The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “So is the storm here to stop it happening, or to help it along?”

  She looked at him then. “Do lions and antelopes choose to drink together around a waterhole? They have no choice, if they're to drink at all. Tlaloc is the same. Magic on this scale is its meat and drink. Once loosed, it's drawn here. What it does when it arrives is entirely up to it.”

  “It's not going to make things easier. That's for certain.” Gurzil's breath in Hadrian's ear was hot and smelled of flesh.

  “I know. But for the moment, it's not our problem. The Gabal and the other duergar clans are converging. Whatever's going on here, it's not going to hold his full attention for much longer.”

  The Galloi reached past them both and tapped Kybele on the shoulder. One thick finger stabbed behind them indicating where she should look. A black dot resolved out of the skyline.

  Kybele stepped out from under cover to meet the raven Kutkinnaku as it fell heavily from the sky. It landed on a yellow fire hydrant with a rattle of feathers and sinew. A drift of black feathers in its wake scattered across the road surface.

  “What happened to you?”

  The raven flapped its wings and croaked in pain. Its tail was ragged. Hadrian saw large patches of raw skin where down had been torn out. One of its eyes was red.

  “The skies are getting crowded,” it said.

  “You look like you ran into a 747.”

  “That's what it felt like. Whatever it was, it was big and pissed off.”

  Kybele dismissed the raven's concern. “What's happening on the ground is the main thing. Can you give me any details?”

  The raven flapped painfully to the sidewalk and limped across the pavement. Every time it moved its left leg forwards, its right wing snapped half-open. The gesture was uncannily like a wince.

  When it was off the street, it conversed with Kybele in its hoarse raven speech. The Hekau had stopped working for the time being. Presumably, Hadrian thought, because the details weren't for his ears.

  “Okay.” Kybele nodded with satisfaction when the raven had finished and hopped away to groom itself. “Lascowicz's hold on this area is firm, but not complete. He hasn't had time or energy to spend on locking it down completely, given the other work he's had to do.” She indicated the skyscraper visible through the exit; energies both electrical and magical still danced violently across its surface. It looked like rain was falling on it from all directions at once. “When the fighting starts, we can get in easily enough.”

  “And then?” Gurzil asked, saving Hadrian from voicing the same question.

  “We'll find Ellis and get her away, of course.” Ignoring their misgivings, Kybele held out an open hand to the Galloi, who reached into its coat and produced a flat, clay disc the size of a CD. She took it and held it pressed between both hands. “Hadrian, I want you to do something for me.”

  “Okay,” he said. “What?”

  “Put your hands on my hands. Your connection to the Second Realm is stronger than anyone else's here. This charm hasn't worked in the world since the last Cataclysm.” He did as she said, and was surprised by the coldness of her fingers. “Tighter. Good. I also need you to imagine something for me. It's hard to visualise, so you're going to have to concentrate. Are you ready?”

  He nodded.

  “Magic is the art of causing change by an act of will,” she said, “but it's not enough just to will. That's why it's an art. You have to guide the impulse, hence the artifacts and rituals attendant to the process. I'm going to give you something to help you do that. Look over my right shoulder. What do you see?”

  “A building.” Stupid question, he thought. That was all there was, wherever he looked.

  “Really look. Do you see nothing else?”

  He studied the scene more closely. The street was lit by flickering auras surrounding the Transamerica Pyramid. Rubbish was mounting up, forming drifts in doorways and alley entrances. The building directly opposite them might once have been a bank or a corporate headquarters, twenty-odd storeys high. Its foyer had lofty ceilings, marble appointments, and enormous glass doors that were intact despite the radical changes the world had undergone around them. He could see nothing unusual about the building at all, from its base right up to its summit.

  “Keep looking. I can't show you directly. I have to insinuate it into you, slide it in past your natural defences.”

