The Crooked Letter (18 page)

‘Goodbye, Mimir,’ she said, dropping the disc at her feet and crushing it beneath one black heel. ‘Until the next Cataclysm, perhaps.’

Fragments of glass flew in all directions. A sudden wind blew around them, like a miniature hurricane, billowing Hadrian’s shirt and getting in nis eyes. Then it was gone, and he was left blinking in the aftermath of the strange encounter. There was no sound but echoes of the wind, and no signs of life but for the giant blank eyes of the Kerubim. And themselves.

And magic.

Any doubts Hadrian might have entertained about Kybele’s sincerity on that score were now firmly dispelled.

‘Can we believe what it said?’ he asked her, not sure what he wanted her to say in reply. ‘About Yod? About Lascowicz? About the Swarm?’

Give in now,
the Wolf had told him,
and deny us the pleasure of hunting you.

‘It has its own vision, Hadrian,’ she said. ‘As we all do. I’ll trust it on some points. If the Swarm is indeed waking, then our time is very short.’

‘What sort of hunters are they?’ he asked, chilled by her tone. ‘Can’t we just lie low and hide from them?’

‘You know what vampires are,’ she said. It wasn’t a question. ‘There have been many stories about them told through history: of vicious demons living on blood; of mad murderers in the dead of the night; of death-hungry witches devouring children and lustful men. They’re all based on the Swarm and their spawn, the draci. Humans have toned the memories down to help themselves sleep at night. That the Swarm is awake and working with the energumen is a terrifying thought.’

Hadrian had seen enough in recent days to believe in vampires, but
worse
than vampires ...? He couldn’t tell if Kybele was just trying to scare him or if she meant it. Possibly both.

‘So we run.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘The Cataclysm is only beginning. There is a certain amount of time open to us before such forces will attain their full power. We’re going to find Lascowicz before the Swarm finds
us.
We’re going to strike first.’

He eyed her uncertainly. ‘And Ellis, too. We’re going to find her as well, right?’

‘I said I’d help you, Hadrian, and I will. Trust me. What you’re going to gain will far outstrip what you’ve lost.’

A chill wind rose up, driving away the warmth of the sun.

Kybele guided him back to the car where the Bes were playing a silent finger game to pass the time. There were five of them now. They shuffled along the seat as the Galloi climbed inside, then resumed their unblinking vigil like birds on a wire watching a coming storm. The Galloi pressed a chocolate bar into his hand, its deep-set stare insisting he take it. He ate it gratefully, feeling not quite one of the gang but at least temporarily out of harm’s way.

The car purred like a big cat as Kybele climbed behind the wheel. The carved stone was sitting exactly where he had left it.

Mimir had told him that some place called Sheol was important and to seek the Sisters, whoever they were. He didn’t know what that had to do with Ellis or Seth. When he pressed Kybele for information about them, she was evasive, saying only that the Sisters had been part of the Second Realm since the last Cataclysm.

‘You have to walk before you can run,’ she said. Take it slowly. You’ll get there in the end.’

‘I didn’t ask for this,’ he said, fighting a rising tide of resentment, ‘and neither did Seth.’

‘You’re caught in it now. I don’t see the point denying it.’

‘Neither do I. I just wish there was something I could do about it.’

‘There will be, Hadrian. Don’t you worry about that. Let me help you look for Ellis, for now, and we’ll work out what to do about Lascowicz and the Nail as we go. I suspect that these two ends will prove to be inseparable, in the long run.’

‘How?’

She smiled. ‘Let me keep some secrets just a little longer, will you?’

His right hand clutched the bone of his brother where it sat in his pocket.

Kybele drove on under a chaotic sky.

* * * *

‘Gods are solitary beings, like most predators.

Only prey socialises.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS.
EXEGESIS 10:5

t is good that you have come to us,’ said Barbelo, the leader of the resistance movement in the Second Realm. ‘The Cataclysm we dreaded is here. In the times to come, we will all lose something and gain something. This is your chance to gain, although loss is still fresh in your mind and heart.’

Seth didn’t know what to say. He, Xol and Agatha were standing in a large marble hall — or so it looked to his eyes — surrounded by gracefully carved Grecian pillars and waterfalls. In the centre, facing them, was the golden statue of a woman caught in the act of turning. With one leg lifted off the ground and one hand upraised to shoulder height, she looked no more than fifteen, and was sculpted wearing a flowing cloak that exposed one sexless breast to the eyes of her audience. She didn’t move, and nothing about her seemed overtly magical — except for the voice, which echoed through the chamber in rich, almost masculine tones — but Seth found it difficult to stare directly at her. She glowed with more than light, making his eyes blur and water if he persisted.

Hard radiation,
he thought.
Maybe she’s made of yellowcake.

That speculation, an involuntary one when first ushered into her presence, slipped through the mnemonic Xol had given him. The dimane had painted a mark on Seth’s inner left forearm: two concentric squares, one slightly larger than the other. When he clenched his fist, they rotated in opposite directions. ‘Concentrate on this shape moving in this way,’ Xol had said, ‘and your thoughts will be obscured.’ It seemed to work, although he didn’t understand why. Agatha didn’t frown so much when he mentally cursed her. None of the passersby in Bethel had looked at him oddly. Not more than once, anyway.

The irony of that wasn’t lost on him. Bethel, the location of Barbelo’s temple, was disorienting and strange. Its buildings ranged from bulbous white houses, clumped together like pebbles along convoluted thoroughfares, to slender, graceful towers stretching high into the sky. People and other creatures were everywhere, following the streets in all directions, moving in and out of buildings on mysterious errands: giants and dwarves; skin of all shades and colours of the rainbow; multiple limbs, features and bodies; extra limbs made of substance other than flesh, such as wood or metal or glass; beings that didn’t move at all but had to be pushed around in wheeled chairs or that floated through the air by force of will alone. There were insubstantial beings, suggestions of strange shapes that lurked just out of sight, blurred as if the air was too thick between them and him. Some were transparent or distorted, or lacked perspective, or constantly changed shape. Some he couldn’t look at directly.

