Maxius IV – two days later
Selma Grey moved quickly through the market place, ignoring the pleas of the various vendors in her path. She become quite adept since they had arrived on this little backwater township in ignoring just about everything – everything except her husband's increasingly erratic behavior. "If only I could burn those damn paintings." She muttered to herself, ignoring the puzzled look from the merchants she passed. "Maybe then he'd snap out of it." She sighed in frustration.
"Dr. Grey?" a familiar voice called from behind her. Selma turned to find herself staring at a face she had not seen in many years.
"Sarah … Sarah Chambers? My heavens, it's been what – almost 10 years?" Selma smiled and enveloped the younger woman in a motherly embrace. "What ever brings you to Maxius IV?"
"I was going to ask you the same question." Dr. Chambers responded, returning the hug. She turned and gestured towards the two people at her back. "Selma let me introduce you to Captain Matthew Gideon of the Earth Alliance cruiser Excalibur and my friend Dureena Nefeel."
"A pleasure to meet you both." Selma glanced quizzically at Dureena, mentally running through the catalog of alien races she had studied and not finding one that matched the dark haired, tense young woman in front of her. "Are you here on a mission?"
"Selma, haven't you heard what's happening on Earth? Hasn't Herodotus heard about the Drakh plague?" Sarah Chambers asked, anxiously watching her old tutors face as she spoke.
"Yes, I've heard some of what is going on from various traders who have passed here on their way to Babylon 5. As for what Herodotus has heard, …" her voice trailed off, leaving an awkward silence. She searched the face of her one-time favorite student silently as a plan formed in her mind. "Sarah, you know what happened after Jack and Angie died?"
"I heard you and Herodotus left Earth for Mars to get away from painful memories."
Selma smiled affectionately. "Dear Sarah, still the diplomat. I'm sure your friends already know that my husband had a nervous breakdown after the death of our children. Going to Mars was my idea. I had family there, and I had hoped that getting him away from all that reminded him of the children would help him to start to heal. Sadly, I was mistaken."
"What do you mean?" Sarah asked, hesitantly.
"Not here." Selma replied. She motioned to a small café and beckoned the group to follow her. "We'll be more comfortable here. It's something of a sad story and I find sad stories are much more acceptable with a glass of what passes for ginger beer." The elderly woman motioned to the tavern keeper and soon the group was sitting at a private table with glasses of honey-colored liquid in front of them.
Gideon took a sip from his glass. "Nice!" he commented. "Very smooth."
"Yes, it was my husband's favorite drink when we first arrived here. Of course, that was when I could still drag him out of the house, away from his work."
"What work?" Sarah asked.
Selma stared down at the table, arranging her thoughts. "You have to understand, Sarah, that Herodotus was devoted to our children. He believed that it was through children that one obtained immortality. Once they were gone, his mind just couldn't seem to settle on any one thing for long. Nothing seemed to hold his interest, not his work, not his old hobbies, … not even me. So when he first showed an interest in the paintings, I was actually thrilled. It was the first time in months I had seen any signs of life in him."
"What paintings?" Dureena asked, confused.
"Sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. My brother found a cache of artwork done in the late Twentieth century by an obscure woman artist. Her specialty was portrait work. She was no Holbeins but she did have a certain talent, enough that some of her work is still exhibited by small museums back home to this day. But no one had every found any of her early works until my brother came across them in a vault he excavated while building a new spaceport in Canada. She had done a series of portraits of people in what can only be described as medieval costuming, and used a fantasy world for her background. It was a series of canvases meant to be shown together which were entitled "The Dark Lady and her Lords of Magic". Nothing like the work she would later do, but amusing just the same. My brother brought the works with him to Mars after the job was finished, along with some absurd legends he had heard about the portraits. I think it was those legends, more than the portraits, that finally peaked my husband's interest and then fueled his obsession."
"Okay, now you've lost me." Gideon commented, tipping his glass back to finish his drink. "What legends? What have a set of pictures go to do with you and Dr? Gray being out here in the middle of no where instead of back on Mars helping work on the Drakh plague?"
"The stories my brother brought back," Selma continued, ignoring the captain's comments, "were that the people in the pictures were magical beings, immortals who had asked the artist to paint their portraits in return for granting her a long and fruitful life."
