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Author’s Note: This is the original short story that is the genesis of this novel. I wrote it as the final short for a first year fiction writing class while studying at the University of Pittsburgh. I got the idea for the story while walking around the Oakland district of Pittsburgh and wondering what I should write my final short about, and then just started randomly associating words until I came up with the title of this short. With the title in mind, I came up with this tale, based on a character I had been drawing in my sketch pads since I was in high school. I guess I always wanted to find out what he was up to.
Within the Prismatic Maelstrom
David Arris floated helplessly on the waves, staring up at the sky as it slowly worked its way through the blue spectrum toward dusk. The ocean water lapped continuously over his inflatable life jacket, occasionally spraying his face with saltwater. In the moments when he wasn't thinking of sheer survival, of staying afloat, he cursed himself for thinking it was all supposed to be some easy money: just fly some Drug Enforcement Agents so they could shadow a suspected cocaine speedboat. That had lasted all of fifteen minutes before the Stinger missile sliced through the engine cowling of his helicopter, the only miracle being it didn't explode on impact as designed, and sent him and his two passengers into the Caribbean.
The sky was slowly melting from blue to black when Arris saw the silhouette of an island slowly drifting over the horizon toward him. Beneath the water, his legs could feel the pull of the current as it aimed him at the island like a malicious hand testing the weight of a stone before hurling it. The last rays of purple light were bleeding from the sky when his feet brushed the ocean floor 50 yards off shore of the island. He began to paddle toward shore until the water level had dropped down to his knees and he trudged up to the beach, stumbling the last ten yards to shore and collapsing onto the sand.
A sudden burst of light sliced through his eyelids and made him squint despite his closed eyes. The sand beneath him had transformed: It was soft and pillowy. He opened his eyes, using his arm to block the rays of light assaulting them. Everything was bathed in yellow as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the sunlight streaming into them.
"Good morning, Mr. Arris," a voice said from the brightness to his left. "Don't be alarmed, some locals found you washed up on the shore and were fearful something wild might get you during the night so they brought you to me.”
Arris rubbed his eyes, dispelling the illusory effect of over-brightness, and focused on the speaker, a tall thin man with jet black hair and a hook nose. He had a thin, Machiavellian face and the fit build of man who exercised often, even if he did appear to be in his late fifties or early sixties.
"Where am I? " Arris asked, "and how do you know who I am ... and who are you?"
The man smiled slightly, as if he had anticipated the questions and had a prepared statement on hand to answer them.
"You are in the guest bedroom of my mansion on the island of Deltravetas. I examined the identification in your wallet which said that you are Mr. David Arris from Washington, D.C., and I," he paused slightly for effect, "I am Doctor Konrad Onorien."
Arris rubbed the stubble on his chin thoughtfully, pleased to have ended up in a bed and not at the bottom of the ocean. He swung his feet from under the bed coverings and stretched his legs. Arris quickly scanned the room and then its owner and concluded that Dr. Onorien was a wealthy man. Peculiarly wealthy, Arris thought, as he looked at the dark-maroon velvet smoking jacket and the white ascot tied underneath the blue silk shirt Onorien was wearing, not the kind of wardrobe a man normally wears on a tropical island.
Arris was sitting on was a brass canopy bed with white mosquito netting, the walls were paneled with walnut and a brick fireplace stood in one corner of the room with white maple logs stacked in a neat pyramid to the side. Through the glass doors that led to a balcony he could see the emerald green canopy of the tropical forest that hugged the island's jagged interior landscape, and beyond he could see the sapphire ocean that stretched out toward infinity and mixed with the azure sky.
"Lunch will be served at noon, Mr. Arris," Onorien said, breaking the momentary silence which had filled the room. "Since there will not be transportation from the island until the next supply helicopter arrives, you should consider yourself my guest."
"Thank you, very much," Arris replied. "When will that be?"
"It should be here on Saturday," Onorien said, "and the crew usually stays the night before leaving."
Arris looked up at him and drew a breath, "Would you mind telling me what day it is now?"
"It is Thursday, Mr. Arris," Onorien replied, looking thoughtfully down at him. "One thing, however. If you decide to wander off the estate before you leave, I advise you to be extremely careful of the jungle -- not all of the locals here are as friendly as the ones who picked you up. Please tell me beforehand when you plan to go out and how long you expect to be gone."
"OK, sure, thanks," Arris replied, watching Onorien disappear out the door and down the hallway.
