by K. G. McAbee

Chapter 1

Matthias Southers reached long arms over his head and stretched his cramped muscles, yawned and combed fingers through his spiky black hair. His tall lanky runner's body was draped in rumpled sweats a few shades darker than his bright blue eyes and his fingers were stained with various shades of ink. On the battered library table before him, a litter of books and papers spilled out of a faded cracked briefcase, with a large box of tissues resting beside it.

"Damn," Matt muttered as he caught a glimpse of his ancient wristwatch. He gave a guilty wince at the sound of his voice and looked around to see whom he might have offended.

No one sat at any of the other tables adjoining his own. No one lingered at the shelves receding into the distance on either side of the central open study area.

No wonder, Matt thought with a contrite grin. It's almost closing time.

At the checkout desk across the room, a few remaining students rustled papers and shifted books as they murmured in subdued tones about incipient term papers and the best places to get a burger, this time of night. An elderly gentleman, his thick white hair gleaming like a snow bank in the fluorescent lighting, gave a loud sigh as he returned a newspaper to the rack and shook his head at the students and their chatter. The young woman at the checkout desk straightened paraphernalia on her desk: her cardboard box of pens, the 'due by' stamps, the calendar. Her mind had obviously already departed for home. She gave a half-hearted wave as the students left in a group, smiled when the old man lifted his battered cap to her in outmoded courtesy as he shuffled out behind them.

Then she gave a glance towards Matt and a questioning shrug.

Matt stuffed papers into folders, crammed pens and pencils into the briefcase and closed books on markers which ranged from ragged ticket stubs to bits of tissue to a piece of cardboard with the word Tide still visible.

The books were as eclectic as the bookmarks: The Golden Bough snuggled up in comfort against Malleus Malificarum, while Burton's Book of the Sword juxtaposed beside Fox's Christian Martyrs--one author notoriously freethinking, the other as famously not. Matt had received odd looks on his first visit to the library, when he had asked for a selection of their books on witchcraft and sorcery. He had had to carefully explain his projected thesis on the origins of alchemy and magic, and present his credentials as a professor of Medieval Literature, before those odd looks had turned to smiles.

He often wondered why dabblers in necromancy were ostracized, while teachers had only to present their thesis subjects to be able to study anything at all.

Snapping the clasp on his briefcase, Matt scooped up the reserved books to take to the desk, dropped them again to grab a tissue and blow his nose.

"Damn allergies," he murmured.

"Psssst!"

Matt looked around. There was no one near him in the central study area crowded with tables and individual desks.

He peered behind the stack of books closest to him.

Nope. Still no one.

Shrugging, Matt grabbed his books and struggled toward the checkout desk, the unwieldy pile near to toppling from his arms, his briefcase dangling from one long nail-bitten finger.

"Hi, Professor Southers," yawned the young woman at the desk. "Get a lot done tonight?" She took the books from him just before he dropped them and slid them onto a cart, then steered it into a glass-walled room behind her, slamming the door with the decision born of relief.

"Not as much as I would like, Alicia, but when do I ever?" Matt replied, scribbling his name on a reserve card for the next evening.

"Yeah, you and me both," she agreed, shaking her head. "See you tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," Matt muttered to himself as he tried to remember what tomorrow was. Thursday? Wednesday?

"Neat. Shakespeare, right?" Alicia asked, her tone almost certain, but not quite.

Matt's face was solemn. "Been reading again?" he accused in a teasing tone, then sniffed violently and grabbed for a tissue.

Alicia blushed a violent red.

"Nah," she admitted with a shake of her blonde ponytail. "Cliff notes. We had a test last week and I don't have much time for reading, what with working and cheerleading and Tommy and all, so..." punctuated by a shrug.

Matthew shook his head in reproof.

"This younger generation," he chided, his tone amused. "Alicia, if you don't mind my saying so, I really think--"

Ignoring him in the most polite possible fashion, Alicia checked the lock to the reserve room door and shoved the remaining books in another cart for replacement on the shelves. Gathering up her purse and a massive key ring, she headed for the front door.

