The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “They are more than idols, you fool. They hold your life in their hands.” Tatenen's hand snaked around the back of Synett's neck. The man stiffened but did not flinch. Again Seth waited, growing increasingly restless, as the examination took place. Each one seemed to take longer than the last.

  When it was finally done, Synett expelled an explosive breath and stepped back, looking relieved.

  Tatenen faced the two left to examine: Xol and Seth.

  “The young, hollow man.” Tatenen turned to him. “Present yourself.”

  Seth stepped forwards, refusing to bow. Instead of touching the back of his neck, Tatenen's hand went across Seth's forehead. The man's skin was cool and smooth, like finely sanded wood. He couldn't bring himself to look Tatenen directly in the eyes. Instead, he focussed on the bulbous end of the staff, which stood almost eye level with him. He saw feathers in its translucent amber depths, and long, curved bones: the remains of a bird, Seth thought, frozen in midmotion. The bones looked as if they might reassemble at any moment and fly up into the sky.

  “We are the Old Ones,” said a voice, “the architects of the devachan.”

  “Born in darkness, invisible, vital,” said another, “from the voids surrounding the realms to the immortal depths of space, we ruled.”

  “Amun and Amaunet.”

  “Huh and Hauhet.”

  “Kuk and Kauket.”

  “Nun and Naunet.”

  “We are the Eight, and we will remain the Eight.”

  “Forever, or until Ymir returns to set us free.”

  Seth turned his gaze upwards to the source of the voices. The eight Old Ones, whom Tatenen had called the Ogdoad, were leaning over him, staring at him with their bulging eyes. The faces twitched and flexed with exaggerated vitality; their skin glowed with a faint purple sheen.

  “And who is this?”

  “It is the twin.”

  “Which twin?”

  “The particular one, of the moment.”

  “A mess of contradictions,” said one of them.

  “No different from the others.”

  “No different from anyone.”

  “Even we are conflicted at times.”

  “But such division…”

  “Does he know who he is?”

  “Does he believe in anything?”

  “Does he desire her simply because his brother desires her?”

  “Does he want to live?”

  He tried to open his mouth to answer the Old Ones’ questions, but it was frozen shut. All he could move was his eyes. When he rolled them to look at the others, he discovered that they had vanished: Xol, Agatha, Synett, the kaia—even Tatenen himself. He was alone on the stone shelf under the fierce gaze of the Eight.

  You will not directly address them again. Seth had incorrectly assumed that to be a warning or a threat. He mentally cursed Tatenen for taking away the only thing he had left: the ability to protest his treatment. He couldn't break the charm in the same way as he would fight egrigor. He was trapped.

  Of course I want to live, he yearned to say. Why wouldn't I?

  “He is passive.” The voice of the giant being was conversational, as though discussing an interesting specimen confined to a laboratory cage. “He walks among predators and sees not their teeth.”

  “His mind is closed.”

  “Yet the world turns around him.”

  “And we turn with it, for good or ill.”

  “Our fate is bound.”

  “We have much yet to do.”

  “We must decide.”

  “Should he follow his fate, or perish here?”

  “He does not see the path before him.”

  “The other would have served better, in his place.”

  There was no mistaking who “the other” was: it had to be Hadrian. They were saying that Hadrian would handle the Second Realm more successfully than himself.

  “All are fragile, including the ones who make us so.”

  “This one in particular.”

  “He has suffered much.”

  “We all have.”

  “His misery is not yet complete.”

  “We cannot deny him completion.”

  “Nor us the chance to attain our own fate.”

  “His brother comes.”

  “We will be saved, then.”

  “We are decided.”

  Seth reeled back from Tatenen's hand as the Eight resumed their previous dispassionate attitude and his companions reappeared. His skin was hot where the hand had touched it. His head throbbed powerfully, as though his skull was contracting and relaxing with every heartbeat.

  He barely noticed as Tatenen turned to Xol, the last to be tested.

  “Coatlicue's other son.” Tatenen raised his hand, and Xol leaned forwards. “You did not visit us the last time you came this way.”