Arris got off the bed and walked over to the balcony doors and looked out. Onorien's mansion was built on the side of a mountain, and jungle stretched for more than a mile in every direction away from the mansion. To his right, Arris could see the ocean about a mile away. On his left was the small mountain that formed the spine of the island, its full-bodied brown-black complexion giving Arris the impression that it was the sole reason the island stuck up out of the ocean.
He inhaled the air, caught the fresh, clean scent of the ocean within it, absent of the smoke and smog he was accustomed to think of as "fresh air" when outdoors in D.C. He turned and walked back into the room and noticed his clothes neatly folded on one of the chairs. He picked them up and noticed that they had been washed and ironed even though he had only been here overnight.
Arris dressed and left the room, heading in the direction he had last seen Onorien traveling. The hallway was as elegant as the bedroom, with ornate candelabras mounted to the walls at regular intervals instead of light bulbs from the ceiling, a seemingly impractical, if not quaint, throwback to the days before electricity or gas lamps. Then again, Arris thought, maybe there wasn’t any electricity on the island. The end of the hallway opened up to a large domed foyer, the staircase sweeping along the one wall as if it was meant to allow for grandiose entrances from above while guests waited below. Arris paused and took in the view below when a man dressed in a butler's suit emerged from one of the halls adjacent to the foyer and looked up. The man looked up at Arris curiously, as if the man was expecting Arris to say something or order a cocktail. Arris smiled politely and slowly descended the steps, watching the man turn and retreat down the hall. Arris got to the bottom and walked to the double doors, drew aside one of the curtains that hung to either side and looked through the slit-window and across the well-groomed lawn surrounding the mansion. A hundred yards away he saw a jeep moving parallel to the fringe of the jungle. As he stared at the vehicle his attention caught on a plume of purple smoke that was slowly rising up out of the trees and melting into the breeze coming off the ocean. Arris stared at the smoke: What the hell makes purple smoke, he wondered?
He was just about to open the door when he felt another presence enter the room, the hairs on the back of his neck rising at the intrusion. He turned casually around and saw Onorien standing at the end of the other hallway leading from the foyer.
"Ah, good, so you have decided to come to lunch," he said. "If you will follow me, we can go to the back veranda now."
Without waiting for Arris to reply, Onorien turned and strode down the hall. As Arris followed him, he saw a variety of paintings lining the wall, all by artists famous enough for Arris to know their names, or at least know he had once heard the artist’s name. Arris watched in silent amazement as the strolled by them, uncertain why they were relegated to a hallway of no distinction.
"Do you like art, Mr. Arris?" Onorien asked, not turning his head but speaki
ng loud enough for the words to float back to Arris..
"That depends on the painting. I'm no expert," Arris said.
"These are all originals, every one," Onorien said proudly. "I've spent quite a time collecting them -- Van Gogh, Rembrandt, Monet, Dali, Picasso. Would you like to see my display gallery after lunch? I've got more paintings there, as well as a collection of interesting artifacts and what-have-you."
"Yes, of course," Arris said, pausing slightly and looking at the signature on a painting of a lion and an angel staring over a balcony. It read "Magritte."
The veranda, as Onorien termed it, was quite a bit more than the name hinted. It extended off the back of the mansion over a shallow precipice, forming an "L" with the house and the cliff, extending along the edge of the cliff for about twenty yards and resembling a scenic overlook more than a backyard porch. A few feet from its cliff-side ending was a small waterfall that tumbled a few dozen feet into a shallow stream below. At the bottom of the waterfall a rainbow refracted from the mist-filled air, sending its spectrum in a gentle arc from the water to the nearby jungle.
"Impressive, is it not?" Onorien asked.
"Very. It must have cost you a fortune to build here. How did you find such a spot?"
"Just luck, actually," Onorien replied. "This mansion was the beginnings of a Spanish fortress which was never completed. Sometime in the late 1600s, Spain wanted to build a fortress here as a re-supply point to and from Mexico and Florida – Spain was going to build a series of them, actually, as protection against pirates and sudden storm fronts – but they abandoned it after a short while.
"Apparently, the garrison was overcome by disease or some such thing and died without getting word off the island as to their predicament. By the time a ship came by, it was too late, much too late, actually,” Onorien said casually. “The Spanish hadn’t correctly charted this island, and it was nearly a hundred years before another ship from a European country dropped anchor in the bay. And, oddly, they mis-plotted the island’s location, too. It wasn’t until 1895 that the island was finally put on a navigational map in its proper location.”
