Doorway from Darkness

Christopher Kempke

Copyright (c) 1991

A cry of human anguish tore me from my sleep, a bloodcurdling scream which lingered as my vision cleared, dying to a series of sobs.

By the time I was on my feet, my now-awake brain had identified the horrible sounds as my baby crying for its dinner, considerably less terrible than some strange dream had led me to believe. Pulling my mind together, I stumbled to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and looked apprehensively within. I am not the best of housekeepers, and my wife is less so, but I located the milk without resorting to a seeking spell, and filled the bottle with practiced skill. A small spell warmed it, and I was on my way to the bedroom in less than a minute.

Erika was sitting up in the crib, her crying stopped now as it was clear that she had my attention. The scent which assailed my nostrils as I bent over her nearly brought tears to my eyes. The milk could wait.

Sal insisted there was something intrinsically wrong with changing diapers by magic, but Sal wasn't around, and her quirks were not of immense concern to me at the moment. The diapers disintegrated at my mental urging, and fresh ones slid from the box to my hand at my call. Erika was of course delighted; her age was not yet sufficient to notice anything wrong with diapers levitating; with luck she never would. I am probably the most powerful wizard of the Web, the only likely competition being my wife Sal. Erika would probably surpass us both when she reached the age that we could teach her. The diaper catastrophe solved, I urged the bottle on my child and helped her with the apparently difficult task of keeping it in her mouth.

When the phone rang some ten minutes later, Erika was deeply asleep. Sal would have accused me of a sleep spell, but since I could do them without gestures or words, it would be difficult to prove. In any case, Sal was on the other end of the line when I picked it up.

"Carl? I just got a call from the police station. Jeremy says you should go to the morgue and ask about the dead wino they brought in last night. He sounded scared."

Jeremy was one of the few people who knew our abilities. Wizards are rare on Earth, the Mages' Council requiring secrecy of them. However, I've been known to train the occasional person in a few small spells, in case I should need their help in the future. Jeremy was such a one.

I pick my people well and train them better; it would take more than a small problem to frighten them. And large problems could take more than a few minutes for me to solve.

"All right. Can you come home and watch Erika?"

"I'll be there in half an hour." There was a click on the other end of the line.

Better than her word, Sal was home in twenty minutes. Her long black hair flew wild as the business suit she wore shifted and changed into more casual clothing. I cast the reverse spell a few minutes later and was out the door.

The Dodge truck in the driveway shone like new; Sal must have had it washed earlier in the morning. I hopped behind the wheel and was halfway into the city when I realized I had no clue where the morgue was. A phone booth rectified this fairly quickly; there was a brief delay until I found its listing under "Funeral Services." I meditated on the oddly-placed listing until I walked in the door of the morgue.

"Carl Moonsente. I have an appointment with the director." I used my real name on the off chance that Jeremy actually had made me an appointment. The barely audible word of command at the end of the sentence was on the more likely chance that he had not.

He hadn't; the technician smiled awkwardly. "I'm afraid the director doesn't actually work here, he's at the office downtown. No one told us you were coming, but if you'll tell me what you'd like..."

"I need to see the wino you brought in last night. I understand there's something a bit..." I paused meaningfully, not knowing my meaning, "unusual about him."

The technician knew. "That's for sure. Come along."

He led me into the interior, slid a tray out of the wall, pulled back the cloth covering the body.

It looked dead, but little more than that, save that the eyes were sunken more than I might expect. I looked encouragingly at the technician.

"So what do you know so far?" I had no clue what was unusual about this corpse, but if I alerted the technician to my ignorance he'd probably develop a suspicion that would take more than a word of command to undo. Luckily, he was a naively trusting soul.

"Only what you do -- his brain is missing completely. Not a cell of it left so far as we can tell. And there's no mark on him anywhere. It's spooky, is all I can say. But what's even spookier..." His voice lowered. "We brought in another one just like him, from the same alley, just this afternoon. And Central had one last week, from the same place."

"Any thoughts on what it might be?" I was as clueless as they were. It was quite clear why Jeremy had given Sal a call.

"I think it might be some kind of disease that acts really fast, dissolving the brain."

I shook my head. "Even if it dissolved, it would have to go somewhere."

He nodded, shrugged. I decided not to push my luck.

"Well, thank you for your time. You've been a great help in my investigation. We'll let you know what we find out." He didn't ask who "we" were, which was fine with me since it was a lie anyhow. He pushed the corpse back into the wall with something like relief. I have to admit I wasn't terribly thrilled either.

Early evening found Sal and I at the alley where the bodies had been found. It had been cordoned off with yellow "police investigation area, do not cross" tape, which we ignored. The alley itself made a sharp bend, hiding its contents from view of the street. If muggers could have designed an alley, this would be it. In our case, though, the lack of visibility was of considerable aid. As soon as we could not be seen, we began protection spells.

