SongMaster's Realm Read online

  It was a sobering thought. When Peter died, his elder son Jared would take the throne. Jared was like his father in many respects, given to moodiness and careful thought before taking action. He would thoroughly weigh all sides of an argument before making a decision, and could be trusted to stay rational in almost any situation. He was also one of the best swordsmen in the city, if not all of Asria. He would make a good king, and Fender would be proud to serve him as he could.

  Unfortunately, the king also had a younger son, Jalis, who would become crown prince, heir to the throne. This unsettled many people, Fender included. Jalis, in Fender’s opinion, was a brat. He was a scheming troublemaker, self-absorbed and petty. He surrounded himself with a small group of people, self-serving courtiers and ladies that longed to further their own interests and climb the social ladder within the castle. Fender would have loved to transform Jalis into something rather disgusting, but his moral character and better judgment precluded it. He figured Jared’s best bet as King would be to send Jalis to command one of the far West border garrisons and get him as far away from the capital city, Beláin, as possible. It might put Jalis in some danger from goblins and mercenaries, but it would keep Jared out of danger from his brother.

  For the time being, however, Peter was King, and Fender served as best he could, doling out friendship, advice and magic as needed. Peter was a good man and a good King, still mentally sharp despite his advanced age, and possessed of an innate sense of justice that never seemed to desert him.

  As the day’s audience with the King progressed, Fender used his arts to blend into the crowd, becoming just another anonymous onlooker, listening to random scraps of conversation. He was welcome to stand next to the King if he wished, but he preferred to remain in the background. For one thing, standing front and center next to Peter would become terribly boring very quickly, and for another, disappearing into the crowd allowed him to hear statements and complaints that might not reach the King’s ears, and these he passed along as he deemed necessary. As he drifted here and there, the feeling he got was that people were generally happy with the state of affairs, though worried as always about the border skirmishes in the south and the influx of mercenaries and goblins from the west. The army was doing a good job of keeping the violence away from most heavily populated areas, so the concerns that Fender heard were mostly for relatives and friends that were serving in the army.

  Suddenly, across the mass of people, Fender spotted his friend Gaen, the Warmaster, standing in the shadow of an archway. He maneuvered his way over to speak to him. He knew Gaen had just recently returned from the southern border. He and Fender had been good friends since he became Warmaster almost twenty years ago. Their personal philosophies, although not completely different, were far enough removed from each other to allow the two of them to enjoy a good argument every now and then.

  “Gaen! Good to have you back! How goes it, old friend?” asked Fender by way of greeting.

  Gaen scowled. “Hello, wizard,” he growled. “Not well. We’ve had four reports this morning of goblins raiding villages on the western frontier. Half of these idiots are whining to the King, begging for aid and protection. It’s aid and protection I can’t afford to give right now because almost all of my infantry is tied up on the southern border, trying to match Sarth’s every move. I’m spread too thin, I can’t find a decent drop of ale in the place, and on top of it all this infernal rain won’t stop!”

  Fender smiled. “You aren’t happy unless you’re complaining, are you? Sarth has been making forays into the south for three years now, and you’ve done an admirable job of keeping them out. Goblin raids are hardly anything new, you obviously don’t know where to look for good ale, and the rain – well, the rain will stop eventually.”

  “You’re right, of course,” sighed Gaen. “It just gets damned discouraging sometimes. Do you have any idea how hard it is to march in a downpour, much less fight those dirty little border skirmishes in it? And I don’t like this rain. It’s unseasonable, and to be frank, it gives me the creeps.”

  Fender nodded. The rainy season should have ended a month ago, and something about the storm also made him uneasy, although he was very surprised to hear an old warrior like Gaen admit it, even to his magician friend. Determined not to dwell on it too much at present, he shook off the shuddering feeling that had settled upon him and clapped the Warmaster on the shoulder. “You’re just getting senile, old man. Let’s see if we can’t scrape up a good mug or two of ale.”

