Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm

by John C. Wright

  The bird lowered her head and ruffled her feathers to made herself look bigger. “Your infatuation is that of a loathsome toad hungering to lick the soaring she-hawk! You—”

  I snatched the bird off Abby’s wrist. I have quick hands, but, even so, it was a lucky move.

  Wild Eyes drove her beak, sharp as a knife, into the fleshy part of my thumb, drawing blood. It was a pretty deep cut, and might have even severed the nerve. I reached and caught her head in my other hand, and held her beak shut.

  “You poked me slightly,” I said. “I hope you feel like that accomplished something.”

  Because I cleared my mind and concentrated and the dripping blood dripped back up my wrist and collected itself back into the cut, and the cut closed itself like a tiny trapdoor closing.

  “See?”

  The bird glared at me. She was good at glaring. She was glarrific.

  I said, “If I let go of your beak, the next thing you say is going to be, ‘Yes, sir.’ I am a man and a son of Man, and you are a beastie. Because you are the pet of the girl for whose sake I am suffering through all this rather than beating feet to the nearest exit sign, for her sake, I will spare you, but only if you serve her, and me, by permitting me to find her. Do you understand me, you wretched little feather duster?”

  I took back one hand, releasing the beak. The bird said nothing, so I squeezed just a little bit.

  “Yes, sir,” said Wild Eyes in a voice that dripped malice.

  It was a satisfying moment.

  Yes, I was picking on a critter one-hundredth of my size, which made me a bully, technically speaking. So what? At least she talked!

  3. Portable Hole

  Wild Eyes promised me to perform the task. I either had to trust her then and there, or twist her head off. But no girl ever falls in love with the guy who kills her pet, so I decided that trusting the murder-eyed little crazy bird was the better part of getting my way. She shot out of my hands like an irked arrow.

  In the meanwhile, Nakasu had been kneeling by the broken hoop of the Moebius coil set in the floor. He had connected the socket in the hilt of the golden flail to some sort of valve or control I could not see, and he was adjusting the ruby rings on the flail rod, giving them little half turns to the left or right like someone working a combination lock. His chest was frowning in concentration. He looked like he knew what he was doing: I assume his work as a station master included wayship travel through Moebius gates, and maybe the basics of Moebius coil maintenance and operation.

  Nakasu stood and twisted the flail. The whole thing, pole and triple arms and all, expanded and went limp, and he curled it up like it was a cat-o-nine-tails whip, except with only three tails, and laid it flat on the floor. He plugged the first arm into the socket at the base of the stock, while the other two arms lay to one side, like the tongue of the capital letter Q. With a surge of auroras, a dark ball appeared in the center of the ring. At first it roared, pulling Nakasu and assorted litter toward itself, but in the same instant the roar became a teakettle whistle, and the wind died.

  (I was sort of expecting a spear-shaped Moebius coil to fling itself through the black sphere of the gate, the way it had when Penny opened her father’s crude breadboard coil in the basement of the Haunted Museum, but none did.)

  Nakasu bellowed with laughter, and looked around for Abby, who was not there. He waved at me and pointed at the dark orb. We could get out at any time. That was a satisfying moment, too.

  He made the gate ball shrink and vanish, and he plugged the other two arms of the flail into the socket, one after the other, to test if a gate would form. I felt a pang of embarrassment, mingled with admiration.

  Because I would have assumed that if one of the flail arms worked, the others would work, too. He might be a monster, but he was older than me, and more thorough too.

  4. My Fathers’ Sword I Gird Me On

  Abby had picked up the child Ossifrage had cleansed, and all three went outside together for proper midair burial. She had been raised by corpse-handlers, after all, and so I guess she thought no one else would help.

  When she came back in, Ossifrage floated her over to a high shelf, and she set to prying open more cases with her red-hot weapon blade.

  She lowered herself on a copper chain. For a girl her age, she rappelled like a pro rock-climber or a ninja on a bat-rope.

  Nakasu said something to her. She jogged toward me, saying, “The Freedman says he can open a working portal to the last three aeons this gate touched, but he does not know which is which. They are all living worlds, because only from them come these captured relicts and rarities. Whether they are allies of the Dark Tower or enemies, the gate will open directly into an Ur encampment or one of their depots.”

