Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets: An Anthology of Holmesian Tales Across Time and Space by David Thomas Moore

Author:David Thomas Moore [Moore, David Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Anthology
ISBN: 9781781082225
Publisher: Abaddon
Published: 2014-10-06T13:00:00+00:00

The Final Conjuration

Adrian Tchaikovsky

“It’ll probably be secondary -world,” said Adrian when I spoke to him about this, “as that’s my thing.” And oddly, ‘The Final Conjuration’ takes both the longest and shortest leap with the concept of the anthology, actually ’porting Doyle’s original creation directly out of Victorian England and dropping him into the ultra-High-Fantasy world of the seven great Lords Wizard. I suppose it’s cheating, but the detective’s palpable frustration at being unable to ‘eliminate the impossible,’ according to his famous maxim, is worth it.

YOU WILL HAVE heard, of course, of those events in the Year of the Yellow Cat that almost plunged us all into a disastrous war. A handful of days, now consigned to history, when the great wizard-lords mustered their most destructive energies, and armies of conjured demons roamed restless on every border, waiting to be unleashed.

And yet the details of these events are as obscure as they are notable. How the business was resolved has been hidden behind a veil for many decades, by those fearing that the revelation might open up wounds only recently scabbed over.

Now, however, these matters have passed into something close to myth, so that my master, the Green Wizard Ang Tze, has graciously given permission to this humble scholar to narrate the full truth, many particulars of which are known to none but I.

You will recall that year was marked by many an inauspicious omen, so that throughout the drawn-out months of the dry season the wise prepared for ill fortune, and the foolish sought to perpetrate it.

This is how it started: I had been seated on an ornamental hill overlooking the demesne of my master, and pondering certain philosophical absolutes, when my master’s summons shattered my train of thought. I was transported in the blink of an eye into his audience chamber, a nine-sided doorless vessel of glass which was lit emerald by his radiance.

“Wu Tsan,” he said, “a most unwished-for occurrence has transpired. I am called to the demesne of Men Shen, the Blue Wizard.”

I was speechless. Rarely indeed would any of the great lords venture into the sanctum of another.

“The call has gone out to all of us,” he clarified. “Some fate has befallen Men Shen.”

My heart was all but stilled. The Blue Wizard, no less than my master, was one of the great lords. To even so much as inconvenience him would require a degree of power only possessed by his peers. The seven wizard lords had ruled in peace—if a quarrelsome and acrimonious peace—for many long centuries, but the spectre of war between them had always been present. Such a war would reshape the world, transform or obliterate millions, perhaps destroy all.

“Wu Tsan,” my master said, naming me once more. “Of my servants, you are noted for your open and enquiring mind. Today such qualities may find favour. Travel with me, and we shall see what has become of Men Shen.”

THEY WERE ALL present: the Green Wizard was the last to arrive. It is a

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