With Extreme Prejudice

There is a darkness that settles over me, a shadow mirrored by the sky. I know we will fly out from under it, but I suspect the leaden mood will linger. The task ahead is grave. It settles on me like a funeral service, which is what it will be for someone’s family. Hopefully not my own.

The call came early or late depending on your time zone, while I was still groggy from the night before. Don’t let anyone fool you; no one parties like the Japanese. Only a meet and greet, no active negotiations. For a few hours, it felt good to forget how that relationship would transform when they went from prospective clients to paying customers. That day, the party would end, at least for me. They would continue to drink and sing and flirt with the cute waitresses. They could afford to ignore reality and distance themselves from the consequences of their actions. They had me.

Early mornings at the airport were always the same. The only thing that changed was whether they charged for wi-fi and what overpriced coffee shop occupied the terminal. The crowds were always similar, businessmen and women preparing for a busy day ahead, couples with young children traveling home for a family crisis, overnight students and young tourists slouching across the line of seats waiting for their connecting flights. I wish I were in the last group, snoozing through until boarding or until security nudged my feet to remind me that sleeping was not allowed.

Instead, I had to identify targets and strategies based on the files my employer had just forwarded to my phone. This one looked like carnage. It would probably make the news. Hopefully not before I was long gone and on to the next mission, wherever that was. New York, Madrid, London, they all dominated the cable channels these days. Each left its scar upon society. And I was the ghost wielding the knife, disappearing before anyone knew I’d been there. But there was no escaping the devastation I left behind.

Reviewing the files turned off the portion of my brain that felt remorse, the empathetic and emotional. Now it was all down to organization and formulas, who to take out first, how the panic would spread, the objectives, the targets, the acceptable losses and collateral damage. It became an intricate game of social Darwinism; how many amputations were needed so the larger body could be saved. Salvation required sacrifice. That’s where I came in.

By the time I boarded, I’d identified where to set off the primaries. From the initial shots the panic would spread, herding victims into the desired locations, the cafeteria, the conference rooms, the auditorium, anywhere they could be gathered and dealt with quickly as a group. This time I’d have local security on my side, paid mercenaries ensuring no word of the massacre leaked until all the casualties had been dealt with. There would be no repeat of the debacle in New Delhi last year.

Just before I landed, I noticed the flagged file. This time I had an inside man. The inexperienced always thought that would make things easier. It never did. Invariably, they ignored the timetable thinking they could draw it out another six months to when their relocation wouldn’t be an inconvenience, disrupt their holidays, or make their kids change schools. Or they’d start planning too early and tip off someone in security, compromising the entire mission.

As a last act before they blacked out my electronic access on approach, I tagged the files I wanted to flash to hardcopy. I’d print them out and ink them with the final markups. I hated leaving a paper trail but sometimes it was unavoidable. I set an alarm to destroy the printouts on my way out along with all my electronic files. Infosec and plausible deniability.

At the gate, I paused to watch the television coverage of the World Bank protests. Without realizing it, they were providing cover for my operation, dominating the news cycle until I was clear. The irony was that many them supported my brand of social Darwinism thinly disguised as capitalism, though most didn’t believe in evolution and wouldn’t survive the laissez faire of a true free market economy. Soon, they would be secondary casualties in the crossfire of their own culture war. How many would be among the wounded left untreated, the dying without care? When the carnage changed their lives forever, how many would extend their empty hands, suddenly embracing Das Kapital over the Wealth of Nations? But consistency isn’t my concern, only the primary, the one target purposefully buried in the static beneath the noise.

On the tram-ride through the airport, I worked on getting into character. At the main terminal I picked up the bar-coded package from FedEx with the final instructions, a location, data access and a badge. They’d even spelled the name right, unlike the last job where they had substituted a B for initial T. Not that I was offended. It wasn’t like it was my real name. But there was still security to get past, remote, electronic and human which mismatched IDs would complicate. There could be no suspicion until after I’d cleared the building and was on the next plane to the next location or to a safe house until the next crisis mandated the public’s twenty-four seven attention, an escaped balloon, a politician’s foot tap, a pop singer’s rehab, a wide receiver’s arrest. The myriad of trivial distractions that allowed people like me to flourish with complete autonomy and anonymity. If religion was the opiate of the masses, cable news had become their crack cocaine.

This time there was another wrinkle. The primary target wasn’t identified in the manifest. I would receive an onsite update. Face-to-face intel briefing, always tricky. That meant their inside man knew more than I did. A situation of trust, one I was never good at. The point of the exercise was to eliminate the primary with enough chaos that no one knew who the target was until they sifted through the rubble. Expensive, but effective. And it wasn’t like I was paying the bills.

After retrieving the package, I used a self-serve terminal to burn a hardcopy of my files. I made the final markups as I waited in line at the taxi stand, then stuffed them into my briefcase with the more sensitive and volatile items I needed for the operation as I climbed into a cab. After a quick review of the SatNav app on my iPhone, I gave the driver an address a few blocks down from the target’s main entrance. I’d street hike it the rest of the way to avoid my transport being captured on the security cameras outside the building. Based on the configuration, experience and intuition, there was a high probability I’d find a secondary entrance inside the parking structure. With a badge, it would be trivial to ghost in behind someone else, eliminating a scan. I knew security and Feds would eventually piece it all together. This was just another delaying tactic to help secure my line of retreat. In the worst case scenario, this could turn into a game of seconds.

The cab ride gave me an opportunity to plot out contingencies. Fortunately, I could make a few educated guesses as to the high value target. Usually a director or vice president, more rarely a program manager. I could identify those by cross-referencing their listed projects with a company news search on Google Finance or their personal profiles on LinkedIn. Sometimes there was a specialist or technical lead. Usually, I would ID them by the Ph.D. on their corporate resume. A handful of times those searches had revealed nothing, but in those cases target hadn’t had a particularly lofty title or advanced degree, just his name associated with a number of critical intellectual properties revealed by patent search. The one time all those searches had failed me, the target had been an IT specialist buried deep in the corporate core. This time, no names stood out. Fortunately, with an operation as large as this, there weren’t many variations on the main theme.

My employer had been generous with their margins, expanding the number to several times the initial thousand that had enticed me into taking the job on such short notice. Surgical strikes required extensive planning and cover stories. This job should be as easy sawing a few branches off an org chart and walking away before they hit the ground. That’s all these operations came down to in my mind, crossing out a few boxes, rearranging the cubes of a few dozen departments, wiping the databases of a few thousand names. All very clean, detached and remote. The real chaos wouldn’t erupt until I was far, far away.

As I arrived on site, I found exactly what I’d hoped for from the street maps, a back access to an adjacent shopping center. Really just a poorly marked door that meant employees didn’t have to brave the weather to purchase necessities or get takeout, a rare perk for them. For me, it became an unobtrusive entrance into the company parking structure that avoided the first line of security. From there, simple patience disguised as a hurried call for a woman to hold the door as I juggled netbook, papers and cell phone gained me and my briefcase access into the building after she glanced at my badge, just to make sure I had one. A smile, an ID and a genuine "thank you" were all it took to enter the target unsearched and unnoticed. The magnetic key incorporated into the badge should have worked alone, but this ensured that security wouldn’t be alerted if I’d already been compromised.

Inside, I ducked into the nearest bathroom to hack into the company intranet for a floor plan. I had a room number for the rendezvous, but I needed to find the least trafficked halls and stairwells to get there. It wouldn’t do to step into an elevator with a company director or VP. Looking lost or asking directions would garner me unwanted attention. Cracking a company intranet from the outside required tunneling through all the firewalls and encryption. Tapping into their wireless network from the inside was easier, especially using the name and employee number I’d stolen off my friendly coworker’s badge. Amazingly, I’d found an easily modified iPhone app to do almost exactly what I needed. I also monitored a freeware RF scanner on my netbook patched through a wireless antenna booster with the alarms routed directly to my e-mail, just to make sure there wasn’t a lot of chatter on the security handhelds or any unusual volume of traffic coming in and out of IT. Everything was as quiet as a graveyard on a midwinter’s night.

I tried not to read the names on people’s badges as I navigated the building to the designated location. I was good at names. I had to be to piece together the information I needed to identify the targets. But I never wanted to put a face to my work. The few I had still haunted me in the quiet moments between jobs. I knew what my work did to people’s lives. It was hard to ignore the statistics. But if I didn’t do it, someone else would. And they might not be so compassionate.

The meet was slated for a large conference room just off an unused lobby that had once been a side entrance but had been enclosed and was now used exclusively for VIP reception, with a tiny, reserved parking area standing empty just outside. It was adjacent to a back stairwell that would provide inconspicuous access. The only drawback was the copy room just up one hall, and the secondary access to the labs just down another. Still, the layout suggested it was one of the least trafficked areas in the building, with the room itself used less than once a month. My contact had done his homework.

I scouted out the location with a walk-by on my way to the closest coffee station. It always paid to check the nearest employee break area. If security were on alert, five would get you ten that you would find a team congregating there.

All clear.

I took a moment to locate a disposable cup in one of the cabinets, then poured coffee from the fullest pot, the odds on favorite to have been cooking on the burner the least amount of time. One hesitant sip told me I wouldn’t need to add any powdered creamer, which could only enhance the flavor of truly hideous coffee, just a packet of sugar. Someone either sprang for name brand, or I’d stumbled onto a coffee klatch’s private stock. Either way, I was content as I snapped a lid on my cup. Coffee was as much a necessity at the point as a cover. Last night’s karaoke and the intervening time zone shifts were starting to catch up with me. I needed to be alert for this meeting, and during my impending escape.

I went back the conference room, popping my head in the door to verify it was empty. Seeing it was, I flicked on one bank of lights and settled in a chair behind a line of tables in a back corner where I had command of both doors. I pulled a lab notebook out of my briefcase along with a stapled sheaf of papers and the netbook, and started penciling notes. Anyone entering would assume I was taking advantage of a quiet room to finish a presentation, or was waiting for an informal meeting. Like a good worker drone, I’d offer to leave if anyone else came in. Unless he was my contact, of course.

I didn’t have long to wait. I’d arrived fifteen minutes early, just to make sure I’d be the one occupying the dominant position in the room, not walking in off-balance as others had tried with me before. In my line of work, it paid to be the one in the blind not the one in the sights. I’d only been sitting about five minutes when an attractive young woman in a corporate-clone blouse and skirt that would have been unremarkable had it fit any less perfectly entered, her fiery ponytail bobbing as she looked somewhat startled to find me there. Even as I began to collect my things and offer to abandon the room, she slipped the door closed behind her and uttered the magic code words with an unidentifiable international accent. "Mr. Tuttle, I presume? How was your flight from Brazil?"

I eased back into my seat, somewhat surprised. Nine out of ten insiders were men, usually angry, white and middle-aged, men defending a territory, men who had been passed over, men trying to endear themselves to a patron higher up. Men shouldering an ax they felt was in constant need of grinding. I had encountered one or two women, but never one so young. This one must be ambitious to stake her future on cleaning up after an operation this large. But my grandfather had often reminded me that two of the three Irish gods of war were women, and any descendant of the land of the Celtic Tiger knew better than to cross them. I didn’t think much more about it before I gave the agreed upon reply, "You know, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there’s trouble."