"Keys," said Matt as the clink of metal against metal rang a bell in his head. He rummaged in his briefcase. "I know I had keys when I came in."

He yanked out four notebooks from the briefcase and placed them on the desk, arranged a company of pens and placed pencils, ragged with teeth marks, beside them, followed by a half-wrapped sandwich and an apple with a bite taken out of it. A snowy profusion of papers and tissues rose in dangerous drifts to the top of the case as he slid them aside, searching for his key ring.

Alicia called from the front door, "I'll just go ahead and lock up, okay, Professor Southers? You can pull the door to when you find them. Goodnight."

She was used to Matt and his key problem. It was not uncommon for him to spend several minutes looking for them every night, and it wouldn't be the first time he'd locked up for her. She flicked a row of light switches beside the door, leaving just the last one in its upright position.

Matt waved a hand distractedly in her direction as he shut his briefcase. Leaving it on the desk guarding his paperwork, he ambled back to the table where he had been reading, to look under and around it. Experience told him the missing keys were likely to be there.

"Sir?"

A man stood between the stacks, just beyond the dim circle of light left by the single fixture still burning near the front door.

Matt looked up, startled to find someone still in the library.

The figure was just visible as an outline in the dimness. Matt could discern no features, but for a brief instant, he was almost sure he could see green eyes gleaming in the near-darkness. He shook his head, blinked his own eyes hard, and then looked again.

Nothing but a faint shape, in the form of a small but stocky man.

Then why did he feel he could almost see more, feel more than was there, Matt wondered.

"I don't think you're supposed to be here," Matt said with more than a little hesitation. "She's locked up for the night. It's after nine, you know."

He had forgotten all about his keys.

"Could you be searching for these, by any chance?"

The man-shaped shadow held up the missing ring. They glinted in the shadows like lost jewels.

Matt hesitated for a second, that odd feeling still strong within him, then strode forward and reached for the ring of keys. "Thanks," he said as he held out his hand.

The man did not offer them to Matt.

Instead, with a toss of dimly seen fingers, he flipped the ring upward.

Matt was sure he saw the keys glitter as they rose towards the library mezzanine, a scant few feet above his head.

He did not see them come down again.

"Cute," Matt said, his tone dripping sarcasm laced with a tiny bit of fear--ill met in darkness, his mind murmured idly--"but I'm really not in the mood for tricks. If you'll just let me--"

"Tricks?"

The man actually sounds offended.

"I do not take your meaning, sir. Indeed, I do not," huffed the stranger as he stepped out into the bright, in comparison with the shadowy stacks, light of the open area.

"Verene," came another voice from further back in the stacks, "remember why we're here, in the name of the Unnamed."

The man called Verene gave a quick glance over his shoulder, and then turned back to Matt.

"My apologies, sir. Here are your tokens."

With a nimble gesture, Verene plucked the keys from mid-air, and then sketched a bow as he held them out to Matt.

"But," he said, as Matt took them in bewilderment, "I would appreciate a moment of your time."

Matt sighed. Play along, his mind murmured, see what's happening. Either this guy is really good at party tricks, or...

"Okay, it was a good trick," he agreed. "What are you selling?" He fingered the keys for a moment, turning them over in his hand, then put them in a pocket and promptly forgot they were there.

"Just remember, though, we're not supposed to be here after hours," he said with a shrug.

Verene stepped forward. A short stocky figure dressed in dark red from head to toe, he gave the impression he was overflowing with scrupulously suppressed glee. He viewed Matt head-to-toe, rubbing his hands together in what looked like satisfaction, then asked, "Know you aught of swordplay, my lord?"

Matt blinked. What kind of a question is that?

"Well," he replied, uneasy, "I fenced a bit in college. Why?"