Protection magic is a strange art. The usual case is to "weave" a mesh of the particular protections you need; when the shield is triggered, it flashes a metallic blue and prevents the entry of whatever you have it guarding against. However, Sal and I weren't sure what we needed protection against, so we each put up a "generic" shield, literally millions of protection shields interlaced, allowing only air, some light, and our clothing to contact us. This gave us a cobalt blue aura as thousands of dust molecules, small insects, television and radio waves, and the like were repelled. To an observer, we would glow brilliantly. The more serious problem, of course, was the effort required to keep up such an arsenal of protections. Because of a magical accident earlier in my life I could cast spells on some sort of "universal" energy source, but all other wizards, Sal included, became tired quickly as the spell sapped their strength. I could not maintain her shield; for my power to get to her she would have had to allow magical penetration of her shield, and it was not at all clear that magic wasn't exactly what we needed protection against. There was a definite time limit to her participation in this investigation.

The glow helped by providing illumination, bathing the whole place in an eerie glow. I am, to understate the matter considerably, not comfortable in the dark; I added a beam of pure white light, casting it here and there.

Down the alley from us was a stack of garbage, obscuring a small section of the alley; the rest was clearly visible, and just as clearly empty. I gestured to Sal, she nodded and moved back a bit. I gathered energy, wrapped it carefully around the garbage stack, and lifted it twenty feet in the air. Sal wrapped a binding spell around mine. The instant the stack was secure, I flashed my light back to the now-revealed alley.

We were clearly not the first people to ignore the police warning tape. A young man wearing a black leather jacket lay on his back in the alley, hands covering his face. He didn't more as I approached, a mental scan gave me nothing. He was dead.

Sal beat me to him, pulled back his hands, stiffened suddenly. Something small and dark flashed between them, a piece of night attempted to grab onto her face.

It was a bad choice; Sal's reaction was instantaneous; a blast of fire that wrapped the small speck and hurled it toward the alley wall.

I reached it a moment later, dousing the flames with a thought. In my light, the creature resembled nothing more than a piece of black fluff, about a hand-width wide. Sal joined me at my side. "Looks like a tribble."

"Indeed. It appears dead now, though." I confirmed this before letting my protections drop. I picked it up carefully, though there was little enough left after Sal's attack.

It was unlike any creature I has seen in my fairly wide experience. Teeth protruded from beneath, and a gentle static flowed about it, causing its singed hairs to rise and fall despite its lifeless state. Of eyes I could find nothing left, suggesting a magical tracking of its victims. The only thing certain about the body was that it felt somehow wrong, carrying an aura of places just around the corner but infinitely far away. It was clearly a creature of another world, and I needed to know where it came from. I sat down, holding it carefully in my hand.

Closing my eyes, I let my mind drift. Darkness flowed over and through me, spinning and resolving into tiny, star-like points of light. I waited until the stars filled the sky, then lowered my mental vision to the ground. A river of stars flowed by me, millions of tiny glowing dots, swirling like eddies of water. I splashed with my mind, briefly disrupting the flow, then again, a complicated pattern, each break almost immediately vanishing into the river's course. After a time, I waited.

Another presence joined me--a council wizard who had served his apprenticeship with me. I called him Fireflower, as did everyone else, not only because his real name was difficult to pronounce, but in honor of a beautiful pyrotechnic display which had been his first mastered spell.

Fireflower took a few moments to orient himself, then spoke in eloquent, wizardly fashion.

"Whatcha need this time?"

I flashed him a mental picture of the creature we had killed. "Do you know what this is? Killed one of them on Earth, don't think it belongs here."

"It certainly doesn't. Eats brains, no? The Council discovered them a couple years ago trying to open a faster gate to Carcigena. They're nasty little things, almost completely unintelligent, and nearly impossible to put a control spell on. We just slammed the gate shut and blasted the suckers that got through. Not before they'd killed a couple of the guards, though. Certainly not intelligent enough to open gateways themselves. Somebody summoned it, sure as..." he paused, searching for an idiom.

I let my breath out in a short sigh. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a hostile Mage. The last one had almost destroyed the Council and several worlds. "Who isn't there right now, Fireflower? One of the Council gone bad again?"

"Everyone's accounted for, Carl. We've been in meeting for several days. But there's a much more likely explanation. Opening the gate to their world was trivial; even a non-Council wizard could open it. Maybe it could even be done by accident."

I smiled at the term "non-council wizard." In the past such a person would have been called a renegade, but I was not technically a Council wizard myself, and Fireflower wasn't going to offend me. Even if our friendship hadn't dictated politeness, the Mages' Council owed me too great a debt for taking care of the aforementioned rogue wizard.

"You think a normal, off-the-street, untrained person could do it? I'd be more inclined to think wizard."

"Me, too, but keep possibilties open. We'd probably know about any practicing wizards beyond the medicine-man stage. What are you going to do about it?"