  I said, “It may be our only way out. We cannot use it yet. We have to stay long enough to rescue my — um.”

  But she was already talking to Nakasu. And, yes, I heard her call Penny my mistress to him.

  “Employer,” I corrected. “No, not even my employer, really, the daughter of my employer.”

  Abby smiled a beautiful smile and handed me my father’s gear: bulletproof jacket and night-vision goggles and flashlight. The gear had not been in the shelves that fell, so it was all unharmed and in working order. That was a satisfying moment, too.

  I slipped the coat on. There I stood, barefoot, wearing a loincloth, in a heavy jacket that was too small for me. The moment was less than satisfying.

  Then Abby handed me a leather package.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “It was with your leather-armor coat,” she said, tapping the Kevlar jacket. “It was in the pockets and compartments of the belt. The magicians removed them and cast separate horoscopes for them, but I found them locked in the same case.”

  I had not checked all the pockets of the coat hours and geologic ages ago when Dad threw it on me. There were pouches and sheaths hidden in the lining. I had not even known the belt was a money belt, with secret pockets and flexible pouches.

  Some of the gear was hidden in the coat, and some in the belt. The gear included a magnetized compass needle sealed in plastic, able to float in water; a cotton square coated in petroleum jelly; a small ferro-cerium rod for use as a signal mirror; a carbon steel three-inch hacksaw blade with a reverse tango-style tip, which could also be used a striker for the ferro-cerium rod to start fires; several moleskin adhesive patches, in case of blisters; over two feet of stainless steel downrigger cable packaged in plastic, for use as a garrote, or to cut zip ties, or to tie things together; Kevlar line of the same length; two small and one large black bobby pins, or maybe they were lockpicks; zirconium-ceramic razor blades; a brace of throwing knives of the same material; five gold coins, big as quarters; and a punching dagger hidden in the belt buckle.

  In the largest compartment was a rosary as long as a belt, with a cross larger than my palm, with a centerpiece medallion showing two knights astride one horse.

  This was no money belt. It was a utility belt. I buckled it on, feeling like Batman.

  The flat wooden case of the sword cleaning kit was in one of the large jacket pockets, as if Dad had just slipped it in there during those last hectic moments while he was sending me off, and I had not noticed. Some Batman. But I had been worried about the sword, so I was glad to see it.

  I made some wisecrack about not having any pants, and Abby volunteered to go look for something for me to wear on my nether parts.

  6. Haunted Hauberk

  It really annoyed me that I was too big to close the Kevlar jacket all the way shut, but then I realized I was thinking in too human a fashion. I cut a big slice of myself out of my chest with my sword, pushed the jacket shut and zippered it up, and then reabsorbed the extra flesh and blood and bone back into myself, ending up slightly taller and slightly thinner. That was really gross and painful, but it was still a satisfying moment, because I realized that I had not realized what the limits were on being immortal.

  I was a
lso sick and tired of getting hurt all the time, and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons, and so I know you are supposed to collect loot after a mission. I kicked through the museum of fated rarities looking for armor. There were several helmets and at least two full suits of jousting armor, but they were made for people way smaller than I was.

  I scrounged around and found a suit of chainmail made of copper-colored cunning metal, and a coif. (Technically, it is called mail, not chainmail, you know, but I don’t want you to think I was wearing a bag of letters.) A coif is a hood made of mail usually worn under a helm or helmet, with a collar to protect the shoulders and neck.

  The chain links expanded and contracted after I donned it, so that the mail adjusted to my height and width, and the forty pounds or more then fit snugly, so that not all the weight was resting on my shoulders.

  There was a heavy conical helm that went with it, but it only had one eyehole right in the center of the faceplate, so I could not use it.

  For padding and an extra layer of armor, I wore Dad’s jacket under it, but removed the belt and baldric and wore that on the outside so I had a place to hang my flashlight. I slung my night-vision goggles around my neck, and checked and was surprised the battery was still good—I had assumed my tech gear would fail in the Dark Tower.

