Illusionarium

by Heather Dixon

  One pulled a pistol from a holster at his waist; Lockwood kicked it out of the guard’s hand, sending it flying into the empty fireplace.

  A blurred moment, and the fighting refocused and paused. The masked guardsmen untangled and stepped apart.

  Lockwood had gone. Crisp footfalls faded in the distance, beyond the tower door.

  “He’ll be off to fetch the guard,” said Lady Florel, motioning me out the door after her.

  “Yes—yes, very keen, Lockwood.” I ran down the stone stairs after her, the broad subject of Hope speeding my feet. The crimson guards hurried us on in perfect step. “I’m—dead glad you’re back, Lady Florel! Did—did you say cure?”

  “Quite right,” she said, flashing me a smile as we entered the grassy courtyard. “Follow me.”

  “That’s grand!” I exulted, practically bounding after. “Let’s get it to my fath—”

  I tripped over something and knee-planted into the spongy grass. Twisting around, I saw it was a fallen yeoman, his lantern glowing on the ground a length away. The light reflected in his open eyes. Automatically I was at his side, checking his pulse. But his skin was already cold.

  “He’s—dead!” I said.

  “Yes, my masked guard can be very enthusiastic,” said Lady Florel. “Put this on, please.”

  Her guard promptly strapped a mask over my face. It covered my nose and mask, the tubing at the chin hissing. I gagged on a breath of ice-encrusted air as the Tower of London courtyard glowed on its own accord. Fantillium. Suddenly the world was sharp and clear, and my horror at the dead yeoman faded into a dull footnote. My lungs froze with liquid ice.

  “It’s a traveling illusionarium,” Lady Florel explained, buckling a similar gas mask around her head. The guard surrounded us in a perfect crimson circle, each wearing his own gas mask over his facemask.

  In the fantillium light of blues and grays that glowed almost white, in the center of the courtyard by the White Tower, Lady Florel illusioned. She illusioned with the brick wall of the tower as her canvas, her hands twisting in and out and thoughts pulling away from her fingers in thin wisps.

  An arched doorway formed before her. I recognized it as the door Lady Florel had illusioned on the Chivalry—and the same door that stood on the other side of the building. The White Tower’s door.

  Except it was different. The wood was decayed and splintered, and moss grew in the cracks. Rotting. The brick around it crumbled at the corners with Lady Florel’s illusion.

  Her hands trembled as she finished, and the illusion on the wall before stood complete. An ancient door of old wood and iron pocked with age. Lady Florel twisted the rusting latch and opened the door.

  It didn’t lead into the inside of the White Tower.

  I half recognized where it led now. Before us stood a mirror image of the Tower of London courtyard. The fortress walls lay before us, but crumbling and ruinous, and the scrubby grass of the rolling courtyard hills was an overgrown mess of weeds. An abandoned-for-years version of the Tower of London: a mess of broken buildings below a sea of airships.

  Shouting filled the courtyard. Yells echoed across the stone walls. I whipped around to the sight of Lockwood charging from the far wall, leading the head yeoman—dressed in a nightshirt—and a flock of soldiers at his heels.

  “Our Arthurisian friends!” Lady Florel cried with delight. “Why don’t we give them a very warm Nod’olian farewell!”

  On cue, a masked guardsman streaked past me in a crimson blur. Silent as a prayer and smooth as a zephyr. Several yeomen broke away from the group and chased after him, the head yeoman barking orders. I regarded this all with mild, fantillium-tinged interest, watching the guardsman dart to the vertical tower in the middle of the courtyard and then up to the airship dock, a structure of X-beamed steel. He leapt, grabbing the beams, and began climbing it, hand over hand with utter ease and speed, ignoring the lift entirely.

  The dock platform loomed high above, old regimental airships docked along it in a neat row. The crimson guard leapt onto the platform in a graceful arch and leapt again onto the first airship, scaling it with dexterity until he reached the balloon’s envelope. A blade flashed in his hand.

  He plunged it into the balloon, making a long slit.

