Triumph of the Darksword (24 page)

Most are insane—as is my poor Gwen. But some are not. Some—one in particular, this man known as “Sorcerer”
—
are quite sane. He tried, countless times, to get back across the Border. According to him, the barrier is an energy field composed of the magical energy within this world and within each of the Living. The Living who are cast out cannot get back in due to their own energy force. Much as two like magnetic fields repel each other, the magic of the world repelled his magic. All these years, he has waited for this world to make a mistake, a mistake that would let him back inside.

I was your mistake.

A Dead man crossed the magical boundary. The spell was shattered, the lock broken. I myself, having no magical energy, would not be repelled. I could come back. And if I did, it was theorized that I would disrupt the field. I would leave the door open behind me.

As I said, Sorcerer came to this conclusion after months of study. We were not always enemies, you see. Once I trusted and admired him—

But that is another story.

Those in power managed to convince me that the two worlds must meld, become one. I thought this would prove a blessing for Thimhallan. I believed that a blending of the two worlds would bring about a new order in the universe. My dreams were bright. The dreams of others, however, were twisted and distorted
.

I came back. … and they followed me, bringing war.

They deceived me and betrayed me. I realize now that they mean to conquer this world as they have conquered others.

Will the Prophecy be fulfilled? Are we hurtling to our own destruction as rocks tumbling down a cliff face? The thought is a terrifying one. And it is made all the more frightening because it seems we have no choice in our own destiny; that some all-knowing and uncaring Master controls our puny lives and has controlled them from time immemorial.

Is there no escape? I am beginning to think there is not. The only two right and good things I have ever done in my life—choosing to leave this world and choosing to return to save it—have apparently only brought the Prophecy that much closer to fulfillment.

If this is true, if our lives are dealt to us like the cards of the tarok, if we are thrown down to take a trick or be lost as our Player deems and there is nothing more to life than that, then I begin to understand Simkin and his way in this world.

The game is nothing, the playing of it everything.

M
ajor James Boris, commander, fifth battalion, Marine Airborne, was known among his men affectionately (if unofficially, and never when he was within hearing) as Stump. In build he was short, thick-bodied, and well muscled—physical qualities that undoubtedly helped earn him this nickname. Thirty years old, he kept his body in top condition, and yearly, during the base’s annual inspection by the brass and top government officials, Major Boris invited as many young recruits as wanted to endanger their skulls to rush him in a group and attempt to knock him off his feet. (According to legend, a recruit once stole a tank and drove it straight at Major Boris. Legend has it that, when the tank struck him, James Boris remained standing rooted to the spot, and it was the tank that flipped end over end.)

Those who served with James Boris from his early days as a young recruit knew the true derivation of his nickname, however. It came from the classroom, not the locker room.

“James Boris, you have all the imagination of a tree stump!” remarked an instructor caustically.

The name stuck.

The comment—and the nickname—didn’t bother James Boris one bit. He wore it proudly, in fact, as he wore his many medals. This lack of imagination was, he considered, one factor that had enabled his swift rise through the ranks. Major Boris was a by-the-book commander. His roots were deeply mired in the firm ground of rules and regulations, a comforting and reassuring thought to those he led. There was never any need to wonder where James Boris stood on any issue. If it was covered in the rules and regulations, then Major Boris stood squarely on top of it and nothing—not even the legendary tank—would move him. If it wasn’t covered in rules and regulations …

Well, that point was moot. James Boris had never encountered anything that wasn’t.

Until now.

This particular aspect of Major Boris’s personality—the fact that he had no imagination—had been one of the major factors involved in selecting him for the expeditionary force to Thimhallan. Top government officials had descriptions of this bizarre world, descriptions provided by two men: one known to casino audiences as Sorcerer and another known only to certain secret government agencies as Joram. The top officials, many of whom could scarcely believe what they heard, decided that it would take a man of nerve and cold, hard logic to survive in Thimhallan without losing his senses.

It was easy to see how they reached this decision and it undoubtedly had some merit. Unfortunately, the decision proved disastrously wrong. Although any person sent from the safe, secure world of technology into the strange and terrifying world of magic must have been shaken to his core, a commander with imagination might have been flexible enough to cope with the mind-boggling situations. Major Boris, on the other hand, felt that—for the first time in his life—his solid, sturdy stump had been blasted clean out of the ground. Now he lay helpless, his roots exposed, a pathetic sight.

“You want to know what I recommend, Major?” muttered Captain Collin. “I recommend we get the hell out of here!”

The Captain, a man of forty-five and a veteran of one of the most grueling tank campaigns ever fought on the Outer Fringes, took out a cigarette with a trembling hand, dropped it, took out another, accidentally snapped it in two, and finally stuffed the case back in his pocket.

Major Boris looked gloomily at his other captains and received emphatic nods from the rest, except for one, who wasn’t paying attention, but sat huddled in a chair, shivering.

“You’re suggesting we retreat—” James Boris growled.

