by Paul S. Kemp
“All well, Sarge?”
The sergeant waved at him to move on, never taking his eyes from Egil.
“We can stop it,” Egil said.
“How? You said it can’t be hurt.”
“We have a way,” Nix said, losing patience. “I’m asking you to trust us, or at least believe us. But we need to go right now. The thing will come after us and only us. If no one is here, no one else will be hurt.”
The sergeant sniffed, considered, and looked at Jyme. “You got nothing to say here?”
“Just clear the street,” Jyme said. “Everything Nix said is true.”
The sergeant looked past them, back at them. “Fine.” He pointed a finger at Nix’s face. “But don’t fak me over, gentlemen. Or I will find you.”
Egil thumped him on the shoulder. “Good man.”
Nix, Jyme, and Egil sprinted off toward Ool’s clock, the towering spire like a dark line splitting the predawn sky. Behind them, the sergeant and the other Orangies started shouting for everyone to get clear.
“Next time through maybe we ought to make him have rank or wealth or something, yeah?” Nix said, jesting.
“Yeah,” Egil said, apparently not jesting.
They ran through the streets, the tall spire of Ool’s clock their guide. The farther away they moved from the slaughter on Mandin’s Way, the more ordinary became the activity in the predawn streets—wagons and carts, donkeys and merchants, buskers and hawkers arguing over street corners, and pedestrians getting about their daily business. Nix took it all in and could not shake the feeling that it was all a fiction, something made, rather than something grown. He forced the thought from his mind.
“Keep moving!” Egil said, pulling him along.
He’d drifted to a slow jog without realizing it. He picked up his pace, focusing his mind on the task.
“Both of you listen now,” he said, as they turned onto Non’s Boulevard. “I’ll activate the plates when we reach the clock. If something happens to me, you two carry on, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Egil said.
“Shite, man, I figured you’d at least protest the thought of me dying,” Nix said. “Anyway, once they’re activated, they should stay that way. But nothing can be done with them until they’re within the Fulcrum. That’s what the book said. If it’s you and not me doing the casting, just read what’s on the plates. It’ll be like Ool’s book. The script will appear strange and unreadable at first but then it will start to…sink into you. You’ll know what to say.”
A loud, piercing scream sounded from a block or so behind them. Another joined it, another. Nix imagined the creature bursting out of the guild house and onto the street, tracking them in its way.
“It’s coming,” Jyme said, glancing behind them.
“Aye,” said Egil.
Nix kept talking as they ran, cutting through an alley toward Cobbler’s Row. “Remember, in the Fulcrum, as you cast, you just think of what you want, you wish it, but small fakking changes. Small. Our plan is to remake the world exactly as it is except that we found something else in that tower in the swamp, something interesting but harmless, and these plates are hidden away somewhere else. I’d planned for me to remember, but you don’t have to. How do you want it?”
“Yes,” Egil said without hesitating. He must have already thought it through for himself.
“No,” Jyme said. “I don’t think…no.”
“Good enough,” Nix said. “Final thing. I think the remaking has to go back to the point in time of the first change wrought by the spell. The world doesn’t start again from the beginning. It starts from the change as though it’d always been that way.” He paused, then said, “And that’s a maybe.”
“A maybe?” Egil asked.
“Fak,” Jyme swore.
“Yes,” Nix said. “A maybe. Hells, I don’t know. This is the most powerful spell ever made, Egil. It’s like being a god. Not even a god, the god, the only one that matters, at least in that moment. Maybe lots of things are possible. Maybe the world does restart from the get. I’m making an assumption. And anyway, how would we know? We’ll be here when we were meant to be here.”
“Gods,” Jyme said softly as they ran. “Gods. This is fakking maddening to think about.”
“If one of us dies, we go again,” Egil said. “That’s our rule.”
“That’s our rule,” Nix said, nodding. “One of us dies, we go again. We are not coming through this worse than we started. Jyme?”
“Agreed, yes, of course,” Jyme said. “All of us or we go again. But…”
“But what?” Nix asked.