Arris was happily surprised when lunch turned out to be roast pheasant and a red wine that Onorien said was especially made for him by a vintner on the Moselle River in Germany. Arris tore into the food, acknowledging his hunger and his survival of a helicopter crash at sea by eating hurriedly, as if he had been away from food much longer than he had and was now reacquainting himself with its pleasures.
“Well, Doctor, how did you find your way here, if so many others found it so difficult?” Arris said between gulps of wine.
"My father died when I was seventeen as the result of a duel with the baron of Saxony," Onorien said.
"A duel?" Arris asked, " I thought that went out at the early nineteenth century?"
"In most places it did, but in Germany many of the so-called noble families still held to the old ways, and my father was one of them," Onorien said, sipping his wine and waving for his plate to be removed. "It became obvious to me that I should not stay, so I sold my father's estate and went to England to study chemistry and physics, which eventually led me to a medical degree.
"After several years of practice as a physician, I grew tired with life in London--indeed, with civilization as a whole--so I did what so many young European men with money do, and I began touring the world, working sometimes in clinics tending to the sick and poor in whatever country I happened to be in at the time, but mostly just absorbing the cultures of the world," Onorien said, obviously pleased at having someone to tell his story to. "For almost thirty years I moved around the world, staying for a year of two wherever it was the latest boat took me. I was working my way up from South America, intent on the United States but in no real hurry to get there, when I stumbled upon this abandoned Spanish fortress some years ago while sailing around the islands in search of some calling. Now, I help those who truly need my attention."
"Who, the natives?" Arris asked, feeling a twinge of political correctness about calling whoever inhabited the island 'natives.'
"Yes, actually," Onorien said, smiling slightly and draining his wine glass. "Come, let us go to my gallery."
The room could have easily have qualified as a medium-sized gallery by any city's standards, and Onorien took on the air of a museum guide as he began to show Arris around the room.
"This, Mr. Arris, is the original 'Man with the Golden Helmet' by Rembrandt," Onorien said proudly. "Fortunately, it was acquired by illicit means quite some time ago and I was able to get it for a steal," Onorien laughed slightly. "Perhaps you have heard that this paining was on display in the Berlin Museum? That one was identified as a forgery a number of years ago by experts -- though those fools actually think it was by an artist from the same period. This, the original, has been in my family’s collection for more than a hundred years, yet a counterfeit sat in a museum until recently, and now art historians are wondering what ever happened to the original and the police are trying to determine who could have stolen it. It never occurs to them they bought a fake in the first place."
Arris wondered about the explanation for a moment, wondered why Onorien would buy a stolen painting when he knew very few people other than himself would ever be able to see it. He forgot those thoughts when he saw a set-up of polearms from the middle-ages. Onorien saw Arris' attention shift and ushered him to the display.
"Are you familiar with the legends of King Arthur," Onorien inquired.
"Yeah, somewhat," Arris said, "I read some of them when I was a teenager."
"Good," Onorien said appreciatively, laying his hand upon a sword. "This sword here is Excalibur, the very one used by the supposed legend King Arthur."
Arris raised his eyebrows sharply at Onorien's strange explanation. Who would possibly claim to own the sword used by a mythical person? He looked down at the sword more closely despite himself, subconsciously wondering whether it really was THE sword. The silvery blade glinted in the light and he could make out his reflection amid the Celtic runes engraved on the side that faced him.
Arris caught Onorien's eyes, which were trained on him as if Onorien could hear his thoughts and was disappointed by the doubt in them. Onorien smiled wryly and led Arris over to another wall which was similarly bedecked with medieval weapons. Arris wondered where and why Onorien had gotten hold of them; it seemed strange that Onorien would have a display gallery that only he would ever see. He heard Onorien's voice and tuned into it in mid-sentence.
". . . and this dagger was one of the ones used to stab Caesar," Onorien said triumphantly, hoping to astound Arris with the news. "I'm still trying to find the one used by Brutus, but I can't quite locate it."
This guy's nuts, Arris thought, as he took the dagger from Onorien and looked at it.
Arris, not wanting to embarrass his host with his disbelief, inquired as to one particular sword with a jet-black blade and a plain hilt that seemed out of place with all the other "treasures."
"Ahh," Onorien said slowly, obviously satisfied that Arris had noticed it. "That is an odd weapon indeed. It was originally owned by a German baron in the early 1800's. He had the weapon specially made to combat the undead."
"Undead?" Arris asked, "What's that?"
