The Crooked Letter (59 page)

‘Well, I’m not. I intend to fight for my home even if you aren’t.’ Kybele looked over her shoulder at Xol. ‘And you! Break the Sisters’ hold on the Fire and you and your brother can go free. Do you intend to let your so-called friend ruin your best hope of salvation? Fight with me, and we’ll all get what we want!’

Agatha and Xol exchanged a glance. ‘We came here for a purpose,’ she said, raising mirror-finished palms to ward off an attack. ‘We’re not leaving until we’ve seen it through.’

Xol nodded in agreement.

Kybele shook her head. ‘Have it your way, then.’ The shadow-blade lashed so suddenly for Agatha’s head that Seth almost didn’t see it. Agatha defended herself with liquid ease, then counter-attacked by scratching bright red lines in the air that whipped and cracked at Kybele’s face. Raw will sparked like lightning between them. Seth reeled away as the two women fought over the kaia, while behind them the Sisters burned in the heart of the sphere.

Kybele screeched in rage, bending all her power to knock Agatha back. Her human aspect dissolved in the process, unravelling like a knitted doll. Black tentacles coiled and uncoiled with malignant intent. Agatha vanished under them, then reappeared a moment later, barely human herself. Seth couldn’t quite make out what was going on, but he caught glimpses of Agatha’s determined face in the centre of ten lethal blades. Darkness threatened to engulf her. Smoke swirled as though flapped by mighty wings.

For a moment, it looked as though Agatha’s light might prevail.

Then the heat ray swung away from the Sisters and focussed on both women. With horrifying suddenness, Kybele and Agatha burst into bright blue flames.

‘We will attain our former glory,’ the kaia said again. ‘None shall stand in our way.’

With a bright flash, both women disappeared into sparkling motes of light.

‘No!’ Seth cried as Agatha’s ten silver rings jingled to the floor. The edge of the fiery beam splashed over Ellis, who recoiled as though physically struck. The Holy Immortals gathered around her protectively. Xol just stared at the place Agatha had stood with dismay etched deep in his inhuman features.

Seth resolved to step in before someone else was killed. The kaia wouldn’t want to kill him, for that would stop the Cataclysm in its tracks and ruin the plans of their master. He alone could act with impunity.

One of Agatha’s rings had rolled to a halt close by his feet. Brimming over with rage, he bent down and picked it up. It shimmered like water, holding its shape but already beginning the disintegration wrought by the passage of Agatha’s will. He gripped it tightly in his one remaining fist.

They work like lenses,
Agatha had told him.
They focus my will.

Gritting his teeth, he gathered all his pent-up resentment and frustration. The kaia had killed his friend and would betray everything she had striven to achieve, if given the chance. Emotions boiled within him, yearning for release. Sheol quaked around him. He opened his mouth to set free a scream that would shake the world.

Before he could make a sound, the kaia shivered into dust. It expressed no surprise or fear. It simply collapsed in on itself then exploded into a cloud of ash. Stinging hot motes stuck to Seth’s skin. His nostrils filled with smoke.

The red sphere around the Sisters peeled back.

‘Thank you, Seth,’ said Ana, brushing down her robe. ‘We are quite capable of defending ourselves when we need to.’

‘Eventually,’ added Meg.

‘But — what happened?’ He wiped ashen tears from his eyes, stunned. Ellis was blinking and shaking her head. Xol and Quetzalcoatl had backed away and stood together on the far side of the sphere. ‘Did you kill them?’

‘Yes, and all their kind. They saw Sheol, as was their desire, and now their lives are spent.’

Seth imagined kaia all across the Second Realm disintegrating where they stood. The Sisters hadn’t needed him at all.

The ring in his hand crumbled and evaporated into nothing, leaving all the emotion he had summoned exactly where it was.

