Ogden pulled his hat down low over his face as he strode through the gutters of New Amsterdam, past bawdy houses and soapbox preachers alike. In the taverns that he passed, there was a song being sung, and though he did not understand the Spanish words being bandied about, the rhythm of the drum made it painfully clear what the message was. The same message that rattled along the train lines across the colony. Revolution.
The massacre in the Boston Harbor had been too big for the Colonial forces to suppress. Four hundred men or more turned into fish and set loose in the ocean for protesting an unfair rate of tax. It called out for justice. Ogden was well attuned to the flows of magic—it permeated everything that lived—and he could hear the outrage pulsing in his own veins.
The Empire had banned all magic within the city limits, which was laughable. But then they had set a dome of magic over the city, so at least the seal against traveling spells could be enforced. A clear sign that the Empire was running scared of its own shadow.
Ogden ducked into an alleyway where two buildings leaned so far together that they touched in places at their higher stories. Plaster dust showered down on him as the people inside went about their rough business.
Manhattan was the richest island in the whole of the Colony, barring the governor’s castle on Roanoke, and the people here felt the sting of the taxes levied against them less heavily than the starving commoners in their fields. There were no empty bellies here, no one was falling from horses or being mauled by the skinwalkers of the Indian nations who still ran around in the shape of mountain lions preying on those who settled out west.
This should have been the place where contentment with British rule ran the highest, yet here he was, on his way to a meeting in some counting house’s basement, with a letter in his pocket from the desk of Magus Burr—a sorcerer who had played his cards so close to his chest that most would have sworn he held no position at all on the concept of self-governance.
The letter had been cleverly hidden inside a dove that kept battering itself off Ogden’s windows for a fortnight before he finally had it shot down and brought in for study. The message was simple and clear: all magi unhappy under the yoke of the British should gather in Manhattan on this night to discuss what was to be done. There had been some rather cruel curses woven into the letter that would cut off his fingers or torn out his tongue if he had shared its contents.
Ogden knew that Burr was capable of even more creative curses than those, but the magus was a busy man right now, quietly planning a civil war that could send the whole of the Empire into a downward spiral back to another dark age, And that assumed that the bloody French didn’t just swoop over the channel to the homeland and unleash their own version of hell the very moment the strategic minds of the Empire were turned elsewhere.
There was a brawl spilling out onto the street from the next barroom, and Ogden had to dither in the alleyway while the animals slugged it out. From the corner of his eye, he could see the redcoats doing the same. It made him wonder if there really was a web of detection set up over the city to stop all unlawful uses of magic, or if the Empire’s pet spellhounds were just too lazy to intervene in a petty dispute like this. A gap opened up in the crowd and he slipped through unseen before he could find out one way or the other.
The counting house was not far ahead, a monstrosity of marble and flagrant opulence that amazingly hadn’t already been chipped apart by revolutionary graffiti. Across the top of the lintel it read First Bank of America. Ogden shook his head at the thinly veiled jab at the Empire and then ducked inside through the layered illusion of a locked door. Inside, a trail of oil lamps on the floor led him to a rear room and then down to the dull glow and muttering voices in the vaults below.
Ogden did not recognize every magus in the basement. There were a great many of their caliber across the Empire and, with the potency of the natives’ arcane defenses, many of them had been politely invited to the Americas until the situation was more settled. He counted at least two hundred magi and their assorted apprentices crammed into the cellar. There was only one chair in the whole place.
Near to the center of the room, and surrounded by a jostling circle of the most potent magicians on the planet, was the smug grimace of Magus Burr, looking like nothing so much as an overly content frog, stuffed to bursting with flies.
Ogden strode forward, and from a few of his fellows, he received brief clasps of the hands in welcome. There was a degree of deference there too—several of the younger magi, the ones who had been born here in the colonies, bowed their heads to him as if he were their school teacher. Peering at them in the dim light, he suspected that for several of them, he probably had been. That was good. Ogden’s voice alone wasn’t going to be enough to dissuade Burr and his cabal from their madness. The crowd shuffled back just enough for Odgen to be seen and Burr gave him a benevolent smile. “It is kind of you to join us. Even if the hour is late.”
Ogden nodded curtly. “There was no possibility that I wouldn’t wish to speak on this matter. Sir.”