Verene glanced over his shoulder, beckoning to his partner still drenched in shadows. A tall man with massive biceps, dressed in leather vest and breeches like a biker, stepped into the circle of light.

Verene beamed up at the newcomer, his swarthy face wreathed in a smile. "You see, Imre? A swordsman, as well. Now will you believe my idea a good one?"

The hulking Imre ignored the smaller man's question and gave a jerky bow in Matt's general direction. "A pleasure to meet you, lord," he intoned. "Pray do not judge us too quickly. We are not charlatans, nor are we here to pilfer nor purloin."

"Then, what do you want?" said Matt, deciding these two were some kind of confidence tricksters. But what could they want with someone like me?

"Why, we wish you to accompany us to another world," said Imre.

"Oh," replied Matt. He sneezed.

* * * *

Somehow, the two of them ended up with Matt in his rusty old rattletrap.

He wasn't quite sure how it came about, but he suspected it had something to do with the one called Verene being persuasive and the one called Imre being huge.

Imre had scooped up Matt's briefcase from the front desk in one massive arm and hustled the other two out before him, pulling the door to behind them with a smash that came near to shaking the brittle wood from its frame.

There was nothing in the deserted parking lot but Matt's old car. A drift of dead leaves had piled close against the driver's side, driven there by the cold November wind. They made a swishing sound as Matt opened the door and raised the seatback, motioning Verene into the back.

"Sorry about the mess," he apologized as Verene clambered in through heaped paper cups and candy wrappers. "I keep meaning to clean it up, but you know how that goes."

"Indeed, lord, I fear neatness is not one of my major traits, either," Verene said from deep within the back seat.

Imre snorted like a wounded wildebeest and slammed the door on the passenger's side with enough force to shake flakes of rust from the liner-less ceiling.

Matt sneezed and scrambled for a tissue. Verene politely handed him one from the box resting beside him.

This is crazy, Matt's mind argued. These two will cut my throat, steal my car and leave me on the side of the road.

Yeah? He argued back. And where would that get them? Police on their trail, and what to show for it? A rust bucket and eight bucks, plus change.

His mind gave up for the moment, but Matt knew the argument was far from over.

* * * *

Matt had never been to the Suds'n'More, but he knew they served beer and that seemed the most important matter to his two new acquaintances.

Maybe I'll get a meal out of them, was his thought.

Maybe more, his mind warned right back.

Although he had never admitted it to himself, Matt was lonely. This was the primary reason for all his mental arguments with himself, the lack of others with whom to discuss things. In September he'd begun his first semester teaching at a new school; heck, his first semester teaching! He missed his friends, he had no family but a sister--and he hadn't had very much beer lately, either. His finances were at an all-time ebb and he had been living off canned soup and Kool-Aid.

He knew he had been lucky to get his job. There weren't many opportunities for a new-minted teacher of literature, with no credentials, no published papers. Sometimes he wished he had listened to his uncle and gone to technical school. At least he could have gotten a really good-paying job.

He slid the car into a free space in front of the cafe and slammed the gearshift into park. It was after nine-thirty. In this sleepy small town that meant there were few places open for business, but the Suds-n-More catered to a lively clientele. It was humming with students from the local community college where Matt taught. They were clustered around several of the tables and packed most of the booths. All seemed to be discussing, at the tops of their voices, classes, instructors and each other. They were as noisy as magpies.

Two truck drivers sat across from each other in one booth, plowing through huge platters of chopped steak and fries drowned with ketchup. Matt shuddered as, like mirror images of each other, they each sopped their rolls in the greasy steak juices and took huge dripping bites.

"There's an empty booth," Matt said, as he spied a party of four get up from their meal and head towards the register. "Let's grab it."

He headed towards the rear of the diner with Verene and Imre in tow. Before they could reach the booth, a trio of football players materialized beside it. They slid onto the patched seats and all three gazed up at Matt with matching sneers.

"Too slow, huh, Teach?" asked one, and the others laughed.