  With her hands and the charm clutched tightly in his, he scanned the seemingly endless grid of windows. Something did catch his eye. He peered closer, not sure what he had seen, but it escaped him amongst the details. His eyes insisted on showing him what he expected to see: glass rectangles and aluminum frames; hints of shadowy, abandoned offices; the ghastly glow of magic wreaking havoc nearby; the glassy reflections of him Kybele, Gurzil, and the galloi; and the buildings on their side of the street hulking huge and angular above them…and there, a shape lurking in the reflection of those buildings. The image wasn't just right angles and planes; there were curves, and impossible intersections. It seemed to be rotating, collapsing, dissolving…

  “That's it.” Kybele's voice threatened to dispel the image. “I've given you an image, in your mind. Don't let it go. This pattern is the key to the charm.”

  He concentrated on it as instructed. Dizziness swept through him. The shape wasn't really there, but he could see it perfectly clearly. He felt a strange rushing sensation along both arms. Kybele's hands suddenly grew very hot, as though the disc between them had caught fire. He glanced at her. Her eyes were tightly closed. Her lips moved, but no speech emerged.

  His gaze was dragged back to the pattern shifting in the reflection and in his mind at once. It was spinning like a whirlpool, while at the same time unfolding like a flower. His breathing was loud in his ears, and so was Kybele's. Her chest rose and fell in time with his. The image was doing something to the world, although he couldn't immediately tell what.

  The raven cawed loudly in surprise. Hadrian's eyes flickered away from the shifting pattern down to where the reflections of the four of them stood. His eyes had trouble focussing, or so it seemed at first. Then he realised that their images were fading, melting into the background like ice on a hot pavement.

  Shock broke his concentration. They were becoming invisible! No wonder Kybele was so confident of sneaking into Lascowicz's fortress and stealing Ellis from under his nose.

  A new part of him, only just beginning to find a voice, wondered: could Seth have done this had their positions been reversed; would Kybele have found him as useful?

  Even as he thought it, however, the process halted, leaving them partly translucent. Kybele made a tsk sound. He looked directly at her. Her hands still felt solid between his, but he could see right through her to the street beyond. Her expression floated on reality like a watercolour painted on glass. He could read the licence plates of cars with perfect clarity through her shoulder.

  She opened her eyes and likewise checked her reflection.

  “Not bad,” she said. “It's a shame we didn't go all the way, but it's better than I expected.” She pulled her hands free and exposed the clay disc. With two swift motions, she cracked it into four pieces and handed one to each of them. “Hold these. They'll bind you to the charm while it lasts. Damage them and it'll fail for all of us.”

  Hadrian took his piece cautiously, remembering the heat he had felt through Kybele's hands, but the fragment was perfectly cool. It was rough beneath his fingertips, like unpolished sandstone. Carved into its surface was a snapshot of the pattern he had been visualising.

  The raven hopped closer. “You couldn't spare some of that, could you?” it asked. “It's murder up there.”

  “It'll be murder down here too, if you don't get back to your post.” Kybele pocketed her fragment of the disc. “Send me a sign once the fight begins. We'll move when the distraction is greatest.”

  The raven, disgruntled, muttered in its native tongue and stretched its wings. With a series of painful flaps and awkwa
rd skipping motions, it managed to drag itself back into the sky.

  Kybele waited until it was out of sight before turning to the others. “Right. Let's get going. The charm does nothing about the sounds we make, so keep it down. And stay right behind me. I don't want anyone wandering off. Understood?”

  Hadrian nodded. Gurzil snorted in his ear. The Galloi just stared, face as broad and expressionless as a rubbish bin lid.

  In single file they headed off to rescue Ellis.

  There was no grand announcement. Seth and his companions simply began to leave the hiding place of the kaia through the same tunnel by which they had entered, watched by the members of the collective mind who were remaining behind. Seth nervously made his way through the group of silent figures, treading as carefully as he would at an art exhibition. He was irrationally afraid that if he knocked one over, all would come down, toppled by some strange domino effect.

  The tunnel outside was empty. When the way was certified free of egrigor, Seth ducked his head and followed Agatha and three of the kaia into it. Xol came after him, then Synett and more of the kaia. Spekoh, the kaia's mouthpiece, had explained before their departure that members of the gestalt would prepare the next leg of their journey at a location not far from the hideout. The expedition would go there, leave the city, then join the Path of Life.

