Book of Transformations

by Mark Charan Newton

  The tree creatures began combusting, flames taking to the wood and leaves with brutal effect. Lan dropped back to where Ulryk stood chanting and forced a barrier around them both where the flames could not reach. Kneeling, she watched branches tumble to the forest floor, withering and crackling with heat, an alien wail rising from within – and from here it was obvious the woodland wasn’t quite real. The flames emitted a slight purple tinge; there were sparks spitting outwards, too.

  A few moments later, once the flames had burned down, she released the forces surrounding them.

  Foliage still smouldered, and Ulryk was panting.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

  ‘I have’, Ulryk observed, ‘felt better, but thank you.’ He was still shaking, and there was a burn mark across his robes.

  ‘There’s no logic to any of this,’ Lan said. ‘It doesn’t seem real. The weather doesn’t seem to exist, the forest seems to act abnormally. I could be in a dream for all I know.’

  ‘The same could be said for the world above.’

  ‘Don’t get meta with me. So, do you want your book then?’ Lan gestured to the tome that lay in the grass, untouched and unharmed.

  Ulryk stood with a steady dignity and began hobbling towards the book. Something, though, didn’t seem right: half of the sky was black, half of it a distorted grey, and the forest canopy seemed to be . . . irregular. Instead of the natural curves and edges to the trees and leaves, things were comprised of hundreds of little squares, an abnormal, mosaic forest.

  As soon as Ulryk lifted the book from the grass the world fell apart – quite literally. The squares multiplied, sweeping across the forest with a rush of wind, changing from dark browns and greens to the colour of rock, the images distorting.

  They found themselves inside a large stone chamber: it had all happened so suddenly.

  Ulryk turned around, gasping. He fumbled until the two books he was carrying were safely in his satchel, and then he hurriedly pointed to the hundreds of equations etched deep into the walls, whereupon he began to mouth things in a language she couldn’t quite recognize.

  Confused, she turned her attention elsewhere. There was a square doorway, but nothing within the room itself, save for the numbers and letters and lines. Lan moved to the door and poked her head out, confirming that they were in the temple surrounded by skulls.

  ‘OK . . .’ Lan said, then back inside to Ulryk. ‘Hey, what the hell just happened?’

  ‘It was an artificial reality,’ Ulryk marvelled. ‘The lines on the wall, they’re a language that I’ve only seen in a few texts. If you look carefully, there are thousands of minute mirrors constructed within the brick. We passed through an artificial reality! You were quite right, Lan – it was a dream, more or less, but one created by Frater Mercury – who must have used his technology to store the book in a safe place.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So only those who deciphered his code could understand where he had hidden it? So it left a connection to him, but one almost impossible to find.’

  ‘What happened to the ghost, Adena, if it wasn’t real?’

  ‘I’m here,’ a voice said.

  The priest moved around the room trying to locate where the voice came from. ‘Adena?’ he said. ‘Speak again.’

  ‘I’m in the mirrors this side now. Look closer.’

  Faintly, in a cluster of the small mirrors, a shape took form, broken up by the stonework behind, and it began to resemble the girl who had guided them here.

  ‘So many mysteries,’ the priest muttered. ‘So little time.’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ the ghost said. ‘There’s more, so much more on this side . . .’ And with that, the form faded, leaving the room in utter calm.

  ‘So now what?’ Lan asked.

  ‘I need to return to the surface, reflect upon the texts and compare them, then I must conduct the rituals.’ Ulryk paused for a moment, as if the weight of expectation dawned on him. ‘Then I suppose I must see about bringing Frater Mercury into our world. I am ashamed to admit that I have not thought much about the realities of this: merely finding the other book. For years I thought it did not exist. And now . . .’

  ‘Let’s get back,’ Lan said. ‘There’s plenty of time for speculation later.’

  PEOPLE’S OBSERVER

  The Secret History of the Villjamur Knights

  The famed heroes of the city of Villjamur are frauds. They are not what you think they are. They are weapons of the elite, trying to suppress the poor. Would you let these people protect your city?

