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.
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