  Just then there was a commotion just outside the hall. Fender heard a shout, and then someone came stumbling into the hall. As startled soldiers moved to intercept the figure’s path to the King, it collapsed just inside the entrance.

  Fender and Gaen were also already moving, shouldering their way through the crowd until they reached the figure. It was a young man who looked to be about eighteen or twenty years old, drenched from the rain and covered from head to toe with mud and blood. Fender immediately hoped that not all of the blood was his own, because that would mean he was close to bleeding to death. As courtiers and court ladies backed away in shock and disgust, he kneeled down and felt for a pulse, realizing that if the blood didn’t belong to the young man it probably would have washed off in the rain. “There’s a pulse, but it’s slow and thready. Has anyone called for the physicians?”

  A voice in the back shouted that the physicians had indeed been sent for, so Fender concentrated on artfully controlling the young man’s pain. It proved to be relatively easy, as he kept slipping in and out of consciousness. It wasn’t long before two men in long white robes pushed their way through the mass of people, carrying a stretcher. They skillfully hauled the youth onto it and bore him towards the back of the hall, disappearing through one of the archways.

  Fender stood and looked at Gaen. “What do you think?”

  The other shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t even tell if he was wearing colors, he was such a mess. He was hacked up pretty badly. I can only guess if he was attacked by brigands or goblins or who-knows-what-else. I can’t tell.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Fender. “Speculation at this point is pretty useless. We’ll just have to wait until he wakes up. If he wakes up.”

  The two men went to hunt down a good tankard of ale while they waited for word on the patient.

  THREE

  It had slowed to a drizzle outside when Maestro woke Joel the next morning. The kitten was lying on his chest, purring and completely oblivious to the fact that Joel was not a pincushion. Joel sneezed, disentangled himself from sheets, pillows and cat claws, and sat up groggily. He had not slept well at all. He had dreamed vividly all night long, but the content of those dreams was beginning to vanish as his waking consciousness returned. He frowned, recalling vague images of a book that spoke Italian, a short bald man with one eye, and some woman walking into a wall made of glass or water. There was also something about a shipwreck and some flying iguanas, but that was fading as well. He glanced at his alarm clock. It read 6:47.

  Startled, he walked to the window and peered through the shades. The sun was completely hidden by clouds, but it was obviously midmorning or later. Making his way over to the dresser, he looked at his watch. It too had the hour hand almost on the 7 and the minute hand midway between the 9 and the 10. What the hell? he thought and stumbled into the kitchen, narrowly missing tripping over Maestro. The clock above the stove read 6:49.

  Joel got some coffee going and sat down. As the old machine sputtered happily in the corner, he puzzled over the clocks. He supposed it was possible that he had had a power outage sometime during the night, but that failed to explain why his watch had lost the same amount of time – he guessed it to be two hours. Try as he might, he could not find a rational explanation for why three different clocks had suffered mechanical breakdowns simultaneously for the exact same amount of time. He refused to consider the only explanation that presented itself. Time does not just stop for three hours and
then come back and pick up where it left off. Feeling more and more uneasy, he left the coffee machine to finish its job and went back to hop in the shower.

  Fifteen minutes later he was back in the kitchen, feeling a little more alive. He poured himself a cup of strong black coffee, picked up the phone and dialed time and temperature. A female voice answered after three rings. “Thank you for calling Metropolitan Time and Temperature. The time is 9:52 A.M. The current temperature is 74 degrees. We are expecting continued showers today, with –” Joel hung up. His clocks had lost about three hours. Deep in thought, he sauntered over to the window and looked out at the rain. He had absolutely nothing planned today, and it had slowed down outside to a drizzle, so he decided to go for a walk. If he brought his guitar and went to the nearby park, he could sit under a tree and do some songwriting. He smiled slightly to himself. He might despise the rain, but there was no denying the fact that it often put him into a great frame of mind for songwriting. Of course, most of the songs he ended up with were ballads in a sad, minor key, but songs were songs. Besides, he thought, I haven’t done any serious moping in a while, and what’s a day without a good mope?