"Undead, well," Onorien paused to consider the topic silently. "They're creatures that are neither alive nor dead; possessed bodies. A state of corpse limbo where the spirit is not there yet the body functions -- supernaturally, of course. You've heard of zombies, ghouls, vampires. . . that sort of stuff?"
"Yeah, in horror movies," Arris said.
"Well," Onorien continued," Baron Ewald von Hoth believed that he was being haunted by evil supernatural forces under the control of the Devil. He had this sword made from some metal he found in a meteorite -- he believed it had been sent by God to help him -- and was going to enter Hell and kill Satan with it.
"Unfortunately for the Baron," Onorien tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip, "he was found bu
rned to death on an inverted Cross with the sword chained to his right wrist."
Arris thought about the story for a second. It would take a really desperate man to have a sword made to combat demons and bogeymen, a sword that would never be used due to the nature of the weapon -- to combat imaginary beings. Arris sighed to himself and followed Onorien around the room, listening attentively, although mostly disbelievingly, to the tales Onorien related about the other objects within the room.
Afterwards, Arris spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the grounds of the estate, all the while having the odd feeling that he was being watched both from the jungle and the mansion. For a moment, as he paused to admire the beauty of the jungle, he thought he saw a face among the trees: An ebony face with multi-colored paints streaked on it. The face, if it ever was there, was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.
The gentle breeze that had been blowing stopped and the jungle noises abruptly changed to a deafening silence. He took several long steps backward, keeping his eyes on the treeline. He turned and briskly strode for the mansion, casting a quick glance over his shoulder every few strides to ensure that he wasn't being followed.
As he neared the front of the house he saw an abrupt flash of yellowish light erupt up past the roof from the veranda at the back of the house. At the same time he thought he heard a muted scream. As he wondered what was going on his stomach sank and the hairs on the back of his neck rose abruptly. He whirled around quickly, sure that there was someone sneaking up on him. For a bare second he thought he saw a man. A black man with a body streaked with paint and a feathered spear in his right hand. As soon as Arris caught the man's eyes he disappeared into the air. Again. Arris quickly walked to the house, frequently turning in circles to make sure that he wasn't being followed, certain that Onorien's tales of the supernatural had somehow gotten the better of him.
He yanked the door to the mansion open and briskly went in, quickly bolting the door behind him. He sat for a moment on the lowest step of the staircase, his hands trembling slightly. There was a person out there, he thought to himself, but where?
Arris busied himself in Onorien's library in the two hours remaining before dinner. The library had an odd feeling to it. It felt very enclosed despite the largeness of the room, giving Arris the impression that someone could sit reading for hours in and not even realize any time was passing.
Arris came across a shelf filled with books that seemed quite old. He pulled one off the shelf and examined it. The title stated "Lead and Gold" in plain black letters. He opened it and scanned the pages. Chemical formulas abounded. He crossed his eyebrows perplexedly and placed the odd book back on the shelf and pulled another one off. It was also about transforming lead into gold. The main point of the book, however, dealt with the employment of some device called the 'Philosopher's Stone,' some tool that apparently was the key to the process.
Arris felt a tap on his shoulder. He abruptly caught his breath and lifted slightly in his shoes with fright at the sudden intrusion. Onorien's butler had come to tell him that dinner was about to be served. Arris thanked him and looked at his watch: Where had the time gone? He got up from his chair and followed the butler down the hallways to the dining room.
Onorien was standing in a corner of the room talking with someone when Arris got there. The man didn't appear to be a servant as he was dressed in a dark purple cloak and pointing at some piece of paper that the two men were both holding. Onorien noticed Arris' arrival and the man hurried out of the room. Onorien smiled politely and walked over to Arris.
"I hope you had an enjoyable day, Mr. Arris," Onorien said warmly. "Dinner will be served shortly. In the meantime, may I offer you a drink?"
"Yes, thank you," Arris said, "a gin and tonic."
Onorien stepped over to a nearby cart laden with bottles and poured two drinks, handing one to Arris and keeping the other for himself.
"I've been meaning to ask you," Onorien said in a quite polite tone, "how did you end up on the beach last night? We don't often get visitors here, but when we do they usually come by more orthodox methods."
"Well," Arris said, stalling for time to create a lie in case Onorien was a front for the drug smugglers he had been after. "I was sailing my boat up to Puerto Rico when, somehow, I hit a reef that wasn't on my maps. My ship broke up and I just barely managed to grab a life preserver before it went down."
Arris took a swallow of his drink before continuing, smirking as he did so, "I guess it must be the 'Bermuda Triangle' or something."
Onorien smiled perceptibly and took a sip from his own drink.