Burr chuckled. “You cut to the quick as always, sir. That was my intention all along. Civil discussion amongst peers is the only sensible way for us to decide things. The gentlemen in the city above us are free to argue in whatever manner behooves them, but I think that everyone here can at least agree that any decision reached by the popular opinion must be ratified by us for it to successfully proceed.”
That was far too reasonable and clearly setting the bait for some later sophistry, but Ogden set his jaw and agreed amicably. As always, Burr sat smiling and nodding and saying not a thing. That had always been his way in every dealing Ogden had had with him. He set others into motion—planting the seeds of his ideas in them and then letting his marionettes dance to his tune when the time finally came to speak.
They’d had limited dealings through the years at the few conventions the Colleges held, and while Burr’s intellect was impressive, his attitude was not suitable for scholarly pursuits. His puppets were flamboyant young magi, dressed up in bright colors that the redcoats could have spotted and remembered from a mile away. Among the British emigrants, there were many stoic supporters of His Majesty, King Henry, but their number dwindled the longer the debate went on and had withered in the face of the Empire’s wild replies to calm complaints.
As a proportion of the population, the British were only barely a majority in the colonies at the best of times. With the Five Year War not long ground to a halt, there had been a flood of French refugees swelling the colony’s population. The French loathed their new government with what was rapidly becoming a characteristic passion, and they spoke on the subject with great vigor in their prolific coffee houses. That concerned the overseers of the colony much more than the drunken antics of the Irish and the Spaniards. Raised voices and riotous arguments could be expected with liquor; when you heard them over coffee it was a sign of more serious troubles.
Magus Lafayette spoke for the French contingent and, whereas the other magi were on the subject of concessions that could be won by gentle resistance and writing letters, he had already moved on to discussing the ways that the colony could become a free republic with equal rights for all of its citizens. In contrast to Lafayette’s flamboyance, Magus Madison spoke in soft tones that made the surrounding speakers lower their own voices and lean in closer to catch his words. He was a moderate and, like Ogden, he had been in the field and seen what full-scale magical warfare could do to a nation.
The young all cried out for war, and the old argued all sides of the issue relentlessly. The veterans of the Empire’s earlier conquests—Ogden, Madison, Arnold and Charleston stood silently and let the roar build up around them. Their eyes met across the room as arms flapped around, and raised voices and emotions churned up the ambient magic in the room. There was sadness there; the veterans could feel the way the tide was turning and Ogden suspected that like him none of them wanted to cast death again.
Something was off with Magus Arnold. He seemed distracted—checking his pocket watch each time Ogden looked at him. He had it cupped casually in his palm as though it weren’t an expensive extravagance. The basement had grown hot with so many bodies pressed in together. Ogden had shed his jacket and hat early on, tossing them into a corner on a heap of others. His waistcoats were now unbuttoned and his shirt was going the same way. There was sweat trickling down the faces in the crowd, but Arnold was still buttoned up as tightly as if he were meeting the Pope—even his gloves were still in place.
Ogden didn’t say anything. He fell quiet as the arguments continued to rampage around him, and he started to slip through the room. He took the time to shake hands as he went, greeting the Scottish magi who had settled in the far northern reaches of the continent and the Roman ones who had made their homes in Virginia, until eventually he reached Arnold, the man whose adopted home city they were standing in right now. Ogden clapped him on the shoulder, making him startle and drop his watch, and before he had a moment to recover, Ogden grabbed his glove and tugged. The feeble illusion shattered. Arnold’s fingerless stumps protruded from his shirt sleeves.
Although Ogden could swear he spoke softly, the whole room fell silent as he cried out, “Magus Arnold, what have you done?”
The Empire was on the lookout for anyone using magic without permission, so none of the hot-headed youngsters were given the opportunity to duel Arnold. It was probably for the best, even without fingers, Arnold was a veteran of the long and painful campaign against the Crow tribe and there was a fair chance he would have made mincemeat of those children.
The gathered magi fled up the stairs and out into the streets. Ogden joined the flight, but a glance back showed him that Arnold and Burr had not joined the fleeing mass, the two of them were still standing in the sweaty room—all hope of a resolution abandoned in the face of the impending danger.
Out on the street, people were screaming in a dozen different tongues. The French were claiming that the Royal Navy stationed in the harbor had opened fire on the city. The Irish were shrieking that the Indians were attacking. The Spaniards swore blind that it was the end times. And amongst them all ran drunken Englishmen, swayed to the opinion of whomever they were standing the closest to.
