Sephirot, p.17
Sephirot, page 17
There was a low growl from just ahead of them, and the Guardian stepped through a gap in the hedge. Its leonine face wrinkled in a snarl, and its golden eyes looked at him with a hungry expression, but it stopped about ten feet away, its muscles tensed, flexing its taloned fingers. One lip lifted to show a dagger-like tooth.
“That thing doesn’t frighten me,” he said. “I don’t think it’s real. I don’t think any of this is real.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Liam said. “Oh, it might not be real from the perspective of your world, but when you’re here, it’s real as hell. You’ve already felt what these worlds can do, haven’t you?”
He frowned, opened his mouth and closed it again, and Liam laughed.
“Of course you have. I bet you’ve felt plenty from wandering through the Sephirot. It can be sweet. We’ve heard from other people who’ve made it this far. If you’ve been here as long as Marshall and Felice and the others say you have, you’ve been eating and drinking, and sleeping and laughing and running and fucking. Everything that a man like you needs. You know it can be good.” Liam leaned toward him, a broad smile on his lean face. “But it can be bad, my friend. You’ve felt that, too, I think. And you have no idea how much worse it can get.”
There was another noise behind him, the noise of running feet, and he turned to see a half-dozen of the silver-suited guards running toward him, guns drawn. But they halted, as the Guardian had, and now the three formed a triangle, the top point of which was Duncan, facing Liam with his back to an impenetrable hedge. If he dodged around Liam, made a run for it, he would have to run directly into either the Guardian or the prison guards.
“So you have a choice to make,” Liam said. “You can fight it, in which case you’ll very likely die. If you don’t think those guns, or the Guardian’s teeth, can kill you, you’re wrong.” Liam grasped his upper arm again, and this time Duncan didn’t resist him. “Or you can show us how to jump, and you can taste the sweet for as long as you want to. Knowledge, you know? That’s what we have here. The knowledge of everything. All of your questions answered. We can give you that. You can have that forever.”
He swallowed, glanced from the guards to the monster, and then looked down.
I have to get out of here. They’ll kill me if I refuse.
And suddenly energy poured through him, coming from his belly and up through his chest, and surging from his eyes like twin laser beams. Where he looked, his line of sight left a glowing spot on the green of the lawn.
“Stop,” Liam said, his voice rising in alarm. “You can’t escape that way.”
He drew a glittering line with his eyes, between Liam’s feet and his own. “Why not?”
“Because you don’t know the danger you’re in.”
He laughed. Another line, at right angles to the first, like a fiery gash in the grass.
Liam’s grip tightened. “The next place after this… you haven’t experienced danger yet. No one gets through the next one alive.”
A third line appeared. “And my alternative is to stay here and get eaten by the Guardian, or roasted alive by ray guns? That’s not good enough? I die here, I die there, same difference.”
“You stay here, you don’t have to die.” Liam’s voice rose in alarm. “You can have anything you want. You don’t understand what you’re giving up. And for what? For pain and death in a world that is far worse than anything you’ve yet experienced.”
He glanced behind him, and with a flick of his eyes, completed the square around his feet. “I don’t trust you. And as far as the next world, I’ll take my chances.”
The square of grass gave way beneath him like a trapdoor, and he fell through feet-first. The Guardian gave a roar of rage, and there was an outcry of defeated anger from the guards. But Liam, still holding his upper arm, was pulled over and down, and came head first through the portal. Linked, one head upward and one head downward, a positive image and its negative reflection, the two of them fell together from the gold and green of Tiferet into a smoky red twilight that was like a descent into the pits of hell.
Chapter 6
Gevurah
Duncan landed with a breathtaking thud, face down, on some uneven, unyielding surface. Liam’s hand still gripped his arm, and it ached, the older man’s fingers digging painfully into his biceps. He opened his eyes to take in a scene made mostly from scarlet and gray—an overcast sky with a crimson sun near the horizon, the rough stone façades of buildings, streets made of dirty cobbles, a fire burning in some kind of town square. A hot wind was blowing down, moaning in the tilted eaves of houses and through leafless branches of trees. He rolled over, took a deep, painful breath, and reached up to pry Liam’s hand from his arm. Only then did he glance over at the man, who still had not moved.
