The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “Because everyone is.”

  “But I haven't done anything. I'm not involved in this.”

  “You are, whether you want to be or not. The only way out is to kill yourself. I don't know about you, but suicide has never been an option for me.”

  Seth's finger bone suddenly seemed to weigh tons where it lay tucked in his pocket. A fire began to burn in his belly. He felt sick. He had considered suicide many times in his life—his early teens had been a nightmare of self-doubt and self-loathing—but he had never attempted it, and he had certainly never been told by someone that it was an option he could seriously consider.

  Tears coursed down his cheeks, and he did nothing to quench them. Kill yourself and save the world. It wasn't a terribly heroic option.

  “I don't want you dead,” she said, “and I'm pretty sure you don't, either, but I can tell you don't entirely believe me. The only way to earn your trust is to—well, to earn it. To give you proof. And I will. Remember, I haven't hurt you.”

  He looked away, out into the darkened city, and wished he could get out of the car. The interior smelt strongly of aniseed. The Galloi behind him shifted position, provoking a loud creak from the seat. Hadrian wondered if the giant cared one way or another about the people who had died in the last forty-eight hours and those who might yet die if some way wasn't found to stop Yod in its tracks.

  He felt eyes on him. The Bes were staring at him from behind their identical pug noses.

  He looked back to Kybele.

  “I'm talking about magic,” she said. “Are you interested now?”

  They came to a junction between five major roads just as the sun was coming up. There they stopped. Kybele put the engine in neutral and the handbrake on. Doors opened in the rear, and the Galloi guided him out of the car. The giant remained mute, but made it perfectly clear that Hadrian had no option but to obey: one big hand pressed like a saddle on his shoulder.

  The nearest of the roads stretched east with only a slight kink along its length, and Hadrian was able to view the dawn through a thicket of skyscrapers at the road's end. Light echoed and refracted off canyon walls of glass and aluminum, throwing strange reflections in all directions and turning the façades of the buildings to blood.

  Everywhere he looked he saw buildings. The city seemed to stretch forever, rising and falling in step with the underlying geography. The license plates on the nearest cars proudly declared an American origin.

  “What city is this?” he asked again, determined to get an answer this time. “I don't recognise any of it.”

  “The old names and fealties mean nothing,” Kybele said. “The city is in a fluid state, like the rest of the world. The ground is literally shifting underfoot. That's what it means to be in a time of Cataclysm, Hadrian. As the geometries of the Second Realm bleed into the First, the usual boundaries blur; the logic and structure of dreams replace the material. We are, therefore, not in a specific city. We're in the city, every city at once. Behind the names and the municipal borders, that's what it has been for tens of thousands of years, and what it will remain until the Earth is a blasted cinder under a swollen sun.”

  “I don't understand,” he said, despairing at the number of times he had said or thought that phrase in the previous day.

  “Look behind you,” Kybele said.

  He turned. The intersection was deserted, like all the others. Abandoned cars and trucks lay in their dozens. Something large had come this way in the recent past and shunted them to one side. Several deep impressions marred the road's smooth blackness as though wide, circular feet had planted themselves there while the rest of the creature rose up to look around.

  But that wasn't what Kybele was trying to show him. Her outstretched finger led his gaze up from the street to the building facing them, a narrow silver tower, two sides of which met in a wedge. Behind it was a giant glass and steel box that stabbed at the sky like an upraised middle finger. A stylised company logo at its top reminded Hadrian of the arcane symbol he had seen spray-painted at the bus stop the previous day.

  On the side of the building, marring its perfect reflectivity, were two wide black rings with nothing at their hearts.

  He shivered. They looked like eyes. The eyes of gods, fixed eternally on the rising sun. Although their stare passed over his head, suddenly he felt he was being watched.

  “Kerubim,” said Kybele. “The invasion has begun in earnest.”

  “Are they dangerous?” Hadrian asked.