All that Ogden could be certain of was that there were no stars visible in the sky above; no clouds, nor any sign that the city was not completely enclosed in a pitch-black bell jar. Flows of magic coiled away from Ogden. Of the many reasons that magi usually kept far away from one another, magical interference was probably the least important, ranking far behind arrogance and the impossible truth that even a magus left alone in an empty room would somehow generate a bitter argument. But at the moment, it was exactly that interference that prohibited Ogden from interpreting the magic clearly.
Burr’s secret convention was probably never going to have produced a consensus. The magi would have returned to their towers undecided on a course of action and waited for history to flow around them, as per usual. It took a catalyst like Arnold’s betrayal to actually force a conflict.
Ogden was among the first to abandon any pretense that the magi had remained undetected. He cast his flying spell with consummate ease and drifted up above the crosshatch of streets and buildings to take in the entirety of what was happening. That was when the nearest redcoat shot him. The musket bullet caught him through the rear of his leg, ruining a perfectly good pair of boots and disrupting his concentration enough that he went tumbling back down to the street, only to be rescued at the last moment by a cushioning cloud thrown up by one of his peers.
Casting a healing spell on oneself was near impossible, and the other magi were rushing this way and that to escape the redcoats who were now on the offensive. The last thing Ogden remembered was the heat of blood flowing from the wound in his leg.
* * *
When Ogden woke from his brief bout of unconsciousness, he found himself propped up in the back of a hay cart a few streets over from where he had been injured, a small group of his fellow magi gathered around him. They updated him on the situation—there had been fighting in the streets between the redcoats and the magi. And after several hours, the magi had managed to annihilate most of the government stooges. Now the problem wasn’t the redcoats—they had bigger things to worry about.
Ogden learned that the solid barrier spell that encircled the island of Manhattan had become porous, and several magi and civilians had volunteered to venture through the wall, investigate the situation, and report back. Once through the wall, they remained visible for a short time, encountering what appeared to be solid ground instead of the Hudson River, but observers reported that within minutes, they lost sight of the volunteers completely. None had returned.
Ogden was soon bellowing orders from the back of the haycart as though the command had been given to him. No one was to pass through the barrier until they could figure out what had happened; whether the island had been transported to some unknown location, and if so, where and why.
At some point, one of the young magi, a woman from Rome, came to perform a healing spell on Ogden’s leg. With a hastily summoned walking stick in hand, Ogden and a few of the other magi made their way to the nearest edge of the island. Ogden could feel the magic thick in the air surrounding him—thicker even than when the Empire had placed the dome over the city.
It was at this magic barrier that enclosed the island that they encountered their first demon. It had a feline cast to its features, although it was entirely hairless, and in places it was covered in metallic thorns. It was also entirely wild with panic. The magi soon had it confined in a hastily drawn circle, and Ogden put it to question.
What they learned was worse than they could have imagined.
The demon’s speech was slurred and it constantly shuffled around within the circle. Gradually its story became clear. It had been going about its demonic business within its own personal demesne on the hellish plane, when the island smashed through on its way to wherever this—its final destination—turned out to be. Ogden and the other Magi were astonished. Magic on this scale was almost always more simply performed with a wish—a deal with a demon, or a djinni from the Caliphate.
But the demon swore blind that its kind were not responsible, and it was well known that demons were entirely incapable of telling lies. Ogden also knew that the djinni generally emphasized the manipulation of probability, and he felt certain they lacked the raw potency required for something as substantial as the permanent transportation of an entire island to parts unknown.
Reports began to filter in from other places on the island: other demons that had been similarly dislodged and were now contained within circles of their own. The demon Ogden was interrogating kept digressing, trying to correct what it considered human misconceptions—such as the idea that demons were naturally destructive. It wanted to set the record straight. The behavior was chosen. The violence humans experienced at the hands of its kind was intended only to clear a foothold so that more demons could escape their own dimension—a valiant effort at colonization.
It was in the midst of this conversation that the bubble over the city melted away and the unfortunate residents of Manhattan first witnessed the blinding white expanse stretching out in every direction. All hell broke loose. Civilians were going berserk, screaming and panicking, many sprinting off into the desolation before they could be restrained.