  After scrounging up a small breakfast and making sure that, once again, Maestro’s bowl was full, he put on his overcoat, shouldered his guitar case and stepped outside. As he turned to lock the door, he once again felt unseen eyes on him, making the hair on the back of his neck prickle. He froze, then for no particular reason he glanced at his watch. It had stopped once again. Very interesting. At least my hallucinations are causally connected somehow. Determined to ignore what he was beginning to believe was his growing mental imbalance, he locked the door and set out toward the park, vowing to get out more often.

  It was very difficult to ignore the feeling, however. All the way to the park, he felt eyes watching him. Several times he spun around in a vain attempt to see who was following him, but if there was anyone there, he or she remained hidden. He cursed himself for being so jumpy and so predictable and kept walking, but a few minutes later he spun around again, the sense of being watched was so strong.

  At last he reached the park. He looked around, chose a tree with a nice full canopy of leaves, and settled down next to the trunk, unslinging his guitar case. He picked up the instrument and strummed a few chords, determined to do some songwriting and put the strange events of the morning out of his mind. He looked around at the empty park. Water glistened on everything, from the abandoned playground to the various scattered park benches; this along with the blanket of stillness lent an eerie air of otherworldliness to the surroundings.

  He closed his eyes and thought back to a song he had started a week or so ago. It was a sort of traveling song, one you could sing to yourself as you walked or drove from one place to another. He quietly picked the tune and ran through some verses in his mind.

  Pray for the sun

  To speed you on your way

  Find another road to heaven

  Find another place to stay

  Don’t look back

  There’s so much to see ahead

  Can you answer the wind

  Can you remember what she said

  And I said Hey!

  And I said Where are you?

  He stopped. That last chord didn’t sound quite right. If he didn’t use the subdominant and used a Phrygian cadence instead –

  “Joel Peters?”

  He jumped and looked around. Standing about ten feet away from him was a tall man with short grey hair and a neatly trimmed grey beard, dressed all in black.

  “That’s me. Can I help you?”

  The man smiled. “I have been looking for you. Do you mind if I sit down?”

  Joel shrugged. The man apparently took this for an invitation and sat down under the tree, several feet away. He and Joel studied each other in silence for a few moments. The man was tall, at least six and a half feet, and moderately built. He had shockingly green eyes and looked to be somewhere around sixty years old. Part of Joel’s mind that he was trying not to listen to was screaming that the man was perfectly dry. No wet spots, no mud on his clothes, no sign that he was out in the rain at all.

  Again determined to ignore his hallucinations as nothing more than a vivid imagination, Joel broke the silence. “So what can I do for you, sir?” He hadn’t meant to say “sir,” but the word had just slipped out. The man exuded power and authority in an almost palpable aura.

  The man in black smiled again. “Ah, indulge me, if you will, while I collect my thoughts. I have a story to tell you, if you are willing to listen, and I am merely trying to decide how to begin.”

  When Joel nodded and put down his guitar, the man said, “My name is Massar.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” Is that Turkish? Russian? “It seems you know my name already, and as for a story, well, you can see I’m not terribly busy.” What kind of person walks up to someone in a park and asks if he can tell them a story? If I don’t like his story, is he going to chop off my ears?

  I am really getting paranoid. Perhaps I should see somebody.

  Massar nodded. “Let me begin, then, with a question. Do you enjoy traveling?”

  It was an innocent enough question. Joel shrugged and nodded. Massar went on.

  “Outside of your normal realm of experience, there is another world, very close to this one. It is called Alera by its inhabitants, which means, oddly enough, Earth. It is very similar to this world in many, many respects; similar enough, in fact, that I have often wondered how the two worlds are connected or related.

