The Crooked Letter (42 page)

The swarm was thinning. Soon it would be past, and there would be no chance at all of hitching a lift.

‘What do I do now, Spekoh?’ There was a panicked note to his voice.
I
don’t want to be left behind!

‘All is not yet lost. One of us will swing around Sheol and pick you up on the return.’

‘Flow long will that take?’

‘Some time. Our orbit is still quite wide.’

‘Minutes? Hours? Days?’

‘Hours.’ The kaia watched as he climbed wearily to his feet and made another equally futile grab for another of the flying grey acorns.

Seth thought bleakly of their pursuer. It wouldn’t take too long for him or her to reach the funnel ... certainly not hours. He would be vulnerable with only the one kaia to fight beside him. If it came down to defending himself with willpower, his grasp of his new talents was still rather shaky. Tatenen had proved that he was far from all-powerful.

A handful of the Vaimnamne swept by, well out of reach. The swarm was mostly spent. He watched the stragglers go and wondered how Xol and the others were faring. Had they reached the next leg of the Path already? Had they realised that he wasn’t among them? Were they even now trying to turn their steeds back, and failing?

‘Seth.’ The voice of the kaia snapped him out of his gloomy reflections.

‘What?’

‘Look.’ The childlike figure’s left hand pointed at the very last of the Vaimnamne. It was larger than the others, bringing up the rear like a sheepdog intent on gathering stragglers.

It was coming right for him.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. It was either trying to kill him or wanted him to jump aboard. He had to assume the latter, and had only a moment to ready himself. ‘What about you? You jump on as well.’

Spekoh didn’t reply. As the last Vaimnamne rushed toward him, he felt the hands of the kaia grip him around the waist and give him a solid push. He clutched at the Vaimnamne as clumsily as a baby for its parent. It rocketed into his arms and, with a bone-jarring lurch, pulled him off his feet and into the sky.

The world tumbled around him. A wail emerged helplessly from his mouth. He wrapped his legs around its cool metallic skin and glanced fleetingly behind him. The funnel receded with disconcerting speed, the kaia standing alone on its lip, watching him go. Then the Vaimnamne rotated once about its axis and put on a burst of speed.

Seth belatedly remembered what Agatha had said about bending the creature to his will.

‘I need to go with the others, up there,’ he gasped, risking letting go with one hand to point at the greenish glint.

‘I know,’ the Vaimnamne said in a surprisingly human-sounding voice. ‘That is why none of my kind will carry you.’

Seth was speechless for a moment. This he hadn’t expected at all. He had imagined the Vaimnamne as animals, not people.

‘You have so much to learn,’ said the creature he rode. ‘Nothing lives here without a mind, for nothing can grow without will, and without a mind there can be no will. Everything you see that moves and changes does so at the urging of itself or another. Without will, there is nothing but death.’

He mentally kicked himself. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. I hope I didn’t offend you.’

‘On this matter, I am not offended. I am simply trying to tell you something you need to know. The First and Second Realms are fundamentally divided. In the First Realm, you have to learn to use willpower; it does not come naturally. In the Second Realm, you have to learn to exercise physkality, for that is not a natural phenomenon here. You and your brother exist at meeting places of the two realms; you have both at your disposal. Those like us who evolved here are not so lucky. We are confined to our environment as the creatures you call fish are confined to the sea. There is no crossing over for us. We live here and are of here. Without the Second Realm,
just
the Second Realm, we are nothing.’

The Vaimnamne’s voice was firm but sorrowful.

‘My kind will not carry you,’ it said, ‘because they fear the destruction you could wreak upon us.’

‘What destruction?’ The words emerged from his mouth without thought. He retracted them immediately. ‘No, I understand what you’re saying. If the realms join, they’ll be changed. You’ll lose your home.’

‘Yes. And we will die.’

‘Are you trying to blame me for this?’

‘You are the key to all the changes overtaking the realm. That is not your fault, but it is your responsibility. I ask you to find a way to turn things back. Return to the First Realm. Leave us to explore the heavens in peace.’

Seth heard desperate longing in the creature’s voice.

It’s not up to me,
he wanted to say.
I
didn’t choose to be here; I wanted none of this. Why does what I decide have to make such a difference?

‘Well,’ he managed, ‘I’m certainly doing everything in my power to make that happen.’

‘Hear my words,’ said the Vaimnamne. ‘The decision is not yours. It belongs to the Sisters who tend the Flame. You can only plead your case. Do you not know exactly what awaits you?’

He had to admit that he had only the dimmest understanding of what the Sisters did in the Second Realm, and how in particular they could help him. ‘I’m going to ask them to send me back to the First Realm,’ he said. ‘That’ll fix your problem. Wouldn’t it?’

‘Yes, unless your brother also dies. If that happens, I do not think the Sisters will aid you twice — or that Yod would allow you a second chance to try.’

That was a sobering thought. Seth clung tightly to the metallic back of the Vaimnamne and told himself that the sinking feeling in his gut was the result of his precarious position and the rate at which he was ascending, nothing else.

‘So it’s now or never,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘That’s just great. As if I didn’t already have enough to worry about.’

The green speck grew steadily brighter before him as the swarm of Vaimnamne approached. He could see the three kaia travelling in a perfectly straight line, directed by a single will. He thought he might have spotted Xol by virtue of his colouring. The others were lost against the backdrop of the Second Realm.

‘Why you?’ he asked. ‘Why are you the only one who will give me a ride?’

‘I am the leader of the Vaimnamne. It is my responsibility to explain our plight to you. I have to believe that you possess the determination and ingenuity required to restore the world to the way it’s supposed to be.’

‘Maybe you’re talking to the wrong person,’ he said, thinking of the Ogdoad’s words.
His brother comes. We will be saved, then.
‘Maybe you’d have been better off with Hadrian.’

