The Crooked Letter: Books of the Cataclysm: One

by Sean Williams

  “But where? What's missing?” He held his hands up in front of him; they were barely visible but definitely present. “Which bit has gone? Is it something small? It couldn't be large or I'd have noticed it. Or have I forgotten about it? Is that it? Have I been magicked to forget?”

  For a second he seriously wondered if there was a part of his body that he hadn't missed because he no longer knew it was supposed to be there. But that was silly. There were people around him and he could see that they had the same number of arms, legs, and fingers as he did. There was nothing they had that he didn't.

  Before Ellis could answer, if she actually intended to, the king boomed from further up the tube: “Keep moving along! We're almost there!”

  Seth reluctantly shelved the problem and turned to crawl on. He felt excluded from a terribly subtle joke, one he knew existed and was probably at his expense, but one he couldn't for the life of him understand. He wasn't blind or deluded. If there was something wrong with him, something missing, he would know. He was sure of it.

  But he couldn't ignore the fact that people had all come independently to the same conclusion: he wasn't complete somehow.

  He'd be damned before admitting that it was Hadrian he needed to make him whole.

  Something clanked ahead, and suddenly the tube was full of light. The king had opened a hatch at the end of the Goad. Fresh, cool air sighed around them; Seth hadn't noticed how stuffy it had become. With a soft grunt, the king grabbed the edge of the tube and hauled himself up and out of sight. The sound of his footsteps rang along the top of the Goad, banging and scuffling. One of the kaia followed him. Agatha, the next in line, took a look out of the hatch and visibly blanched.

  The king's head poked down from above. He and Agatha exchanged words too soft to hear, then she pulled herself together and nodded.

  “What is it?” called Seth to her. “What's out there?”

  She looked back at him. “Do you trust me, Seth?”

  “Of course. Why?”

  “I wasn't lying about us not having to fly.”

  Agatha got her long legs beneath her, so she was crouching on the edge. Without a word, she leapt into space and dropped instantly out of sight.

  “No way,” said Ellis.

  Seth was hypnotised by the circle of sky where Agatha had been. “You didn't know? I thought you'd been this way before.”

  “I was out cold, still freaked out by dying and all—remember? Shathra carried me.”

  Seth didn't gainsay her account, remembering how precipitous his own arrival in the underworld had been. Ellis had somehow plunged much further into the realm on her death, bypassing the underworld entirely; that could have had effects he could barely imagine.

  Another kaia was next. This one jumped after Agatha rather than climb up top. Two Immortals followed. Then it was Seth's turn.

  He inched forwards to the edge and peered over. The Goad ended in empty air. There was nothing around him but space. The Wake formed a curved, wispy wall in the distance ahead of him, like cirrus cloud wrapped in a wide, vertical cylinder. Beyond that…

  “Believe me,” said the king, “it's there.”

  “What is?” He looked up at the cheerful simian face, leaning over him from above.

  “The entrance to the Path of Life.” One wrinkled pink finger stabbed down into empty air and the vast curve of the Second Realm beyond. “This leg requires a leap of faith. I tell you that it will catch you as it caught the others. Will you trust me?”

  Seth's mouth was dry. He looked back down, and wondered what would happen if he said “no.” Would the handsome king push him out of the Goad and make him fall?

  Not for one instant did he consider that the king might be lying; truth was written all over his features. But falling was hardly an improvement on flying.

  “I'll do it,” he said. “First, though, I want to see something.”

  He pulled himself out of the end of the Goad as the king had, but didn't heave himself right up. It was enough to look along the pipe through which they had crawled at the majestic bulk of the skyship, looming fat and wide behind them. The Goad stuck out of the front of it like a bee's sting, tapering to a blunt point where the hatch opened. The first kaia crouched on it like a surfer, feet spread to keep itself steady on the curved surface. The thing Seth particularly wanted to see—the ekhi—was visible as a sheet of mirror-finished life stretched taut over the back of the skyship. It rippled and flexed, sending sun-bright reflections of Sheol in all directions.

  “It's already growing restless,” said the king.

