by Paula Guran
She stepped around him, graceful as a dancer, and hooked her ankle around his foot as he went by, sending him sprawling, his axe skittering across the smooth black floor.
“Are you done?” she said. Her cloak drifted from the ceiling and settled down around her shoulders again. His face burning in shame, Barrow got to his feet. He left his axe on the floor, afraid of what she might do if he tried to retrieve it. If she attacked, he would fight ferociously, but she was just standing there, looking a little impatient, and even a little bored. Barrow had never before doubted his fate—he was a hero, and though the way was long and full of trials, he would win the Key, the greatest magical item in a world full of magic, the item of power no human hand had ever touched before. His allies respected him, and so did his enemies—but this witch from Outside toyed with him and taunted him, and he could not fathom how to strike her down.
So he followed her, through the hall and down a series of winding corridors, past the shattered remnants of the three great Gates, deeper into the red-black heart of the Citadel. Perhaps this is the part of my journey where I am humbled, he mused. Mayhap this witch will show me something important about myself, something to aid me in—
“The Chasm of Flies,” the witch said, shouting to be heard over the horrible buzzing that filled the Citadel, and gesturing at the vast space yawning before them. As wide as the Citadel itself, stretching as far as he could see, the Chasm was a great pit seething and alive with millions upon millions of churning insects, black flies and richly green flies and even the snow-pale flies who carried the Unsleeping Sickness. “Lector,” the witch said, patting the Living Book tucked under her arm. “What are those flies feeding on?”
“Heroes,” Lector replied, and the witch laughed and laughed.
“I had no idea that’s what fly shit smelled like,” she said. “But when you multiply one speck of bug poop by about a trillion, I guess it gets noticeable. Whoo. Anyway, check out this spell. I learned it off a bruja when I was living in a really nasty squat last year, there were bugs everywhere. Normally it just clears a room, but I’m pretty sure I can amplify it . . . ” She took a deep breath, then shouted, “SHOO, FLIES!”
The insects rose up in their millions, a black and green and white cloud, and revealed below them . . . a mass grave. A great tangle of men and women and the other races capable of heroism—the Grievous Ones with their spiny flesh, the Original Men with their snake’s eyes, the amorphous Unshaped—all broken and bloodied and rotting and emptied of their souls, made into nothing but a feast for flies.
“See there?” the witch said. “That’s what happens to heroes. It’s nothing personal. That’s what happens to everyone—no one lives forever, and even the gods can bleed. But heroes tend to die unpleasantly, far from home, without any friends.”
She slid close to Barrow as he gazed at the bodies, wondering how many of them had famous names, how many had been sung about in stories every bit as loudly as Barrow had heard his own name sung—and, worse, how many of them were not remembered in song or story at all anymore. “But you thought you were special?” she said. “You were going to be the one who really made a difference? In your heart of hearts, you thought you were going to be the one that lived forever, didn’t you? You’re all excited about having a destiny. Big deal. So did they. There are enough magical weapons down there to fill a war god’s armory, and enough heroic stories to fill even this weird talking infinite book I stole from you. I’m not saying there’s never a good reason to do great things, Barrow. But doing it for the sake of being a hero is bullshit. I mean, I have just one question—”
The buzzing of the flies suddenly went silent, though the insects themselves continued to bob in the air, and a new voice spoke: “I will ask the questions here.” That voice was beautiful, cool, and serene, as was the speaker. She walked across the Chasm on the floating cloud of flies as if their hovering bodies were paving stones, a perfect blonde dressed in little more than three clusters of diamonds that did the minimum necessary to protect her modesty, with a diadem of white gold upon her brow.
Barrow’s heart grew lighter when he saw the witch narrow her eyes, her demonic cloak writhing around her body. She didn’t like the look of this woman, which meant Barrow did.
“I am the Mistress of the Key,” the blond enchantress said, standing just a few feet away on a platform of white flies. “You have breached the Gates, and come to the edge of the Chasm, and now, you have the chance to win the Key.” She glanced down at the open grave beneath her feet. “Or to join the others who have tried in the past.”