"A man alone," she finished the protocol with a hint of a smile.

"I finished the preliminaries on the way in," I said, wasting no time with social niceties. "All I need is the primary plus five minutes and I can flash you the solution to bring this place down. Just make sure you and your friends are under cover before the clock starts ticking."

I looked up with my fingers poised over the keyboard, expecting her to come closer before she told me who the target was. When I saw she hadn’t moved, only crossed her arms in front of her, my impatience got the better of me, "Come on, honey, I need a name."

"You don’t remember me, do you?" she asked with an edge of silk polished steel to her voice.

As I studied her a moment, a sense of familiarity began to niggle at me. I became convinced that I’d seen her somewhere before. Still, I couldn’t connect her face with a name.

"Bali, three years ago," she offered almost as a question. I just shook my head, my stomach beginning to fall as though I was already in the express elevator headed down. "Well, I remember you," she added with lilting note of certainty.

Any hope of bluffing my way through this encounter began to fade. Still, I had to try. "That’s nice but we don’t have all day."

"Actually, we do," she said, her arms uncrossing to reveal a corporate issue Blackberry. "And yours is just beginning." She tapped a few keys with perfectly manicured and crimson lacquered fingernails. A tone that no longer sounded dulcet from my netbook informed me that I’d received an e-mail, the last before my access was cutoff and all my processing locked down.

"As you can see," she continued as I stared blankly at her message, unable to read or focus, "your contract was transferred under our corporate umbrella as of this morning. Your bonus has been cancelled and your contingency fees retracted. You’ll also find our latest press release attached at the bottom. Security will be here momentarily to escort you and your briefcase out of the building, right in front of the press conference already in progress. By market open tomorrow, your name and face will be splashed all over Fox Business, Bloomberg and CNBC. I think even the Feds might want a word with you, something about financial terrorism and unpaid taxes. By the time our corporate counter-espionage team helps them unravel your shell corporations and offshore accounts, you’ll be lucky to see daylight again."

I should have planned for this eventuality but hadn’t. She smiled wickedly as the full weight of her snare settled across my shoulders.

"For all the people you’ve made suffer without cause, it’s my turn to say it," she finished sweetly. "You’re fired. The terminations of your associates are already underway."


© 2010 Edward P. Morgan III

To You This Day

“If you begin to bleed,” Majdal whispered from the stool beside the bed, “I’ll do my best not to stop it, but she will be watching.”

Maryam smiled up weakly at her friend as her contractions passed into another lull.

“You will do no such thing,” Nana snapped from beside the door. “You will not allow her to escape God’s punishment. My ears may be old, girl, but they still hear as well as yours.”

As Majdal renewed her silence, Maryam hoped for Nana to doze off again on her stool by the door. The inside of the one-room house was cool and dusty like the morning. It would turn warm before the day was out, even sheltered from the blazing sun. The northeast winds had arrived early this year, hot and withering like the winter, like a foreshadowing of her impending ordeal.

At least the walls of this one were intact, unlike so many of the abandoned houses Maryam had spent her confinement in since her condition had been discovered. The rainy season seemed so long ago, now, more than a just matter of months.

When Maryam and Majdal had renewed their girlhood friendship a few days earlier, Majdal had wondered aloud why Maryam had not sought her help earlier, before she’d begun to show. There were both herbs and drugs that could have changed her situation, solutions both natural and manmade. The herbs were easily gathered, passed from mother to daughter, midwife to midwife for well over a thousand years. The drugs she could have smuggled in from the enemy via Gaza then Cairo where she’d just finished her training. Getting caught with either would have meant Majdal would have shared Maryam’s fate. But that was unlikely. Border guards were easily bribed as long as they were ignorant of what she carried. Local men were oblivious that such solutions existed. And unlike them, women knew how to keep a secret when their lives depended on it.

But that had never been a possibility, Maryam had told her. This child was the gift of Jibril, peace be upon him. All that mattered was that he was born. His mother’s fate was inconsequential. Unlike her friend, Maryam seemed to accept this.

She lay on a simple bed, a rude, wooden frame strung with latticed rope supporting a thin, straw-stuffed mattress. Hardly comfortable but more than she had at home. The mattress had an acrid smell to it. Some of the chickens scratching across the floor had roosted on it before men had returned and disturbed their newfound home.

The packed dirt floor and sun-dried mud-brick walls emanated the earthier scent of goats and cattle. Since their enemies had been driven off, the elders had used the house to shelter animals from the undying winter wind and sun. A goat was tied to the foot of the bed, her surrogate for feeding the child once it was born, her family’s only contribution, other than Nana being her doula, her assistant to help her bear this tainted child.

In the center of the dusty floor stood the flat disc of a concrete fire-ring, blackened from use despite Majdal’s repeated scrubbings the past two days. A small stack of clean towels donated by the women of the clan stood beside a yellow plastic tub filled with freshly drawn and boiled water, covered by a kerchief to keep it free from the red dust that already sullied the cloth’s purer white.

The wind constantly blew in more dust from outside along with sounds and smells through the high, square window openings near the thatched roof and around the slats of the unusually well-constructed door. The scent of cattle greedy for the last of the rain-gorged grazing wafted in accompanied by their occasional impatient lows. Closer, she could hear the herdsmen, boys really, listening to a futbol match on the radio as they guarded the entrance, against who she was uncertain. No one was likely to come to her aid. Yusuf was dead, his execution coming just days after her pregnancy had been confirmed. Her father and brothers had disowned her. But the herdsmen and their weapons had been a constant presence since the elders had handed down her verdict. Perhaps they were afraid the enemy would intervene to create sympathy in the foreign press. Even along this remote frontier of the country, CNN had jackals disguised as sheep always sniffing around the carcass of a story.

Removing watchmen from the herds to serve as guards showed how seriously the elders had taken her crime. The men were on constant alert for raids by the former inhabitants of villages like Dawood lest her people be unable to consolidate the gains of the past several years. Once, both sides had coexisted in peace. Now farmers and herders exchanged gunfire on sight. There was no longer enough water for both. The enemy seemed unable to comprehend that this land had been given to her people by God, even when the elders made examples of places like Dawood. Here, the occupants must have fled; otherwise, the buildings would have been burned to the ground.

Now, Maryam could hear Nana’s soft snores from the three-legged stool by the door. Majdal quietly crept closer.

“Is it true you don’t remember what happened?” Majdal whispered, her eyes wide with awe and disbelief. She adjusted her hair behind her kerchief nervously as Maryam searched her eyes, as if looking for some spark of understanding from her childhood friend.

“No, I remember,” Maryam responded wearily, her eyes now sinking shut after the early hours of an difficult labor, drifting off into a memory of the last time she had been confronted by that question.

---

She stood before the elders, her belly just beginning to bulge beneath her dress. They sat on stools behind a broad board arranged on trestles as a table, its surface grainy and weatherworn just like the three judges perched behind it. They all wore stony masks lined with disapproval as they set themselves to weigh her actions against the strictures of God’s Law and its prescribed penalties. By now, they had spoken to all the other witnesses and had heard the result of her grandmother’s examination. It was unlikely anything she could say would soften their position. This wasn’t the first time a wayward daughter of Eve had stood before them. History taught her that best she could hope for was a flogging, the worst, death. Either sentence would be carried out without mercy or compassion. Hers was not a kingdom beholden to the good impressions of their mutually sworn enemies.

She kept her gaze upon the packed dirt floor, knowing that to make eye contact would be seen as a threat by men such as these, especially from a woman. Her hands were clasped before her gender in a gesture of modesty that could not disguise the slight swell beneath the thin, white muslin of her dress. She had stolen glances at the men when she’d first entered. Initially, she had recognized none of them. She’d heard rumors that they all came from villages farther east, in the direction of the capital but far from anything resembling its moderating influence. Here, remote officials turned a blind eye to local justice to encourage the gains her people had made against the enemy’s insurgency and their desire to break away with the land God had bestowed upon her people over a thousand years before. The men before her, like all the elders of her clan, saw such a break as unendurable apostasy, the penalty for which was also death.

On second glance, one was slightly familiar, the one in the center, an old man named Jaspar, the wizened headmaster of a boy’s school in Nyala, the school that one of her brothers had attended. To say it was a religious school was to say that the rainy season was wet, redundant. By foreign standards, all schools in her province, whether her people’s or the enemy’s, were fundamentally of the same nature.

“Maryam,” Jaspar said in voice gravelly with age, “you are accused before God’s tribunal of the crime of adultery. We have heard from witnesses who have testified to the circumstances of your sin. You stand before us as your only opportunity to speak before we pass judgement. What will you say in your defense?”

She kept her eyes down in silent thought. She wanted to beg for mercy that she knew would not be forthcoming. These were hard, isolated men scratching a living from a hard, isolated land. She longed to beg for the shelter of her mother’s arms, to retreat into the fortress of her father’s and brothers’ protection. It was too late for that. They had long since abandoned her. She wanted to cry, but knew her tears would only be seen a woman’s weakness or manipulation.

Instead, she felt something stir inside, something she hadn’t felt since she was a young girl, still allowed to run with the boys. A voice whispered deep inside, a voice she recognized each time she thought back to what had happened to her. A voice that embodied the bright figure that had replaced the darkness of that night. She dragged her gaze up to meet Jaspar’s eyes and in a clear, calm voice she couldn’t believe was her own, she said, “I have known no man, only an angel.”

The slightly less aged men to either side of Jaspar leaned in quickly, animatedly whispering into each of his ears before he waved them both away, never breaking eye contact. He scrutinized her, his eyes piercing her as though he could see straight through her modest dress and kerchief into her immortal soul, as though she stood naked before him as he tried to decide whether her words would leave her wanting.

“So you do not deny that you are with child?” he asked flatly as if he already knew the answer.

The voice inside suffused Maryam with certainty and confidence. In defiance uncharacteristic of women of her clan, she spread her arms wide to reveal her belly, surprising herself with her own actions. “How can I deny it? You have had my grandmother inspect me. We both know what she found.”

“You have heard it with your own ears, Jaspar,” said the gray-bearded man to Jaspar’s right, a recent arrival from across the narrow sea sent to teach the men of her clan the true ways of God. “The whore admits her guilt.”

“Belshazzar, let her speak,” Jaspar admonished. “It is her right before God. We are only the instruments of his divine justice.” Turning back to Maryam, he asked, “So you do not remember what happened in the city? Your sister, Isabeth, claims you were forced, though she could not produce the witnesses needed to uphold that allegation.”

“I remember everything,” Maryam replied. Her voice came out strong and steady, as clear as water from a deep, stone-lined well, so unlike the quiet deference she had always shown her father and brothers, or the handful men she had dealt with in her clan. She was no longer certain that voice was her own. “God’s messenger came to me in a dream that night.”

“Perhaps she has a sickness,” said the man to Jaspar’s left. “Perhaps she struggled, and took a blow to the head.”

