Doctor Strange: Dimension War E-Book

James Lovegrove

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 402

Beschreibung

The mind-bending original adventures of Doctor Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, are brought to life for a new era by New York Times-bestselling author James Lovegrove. When arrogant physician Stephen Strange lost the ability to wield a surgeon's knife, he embarked on a path of self-reflection, mysticism and discovery. Now equipped with magical powers, he battles tirelessly to defend the Earth from arcane threats that few humans can conceive of – battling rival sorcerers, thwarting Nightmare the malevolent ruler of dreams, and daring to defy the terrifying despot of the Dark Dimension, Dormammu.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Credits

About the Author

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DOCTOR STRANGE: DIMENSION WAR

Print edition ISBN: 9781803362571

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803362595

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: March 2024

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

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C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

© 2024 MARVEL

Cover art by InHyuk Lee

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This book is dedicated to

Stan and Steve

who made the magic happen

PROLOGUE

A LONE figure staggered through the mazy streets of Greenwich Village. It was late at night, and a pounding downpour had driven most Manhattanites indoors. But not this man, who moved along the slick, rain-spattered sidewalks hunched over, trembling, seemingly in the grip of profound torment.

He was searching for a particular townhouse, and at last he found it, on the corner of Bleecker Street and Fenno Place. The residence was made distinct from its neighbors by the large, circular skylight set into its angled roof. With nine panes arranged like an asymmetrical tic-tac-toe board, the skylight resembled some arcane ideogram.

The man climbed the steps and hammered on the front door, which swung inward immediately, as though a visitor had been expected. He stumbled across the threshold, and the door closed behind him. He looked round to see that no person had opened or shut the door. It had operated apparently of its own volition. Some automated mechanism, he assumed.

The hallway was spacious and filled with exotic furnishings: ornate mirrors, cavorting statues, intricately fashioned urns. A broad staircase curved upward. Dozens of candles flickered in tall candelabras, and the heady smell of incense wafted through the air.

The man thought he was alone, but then, as if from nowhere, another man appeared in front of him.

This other was tall and dignified-looking, clad in a loose, bell-sleeved dark blue shirt and skintight leggings, with a sash cinched about his waist and a high-collared cape hanging from his shoulders. Suspended around his neck was a golden amulet, square in shape and featuring a closed eye at its center. The ensemble was completed by a peculiar pair of gloves which reached to his elbows and had a spotted pattern somewhat like leopard-print. His raven-black hair was white at the temples and a neat little mustache adorned his upper lip.

He looked, in short, like exactly what he was rumored to be. A student of the occult. An expert in sorcery. A magician.

“Mr. Trent,” he said. His voice exuded calm, quiet competence.

“You—you know me?” said his guest.

“The face of New York real estate mogul Ronald Trent is not unfamiliar to those who read the newspapers and watch the news.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” Trent was, in his way, famous. Some might call him notorious.

“And you are in trouble,” said the magician.

“I am,” Trent said. For someone like him, the hardest of hard-nosed businessmen, this was a difficult thing to admit. “How can you tell?”

“All who come to me as importunates are.”

“Importun—?”

Before Trent could finish echoing the word, the magician made a beckoning gesture. “This way. Follow me.”

*   *   *

“IT’S THE dreams,” said Ronald Trent, sitting in the magician’s book-crammed study. “The dream, strictly speaking. Same one, night after night.”

“And what happens in this dream?” the magician asked.

With some effort, Trent collected himself. Being out in the rainstorm had left him bedraggled, his hair awry, his clothing sodden, but this only added to a pre-existing haggardness. There were dark rings around his eyes, and his complexion was tinged with gray, suggesting he had not slept well lately, or indeed at all.

“Every night,” he said, stumbling slightly over the words, “I dream of a man in a hooded robe, bound in chains.”

“And what does he do, the hooded man?”

“Nothing. Just stares. Stares and stares at me. I can’t even see his face—it’s hidden in the shadows of the hood—but I know he’s staring. It’s like… like he’s judging me.”

“What might he be judging you for?” the magician said.

Trent hesitated briefly. “Nothing. Nothing comes to mind.”

“I presume you’ve sought conventional treatment for your… problem.”

“I’ve been to doctors. To psychiatrists. The best money can buy. Even to a priest. Pills, therapy, praying, none of it helps. This has been going on for weeks. Weeks!” Trent clutched his gaunt cheeks with both hands, shaking his head from side to side. “I’m going crazy! I can’t focus at work. I’m barely eating. I dread going to bed. Every time I close my eyes and doze off, I’m there in that place. That same blackened, empty landscape, where everything’s all bent and sharp like thorns, and in the middle of it, staring at me, the hooded man.”

The magician nodded pensively. “I believe I know what is plaguing you, Mr. Trent, and I believe I can resolve the matter.”

