Couldn't post the usual on Friday, so today you get two! They finally reach the Seal... and discover what lies on the other side of something that walls off a country even from gods!
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Chapter 15.
Urelle watched as Druyar methodically unlocked the seven different locks sealing shut the immense door that was at the end of the lowest corridor in the Freehold, five levels below the ground, through other locked and guarded doors.
The big man very carefully examined each lock, laboriously comparing the symbols on lock with those on the seven keys he had taken from inside his armor. After selecting a key, he then compared the symbols on the key to those on the lock three times before inserting the key and turning it in the lock. Only once he had heard the loud click! from the lock did he attempt to draw back the associated bolts.
Why's he so careful about it? Ingram asked in their silent mental link.
Not sure. Wait a minute. She focused, then looked at the door with magical sight. Balance and Sword, that's why. Those locks are covered with powerful defenses. I'm guessing if he put in the wrong key, he'd be in for a lot of pain.
"Of course," Victoria murmured aloud. "One would expect the door itself to be a formidable barrier, and an active one as well as passive, to something so crucial to another's security."
"Yah," agreed Druyar. "Locks very magical. Have traps, too, not just spells. Fire, poison, thunder, light, cold, others. Do wrong, you die, or at least be hurt very bad."
"But as you can see, Druyar is very careful for us all," Frederic said. "Is it open, Druyar?"
"Think so." Just as methodically, the Salandaras surveyed the circular door all the way around its perimeter, then nodded. "Yes. All locks turned, all bolts drawn. Can open now, if want."
The four looked at each other; Urelle finally looked up and nodded. "It's time, sir."
"Yah," he said again, but then he knelt down, so that his head was now level with her eyes. Druyar's bright green eyes studied her, and he gave a broad smile. "You Salandaras, now. You one of us. Won't say don't be afraid – that really stupid. But you remember you Salandaras too, when you afraid. You prove you strong, stronger than fear, stronger than pain, stronger than monster or trap or ghost or god that try to stop you." He tapped his chest, pointed at her. "Heart of Salandaras make you strong. Luck of Salandaras keep you strong."
Urelle could feel the absolute faith behind the huge man's words, and more: the absolute acceptance of her, that what she had risked meant everything to him and his people. She felt a sting in her eyes and then stepped forward and gave Druyar a hug, wrapping her arms as far as they would go around the massive armored chest. "Thank you so much, Druyar. And… I'm proud to be one of you. And so very humbled and sad for the price you pay to be one."
The green eyes showed that glint of sadness mingled with pride again. "Yes," he said, more clearly, some of his accent momentarily faded. "Is sad. But brings us people like you, too, so maybe not so sad. Now you go, and remember what names are yours."
Frederic nodded, and accepted her embrace as well. "I have married into the Salandaras, of course," he said, glancing at Druyar, "but had it been necessary to take the Crucible, I admit my courage might have failed. Fare thee well, Urelle Vantage Salandaras, and for what it may be worth, take my blessing as well." He sketched a symbol in the air, and she felt the magics of the world concentrated, brought to their essence and then dispersed to each member of her party.
The others said their goodbyes as well, as Urelle gazed upon the door and the circular wheel set in its center, like one she had seen in a picture of an Odinsyrnen vault.
Then she reached up and turned the wheel, once, twice, three times, and there was a CHOK sound as massive bolts disengaged. The door swung open easily, revealing a dark cavern beyond. "Let's go."
The four of them trooped through the circular doorway; once the last of them, Quester, had passed the threshold, they heard Druyar mutter one more "Good luck," and the massive portal swung shut and the many locks re-engaged in a shock of metallic sounds, the finality echoing through the cave and Urelle's heart. No turning back. Even if we wanted to, I don't think they could even hear us on the other side.
"So, are we through the Seal?" Ingram asked. "Was that door part of the Seal?"
"I don't think so," Urelle answered. "That doesn't fit with what the Wanderer said, or with how I would've set it up. But it must be very nearby."
She brought up her hands, focused, and looked.
Slowly, she became conscious of someone shaking her. "Urelle! Urelle! Lady of Wisdom, help her!"
"I… I'm okay," she managed after a moment. "No, really, just… just give me a few minutes."
"What happened, Urelle?" Quester asked, as she sat there, eyes closed, trying to recover.
"I did something… really stupid," she admitted. "I just threw up my most sensitive spell and looked through it, forgetting what the Seal barrier looked like even from yards away out there on the beach, months ago. It was like stepping out of a cave and looking straight up into the Sun, only worse, because that kind of spell… well, it hits all your senses at once. So it was like I punched myself in the head really hard."