“Perhaps she is full of demons, Melkior” shot back Belshazzar, “and the angel she speaks of is one of God’s fallen. Or, perhaps, she is a witch.”

Maryam paid no attention to either of them. Her future, and that of her unborn child, lay in the hands of Jaspar, the one Jibril now stood silently behind, the only one of the three wise, old men anointed to decide her fate who seemed prepared to listen to her tale. She continued, “He showed me a vision of the future, showed me cradling my infant son. ‘To you this day, a child is born...’”

“You say you have known no man,” Belshazzar interrupted, “but how can this be if you are with child? Even your grandmother did not claim you remained a virgin when she testified after your inspection.”

“Jibril, peace be upon him, stands behind you now, beckoning you to recognize this miracle.” Maryam replied, her eyes smoldering as she turned toward her accuser.

“Silence!” Belshazzar commanded. “We will not tolerate your blasphemy any longer.”

“You say you remember…” Jaspar began.

“Without the proper witnesses,” Belshazzar interrupted again, “we must assume she gave consent. So the Law is written.”

“I can prove my virginity,” Maryam said, turning back to Jaspar, undaunted. She began to lift the hem of her dress as if compelled. The tribunal averted their eyes in horror.

“She is a sorceress,” Belshazzar screamed, throwing his forearm across his face.

“She attempts to cast a spell upon us by revealing the Serpent,” added Melkior, who completely turned away.

Jaspar said nothing, only scrutinizing the table as he motioned the guards to lead her out, her opportunity to speak at a premature end.

She was led outside and forced to stand in the village center even as the afternoon rain began to fall. The droplets felt like tears from heaven, cleansing her of the defiance she knew would weigh heavy against her fate. Soon, the guards were squatting under the eves of nearby houses, their assault rifles still in hand and lazily pointed in her direction in case she transformed outwardly into what they all feared she had become within. She was forced to squat in the mud and cover her head as best she could with her kerchief and her arms, as no one wanted her under their roofline, even outside, lest her demons find welcome in their homes.

After an interminable time in the chill that accompanied the rain soaking through her dress, she saw the head of the clan’s religious police signal the guards to bring her back inside. At the door, a young man with a truncheon-whip warned to her stay quiet or she would taste the sting of God’s justice early.

As she once again stood before the tribunal, this time soaked and dripping wet despite her best efforts, each of the men flanking Jaspar laid a palm-sized stone on the table without a glance in her direction. Neither would meet her eyes. With seeming reluctance, Jaspar lifted a stone from under the table.

“Maryam, betrothed of Yusuf,” Jaspar announced, “We find you guilty of the crime of adultery.” He set the smooth, river stone on the table with a resounding thunk of finality, like a heavy door suddenly and firmly shut.

Maryam felt as if one of her brothers had struck her in the abdomen and all the air wanted to rush out of her lungs. She wanted to scream, to wail, to lift her protests to heaven. Instead, an unseen hand clamped her throat and held it shut. When her knees began to crumble, she felt as if someone had stepped behind her and put their hands beneath her arms to help support her weight.

Jaspar continued. “Your sentence will be delayed until the child of your crime is born.”

Belshazzar then added with an evil smirk, “Dead or alive, blood is required to cleanse this baby of your mortal sin.”

---

When Maryam next awakened, morning had worn toward late afternoon. The contractions kept creeping closer now, embracing her like severe menstrual cramps that came and went in waves, each pushing more sweat out through her pores before she settled back into exhausted lulls where she faded out to nap. Each time the arms of labor encircled her, she was tempted to push even though Majdal had instructed her to resist the urge. It was not yet time, not yet productive other than to sap her reserve of strength, a reserve she would need once her water broke and the baby crowned. She smiled wanly thinking about the term Majdal used, and how her baby would wear a crown one day. So Jibril had told her.

Maryam’s renewed groans reawakened Nana on her stool. She trundled over, striking Majdal out of the way with her walking stick before peering under Maryam’s skirt.

“Get up,” Nana commanded, emphasizing each word with the tip of her stick. “Enough of your laying around like a Western princess. It is time you got to work to bring this child out.”

“Her water has not yet broken,” complained Majdal, who had also dozed through the latest lull.

“That doesn’t matter,” Nana countered. “I’ve been doing this since before you were born, girl. I can see when mother and child are ready, even if you and she cannot. Now get her up.”

As Majdal levered Maryam to her feet, Nana poked encouragement with her walking stick. Together, they guided her toward the blackened fire-ring in the center of the house.

“Squat down.” Nana whacked Maryam lightly across the shoulders this time. “Don’t hold back girl. That child of sin is coming out. He will be purified in your blood even if I have to force the herbs down your throat to coax him from your womb.”

The concrete patch was rough as Maryam shifted her callused feet. Closer to the floor, she could smell the dust. Majdal once again peered under her skirt. Cramps increased to pain as the arms embracing her transformed into iron bands encircling her abdomen.

“Your ordeal is almost over, Maryam” Majdal encouraged. “When you feel the next contraction, I want you to push.”

Maryam did as she was told, focusing on the child rather than the fate that awaited her after it was born. With each contraction and subsequent push she felt a painful stretching inseparable from a powerful burning, both accompanied by a ringing in her ears. As the severity of sensation subsided momentarily and she began to catch her breath, she sank to her knees and leaned back until she was balanced on her hands.

“Stop your screaming, girl,” Nana admonished with a flourish of her stick. “You deserve all the pain God has given you. Accept it as your punishment.”

“It is best to grunt rather than scream,” Majdal said quietly. “You will find it better controls the pain. Remember to breathe. That, too, will help.”

Until that moment, Maryam hadn’t realized the sound in her ears was her own voice. She gritted her teeth, desperately trying to continue breathing as the bands across her belly tightened and she bore down with them again.

“The head is emerging,” Majdal said, squatting before Maryam’s splayed legs, occasionally lifting her head from behind the screen of her skirt. “The child remains inside the caul. That is why your water never broke. An omen of good luck, Maryam.”

“Better luck for the infant than its mother,” Nana observed. “This child wants to remain untainted by its mother’s flesh. It shrinks to avoid the touch of her corruption.”

“One more big push and the worst will be over,” Majdal said, positioning her hands to support the emerging babe.

Maryam felt lightheaded and exhausted, her arms and legs, now coated in a sheen of sweat, ready to collapse beneath her weight. Suddenly, she felt even lighter, as if a pair of unseen hands once again supported her. The pain subsided at their touch, replaced by detached calm and determination.

“One more small push and the shoulders will be out,” Majdal said. “That’s it. Just a little more. Ok, I have him,”

Maryam sighed with relief commingled with exhaustion.

Majdal carefully tore away the caul, setting it nearly intact on the concrete. “Welcome your son to the world, Maryam. Your baby is a boy.” The infant gulped for air and let out a hearty wail as Majdal pinched his pale cheeks between her strong, dark fingers.

“I know,” Maryam said, panting as she collapsed to the concrete. “God’s messenger told me it would be so. Yusuf will be so proud.”

“Yusuf was killed months ago, Maryam,” Majdal reminded her gently, wiping the worst of the blood and fluid from the infant with a towel dipped in the water of the yellow tub.

“That’s too bad,” Maryam murmured. “Yusuf was innocent.”

“Your depravity knows no end,” Nana spat. “That lie cost Yusuf his life. He was no more innocent than you. You have both brought nothing but shame and disgrace to your families. It is time for this community to set that right with God.”

“First, she needs to expel the afterbirth, Nana,” Majdal chided. “You know by law the birth is not complete until then.”

“You will tend to that. I will inform the men to prepare.” Nana scurried outside, reminding Majdal of an old, three-legged dog searching for village scraps in the way she tottered with her walking stick. That Maryam’s own blood should be impatient for what came next. Majdal shook her head.

“Let’s get you back to the bed,” Majdal said, cradling the boy, now completely wrapped in another, cleaner towel, his cord to his mother tied and cleanly cut. “Put your hand on my shoulder. I can bear as much weight as you need me to.”

“Nana will be angry if we spoil the bed,” Maryam said in the voice of a little girl still desperate not to disappoint an elder. “The blood will make it no longer usable for the animals.”

“Let her be angry,” Majdal replied with a quick glare toward the door.

Like two drunken men after a long night celebrating an African Nations Cup victory, they lurched Maryam to her feet and stumbled her toward the bed, all without jostling the child too much. Once Maryam was arranged comfortably, Majdal asked, “Would you like to hold him?”

“In a moment.” Maryam began tearing at the stitches of waistline of her skirt, like a woman again possessed, until she extracted something from behind the fold of cloth, cupping it like a talisman in her hand. Only then did she accept the infant, who curled between her arm and breast. The boy burbled contentedly.

“What will you name him?” Majdal asked.

“I would call him Isa,” Maryam replied, gently brushing a finger against his cheek. Instinctively, he turned his head to follow his mother’s touch, hoping it would lead to his first meal.

Maryam turned her weak smile up to Majdal. “Who will care for him when I am… gone?” she asked, choking on the last word. “Don’t let Nana or any of the elders raise him. They will persecute him or worse. They are jealous and fearful. Jibril has shown me, peace be upon him.”

“Isabeth has agreed to take him,” Majdal said in a comforting tone, smiling down at the boy, stroking his halo of fine hair.

“That will be good.” Maryam smiled approvingly, taking Majdal’s hand. “A gift from me to my older sister since she can have none of her own.” Maryam then gripped Majdal’s hand tighter, drawing her closer to whisper in her ear. “Tell Isabeth that God’s messenger commands that she and Zakariyya flee with him to Cairo. Make them promise not to return until it’s safe for him again. Show them the way, my friend.”

Maryam clutched Majdal’s hand with surprising strength, refusing to release it until she swore by God and all they held holy that she would make it so. As Maryam held her hand tight, Majdal could feel the cool, flat object pressed between their palms. Looking down at her hand once it was freed, Majdal found she held a small, gold coin, easily a year’s wages for a woodcarver like Zakariyya. She could only stare at it in amazement, wondering where Maryam had stumbled upon such a rich gift to provide her son on his birthing day.

Soon, the placenta also left Maryam’s body. By then, a fair amount of blood had soaked into the mattress and Maryam’s once white skirt, half a liter at most. Nothing unusual. Unfortunately, not enough that she would die or lose consciousness, Majdal thought. But she would remain woozy, which would be best for the ordeal that remained.

Mother and baby dosed in the afternoon air that had cooled to merely warm. At the foot of the bed, the goat, unnaturally calm throughout, bleated and strained at its short lead, hungry to explore the possibilities it smelled beyond reach in either the placenta or the caul still laying on the concrete ring.

Majdal quickly removed her kerchief, knowing none of the men would notice her indiscretion in the chaotic scene to follow. Delicately, she removed the placenta and what remained of the umbilical from the bed, placing it on the linen square, then moved to the fire-ring. She had just set the caul beside it, both of which had already begun to shrivel in the warm, dry air of early winter, and folded up the cloth when Nana returned.

