by John Hook
I saw the old man’s eyes rotate up. I spun around. A sword flashed and stopped inches in front of my throat. Wielding it was an oriental woman in a black kimono with a single red peony on the chest. Her eyes were dark, intelligent and keenly aware. I knew that my fate was entirely in her hands.
“Manners, Kyo. These are visitors.”
Something stirred in me, the same way it had with Izzy. I saw the recognition in her eyes.
“We know her, right?” Izzy asked.
With a flourish, the woman called Kyo sheathed her sword and nodded.
I eased myself up.
“Glad we got that cleared up.”
“I’ll keep my eye on you. I still don’t remember where I know you from, although I sense that you are a friend.”
“Have you been having any dreams?”
“I’d say yes but I can’t seem to remember much.”
“Why are you here?”
Kyo studied me again. “Why do you want to know?”
“Because I don’t think this is reality any more than where we came from was and I’m looking for common patterns.”
“I’m protecting my father, but you wouldn’t understand.”
“I keep telling her I’m an old man, no one wants to harm me.”
“Why wouldn’t I understand?” I asked, ignoring the old man for a moment.
Kyo muttered something in what I thought might be Japanese. Then she said: “You are Gaijin. Westerners.”
Izzy took the postcard from my hand and held it out to Kyo.
“We just got here by Quentin… that’s him...” Izzy nodded my direction “…staring at this picture. I’m Izzy, by the way.”
Kyo looked at the picture. She looked at the key. It was golden and shaped like a skeleton key.
“Try me,” I said.
“Demons are coming for my father.”
“Demons,” I said. A flood of images came into my head. I almost fell, but Izzy caught me. My skin had strange but faint blue markings on it.
“What is it?” Kyo asked.
“I saw them, in my head. Gray. Ugly.”
“I’ve never seen them. They wear cloaks and masks.”
Izzy seemed lost in thought and then he spoke. “If this is like the situation we just left, I’d guess that protecting her father may have been something she failed to do earlier.”
I looked at Izzy and it hit me. This was the pattern. I turned to Kyo.
“You died here.”
“What?”
She seemed shocked but as soon as I said it I saw something in her façade crumble.
“This is something you are remembering because it has to do with how you died. I don’t know why, but I think that’s the pattern.”
“You are saying we’re dead?”
“You were away, my daughter. There was nothing you could have done.”
The old man seemed content, compassion on his face, but as he spoke blood seeped from his throat and pooled around his legs.
“Father, no!” Kyo shouted in horror.
And then I saw her collapse in on herself. She took her dying father in her arms and held him. A high-pitched sound escaped her throat as both deep sorrow and anger fought for control of her face. I couldn’t think of what to say so I said nothing. Finally she laid her father down and stood.
Kyo looked at me, her face darkened. “Why?”
“I don’t know. In my—whatever this is—I prevented a murder, although there was a hidden price. I escaped before I had to pay it.”
I told Kyo what I remembered about being murdered and failing to save Janovic’s victim and then coming back to change that.
“Maybe it was how I died,” Kyo said softly.
Izzy said, “It might be about forgiveness, whatever it was.”
“You’re right. I was away from my rural family when it happened. I had gone to the city. I had become successful. I had rejected my superstitious family. No one knows how they were killed. A gang out for kicks, the prefecture police said. I became obsessed with the idea of demons. I became depressed and blamed myself. And finally…” Kyo held up her sword. “…I killed myself with my father’s ceremonial blade.”
“Kyo, I’m sorry.”
She nodded but said nothing.
“So each of us is stuck in a refrain about our deaths and seem to be working out alternative endings.” Izzy turned everything over in his head.
“Are there more of us?” Kyo asked.
Izzy was peering out a crack in the front door.
“I don’t know if there are more of us, but there are more of them.”
We came to the door. In the distance, moving through the trees were figures robed in black with oriental demon masks on, brandishing swords.
“These are the demons I was going to protect my father from.” Kyo exhaled. I could tell it was a breath to draw energy.
“No.”
Kyo turned to me.
I motioned to the floor where her father had been sitting. It was empty. There wasn’t even any blood.
“There is no one left to fight for. You did what needed to be done, just as I did. And Izzy, in his strange way of not going to face his diagnosis. They are hungry ghosts who want something, like Johnny Speedo.”
I ran about the cabin, looking. I didn’t know what I was looking for and I didn’t see anything. I opened a door in back. It opened out on a quiet scene of snow and trees, but no demons. In the distance, I saw Rox, running. She turned for just a moment and then disappeared into the wall of white.
“Come on!” I called. “This way.”
I ran ahead of the others. I checked to see that they were following, but I took a large lead and headed deep in the woods. I found Rox standing at the base of a tree. I looked into her face, deep in her eyes, and suddenly everything came flooding back.
“You are not really here. You are like Saripha’s wraith.”
“You are in a place where I can make contact, but I’m far away. I don’t think you’ll see me again. You need to use the key. You are being drained.”
