The Other Side of Magik

A Synopsis

There is an alternative reality to the universe we know and understand. A very close and similar reality that is almost exactly the same, almost normal and familiar... except for some minor deviations.

History there took a slightly different path... the DNA spiral is left-handed... dragons are real and not quite what they seem...Sniggering Trees can spot a lie a mile off... werewolves can get the pension... electricity doesn't work... and magik does.

Angland is a twenty-first century world of steam-buggies and airships, windmills and gas-lamps; a world where magik is the science that binds the fabric of society. A science that could offer a great future for its students...like sixteen year-old Garreth Aldredge.

Unfortunately, Garreth has failed to live up to expectations in his apprenticeship with the communications company... he can't get the magik quite right... and his future is bleak. Worse...there is a high-ranking wizard, one Theolonia Crabbe, who has dark designs on Garreth. Theolonia carries within her mind the soul of her dead twin brother, Horatio, and Horatio needs a body to inhabit to fulfill his destiny. Horatio is a mandrake...a cold and fell necromancer of the worst aspect.

But it's not exactly Garreth's body the wizard wants, but his opposite number in the mythical parallel universe... our universe... that place where strange mechanical forces are at work and magik isn't; because people from there are impervious to constructed magik. It won't work on them. And the ancient and proscribed Book of Null tells how to swap them over... which Theolonia proceeds to do.

Danny Royce is Garreth's counterpart in our reality, and he too has problems. At life, at sports, at relationships; and one night... through a mirror...he sees another world...sees himself...and both lads are sucked through to each other's world. Swapped over against their will.

On both sides of reality family and friends, especially girlfriends, are amazed and confused at events. In Angland the mandrake traps Garreth and invades his body; but it's not plain sailing. The lad won't give up the Null part of his brain, the bit where magik can't reach. And he's fighting back with the one weapon he has left... his adolescent mind! Horatio is being driven mad. People are noticing; especially the country's top wizard, the garrulous, eccentric, vain Salamander Ord. Theolonia must get rid of her brother or it's her neck! So she uses the Book of Null again and swaps them back.

Ord's furious! There's no way to get the mandrake back and now the vile creature will be let loose on an unsuspecting reality... ours! But, actually, there is a way. Salamander Ord breaks a secret tradition, and law, and visits the Eldritch Folk... those temporally anomalous, short-statured, bio-engineered, phase-shifting incendiaries commonly known as dragons. They have secrets and one of them is how to cross realities.

Luther, a juvenile of the race, and Garreth riding on its neck cross over to our world and kidnap Danny. But Garreth has to stay behind... there's only one seat on a dragon. Once returned to Angland, the mandrake in Danny's body manages to escape, swearing vengeance on his sister Theolonia and all who stand in his way. Now Ord is in pursuit, along with old Afferton Smythe, the eighty-three year-old were-wolf, Garreth's fat marmalade cat Mr Toast and Jemma, Garreth's girlfriend. Oh, and Luther the dragon.

Through the underworld they race, following Horatio's trail, aided by the lady keepers of souls and some ecclesiastical magik. Across sacred sites, stone circles, fairie groves and counties they finally corner the dark creature in York, at Theolonia's great Gothic house. There, Horatio and his allies, the leaders of the witch's and sorcerer's underground movement, are defeated in a duel of constructed magik and wits, and the mandrake is destroyed. So too is Theolonia.

Danny is saved! The mandrake sought to escape by destroying his sister's mind and taking over her body... only to die himself in her empty shell. Now all Salamander had to do was swap the lads back and all would be well. Simple! Or is it?

Theolonia's body wasn't hers. She'd used a copy of the book and escaped to our reality, leaving behind a feeble counterpart. She was free!

Alfred Peregrine Roland Johanssen-Kell, His Majesty Alfred VIII, Lord High Chieftain and King of The Angle Isles and her Domains, is not happy at his old mentor's doings. He wanted to meet the intra-dimensional traveller and the eighty-three year old were-wolf, but hadn't expected dragons or to widen the contacts between worlds. And... what if others had travelled that same route through the Book of Null... what if they wanted to come back? What if they had to find Theolonia?