The demons were not much better: flinging themselves against their containments and ranting about the things that even demons fear. Nightmare creatures that snatched demons in their sleep. Abductions and experimentation by the creatures of the far realm. A realm that was “CLOSER TO THE SOURCE” than their own demonic plane, and further yet from humanity’s reality. The demons believed that Manhattan had been taken to this place.
Ogden had never heard of this far realm, but when he reached out with all of his magical senses, he could not argue. There was a roaring intensity where there should have only been ambient power.
* * *
It was on the second day of exile that the attacks began.
Civilians were going missing. At first, they attributed it to madness and fear, since the magi were unaffected. But at a hastily called town meeting a month into their exile, it was no longer possible for the magi to ignore the truth. People were not leaving Manhattan and wandering off into the white expanse—they were being taken. When Ogden listened to story after story told by the people of their lost island, listened to the terror in their words, he recognized the pattern. They raised walls. Conjured them from raw magic in a feat that would have been near impossible on earth. But it was not enough.
When more went missing, the walls were raised higher. Guards were put in place. Some went mad from staring out into the stark abyss. Eventually, a permanent barrier was erected and it was then that the creatures of the far realm became violent. The damage was never witnessed as it occurred. Only on brief patrols outside the walls were the strange markings, the strange growths and gouges, revealed. By then, the demons roamed freely on the island as allies—there was no advantage in violence, so they did not pursue it.
Sometimes, something made it over the wall, wreaking havoc until it found another victim to drag off into the desert beyond the barriers. Over time, living in terror became the norm. Marriages were conducted and children were born, each infused with so much magic that, within only a few years, they were the equal of any College-trained magus. There were few deaths, at least among the magi. The saturation of magic had rendered them more or less ageless and, with so much magic to call upon, sickness and want were things of the past. It could have been a utopia if the attacks would have just stopped.
Eventually the enemy was seen. Strange spindly pallid things with huge black eyes, bulbous heads, and few other features. They had a scent that reminded Ogden of nothing so much as a nest of rattlesnakes that he had once uncovered while divining for water. The creatures came in small numbers. Intent on abduction rather than warfare and so talented in magic and so steeped in the power of this place, that it was difficult to stop them.
But the magi were nothing if not resourceful. New strategies and spells were devised and every moment that was not spent in defense of the island and its people was spent plotting a way back home to safety. For two hundred and twenty years, every man, woman, and child strove for that goal and so went the siege of Manhattan until they saw the beacon.
There were few scouting trips made after the first century. The far plane was an empty desert in every direction as far as the eyes could see, and there were no resources to be harvested. If the enemy had a city, it was well hidden, and many suspected that the native’s mastery of magic let them slip into pocket dimensions forged into whatever paradise they could imagine whenever they were not hunting humans or demons for whatever terrible purposes they pursued. Staring up into the endless white of the sky had driven many of the Magi to madness over the years but there were times when even Ogden’s eyes were drawn up to that colorless expanse, seeking any hint of a star, any hint of a sky.
When sentry cries went up, it took him only a moment to follow after the magi flying up into the sky. The beacon that they rushed toward was little more than a black spot in the ceaseless white but that black spot gave him more hope than he had experienced in centuries. He flew to it, casting caution to the wind and closing the distance in an instant. It reeked of the hells, sulfurous and foul, but still he plunged into the cloud of blessed darkness with all his brothers in arms, even hearing the trills, shrieks and threats of the demons at its edges. He could feel home just beyond it, he could hear the siren call of earth in this tiny rift between worlds.
The way was blocked. A corpse had been stuffed into the crack, but beyond that lump of dead flesh Ogden could hear voices. Human voices. The magi joined their power and argued swiftly through the process of creating a spell. Then together, they cried out through the mouth of the corpse, saying the only thing they could unanimously agree on. “We are coming back.”
The moment the words were out of the corpse’s mouth, the rift began to collapse. Ogden and the others cast every spell that they knew to delay it, but whatever impossible power had punctured through the planes, it had only given them a moment. Ogden drew on the raw magic of the plane to which they had been exiled. He became a channel for it, pouring all that he could into the gap, but before their eyes, the aperture to earth snapped shut.
The black hole hung in the sky above Manhattan as a daily reminder of the opportunity that they had just lost, no bigger than a pinprick. The demons were delighted, at last they had a way to communicate with their home, some small connection to the planes above. The humans of Manhattan were less joyful but their resolve was hardened. It may have only been for a moment, but they had caught the scent of home and there was nothing that they would not do to get back to where they belonged.