“I hate leygates!” Virginia Dare screamed as they plunged into the icy water.
“Now you tell me!” Dee shouted.
They fell, down, down, down… and then suddenly there was no water around them, only complete and utter darkness.
“And I particularly hate the falling ones…” Virginia’s voice sounded dull and muted, as if she was talking in a tiny space. “I’m not keen on the jumping ones either.”
Dr. John Dee tried to orient himself, but in the blackness, he was unsure which way was up and which was down.
“What about a light?” Virginia said. “I think a light would be good right now.”
“Has anyone ever told you,” Dee began, “that you talk too much?”
“No.” Virginia sounded genuinely surprised. “Do I? I guess I do.” Her voice changed, turning savage. “But only when I’m plunging through a leygate in the pitch-dark! Then I suppose I might have a few things to say.”
Their ears popped and a series of appalling scents wafted over them, as if they had just fallen through stinking clouds.
Suddenly all sense of movement stopped. They were still in a black void.
“Do you have a match?” Virginia asked.
“A match?” Dee asked, confused.
“I thought you magicians always carried matches with you. To light your candles. Aren’t magicians always lighting candles?”
“I’ve used electric light for the past century,” Dee muttered. “I don’t carry matches.”
“It’s very dark,” Virginia said, stating the obvious. “Scary.”
“Don’t tell me you’re afraid of the dark.”
“Not the dark, Doctor, but what lives in it.”
With a sigh, Dee reached under his coat and pulled out the stone sword. The moment his flesh touched the blade, it started to glow, gray first, then blue, and then blooming bright and white before it suddenly flamed red, filling their surroundings with a cold, stark light. Streamers of fire blazed off the sword, but it was a chilly fire that left speckles of ice spinning in the air.
“Hmm… not much to see,” Dee said, looking around.
Virginia Dare stood beside him, face ghastly in the light of the cold red flames. Then she slowly turned. “I think I preferred it when we could not see.”
A flat barren landscape stretched gray and unbroken in every direction. Beneath their feet, the only marks in the powdery dust were their footprints.
“Where are we?” Virginia asked.
Holding the sword high, Dee turned in a complete circle. “I’ve heard about these… though I’ve never seen one firsthand. It looks like an unmade Shadowrealm.”
“Unmade?”
“Started, but never finished.” He lowered the sword and the shadows clustered closer. “Elders create Shadowrealms using their auras, imaginations and memories. Sometimes a powerful individual can create an entire realm, but often groups will come together to shape their own world.” He gestured with the sword. “This one was never finished.”
“Why?” Dare wondered out loud.
“I have no idea…,” the Magician began, then caught Virginia by the arm, dragging her away. “Run!” he yelled.
She turned and looked up… and saw four cucubuths dropping out of the black sky.
“They must have fallen through before the leygate closed,” Dee said.
The four creatures settled lightly onto the ground, turned, obviously disoriented, then focused on the glowing light from the sword. With triumphant howls, the creatures raced toward Dee and Virginia.
Once they started to run, they changed. The transition from human to beast was instantaneous. One moment they looked like shaven-headed young men; the next they were enormous wolflike creatures with human faces. They ran upright on two feet, but hunched over, their claws sending up whorls of dust.
“Doctor?” Virginia said calmly.
“Send them to sleep,” Dee called out. “Can you play and run at the same time?”
Dare pulled her flute from its leather cover, put it to her lips and blew gently.
And yet no sound came out.
“Oh,” she gasped, “that’s not good.”
The four cucubuths were closer now, their handsome faces marred by the ragged teeth that filled their mouths. Hairless tails thrashed the ground.
There was a flicker of movement in the air behind the cucubuths, and Huginn and Muninn appeared. The huge ravens tumbled from the sky, crashing to the ground in a cloud of dust. They flapped their wings, but only rose a few feet off the ground before they settled down again. Then, spotting the blazing sword, they screamed Dee’s name in unison. The giant birds darted toward the only light in the landscape, moving in a running hop that quickly ate up distance.
“Doctor, if you have a genius plan, now is the time to use it,” Virginia panted, shoving her flute back into its cover and pulling a flat-headed tomahawk from under her coat. When Dee didn’t immediately reply, Dare risked a quick sidelong glance at him. “John?”