Matt recognized them all from his remedial reading class. None of them could read over a fifth grade level. Not one of them cared. Their only passion was football.

Matt didn't like confrontations. And he certainly didn't want a fight with these bruisers.

"Let's look for another place to sit," he suggested.

Imre stepped forward to the edge of the booth. He grinned down at its inhabitants, reached for the napkin holder--shiny heavy-gauge steel--and held it over the table in one hand. Without the slightest sign of effort, he crushed it to a crumpled mass in one huge fist.

Shreds of paper napkins flew in a mini-whirlwind around the shattered carcass.

Imre opened his fist and the flattened piece of metal, no longer recognizable, fell with a clang to the chipped blue Formica of the tabletop.

"Our table, I believe," said Imre in a pleasant tone.

The three athletes scrambled out of the booth and headed towards another, careful not to look at Imre, Matt or Verene.

Imre swept one arm in a clumsy motion that was almost a bow. "Shall we sit here, lord?" he said with a grin.

Matt grinned back and slid into the booth. Verene sat down with dainty care opposite him, looking like a dwarf next to his towering companion.

A harassed busboy slid to a stop beside them and raked dirty glasses and the demolished napkin holder into a wide plastic container, as red as the ketchup the truckers were enjoying. He swiped a greasy rag half-heartedly over the stained tabletop and departed, to be replaced by a waitress in a uniform that had once been blue but had washed out to a sickly grey. She shuffled menus in front of them and waited with a bored expression, pad in hand, jaw working on a mouthful of gum. Matt could smell spearmint fumes wafting over the table.

Verene held his menu up with a bemused look on his face, turned it over a few times, and said, "I fear, lord, that you must guide us through the delicacies of this establishment. We are strangers here, you see."

Matt took a look at Imre's bulk and at Verene's stocky figure and decided that health concerns were not an issue.

"Three double chili cheese burgers, three orders of cheese fries, and keep the beer coming," he commanded, handing her the menus.

She popped a bubble, scribbled on her pad, and headed for the kitchen.

Hope these guys have money, his mind warned him. Eight bucks, remember?

If they don't, we'll wash dishes, Matt soothed his uneasy mind. It seemed more important to him to feed these two than it did to worry about how they'd pay for the meal.

Besides, these guys didn't look like they were hurting for money. Verene's shirt had to be silk and his vest was a thick rich material Matt didn't recognize. Imre's leathers probably hadn't come cheap, either.

The waitress reappeared with a tray containing three beers, three icy mugs and an intact napkin holder.

"It is really quite simple, my lord," Verene said when the waitress had performed her disappearing act again. He poured a bottle of beer into his mug and chugged it down as if it were water. "We are from another world, and we need you to help us in our confrontation with a great wizard."

Imre seized a bottle, scorned the mug, and poured its contents down his throat. Matt poured his own beer and took a sip, then shrugged and took a gulp, then another. Imre pounded his empty bottle on the scratched tabletop, and the waitress popped up again with three more longnecks clutched in one hand. She gathered up the empties and gave a swipe at the table with a ragged dishcloth, her mouth still working on the gum.

This time Imre deigned to use a mug. He upturned the bottle. Matt watched the foam reach the top of the mug and slither down the side. Imre scooped it up and chugged the beer down, all in a single motion.

Matt opened his mouth to reply to Verene's opening statement when the absurdity of the situation struck him again. Here he was, a minor professor with allergy problems, working at a third-rate community college days, and nights on a book that would probably never be published, and suddenly these guys needed his help against a wizard?

Yeah, right.

Still, they were buying the beer--you hope, the words murmured nastily through his mind--and plenty of it. Might as well play along; see where the punch line was.

"This wizard, he's pretty powerful, huh?" Matt remarked with a casual shrug, as though he met wizards every day. He gave a sniff and reached apologetically for a tissue.

