understood his father well enough to know Pug was fighting an impulse to reach out and embrace the form of his former wife, to comfort a person who wasn’t really there. Softly he said, ‘I can’t call you Mother.’ He looked her in the eye. ‘But I never understood until now just how difficult this must be for you.’ In what was an impulsive act for the usually stoic magician, he took a step, slipped his arms around the demon in human form and held her closely for a brief moment.
When he stepped away, he saw more tears streaming down the face of the first person in life he had beheld. Powerful emotions tore through him, and he fought back the urge to say more. No matter how much he wished his mother back, alive and before him, it was nothing compared to what his father must feel. He put his hand on Pug’s shoulder and said, ‘We must make the best of a terribly confusing and awkward situation, and if we focus on what is before us, perhaps what is behind us will distance itself enough that we may develop new ways of seeing each other.’
Nakor grinned. ‘That’s very nice, but have you noticed someone is coming towards us?’
All looked in the direction Nakor indicated and saw the landscape was starting to resolve itself. Approaching them was a familiar figure clad in a black robe, wearing sandals bound upon his legs with whipcord, and using a staff as a walking stick. His hair was black, his posture youthful and his stride vigorous, as he had been in his prime.
All four were momentarily stunned and finally Pug put voice to their incredulity. ‘Macros!’
The figure held up his hand. ‘No, though I resemble him, no doubt.’
Miranda and Nakor exchanged glances and the short gambler asked, ‘You have Macros’s memories?’
‘No,’ said the figure.
‘Who are you?’ asked Magnus.
‘I have no name. You may think of me as a guide.’
‘Why do you look like my father?’ asked Miranda.
The guide shrugged slightly, in a perfect mimicry of Macros. ‘That is a mystery, for I am by nature formless in the mortal realm. I can only speculate, but my conclusion is that I appear to be who you expected me to be. I am sent by One whose Will is Action, but I needed to be in a form with which you could converse.’
The four exchanged quick glances, then Nakor laughed. ‘It is true that for most of the last hundred or more years I’ve expected to see that rascal’s hand behind every 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 Macros’s smile, Guide said, ‘This is true, but that doesn’t mean it’s unoccupied.’
Pug considered that for a moment, but decided that among the thousands of questions demanding answers, the meaning of that riddle was one he could wait for.
They forged across the bed of a long-absent sea. As they trudged across the rough channels and gullies, Miranda asked, ‘Why are we walking?’
Guide said, ‘You have a better alternative?’
With an all-too-familiar smug smile, she glanced at Pug, then vanished.
A
