from the forthcoming novel, The Fate of Stars
John took careful steps toward the building, watching as rain shattered the mirrors of the puddles on the cobblestone path, golden worms of light wriggling in them.
Finally, a few feet from the door, he forced himself to look at the body recumbent on the steps.
It wasn’t Jane.
John took a quavering breath, realizing he’d been holding it for the last dozen paces.
It wasn’t Jane.
His twin must still be alive.
One
Teller of Fate
A typical Scottish evening had settled over the manor house: Driving winds, fierce lightning, pounding rain.
That night had started quite sedately for Jane.
A simple dinner alone at one corner of the large, echoing kitchen. A candle her only light; an iron stove her only heat. A visit to the crypt where the Incunabulum slept in its steel cradle followed. Finally, she continued up to the main body of the house, to the company of the more congenial books in the library.
An evening of reading would be concluded by a night of dream brought by the adventures of one parchment bound hero or another.
Once in the library, Jane quickly lit the fire from logs and kindling already laid in the grate.
The book she had chosen sat on an ivory silk covered table beside the overstuffed chair.
She settled in, curling her feet beneath her. Jane sniffed at the pages of the book before opening it, savouring vanilla smell of old binding. Her fingers caressed the supple leather of its cover. Chestnut hair tumbled in waves over one shoulder, highlighted by the cheery fire.
The flames crackled in the large stone fireplace, their flickering light dancing over row upon row of books, leaving those immediately surrounding it in deepest shadow.
Jane could feel the heat on her forehead, cheekbones, arms, and the parts of her legs not covered by her nightgown.
She opened the tome at the leather strip that marked her place and read.
Thus, she began enjoying the company of one of her heroes, this one a peasant human girl named Davida, on a world that no longer existed.
Davida was an orphan of the only sizable city on her world, a grim plutocracy called Scorn. Her mother had been a Teller of Fate and part-time whore murdered by a client when Davida was eight local years old.
Coming upon the horrific attack, Davida had fled her mother’s room with the only things worth taking: her honour and a bag of indigo silk containing a fat pack of cards, the Syrat. That deck the elder woman had used to great effect to tell the future as well as the past and, more surprisingly to most, the hidden truths of the ever-burning present.
For years afterward, as childhood died and young womanhood bloomed, Davida followed her mother’s path as Teller of Fate, though something lacking in her kept her from becoming as skilled.
As for the older woman’s other profession, luck and a charm that frightened as much as it enchanted kept the attentions of the Jonnies from lingering on her body.
They did that is until the Dark Man came.
Jane read with sorrow and grief how the Dark Man, who came for a fortune, stole the bounty of her maidenhead as well.
She wept as she read of Davida’s use of the Syrat to flee the Dark Man’s attentions before he could take the one treasure left to her.
Jane had just read of her appearance in a hut made of uncured wood in the desert when a noise from the hall gently tugged her back into her own world.
At first, she couldn’t name the source of the disturbance. It wasn’t sound, though it had something of the feel of an audio disturbance. It was more a movement in the air, a vibration just shy of actual sound.
She wasn’t overly concerned at first.
The only other person who could get into the house alive was her twin brother, John. Still, something was out of place. Heightened senses and a lifetime of training came to her aid.
Someone who had no business here was in the house.
That someone had breached the security of the outer portal and her only warning had been that out of place not-quite-a-noise.
Jane stood and closed the book, dropping it into the seat of the chair. Lifting the hem of her nightgown, she stepped silently to the thick double doors sealing the room.
Pressing her ear to the door, the young woman let all sound fall silent. The crackling of the fire, she blocked out, then the sound of her breathing and even the faint double pump of her heart.
‘Listening’ was an inadequate word for the sense she employed now, but no better word existed in any language spoken by humanity.
After a timeless interval, she had it: the soft pads of three sets of steps along the hall two floors below. They were after the Book.
Jane spent a bare second deciding that she had time to change before going to confront the thieves; they should be stopped by the guardian that blocked the entrance to the crypt.
Making not a sound, Jane of Clan Airkhart left the library and headed to her room to change.
Two
The cloaked figure intercepted the arm swinging the poisoned knife, crushed the fingers holding it, and dislocated the shoulder of his foe as the former pivoted on his left foot, flipping her over his shoulder.