  “I know.” He could feel its yearning to break free and dance around the bright light in the sky. Sheol was close, glaring down on him with painful brilliance. He couldn't look up for fear of being blinded.

  He turned to squat back down, then stopped. “What's that?” he asked, pointing at a black spot caught in the turbulent flow of the Wake. It was tiny in the distance, but distinct.

  “If I had to guess,” said the king, “I'd say it's your pursuer. He or she got past the kaia, so it's entirely possible that they've made it this far.”

  “Even without the Vaimnamne?”

  “Even so.”

  Seth admired their persistence, even as he despaired of shaking them. A renewed sense of urgency filled him.

  “I'm going now. Thank you.”

  “You are welcome, Seth Castillo. Should our paths ever cross again, I will be glad.”

  Seth backed down into the opening at the end of the Goad.

  Ellis had moved forwards and looked nervously over the edge. There was only just enough room for both of them to crouch there, side by side. He thought of Agatha, potentially leading the expedition into disaster but forced to trust the handsome king when he said that they would be safe. At the end, she had been utterly alone, confronting a terrifying gulf with no one to support her.

  “Let's jump together,” he said.

  “Why? I can do it on my own. I'm not afraid of heights.”

  “Not for your benefit. For mine. If I die again, at least I'll have some company.”

  She laughed. It had a slightly hysterical edge, but she did take his hand. “On the count of three, then.”

  “To hell with that,” he said. “Let's just do it.”

  She laughed again as they hurled themselves into the open air.

  “The oldest stories depict hierarchies in heaven: gods above us, and gods above them; and so on beyond the bounds of comprehension.

  At each degree of ascension, a whole new pantheon is revealed. It is no wonder, then, that when the uppermost fell, the entire world fell with it.”

  THE BOOK OF TOWERS, EXEGESIS 10:7

  Out of the city.

  It sounded so easy, Hadrian thought as he ran, but it wasn't. The forest of buildings rose and fell in an apparently endless wave across the land; roads looped back on themselves, crisscrossing and undulating with no obvious symmetry; signposts referred to the old world and had no lingering significance; the new mystical signposts said nothing about the world outside.

  He felt like a lab rat in a maze—only most lab rats didn't have to worry about cats chasing them as they ran. And the maze wasn't in the process of being demolished by two scientists fighting in the lab outside. The imp clinging to his back like a child going for a ride had mentioned that Mot and Baal were running rampant, and he could believe it, judging by the sounds of destruction he had heard during the night. As the two elder gods slugged out their differences in the city's skies, the landscape beneath was paying the price.

  The sound of the Swarm was rising again, a metallic screeching that never fell far behind and promised never to let him go. A hint of dawn glowed to the east, but that proved no deterrent to them. Weird shadows stirred in the windows around him; dust lifted in violent but short-lived vortices; dead trees shook. The city sensed the things passing through it, and was afraid.

  I will not give in to terror, Hadrian told himself. I'm not alone, and I'm not helples
s. I can escape.

  The fact that Pukje appeared to have fallen asleep on his shoulder did little to increase his confidence.

  Instinct urged him to turn left, down a winding alley. He followed it without hesitating, skirting a block that had been utterly reduced to rubble. Instinct hadn't served him wrong yet. He had turned no corners to find the Swarm waiting for him with arms outstretched and vampire-teeth grinning. There were even moments when he thought the Swarm might be slipping behind. But those moments never lasted. Either fatigue—punishing his battered body—forced him to slow, or the Swarm caught a lucky break. They were soon on his tail again, unleashed and hungry for the kill.

  Through it all, the bone in his chest throbbed steadily, a second, magical heart giving him strength when he most needed it. That, if nothing else, convinced him that Pukje meant him no ill will.

  An intersection came and went; he felt no impulse to turn. He jumped a tumbled bin and almost landed on the skeleton of a cat picked clean by unknown teeth. A black shape—one of the ghastly flapping creatures he had seen in Lascowicz's lair—swooped overhead, and he ducked out of sight just in time. From a narrow, pipe-lined niche, he peered out and upwards, taking the opportunity to catch his breath while it flew by.

  We do it together, or neither of us does.