"That was foolish, Urelle," Victoria said, in a half-chiding, half-relieved tone. "I hope you will not make such mistakes again!"
She laughed, getting – a touch unsteadily – to her feet. "Oh, Auntie, I'll probably make dozens of such mistakes again. I just have to hope it's always when I'm not about to get killed."
She took a breath, then focused again. "Let's try this the right way this time."
Even with her strongest filter charms active, the Seal was almost blinding in its brilliance, a living latticework of golden power that lay only a few feet in front of them and extended outwards in all directions, into the cavern floor, through the walls, through the ceiling, to eventually encompass the entirety of Aegeia.
But…
But here, here the latticework was not the absolute perfection she had seen months ago on the southern shores of the continent. In front of her the crystalline symmetry bent, puckered in, swirled in a vertiginous complexity that dizzied her, a knot of godsfire and geometry – no, a dozen knots, a hundred, a thousand, each one re-tying itself and then untying into the next in a fountain of sunfire convolutions.
"Balance…" she breathed. "It's … beautiful."
She saw Ingram near her, squinting, face strained. "I… I almost think I see something. Like a glittering heat-shimmer that spans the cavern."
She nodded absently. "You have a lot of magical potential, Ingram. We have to look into that sometime soon, but yes, I think you're sensing it, somehow."
"Beautiful is well and good," Victoria said, "but can you open it?"
"I… I'll have to. But I don't quite know how. Yet."
She felt Ingram's impatience, instantly squelched; he knew she would be trying her best already. And she was. But … how? A simple barrier or the spell she'd been able to see on the Coin, those were something like a matter of cutting a single knot, unraveling a weaving once you found the right thread. This thing… it had many "right threads" and she wasn't sure how…
"… path in space-time-dimension…"
She felt her breath catch in her throat, even as the true meaning of the Wanderer's deliberately casual description suddenly burst in upon her.
All of the… knots, keystones, threads she was seeing weren't really doing and undoing themselves; that was just the way her sight was trying to interpret something beyond normal human perceptions. They were all there, all at once, in one place and yet infinitely far away. The Wanderer, when showing her some transportation magic, had alluded to "crossing dimensional boundaries". And in his Book…
She reached into her pack, pulled out the Wanderer's Book, paged through it, her fingers and the Book's faint magic guiding her to the right section. For long minutes she sat and read.
"Are you… okay, Urelle?" Ingram finally said, hesitation in his voice. "You look… well, a little gray, pale, like something was really wrong."
She stared at him a moment, mouth opening but nothing coming out. After a few seconds, with the others staring at her in increasing concern, she found her voice. "Not… wrong, I guess, but… by Myrionar." She shook her head. "You know that the Seal keeps out pretty much everything – even including the gods, right?"
"That was our assumption," Vitoria agreed, "and those we have spoken to appear to confirm it. And?"
"And if that's true, then it has to block them… well, from every direction. The gods can walk in different worlds than this one; their own realms, those of their compatriots, maybe… maybe even many different worlds like this one." She waved vaguely at the book. "That's what the Wanderer's written here; he says that there is an infinity of worlds, as near each other as one written page is to another, yet as distinct and separable as those pages. Athena's Seal exists through all of those pages, or at least all the ones that you could ever expect even the gods to reach and try to enter by."
Surprisingly, Quester nodded. "Yes. The Mother-memories say this is true. Perhaps… perhaps even that we ourselves have been on other worlds than this."
"So what does that mean for us, Urelle?" Ingram asked.
"It means…" She stared at the Seal again, took another deep breath, "it means that getting through the Seal isn't just a matter of unraveling it here, or pushing through a hole. The way through is… well, through multiple worlds. I will have to find a way to open the Seal in stages, find our way from world to world and work our way through the seal until a way opens back into our world… within Aegeia."
"Founder's Name," muttered Ingram. "But you said there's an infinite number of worlds! Even if we spent fractions of a second in each one, we'd take the lifetime of the universe getting through!"
"Oh!" She smiled. "It's not that bad. The … knots, whatever, all connect back in Aegeia. A lot of those connections won't help us, but there should be a reasonable-length path to the, well, nexus on the other side, where all the other ends of the knots or keystones connect." She waved the Book again. "That's what I get out of this. He says making something like this requires you set up… what does he call it… a cascade of seals, that self-replicates throughout the entirety of reality. But the cascade's based on one … set of seals you, the mage, have to design yourself. To do that you have to hold the entirety of that set in your mind when you cast the spell, and then the spell goes on from there, I guess…. Grouping each new set of worlds in the same way that you grouped the first."
