Riven

by A. R. Knight

  Here, though was the end of my clues. Behind me stood the tree that I’d seen when I was half dead. Where I stood now, smashing down some white threads of grass, was where Selena had walked. Where the dark thing following her had passed.

  Chapter 48

  For the first time I wished I had a sneak with me. If Anna had been there, I’m sure she would’ve had some idea for how to find Selena. Part of me wanted to turn back right then. Cross over, give tonight up as a first attempt and then come back later with Anna. But the bigger part of me realized that Riven was getting worse. If someone like Barth was out here hunting and killing guides, and Graham was doing the same, how much time did I really have before one of them caught up with me?

  So instead I tried something new.

  The first street that I walked down was crowded. Plenty of spirits bustling out of the city, but a few stood around watching the procession. Those were the ones I was looking for, the ones with a little bit of themselves left. The ones that could hold a conversation.

  I went up to a woman who, sitting on a listing bench, looked like she was counting the spirits walking by. Her mouth moved silently as her eyes tracked each and every one.

  “You still here?” I asked, coming up beside her.

  “Depends on what you mean by here,” the woman said, turning to look at me. “I’m not so sure where here is.”

  “You ever hear of Riven?” I said. Because spirits came from people dying anywhere, there was no guarantee that they knew that Riven existed. Many had no idea what had happened, only that they were somewhere else and didn’t feel normal. I’d found the spirits who understood were easier to deal with. Less prone to panic.

  “I have no idea what that is,” the woman said. “If you’re asking if I know that I’m no longer alive? I think that’s rather obvious.”

  “That’s something, anyway,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  I tried to be polite with spirits. Especially when I’m just getting started. It’s hard to know what could trip a spirit off, send them into a rage. With the streets crowded, the last thing I wanted was a fight that would attract attention, or even bring other spirits to the brink of anger.

  “You’ve already made me lose count. Well over nine thousand in the last four days,” the woman said. “So I suppose you can ask, yes.”

  I didn’t flinch at the number. Who knew how many people all across the world went through Riven? How many were sent on by guides, how many more naturally went to the Cycle. Nine thousand just on this street? Who knew if that was a lot, or a little?

  “Have you seen a woman with a moonlight dress? Her hair is auburn, down below her shoulders. She has a scar on her face,” I said.

  The woman shook her head. “I’m only counting. I don’t recall anyone like that.”

  Before I could say anything else she turned back to the street and started again. At one. She’d probably continue like that, counting onward and upward until the Cycle finally took hold of her. Still, as Riven existence went, that was one of the better spirits I’d seen.

  The next one was a young man in soldier’s fatigues. Surprising that he looked so normal. Standing there in the middle of the street playing games with the spirits as they walked by. On one he pulled down a pair of trousers. On another, he tussled their hair. None of the spirits cared. They moved on without reaction.

  “Having fun?” I said to him.

  “Fun?” the man said. “There’s nothing else to do. I’m waiting for something to happen. Waiting for one of them to have a reaction, to come at me. Anything to feel even a little bit alive.”

  “They tend to respond to aggression,” I said. “But you can’t really hurt each other. You’ll just wind up losing what’s left of your mind.”

  “The thing is,” the man said. “I thought I lost it when the artillery fired. Then I woke up here and all my mates were gone. Wandered around this place for three days and then found this line of people. Figure I’ll just keep going with them, but it gets boring walking all the time, you know?”

  “Have you seen one?” I said, giving a description of Selena. The man shook his head.

  “Only got here a few hours ago,” the spirit said. “Can’t help you there.”

  “I’ve seen her,” came a crusty voice from behind us. A head poking out of a window on a building that looked like it at once held a store but was now a crumbling pile broken boards and brick. “She passed here yesterday. Looked awful scared for a spirit.”

  “Do you know where she went?” I asked. I would have felt better if the spirit came out of the building, rather than hiding behind a window, but I wasn’t in a position to choose.

  “I followed her,” the voice said. “I know where she went. I can show you if you give me that knife of yours.”

  Striking deals with spirits. Another one of those things guides weren’t supposed to do. Except there’s one thing the spirit didn’t know, and that’s the fact that I could end it at any point. Wrangle and clean up what remained of his sanity and send him on a quick trip to the Cycle.

  “I’ll give you the knife if you take me to her,” I replied.

  The crusty voice made its way out of the building. I did a double take. The spirit wasn’t an elder, but a gentleman in his thirties. Maybe even younger. Only he leaned over and walked with a broken bit of board that served as a cane. I would’ve said it didn’t make any sense except spirits came to Riven in their own best image. Came with what was left of their minds and what they happened to recall. If the spirit was so used to hunching over, so used to having a cane and talking with a voice ground to gravel by age, then that was what he became.

  We left the pranking young man behind and the spirit with the cane led me deeper into the Shambles. Off of the main path and through winding alleys bordered by buildings in various states of collapse.

  “You’re a guide aren’t you?” the spirit said.

  “Good guess,” I replied.

