Mobius

by Garon Whited

  “I shall await your return in the temple,” he offered.

  “Oh, no you won’t,” I contradicted. “If everyone else goes, you go, too. You can be the last man out, if you like, but do not stay to watch over things until I return. That’s an order. Got it?”

  “As you command, my lord,” he bowed and backed out of the chamber. I focused on how to target the Great Arch of Tamaril.

  Along about here, I worried. I’ve never actually been to Tamaril. I don’t think I’ve even seen their Arch. Floating in the void, surrounded by an artificial Firmament, I expected to have to seek the Great Arch of Tamaril for minutes, possibly hours. To fight through the static and seething chaos, to struggle with picturing the Arch, to drive my own gateway to greater and greater efforts, drawing heavily on the matter-conversion reactors in the heart of the mountain to force the spell to cross the barriers between one gate and the other, stretching to infinity and beyond!

  Nope. It connected immediately. My big escape from the free-floating city in the void, and it’s an anticlimax. Bronze and I simply walked through and closed it behind us. Sometimes gate travel is too simple. I think that’s what makes it hard to accept the first dozen times you do it.

  Tamaril was in much better shape than Zirafel.

  Zirafel was afflicted by a curse a thousand or three years ago. I presume—based on what I know of the gods—Sparky either built an avatar or channeled a massive working through a whole family of fire-witches. The curse sealed off Zirafel, containing within it the citizenry who followed Queen Flarima’s edict to permit religious freedom. Since then, Sparky’s attitude seems to have mellowed, but maybe she’s only being more agreeable because being a bitch hasn’t worked so well.

  Still, at the time, Zirafel was locked away, isolated. I don’t know if everyone inside died immediately or if they were allowed to slowly starve to death. I see practical reasons why everyone inside should be killed instantly by the curse, but I don’t have the same perspective as Sparky. Their ghosts, on the other hand, were condemned to remain within the cursed city for eternity—at least, until I showed up and they took the nightlord express to the afterlife.

  Tamaril, by contrast, sat quietly on the eastern Edge of the World and wondered why their insta-travel arch wasn’t working anymore. The Plaza of the Arch used to be a place of high traffic, kind of like a tunnel under a river, connecting one half a city to the other half. No doubt they had other ways to find out why they shouldn’t stick their noses into Zirafel.

  I’m a little puzzled why the doorway in the Hand compound could access the Zirafel arch. Was the arch only temporarily disabled by the curse? Or was it only cut off from its twin, specifically? Or did it work perfectly well and everyone in Zirafel was already dead and ghostly? The last one might be more likely, since it was also known as the City of Bones. Who in Tamaril would want to use their arch if it led to a city haunted by hundreds of thousands of ghosts?

  Whatever Sparky intended, this dealt the Empire a serious blow. If you have—effectively—half your capitol city turned into a haunted ruin by a divine curse, it’s something of a hit to your morale as a nation. While the Empire slowly crumbled over the next few decades or centuries, Tamaril followed suit. The city didn’t collapse, but it did lose a lot of power and prestige, and therefore money, and therefore people.

  When we stepped through, the Tamaril version of the Plaza of the Arch was still a big, sprawling place, but traffic was a nightmare. Wooden stalls were parked any which way, thick as fleas on a dingo. People in them hawked wares at high volume and steep discounts. Others roamed through the pathways between, carrying goods for sale and accosting anyone foolish enough to make eye contact. It was a bedlam of stalls and roving peddlers, loud and busy.

  Beyond the Plaza, buildings still towered over the streets, but many of the columns struck me as less ancient and more copied. Several arches were more artful than architectural. My quick look was hardly a full evaluation, but my impression was of a culture copying the ancients without fully understanding why the ancients did it their way. Sure, the arches were still load-bearing, but they weren’t as strong as the originals. The pillars and columns were still there, but they were constructed of individual stones and mortared together, not cut to form interlocking pieces or quarried whole.