  “Forgive me,” said the dimane. “I was in a hurry.”

  “Fortune does not favour the hasty.”

  Xol's golden eyes looked up at the man, then went dull as their skins touched.

  Seth waited out Xol's testing with ill-concealed anxiety. The Ogdoad were blank-faced now, but he remembered too well their leering self-interest and the uncaring way they dissected both his mind and his fate. His misery is not yet complete. What did that mean? Wasn't it enough that he had died and lost everything he knew?

  Does he know who he is?

  His brother comes.

  We will be saved, then.

  He suddenly felt as though everything he was striving for was pointless and futile. The attempt to reach Sheol could end right here and now on the whim of beings whose existence he had never even suspected. They would judge him then test him—and even if he passed their test, there would be another when he reached the Sisters. It didn't matter what he did or was because every decision was already out of his hands. A roll of the dice would be fairer.

  “This is pointless,” he muttered. “It's a joke. It has to be.”

  Agatha shushed him, but he ignored her. He raised his voice in challenge and paced across the stone shelf. “Who are these things?” he asked the others. “What gives them the right to judge us like this? I think we should just ignore them and keep going. Xol is proof that you can get to Sheol without being judged. I don't know why we came here at all!”

  His appeal was met with grey blank stares from the kaia and applause from Synett. Agatha looked at him with horror in her eyes. Xol and Tatenen were still locked together, oblivious to the world. The floating island could come crashing down around them without their noticing.

  The giant faces didn't change expression.

  Seth cursed them. He didn't care who heard or what the consequences might be. His resentment and anger poured out in a vitriolic stream, damning them and everyone associated with them for an eternity. He cursed the Second Realm and its bizarre laws; he cursed Yod for killing him and the Swede for wielding the knife; he cursed Agatha and the kaia for choosing the Path of Life; and Barbelo, who couldn't have done less to help. Synett's smug look demanded a response, so he cursed him, too, for dipping into his mind without an invitation. He who commits adultery has no sense. He who does it destroys himself.

  He rounded on Xol last of all, and was surprised to see the dimane's eyes open and staring at him. Tatenen had removed his hand, and stood to one side, mouth in a tight line, letting Seth dig himself deeper with every word.

  “And you—” Seth forgot whatever it was he had planned to say about Xol. “Do your worst. I don't care. Kill me, and you idiots will get what you deserve. I'm sure Yod won't take kindly to its plan being ruined.”

  Tatenen was unbowed. He raised his staff and pointed it spike-first at Seth. The tip glowed white, and grew brighter as Tatenen chanted at it. The words were liquid and fast, tumbling like rapids. Seth felt a psychic clamp constrict around his mind, and he tensed, determined not to scream.

  Then the eyes of the Ogdoad flashed red, knocking Seth and Tatenen apart. As he tumbled spread-e
agled onto his back, Seth saw the mouth of one of them drop open. Sound issued from it that was at total odds with the lively chatter he had heard while connected to Tatenen. This was a roar like the collapsing of mountains, the raising of seas. It came from the depths of time and rang through eternity. It was all frequencies at once—and yet he could understand it perfectly well.

  FORGIVEN, it said.

  Pain blossomed in his chest, where the Swede's dagger had struck. He hissed and rolled over, clutching both hands over the spot. There was no blood, no ragged wound. He rose up on his knees, took his hands away, and nervously looked down at his chest. There, in the skin, where there had been no mark before, was a looped cross—an Egyptian ankh—the size of a thumbprint burned in black.

  “No!” cried Tatenen, rounding on the Ogdoad who had spoken. “You cannot mark him. I forbid it!”

  The giant mouth closed. Its eyes stared implacably at its opposite number over Tatenen's head as though he didn't exist.

  “Take it back! I demand you take it back!”

  The Old Ones ignored him. Tatenen roared in frustration and turned to Seth with his staff still upraised.

  Seth, standing, didn't know what had happened, but he could tell from the look on Tatenen's face that he had narrowly cheated death. The tip of the staff still shone, but it was wielded with bluster this time, not real threat.

