The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “Where's the next leg start?” he asked wearily, braving the silence that had consumed the group since the Ogdoad had let them go. There had been little opportunity to discuss more than the tasks at hand. None of the issues exposed by Tatenen had been explored, let alone resolved.

  I am the fratricide, the murderer. I am guilty.

  The betrayer will become known to you in time.

  His brother comes. We will be saved, then.

  Does he know who he is?

  Agatha pointed in the direction of the greenish spark. “There.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “We catch a lift.” The woman searched the black sky. “They shouldn't be far away—if the Vaimnamne really exist.”

  “They exist,” said Xol, his voice flat and heavy. The exposure of his history by the Ogdoad had brutalised him as surely as a beating in the First Realm. His aura felt raw, truncated.

  “I hope so,” said Agatha. “I've been hearing stories about them all my life.”

  Seth hadn't decided yet whether or not he felt sorry for Xol. The events his guide had confessed to had taken place a very long time ago, and things had changed a great deal since then. It would be too easy to classify him as nothing but a cold-hearted brother-murderer, the man who out of jealousy had almost brought a full-blown Cataclysm upon the world. He was sure that, from Xol's point of view, it wasn't remotely that simple.

  But Xol had done everything in his power to keep the truth hidden from Seth. Was there more yet to come? Could Xol's shame and self-hatred become a threat to the expedition. A betrayal, perhaps?

  Seth was about to ask what exactly Agatha was waiting for when Synett cleared his throat.

  “It's worth looking the other way, too,” said the man. “You should see this.”

  Synett was standing on the edge of the funnel, looking straight down. He waved them over and pointed.

  “See?” Visible, a disturbingly long way down, was the last juncture, a seed-shaped crystal tipped on its side with openings at either end. One opening led up the Path of Life and the other down. Crossing the gap between the two ends of the crystal had initially seemed impossible, for the crystal's surface was slippery and there were few handholds, but the four kaia had known the trick to it. There were patches of crystal that acted like magnets, drawing anything living to them in order to suck their will. The attraction was strong enough to keep a person suspended in midair. Provided they didn't linger overlong at any one spot the rate of absorption of will was too slow to be a problem, and apart from one terrifying moment when Seth had been forced to hang upside-down by one hand and one foot while he searched for the next gripping point on the crystal, his crossing had been accomplished without incident.

  A black shape now marked the perfect smoothness of the crystal seed. It was a spread-eagled person, limbs moving slowly but purposefully from one end to another. Someone was coming along behind them on the Path of Life.

  “We're being followed,” Seth said aloud.

  “Yes,” said Synett. “And look further. The realm is under attack.”

  Seth shifted his gaze to the distant surface of the Second Realm. They were so high now that the world's spherical nature was immediately obvious. The ground below curved in a bowl that never ended, sweeping dizzyingly upwards to meet itself on the far side of Sheol. The rising walls of the bowl were always at the edge of his vision, tugging at his balance.

  At the bottom of the bowl he immediately saw what Synett meant. The reddish cracks were spreading, buckling and splitting the bowl like a Raiku-fired glaze. At places where the buckling was most severe, where cracks met or the plates between them were furthest apart, light flashed and strange, dark tides spread across the land. He was too far away to discern details, but it looked as though the underworld was pouring into the realm like oil rising up from the heart of the earth—and riding on the back of that flood came other creatures from more distant places still, striking for the heart of Yod's territory while its boundaries were weakened.

  “The damage goes both ways,” said Agatha with ferocity. Seth was surprised to see that her cheeks were wet. The sight of her beloved realm under attack seemed to physically pain her. “Yod is best prepared to move against the First Realm, but that doesn't stop someone from trying to come here in return. There are other powers besides Baal, and many will not have forgotten the last Cataclysm. They will know what these events mean. They will act in retaliation as best they can.”

  “They can't win,” said Xol woodenly.