"The most powerful in the history of our world. Perhaps the most powerful to have ever existed in any world, for aught we know," agreed Imre. He slugged back his beer in a couple of gulps, then dug into the plate of cheese fries the waitress slammed before him, in reckless disregard for his cholesterol levels. She shuffled out other plates before Matt and Verene and wordlessly gathered up their empty bottles.

Matt sipped his beer. Was it his second or third? He'd have to be careful not to try to keep up with his new friends. They had clearly had more practice than he had.

"But how can I help you? Aside from a few card tricks, I have no magic abilities to speak of, and even if I did, I certainly wouldn't be in this guy's league. So why ask me for assistance?"

Verene sniffed. "We are hardly here to beg for your magickal assistance, my lord. I, myself, can offer all the support in that direction, which we need." He held up a hand at Imre's incipient interruption. "With, as I was about to remark, the help of some few others, it is true. No, we need quite another sort of help from you." He upturned his glass, set it down empty.

Wherever these guys are from, thought Matt, they certainly can put away the beer.

"Well, I hope it's not my fencing. If there's anything I'm less impressive at than magic, it's probably that," Matt admitted.

Matt was enjoying his meal with them, even if they were crazy. He picked up his hamburger and took a huge bite. The juices ran down his chin and he groped for a napkin.

As usual when he needed a napkin, the tightly stuffed box was so full that only bits and pieces came away in his hand.

"Allow me, lord."

Verene plucked, from thin air, a heavy pale green damask napkin with a gold M embroidered on it in a semi-Gothic script. The napkin had obviously not originated in this greasy spoon. In fact, it was rich and elegant enough to have come from a castle and Matt felt uncomfortable using it to wipe hamburger grease from his chin.

He made a mental note to find out just how Verene did that. Later. For now, he was going to go along with the joke. He hadn't had as much fun in quite a while, not since he had left his hometown to come here to Arkwright to teach Remedial English and Literature.

"So, if it's not magic and it's not fencing, what is it exactly that you want me to do?" he asked again when his mouth was empty. He burped politely into the elaborate napkin.

"A simple task, lord, but one only you can accomplish," Imre said, opening yet another beer. Their waitress had kept them coming in a steady stream, as ordered, popping up in an almost uncanny fashion whenever they needed one. "We want you to pretend to be a dead man."

Matt choked on his beer.

"A dead man?" he sputtered as Verene reached over the table and pounded on his back. "No, really, I'm fine," he said to stop the pounding. "What do you mean, a dead man?"

"A bit more than six of your years ago," Imre said after wetting his throat with another entire mug of beer, "Gremian Brecc arrived at the court of Queen Ffazia, the eleventh of that name. Presenting himself as merely another sorcerer, he in time took over her throne and her army. The queen was killed, the army was disbanded except for a small rebel band led by Commander Hawkmoon, and those of us who were loyal to the royal family were forced away from the capital and into hiding. Since that time, Gremian Brecc has tried to subvert or destroy all his enemies. Indeed, excepting only Verene and my humble self, the commander's small band and some few of the noble houses, no one now stands against him. He has driven all the others back to their own fastnesses in the surrounding mountains or to other lands entirely."

"Typical," said Matt. "Most tales of fantasy must have some sort of all-powerful figure to fight against. The quest motif, the tales of a small band of fighters placed opposite this great evil." He finished his beer and burped again.

"But I still don't see where I come in. Who is this dead man I have to pretend to be?"

He was enjoying this game. It brought home to him just how much he had missed his friends back home and their evenings of cutthroat role-playing games.

"I suppose I have undiscovered powers, and if I go to your world they'll manifest?" Matt said as he reached for his mug.

"Unlikely," said Verene as he nibbled with dainty care at a fry, eyeing its crinkles with ill-concealed fascination. "It has seldom happened that powers not evident in one world will manifest in another. No, we expect nothing so unusual in your case, lord. We wish merely for you to pretend to be your other self."

Verene picked up another fry between two stubby fingers. "If you will enlighten me, lord, how does one arrive at this uncommon shape?"

