Volume One: The Road Out
Chapter Four
Verse Five: The Golden Prince
Special Agent Saul Bridger sat at a
table of a chic too white coffee shop looking out the window sipping
an espresso. He decided that the truth was not within his reach,
perhaps it was out there, somewhere. But it wasn't within his reach.
A Kidnapping case taxed everyone on it. The longer the victim
remained at large, the lower the chances of find that victim alive.
Bridger cursed himself silently for not taking the two suspects into
custody immediately. Night and Day, he shook his head at the names,
had made a run for it and then everything had gone nuts. Another
agency had set up a sting operation and Bridger could not find out
which agency or under whose authority. Bridger couldn't get access to
the suspect's home or the victim's home either now. His persistence
had resulted in him being placed on administrative leave, with pay,
and told to take a vacation and forget about the case.
Bridger had tried, he'd really tried.
But then he read in the paper that one Amy Welcher had been reported
missing by her mother. The news report hadn't mentioned that Amy
Welcher was the long time girl friend of one Harley Night, one of two
primary suspects in the Salt kidnapping case. Later news reports
indicated that Night and Day were now wanted in connection with the
murder of federal officers, apparently the officers had been killed
with an axe. And yet, when Bridger called his friends in various
federal agencies, nobody seemed to be able to find out who
investigating the kidnapping and nobody had a record of federal
agents murdered with an axe. Bridger had tried calling the news
channel and was met with lawyers and doublespeak, far more resistance
than Bridger had expected for a story where the news report seemed to
have come straight from an official agency statement.
The whole affair left Bridger confused,
with a bad taste in his mouth. He could taste a cover up, and it
tasted like aspartame and MSG. Bridger knew that he should ignore
this. The whole sequence might as well have been written on a film
noir script. He was setting himself up to the be rebel agent on the
run from his own organization. He could see the liner notes alluding
to government cover ups and conspiracies. Bridger wiped his mouth
instinctively.
"It's like a sausage. If you want
to keep enjoying something, don't find out what goes into it."
He said to himself, "I guess I'm about to stop enjoying my job.
But really, what else am I going to do? Two kids have been kidnapped
and taken who knows where. They're probably already dead, but I have
to keep looking until I find a kid or a corpse."
He paused, and then finished his
espresso.
"Mother Mary, I hope they're still
alive."
* * *
"I'm dead," Fitzroy said to
nobody in particular as looked around at timber walls rising around
him in all directions. Fitzroy noted that he seemed to be in some
sort of walled village, within the the walls were earth sheltered
buildings with small garden plots in front of them. The people moving
around were dressed in a manner that seemed to draw upon elements of
iron age Pre-Roman European peoples, East Asian herding peoples and
Native American peoples. What had led Fitzroy to pre-declare himself
deceased were the people at the gates leading in and out of the
village. The gatekeepers were dressed in tabards and chain mail of
medieval Crusader knights, with mostly white tabards.
"Who are you? And what are you
doing in here?"
Fitzroy turned and found himself
looking at a growing crowd of villagers. A Middle aged woman was
standing in front and when she spoke again, Fitzroy realized she had
been the one to speak before.
"What manner of witch or wizard
are you in these clothes? Why are you here? What do you want?"
"I'd love to answer you, because
then maybe you'd help. I'm just not sure how to answer the questions,
because things have gone very weird lately. I mean my father murdered
my mother for some sort of ritual. A guy calling himself the
Witchdoctor tells my sister and I to run, find the Dreamer and the
Walker, because apparently they can help. We find them, but that
doesn't help, because they don't know much more than us. So we're
running from these men in black and white suits. Then we're also
running from this black hound thing. I managed to scare the hound
off, but because of that, I can't stay focused. I think I passed out.
Now I'm here."
The crowd was silent.
"I'm dead," Fitzroy said to
himself, "I said the wrong thing, you're going to kill me."
Finally the woman in front spoke, "You
are Mordred, but you have chosen to become the Kudavbin King."
"I don't know what you mean,"
Fitzroy said carefully and slowly, "My name is Fitzroy. Salt.
I'm on the run with my sister and two guys named Marion and Harley
who are apparently the Dreamer and the Walker. I don't know anything
else, because nobody has told me anything else."
"You are the Kudavbin King, your
sister is the Last Princess. Your sister is destined to lead the
tribes back to freedom, to the old ways. You are destined to kill
your father and end his reign of terror as the Locust King."
Fitzroy shook his head, "I really
am dead," he said.
* * *
"Please be alive. Please be
alive." Amy opened her hands and a tiny little blue butterfly
fluttered into the sky. She watched it go in stunned silence.
"I did it. It's alive. I did it!
let's see the freak do something like that! Hah!" She said and
danced a little dance.
Grub clapped quietly, "Well done.
You've created something new in the story. Remember, if you're going
to work with me as a wizard, that wizards are agitators and saboteurs
and con men."
"Con artists, thank you very much.
Nobody is going to mistake me for a man." Amy interrupted.
"Con artists, that works too."
Grub smiled. "The point is that we're like graffiti artists or
comedians, we catch people off guard with misdirection and sleight of
hand, and then hit them with magic where they're exposed."
"That sounds more like a stage
magician." Amy said, still watching the butterfly.
"There's being a wizard and then
there is being a magician. Being a wizard means magic and that means
story. Being magician means misdirection and that means sleight of
hand and illusion. Stage magic. All good magicians are wizards and
all good wizards are magicians."
"Okay, fine. But we're still
sitting on a park bench conjuring butterflies. And as amazing as that
is, and it's pretty darned amazing, we still aren't doing anything to
save my Harley. He might even be dead already."
"Little Miss, I don't want to take
you into battle unable to protect yourself. The story does that to
the main characters all the time these days, because the Locust King
is in control of the story. The past is littered with the dead bodies
of untrained characters: First Mothers who never raised anyone, First
Heroes who did without ever being heroic, Dreamers and Walkers whose
dreams and walks were cut very very short, Kudavbin Kings who mere
could have been- but weren't. I am sending my apprentice into the
fire without protection. And your boy is alive, I'd have felt the
string snap if one of the storytellers were dead."
"You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be from within
the story. It's possible he's dead and somebody masked his death from
me, but very unlikely. I'd bet real money that your boy's alive."
"Please be alive." Amy said
quietly.
