It took Parial some time to recover from speaking the word of opening again. With the door now securely in position and the immediate threat gone, Karol seemed happy to allow everyone to just stop and rest for what felt like the first time in an age. Even he seemed to relax a little and took his time picking up the akrys rods that they’d managed to bring inside the Sanctuary building. Only four of them, only four. And he had no idea if that would be enough for what he had in mind.
He’d picked Parial up from where she had fallen and moved her to where she could sit comfortably with her back against a wall. She was breathing heavily, and each out-breath came with a pained wheeze, but she uttered no word of complaint and just drew up her knees to her chest and hugged them with both arms. The boy, Mouse, stood by the sealed doorway running his hands over the stone surface, perhaps trying to understand how the rules of the world had just been broken in front of him.
The room they were in was not large, and gave the impression of being an antechamber to somewhere important which is in fact what it was. A dim light radiated from panels of polished glass set into the ceiling above them. The walls, including the outer wall where the door that was not a door stood, were all beautifully polished stone, inlaid with intricate knotwork borders, each border containing a carved inscription of Imperial power and dogma. The Emperor, the walls proclaimed, was virtuous. He was good. He should live forever. The works of his hands would endure.
Well Vanguard wouldn’t, Karol thought, and he recalled an old poem about the hubris of great rulers and the indifference of time. Vanguard was a mighty metropolis, a work of civic art, a stronghold. Was. Today it was in its death throes. Soon it would be a ruin, and perhaps some as yet unborn traveller would find shattered stones proclaiming the glorious eternal power of the Emperor and wonder simply “who?”.
Opposite the stone-sealed portal was another more mundane doorway, through which Karol could see a wide staircase leading upward. The thing that he sought, that Parial had risked so much to reach, was at the top of that stairway and Karol wondered, more urgently now he had time to consider his actions, if there was any hope to be found here. That he would live or die was a risk he was almost indifferent to, but the others? What choice did he have but risk it. They would certainly die if he didn’t, and surely some hope was better than none. A soft noise from Parial attracted his attention and he turned to her. She was rising from the floor now, pushing herself up the wall.
“Take the time to rest,” Karol said to her.
“I must complete the minister’s task. I must send a message to the Imperial court,” she said, and Karol could her the strain in her voice as she struggled to keep the pain and exhaustion from it.
Karol shook his head. “A few minutes won’t make a difference.” But she ignored him and moved, almost staggering, to take one of the akrys rods. Karol turned to Mouse and clicked his tongue to attract the boy’s attention from the stonework that so absorbed him. “Come on”
Parial leading the way, the three of them climbed the stairs. She felt herself trembling and it was not just the awful exertion of using the word of opening she knew. This was a place that was almost sacred in her imagination, a place she could never have hoped to have entered unless she had risen to the highest ranks. The walls on either side of the stairway showed the imposing likenesses of dignitaries from the Imperial Court and she felt their judgmental eyes upon her. You should not be here, they seemed to say, You have not earned the right.
At the top of the stairway was the object of their journey. A large square room, with hexagonal pillers at each corner supporting a vaulted ceiling whose apex was high above them. The centre of the room was filled by a pyramid of stepped stone platforms and above the highest of them was…
Was…
Was…
Parial stared at the space above the top of that miniature ziggurat and knew she could never describe it. The space, the air, was wrapped in on itself somehow and although she could not see it she knew it as keenly as she would know that stepping from a high ledge would cause her to fall. Her eyes could not focus on that place, as though they were trying to fix on a point on the furthest horizon and immediately in front of her eyes at the same time. She felt her heartbeat becoming more rapid and pounding, pounding, pounding. She should not have come to this place. Nobody should. It was impossible, impossible to approach this thing, to know this thing, and remain sane. The Draklyn Storm, the object of her struggles today, was right ahead of her and she wanted to run for her life and risk the monsters in the city outside. Her grip on the handle of the akrys rod tightened and so did her resolve. The minister had died for this. She would not let him down.
Uncaring about Karol and Mouse, not even thinking how they might be affected by the Draklyn Storm, Parial raised the akrys rod and began to twist the wheels that would spark the contents into smouldering life. The ridged edge of the wheels felt like they would cut into her gripping flesh as she turned the wheels and then Karol was by her side, his hand over hers.
“Don’t waste it,” he said. “We’ll need all the power we can get.”
Parial pulled away from him. “This is the reason we are here,” she said, “Why else would you come here? My minister gave his life to accomplish this. If you try to stop me-”
“What?”
What indeed? Parial glared at Karol. “I shall report you.”
She thought for one awful second that he would laugh in her face and she did not know what she would do if he did. But he didn’t. He just shook his head and then nodded.