  Here be secrets:

  The one called Lan – the female of the group – used to be a man! Cultists have turned her body from a man to a woman by using the evils of relic technology. Would you let your children roam the streets with such a monster claiming to be their protector? This is not right!

  The one called Tane – he is famous for having huge amounts of wealth. Tane is the son of Lord Chattel, who owned the most vicious slave business in the Archipelago. Slavery, though frowned upon in this city, still goes on in the corners of the Empire, and Tane is an inheritor of a vast fortune. More! He has earned much of his wealth in his own lifetime. He is a man who trades in death and yet parades about the streets as if he has the moral upper hand. This is not right!

  The one called Vuldon is no stranger to these streets: he is the Legend, the so-called hero from our city’s past. Those with long memories will remember the Legend as being responsible for a tragedy whereby many children were killed. He escaped into hiding, but deems himself now suitable to return to this city. A child-killer is loose and unpunished. This is not right! Would you let this brute see to the safety of your child?

  Documents signed by cultists associated closely with the sinister Knights will be produced as proof in the next issue. People of the city, you have been fooled. These people are monsters. Do not let them get away with this. Reject them. We call for them to be harassed from the streets for the safety of ourselves and our children. Do not let these perverts and abusers roam free.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Fulcrom found the article in the afternoon, as it fluttered about the streets, and he picked it up only because he’d seen more than a few citizens eagerly reading their own copies.

  Time stood still; even the snow seemed to linger hesitantly. He could feel his pulse quicken as the words filtered through his mind. Things connected there. He realized that the anarchists would have used the printing press stolen from the Inquisition to make this and that somewhere along the way, someone had betrayed them. But these were his final thoughts – his first concerns were for Lan.

  Immediately he stormed back to the clifftop hideaway to find the other Knights, but they were out, and Lan was, of course, still with Ulryk. Fulcrom fumed and stomped about the complex, shouting at whoever was around. He ordered every available cultist and staff member into a brick-ceilinged antechamber, whereupon he held up the faked copy of People’s Observer, and read it aloud.

  That was when Feror broke down in tears; all eyes turned towards him.

  Fulcrom moved over to the cultist, and dragged him by his collar into the Knights’ quarters. He slammed him up against the cold stone wall. ‘Talk,’ he snarled into his face.

  Feror slid down the wall, drew his knees to his chest and began to sob.

  ‘You have one minute to tell me why I shouldn’t kill you!’ Fulcrom shouted.

  Feror was merely the sum of his emotions then, nothing more, nothing less. ‘They . . . they made me.’

  ‘You know,’ Fulcrom said, ‘we hear that excuse all the time. They made me. Who the fuck made you, and what did they make you do?’

  ‘They took my family – my daughters, they’ve got them hostage. Still have. What was I to do? It was my family, investigator . . . Y-you understand, don’t you?’

  ‘You should have come to us first. We could have helped. We’re the fucking Inquisition, if you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘They said they would kill them
in an instant,’ Feror blubbered, ‘if I so much as breathed a word about it to the Inquisition. They just wanted background information. I didn’t see it as a big issue, just a little information.’

  ‘Have you seen People’s Observer? This forged rag that has now spread about the city like a plague?’

  Feror nodded, and he closed his eyes with more tears streaming down his face.

  ‘There’s your big fucking issue. The effectiveness of the Knights depends upon the population’s favour now. I’ve no idea how they’ll react, but I’m guessing it won’t be kind – especially to Lan. They’ll probably want to lynch her.’

  ‘I know,’ Feror sobbed. ‘I know.’

  Fulcrom stared at him for a while longer, and kicked at Feror’s legs to release some aggression. ‘What do you know of the anarchists’ organization? I want addresses. I want names. Otherwise I’ll hand you over to the Emperor’s special forces and let them deal with you.’

  The distraught cultist revealed only a handful of facts. He didn’t know any leaders, had never even seen Shalev. The anarchists – such as they were – operated in splinter cells, virtually independent of each other, united only in their hatred of the rest of the city.

