The Crooked Letter (37 page)

But Hadrian would be dead, and that wasn’t a solution as far as Seth was concerned.

He could smell stone and blood. It was a genuine smell, not something filtered through his senses from the Second Realm and mistranslated in the process. Its richness surprised and alarmed him — and disturbed him, too. The overlap of minds profoundly undermined his sense of self.

‘I think he’s hurt,’ Seth said, trying his utmost to keep the vertigo to a minimum. ‘I don’t think he’s dead. El— Ellis was with him.’

Xol’s hand kneaded his shoulder. ‘That’s good news, my friend.’

Seth’s feelings were more complex than that, but he was glad that Ellis appeared to have escaped from his killers.

The feelings faded. The divide between the twins slammed back into place.

‘We must keep moving,’ said the kaia’s current mouthpiece.

Seth resigned himself to opening his eyes again. The Path swayed and swung in front of him, but he felt none of the backflipping he had experienced before.

‘How much further, Spekoh?’ he asked.

‘The Raised Land lies ahead.’ The kaia group-mind had been giving exactly the same answer for the last two hours.

‘Will we have time to rest when we get there?’

Agatha’s expression said it all.

‘I didn’t think so.’ Seth sighed. He grunted and managed to get to his feet. ‘Right. Back to it. There’s nothing I can do for Hadrian from here.’

As the motley group continued its journey, he wondered if there had ever been anything he could do for Hadrian. The barrier between them had grown steadily thicker in their teenage years to the point where they needed that divide more than they had ever needed each other. It became like a supporting wall between two apartments. Removing it would have brought both of them tumbling down.

Now, after Sweden, the wall was all that remained. Hadrian was on his own, and so was Seth.

But he has Ellis,
a dark place in his mind whispered.

He gritted his teeth and kept walking.

* * * *

The expedition to Sheol had come out of the top of the ‘twixter with the fomore far behind them. Two of the kaia had been caught up in the swirling winds and didn’t emerge. Seth wondered if that was what the storm had meant by taking its ‘fill’ — a tribute in exchange for their safe passage. If that was the case, it had chosen well; the kaia didn’t seem to mind at all that their number was reduced to five.

From the top of the storm, well above the foulness of Abaddon, the Second Realm had been an amazing sight, and Seth had taken a moment to bask in the many colours, shapes and perspectives of his new world. His eyes were dragged from wonder to wonder. Was that flock of balloon-shaped creatures that converged on a cloud a kilometre or so away a swarm of living things or a natural phenomenon? Where did the mountains he could see bulging out of the surface of the world come from if there were no tectonic movements to ram continents together? What was the L-shaped red patch that glowed like molten lava on the far side of the world?

Gradually it became clear that there was an ecosystem in the sky, just as there was on the ground, ranging from ethereal beasts as large as whales down to seaweed-like fronds that drifted on thin air, waving listlessly back and forth. These were hunted by bright star-shaped mouths that swooped through the air trailing numerous slender tentacles behind them. When they fed, they burned like miniature suns.

With the saraph wings buzzing like a lawnmower at his back, he rose steadily into the sky alongside the others, feeling not even remotely like an angel — more like an unwieldy dragonfly — but wondering if this was where that particular legend had sprung from. Agatha stayed close to shout directions. Xol showed him how to will the wings open so he could glide. As though they had choreographed it beforehand, the expedition fell into a protective, vaguely hammer-shaped formation around him, with two kaia trailing at the rear. Together they spiralled up into the sky, circling lazily until Abaddon was just a scratchy black stain far below and Yod a tarry pimple sticking out of it.

Only from that perspective did Seth see the fissures. Faint, golden lines traced angular patterns across the surface of the Second Realm. They twinkled faintly, as though the ground was just a thin crust over a glowing substrate. The Second Realm appeared to be cracking up.

‘Is it always like this?’ he shouted to Xol. ‘Did I just not notice it before?’

‘No,’ the dimane said, ‘this is new.’

‘The Cataclysm,’ shouted Agatha over the sound of their wings, a worried expression on her face. ‘It strikes deep!’