  The inner workings of my soul, like an old clock, groggily awakened and groaned. Orthogonagen was dead flammable, and a lungful could kill a man, besides. The fumes of the gas warped the guard, who clung still to the ribbing of the envelope. With a twist of his hands, he produced something within his many-pocketed jacket. I instinctively knew what it was before I even saw the flicker of an orthogonagen match.

  “Lady Florel,” I said, alarm growing. “He’s—”

  Spark.

  Boom.

  I felt the impact before I saw it. The explosion threw me back and smacked me against the brick of the White Tower. The airship’s balloon billowed into masses of yellow-orange florets. My eyes burned with the light. And slowly, slowly the ship pitched, a mass of fire, and began to sink over us, encasing the courtyard. Lockwood and the yeomen, who’d been racing to us, quickly raced to the lift to rescue those still in the airship.

  Boom. The airship docked by the one aflame caught fire, the burning explosion throwing the yeomen back.

  “Now is the time to make our exit!” Lady Florel grasped my arm and yanked me through the illusioned doorway, into the ersatz Tower of London courtyard.

  The moment my foot crossed the decaying threshold, a change occurred.

  Every cell and microbe that made up my entire self went . . . blip . . .

  . . . and shifted one millimeter to the side. My vision flashed black. I tumbled onto the dew-drenched weeds, gasping for breath. Cool air kissed the skin around my mask.

  I scrambled to face the doorway behind me. The courtyard beyond glowed brilliantly with fire. The burning airships had crashed into the courtyard, their flaming envelopes draped over the fortress walls, trapping everything in Death. The yeomen had disappeared.

  One figure lay near the illusioned doorway, a dark silhouette against all the flames. Sprawled across the grass, unconscious. He wore an eye patch.

  Lockwood, I thought, and my conscience roused.

  “Lockwood!” I yelled as flames licked around him. I dove back through the illusioned doorway, back into the Arthurisian world.

  “Jonathan!” Lady Florel yelled.

  My organs reorganized, sending stars through my head. A barrier, a great wall of flame, surrounded us and seared my eyes and skin. I couldn’t bear the light. I threw myself at the lieutenant, beating the flames out of his uniform. He roused and kicked me away.

  “Stupid!” I yelled, lurching back onto my feet. “I’m trying to help you, idiot!”

  The fire roared to an inferno, a vortex of blistering light. Lockwood struggled to his knees, coughing. Fire encased us. Our only exit was the illusioned doorway.

  Which Lockwood could not see.

  I inhaled deeply, held my breath, tore the fantillium mask off my face and pressed it against Lockwood’s nose and mouth. He struggled against it.

  “Breathe!” I seethed.

  He cough-inhaled. I knew the fantillium was running through his veins when he threw his hand up and shielded his all-pupil eye, cringing. Blotches formed in my eyes, my lungs screaming for a breath of air. I grabbed Lockwood by the shoulders with one arm, dragged him to his feet, the mask still clamped over his mouth, and we dove together through the illusioned door.

  Stomach, lungs, heart, and spleen all twisted themselves inside out. A hiccup of mortality—

  —and cooler air swept over us. I gasped. The doorway behind me dissolved into the crumbling wall of the White Tower. I lost my grip on Lockwood and collapsed into the mess of weeds. The old brick fortress spun.

  Around us, the masked guard stood like red chess pieces. The weeds parted with Lady Florel, who looked at us and shook her head.

  “Oh, Jonathan,” she said with a weary smile. “Welcome to Nod’ol.�
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  CHAPTER 8

  Lady Florel’s masked guard spirited us away from the strange Tower of London ruins. I was so exhausted, everything passed before me like a dream. The sun rose, its light warped through the giant glass ceiling. A large, old-fashioned airship flew us across the city—a place of familiar and unfamiliar buildings, all in decay—to the center. Here stood an unfamiliar marble building of white pillars and domes. Unlike the rest of the city, it looked tended to.

  The airship docked at a platform on the roof, and after disembarking and descending through a gabled rooftop, down stairs of thick rugs and corridors of large paintings, we were escorted to an atrium sitting room, a parlor of hanging plants and palm trees and spindly furniture. It smelled thickly of perfume.