“What have you done?” Nana demanded from the doorway, staring at the blood soaking through Maryam’s skirt into the bed, her exclamation startling both mother and child awake. “I cannot bring her out like this. She is unclean. The elders will be appalled.”

Majdal took the opportunity to slip the gold coin inside the kerchief and quickly roll the small, bundle inside her waistband. If the package was discovered, she would be accused of witchcraft and likely reap Maryam’s exact penalty. The blood from her kerchief blended with the rest already staining the front of her blouse and skirt. Bringing forth life was a messy business.

“Perhaps you will have to delay,” Majdal remarked. “The baby should be allowed to feed from its mother at least once before it is given away. So our customs say.”

“Nonsense,” Nana snapped. “The less that child knows of its mother, the better.”

“Then I guess the men will just have to confront the stain of their decision early,” Majdal observed.

Nana only glared before her eyes darted around the room as though she had been stricken by a seizure until they rested on the yellow tub. “Remove the child,” she commanded peevishly.

Majdal retrieved the boy from Maryam, both of whom began to wail at their sudden separation. Majdal retreated across the room, sheltering the baby with her arms as she pressed her back against the wall, fearful that Nana might flail out indiscriminately with her stick and strike them both.

Instead, Nana bent down and grasped the basin full of water and flung it onto Maryam’s waist. The bright red blood on Maryam’s skirt quickly faded to pink as the water rushed through her clothing and the mattress, streaming onto the floor. Maryam started to sit up from the shock of the water, but stopped as the pain of movement caught up with the still aching wounds testifying to her son’s birth. All her breath escaped her in a gasp. She was completely awake and alert again.

“Now I can fetch the guards,” Nana said with a nod of satisfaction as the tub slipped from her aging fingers and thumped hollowly as it bounced across the floor. “Stay out of the way, girl,” she snarled at Majdal. “Your part in this is done.”

As the reality of her impending punishment soaked in, Maryam clutched her arms around her chest and began to keen a high and eerie note, shivering in the stagnant air as the full knowledge of what would come next settled over her like a shroud.

A moment later, two guards poked their heads inside. They had no eyes for Majdal, the baby or any of the scattered signs of the birthing process, focusing exclusively on Maryam, and then, only on her face. They strode toward the bed, their AK’s rattling against their sides, and roughly pulled her up, half dragging her toward the door even as her feet halfheartedly tried to keep pace. The goat bleated and shied, trying to escape as one of the guards kicked the yellow tub aside but only managed to wrap itself tighter around the rough-hewn bedpost as the remaining chickens scattered. Before she departed, Maryam peered over her shoulder, and mouthed the words: Isa. You promised. Then she disappeared into the bright afternoon sunlight. Framed by the doorway, it seemed to radiate from her like a golden aura, once again armoring her against her fate.

Majdal remained with her back against the wall, slowly sinking to the floor, at first gasping for breath in the wake of the sudden violence of her friend’s departure, then sobbing quietly for fear that any sound would draw unwanted attention back to her and the child. Through the high windows and still open door, she could hear the commotion as the men of the clan gathered. She could almost hear the women shuffling their feet in the background, not allowed to voice their grief as their mourning might be seen as sympathy for the damned. She imagined the sharp clink of river stones settling one against another as boys set them into piles after carrying them from the wadi. Majdal tried to ignore all that, focusing instead on the last of the water dripping from the mattress into the shallow pool below, bloody drops plopping softly to the thirsty earth like the tears rivuleting down her cheeks and dripping off her chin.

Calmer now as the noise outside receded, Majdal retrieved a tiny, glass vial from the pocket of her skirt. It was filled with oil bought just yesterday from a perfumer in a village market. She unscrewed the black plastic cap, daubing some fragrant oil on one finger. It smelled sweet and fresh, masking the sharp, metallic scent of blood that had settled through the room. Even the goat had slunk into a subdued silence, leaning against the bed for support and comfort, staring at her dolefully. She would have to milk it soon to provide a surrogate for the boy’s missing mother.

But first the oil, infused with nudar and the balm of Gilead, in the manner of the old ways, the only gift she had to offer.

“Isa, he is named,” she said, anointing the infant’s forehead with a drop of oil.

The baby quieted at her touch and smiled up angelically. She became lost to all but his expression, the bloody aftermath in the room receding behind his eyes. His smile reminded her that he, at least, was still alive. She knew she needed to slip out while the village was still distracted by Maryam’s sacrifice and meet Isabeth and Zakariyya so they could all escape to safety. But she was unwilling to move, unwilling to risk hearing the barbaric sound of her friend’s execution. Instead, she cherished the warmth of this new life held tightly to her chest even as another life slipped away outside, cherished the sound stillness interrupted only by his beating heart before the chaos of flight began.

Just beneath Majdal’s hearing in the distance beyond her sanctuary, Maryam grunted as the first stones struck as if she were once again in labor.

© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III

An Illusionary Life

What really happened that night? The truth? The truth is an illusion. If you concentrate hard enough, it becomes foggy around the edges, indistinct. As with any good illusion, your mind fills in the details to its own liking, its own level of comfort. Or you refuse to believe entirely and render it transparent, fading until it exists only in a dream. I will tell you of that dream, that truth, that night, if you will tell me how to disbelieve and make its memory disappear.

It started with an Illusionary Life. When Mark pulled it from the cellophane package, I knew it would cause us trouble. Sorcery always did. Kern eyed the card covetously, trying to trade for it before Mark knew its true value. It would have completed Kern's Illusionist deck perfectly, the only illusion spell he didn't own, a keystone to lock together its existing the strategies. Not that he needed it. Each existing spell complimented the others with near flawlessness creating combinations that were all but unbeatable. With that card the deck would have stood independently, spanning any chasm between victory and defeat. Kern offered Mark five hundred dollars, cash. Straight out of his pocket, the bills peeled off one by one. Mark could only stare.

Unfortunately for Mark, the clerk told him how lucky he really was. The card in his hand was one of only two thousand printed, only five hundred of which had found their way into the booster packs. The rest had been distributed at tournaments to professional players who needed them less. Already the card was worth three thousand dollars on the open market, more if you knew the right people. Apparently, the store's owner was one of those people and offered Mark four thousand dollars. Kern offered five. The owner mentioned free spells for a year. New spells, the latest, to fill Mark's book and make him a powerful Sorcerer in his own right, as powerful as Kern. Kern went to seventy five hundred, and said they could leave for the bank anytime.

Mark's wicked smile said that he liked having something Kern wanted for a change. He looked from Kern to the owner and back, then told them both he would think about their offers, but he would need a plastic sleeve to protect his prize before taking it home. Knowing Mark, he would wait until Kern became truly desperate before accepting his offer. Unlike Kern, Mark couldn't make a living playing Sorcery: he needed the money.

Kern's face did not show his characteristic acceptance and patience, the look that so infuriated Mark on other occasions. I could see the schemes forming in Kern's head. His eyes laid out more offers and counters, darting from the persuasive speeches to bribes and threats, settling on bargaining and an agreement before starting through again. Looking back, I can see that was the moment Kern transformed.

I want to think the best of my friends, to think that there are some acts they are incapable of performing. To say Kern would have done anything to possess that card is not right. He would not have put a gun in Mark's face and forced him to hand it over. He would not have violated Mark's home and stolen it while Mark was away. He would not have even slipped a hand into Mark's backpack while his attention drifted and pilfered it. But two months later he did steal Mark's Illusionary Life. And came deadly close to taking Marshall's in the bargain.

Ironically, that night began with talk of killing. Then it was only a game to us, an adolescent game the five of us should have outgrown, but hadn't. A game where life and death were illusions as well, a fog to be swept away by the day to day events of the following week. A dark dungeon where we had played for years before the siren's call of Sorcery spells ensnared us.

...

"Kern doesn't want us to kill him, Mark."

"Six weeks sliming through every trash-strewn alley and rat-plagued sewer in the city, and now you don't want to kill him?"

"Kern doesn't want him dead."

"If I catch Lars, he dies slow whether Sumner likes it or not. Have you forgotten about what he did to William? Or Sebastian? Our two best fighters die in that ambush and you think we shouldn't take this guy out? It took us a week just to find what he'd left of Sebastian's body. No one should die like that, Baird."

I looked to Claire for help. She raised an eyebrow in return but remained curled around the glass of wine she always nursed beforehand, silent as usual. I could almost hear her say, "You brought him in, Daniel." Thanks, Claire. When I turned back, Mark hadn't slowed.

"We're getting nowhere because Sumner's yanking us around and enjoying it. Every time we get close to Lars, Sumner makes him disappear. If he didn't want us to kill him, why did he send us after him in the first place? He's just playing with our heads, you said so yourself."

"You just haven't gotten used to Kern's style. It took me a few months. He puts a lot of thought into the details and it shows. You're taking this way too seriously."

"That's because I'm here every week, just like you and Stillman," Claire shot Mark a withering look. She hated being called by her last name, especially when he used only the first half. Mark continued, oblivious. "And I'm tired of giving in to what Sumner wants. It's time we cut him out of the decision."

A fist pounded against the door. Mark froze, looking uncertain of what might have been heard through the open window. The pounding continued. "Open up, or I'll bust it down." Teeth and eyes grinned in the window. I relaxed. Mark uncoiled, then unleashed.

"Damnit, Fay, why do you always scare me like that?"

"Just getting into character, man, getting ready to terrorize the locals. You boys ready."

Claire padded her way to open the door for Marshall. As she returned to the couch, she called casually over a shoulder, "Mark doesn't want to play Kern's game anymore."

Marshall looked to Mark. "Man, we were so close last time. What's going on?"

"He needs a break," I said before Mark could start again, "I think we all might." Claire looked hurt that I had spoiled her setup.

"I was just getting into this." Marshall said. He swung a chair around and leaned his massive chest into its back, looking at Mark. "So what are we doing tonight?"

"Sorcery." Mark's dark eyes sparkled. "I've been building a deck that will beat Sumner's Illusionist."

Marshall leaned back. "That's what you said last time. You know Kern's always changing that Illusionist deck. I thought I had it beat more than a dozen times, then he takes over and none of my damage gets through. All of a sudden, it's boom, dead, just like that. Usually plays it so I kill myself."

"That deck was Kern's inspiration for Lars," I said. "You see how much success we've had against him." Kern was truly inspired when building Sorcery decks and game world characters. That's why all of us wanted him as Game Master. Sure, it was a challenge, frustrating at times, but Kern added layers of detail that made you think you could step from Claire's game room onto one of his busy city streets. Even Marshall admitted being able see the scenes that Kern described. It was the same when Kern played his Sorcery cards. He would create a running narrative with each card he laid down. The effect was hypnotic. It helped that he kept cards with only the most inspired artwork.

"You two always think in direct damage. That's why William and Sebastian are both dead." Claire rose slowly and stretched, then joined us at the table. "Beating Kern requires subtly. You can't buy into his aura of invulnerability. He has a weakness if you know where to look."

We all stared at her. Kern had introduced each of us to the Sorcery and still remained the undisputed Master among us. He had won money in several tournaments, enough to finance his other passions. Rarely had any of us beaten him, and then only when one of his trial decks behaved badly. His Illusionist deck never misbehaved. Though I knew better than to doubt Claire, I had to ask, "Are you saying you've beaten Kern?"