"I guess I'll keep a watch on gate openings to Earth. Ask the Council not to come here for a while -- I don't want to be tracking the wrong people."

"Are you and Sal really powerful enough to monitor an entire world?"

"Of course not. That's why you're going to come help us."

Fireflower gave a short laugh. "Teach me to open my mouth. Need anybody else?"

"Not if they're in Council. Although what you people find to talk about for five days a month escapes me entirely."

"Mostly rumors about you."

It wasn't a surprise. "Probably as common as Elvis's picture in the tabloids."

"They'd still like you to come back, you know."

"I know. But I'm a father now, and I can't afford to be off gallivanting about the Web. If Erika wants apprenticeship, I'll be back when she's twelve. Until then, I'll keep my red, thank you." Red robes were the mark of an "independent" wizard. Sal wore the black-and-silver, but was barred from council meetings because of her relationship with me.

"I didn't really expect you to change your mind. I'll meet you at your house in a few hours."

"Make sure it's more than two. If you beat us there, you'll scare the living daylights out of the babysitter."

I got a faint affirmative, and Fireflower's mental presence faded from the river.

I opened my eyes. Sal was sitting across the alley from me, her face a mask of boredom. She brightened when I spoke.

"Fireflower recognized it, doesn't think it could have gotten here without a summoning or a gate accident. I'll tell you about it on the way home."

Fireflower made an impressive entrance. A darkening of the air in my living room was the first sign, followed a moment by the "whoosh" of air sliding between two worlds. Light spun on darkness, and Fireflower was there. He wore silver and black robes, his ebony skin almost lost in it's folds.

Erika was delighted, reaching out to tug on his robes. Fireflower adjusted his balance and swept her into his arms, barely managing a nod at Sal and myself until after a major conversation with my delighted child. From somewhere in his robes he produced a small, brightly colored rattle, brilliant hues magically swirling in time to its tiny musical notes.

After an interval, he seated himself, not relinquishing his hold on the child. His grin faded somewhat as he faced us.

"You know this may be a pointless effort? There are, what, five billion people on this planet? And we're supposed to pick out a single wizard?"

Sal smiled. "You enjoy a challenge, remember? Besides, the person we're looking for is probably in the vicinity of the city."

"Which doesn't exactly help. New York has a sizeable population itself." Fireflower shrugged. "But then, I have nothing better to do."

"It's a good thing you're so committed to the cause," I said cheerfully. "Shall we begin?"

He nodded. "Will Erika behave herself?"

"Usually not. I'll put her away." I lifted her from Fireflower's arms, carried her to the bedroom.

"Don't you DARE put a sleep spell on her!" Sal's voice carried from the living room, along with Fireflower's chuckle. Shaking my head, I put Erika in the crib. Obeying the letter if not the spirit of the law, I wove a sleep spell around the rattle, placing it in the crib next to her.

Almost immediately, she picked it up, dropping into a deep slumber a few seconds later. Satisfied, I re-arranged the blankets to be sure she'd be warm enough, then returned to the living room.

Sal and Fireflower sat on the floor, their eyes closed, their breathing deep and regular. I joined them, careful not to disturb their meditation. Moments later I was with them in a completely different sense.

Our minds slid out over the city, looking for unusual activity. The actual spells were not complicated, but the process was. We were looking for emanations of power or a gateway to another world. Unfortunately the background noise in a major city is considerable.

Three times I felt an outflow of magic, three times tracked it to someone dying, their life flowing out in a burst of energy. In no case was the energy gathered, rather it escaped into the general environment. This particular feature of human death was abused in innumerable worlds of the Web; since personal stored of energy were quickly depleted, killing a human or other intelligent creature released a sizable amount of energy which could be harnessed by a wizard. The Mages' Council expressly forbid such activities, of course, but they happened nonetheless. It was just one of the myriad ways in which my profession makes a nuisance of itself across the multitude of worlds.

I kept looking. After an hour or so, I felt Sal's mind touch mine, Fireflower's a bit later.

"Find anything?" I asked.

"Only that you live in a particularly violent city." Fireflower was a inured to such things, but the disgust was still present in his voice. "There's enough energy out there to disintegrate a small mountain, but no one's grabbing it."

"I found another one of those mind-eating creatures. I killed it." Sal's voice was weary. "I'm going to roam out a bit further for the next hour." Her contact shivered, vanished.

"Probably not a bad idea," Fireflower said. "I'll help her. You keep checking the city proper." He broke contact, too.

I slid back into the city, following a couple of likely leads which led nowhere. I was just about to start my search over when a brilliant neon arrow flashed in my mind. I followed its path out of town, past the suburbs, to a small forested grove littered with tiny mind-patterns, all matching the mind-eater we'd killed earlier. Something else was there, too, the subtle hint of alien power.

I snapped my eyes open. "Nice job, Sal! Let's go." Both Sal and Fireflower were already on their feet.

"What do we do about Erika?"