  Lockwood paced the far side of the room like a caged tiger. I collapsed on the nearest sofa, smearing it with soot, fire still flaring in my vision.

  Lady Florel arrived at the room just moments later, already washed and in new clothes of pieces and layers. I leapt to my feet and confronted her.

  “What did you do that for?” I said angrily. “I—I—I hardly know what to think, Lady Florel! You didn’t have to go and blow everything up! Isn’t our life’s work to save people’s lives? I mean, didn’t you used to save lives on the battlefield? What’s happened to you, Lady Florel?”

  Lady Florel ignored my words with a smile and turned to a long table at the side of the room, where a spread of food steamed in tureens. Unfamiliar food. Roasted orbs—probably potatoes—sugar-encrusted pears. Roasted chicken—all of the chicken, with wings and legs still attached. All our food on Fata had to be shipped from the south, which meant it came in pieces, and I didn’t quite trust food that hadn’t been cut up into God-fearing chunks. I fumed as she ladled food onto her plate.

  “Lady Florel,” I said slowly, putting the entire weight of it in my words, “I think you might have killed people.”

  “Oh, yes. I’m terribly disturbed by it, of course,” she said. “Also, Jonathan, I’m Queen Honoria here in this world. I would appreciate it if you referred to me properly. Try the potatoes?”

  “Excuse me,” said Lockwood, glaring at us both from the far side of the room. “But where, exactly, is here? Are we inside an illusion?”

  “Lieutenant!” Lady Florel set down her plate of food. “What an—unexpected surprise to have you with us!”

  Warily, Lockwood took a step back and eyed the windows behind him. Lady Florel strode to an ornate gold-trimmed chess set, sitting on a small side table, and turned her attention to its figures.

  “In answer to your question, Lieutenant,” she said, “no. We are not in an illusion. Tell me, have you ever played chess?”

  “No,” said Lockwood at the same time I said, “I have.”

  “Of course you have, Jonathan. How many different moves can you make? If you are the player to open?”

  “Twenty,” I said without thinking.

  Lady Florel’s hand hovered over the pieces of ivory and ebony. The craftsmanship was so fine, individual strands of hair had been carved into the horses’ manes. She pressed the knight’s head between her fingers and moved it over the pawns to a black square.

  “The universe is . . . quite a bit like chess,” she said. She smiled at my expression. “Let us say, in my first move, I choose to move my knight here. Then what happens? The game progresses in a very different manner than it would have if I, perhaps, moved it here.” Lady Florel moved the knight two squares to the side. “It could be completely different, in fact.”

  “Perhaps,” I admitted. “But probably not entirely different.”

  “Precisely. Let us say—” Lady Florel took the other knight, and mimed the pieces splitting apart onto the two legal squares. “Let us say that the very moment you decide to move the piece here, your same self decides to move the same piece here—and the game . . . schisms.”

  My brow furrowed.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “So there are two games being played at once.” Lady Florel set the knights back in place. “One, where you moved the knight here, and one, where you moved the knight there. Each on their own dimensional plane, invisible to the other. And let us suppose that each of those games schism at each move. How many different schisms and worlds where the same chess game is being played could there be?”

  “Thousands,” I said. “Hundreds of thousands.” Comprehension dawned over me. “Lady Florel, are you—you’re saying that—this world is a sort of—other version of ours? That we broke apart somehow?”

  Lady Florel, beaming, tossed the knight at me. I caught it in one hand.

  “Precisely!” she said.

  “What an utter load of rubbish,” said Lockwood.

  “Fantillium is the key to the doorway between these worlds,” Lady Florel explained. “If you can illusion something identical to another world—specifically, a door—down to the very speck, the mortar and brick—you can somehow manipulate the physics of the world into thinking it belongs to the other world. Do you see? We can create gateways.”

  I sat down, head pounding in my ears. If this were true, it explained why this world had a Tower of London and other buildings like in Arthurise, yet different ones as well. When did it schism from ours? And—did this all mean there were other worlds? Hundreds? Or even thousands? My mind feverishly algorithmed. There could be billions of different worlds! I pressed my hands against my head.