She smiled innocently "Only once, but it was the only time I tried."

"When was this?"

"Last February when you guys decided to test your manhoods by nearly freezing them off at Cassoga Lake. Kern stopped over that Saturday with a bottle of French merlot. Halfway through he made a bet I couldn't refuse. The game took most of the night but with the incentive he provided, winning was all I could do."

"Maybe he didn't want to win." Mark was five years younger and new to our group. He probably thought he might enjoy losing to Claire. He didn't know Claire Stillman-Thomas.

"Not with what he lost." Her smile turned devious.

"That's my Claire," Marshall chuckled, "Man, don't mess with her."

Mark opened and closed his mouth as heavy boots heralded Kern's approach. Kern strode up the walk dressed in his typical black, a dark bottle in one hand and a heavily laden backpack in the other, black long-coat and hair swirling behind. He once told me he walked fast to maintain that effect and with a heavy heel to ensure people noticed. His entire wardrobe was black, with the exception of a favorite T-shirt that only came in navy. He only wore that one when he thought people wouldn't notice. He didn't wear it often.

Mark started before Kern set down his backpack. "Kern, we've decided to take a break from the game tonight and play Sorcery instead."

"Bad idea," Kern responded somberly. "I've been having dreams about Lars again. Powerful dreams."

Mark groaned. Marshall rolled his eyes. With a thumb toward the kitchen he asked, "You mind, Claire?" She nodded him that direction. Still shaking his head, Marshall disappeared into the kitchen in search of a beer. I called after him for one myself, hoping Claire stocked something stronger than the amber water Marshall usually poured down. Claire gave an inquiring look to Mark who dismissed her with the wave of a hand. With an annoyed look, she followed Marshall for an uncharacteristic second glass of merlot. Kern's dream games had a reputation for being the most bizarre. And the most deadly. They pushed the game onto a surreal plane, leaving us all to ponder the meaning of our seemingly trivial lives for days afterwards. An experience I neither relished, nor one I would miss voluntarily.

Kern did relish these games. He shaped each encounter to push the limits of our personal prejudices, as well as those of our characters. He challenged our concept of the world, and forced us to examine the undesirable choices it contained. Usually, Kern announced his dreams with an impish grin, smiling at the reaction he knew would come. That night Kern's brow furrowed slightly. He looked distracted, maybe even worried. I looked to Mark to see if he noticed, but his jaw was set. Marshall said you had to crack him with a beer bottle before he noticed anything when he was like that. A full beer bottle. I wished Claire had stayed. Unlike me, she rarely doubted her observations and generally knew what to do with them.

"Not again," Mark said, "We're getting nowhere already without you pulling our strings." Mark had a point, but I thought his complaint was rooted more in his own buttons being so numerous and so well greased. Kern didn't push them anymore, thought it was too easy to get a reaction and too hard to make him think.

"These aren't the normal dreams." Kern turned to me with a look of appeal. He never appealed to me for anything. "Lars has developed a personality of his own. He doesn't tell me anything anymore." Though there was none of the usual tongue-in-cheek tone, this sounded pretty normal for Kern. He loved pretending the game world was the only world that mattered. We all knew this was just another one of his games to ingrain us into the fantasy he created, and controlled.

Mark also turned to me, "See Baird? He needs a nice, long break."

"Daniel, we have to play tonight, or Lars will have more time to plot against you. I don't know what he'll do next."

Mark looked as if Kern had just made his best point. Both Mark and Kern leaned toward me expectantly. I listened hopefully for Claire's or Marshall's return. From the noise in the kitchen, they were in the middle of constructing a full munchies buffet.

"You don't sound like yourself tonight, Kern," I said after a moment, "Maybe, we do need a break."

"Yeah, Sumner," Mark leaned back victoriously, "If you need to play Lars so badly, get out your Sorcery deck. I can always beat him that way."

Kern leaned closer. "If we don't play tonight, Daniel, none of us will be safe. I don't control him anymore." This was beyond Kern's normal strangeness. His insistence on playing frightened me.

Mark rummaged through his bag searching for his deck. "What's the matter, Sumner, don't think you can beat my weenie little deck? I'll spot you five points."

The pleading vanished as though Kern had donned a mask. His face transformed into someone unfamiliar. The features were the same, but I no longer recognized the expression. His eyes bore into Mark with an intensity that could conjure fire from wood. Or steel. "You believe you can defeat my illusions with your cheap artifacts and other petty spells? Your nightmares only hint at the abuse you will suffer."

"Let's make it interesting then. You once offered me seventy five hundred for Illusionary Life. Want to bet your Spells of Shadow against it? That's your rarest card, right? Not quite even, but I'll live."

"Never bet what you can't afford to lose."

"Afraid your image will suffer without your Spells?" Mark asked, already shuffling his cards.

"Your Life against my Spells?" Kern considered the offer for a moment. "Done." Kern extended a hand. Mark shook it eagerly. Kern unzipped the inner pocket of his backpack where his Illusionist deck resided. "Remember, Hastings, you were warned."

...

Kern stared past the ebony box on the table into one of candles I had lighted to create the proper mood. The silver inlaid runes reflected the flickering candlelight flashing in perfect time with Kern's murmuring. The box was a recent addition to his trappings, as was the ritual he now performed. Kern had acquired both in the months he'd lusted after Mark's card as if to reinforce that he was the Master Sorcerer among us, and therefore the rightful owner of Illusionary Life. Perhaps he was trying to compensate for the card's perceived absence from his deck. More likely it was a cry for help echoing unheeded.

Everyone else was silent. Claire had glared when I had lighted the candles, uncomfortable with Kern's dramatics. Now, she stared at the arcane runes on the box as though they had come into focus for the first time. Mark fidgeted in his chair, but knew that interrupting Kern's theatrics would only extend them to an intolerable length. Ignoring Kern, Marshall studied each of Mark's cards with a long, sober look, nodding and occasionally smiling before thumbing to the next. I was the only one enjoying Kern's performance, as I always had, oblivious to the changes in Kern over the past few months. I can see now that he took these rituals seriously.

Kern slowly lifted his gaze from the candle. His vacant stare circled the table, pausing on each of us momentarily before continuing. Mark returned his stare defiantly, Marshall impassively. After Kern's eyes moved on, Mark looked slightly relieved, and Marshall slightly strained. When Kern's eyes settled on her, Claire just shivered and looked away. Later, she would tell me his eyes seemed to look right through her. She knew then that Kern Sumner was no longer behind them. My natural urge to wink and smile died when his eyes met mine.

Kern sat back with a wan smile, steepling his fingers before him, evaluating our reactions. "How about some mead?"

Perfect, I thought. We needed something to lighten our mood. While Kern set his bottle on the table, I retrieved the glasses from their place in the hutch behind me. Claire kept them close for their inevitable use during the game. Everyone brewed mead, with Mark and I being the leading contributors and Marshall our largest consumer. Kern only brewed a few bottles a year, but his mead was like everything he did for the game, unsurpassed. The cork slid from the bottle with barely a pop. Dark amber filled the glasses. The familiar smell visibly relaxed the rest of us.

"A toast," I offered, attempting to seize the mood again, "to the games we play only with our closest friends. May our friendship endure forever."

"You mean may we forever endure our friendship." Mark said, which drew a chuckle from Marshall.

Our glasses clinked above the center of the table. Claire savored her first sip a moment then smiled. Marshall drank deeply, then let out a contented sigh and refilled his glass. Even Mark nodded approvingly. Tension drained with each mouthful, though I noticed Kern's glass barely touched his lips.

"You ready to settle this, Sumner?" Mark asked after a couple sips.

Kern slowly shuffled his cards. "There's no rush. Finish your mead."

"You won't win that easily."

Decks were cut and hands drawn. Judging from the first rounds, it would be a long game. Claire started nodding off. After a second glass of mead, Marshall looked as though he was about to. I felt tired myself as I nursed the remains of my glass. It was an unusually contented tired. I was in a warm fog, comfortable and safe among friends, the earlier tension washed away by the mead.

"Good mead," I said sleepily. "When did you make it, Kern?"

"A couple months ago," Kern said. He sounded more like his old self again as he studied the cards in his hand. "I found it bubbling in the closet one morning after some intense dreams about Lars. I'm not sure what's in it, but I know it's magical." His eyes twinkled mischievously.

Marshall drained his glass and laid his head on his crossed arms. "Wake me up when something interesting happens."

"Yeah, this wizards' war sure fizzled." Claire moved to the couch. She rested her head on its back where she could see the game. She, too, was asleep within minutes.

By the time things finally got interesting, I could barely keep my eyes open. Both Mark and Kern had plenty of spell points, but each waited for the other to make an opening move. Mark finally did by playing a half dozen creatures and declaring an attack. Kern countered with the Puppet Master, taking control of Mark's minions and sending them into the Shadow Maze. My eyelids fluttered shut. I heard Mark invoke Illusionary Life. As long as it was on the table, he could not die. He sounded tired now, his voice drained of it previous drive to win.

I forced my eyes open to see Kern lay down Reality Vortex, a card I'd never seen before. I couldn't read the text, but its scene showed cards and people swirling into a maelstrom. As I concentrated, the scene animated before my eyes, captivating me. People cried out, struggling to get free. When I saw Claire and Marshall among them, I leaned closer. My vision reeled as the vortex pulled me in. The last thing I heard was Kern victoriously calling out his next succession of cards: Spells of Shadow to mimic Illusionary Life; Head Games which drew Mark's card into the vortex with us; and, finally, Vanishing on Mark himself. He can't do that, my mind screamed. Vanishing can only be played on a creature, not a player. My consciousness spun as I cried out that Kern's last move was illegal. The only response I heard was an unfamiliar laugh booming in my ears until it submerged into the maelstrom with me.

...

The cold beneath my cheek slowly leached the sleep out of me. My side ached from resting on something hard and unyielding. I opened my eyes, and slowly rose from the stone floor. A wave of dizziness crashed over me as I looked around. I felt like I was in a dream, a specter in a world I no longer recognized. The room was small with torches lining its gray stone walls. Gray slate flagstones covered the floor. A course-grained door sealed off the world beyond. A heavy wooden table stood opposite the door.

I swayed slightly for a moment, trying to focus. Where was I? What happened to the others? Where was Claire? Panic dispelled the dizziness as I frantically scanned the room. Claire lay near Marshall, each positioned as though the furniture beneath them had vanished, leaving them to float down and conform to their new surroundings: Claire was curled up one side, Marshall resting his head on folded arms. Mark and Kern looked as if the same unseen force had blown them over, leaving them spread flat upon the floor, Mark on his back, Kern face down.

I knelt beside Claire first. She seemed to be breathing slowly and evenly, like she was asleep. When I touched her arm, her eyes snapped open so wide with terror that I nearly tipped over backwards before extending a hand behind me for balance.

"Daniel." Claire blinked slowly and raised herself onto one elbow. "Where are we?"