  “Wasn’t a guess,” the spirit said. “The only ones who come after spirits in Riven are you guides.”

  I felt something at the end of that sentence. Like a lingering question, a phrase left hanging in the air as though the spirit wanted me to ask for more. So I did.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because I don’t think you’re after the spirit. I think you’re after the guide following her,” the man said.

  “The guide following her?”

  “A real nasty piece of work,” the spirit said. “Not one that I’d like to meet when I go to the other side.”

  The other side. Not many people called it that. Guides didn’t have the patience for it. If you’re angry, you’re angry. There weren’t sides to cross. There weren’t emotions and feelings to protect. In Riven, it happened to every spirit at some point and that’s all there was to it.

  We came to a split in the alley, three branches heading off in different directions. In front of us was a larger home, two stories and still mostly put together. In fact, as I looked at it more closely, the building looked clean. Maintained and repaired.

  “The spirit you want is in there,” the man said. “Now about our deal. The knife.”

  “Why?” I asked. “What do you want with it?”

  The man shook a little. Closed his eyes for a moment. “Some days are better than others, but I feel it coming on. The call is growing. When I lose it, when I lose who I am, I want to be able to end it.”

  “You won’t be able to,” I said. I’d heard that before too. Spirits that knew where they were, knew what was coming. Wanted a way to wrangle themselves, erase who they were as they fell into an angry mess. “You’ve got two choices. Give in and go to the Cycle now, or hold out, lose yourself, and then a guide will find you and set you on your way.”

  “I said give me the knife,” the spirit argued. “That was our deal.”

  I reached under my belt and grabbed a knife with my left hand. Held it in front of me. The spirit turned and reached for it, his e
yes bright. I twisted the hilt, sent the blue fire down the blade, and stabbed it into the man before he could react. I could see his eyes go wide as the fire rushed up and down his body.

  “You wanted to be free,” I said. “Now you are.”

  I sheathed the knife as the spirit, walking straight and leaving the cane on the ground, started his journey to the Cycle. I started mine into the house.

  Chapter 49

  For the first time in Riven, I encountered a locked door. When I twisted the handle and tried to pull the door open at the back of the house in the Shambles, it didn’t move. Beneath the handle was a keyhole. It was new, shiny, and unlike anything else that I’d seen in Riven. At least anything outside of a guide base. Whomever lived here had resources, knowledge, and, perhaps most importantly, the will to make a home in this world.

  So I set out to destroy it.

  First I tested the door by force, pushing against it and getting nowhere. I didn’t want to do a shoulder charge given the sorry shape of my left arm, still aching from my jump out of Barth’s tower. I could lead with my right, but if I hurt that arm, I’d be useless.

  I gave the door a kick and got nowhere. Except, I heard a noise coming from inside the house. Muffled. I leaned close to the door, stuck my ear against the wood and listened.

  “Is there someone out there?” the voice barely came through, like a blunted whisper. I recognized the pitch. Selena.

  I took a look around. The alleys dividing the house from the other buildings were wide enough to make scaling up a different structure and jumping onto the house a risky move. I went around to the front and found what had been a second door but it had been bricked over.

  There were three windows, all on the second story. Others on the first floor were sealed in like the front door. Whomever lived here wanted this place as a fortress, not a home.

  I took out my lash and tied the end of it around the back door’s handle. Walked back as far as I could, until the lash was tight. I pulled it across my chest, gripped the lash hilt with both hands and tugged. I couldn’t keep my grasp. I felt the door start to give, but as it moved the lash slipped out of my burning hands.

  I needed a better grip.

  The answer was right in front of me. In the street. The cane left by the other spirit. A lever I could use to increase the pressure. I took my lash handle and some of the slack in the line and tied the end of the lash around the cane. Then, holding the cane in my hands, I pushed. Put all my weight into it. Behind me the door groaned and I heard the crackle of wood giving way, splintering under more pressure than it could handle. With a crackling roar, the door fell free to the ground.

  I ate a mouthful of dirt as the sudden loss of resistance shot me into the alley and sprawled me along the stones. But what were a few more scratches at this point?

  “Selena?” I called as I went in the house. “Are you up there?”

  The inside or at least the part where I entered, was immaculate. The walls, while still bare stone, were clean. Any cracks had been patched over, broken blocks replaced. The floor was smooth stone. Like a modern house back in Chicago before any wood was laid down. Ahead of me, on the ground floor, was a dark room. Without any windows the only light that came in was from the door that I’d just torn open. The room looked empty.

  “Carver?” Selena replied. “I’m up here.”

  To my left was a set of stairs leading up. Stone steps with boards placed over the top to make for easier footfalls. Also, I noticed when I stepped on the first one and it creaked, a good way to detect an intruder. I made my way up and walked into the strangest room I had ever seen.

  The entire second story was a single large chamber. It may not have always been so, but now the whole place was patterned over with boards along the ground. Windows let in gray light, illuminating a series of rudimentary wooden. Tables covered with tools, weapons, and books. And, tied to one of them, Selena. In the same dress she’d worn in my vision. Only instead of one scar on her face, Selena looked like she’d taken the brunt of a hundred blows.