  “Not now, but they will be.” She breathed deeply as though tasting the air. The air was chilly and carried a faint tang of rot. Many clouds in a hundred different shapes and colours scudded across the sky. The last of the stars vanished into blue with the rising of the sun.

  “What do you want me to do?” He assumed they had come to the intersection for a reason, not just to sightsee. The sooner they got down to it, the sooner they would find Ellis. That was the most important thing.

  “Be patient.” Kybele reached into a pocket and produced a complicated brass instrument, reminiscent of an astrolabe crossed with a spray can. It had a handle which Kybele pumped in and out, making a soft clicking noise, and a glass tube that glowed a muted pink. There was a flared nozzle at one end. Kybele pointed it at the ground, at Hadrian, at the giant eyes she had called Kerubim, and at random points in the air, pumping the handle all the while.

  “Yes. As I thought.” She pumped a few more times before putting the device back into her pocket, apparently satisfied with what it had told her. “Come with me.”

  Taking his hand, she led him across the empty intersection to its centre. The sun was creeping steadily to fullness as she positioned him facing it, shifting him to his left so he was exactly where she wanted him to be. Then she reached into her other pocket and took out a glass disc.

  “Good. Hold this and tap the ground beneath your feet with it. No,” she said when he didn't obey her commands exactly, “don't step forwards. Bend over right where you're standing. Tap three times, times three. Nine times in all. Like this.” She knocked on her knee.

  “Why?”

  “I said I'd show you some magic, remember?”

  Hadrian eyed her sceptically, hefting the disc in his left hand. It was heavy, and when he shifted his gaze to it, he noticed faint carvings around its outer edge. They weren't in any language he recognised.

  He felt a sudden lightheadedness, as if everything around him was about to peel away and expose itself for the cheap rubber mask it had always been. What would lie behind it? A large part of him was afraid to find out.

  “Quickly,” she said. “Dawn's almost over.”

  Crouching on the balls of his feet, he reached down and tapped the disc three times on the rough surface of the road. Nothing happened. Feeling like an idiot, he repeated the three knocks, then repeated them again.

  He stood up and looked around. “Now what?”

  “Five ways converge in the shape of a sign that once symbolised the Second Realm,” Kybele said. “And these five roads meet over a well that used to be the home of—” She stopped. “Ah. Here he is. Come out and say hello, old one.”

  Hadrian felt the air move about him. The movement came again, as if something large and invisible was sliding through him.

  I would not speak to you, whispered an ancient, dry voice between his ears, making him jump.

  “No?” Kybele chuckled. “I thought you'd be glad to be here. Glad to be at all.”

  This is not your doing. The air shifted again, and this time Hadrian caught the flat lines and planes of the buildings around him shifting slightly, like light bending through a lens. Reminded of the glass disc in his hand, he raised it to his left eye.

  He gasped and almost dropped the disc. A monstrous head eight metres across had materialised in the middle of the intersection, and he was standing inside it.

  You haven't the will to reunite the realms, the voice said. Hadrian turned, seeing the head's exterior bulging around him. There w
ere two ears swept back like bat wings. The nose was broad and hooked like a beak. The wide mouth was filled with spade-like teeth. The eyes—

  Again Hadrian jumped. The eyes, although he was seeing them from the inside, were looking right at him.

  “My god,” he breathed.

  “Not a god,” hissed Kybele. “Remember what I told you about that.”

  This one has much to learn, said the creature. He calls me but asks nothing.

  “The young of today—and many of the old, too—have forgotten the way things used to be,” Kybele said. “It has been a long time since you last gave any advice.”

  I have slept. The air itself seemed to age as the creature strained it through its translucent lips and teeth. The time between Cataclysms is an eternity of nothingness.

  “I thought you'd be grateful for company, then.” Kybele nudged Hadrian with a sharp elbow. “Go on. Ask!”

  “What should I ask?” he ventured, wondering for a feverish moment if he was about to be granted three wishes.

  That is not a question I can answer. Is there nothing your heart desires to know?

  “Where's Ellie? Is my brother okay?”

  I know nothing of these people.