  I had only a moment to consider all this, taking it all in at a glance, as it were. The oddest thing, to my mind, was the thriving, bustling, busy nature of the commerce going on around me. If someone got on the Emergency Broadcast Network and announced the launch of enemy ICBMs toward the country, would the stock market floor still have people buying and selling? If Rome was burning to the ground, would the fishmarket still haggle over the price of tuna?

  Could these people not know the world was ending? I didn’t see how it could be possible. I mean, I could see the sky-high wall of the expanding chaos.

  Hmm. Okay, the sun isn’t coming up, so it’s dark as night out there. There are lamps and lanterns and magical glows all over the market, so there’s a lot of light pollution. Maybe they can’t see it as anything more than an oddly-colored storm, if they can see it at all.

  But the sun! The sun hasn’t come up in a couple of… days? It hasn’t come up in a long while, I mean. It’s so overdue, it isn’t late, it’s AWOL. Surely, in the City of Dawn, someone has consulted with a priest? There have to be churches. The gods—any of the gods—when asked can tell the people what’s…

  Hold on a minute. Maybe the gods don’t care enough. Why waste the figurative breath? All these people are going to die. Why bother to tell them anything?

  All right, all right. Assume the gods are keeping quiet and the people can’t actually see what’s coming. I keep coming back to it—the sun. It’s not coming up. Why aren’t they panicking? Is it denial? Propaganda from the political powers? Or has it just been dark long enough for them to finish panicking and go back to work? I mean, how long does the riot last? An hour? Ten? The weekend? Sooner or later, you have to get tired of rioting and go home.

  Social mysteries are not my forté. If they wanted to buy, sell, and trade right up until the heat death of the universe, it wasn’t my affair.

  Bronze and I did make a bit of an impression when we stepped through. There was a small area around the Arch, cordoned off by six stone posts supporting a bronze chain. We had to step over it when we came through. Nobody had a market stall in the way, so we were lucky there. People screamed and scrambled away from us, clearing a space, which I thought was helpful. We turned to face the Arch and Bronze bit through the chain to get it out of my way. It ran around the Arch through rings set on the posts. She spaghetti-slurped the whole clanking length of it right out of its rings while I worked on my spells.

  Setting up the bolt-on accessory to the Great Arch of Zirafel—excuse me, Tamaril. I’m used to the other one—to the Great Arch of Tamaril was pretty simple. I had most of it already constructed and ready to go. My version, not being drawn on the ground, took up almost no space. One fist-sized crystal went on each side, at the base points of the Arch, with a rudimentary orichalcum cable strung between. Once placed, there were some invisible things to do—energies to be injected, the spell equivalent of jumper cables to connect, and some finicky bits in finding exactly where in the Arch’s power structure to connect them—but it was relatively straightforward.

  Okay, I say that. Mary once pointed out I’m an expert—the expert—on gate spells. It was straightforward to me, but I think I could have explained how to do it to anyone with the capacity to cast the gate spell.

  As for the bolt-on, I’m glad I didn’t have to do the research and development. I don’t know how many minor gates my spherical nemesis blew up, blew out, or otherwise blew away, but I’m guessing it was several. No doubt he would be highly irate to discover I stole most of his research. This is one reason I assume anything I do—unless kept a deep, dark secret—is going to be copied and countered by everyone. If it works well, everyone will want one of their own.<
br />
  The Arrows of Nuclear Devastation +5 (five million, that is—save for half!) are no exception. If there are no survivors, there’s no one to report, and they stay a secret. Not exactly my favorite way to keep one, but it’s usually effective.

  Bronze snorted behind me as I finished the connections. The crowd initially surged back from us, as is quite reasonable when the gate to the haunted City of Bones opens unexpectedly and things come through it. When we didn’t immediately begin killing anyone, people moved toward us again, trying to get a look at what was going on. Bronze snorted flames to discourage interruptions and enforced our personal space with a minimum of bloodshed. Thumping someone with her nose or shoulder usually got the point across. Whacking someone with her mane or tail stings like hell even if the doesn’t draw blood. Once, she reared and blew a cloud of fire into the sky. Rather than trample anyone into paste, she kept turning, semi-threatening the leading edge of the crowd, and kept me undisturbed while I worked.