I considered. It would be too dangerous to bring her with us, but there was little chance of getting a babysitter at this moment in time.

"Monitor that power for a while. I'll take her to day-care."

Sal looked at me strangely, then shrugged.

I stepped into the bedroom, lifted Erika from the crib, shook her gently to wake her up. Pulling her close to me, I pulled darkness around myself.

Through the enveloping darkness thin red lines could be seen. We drifted through space, past several of the lines. I found the one I wanted, followed it until it began to wrap over itself in a huge spiral, forming a tunnel several times my own height. We flew down the tunnel, faster and faster, until a dot of white light at the end grew to engulf us, and I stepped onto a stone floor in a room with no doors.

A large stone table filled the majority of this vast room, around it were seated fifty or sixty men, all dressed uniformly in black and silver robes. My own attire had changed during the transit to flowing red robes. I had also changed Erika's diapers to match.

The men looked up as one, whatever they had been discussing a moment before gone. I waited for them to make their move. They didn't. Seconds grew into a distinctly uncomfortable pause.

Finally, the man at the head of the table stood, slowly. His name was Miren. He had a flowing white beard, wrinkled skin, and eyes that could only be described as dead. A recent tragedy had deprived him of both his wizard's immortality and much of his power; he was emotionally and psychologically crippled. Still, he was Miren, worshipped as a god on eight worlds, head of the Mages' Council of Somdor, the man whose words were the final judgement of any wizard who dared cross the Council's wishes. He was the man who had brought me, a homeless orphan, to another world, and trained me to be the wizard I was now. As he looked at me now though, it was unclear what he thought.

The men around the table waited. They were the most powerful group ever assembled, wizards from two hundred Web worlds, judge, jury, and all too often executioner of governments and people on almost a thousand of those worlds. Their combined might could remove a planet from existence, create a new form of life, summon forth or create nearly any object imaginable. I was not sure they'd be equal to the task I needed, however.

"I need you to take care of Erika for a few hours."

Miren stopped his forward motion, shook his head twice as if to clear his ears, and considered.

"Okay." A voice spoke from the table rather than Miren. I turned.

J.R.R Tolkein forever changed Earth's perceptions of wizards. Gandalf was a tall, white-bearded old man in flowing robes, carrying a bent staff of rune-inscribed wood. I have only known one wizard like that in my entire experience, and it was he who stood. However, Antony bowed and grinned crookedly at me, ruining the image entirely.

I considered in turn. Antony's mind had been fractured trying to close a gate to a hostile world known as Caligan, and though he had made some progress since then, he was still prone to fits of bizarre behavior. His malady was one no amount of magic would ever heal; he had been touched by intelligences so alien to our own that full rational thought of either form would now forever be denied him. On the other hand, the entire Council would be watching him, and I hoped I would only be gone for an hour or two. Antony needed my trust as much as I needed a babysitter. I carefully handed Erika to him.

"She's been fed, so you just have to keep her out of trouble for a while. I'll be back in a few hours." Antony nodded as he always did when receiving instructions. From previous experience, I knew there were almost even odds that he understood. Still not sure of my choice, I turned and pulled the darkness of the Web about me just as Miren finally spoke.

I'm not sure what he said, but it might have been "Good luck, Carl."

Sal and Fireflower were waiting impatiently in the driveway. Sal's eyes were closed, they opened at my footsteps. "The power source is getting stronger. I'm fairly sure that it's a gate of some sort, and it's opening again."

"Then let's get on it." I hopped into the truck, Fireflower behind me. Sal sat next to me, closed her eyes, and pointed west. I turned the keys and we were off.

It's worth mentioning that I didn't have a clue how to drive a car. I was taken from Earth as a child, and returned only recently as a wizard; I never had any particular need for a driver's license in the worlds where I spent most of my apprenticeship years. I drove with a combination of Sal's help, some limited experience, and magic. The result wasn't too bad, and it usually got me where I wanted to go.

This time I got only five miles from home before a siren sounded behind me. Cursing softly, I pulled the side of the road. Beside me, Sal opened her eyes and spoke softly.

"Make this fast -- that gate is fully open."

A police officer walked up to the window, which I rolled down.

"What's the problem officer?" I noticed his gun was in his hand.

"You're the problem. I clocked you at almost two hundred miles an hour. Would you step out of the car please?"

I heard Sal gasp at the number, and ignored her.

I pointed back onto the road suddenly. "Officer! That car's speeding! You'd better catch it! I'm not important!" I placed a word of command at the end of each sentence.

He struggled with the magic, but my claim was too ludicrous; he broke the enchantment and raised his gun.

"I said out of the car, now!"

Sal's eyes were wide, and I doubted that it was the policeman who caused such an effect. Something was happening with the gate, and I was wasting time.

I reached out quickly, almost carelessly with my mind, shaping a ball of flames and heat, pulled it into this world and rolled it under the unoccupied police car behind me.