“Alright,” he said, “Send your message, but keep it brief.” Then he stepped away and sat down on one of the lower steps of the ziggurat with Mouse beside him. It looked like they were prising open the akrys rods that they held. Parial went back to twisting the wheels of hers and she felt them suddenly give with a clicking friction. A moment later she smelled the first wisps of the smouldering contents being emitted through tiny vents in the mechanism. She was familiar with the rippling tingle that ran through her a second afterwards, and that continued for several more seconds, but she’d never had to shape and direct it herself before. Raising the ackrys rod she faced the impossible emptiness atop the ziggurat, her eyes uplifted to it and she declared her name, her status, her rank of office and her desire to urgently deliver a message to the Imperial Court. The feeling of contact established was like a hook within her mind attached to a tight and pulling cable whose end was in the heart of the anomaly before her. Her lips moved but no sound came from her lips. Her body shook as she felt the words of her message being pulled from her one by one like splinters from a wound. Each passing moment was agony. Is this what the minister, and the other ministers, endured each time they came to the Draklyn Storm? Parial felt her body grow limp as the message and more was taken from her, each image, each detail flashing past her recollection again. Then the cable was cut and the hook dissolved, and Karol was holding her in a tight grip having pulled her away from her position of communion.
“That’s enough,” he said, his voice hard and resolute, “they got their message.”
“They wanted to know more,” Parial gasped, “they sought to learn every… everything.”
“Then let them come and learn it for themselves.” On the lowest step of the ziggarut, Mouse was busy. He was scooping out the contents the of akrys rods, making a pile of the nuggets of resin and shavings of wood that had been hidden away inside the metal vessels. Before Parial could stop him, Karol had turned the wheels on the rod she’d been using to close off the interior from the air and then he started to prise the mechanism open. “They’d have killed you if they’d carried on.”
Parial could not bring herself to look at the Draklyn Storm again and kept her eyes on the growing mound of incense on the step. “We’re going to die here anyway,” she said. Mouse looked up at her, just for a second, with no expression on his face, and then looked down again at his task. Karol had deposited the contents of the last akrys rod and Mouse merged them with the main pile.
“No, we’re not,” Karol replied. With the edge of a broad bladed knife from his belt he started to sweep the pile of wood and resin into his coin-pouch after first emptying the few coins from it onto the floor. He didn’t feel like over-explaining things, not least because he wasn’t sure how this would work, or if it would work at all. Leaving the details vague gave him the best chance of dealing with whatever happened. His job done he used the point of the knife to chisel around inside the broken end of the akrys rod that Parial had used. A few seconds later a glowing ember of charcoal popped out and landed on the step. Mouse reached for it but a warning bark from Karol made the boy draw back his had before he could be burned. Karol scooped it up on the knife-point and tipped it into the pouch before blowing into it a few times.
Curious despite her irritation and the aches and pains still making every joint in her body throb in time with her heartbeat, Parial leaned over Karol’s handiwork, only now paying attention. “What are you doing with that?”
“This stuff powers your magic, doesn’t it?” Karol said, in between blowing breaths into the bag.
“Not my magic. And not really magic. It’s a technology that few understand, but yes the incense contains ingredients that release the energy needed. You’re wasting it.” She could feel the rushing sensations across her body as the incense burned, and the smoke began to drift out of Karol’s coin-purse. Compared to what she had felt earlier when she’d ignited the akrys rod this was like a powerful wave compared to a gentle rain on her flesh.
“No,” Karol said, “I’m not. Come on Mouse. Leave those, we won’t need them.” But Mouse was picking up the fallen coins and pushing them inside his own pocket. Karol grinned, the first time Parial had seen such an expression on his face. “Alright then, consider them wages for your work. Now come on.” Mouse trotted obediently up the steps of the ziggurat with Karol, but Parial hung back, reluctant to approach the unreality of the Draklyn Storm.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re sending another message to the Imperial Court,” Karol said, “Come on. You too.”
Parial stepped forward warily.
“What message?” The rush of sensation from the incense smoke made it feel to Parial as though her entire body was vibrating, or was it the world around them? She saw Mouse fling his arms around Karol’s waist, clinging to the sell-sword. As Mouse moved his limbs and body left after-images behind him, like trails through the sky. Parial felt herself falling and looked aghast at her own hands as they too began to trail phantom memories of themselves, fading in intensity and through all the colours of the spectrum as they moved. Feeling impossibly alone and distant from anything that made sense she reached for Karol and she saw him smile as he reached out, rainbow-limbed, and took her hand gently.
“Us,” he said and she saw the words form in the air as spectral bursts of light as he spoke and then he pulled them all forward firmly as he stepped with them into the Draklyn Storm and oblivion.
Otherworlds 