  “So tell me,” Hadrian said over his shoulder to Xol, once they were moving. “Tell me what happened to your brother.”

  The dimane looked as though he'd rather try to climb Yod's black ziggurat than answer that question.

  “How much do you know?”

  “I know he died and triggered an accidental Cataclysm. You killed yourself in order to stop it, but it wasn't enough. Your brother appealed to the Sisters and they turned him into a ghost.”

  “That is essentially correct.”

  Seth was determined not to let him off the hook that easily. “There has to be more to it than that. Why did they turn your brother into a ghost? How can you become a ghost when you're already dead? Wasn't he one already?”

  Xol didn't look at him, and didn't answer the question directly. “The Sisters hold the gateway to the Third Realm. What this means is difficult to explain, since the Third Realm is as alien to us as this realm is to you. In the First Realm, power is measured in the physical resources one can control; here in the Second, strength of will is the yardstick. The power of the Sisters lies in neither source.”

  “It doesn't matter to me where they get their power from or what it means,” Seth said. “They can run on clockwork for all I care, as long as they can send me back to the First Realm.”

  “There is much that they can do,” said Xol, “if we can convince them to do it. They have many options open to them, thanks to the gateway, the Flame—for in the Third Realm choice is paramount, not will or flesh. Choice determines who you are and how you fit into the world. Not just the decisions about what to say or do—the sort of choices you make now—and not just the decisions you make from moment to moment without even thinking about them, but every decision you have made in your entire life, considered as one immense series. What the Sisters did to my brother, simply put, was take away his ability to choose.”

  Seth felt himself getting tangled in the numinous yet again—a maze worse than the journey with Synett through the depths of Abaddon. Every time he asked a direct question, he got metaphysics in response.

  “You know that I'm going to say that I don't understand.”

  “I sympathise. Choice, volition, velleity, conation: there are few words to describe the essence of the Third Realm. Shadows dance on walls, and ignorant savages point at them like idiots.” There was a ferocity to Xol's voice that Seth hadn't heard before. “It's been a long time, and I'm still trying to work it out.”

  As they moved out of the backstreets and into relative suburbia, Seth tried to bring the conversation back to the point that mattered most. “So why didn't the Sisters do what your brother wanted?”

  The dimane was silent.

  “Xol?”

  “You ask the wrong question.”

  Seth concentrated on the dimane's face, which had become an impenetrable alien mask as so often happened when the subject of his brother was at issue. “Xol, you have to tell me why the Sisters did this to your brother. If I don't know, how am I going to avoid the same fate?”

  “The Sisters didn't make my brother do anything he hadn't asked them to do. They did exactly what Quetzalcoatl came to them for,” said Xol in an inhuman whisper. “I know it's hard to understand, but he asked to have his choices taken away. He wanted to be trapped with them forever. And although I went to Sheol to plead for his release, the Sisters would not go against his wishes.”

  Seth stared at him, horrified. “Why? Why on Earth would he do that?”

  “Perhaps you never will understand. You are the older twin. You didn't grow up in your brother's shadow, in his reflection. Have you ever wondered what it feels like to be reminded every day that you are the opposite of the one you could have been? To look in a mirror and see not yourself but the face of your other half, the reflection of you? That isn't who I am, you might tell yourself, but the truth doesn't look away if you glance at it; it stares right back. Before you know it, you are caught in the mirror, and the only way out is to smash it to pieces.”

  Xol's voice had risen in intensity. Despite the disturbances still rolling through the city, there were citizens about. Some looked at them with open curiosity.

  “What's your point?” Seth asked him. “I know who I am. I've always known. If Hadrian didn't know, isn't that his problem?”

  Xol only shook his head, an alien, hurt-filled presence at his side.

  “Let's just walk for a while, Seth,” said Agatha. “The less attention we attract, the better.”