  “But they can try, and their efforts will aid us. Anything that distracts Yod from our mission will only make our success more likely.”

  Seth's gaze slid back to the figure creeping across the distant crystal. That there was only one didn't especially reassure him. Where one led, others would follow. If Tatenen and the Ogdoad were responsible for keeping the Path of Life clear of dangerous types, then they weren't doing their job well enough. Or Tatenen had let this one slip through deliberately to irk them…

  Agatha's gaze had drifted, too. “There!” she said, pointing up and to their right. “This is how we're going to get to the next stage.”

  Seth saw a patch of twinkling light against the backdrop of the Second Realm. It looked like a meteor shower burning up in the atmosphere, but he knew not to trust his first impressions. The twinkling grew brighter, resolved into a cloud of small grey objects sweeping in a curved path around Sheol.

  “They are the Vaimnamne,” Agatha said, a fierce joy shining in her eyes. “The silver steeds. We will ride them.”

  “How?”

  “They'll sweep by here in a moment, Seth. We must each catch one and bend it to our will.”

  He swallowed. “What if we miss or they won't listen to us?”

  “That simply must not happen.”

  “And what about at the other end?”

  “We jump off.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “I'm sure it's not.” She grinned at him. “Are you frightened?”

  He bristled. “I'd be an idiot not to be.”

  “So am I.” Laughing, and taut with anticipation, the tall woman walked further around the lip of the funnel as the cloud grew brighter. Getting in position, Seth thought with a sinking feeling. He exchanged a sceptical look with Synett, thinking hard. If he had to jump on something large and moving fast, he would rather jump in the direction of the heart of the funnel. That way he wouldn't fall more than a dozen metres or so if he missed.

  “‘Behold,’” said Synett, “‘one shall mount up and fly swiftly like an eagle.’”

  Not for the first time Seth wondered at the nature of the Holy Immortals, whose existence was so intimately tied to the Path of Life. He had pictured them as monks in either Buddhist or Christian robes, elderly men and women of dignified demeanour. He didn't know how to reconcile that image with the requirements of the Path: he couldn't imagine the Dalai Lama leaping onto the back of a meteorite or the pope swinging overhand up the roots of a giant phantom tree, as he and the others had been required to do two junctures back.

  “Sounds good in theory,” he said in response to Synett's quote. “Has your Bible got anything about plummeting to our deaths?”

  Synett smiled tightly. “‘The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.’”

  “Well, here's hoping your Lord will start looking out for us soon. I haven't seen any evidence of it yet.”

  “‘You who fear the Lord, wait for his mercy and turn not aside, lest you fall.’”

  “I get the picture.” Sometimes he wondered if Synett's “Lord” was more than just a holdover from Bible-bashing days in the First Realm. The man was supposedly in the service of Barbelo, but what if he was actually allied to Yod? Could he be the betrayer in their midst? Was he just waiting for the right moment to push Seth off the Path and to his death?

  Synett, he sensed, was like a dog looking for a master. Obedience to the Bible in the First Realm h
ad become service to Barbelo in the Second. Allegiances could change, even among the blindly faithful.

  But murdering Seth a second time wouldn't fix anything, he reminded himself. Not for Yod. Both he and Hadrian were valuable right where they were. Yod's plan was to keep them there, not to kill them. So even if Synett was the betrayer, Seth didn't have to worry about being pushed off the back of a meteorite. That, he told himself, was something.

  The glittering cloud grew brighter. It was still hard to tell how large the “silver steeds” were, how fast they were moving, or even exactly how far away they were. Agatha was poised and ready, legs bent and arms spread. The kaia were strung out in a line along the lip of the funnel to his left. Xol stood with his back to the swarm, looking over his shoulder. Synett waved his bandaged hands as though drying them, and assumed a similar posture, but with markedly less confidence.

  Seth steeled himself to jump. If the others could do it, so could he.

