by Paul S. Kemp
“It’s not,” Nix said, shaking his head and thinking it through. “The book says the remaking always leaves something leftover. A palimpsest.”
“I don’t know what that even means,” Jyme said. He stopped pacing and put a hand to the wall, as if he might fall over. Nix understood the feeling.
“It’s the ghost of old writing when you rewrite something,” Egil said. “The impressions on the page.”
“That creature is the ghost of old writing?” Jyme asked.
“Of an old world,” Egil said, and nodded.
A long silence fell. Jyme broke it.
“This is insane!” He looked like he wanted to run. Instead he started pacing anew. “You two are discussing this like it’s a love potion we bought at the Low Bazaar. This is a fakkin’ cataclysm. Do you even hear yourselves? This can’t be right, Nix. You read it wrong, or those wizards are full of shite or somethin’.”
“I don’t think so,” Nix said.
“Nor I,” said Egil.
“Damn it all,” Jyme said. He sat, deflated. “What then? What do we do?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” Nix said.
“And?” Jyme asked.
Nix was still working through details, and what he had for a plan was uncertain at best. But it was what he had. “Understand that I’m working this through, yeah? We’re going to make the plates, the Great Spell, go away.”
“What do you mean ‘go away’?” Jyme asked.
Nix spoke quickly to plow through his doubts. “We’re going to remake the world. But we’re going to remake it precisely the same way, except that these fakkin’ plates will be locked away forever, or at least as close to forever as we can make it. Our world is the final world as far as we’re concerned. No more Great Spell.”
“I don’t see how it can be precisely the same,” Jyme said. “It’s still a remaking, yeah?”
Nix saw where the question would lead. “Yeah.”
Jyme looked up. “Then we won’t be us. Or we’ll be us, but different.”
Nix was shaking his head before Jyme finished the sentence. “No, no. We’ll be the same.”
Egil cleared his throat. He’d taken out his dice and was shaking them absently in his hand. “We’re not pots. We can’t be broken and remade and still be the same thing.”
Nix could not muster the conviction to gainsay him, not entirely. “Maybe we can if there aren’t any cracks. We don’t know.”
“Fak,” Jyme muttered. “Fak. It seems like we’re saying everything is false, that nothing matters. There’s another world coming after this one, and there was one before, or ten, or a hundred, and why the fak do anything at all? Gods. Gods.”
“Calm down, Jyme,” Nix said.
Egil put his dice back in the pouch at his belt. “That’s not what he’s saying.”
“You sure?” Jyme asked. “Then what?”
“Yeah,” Nix said. “Then what? Because it sure feels like that’s what I just said, though maybe not quite so bleak. Thanks, Jyme. You fakker.”
Egil inhaled deeply, exhaled the same way. “All he said is that things are temporary. It doesn’t mean nothing matters, and it doesn’t mean nothing is real. It means it’s…temporary. But then it’s always been, hasn’t it? We die and our world ends. It’s no different if it’s the whole word or just us. Temporary, yeah?”
Nix and Jyme stared at him.
“I like that,” Jyme said. “Yes. I like that.”
Nix nodded. “And I. I don’t know if it makes sense or not but I’m hanging on to it.”
“You should have a pipe or something, priest,” Jyme said. “Waxing profound and all.”
“He does that sometimes,” Nix said. “I blame the fact that he’s been hit on the head often.”
“Ebenor’s eye does make a nice target,” Jyme added.
Egil grunted. “And now let me add some additional profundity and it goes as follows. Fak you. And also you.”
Nix laughed aloud. “Didn’t know you were signing on for this, now, did you Jyme? Ha!”
“I did not,” Jyme said, and the words caused the mirth to wilt. “Wait, what about that thing? The leftover?”
Nix shrugged. “There will be a different one, I guess. There’s always a leftover.”
Neither Jyme nor Egil would make eye contact with Nix. Each was lost in his own thoughts, his own doubts.
“I’ll hear other suggestions because I don’t have anything else,” Nix said. “Well?”