  Feror had seen his family one member at a time in the top floor of a backstreet tavern, and only for a few minutes at the most, enough to ensure his loyalty to them. He’d pleaded for their return but they refused until they’d bled him dry of information.

  ‘Are they still with the anarchists?’ Fulcrom demanded.

  Feror nodded.

  Fulcrom’s rage ebbed, and mental clarity returned to him. Could he have acted any differently than the old cultist who was protecting his family? What if they’d taken Lan? Fulcrom hauled him to his feet and stood toe-to-toe with the man.

  ‘We’ll get them back for you.’

  ‘How?’ Feror’s eyes brimmed with hope.

  ‘We’ll use the Knights while we still can.’ Wherever the hell they are. ‘Presumably you had a contact, someone to go to when you found something useful?’

  ‘A landlord at the tavern. I’d go to him and he’d send word. We’d meet in his upper room.’

  *

  Tane and Vuldon returned to their quarters, finding Fulcrom and

  Feror sat across a table from each other, in a contemplative silence.

  ‘Which fucker told?’ Vuldon demanded.

  Cautiously, Fulcrom explained what Feror had done while the old man stared at the table, not daring to meet their eyes while his guilt was aired. Neither of the Knights made a move to threaten the man, which either showed how much they’d grown into their role, or revealed how stunned they were.

  ‘Now what?’ Vuldon asked.

  ‘We go to get his family back for him,’ Fulcrom replied.

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘Vuldon, we get his family back. You of all people know how important his children are to him.’ He wished he didn’t have to mention that fact, but it seemed to hit Vuldon where required.

  ‘Where’s Lan?’ Tane enquired, padding around to Fulcrom’s side.

  ‘Still with Ulryk.’

  ‘I suspect it’s easier for the old girl to keep away for now.’

  ‘You don’t hate her?’ Fulcrom asked. ‘You didn’t know her history.’

  ‘Oh, we knew everything, old boy,’ Tane replied with a wink, much to Fulcrom’s surprise. ‘These cultists yap like hounds to please us Knights. Who knows, the amount of information I took from those show-offs, I might have made a decent Inquisition aide after all.’

  ‘And it never bothered you?’

  Tane shrugged.

  Fulcrom glanced to Vuldon, waiting for his response. ‘I know what it’s like to be judged,’ Vuldon grunted. ‘She proved herself. Only thing that matters is a job well done.’

  ‘Whether or not the people of the city think that’s what matters is something else entirely,’ Fulcrom said.

  ‘No good crying over spilt milk,’ Vuldon declared. ‘Action’s better than us sitting here wondering what they think of us.’

  ‘What,’ Tane said, ‘we’re just going to ignore any of this happened?’

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘But we’re nothing more than the Emperor’s tools for propaganda and now that opportunity has gone.’

  ‘No,’ Vuldon snarled. ‘Well, yes, that’s true, but what else d’you expect from politicians? We’ve also done fuck-loads for this city, saved dozens of lives and halted just as many crimes, and I’m not giving up because of this. I’ll only stop when I’m dragged away – you can bury me in this outfit.’ Vuldon pulled at his shirt before turning to Fulcrom, who felt a spark of pride. ‘So,’ Vuldon continued, ‘do we get this joker’s family back or sit here like idiots?’ Vuldon tilted his chin to indicate the cultist, who was silent but wide-eyed.

  ‘We get his family,’ Fulcrom replied.

  *

  They headed into the caves undercover, an hour after Feror had gone ahead with his request to deliver information. He had given them an address across the road and been told to wait. It was a run-down shell of a room that overlooked the street alongside the Dryad Tavern, a three-floor joint deep in the new territory of Underground North. It was night, and the glass that lined the roof of the enormous cavern cast no light in the darkness. The street was empty and something didn’t quite sit right with Fulcrom: there was an absence of activity. With a couple of hundred thousand people within this cavern, he expected to see some of them.

  According to the cultist, Feror was always taken to the top floor of the Dryad Tavern by hooded Cavesiders, where he would then reveal any information about the Knights: their movements, their general status – and, of course, their pasts.

