Shael, he thought. This place is called Shael.
The landing had only two doors, both were solid oak varnished to a dark brown. His mother opened one directly opposite the stairs.
‘Do you remember the cottage,’ she asked.
‘Of course, from your drawing. Katy said it was your Primer? Is that right?’
Her eyes brightened at this. ‘Yes, that’s right! Every one of us that can travel here has a Primer. Yours was the beach right?’
Dave nodded.
‘These Primers are very important. They are your roots to Shael. Not only are they your way in, they are also intrinsically linked to you. Other travellers can travel through or visit your Primer, but their powers will be very limited. So too would your powers be in someone else’s. Do you understand?’
Dave nodded again. Although he was only young and used Shael as a way to escape, it was the beach where he felt most at home. Where he felt safe.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ she continued. ‘You’re not immortal. If someone walked in here with a shotgun, you are no better protected than you would be back home. But your Primer does offer a level of protection from here. From Shael.’
‘But my Primer tried to kill me,’ he said. ‘That thing in the sea nearly ate me.’
‘Ah, but it didn’t though did it. You could argue that your Primer actually saved you.’
‘That’s some twisted logic mum. More to do with luck than anything.’
‘Believe what you want to believe Davey,’ was all she said and entered the room.
The room was obviously a bedroom and decorated with the same floral design as downstairs. In its centre was an antique four poster bed with equally decorative bed linen. The bed was clearly a double, but there was just the one bedside cabinet with a single oil lamp which his mother duly lit. She opened the cabinet and from it she took out a small box. Dave recognized it immediately as a smaller version of the box she had opened for him all those years before.
She sat on the bed and lifted the cover.
‘Tell me what you know of Shael’ she said.
‘Well, apart from what you showed me when I was young, not much really. I mean, I’ve seen a bit more now on the trek here with Katy. The staircases and all that, but up until that weird little boat I’ve never seen any other signs of human life.’
‘The chances are if you kept to your Primer and just created different lands from there, then you never will,’ she said. ‘I’ve only met a handful of others because I’ve actively looked for them. We like to keep ourselves to ourselves.’ Dave thought of the people in the pictures he hadn’t recognized.
‘How many others are there?’ he asked.
‘I expect if you were to get us all together, there would be hundreds, maybe even thousands. And those would just be the ones that decided to use their talent.’
‘Jesus,’ he exclaimed. ‘Hundreds of women and just me!’
‘I wouldn’t get any bright ideas,’ she said lightheartedly. ‘Most of them would be very wary of a man with such……….talents.’
‘Point taken. But what is the point of this place? What is the point of Shael? Hundreds of people with this power to travel to a different world, but for what?’
‘That’s a very good question Davey. I mean, I’m no historian and all I know is what has been passed down to me by my mother and from the few people I have met here, and what they know has been passed down to them, you understand? What I’m trying to say is that whatever history this place has or had, has been passed down through years of Chinese whispers. Lot’s of contradictions and truths behind the truth.’
‘Ok, I get that,’ he said. ‘Probably won’t find this place listed on Google. But what do you know?’
'Ok, let me try. What is your understanding of a multiverse?’
‘A multiverse? It’s some theory that there are infinite different worlds all marginally different than the next. A banana in one world could be yellow and red in the next, etcetera. But it’s just a theory mum. The sort of thing you see in movies.’
‘To the extent you describe it yes,’ she said. ‘But there are other worlds or realms or dimensions or whatever you want to call them. Thousands of them. All completely different except for one thing. All of these worlds were created right here in Shael.’
‘This place builds planets now!’ he exclaimed.
‘Not any more,’ she said. ‘That side of it stopped years ago. But the creative side, the ability to create different landscapes still exists. The echoes of this ability lie in you and me and all these hundreds of people that can still cross here. In its time I believe people like us were highly prized. We could dream up and bring to life these fantastic landscapes which the old rulers could mold into whole worlds; whole realms!’
‘Mum, you’re talking about creation here. You’re talking about God or the big bang theory. I mean, every scientific theory known to man could be blown out of the water. This is fucking huge!’
‘Now do you understand when I say there is a whole lot more at stake here?’
‘Yeah, I get it. But come on! Was our planet created here?’
‘I believe Earth was created here yes, but like I said it’s not like there’s a logbook or something. Shael was once a world that created worlds. People like us were used - and treated as dignitary I imagine - to help shape the worlds that were created. Can you even begin to imagine the scale of it Davey?’
Dave always prided himself in having quite a vivid imagination, but something like this was too much even for him. The scale and time it must have taken was unimaginable.
‘I’m finding it hard to imagine a great deal mum,’ he said. ‘We are literally talking old testament biblical proportions here and it must have taken millions of years. And then what, the production line just stopped?’
‘This is where it gets extremely vague,’ she said. ‘Some say there was a war between different factions. Some say whatever magic or power that was used to create the worlds was used up. Maybe they just fulfilled their quota! The truth is Davey no one really knows. Shael still existed - and still does - but the once great power and purpose of the place has now gone.’