  Kybele had once said something about strange alliances forming before the end came. He had never expected one this strange.

  “Pukje!” he hissed, shaking the creature drooling on his shoulder. “Wake up!”

  “What? Eh?” Narrow eyes flicked open. “You're doing just fine, boy. Keep going as you are.”

  “I'm not going anywhere. I'm just running in circles.”

  “I doubt it—but if you are, then it's for a reason.”

  The imp's eyes closed again.

  “Damn it!” Frustration threatened to get the better of him. If there was some pattern to the way he was moving through the city, it was hidden from his conscious mind. What was the point of that? If he didn't know where he was running to, he was just as trapped as before.

  The caterwauling of the Swarm was getting louder and closer. As soon as the flapping thing had gone, he hurried along the alley to the next intersection, where his gut told him to turn right. Out of defiance, he turned left, just to see what would happen.

  He regretted it almost immediately. Any feeling he had that he might outrun the Swarm quickly evaporated. With every step he went down the left-hand path, the more chill the air became and the less colour there seemed to be in the world. The cloudy sky faded to mottled black. Reflections writhed in muddy puddles.

  A deep, resonant hiss joined the screech. It came from ahead of him, at the end of the street. He stumbled to a halt, suddenly terrified. The sound reminded him of the boiler under the hospital, dark and dangerous. Gravel and dirt danced on hearing it. He didn't want to see what made a noise like that.

  A tide of blackness turned the far corner and rolled like a cloud along the street towards him. He turned and fled before its heart came into view. When he reached the intersection at which he had turned left, he kept running along the right-hand path, the one he should have followed in the first place.

  Too late, his instinct told him. You screwed up. It's all over, or will be soon.

  He shook his head in denial and ran as fast as he could.

  Behind him, the darkness of the Swarm grew in intensity. It knew he was close.

  “Geometry,” said Pukje sleepily in his ear. “It's all about geometry.”

  “I was never good at maths,” Hadrian gasped.

  “No wonder, the way it's taught these days. Geometry is the language of truth, and teachers make it look like a conjuring trick. Doodles and illusions are all they peddle. Maybe if they hadn't forgotten what it was really for, your people might have withstood this invasion a little better.”

  Hadrian couldn't argue with that. For one, he was out of breath. For two, he suspected the imp was right. The power of the metaphor that had killed the draci was enough to demonstrate the truth to him.

  Pattern is the key, Kybele had said. If you capture it, hold it, you have power over the way it changes.

  “But how can it help us now?” he asked, turning right then hard left onto a main road. Buildings loomed over them in two solid masses, like ravine walls. Empty windows stared at him with the eyes of corpses, reminding him of the city's dead. If he didn't think fast, he would soon join them. “The Swarm's never going to let us go, even when I do what the geometry says. I can't run fast enough.”

  “That's because you're not following the geometry to its logical conclusion,” Pukje said. “You're thinking in two dimensions. Take your mind out of the map and wonder where else you could go.”

  Out of the map. “You mean we could fly?”

  “I suspect not. And we would be unsafe even there.”

  As if to prove Pukje's point, the flapping thing hove into view out of a laneway directly ahead of him. Its underbelly was deep in shadow. Hadrian saw glowing red eyes on stalks swinging to fix on him. It emitted a triumphant shriek.

  He froze, knowing it was too late to run. The next intersection was too far away to reach in time. He could turn back, but every nerve screamed that this would be a bad idea indeed.

  “Instinct is all very well,” Pukje whispered in his ear, “but it must be combined with intellect to be truly effective. A sword in a fool's hand is little more than an artfully pointed stick.”

  “I'd give anything for a sword right now.”

  “You have one in your mind. Use it and we will survive.”

  A sword? At that moment his mind felt like nothing so much as an overheated lump of jelly. There were only two ways to go: forwards or back. The flapping thing was moving towards him, its many legs flexing, its sharp talons quivering. Behind him, the darkness was gathering. The screeching of the Swarm had taken on a new note, one even more piercing than before.

  If he couldn't go forwards and he couldn't go back, he asked himself, where could he go? What use was instinct when it had so few options?