"The Triangle does have a strong magic pull. I think it can be attributed to the heavy magical practices on Atlantis before it sank."
Arris resisted the urge to laugh at Onorien's magic interest and used the opportunity to press Onorien on the subject.
"You seem to have a lot of interest in magic, judging from your library, anyway, and I was wondering what it's all about?"
"Do you believe in magic," Onorien responded.
"No. Well, it's all just sleight of hand, that's all."
"I see. I take it you've seen Houdini or Doug Henning," Onorien said distastefully. "People nowadays don't seem to consider magic as anything but card tricks and sawing people in half. They attribute everything to two categories: science or chance. If science can't explain it then it falls into the second area. Magic has been thrown out the window -- disavowed. But I tell you, magic can do anything science can do."
Arris wanted to change the subject, avoid allowing Onorien to humiliate himself. He knew, however, that he would have to hear him out.
"Do you know why the dark age alchemists were unable to transform lead into gold," Onorien asked, as if knowing what Arris had been reading in his library. "Because they didn't believe it could really be done. Too many calculations, not enough faith. I've done it, though. Hundreds of times.
"It's a shame when such a powerful art gets ignored because people don't understand it. They don't want to try to understand. It's much easier to show someone a mathematical formula and say 'that's how' than try to show them the actuality of it, but magic can't be shown in a proof, it must be experienced -- believed at face value," Onorien paused a moment before continuing. "I hate to think that the sole preservers of magic will be voodoo shamans. They're so primitive."
Just then a servant wheeled a cart of steaming food into the room. Onorien set his drink down and took his seat, motioning for Arris to do likewise.
"Do you mean to say that voodoo is for real? Tarot cards and all?" Arris asked.
"Of course it's real," Onorien said matter-of-factly, "no civilization would practice an art form that failed to work. No, indeed, it works quite well for its purposes. I have been trying to teach some of the islanders more sophisticated sorcery, but they seem unable to grasp much beyond the Fourth Dilentium."
"The what," Arris asked, astounded that Onorien seemed to have an entire history to his story.
"The Fourth Dilentium," Onorien said, pausing as the servant laid the food on the table, "is a stage of magical procession in which spells of similar power and complexity are grouped. There are nine known Dilentii altogether, ranging from simple cantrips to the Natural Incantations. I am presently trying to gain access to the Ninth Dilentium. It is difficult work, though, as I haven't found any spells of that power in any available lexicons and I haven't yet perfected the one I'm working on now."
Arris, unsure what to say, decided to ask about the native islanders, hoping to get away from the topic of magic and restore some sanity to the conversation.
"What're the natives like here. I could have sworn I caught one following me this afternoon but, when I looked, he disappeared."
Onorien creased his forehead disconcertingly. He seemed to resolve it and looked up at Arris.
"For the most part," he said, "they are simple fisherman and shell collectors. Some of them want to turn the island into a tourist resort. A smaller faction i
s trying to reassert the influence of voodoo over the populace, to return to the earlier, supposedly better, times.
"I had been helping the smaller faction in developing their powers until I realized that they were more interested in simple occult practices than thaumaturgic development. That's when I stopped helping them, I didn't want my craft to be twisted out of recognition."
Onorien looked down the table for a moment at Arris, pursing his lips and knitting his eyebrows. "You are Christian, are you not?"
"Yes, what does--" Arris started.
"Then you are familiar with the Bible and the 'Creation' story," Onorien continued. "In it, it says that man was created in God's image. God molded man after Himself, therefore making us each gods on a smaller level. God's power is, therefore, our power. If you can believe in a god who is all powerful, why not a man who has some of that power?
"I'm sure you are also familiar with the theory that religion was created to pacify the masses," Onorien continued. "But why? I'll tell you: Because rulers were fearful of the power of magic and the threat of it to their rule. They devised religion, in the sense we know it, as a counter to belief in magic. Why else would the Bible explicitly warn against the practice or belief in magic? There is only one reason: to sway people away from magic so that the rulers of the time could consolidate their power."
Arris took a drink from his wine glass. "Well, it's an interesting theory, but. . ."
"Ah, yes, I understand," Onorien chuckled, "perhaps we should change the subject before you think I am insane because of my hobby."
"Hobby?" Arris asked.
"Yes, how could a man of science as myself really believe in magic?" Onorien said, smiling unconvincingly. "It is easier to pretend you believe in magic than it is to actually believe in it. It also helps keep the "mad scientist" image among the natives so that they leave me alone. I do, however, know a few cardtricks."