“Why not just cast the remaking and make us all alive and hide the plates? Solves all the problems in one go.”
“No,” Nix said, trying not to feel overwhelmed by the scope of the conversation. “No. Because that remaking could fail or get fouled somehow.”
“So?” Jyme said.
“So,” Egil said, picking up Nix’s thinking, “maybe one or two of us are dead and the remaking doesn’t bring us back but does secrete the plates in some unknown corner of Ellerth. Then what?”
“Then someone is dead and there won’t be another remaking,” Nix said, finishing for the priest. “At least not by us.”
“I don’t get it,” Jyme said. “Why would it do that?”
“How the fak would I know, Jyme?” Nix said. “Half of this is guesswork. I only know we have just established a rule, and that rule is that if someone dies, the change we make in the next casting is remaking the world to bring him back. Until and unless we all three make it through alive and stand in that Fulcrum together, we do it again, plates and all. And then again, if need be. Maybe just make a small change to help us along the next time.”
“Hells, this entire conversation could be the change from last time,” Egil said. “Helping us along.”
Nix knew and thinking about it made his head light. He decided that they had their plan, such as it was, and he’d stick to it because he had nothing else. He was risking their lives on a hunch, on an awful lot of unknowns. He hoped the hunch was right, or maybe had a basis in a previous world. Otherwise, they could all three die, never reaching the Fulcrum, never remaking the world, and that would be the end for them.
“I’m just going to say,” he said, “that this is not an ideal damned discussion to be had at a full run while pursued by a monster.”
“Aye, that,” Egil said.
The clock rose before them, the breaking dawn stretching a faded shadow of the spire across the city. They ran as directly for it as Dur Follin’s haphazard street layout allowed. Heads turned to watch them pass, surprise or questions or indifference etched on their faces.
The clock stood on a foundation of huge gray blocks of stone. The stones were of a kind that couldn’t have been quarried near Dur Follin, and were said to have been brought to Dur Follin by giants. Nix knew better now.
Age and weather had left the foundation stones pitted, and lichen stained them green in irregular patches that made them look like maps of worlds that never were. Scrawled vulgarities marred the stones where the lichen offered a blank space, all of it written in chalk or paint.
Atop the base stood the tower of Ool’s clock, and nothing marred its rough surface. The spire stretched skyward, twisting and narrowing as it ascended, the architectural flourish giving it a warped, unfinished look, like a mistake, like a leftover. Four thin spires rose from the corners of the tower’s concave top. Somehow it had always reminded Nix of a bird’s nest. In the predawn quiet he could hear the sound of flowing water from somewhere within the spire, the sound faint and diffuse behind the stone. No one knew how the water clock worked, or why or how the water within kept flowing. It was a mystery, or at least it had been.
“Where would it be?” Jyme asked. “Right here? Inside?”
Nix didn’t know. He was working on faith. He eyed the area, looking for a clue or association to trigger something he’d learned from Ool’s book and let him discern
the location of the Fulcrum. There was nothing but the same ground he’d walked on and past for decades.
“Has to be inside, doesn’t it?” he said.
Egil’s voice was calm. “There’s no way inside. We’ve checked before, Nix. There may not even be an inside for anything other than the water and the clockworks.”
“Not helping,” Nix said, though he knew the priest spoke truth. He and Egil had scoured the base of the spire years earlier, on a drunken lark, hoping to find a way in, convincing themselves in their stupor that the fabled clock tower had to hold some ancient treasures. They’d found nothing then and they’d find nothing now.
All at once the clock started to toll, the sound of its gongs ringing down in resounding waves from the peak of the spire, the volume like a weight on them.
Nix lifted his eyes, blinking into the sound, the twisting lines of the tower momentarily making him feel dizzy. He looked up near the tower’s top, where the round metal slabs of the huge gongs hung suspended in a row that circumnavigated the spire, twelve in all, one for each hour of day and night. A jointed mechanism jutted from the spire above or below the gongs, each ending in the hammer that tolled the metal. Nix watched as the hammers tensed and struck, one after another, announcing the sixth hour, presaging the dawn. A new day, and the world would either be remade or not.