The explosion was spectacular; spectacular enough that the officer turned suddenly to look at the remains of his vehicle. I put the truck into gear with my hand while pushing it forward with my mind. By the time the officer knew what had happened he was clearly visible in my rear-view mirror. He chose not to shoot because of the traffic on the road.

"What's up?" I asked Sal.

"I don't know. I've never felt anything like that gate before. It's either very large, or it's opening across a very large distance. In any case, it's only barely under control. Whoever's opening it doesn't know what he's doing."

Fireflower made a few quick gestures, but I heard a siren again before I could tell what he was doing.

"Don't worry about it," Fireflower said. "It's us. I put a police-car disguise on the truck. It's not very good -- I've not seen too many of them. But at 200 miles an hour you're going to be a blur anyway."

Sal's knuckles were white.

"Do you want me to slow down?"

"Yes, but we don't have time. Turn north as soon as you're able." She began weaving protection spells around the truck as I scooted in and out of traffic lanes. Cars in front of me were getting out of my way as best they could, though by the time they heard my sirens or saw my lights I was almost on top of them anyway.

A highway turnoff went north; I took it. Vehicles scattered.

"Just like an arcade game," I commented. Sal let out a sound that wasn't quite a moan.

"I don't want to see a flashing 'Game Over,' Carl." She cast a short spell, pushing a car in front of me to the left lane. I took the newly opened lane and sped by.

"Keep that up. Fireflower, navigate!"

He was already doing so. Following his direction, I turned back to the west, depositing me on a little-used road. We were clear of the city now, entering a forest. The road lost its paving, began to turn frequently. I was forced to slow down.

"North again!"

I looked, but could see no road leading the direction I needed to go. "How far?"

Fireflower considered. "About a mile."

I brought the truck to a stop on the side of the road. "Let's do it on foot."

We stepped out of the truck and entered the forest at as quickly as possible in the dark. None of us suggested a light, we knew too little about what was ahead to advertise our position so blatantly. Almost simultaneously, we put up protection spells, toning them to the maximum performance we could achieve without glowing. Sal's clothing shimmered briefly, weaving itself into insubstantiality, then to silver-and-black mage's robes. None of us ceased our half-run into the forest.

Fireflower, in better shape than I, fanned out to the left, his black skin and robes causing him to vanish almost instantly into the forest. Sal noticed and increased her pace, silently disappearing into the forest on my other side.

I slowed to give them time to get ahead, and immediately wished I hadn't. I'm not fond of darkness at any time; deep in unknown woods facing a definitely magical and probably hostile force, I was positively terrified. Every patch of shadow seemed to me to hide a living form, clumps of darkness seemed to move at the edges of my vision, freezing into immobility as I turned my head. Although the night was warm, my skin felt cold, the slightest contact of the wind like the pressure of an unseen hand.

Behind me, a twig snapped. Perhaps it was one of the "sounds of nature" that woodland experts refer to when they're in safe, well-lit houses at high noon; now it was the sound of a danger I didn't care to face. My pace went from a slow walk to a full-out run.

Four minutes is a speedy time for the mile run on level, unobstructed ground. I covered the distance through dense forest in just more than six , aided by magic and fright. Tree limbs snapped out of my way as I ran, undergrowth tore itself from the earth, pulling aside to let me path.

One root failed to observe my magical compulsion; by the coincidence that seems to be the only inflexible natural law, my foot met it. My body lifted, fell, and slid in a brilliant flash of cobalt blue to the edge of a clearing.

A bonfire flamed within. On the other side a giant cross was set into the ground upside down, a decapitated goat suspended from it in a position no one would mistake as natural. Forty or fifty men in white robes stood around the clearing, thirteen of them in a smaller ring around the fire and an alter. One of the thirteen held a curved sacrificial knife, and was bent over a boy of perhaps ten lying on the alter.

Every one of them turned to look at me as I flashed. Unhurt, I got quickly to my feet.

"Good evening, Gentlemen. Someone ordered a pizza?"

The one with the knife narrowed his eyes. "Get him!"

Subtlety, I determined, was not this man's strong point. Several of the robed men started toward me. I held my ground and spoke.

"No, get him!" I pointed, and added a word of command. As one, the body of men turned and charged the one with the knife.

He looked confused a moment, then raised his arms to his sides and spoke a few words. The might have been backwards Latin; on the other hand they may have been complete gibberish. In any event, the flames behind him roared to new heights. His attackers froze, looking around in some confusion.

The Mage's Council has hotly debated the existence of God and Satan. It was generally accepted by the council that though either might exist, they tended not to interfere frequently in the affairs of men. I considered it unlikely that the High Priest had actual help from the Prince of Darkness; still it was undeniable he had tapped some source of power.

I used their confusion as best I could. "Leave us! Return to your homes and never come back here!" The syllables afterward rang with uncontrolled power; I was not attempting subtlety any longer. Anyone who might have wished to confront me changed his mind quickly. The clearing emptied except for the High priest, the twelve others in his circle, and the boy on the altar.