Trent looked at him with almost pathetic hopefulness. “You can? Really? I was told I should try you. Rumor has it that you specialize in this sort of stuff. If it’s true, if you can make the dream stop, you won’t regret it. I’ll pay you handsomely. I’ll tell all my pals about you. I’ll make you a celebrity.”

“I seek neither wealth nor fame,” said the magician. “My only goal is to help my fellow human beings. Go home now, Mr. Trent. I’ll call on you tomorrow night.”

Ronald Trent left the house on Bleecker Street feeling something he hadn’t felt for a long while. The magician’s confidence had kindled a flame of optimism in him. His nightmare might finally be over.

*   *   *

TRUE TO his word, the magician arrived at Trent’s the next evening. The real estate mogul lived in the penthouse of a tower he himself had constructed, a couple of blocks away from the city landmark that was the Baxter Building, home of the Fantastic Four. His apartment was an opulent palace with sweeping views of the Manhattan skyline.

Seemingly not surprised nor particularly impressed by the extravagance of the place, the magician encouraged Trent to go to sleep as normal, while he would wait in an adjoining room.

“But how?” said Trent. “How’s that going to work? What are you going to do?”

“It’s very simple,” the magician said. “I shall enter your dream, Mr. Trent.”

“You’ll what?”

“You disbelieve me?”

“No. I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t know what I believe.”

“You came to a practitioner of the mystic arts for aid, Mr. Trent. Have faith that I know what I’m doing.”

Trent could have protested further but chose not to. The man had a point. Trent was desperate. The magician was his last resort. Enter his dream? Sure. If he said so. Why not?

Trent took himself to bed, popping a couple of sleeping pills which he washed down with a slug of bourbon for good measure.

Soon enough, sleep drew its curtain over him.

Then he was there again: back in that dark, twisted place of winding pathways and leafless trees and broken ground, like a world that had been devastated by some apocalypse, where whatever lived and grew, lived and grew stuntedly and soullessly.

And there, too, as expected, was the robed, hooded man, with his burden of heavy iron chains. He stood observing Trent fixedly, and Trent, as he always did, turned aside to avoid that mute, accusing stare, only to find that the hooded man still stood before him. This was the true hell of the dream. Wherever Trent looked, the hooded man was invariably in front of him. If he ran away in any direction, the hooded man loomed ahead. Trent couldn’t even close his eyes. The dream prevented that.

Something was different this time, however. Trent was no longer alone with the hooded man.

The magician was beside him.

With calm resolve, the magician approached the hooded man. Trent had never had the nerve do this. He had only ever yelled at the phantasmic figure to leave him alone or pleaded with him for mercy, in either instance receiving nothing but stony silence in return. It certainly had not occurred to him to speak with the hooded man conversationally, as the magician was doing now.

“You,” he said. “Whoever you are—whatever you are—why do you torture Ronald Trent in this manner? What has he done to deserve it?”

“He knows,” the hooded man replied in slow, sepulchral tones, like a monk intoning a liturgy. “He knows exactly why I visit him in his dreams night after night. He knows his shame. He knows the crimes he has committed. If you do not believe me, ask Chester Crang.”

Chester Crang.

The name fell on Trent’s ears like a hammer blow.

Of course. That was it. Crang. Crang and all the rest.

The hooded man might have said more, but then came a sound of hooves. They thundered from a distance, growing ever louder as a terrible apparition loomed over the horizon. It sped closer, revealing itself to be a coal-black horse with a horn sprouting from its forehead, like some demonic unicorn. Astride this creature sat a slender wisp of a man. The latter was clad in a forest-green fishnet bodystocking, with an up-pointing collar around his neck and a tattered cape trailing behind. Red eyes leered dementedly from a face as white as chalk, below a shock of jet-black hair.

The magician turned to confront the new arrival. His jaw set into an expression of steely resolve.

“Nightmare!” he growled. “I had a feeling you might show yourself.”

“With you intruding into my realm, mage,” replied the rider, reining in his mount, “how could I not? Have you come to spoil my fun?”

“I should hope so.”

“Pity. I think, however, that you have overestimated your worth, and you will now pay the penalty.”

Trent’s dream had taken a truly unexpected turn. The magician’s presence had upset the status quo, drawing in a new element—this horrendous horse and its even more horrendous rider.

The two of them, the magician and the personage he had addressed as Nightmare, squared off against each other, clearly readying to fight.

And that was when Ronald Trent woke up.

*   *   *

HE WOKE up sweating, tangled in the bedclothes, heart racing, as was the case every time he had the dream.

Things had changed, though.

The hooded man had mentioned Chester Crang to the magician.

If the magician investigated the name… If he learned what Trent had done to Crang, and to numerous others like Crang…

That must not happen.

Trent clawed his way out of bed and reached for the semiautomatic pistol he kept in his nightstand drawer.