  “You are spared my wrath,” Tatenen said, voice shaking with repressed rage, “but your friends are not so lucky. The price of passage will be high and I am in no mood to tolerate forfeit.”

  Agatha bowed again, shakily. A strand of yellow hair had wound its way loose from her forehead, and she tucked it carefully back. “We understand, Lord Tatenen. Tell us the judgement of the Eight and test us as is your right. Then we will be on our way.”

  He turned to look at her, but kept his staff aimed squarely at Seth's stomach. The tip didn't waver in the slightest.

  “You have been judged,” said Tatenen. “A murderer, a traitor, a cuckold, and a liar; one each of these is among your number. Your test is this: tell me who is who in three cases, and I will let you pass.”

  Seth frowned in irritation. “What is this? A riddle?”

  “No. It is a question.”

  “A murderer,” he repeated, “a traitor…”

  “A cuckold and a thief. Identify three out of four, and you will be spared my punishment.”

  “What if we get one wrong?” asked Xol.

  Tatenen turned to face the dimane. The staff finally came down. “I am humane. I will allow you one mistake. But if you get more than one wrong, you fail. You will turn back. I will keep my fee.” A cruel smile brought no life to the man's face. “That's the way it will be.”

  Seth shook his head. The test seemed petty and pointless to him, but with the mark on his breast still burning, he was no longer in the mood to push his luck.

  And there was no point denying what he knew to be true.

  “I guess I'm the cuckold,” he said, not looking at Synett. “Hadrian and Ellis and I. It was—complicated.”

  “Correct,” said Tatenen without looking at him.

  “And I'm the murderer,” said Synett.

  “Incorrect.”

  “But—”

  “You are a murderer, yes, but not the murderer to whom I am referring.”

  “That's not fair!”

  “I didn't say it was fair.” Tatenen leaned on his staff as though suddenly weary. “I will allow no more mistakes. You must guess carefully from now on.”

  Seth stared at his companions, fuming to himself. A liar, a murderer, and a traitor. He had never murdered anyone, and he didn't think that what had happened between him and Hadrian counted as treachery. Although his confession to being the cuckold didn't mean that Tatenen had let him off the hook, he felt confident that he wasn't guilty of any of the remaining crimes.

  But that still left the question of who was. They needed to guess two in order to pass, with no mistakes. Who could they be?

  He walks among predators, the Ogdoad had said, and sees not their teeth.

  “I'm the liar,” said Agatha, a defiant expression on her face. “I told Seth when we first met that he was nothing special. In Bethel, I told him that he had no right to claim my allegiance, that he was a liability. I said such things because I was afraid of what his existence implied for the realm. His role in Yod's plan blinded me to who he was and who he might become. Since then, he has earned my respect by helping Barbelo and Nehelennia; he has endured much hardship in a war he never chose to be part of. He deserves to know the truth: that he is special, and that I have known it all along.”

  Tatenen smiled. “Correct.”

  Seth stared at the tall woman, more than a little surprised by her revelation. He wasn't sure how to respond, or if a response was even required. He hadn't realised that she felt guilty about her early dismissal of him, but it must have been on her mind for Tatenen to focus upon it.

  “Thank you,” he said. She nodded, looking uncomfortable. The strand of hair was loose again, but this time she ignored it.

  “Two to go,” Tatenen reminded them. “One guess left.”

  Murderer or traitor? Seth put Agatha's confession behind him and thought fast. Each verdict so far had been weighing heavily on the guilty party's conscience. They were also related to him. Synett's past crimes weren't relevant, but Agatha's relatively minor one was. He didn't think that was a coincidence.

  Seth exchanged glances with all of his companions. Two of them were guilty of serious crimes that were, if his theory was correct, connected to him somehow. He needed to know who they were even if Tatenen wasn't going to force the issue.

  “I'm waiting.” Tatenen's hand stroked his staff as though aching to wield it.