‘What happens if Yod gets its way? Will this all break apart?’

‘No one knows.’ Agatha shook her head. ‘I hope never to find out.’

Sheol burned constantly above them, too bright to look at directly. As high as they had come, it seemed no closer, and after a while he began to grow weary of flying. It had been fun at first, once they had cleared the ‘twixter, but now it was just uncomfortable. His shoulders and thighs ached from the harness gripping him, and the bones of his skull — if he still had any — felt as though they’d softened into jelly. He longed to put his dangling legs on solid ground and stand as he’d been built to. Time dragged and he seemed to have been caught in a trap of perspective: the ground was no longer receding, and Sheol was coming no closer. They were in a hellish kind of purgatory that only plummeting back to the ground could free them from.

He couldn’t look directly upward, due to Sheol’s brightness, so it came as a surprise when they reached the hole in the sky that was the lowest entrance onto the Path of Life. A shadow suddenly fell over them, and he found himself staring up into a gap in space, a topological cave that led to another place entirely. It loomed out of the sky like the rear bays of an aircraft carrier, a skewed oval with knife-sharp edges and walls of a dark brown stone-like finish. The depths of the entrance were shrouded in blackness.
Wormhole,
he thought, but for worms the size of the cloud-whales he’d seen earlier.

The formation broke apart around him. The lead kaia settled onto an overhanging edge that took their weight easily, even though it seemed as thin as paper. Their wings fluttered and vanished one at a time, then they guided the others aboard with small but strong hands. Seth tested the surface before standing on it. By rights the structure shouldn’t have been there at all; it should have fallen out of or evaporated back into the sky in an instant. It felt as solid as a rock.

The kaia helped him out of his harness.

‘Won’t we need the wings to go the rest of the way?’

‘No,’ said Spekoh flatly. ‘We will follow the Path of Life.’

‘I thought we already were.’

‘The Path is not a direction, or a road, or something you can point to on a map.’

‘So what is it then?’

One kaia pointed deeper into the hole in the sky. A different one answered. ‘The Path is this way.’

Seth peered into the hole and saw nothing but more hole. A cool wind blew steadily out of it.

Agatha seemed, for once, as poorly informed as Seth. ‘We take you at your word, Spekoh,’ she said. ‘How far to Tatenen?’

‘It lies ahead,’ said the kaia. Seth would soon grow tired of that phrase. ‘Please follow, being sure to walk where and as we do. The way is perilous. Once begun, turning back is not permitted.’

With that caution, the kaia led the way into the hole in the sky.

* * * *

The Path of Life was like nothing Seth could ever have imagined. His previous experiences offered no analogy, no easy means of understanding its existence or purpose. After what felt like a small eternity thinking about it, he came to the conclusion that the Path had
no
purpose: it wasn’t a made thing, or even a natural thing. It didn’t fit into any grand scheme. It just was.

It was, he decided, a mistake. A flaw. A jagged, crack in the sky, with just enough room along its heart for a handful of people to tread.

Seth concentrated on the back of the kaia ahead of him. If he looked to either side, his mind reeled and his body reeled with it. The physical properties of the Path of Life — or the physical metaphor that wrapped around it, like the flesh of an oyster embracing a nascent pearl — were unnerving to an extreme. The edges of the Path weren’t solid; they were spatial. Light bunched and slewed across them, giving them a liquid sheen. Ahead and behind was blackness, but up, down and to either side was a mishmash of perspectives. Shimmering reflections formed and dissolved without warning. At one point, he was surrounded by images of his own face, twisted horribly from true. It was exceedingly difficult to find a point of solid reference at any one time, so his balance skidded and dived at the slightest provocation.

Birth metaphors came to mind and he wondered what sort of transformation such a disorienting canal might lead him to.

‘I feel your discomfort,’ said Agatha, easing her way past Xol to walk beside Seth. ‘We all do.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He kicked himself for letting his concentration slip.