Ingram frowned, then nodded. "I think I get it. So, there's a path to the center, to Aegeia, through each of those sets or sheaves of worlds?"
"Sheaf, that's a good word. Yes, that's what I think. You have to work through a given sheaf. The only danger is if you make a transition through to a neighboring sheaf, then you have sort of re-set yourself. But that should be fairly easy to notice. I have to assume there would be some form of discontinuity between separate-though-connected sheaves."
"And do we have any idea how many worlds are involved in one of your… sheaves?" Victoria asked.
"It has to be something a god – an incarnate god – could keep in their mind while setting up the seal design. Gods are, I guess, better at that kind of thing than we are, but… well, I wouldn't expect fewer than ten, and probably no more than a hundred."
Ingram winced. "A hundred worlds?" He shook his head. "Well… at least it's a lot better than infinity. Can we just pop from one to the next to the next?"
"I … maybe? I don't know if there will be a physical offset in the location of the seal. Probably not much of one, but when we come through there will likely be some amount of error." She thought. "Have to be, I think. Each world is different; there can't be a hundred percent correspondence between them, so the corresponding location of the flaw in the seal will be different too… though it won't prevent passage anywhere in the other worlds, only passage to this one, so no one on those worlds should be able to detect it. I think. So, I'll have to locate the Seal each time before we can leave."
Her friends looked at her, then at each other; Quester flapped his wing-cases in a shrug. "Well, the more we wait, the longer this will take, yes?"
"Let's go, then," Ingram said. "Do we hold on to each other?"
"Yes. Physical contact will let me draw you all with me."
Aunt Victoria's hands rested on her shoulders in a reassuring grip; she could sense Quester's second-hands take a firm grasp of Victoria's armored coat, and Ingram hold tight to one of Quester's first-arms.
She closed her eyes, then opened them again, seeing the fountaining, ever-changing yet constant maelstrom of the Flaw in the Seal, the Keystone between worlds. She remembered the Wanderer's descriptions of teleportation and similar motion-magics – ones she had tested with him, but hadn't – yet – used in the field. This would be like, and very unlike, those.
But the basic principle was the same. She reached out her hand, surrounded it with magic and focus, with symbols that resonated with the motion of the Seal, that picked up the patterns of its unmoving motion, and… grasped the fabric of reality, pulled with first one hand and then the other, opening a loop of that coiling fountain of power and possibility…
… and the fountain erupted around them in golden fire and the impersonal violence of a tornado.
Chapter 16.
Victoria rolled from her back to her hands and knees and wavered there, unable to rise, trying to keep her breakfast from ending up on the ground beneath her. From the scrabbling and gagging sounds around her, the rest of the party were doing no better.
It seems intrauniversal travel is… unpleasant.
It took several minutes for her stomach to finally accede to her demands that it behave itself. I must be getting old. I've been through worse. That time Cillerion decided to sing us away, now…
But at last she felt steady enough to rise to her feet and check on her companions. Urelle had lost her breakfast, alas. Unsurprising, of course; if it was bad on them it would likely have been worse to the one doing the work.
Ingram was already up, but his attention was focused on Quester, who was showing little inclination to rise at all. Even the Iriistiik's thoughts were jumbled and incoherent, though clear enough to show that he was slowly recovering.
"Oh, Balance, I'm so sorry," Urelle said, then gagged again and spat out a mouthful of slightly-chunky saliva. "Ugh ugh ugh." She sketched a quick sigil in the air and gestured; light flickered on her hand.
Victoria saw Urelle's forehead wrinkle again and her mouth tighten. The light flickered again, steadied, and then the cleansing spell activated. "What happened, Urelle?"
"With what, our travel or that spell?"
"Both, I suppose."
Urelle sat down on a rock, holding her head in her hands for a few moments; Victoria joined her, putting an arm around the smaller girl. "I've never done anything like that before – the, well, cross-universe jump, let alone doing it by trying to squeeze… Myrionar's Sword, there aren't even good words… past, around, through, whatever, a hole-that-really-isn't-there." A corner of her mouth turned up. "But now that I've done it, I think I can have a little more control the next time."
"And your cleansing spell?"
"Conditions here are… different. Magic still works, but the environment, the way it works, it's not the same. I can force it to work the way I want, the way I know… but it's hard. I'll have to adjust every time we go somewhere else, I guess."