Neither Jyme nor Egil said anything.
“If we don’t do this, or if we can’t do this, eventually that thing is going to get these plates. Or if not it, then someone else. Kazmarek or someone like him. Too many people know about them now. And they…want to be found. That’s what the book says. The need to create and destroy and create anew, it’s…inexorable. Eventually they’ll be found and someone will use them. And then who knows what the world will look like. It’s us or them.”
“Gods,” Jyme said.
“Fak,” Egil said softly.
“I wish I’d left them in the swamp,” Nix said. “I’m sorry I didn’t. They must have been protected there or something. But now they’re out and it’s too late to put them back in a box. Unless, unless…”
“Unless we make a new box,” Egil finished.
“Yes. Yes.”
Jyme’s face was red and blotchy. “It’s not a fakkin’ box. It’s the world. You’re talking about the world.”
“Yeah,” Nix said. “Yeah.”
Egil stood, exhaled. “So how do they work? The plates, I mean.”
Jyme gave a start and his expression looked panicky. “You’re not going to do it here?”
Nix almost laughed, Jyme sounded so panicked. “No. I can’t do it here. It only works in one place—though place seems the wrong word—called the Fulcrum.”
“And where’s that?” Egil said.
“You warming up to this?” Nix said.
The priest shook his head. “No. But things are what they are. I’m with you. I don’t see another way.”
“Things aren’t what they are,” Jyme said. “I don’t feel fakkin’ real. I feel like a player in a play all of a sudden. Gods.”
“Of course you’re real,” Nix said, but Jyme’s words planted a seed of doubt. Were they just the outcome of a spell, the spawn of someone’s wish long ago? Players in someone else’s play?
“How can you say we are when—”
Nix stabbed the air with a finger to silence him. “That’s enough, Jyme! Enough! We’re real. I’ve lived, you’ve lived, everything that’s happened has happened. As Egil said, we’ve always been temporary. What does it matter how we started or who started us? We are what we are.”
“Anyway,” Egil said in an even tone. “The location of the Fulcrum?”
Nix was glad for the change in conversational direction. “The Fulcrum is not a where, exactly. The Fulcrum is the fixed point of the world, a place that doesn’t change with each iteration. The spell can only be cast there.”
Jyme was shaking his head, just shaking it over and over, as if he could knock loose everything he’d heard. Nix didn’t think he even realized he was doing it.
“So the Fulcrum could be anywhere,” Jyme said. “We’re just going to keep running from this thing until we happen to find it.”
Egil stared at Nix.
“Say it,” Nix said.
“Jyme makes a point,” Egil said.
“You’re jesting now?” Jyme said. “Still? After this? Gods, men. Gods.”
“Breathe, Jyme,” Nix said. “I find it helps. Just breathe.”
Jyme stared at him, nodded, and took a deep breath. “I cannot believe we are talking about this. I can’t.”
Nix couldn’t, either. He’d awakened yesterday morning and the day had been just another day.
Egil spoke softly. “How does the spell work?”
Nix consulted the knowledge imprinted on his brain from the book. “You a
ctivate the plates with the Language of Creation, read the words, and the rest is as much an act of will as a casting. You think about what you want and that is what you get.”
The furrow in Egil’s brow announced his skepticism. “That’s all there is to it?”
Nix shrugged. “It seems so.”
“This is a weighty damned matter for a ‘seems,’ ” Jyme said.
“Agreed,” Nix said. “But ‘seems’ is all I’ve got. The only thing we change is that the plates are hidden somewhere very hard to find. Everything else stays the same. A little change.”
“Little,” Jyme scoffed.
“And in the process we make a new leftover?” Egil asked. “A new creature?”
“Yes, I think. The remaking is never perfect, that’s what the book says. There’s always a leftover. Maybe it’s something like that creature every time. Maybe it’s something else. But we take that risk, yeah? We already know what we have this time around. Can’t be worse next time.”