The magician was seated on the floor in the room next door, in the lotus position. His eyes were shut tight, his breathing almost imperceptibly slow and light. Trent crept towards him barefoot on the thick-piled carpet. He could scarcely believe what he was doing. But he had not risen this far in life, had not accumulated so much money and prestige, only to have some Village weirdo ruin it. Kill him, dispose of the body somehow. No one would know.

He racked a round into the chamber of the semiauto and leveled the gun at the magician’s head.

Just as he was about to pull the trigger, Trent saw the eye on the magician’s amulet open.

Next thing he knew, he was being bathed in light.

The light emanated from the eye, a beam of brilliance that encased Trent, stopping him in his tracks. It was not simply light. It was more than that, much more. It was honesty. It was integrity. It was truth in all its forms.

The light penetrated through Trent’s skin somehow. It pierced him to his heart, to his soul. It filled every corner and crevice of him with its illumination, finding the shadows within him, the dark places where he stowed his sins.

Trent couldn’t bear to look at it, but neither could he escape it. The amulet’s light exposed him to his core, and all the guilt he had ever felt rose to the surface. Everything he had fought to keep down, pretended he was immune to, came seeping out.

He dropped the pistol. He sank to his knees. Pressing hands to face, Ronald Trent started sobbing piteously, like a scolded infant.

When the bout of weeping had run its course, Trent looked up to find the magician, awake now, standing over him. He held the pistol in one hand and its magazine in the other, with the slide on the gun locked back to show that the weapon was unloaded and made safe.

“Wh—what just happened?” stammered a timorous Trent.

“The Eye of Agamotto protected me while I was in my trance state,” the magician said. “It shone its light on you, delving into the goodness that still resides in you. Yes, even a man like you, Mr. Trent, has some goodness within him, however small and shriveled it may be. And now you know what you must do.”

“Yes,” said Trent. “Yes. Chester Crang. A business associate. I ruined him. Cheated him in several deals. Bankrupted him. Last I heard, he was living out of a rat-infested shoebox apartment in the Bronx, drowning his sorrows in drink. And there’ve been others. Rivals I’ve ruined by undercutting them, refusing to pay their invoices, trampling over them on my way to success. So many! One even committed suicide, so I’m told, because of me.”

“You have much to atone for,” said the magician. “That was what your dream was trying to tell you. The hooded man was a manifestation of your guilt. Perhaps now is the time to start putting things right.”

Trent frowned. “I—I don’t know. Is it possible? After all I’ve done?”

“Redemption is always possible. No life is so far gone along the road of damnation that it can’t be turned around. Believe me, I know.”

The man appeared to speak with authority, and Trent drew encouragement from this. “Yes,” he said, his voice filled with righteous determination. “Yes! I can make up for what I’ve done. I can repay my debts. It’s never too late.”

The magician gave a thin smile. “It never is, Mr. Trent. See to it that you do what you should, and from then on you will sleep as soundly as a baby.”

“I will,” Trent declared. “I swear it.”

*   *   *

BACK IN his townhouse on Bleecker Street, which he had dubbed his Sanctum Sanctorum, Dr. Stephen Strange contemplated a job well done. Ronald Trent would keep his vow, he was certain. Like Ebeneezer Scrooge, he had been changed by a dream vision and nothing would ever again be the same for him.

Strange recalled his encounter with the entity known as Nightmare during his intervention in Trent’s dream. He had suspected that Trent’s underlying guilt was so strong that it had attracted the attention of the Dream Dimension’s most dastardly denizen, who derived his power from the misery of sleeping mortals. Trent had unwittingly been drawn into Nightmare’s realm every night in his slumbers, and Nightmare had been feasting off his anguish, like a vampire sucking blood.

Projecting his astral self into the Dream Dimension, Strange had planned on bargaining with Nightmare to leave Trent alone. In the event, the two of them had had a face-off, during which Trent had returned to the waking world. Strange, alerted by the Eye of Agamotto that his physical form was in danger, had fled from the battle before it had even begun, leaving with Nightmare’s mocking laughter ringing in his ears.

“Going so soon, Strange?” Nightmare had crowed. “But we’ve hardly started. Coward! Perhaps you are not all you’re vaunted to be. Perhaps the Ancient One chose his disciple unwisely. I have no doubt we two shall meet again, and then we’ll test your mettle, Strange. Yes, then we’ll see whether you are deserving of the responsibility bestowed upon you.”

Nightmare, like most of his kind, was a braggart and a blowhard. Doctor Strange remained confident enough in his magical abilities that he could outmatch almost any eldritch foe, and those he couldn’t outmatch he could outsmart.

Yet he had not been a fully-fledged sorcerer for long. However well his master, the Ancient One, had trained him and prepared him, perhaps he did not truly know all the dangers he might face in times to come.