The flying thief knocked the legs out from under another running to help his falling comrade.
The head of this one fell into the defender’s rising boot.
A crack loud enough to be heard over the deafening downpour ended that thief’s career.
The career of the tumbling thief trying to get her feet under her didn’t. She stumbled spastically, causing the third thief to jump awkwardly to one side.
This gave the defender time to fling one side of the cloak back and draw a broadsword.
The last thief slowed abruptly and, with rather better grace than his leap, flung his knife.
It missed.
Now unarmed, he faced a taller, heavier opponent who had so far shown a breathtaking lack of consideration for a fellow professional just trying to earn a living.
He decided on the better part of valour and took to his heels. His one surviving partner staggered along in his wake.
Standing over the body of the third thief, the cloaked figure sheathed his sword and pulled his heavy, oiled cloak back over his shoulder.
Some of the damp had made its way under his protection from the rain. After relieving the body at his feet of all its portable wealth, he trudged on.
His damp shirt sleeve began to itch.
⁂
An ordered constellation of bright yellow-orange points of light in the middle distance just below him was the only thing visible.
Dozens of bony fingers tap-tap-tapped on the deep hood of his cape; the rain had lessened not at all. The character felt just the slightest touch of wind on his face, forcing the rain in. It made stitches of cool damp on his chin and right cheek.
A bright, stuttering flash and for a moment there were soaked, wind bent trees clustering near a muddy footpath that wound down to a cluster of stone buildings. The lights became windows.
Then darkness followed by a deep rumbling in the air and they were just an array of lights again.
The cloaked man, John Airkhart by name, continued toward the manor.
⁂
John started at each bolt. Something unnatural drove this storm.
‘Too late,’ he thought. ‘The Book has been opened.’
He shuddered again and hurried down the muddy track, taking guidance from the random flashes of actinic light.
In his haste to prevent a disaster that his heart insisted had already happened, John was moving too fast for safety.
When, after slipping, sliding, and falling several times, he finally reached to the level of the manor, John knew he was too late.
A body sprawled across the stone threshold of the manor’s main entrance. The door itself was ajar on darkness.
John stood for a few moments panting slightly, his right hip and left knee throbbing from his most recent fall. His hand rested on the slightly rusty iron of the open gate, its strong electronic lock a tangled mess of steel. Pieces of it were scattered on the muddy cobbles of the path leading to the door of the manor.
John could faintly smell the stink of expended plastique.
He took careful steps toward the building, watching as rain shattered the mirrors of the puddles on the cobblestone path, golden worms of light wriggling in them.
Finally, a few feet from the door, he forced himself to look at the body recumbent on the steps.
It wasn’t Jane.
John took a quavering breath, realizing he’d been holding it for the last dozen paces.
It wasn’t Jane.
His twin must still be alive.
He examined the body of what was obviously an unsuccessful thief. Another female. That made three out of four that he’d met so far.
She had succumbed to one of the five lethal traps at this entrance. The thief lay at an angle across the steps leading from the shallow alcove housing the door. She was face down, her head at the bottom of the steps. She’d been trying to get away.
John lifted her upper body. No blood to redden the damp stone beneath her. She’d managed to disarm the bladed lethals but evidently hadn’t counted on the poison.
He looked up at the open door.
She hadn’t been alone.
He stepped slowly over the body and into the house, being careful not to touch door or frame as he passed.
Three
Baroque paintings decorated the dark walls. Small bronzes in evenly spaced alcoves lined the hall. From their place high on the walls, gas-lit sconces supplied just enough light to identify the dark spots on the blonde hardwood floor as blood.
‘So,’ John thought, ‘someone else didn’t manage to avoid all the lethals; careless of them to let it just drip like that. Then again, they probably think they have the manor proper to themselves. It’s below that they expect trouble.’ He allowed an almost feral grin to darken his features. They’d not be disappointed there, at least.
He stopped, closed his eyes, and ‘listened.’
He couldn’t find Jane. She must already have gone below. ‘Too late,’ he chided himself. This was just another attempt to snatch the Incunabulum, as far as Jane would be concerned.
The dark intent of the man behind all this was a burden of knowledge that he carried alone. He dashed down the hall, heavy boots beating a tattoo that competed with the crash of thunder.