I turned my attention to the last of these. A couple seconds observation convinced me that the boy was still breathing; the red line of blood down his chest appeared to be superficial.

"Let the child go." I strode forward as I talked; obviously not the move the priest expected. But he held his ground.

"You misunderstand; he is one of ours. I have cut his chest, placed the devil in him. He now knows and will obey his master in this world." As if to confirm this, the boy stood up and stepped to the priest's side.

I shook my head. "You shall not have this child. I claim him in the name of our Father in heaven." I slipped a full protection spell around the boy, enhancing mine at the same time until we both glowed with a brilliant blue aura.

The priest attempted to reach through the spell, failed. He turned to me with an anger like none I had ever seen.

"Your power is as nothing before the might of Lucifer! Your death shall only begin your punishment, and the child shall be mine regardless!"

He stretched out his hands toward me, and flames poured forth from them. My shield held, but just barely. I struggled to bring it back while the fire roared around me. This guy was playing with more power than I had expected.

The flames died, and I carefully stood as I had before they had begun, to make it appear that they had no effect whatsoever. One of the robed men slammed into me from the side; he stumbled away from a brilliant blaze of blue, holding a broken arm and just beginning to scream. His natural mental protections dropped from the pain; I pulled a sleep spell over his mind, and he slumped to the ground.

"Next?" I said casually, wondering desperately how long it would take Sal and Fireflower to get here. Another of the robed men charged; I changed his robes to concrete and he stopped before he got close.

The priest walked toward me with his knife held in front of him. I let him. He swung his knife, I instinctively raised my arm to block the blow; it probably saved my life. The blade passed through my protection spell as though it weren't there, bit deeply into my arm.

Arrogance has gotten me in trouble before; this time it was going to get me killed if I didn't move. I dropped to the ground, rolled away. One of the acolytes, encouraged by his leader's success, drew his own knife and attempted to run it through me. I didn't play games; the acolytes robes blazed suddenly into intense flames. He dropped the knife and ran screaming from the clearing.

I grabbed the knife with both hands, stretched it into a sword, stood. I attempted to ignite the high priest's robes as well, but failed. We both took a fighting stance as the remaining acolytes formed a ring around us.

I took a good swing at him. My swordsmanship is nothing to write home about, but my weapon was longer than his by a good eighteen inches, and I was apparently faster. Still, he managed to block the strike, and my poorly-fashioned sword shattered at the shock.

A blue-white flash of electrical energy darted from somewhere outside the ring, jumping down the priest's blade and slamming into his body with enough force to drive him backwards through the ring of acolytes, stopping against the altar. I didn't need Sal's shout of triumph to tell me that help had arrived.

The acolytes turned to face this new threat; four of them drew their ubiquitous knives and tried to run her down. I saw two of them encased in ice and a third one fending off a wooden staff that appeared out of nowhere to beat his head; then I jerked my attention back to my own aggressors. The five remaining acolytes decided to give the attack one more try. I selected one, grappled him to the ground, exchanged my image for his and let his compatriots beat him senseless while I slid out of the mass of men. A few gestures more and the ground began to swallow them up, stopping only when each man was trapped to his waist.

Satisfied, I turned my attention back the priest. He had survived the shock, and aside from his now-straightened hair looked none the worse for wear. His eyes held raw murder, with that same strange intensity I had noted earlier. As soon as my image returned to normal he raised his arms in my direction.

Some have said I don't learn from experience; this is blatantly false. I was already on the ground and rolling aside when the flames cut the air above me. I gathered my own fire and returned the gesture. It parted around him harmlessly, but the boulder that Sal rolled through his path didn't. He went down in a tangle of limbs. Sal was on him in a moment, a knife in her hands from somewhere.

Above her head, a pale sphere shimmered for a moment in the firelight, and a multitude of tiny voices filled my mind for a fraction of a second. Moments later the sphere shimmered again, larger and only inches from Sal's head.

"Sal! Dive!" Even as I spoke she looked up and realized her danger. The high priest took this opportunity to kick her feet out from under her. They went down together. I lifted a knife from the ground and ran toward them, keeping beneath the flashing sphere.

The high priest wrested Sal's knife from her and swung. Sal rolled aside, the knife tangling itself in her robes. Before the priest could recover it, my own knife had slit his throat. I don't kill easily, I could see no choice this time.

Sal and I scurried away from the growing sphere as voices began again in my mind. I pushed them aside with some force.

We had made it about twenty feet from the sphere when I blacked out.

Darkness filled my mind, a swirling, complete darkness of complete comfort. And somewhere in the darkness a million tiny voices were calling out to me, urging indecipherable actions...

My eyes snapped open at Sal's slap. She held my cut wrist in one hand, was weaving spells to stop the profuse bleeding. The high priest's knife wound slowly sealed itself, then closed.

