps they went through Luton instead.
 
That thought depressed her and fed her worries of what fate awaited her in Rofen's office.

Joseph stopped in a corridor that looked more like a school than some place of magical study.
 
Doors to various rooms and notice-boards overflowing with bits of paper pinned to them lined the walls.

"Wait here," said Joseph, indicating a bench next to a soft drinks machine.
 
"I'll tell him you're here."

Maureen sat with her bag on her lap, watching people come and go.
 
Some of the acolytes looked so young.
 
Mind you, Ernest and his friends couldn't have been much older when they first came through the gateway.
 
They wouldn't dare let them into the Realm of Men that young nowadays.
 
She remembered how Ernest and his friends would teach her all the magic tricks they'd learned in class the week before and then get her to help with their homework, whilst her mother made them jam sandwiches and cups of tea.
 
She chuckled to herself thinking how the boys would have been thrown out if anyone had found out they were telling her.
 
But then what harm could she do, a little girl, who used to cry herself to sleep for feeling so excluded from the world through the door in the cellar.

Her thoughts drifted back to the present to hear someone talking from an open door down the corridor.
 
It was too mumbled for her to make out individual words.
 
She got up, deciding that the bench was uncomfortable, and tried to read the notices on the board.
 
But they were all in what she assumed to be Old Elvish, a language she couldn't read.

She found herself drawn toward the voice, started making out words such as "Mana".
 
Then she found she was standing at the doorway, looking in.
 
It was a classroom, full of boys no older than ten, dressed in their crimson acolyte robes.
 
They stood in rows with blades of grass on the tables in front of them.
 
The room was stuffy, the only light coming from a high strip of windows that revealed nothing more of the outside world than a brick wall.
 
At the head of the classroom stood a teacher with a brown bushy beard and pair of thick glasses that he stared into trying to make out the world beyond.
 
He didn't see Maureen.
 
She doubted if he could even see his class.