Contingencies must be made... contingencies that involve two young men on either side of a reality divide, two young girls who think the lads are something special, an old werewolf with a rejuvenated soul and a juvenile dragon that thinks everything in our reality is so amazing... especially rock music.

The boys are swapped back, their secret is safe and everyone's happy...

... everyone, that is, except Salamander Ord.

Read on....

Prologue

Once...

...long ago, in the frozen, far-off northern lands of Outer Thule

...a dragon told the most amazing secret to a magician. They were playing cards at the time, and the dragon was losing. Dragons and mages have little use for gold and the like; the coin... and purpose... of their game was information. And the mage was winning, not because he used glamours and conjurations of magikal mien to aid him, but because he was a good player of the cards and the dragon wasn't.

Besides, the skeins of magik unravel in the presence of dragon-folk. Spells and such can take on unusual aspects around them... usually with awful consequences. That's why dragons inhabit the cold, northern wastes and men don't... there are no conflicts of interests.

As forfeit for losing, the secret was divulged, thus ...the world that men knew and were familiar with was the mirror-image of another. And in that other reality, some things were very different indeed.

For one thing, the science of magik did not work, and strange new ideas and forces shaped that world. Oh, the heavens were still the same, the stars occupied their usual places and the Moon still graced the skies, but this other world was opposite in all things, and mechanical and scientific contraptions ruled the day; there was no knowledge of the wonders and mysteries of the natural power of magik. On that world, man never knew what had been lost... or never gained.

Until...

...until someone found a way to cross over into it... to open up a doorway between them. A doorway that upset the order of things. Such was the rarity of the disclosure, and so profound the tale, that the mage recorded everything in the runes of his craft and sent what he had learned to the great colleges of magelore for their examination. And for many years great thinkers and magicians wrestled with the tale, seeking to find the moment of access. For then, once knowing the time and place, a formula of power... spell, if you will... could be crafted to delve into this mirror world.

The lore and legend of the craft of magik was sifted for clues; history was searched and dissected for any evidence of something out of place; and slowly, very slowly, over many generations, the little pieces began to add up. There were stories of people who didn't belong. Strangers who would appear in the midst of a battle, or at the height of a storm when the lightning was flashing. All of them found near ley-lines or barrows or henges; places of mystery and power. And these strange ones all shared the same disturbing ability... they were unaffected by magik. Not like dragon-folk were unaffected, but totally indifferent to it! They were impervious to the direct application of constructed magik. More! The structured symbolisms of mathematics, harmonics, philosophical paradigms and mental imperatives that are the building blocks of the entire range of thaumaturgical disciplines that make up the Arts Arcana... known as Magik in the common tongue... would fall apart in the presence of these strange ones! Such power! To be able to nullify magik! Nullify... null. Ahhh. The last clue fell into place. Null.

Legend said there had once been a book so dire and fell that it had been proscribed and damned for all time. A book so dangerous that none could be trusted with its secrets. The Book of Null. Written during the great Druid convocation at Long Meg, in the days when the power of Rome held the land.

The doorway, ancient texts reported, to another world.

From one end of the Angle Isles to the other, the search ran its course. From the Pictish highlands to the Cymric valleys, across the lowlands of Angland and down to the brooding cliffs of Tintagel, throughout the mist-encased realm of Erin's Isle mages sought the book. Dark vaults, in remote colleges and abbeys and seminaries, were searched; the great Druidic establishments and centres of learning scoured their libraries and crypts, and ancient rune-stones were cleaned and examined.

And it was found. Encased in a sealed leaden box and buried with others of its kind at the holy centre of learning at Newgrange, in Erin's Isle.

Now, with the book as a guide, spells could be created that would follow the threads of history back into the past; threads that could be wound back to the moment when the doorway was opened. And at the centre of that moment, where the streams of probabilities met, was... William of Normandy, claimant to the throne of Edward the Confessor.