Barrow went down on one knee and bowed his head in respect. “Mistress,” he said. “I am eager to meet any challenge you care to set.”
“So Keymistress,” the witch said. “You look a lot like this woman I know. Any chance your last name is ‘Husch’? You could be her twin sister.”
“I was not of woman born,” the Mistress said, her voice as clear as fine crystal. “I have no sister, or mother, or father, or daughters. Do you, too, come to try and win the key?”
“Sure,” the witch replied. “So what’s the challenge? Mortal combat with Barrow the Barbarian? Staring competition? Or should I just guess what you have in your pocketses?”
“You need only answer my question,” the Mistress said. “And if your answer satisfies me, the Key is yours.”
The witch snorted. “Let Barrow go first. He’s been waiting for this a long time.”
The Mistress turned her head to Barrow, and bade him rise. He stood perfectly straight. He had supped with kings, seduced queens, and counted gods among his close friends and dire enemies—but the Mistress seemed like something else again, something greater than the gods, or perhaps merely apart from them. “Barrow of Ulthar,” she said, “tell me: why do you desire the Key?”
Barrow blinked. He wanted the Key because that was his quest; because the swamp witch in his childhood village had seen a vision that he would someday seize it; because the diviner-in-chief for the great Stone King of the Inverted Mountains had declared that Barrow was destined to wield it; because his own dreams were almost nothing anymore but endless wanderings through black hallways filled with locked doors he could not open. He considered coming up with some more elaborate answer, something about breaking the shackles of tyrants, or opening new pathways of opportunity, but he feared the Mistress would sense dissembling or exaggeration. Truth had always served him well, and he would continue to serve truth. “Because it is my destiny,” he said. “Because I am the one who has been fated to win the Key, where all others have failed.”
The Mistress inclined her head. “And you, Marla Mason of Felport? Why do you desire the key?”
“Where I come from, there’s a saying,” Marla said, “anyone who wants to be president should be disqualified.” She nodded at Barrow. “Anyone who thinks he deserves to have the most powerful magical artifact in the world just because it’s his destiny should never be allowed to get his hands on it. I want it to keep it away from him, and people like him, who want power for its own sake.”
Barrow took a step back from the edge of the chasm, suddenly dizzy. “But I don’t—I don’t want it for anything bad, it’s just—”
“It’s just your MacGuffin,” Marla said, not unkindly. “You didn’t think it through well enough, is all. It’s not your fault. You’ve been telling this story for decades. It’s no wonder it’s starting to run a little thin. That’s always a problem with an ongoing series.”
“You have answered well, Marla Mason,” the Mistress said. “You may have me.”
“What do you mean I may—”
The Mistress leapt up from the flies, and floated toward them. She began to glow, first faintly, then as brightly as the brightest of the triple suns, and then—
She vanished, and a key of shining diamond fell to the floor. Marla Mason knelt and picked it up. “That wasn’t so hard,” she said. “Then again, I got to skip to the last chapter, which is hardly fair to you.”
Barrow licked his lips, eyes fixed on the key. “What will you do with it?”
Marla shrugged. “Open a door.” She squinted, then stabbed the key at the air, and gave it a twist. A rectangle outlined in white light appeared in the air, and she tugged the door open. Barrow expected to see something amazing—a heavenly universe, perhaps, or whatever dark pit her demonic cloak hailed from.
Instead, the door just showed a room, with an old white-haired man sleeping in a bed. A woman who looked a bit like the witch Marla Mason was stretched out on the floor in one corner, and through a window, another woman was watching—she wore spectacles, and had a tight blond bun, but she looked so much like the Mistress of the Key, who really was the Key—
“Want to come in?” Marla said. “See the world?”
Barrow recoiled. What trickery was this? The witch had stolen his destiny, and now she offered him a dirty room, an ugly bed, a smeared window, a living artifact transformed into a nurse—
“Never!” he shouted, and leapt into the Chasm, to join the other fallen ones. He might die, but he would die a hero, which was better than living as nothing but a man.