"I don't know. Something happened during the game last night and I woke up here. Are you all right?"

"I think Kern drugged the mead." She shook her head as if to clear it.

"Help me check out the others." I offered her a hand up.

Mark rose after a bit of shaking, looking dazzled. Rousing Marshall required only a light touch on his wrist. Then I crashed to the floor as his leg swept both feet from under me.

Claire motioned for me remain still. Marshall had rolled up into a crouch, his glazed eyes darting around the room. I didn't move until I saw his eyes focus for a few seconds.

"Sorry, Daniel, I didn't know it was you." Marshall rubbed his forehead, then extended a hand to help me up.

I accepted his hand and rose stiffly from the floor, my hip and shoulder throbbing from a perfect two-point landing.

"Hey, guys, look at this," Mark called. He was standing in front of the table, hefting a large sword.

I moved to join him, careful to stay clear of his swing radius. Claire followed. On the table was an eyeball suspended in a viscous green liquid encased in a sphere of blown glass staring vacantly into the room. A wire-wrapped monocle rested beside it. There were also two broaches, one black and one white, both encrusted with gemstones, and another sword not quite as large as the one in Mark's hand, but looking just as sharp.

"Check this out," Mark squinted through the monocle. When he turned his head, the eye in the glass ball followed as though it was linked by an invisible mechanism, a third eye. "I can see the whole room, just like I was inside the bulb. This is cool."

Suddenly, Mark stopped turning. His real eyes widened and the lens clinked onto the table. "Something moved out there. Something with teeth."

Claire looked dubious. "What is this thing?" she asked, checking the lens for damage. Marshall peered over her shoulder.

"It's an artifact called the Eye of Osiris," Kern replied from behind us. "It allows you to see your opponent's next creature before it attacks. Very useful."

"What about the rest of this stuff?" I asked.

Kern moved forward. "The sword Mark's swinging looks like Steel Justice. Hold it still a second, Mark. See the writing down the blade? It's just like on the Sorcery card. The other one is called the Diabolical Defender. You can tell by those agonized faces molded into its guard."

Kern paused, waiting for someone to ask more.

Ignorance and curiosity overcame my annoyance at his play to be recognized as the authority. "What do they do?"

"Diabolical Defender makes a creature nearly invincible, though if it doesn't taste blood it will turn on its wielder in devious ways. Steel Justice doesn't defend; it's all damage. Effective, but if the wielder is weak or a companion dies, it will transform into Blind Vengeance and cause the creature to attack without thinking."

"I had them both in my hand. You were going to take a thrashing before all my creatures disappeared," Mark said, gesturing with the Steel Justice.

"A dangerous strategy, but you'll find that out yourself," Kern observed before continuing, "The white pin is a Life Charm, and the black one a Death Charm. They look nearly identical, though you can tell they were drawn by different artists. Both allow you to disbelieve an illusion and take no damage. The difference is that Life Charm protects multiple creatures while the Death Charm only works for one. The timing is tricky. You can't defend against the illusion before you play either of them, so you better know what's real."

"I had them too. I was about to play the Death Charm before you cast that Vanishing and I woke up here."

"Where are we anyway?" Marshall asked, seeming more alert now.

"I'd say we're in the Shadow Maze," Kern answered, "or at least at the entrance to it. Those runes on the door are the same as on my card. Only on the card, the door is open. We're safe as long as that door stays shut."

"Sorcery cards," Claire nodded slowly, "Is that where you got the inspiration for what you put in the mead?"

"You mean he drugged us." Mark spun on Kern.

"No." Kern backed away, hands out to either side. "I don't know what was in it. Lars made it while I was asleep."

Mark stepped toward Kern with a menacing look. "I'm tired of your games, Sumner. What did you do to us?"

"Nothing. The last thing I remember was staring at the candle on Claire's table, thinking about how Lars would play my deck. Then, I woke up here with all of you."

"Do you think this is some kind of game? Why are we here, Kern?" Mark took another step forward, leveling his sword at Kern's chest.

Kern continued backing up, frantically looking over his shoulder at the door. "I don't know, I swear. I warned you Lars might do something like this."

"Lars," Mark continued to advance, "there is no Lars. He's all in your head, Kern. Now tell me the truth or I swear I'll dig it out of you." Steel Justice cut small slices of air before him.

I was paralyzed to do anything but stare at the faces around the room. The blood from Kern's face seemed to drain into Mark's, making it as red as Kern's was pale. Marshall's jaw was tense, but he seemed resolved to let Mark terrorize the truth out of Kern. Claire struggled with the same shock I did, only for a moment less.

"Mark, leave him alone," Claire commanded quietly.

"And I'm tired of you always defending him." Mark spun on Claire.

In a heartbeat, Marshall sprang into Mark's side, wrapping two powerful arms around his waist and driving him toward the floor. Just before impact, Marshall tucked, rolling Mark's body to avoid the bulk of the impact. The sword flew clear, skittering off the floor and clattering loudly against a wall. The instant Marshall moved, Kern bolted for the door. He disappeared into the darkness behind it before my mouth could form a word.

"It's OK, Mark. I've got you," Marshall whispered gently, but held Mark tight, "Are we calm? Are we calm?"

As soon as Mark relaxed and nodded, Marshall released him, getting up quickly and stepping back.

"What was that for?" Mark rubbed his right shoulder while rotating his arm. "I wasn't the one who poisoned us."

"I just wanted to make sure the wrong person didn't get stuck." Marshall looked ready to react again.

"Thanks, Marshall." Claire turned to glare at Mark. "If you ever point that at me again, I won't be half as kind. Now, if you're back under control, we still need to figure out what's going on. And now we need to find Kern, too. Any suggestions?"

A cry like the tearing of metal pierced the room. A shadow freed itself from the open doorway and beelined for Mark. Marshall leaped to intercept it, but clutched at empty air as the thing dodged with blurring speed. His back slammed against the wall as he twisted just in time to avoid crashing into it headfirst. Mark scrambled backward, frantically grabbing at the floor behind him for the sword. The shadow hissed, revealing black, needle-sharp teeth ready to plunge into Mark's neck. Mark screamed when they tore past his left arm instead as he threw it in front of his face, and again as dark claws ripped into his arm leaving a bloody trail behind.

I dove onto the table for the other sword, scattering the charms and knocking the glass bulb into a drunken roll. As I clutched the sword's hilt, my momentum carried me toward the table's edge and the gray floor beyond. I twisted my head to see Marshall pushing away from the wall. I screamed his name and flung the sword at him just before I ran out of table and crashed to the floor. I crumpled upside down onto my neck and shoulders, my back leaning against the wall.

Pain closed off my mind. It no longer acknowledged Mark's unending scream or his slow-motion scramblings away from the shadow that consisted only of teeth and claws and wisps of trailing darkness. Nor could it make sense of Marshall's legs sprinting across the room, torso severed by the ceiling of the tabletop, a sword occasionally rising into view. Not even Claire flying through the air on her back, her hands outstretched to catch my crumpled body, too late, generated a response. Rather, my brain centered on the ringing of glass on wood somewhere below me. My eyes were attempting to reorient and right the room when the ringing stopped. A sphere fell up toward the floor, its lone eye staring soulfully into mine, begging me to intervene. My eyes anticipated shards of glass tumbling in all directions. Instead, an unseen force pushed Claire upward against the floor that slowed her so that the backs of her hands smashed the stones in place of the orb. The eye in the bulb searched the room high and low for its savior.

Another eerie, two-tone scream reoriented the room. I untangled myself and rolled onto hands and knees, searching for the scream's source. I saw Mark falling backward, his right hand guiding a sword forward while his left fell away from the creature's now missing teeth and claws. The dark form had turned its razors to Marshall as he struggled to free the blade deep within its back. With both hands Marshall pulled the sword back and over his head an instant too late. The creature cocked back like a snake and struck at Marshall's exposed chest, only to dissolve around Mark's sword as it sliced through the shadow's body from behind. Marshall slumped to his knees as he aborted his intended killing blow.

My heart pounded as I stared at the others from the floor for several seconds, all of us struggling to catch our breath and comprehend what had just happened. After a moment Marshall walked to the open door, checked the hall both ways and closed it. Claire stood, set the glass bulb back upon the table, went to Mark and began daubing the blood from his arm with her shirttail.

"What just happened?" Mark sounded distant.

"Its teeth only grazed you, but it got you good with the claws." Claire wrapped his forearm with the handkerchief Marshall offered. "You'll a nice set of scars to talk about. Is that too tight?"

Mark stared at the blood soaking through his bandage. "What's going on? I don't see any blood on the floor except mine."

"It's OK." Marshall gently laid a hand on Mark's shoulder.

Mark shook it off. "It's not OK," Hysteria slipped into Mark's voice. "A shadow creature that can't be real just zipped through the door and sliced four bloody gashes into my arm then vanished when I struck it with a sword that just happened to be lying on the table in the room where we all appeared as though by magic along with a bunch of other stuff I've never seen before except in the Sorcery cards that the psychopath I was playing against said they represented before he freaked out and ran through the door where the shadow thing came from in the first place."

"Mark, snap out of it." Claire repeated for the third time, shaking his shoulders until he ran out of breath.

Mark stared at her a moment, then slumped against the table. "Would somebody just tell me what's going on?"

I had a theory of my own, but wasn't ready to accept it myself, so I listened.

"Kern finally lost it. He drugged us and I think we're hallucinating from whatever he put in the mead." Claire's voice was calm.

"Hallucinations don't do this," Mark pointed to his arm. "Besides, if this isn't real how come we're all here?"

"Maybe the drugs put us into a dreamlike state. Kern could be describing the whole thing, just like in one of his games." Claire voice remained a cool but not quite patronizing counter to Mark's intensity.

"You're saying Sumner's controlling everything while we're in some drugged out haze?"

"Man, this is more real than any dream I've ever had," Marshall added. "Kern may be good, but."

"If this is a dream," Mark interrupted, "then how do we get out? Play it through, and hope he lets us wake up?" He crossed his arms in front of him, wincing when they connected.

I considered Claire's theory. If this was a dream and I knew it, I should be able to change it the way she taught me. It had worked on my nightmares in college. I closed my eyes and concentrated on opening them to something more pleasant, like Claire's bedroom with its ruffled bedspread, lace curtains and mirrored dresser. I developed the picture in my mind just as I remembered it from the many intimate talks we'd had there over the years.

When I opened my eyes, Mark still leaned against the wooden table glaring at Claire, his arms folded across his chest. Marshall was right: this was more than a dream.

"Claire, I've known Kern since high school." I picked up the monocle from the table, nervously rolling it through my fingers. "For all his imagination, he's well grounded in reality. He just didn't like the reality he saw, until he started winning Sorcery tournaments."

"Winning tournaments is more pressure than you think, Daniel," Claire retorted. "Kern takes succeeding very seriously. Maybe this is just a way of retreating farther into his game."

"Stillman's right," Mark said, "Sumner snapped. You heard him raving about Lars when we started tonight."

"Maybe you're right. But, if this is a dream," I turned to Claire, "why can't I change it?"