He had chosen a difficult, treacherous path in life, and while there would surely be further successful days like today, he foresaw that there would be perilous ones too. Ones where his life, his very soul, might be forfeit.

Strange sent up a prayer to the great Vishanti, the trinity of gods who guided the hands of virtuous mystics. He beseeched them that whatever trials he faced in the future, he would be equal to the challenge.

Not just for his sake, but for the sake of everyone on Earth.

ONE

IN HIS castle in Transylvania, Baron Karl Amadeus Mordo brooded.

Baron Mordo spent a lot of time brooding. He had much to think about, and much to be resentful about.

Mostly his broodings centered on the Ancient One, his former mentor, under whom he had studied the mystic arts for a number of years. Those years had been spent in the Ancient One’s Tibetan mountain retreat, far from civilization, with none of the comforts and luxuries Mordo was accustomed to. Living according to a spartan regime, sleeping on a straw-pallet bed, eating like a peasant. And all for what?

His hope had been that one day, thanks to the Ancient One’s tuition, he would command every magical secret there was to know. As scion of a family of magic-wielding aristocrats, Mordo felt that ultimate sorcerous power was his birthright. But whereas his parents Nikolai and Sara had sought only to shore up their personal status by magical means, Mordo had harbored greater ambitions. He’d wished to become nothing less than Sorcerer Supreme.

That dream had been dashed when the Ancient One rejected him for another pupil, Stephen Strange. The upstart American had usurped his place in the Ancient One’s favor; soon enough, Mordo had been banished from his master’s presence and had made his way home to Europe sullen and defeated, like a dog with its tail between its legs.

That was months ago. Now, finally, Baron Mordo decided enough was enough. With his magical education incomplete, there remained spells and rituals he had yet to learn, ones that would elevate him from adept to mage. The Ancient One had withheld them from him, so Mordo had to take them by force.

A fire blazed in the huge hearth in Mordo’s private chamber, which occupied a whole floor in one of the castle’s turrets. He watched the flames crackle and writhe, and a broad smile settled upon his face. Mordo was a squarish, heavyset man, with bushy eyebrows and a pronounced widow’s peak whose M-shape was mirrored by the W-shape of the thick goatee beard on his chin. Tufts of hair stuck out above his ears, refusing to stay flat no matter how he tried to tame them. He was not handsome but he carried himself with a certain swaggering authority which some might mistake for charisma. The smile he was smiling right now, though, was anything but charming.

He took himself over to a large throne-like chair whose back was carved to resemble a vulture with its wings outspread. Seated, he closed his eyes and willed himself into a relaxed, receptive state. In a matter of moments, his astral form sprang forth from his body. He flew away from the castle, from his hometown Varf Mandra, from Transylvania, from Europe. Travelling at speeds the average mind could scarcely comprehend, his astral form hurtled halfway across the world until it reached Tibet.

Navigating his way unerringly across the jagged topography of the Himalayas, Mordo swooped towards a remote, monastery-like dwelling that nestled against a mountainside: the Ancient One’s retreat. Simple whitewashed buildings with bright red pagoda-style roofs surrounded a courtyard where koi carp drifted to and fro in a pool dotted with lily pads. Dusk was gathering over the towering, snowcapped peaks, and windows in the retreat began to glow as yak butter lamps were lit indoors.

Mordo well recalled the routine of daily life under the Ancient One’s tutelage. It was a kind of prison, he thought. You rose early, carried out menial tasks, exercised, meditated; only then, after these duties were discharged, were you allowed to commence your studies and practice your spells. The day ended with a second round of domestic activities. Everything had to be done at the appropriate hour and with due reverence and attentiveness. No action—even something as straightforward as, say, lamp lighting—could be performed unless it was performed mindfully.

He descended towards the Ancient One’s private quarters, his astral form penetrating the outer wall as though it did not exist. He had wreathed himself in a cloaking spell to disguise his presence but found this measure had been unnecessary. The Ancient One was poring over an antique scroll, so absorbed in contemplation that he was entirely oblivious to Mordo’s incursion.

Mordo turned towards the kitchens, where he knew someone would, at this moment, be preparing the Ancient One’s evening meal. Sure enough, there was Wong. Zealous Wong, the most loyal of all the Ancient One’s domestic staff. He stood at a table, chopping vegetables for soup.

It was child’s play for Mordo to enter Wong’s mind and seize control of him.

He directed Wong to a shelf laden with traditional local medicines derived from herbs and minerals. One of these was a potent analgesic which, taken in moderation, eased most aches and pains. An overdose, however, could prove lethal.