“Drained.”
“I can’t explain it, but I feel it.”
“The key. How do I use it?”
“It is your key.”
Rox took the card from my hand. She detached the key and dropped the card. She placed the key in my palm and closed my hand about it.
“And now I must go. Don’t keep looking. You won’t find me.”
Rox shimmered and was gone. I felt as if a piece of me had been torn away. I pulled inside myself. I sensed Izzy and Kyo running up. Then I felt an energy that seemed to be centered on the key. Blue light radiated and we found ourselves standing in a large, blank room. Saripha and Anika (not Niko) were there looking as bewildered as we were.
Anika looked visibly shaken and Izzy walked over and put his arm around her. I looked at Saripha.
“You found a way to not die on the tower?”
“It was a little more complicated than that.” She smiled wanly.
Suddenly a door opened and a man came into the chamber. He was disheveled and seemed annoyed about something.
“How did you do that? How did you shut down the dreaming?”
That’s all it took. The implication was that he understood the agency of what we had just gone through. I grabbed him and slammed him into the wall, letting my anger flare up.
“Heyy!”
I placed my face close to his. He stopped struggling.
“Tell me about the dreaming. What are you doing to us?”
“Look. I’m just the engineer.”
“You make this happen?”
“The machines do. The collars help, but most of it is done with a gas.”
“The fog we saw.”
“Yeah, they dream, usually about making their lives right. They think that they are here because their lives weren’t right.”
“Why? Why do you do this?”
“I don’t know. They make me do it.”
I press
ed on him a little harder.
“But something different happened this time.”
“Yeah, it stopped. It’s not supposed to stop.”
I leaned very close. I felt cold and hard. I knew from what she said, I didn’t have much time to find Rox.
“What is supposed to happen? Do we keep dreaming forever?”
“No you get turned into protos after you’ve been psychically… syphoned, they call it.”
“The people who pay for their fantasies all die?”
“You can’t die. They go to work in the metal pits. Then they come back here after a long time and it starts over.”
“Metal pits?”
“Yeah, they apparently mine metal, although I’ve never seen any of it.”
I let him go and he collapsed to the floor. We all stood around him.
“Who knows this didn’t go as planned?”
“I don’t know. No one, maybe. I didn’t report it yet. Was coming down to see what the problem was.”
“I want to see the Magister. How do I find him?”
“The Magister.” The man looked shocked. “The Magister doesn’t see anyone.”
“You let me worry about that. How do we get to him?” We closed in tighter around him.
“There is a stairway that leads all the way to the top of the tower. I don’t know where he is, but it is somewhere up there.”
“Take us.”
“I’ll show you the staircase. I ain’t going up there.”
Kyo hauled him up, firmly.
“Show us,” she said.
We were taken to a room two flights up. It was ornate but empty. There were carved pillars, tiled floors and two alcove stations on either side of an ornate pair of doors. It looked like a room where people once gathered and I could picture guard stations in the alcoves. Was this where people once came for an audience with the Magister? A thin layer of dust everywhere suggested this room hadn’t been used in a very long time.
“What is this room?”
“I don’t know. It has just always been here, but no one has ever used it since I’ve been here.”
“No one sees the Magister?”
“Not since I’ve been here.” The man was agitated and nervous.
“And this is how they would have to go?”
“As far as I know. Through those doors. They are locked.”
I stepped up to the doors and tried them. They rattled, but they were solid. They were heavy and they weren’t going to budge.
I opened my palm. I was still grasping the key. I had somehow wound the ribbon around my wrist. It was too much to hope for. I slid it into the lock. It fit perfectly. I turned the key. There was a series of noisy shifts and a crack parted the doors. They were open.
“You had a key? I’ve never seen a key to that door.”
“How did we get a physical key?” Izzy asked. “Wasn’t everything some kind of fantasy we were just sharing?”
“Maybe a glamour of some kind. Something Rox was able to do for us wherever she is, whatever shape she is in.”
I turned to the still-frightened man.
“What’s your name?”
“Bela.”
“Bela, we walked in with weapons. Where are they?”
“They got confiscated. They wanted to put collars on you too, but it was too dangerous. People in the dreaming react violently to being touched. They incorporate it into their dream.”
“Bela, do you have our weapons still?”
“Yes.”
“Izzy and Anika, go with him and fetch our weapons.”
Izzy nodded. Anika shoved Bela in front of her and they left the room, returning a few minutes later with the bows and arrows, clubs and Kyo’s and my swords.
“Okay, let’s go meet the Magister.”
Kyo unsheathed her sword and held it at Bela’s throat. Bela’s eyes widened in alarm.
“What about him?” Kyo said quietly but with menace. I could tell she was still processing her memories of reliving her father’s death and her own suicide. There was an edge to her I hadn’t seen before.
“We could just let him go.”
“He’s a toady. A collaborating human. He will alert the others. We need time.”
I had to admit Kyo was right.
“Well, Bela, you have a choice. You can come with us.”