Behind him, the hall began to change.
⁂
Snug and black made a much better stalking outfit than loose, flowing, and white. Soft-soled calf high moccasins helped a lot, too. Jane Airkhart had also tied her hair back. Wishing for a moment that she could have carried on reading of Davida, the Custodian of the Incunabulum left her bedchamber to meet the threat.
She carried no obvious weapons, but only a fool would consider one of her clan unarmed.
After arriving at the end of the main floor hall, just before the door to the cellars, Jane hid behind a pillar and once more played out her Senses. The three thieves were still stalking down the hall. One injured, though not seriously. They’d be on her in thirteen of her measured breaths.
She could wait for them here or let the guardian deal with them and clean up whatever remained.
She elected to take them out herself as punishment for disturbing her evening.
Only three breaths away now.
Wait.
Wait.
Now.
She leapt out—and there was light bright enough to paint the pattern of her retinas on the back of her eyeballs.
No pain, but a roaring boom then nothing, not even thought.
Four
The sound of violence ahead drove John into a flat run. He rounded a corner, boots skidding on hardwood, and saw motionless forms sprawled at the entrance to the cellars. That and a lot of blood.
He raced to the still forms.
Two of them had died from obvious wounds.
The third appeared unharmed. Curious, despite his fear, John turned the supine figure over. His hands jerked back involuntarily, and he barely stifled a cry.
The mouth and eye sockets of the body were ragged holes, wisps of smoke still escaping them. Even as he watched, horrified, the chest of the corpse began to collapse. Like a balloon slowly draining of air, the body became a flat, wrinkled shell. Bright flashes sparked on it, and then it burned with a cool blue flame. In seconds it was gone; a stain on the hardwood the only evidence that a human had ever been there.
He sat back on his heels, stunned.
Jane hadn’t done this, and she wasn’t here. That could only mean she was a captive of whoever had. Yet, there had only been three thieves left.
As he turned to go, he noticed the changes in the hall he’d just come down. The walls were red now, the ceiling higher and getting higher still.
Someone had opened the Book. Someone was reading it.
John was up and at the ancient oak of the cellar door in two strides.
He slammed it with the heels of both hands and passed through the stone portal. He took the spiralling stone risers down two at a time; his right shoulder hitting the rough stones of the wall every two or three steps.
Down and around, through dark and light by turns as he passed electric lights in sconces built for oil lamps. His shadow ran ahead and faded for each one.
The stairs ended. A corridor in utter blackness stretched before him.
Even knowing what was there and how to get past it, John still felt afraid. Advancing a measured pace into the corridor, he reached out his hands and pressed his palms firmly against both walls.
John closed his eyes and lowered his head. Words in a sibilant tongue not spoken anywhere but here since before the fall of Atlantis dropped from his lips.
An intense white light suffused the stones of the barrel-vaulted hall. It drove shadows away and warmed the space considerably.
There was only a silence when he was done. There should have been a familiar noise indicating the way was clear. That meant trouble.
He risked, “Jane?”
Five
His voice bounced back quickly; nothing else.
John strode forward, arms out slightly from his sides; cloak thrown over both shoulders, leaving his arms free.
Ahead, he could see the place where the corridor widened. It was there that the guardian was supposed to discourage thieves. It was the last line of defense.
He arrived at the place and found nothing. Anyone trying to access the corridor beyond this point would have to traverse a nightmare landscape composed of their deepest fears. Escape was always possible, but only back the way they came. Persistence meant facing panic-inducing terror strong enough to kill.
John had the right of entry.
Even so, he should have been greeted by a sign that the guardian was vigilant. He looked to his right, toward a door that should have been tightly shut.
It was ajar.
Cautiously he moved forward, a creeping dread knotting his stomach. John swung wide the door into a small room. He was apprehensive for more than the obvious reason. Never had he or his sister clearly seen the guardian.
It valued its privacy highly. Familiarity was no part of its bargain with the Clan Airkhart.
Light from the stones of the chamber spilled past him and lit the small room dimly. There was nothing but a table, stool and a shelf built out from one wall and covered with straw: a bed.
In one corner lay a still form. Its white streaked, grey fur darkened in places and matted with blood.
As John advanced, horrified, he noticed something against the grey of the stones. Its head had been cleanly severed from its neck.