  “About sixty centuries ago on Alera, there lived a wizard named Magir. I use the term ‘wizard’ loosely, for Magir was what is called a ‘dabbler.’ He had no magical training whatsoever, and theoretically should not have been able to practice magic at all. But practice he did, and actually became extremely adept in the art.”

  He paused a moment and looked closely at Joel. Joel, for his part, was silently attentive, so he continued.

  “Magir was, shall we say, a little mad. Toward the last part of his life he spoke to and saw people who weren’t really there. He would spend long periods of time in shapes other than his own, and that can have a detrimental effect on one’s sanity. He separated himself from other men, and the long periods of solitude bred discontent. He became extremely nervous and paranoid, and came to believe that the entire universe was bent on his destruction.

  “A mad, powerful wizard is very, very dangerous, and also vulnerable to certain undesirable influences. In the final years of his life he developed a theory. To this day I do not know if the theory was his own original thought or if it was ‘placed’ in his mind by magical means.”

  Despite himself, Joel was caught up in the story. Several questions had come to mind, but Massar spoke almost as if lecturing a student, looking intently at Joel as he spoke. Joel decided the questions could wait.

  “The theory that Magir developed has yet to be disproven, to my knowledge. He thought that what we call Reality is in fact the sum total of all of the life experiences of all sentient beings on all of the worlds in all of the universes. In other words, Reality is nothing more than what we want and expect it to be. Change your thoughts, and you change Reality, or at least your tiny little bit of it.”

  Joel broke in. “Wait a minute. That makes no sense to me. I can change my thoughts all I want, but no matter how hard I wish, this guitar isn’t going to change into a Gibson Les Paul.”

  Massar smiled faintly. “True enough, but let me finish. Magir had an explanation for objections such as yours. He reasoned that an undisciplined mind, if it changed its thoughts, could create the possibility of a change – seed the ground, if you will – but would be too weak and disordered to actually warp the fabric of space and bring about that change. Only two things could do that. The first possibility was that if enough ‘normal’ minds were to get together and imagine one thing, together they would have enough power to create that thing. As an example, if enough people fear an eart
hquake, they’ll probably get one.”

  “Like in California,” Joel muttered.

  “Exactly. The other possibility was that if someone were to train his mind, exercise it, then that person would become powerful enough to warp the fabric of space. That person would be a magician or a wizard. The more powerful his mind, the more ‘exercise’ he gave it, the more he would be able to accomplish.”

  Joel smiled. “Okay, that makes sense to me.”

  Massar gave him a strange look and continued. “Now, I fear, I must come to the point of the story. What Magir did with that information has never been matched by any other wizard. He set down in a book, called the Duran, explicit instructions for destroying Reality. He then encrypted it with a seemingly unbreakable code, hid the book, and then died.”

  Massar was quiet, apparently done with the story. The park was silent, save for the faint sound of rain and a few cars hydroplaning by on the street. Joel sat up and leaned forward. “Okay,” he said slowly, “I think it is a very engaging story, and you could really write a book. But there are a few things I don’t understand that might puzzle your readers.”

  Massar’s face darkened. “Ask,” he glowered.

  Some people just can’t handle criticism. “Well, for one thing, if Reality is nothing more than our thoughts and feelings, then why is it so hard to change? Seems to me just holding a specific thought in your head long enough would do it.”

  The other man leaned back a little. “In a sense, it does. Others have utilized, however unknowingly, the principles that Magir discovered. Look at some books in your world: Creative Visualization, Think and Grow Rich, and so on. Some untrained minds have success, but more often than not the practitioner gives up before the goal is reached. It’s simply too difficult. Imagine a piece of cloth with an embroidered design. The cloth is the basis, the very fabric of space itself. The embroidery is our accumulated thoughts and experiences. The sum of the two, the embroidered cloth, is what we call Reality. In order to change the whole, the embroidered cloth, it is necessary to alter both the embroidery and the underlying cloth, since the two are inextricably bound to create the whole concept of Reality. It is much harder to do this than to simply meddle with the design.”