The light moved on and she followed it for what seemed like hours, but was probably only minutes. Her Head Up Display showed the date and time in characters she did not recognize. The on-board maps refused to recognize that she had travelled any distance within the Tree of Indeterminate Species.
The flame-light went out.
She stood there, staring towards the place she had last seen it. Soon she heard footsteps; heavy boots clocking towards her on the hard stone. Her uncle’s boots, she supposed. She opened her mouth to call out to him again. To her strange uncle, who had gone travelling in an imaginary world, seeking to destroy the most beautiful thing in the world.
Panic seized her. Although she knew that her avatar could not be harmed, she turned and fled. The footsteps followed her, beating out a measured and steady walking gait, neither gaining nor losing ground as she pitched headlong through the darkness.
The asterisk.
No wonder she could not lose her pursuer: he was following the giant glowing star she had set above her head. She extinguished it and turned, and ran on…but not for long. She had gone less than a dozen steps when she spotted a light. It was the aperture in the wall of the tree through which she had entered.
She jogged through the gap and emerged in the sunshine of another land. This was not an environment that she had programmed herself, though she immediately recognized it from her uncle’s confabulations.
She stepped down into Faerie Land and wondered, for the first time, if she had actually gone mad.
4. A Surfeit of Wrath
The Warrior Queen had risen through the ranks in the same way as every other warrior, but when her mother was slain there was no question that the Queenship would fall to her. She was the strongest and the most skilled of her peers; the quickest and the most intelligent. She, like her mother before her, was the first among warriors, for blood will out.
Yet the Queen of the Warriors knew that she was fated for more than her mere birthright. Her mother had fought and governed and procreated until she died of violence, but the new Warrior Queen knew that her life had a different shape. Her life was a story, and that story was her own.
For this story, the Warrior Queen would need new tools and traits and knowledge. She did not know exactly where this story would lead her, but she did know that its theme was ‘vengeance’.
The Warrior Queen went first to the eldest of her generals for counsel. She thrust a spear into the dirt and sat cross-legged in front of it with her weapons arranged about her, in the way that was proper for the warrior folk. Her pennons snapped and whistled in the wind as she faced him across the campfire.
The General sat beneath his own pennons and inclined his head. “So formal an address, my Queen?”
“Yes,” she said. “This kind of story requires a formal beginning.”
“The story has already begun,” said the General. “But you are the Queen, and so formally we shall proceed.”
“Tell me what you know of my mother’s death.”
“I know only that she was slain by a mortal.”
“What do you know of this mortal?”
“Rumours, lies and half-truths,” said the General. “There is no good intelligence on this matter.”
“The truth can be found amongst rumours and lies,” the Warrior Queen replied. “One must not look at the shape of them, but rather, one must discern the shape they obscure.”
The General regarded her quietly. “That is not a warrior’s wisdom.”
“It was not a warrior who murdered my mother.”
“True enough.”
“I will take whatever wisdom I can, if it will help me find the mortal who brought my mother low. What else do you know?”
“I have heard tell of a mortal magus that once stalked the land, and who slew many creatures, both humble and mighty. He destroyed the Queen of the Mountains, but he failed in his attempt to kill the Tree Queen. The Ore Queen somehow drove him from her Realm without conflict. All of this took place before your mother was murdered. I have heard nothing about any mortal since then.”
“A mortal man slew my mother,” said the Warrior Queen, “And no reprisal was exacted.”
“Yes.” The General was known to have been close to the Warrior Queen’s mother. He might have been reckoned the new Queen’s father, had the warrior people arranged their society in families rather than combat units.
“This must be rectified.”
“An you designate the field of battle, my legions and I will be happy to challenge any foes on Majesty’s behalf,” said the General. “But…locating a single mortal, who has surely returned to his own world? That is beyond my power.”
“Whose power, then, extends to the mortal realm?”
“The court ruled by Titania would holiday there in times past,” said the General. “But she was too free with her name, and she is gone now; her people dispersed.”
“Who else has power beyond the Realms of the Land?”
“Few, I expect, save the Council of the Magi.”
“The mortal I seek was himself a magus,” said the Warrior Queen. “It is fitting that I take my grievances before the Council.”
“May those who would oppose you fall before your wrath,” said the General.
“I hope they will be numerous,” said the Warrior Queen, gathering her weapons and rising to her feet. “For I have a surfeit of wrath to spend.”
5. The Bad Puppy
Sired by a sailor and born to a whore, El Cachorro Malo reared himself on the streets of San Salvador.
The Bad Little Dog once had another name, but he had forgotten it by the time he was old enough to understand its importance. Malo earned his new appellation by his deeds. He lived in poverty and hunger and ignorance, fighting for every morsel or scrap; and somehow the Bad Little Dog grew to be hardy and strong.
