by Andy Havens
Ha! Yes, there it goes! she thought. From a beautiful, shifting pattern, the strings dissolved into a clumpy mess and both players laughed as they tried to extricate their fingers. When they’d finished, one took out a single silver coin and handed it to the other. The winner bowed graciously and they went on their way.
Or at least she thought they had.
Monday whispered a word that she couldn’t quite hear and the two turned around and headed back toward the steps. They were both young-seeming by Mundane standards; maybe in their early twenties. As Reckoners… hard to tell. Kendra didn’t pry beneath the surface of what they chose to display. Their gender also wasn’t immediately apparent, but Kendra had learned not to pry into that area, either. Even more than with Mundanes, gender and sex were fluid concepts among the Domains.
When you can live for thousands of years, she had thought when first discovering that fact, I can imagine one set of rules for anything gets kind of boring.
Monday had clearly called them over with a quick Way, and he asked, “Would you mind playing again so my friend can see what you’re doing up close?”
The two looked at each other, then back at Monday and Kendra.
One was about to speak and, from the sour look, wasn’t going to say, “Yes.”
Kendra interrupted before they could and said, “Ten bucks says I can pick the winner at least three moves before the game ends.”
Still the frown.
“Ten bucks each. I’ll put my hands in my pockets. When I know who’s going to win, I’ll put out both hands with a coin in the one for the side I think will win.”
The two looked at each other and nodded.
“Mr. Monday,” Kendra said, “You count the moves and watch for when I take my hands out. You two OK with that?”
They nodded, both now grinning, and the one who’d recently lost took out the string and they began again.
“One,” said Monday, leaning back with a smile on his face.
The players’ hands moved very quickly at first, but Monday had no problem keeping up the count, his voice low and firm.
He sounds like a grade school teacher helping kids learn their numbers, Kendra thought.
At around the twenty turn mark, the game slowed a bit. The knots more complicated, the elements of Chaos coming more into play.
Rather than watching their hands, as a few other bystanders were now doing, Kendra let her mind wander. She felt the variety of other Ways around them, both personal and public. The Narrows, of course. A feature in almost any urban or suburban landscape. The profoundly deep and strong Ways of Sight in the Library behind her, like a pool of still water that you know goes down thousands of feet.
Little touches of Earth here and there as various Reckoners, naturals and constructs of that House went about the business of the world. Quite a few individuals from Increase, whose Ways seemed more like clothing than tools; they were always on, always on the make, always striving. Very little from Flux, as it was a small House. But still… there it was. The power of change. The slide of loss or the joy of gain. Different than Increase, but… something. Same with Release. She could feel several locks of Release being opened and closed up and down the street.
Flux gave birth to those two, she remembered. And they still ‘smell’ similar sometimes.
And right in front of her, the gambling, random power of Chaos. The two players going at it even faster, even more skillfully because of the audience.
Kendra didn’t exactly close her eyes, but she stopped using them as her main sensory organ and instead reached out further with whatever senses were linked to the Ways.
Fingers on string. Minds filled with the joy of play and the anticipation of surprise. Enjoying the gamble. Why? Why is it fun to gamble on random chance? To apply rules to a universe without them? To enforce will or pattern where there is none? Or just to be involved in the throw of the dice, flip of the cards?
Other Ways bent and merged around them. Some in the neighborhood. Some far away. Some in the little audience, gathered on the sidewalk, enjoying the brief display of skill. To Mundanes, it looked a lot like what it was – a complicated, championship game of Cat’s Cradle. The Reckoners saw that, yes, but also could sense the Ways of Chaos as they flipped and spun through the yarn with each move.
There it is.
She saw the overlap. The blending. Chaos reaching out from the threads and touching a Way of Sight; one of the observers was doing a simple recording of the game to show to a friend later in the day. He was leaning closer, smiling along with everyone else, but trying to keep a good view for his Way.
Next to him, a lady of Increase. Older. But, like all of her House, always on the make. Always looking for the main chance. She was carrying a Way of Assessment that helped her judge whether or not someone was likely to be a good contact or a waste of time in terms of her network.
Her Way overlapped the Way of Sight. She didn’t sense that. Or the Way of Earth up the street that was being used by a short, golem-like thing to gather water and clumped leaves out of a gutter, putting them into a barrel on its back.
None of them sense the overlap. The places where the Ways touch. Or if they do, they just overlook it. Like something in the background. Noise. Environment.
But a touch here… A nudge there…
The player nearest the woman, the one on Kendra’s right, felt for some reason as if this contest was more important than it seemed. As if the outcome wasn’t just ten bucks and some laughs. Like maybe someone important was watching carefully. Judging.
As Monday counted, “Forty-nine,” Kendra took her hands out of her pockets and kept them fisted on her knees in clear view of Monday. The players were too engrossed in the game to notice, but she knew the Librarian would be able to run the scene back for them if they somehow distrusted his count.
The play continued. And at the count of fifty-eight, the Earth creature’s barrel made a kind of “Whooof!” noise as it incinerated its load of leaves. The Way of Assessment shifted for just a second to take in that piece of information, and the Way of Sight vibrated slightly as it did (at least in Kendra’s mind), making the attention of the person doing the recording seem less interested, less important, less valuable.