  With a sound like falling bombs, the Vaimnamne were upon them. The size and shape of small, elongated barrels, with no visible means of propulsion, the Vaimnamne moved at about the speed of a bicycle downhill—much slower than Seth had dreaded, but still hard to catch from a standing start. He grabbed at one and missed. A second slipped out of his hands before he could get a proper grip. There were dozens of them flying past the funnel, whistling in descending mournful notes. A third evaded him, and he bit down on a curse.

  Synett succeeded on his second attempt. Xol and Agatha were already gone. Three kaia were swept away, leaving one—and him.

  Seth made a grab for another silver steed. It dodged fluidly away. “It's harder than it looks,” he said, feeling criticism in the kaia's blank stare.

  “They are avoiding you.”

  Seth's bluster evaporated. It was true. The Vaimnamne parted before him like a river around an island. Some came close but swerved sharply away if he made a move towards them. He literally threw himself into the air in an attempt to catch one, but it slipped deftly through his arms. He hit the lip of the funnel awkwardly on his backside, feeling like a fool. And hurt, rejected by creatures he hadn't known existed until bare moments before.

  The swarm was thinning. Soon it would be past, and there would be no chance at all of hitching a lift.

  “What do I do now, Spekoh?” There was a panicked note to his voice. I don't want to be left behind!

  “All is not yet lost. One of us will swing around Sheol and pick you up on the return.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Some time. Our orbit is still quite wide.”

  “Minutes? Hours? Days?”

  “Hours.” The kaia watched as he climbed wearily to his feet and made another equally futile grab for another of the flying grey acorns.

  Seth thought bleakly of their pursuer. It wouldn't take too long for him or her to reach the funnel…certainly not hours. He would be vulnerable with only the one kaia to fight beside him. If it came down to defending himself with willpower, his grasp of his new talents was still rather shaky. Tatenen had proved that he was far from all-powerful.

  A handful of the Vaimnamne swept by, well out of reach. The swarm was mostly spent. He watched the stragglers go and wondered how Xol and the others were faring. Had they reached the next leg of the Path already? Had they realised that he wasn't among them? Were they even now trying to turn their steeds back, and failing?

  “Seth.” The voice of the kaia snapped him out of his gloomy reflections.

  “What?”

  “Look.” The childlike figure's left hand pointed at the very last of the Vaimnamne. It was larger than the others, bringing up the rear like a sheepdog intent on gathering stragglers.

  It was coming right for him.

  “Bloody hell,” he said. It was either trying to kill him or wanted him to jump aboard. He had to assume the latter, and had only a moment to ready himself. “What about you? You jump on as well.”

  Spekoh didn't reply. As the last Vaimnamne rushed towards him, he felt the hands of the kaia grip him around the waist and give him a solid push. He clutched at the Vaimnamne as clumsily as a baby for its parent. It rocketed into his arms and, with a bone-jarring lurch, pulled him off his feet and into the sky.

  The world tumbled around him. A wail emerged helplessly from his mouth. He wrapped his legs around its cool metallic skin and glanced fleetingly behind him. The funnel receded with disconcerting speed, the kaia standing alone on its lip, watching him go. Then the Vaimnamne rotated once about its axis and put on a burst of speed.

  Seth belatedly remembered what Agatha had said about bending the creature to his will.

  “I need to go with the others, up there,” he gasped, risking letting go with one hand to point at the greenish glint.

  “I know,” the Vaimnamne said in a surprisingly human-sounding voice. “That is why none of my kind will carry you.”

  Seth was speechless for a moment. This he hadn't expected at all. He had imagined the Vaimnamne as animals, not people.

  “You have so much to learn,” said the creature he rode. “Nothing lives here without a mind, for nothing can grow without will, and without a mind there can be no will. Everything you see that moves and changes does so at the urging of itself or another. Without will, there is nothing but death.”

  He mentally kicked himself. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I hope I didn't offend you.”