Marla stepped through the door, and immediately rolled over on her side and vomited, which was weird, because she hadn’t been lying on her side, she’d been walking through a door, except now she was on the floor, and—
“Oh,” she croaked. “I woke up in my own body, huh?”
Dr. Husch opened the door, and a doughy orderly hurried in and helped Marla to her feet, then pulled her outside, to the safety of the observation room. “In your hand,” Dr. Husch said. “What is that?”
Marla looked down at the crystal key she was holding. “Oh, this, it’s—you, I think, he must have seen you at some point, because he sure as hell fantasized about you, or . . . wait.” She shook her head. Marla knew she’d just done something, gone into a weird fantasy world and said some cold-hearted shit to a crazy man’s mental barbarian avatar, but the details were fading fast. “Why can’t I remember?”
“It can be difficult to remember dreams,” Husch said, plucking the key from Marla’s hand. “How much more difficult must it be to remember someone else’s dream? But you did what you were sent to do. You showed Barrow he is no hero of destiny. You broke the spine of his story, and you took away this key, which is, I think, a rather potent artifact—either great magic he willed into creation, or some existing magic he managed to grasp with his psychic abilities.”
“Artifact, huh?” Marla said, plucking at her cloak, which was also an artifact—an object of unknowable age and great magic. An object with motivations, however inscrutable they might be to their wielders. For some reason, wearing the cloak was making her skin crawl even more than usual today. Its malign intelligence, always a presence deep in the back of her mind, seemed more active and agitated, now, like a cat who’d spent hours watching squirrels frolic safely behind a pane of glass. “Think we can sell it?”
“I believe I will hold onto this key,” Dr. Husch said. “For the very reasons you so neatly articulated while you were unconscious.”
Marla waved her hand. “I don’t need to know what I say in my sleep. I’m sure it’s embarrassing. But . . . why isn’t Barrow waking up? Wasn’t busting up his delusion supposed to cure him?”
“I don’t know,” Husch said. “I’d hoped, of course, that he would become lucid when you proved his delusions of grandeur were false—I didn’t expect him to be cured, but if he could hear me, then therapy might be possible. He’s not speaking, though, so I don’t know what he’s experiencing now . . . ”
Barrow did not die in the pit. He lay among the filth for a while, then began to search the corpses. As the witch said, there were magic weapons there, countless ones, and he chose some of the most deadly for himself. He climbed out of the pit, hauling himself and his implements of war to the Citadel’s floor. Lector, the Living Book, rested on the stone, left behind when the witch departed.
“Lector,” Barrow croaked. “Old friend. Tell me. Do you know spells to raise the dead, and send this pit of fallen corpses into battle?”
“I do,” Lector said.
“This Citadel,” Barrow said, licking his lips. “Has it ever been held by a mortal before?”
“It has not,” Lector said. “Only by gods.”
“Ah,” Barrow said, flexing his fingers. “Then I will have to become a god, then.”
Lector seldom spoke unprompted, generally limiting himself to answering questions. But he spoke now. “Barrow of Ulthar . . . what are your plans?”
“If I am not a hero,” Barrow said, “Then I must be . . . something else. If I do not have a destiny, then I must make a destiny of my own. If I cannot unlock all the doors in all the worlds . . . Then I must tear holes in the walls. If I cannot save the world—”
“Then I must conquer it,” the old writer shouted beyond the glass, and Marla winced. “I will have my revenge!”
“He’s gone all Dark Lord on us, hasn’t he?” Marla said.
Dr. Husch sighed. “It seems so. His story is taking a darker turn. He’s making himself into an anti-hero.”
“I can’t imagine there’s much of a market for stories about those,” Marla said. “So . . . did we make things worse? Is he going to start trying to reach this world now? Are there going to be, I don’t know, hordes of orcs and black dragons who breathe napalm and dust storms of living anthrax popping randomly into existence? Aren’t you afraid he’s going to find another way in, and that he might bring an army next time?”