The player on the right fumbled a knot, casting the whole thing into a tangled mess.
The crowd applauded, for it had been a very long, very talented play of this game. Several of the bystanders congratulated the players, both of whom seemed pleased to have had such a good audience for their skillful session.
After the onlookers had dissipated back into traffic, the two players looked expectantly at Monday and Kendra.
“She made her decision at the count of forty-nine,” Monday said. “Nine turns before the end.”
They looked at Kendra, each with a grin she was familiar with from her time with Vannia.
They love the wager almost as much as the toss, she realized. There’s something there. Something important to think about later.
Kendra opened her fists and turned them over… a quarter resting on the palm of her left hand.
“I win!” she said, and the two players made faces of delighted surprise, and bowed to her slightly, one of them going so far as to tip an invisible hat in her direction.
As they made to walk off, however, Kendra cleared her throat. Loudly.
They turned back, all innocence and surprise.
“Ten bucks,” Kendra said dryly. “Each.”
The winner made a sour face and Kendra expected they were about to say that they didn’t have any Mundane money, so she interrupted asking, “Or would you rather owe me a favor?”
They both shook their heads quickly and one scurried across the street to an ATM. Three minutes later, Kendra had a crisp twenty-dollar bill in her pocket.
Turning to Monday, she said, “That’s what you wanted me to do. So you could see.”
He nodded, smiling but serious. “Yes.”
“And?”
&
nbsp; He looked up at the bright, blue sky and rubbed the short, white hair on top of his head for a moment. Finally, he turned his very direct, dark eyes on her.
“I saw nothing strange.”
“Nothing.”
“No. Nothing. I focused a variety of Ways, some of which are very common and some of which are particular to me. You were surrounded, essentially, by the equivalent of cameras, a room full of medical devices and arcane trip-wires. Every possible manner of observation I could think of, both reasonable and absurd.”
“But?”
“But, to me, it looked like a Chaos game that you predicted. You had a fifty-fifty chance of being right, and you were. That’s the interpretation of my many observations.”
Kendra frowned. “But I made it happen. I did the ‘spork thing’ and caused the outcome. I didn’t predict it.”
“How do you know?” Monday asked.
“How do you know when you… I don’t know… drop a rock into water that it will create ripples and not bounce back up.”
“Because that’s how rocks and water work.”
“Right.”
Monday made a “hmmm,” sound and stood up, holding out a hand and helping Kendra to her feet.
“Even Mundane scientists have trouble separating prediction from cause in some instances,” he said. “In your case, I think we’ll need more time and, maybe, other people to help with the study of ‘sporks’ as you say.”
He’s assuming I want to be studied. That I’m interested in understanding both how and why I can do these things. As old, wise and all-seeing as he is, she realized, that’s his blind spot: he assumes everyone is as interested in “knowing” as he is.
“We’ll see,” she said noncommittally.
As they walked back up the steps to the Library, Monday said, “I am looking forward to the Cathedral. It really does have the best coffee.”
“Sounds like everybody agrees on that.”
* * * * *
That had been early in the day. It was later, now, and the others were inside the Cathedral having the wonderful coffee. But not her. Nope. She and Vannia were hovering a thousand feet above the Iraqi desert.
“Put in that Sight thingy,” Vannia said, holding Kendra’s hand. Partly because Kendra hadn’t fully mastered the Way that Chaos used to fly. Partly because even when she did it right, it made her dizzy and nauseous.
My vertigo is not childish, she thought. Until very recently, I didn’t know you could fly without machines. It makes perfect sense for me to feel squidgy.
Kendra fished around in her pocket for the monocle Wallace had given her. He’d removed the 24-hour restriction, so it would continue to work for her (and nobody else) until it was destroyed or someone from Sight turned it off.
“Got it. What am I looking for?”
“Down there. Right below us. You see that ridge?”
“Yup. Looks like a long, narrow hill, right?”
“That’s it. See if you can spy what will look like a big, gray, rocky thumb kind of thing sticking up near the eastern edge of it.”
Kendra started looking through the monocle, concentrating in the way Wallace had shown her, zooming in a bit. Enough to see nothing but the rocky ridges of the hills below. She scanned for a moment and finally saw something of a different color than the surrounding soil.
“Hang on. I think I see something.”
She zoomed in some more and in a moment could tell it wasn’t a natural structure. It was shaped, more or less, like a capital letter “D,” flat on the western edge, then rounded on the other side.
“Got it. It’s a kind of half-cylinder thing, right? Like half a drum?”
“That’s it. Can you see any details from here?”
Kendra zoomed in further and saw that it must have once been a mighty, circular fortress of some kind. It was probably around twenty stories tall, had windows dotting its round edge here and there, and seemed to rise up in a series of slightly smaller layers. Like an ugly wedding cake.
It also appeared to be broken in some key ways. There was a gate or large door, cracked on both sides and above, as if someone had driven a too-large truck through it. There were a number of major chunks taken out of it, too, and the whole thing seemed to have settled akimbo into the dry dirt around it.