He fell to his knees, choking on grief and a strong sense of futility. What did it matter what he did or tried to do? It never worked out the way he wanted it to. Agatha would be unavenged and he would remain trapped by the machinations of others for what little life remained to him. He wasn’t the strong one at all any more!

Does he know who he is?

Wildly, despairing, he wondered what Hadrian would have done, had he been there in his place.

‘The gesture was well meant,’ said Meg reassuringly, from her great height. ‘It has been noted.’

‘Yes, sister. It has been noted.’

‘And now I think we’ve heard enough.’

‘I agree.’

Meg held up her arms. ‘Seth Castillo, have you made your choice? Do you request the assistance of the Sisters in this matter? Is it your wish to enter your life-tree at a time shortly prior to your death in order to pursue another ending? Will you abide by the decision of the Sisters to help or not to help you?’

It had become very quiet in the wake of the kaia’s attack, and the death of Agatha and Kybele. The shaking of Sheol had momentarily ceased. The Sisters’ domain was as silent as a tomb.

Seth swallowed his self-pity and climbed wearily to his feet. If he was going to make good of the situation, this was his last chance.

‘Yes,’ he said, trying to keep his voice even, ‘let’s do it.’

‘Then it will be done,’ Ana said. ‘Please come forward and take our hands.’

The Sisters moved so they stood on either side of the Flame. Its bright light cast deep shadows on their faces. He stepped closer, as instructed, and only as he held out his right arm did he realise that his hand had regenerated. He flexed it numbly, and placed it in Ana’s left palm.

Meg smiled at him. He didn’t feel comforted. His flesh came and went with impunity, but he didn’t think it would be so easy to bring Agatha back.

‘It’s time,’ said Ana.

Meg’s gaze slid over his shoulder to someone behind him.

‘Time for what?’

* * * *

‘Some say that the goddess destroyed the old gods

so we would be free. Some say the old gods

put on new faces and walk among us still.

Some say that the world has changed too

much for them, and that they could not exist

here any more, even if they wanted to.

Some say the old gods killed each other. Some say

that there were never any gods in the first place.

Some say that change, not the goddess, was what

destroyed them in the end.’

THE BOOK OF
TOWERS
, EXEGESIS 12.29

adrian came back to himself piece by piece, as though waking from a very deep sleep. The light came and went in waves too. With each pulse, more of the world filtered through.

A circle of men and women surrounded him, apparently made out of glowing green jade. There was a bald, black man with bandaged hands. There was a monster he had seen in a dream — solidly built with forward-thrusting head, a snake’s mouth and fangs, and a crest of not-quite-feathers down its skull and back — but there were two of them now, identical apart from a gleaming wound on one’s temple. The air was full of smoke or very fine dust.

‘It’s time,’ a woman said from behind him.

‘Time for what?’ he asked.

The world spun around him.

‘Who said that?’

The panicky voice was his, and it came from his head. But he hadn’t spoken.

‘Seth?’

‘Hadrian?’

The world swung giddily. He had no control over it at all. Glimpses of a bright point of light and two older women came and went too quickly for him to focus on them. Everyone was staring at him, expressions of surprise and alarm on their faces.

‘Oh, my god.’

Understanding came like a slap. The people were staring at Seth, too. He and his brother were in the same body, their faces pointing in opposite directions.

The giddy motion ceased.

‘You’re kidding,’ he heard Seth say. Hands he had no control of patted at his face. Hadrian tried automatically to twist away, and the head they both inhabited did shift slightly.

‘It’s better than being hollow,’ said the bald man. ‘Now you’re Janus, and no one will ever sneak up on you again.’

Seth swung angrily on him. ‘Shut it.’

With that movement, Hadrian’s view settled on the older women. Two were close by, robed in blue, and appeared to be holding his hands. A third woman he hadn’t seen before stood nearby, dressed and veiled in black. He recognised her from a dream.

‘Hello, Hade.’

‘Ellis?’

‘None other. Welcome to the madhouse.’

