by Dana Fredsti
When they came at last to their destination, and Caesar stepped from his litter, he spotted a less welcome figure haunting the entrance to the Curia. Spurrina, the cadaverous haruspex who had started all this talk of bad luck with his damned prophetic mutterings. Caesar vowed to himself that on his return from Parthia, he would remember to have the miserable old storm crow quietly eliminated. For now, however, he would content himself with a public rebuke.
“The Ides of March have come, old man,” he said pointedly.
The old seer bowed his head and answered softly. “Aye, they have come.”
Caesar allowed himself a small smirk of triumph before Spurrina murmured further.
“But they are not gone.”
A chill came over Caesar as he left his servants and entourage behind to enter the marble hall. The senate rose to greet him and he strode through their midst to take his seat at the base of Pompey’s statue. This was a snake pit, but he knew his friends here. Many of the senators here now were his men. Appointing his own partisans had weakened the old aristocracy’s hold, making the senate increasingly subservient to him. They knew it. And they hated him for it.
Let them.
Scarcely had he taken his seat before senators were jostling to reach him, petitions in hand. He allowed a group of his most trusted appointees to approach first, including pale, hungry-eyed Cassius. He was followed by Gaius and Servilius, the loyal Casca brothers, and then his heirs, Decimus and Brutus—both distant cousins, but more like sons to him. Another of their fellow supporters, loud, bold Lucius Tillius Cimber stepped up, and the others crowded closer to offer their hot-headed friend their support, wordlessly fanning out around Caesar.
“Noble Caesar,” Cimber’s voice ached with quiet desperation, “I implore you for the sake of—”
“No, this needs to wait, Lucius.” Caesar would not need to read his petition to know what the man wanted—to have his brother recalled from exile. But damn the man, the legions would march on the Parthians in just three days. Besides, the ruler liked Cimber’s brother exactly where he was. “There are more pressing matters for today.” He rose to address the senate and waved him away.
Cimber did not leave, but only fixed him with a hard, unreadable glare for a fleeting but uncomfortable moment. Then, without warning, he dropped his petition scroll and violently seized Caesar’s tunic with both hands, jerking it down.
Thunderstruck, Caesar bellowed, “What is this violence?”
As if in answer, a low rumble, then a howling, keening shriek suddenly filled the chamber. It echoed off the spotless marble floors, growing to a piercing storm of screams, as if the furies themselves had come into the hall, wailing in outrage.
Caesar felt himself trapped as if in a dream, his limbs moving at a snail’s pace as he fought to rise and free himself from the man’s grasp. The others around him were reaching for him, but they were caught in the same heavy grip, like divers struggling to swim to the surface of the sea before they drowned.
The hall filled with brightness as brilliant lightning-fire roared up like a living curtain from the floor, barely two paces away from him, and shot skyward through the high-arched ceilings. The eerie, roaring wall of lightning ran in a crooked line from wall to wall. It cut through the line of men in front of him and they died screaming. Cimber released him in shock, and stumbled against the fiery barrier. It devoured him entirely, as if he had backed into an open furnace.
Overhead, large portions of the majestic ceiling arches, now unsupported, came tumbling down. Some blocks fell into the blazing wall and vanished before they could touch the floor, others fell on the senators below.
And then, as swiftly as it had come, the ear-bursting wall of Tartarus-fire was gone again. The marble-clad floors, columned walls, and arched ceilings were still pristine… except where the terrible veil had stretched across. Like a knife cutting a wedge of goat’s cheese, it had split the building apart, leaving nothing on the other side. No senate hall, no senators—nothing beyond but a dismal new landscape. There stood tall, ruined buildings of a curious design. The bright morning sky was replaced by another, smudged black by fires, the smells of spring mixed with that of ash and gloom.
A pair of dark figures stalked the streets, wearing somber robes, slowly swinging braziers of burning incense. Their faces were obscured by ominous blackened leather hoods in the shape of bird heads, each with a long beak and large round glass baubles for eyes. Behind them trailed a slave, the lower part of his face hooded with filthy rags, leading a cart pulled by a starving donkey.