Arris returned Onorien's smile weakly and turned his attention to the food in front of him. The rest of the meal was spent talking about Arris' life in the military and his college schooling, with Onorien adding anecdotes where appropriate. When dinner ended, Onorien excused himself saying that he had business to attend to and apologized that he would not see Arris until the next morning.
Arris spent the remaining hour of daylight sitting on the balcony outside his guest room and staring at the jungle, watching the different hues the sun emitted as it sank into the ocean. He wondered why Onorien would choose such a peaceful, out of the way island to live. If he really thought magic existed and wanted to preserve it, Arris reasoned, wouldn't he rather be near some large population center where he could teach other people?
Arris retreated from the balcony and headed for the library. He had been rummaging through he shelves for about an hour when he thought he heard a noise resembling a muffled scream. He scanned the room to see if there was someone else around but it was empty. He passed it off as just a floor board creaking under his weight.
Then he heard it again, only this time a faint smell of burnt ozone wafted through the room. He walked close to the walls, trying to find the scent's origin. As he slowly moved along the far wall from the door he felt a slight draft come from the bookcase.
He stared at it disbelievingly, passing his hand back and forth through the draft. No one hides secret passages behind bookshelves anymore, he thought as he slowly started pulling books out, looking for the catch mechanism. He was even more surprised when pulling a small thin book from the top shelf opened the portal.
The bookcase swung in to reveal a passage neatly hewn from the rock of the mountain. He hadn't thought about it before, but he realized that the mansion wasn't just built next to the mountain, but into it. He walked into the corridor, which was lighted by pine torches held in ornate braces, closing the bookcase as he entered.
He slowly crept down the tunnel, noting the several other passages connected to it and leading to other places in the house. As he neared the exit of the passage he slowed down and pressed himself up against the wall, not sure what he should do if he met somebody. He hugged the wall closely as he moved the last few yards to the opening, sure that his hushed breathing would give him away.
He peered through the opening into the cavern-like room beyond it. A flight of steps hugged the wall leading down from the corridor he hid in and the room was heavily cluttered on one end. The cluttered side was filled with boxes and wooden kegs; a large worktable was pressed against the wall and was covered with beakers and vials and other chemistry equipment. There were several shelving units near the desk, some containing large amounts of books while others had just small boxes or flasks.
Then his eye caught sight of the part of the cavern farthest from him. The floor seemed to be made from obsidian, the wall opposite him contrasted the black floor by the whiteness of its marble. On the floor was drawn a large hexagram in silver, with thirteen lit red candles surrounding it.
Standing in the center of the hexagram was a man robed in a black cloak, the hood had been thrown back and revealed his long scraggly white hair. A man clad in dark purple stood about ten feet behind him and was writing something down. Opposite the two men on the wall was a black man held to the wall by heavy iron chains clamped to his wrists and ankles.
The man on the wall was sobbing softly, the blood running down his arms evidence of his struggle to free himself. Arris' eyes bugged out with astonishment at the scene. He wondered who these men were and what they were going to do, and why they were doing it. The black-clad man was gesturing and moving his arms in odd motions, stopping once in a while to cast some powder into the air and Arris could hear a lilting voice reciting something in a language that resembled a cross between Latin and Arabic.
The man on the wall looked around the room pathetically and then caught sight of Arris in the passage. The man looked pleadingly up at him, his eyes begging for rescue. Arris tried to sink deeper into the shadow he was in, hoping the man would consider him a hallucination. The man, however, thrashed more violently in his manacles and screamed out.
The two men whirled abruptly, the one in purple quickly produced a dagger from his robe and moved to the foot of the stairs. The white-haired man strode over to the younger man's position and looked up at Arris.
"Mr. Arris," the man said and shook his head disparagingly. "I'm sorry you had to see this, now; I was hoping to surprise you later. Please, do not hide."
Arris eyed the two men and stepped into full view, his mind racing for a solution to his dilemma.
"I was hoping to test a normal person's resistance to spells," the man said, "but I didn't want to test you for another day, not until I had perfected 'the Maelstrom'."
Arris scanned the room, the man's statement not registering as sense in his mind. "Where is Doctor Onorien," Arris asked. He thought he already knew the answer but refused to believe it.
The white-haired man chuckled softly, "I, Mr. Arris, am Onorien." He gestured to the other man in the room, "This is my assistant, Arlet. You have interrupted a test of my new spell. I do not like to be interrupted."
"Spell? You're serious about all that magic bunk," Arris said.