When Malo had grown strong enough…survived long enough…something changed in him. Some desire he did not understand: it was not hunger, or thirst, or lust; it was something that went beyond the scarred flesh in which he lived. Malo wanted knowledge.
Though Malo could not read, he knew how to tell numbers from letters. After some experimentation, he discovered that each numeral corresponded to an ordinal number that he knew by sound and by value. Larger numbers required combinations of numerals to represent them. From his analysis of these combinations he learned to add and subtract, multiply and divide. Numeracy came easily to Malo, but literacy was another matter.
Malo gathered up a pile of advertising leaflets, propaganda flyers, magazines, and newspapers. He made lists of the symbols he found there, and he stared at them for hours. He squinted to blur the letters, trying to glean clues from the shapes of the words and sentences. It did not occur to him that some of the characters might belong to different alphabets. He did not know that there might be languages other than the one he spoke and thought. He did not think to ask for help, for nobody had ever helped him before.
Malo invented one system after another, trying to find the meaning codified in written language. He looked to the passage of the stars, to the flight of birds, to the roll of a die…but no matter how hard he worked at it, his constructions always cancelled down to an empty silence.
Malo did not learn to read, but he learned much about language in the process. Language bound his thoughts to his deeds, his memories to his mind; the world outside to the world within. Malo came to hate it—this structure that interposed itself between his senses and his consciousness. It enslaved him; it concealed its truths from him; it bound him to a life of squalor and misfortune.
Malo turned the full weight of his anger and ignorance and will upon it and he grappled with it until something finally gave way. Finally, he broke the hold that language held over him—but that was not all that was broken.
Malo did not think himself insane. He
did not know what insanity was…but his capacity to reason and to speak had been damaged, and so had his ability to distinguish wakefulness with his dreams. Malo needed help, and there was only one person to whom he could turn.
He had not seen his mother for half his lifetime, but he had no difficulty finding her. Malo had a sense for it now: for discerning identity, no matter how hidden in context. He found her living in an alley; diseased and frail, halfway starved and three quarters mad. She looked up at him with recognition and fear, and pity. Mad though she was, she was versed in the secret wisdom of shamans and whores.
He fell to his knees beside her. “Mama,” he said. “Mama. Help me.”
“What has happened to you, my son?”
“I have broken something.”
As she looked upon him she felt it; in her ears; in her breast. “I see what is wrong with you, Malo, but I cannot cure it.”
“Mama. Help me.”
“Perhaps your father can help you,” she said. “It is unlikely, but I know of no other.”
“My father?”
“Your father.”
The first time she spoke the word, Malo learned its concept. The second time, he knew that such a one existed, in relationship to his own being. The third time, Malo knew the man. His father had come from some faraway place, and, after siring him, had moved on to some place further still. His father had power. His father…maybe…could help him.
Malo rose to his feet.
“Stay with me, son,” said his mother. “Stay, just a while.”
“Your son,” he said.
“Yes, Malo. You are my son.”
He thought about it for a while. “What is my name, mama?”
“You are Malo.”
“I am called Malo, but what is my real name?”
She bowed her head. “I have forgotten.”
“I am not your son.”
“You’re right, Malo,” she said. She looked at him one more time. “You are your father’s boy, and you always will be.”
6. California
It took Malo a week to scrape together the dollars for a bus fare to Guatemala. From there he went north, to the Mexican border, and crossed that nation on foot. He was a city boy, and it was difficult for him to scavenge in the countryside, but he was used to hunger and privation and utterly immune to misery. He had a goal, now; a quest; and that was more comforting to him than fresh food or a warm embrace.
Malo entered the United States of America through a sewer pipe somewhere outside of El Paso.
North of the border it was easier to survive. He walked; he rode in truck beds; once he even sat inside a car. He slept outside, in ditches and hedges, barns and outhouses, alleys and crawlspaces. Those he met pitied him, but he was fierce enough to elicit fear as well. He made no friends, but he made no enemies, either.
His father’s spoor became stronger as he drew closer to California, and so did Malo’s own affliction. Bad things followed in his wake: power outages, plagues of madness, outbreaks of disease, sprees of violence. He did not know if this was his fault or his father’s, and he did not care. He would just keep on walking until he found what he was looking for.
He was not yet thirteen years old.
7. High in a Tower
Not so far away, in a tower hidden amongst many others like itself, the innermost circle of the Conclave was gathered to assembly. All of its officers were present, in spirit if not in person. When each member had found their place at the oval table, the Chairman called the meeting to order. First, he recapitulated the minutes of their previous meeting, and then he called upon each of the officers to report on their domains.
The Pyromancer spoke of solar cells and volcanoes and satellites and perdition. The Psychopomp told about madness and dreams and rock’n’roll and breakfast cereal. The Captain Above and Below spoke of seabirds and shipping lanes and submarines and stars. The Bitch of the South informed the Conclave about icecaps and ozone and whaling vessels and missile tests. The Greenest Man sang about jungles and forests and drugs and chainsaws. The Shadowed One whispered his thoughts of demons and death and presidents and popes.