"Sounds like Technomages." Gideon murmured to himself. "But I didn't think they showed up on Earth that early in Earth's history."
Selma continued her story, staring down at her glass. "The artist did, in fact, live to be over a hundred years old and was painting new portraits up until the day she died. This and other coincidences that my husband's research discovered led him to believe that the legends were true. He developed an obsession to find out everything he could about the artist and her subjects with the hope that one day he might actually meet these magical beings and…"
"And ask them to bring your children back." Dureena finished the statement sadly. "My people have stories of such quests. They always end badly."
"Nothing I have said over the last few years has reached past that obsession of his, not even when I told him about the Drakh plague. Those canvases seemed to have cast a spell of their own over him, a spell I can't seem to break. Sarah, I know it's a lot to ask, but he always thought highly of you. Maybe you could talk to him? Make him see what he's doing to himself, to us…"
"Of course." Sarah replied, putting her hand over the older woman's. "Take me to him."
"Hold on." Gideon replied, looking off across the bazaar. "We need to wait for Galen. He said he'd meet us here."
"Really Matthew, you should have your eyes checked. I'm standing right here." an amused voice responded from the shadows behind Gideon. The Technomage stepped forward with a smile, nodding his greeting to Dureena and Dr. Chambers.
"I hate when you do that." Gideon complained, only half joking.
"I know." Galen replied, unconcerned. "I believe you were about to introduce me to this lady?"
Sarah made the hurried introductions, including the fact that Galen was a Technomage. Selma examined their new companion silently, revising what little she had known about that mysterious order. The man in front of her seemed normal enough, not like the so-called "Lords of Magic" enshrined forever on her husband's accursed canvases. "I'm pleased to meet you Galen." She said, and then moved to lead the group from their quiet little nook. "I only wish it could be under better circumstances."
The group walked swiftly through the crowded market place, most of its inhabitants giving the Technomage and his friends a wide berth. It wasn't long before they had reached the small adobe house the two Earth doctors shared on the outskirts of town. Selma silently slipped the lock and lead them into a sparse front room, where three life-size canvases stood against the far wall. "Those were the portraits my brother found on Earth. There were, according to legend, four of them. Herodotus has a theory that to contact the people on the canvases he had to have all four of them. He's still searching for the last one." She commented, automatically setting the lights so that the works could be seen to their advantage. The first was a portrait of a young woman dressed in a long dark robe, with a band of gold around her forehead, keeping her black hair back from her face. She stood with a sword grasped before her and a large, snowy owl perched on one shoulder. Her eyes were fathomless, deep dark pools that even in the flat surface of the canvas seem to draw the viewer into them. The two companion pieces were of portraits of men, one a lean, dark haired wanderer with an intricately carved staff in his hand. The other man was as golden and bright as the woman had been dark, with blazing blue eyes that seemed to leap from the canvas.
"The Dark Lady and her Lords of Magic." Sarah murmured, drawn to the portraits almost against her will. The artist had added incredible detail to her work, little imperfections to the fold of a robe, or a hair out of place that made the figures almost life-like.
"Strange." Galen commented, looking at the Wanderers portrait. "That staff looks familiar. I would swear I saw one of my order with one similar to it. But Matthew, you are right. My order did not find members on Earth during this age of Humankind."
A pounding sound suddenly erupted from deep inside the dwelling. Selma grimaced at the sound. "Oh, no! What on Earth could he be doing down there?" She scurried towards the back rooms, the Excalibur's crew in tow. There they found an elderly man busily trying to open a large, almost man-sized crate that had been propped up on a table. He glanced back at his wife for a moment, an almost maniacal smile on his face. "Selma, look! Your brother found the last one! The set's complete!" He ripped out the last few nails and pulled the top of the crate off hurriedly, digging through the mounds of packing material inside it till he found its contents. He wrestled it out of its home hurriedly then propped it against the wall. "See, here he is, the last of the players. The Swordsman has finally come to join his Dark Lady."
Gideon heard Galen's sudden intake of breath from behind him, and Dureena's exclamation of disbelief. Both he and Sarah stared at the life-size portrait, stunned into silence. It was a painting of a man, a man with a tall sword strapped to his back and a parrying knife in one hand staring at the artist with what passed for disinterest. But what drew them all to the painting, what riveted them to the fantastic work was the man's face. It was a portrait of Galen.