The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  Hadrian moved without thinking. He rolled and Utu came up. The flash of silver as the staff met the knife was blinding, and the smaller blade went flying out of the energumen's hand—but not before it left a red line on Ellis's cheek that immediately sent a curtain of blood streaming down her face. She flinched away and cried out through the gag.

  Hadrian stood with Utu in both hands before him. The blade sang for Bechard's blood. He ignored it.

  “You can't fight me and the Galloi,” he said, hoping it was true. His pulse pounded too fast in his ears to think properly.

  “No, my transparent friend.” Bechard lunged for the fallen blade. The Galloi kicked it away. “But I can hold you up. It's only a matter of time before reinforcements arrive. Then it'll be your turn to be outnumbered.”

  The Galloi pointed urgently at Ellis. Hadrian tugged Utu away from Bechard. The staff wasn't the only thing hankering to fight. He was sick of being helpless, of struggling to survive with the barest scraps of his dignity intact; killing Bechard—or attempting to—might have solved very little, but it would have made a primal part of him feel much better.

  Ellis came first. “Utu, cut her free.” There wasn't time to be careful of the blade's bloodlust. It guided his hands, swinging in a surprisingly delicate arc to slice through the plastic straps. Ellis's red-welted wrists fell apart from each other, and she immediately reached up to tug at her blindfold and gag. He helped her as best he could. Her hair was tangled around the blindfold. A clump of it came out in his hand.

  “Hadrian?” She stared at him with eyes bloodshot and red-rimmed. “I can see through you!”

  Her hand reached out to touch his translucent face. He nodded, unable for the moment to speak. It was her.

  She stood and tightly embraced him. “God, I'm so glad you came.”

  Bechard lunged with a growl behind them, and the Galloi took pains to keep him away. Hadrian was oblivious to them. It was really her!

  “Quickly,” he whispered into her ear. “We have to get out of here.”

  She pulled away. He took her hand, and together they ran for the exit.

  “You really think she's going to get out of here alive?” Bechard called after him, dodging another blow from the Galloi's staff. “Or any of you?”

  Hadrian ignored him. They ran outside, into the cool night air.

  And stopped dead.

  A crowd of several hundred Feie surrounded the rotunda, grinning at them with sharp, fishbone teeth. Kybele stood on the lowest step with her hands outstretched. A glowing swastika hung in the air before her, throbbing yellow. Although the Feie strained against it, they couldn't get past.

  Beyond them, impaling the sky on a white-hot spike, was the Transamerica Pyramid. It pulsed with supernatural energy, almost too bright to look at.

  “Ouch,” said Ellis, squeezing Hadrian's hand tightly. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her that they would still get safely away, but the words wouldn't come.

  Lascowicz's imposing figure parted the crowd like an icebreaker. The Feie edged aside, as though uncomfortable to be near him. The creature inside his body was invisible, but he radiated a gleeful, hungry menace all of his own. He was naked to the waist and walked barefooted. Blood matted his thick grey chest hair. Reflected fire danced off his bald scalp as though playing across wax.

  Lascowicz chuckled low in his throat as he came to the sigil Kybele had painted in the air and threw something at her feet.

  There was no mistaking it. Gurzil's head passed through the barrier unimpeded and dropped heavily to the ground before them. Blood dripped thickly from its base. One horn was missing. They could still see through it.

  Ellis put her hand over her mouth. Kybele's lips tightened. Hadrian felt light-headed. He hadn't noticed the sound of fighting die down outside the rotunda. He hadn't even realised when Gurzil's war-bellow had ended along with his life—and now it looked like it had been spent for nothing.

  “You set them up,” Lascowicz gloated to Kybele, “and I keep knocking them down. Or chopping their heads off, rather. How many more of your minions are you going to throw away like this? Is your large friend in there to be next?”

  Hadrian looked over his shoulder to where the Galloi had gathered Bechard into a sodden bundle. This he hurled through the opening in the tarpaulin, over Kybele's head, and into the Feie, where it landed with a series of dense splats. Emitting a high-pitched, bubbling laugh, Bechard staggered to his feet, rearranging himself as he did so.