John felt a strange detached sort of sorrow.
Even if he recovered the Incunabulum and found his sister unharmed, the price of the thieves’ venture was already too high. He feared that a centuries’ old bargain would be ended because of this murder.
With a sigh, John left the death chamber.
Six
The need for caution forgotten, he hurried down the hall.
Ahead lay the prize the thieves had paid so much to get and his sister, whom he refused to believe was dead.
Only blackness before him. That meant the room that housed the book was dark.
It was never dark.
Despite countless trips down here, John still had to feel his way, one arm out to either side, fingertips brushing the rough stone. The echoing knocks of his boots on the flagstone ran ahead, announcing his immanent arrival for any who lay in wait.
John’s fingers ran out of wall to touch just as he stumbled down the step into the cell that housed the book. He managed to keep his footing.
“Jane?” No echo this time. Again, no reply.
He felt his way to a wall and moved along it slowly, looking for a switch that he’d never had to use before.
He found that it was already on.
He flipped it back and forth anyway, in that desperate way people have of trying to make the obvious not true, just this once.
John stood in the darkness, listening.
He remembered the morphing hallway upstairs and knew he dare not trying anything extempore to make a light.
If the Incunabulum were here and open, just glancing at it could have disastrous consequences.
Nothing for it, he’d have to feel his way around.
John knew where in the room the book was and slowly made his way toward it.
He shuffled his feet along the ground, not wanting to trip over anything; dreading to think over whom he might trip.
He met no obstacle before his left boot thudded into the base of the plinth.
John reached out and felt around the top of the lectern. The steel cage that imprisoned the Incunabulum was locked. It was also empty.
On hands and knees, he searched the floor of the chamber and found nothing. Deciding to take a chance, John stood and sparked his lighter.
The room was bare.
He walked back to the lectern and examined the cage lock. It looked like it hadn’t been opened in years, just like always.
As he lifted his head, he noticed the shadow.
It was circular and on the wall opposite the entrance to the chamber. Every other shadow cast by the flicker of the zippo in his hand wavered and juddered.
This one was rock-steady.
John walked over to it, goosebumps surging over his scalp and down his back. This couldn’t be a shadow. Given that someone had likely just read from the Incunabulum, it could be anything. Literally.
Up close, it still looked like a shadow laying over the rough shapes of the stones.
John looked back into the room for the object and light source his common sense told him had to be there.
He crouched until he could see the shadow at eye level and reached a tentative hand out to it.
His fingertips reached the plane of the circle.
Seven
He’d been expecting to feel the wall.
A mild tugging was what he felt instead. A spiral of deep red bloomed from his fingertips and drained into the black of the hole just as the tugging turned to agony.
John yanked his fingers away with a yell, falling backward into the chamber with the force of his recoil. The lighter slipped from his grasp and went skittering along the stone floor. Fortunately, it stayed lit.
He retrieved it and by its light examined his throbbing hand. The tips of his middle and ring fingers looked like they’d been repeatedly cut with a filleting knife. Blood flowed freely from the ragged ends of the cuts.
To his horror, he realized that bits of flesh had been stripped from them.
He fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief and awkwardly wrapped the fingertips of his good hand with his bad. It did nothing to lessen the pain, but John was confident it would at least stop the bleeding.
Once done, he crouched on the floor and stared at the vortex, thinking.
Logic suggested that Jane, her abductor, and the book had all exited the room through what he thought must be a Portal.
He and his sister had been educated about such things as a routine part of their training. Clan Airkhart had taken a perpetual vow to watch over the Book in a past so ancient as to be semi-mythical. Neither John nor Jane had ever actually seen a Portal or expected to.
If this Portal behaved as such gateways were supposed to, it could close at any moment. If we went through, he should end up wherever they had gone.
‘Should’ was the qualifier that worried.
After a few minutes, John realized he really didn’t have any other options.
Steeling himself, he stood, walked over to the opening and crouched down. The throbbing of his fingers made him hesitate to put his body at possibly terminal risk. He had no choice, though. Moving as quickly as he could, John Airkhart, Custodian of the Incunabulum, stepped through.
To Be Continued
—Gideon Jagged
Innsmouth, June 2020
Copyright © 2020, Gideon Jagged
All Rights Reserved.