I Can See Clearly Now (3 page)

Rel finished,
“I need to know how long I’ve got. Where’s Pevan?”

“What do you
need her for?”

“I need to get
to the Sherim. I may not have much time. Sir.”

“Get running,
boy. Pevan’s chasing Van Raighan.” Pollack pushed Rel towards the
door, swinging open on its creaky hinges. Something exciting was
definitely happening outside, by the shouts that drifted in.

Rel said, “Sir,
you don’t understand. I may be our only chance to stop Rissad, and
for all we know he could be crawling towards that door right
now.”

“And right now,
Van Raighan is getting away because you distracted us all. You’d
better hope your sister’s more useful, boy.”

“Maybe you
should have paid more attention, then!” Rel snapped. Like it was
his fault if the Sherriff’s men had let the thief get away.

“You shouldn’t
shout at the Sherriff like that, Relvin,” Pevan’s voice cut through
Pollack’s growl as the big man raised a hand to strike Rel. “It’s
disrespectful, and you did distract everyone.” Pevan was stood in a
Gateway in the wall by the door, holding Van Raighan’s arms pinned
behind his back. The thief wore a grimace, and a dark mark above
his right eye that was probably a new bruise. Pevan shoved him
forward and stepped out of the Gateway, letting it slide closed
behind her.

Rel opened his
mouth to protest, but she beat him to it, “You want me to Gate you
to the Sherim? We’d better get moving.” She pushed Van Raighan
forward again and he stumbled right into Pollack’s chest. The
Sherriff grabbed him clumsily. Pevan continued, “Try not to lose
him again, Sherriff. I won’t always be here to clean up your
mess.”

Van Raighan
yelped as Pollack’s eyes bulged, the Sherriff’s arm tightening
across his captive’s chest. Pevan gave them a sweet smile, head
tilted to one side, then took Rel’s arm and pointed at the rough
stone of the nearest wall. “You need your bag, Rel?”

Rel was always
surprised by how soft his sister’s hands were, even through the
fabric of his shirt. And small, with fine fingers. The only
feminine feature she possessed, he was sure. He swallowed. “No
time.”

Pevan nodded,
and a Gateway appeared on the wall. They stepped through and out
under a bridge. In front of them the canal surface rippled with
rain. Rel knew where they were - still a good mile and a half from
the Sherim.

“Pev-“

“You know it’s
a bad idea to Gate directly to the Sherim, Rel. For that matter,
you know it’s a bad idea to go twice in the same day.” Pevan put
her hands on her hips again, fixing him with a glare as if he was
just out to make mischief.

“It’s not like
I have a choice.” He looked around nervously, but apart from a
faint shimmer around Pevan’s head, there was nothing to worry
about. If that was all her disapproval, then either the Sherim was
quiet today or she secretly approved. And Pevan never approved of
anything he did, even when it was obviously the right thing to do.
At least a quiet Sherim meant it was safe to talk for a moment or
two.

She winced, “I
know. Will you go all the way to the Court?”

“Better safe
than sorry. Can’t you get me any closer to the Sherim?”

“Be careful.”
She put her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, and Rel
found himself clenching his fists as he grabbed her. Too late to
back out now, but this was stupid. If the Second Realm itself
didn’t find some inventive new way to kill him, the Wildren would
get him, and if they didn’t he’d have to come back to Dora. If he
was lucky, she’d only skin him alive metaphorically. If she came
back herself from whatever she’d been doing.

In the wall of
the bridge, the Gateway twisted. The swirling wrongness of the
Sherim was visible beyond the opening, but the surface of the Gate
rippled, distorting the image. Reluctantly, Rel let his sister go,
and pointed at the Gateway.

“Is that
normal?”

“Up here?
That’s calm. Get going, I feel like my brain’s turning to
soup.”

Rel took a deep
breath and took a step towards the Gateway. Normally, stepping
through was like stepping through a doorway, but his hair stood on
end just being close to it. He closed his eyes and walked through,
trying to fight down a shudder.