The weirdest thing about Bethel was that the entire place — roads, buildings, signs, public squares — stood a full metre off the ground. Seth hadn’t noticed at first. Only as he stepped over a drain did he realise that the surface of the Second Realm actually lay some distance below, in the town’s shadow. Then he noticed the stays and bolts holding the town’s structures together. The roads and sidewalks didn’t move under foot, any more than those of a normal town would, but because he couldn’t tell what held it up — it could have been floating magically for all he knew, or standing on monstrous legs — he nonetheless had the distinct impression that the entire town might start moving at any moment. It gave a whole new meaning, he thought, to the term ‘high-rise district’.

If the town seemed strange to him, the sky was stranger still. The sun hung directly overhead, as it had been before. Yet he had been travelling with Xol and Agatha for what felt like hours. What were the odds, he wondered, that he should look up exactly at noon both times?

Sun and sky.
His mind knew instinctively how to interpret what he saw above him. Only with the greatest of effort, and in the face of incontrovertible evidence, could he convince himself to see things differently. Directly above wasn’t a blue sky dotted with cirrus, as he was used to, but another landscape entirely. He saw fields and hills and lakes stretching up across the dome of the heavens, hazy like an impressionist oil painting. The landscape curved up around him, and met itself on the far side of Sheol.

Any lingering doubts that he was somewhere completely alien to everything he had ever known were dispelled in that moment. The Second Realm was the inside of a giant sphere, a hollow world with life clinging to its inner surface. Sheol hung in its exact centre, its light shining on every square metre of the world around him. That was why it was still noon. It was always noon in the Second Realm. Twilight, sunrise, sunset, night — no such things existed in the world Agatha called home.

He realised then that his mind was losing its capacity for wonder. How could he stand in the place where legends were born and not be accepting? He was beginning to allow each new amazement with numb finality.

Finality, but not fatality, he hoped.

‘The Second Realm,’ said Barbelo in response to his inappropriate yellowcake thought, ‘is built on the persistent illusion of self. The shape humans are born into in the First Realm is given to you whether you want it or not. You carry this shape here, after your death, and it holds for a while. But it will not hold forever. Here, there is no escaping who you are — for that is
all
you are. Your true shape reveals itself in time. The more you try to hide your true shape, the more it erupts from within you. You will see.’

He bowed his head in something like apology, embarrassed that his concentration had lapsed and fearful that he might have insulted something that, by the only frame of reference he truly understood, might be a god.

‘We have witnessed disturbances in the underworld,’ said Agatha, her narrow, limber frame bent in obeisance. ‘At first we thought it was just the usual provocations, but I sense direction behind it. Misdirection. Our attention is being diverted while darker work is put into effect.’

‘Unrest is spreading,’ Barbelo agreed. ‘I have received reports of strange magics in the nether regions, of fractures in Bardo and armies massing to take the leap. I fear for both realms if the distance between them shrinks sufficiently. Baal is too somnolent to resist a major incursion, I think.’

‘Yod will still need the support of the elohim — and more, if the Cataclysm is to last. What of the Fundamental Forces? Will the Sisters stand against the Nail? Will the Eight? Will the handsome king?’

‘The alignment is only now beginning to shift deeper in-realm. Those alert and sensitive to such things will know, but some may stir slowly.’ Although no expression appeared on the golden statue’s soft-featured face, Barbelo’s voice was full of warning. ‘It is our duty to alert the old ones. Who can stand against Yod and hope to prevail? Without them, no one.’

Xol nodded grimly, and Agatha allowed a frown ro break her adoring mask. Seth looked on, following the discussion with some difficulty. Yod and Barbelo were enemies; that much was clear. Who the Fundamental Forces were — the Sisters, the Eight and the handsome king among them — he didn’t know, but they sounded important. The Nail, he had learned, was another name for Yod, and the elohim were a superior breed or class of daktyloi, the inhabitants of the Second Realm: high ranking but not as powerful as the deii who ruled under Yod. Bardo, if he remembered correctly, was the black void that lay between the First and Second Realms, which Seth had crossed after being killed by the Swede.

He
did
know that the topic of discussion wasn’t the one he’d been promised.

‘What about Hadrian and Ellis?’ he asked. ‘How can we make sure they’re safe?’

He felt Barbelo’s attention turn on him again, and his scalp prickled.

‘Your brother’s fate is out of our hands,’ said the statue. ‘Were he in this world, we could protect him as we intend to protect you. But he is not, so we cannot.’

‘There must be
something
you can do,’ he insisted.

‘We have connections,’ said Agatha. ‘Some have helped us establish networks in the world from which you came. They are being mobilised as we speak to look for your twin, among other things. It may be that one of them has already found him, and will keep him from those who would do him harm.’

‘Can you take me back there?’

Agatha shook her head. ‘No. That isn’t possible. You are human; you can only go forward. What you ask for is as impossible as returning to the womb.’

‘The Sisters could do it,’ said the dimane, his crest rattling.

Agatha looked at him in surprise.

‘The Sisters can do many things,’ said Barbelo, ‘not all of them to our benefit. You know that well. We should appeal to them only as a last resort.’

A stubborn silence fell. Seth wanted to press the point, but it was difficult to contemplate defying Barbelo. Her presence was authoritative and confident in her temple, where he felt neither.