And in 1066 he set sail to claim what was his...

The Year 1066

Harold, son of Godwin, Eorl of Wessex, true claimant to the throne of Edward, was a man of renown and courage. Young, brave, well-studied in the arts of life and war, he faced such as no man in Angland had ever faced before. To the north, his venal and vicious brother Tostig had invited the Viking king Hardrada to join with him to unseat Harold and share the spoils of the Isle.

Across the water in Normandy, William readied his long-boats and his barons to invade the southern shore, certain that Harold's citizen militia would prevail not against his seasoned and professional army.

Harold's seers and mages knew the reality of the situation. Dire magik would need be employed if their king was to triumph. And so it came to pass, that a grimoire of terrible power was used. The Book of Null. This was a secret and hidden book. It was a book of awful consequence; and that which it called forth brought doubt and confusion to the Norman mages.

The currents of probability began to swirl and roil; and in the mirror-Earth history began to change...

September 25, 1066

Harald Hardrada, son of Haakon, grandson of Halfdan the Black, was doomed. His shamans and seers had been blind to Harold's movements, and now, in the cold mist of morning, his great skills and courage were as nothing with his enemy on the high ground and a river at his back. Swords and battleaxes were drawn; shields bought up. Hard eyes stared at death from beneath horned battle-helms.

But Harold, impervious now to the arts and guiles of magik, caused Harald, son of Haakon, to kneel before him in homage. It is known that Harold offered his hand in friendship.

...across the tenuous divide that separated realities, another Harold, ghostly and ephemeral, looked down in triumph on the fallen body of his enemy...

September 28, 1066

Word came that William had landed on the southern shore at Hastings and was deploying his army. With a speed of decision that was breathtaking, Harold led both Saxon and Viking forces south. Destiny loomed before them.

...the ghostly Harold, firming now in probability, disbanded his army and, gathering around him his loyal bodyguard, sped south to confront the usurper...

October 14, 1066

There was great doubt in the camp of William. A silence had fallen on the land; a silence so profound that his best mages could not penetrate it. Harold was elusive. No word of his whereabouts came to William's ear.

Then, at seven-of-the-clock in the morning, William, Duke of Normandy gazed up from the beach of Hastings where his army was camped in mailed array, and saw his Saxon foes appeared as if by magik through the mist; and behind them...

...behind them came a vast hoard of Viking warriors, resplendent with shield and sword and axe, each one beating his weapon to his shield so that a great drumming resounded across the sands... like the heartbeat of an angry world.

The glint of light on double-axe and greatsword reflected in William's eyes and hid the fear within. Without a word, Harold moved towards him, and by ten-of-the-clock, William knelt at Harold's feet, his aspirations, like the blood of his followers, leaching away into the sands of Angland.

...Harold's new levy of citizen militia was no match for the disciplined Norsemen... and soon the last of the Wessex lords lay dead... an arrow through the eye his final epitaph. The iron fist of William began its relentless grip on his new kingdom.

Yuletide 1066

With pledge and promise the leaders of all the great clans of the Angle Isles assembled in Winchester and offered Harold kingship over the nation of Angland. From their secret places came those who had kept the ways and gods of old; Celt and Pict and Norse and Saxon all celebrated the new order. And the laws of nature and earth, of fire and stone, of water and sky, of life and death... of magik... were celebrated and honoured across the length and breadth of Angland.

In the mirror world... the Second Earth of the dragon's tale... a newly-conquered England firmed in reality...

...and history there began a different path.

The Year 2001

The Book of Null had been hidden for centuries. Banned and proscribed, it had been forgotten in the mists of time. Then, someone found it again... and used it.

Far away, beneath the icy wastes of the North, a scribe of the dragon-folk gazed into a basalt mirror, saw the ripples there that spoke of the disruption of space-time itself and knew exactly what had happened.

Good grief, it thought to itself, it's happening again!