  Blood soaked and breathing heavily, the Galloi came to stand behind Kybele.

  The ground shook beneath them. A rattling sound heralded the coming of rain.

  Lascowicz reached into his pocket and produced the quarter of the disc that Gurzil had carried. With a look of profound enjoyment, he snapped it in two. Instantly, the three of them regained their normal solidity. He tossed the pieces after Gurzil's now-opaque head.

  “There,” he said. “Now we can exchange insults face to face.”

  “You're insane,” said Kybele, unbowed. “Do you really think you're going to get away with this?”

  “Do you?” Lascowicz folded his arms. “I'm not the traitor here.”

  “This is my city, my realm. I cannot betray it.”

  “It's not your city, and you're a fool for still thinking so. It outgrew you a century ago. It's something else now. It's surpassed its queen.” Lascowicz looked around him at the shadowy buildings hulking over the edge of the park. “You may not have noticed, but they're not bowing. They don't even know you're here. This, however—” He pointed behind him, to the flaming sword sticking out of the skyline. “This is my doing. I am awake again. I live!”

  “Yod won't even notice.”

  “You truly have no idea.” Lascowicz shook his head. “This has nothing to do with the Nail. It's time for a new player. If we must have a Cataclysm—” the Wolf's cold gaze fell heavily on Hadrian, “I want to make sure I'm on the winning team.”

  “Baal is as good as dead,” Kybele scoffed.

  “Who's talking about Baal?” Lascowicz looked innocent. “I didn't mention him. Your mind is addled, old woman. You're stuck in the past. The present calls for someone vital and strong. Someone who won't allow an invader to crush the realm into any shape it wants, then throw the scraps away when it's finished.”

  “You, I suppose.”

  Lascowicz laughed again. “Mot. The old god of death is still hungry, despite its recent snack. Did you think it would obediently go away when it was no longer needed? Its appetite is merely whetted; its cage is coming down. Within minutes, it will be all over.”

  Kybele rolled up her sleeves. “You're an idiot as well as insane.”

  “I've won,” Lascowicz snarled, thrusting his face forwards. “Refusing to admit it won't change a thing.”

  Kybele spat a stream of syllables in an unfamiliar language. The swastika-shaped sigil flashed blindingly bright. Bechard and the Feie fell back with their eyes covered. Lascowicz, however, didn't flinch. He thrust a clawed hand deep into the heart of the fire, trying to tear it out. His features darkened and Kybele's chant grew louder. Hadrian felt dense knots of energy—of will—tangling around them. Like a pair of giant squid in combat, their mental forces far exceeded what was physically visible.

  Distantly, insanely, he thought of Michael Jackson protesting to Paul McCartney: I'm a lover not a fighter. He couldn't stand by as Kybele, who had helped him, fought alone against his enemy. He had to help in return, or at least try to.

  Remembering how Kybele had used him to tap into the power of the Second Realm, he stepped closer and put a hand on her shoulder. She smiled and her voice became stronger. Lascowicz snarled as the sigil burned brighter still, exposing the creature sharing his body. It stood out from the skin of his scalp like a hideous, fractal aura—originally wolf-shaped, but now buffeted and distorted by Kybele's will. Behind him, Bechard was trying ineffectually to keep his body whole. An invisible force pushed him backwards, and not even the sini
ster wraith that was his spectral half could keep his many pieces together.

  An oily, nauseating taste flooded Hadrian's mouth. The roaring of blood grew louder in his ears along with a feeling that he wasn't quite in control. As though in a dream, he watched his other hand come up with fingers spread to touch the centre of the sigil.

  The concussion was so loud he didn't hear it, but he felt it. The blast knocked him and Kybele from their feet and ripped the top off the rotunda. Ellis flew into the Galloi, who swayed like a tall tree, blinking. The Feie went down as though a nuclear blast had felled them. Lascowicz and Bechard, standing on the other side of the sigil, disappeared into the blaze. When Hadrian blinked, a stark afterimage of two feral silhouettes flashed at him, limbs upraised in surprise.

  “Where did they go?” The words came out of his mouth but he couldn't hear them. “Did I kill them?”

