by James Peart
He would have to see, he decided finally. In coming to a decision, he may have been swayed by the notion that he did not want to stay in this dying world any longer than necessary. Whatever the case, it was now time to act.
Stepping onto the plinth, he reached across and with the index finger of his right hand pressed the first button.
He felt the markings stir against the ball of his finger, as if alive with some unknown force. Above him, in the fading sky, there was an unearthly crack and as he looked up through the crumbled roof he witnessed a jagged fissure of lightning, enormous in length and scope, fracture the heavens with an almighty clap. The ground beneath him rocked momentarily and as he struggled to remain upright he saw that the building had started to collapse around him. Shards of plaster and stone, torn from their stay in the walls of the palace, rained down on the floor, sheeting it in clouds of rubble and dust. Everywhere there was ruin. Pictures were torn from the walls, the images they contained from another age ripped inside their shattered glass casings. A giant split appeared in the floor beneath one of the tables like the breach of something monstrous, spilling rock and clay onto the flagstones from the ground underneath. Daaynan watched, fascinated, not sure of where to step, not sure that he could move, until the building grew still.
When the downfall subsided, the room, the building itself, was almost totally exposed to the sky and the giant sun that dominated it. Without stopping to ponder his altered surroundings, certain that the chain of events he had put into motion were the correct ones, he pressed the second button.
There was a thunderclap in the overhead sky, and another lightning fissure, far smaller than the first, split from the heavens to mark the building. The palace wasn’t its intended target, however, he noted, stepping down from the plinth and away from the table, but the crown that sat on the skull of the deceased King. It struck the golden coronet with terrific force, its stark red light flaring blindingly upon contact with the metal, rending it in two, its beam continuing down the length of the King’s frame. It flared once more, coating the skeleton in its light, animating the King, cloaking him in its red haze.
Daaynan stared.
The King had eyes where a moment ago he did not. They opened and looked up at him and there was enough living in that regard to cause him to step back in surprise. They were yellowed with age, their pupils flat and wide like those of a cat. Whatever it had drawn from the sun, it could clearly replicate life, although he doubted it was of the human variety. There was now skin covering its entire frame. He supposed that was what it was. It looked like a translucent membrane tightly sketched over its bones, thin yet strong, he somehow thought.
It, or he, turned from Daaynan and with a casual motion of one hand indicated his body and the remains of the palace. “Did you do this?” he asked.
“It was done for me,” he replied. Not quite a lie.
The King stood up, pushing aside the chair he sat in, and considered him. At well over six and a half feet, he was nearly as tall as Daaynan. “Are you a magician?”
“Of a kind. I need...help with someone. This individual lives in another world. The magic I used to find the help I need carried me here, to this place.”
The King, if that was what he was, absorbed this slowly. “You’re not telling me everything. Are you from this person’s world?”
“I am.”
“Then you must have employed some very powerful magic to carry you here.”
“What is this place?”
The King gestured at their surroundings once again. It was a lazy action and one Daaynan did not care for. There was more animation in his face now, the veins and muscles beneath his skin apparent, pulsing and stretching in regular cadence. He saw an arrogant expression cross his features, a look underpinning a self-importance that seemed somehow permanent.
“This is where I govern. Everything that you can see and more besides, much more.”
“There are more...buildings...here?”
“Far more than a year’s travel would have you see. What manner of magician are you?”
“I am a Druid. I study history and philosophy and care for the people in my charge.”
“That is not the question I asked. How did you bring me to life once more?”
“My magic is sometimes of a general nature. In this case, I left many of the details in its summoning to its own device.”
“Not the complete truth, I would guess. Still, you need my help. I will grant it on one condition.”
“What would that be?”
“That you assist me in turn, of course.” He outstretched his right hand, one of the fingers on which held a gold signet ring. “Reach out and hold my hand in yours.”
Daaynan stood where he was, unmoving. “What are you asking of me? Who are you?”
“I am the Raja Iridis. I am the ruler of this world and everything in it. That you come from someplace else matters little. You were born to swear on an oath that you will promise fealty to me and me alone.”
He gave the other a look of cool assessment. “What if I don’t?”
“Touch me, Druid, and find out,” Iridis said in response but he was already moving toward Daaynan, reaching for his face.
Daaynan reacted at a speed that an observer would have found difficult to follow. One moment he was situated halfway down the length of the King’s table, the next he was standing on the plinth and had pressed the last button in the sequence of three. A fraction of a moment later and the being that called itself Iridis would have caught the Druid’s robing and pulled him close. What happened instead was that a fantastic burst of light caught both of their forms and the world of the red star disappeared from both of their visions and they felt pulled- no, wrenched- from the palace and into the world between worlds once again (for Daaynan, at least).