"You've lost a lot of blood," she said with concern in her voice. "I don't have time to do better than just stopping it now-- you'll have to be careful."

I nodded and looked over her shoulder. The sphere was no longer flickering; instead it had grown to almost fifteen feet in radius, a blood-red sphere with black "cracks" that slid around it in apparently random patterns, vanishing and reforming slowly. And directly beneath it, bathed in a light blue aura, stood the boy from the altar. He was looking up into the sphere, his mouth open slightly. There was a brilliant cobalt light pouring off the protection spell, but it was weakening quickly.

A ball of silver and black rolled under the sphere. Fireflower grabbed the unresisting boy in his arms just as the protection failed altogether and carried him rapidly to where Sal and I sat waiting.

"What the hell is that thing?" Fireflower's black skin shone with a pale red in the light of the gigantic sphere.

"Caligan gate," Sal and I said together. I continued solo.

"The creatures on the other side 'speak' directly to minds. They cause death in the best case. Those less lucky go insane. Antony met one..." I let the sentence trail off. All of us knew Antony's madness. "If that gate opens completely, we're in serious trouble. So is this world, for that matter."

"The priest must have opened it by accident. None of the usual controls are there. I can't get my mind around it. Every time I try I hear voices laughing at me." Sal's voice was exhausted, her body looked worse.

"Shit!" I said suddenly. "Sal! Get that boy out of here! We can't protect him and still have any hope of getting that gate closed."

I looked toward the various immobilized acolytes in the clearing. They had not had any protection; it was clearly too late. The two that still moved did so only to pull themselves into a ball and whimper. Sal grabbed the boy and fled the clearing.

Fireflower still looked relatively fresh; I felt like I would pass out again at any moment. I pictured a two-foot candy bar in my mind, made the appropriate gestures to bring it into reality. I consumed it as quickly as possible while Fireflower surveyed the gate.

"Well?" I said when I had finished.

"Sal's right; it's uncontrolled."

"Okay, let's try to put a larger gate around it then, contain it. We might be able to force it closed by pulling the larger gate shut."

Fireflower looked at me askance. "Not to be argumentative, Carl, but Miren once told us never to put a gate around a gate. He was quite firm about it."

I shrugged. "Do you have a better idea?"

I knew the answer, began my spell. Fireflower's mind joined mine, and together we began weaving a larger sphere around the smaller gate. By now there was enough power in the clearing that our work could be seen by the naked eye. White strands like gigantic spider webs coalesced into existence, threading through one another to form a pale glowing white sphere. Wizards often speak of "weaving" a spell; usually it's metaphorical, but here we were doing in reality.

While we worked, a tinny laughter kept forming in the back of my mind, a million voices screaming with mirth. I pictured Antony with my mind, used the force of the memory to shove the voices into oblivion.

The last fragments of the spell slid into place. Fireflower looked at me for several long moments, then we wrapped out minds around the cloth we had created and pulled the gate tight.

The explosion was purely mental at first, a millionfold increase in the laughter, then the red gate consumed our white one; flashing outward to triple it's size. Fireflower and I turned and ran from the clearing, stopping a hundred yards later to look back.

"Whatta ya know? Miren was right!"

Fireflower didn't seem amused by my comment. I didn't blame him; the sphere was now more than seventy yards in diameter, pulsing with light like some gigantic disembodied heart lit from the inside.

"Now what?" Fireflower looked contemplative, but he had to be thinking the same thing I was; that gate was almost open, and completely out of our control. My eyes scanned it from top to bottom, looking for something, anything, that could help us close it. I found something else entirely.

A figure bathed in blue light stood only a few feet from the sphere, indistinct because of the distance and the glow, but there was only one person on this world that it could be.

"What's Sal doing?" I pointed. Fireflower looked at me with wide eyes; I returned the look. We started running at the same time.

We were thirty feet from the figure when it turned. It was a weathered old man, white beard flowing in the stiff wind that escaped the gate, holding a gnarled staff in one hand, my baby in the other.

"Antony! Get Erika out of here!"

He appeared not to hear. I closed the distance faster than I have ever run. But there was nothing I could do. Erika was covered by Antony's protection spell; nothing I could do would obtain her unless Antony chose to give her up.

I looked him in the eyes. There was no trace of sanity within; how he managed to keep up a protection spell was beyond me. His eyes stared past and through me.

"Carl!" Fireflower's shout caused me to look up. One side of the gate was splitting, an ebony crack forming larger and larger. The gate was opening.

I summoned fire, poured it through the crack in the gate, trying to reverse the flow of power. The crack slowed, stopped.

I could not maintain both the flames and my protection spells for long. Fireflower added his force to mine. I broke off, repaired my protections, then replaced him as he did the same. We alternated for several minutes, but it was clear that Fireflower was tiring. Already the crack was beginning to split again.

I turned to Antony, was surprised to see him staring right at me.