Blotched gray corpses filled the rickety wagon.
Caesar turned from the nightmare outside and looked down at the bodies of his dead friends. Of those taken by the veil, nothing was left but stray scraps of silk and flesh. At his feet lay Cassius, Gaius, Servilius, and Decimus. All dead, all broken by fallen masonry.
Were there no survivors?
He looked about for anyone else alive. Turning, he saw his beloved Brutus lying beside him, a puddle of blood expanding beneath him. His body had been crushed by a sharp-edged block of marble. Caesar knelt down and cupped his head. The younger man’s eyes fluttered, and he tried to speak, but no words could escape. He looked up into Caesar’s eyes, and then his gaze faded away. The closest thing to Caesar’s son was gone.
“You too, Brutus?” His voice cracked. The portents were clear. The gods themselves had rained down punishment, in payment for his hubris, and Rome itself had paid the price with him.
A gleam caught his eye. A dagger lay in Brutus’s hand. Had the gods placed it there to give to him? He gently pried it from his heir’s fingers and rose. Like a gladiator, he raised it to heaven and saluted the gods.
“Then fall, Caesar!”
He fell upon his blade.
Upminster, United Kingdom, AD 1955
He smiled down at his guest, enjoying the raw fear in her eyes, visible above the swatch of duct tape that covered her mouth. Tears dripped down her cheeks and she struggled to breathe through mucus-filled nostrils. He’d take the gag off… eventually. His basement was soundproof, but he’d wait until she was close to suffocation, terrified that she’d asphyxiate on her own snot. She’d be so grateful for air, so relieved to take those first few breaths… until she saw the toys.
By the time he’d finished with her—and oh, he planned on stretching things out as long as possible— she’d be praying for an easy death like suffocation.
He’d watched her for several months, getting to know her routines, any variations and how often they’d occur. Not often—a point in her favor. Grocery shopping on Sunday, nine-to-five receptionist at a local dentist’s, dinner with her mum on Wednesdays, pub with her girlfriends on Fridays and the occasional Saturday, and the bi-monthly visits to the cinema on Saturday afternoons.
After careful consideration, he’d chosen Saturday night to take her. Her friends would be pissed up when they left the pub, and down with raging hangovers most of Sunday. No one would notice her absence until Monday morning when she didn’t show up for work. All he’d had to do was wait until she parted ways with her friends and started on wobbly feet down the little alleyway that led to her basement flat. There he’d quickly overpowered her, tossing her unconscious body into the boot of his car.
Now he picked up a black canvas bundle, slowly pulled on the ties that held it shut, and allowed the heavily weighted length to unfold, displaying a glittering array of knives in a variety of shapes and sizes, taking care to make certain his guest got a good look at them.
“You like these? Sheffield steel. Nothing but the best for my company.”
Her eyes widened and she whimpered, the sound frantic under the tape.
He smiled, full of good cheer at the thought of the hospitality he was about to inflict on her.
Life was good.
She whimpered again, sounding like a whipped puppy. That made him frown. He liked puppies. He’d never found pleasure in hurting animals. Just people.
An empty space on the carefully organized display caught his eye. One of his favorite knives, a filleting blade, wasn’t in its spot. He cast his mind back to the last time he’d used it. His previous guest had visited more than a month ago. Had he used it since then? He chuckled to himself. Yes, he’d deboned a whole salmon for dinner the week prior. Must have left it in the dish drainer. Careless.
“Damn,” he murmured. “If you’ll excuse me, I must retrieve something. Can’t get close to the bone without it.” He grinned as she started thrashing again. Anticipation made this so much fun. “Be back in just a tick.”
He stepped out into the main portion of the basement, closing the heavy iron door behind him and twisting the lock shut. Not that she could get out of the shackles, but one couldn’t be too careful. Taking the basement stairs two at a time, he whistled a jaunty little tune.