"Will… this have … any effect on the rest of us?" Quester buzzed weakly.
"Lady's Wisdom, don't talk!" Ingram said, voice thin and shaken. "You were unconscious for a few minutes there."
"I am… recovering. And my question is relevant."
Victoria saw Urelle gesture vaguely. "I… don't know? In an infinity of worlds I'd guess there must be some that would be terribly different from ours. But if they're ones in which magic doesn't work at all, or is so restricted that nothing I could think of would work, I'd guess they're ones that the gods and other forces would have a very hard time passing through, so probably didn't have to be shielded against." She shrugged. "We'll have to hope so, anyway, because if one of our sheaf of worlds is like that, we'll never get past it."
"I suppose the next order of business is to find the Seal connection in this world to the next in our sheaf, yes?" Victoria said, rising and dusting off her battle-jacket. "So where…"
She trailed off, because for the first time she took a real look at their surroundings.
Great Balance, it's hideous.
Surrounding them was a cracked, seamed plain, black and grey, covered in places with a grey-white powder that looked at first glance like gravelseed flour but smelled of brimstone. Volcanic ash, she realized as she raised her head and saw, miles off, the towering cone of a mountain with a pall of black smoke rising from it, one that spread out in all directions and left the world shrouded in a grim twilight – a twilight out of which the sulphurous dust sifted slowly down.
The terrain itself was jagged and broken, a gigantic version of the chaotic, split surface seen on a field of mud that has baked to stone-hardness under the sun. Vague shadows in the distance indicated that this might be a caldera – a huge mountain-ringed valley – of which the great volcano looming above was but a single vent left from a cataclysmic past.
"Athena's Wisdom, this looks terrible," Ingram murmured.
"Feels that way as well," Urelle said, and shuddered. "Like we're… I don't know, maybe closer to the Black City."
Victoria could feel it, too. The oppressive, hostile miasma that had covered the world when Kerlamion brought the Black City to Zarathan had become a part of the background of their lives… but here it weighed heavier upon them. Or, possibly, is added to; there is some additional note, a personal malevolence that I do not recall from our first sense of the Black City's arrival. "This is not a place for people to live long."
And yet not uninhabited, Quester noted.
His thoughts pointed them to the middle distance, down a ragged slope from them, where a clear road led, straight and true, across the wasteland, intersecting with another farther on. Moving dots showed that there were people of some kind traveling on those roads.
Ordered in travel, Victoria noted. The dots were organized in clear groups, not merely random scatterings. Though she could see nothing else, the sharp lines delineating each group said military to her. "Troop movements. We had best keep well clear. We are not staying here, and we don't want to be caught."
Ingram had his long-viewer glasses out. "Definitely not. They're not human, whatever they are, so we'd stand out. Urelle?"
"I'll look. It might take a few minutes just to figure out the direction, though."
While Urelle focused her power to try and locate the Seal intersection in this world, Victoria borrowed the long-viewer. The marching dots leapt into clear focus; humanoid, but definitely inhuman, the creatures wore functional but, from Victoria's point of view, very ugly armor, mostly of black iron and hide and chain, with equally ugly but clearly effective weaponry – short bows, chopping/thrusting swords for use in formation, spears. They were broader on average than human beings – somewhat like shrunken-down bilarel, but instead of being grayish, these were darker-skinned with a touch of green. There also appeared to be at least two classes, or perhaps subspecies, involved, as some groups were a foot or so smaller than the others, and in at least one group she noted a couple of figures even smaller.
I dislike judging on appearances, but they do not inspire me with any desire to get closer.
I agree, Quester thought, seeing the images in her mind. Even if they are not inherently bad, armed troops marching to apparent war through this sort of terrain will be short-tempered and suspicious of strangers, regardless.
"Over this way!" Urelle said. "I can see it… it's like a glow of gold. Over that ridge," she pointed to a jagged stone line fifty yards high and about half a mile away.
The four of them moved in that direction, Urelle leading, Quester and Ingram flanking and slightly behind her, and Victoria watching the rear. It was difficult going, picking their way through cracked blocks of obsidian, razor-sharp shards threatening to penetrate even her enchanted battle-coat and boots, low drifts of ash, tumbled basalt boulders. The only signs of life, other than the distant marching warriors, were occasional low, thorny bushes that clung precariously at the intersections of ridges that must channel the infrequent rains. A distant boom reached her ears, and Victoria looked back to see a larger, red-lit plume of smoke and ash rising from the volcano.
This is a terrible place, she thought. Myrionar grant that not all the worlds we must pass through are like this.
