The Reign of the Brown Magician. Lawrence Watt-Evans

sir.” Carrie turned and fled.

      When she was gone, Bascombe stared at the door.

      For decades the Imperial government had relied on those damned mind-reading mutants for much of their intelligence-gathering and long-distance communication. Thorpe wasn’t the first one to go bad, and she probably wouldn’t be the last, but each time anything like this happened, Bascombe worried; someday they might all go bad.

      And this time it was all mixed up with the two known alternate universes, with the thing called Shadow that had been sending its spies and monsters into the Empire for the past seven years, and with the party of troublemakers Bascombe and his political rival General Hart had sent to their deaths. And now there was this thing about near-instantaneous travel across deep space.

      At least, the telepaths said Thorpe had somehow crossed all those light-years in a day or so, without a ship.

      If that was true, if hopping between universes could provide near-instantaneous interstellar travel, that could mean that space-warp technology, Bascombe’s own little bailiwick in the Department of Science, might be even more important than he had thought.

      And if it wasn’t true, it could mean that the telepaths had already gone bad.

      * * * *

      Near the end of the row of gargoyles that drained the rooftop was one with a broken jaw. Its granite chin was gone, and the rusted end of an iron pipe protruded below the stumps of fangs, a jagged hole in the pipe’s underside spilling water in uneven splatters onto the stone of the tower’s battlement.

      The steady rush of water from the others, pouring out over the side, did not bother Pel Brown at all, but the pattering from the broken pipe sounded like a child’s running feet, and that sound tormented him. It was as if Rachel’s ghost were running endlessly across the parapet.

      He wanted to reach out and grab her, pull her back to safety, away from the edge—but she wasn’t there.

      Rachel would have adored this place, he thought, with its spires and its gargoyles, its spiral staircases and its secret passages. That she had not lived to see it was still unbearable, despite the weeks that had passed since he was told of her death.

      He stood under the overhanging eaves, watching the rain, watching the streams of water pouring out into space, watching the one stream that scattered and fell short, watching the repeating pattern of splashes on the stone.

      He had, for the moment, suppressed the visible portion of the aura of magic that surrounded him; to outward appearances he was only a man, but he could still feel the matrix he held, the power that flowed around and through him.

      He could stop the sound, of course; any time he wanted to, he could stop it. He could blast the gargoyle into powder, if he chose. He thought that with a little more effort he could repair it, gathering dust from the air around it and healing the carved stone.

      He did neither; instead, he drew the power to him, reached out into the web, into the power matrix, and found the lines that led up into the clouds overhead. He shifted them, working by feel in a way he had no words to explain.

      The rain stopped, as if someone had shut off a faucet. Almost immediately after the last drops plopped onto the tile roof the steady flow from the other gargoyles slowed, and the spattering fall from the broken pipe changed its rhythm, becoming less even.

      And that was worse.

      It didn’t sound like his daughter any­more; it didn’t sound like anything. It was as if he had erased the last trace of her. The sky was still grey overhead, the water was still dripping from the eaves, the battlement was still glazed with rain, but no invisible child’s footsteps pattered on the stone.

      Instead, damp air swirled and whispered across the stone, driven not by wind, but by the magical currents of the matrix.

      He pulled the power to him, grabbing at it, hauling it in; magic seethed in his mind and his fingers, and the distinction between himself and the matrix he held became vague and uncertain. A red sheen blurred his vision for a second, and then was swept aside in a shower of crimson sparks that danced wildly across the stonework.

      He was glowing again; his control of his appearance had slipped, and a halo of shifting colors flickered around him.

      He ignored it, looking upward.

      The clouds hung above him, low and dark, and he sent a broad band of scarlet fire snaking upward, lighting them to the color of blood.

      The unnatural glow suffused the landscape; the green forests on the distant hills turned black, the gray marshlands that encircled the fortress were tinged with a rusty life, and the castle itself took on a color that had never been seen in nature, not in this world, nor on Pel’s native Earth.

      It looked like something out of a horror movie, Pel thought, that eerie sky and the thick clouds and the gargoyles, hovering above him.

      That seemed perfectly appropriate. He felt as if he’d fallen into a story months ago, and been unable to climb back out. Sometimes it was science fiction, as in the Galactic Empire, with their spaceships and blasters; sometimes it was an epic fantasy, as when Shadow had made him into a wizard and he had turned on her and destroyed her. Why shouldn’t it be a horror story now?

      He released the knot of power he had gathered—not in a spell, as he had thought he would, but in a simple release, flowing back into its natural patterns—or at any rate, into a form as natural as the patterns could be while still bound together in the world-spanning matrix that Shadow had created for herself and passed on to Pel.

      The rain began falling anew, and Pel turned away.

      He had no reason to be up here, really. He had been exploring the fortress for lack of anything better to do—or rather, because he was not sure he knew what he wanted to do.

      He knew what he wanted to have—he wanted his wife and child back. And he knew that he held a power that could allegedly raise the dead.

      But he didn’t know what he had to do to make it work. He didn’t know how to find out.

      Hadn’t someone said that knowledge was power? Well, Pel thought, the converse didn’t seem to be true. He had all the power he could want, but it hadn’t gotten him much in the way of knowledge.

      He stepped into the tower, closed the door behind him, and started down the stair. The way was dark and narrow, the slit windows covered by dusty shutters, and Pel had no lantern or torch, but he didn’t need one—he carried the mobile focus of all this world’s magic with him wherever he went, and its glow brilliantly illuminated the surrounding stone walls.

      He didn’t need to see at all, though; the matrix also let him sense the shape of the world around him in some more direct way he did not understand.

      It was amazing how quickly he had become accustomed to carrying this thing about wherever he went, he thought as he tramped down the steps. Shadow had used something like hypnosis on him, he knew—something that used magic, rather than the simple psychological stunts and suggestions of Earthly hypnotists. She had wanted him to learn quickly, not for his own good, but so that he could serve her purposes that much sooner. So he accepted calmly that his senses were altered and enhanced, that he was bound to a network of mystical force as if it were a part of his body, that he could draw on that seemingly-infinite source of energy and therefore no longer grew tired, no matter what he did.

      It was mad, really; he was living out an insane power fantasy. Shadow had used this matrix to rule her entire world, and had intended to conquer others, as well; surely, Pel thought, no individual could handle such physical power. It had to be some sort of dream or delusion—a story, not real.

      If it was all real, then how could he accept it so calmly?

      He paused, and looked about at the shifting glare of colors that shone across rough gray stone.

      Was it real?

      Of course it was. Poor Ted Deranian had thought he was dreaming, and it had