Daaynan felt a familiar heat, like a rash against his skin. When it subsided, as he expected it to, the surrounds of the temple asserted themselves into his view. He looked around and saw nothing but columns of light. He noted the stains he had made on the four pillars, one of which was arrowed, the point of which directed him back the way he had originally come.
The stained column opposite the column with the arrowed stain was the one he had walked through. He walked back from this now, searching for that other, his hands raised, ready to summon fire, yellow to attack. He found him not three feet from the pillar that led into the dying world from which he had been taken. He was lying on the temple floor, apparently spent of force, of no seeming threat to anyone. His eyes were half-lidded, his breathing laboured and uneven, seemingly only partially aware of his surroundings. Daaynan remembered how this place could drain your life-force, if you did not have sufficient protection. He himself had use of the somnolent veil, the pink flame that brought about sleep yet also guarded against attack. He would have need of it here.
It did not bother him that he had brought Iridis into the temple against his will. He knew it was a rationalisation but he had breathed life into the King. Even if he hadn’t he would not have worried about interfering with the will of such a man. He had an idea that the buttons on the columns of light were meant to bring individuals who lives had come to an end in some way. Indeed, here the subject’s whole world was about to finish. But to take others presented a moral question. Iridis had been about to attack him, or do something he feared was far worse, though he could but speculate on what that might have been. Would he rob the life of others? How many would he take? Two? Three? How many would be enough? There were other ways he could enlist help, he knew. He considered the idea that it might have been a mistake to come here in the first place.
Something tugged at the corner of his vision. He turned back to the spot where the King had been resting and found it empty. He walked away from it, moving slowly around in each direction, and spotted him twenty feet away, bent forward against one of the pillars, lost in concentration. He sensed Daaynan’s attention somehow and turned to face him.
“
This is a way station, Druid. You have brought me to an in-between place. What manner of sorcery is it you possess?”
“What have you learned about the temple?”
“The temple is it? It stores an infinite variety of what it calls systems, each one different from the next. It calls forth souls from each, those whose stay has ended.”
“You’re in communication with it?”
“It speaks to me, as all life must.” The King turned from his concentration on the pillar, regarding him with a bitter expression. There were lines on his face that had not been there earlier, the life energy that animated his expression spent of force by his stay in the temple. Daaynan stepped back from the other, not trusting him. It could be that he too was weakened here but it was good to be cautious. He did not seem able to summon fire but there were other ways to present a threat and in his own way the Druid felt that the King’s power was at least the equal of his own.
“What does it tell you?” he enquired.
Iridis smiled, and Daaynan glimpsed piece of what the King was made of beneath that smile, something of a gruesome countenance that lurked in the shadow of the expression that hid it. Not a human countenance but one of a devil of some making, devoid of temperance or mercy, holding dark virtues in restraint for what it lacked in compassion or shared feeling. Long moments spent under the gaze of that stare, he felt, would drive an individual mad.
Without dwelling on the matter, Daaynan turned to the pillar nearest him and dove inside the light that composed it, meaning to leave the creature behind. As he moved, however, his shoulder fell numb with shock and as he turned back to investigate the source of the feeling he could see that the other had reached out and caught a section of his broad-cloak. Together they tumbled through the light, Daaynan attempting to writhe free of the King’s grip. He turned inside the spin, managing- unfathomably- to grasp a welt of his cloak and tear it free. The other faded from his vision, absorbed by the light as it receded and the structure of this world into which he had entered imposed its own surroundings. It all happened blindingly quickly and would not have happened at all had the Druid not acted without thinking.
When the surroundings of the world he had entered imposed themselves fully he found he was standing at the edge of a cove, the waves of some foreign tide lapping at his boots. There was a lagoon near the end of a shore, and beyond it were buildings of a description, small and similar in shape and size yet extravagant looking. The detail was fine, the buildings composed of a material he did not recognise. This was no time to study the scenery, he decided. He quickly looked around, hoping to find a plinth like the one in the King’s world on which the buttons would be mounted. There was nothing of the kind for as far as he could see in any direction he chose to look. There was simply land and sea and banks of earth leading back into fields, a number of which were manicured like the gardens of Fein Mor that rolled away toward the horizon where a fading blue sky gladdened distant treetops.
There was a figure standing, no walking along inside the shallow lagoon, its head bent low, moving in a fashion so dejected it was striking in its isolation. It was a young man, headed not toward the buildings at this time of the evening- if time could be marked in the usual way here, and he supposed it could not- but further out to sea. The Druid studied him for a moment, conscious that he had little time in this place, the cold numbing in his shoulder serving him as a reminder of that fact. He had broken free of the other, not knowing if Iridis had entered this world with him. He sensed however that he was close by. He knew what he must now do, and without the help of the shields that drew people from each world into the temple. His magic could do that- green fire that drew matter and energy into the real world from another; what it really did, he thought- no, hoped- was draw matter including people from the world he was in to the one he had come from. The idea that the Northern Earth was for the time being no longer his home ought not to change the way his sorcery worked, yet the knowledge sat heavy with him. No matter. He brushed his feelings aside and started out toward the young man.