‘I do not trust the prophecies of ancient, enchanted minds. I trust only what I see and feel around me. You are real, and you are here. It is you in whom I must place my faith.’ The Vaimnamne banked smoothly to the left, following the rest of the swarm as it swept up to the green spark. ‘Please, Seth Castillo, do not kill us.’

Seth didn’t know what to say in reply. He felt uncomfortable promising anything, given his circumstances. Everyone wanted something from him. Agatha wanted him to help Barbelo win the war against Yod and save the realm. The kaia wanted to walk under the light of Sheol again, when Yod was overthrown. Xol’s motivations were altruistic on the surface, but they almost certainly hid a need for redemption; if the brother Xol had murdered couldn’t forgive him, perhaps Seth could do it in his place.

Synett didn’t seem to want anything at all. He had only come along because Barbelo asked him to do so and Agatha had insisted. Did that mean he had no motive, or that his true motivation was hidden?

Seth didn’t know. He didn’t know what he himself wanted, either. The thought of going back to the First Realm had initially filled him with relief, even hope — but then he had caught the vision of Hadrian and Ellis together, and his feelings had turned sour.

Did he really want to go back there, to the way it had been?

What if the choice was between doing that and becoming the destroyer of an entire species? Of an entire
world?

The Vaimnamne banked again. Seth’s arms were getting sore from hanging on, and a renewed fear of falling flared up in him.

‘How much longer?’ he asked. Their destination was looming large ahead of them, but not quickly enough for his liking,

‘You are safe with me,’ the Vaimnamne reassured him.

‘Thanks. I guess if you’d wanted me dead, you could have dropped me ages ago.’

‘That is true, Seth.’

‘Do you have a name?’

‘I do.’

Seth waited, but it wasn’t offered. He took the hint and rode the rest of the way in silence.

* * * *

‘A world without gods is not a world without

wonder. Strangeness walks our land as it always

has. It simply takes new shapes and wears new

faces.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
EXEGESIS 10:12

adrian and Ellis quenched their thirst in an uninhabited tropical fish shop. The tanks were full of dead fish, undrinkable and foul smelling, but there was a large bottle of water in the rear office and a cupboard full of slightly stale muesli snacks. Hadrian ate voraciously, not realising until then just how hungry he was. With something in his stomach, his headache eased, and they were soon on their way again.

They kept to side streets, winding circuitously through the sprawling cityscape, their only rough guide the reflected glow of the fires behind them. Rain fell twice, once in a gentle but steady stream that soaked them to the bone. The second came in a flash storm, accompanied by lightning and booming thunder. They waited out the heavy rain in the back of a toppled truck, afraid of what might accompany the storm, but nothing came out of the darkness. Wet and cold, they crept out of cover when the storm had passed and continued putting a substantial distance between them and Lascowicz’s lair.

Twice, something swept overhead, a giant invisible shape that stirred the clouds and left flashes of ball lightning in its wake. Hadrian couldn’t tell if it was flying under or over the clouds. Occasional glimpses of the stars showed them to be warping, as though seen through waves of intense heat. Subsonic roars shook the city and brought showers of mortar down upon them. He didn’t know what caused the disturbances, but he thought of the collapsing Transamerica Pyramid and of the creature Lascowicz had summoned that night: another dei, perhaps the one called Mot. If so, the skies above the city had become playgrounds for gods along with the streets.

‘Wait.’ He brought Ellis to a halt just as they were about to dash across an empty intersection.

‘What is it?’

‘I don’t know. A gut feeling.’
Danger
—
leave quickly.
Dread soaked into him the longer he stood staring at the intersection. ‘I think we should go back. Find another way.’

‘Why?’

He couldn’t explain how he knew. ‘There’s something bad here. Something that might hurt us.’

‘You’ve got to give me more than that.’

‘That’s all I have.’

She shrugged. ‘How do I know you’re not imagining things?’

He wasn’t sure himself. He was simply responding to an intuitive reading of the intersection. It was as though something had shifted in his head and in the world around him: a new geometry was making itself felt. There was a resonance between the shape of the road and the world around it.

He backed away from the intersection and took Ellis with him. ‘Watch,’ he said, picking up a half-brick and hefting it one hand. ‘Let’s see if I’m right.’

With a grunt, he threw the brick into the centre of the intersection. What he expected to happen, he didn’t know. But he knew, somehow, that it wasn’t going to be good.

The brick came down — and disappeared as though it had never existed. Without so much as a sound or a ripple, it was swallowed by the road surface and vanished without trace.

They waited a second. Nothing stirred. Hadrian was about to suggest that they had seen enough when, with a loud cracking noise, a stream of brick-coloured gravel sprayed out of the road. It shot with surprising force into the air, smashing a window on the building opposite them and rattling onto rooftops. They instinctively ducked, although none came in their direction.

‘Okay,’ Ellis said, taking his hand and hurrying back the way they’d come, ‘you’ve convinced me. Any other gut feelings you’d like to share?’

‘None at the moment,’ he said, ‘but I’ll let you know.’

‘Do.’

Her hand was cool against his. The night deepened around them as the fires gradually receded into the distance. He didn’t know when dawn was due, but he longed for it. It seemed an eternity since he had last seen sunlight.

The next intersection was ‘safe’. From what, exactly, Hadrian wasn’t certain, but he suspected it wasn’t just from brick-eating monsters or obvious physical threats. The city was a dense tangle of connections and potential connections, as though a horde of giant, invisible spiders had moved in, leaving swathes of overlapping webs in their wake. The webs weren’t visible, but he could feel them connecting buildings, lampposts, fire hydrants, parking meters — even manhole covers and drains. Nothing was exempt. If it was part of the city, it was caught up in the web.