The next moment, he was on his feet, heart hammering against his ribs, stumbling his way backwards, blindly.
It wasn’t Liam Kyle any more, or, perhaps, it never had been. What lay sprawled on the cobblestone streets was a leonine monster, the twin of the one who had been gnawing bones in the middle of labyrinth, except it still had hanging on its bulging arms, legs, and torso the tattered remnants of the orderly’s scrubs that Liam had been wearing.
As he stared, panting with terror, the thing opened its eyes halfway, gave a snarling cough, and a pink tongue came out and licked its lips, twisted around one long canine. It fixed him with its slit-pupiled golden eyes, and said, in a deep growl of a voice, “You should have listened to me.”
“Liam?” His own voice sounded thin and whistly in his ears.
“You need to get out of this place as soon as you can. I wasn’t lying about that.” It coughed again. “It’s killing me as I lie here. It’ll do the same to you.”
“What’s killing you?”
“You can’t feel it? It’s poison. It’s in the air. I knew I should have let you go when you fell, but I wanted your knowledge too badly. And I’ll die of that want.”
“There’s nothing in the air but smoke.”
The hairy lip curled in what may have been a smile. “If you can breathe it and not die, maybe you have a chance here.” Another cough, this one painful and rasping and prolonged. “Maybe there’s a reason why you can jump and few others can. You can survive, and we can’t. We want something we can’t have.”
“Why are you a monster? You weren’t before. You looked like my uncle.”
Another baring of the teeth. “I already asked you once. You’ve come this far and you still believe in appearances?” There was a hitching, gravelly intake of breath, followed by a paroxysm of coughing. “I even told you I wasn’t Liam Kyle. You’re still not seeing past the surface. I’m surprised this journey hasn’t killed you yet. Maybe what you mostly are is damn lucky.” The creature beckoned weakly with its taloned index finger. “Come here.”
He hesitated, staring at the thing’s massive body, its long, yellowed teeth still showing.
“If I’d wanted to kill you, I’d have already done it. You never were in any real danger, not really. Not unless we thought you wouldn’t cooperate any other way. We wanted what’s in your brain, not what’s in your guts.”
He went toward the thing, slowly, and knelt down next to it. His heart was beating so hard he thought it would shatter.
“Find a way out of here. Hide. You don’t know what you’re in for.”
“What? Can’t you be more specific?”
“Don’t you see the pattern yet? Each place in the Sephirot offers you one lesson and one lure, one thing to learn and one reason to give up and go no farther. If you take the lure, that’s as far as you get. Here? It’s not so much a lure as it is a weapon.”
He looked around him at the hellish landscape, now darkening into night. “What’s the weapon? Don’t cooperate, and we’ll kill you?”
The creature nodded its enormous head, and winced a little. “Something like that. If you’re fortunate they’ll just kill you. Most aren’t that lucky.” The creature’s voice was weakening, hoarse, becoming hard to understand. “Get free of this place as soon as you can. Jump. Anywhere is better than here. What this place has to teach you is nothing worth knowing. Endurance, strength maybe, but you can learn that another way.”
“I can’t control how to jump.”
Another dry laugh that ended with a shuddering grimace. “You’re not trying hard enough. You’ll have better incentive soon.” There was another great, rasping breath, and the thing’s eyes went unfocused. Its muscled, furred chest settled, down, down, the air hissing from its broad feline nose.
The chest didn’t rise again.
He heard a gasp and a shout, and looked up to see an old woman, clad in a filthy dress, a ragged bonnet around her head, staring at him.
“A demon!” she shouted, pointing at the dead creature lying in the street. Her voice was wild, thin, like the keening of a bird.
“No,” he said. “He’s not a demon—“
“Demon!” she shouted again, and her bloodshot eyes turned toward him. “Evil! You consort with evil! You brought it here!”