As he approached, someone emerged from one of the buildings. Two someones. The first was an elderly woman, dressed in strange yet fine clothes that were somehow ill befitting a formal occasion. She cried out “Christopher!” The young man for whom the warning was clearly intended did not look up. He continued walking in a crooked line, his head bent low in some private stupor. He was as unobservant to what was happening as Iridis’s skeleton had been. Daaynan understood. The life, or most of its force, had been taken from this Christopher just as it had been from the King. He was dying or already dead. Their time in their respective worlds had come to an end, as would his if he did not set out to accomplish what he had come here to do. He would not be taking a life so much as giving this young man a chance to start over in a fresh environment. Other considerations, such as why this man should be taken against his will from everything he knew or would have known and what effect this would have on a mind that was already likely very delicate, were brushed from the Druid’s thoughts as he acted on his decision. He could sense that other, closer than ever now. Summoning the green fire, he reached out with one hand, directing it at the man, the flame issuing- no, streaming- toward him.
The second person to emerge from the building was a young man also. Of the two, he presented more of a threat. He came running out of his dwelling, not crying out as the old woman did but intending to place himself between his friend and the Druid. He had a similar build to ‘Christopher,’ tall and stick-thin, yet there was a lively animation to his face that went deeper than the predicament he was in allowed for. Daaynan read determination on his features and a lack of hesitation he could have admired in another situation. The man ran straight into the flame without thought of what could happen to him, yet he was too late to save his friend. The fire swallowed them both, the Druid turning the magic back toward him at the last moment to include himself in its summoning. Seconds later all three were gone.
8.
Simon felt pulled back through a blazing corona of verdant light. It shone everywhere he looked, consuming everything, including the beach he had been standing on- running on- just a moment ago. His legs continued to drive forward and back yet they couldn’t seem to find purchase on soil, water or land. He was held, he decided, inside some manifestation of the purest kind of light. In an odd kind of way, he seemed acquainted with it, as if it provided the cloak of familiar surroundings of early childhood. He bathed in it as would a stranded sailor in the flash of a rescue light of an oncoming vessel. He turned in the beam and found he could see both Christopher and the man dressed in black. They were adrift of him by some distance, revolving in a featherlike orbit, unreachable in their spin.
Then the light altered, became white at first, then a number of separate white shapes. When his normal vision returned he could see the shapes were vast beams of light that stretched high as far as he could see and numbered more than he could count. He felt drowsy, beyond ordinary thought. He could probably move, he thought, yet his will to act had momentarily deserted him. Ahead of him lay Christopher, slumped against one of the beams, locked in an equal paralysis. The man in the black robe was standing, however, watching them and past them, perhaps at a fourth party to join this merry trip. He said something, the Reaper (Simon found it easy to think of him as such- where were they after all but in some version of an afterlife?) but filtered through the haze of his diminished senses he couldn’t quite catch it. ‘Need to move now...he’s almost upon us,’ was what he thought he heard but he wasn’t quite sure. An instant later the Reaper was at his side, wrenching his arm to get him to stand. He held Christopher’s arm with his other hand, pulling them both forward and toward one of those impossibly tall beams, entering it somehow, merging with the light. An instant later they were falling again, tumbling through the brightness, Simon’s head growing dizzy in the spin. He turned back, watching for that fourth party the Reaper seemed worried about, but could see nothing in the spil
l of light.
When the light finally died, Simon found himself in a place he had never encountered before. He didn’t seem to be standing up, sitting or lying down. It felt comfortable all the same, though there was an utter lack of silence that at first unnerved him. There was literally no sound whatsoever, at least none coming from his surroundings. He turned to the Reaper, who had released them both and was looking around him as they were. A soft humming in his ears began, a gentle susurrus at first but it increased in pitch and intensity. He cast around for the source of the noise before he realised it was the sound of his own blood thrumming through his veins.
“Are we inside or outside?” he thought, starting in surprise when the Reaper answered his question.
“I don’t think that question applies to a place like this. At least he hasn’t followed us in.” The Reaper seemed deep in contemplation, his answer half directed to himself. A thin frown line grooved his forehead, running from one temple to the other like a loping scar. There were actual scars on his face, Simon noticed, long, rending tears moving along one cheek and the side of his neck that had been bright red and orange at one point but now looked diminished in this opaque light.