  “On this matter, I am not offended. I am simply trying to tell you something you need to know. The First and Second Realms are fundamentally divided. In the First Realm, you have to learn to use willpower; it does not come naturally. In the Second Realm, you have to learn to exercise physicality, for that is not a natural phenomenon here. You and your brother exist at meeting places of the two realms; you have both at your disposal. Those like us who evolved here are not so lucky. We are confined to our environment as the creatures you call fish are confined to the sea. There is no crossing over for us. We live here and are of here. Without the Second Realm, just the Second Realm, we are nothing.”

  The Vaimnamne's voice was firm but sorrowful.

  “My kind will not carry you,” it said, “because they fear the destruction you could wreak upon us.”

  “What destruction?” The words emerged from his mouth without thought. He retracted them immediately. “No, I understand what you're saying. If the realms join, they'll be changed. You'll lose your home.”

  “Yes. And we will die.”

  “Are you trying to blame me for this?”

  “You are the key to all the changes overtaking the realm. That is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. I ask you to find a way to turn things back. Return to the First Realm. Leave us to explore the heavens in peace.”

  Seth heard desperate longing in the creature's voice.

  It's not up to me, he wanted to say. I didn't choose to be here; I wanted none of this. Why does what I decide have to make such a difference?

  “Well,” he managed, “I'm certainly doing everything in my power to make that happen.”

  “Hear my words,” said the Vaimnamne. “The decision is not yours. It belongs to the Sisters who tend the Flame. You can only plead your case. Do you not know exactly what awaits you?”

  He had to admit that he had only the dimmest understanding of what the Sisters did in the Second Realm, and how in particular they could help him. “I'm going to ask them to send me back to the First Realm,” he said. “That'll fix your problem. Wouldn't it?”

  “Yes, unless your brother also dies. If that happens, I do not think the Sisters will aid you twice—or that Yod would allow you a second chance to try.”

  That was a sobering thought. Seth clung tightly to the metallic back of the Vaimnamne and told himself that the sinking feeling in his gut was the result of his precarious position and the rate at which he was ascending, nothing else.

  “So it's now or never,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “That's just great. As if I d
idn't already have enough to worry about.”

  The green speck grew steadily brighter before him as the swarm of Vaimnamne approached. He could see the three kaia travelling in a perfectly straight line, directed by a single will. He thought he might have spotted Xol by virtue of his colouring. The others were lost against the backdrop of the Second Realm.

  “Why you?” he asked. “Why are you the only one who will give me a ride?”

  “I am the leader of the Vaimnamne. It is my responsibility to explain our plight to you. I have to believe that you possess the determination and ingenuity required to restore the world to the way it's supposed to be.”

  “Maybe you're talking to the wrong person,” he said, thinking of the Ogdoad's words. His brother comes. We will be saved, then. “Maybe you'd have been better off with Hadrian.”

  “I do not trust the prophecies of ancient, enchanted minds. I trust only what I see and feel around me. You are real, and you are here. It is you in whom I must place my faith.” The Vaimnamne banked smoothly to the left, following the rest of the swarm as it swept up to the green spark. “Please, Seth Castillo, do not kill us.”

  Seth didn't know what to say in reply. He felt uncomfortable promising anything, given his circumstances. Everyone wanted something from him. Agatha wanted him to help Barbelo win the war against Yod and save the realm. The kaia wanted to walk under the light of Sheol again, when Yod was overthrown. Xol's motivations were altruistic on the surface, but they almost certainly hid a need for redemption; if the brother Xol had murdered couldn't forgive him, perhaps Seth could do it in his place.

  Synett didn't seem to want anything at all. He had only come along because Barbelo asked him to do so and Agatha had insisted. Did that mean he had no motive, or that his true motivation was hidden?

  Seth didn't know. He didn't know what he himself wanted, either. The thought of going back to the First Realm had initially filled him with relief, even hope—but then he had caught the vision of Hadrian and Ellis together, and his feelings had turned sour.

  Did he really want to go back there, to the way it had been?