Magician’s End Read Free

turn and twist of our existence.’
    The others nodded slowly. Pug said, ‘Well, then, guide. What should we call you?’
    ‘Guide serves well enough,’ he answered.
    ‘Where exactly are we?’ asked Magnus.
    ‘The world of Kolgen.’ Guide pointed to the south. ‘Once a majestic ocean lapped these shores, now there is only blight and desolation.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Pug.
    ‘Walk, for we have a long journey if you are ever to return home,’ said the likeness of Macros.
    ‘Before we begin,’ said Miranda, ‘can you explain how you resemble my father down to the tiniest detail?’
    Guide paused, and smiled exactly as the now-dead Black Sorcerer had in life. ‘Certainly,’ he said with another pause, again exactly as Macros would have. ‘We exist in a realm of energy, we who serve the One. We are forever in the Bliss, part of the One until we are needed and we are then given form and substance, given an identity commensurate with our purpose; to ensure efficiency, all memories of previous service in that role are returned. So, currently, I think of myself as “I”, a single entity, but that will dissipate when I rejoin the One in the Bliss.
    ‘I am only an abstraction of energy, a being of light and heat if you will, a thing of mind alone. Hence, the One gives me the ability to … suggest to your mortal minds any shape and quality suitable to sustain communications.’
    ‘But we are not mortal,’ said Nakor, indicating Miranda and himself.
    ‘You are more mortal than you might guess,’ returned Guide, ‘for it is of the mind I speak, and while your fundamental being is demonic, your minds are human, more so each day. Moreover, your demonic bodies are things of flux energy, imperfect imitations of beings of the higher plane.
    ‘And you are becoming that which you appear to me, with limits, of course. You would never mate with humans and produce offspring, nor would you be subject to their illnesses and injuries, and those who battle demon-kind can still destroy you, returning your essence to the Fifth Circle.’ He lowered his voice and seemed to be attempting kindness. ‘Nor do you have a mortal soul. Those beings whose memories you possess have travelled on to the place where they have been judged and are now on their path to the next state of existence, or have returned to the Wheel of Life for another turn.
    ‘In short, you will never truly be Miranda and Nakor. But you’re as close as any being will ever get.’
    Turning, he began to walk away. ‘Please, we must travel far and while time here is not measured as it is in the mortal realm, it is still passing and the longer you are away from Midkemia, the more the One’s Adversary stands to gain.’
    Pug and the others fell in next to Guide and Pug said, ‘Then I believe you had best tell us in your own fashion what it is we need to know, but could you begin with why we are here?’
    ‘That’s the simple part,’ said Guide. ‘You fell into a trap. The Adversary has been waiting a very long time to rid Midkemia of the four of you. To do it in one moment, that approaches genius.’
    ‘This Adversary you speak of,’ said Nakor. ‘Who or what is it?’
    The guide paused. ‘It will be easier if we wait on questions until I finish explaining to you what has befallen you. You are vital to what transpires, but still just a tiny part of the whole. To leap to attempting the larger picture might confuse.
    ‘You are stranded in a reality that is not your own, and have no easy means of returning. You are, not to put too fine a point on it, marooned here.’
    He kept walking and as the four companions glanced at one another, they hurried to keep up with his brisk pace. Pug overtook him in three strides and said, ‘If we are marooned, where are we going?’
    ‘To find one who may facilitate your release from this place.’
    ‘But I thought you said this world was naught but blight and desolation?’
    In a perfect duplication of