  Hadrian swallowed his disappointment. “What happened to the people in the city?”

  They were sacrificed to Yod.

  That accorded with what Pukje had said. “Everyone in every city?”

  Yes.

  “What about the people outside?”

  The world is in a chaotic state. Many forces are stirring.

  “Does that mean they're alive?”

  For the moment.

  Hadrian was glad to learn that he wasn't the last person alive on the planet, although his relief was short-lived.

  “What about Lascowicz? Do you know where he is?”

  He is seeking you. The Swarm stirs at his call.

  “What's the Swarm?”

  They are hunters. They wake as I do, now the Cataclysm is upon us.

  Hadrian glanced at Kybele. Her expression was very serious.

  “What can I do to stop Yod invading the First Realm?”

  You can do nothing in this realm. Only the Sisters can grant that which you desire.

  “How do I find them, whoever they are?”

  All roads lead to Sheol, in the end.

  Kybele's hand came down on Hadrian's shoulder.

  “Gibberish as always,” she said to the ghostly head. “I thought the years in blackness might have sharpened your sight, but you're as useless as ever.”

  I speak the truth, said the creature, its monstrous head turning slightly to focus its eyes on her. You know it as well as I.

  She made an exasperated noise and took the glass disc from Hadrian. The rising sun caught it, casting a dancing rainbow ring across the black surface of the road. Without it, Hadrian could no longer see the head, but he could feel its form turning agitatedly in the air around him.

  “Good-bye, Mimir,” she said, dropping the disc at her feet and crushing it beneath one black heel. “Until the next Cataclysm, perhaps.”

  Fragments of glass flew in all directions. A sudden wind blew around them, like a miniature hurricane, billowing Hadrian's shirt and getting in his eyes. Then it was gone, and he was left blinking in the aftermath of the strange encounter. There was no sound but echoes of the wind, and no signs of life but for the giant blank eyes of the Kerubim. And themselves.

  And magic.

  Any doubts Hadrian might have entertained about Kybele's sincerity on that score were now firmly dispelled.

  “Can we believe what it said?” he asked her, not sure what he wanted her to say in reply. “About Yod? About Lascowicz? About the Swarm?”

  Give in now, the Wolf had told him, and deny us the pleasure of hunting you.

  “It has its own vision, Hadrian,” she said. “As we all do. I'll trust it on some points. If the Swarm is indeed waking, then our time is very short.”

  “What sort of hunters are they?” he asked, chilled by her tone. “Can't we just lie low and hide from them?”

  “You know what vampires are,” she said. It wasn't a question. “There have been many stories about them told through history: of vicious demons living on blood; of mad murderers in the dead of the night; of death-hungry witches devouring children and lustful men. They're all based on the Swarm and their spawn, the draci. Humans have toned the memories down to help themselves sleep at night. That the Swarm is awake and working with the energumen is a terrifying thought.”

  Hadrian had seen enough in recent days to believe in vampires, but worse than vampires…? He couldn't tell if Kybele was just trying to scare him or if she meant it. Possibly both.

  “So we run.”

  “No,” she said. “The Cataclysm is only beginning. There is a certain amount of time open to us before such forces will attain their full power. We're going to find Lascowicz before the Swarm finds us. We're going to strike first.”

  He eyed her uncertainly. “And Ellis, too. We're going to find her as well, right?”

  “I said I'd help you, Hadrian, and I will. Trust me. What you're going to gain will far outstrip what you've lost.”

  A chill wind rose up, driving away the warmth of the sun.

  Kybele guided him back to the car where the Bes were playing a silent finger game to pass the time. There were five of them now. They shuffled along the seat as the Galloi climbed inside, then resumed their unblinking vigil like birds on a wire watching a coming storm. The Galloi pressed a chocolate bar into his hand, its deep-set stare insisting he take it. He ate it gratefully, feeling not quite one of the gang but at least temporarily out of harm's way.

  The car purred like a big cat as Kybele climbed behind the wheel. The carved stone was sitting exactly where he had left it.