Dee stopped.
“John?” she said again. She had actually run past him, but returned now to stand by his side. The Magician’s face was completely expressionless. His cold gray eyes turned red and blue in the reflected light from the burning sword. And then Virginia realized that the grit of this unmade Shadowrealm was coiling and twisting around his feet, creating patterns-intricate spirals and snaking ripples. She moved her hand past his eyes, but they did not blink, and she knew then that he wasn’t seeing her, nor could he hear her. “You always were trouble, Dr. John Dee. No wonder everyone around you died.” Then she turned to face the cucubuths and the crows alone.
Fire that was cold
Ice that was hot.
The sensations rolled off the sword and flowed through his wrists up his arms and settled into his chest.
And with the warmth and the chill came the memories, terrible, terrifying memories of a time before the humani, of a time when the Elders ruled the earth, and then beyond, to the world of the Archons; and before them, to the Ancients; and back further, to the Time Before Time, when the Earthlords ruled.
Memories of the four great swords of power…
… of their creation…
… and their powers…
… and why they had been separated…
… and why they must never be brought together…
And the shocking realization that these were not weapons, these were more; much, much more.
“John!”
The Magician slowly turned his head to look at Dare, and whatever she saw in his face left her speechless. Something ancient and alien peered out through his eyes. She watched, frozen, as his hand rose, bringing the weapon up before his face.
Fire.
The stone sword blazed with white-hot fire.
Ice.
Ice crackled and formed on the blade and hilt.
Suddenly the sword shifted and separated, leaving him holding Clarent burning red-black in his left hand and Excalibur cracking with blue fire in his right.
“Where do you want to be, Virginia?” Dee’s voice was a hoarse whisper.
“Anywhere but here.”
The cucubuths were almost on top of them now, circling warily around the two swords. The ravens were laughing in Odin’s voice.
“Do you know where I want to be?” Dee asked. His arms described two enormous perfect circles-blazing red, crackling blue-in the air. The circles overlapped in the middle to create a long oval that shimmered like melting ice.
“John, you’re scaring me.”
“I want to go home,” Dee said. He stepped into the oval and vanished. Immediately, the fire started to die, the ice began to melt. The cucubuths howled and darted forward; the ravens screamed.
Closing her eyes, Virginia Dare threw herself into the burning melting oval…
… and opened them to the sun on her face. She breathed in warm salt-scented air and discovered that she was lying on grass, listening to the sound of traffic. Car horns blared, and it suddenly occurred to her that it was the most musical sound in the world. She sat up and looked around. Dee was sitting beside her. Excalibur and Clarent lay on the grass alongside him, a puddle of ice around one, scorched earth around its twin. “John, your hands…,” Virginia said in horror.
Dee lifted his hands. They were both burned black, the flesh raw and ugly, blisters already beginning to form. “A small price to pay.” He grimaced.
Virginia stood up and looked around. She could hear voices close by. There were trees all around her, and she could see the tops of nearby buildings. One, a tower, seemed familiar-very, very familiar. “John, what did you do? Where are we? Tell me this isn’t another Shadowrealm.”
“I suddenly realized what the swords could do,” Dee said quietly. “No, realized is the wrong word. I was told what the swords were capable of.” When he turned to look at Virginia, she noticed the tiny speckles of blue and red, like chips of ice and cinders, in his gray eyes. “The Elders created the Shadowrealms with the swords… but the Archons used them to fashion the leygates.”
“You created a leygate!” Virginia looked down at him, shocked. “Even for you, John, that is very impressive. And what about the cucubuths and the crows?”
“Trapped forever… unless Odin goes after his pets.”
“How did you get us here?” Virginia asked.
Dee’s smile grew pained. “I just saw where I wanted us to be-” He stopped suddenly and looked at his hands again. “You know, these are really starting to hurt…”
“Put some aloe vera on them,” Dare said automatically. “And where, exactly, are we?”
“Pioneer Park, San Francisco.” He turned his head to where Coit Tower rose above the treetops. “Five minutes from my home.”