  While I was still fiddling with the sword belt, Abby returned with a pair of red silk pantaloons large enough to fit anyone who did not mind wearing puffy clown pants, and a pair of sandals too small for me, for anyone who did not mind wearing used shoes. They were old-fashioned sandals, the kind you tie up to the knee, so they would fit on any feet although my big hairy toes hung over the lip.

  Abby said, “Before you touch them, know that these are from the feet of the Illyrian. They are ritually unclean, both from her death and her witchcraft.”

  I grunted as I pulled the laces tight as possible. “If wearing the shoes of a dead witch was good enough for Dorothy, it’s good enough for me! I even killed her pretty much the same way, come to think of it.” Experimentally, I stood and tapped my heels together. “There is no place like Tahiti!” But nothing happened. (In hindsight, I was glad it didn’t. Considering where I was, I should have been more careful.)

  Abby insisted that she was the one to tie on my sword belt and sword. “Since neither your sister nor your mother is here,” she said, “I must serve in their stead.” She put her arms around me to buckle the belt and scabbard on. My grandfather’s katana—which was apparently a magic item—was now hanging in its proper place at my side. Altogether a satisfying moment.

  The chainmail made some small adjustment when she hung the sword, and this made her jump back in fear.

  “What is that?” she said.

  I showed her the one-eyed helmet.

  “This hauberk was made for Arimaspians, Rephaim from beyond the Riphaean Mountains,” She said. Rephaim meant giants, but it also meant tall men, sort of the way our word dwarf both means a short man and a magic creature. “They are in eternal war for the Cunning Metal, the living gold, that runs through the mountains with a race of flying horse-monsters called Twyforms or Gryphons, and in the struggle, both sides display insane cupidity, and so such alloy is frequently cursed and disloyal!”

  I ran my hand over the nice, hard, pebbly surface of cold metal links, so dense and firm between my easily-cut flesh and a world full of nasty, pointed objects with unfriendly edges.

  “The metal is haunted?” I said. I was hoping that a friendly ghost like Casper would be inside this hauberk, because I really wanted to keep it on.

  Abby said patiently, “Yes. In that aeon, called Taari, to escape any second flood, all the wise men and philosophers and magicians lived not in a dark tower but instead in an underground city called Janaidar, and when she was destroyed in earthquakes, all were crushed. The unburied ghosts of the philosophers were impregnated by the fire at the heart of the world into the copper lodes of the Riphaean Mountains. This metal employs the self-deceit of the ghosts of the wise as its basis, rather than the pride of kings or the lust of witches as in abarbaltu or abartahsistu.” These were the words for the black living metal and the purple remembering metal. “It shares the same weaknesses. Only the alloy is different. I think it contains less tin.”

  “Maybe these spirits will like me! I am tired of getting cut and bit. Nothing else fits!”

  She continued in a severe voice, “You should take it off. It is best not to wear such armor, and the Ur never do, for any foe at one with the Oneness can turn it against you. Observe.” She put her hand on it, and it tightened uncomfortably. “You cannot remove it now. Can you unify your soul and spirit, heart and mind?”

  I was thinking what to answer her, when we were interrupted.

  7. Finally

  There was the noise of an echoing bang, loud as a pistol shot. It was the sound of a battering ram, being pounded against some door I could not see. I assume the coal-black wolf man had called the reinforcements.

  Abby jumped in alarm and drew her sickle-and-chain weapon. I drew a deep breath, and my hauberk adjusted itself to sit comfortably on me again. The corselet now sort of creeped me out, but there was no time to doff it.

  “Where is that noise coming from?” I shouted.

  Foster was now dressed in a strange combination of Halloween costume mixed with a crimefighter’s garb. By this, I mean he was wearing white pantaloons with knee-length toe socks, a tunic even whiter, and a hooded cloak of white and silver inset with threads that looked like fiber-optic glass. He was wearing glacier sunglasses with lenses and sidepieces of polarized glass, and a ninja mask over his mouth and nose, I kid you not. Why a man who can turn invisible wears a mask, I could not bring myself to ask. I think he still had the blue paint on under his getup, but hardly an inch of flesh showed anywhere.