Sure enough, the filleting knife rested in the bottom of the dish drainer, waiting for him. The sharp metal glinted under the kitchen lighting, almost as if it were winking at him. He grinned to himself, liking the fanciful thought of his knives having their own personality, even if he knew it was utter rubbish. He didn’t have voices in his head, or some big man in the sky telling him to kill people.
He did it because it was fun. And wasn’t that the best reason to do anything?
The floor shifted under his feet with a suddenness that nearly threw him to his knees. He grabbed the edge of the worktop, holding on as the house shuddered around him, groaning and creaking like an arthritic octogenarian. There was a loud ululation, rising to a painful shriek. Dishes danced on the cheerful yellow-tiled counter, a plate leaping off the edge to shatter on the floor.
The shaking stopped as abruptly as it started. The house settled with one last creak. Something upstairs fell with a heavy thud. And then, nothing.
A superstitious man might question whether this was a sign from God Almighty, he mused, telling him that his hobby somehow was wrong. A small smile played across his face. He had no such internal struggles, theological or otherwise.
His guest would be beside herself. What if something had fallen on her? She might be seriously injured, or worse, dead.
Then what fun would she be?
The mess in the kitchen, and no doubt elsewhere in the house, could wait. He needed to check on her right away, and hurried back down to the basement. Turning the lock, he threw the door open.
A gust of frigid air greeted him.
His playroom—along with his new toy—was gone. The room, the walls, the council house that butted up against his directly across from the door.
All gone.
Cautiously, slowly, he peered around the door, first to his right and then to his left. The street he’d grown up on still remained.
In front of him, however, lay an expanse of grass as far as he could see, the sky above a cold slate gray. The word “tundra” came to mind, one of those stupid bits of information that had stuck from school. He couldn’t quite remember what it meant, but it seemed to fit the scenery in front of him.
Crazy.
Someone screamed off in the distance. Closer to home, he thought he heard the mutterings of incoherent prayers.
He grinned.
This could be fun.
He decided to dress for any occasions that might lie ahead.
Sea of Tranquility, the Moon, AD 1969
The radio beeped again. Mission Control’s voice crackled in his ear.
“Okay. Neil, we can see you coming down the ladder now.”
Commander Neil Armstrong carefully backed through the Eagle’s forward EVA hatch. Even in one-sixth Earth gravity, his cumbersome space suit made him feel like Frankenstein’s monster as he stepped off the egress platform and carefully, slowly, lumbered his way downward.
The landing had been so soft that the Eagle’s shock absorbers hadn’t compressed. He had to hop down from the last rung to the footpad of the module. He paused a moment to make sure they would be able to climb back aboard, and then dutifully reported the situation.
“Okay. I just checked getting back up to that first step, Buzz. It’s… the strut isn’t collapsed too far, but it’s adequate to get back up.” The radio let out another piercing high-pitched peep.
“Roger,” Houston responded. “We copy.”
“Takes a pretty good little jump,” Armstrong said. “Okay. I’m at the foot of the ladder. The LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about one or two inches, although the surface appears to be very, very fine-grained, as you get close to it. It’s almost like a powder. Ground mass is very fine.”
He paused for a moment on the metal footpad, his last touchstone with Earth. Up to now in the mission, the constant stream of tasks at hand had taken the lion’s share of his attention. Now, here at the brink, unbridled and oddly poetic new thoughts unexpectedly presented themselves.
He adjusted his sun visor. The sky was an unrelenting midnight black, but it still felt like daytime. The pure, unhindered sunlight burnished the lander to gold and silver and tinted the brilliant lunar surface a welcoming grayish cocoa. The horizon wasn’t quite right—it was too close, its curvature so much more pronounced. The absolute lifelessness of the vista fascinated him.
Nothing has changed here for hundreds of thousands of years, he thought. Generations of humanity emerged from the trees… and in all that time, all of this has looked the same. A new realization began to eclipse the rest of his thoughts. Over half a billion people were watching him at this utterly unprecedented moment. He swallowed. He blinked.
The radio beeped again in his ear.
He pulled himself together.