  “What happened?” I said coming over and cutting her free. “Who’s doing this to you?”

  “Carver,” Selena hugged herself and glanced around. “Carver, it’s your mother.”

  Chapter 50

  I should have been more surprised. My mother? The dark spirit following Selena? The comment sank in and washed off me. Perhaps I’d seen something of myself in the spirit’s eyes when she had turned back, hazy and distant in my half-dead vision.

  “Where is she?” I asked.

  “She comes and goes,” Selena replied. “I don’t know where she is now. All she talks about is Graham, and you.”

  “Me?”

  “That’s why she took me,” Selena said, glancing down. “She wanted to know everything about you. What you’re like. Your hobbies. All of it.”

  “She beat you up for that?”

  “No. She hurt me because Graham told her to,” Selena went over to one of the tables covered in books. “I think he has some power over her. Controls her like the other spirits, except not everything. Sometimes, she even says she’s sorry.”

  I followed her, looked down at the books. They weren’t the kinds that I saw back in Chicago. More like binders with papers shoved between the covers. Cheap organization. Selena opened one and we looked at the first page. Unlike Barth, my mother had access to pencils. Actual writing tools. Stolen from a guide base, most likely.

  “I see her writing in these all the time,” Selena said. “I think it’s her diary. I hear her repeat things to herself, like she’s trying to remember.”

  “Don’t you want to leave?” I said. “Get away?”

  “Remember when we talked about family? When I told you about mine? This is your chance to find yours.”

  Selena pointed to the first sheet of paper, the first entry. Dated just a few days after I was born.

  June 21st, 1890

  At least, that is what I think the day is. Hard to tell in Riven. If that is correct, then I was murdered three days ago. Killed because I chose to love the wrong person. Bryce, though, is still here. Still helping me set up this place. He’s agreed, if I start to fall apart, to bind me.

  June 22nd, 1890

  We’ve made the plans. Bryce agreed to keep an eye on my son, Carver, who is still alive. I’m not sure why. But at least I will know his life, if only secondhand. It gives me some hope in this ruined world.

  I looked up from the table. Bryce had a hand in everything. Even though I’d bounced around from guide to guide as a child, even moving around the country, it had always been Bryce showing up to take me from one place to the next. He hadn’t been doing it out of charity. He’d been doing it for my mother.

  “Who killed her?” Selena wondered aloud, continuing to flip through the pages. “I can’t find where she says.”

  “She might not know,” I said. “The hospital said she died in her sleep.”

  “Here, look at this one,” Selena pointed to another entry farther along.

  October 10th, 1896

  We met again today. He says he’s still holding on, but I’m not so sure. I don’t know how he can survive so long without being bound. Bryce cautions me against the meetings but he can’t understand. I suppose Bryce could use the binding, could compel me not to. I don’t know that he has the courage.

  “Who is the ‘he’ she mentions?” Selena asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “She might name him in an earlier entry.”

  Bryce had bound my mother. Kept her alive in Riven all this time. He’d told me that she disappeared when I started coming in. Had Bryce released her then?

  December 25th, 1900

  Carver continues to grow. Bryce tells me that my son has crossed over. That he’s already approved for training. At once I am filled with joy at the idea of seeing my son and filled with fear that the guides understand what he is. Even Bryce doesn’t know. The risks are so great.

  “If we had the time to
read all of these,” Selena said. “instead of flipping through...”

  “Go to the end,” I said. “The last ones.”

  Selena nodded and we moved down the table to the last set of pages. These hadn’t yet found their home between covers. Unlike the first entries, the writing here was fractured. Ideas didn’t seem fully formed and the handwriting skipped around. Jagged edges to rounded letters, words written over others.

  April 6th, 1917

  The spirits say our country has entered the war. Bryce tells me that Carver is doing well. I fear Graham is stronger. I need to find him.

  The next few entries rambled. Lacked cohesion.

  “Bryce must have released her at some point,” I said, and Selena nodded. “But why?”

  “I think your mother is the only person that can answer that,” Selena said.

  June 3rd, 1917

  I saw Carver today. If Graham comes for him now, my son will not survive. Perhaps, though, I can find an opening. Graham is distracted. Extended. All it would take is a single strike to end all of this.

  Two days ago. My mother had been watching me. From where?

  We both heard it. The creak of the stairs. I put myself in front of Selena and drew my lash and knife. If it was my mother, there was no telling what she would do, and I would be ready.

  The spirit walked up the stairs without hurry, taking each step and, at the top, turning to look at me. Just like the spirit had in my half-dead vision. Her wild hair bled down into the bands covering the rest of her body. The same spirit I’d seen at Nicholas’s lab, the same one who’d stopped the fight as soon as Anna called my name.

  “Carver,” the spirit said, staring me straight in the eyes. “You shouldn’t have come.”