  Kybele shook her head and helped him to his feet. The Galloi helped her in turn. Ellis looked around her in a daze, blood trickling from her ears and nose, her weight taken by the Galloi's fist gripping her collar. Hadrian had just enough time to acknowledge that she was unharmed when another silent concussion rocked the world.

  This one was different—no less powerful, but distant and therefore diluted. If they'd been standing right next to the source, Hadrian didn't doubt that they would have been atomised. The ground heaved upwards, then slammed back down, sending them flying again. He was weightless for an awful moment, then cracked his head against the side of the rotunda when momentum returned. He rolled, seeing stars. Something bright slid across his vision, and he struggled to focus on it.

  The Transamerica Pyramid was falling. No, he corrected himself: it was getting wider, making it look like it was collapsing. Through the haze and the shaking of the world around him, he realised that the base of the pyramid was expanding like a skirt or an unfolding fan—like wings.

  The red eyes of the Kerubim flashed and changed colour to black. They stared down into the lair as a god would before wiping the Earth of its creation.

  “Mot, no!”

  Kybele lunged forwards, hands upraised in defiance. She was obviously much more than a human now. She was a locus of force in a world full of conflicting powers. The buildings did seem, for a moment, to bow down around her. Space warped. Trees were uprooted and flew away. Hadrian screamed as the air turned to ice around him. Tiny, crystalline spikes grew like stalactites into his brain. A bright, black-eyed wraith, as wide as the sky, swept over him.

  Then his mind gave out. He heard nothing. He saw nothing. The Earth kicked him off its back, and he finally let slip his grip on it. He free-fell into the void and, with the last of his strength, called his brother's name.

  “They are sleeping, the great ones. In the Five Cities they are interred; in the Broken Lands they rest. All you gods of old, we bow down before you. We who have inherited your lands, we implore you to keep sleeping.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, FRAGMENT 23

  The world bent horribly for a moment, then snapped back into place. Seth staggered, and only Xol's hand on his shoulder kept him upright. As if his balance wasn't already hard enough to keep, he thought. Now this!

  He looked around in a vain attempt to locate the source of the disorientation. The others didn't seem as affected, although Agatha did look a little unsteady and Synett wore a permanent wince. The stony kaia trudged along as though all the world's troubles lay on their shoulders.

  The disorientation came again. The world turned upside-down, then flipped back the right way. His legs buckled beneath him and he fell to his left. Unable to tell which way was up, he managed only to make the situation worse by knocking Xol off balance, too. They fell in a tangle of limbs.

  “What's wrong?” Agatha loomed over him, a concerned look on her face.

  The bizarre geometry of the Path of Life was too disorienting a backdrop. He closed his eyes.

  Instantly he was assaulted by images: a building on fire, a man who had been chopped to pieces but was still moving, a shining knife, and—

  He gasped aloud. Ellis. He saw Ellis!

  “Seth!” Agatha grabbed at him. “Seth, talk to me. Are you under attack? Tell me what's wrong!”

  He pushed her away. The shaking she was giving him only made it worse. “It's Hadrian!” he gasped, knowing instinctively where the visions came from. Another appeared, this time a child's drawing of a ghost: a bright white shape with two circular black eyes. “Something's happening to him!”

  “Is he injured?” asked Xol this time, voice urgent. “Has someone hurt him?”

  Seth understood the dimane's concern. If Hadrian was dead, the Cataclysm would end. The quest to reach Sheol could turn back; Xol wouldn't have to confront the Sisters again.

  But Hadrian would be dead, and that wasn't a solution as far as Seth was concerned.

  He could smell stone and blood. It was a genuine smell, not something filtered through his senses from the Second Realm and mistranslated in the process. Its richness surprised and alarmed him—and disturbed him, too. The overlap of minds profoundly undermined his sense of self.

  “I think he's hurt,” Seth said, trying his utmost to keep the vertigo to a minimum. “I don't think he's dead. El—Ellis was with him.”

  Xol's hand kneaded his shoulder. “That's good news, my friend.”

  Seth's feelings were more complex than that, but he was glad that Ellis appeared to have escaped from his killers.