  The silence was thick and heavy. Seth wondered what would happen if they refused to guess. The same as if they guessed wrong, he assumed. They'd be sent back down the Path of Life, back to the hole in the sky and the saraph wings. From that point, it was literally downhill all the way. There would be no safety in Abaddon or Bethel, or anywhere on the disintegrating surface of the Second Realm…

  “I am the murderer,” said Xol, his voice so soft that for a second Seth wasn't sure who had spoken.

  “Correct,” said Tatenen. “Speak up, and tell us why.”

  Xol's eyes remained downcast. “My brother was ruler of our nation. I was his younger twin, the smaller and ill-favoured of the two of us. I was jealous of his good fortune. He was king of the wind and the zodiac, the lord of knowledge. He walked among the deii, and was consulted by Baal.

  “Resentment burned in me—and there was more to be jealous of than that. Quetzalcoatl's chief warrior, Tezcatlipoca, stood between us. She was the Jaguar, whose reflection made mirrors smoke and burst into flame. My brother and I called her Moyo, for there was nothing she couldn't do. I set my mind to putting us on the throne—she and I together, as royal consorts—in my brother's place. I conspired to overthrow my brother, to seduce him with promises of greater power still, then to destroy him. We—”

  The brief rush of words ended abruptly. There was ringing silence for a moment, then Xol concluded more evenly: “I killed my brother, and in the process caused a Cataclysm. My lust and greed threatened to tear the world apart. I killed myself out of remorse, and that brought the Cataclysm to an end. Here, as a constant reminder of what I did, I adopt the form by which Quetzalcoatl was adored: the feathered snake is my brand and my punishment. But there is no atoning for my crime. My actions inspired Yod to kill Hadrian's brother and bring about another Cataclysm. I am the fratricide, the murderer. I am guilty.”

  “Yes.”

  The gold eyes came up to stare at Tatenen. “I've told you what you wanted to hear. Have we passed the test?”

  “I am—satisfied.” The tall man's expression was one of reluctant benediction but his eyes were gloating. “I congratulate you all. Murderer, liar, cuckold—you are free to go. The betrayer will become known to you in
time.”

  “Why don't you tell us who it is?” asked Seth, feeling slightly numb after Xol's revelation.

  “Because I don't have to.” The amused gaze swung to meet his. “Hollow one, you are both brave and foolish to undertake this quest. The Eight have marked you with the sign of their protection, but that will not avail you anywhere but here and in the devachan. Until all the realms are reunited and their bindings removed, they have no power to save you. You must fight your own battles.”

  Tatenen rapped on the stone four times with the end of his staff.

  “Take your offering, O Kuk and Kauket, who were the darkness that reigned before creation. Take your offering, O Huh and Hauhet, who brought forth matter from the eternity of space. Take your offering, O Nun and Naunet, who parted the primeval waters. Take your offering, O Amun and Amaunet, who breathed life into the formlessness. You who protect the gods with your shadows, show these lowly wayfarers the path before them.”

  With a grandiose flourish, he swung the staff about to point at one of the giant faces with scales and teeth like swords. Its mouth swung open with a boom that shook the ground beneath them. Inside was utter darkness, impenetrable and cold. The chill wind blew harder as the faces faded away to nothing, leaving the dizzying vista of the Second Realm and the flaw at its heart in their wake.

  “Go,” Tatenen intoned. “Do not return.”

  “What about your price?” asked Agatha.

  “I have already taken it.”

  Seth didn't know what he meant until he performed a quick head-count. There were only four kaia left.

  “Thank you,” Agatha said, with a final respectful bow.

  Tatenen gestured impatiently. “I have done nothing to be grateful for.”

  With that, he vanished.

  Seth looked nervously into the black pit where the Old One's mouth had been. He was beginning to wonder if where they were headed was going to be worse than anything he'd faced up to this point.

  Does he know who he is?

  His brother comes. We will be saved, then.

  Xol sighed heavily and led the way. Agatha followed close behind. She went to put a hand on the dimane's shoulder but was shrugged away. A look of hurt flickered briefly across her angular features.