Such was his surprise that he managed for a moment to wrest control of his head completely from his brother. ‘Oh, Jesus. I’m so sorry.’

‘You and me both. Believe me.’

‘I thought she —’ Hadrian could feel Seth struggling to regain control. His field of view shook violently from side to side as they wrestled mentally with each other. ‘I didn’t mean —’

‘Get out,’ his brother hissed, ‘of my head!’

There was a tearing sound.

Hadrian staggered forward, suddenly released. He had his own body now, not just eyes staring out the back of his brother’s head. Momentarily off-balance, he put out two perfectly ordinary-looking hands to steady himself. He appeared to be wearing the same bloodstained clothes he had left behind on the mountain. His fingernails were dirty and split. On the surface, very little had changed.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw when he turned to confront his brother.

Seth was as a mask, a waxwork dummy. On the outside, where he could see himself, he looked real and solid, but his inside was completely absent. He was hollow. Only his face remained permanently visible.

‘So
that’s
what I look like,’ his brother said, backing away from the two women guarding the bright light. His expression mirrored the surprise Hadrian felt. ‘Jesus.’

Hadrian didn’t know who to stare at: monsters or glowing people or hollow reflections of himself. He wanted to run to Ellis, but her posture was defensive and her veil completely opaque.

‘What’s wrong?’ Hadrian asked Ellis, hearing his voice as though from a great distance. ‘What’s happened to your face? What did Locyta do to you?’

‘Who?’ she said to him. ‘I was like this when I woke up here, after Shathra found me.’

One of the green people bowed. Hadrian was barely keeping up. He was lost among so many new faces, in the midst of so much unfamiliar context.

‘I am Meg,’ said the taller of the two women by the light, with a pitying look on her face. Her hair looked like a helmet of ice, close about her head.

‘And I am Ana,’ said the other, as sharp-eyed as a blackbird. ‘By your arrival here in Sheol, Hadrian, the Cataclysm is stalled. But this is only a temporary measure. It will commence again the moment you return to your body — as you must before long, or lose connection with it forever. Yod is stretched until then across Bardo, unable to complete its advance but unable also to retreat. We have a moment, now, in which to act.’

Both women held open their hands, indicating that Seth and Hadrian should join them in a circle around the bright point of light. Seth seemed to know what was going on; he moved forward and took Ana’s hand without hesitation. Hadrian warily took Meg’s.

The two brothers looked at each other. There was a small black ankh tattooed on Seth’s chest, and another, stranger design near his left wrist. It flashed in and out of view, consisting of two squares spinning furiously around each other.

‘Well, you’re here,’ said Seth, the expression on the empty shell of his face complex and hard to read. The bitterness in his voice, however, was undisguised. ‘I guess it’s all going to be okay, now.’

Hadrian felt surprisingly alienated by what he saw in his brother. ‘Seth — about Sweden and Locyta, the knife — everything —’

‘Don’t say it.’ His brother looked away. ‘That’s all irrelevant. Or soon will be, anyway, when we rewrite history.’

‘How?’

‘You’ll see.’

Seth held out his hand. Hadrian was about to take it, thereby completing the circle, when both Ana and Meg shook their heads.

‘Ellis,’ said the shorter of the two, ‘join us. You’re part of this, too.’

Ellis backed away a step. ‘No.’

‘You wanted a chance to have a say. This is it.’

She reluctantly stepped forward to complete the circle. Seth took her right hand and Hadrian took the other. She smelt the same as she had in the First Realm, and tears sprang to his eyes at the sense-memory. Images of the draci came and went.

This wasn’t a trick. His brother was real. Hadrian had followed him to wherever they were now, and he could feel his presence thrilling through Ellis’s hand. They had been reunited — had literally, for a moment, been in the same body. He couldn’t have been fooled by that.

The demonic figure with the gash on his face stepped forward to talk to Seth. His expression was a closed book to Hadrian, but there was no denying the intensity of the moment.