“Possibly,” Dr. Husch said. “Loath as I am to admit defeat, I think it’s time to take extreme measures. When therapy fails, sometimes the only solution . . . is isolation. Fortunately, you brought me a key, and keys aren’t just used for opening doors—they’re also used for locking them.” She cocked her head, considered the door before her, and slipped the crystal key into the lock. Which was quite a trick, since the key was way too big. Nevertheless, it fit, and Dr. Husch twisted it, resulting in a click as loud as a thundercrack. The door began to change, transforming from beaten-up metal into black volcanic glass. The change crawled up the wall and across the window until the entire room was an unbroken sheet of stone. “There,” Husch said. “Locked away.” She tucked the key into the pocket of her suit.
Marla whistled. “When you do solitary confinement, you don’t fuck around.”
“Your payment is due,” Dr. Husch said. “A trick and a secret, you said?”
Marla, who’d been staring at her reflection in the black glass, blinked. “Uh, yeah, right. The trick—I wanted to know how you managed to bind up some of the most powerful people you’ve got here. Agnes Nilsson, Elsie Jarrow, that caliber. From my researches, they should be impossible to hold. Then again, that was before I saw you do this.”
“It’s a rare patient who provides the key to his own security,” Husch said. “Barrow is a special case. The bindings on Jarrow and Nilsson are a bit involved, and I’ve had a trying day, but come back next week, and I’ll take you through the sigils and incantations.”
“Fair enough. As for the secret—I hear you’ve been running this place for decades, and you don’t look a day over twenty-five, no matter how you try to old yourself up with the dowdy hair and clothes and bondage hair. Even if you have one of those spells where you don’t age when you’re sleeping, that wouldn’t account for this kind of youth. So what’s the deal?”
Dr. Husch patted Marla on the shoulder. “Oh, Marla. Your mistake is in assuming I’m human.”
Marla frowned. “Don’t tell me you’re . . . an artifact in human form?”
“Of course not,” Dr. Husch said. “I’m a homunculus, just like the orderlies. Except my creator—he’s gone now—made me much smarter than they are, and my tastes go beyond meals of lavender seeds and earthworms. If I were human, I would have been able to go into Barrow’s dreams myself, and seen to his therapy directly. Of course I’m not human. Why else would I have hired you, dear?”
/>
Marla frowned. She had a memory of Husch, telling her this already—“I am not of woman born”—but, no, that wasn’t really her, it was Barrow’s version of her. The old writer was psychic, so maybe he’d seen into Husch’s mind and found her secret, incorporating her true nature as a magical inhuman thing into his fantasy world. If he could see into Husch’s mind, then . . .
“Next time, hire someone else,” Marla said. “Barrow’s bad for my mental health.”
That night, Marla stopped by a used book store and pawed through a crate of yellowing old magazines. After half an hour of searching she finally found one with a story by Roderick Barrow, called “Shadow of the Conqueror!”—complete with exclamation point. She paid for the magazine with pocket change.
She read it in her tiny studio apartment south of the river. Barrow wrote a lot like he talked. The last two pages were torn out, but it was pretty clear what was going to happen: the hero would thwart the villain, free the slaves, and get the girl, who was dressed in golden chains and not much else. Nothing in the story really rang any bells, and her memories of the experience in Barrow’s mind didn’t come any clearer, the details turning to mist whenever she tried to focus on them. Ah, well, screw it. She tossed the magazine into a corner. Who needed fantasy stories, when she had asses to kick and secrets to learn?
Later, Marla dreamed of a house of endless black hallways. Every corridor was lined by dozens of doors, some marked with numbers, some with letters, some with runes or mystic sigils. She tried all the doorknobs, but none of them opened—none of them so much as turned—and though she pressed her ears to the door, she couldn’t hear anything. She just kept walking, until she reached a door made of black volcanic glass, with no knob at all, but something on the other side was pounding, and pounding, and pounding, as if trying to break through—