“Okay. I’m going to step off the LM now.”
With both hands secure on the ladder, he cautiously stretched out his left foot, leaving the other on the safety of the lander’s footpad. His boot sank a fraction of an inch into soft, fine lunar dust, sending grains of it leaping away in an unearthly—literally unearthly, he thought— fashion. The regolith clung to the sides of his boot in fine layers, like powdered charcoal.
That bootprint could remain there for eternity, he realized. Armstrong cleared his throat, thinking of the right words to say.
“That’s one small step for man…” He glanced up at the minuscule thumbnail of the Earth, floating so serene in the blackness. How fragile it is… so small, so very colorful. I could blot it out with my thumb…
As he watched, the tiny blue planet splintered. A thousand brilliant cracks appeared, as if the Earth had been hiding a sun inside—one that had finally grown strong enough to burst through its ancient cocoon. The slender rivulets of fire ran from pole to pole and across the globe, its cloudy blue-green ball spider-webbed by a million blazing electric filaments.
Armstrong stared in speechless horror as the light from the fractures speared out into space. He lifted his hand to shield his face from the blinding light that had been the Earth.
Just as suddenly, the exploding glare was gone.
So was the Earth.
Armstrong collapsed to the dusty ground, his limbs gone to jelly, his eyes wide and raw and wet, still staring—unbelieving, uncomprehending—at the empty sky. He sat there, utterly alone, quivering within his pressure suit in stunned silence.
And then…
The Earth was back.
5
Once the sound and fury had passed, Cam was the first to rise back to his feet. When he did, he stared in wonder.
Gods of my father…
Beyond where the colossal wall of druid-fire had arisen, a strange new vista now lay before him. The trees were like none he had ever seen. No oaks, birch, poplars, ash, or alders remained. There were reeds and ferns, clubmosses and bracken in abundance—indeed, it seemed as if even the trees themselves were ferns of enormous size.
Lizards skittered up every scaly trunk, pursuing huge beetles. The dense warm air buzzed with brilliant gleaming streaks of armored dragonflies as they dove and circled, hunting smaller winged insects. Each one was at
least as long as a tall man’s arm, in jeweled hues of emerald, azure, or reddish-gold amber. Off in the distance, strange bellowing sounds echoed, like those of a great elk, but deeper and louder than any he had ever heard.
This was no land of mortal men. It could only be a realm of the Sídhe, the folk of the enchanted world. Cam knew his own lands and people lay beyond this fey realm. He stared into its strange depths, took a quick breath and nodded to himself.
No choice now but to cross it. Without hesitation, he bolted for the line of division and crossed over into the Otherworld.
His deerskin boots were quickly soaked. It was warmer and wetter here, and the ground was marshy at best, much of it no more than stagnant pools and dank fenlands. Yet he had a second wind now, and this time he swore he wouldn’t give his pursuers another chance to close the gap—if they dared to follow him through this maze of lush ferns and uncoiling horsehead plants.
No jeers or war-howls rose behind him, but he raced on ahead all the same, for as long as his tortured legs and lungs continued to pump. When at last he reached his limit and staggered to a clumsy stop, he dove into the undergrowth and lay there hiding, listening for any sign of pursuit. His chest rose and fell while his runaway heartbeat slowed and fern fronds tickled his face. Still no human sounds came to his ear.
Once he caught his breath again, he peered around and risked standing. There he watched, waited, and listened, perfectly unmoving. His cheek stung, so he reached up to touch it. A veil of blood had crusted on his face from the fresh scar below his right eye.
Ignoring the burning cut, he cautiously began to move and made his way silently through the curious landscape. A chorus of insects announced his every step. As he passed the deeper pools, fish darted away, and the biggest newts he had ever seen scattered from the muddy water’s edge.
Strange that there are no birds. Cam wondered if this was an ill omen.
Here and there, misshapen frog-things the size of wild hogs sat and regarded him implacably, tracking him with their fat-lidded eyes, as if deciding whether he was an unusual new bug worth snapping up for a meal.