"Yes. Wouldn't you rather believe I'm insane, though? I see you need a lesson in necromancy," Onorien said. "Watch ... and believe."
With that, Onorien turned in his spot and quickly uttered a series of foreign words and pointed his fist at the man on the wall. A burst of fire erupted from his arm and flashed towards the manacled man. The man screamed shortly as the fireball turned his body into a mass of charred flesh. Onorien spun in his spot and laughed sarcastically at Arris.
"Bunk," he said, "perhaps it's time you experience magic -- firsthand. Arlet, fetch him."
The purple clothed man quickly sprang toward the stairs after Arris. Arris turned and sprinted down the hallway, racing for the square of light outlining the secret door at the end of the tunnel. He yanked the door open and slammed it shut behind him, barely making it ten feet into the room
before the bookcase exploded and showered the room with burning embers, the shockwave knocking him to the floor.
Arris picked himself up and raced out of the library into the adjoining hallway, trying to picture the way out of the mansion, and smashed headlong into the butler.
"Quick," Arris sputtered, "how do we get out of here? Onorien's gone mad."
The butler smiled sardonically and produced a revolver from inside his jacket, training it carefully on Arris.
"So, Mr. Arris, this chase is ended," Arlet's voice said from down the hallway.
"I've got him here," the butler said, looking triumphantly down the hall at Arlet.
Arris quickly kicked up at the gun, knocking it from the butler's hands and down the hall behind him. The butler turned towards the weapon and Arris kicked his knees, tripping him to the floor. Arris sprinted down the hall, ignoring Arlet's scream for him to remain where he was, turned several corners and stopped in a hallway ending in a door. Footsteps beat closer from further down the corridor so he wrenched the door open.
It was the display gallery. Arris scanned the room quickly for a window, but was tackled from behind before he could start to it. He twisted in the man's grasp and broke Arlet's hold, rolling from the floor to his feet. Arlet pulled a knife from the folds of his robe and jabbed at him jerkily. Arris deftly side-stepped the lunge, caught Arlet's arm at the wrist and elbow and drove his knee upward into Arlet's arm. Arlet screamed loudly and the knife popped out of his hand and clattered on the floor.
Arris twisted Arlet's arm violently behind him and punched a sharp blow to the small of his back. Arlet fell to the ground and quickly rolled over, thrusting his feet into Arris' stomach and sending him crashing into a vase stand near the wall. Arris watched as Arlet scrabbled for his weapon and began to stand up. Arris noticed the ancient Roman dagger on the wall, grabbed it, and whirled it into Arlet's shoulder. Arris watched for a second as Arlet fumbled through his robes and began to chant. Arris grabbed Onorien's "Excalibur" from its stand and headed for the young thaumaturg.
Before he covered the distance, however, he was thrown to the far wall and the sword stripped from his hands by some invisible force. Onorien stood in the doorway with a hand pointing at him.
"What the hell," Arris said as he struggled to his feet.
"I can't very well let you leave now," Onorien replied, "if the outside world finds out about me before I'm ready I could be ruined. No, I won't have that. I have planned too long to allow anyone to disrupt my schedule. You shall have to be dealt with."
"Plan? What plan?" Arris asked, his mind whirling as it tried to piece together some semblance of reality as he remembered it.
Onorien looked at him sternly, "Everybody wants to rule the world, Mr. Arris. I shall."
Arris was about to reply but was cut off before he could by the hurried entrance of the butler.
"Onorien," he blurted out pathetically, "the natives have killed the guards and are in the mansion."
Onorien frowned and looked over at Arlet, who was struggling to his feet. "Arlet, you take care of the natives; I'll deal with Mr. Arris."
Arlet looked fearfully at Onorien, slowly nodded and trudged away, tossing the Roman dagger to the floor near Onorien and signaling for the butler to follow.
"Well, Mr. Arris," Onorien said and shook his head, "some times things just don't go as planned. What a fortunate day to put my powers to the test."
Onorien produced a small object and placed it on the floor in front of him where he crushed it underfoot. A flow of strange words poured from his mouth for a few seconds. Arris tried to run but found that he was being pressed to the wall by some force. He could slide along the wall but could not move away from it.
Onorien smiled wryly and pulled a piece of glass resembling a prism from his robe. He pulled a packet of something from another fold in his robe and squeezed the contents onto the prism. He rubbed the fluid over the object, began reciting some gibberish, and moved the object through the air in front of him.