"I've kept her safe, Carl." His voice was almost, but not quite, that of a sane man. Laughter sounded in my mind; it was echoed in his eyes.

"Yes, Antony. Thank you. I can take care of her now."

He nodded, handed Erika to me. I wrapped my protections around her as well, noting that she was asleep and breathing easily. That had to be the result of a spell, since the howling wind around us would have woken the dead.

I turned my gaze back to Antony. He had walked another ten feet forward, placed his hand on the surface of the sphere itself. I shouted for him to come back, but there was no way he could hear me over the roar of wind.

Fireflower staggered. He looked at me for a moment. "I'm sorry, Carl. I'll bring help." He stepped across and out of my world.

My own fire could not keep the gate from opening any longer. Laughter filled my mind, but not the laughter of the Caligans. It was Antony's voice, magnified a millionfold by some spell.

A tiny red creature with wings slipped from the gate, then another and then hundreds. No larger than wasps, they filled the sky with laughter and voices and crimson fire.

It was now a fight just to keep the protections strong enough to resist the Caligans' voices, protecting my child and I. As quickly as I could and still be sure of my footing, I began backing away from the gate. Cobalt blue almost completely obscured my vision.

Antony's laughter increased in pitch; there was something soothing about it in the mere fact that it was human, though barely so.

Erika screeched suddenly, notifying me that she was awake. I ignored her, my spells were being broken down now faster than I could renew them. I had to put distance between myself and the gate. No longer able to move cautiously, I ran.

A darkness at the edge of my mind threatened to drop me once more into unconsciousness. I slowed my pace, concentrated all my will on staying awake. My protections started to crumble, so I switched my mind back to protecting us.

I dropped unconscious for a moment, but regained it before I struck the ground. Erika landed heavily to my side, but the mass of blankets appeared to protect her. I pulled her back to me, and started crawling away.

Suddenly my protection spells sprang back to full strength, and Sal was at my side. She took Erika from my arms and helped me to my feet, pulling me further from the gate.

Antony's laughter made me turn. He stood at the edge of the gate, half his body already in another world. The swarm of Caligans flowed by him, but he stepped into the gate, raising his arms as if to block their path.

It actually appeared to work. The Caligans continued to pour forth, but they did so through other cracks in the gate, avoiding Antony altogether.

Some quiet voice in my mind spoke the impossible. Antony had listened to the voices of the Caligans for several minutes, had lived with the memory of those voices for two years. Perhaps he could do what a sane wizard could not.

I pulled away from Sal, running back toward Antony. She followed for a few steps, then realized her protections would never hold. I tapped her mind briefly as I ran.

"I have an idea. Get Erika as far out of here as you can. I'll meet you in the Council chambers if this works." I didn't have the energy to say more; my protections were crumbling already, and I had only a few minutes to work.

"I love you. Don't kill yourself for a crazy old man." Sal's voice was like a beacon of energy; I increased my pace and made it to Antony's side as Sal vanished into another world. Carefully, I placed my hand on Antony's shoulder, trying my best not to startle him.

At the contact the inhuman laughter stopped, and my protection spells went from brilliant blue to completely invisible. Antony had somehow found or created an eye in this storm.

I slid my mind into his, found only the shattered pieces which I had once tried to repair on a distant world. Now I merely tried to understand them, and realized that this would be the harder task.

Minutes passed as I sorted, looking in mental crannies for the key to his insanity. I found only an overpowering will to survive that was in itself more powerful than sanity.

Words from the physical, real world brought my awareness back.

"I understand," Antony said. His eyes were clear. "You must get far away." There was no word of command on the sentance, but a sound of death that was as powerful. I ran for a hundred feet, turned and looked back.

Antony's body was dissolving, turning slowly into light. When all that was left was his head, he turned back to me and laughed. The laughter continued until he was completely gone, and beyond.

The gate began to fade.

The Caligans who were free in this world turned back almost as one, their laughter and voices silent, rushing to recreate what Antony was tearing apart. It was a hopeless task; they fought against a power as implaccable as the insanity they had caused.

It took four minutes for the gate to vanish completely. The few Caligans still on this side dropped dead from the skies to the ground. I would have to return here in a day or two to remove the alien bodies before they were discovered.

I spent a few long moments confirming that the gate was really closed, then stepped across the worlds to the Council Room. Fireflower and Sal were already there, Sal holding Erika in one hand and the hand of the Satanist's boy in the other. The room was full of silver-and-black wizards, their numbers declining quickly as they stepped toward Earth. I stopped the remaining ones with a few short words.

Sal smiled at me. The darkness closed in again, and this time I saw no reason not to let it come.

Christopher Kempke is a dangerous, psychopathic Computer Science graduate student with too much time on his hands. Attempts to lock him up have resulted only in a temporary confinement at Oregon State University, where he can be reached as kempkec@mist.cs.orst.edu on good days, and not at all on bad.