  A reflection in one of the windows across the road caught his eye. A black wing slid across panes of mirrored glass like an oil slick, hideous and malevolent. In moments the flapping thing would be upon them.

  The reflection triggered a thought about Kybele, and kitchens. There was another way. Forwards and back might be blocked, but there was always sideways.

  “Yes,” said Pukje as he turned and ran into the nearest building. “I was beginning to think I'd have to spell it out in large print.”

  Hadrian ignored the comment. The building seemed little different to the many others he had explored in the days since he had found himself alone in the city. Its foyer was all marble and shards of glass. Brown shrubs hung as limp as barflies over planters, as dead as everything else in the city. Doors behind the reception desk led deeper into the building. A bank of elevators stood like mausoleum slabs off to one side.

  His instinct was momentarily vague on where to go next. Outside, the flapping thing's claws scratched at the window glass, setting his nerves on edge. The Swarm was getting nearer by the second, pushing the dawn out of the sky. Just entering the building wasn't enough to guarantee his safety. He had to do much more than that. The question was: what?

  He went behind the reception desk and tried the doors. Both were locked. He fished through a scattering of personal effects on the desk—trying as hard he could not to notice the faces on the ID cards and photos of loved ones—and found a ring of keys. He was trying them when glass crashed behind him, and the flapping thing roared.

  “Don't worry about them,” said Pukje when he turned to look over his shoulder. “They're not on the same side. Let them fight it out. Be glad they're giving us a few extra seconds and keep right on with what you're doing.”

  Hadrian found the key and opened the door. As he slipped inside, he caught a gut-watering glimpse of the creatures outside quarrelling over him. A terrible wind had sprung up, melt
ing the road surface and sweeping it up into a funnel around the flapping thing. Black, elongated shapes danced in the wind, their song ghastly to hear.

  Gratefully, he shut the door on the sight, and although the gesture seemed futile he locked it.

  A short corridor led to a communal area with coffee urns, a small fridge, and a television. His gut told him that this wasn't what he was looking for. The geometry was wrong: too static, too self-contained. He needed something fluid, interstitial.

  He kept moving, trying not to hear the noises behind him. Pukje was right. He had to think clearly, not be panicked by things he could do nothing about.

  A flight of fire stairs called him. The concrete shaft echoed emptily with the boom of his entry. He automatically went to go down, thinking to escape underground, but hesitated on the top step. No. That way led to Kybele's realm—the world of basements and parking lots and subways and drains. She and her dwarflike minions knew their way around down there much better than he did. They would expect him to take the obvious way, and he would be as unsafe among them as he was out on the streets.

  He turned and—although his mind cried that it made no sense, that it would seal his doom—began climbing upwards.

  “Excellent,” said Pukje, “you're a natural.”

  “I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing.” He went up two steps at a time, even though he knew he should be conserving his strength. With Pukje on his back, he would soon tire of that pace. “Or where I'm going.”

  “Somewhere safe.” The imp clung tight. Every step upwards made him bounce like a backpack—a bony, wriggling, bad-breathed backpack that seemed to think Hadrian knew more than he did. “I trust you.”

  Three floors, four floors. Hadrian dropped back to single steps at a jogging pace. He was breathing and sweating heavily. The inside of the stairwell was dark and stuffy, like an oven. When he looked up the central column, he couldn't see the top.

  Five floors, six…He stopped. The door to the sixth floor was unlocked. He pushed it open and—although there wasn't likely to be anyone on the far side—eased himself quietly through. He found himself in a typical office, with cubicles laid out like a child's Lego set, smelling of synthetic carpets and ozone. With no air-conditioning, whirring printers, or computer fans, the air was breathlessly still. He traced a zigzagging path through it, guided by yellow sunlight that carved blocky wedges out of the air. The office took up half the cross-section of the building. A long wall separated it from the other side, but doors led through it in two places, suggesting that both areas belonged to the same company. The one he headed for was ajar. The far side was more opulently appointed, with enclosed offices and frosted glass desks. Where the bosses retreated, he thought; middle-management heaven. He followed a procession of meaningless names along a corridor, turned left at a secretary's station, and came to another resonant door.