Arris watched uncertainly, fearfully. He slowly moved along the wall in an attempt to get away from the sorcerer, wondering what kind of spell required such a long incantation as he listened to the words. Spell? He couldn't believe in the reality of his situation -- real wizards casting real spells in a real world. It just wasn't supposed to happen. It just couldn't be true.
He heard the sounds of a struggle growing nearer from down the hall and wondered what was going on. He heard several gunshots and then an agonized scream. Just then the air in the room began to move slowly past him, the area in front of Onorien shimmering colorfully as Arris made out faint rays of light coming from Onorien's prism. As the colors grew more solid the wind in the room picked up speed, revolving around the forming patch of colors in front of Onorien. A vortex formed in the air, the colors from the prism mixing in the center and slowly filtering out as the whirlpool of light grew larger.
Arlet, bleeding from several wounds, suddenly appeared behind Onorien in the hallway. He was about to enter the room when an arrow pierced his neck and Arlet collapsed to the ground, dead. Arris moved more quickly along the wall as he slid further from Onorien. He turned and saw the black sword, the emerald set in the pommel glowing green. He reached for the weapon and cast a glance at Onorien.
Onorien had come out of his spell-trance and was smiling wickedly. In the hallway a black man streaked with warpaints appeared, menacing Onorien with a feathered spear. He stared momentarily at Onorien and then lifted his weapon. Too late.
Onorien turned the storm of light on the man and engulfed him. The native barely had time to start a scream as the vortex caught his body and dissolved it into the air. Arris quickly grabbed the black blade from the wall and was surprised to find that it dispelled the invisible field in front of him on contact.
He stumbled from the wall into the center of the room, holding the sword in front of him. Onorien didn't notice him as he made his way towards the wizard. Onorien brought the maelstrom laterally across the room, blasting the intervening wall to rubble and exposing more natives in the hallway. They were paralyzed with fear and only watched the whirlpool as it quickly closed in on them and evaporated the first two men in its path.
The storm seemed to grow in intensity the more it destroyed, the wind whipping about faster as it demolished more. The sides of the hallways and the rest of the opposite wall burst to pieces and melted into the color stream. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. They swirled and annihilated everything as Onorien advanced on the remaining natives. One was trying to cast spells of his own, but was too frightened of the coming storm to concentrate hard enough and kept stopping midway through an incantation.
Arris charged Onorien, bringing the sword back like a baseball bat. Onorien's head turned to face him and he saw the black sword in his hands. Onorien brought his hands around toward Arris but the storm trailed along much more slowly, ponderously decimating all that it touched.
The black blade cut through the wizard's robes and bit several inches into his side, throwing him against the wall and causing him to drop the prism. Arris raised the sword and brought it back down on the sorcerer, cutting deeply into his shoulder and slicing through bone. The wizard uttered a gurgled scream and slumped to the floor. Arris caught sight of the storm, now out of control and whipping about furiously, and wondered if it had been wise to attack Onorien before having him bring the fury to a halt. A red tongue of light licked out at him but he dispelled it with a quick parry. The storm was quickly filling up the room, threatening not only its creator but him as well. Arris caught sight of a window and raced for it, leaving the wrecked wizard on the floor.
He could feel the intensity of the wind blowing through the room, see the maelstrom expanding with everything it destroyed. He heaved the sword through the window first, shattering the large panes into crystal splinters, and followed an instant behind it as the tempest filled the room and obliterated it. He fell to the ground outside and rolled down t
he short slope leading from the house.
He looked up at the mansion and saw the prismatic rays shooting from the window. Below the window' he saw the black sword stuck into the ground by its blade, resembling a cross. He got up and ran along a road that to led to the beach. He stopped running about a half-mile from the mansion and looked back to where the mansion was. Rays of color sprouted up into the sky and faded into the darkness and the howl of the wind was now dying down to a whisper. He wondered what would be left of the mansion to substantiate what had just happened. No one would believe a story like that without proof, it was just too absurd.
He shrugged his shoulders and started walking, wishing he had salvaged something: The black sword, that would be proof. Or would it have been? Someone would probably have been able to explain it scientifically one way or another. He let these thoughts wander through his mind until they, too, faded into the sky as he gazed up and admired the stars for their seeming simplicity.
Television Pilot Episode
Author’s Note 2: Years after writing the short story, I wondered about how to revive David Arris as a character, a character I’d thought about long and hard for many years. I was certain there was a story arc to tell about this man and his brief introduction to the hidden magical side of reality. Finally, I struck upon the idea of turning the first short into a television pilot episode for a series that would be a supernatural action-adventure romp.