Mordo compelled Wong to pour a liberal quantity of the medicine into the soup pot, and add plenty of turmeric and cumin to hide the taste. Then, when the soup was ready, the ensorcelled Wong carried a bowl of it through to the Ancient One. Mordo felt Wong resisting him every step of the way, but the servant’s willpower was nowhere near as great as Mordo’s. He set the bowl before the Ancient One, who acknowledged receipt of it with a vague, distracted nod. Mordo bade Wong to return to the kitchen and sit down on a bench and go to sleep, which he duly did.

Meanwhile, the Ancient One broke off from examining the scroll to spoon soup into his mouth. Mordo’s astral form hovered nearby, watching eagerly.

It wasn’t long before the wizened old teacher was clutching his chest and groaning. He tried to stand but collapsed onto the cushions of a divan.

That was when Mordo cast off the cloaking spell.

An astral form was invisible to normal human eyes, but the eyes of the Ancient One, even though he was in considerable physical distress, had no trouble seeing Mordo.

“You,” he croaked. “Mordo. You are responsible for this. You have had my food tampered with.” He attempted to summon up a spell to repel his unwanted visitor, but his hands were no longer responsive and could not form the necessary configurations. Likewise, his whirling brain could not formulate the words that helped channel other-dimensional magical forces. “You would dare do such a thing as this?”

Mordo let out a gloating chuckle. “I would dare anything, my erstwhile master.”

“What do you want?” the Ancient One gasped.

“Not much,” Mordo said. “Merely access to the conjurations you failed to share with me when I was your pupil. You guarded them closely during my time here, and in the end deemed me unworthy of knowing them. That must change. Tell me all I need to know, and I will have Wong fetch you an antidote. If not… Well, a younger, healthier man might recover of his own accord, but you are elderly and frail. Your life is draining away before my very eyes. At this rate, I doubt you will last longer than an hour. The choice is yours, Ancient One. Speak, while there is still time—or die!”

*   *   *

THOUSANDS OF miles away, in his Sanctum Sanctorum, Doctor Strange woke up with a sense of terrible foreboding.

He had learned to trust such instincts. As dawn light filtered around the drapes in his bedroom, Strange got up and dressed quickly. The sense of foreboding only grew as he hurried to his Chamber of Shadows, where he kept his most powerful magical books, artifacts, and esoterica. At some subconscious, preternatural level he was being alerted to jeopardy. The jeopardy involved not himself but another person. He was almost certain he knew whom, but there was a surefire method of checking.

Centermost in the room stood a waist-high plinth topped with a domed lid. Sliding the lid open, Strange revealed a basketball-sized glass sphere that glowed inside with ribbons of coruscating, iridescent light.

The Orb of Agamotto. One of the greatest scrying tools known to humankind. Like Strange’s amulet, it was imbued with a tiny fraction of the divine essence of Agamotto himself. The mighty, All-Seeing Agamotto, one of the triumvirate of deities, along with Oshtur and Hoggoth, who comprised the Vishanti.

Strange held his hands over the Orb and attuned himself to its mystical vibrations. This was not unlike searching for a station on an old-fashioned analog radio, turning a dial until a signal came through the static, loud and clear. Magician and artifact became aligned, so that what Strange desired to see, the Orb would show.

An image shimmered into life within the sphere. It was the Ancient One, ailing and helpless, with a wraithlike figure hovering menacingly over him.

Strange had no trouble recognizing the latter.

“Mordo,” he murmured, his lip curling.

There was no time to waste. He steadied himself mentally and sent forth his astral form. Body and soul separated, a melancholy sensation, a heartfelt wrench, like lovers parting.

Incorporeal, no longer subject to the laws of physics or biology, Strange flew.

*   *   *

MINUTES LATER, his astral form arrived in Tibet and was spiraling down towards the Ancient One’s retreat. It was months since he had departed the place, heading back out into the wider world to begin his new life as a magician and use the skills he had acquired to benefit others. Coming here, even as a nonphysical spirit, felt like coming home.

No sooner did he enter the Ancient One’s private quarters than Mordo turned towards him. The two of them, in their astral forms, stood poised antagonistically, while the Ancient One himself sprawled on the divan, panting and perspiring, desperately pale.

“I should have known you might come running,” Mordo sneered. “Stephen Strange. Teacher’s pet. Or do I mean faithful lapdog? Anyway, you’re too late. The Ancient One is doomed. Breathing his last. It seems he would rather perish than surrender his greatest magical secrets to me.”

“So that you can exploit them for your own gain, Mordo?” said Strange. “No wonder he won’t share them with you. All the time you were here, you spoke of your superiority to others, your contempt for those weaker and humbler than you. That Old World snobbery of yours.”

“Why serve the common herd, Strange, when you can rightfully command them?”

“And that is the difference between us. Where I would help people, you would rather lord it over them. Magic was never for you. The Ancient One made the mistake of trusting that your better nature would win out. He failed to recognize an unrepentant egomaniac.”

“Oh, and you weren’t one yourself?”