  Now, though, she warned me of the approach of armed and armored men. They cuffed and swore and shoved people aside, demanding passage, but the depth and density of the crowd kept them from making any speed. In her estimate, the first one would be annoying me in about a minute.

  I acknowledged her warning and kept working. I was pretty sure we could be gone before we had to deal with the local cops.

  With the last of the spell connected, I activated the first crystal. It began to glow.

  “You there! Halt! Explain yourself!”

  Bronze expressed regret. One of them was quicker than she thought.

  “I’m leaving,” I told the panting guardsman. I ignored the short spear he pointed at me. Bronze moved next to me, in front of the Arch.

  “Identify yourself!”

  “I’m the guy who is leaving,” I reiterated. “I can either go away, in which case you’ve successfully thrown me out of your city, or I can stay, we can have problems, bloodshed, and death. Then, if there are any survivors, they have the problem of paperwork, corpses, and explanations. What’ll it be? Start a fight or banish me from the city?”

  Two more guardsmen broke through the crowd and joined their fellow. Two more were about to.

  “Well?” I insisted.

  “Stand where you are!” he ordered, choosing to offer blood and paperwork to the gods of bureaucracy.

  Bronze blew fire at him and his friends. It wasn’t her best effort. It was a cloud of flame, not a blast. Hair singed, cloth scorched, someone was missing an eyebrow. All things considered, it was more her way of forcefully telling them to go away than an attempt at harm.

  Meanwhile, I sprang to the other leg of the Arch and activated the second crystal. The spell started, fired up the Arch, and the whole setup chimed like a struck bell, deep-throated and reverberating. I probably yelled, but I definitely regretted my helmet. I tried to clap hands over my ears, but between helmet and gauntlets, there wasn’t much I could do. A moment later, I realized I was on my knees, along with half the crowd. The other half was lying down and either writhing in pain, clutching at their heads, or unconscious.

  Oops. Well, how was I to know there would be a sonic manifestation? I only showed up at the end. I wasn’t there for the whole process.

  On the upside, my ears regenerate. I stood up and watched as the tunnel in the Arch, already formed, continued to reach out. The would-be corridor extended away from us, lengthening into the infinite distance.

  I put one hand on my visor, ready to slap down both the transparent faceshield and the opaque blast shield. The last time I saw this, there was light at the end of the tunnel.

  Which, of course, is why I wore the armor. My knights have no need for a light-proof face covering. They always need to see what’s going on around them. I—or Diogenes—anticipated the need for a light-proof suit. Yes, the incident with blasting my face off did inspire me, as well as some other things. In this case, I wore my armor even though it was weakened, less as a defense against weapons and more against sunlight. I had no way of knowing if the destination would be in daylight or not, and I couldn’t wait until dawn here because it wasn’t coming.

  The tunnel flickered for a moment, rippling down its length, the same instant a distant pinprick of light appeared. It hurt my eyes to look at it, so I knew what to expect. The Arch started to eat itself, the structure of it weaving and rolling and writhing into itself as it thinned, so I slapped down my face protection, grabbed a stirrup, and let Bronze be my seeing-eye horse.

  We stepped through the Arch together.

  Tamaril, Day One

  There’s something about traveling in time that bothers me.

  Don’t misunderstand. I get the whole branching timelines thing. Traveling from one alternate Earth to another alternate Earth—albeit slipped forward or back along the chronological track—isn’t too disturbing. Events in any given Earth are the events of a unique, singular Earth. What was, was. The past is fixed and unchanging. True, I might not know what exactly happened, but those events all taken together add up to the particular world I occupy.

  The idea of interfering with the past—as opposed to creating a new universe, I mean. There’s a difference between causing a new universe to exist and screwing up an existing one. This sort of thing causes me no end of worry and grief. If I change something in, say, the Roman Empire, does that prevent the fall of Rome? Delay it? Or hasten it? Do the Dark Ages last longer? Or are they over more quickly? Does Galileo do his experiments, does someone beat him to it by a generation, or do they hang him? Whatever happened before, I’ve changed it. This is distinct and separate from creating a what-if where things go wrong. At least in a branching timeline, the original is still there.