He sprang to his feet. “I didn’t bring it deliberately… he followed me…”
Why am I wasting time arguing? Do what Liam said. Get the fuck out of here.
He turned and ran.
By this time, others were coming out of houses and alleys, like the woman dressed in dirty rags, soot smudging faces, eyes dark with suspicion. They looked at Duncan as he sprinted past, then at the fallen monster, and then back at him again, uncertain whether to chase him or to let him go.
He turned down a narrow alley, past rickety structures composed of no straight lines or right angles. He heard noises of pursuit, and ducked as soon as he could down another, narrower lane that curved away and uphill. A thorny bush snagged his clothing and popped free, but not before he had a moment’s panicked thought that he’d been grabbed by another taloned claw.
Finally the noises dissipated into silence, broken only by the sound of the wind. The houses here were more widely separated, interspersed by narrow fields with sparse, scraggly crops, and hillsides tangled with brambles. There was a dry, cindery taste to the air that caught at the throat, and he coughed and spat to the side of the road, clutching at his aching sides. He turned into the recessed doorway of a ramshackle building that appeared to be abandoned, and sat down on a cracked front stoop to take a better look at his surroundings.
It was fully night now, and overcast, but there was a reddish glow from the town behind him that lit the underside of the clouds and gave a ruddy cast to the shadows.
What was he in for here? Even Liam was afraid of this place. Maybe if he could find a portal quickly, and jump again before he got caught, he’d be all right.
He recalled his creation of the portals in Netzach and Tiferet.
Perhaps didn’t need to find one. Perhaps he could make one.
But try as he might, he couldn’t bring back the clarity of vision he’d had in Netzach, and the laser-sharp ability to cut holes in reality he’d somehow conjured up in Tiferet. Whatever those had been, they no more came when summoned than the portals did themselves.
There was no sound of pursuit. Evidently the people in the town had lost his trail, or maybe they had been more interested in the body of the monster than they were in the completely ordinary man who’d been standing next to it. After a time, he dozed, his head on his knees. It was warm enough here, although the wind was incessant, and even in his uncomfortable position he was able to sleep a little.
He dreamed dreams of falling, dreams of being trapped, dreams of being chased as his legs became heavier, heavier, and finally he fell in the middle of the road, and lay, unable to rise. At some point a creaking noise intruded into his dream, and at first it was no more than an annoyance, an irritating non sequitur that had nothing to do with anything happening in his sleeping visions.
But it got louder, and more insistent, and finally he said, “What is that?” as a hand clenched his shoulder and he jerked awake, breathing hard.
He leaped to his feet, and found himself facing a scrawny old man whose features were barely visible in the ruddy gloom. He got a glimpse of sunken cheeks, a long, beaky nose, and wide eyes.
“What’re you doing on my front step?” the old man said in a hoarse whisper. “Who are you?”
“I thought…” He took a deep breath, willing his heart to slow down. “I thought it was an abandoned house.”
“It ain’t. I live here.”
“I see that now. I’m sorry.”
“Where’d you come from?” the man said, and his voice dropped even lower. He still had one hand on Duncan’s shoulder, and his bony fingers dug into the muscle. He pulled his face close to Duncan’s. “You ain’t from here.”
“I came from the town.”
“No, you didn’t. You ain’t from here. I’m old and poor, but I ain’t stupid. I can see you ain’t from here. You came in from outside, didn’t you? I know you did.”
Faced with such certainty, it was pointless to lie. “Okay. Yeah, I came in from outside.”
“You’d best hide, then,” the old man said. “Them in the town will be after you. And like as not they find you here, they’ll take me as well.”
“Hide? Hide where?”
The old man swallowed, and a furtive look came into his eye. “You could keep going down the road, but you’ll more’n likely get caught before the night’s over no matter what. They got spies all around here. You get off the road, it’s hard going. Thick with brambles and brush, and wouldn’t do you no good anyways, because they’d use dogs to track you and the dogs can go faster in that sort of land than you can.” He paused, licked his lips. “I’ll shelter you for the rest of the night. I don’t mind. Ain’t no business of mine, what they want outsiders for, and you look like a nice boy. I got but one bed, but you can sleep in the chair and be comfortable enough, I expect. Then morning comes, we’ll talk more about what you might do.”