“I’m suggesting we get out of here before we’re all dead or looney as—” Captain Collin bit his words off with a vicious snap, letting a glance at the shivering captain sitting beside him complete his sentence.

Major Boris sat behind a standard-issue metal desk, facing his company commanders who sat before him in standard-issue metal folding chairs, meeting inside Major Boris’s standard-issue field headquarters, a dome of plastic made in the latest geodesic design. A series of other domes—some larger (supply domes, mess domes) and many smaller, living-quarter domes—dotted the landscape for miles about. The domes could be dismantled in a matter of minutes, the entire battalion could be aboard ship and out of this nightmare world in a matter of hours.

Resting his hands firmly on the metal top of the desk, the Major felt reassured by its coolness, its stolid, unyielding … what? James Boris groped for a word. Metalness? Stolid, unyielding metalness? He didn’t suppose
metalness
was a word, but it said what he meant. He could be out of here by 0300 hours, back in a world of metal.

His hands clenched on the desk top. He looked around it carefully, taking in everything from a green teapot with a bright orange lid that he couldn’t recall having ordered—tea was the last thing James Boris wanted to drink right now—to the papers stacked neatly in a pile next to his standard-issue field computer. Nervously, unaware of what he was doing, the Major began to drum his knuckles softly on the metal, his gaze switching to a small transparent plastic window set into the side
of
the plastic dome.

It was night, dark as hyperspace, with no moon or stars visible. James Boris wondered, his gloom deepening, if this was
real
night or one of those terrifying, magic nights that
had been dropped over him and his men like some huge, smothering blanket. A quick glance at his watch reassured him of the time, however: 2400. They’d been here only forty-eight hours.

Forty-eight hours. That was the length of time the brass had figured it would take to intimidate the population of this world. A populace that, according to reports, was living somewhere just south of the Middle Ages. Forty-eight hours and Major Boris was to have sent back word that the situation was well under control, his forces were occupying the major capitals, negotiations for peaceful coexistence could begin.

Forty-eight hours. Half his men dead, over half his tanks destroyed or out of commission. Of those men surviving, probably a third were in little better shape than the shivering captain. Major Boris made a weary, mental note to turn the man over to the medics and declare him unfit for command.

Forty-eight hours. They were safe enough here, he supposed, hidden in the mountains, but he kept having the eerie feeling he was being watched, unseen eyes observing him.

Staring out the window, Major Boris heard his captains talking. They were going over the incidents of the last forty-eight hours, describing them for the hundredth time in tight, tense voices, as though daring anyone to dispute what they had seen. James Boris floated on top of their sea of words, seeing occasionally in his mind the fragment of a rule or a regulation drift by. Floundering, he sought to grasp it, to hang onto it. But it always sank, and he was left helpless, drowning.

So lost in this dark sea was the Major that he never noticed the silent entrance of another man.

Neither did any of the others. This was due, perhaps, to the fact that the man did not enter through the headquarters’ door, but simply materialized inside the dome. A tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man, he was dressed in an expensive cashmere suit, a silk tie at his throat. It was odd apparel for a battlefield and, if his dress was odd, his demeanor was odder. He might have been lounging at the bar, waiting for a table in a fine restaurant. Calmly, he straightened the cuffs of his white shirt, a jeweled cufflink sparkled at his wrist. Calmly,
he regarded Major James Boris. A plastic laminated identity card adorned with his picture was tucked carefully into his suit pocket. Stamped across it in red was his name, Menju, and the single word:
Advisor.

Although the man made no sound to draw attention to himself, he did nothing to try to conceal his presence either. The captains sat with their backs to him Major Boris, wrapped in his own problems, was still staring at his desk. The newly arrived man listened to the captains’ reports with interest, occasionally stroking the identity card he wore with the tips of fingers remarkable for their length and delicacy of touch. When he toyed with this placard with the single word,
Advisor
, he smiled, as though he found it all highly amusing.

“It was when we were attacking that stone fortress where we had, so we were told”—Captain Collins tone was bitter and ironic—“the creeps trapped. One of my tank crews had one of them, a woman, a
woman
, mind you”—the Captain’s tone grew dark—“in their sights when this green goo starts oozing through the hatch. Before they know what’s happening, this … this slime is eating into their skin! They start to glow, like, and within seconds they’re a quivering mass of green jelly.

“Kid turned into a wolf right before my eyes! Leaped on Rankin, knocked him down, and tore his throat out before I could move. God help me! I’ll never forget Rankin’s scream What could I do? Run? Hell yes I ran! And the whole time I was running I could feel hot breath on my neck, hear that thing panting behind me. I can still hear it.”

“We fired at this thing, but he must have been thirty feet tall. We coulda been tossin’ matches at it instead of lasers for all it cared. Lifted one foot and smash! That was the end of Mardec and Hayes. We couldn’t even get the bodies outa the wreckage…”

“A man in white robes, like some damn picture in a Sunday school book, jumps up and attacks my boys with a sword. Yeah, a sword. They get ready to cut him in two with their phaser guns and—wham! They fire and the sword—”

“—deflects the light?”