  Mimir had told him that some place called Sheol was important and to seek the Sisters, whoever they were. He didn't know what that had to do with Ellis or Seth. When he pressed Kybele for information about them, she was evasive, saying only that the Sisters had been part of the Second Realm since the last Cataclysm.

  “You have to walk before you can run,” she said. “Take it slowly. You'll get there in the end.”

  “I didn't ask for this,” he said, fighting a rising tide of resentment, “and neither did Seth.”

  “You're caught in it now. I don't see the point denying it.”

  “Neither do I. I just wish there was something I could do about it.”

  “There will be, Hadrian. Don't you worry about that. Let me help you look for Ellis, for now, and we'll work out what to do about Lascowicz and the Nail as we go. I suspect that these two ends will prove to be inseparable, in the long run.”

  “How?”

  She smiled. “Let me keep some secrets just a little longer, will you?”

  His right hand clutched the bone of his brother where it sat in his pocket.

  Kybele drove on under a chaotic sky.

  “Gods are solitary beings, like most predators. Only prey socialises.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 10:5

  “It is good that you have come to us,” said Barbelo, the leader of the resistance movement in the Second Realm. “The Cataclysm we dreaded is here. In the times to come, we will all lose something and gain something. This is your chance to gain, although loss is still fresh in your mind and heart.”

  Seth didn't know what to say. He, Xol, and Agatha were standing in a large marble hall—or so it looked to his eyes—surrounded by gracefully carved Grecian pillars and waterfalls. In the centre, facing them, was the golden statue of a woman caught in the act of turning. With one leg lifted off the ground and one hand upraised to shoulder height, she looked no more than fifteen, and was sculpted wearing a flowing cloak that exposed one sexless breast to the eyes of her audience. She didn't move, and nothing about her seemed overtly magical—except for the voice, which echoed through the chamber in rich, almost masculine tones—but Seth found it difficult to sta
re directly at her. She glowed with more than light, making his eyes blur and water if he persisted.

  Hard radiation, he thought. Maybe she's made of yellowcake.

  That speculation, an involuntary one when first ushered into her presence, slipped through the mnemonic Xol had given him. The dimane had painted a mark on Seth's inner left forearm: two concentric squares, one slightly larger than the other. When he clenched his fist, they rotated in opposite directions. “Concentrate on this shape moving in this way,” Xol had said, “and your thoughts will be obscured.” It seemed to work, although he didn't understand why. Agatha didn't frown so much when he mentally cursed her. None of the passersby in Bethel had looked at him oddly. Not more than once, anyway.

  The irony of that wasn't lost on him. Bethel, the location of Barbelo's temple, was disorienting and strange. Its buildings ranged from bulbous white houses, clumped together like pebbles along convoluted thoroughfares, to slender, graceful towers stretching high into the sky. People and other creatures were everywhere, following the streets in all directions, moving in and out of buildings on mysterious errands: giants and dwarves; skin of all shades and colours of the rainbow; multiple limbs, features, and bodies; extra limbs made of substance other than flesh, such as wood or metal or glass; beings that didn't move at all but had to be pushed around in wheeled chairs or that floated through the air by force of will alone. There were insubstantial beings, suggestions of strange shapes that lurked just out of sight, blurred as if the air was too thick between them and him. Some were transparent or distorted, or lacked perspective, or constantly changed shape. Some he couldn't look at directly.

  The weirdest thing about Bethel was that the entire place—roads, buildings, signs, public squares—stood a full metre off the ground. Seth hadn't noticed at first. Only as he stepped over a drain did he realise that the surface of the Second Realm actually lay some distance below, in the town's shadow. Then he noticed the stays and bolts holding the town's structures together. The roads and sidewalks didn't move under foot, any more than those of a normal town would, but because he couldn't tell what held it up—it could have been floating magically for all he knew, or standing on monstrous legs—he nonetheless had the distinct impression that the entire town might start moving at any moment. It gave a whole new meaning, he thought, to the term “high-rise district.”