  With those glasses and covered face, he looked like the Claude Rains version of the Invisible Man. In the cloak and hood, he looked like a bright white version of a blackfriar crossed with a Ringwraith, or, since I read the classics, he looked like Moon Knight.

  Moon Knight had been moving around the chamber retrieving his shot arrows. The witch’s whip was tucked through his belt (I didn’t see when he picked it up) and he was arguing with Ossifrage, who was waving his hands like a semaphore, and telling Foster to toss the cursed whip away in a language that sounded like Dutch.

  When the crash on the door resounded through the chamber, they both jumped up, Foster to his two feet, and Ossifrage two feet into the air. They jerked their heads left and right and up and down.

  Nakasu had still been fiddling with the golden flail, or portable hole, or whatever you want to call it. When the ram smote the door, he lifted one arm to expose the earhole below his armpit, much the same way a human-shaped man would cup a hand to his ear.

  Nakasu pointed. The doors were trapped under a few tons of toppled shelving. No one was coming through there in a hurry, unless someone out there had the Walk Through Walls ability. Which (considering how freaky all things here in freakyland were) someone probably did, but, for whatever reason, at the moment, the enemy forces were trying to beat the doors off the hinges the old-fashioned way. Even with the living metal in the hinges and bars straining to help them, nothing smaller than a giant armed with a steam shovel was moving the tons of toppled shelves and cases pinning the door.

  So we had a clean getaway ahead of us. That was also satisfying.

  Wild Eyes in a flurry of feathers landed near me, and glared at me with murderous intent. The beak of the bird was red. She had plucked out and eaten the strange double-pupiled eyes from the corpse of the redheaded witch while Ossifrage had not been looking. But in that red beak, Wild Eyes held a purple needle. I am not sure how she was speaking while holding something in her beak, but then again, I am not sure how she could speak in the first place.

  But the falcon’s words were not hostile. She spoke in a voice as thin and high as the sound of a glass harp. “The needle of remembering is pointing at Parthenope,
whom you call by another name.”

  Abby dashed over to Wild Eyes, and took up the needle and dangled it from a thread. The needle wobbled and straightened. Abby said to Wild Eyes and me, “Your mistress is not far: Master Ossifrage can carry us there quickly.”

  Ossifrage, Foster and Nakasu without a word gathered together beneath the windows. There was no more bickering or hesitation.

  Off to the rescue! Finally!

  We soared out the windows into the night. And that was the most satisfying of all.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Damsel in Distress

  1. Open Window

  It was cold, and the wind made conversation impossible. Down we went. Call it three thousand feet or two Empire State Buildings and a quarter.

  Abby’s needle pointed at a blank wall guarded by colossal statues of men and dragons and birds of prey. Midmost, like a Cyclopean eye, gaped a vast ventilation shaft, blocked with a row of spinning blades, one propeller behind another, all turning under their own power: that was the only opening in the armor. We hovered there a moment, shouting at each other. Since Abby’s thin voice was carried away by the wind, I couldn't hear her. But eventually she coaxed the needle to point to another way in.

  Don’t ask me how she was getting complicated replies from a sliver of purple metal or finding alternate routes. I don't know how she did it, but she did.

  Lower we went again. This time we came to a vast gateway like a window. A portcullis slab at least nine acres wide and high was drawn up, and a warm wind carrying the scent from gardens and fruit arbors issued from within. Beams of light, shed by a sea of floating airborne lanterns streaming out the window, and by a small forest of trees whose trunks were eerily alight, shined out into the gloom. It was the most welcoming and friendly thing I had seen on this whole world so far.

  At the window sill, like potted ferns in a window box, was an airfield where the thousand-foot-long behemoths of ironclad airships, moored at tall masts, were gathered. The airy ironclads bristled with rows of ballistae and deadly ray-weapons shaped like elongated brass searchlights. The bowsprits were shaped like winged king-headed bulls with square beards and blank eyes. Each airship was waiting in turn for a mule team to drag the huge vessel within the confines of the Tower wall.