Part 1: The Summoning Circle

Aaron Connell was a creature of Order, though he did not know it. Really, Order is as hard to notice on Earth as Color. People notice colors all the time, but how often do they notice Color? Not so often. Orders works the same way: people from Earth never notice it because on Earth it obviously exists.

Order does not obviously exist on Yothis. There it is one of many cosmic principles, battling for supremacy. Aaron knew nothing of Yothis, Order, or cosmic principles when he sat down on a Friday evening to watch television, or when he went to bed that night and masturbated to images of Olivia Conrad, the pretty girl whose locker was next to his at school. As he slept he caught a faint glimpse of Order as seen from afar, and an assortment of other principles, but by then it was too late and he lay imprisoned by the thaumaturgist Zamphor.

"Awaken!" Zamphor shouted, but Aaron ignored him: it was Saturday and no one was getting him up. But the shouts continued, followed by an agonizing tug that wrenched him into wakefulness. He looked around, then shielded his eyes at the blinding blue-white light that surrounded him.

"A sleeper, 'tis a strange catch," a voice mumbled. Aaron let his eyes adjust. He sat half upright on a hard marble floor and looked around. A man stood a few steps from him, though he was hazy, like he stood on the other side of a standing aquarium. He had a sharply pointed beard and wore stiff, angular clothes in a riot of unlikely colors. A gem that reminded Aaron of the Hope Diamond winked from his skullcap.

Aaron very suddenly realized he was not dreaming.

"What the hell is this?" he said, looking around. Everything looked different, like the opposite of looking through his mother's reading glasses. He held up his hand and turned it over, then returned his attention to the strange man.

"Who are you? What's going on?"

"I am Zamphor the thaumaturgist, demon," the man said, "By the oaths of Egatei and Thezmor and Krix, by the final testaments of Ning-La-Sebru and her daughters, thou art bound to me." He gestured with his fingers like a gangster throwing signs, though his clothing would get him shot in every ghetto in the country (and certain suburbs). He spoke English with a peculiar monotone, like a chant, and in some old-fashioned style.

"I'm not bound to--"

"Silence!" Zamphor said, and he spoke with such command that Aaron fell silent, though the boy jumped to his feet. It was then he noticed he was naked: a thick carmine blanket fell away, revealing his pale skin. He quickly yanked up back up around his waist.

"What is this bullshit?" Aaron said. He stepped toward the man, but found that a translucent barrier stopped him. At first it seemed like plastic wrap, but when he pushed it reacted more like he was trying to push two north magnet-ends together: there was no discrete barrier, just more and more resistance.

"Thou art Aaron Elian Connell," Zamphor said, "of Earth."

"Close enough," Aaron said. The words took a second to sink in (the man's English was not very good), then he flinched. Aaron took another step, and Zamphor stepped back despite the circular barrier.

Aaron was an intimidating specimen, not large but sleek and lean from constant exercise and sports, with a hard edge to his blue-gray eyes. He was of mixed Irish and Puerto Rican descent, though anyone expecting fiery Latin passion or the Gift of Gab found instead quiet intensity and the sort laconic charisma found in generals and early presidents. The boy stared at Zamphor, tightening his fists (scarred from old fights), and the thaumaturgist instinctively shied away.

"Thou shall serve me," Zamphor said, speaking his mangled English into the ground, "in the strife 'gainst the witch Viskel. I have need of Demons of Law to fight her magics. We will speak again ere the week is out."

"What are you talking about? What's a Demon of Law?" Aaron shouted, but Zamphor walked away, disappearing from the boy's view.

He sat down and looked around. The barrier surrounded him completely, and a granite wall blocked his view in three directions. Across from him stood another... summoning circle? Aaron nodded at the idea, then clutched his head. That was the craziest thing in the world. He had been abducted, obviously. The man was probably a psycho, babbling on in some Renaissance Faire accent.

But how many psychos could build magnetic barriers that worked on people, not bits of metal? Aaron touched the barrier again. It shimmered faintly but did not yield. Either he was nuts (everything looked and felt weird, almost cartoonishly clear, but he felt lucid), or he had been abducted by a lunatic mad scientist rapist, or he was...

"Hello?"

The voice came from nearby; from the booth immediately next to his, Aaron surmised. It was high-pitched and frightened, and it spoke polished American English.

"Is anyone there?" Aaron responded.

"Where am I?" the voice said. It seemed familiar.

Someone, or something, shouted angrily in a language Aaron did not recognize. He imagined it meant, "Shut the hell up, already."

"We've been abducted, I think," Aaron shouted. "The man says his name is Zamphor."

There was a pause, then, "Aaron?"

"Olivia!" Aaron cried. Olivia was a classmate. He immediately felt awkward, even though he could not see her. Olivia had a way of making teenage boys feel like dumb little kids.

"Aaron, it is you! What are we doing here? What does he want from us? I'm n..." She fell silent.

Aaron smiled. "Yeah," he said. "I'm naked too," he said, almost apologetically. Then the thought of Olivia sitting naked next to him, her strawberry-red hair framing her pale skin, caught up with him, and he felt his dick involuntarily growing. He swatted at it, which did not help.

"This is crazy," Olivia said. "We've gotta get out. I've tried to cut through this barrier thing and I can't; it's like Jell-O." Then Olivia screamed once, sharply.

"Liv!" Aaron cried. He winced; no one but her best friends called her "Liv."

"I'm okay," the girl said after a moment. Then Aaron heard a weird, low chuckle.

"What's going on?" Aaron asked. He could hear scraping near Olivia's chamber.

"There's a man--," Olivia said, just as a man stepped into view. He was very tall, very thin, and very peevish-looking, with a bored expression and a high, balding head. Aaron quickly hid his erection.