Strange had to accept the truth of this. He shrugged. “I was, but unlike you, I got better. Now, I need you to back off, so that I can save the Ancient One.”

“Back off? Because some jumped-up nobody tells me to? Never!”

“Very well. Then I’ll just have to make you.”

Strange, in his astral form, took a swing at Mordo.

Mordo ducked. “Fisticuffs, is it?” he snarled. “Trading blows rather than spells? Typical of you Yanks. So barbaric. So unrefined. Well, if we must…”

He hit back. Strange dodged, before delivering an uppercut. Mordo, grunting, launched a vicious salvo of right and left hooks. Strange blocked most of these, but a couple got through his defenses.

It was a peculiar fight, in that both combatants floated in midair as they battled, like astronauts in microgravity. The blows themselves were technically intangible, but each man felt the impacts nonetheless, since both existed in the same state of spirit insubstantiality. Neither of them could directly affect the physical world around him in this form, but he could certainly affect his opponent.

They somersaulted and pirouetted around the room, ghosting through walls, through stone columns, through furniture, grappling and recoiling, a weird elegance to their brutality. Mordo was driven by the all-consuming hatred he felt towards Strange, whom he regarded as responsible for his exile from the Ancient One’s retreat. There was pent-up anger behind every punch he threw. As for Strange, his overriding concern was defeating Mordo quickly and soundly so that he would then be free to attend to the Ancient One.

But they seemed evenly matched, he and Mordo. They could fight like this for hours, with no clear victor, while death claimed the Ancient One in the meantime. Strange had to come up with some stratagem to beat Mordo, or at any rate get him to retreat.

The solution came to him in a flash of inspiration.

Use Mordo’s conceitedness against him.

*   *   *

“MORDO,” STRANGE said, drawing back from his opponent. “I can see neither of us is going to win this bout any time soon.”

“The words of a man who knows he is going to lose,” said Mordo.

“Perhaps. But somewhere your mortal shell lies inert, defenseless. The Eye of Agamotto can light my way to its location. What’s to prevent me racing there and visiting a similar fate upon your body as you have upon the Ancient One’s?”

Mordo grinned. “You would not, Strange. Your moral code will not allow you.”

“My master hovers at the brink of death,” Strange said with bitterness. “The man I respect most in the world. There is nothing I would not do to avenge his murder, even if it means committing murder myself.”

“You’re bluffing,” Mordo said.

“Am I? I should have thought that’s a risk you can’t afford to take.”

“If there’s one thing the Ancient One tried to instill in us, it’s that magic should only be used to help, not harm.”

“You clearly failed to absorb that lesson. It seems only proper I should follow your example.”

Mordo scanned Strange’s face, looking for some hint that the American was lying. He saw only steely determination.

With a cry that was halfway between a grunt and a curse, he darted away from the room.

Only when he was several miles from the retreat did he look back. He had assumed Strange would give chase, but he could not see him anywhere.

Then he spied him, in the distance. Strange’s astral form was, indeed, pursuing his, but for some reason he had delayed setting off.

Mordo chortled. What was the old adage? He who hesitates is lost. Well, Strange had hesitated, and now Mordo had a lead over him which he would never be able to make up.

He sped on. Across the deserts and sprawling white cities of the Middle East he went, and over the sparkling blue expanse of the Mediterranean, with Strange lagging far behind. He flew through an electrical storm above Greece and whisked past a jetfighter patrolling the skies of Symkaria. He gave Latveria a wide berth—that nation was not to be trespassed upon, even in astral form—and soon afterwards he was over Transylvania and nearing the thickly forested region of the Carpathian mountains where, in a deep valley, Varf Mandra lay. Castle Mordo was seated atop a crag overlooking the town, a medieval-era cluster of cylindrical towers, buttressed walls and steeply pitched, snow-shrugging roofs, its foundations merging with the selfsame granite from which its masonry had been quarried.

Mordo arrived at his destination and swiftly re-entered his body, spirit and flesh reuniting, the one animating the other like hand in glove.

He barked a triumphant laugh as, moments later, Strange’s astral form came to a halt in front of him.

“Too slow, Strange!” he cried. “You can’t hope to hurt me now that I have full command of my physical self.”

Strange only smiled. “Of course not. But then I never intended to. All I wanted was to get you away from the Ancient One’s vicinity. Think about it, Mordo. You enthralled his servant Wong in order to poison him, didn’t you?”

“I did. So?”

“So, before I left, I took the liberty of freeing Wong from your influence. He is now awake and already at his master’s side, ministering to him. He knows how to restore him to full health. Your plan, in short, has failed.”

Mordo was briefly dumbstruck. Then he said, “Oh, very clever, Strange.” He gave a slow, ironic handclap. “You never were going to assault my body. That was just a ruse.”

“You fell for it. You panicked.”

“And now that the Ancient One knows I have attacked him, he will set up various wards around his retreat to stop me trying the same thing again.”