"Lucid dreaming." Claire nodded. "I should have thought of that."

"Lucid what?" Marshall asked.

"It's a way to change a nightmare into a normal dream," Claire explained. "First you acknowledge that you're dreaming, then you imagine the dream going in new direction. Basically, you take control and redirect it."

"When I tried," I said, "nothing happened."

Claire closed her eyes. A small furrow appeared in her brow. Marshall followed her example after a moment, then Mark. Claire opened her eyes and scanned the room. She stood quietly until Marshall looked up shaking his head.

While I waited, I put the monocle in my hand to my eye, expecting to see the room from a new viewpoint like Mark had described. Instead, I saw three knights in gold armor and fully enclosed helms. They were floating down a stone corridor, but I could see through them as if they were illusions. They were all armed, one with a sword, the other two with halberds. When Claire spoke, I let monocle drop back into my hand.

"So, what are you saying, Daniel?" Claire glanced at Mark as he opened his eyes. Disappointment spread across his face as he looked around the room.

"Maybe Kern was telling the truth. What if he linked to another consciousness in some other plane of reality when he created Lars and Lars took over? Kern could be trapped here like the rest of us." My voice trailed as I stared at the closed door.

"Are you saying that Lars is somehow behind all this? That he teleported us here by magic and is now pulling our strings?" Mark's voice verged on losing control again. "He's a character in a game, Baird. He's not real."

"If he can use magic," Marshall asked, "why doesn't he just blast us with some spell?"

"He's an Illusionist, right?" I tried not to respond to Mark's emotion. "To be effective, he has to use spells we're familiar with. So he chose spells from the Sorcery cards. Not just any cards, but the cards each of us had seen tonight. We know the Shadow Maze was on the table. Mark, you said the stuff here in the room was in your hand. Marshall, you were watching over his shoulder. They were there, right?"

Marshall nodded. Mark's face reddened at being challenged.

"Claire, I saw you sneaking peaks at Kern's hand from the couch after he thought you were asleep. What did he have?"

"All I saw was a Raging Shadow and the Phantom Warriors."

"The Raging Shadow looks a lot like what attacked earlier. Mark, take a look through the monocle and tell me what you see." I held it out to him.

"Baird, you're as crazy as Sumner."

"Just look." I gestured with the lens.

Cautiously, Mark accepted the monocle. He carefully put it over one eye as though it might blind him, squinting to hold it in place. "It looks like the Phantom Warriors. Except one of their swords is dripping blood, like it just killed something." Mark sounded distant again.

"May I?" Claire asked, her hand outstretched. Mark seemed distracted as he handed her the wire-bound lens. "There's something on the floor behind them. It might be Kern." Claire pulled the monocle away from her eye.

Mark pressed the bandage against his arm. "But none of this is real. Magic doesn't exist."

"All I'm saying is that this is more real than any dream and we can't change it even though we are aware of it. But it operates just like Sorcery."

"So instead of trying to change it, maybe if we refuse to believe..." Claire's voice trailed as her gaze fell upon the two charms on the table.

"If the Eye of Osiris works," I finished, "why not them too,"

"It's worth a try," Claire said, motioning for Marshall to lend her his sword. "If the Eye works the same as in the game, those warriors will be headed here next. You know what they can do firsthand, Mark."

The blood returned to Mark's face. "If one of those can get me out of this nightmare, I'll try it."

"If it operates by the rules, you can only try it in combat. You must believe the Warriors can't harm you," Claire reminded him while cutting the bloody edges off her shirt with Diabolical Defender. "You can't defend yourself in any way. Even a twitch says you believe they're real."

"I know how to disbelieve, Claire."

"You forgot during the last game with Sebastian. If you mess it up this time, it will be a lot more serious than losing a character." Claire dropped the bloody rag that used to be her shirttails to the floor. "If that's settled, let's go."

The three of us stared at her.

"Go where?" I thought I knew, but would rather ask.

"Kern's not safe out there alone."

"If those charms don't work," Marshall protested, "we're safer here. With these swords, two of us can defend that door for a long time. In the hall we'd have to guard both front and back."

"Kern may need help." She passed Marshall back his sword.

"He's beyond our help now," Marshall muttered.

"I'm not sure it was him I saw in the Eye." Claire ignored his intended meaning. "If it was, he may still be alive. If not, five of us are stronger than four."

Reluctantly, Marshall agreed. I grabbed a torch from the wall, and tucked the Eye of Osiris under one arm. Claire handed the black charm to Mark, keeping the white one herself. Claire and I followed Marshall into the hall with Mark trailing behind.

...

We roamed the halls for moments or hours. No changes marked the passage of time. The torch never burned lower, nor did its flames flicker even slightly in the breeze created by our walking. The corridors were constructed from the same gray stones as the room with little variation in size or texture. The only change I noted was in the length each segment of hallway and the number of side passages before the next turn. At each junction, Claire called out which way as though she knew exactly where she was headed. I tried to find a pattern to her choices. After a while I gave up.

Initially we talked. Marshall reflected on how that he'd never thought taking fencing in college would come in handy. I quipped with Claire about her new fashion, and how she'd have to cut all her shirts that high once we got out. Marshall agreed with a slow smile. Occasionally, I checked the Eye, reporting to the others that the Warriors still patrolled the halls. Mark mostly kept quiet. He fell farther behind with each report as he stopped to look back, alternately fingering the black charm, rubbing around his bandage and testing the weight of Steel Justice. His silence turned virulent, infecting the rest of us.

Long after the last of our conversation died, Mark called out. As the three of us turned, we saw the Warriors silently advancing behind us, their gold armor flashing brilliantly in the torchlight. Blood seemed to ooze and drip from their weapons. I blinked several times, not sure it had been there all along. Marshall advanced between Claire and I, bracing for their attack, urging Mark back to join him. I passed the Eye to Claire and adjusted my grip on the torch, ready to use it as a weapon if necessary. Claire clutched the white charm in one hand while shielding the Eye with the other.

Mark just stared at the Warriors, the tip his sword resting on the ground, the black charm clutched to his chest like a crucifix. As the lead Warrior descended upon him, Mark muttered to the charm as if trying to convince it to work. Or trying to convince himself it would. The lead Warrior lunged. Mark flinched, his bandaged arm just starting up to shield his face while his good hand raised Steel Justice a fraction. The sword's tip had barely cleared the floor when the Warrior's sword plunged into Mark's chest. He crumpled to floor, his sword clattering to the stone beside him. The black charm clinked twice as it bounced off the slate and rolled back toward us.

The Warrior loomed over Mark's body, its two companions flanking it, all three peering down as if to ensure Mark would remain dead. After a slight pause, Marshall charged with a fiery roar that screamed for blood to quench it. The Warriors remained statuesque until Marshall drew his sword over his head with both hands, then they turned and fled with Marshall in close in pursuit but falling behind even as they rounded the corner.

Claire had started forward with Marshall. She stopped with a sharp breath and grabbed my arm as she pointed to Mark, one hand raised to her mouth. "My God, Daniel. It wasn't Kern I saw, it was Mark."

I pulled my arm free and ran to where he lay. There was no blood on the floor, no cut on his body. His face was a pale twist of terror. He was as cold the floor stone I leaned upon when I touched him. Colder. I found no pulse or heartbeat, heard or felt no breath. Before I could think of what do next, Marshall rounded the corner, winded and alone.

He slowed then stopped when I looked up from bending over Mark. "Is he dead?"

I could only look at Claire, who nodded without looking up.

Marshall dropped to his knees beside me. He reached for Mark's eyelids, attempting to close them with his fingers. But each time he tried, they snapped open as though Mark's eyes remained unconvinced that the object of their terror had fled. With each attempt more of Marshall's tears wet Mark's shirt.

For several minutes we all stared at the Mark's body in disbelief, each of us looking away any time our eyes wandered and met.

Claire broke the silence. "We need to go."

"Go?" I looked at Claire. "Go where?"

"We need to keep looking for Kern, Daniel. I know way back to the room. Mark will be safe there."

I looked to Marshall, hoping he could explain what she meant.

"I'll carry him, Daniel." Marshall nodded, gently squeezing my shoulder. "You get his sword."

As I reached for the sword, I saw black charm at my feet, the Death Charm. I picked it up between a finger and thumb and held it as far out as possible, not wanting its deadly magic rub off on me as it had on Mark.

"What about this?"

Marshall wanted to throw it away. Claire took it, saying we still might need it. Marshall looked disgusted as he cradled Mark's body.

With Marshall's sword in her right hand and the torch in her left, Claire led. I followed.

Claire paused at passages on several occasions, then continued resolutely after a moment's reflection. Not once did she backtrack, or even hesitate when she started in a particular direction. She stopped frequently so Marshall could rest. After a while, I offered to carry Mark, though I knew I couldn't match Marshall's strength. He just shook his head, saying Mark wasn't heavy. After a longer eternity than before, we found the rune-covered door recessed within one of the side passages.

Marshall laid Mark on the table, arranging him so he looked less horrified, more accepting that his terror had truly fled. More at peace than the three of us.

"What now?" I looked to Claire, still unready to make my own decisions.

"Go back and look for Kern." She sounded as though it were obvious.

Uncertain, I looked to Marshall. He nodded gravely without looking up.

Claire asked without inflection, "Would you rather wait here?"

"Isn't it safer here now that only one of us can use a sword?"

"I took fencing in college too, Daniel. But, I still don't think swinging a sword will get us out of here."

"You still don't believe this is real, do you Claire?" Marshall asked after a moment.

"It's only as real as we make it. But something is feeding us what we see and feel. When we find out what that something is," Claire clutched the two charms in one hand, "these will get us back to where we can use that knowledge. All of us."

"If this isn't real," I asked, "why do you need those?"

"Because my mind isn't strong enough to ignore what it sees on its own." Claire replied.

"I just laid out my best friend." Marshall's voice quavered. "He tried disbelieving, just like you told him. It didn't work."

"Marshall, he flinched." Claire's tone was gentle. "I saw him. I'm sorry."

When I nodded, Marshall looked away as the tears pooled beneath his eyes until they looked ready to overflow again.

"Maybe we do agree on something, Claire." Marshall sounded stronger as he turned back, more resolved. "We both want to find Kern. You want to run back with him to where you think you're safe. I want to find out if he killed Mark. If he did, I'll make sure he won't kill anyone again."

Marshall turned away and knelt before the table, laying Steel Justice on the floor before him. Claire and I waited quietly while he whispered a prayer over our dead friend.

Together, we set out in search of Kern a second time. Before we left, I checked the Eye, but saw nothing more than the room in front of me, as though the most pressing threat was the difference in our opinions. As we left, Marshall looked over his shoulder, as if he knew he wouldn't see Mark again.

Marshall led the way through the maze behind the edge of Steel Justice with Claire again calling directions. Reluctantly, she had agreed to guard our back with the Diabolical Defender. Claire looked more comfortable with a sword than Marshall had in accepting the Death Charm she had forced upon him as a part of the bargain. She told me the Life Charm could extract all of us, but that Marshall could only save himself if he chose to. And she didn't intend to wait for him to decide. Marshall maintained he would eliminate the threat, then worry about escape. They placed me between them, each believing they could protect me in ways I couldn't or wouldn't protect myself. I felt caught between the poles of their solutions, drawn to both in different ways but unable to decide, paralyzed by the force of their convictions.