Whilst she was speaking and without Dave noticing, she had taken an object from the box. It was roughly the size and shape of an apple wrapped in a dark red cloth. She slowly unwrapped it to reveal what could only be described as an opaque amber coloured rock. She then took out a thin metallic saucer and placed the rock on it. Immediately the entire room was bathed in an orange light flecked with golden strips that pulsed like a heartbeat. In its very center was a solid mass of golden light. To Dave it looked like a cross between a giant pin cushion and a 3D spider web.
‘Impressive,’ he said. ‘But what is it?’
‘This Davey, is a map of Shael,’ she said. ‘Rendered in glorious 3D. Do you like it?’
‘I do. Where did you get this?’
‘Comes with the job,’ she said. ‘Call it a graduation present. My mother gave it to me after I completed my training.’
‘But how in gods name do you read this? It’s just a bunch of flickering lights.’
‘Like everything in life Davey, it takes time to master, but you’re right it’s not like a regular map. What it does tell you is where you are. See here?’ she pointed to a segment towards the floor where a tiny black spot was pulsing. ‘That’s where we are, and here,’ she pointed to a spot slightly left of this, ‘is your Primer.’
He traced a path from his Primer to where they currently were and noted that it was indeed two down and one across. She then touched a small area on the surface of the saucer and thousands of small pulsing black spots appeared across the entire map. A number were clustered close together, but there were also large areas of the map scarcely populated.
'This shows the position of every Primer in Shael.’
'Jesus,’ he said. 'There's so many.’
'There are, but not all are populated. If I was to put an estimate on it, I would say
that more than two thirds are dormant, either never been used or not used anymore.’
'Not used?'
'Not everyone knows how to use their talent Davey. They may never have been shown. I also believe that a large number just choose not to come here.’
Dave thought of his own situation. He had been one of these people to choose to stay away. In Katy's words, he had forgotten.
‘These golden beams,’ she continued, ‘are the staircases as you call them, and this,’ she pointed to the glowing sphere in the very centre, ‘this is the ancient city of Contillier - at the very heart of Shael. Nothing exists there anymore, but in its day it would have been the centre of this whole empire; where the real magic happened,’ her eyes widened at this. 'General consensus is that these beams once carried people from the city to the outer segments. The blue lights you saw, we think are the ancient remnants of the power that drove those beams. Travelling to the city today would take you years as you can see, and before you ask, I don’t know of anyone that has ever gone there.’
Dave marvelled at the sheer scale of the place with their current position a tiny blinking light far away from the centre.
'Mum,’ he said. 'It's amazing, it really is. But I don't see how this helps our current problem. Shael is obviously a beautiful place, but there's nothing here anymore. What can this Dex get out of it? You said he actually came from here?'
'The history of this Dex can be traced back over four hundred years. Back to the second man I spoke of earlier. A man who called himself Lycheen; the King of Shael.’
Chapter 23
His mother spoke for nearly an hour, pausing only a few times to field Dave's questions. Her voice was solemn as she recounted the story of Lycheen and how he very nearly fucked up Shael and the thousands of worlds connected to it.
Lycheen was originally a man called William White, part of a group of Pilgrim Fathers that set off for North America during the early part of the 17th Century. He travelled from England with his wife and two daughters. Those early passages were fraught with danger, but miraculously the family made the voyage and joined a rough settlement in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Life in those early settlements was incredibly hard with every day a fight for survival. Despite enduring the horrors of the sea crossing, William lost both his children and wife to the first harsh winter.
Riddled with both grief and guilt, he became a recluse, hiding away from the rest of the settlement in a thrown together hut on the edge of a nearby forest. He survived on bare rations of berries and nuts foraged amongst the trees. He also spent the time in a state of delirium. The winter bit hard and along with the frost bite that had started to eat away at his hands and feet, he soon developed a fever. Lying on the floor of his hut in a semi-conscious state his mind began to hallucinate; throwing up vivid images of his dead family and strange tropical lands.
During this delirium, his body flipped to Shael; a talent his mother would have taught him if she had survived past childbirth. He found himself with no fever or frostbite and on a sun baked tropical beach.
Coming from a deeply religious community as the Pilgrim Fathers were, he naturally presumed he had died and this tropical paradise was his version of heaven. The beach offered up plentiful provisions including fruit, fresh water, coconuts and after a few failed attempts, a never ending supply of fish. He built himself a new shelter and could quite contently have spent the rest of his days where he was.
But the problem with humans is they too quickly grow restless and curious. Deep into his second month still with no divine visitation, he slowly came to the conclusion that perhaps he wasn't dead and he actually was in this strange tropical world. As he grew more curious (and more certain) he spent his days venturing further and further from his camp.