  The feelings faded. The divide between the twins slammed back into place.

  “We must keep moving,” said the kaia's current mouthpiece.

  Seth resigned himself to opening his eyes again. The Path swayed and swung in front of him, but he felt none of the backflipping he had experienced before.

  “How much further, Spekoh?” he asked.

  “The Raised Land lies ahead.” The kaia group-mind had been giving exactly the same answer for the last two hours.

  “Will we have time to rest when we get there?”

  Agatha's expression said it all.

  “I didn't think so.” Seth sighed. He grunted and managed to get to his feet. “Right. Back to it. There's nothing I can do for Hadrian from here.”

  As the motley group continued its journey, he wondered if there had ever been anything he could do for Hadrian. The barrier between them had grown steadily thicker in their teenage years to the point where they needed that divide more than they had ever needed each other. It became like a supporting wall between two apartments. Removing it would have brought both of them tumbling down.

  Now, after Sweden, the wall was all that remained. Hadrian was on his own, and so was Seth.

  But he has Ellis, a dark place in his mind whispered.

  He gritted his teeth and kept walking.

  The expedition to Sheol had come out of the top of the ’twixter with the fomore far behind them. Two of the kaia had been caught up in the swirling winds and didn't emerge. Seth wondered if that was what the storm had meant by taking its “fill”—a tribute in exchange for their safe passage. If that was the case, it had chosen well; the kaia didn't seem to mind at all that their number was reduced to five.

  From the top of the storm, well above the foulness of Abaddon, the Second Realm had been an amazing sight, and Seth had taken a moment to bask in the many colours, shapes, and perspectives of his new world. His eyes were dragged from wonder to wonder. Was that flock of balloon-shaped creatures that converged on a cloud a kilometre or so away a swarm of living things or a natural phenomenon? Where did the mountains he could see bulging out of the surface of the world come from if there were no tectonic movements to ram continents together? What was the L-shaped red patch that glowed like molten lava on the far side of the world?

  Gradually it became clear that there was an ecosystem in the sky, just as there was on the ground, ranging from ethereal beasts as large as whales down to seaweedlike fronds that drifted on thin air, waving listlessly back and forth. These were hunted by bright star-
shaped mouths that swooped through the air trailing numerous slender tentacles behind them. When they fed, they burned like miniature suns.

  With the saraph wings buzzing like a lawnmower at his back, he rose steadily into the sky alongside the others, feeling not even remotely like an angel—more like an unwieldy dragonfly—but wondering if this was where that particular legend had sprung from. Agatha stayed close to shout directions. Xol showed him how to will the wings open so he could glide. As though they had choreographed it beforehand, the expedition fell into a protective, vaguely hammer-shaped formation around him, with two kaia trailing at the rear. Together they spiralled up into the sky, circling lazily until Abaddon was just a scratchy black stain far below and Yod a tarry pimple sticking out of it.

  Only from that perspective did Seth see the fissures. Faint, golden lines traced angular patterns across the surface of the Second Realm. They twinkled faintly, as though the ground was just a thin crust over a glowing substrate. The Second Realm appeared to be cracking up.

  “Is it always like this?” he shouted to Xol. “Did I just not notice it before?”

  “No,” the dimane said, “this is new.”

  “The Cataclysm,” shouted Agatha over the sound of their wings, a worried expression on her face. “It strikes deep!”

  “What happens if Yod gets its way? Will this all break apart?”

  “No one knows.” Agatha shook her head. “I hope never to find out.”

  Sheol burned constantly above them, too bright to look at directly. As high as they had come, it seemed no closer, and after a while he began to grow weary of flying. It had been fun at first, once they had cleared the ’twixter, but now it was just uncomfortable. His shoulders and thighs ached from the harness gripping him, and the bones of his skull—if he still had any—felt as though they'd softened into jelly. He longed to put his dangling legs on solid ground and stand as he'd been built to. Time dragged and he seemed to have been caught in a trap of perspective: the ground was no longer receding, and Sheol was coming no closer. They were in a hellish kind of purgatory that only plummeting back to the ground could free them from.