This time there was no conversation, not even a syllable of camaraderie, only the sound of my shoes occasionally scuffing across the floor. Claire had wanted to call Kern's name, but Marshall overruled her believing it would attract more attention than we could handle.

As we searched, we wrapped ourselves in silence, each for a different reason. Marshall seemed to use the silence as a tool, a stone to scrape along his anger, honing it to a razor edge against his silent scream for vengeance. Claire appeared to armor herself within the silence, shielding herself against Marshall's rage, deflecting any deviation from her stated purpose of getting us all home. To me the silence was a blanket, insulation against the cold emotions threatening to drive me deeper into shock and revulsion. The shock of seeing one friend cut down by the possible betrayal of another. The revulsion of feeling a need for vengeance, for blood to cleanse the wound Mark's death had opened within me. Kern's blood. The weight of that idea dragged at my feet, nearly causing them to stumble until Claire walked beside me, her arm around my shoulder offering the support I needed. My body leaned closer to her warmth, my heart deciding what my mind could not.

After endless hours, we came to a place Claire thought was the center of the maze. She answered my bewildered look by explaining she had once seen the map Kern had drawn of this imaginary place, a map he would use to guide us where he wanted in his game. We stood in place of our characters, our alter egos who would have thrived in this environment. As I watched Marshall for a moment, he seemed spellbound by the role of protector he had assumed, as though he had uncovered a meaning, a purpose to his life and resolved to seize it, afraid it might vanish and leave him searching again. Claire neither flourished nor wilted under these conditions. Her resolve was for doing only what was necessary before returning to a quiet life of small luxuries where she could view such events with the detached indifference of a distant spectator, rather than with the close focus of an unwilling participant. My only goal was to survive the experience, to live never to see another friend die in violence.

Around the next corner we found Kern huddled in a dead-end corridor, gibbering. Claire rushed forward, slipping past Marshall, shielding Kern with her body. I laid the torch and the Eye to one side as I crouched beside her. She tried to calm Kern, only to hear the line between fantasy and reality blurred by insanity's errant hand playing across the surface of his mind. Kern kept repeating that it wasn't his fault, that he thought he could control him. Disgusted, Marshall turned away, thoughts of vengeance dispelled by Kern's pitiful ramblings.

"No one controls me now," a voice not quite Kern's stated from behind us. I turned to find another version of Kern, different from the one I was accustomed to. He exuded the same confidence but with more substance behind it.

"You lied to me, Lars." Kern became more lucid. "You promised no one would get hurt."

"Illusions are just elaborate lies, Kern. Your friend bet his life against the illusions he longed to believe were real, just as you did. Sometimes the lie is its own reward, just for the impressions it creates or the actions it drives. In this case, my reward was more substantial." His arm flowed from his body as he uncurled his hand palm up. A Sorcery card turned in the air above it.

Illusionary Life.

Rage gurgled from Marshall's throat as he stared at the spinning card. The veins stood out from his neck and head until I thought one of them would surely burst, leaving the stain of another friend's blood to be washed from by mind. His shoulders shook, screaming of violence losing containment before he struck Lars with a massive blow. Steel Justice rang off the wall, wisps of Lars ephemeral body trailing behind, the force of the impact leaving Marshall momentarily stunned.

"You can't kill me now," Lars laughed. "I am a part of Kern, a fantasy he created but won't admit is real. This card anchors my reality, gives me life in this barren place as long as he possesses it, regardless of what you do. From here, I can reach out and grasp your dreams until I find a way to enter a world with more substance."

Lars became an apparition speeding past Marshall before embracing Kern and dissolving into him on contact. The card fluttered to the floor where Lars had stood.

Recovering, Marshall whirled back toward Kern, sweeping Claire aside with one arm, his motives mirroring the sword in his hand as it transformed from Steel Justice into Blind Vengeance. Kern ducked under another of Marshall's savage blows, clambering on all fours before fleeing past me, snatching up the card from the floor as he passed. Marshall sprinted after him. Before Claire and I could follow, the Phantom Warriors appeared in front of us, their weapons gleaming, the low torchlight making them look more demonic but somehow less real. I could see that Kern had fallen a few yards beyond them and was now scrambling backwards, pushing off the stones with his feet, his hands propping him up behind. Marshall advanced slowly, sword low and to one side. I stepped forward, pleading for Marshall to stop. My pleas did not pierce his lust for Kern's blood.

I looked to Claire. Her eyes were on the Warriors as she drew Diabolical Defender with a knowing smile. Kneeling, she laid it at her feet while I stared dumbfounded. The Warriors continued advancing, weapons now dripping blood. Claire drew the white charm from her shirt pocket, holding it out as if for the Warriors to inspect. Reaching for my hand with hers, she pressed the charm between them and lifted her arms, her right drawing my left up with it. The Warriors were nearly within range of their weapons. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the warmth spreading from Claire's hand.

I opened my eyes a final time. Marshall still stalked his prey. Kern, his back pressed into a corner clutched his hands to his chest, looking terrified, uncertain of what he had done to provoke such hatred. Unable to watch, I looked down. Diabolical Defender lay less than a foot away. Gently pulling Claire down with me, careful not to release the charm between our hands, I picked up the sword. The balance was striking, as though the Diabolical Defender was an extension of my hand awaiting my command to become a blur, an invincible aura of steel before me. I suppressed the urge as I looked up at Claire, her eyes fearing the consequence of my next action for both of us. I let my arm fall, the weight of the sword carrying it behind me. Then I swept my arm forward, releasing the sword as it swung up in front of me. It arced over the Warriors and skittered along the floor past Marshall, coming to rest against the wall by Kern's side with a clang. He lunged for it and raised it as a shield against Marshall's rage.

One of the Phantom Warriors drew back his halberd and lunged toward me. I closed my eyes again, anticipating the blow that would either release me from this nightmare or consign me to another. The warmth spread from my hand to my chest and through the rest of my body. I felt detached, like a child who believes nothing can harm him, or knows no better. I felt a tug as the blade cut through my shirt, followed by a sharp prick and a cold tingle as it pierced my body. And then I was free.

...

I awoke with my head on a table. Claire's game table. I squinted against the light coming through the window. Mark was slumped back in his chair, mouth hanging open, eyes wide with terror. Marshall's head rested on his crossed arms facing me, his eyes still rhythmically engaged in the dream. Kern was nowhere in sight. Claire stirred behind me. I turned in time to wrap my arms around her as she flew into them. We sobbed and smiled, clutching each other to prove we had both emerged alive.

The police came with the ambulance that took Marshall. He was breathing, but did not awaken with our cautious attempts. His continuous dreaming and coma-like unresponsiveness baffled the doctors. After a day of MRI's only deepened their confusion, they pressed Claire and I for answers, then waited when we had nothing new to offer.

A different ambulance took Mark's body. The only wounds they found were the claw marks on his forearm and the graze of a bite, all lightly scabbed over, the blood dried where it had run down his arm and dripped onto the carpet. The autopsy determined that those wounds had not killed him; rather his heart had burst, some defect having weakened a slice of one wall.

The police questioned Claire and me for hours, both at the house and at the station. The consistency of our stories frustrated them, though they had given us no time to compare experiences. They searched Claire's house for the hidden truth they believed existed. Kern's Illusionist deck was still on the table, played halfway through. His backpack was open by the chair, his keys in the outer pocket, his car still parked outside. The only things missing were Kern and Mark's Illusionary Life. The police took the mead to test for illicit herbs and drugs. They found only honey mixed with water, alcohol and dead yeast. Our blood tested negative for each substance they suspected, as did Marshall's, and Mark's. Nothing remained to explain Marshall's condition. Nothing but our story, a truth they chose to disbelieve.

Mark's family buried him that Wednesday. Claire and I heard nothing of the ceremony from across the street, as close as the family would allow us without calling the police. She and I hadn't spoken much since our release. After days alone I had begun to question the reality of our experience as its razor edge had dulled. When I saw Mark's coffin lowered into the ground, it became sharp again. I stared along the row of stones, wondering if Marshall would end up marked by one of them because of my actions.

The next day Marshall regained consciousness and spent another two confirming our story. When Claire and I went to see him, he wouldn't see us, or rather me. Claire stayed. I returned to the cemetery, seeking absolution from Mark's grave. I found none, only the silent judgement of the stone with his name carved into it.

Two hours later, Claire joined me. After standing silently for a several minutes, she turned to me. "He wanted to know why you saved him, after what he did to Mark."

I stared at fresh dirt, phrasing my answer in my head. "When we were still in the room where Mark was attacked and I knocked the Eye of Osiris off the table, you dove for it. Why?"

"Something about the way it looked at me as it went over the edge, like it recognized that whatever existence it had would end the instant it touched the floor, and feared what came next. There was an intelligence behind that eye pleading for me to intervene."

I nodded. "Kern had that same look as Marshall stalked him. I couldn't watch another friend die, regardless of what he might have done."

"Marshall only wanted to kill Lars."

"Marshall was blind for vengeance, Claire. You saw the way he looked at Kern. It was murderous." I shivered, hoping that look would never be directed at me.

"He didn't kill him, Daniel."

"You mean Lars?"

Claire shook her head. "Lars is dead. Marshall gave me this to prove it."

Claire handed me a Sorcery card. The laminate on the back had worn through revealing the now dirty white of the cardboard beneath. The front had a smudge starting in the center of the picture and ending in a torn and ragged edge. At the bottom the quote was spattered with dried droplets blood.

Mark's Illusionary Life.

It took a moment for the meaning of what Claire said before to sink in. "You're saying Kern's alive?"

She nodded gravely, "But he wouldn't be without your help. If you hadn't thrown him the sword." Her voice trailed.

"Where is he?"

"Marshall left him."

"In the maze? Alone?"

Claire nodded again.

"My God, Claire, that's worse than death."

Claire shrugged. "Marshall thought it was justice. For Mark."

"Is that what you think?"

"I think Kern stopped being responsible for what happened the moment his mind split and formed Lars. The rest of the nightmare we summoned from within ourselves, together." Claire stared at Mark's grave a moment, then turned and walked down the row, the grass crunching softly beneath her feet.

I weighed the flimsy card in my hand against the granite marker at my feet, all that remained of two lives, one real, the other illusory. The card's text a fitting memorial to both.

What is life? A madness. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a story. And the greatest good is little enough: for all life is a dream, and dreams themselves are only dreams.

Pedro Calderon de la Barca

I never should have thrown Kern the sword, asking him to pay a price I was unwilling to meet myself. In my desperation to save him, I had damned us both forever.

The focus is always sharp in the past, the farther back, the sharper. It dulls as I draw closer to the present until it becomes unclear, like my future. Each night I wake to hear Kern, still trapped within the dream, like me, screaming for release.


© 2009 Edward P. Morgan III