On the third day of exploring he found the edge of the tropical zone and a herd of slugs. On the fifth day he found the stairway and on the tenth day, almost three months after appearing in his own tropical Primer, he found himself in the company of one Elizabeth Weir a Primer from Harrogate, Yorkshire.
Elizabeth was a Shael veteran of over seventy years. She had trained her own daughter and more recently he own granddaughter in the ways of the world. She was naturally surprised to find herself in the company of a man, but being quite the Shael historian she was, knew it wasn't totally unheard of.
She taught William everything she knew but became increasingly concerned with the speed in which he progressed and the power he soon began to master. What particularly concerned her was his ability to draw power from her Primer; a power that he began to be more and more reckless with. The landscapes he created were far more surreal than she could ever have imagined; filled with giant beasts that she herself could not invoke.
He also began to ask questions about the history of Shael. Becoming fascinated by the ancient machines used to shape the worlds and build portals to the other realms. When Elizabeth saw what he was becoming, she refused to tell him more and asked William to leave. He became incensed by her refusal and in a fit of rage, killed her, stole her map and destroyed her Primer.
'Fuck me,’ Dave said. 'No wonder there's a wariness of men, especially if this is what you base them on.’
'Indeed,’ his mother said. 'I'm sure there has been plenty of other men with these talents - probably they still exist today, but recent history has been somewhat clouded by this.’
'He actually drew strength from her Primer?'
'He did, and the more Primers he visited, the stronger he became.’
'He killed more?'
'Too many more,’ she said. 'He used the map to track them down and swept through huge areas of Shael like a plague. The word spread and a lot of people abandoned ship before he arrived, but when he learnt to trap them, they had nowhere to run.’
William, going by the name of Lycheen the self proclaimed King of Shael at this point had killed hundreds. Some had chosen to follow him, but many perished in his path of destruction. His power was so strong that he now had the ability to block parts of the world and trap people from escaping. Still craving more power and realizing his reach was not far enough, he created bands of shapeshifting warriors and sent them out across Shael imprinted with maps to track down and kill all they found.
His forces moved inwards, their ultimate goal to reach the inner city and reopen the portals that connected to the other realms and send warriors to the far reaches. What he hadn't counted on was the strength of the Primers of Shael.
Realizing their days were numbered, a large number of Primers rallied together and reached the edge of Contillier before Lycheen and his forces arrived. They fought a brave last stand against insurmountable odds.
'The story goes,’ his mother continued. 'That during the final stages of the battle when only a handful of Primers still remained, one who was versed in the ancient ways, opened a portal and tricked Lycheen and a few of his followers into it. Not a gateway to any realm as Lycheen thought, but an empty space that had never been used; a world between worlds so to speak. The remaining Primers then sealed the portal trapping the so called King and his loyal followers to die a long slow death in this void.’ She paused here and looked at Dave for a response.
'That's one helluva bedtime story,’ he said.
'It is isn't it?' she said. 'How much is true or not I'll leave for you to decide. But the handful of other Primers I have spoken to all tell a similar story. A male came to Shael and got completely seduced by its power.’ She touched the saucer again and the map blinked out, leaving the room bathed in the warm glow of the oil lamp.
‘There were some good things to come out of this time though.’
‘Like what?’ Dave asked, failing to see how anything good could come from the virtual fall of an Empire.
‘Well, for one thing,’ she said. ‘The surviving Primers adapted the maps so they could be used as communication devices. It gave them a bit of an early warning system so to speak. They also sealed all the entrances to the city which apparently still
hold today,’ she gently folded the map back into the cloth and tucked it in the box. ‘They also pledged to protect Shael from any future attacks. It’s a pledge that all future Primers - including myself - hold to. Shael is a special world, but if those ancient machines fall into the wrong hands, the consequences don’t bear thinking about.’
'And you think this Dex is one of these Super Soldiers?'
‘Yes, I believe so,’ she said. ‘Now can you see how dangerous he is. How much damage he could do. He doesn’t have the power or the intelligence to try to get to the city, but his purpose is to hunt down and kill Primers; to remove whatever protection Shael has. One of those things running amok over here could do irreparable damage.’
‘There’s one thing I don’t fully understand,’ he said.
‘Just the one?’ she mocked.
‘Well yeah, add it to the list. But seriously, how did this Dex get into our world? If they never got to the city to open the portals, how did he slip through?’
‘That is another very good question. As much as us Primers would like to think we are the only people that can get in and out of Shael, the truth is a lot different. There are parts where the walls between worlds are very thin and some places where there are actual tears. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like this place is riddled with holes, but there are ways in and you don’t have to have our talents to get here. Some Primers have made it their life’s work to trace down and seal up these tears, but unfortunately some still exist. I think either by design or more probably chance, this Dex slipped through one of these tears through to our world.’
‘Shit,’ he said. ‘But you said he was inside dad, not some shape shifting Super Soldier on a killing spree.’
Homecoming Page 13