  Seth could see the sense in that. He could also tell that Agatha was concerned for her friend, but he still felt as though he was being fobbed off. There were so many questions he wanted answered. What had it been like to be on the other side of Bardo during a Cataclysm? Would Hadrian have to kill himself in order to avoid this Cataclysm? What did it mean to be robbed of choice?

  I would prevent you from becoming like me, Xol had said. Seth still didn't understand how that was a possibility. There was something important Xol wasn't telling him.

  His guide trudged on with eyes downcast.

  “I promised you on my brother's name,” Xol said in a low voice, “that I would help you to find a solution that didn't require Hadrian's death.”

  “I remember, but—”

  “I will keep that promise. That is all you truly need to know.”

  The expedition followed fetid, narrow lanes through Abaddon. The buildings around them grew taller and more elegant, their sides ribbed and curved as though they had been grown rather than built. The buildings swayed and shuddered every time one of the realm-warping distortions swept through them. The effects were so severe that at one point they were forced to stop walking entirely and huddle together as the world quaked. Fortunately, the city's inhabitants seemed more distracted by such symptoms of Yod's master plan than by wanted fugitives roaming the streets. When the worst of it had passed, they continued unhindered to where the kaia had arranged for them to begin the second leg of their journey to Sheol.

  For several blocks now, Seth had become aware of a growing darkness and a rising noise. The sound was deep and bone-shakingly loud, as though from a giant engine idling nearby. He didn't realise what it was until they emerged from a secluded lane into a relatively clear area and saw the ’twixter anchored at its centre. The giant rotating storm hung overhead, its funnel swirling with black violence. Its throat narrowed to a furiously spinning tube barely two metres across, pointed at the ground like a terrestrial tornado. Five curving spines arched gracefully out of the ground near its mouth, keeping it contained and fixed to a point just over head-height. Seth could see the distortion the ’twixter made on the world as it sucked air into its
hungry maw.

  Four kaia dressed in concealing black robes hurried out of a nook further round the clearing, and joined them where they stood gawping at the storm's mouth. The kaia bore a sack each. Wordlessly, they produced a number of complex-looking harnesses from the sacks and handed one to each of the voyagers. Seth, although he had grave misgivings, did as instructed, looping the straps over his shoulders and around his thighs. When in place, three small pouches nestled down his spine, from the small of his back to his coccyx. They were warm and vibrated slightly.

  “Are these what I think they are?” His words were swept away by the storm so even he barely heard them.

  “This looks dangerous,” shouted Agatha, her words amplified by will and echoing in Seth's skull, “but it doesn't have to be. The saraph do it as a sport all the time! There are races, duels, ballet—”

  “Have you ever done it?” he shouted back.

  “Never!” The woman's skin was pale, belying her confidence.

  “Xol?”

  The dimane shook his head. “I do not fare well in high places.”

  The kaia checked their equipment, fussing at clasps with tiny hands, then showed them how to activate the pouches. Seth watched as Agatha's wings spun into life, astonished by their beauty and fragility. They were little more than shimmers, glimmering gossamer wings vibrating so fast he could make out neither their exact shape nor their size. The air around Agatha's back was suddenly a haze of energy, a gravity-defying blur that lifted her ever so slightly off the ground, so her steps bounced and sent her golden hair flying. Her expression was one of surprise and not a little alarm.

  Xol was next. The dimane, too, looked distinctly uncomfortable as the wings blossomed behind him; his spines stayed carefully flattened against his skull and neck. Then it was Seth's turn, and he was surprised by the violence of the wings. They sent powerful vibrations through every bone in his body, rattling his teeth and spine. Synett, next, took an experimental leap into the air and flailed, off balance, when he took too long to come down.

  Feeling as though he had a bulging sack full of helium strapped to his back, Seth followed the others out of cover to the base of the storm. His senses were overwhelmed by noise and vibration. The whole world seemed to be shaking—and that only became worse as they neared the mouth of the ’twixter. Its blackness was absolute. He found it increasingly difficult to keep his footing, the closer he came.