‘No, it’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘The Path of Life is responsible. It is neither realm nor devachan but something in between. Some pansophists say that it formed during the last partial Cataclysm, or the one before that; others think that its origins might actually lie as far back as the dismemberment of Ymir. The Holy Immortals believe that our understanding of the universe cannot be complete unless we understand the Path as well as everything around it. They travel the Path in search of enlightenment, and in doing so pass between all of the realms we know. And more besides, perhaps.’

Why are you telling me this?
he wanted to ask.

‘To distract you,’ she said, still seeing past his mental block, ‘and to help you understand why it is you feel disoriented. We are in a space that does not fit our expectations. We all feel disoriented here. You are not alone.’

He felt churlish. ‘Thanks, Agatha. I apologise again.’

‘There is no need. I am acting selfishly, too. When you are distracted, I am distracted. Your mood affects us all.’

Aha.
That made more sense. He nodded acknowledgement and resolved to do better at maintaining the block on his thoughts. He would prove to her that he was more than an invalid slowing the rest of them down.

Agatha stayed at his side. ‘I also wish to explain something to you,’ she said. ‘Or try to, at least.’

He did his best to repress his automatic apprehension. ‘Okay. Go ahead.’

She hesitated, then reached into her top, and produced one of her rings. ‘You’ve seen me use these,’ she said. ‘They are my weapons. They work like lenses, like the mnemonic Xol placed on your arm. They focus my will.’ She looked at him, perhaps to make certain he was following her. ‘They take the energy I give them, and they direct it in the manner of my choosing. I lose energy in the process of using them. That is the nature of magic, you see.’

He nodded, curious as to why she was revealing this to him now. The ring was a thin loop of unadorned silver that glittered in the odd light, as though covered with millions of tiny facets. He had never seen such fine work in the First Realm, and could only guess at its origins in the Second. Perhaps they were family heirlooms: the work of some heroic ancestor, handed from daughter to daughter down the centuries. Or perhaps Agatha had conducted a fabulous quest across the landscape of the Second Realm, battling exotic beasts and duelling ancient deities to steal the complete set of rings from the ten-fingered hand of a monstrous living statue.

Agatha smiled and, much to his surprise, offered him the ring. ‘You have a very strange impression of me,’ she said. ‘There are no heirlooms in the Second Realm, as you imagine them, and no treasures waiting to be plundered. I made these myself. They will be unmade when I die.’

He took the ring, impressed and slightly abashed. It was heavy in his hand, and surprisingly small.

‘How do I make it work?’

She smiled gently, recognising the inane question for what it was. ‘Words direct the will. Words are lenses, too. The entire world is a magnifying glass through which we — our souls — examine the lives we make for ourselves. It’s up to us whether we see clearly or not.’

He was less interested in the philosophy than in the object in his hand, but he began to see, then, what she was trying to tell him. ‘That’s what the Second Realm is to you,’ he said. ‘A means of finding yourself.’

She nodded. ‘My kind live in wonder and exist to protect the source of that wonder. We are wards and guardians at the same time. The realm embraces us, yet at times we are forced to stand outside it in order to defend it. That is often the way with love.’

‘And that’s why you’re helping me,’ he said, ‘even though you hate what I am.’

‘I hate more what I would become if I
didn’t
help you, in spite of what that might ultimately mean for the realm.’

‘So you want to have your cake and eat it too. That doesn’t often work out very well.’

She nodded unhappily.

He hefted the ring, wishing that life had stopped being hard when he had technically stopped being alive. ‘Could I make something like this?’

‘Of course, if you had a hundred years to spare.’

‘That’s all, huh?’

‘Yes.’ Some of her usual briskness returned. He took that as a good sign. ‘I have never believed in doing things by halves.’

He handed her back the ring, understanding that this was the other thing she had been trying to tell him.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I have the whole of you on my side.’

She acknowledged the comment with a nod. The ring disappeared under a fold of her tunic with the others. There, he hoped, it would stay for the duration of their journey.

* * * *

Seth concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, fighting both disorientation and the memory-flashes of Ellis. By focussing on the back of the kaia ahead and, when things became too weird, shutting his eyes entirely, he hoped to make it through this leg of the Path without throwing up, or whatever the Second Realm equivalent of that was.