They rounded the ridge, and saw ahead a steep declivity that led down to a little valley – one with a very small but visible pool of ash-tainted water, surrounded by the thorn-bushes. Urelle quickened her steps, gesturing, and in her mind, Victoria could see the sparkling gold of the Seal just on the other side of the pool.
Ware!
Quester had sensed motion – perhaps with his sensitive antennae – and his warning came just in time. A thing like a monstrous wolf burst from the thornbushes that had camouflaged it, heading straight for Urelle.
Urelle had been fixed upon the vision only she could truly see, so the beast might have taken her unawares; but Ingram and Quester lunged to meet it. Despite the armor it wore – showing the thing was a mount or warbeast of some kind – the creature was no match for the two adventurers. The anai-k'ota jerked its forepaws from under it, and it gave a frustrated, whining howl – a howl abruptly cut off as Quester's longmace crushed its skull.
"Thanks," Urelle said. "Now just make sure I get a few minutes to open this."
Gutteral, snarling voices came from beyond another ridge nearby. Victoria unlimbered her bow and set herself between that direction and her niece. "A few minutes may be all we have."
She felt the mystic energies building around Urelle even as scrambling noises approached from the other ridge. "Balance and Blade," she heard Urelle mutter, "harder here, too. Magic's … off."
"Can you do it?" Ingram asked, tension vibrating in his voice as he flanked Victoria and Quester took a position on her other side.
"Yes… just not fast…"
Dark, armored forms – the same, Victoria thought, as were marching far below – appeared on the high ground above. Scouts, likely. Outriders making sure there were no spies or ambushes. Our bad luck to run into these people.
I think that wolf-thing was calling. That howl wasn't just anger or pain, it almost sounded like words. And look, there's two more of the things with those armored forms. Ingram took a full combat stance, stepping slightly away and in front so he could use his weapon to full effect; Quester did the same, leaping lightly to a taller boulder from which he had a better range and vantage point.
The unknown adversaries confirmed her negative impression by allowing no time to parley; they drew their short, powerful-looking bows, and arrows stitched the air between them.
One glanced from her battlecoat; the others missed, but that was no surprise. The others were taking their first shots at unfamiliar targets in poor lighting and terrain. The fact they'd struck so close was, in fact, worrisome; these were trained and competent warriors. Best to take no chances.
So thinking, she focused her will through the bow, into the arrows as she aimed, loosed, aimed and loosed again, picking one on each side of the detachment of five humanoid and three wolf-like opponents that stood on the ridge.
The arrows blazed with white fire, shockingly clean and bright in the lowering gloom, and struck with devastating flares of brilliance, blowing their two targets backwards off the ridge and knocking the others nearby to the ground, several of them now in flames.
A fine strike, Lady Victoria, Quester said, but that light could likely be seen for miles.
"Yes, I should have thought of that. However, with fortune we have enough time that it should not matter."
That certainly seemed to be the case; the survivors of the band of scouts had dropped to the ground, some rolling to extinguish flames, and seemed reluctant to make targets of themselves again.
"Almost… got it," Urelle said. "It's just… very strange. I have to shift the way I, well, grasp the forces, and –"
The harsh, braying call of a horn echoed across the desolate landscape, and somewhere far away, it seemed to be echoed by a cry like a hunting bird – but a bird filled with hatred and an evil intelligence.
Without warning, Victoria staggered under the sensation of something looking at her, a vast and malign intellect that had suddenly become aware of their presence. She sensed surprise, consternation, and fury, and that demonic bird-of-prey screamed again – nearer, it seemed.
"Mother of Nests, what is it?" buzzed Quester, gripping his weapons tighter. Ingram's eyes were wide and fearful, despite his Camp-Bel control.
"I don't know," Victoria whispered, but took a breath, set herself, and refused to let the unseen yet tangible hatred of that distant regard cow her, raising her will against its force of detestation.
It… lessened for an instant, lessened in what she sensed was sheer, unadulterated surprise that she met its malevolence with unabashed courage and a disregard for its power or reach.
But that screaming thing was closer, and she could tell now that it was an ally, perhaps a focus, for the being whose attention they had drawn. "Urelle –"
"Grab on! Now!"
She scrambled to Urelle's side, the others sheathing their weapons as more armored figures appeared on the ridge above, and gripped her niece once more, feeling her other companions also getting a firm contact.
In the moment the golden light exploded around them, Victoria thought she saw a monstrous bat-winged form descending from the black clouds… a few scant seconds too late.
But what awaits us in the next world?
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