“Aye,” Egil agreed.
A lengthy silence followed. Jyme broke it. “Will we remember?”
“Would you want to?” Nix asked.
“Maybe not,” Jyme said. “But could we?”
Nix shrugged. “Certainly. Ool did. Remember or forget. It’s the will of the caster.”
“Would you remember or forget?” Jyme asked.
Nix ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know. It’s heavy to carry. But knowing now, I think I’d rather stay knowing. You?”
Jyme scoffed. “I want to forget this and never have to think about it again.”
Nix laughed. Egil did not.
“We could have done this before, more than once,” the priest said.
“What?” Jyme asked.
Nix took Egil’s point. “Why would we do it again?” It came to him almost as soon as he asked the question and he nodded. “Because we failed. Shite.”
Jyme held up his hands. “You’re telling me we did this before and don’t remember?”
“It’s possible,” Egil said.
“No, no,” Nix said. “Wait, wait. If we remade it, then we didn’t fail.”
Egil shook his head. “No, we still could’ve. A contingency built in.”
“What?” Jyme asked.
Nix saw it and nodded. “Shite. That could be. The spell is limited only by the will of the caster. We could have done it before contingently.” For Jyme’s benefit, he explained: “Maybe we got to the Fulcrum before and cast the spell. And when we cast it we tried hiding the plates forever but also built in a contingency: If they aren’t or can’t be hidden forever, or if this or that is the case—something we don’t want, yeah?—then remake the world precisely as it was, except make this or that easier next time around so we do it correctly that time.”
Jyme just stared.
Egil said, “That spiral never ends. It could go on a long time. Nested contingencies.”
Nix nodded. “Little changes. Slight differences maybe to help us along and get it right finally? I don’t know.”
“But…” Jyme began. “We couldn’t help us along unless we remembered.”
“No, we could. We could not remember—maybe there’s a reason why we shouldn’t—and yet we changed the world to make a wall easier to climb or ourselves a better shot with a sling or whatever. Keep in mind that we’d be standing in the Fulcrum, looking back on how we got there, trying to remake the world without the plates, but knowing how we got there and knowing what we could change to make it easier next time. So if the remaking of the world without the plates didn’t work, the contingency takes effect.”
“You’re saying we remade the world so we can better climb a wall?” Jyme asked, skeptical.
“I don’t know,” Nix blurted. “Maybe. Little changes. If I was doing it right now, I’d want to make as few changes as I could. Because I want me to stay me, this world to stay this world. So, yeah. Maybe we changed everything but a wall. Or who knows what else? But maybe we didn’t change things enough and we failed. So here we are again, not remembering, the world changed in some small way we’ll never know, but going at it again. Hell, maybe having this conversation is the change!”
“Shite,” Jyme said. “I’m getting tired thinking about it.”
“I see it now,” Egil said.
“See what?” Jyme asked.
“We didn’t remake the world to help us along. We remade it because one of us died.”
Jyme and Nix sat for a long moment in silence.
“Shite,” Nix said softly. “Of course. Of course.”
“You’re saying one of us died?” Jyme said.
Egil shrugged.
“That would make sense,” Nix said, and tried not to think about the way he might have gone out. “Probably it was you, Jyme, being a clumsy oaf and such. But listen, whether we did or didn’t die is irrelevant at this point. We just have to proceed as planned. If we did it before and failed, or one of us died, let’s do it better this time, yeah? We think too hard about previous iterations and what we may have done or not done and we’ll paralyze ourselves. We’ll get it right eventually.”
“Or fail altogether,” Egil said.
“Always uplifting you are, priest,” Nix said.
“We could all die,” Jyme said. “Then there’s no one to remake anything and we’re fakked.”
“Likewise uplifting,” Nix said. “You two should stop talking now.”
“Hells,” Egil said to Nix. “Maybe in a previous world you’re charming.”
“And maybe you’re handsome and less fakking dour,” Nix answered, then shook his head. “No, that’d be asking too much of even the Great Spell. Little changes, I said. Not turning the world upside down.”