There also seemed to be no movement or life in the building. It had the distinct air of “ruins.”
The architectural style wasn’t anything she recognized, either.
Too plain to be Roman or Greek or Egyptian. It reminds me a bit of a ziggurat, but round instead of square.
“OK. I see it. What’s your point? Why do we need to look at it from up here? That can’t be the Sanctuary Cathedral. Unless it’s a real fixer-upper.”
“All in time, my friend. Let’s move a bit west so you can see the flat side.”
They swooped a bit lower and Kendra kept the Way focused on the structure. As they got low enough to make out other features, she got some perspective on the site.
You could get hundreds… maybe thousands of people in there, she realized when its size became more apparent. It’s huge.
Vannia stopped them mid-air so that they were now staring down from around five hundred feet up, looking at the flat, western side of the structure. It was entirely smooth and unmarred by window, door or marking. All the concentric circles of the front were cut along the same line so that it seemed as if some enormous knife had simply sliced down through those layers of rock.
“Can you see it?” Vannia asked.
“See what?”
“Keep looking.
Kendra stared at the flat surface of the building, wondering what she was supposed to see. She zoomed in as far as she could go, looking for details or cracks, but there were none. It was flawless stone, flat as ice and…
Wait… it’s not stone. It just looks like it because that’s what I was expecting…
She expanded her scrutiny, opening her new senses. Something… it reminds me of something… what, though?
“Let’s get closer,” she said to Vannia, still concentrating on the structure.
“OK.”
They dropped quickly and Kendra’s stomach did a little roll… but stayed in place. Soon they were floating about fifty feet away from the smooth plane and around a hundred feet off the ground, about half way up the height of the thing.
“A little closer, please,” Kendra asked.
“A little… but not too much more.”
They bobbed slowly in the cool air, a slight breeze making Kendra shiver.
Then she realized: Cool? This is a desert? Why would it be…
“Wow,” Kendra whispered. “It’s a wall of… Beyond. Like the space on the other side of the mountains surrounding Bardonne’s.”
“Got it in one,” Vannia said.
“What would happen if…”
“I don’t think you want to try. I know I don’t,” Vannia said.
At this distance it was even more palpably smooth. Like a mirror. Or water in a lake. No blemish, no crack, no lines, no ripples or veins. Nothing. Just a polished surface of slivery, gray… nothing.
Like the mountains. It is a final decision. A border between one thing and its opposite.
“Tell me more about this,” Kendra said.
“Let’s look at the other half, first,” Vannia suggested. When Kendra nodded, they shot up into the air and headed west and a bit north for a couple minutes. Then Vannia stopped them and pointed down again.
Below her Kendra saw the mirror image of the ziggurat-thing they’d left behind. Only this one was alive with lights and people and landscaping. A pleasant road wound its way up from the desert floor, curving back and forth through a series of gardened terraces. A large, pleasant looking pond backed up on the structure and curved around almost to meet near the front gate. Not a moat, per se, but a lovely feature, especially seen from above. It made the building seem like a jewel set in a deep blue piece of pottery.
There were
no breaks or cracks on the curved side, just whitewashed and well maintained balconies, windowed alcoves and walkways. Tiny gardens peppered the sides of the building as well, making the entire thing seem like a kind of huge, ancient yet comfortable hotel.
When she zoomed in, Kendra could see dozens of people at work in the gardens, walking the balconies and even gathering on the roof.
Where there was also a helicopter pad, occupied by what she was sure was Gareth Ezer’s private chopper.
The eastern side of the structure, though, was identical to its twin. The same smooth, cool, vaguely sinister plane of nothingness that Wallace had described simply as, “Beyond.”
“How many Sanctuaries have you seen?” Vannia asked as they floated down toward the roof.
“Just two. This and Bardonne’s. Why?”
“They are all defined or surrounded by the Beyond. It’s part of what makes a place a Sanctuary.”
“Like… a security fence or something?”
“Kinda. It depends on the Sanctuary. Bardonne’s Fields are in the center of a Beyond. If you leave the pub through any door other than the Eye, you’ll eventually hit the mountains and then… Poof. The only Way in or out that’s safe is beneath the Eye. But since it’s meant to be a place where you can spar, the Beyond had to be placed a good long ways away. You ran through all those miles of fields. They’re a buffer, I guess.”
“But this Beyond, it doesn’t surround the cathedral. It’s just on that one side. You can see people going in and out through regular doors down there. What’s the point of the wall of Beyond then?”
“I think the Episkopos would rather tell the story. He loves an audience.”
“Who’s he?”
“You’ll see. Soon. We’re already a little late, and I assume Monday and Ezer will want to get started on whatever discussions or whatever whatever they have in mind.”
Kendra nodded, still studying the wall of nothing. Wondering what it was and how it was held up and why anyone would build a wall out of it.
And why I’m more than a little attracted to it…
* * * * *
“Oh. My. God. Nobody was exaggerating. This is… Wow. I mean. Just. Wow.”