He let his eyes drift higher, to the pronged peak of the spire.
“I’ve never heard of anyone climbing the clock,” he said.
“Of course not,” Jyme said. “It’s fakkin’ tall.”
“But rough,” Nix said. “And it thins as it rises. Not that hard a climb but for the height. And yet…”
“No one has ever climbed it,” Egil said. “You’re thinking that’s built into the making somehow.”
“I am.”
“Then the Fulcrum would be?” Egil said.
“There,” Nix answered, pointing at the bird’s nest with his chin.
“There?” Jyme asked. “There! Shite.”
Nix dropped his satchel to the ground and started emptying it of everything save the plates. He also shed the dagger at his back, the one in his boot, the one on his thigh. He considered dropping his falchion but thought better of it, though it would make climbing more difficult. He would feel naked were he without his blade.
“You sure?” Jyme said.
“No,” Nix said. “But we go up anyway.”
“Shite,” Jyme said.
“You said you could climb,” Egil said to Jyme.
“I didn’t say it,” Jyme said. “I showed it. But this thing is…” He looked up. “A hundred fifty paces tall, maybe more. The surface is rough but…”
“Nix,” Egil said. “We start up this thing…we can’t be wrong. We’ll be cornered.”
“I know,” Nix said. “And I might be wrong. But I think I’m not. I can always do this alone.”
“You’re not going alone,” Egil said, as though it were the plainest fact in the world. He started dropping equipment to the ground.
“We don’t have any climbing gear,” Jyme said. “Wouldn’t we have suggested gear?”
“Maybe,” Nix said, standing. “Or maybe we never made it this far yet. Go light.” He patted the hilt of his falchion. “But keep your weapons.”
“Shite,” Jyme said again, looking up at the spire as he stripped himself of gear.
Nix took the plates in his hand, spoke a word in the Language of Creation to activate them. They vibrated in his hands, almost humming. They felt slippery, and the script on them swirled.
“One of you do it if I die,” he said, and put them back in his satchel.
“What’re you boys doing?” said a middle-aged woman who sat on the driving board of a horse-drawn wagon. She drew on her pipe, blew it out.
“I really don’t know what we’re doing,” Nix said to her, and grinned.
Screams from down the street announced the approach of the creature.
“Best clear out of here, goodwoman,” Nix said to her. “The Hells are on our heels and closing fast.”
The woman started to smile, saw Nix was serious, and flicked the reins of the horse.
“You take care then,” she said as the wagon rolled off.
“Get a drink at the Slick Tunnel,” Nix called after her. “Tell them Egil and Nix sent you.”
She raised a hand so he knew she’d heard.
More shouts from somewhere around the corner, a deep roar—the creature.
“Here we go,” Nix said, and moved to the base of the spire. Egil and Jyme fell in with him. They each found purchase on the wall and started up. Nix would lead, finding the path. Jyme came next, followed by Egil. The stone of the clock felt cool under his grip. The pyramidal bricks out of which it was built provided ample ridges and edges so he made good progress.
“You ever climb anything this tall, Jyme?” Egil called.
“No,” Jyme said.
“Eyes on the wall mostly, not up or down, belly close but not flat to the tower; the wind will get tough once we get above the city’s rooflines.”
“Once I feel the direction of the wind, I’ll circle around so we’re lee of it,” Nix called down.
“I’ll be all right,” Jyme said, though Nix thought he caught some nervousness in the tone. “Though I feel compelled to ask whether there’s anything the two of you haven’t done.”
“He’s still funny,” Nix said. “I like it.”
At twenty-five paces up, a growl sounded from below. Nix looked down. The city stretched out below him, piers jutting into the Meander, a forest of sails, a thicket of scows and ships at anchor. The sprawl of Dur Follin’s roads zigged and zagged in all direction like the scrawl of some cosmic madman. Wagons and pedestrians, smaller from this height but still readily visible, roamed them, and to the north, back toward the guild house, Nix saw the creature as it came. It lumbered down the street at an alarming speed, clots of pedestrians and wagons fleeing before it like goats before a wolf. The creature roared as it came, the sound carrying up to them, getting entangled with the screams of people and the distant whine of an Orangie’s whistle.