“Ha,” Egil said, and grinned.
“See, now we have the right attitude,” Nix said.
Jyme massaged his temples. “This is insanity. How can this not be insane? We’re talking about changing the world, about already having died, and you two sit here trading jests.”
“That’s how we manage,” Egil said seriously. “And here’s how you’re going to manage. You’re going to carry this, Jyme. Because you can. We’re all three going to carry it together, yeah? And eventually we’re going to get it right.”
“Yeah, all right,” Jyme said, visibly propping himself up. “Yeah.”
“Now,” Egil said, brandishing the morphic key, “let’s go fix this. Again if that’s the way of it. Wake up, key.”
The end of the key’s barrel elongated and opened, as though in a yawn, then the key said, in its high-pitched voice, “Give us an apple.”
A distant impact caused the walls to vibrate. Another followed, then a third.
“Shite,” Jyme said. They could all could guess the origin of the sound.
“That thing has tracked us,” Nix said.
“How? We’re in the Vault!” Jyme said. “That was the whole point.”
Nix shook his head. “It must be able to follow our scent in the air or the like. Maybe it can’t sense us right now, but it can sense whatever we left on the air behind us and that’s enough for it to know we’re in the guild house.”
“Shite,” Jyme said. “It’s like a fakkin’ hound.”
“Seconding shite,” Nix said, and tossed Egil an apple that he took from his satchel. “For that key.”
Egil held the apple, brown and wrinkled, in front of the key.
“Give us a carrot instead,” the key said in its high-pitched voice.
Egil frowned and looked back at Nix, who rifled through his satchel. He didn’t have a carrot. He shook his head.
“A carrot,” the key repeated.
“We’re having an argument with a fakking key and that thing is here!” Jyme said. “Give it a fakkin’ onion or something. We get caught in here there’s nowhere to go.”
“Give us a carrot,” repeated the key.
“It’s temperamental,” Nix said. “I left it unfed too long.”
Egil’s eyes n
arrowed in anger. He held the key up to his face and stared down the barrel. “There is no carrot. So you will open this lock or I will bend you into a fishhook.”
A long pause, in which Nix imagined the key thinking, then, “Give us the apple.”
Egil held the apple before the key and it took several bites.
Another impact shook the walls, the boom something Nix felt as vibrations in his teeth. He imagined the creature throwing its monstrous form against the doors and walls of the guild house, its senses linked in some arcane way to the plates, drawing it toward the Vault, toward them. They needed to get clear.
With the key having eaten, Egil jammed it into the locking mechanism and waited. One moment stretched into another.
“Come on,” Jyme said, shifting on his feet, while the key did its work. “Come on.”
“Open the fakkin’ lock,” Egil growled at the key.
Nix looked around at the walls, the metal door, the high ceiling reinforced with beams to hold the weight of the river at bay. An idea struck him.
Egil fiddled with the key, grumbling at it, and finally it turned and the lock clicked open.
“You’re fortunate,” the priest said to the key, and shoved it into his belt pouch.
Without another word, all three of them drew their weapons, for whatever good they would do. They shared a collective nod and Egil pushed the door open. A breeze wafted in but nothing else. The hallway was empty.
“Let’s go,” Egil said, but Nix had already laid his satchel on the ground. He crouched beside it and opened the flap.
“You two go,” he said, and took out the plates, the plates on which were inscribed words that would end the world. He lingered over them a heartbeat, the fact of what they were giving him pause, but he forced himself not to linger on it. He snatched the thin reel of cordage he always kept in the satchel and pulled that out. “I’m going to trap that thing in here.”
“Say again?” Jyme said, incredulous.
Another boom sounded from somewhere in the guild house, a dull crash that echoed for a moment like a dying heartbeat. Jyme looked like a horse ready to bolt. “Are you mad?”
“Nix…” Egil said, but even as he was saying it the priest studied the room, the ceiling, and the beams.