“Exactly,” said Strange. “And I will assist him in that endeavor. You won’t be able to pull this trick twice, Mordo.”

“No, true enough,” Mordo admitted.

“Nor do I think you are likely to attack me now. You have overexerted yourself. Your power is at a low ebb. You need rest.”

“That, too, is true. No doubt about it, you win this time, Strange. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try again. One way or another, I will get what I want. I always do.”

“And I,” Strange said, “will always be there to stand in your way.”

With that, Strange’s astral form flitted away, and Mordo was left alone.

Immediately, he fell to brooding again.

Foolish smug American. Stand in his way? Certainly today Strange had proved an obstacle to Mordo. Obstacles, however, were there to be surmounted. Or, failing that, swept aside. And sooner or later, that was what would happen to Strange.

Already Mordo had an idea, a means of trapping Strange and then, at his leisure, destroying him.

Yes. The plan was foolproof.

And once Strange was disposed of, the Ancient One would no longer have his champion guarding him. The selfish old dodderer would be more vulnerable than ever, and Mordo would have no trouble wresting his secrets from him before consigning his soul to join those of his ancestors.

Baron Mordo’s scheming cackle echoed hollowly through the castle.

TWO

DOCTOR STRANGE’S phone rang at an ungodly hour.

“Stephen?” said a creaky, English-accented voice. “Is that you? I have the right number?”

“Yes, this is Stephen Strange. Who’s calling?”

“Oh, thank heaven! It’s Bentley. Sir Clive Bentley. You may remember me.”

Strange did. He pictured a prim, well-spoken gentleman in his sixties with thinning hair and an aquiline nose. He looked very much a physician of the old school, right down to his tweed jacket and bowtie.

“We met at a medical conference in Berlin a few years ago,” Sir Clive continued, “where I was lecturing.”

“Yes, I recall, Sir Clive.” Strange glanced at the clock. Three in the morning. He rubbed his eyes and stifled a yawn. “I spent an hour quizzing you about your innovative version of the purse-string suture.”

“And then, by all reports, you went on to perfect it.”

“I hope you didn’t mind.”

“Dear boy, I was flattered. But anyway, I was wondering…” Sir Clive paused. “Bless me! I’ve just realized. It’s breakfast time here in the UK, but it’s still the middle of the night for you chaps over there. How remiss of me. I do apologize, Stephen. I shall call again later.”

“I’m awake now. You said you were wondering…?”

The renowned British surgeon harrumphed embarrassedly. “As I understand it, you no longer practice medicine.”

“I don’t.”

“You have abandoned the field and moved into more, ahem, esoteric pastures. So people are saying.”

“Are they now?”

“We’re all terrible gossips in the international medical community,” said Sir Clive, “and when one of our brethren—one of the foremost surgeons alive, indeed—goes astray, everyone talks about it.”

“Your definition of ‘astray’ and mine may differ,” said Strange. “I make no secret of the fact that I have turned from medicine to the mystic arts. At the same time, I don’t go to great lengths to publicize it. I have chosen a new direction in life, that’s all.”

Or had it chosen him? That was a question Strange could never quite answer.

“I’m not here to mock,” said Sir Clive. “Or, for that matter, to doubt. I need your help, you see. Specifically yours. Not as a man of medicine but as a man of magic.”

“Carry on,” said Strange. He could never turn down a plea for assistance, no matter how inconveniently timed. He had pledged himself to the protection and betterment of humankind, much like the costumed super heroes who had lately been appearing all over New York and elsewhere—Spider-Man, for instance, and Iron Man, and the shield-slinging living legend of World War II, Captain America, back after a long absence and as battle-fit as ever. Strange considered himself the magical equivalent of those masked, muscular crusaders for justice. They fought the good fight out in the open, clad in bold, bright primary colors, while he did the same in the shadows. Their opponents were would-be world conquerors and ambitious, super-augmented thieves; his an array of insidious and indefinable, but no less evil, forces.

“It’s… It’s my daughter Victoria,” Sir Clive said. “My only child. My wife Margot died a couple of years back, and since then Victoria is all I have, my only family. And now she—she seems to be developing a knack for… the only word I can think of for it is witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft?”

“I know, I know, it sounds absurd. I can hardly believe I’m saying it. But lately Victoria has been having these premonitions which, sure enough, come true. Not like being able to predict which horse is going to win the Grand National.” A hollow laugh. “Sadly no. But the other day, for example, she foresaw that my Labrador was going to get run over and killed in the road—this flash of an image in her mind’s eye—and lo and behold, he did. Poor old Tarquin. I was out walking him, he slipped the leash, darted straight into the path of a Royal Mail van. Must’ve caught the scent of a rabbit or something. Never the brightest of sparks, Tarquin, but he was a loyal companion. Then there are the funny turns Victoria has.”