None of the three said anything. They simply put their faces back to the wall of the spire and climbed. The wind picked up, gusting off the river, snapping Nix’s shirt. Jyme cursed.
“Going left to stay out of the wind,” Nix called down.
Below, the creature reached the foundation stones of the tower. It looked up at them, its mien hidden by the hood, which seemed to stick to its head as though fabric and flesh had congealed into one. It screamed something at them, the gibberish of its words made even more incomprehensible by the sound of the wind.
“Sounds angry,” Nix said.
“Aye,” Egil shouted.
Nix figured the creature’s bulk would prevent it from climbing, so they would be safe as long as none of them fell.
The creature bounded up to the foundation stones, felt at the wall, and started to heave its bulk up the surface. It climbed awkwardly, but with a speed and agility that Nix would not have thought possible.
“Fak,” Nix whispered, and refocused on the climb.
“It’s coming up!” Jyme shouted.
“Just keep going,” Egil said. “Deliberate, though. No panic, Jyme. You fall, you’re going to take me with you.”
“I’m not fakkin’ falling anywhere,” Jyme said.
The wind whistled in Nix’s ear. He focused on the face of the spire, the gritty texture, the lay of its pyramidal bricks with their protuberant edges, each a foothold, a handhold, the sum of them a ladder, as if placed there for that very purpose. He concentrated on the task, his motion settling into the repetition of hand, foot, lift, hand, foot, lift, the words and motion the rhythm of his ascent. He was climbing to the edge of the world, to the tip of a stone finger that was pointing at the beginning and end of everything.
“Nix,” Egil called from below.
Nix pretended to not hear. He shook his head and kept climbing.
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“Nix!” Egil said.
Nix stopped, placed his cheek to the cold stone, then looked down.
Jyme was a pace or two behind him, the wind causing his shirt to flutter. Egil was below Jyme, looking up, the eye of the priest’s tattoo staring up at the unending sky. The creature was below Egil and coming up fast.
“We can’t outpace it,” Egil said. “We delayed too long at the bottom.”
“Not standing fakkin’ still we can’t,” Jyme said. “Go, Nix!”
Nix’s arms screamed with fatigue. He stared at the stone, white as bleached bone. Egil was right. They’d never reach the top before the creature.
“I’m going to stop it,” Egil said. “You two will go on. Fix it next time, is all. Yeah?”
“No,” Nix said.
“Nix,” Egil started.
Nix was shaking his head. “Think of your wife, Egil. Your daughter.”
Egil smiled. “I am. You preserve them for me. We go again, Nix.”
They shared a look, one that bespoke a friendship that transcended time and worlds.
Nix couldn’t speak so he just nodded.
Jyme looked up at Nix, wide-eyed, then down at Egil. “You’re not…?”
“I am,” Egil said. “Just make it to the top and do what we came to do. Go.”
“But we don’t even know if we’re in the right place!” Jyme said. “We’re just fakkin’ climbing!”
“If we’re wrong, we’re all dead anyway,” Egil said. “I’m just going first. But if we’re right, then you fix it, Jyme.”
Jyme looked back up at Nix. Nix looked him in the face, turned, and started up again, leaving Egil where he was. Hand, foot, hand, foot, mind the wind, profile low, find purchase, keep moving. The wind sounded loud in his ears.
After a time, unable to help himself, Nix looked down and saw the creature rapidly scaling the wall, nearing Egil. The wind caused the creature’s cloak to whip and flap but it hung on the wall as if its hands and feet were affixed to the stone.
Even Egil looked small compared to it. The priest, looking down, maneuvered himself sideways to intercept the creature’s ascent. Nix could hear it babbling over the wind, its voices frantic and slobbery.
Jyme and Nix both stopped, looking down, unable to not watch. They had to bear witness, if nothing else.