  ‘How do you feel,’ Fulcrom asked the two Knights, ‘about the anarchists hijacking the People’s Observer?’

  Tane wore a pained and tired expression. ‘It wasn’t fully correct, not that the people would really care. I don’t have any dealings with my father’s business. I frittered away all the money deliberately, because of where it came from, and I . . . Oh what’s the point?’

  Vuldon mumbled, ‘I suppose in this case, the People’s Observer is generally closer to the true facts than the shit the Emperor’s been hawking around.’

  ‘Are you fit to put this aside and carry on?’ Fulcrom asked.

  ‘If you think the public will be fine with us,’ Tane said. ‘Let’s face it, most of what we were about was image and now look at it.’

  ‘Then maybe we can replace that with some substance,’ Fulcrom replied.

  After that brief exchange, they focused on the window opposite, waiting for evidence of life on the top floor. Finally lanterns were lit and figures stirred on the inside, three or four of them.

  ‘Time to go,’ Fulcrom declared. ‘Tane, search the side rooms. It’s unlikely they’ll show him his family at first, but they’ll be nearby.’

  Back into the streets. Tane followed the route up over fences and along the rear of the adjacent building, searching for a high entry point, while Fulcrom and Vuldon took the more difficult and obvious route of heading through the tavern.

  The spit and sawdust joint was quiet inside, maybe five customers staring into their drinks at the bar in a fug of weed smoke, while the man behind it – a thuggish-looking brute dressed more like a bounty hunter, with close-cropped hair and earrings – tried to stop them from reaching a doorway leading upstairs.

  ‘Out of bounds, lads,’ he warned, jumping over the bar with a surprising athleticism.

  He made a move to grab Fulcrom, but Vuldon intercepted him, grabbing the man’s fist in his own and punching his jaw, snapping his head back to one side. The man didn’t make a sound as Vuldon, with a pugnacious rage, jumped up and kicked him in the chest with so much force that the man flew backwards and smashed into the bar. Only a couple of the drinkers peered up from their pints to observe the racket.

  Fulcrom and Vuldon headed up the stairs with stealth until they w
ere on the top floor. Around the rim of one door, at the end of the corridor, Fulcrom could see light leaking from the room and, as they approached silently, voices beyond became prominent. One of the speakers was Feror.

  ‘Go,’ he whispered to Vuldon.

  The Knight took a few steps back, then charged forward, aiming his shoulder at the door. It exploded open, revealing Feror at a table, surrounded by two men and a woman in dreary-coloured tunics, and who each instantly drew their swords.

  ‘I got ’em,’ Vuldon announced.

  Fulcrom ran over to Feror and pulled him out of the ensuing ruckus.

  ‘Any idea where your family might be?’ Fulcrom asked, as Vuldon did something that caused one of the men to shriek in pain. Fulcrom didn’t wish to see what he was doing.

  Feror, with a petrified look about him, could only shrug. ‘They must keep them nearby. They only let me see one of them at a time.’

  They tried a couple of the other doors until they found a sparsely furnished room occupied by two young girls and a middle-aged woman. On closer inspection, Tane was at the far end of the room by the window, with his arm hanging out of it.

  ‘Go on,’ Fulcrom encouraged. Feror peered around cautiously before hurtling towards his family and pulling his daughters to him. They collapsed together on the floor in tears of relief.

  Fulcrom permitted them a brief period of privacy.

  ‘What’ve you got there?’ Fulcrom asked, walking over to Tane.

  ‘Take a look, old boy,’ Tane replied.

  Out of the cheap glass window, Tane was dangling one of the hostage-takers by his collar, and pressing one claw against the back of his neck. The man’s feet kept kicking the side of the building in fear – it must have been at least a thirty-foot drop below.

  ‘I’m debating whether or not to let go,’ Tane declared cheerily, and loud enough so that the man would hear. ‘Any thoughts?’

  The man outside whimpered.

  ‘We might get some answers out of this one,’ Fulcrom suggested. ‘I’m guessing Vuldon might not have been so kind to the others.’