The Sherim
looked like an ordinary wooden door, standing upright without a
frame on the wind-swept grass. To either side, the ground fell
away, to the Federas valley on one side and towards Nursim on the
other. Ahead, the brow climbed to the low top of Aruls beyond the
Sherim. Not that you could walk a step past the Sherim in that
direction.

The Gift made
Rel’s eyes ache as he walked down to the door, and he stifled a
yawn. Focussing on the door kept his attention off the strangeness
at the corners of his vision, but he was used to it anyway; the
slopes to either side, if glanced at carelessly, seemed to ripple,
almost to flap like wings.

A few feet
short of the door, Rel stopped, turned to his right, and began to
circle it. This wasn’t the only Sherim to be marked by a door - the
clash between first- and second-realm logic threw up some strange
patterns - but at none of them did one open the door to pass
through. Some doors simply didn’t open; some, like this one, would,
but all anyone would tell Rel was that there were dire consequences
for doing so.

He let himself
dwell on that as he passed round the back of the door. Sometimes
Dora still treated him like a child, to be scared into obedience by
monsters under the bed. He was a grown man, and she only a handful
of years older than him.

He passed in
front of the door again, feeling the Sherim start to tighten around
him. If he looked down, he knew, his feet would already be a few
inches above the grass. Of course, if he looked down his own
internal logic would reassert itself and he’d fall back to the
ground. Dora used to find all sorts of ways to trick him into
looking down when she was training him. She had no right treating
him like a child when she was so childish herself.

Pressure built
at the back of his neck, like one of those itches that moves when
you try to scratch it. Pevan said she liked the feel of the Sherim,
something about the way it touched her skin. It had no right to
behave like that with his sister. He was all the way around the
back of the door again and coming back to the front. He couldn’t
feel the lean, but he knew he was almost eight feet off the ground,
and leaning far enough over that, if normal gravity still held,
he’d fall flat on his face.

Something about
Pevan. His... sister? Or was that Dora? With the way she was always
teasing him, she might as well be. Which of them was he thinking
about? Dora, with her boyish body but oh-so-feminine hands. No,
that was Pevan. Dora had the eyes. His eyes were boiling. Third
time round the door. Did he have eyes? Surely if he did, they’d be
open, and he’d be able to see the hillside a hundred feet below,
and Nursim in front of him if he raised his head a little.

So, no eyes.
Did he at least still have a body?

Still?

Nothing was
ever still in the Sherim. Right on the brow, the wind was always
strong. The wind was cool on his brow. Except that it couldn’t be,
because his eyes that he didn’t have were hot. No body then. He
didn’t have a body, or he was nobody?

He opened his
eyes. Rel. That was him. Rel was somebody. Rel was in the Second
Realm, now.

Slowly, his
brain erected a semblance of first-realm logic between him and the
world. Up was the direction his head was pointing. That meant that
the big green thing in front of him was a plain. Other features
resolved themselves into the sky, trees, the far-distant towers of
the Court. Rel allowed himself to relax when he managed to pin down
the red flower that grew out of the sky about half-way across the
plain. Going through the Sherim was never pleasant, but if you knew
what you were doing it could at least be made more or less
consistent.

The Court was a
jagged interruption of the flat horizon, six dark spires stabbing
into the yellow fringe of the sky, a day’s walk or more distant.
You could walk there across the plain if you had the time and
stamina; this close to the First Realm, things were relatively
stable and even the predatory Wildren were wary of humans. There
were a few pitfalls, but it was easily the safest way to reach the
Court.

Unfortunately,
Rel didn’t have a day to walk to the Court. He turned to his left,
feeling the dull ache of logic fatigue settling somewhere behind
his forehead. A path, paved in red brick, led along the side of the
plain, up to a small stone bungalow. Rel took the path, trying to
ignore the green of the plains grass shifting slowly to grey, until
only a fool could see anything other than a steep, unforgiving
stone hillside falling away to a precipice far below.

A thin trail of
smoke wound up from the bungalow’s chimney. That was good - the mad
child was in - but also bad; the mad child was in. Rel ignored the
cheery red door and smashed his way through the sole window.