When it was his turn to speak, the Prince of the New Worlds clasped his hands across his belly and said: “I have an intruder in my domain, and I believe that he warrants the attention of the Conclave.” His voice was rich, and jingled like money.
“An intruder?” demanded the Chairman. “Your domain is peopled entirely by intruders.”
“This one’s different,” said the Prince.
“Show us,” bade the Chairman.
They sat in silence while the Prince conjured images and stated his case.
Eventually, the Shadowed One spoke. “He is only a child.” His voice was made of sounds stolen from past utterances, issued by other people. “Why should we fear him?”
The Captain examined a strand of seaweed that was entwined in his beard. “There’s something familiar about this boy.”
“His father,” emitted the Psychopomp, without moving his lips.
The Bitch flexed her fingers, which were tipped with icicles. “The Australian.”
“You have got to be shitting me,” said the Prince.
They pondered this for long minutes.
“He must be destroyed,” said the Pyromancer, his fiery tongue bright behind his charred and soot-stained teeth.
“As we destroyed his father?” said the Greenest Man, shaking his dreadlocks.
“Our failed action against the Australian cost us many lives and far too much power,” said the Chairman. “I would not repeat that mistake.”
The Shadowed One hissed by drawing the sound from the room. He had been Chairman when the attack on the Conclave had ordered the Australian’s death.
“Yet we succeeded in driving him away,” emitted the Psychopomp. “Can we not send his spawn after him?”
“The Faerie Council of the Magi is still angry about the damage the Australian has caused to the Realms,” said the Chairman. “To send the boy after him would have serious consequences.”
“Can we not simply make him whole again?” asked the Greenest Man. “Reassemble the pieces and put him back in his box?”
“No,” emitted the Psychopomp. “He was never whole in the first place.”
“Then what?” said the Chairman. “What can we do with him?”
“We flush him,” said the Captain. “Below the depths, beyond the skies.”
“Let us cast him into the abyss that lies between all of the many, many worlds,” whispered the Shadowed One. “I second the motion.”
“The motion is passed,” said the Chairman of the Conclave. “The Abyss will have him.”
8. The Abyss
The Abyss was an infinite vacuum that was filled entirely with nothing, but it was not empty.
There was no ground beneath Malo’s feet, and no wind on his skin. There was no light in his eyes or sound in his ears. There was no vertigo, no sense of motion or time. There was no air to breathe, but he did not need to breathe it for there was neither life there for him to live, nor death for him to pass into. There was nothing but Malo, alone in the darkness.
There were no referents, no symbols; there was no language to give the world shape and there were no artefacts from which to create one, but Malo did not need language to maintain his consciousness. Language was made of lies, but all was truth to him—and there was one truth that he sought above all others.
His father.
Though his prison had neither walls nor floor nor ceiling, and there was no direction out, there was yet a goal to be attained.
Malo started to climb.
9. The Swordsbeast
When the mortal emerged from the Tree she found that she was no longer located in the simulation she had raised. Meadowlands sloped ge
ntly away from her in all directions; a river meandered past on her left. On her right there stood a forest of bare, black-skinned trees.
The Tree of Indeterminate Species itself looked better from this world’s vantage. Her version had been a sketch, but this one was a finished painting. Still, it was disconcertingly similar to the approximation she’d built.
A beast came around the tree with an enormous sword in each of its monstrous hands. It wore leather trousers and a coat scaled with metal disks that left its arms bare. Those arms were long and knotty with striated muscle—surely the most frightening pair of arms that the mortal had ever seen. A helmet covered the swordsbeast’s entire face, but the mortal could see bloodlust in the eyes that glowed behind its visor. It came on with the shuffling gait of a fencer.
The mortal’s avatar was a grey, bipedal shape with a cartoon image of her face plastered across the sphere that served it for a head. Hardly suitable for combat.
“What the hell,” she said. “I’ll play.” With a slight motion of her chin she replaced the avatar with an empty suit of plate armour. She conjured a massive double-handed sword into her virtual hands and stepped towards the swordsbeast. She felt no fear.
“This gateway has not been sealed,” said the swordsbeast, “And it is guarded. You must satisfy my questioning before I may allow you to proceed.”
“‘Nineveh’,” she replied.
“If you continue to speak insensibly, I must strike you down,” said the swordsbeast.
So much for Monty Python. The mortal sighed and raised her weapon.
The swordsbeast handled the weapons easily, spun them through a sequence of fanciful guard positions. Its footwork was complicated and nimble, though the beast stood eight feet tall.
The mortal drew her viewpoint up into third person so that she could best observe the combat. She was no fencer. She had never held any kind of weapon before…but she had spent many hours playing video games, and many more hours hacking them into submission. She jacked her attributes to the maximum values their data-types could hold and swung the sword.
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