"Bonjour. Es-tu Aaron?" he said in ghastly French.

"Hi," Aaron said, in English.

"Ah, th'other tongue of Earth," the man said, switching over to equally ghastly English. He sounded like a drunk Texan trying to read Shakespeare.

"And who are you?" Aaron said, growing tired of all the weirdness.

"I am called Bence, Zamphor's seneschal," the man said, as if that should be obvious. "The master has tasked me with thy education."

"Thy?" Aaron muttered, then said, "What new role? Where are we? And how do you speak English in... 'this world'?" He tried to bang on the barrier, which did nothing: his hand slowed gradually and hung in mid-air. Bence did not flinch.

"You are demon servitors of Zamphor," Bence said to both of them, "who will use your powers to better himself." He turned to Aaron. "Thou art in Zamphor's manse, outside the city of Ptella, on the land of Darquist, on the world of Yothis, which is far from Earth. I ken English that I might converse with the demons. Zamphor lacks any love of words, except to constrain." He too spoke the horrible fake-Shakespeare dialect, like a grade-schooler doing Hamlet.

"I'm not a demon," Aaron said, just as Olivia, from nearby, said, "Prove it."

Bence spared an interested glance at the girl, then said, "'Demon' is the name of any wanderer not of Yothis. I know thou art a human, yet--"

"You're a human too," Olivia said. There was a dangerous tone in her voice that would be bitchy if it were not so scared.

"Nay," Bence said slowly. "I am a gree, as are most on Yothis. That your race is alike in figure to mine is difficult to ken."

It seemed possible: Bence's features were of no type or combination of types recognizable on Earth. With a quick glance he might look Arab or Indian, despite his glittering, oddly-shaped eyes and the intricate folds of his ears, and in truth, he seemed no more different from Aaron than an Inuit might be from a Massai--within a sort of "range of possibility" for humanity, but his ethnicity was at right-angles to anything Aaron understood or recognized, fundamentally alien.

"So, let me get this straight," Aaron said. "Your boss, Zamphor, is a wizard, and he summoned us to... serve him? Even though we're practically kids? I mean, if he wanted something from Earth he should have summoned a tiger or a marine."

"As some of the things from other words, like humans, come to Yothis, the principles of their world and ours co-mingle, resulting in unusual puissance. Since Ordered worlds are, a priori, vexing to reach, a thaumaturgist cannot pluck until he finds a perfect man. Zamphor will train thee to serve."

"And if we don't serve?" Olivia asked. "Asshole?"

Bence rolled his eyes. He managed a great deal of flip contempt for a man who barely spoke the language in either century. "At any time Zamphor may return you to Earth with a word of dismissing, and thus, can also return you to a place 'tween Earth and Yothis."

The majordomo paused for the ramifications of that to sink in, then said, "Work well and ye shall survive."

Over the next couple of days, Bence visited them several times to teach them the native trade language, which he called Low Quist. It was a simple language, and the majordomo even provided the two humans with flash cards and a dictionary until Aaron felt like he was trapped in French class. He learned quickly, especially since certain constructions in Low Quist reminded him of Spanish (which he spoke passably), but even less irregular. Olivia, an upper-class American monolinguist, muddled through her lessons on natural intelligence and Aaron's tutoring, which he happily offered.

They learned little else of Zamphor's plans, and rarely saw him. Aaron passed his time chatting with and fantasizing about Olivia, occasionally masturbating, mostly practicing the local language, and missing his family, friends, and numerous sports. He exercised as well as he could, determined to remain in peak condition. Bence, through an intricate system of sliding runes, delivered meals four times a day, which consisted mostly of unfamiliar fruits. Most were sweet, though some were dreadfully sour: they were medicine, Bence explained, to inoculate them against local sicknesses.

One day Zamphor summoned a new creature, a horror of mist that congealed sometimes into fangs and claws. Aaron could not see it clearly, but Olivia described it in detail, her voice trembling. A few days later another creature appeared in the cell across from Aaron's. It was an attractive girl, though not a human, with magnificent purple-black skin and silver hair, and eyes that gleamed red in the magic light. Her figure was slim and athletic, and her nakedness kept Aaron in a constant state of excitement, though he could see her only dimly through the barriers. She only remained for a day, then was taken (carefully) from her summoning circle and sent on an errand.

The day after that, Zamphor came for Olivia. She screamed and pleaded, but the wizard explained that he had need of her "powers." Aaron caught a glimpse of the girl as she watched away, clad in a white silk gown. She was as beautiful as he remembered, with straight red hair, dark eyes, and milk-pale skin. She cast Aaron a frightened look before Zamphor and a wicker-armored warrior led her away.

Aaron's loneliness did not last long. One morning (it was always light, but Bence prided himself on regular meal service for the oddities in his master's employ) Aaron's room shook violently. Aaron looked around blearily, hugging his voluminous blanket to him. A hideous, tentacled thing slid down the hallway, followed by something that resembled a metal cat. One tentacle flickered and a drop of slime landed inside Aaron's cage. Aaron reached his hand out, but the summoning circle remained intact.

"Damn it," he muttered, just as the alien girl who had occupied the opposite circle ran into his field of vision. She held a curved sword like a golden machete and with it struck the head from a green, rat-headed humanoid half her size. Its body disappeared in a flash and a sizzle, then her eyes found Aaron. She ran into his cell, gasping for breath. She was naked and a sheen of sweat had formed on her sleek, shapely body. Aaron stared up at her in awe and surprise, his face a few inches from her toned calves. She had tiny horns there, and now that Aaron looked clearly, he could see small, soft horns on her elbows and knees, her back, and the top of her head, lighter in color than the rest of her indigo skin.