Inside, the
bungalow’s single room was neatly organised, with pans hanging from
a rack on the wall, powdered spices in little jars on a rack, and a
fire roaring in the hearth. The mad child sat with a blanket
wrapped around her in a rocking-chair by the fire, her face so
folded with wrinkles that you could almost convince yourself she
had eyes and a mouth.

Her voice was a
rustle of autumn leaves as she said, “Bravo. You’re just in time
for dinner. Would you like something to drink?”

Rel climbed
over the stone sink and let himself down onto the floor, carefully
avoiding the white tiles. With his boots on, he had to place his
feet diagonally across the black tiles. He said, “Sorry, sister, I
came to feed you, I don’t really have time to chat.”

He expected her
to protest, but instead she simply said, “You’d better get cooking,
then, hadn’t you?”

Rel took a deep
breath, then walked over to the hearth and sat down on the fire. He
stared at the mad child’s face; if you thought about the fire too
much, first-realm logic took over and you burned. Flames rose
around the hearth, though, eating at the walls and floor of the
bungalow but not touching anything alive.

Rel closed his
eyes, sat back, and took a step forward. He almost imagined he
could hear the mad child’s scream of frustration in the rush of air
that carried him up the chimney, but even that was strangely muted.
When he opened his eyes, he was walking along the narrow plume of
smoke from a chimney and hearth that stood, bereft of their house,
on the edge of a cliff. The smoke blew out across the chasm - the
bottom was covered in what looked like a lush, dark-blue carpet -
and Rel blew with it, each step carrying him dozens of feet.

The far side of
the chasm passed by beneath, and Rel let himself lean backward
until he drifted in a river of the fine strands of smoke. The river
parted and he fell towards the stony ground, but all it took was
remembering that he had done this before, and he landed in a pool
of water - First Realm logic said that if he’d survived the fall
first time, he had to survive it this time.

Logic fatigue
made his head throb as the well started to drain, sucking him down
with it, and then there was just the breathless rush, half-drowning
as he shot down the pipe, sometimes smothered by the water as it
fell with him, sometimes floating on it. Twice he bounced hard off
the side of the tube in sharp corners, but if anything that made
the headache recede slightly.

It was when he
found himself floating, upside-down, in water that flowed along the
top of the pipe while the bottom half opened to show the field
below that the ache at the front of his brain started to pound. The
pipe curved around through about half the required dimensions, and
suddenly he was stumbling onto a tiny ledge, staggering forward and
pressing himself to the cliff face as gallons of water lashed at
him.

Behind him was
an open expanse of blue that could only be called sky, except that
it went all the way round from above his head to below the ledge.
In front, the cliff went on as far as he could see in every way,
broken only by the plain steel door that opened onto the ledge.

You could open
the door, according to Dora, but that way didn’t go to the Court.
Instead, Rel spread his arms and reimagined them as wings. A
handful of feathers, freckled with brown spots and tipped with
shimmering green - he had to work to get that colour; Dora’s
feathers were an exquisite iridescent blue naturally - drifted to
the floor as he flexed, then sprang forward, straight at the
cliff.

Air caught his
pinions as the cliff ghosted past, as solid as mist, and he swooped
with the feeling of great bags of wind hanging from his shoulders.
For a blessed moment, there was no Second Realm, no Clearsight, no
headache; just a slow, spiralling glide down to the Court. Rel
fought the desire to climb a little and prolong the flight. There
wasn’t time. There never was, but someday...

Landing
snatched the thought away from him, as he stretched his feet down
towards the weathervane on the Tower of Birds. Boots struck iron,
wings became arms, and swoop became fall. He tumbled down the
sharply-sloping tiles and caught the edge. His head chose that
moment to throb, and he dropped to the walkway with enough force to
drive him to his knees.

Doubling over,
Rel pressed his forehead to the cool stone and clamped his hands
over his ears. He didn’t have time for this. Rissad could already
be freeing himself. He clenched his teeth, lips pulled back in a
silent snarl. Focus returned enough to get him back up to a sitting
position. Did he need to go inside? No, the battlement would be
enough. Would have to be enough; he was too close to losing his
battle with the Second Realm’s logic to risk the impossible maze of
the Court’s halls.