Journeyman: The Force of the Gods: Part I Read Free Page A

above.
    They marched in silence for three or so minutes, and then Eric stopped and held his left arm out, signalling a door like all the others, except for a long gauge running along its length.
    ‘Inside, please,’ said Eric.
    Peter knocked on the door gingerly and stepped through, suddenly feeling like a child at school, sent to the headmaster. Eric didn’t follow, instead closing the door from the outside.
    In the centre of the room was a large, heavy-looking table covered in papers and pens and open books. Not a desk; it didn’t have any drawers or anything like that. Just a table. There were shelves containing more papers and books and other artefacts along one wall, and what looked like cupboards and wardrobes, integrated as a single unit, against the other. At the desk was a well-built man who had a large, round, shaven head, and was wearing a dark blue shirt and black trousers.
    He was reading from two of the papers, comparing them. Without looking up, he addressed Peter. ‘Sit down.’
    Peter found a chair by the wall next to the door and sat on it in silence.
    Nothing else was said for a moment. And then the man at the table looked up. ‘Peter Rutherford.’
    ‘Yes.’
    All of the man’s attention was now evidently occupied by Peter; he was studying him. ‘This is the Guild. But Eric will have told you that.’ He spoke with the rough voice of someone who had spent their entire life as a heavy smoker.
    ‘Yes,’ Peter repeated.
    The man nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘The Guild is a group of special people who, in our way, look after normal people. Even though they mostly don’t realize. What we do is hidden, mostly. Because when we worked openly we were taken advantage of and often made a mockery of as well.’
    Peter looked at him blankly.
    ‘What we do is magic.’
    Peter blinked. As jokes went, that would have rated around one out of ten.
    ‘Magic,’ he repeated. It was difficult keeping the sarcasm from his voice.
    ‘Yes, magic. As in the preternatural, forces invisible.’ The Steward looked impatient. ‘Which brings me to why we’ve kept you here rather than just letting you go.
    ‘We have had time to find out who you are. Eric, who brought you here following your accidental discovery of the duel he was engaged in, believes you have potential as a magician, yourself.’
    ‘Do you honestly expect me to believe this?’
    ‘Yes. I'd go so far as to say that you haven't a choice but to believe it.’ The tone of his voice betrayed no humour. It betrayed no emotion whatsoever.
    To Peter, the whole idea sounded simply preposterous. In fact, he was starting to wonder if he had been drugged and was now hallucinating. He might have gone so far as to think someone was staging all of this, if it hadn't been for knowing rationally that there was nobody to whom he mattered that much, and nobody with these resources available to them. That said, he was still lucid, so surely he can't have been drugged.
    He had to admit, it would be the simplest explanation, and he knew that Occam's razor favours, by default, the simplest explanation.
    So the Steward was right, damn him.
    ‘So,’ Peter began, ‘magic is real... and you think I could do it. Why?’
    ‘Mostly because you stayed alive. The majority of people would have just given up and died long before you simply passed out. That shows strength of will far greater than pretty much any other “man on the street.”
    ‘Okay, magic isn’t just about strength of will. It’s just one of many character traits that are needed in a magician. There’s also huge amounts of patience, personal discipline, and other things like that which you would find out more about along the way, if you decide to accept this offer.’
    Offer, Peter thought. Were they going to… ‘offer me what? Training in magic?’
    The Steward nodded. ‘You would be an asset to us, provided you applied yourself to the training. We know of your own situation, and… well, frankly it