  I’ve had energy-state beings berate me for being a creature of chaos. In this, at least, I agree with them. The potential for drastic and unpredictable change is frightening. Terrifying. I’d go so far as to say horrifying.

  Let’s not even get into the questions about free will and predestination. I mean, if I can go back and watch myself do everything I did, do I have free will? I know what’s going to happen—it’s destiny! On the other hand, if, as I fear, I’m going back in time to make myself do what I need to do to do what I’m going to do, is it free will for me and destiny for my earlier self? And then there’s the whole paradox thing…

  I need a nice, soundproof chamber to scream in for a while.

  Speaking of screaming, I did a lot of it on the way down the tunnel.

  If you have a choice between a temperamental time machine with a knackered guidance system and a madman from another planet piloting it, or a kludged-together, self-destructing, hotwired magical wormhole gateway… take the time machine! You may have to make several stops along the way, but you’ll have a lot more fun.

  The first thing I noticed was the tumbling. As far as I could tell, we were weightless and spinning in every direction. There’s this three-axis thing pilots get into, training their spatial sense so they don’t lose orientation in a dogfight. It spins them around in every direction at once. It’s like a stationary roller-coaster. Until now, I’ve always wanted to try one. I no longer feel the need.

  What I did feel was disoriented and nauseous. Less a Bond martini and more a vampire smoothie—more violently stirred than simply shaken. I’m not sure why an undead monster would feel nauseous, but I also felt the prickling, stinging sensation of sunrise. Maybe, as we drew closer to the light at the end of the tunnel, I was undergoing my morning transformation. It seemed reasonable. As the light intensified, it might provoke a reaction like a sunrise.

  Unfortunately, this made me sweat the usual transformation byproducts, as well. This did not help my nausea, but it did take my mind off the usual tickling, tingling, prickling of sunrise.

  I clenched my teeth and eyes and concentrated on holding on to Bronze’s built-in stirrup. She wasn’t happy about our transportation arrangements, either. There was nothing for her to plant hooves on, only the spinning formlessness. She d
oesn’t like not being on the ground. That’s why she stuck to Diogenes’ garage of ground vehicles and only grudgingly tried the occasional aircraft.

  On the plus side, she kept me informed about the light growing brighter and bigger, presumably closer.

  How long did we tumble down the rabbit-hole? I don’t know. My first guess is ten thousand, six hundred, and ninety-two years. Upon reflection, I suppose I might be overestimating it—but I’m not sure.

  Oh, damn. How old is the world? At least, how old is the Great Arch of Tamaril? Maybe we did go tumbling through ten thousand years or so, only the wrong way and faster.

  What I meant was we tumbled down the tunnel for what felt like a long time. But, like all good things, even some seriously screwed-up and awful things come to an end. We emerged from the Great Arch of Tamaril at no great speed, but we came out in something other than an upright position. Bronze managed to avoid rolling over me—a priority, since it was daylight out—and I did my best to simply flop to the ground. I succeeded admirably. The Arch chimed as we emerged, an ear-splitting sound on par with being inside a cathedral bell and using your head for the clapper. A moment later, I had my visor open and was able to vomit comfortably somewhere other than inside my helmet. Relatively comfortably, anyway. By comparison, at least.

  The ground settled quickly while the ringing in my ears slowly faded. Bronze was already upright and looking around, knowing I was in no shape to handle anything more ferocious than an angry earthworm. She and Firebrand kept me apprised, so when I finally pulled myself together and stood, I was at least marginally prepared for what I saw.

  Tamaril was nonexistent. There were no buildings, no roads, no signs of civilization or construction, only ankle-high grass, a bit of table-land, some low hills, and, in the distance, the Edge. The only thing present—besides the Great Arch—was a woman.

  And here I was, stinking like an outhouse and spitting bile. It was not the way to make a good first impression.