“How do you mean, funny turns?”

“Well, she faints, for no apparent reason, and then when she comes round, she says she’s journeyed to another world. Says it’s all rainbow colors and strange geometric shapes. Gigantic snake mouths in midair, floating orbs with lightning bolts branching off them, doorways within doorways, you name it. Hallucinatory stuff, as though she’s been on some sort of psychedelic drug trip, only Victoria doesn’t touch that sort of thing. Doesn’t even drink. That said, she’s always been a solitary, imaginative sort, has my girl, and I suppose this could be some kind of psychotic break. I’m convinced, though, that there’s something else going on here, something more. And I thought… I thought, if you are what they say you are, Stephen, then this might be up your street.”

“What would you have me do, Sir Clive?” Strange asked.

“Come and see her. It’s driving Victoria potty, that’s the thing. She’s frightened by these bizarre experiences. She thinks she may be going mad. Maybe you can reassure her she isn’t, or, I don’t know, diagnose what the problem really is, if it is, in fact, magic-related. You’d be doing me a huge favor, dear boy. What do you say? Will you come?”

Strange could hardly refuse. Clearly Victoria Bentley was a psychic sensitive, and was having premonitory visions and inadvertently spirit-voyaging to other dimensions. It was curious because she was a woman in her mid-thirties and only rarely did such abilities manifest so late in life. Most often they were already present in childhood and started to strengthen and solidify around puberty. Possibly they had lain dormant in Victoria all this time, only to be aroused abruptly by grief over her mother’s death. At any rate, the matter was worth investigating, and if he could bring her and her father some peace of mind, so much the better.

And so, later that same day, Strange boarded an overnight transatlantic flight to London Heathrow airport. He could have used a spell of physical transference such as the Wondrous Wormhole of Weygg-Kalkuun to get him to England in no time, but the conjuration was draining and he did not want to arrive exhausted and debilitated. Sometimes the everyday magic of a passenger jet, whisking you across thousands of miles in a matter of hours, and in relative comfort, was a perfectly acceptable substitute.

*   *   *

A TAXICAB deposited Strange outside the gates to Denningham Manor, Sir Clive Bentley’s mansion in Surrey. Strange took in the rural surroundings with an appreciative eye. Leafy woodland lined both sides of the narrow country lane down which the cab was now fast disappearing. From somewhere far off he could hear a farm tractor groaning across a field, but the dominant sounds were trees rustling and birdsong rippling liquidly. The sun beat down on his head, and the air was pleasantly but not stiflingly hot, summer in England being a far more benign affair than summer on the East Coast.

There was a lodge beside the mansion gateway, a little self-contained one-story cottage. The curtains were drawn in every window. The gate itself stood ajar. Strange passed through and walked up the drive, overnight bag in hand. Sir Clive was heir to a shipping fortune, hence the handsome residence he owned—which he could have hardly afforded otherwise, even on a doctor’s salary.

At the large front door Strange operated the old-fashioned bellpull. A chime pealed deep inside the house. No one came. He tried the bellpull again. Still no one.

Sir Clive was expecting him. Perhaps he was out, summoned away on some urgent errand.

Purely out of curiosity, Strange tried the door. It was unlocked. He entered tentatively.

“Hello? Anybody home?” he called out.

No reply.

“Sir Clive? It’s Stephen. You know, Stephen Strange, who’s just traveled three thousand miles at your request.”

Not a sound in response, save for the echo of his own voice.

In a house this size, there would surely be domestic servants present—even if the owner wasn’t home. Where was everyone?

Strange’s hackles were rising. Something sinister was afoot. Laying down his bag, he ventured further into the building. Briefly he took in the hallway, with its galleried landing and checkerboard floor. A suit of armor stood sentinel at the foot of the winding oak staircase, halberd clutched in one gauntlet. He explored the ground-floor rooms. A library. A billiards room. A drawing room. A dining room. No sign of life anywhere, but he discerned a thin patina of dust on many of the surfaces. It was as though the place had been abandoned, and recently, too, within the past few days.

He prepared a ward of self-defense, just in case—the Shield of the Seraphim. He configured his hands in readiness for casting the spell, each set of fingers assuming an elaborate pattern which mirrored the other hand’s. With just a few words and a gesture, he could work the magic.

In a study whose windows overlooked the rear grounds of the house, he found a huge cherrywood desk with a stack of correspondence, documents and newspapers on its leather-inlaid top. Medical textbooks filled the shelves, and there were some fine pieces of decorative chinaware ranged about the room, including a large blue-and-white willow-pattern vase. Oddly, a candle was burning in one corner. A thin plume of smoke spiraled up from its flickering flame.

Strange pondered this anomaly. Why leave a lone candle alight in an unoccupied building? Did it mean something? Was it some kind of tribute?