  “And you just discovered all this when you were curing diseases, did you?” said Lockwood coldly from the corner.

  “Actually . . . yes,” said Lady Florel, coldly smiling back. “Medical scientists work with a lot of chemicals. Several years ago, I began working with fantillium. I discovered it had unusual properties. And I became an illusionist.”

  “What, and you just happened to illusion the right door?” Lockwood spat.

  Lady Florel didn’t seem upset at all by his tone.

  “Of course not,” she said kindly. “It wasn’t chance at all. There are other illusionists who have gone before me, years ago. I found their work, lost books in old libraries, hidden words. That’s how I learned. Of course, it was easier to illusion a doorway that already existed. I have no doubt the Tower of London exists in hundreds of other worlds. Nod’ol is just one of them.”

  “Nod’ol, Nod’ol.” I echoed the city’s strange name. “But—Lady Florel—why would you even want to—to—go somewhere like this? What about Our Lady’s Charity Hospital in Rochdale? Weren’t you busy establishing that?”

  The life in Lady Florel’s face faded. She suddenly looked old, and sad.

  “I came here, Jonathan, and I realized how much they needed me,” she said. She walked to the wall of windows and looked out over the city. I got to my feet and followed her, taking in the expanse of city through the window. It really was an ugly tangle; buildings were missing their tops, and it looked as though holes had been eaten through their sides. The closer it got to our marble building, the more civilized it became, the more buildings appeared to be inhabited. And closer to us, rows and rows of brick walls and hedges surrounded the building. A maze.

  “They don’t need me in Arthurise,” she said.

  “Of course they—”

  Lady Florel held up a hand.

  “They don’t,” she said. “They did, once. But I’m old now. They see me as a relic, something to write books about and give medals to and dust off every few months.”

  I tried to speak up again, and she silenced me.

  “But here—here in Nod’ol—they need me.” She nodded to the landscape of dilapidated buildings. “Look at it. This city used to be the center of a vast empire. Look at the Archglass! Could Arthurise build anything so massive? But it’s fallen, Jonathan. There’s nothing outside the city—No Kowloon, no New Amsterdam . . . it’s only us in the city now. And everyone here lives in airships. They don’t even live in the buildings anymore. This empire, unlike your Arthurisian Empire, is almost fallen.”

  L
ady Florel’s brown eyes glittered with tears.

  “When I came here, years ago,” she said quietly, “I promised I would save it. I would bring it back to its glory. It’s a marvelous feeling—like stitching up mortal wounds on the battlefield. Nothing matters more to me than this.”

  She was almost crying. I shifted, uncomfortable.

  “Not even finding a cure to the Venen?” I said. “Arthurise is dying, too, Lady Florel. And Arthurise was your city first.”

  Lady Florel unexpectedly brightened and said, “That reminds me!”

  From the inside of her many-pocketed jacket/dress, she produced a tiny brown bottle and offered it to me.

  “The antitoxin,” she said.

  I snapped to life and snatched it out of her fingers, cradling it like a starved man. I examined it, reading the label, and though I didn’t recognize the compound listed—arsenic trioxide—I did recognize the arsenic part. So my father had been right! Arsenic was a key piece in the cure. Administer by mouth, three doses in the bottle. So you could bottle Hope!

  “The Venen has been in this world long before me,” Lady Florel was explaining as I turned the bottle in my hands. “They found this cure years ago. No one even contracts it anymore.”

  I could have wept. Instead, still gripping the bottle in my hand, I swept Lady Florel into a bone-crushing embrace.

  “Really, Jonathan!” she said as I released her. “That was very nearly inappropriate.”

  “May I keep this?” I said. “Are there more?”

  “Yes to both. Though I suspect your father could formulate something from just that sample.”

  “He could,” I agreed, and collapsed into a nearby chair. “Marvelous! Lady Florel, let’s illusion that door and get back to Fata! Ha!”

  “Of course, we ought to discuss how you will pay for it.”

  I slowly placed my feet on the ground.

  “Pay?” I said.

  “Naturally. Did you think you could just take it?”