“I don’t want to do that. No one is supposed to go up there.”
“Well, I did say you had a choice. If you don’t go with us Kyo turns you into a proto. You’ll cause a commotion, but they won’t know as quickly why.”
Bela’s eyes looked at Kyo and shifted back to me. You could tell he knew she wouldn’t hesitate.
“I’ll go,” Bela said quietly.
We pulled open the doors. We were in a very large, round shaft. Ascending upward was a spiral staircase. The steps were polished stone and the railings were fine, dark carved wood. The steps were larger and deeper than you would expect and the clearance between spirals was also greater than you would expect. I realized that this spiral staircase could accommodate someone of very large stature. It was going to be a major climb for us.
The other thing that struck you was that this staircase had not been used in a very long time. It was dark and everything was dusty. The polished stone was dull and the wooden rails were almost ashen in this lack of light.
I turned to Izzy. “Either this guy is a hermit or he doesn’t have much to do with what’s going on in this place.”
“Something just occurred to me.” Izzy was studying the spiral that rose above us as if his answers might be there.
“That we were having more fun hanging out at Veniero’s?”
Izzy laughed. “That too. However, it occurs to me that Hell has had a change in management. The ancient abandoned cities, Guido’s vague talk about agreements. I think the Angel doesn’t belong to this place and that something happened to the old order.”
“And you think the Magister may be part of the old order.”
I looked at Saripha. She tended to hang back, not saying much unless asked.
“That would make sense. I know that Guido was never happy about the bargains he was keeping even though he’d rarely talk about them.”
“You could be right, Izzy. And it may be that learning what happened to the old order is the key to this place.”
“Looking at this staircase, I’m thinking the Magister is pretty old order.”
I looked at Bela. Kyo had him in a grip and he was clearly terrified.
“Bela, have you ever seen the Magister?”
“No one has ever seen the Magister.”
“Until now,” I said and led the way to the stairs.
13.
The ascent up the stairs was strenuous. I had estimated the tower to be maybe ten stories but, based on the turns of the spiral, I guessed it was only about six for whomever used to live here. We finally came to the top floor.
We emerged into a large, palatial room. Its grandeur was startling after the bleak, unkempt spiral stairway. There were columns of veined, polished rock, like marble. From the rafters hung various tapestries of earthen tones. In the middle was a small pool. It didn’t have a fountain but looked like it should have had one. It did, however, have water; cool, blue and clean. Everything was clean and polished as if it were in constant use. At the far end of the hall sat a throne designed for someone maybe fifteen to twenty feet high. It was grand, carved out of some light-colored, almost golden wood. There were tapestry cushions on the throne as well and a banner hung behind it. There were no pictures on the banner. You would have expected dragons or lions or falcons. There were just abstract shapes of color. No one sat on the throne. Instead, a cloaked man sat at a writing desk to one side. Near him, two Shirks and two gray demons stood up and tensed.
“No!” the man shouted. It was drawn out and his voice rose as he said it. “This can’t be! You must leave at once.”
“I’m here to see the Magister,” I said, drawing myself
up, trying to exude confidence.
“No one can see the Magister,” the clerk, or whatever he was, said with a tone that suggested any idiot should have known that.
“So I’ve heard.”
“Leave! Leave at once!”
The clerk motioned the Shirks and demons our way. Izzy and Anika immediately dropped the two gray demons with arrows. If the Shirks had not noticed that we were armed before, they certainly did now and backed away. We crossed deliberately over to where they were.
The clerk was a thin-faced man who looked like he rarely saw sunlight. He was dressed in a suit with wire-rim glasses. On the desk in front of him was a ledger in which he had been scrawling strange symbols with a pen. I could see the fear in his eyes. I had the feeling that status quo for him, whatever that was, had not changed in a very long time.
“What are you writing down?” I nodded at the ledger.
“I keep track,” he answered huffily.
“Of what?”
The clerk looked at Bela. “Did you bring them here?”
“They forced me to,” Bela protested. I decided the clerk was too irrational. I took a Shirk and slammed him into the wall. I understood Shirks. They understood me.
“Where is the Magister?”
“The roof chamber. But you can’t talk to him. He sleeps.”
“What do you mean ‘sleeps’?”
“I don’t know. He never moves.”
“How do I get to him?”
The Shirk nodded towards the gallery that circled above the room. There was a set of stairs on either side of the throne. The Shirk motioned to the back of the gallery.
“Passage to the roof,” he said. I let him go.
I turned to the clerk.
“What happened to this place? Why doesn’t the Magister sit on that throne? It’s his, right?”
The clerk looked me, puzzled.
“I don’t know. This is how it has always been.”
We headed up the stairs to the gallery. There was no use worrying about anyone knowing we were here so we left Bela with the clerk and the Shirks. No one seemed very clear on what to do about us and it would probably take them a while to decide. When we got to the back of the gallery, there was a foyer and a stairway leading to a doorway above. Presumably, that’s where the Magister was.