"Excuse me?" asked Matt in confusion, patting his mouth again with the luxurious napkin. "Oh, the potatoes. A special knife, I think."

"Ah. Indeed." Verene dismissed the potatoes, cleared his throat and said, his tone portentous, "It is common knowledge throughout all the worlds that we reproduce, one to the next, repeating our natures in many ways, reproducing our abilities in some degree. Doubtless, somewhere in this benighted world of yours, there is a great master of the Arts such as myself, a fighter such as Imre here, and even a powerful mage such as Gremian Brecc. Your other self, your image on our world, was killed a short time ago. It was a crushing blow to our cause. We need you to represent him. Just for a short time, you understand, and of course you will be recompensed with great generosity for your trouble," Verene concluded with a gracious sweep of his arm.

Matt was growing dizzier by the minute. Probably the beer, he thought. He hadn't had much lately. The dizziness felt odd. It was not like having a buzz exactly, but different in a way he couldn't quite put his finger on. But he knew it was there.

"Let me recapitulate," Matt said carefully, holding up a long forefinger. "I accompany you to your world. I pretend to be a dead man. I am generously recompensed. And then?"

"Then we return you to your own world, of course," promised Verene.

Imre cleared his throat in warning, his eyes narrowed.

"That is," Verene added hastily, "if we all live through the ordeal."

"Certainly. It would have to be very dangerous," Matt agreed.

"Very dangerous indeed," said Imre, nodding.

Matt was suddenly reminded of a pair of owls. Or a pair of those obnoxious dogs with the springs in their necks, which some tasteful folks put in the back windows of their cars.

"Well," he said, unsuccessfully trying to stifle yet another burp, "that's settled, then. Let's get started."

"You mean, you agree to go?" asked Imre in amazement. "You accept our terms? You recognize the dangers and still wish to accompany us?"

"Sure," said Matt, "why not? I've got nothing else to do this week-end, and only one class tomorrow."

He took a drink from his mug and set it down, empty. A fresh bottle appeared, accompanied by a cloud of spearmint fumes. "Sometimes a good waitress is indistinguishable from magic." He laughed out loud at his own wit.

Verene shot him a questioning look.

Matt said, "Sorry; haven't had beer in a while. Uh, I suppose there's a beautiful woman somewhere in the story? And I fall in love with her, right?"

"Stranger things have happened, to be sure," agreed Verene, eyeing the holes in the saltshaker with ardent curiosity. "I feel I should warn you, lord, that our chances against Gremian Brecc are not good. His powers grow apace and it is quite possible that we may none of us live through the coming confrontation."

"Of course we'll live," Matt scoffed. "That's always a part of the story too. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Eddings' The Worm Ouroborous. Almost any of those derivative fantasy series you pick up these days. Beowulf. It goes on and on. Traditionally, humans have been fascinated by just such stories. So why not become involved in one myself? I should be able to get this done in..."

Matt smiled at the image of himself on a charger, bedecked with flashing armor. It seemed so simple, such an excellent idea, that he wondered why he had never thought of it before. A trip to another world would be a great idea, just the thing to give him a rest before the next semester.

Wait a minute, his mind snarled. What's happening here?

Imre and Verene were becoming dimmer and dimmer across the table, fading in and out.

Too much beer? Or something else? Matt wondered hazily.

He opened his mouth to complete his thought, but forgot exactly what his thought had been. Matt watched in amazement as the surface of the table came towards his nose in extreme slow motion. He focused on a pickle slice left on his plate; saw the seeds in it with great clarity. Next to it, a sodden French fry with a bite taken out of it lay in a pool of greasy ketchup.

His nose itched uncontrollably but he couldn't reach a tissue.

The very last sound he was aware of was the pop and gurgle of another beer being opened and poured into a mug. He heard each tiny bubble rubbing against its mates in the creamy foam, noted the hiss of the escaping carbonation.

His whole body floated away, buoyed up on that sparkling white foam.