The old man pushed him toward the door of the shack, which was still open, and Duncan walked from the dim light of outside into the full darkness of the shack’s malodorous interior. The old man lit a candle, and then shut the door. The candlelight sent flickering shadows across the ceiling, illuminating dark, soot-stained walls, a bare plank floor, a disheveled, narrow bed, a table with one rickety chair. He gestured Duncan toward the only other piece of furniture in the house, a broad chair with a ragged blanket tossed over the back.
“Take your rest there. I’d give you the bed, but I got old bones and an old man’s aches, and I wouldn’t sleep a wink. I don’t know what the sunrise will bring, but it’s bound to be better than stumbling in the dark.”
“What is your name?”
“I’m called Gade. How about you, stranger from outside?”
“I’m Duncan Kyle.”
“Duncan Kyle,” Gade repeated.
Duncan pointed toward the only adornment in the place, a tarnished brass star, with the image of a haloed man in the center. It looked old. The paint was scratched, and the loop of wire that it hung from was black with age. The man’s face regarded them all with the flat, unreachable tranquility of a Byzantine Jesus, his expression inscrutable. One hand was raised, with two fingers extended, in a salute or benediction.
“That’s an icon of Saint Judician,” Gade said. “It came from my grandfather. It’s all I got of his.” Gade looked over at him with a melancholy expression on his thin face. “Don’t matter, I guess. But maybe Saint Judician will watch over us. I’ll take his help, or anyone’s.”
“I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”
Gade’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to be trying to figure out if Duncan was mocking him. But he said, “Sleep well, Duncan. And tomorrow we’ll see.” He blew out the candle, and there was the soft creaking noise of his footsteps on the floorboards, and then a sigh and a groan as he lay down on the bed. After that, silence.
He settled himself as comfortably as he could in the chair and pulled the blanket around his shoulders. He felt sure, as he wriggled his body to move away from something hard digging into his back, that he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but sleep overcame him anyway. He fell into a deep slumber, all awareness gone, until he was brought to groggy wakefulness by the combination of the red light of morning coming in through a window and a rough noise, of uncertain origin, somewhere nearby.
He opened his eyes, blinking and trying to focus. The first thing he noticed was that Gade’s bed was empty. He thought the old man might have gotten up before him, and be outside doing chores, but before he had a chance to ponder what else might be the cause of Gade’s absence, the front door burst open.
Three men, heavily armored and holding daggers that glittered in the ruddy light, came into the little shack. Gade was behind them, an obsequious expression on his face, but he wouldn’t meet Duncan’s eyes.
“Are you Duncan Kyle?” one of the soldiers said.
“I am.”
“You’re under arrest.”
He jumped to his feet. “Under arrest? Why?”
The other two men flanked him immediately, and his arms were pinioned behind him. He struggled, but there was no escaping their grip.
The man who had spoken came up to him, until their faces were close. He had a fat face, with a snub nose, and his jaw was fringed with a scraggly growth of beard. “You talk nice, see? Easier all around.”
“I want to know why I’m being arrested.” His breath whistled in his throat.
“Oh, we got plenty on you. Consorting with a demon, bringing said demon into the town, disturbing the peace.” The soldier grinned. “You’re gonna have a rough time of it, I think.”
“What do you mean?”
The grin widened. “Last fellow who came in from outside and was found guilty of such things, they beheaded him in the middle of the town square. About five hundred people came to watch.” He drew a line across Duncan’s throat with one stubby forefinger. “Poor fellow. Struggled the whole way to the block. Said his name was Benjamin Bathurst, and that he didn’t come here a-purpose, he was some kind of ambassador or dignitary or whatnot and had got here by accident, and would leave soon as he could. He left, all right.”
