by Greg Curtis
Eventually though he found the keys on their hook on the back wall, and then felt his way along to the door. After that it was just a matter of trying to get the right key in the lock. But that took time because there were so many of them, and working by feel didn't help.
Damn it, he thought as he worked. If only he could have used the cats! If only they could be trusted! But they couldn't be and so he was here.
Now, instead of spying on her, he had to break her prisoner out of the city dungeon, something that was much more dangerous. But if it worked, if he got Walken out, all her plans would fail. She would have no witness against him and his family. At least not one she could present. And it would look as though everything the man had said had been a self serving lie based on hatred. Why else would he escape?!
Finally he got the right key in the lock and felt it turn. And then when he pulled it the great door swung open without protest. It didn't even squeak.
“Yes!” He breathed a happy sigh to himself.
“Yes what?” Whitey asked him. “You've finally worked out how to open a door?! Monkeys!”
Though he couldn't see her, Manx could imagine her shaking her head pityingly in his direction. “You can't open a damned door!” he snapped at her in annoyance.
“I don't need to,” she told him haughtily. “I have servants for that!”
Manx caught himself before he yelled at her. This wouldn't be the place to yell. He didn't want the guards to know he was about after all. But the door was open and it didn't matter. Now he had to find the prisoner.
That wasn't going to be easy, he feared. And not just because the gaol was in complete darkness. It was also huge. This was the city's only gaol. It served a million and a half people. But worse than that it was also filled with fog. He cursed his ill-fortune.
Manx didn't know much about the gaol, and he couldn't see his nose in front of his face, but he soon realised why the fog was there when he hadn't called it. When the gaol had been built, it had been decided that the easiest way to get light and air into it was to have bars in the roof instead of concrete. It also let the rain in he supposed. Tonight it had let the damned fog settle.
“Walken!” He called out hoping that the man was awake and would answer him. He imagined that most of the prisoners would have been asleep, having no idea that anything at all was happening beyond their cells. After all there was no light beyond the door, not even the glow of torches. Even without the fog that was filling the cells they couldn't have seen a thing. He had another reason for calling for the man – he didn't know what he looked like. The last time he'd seen the man he'd been five, and truthfully he didn't remember a lot from then.
“What,” a tired voice called back to him from somewhere ahead in the distance. “I'm sleeping!”
“An you'll be dead come the morn!” Manx answered him, still trying to sound like a guard as he made his way down the corridor. At least he assumed it was a corridor.
“What?! No! She said this was just a temporary thing.”
“An you believed her?! Lady M? Ow much you drunk? She's sent for the inquisitors!”
That drew a response from the man. A shocked gasp and a denial. Because inquisitor was just another word for torturer.
“Yeah! Of course yeah!” Manx replied. “Your lies got shown in court. She's angry. You made her look like a fool. Now she wants the truth.”
“Shite! That damned bitch! She lied!”
“Maybe. Deadly bitch! An maybe you're lucky. Master says if you escape, your lies stand. He gets to hurt the Smythe's a bit. Lady M looks like a fool. An no one comes for him.” It wasn't much of an explanation that he'd come with to give the man. But Manx thought it would do when the man was facing a painful death in the morning.
“And who's your master?” Walken asked.
“None O' yours!” Manx told him. And then he turned, guided by the man's voice and started walking up the next corridor, using an outstretched hand running against the walls and the cell bars to guide him. Thankfully he knew it wasn't much further to the man's cell from the sound of his voice.
“Ow do I know this isn't trap?” Walken shouted at him.
“Fine! Be safe until they come and start pull'n the soft fleshy bits off you!” Manx answered him. And by then he knew the man was in the cell just to his left. So he walked a couple more steps, put his hands on the bars to guide him, and dropped the keys through them.
“Keys are yours. Stay, go. But the fog won't last.” And with that he turned around and started heading back. From now on it was up to Walken to decide if he wanted to stay in his cell or not. But he was fairly sure the man would run.
He was more sure when he heard the sound of the metal keys jangling behind him. No one would stay when it meant being tortured in the morning.
After that all Manx had to do was leave this place, and the first part of that was easy enough as he found the door leading to the main room. Then unfortunately he found the guard.
The man, still groaning, smashed into him, knocking him back into the cells. But he did it blind and by accident and ended up somehow following Manx into them before collapsing to the floor. Manx managed to retain his feet and walk past him, even as he heard the sound of keys turning in a lock somewhere behind him.
After that he was in the main room, and he could hear men yelling behind him. Prisoners demanding the keys so they could get out as well. Whether Walken gave them the keys, he didn't know. And truthfully he didn't care. He just wanted to get out of here.
So he staggered his way out into the middle of the main room, turned a little to the right, and headed towards where he thought the front door was. He found the wall instead, but still he was close enough that he could find the door quickly with his fingers. And then he stepped outside into the cold and damp.
There things were also confused. Men were shouting at one another, arguing, mostly about who was who and where everyone was. He could see lights glowing in the darkness as he climbed the stairs, the torches men were carrying, but nothing more. And from there it was just a matter of finding the main gate, and staying away from the lights.
“Find the gate!” He hissed at his companion who he suddenly noticed had been remarkably quiet up until then.
“There'll be food? Cream?”
“There'll be nothing at all ever again if I get caught!” he snapped back at her under his breath.
“Monkey men!” she snapped back. “There had better be food! Or I'll scratch your eyes out while you sleep!”
“Fine! There's stew!” He hissed back, trying not to be heard by the guards who were still busy yelling at one another. “Cream in the morning.”
“This way dolt!” Whitey called to him, convinced by his argument.
Manx followed the sound of her voice, heading out into the parade ground and staying away from the guards with the torches as best he could. And slowly, arms outstretched, he made his way away from the dungeon.
Was his work done, he wondered as he carefully walked to safety? Walken was hopefully free. And in escaping he was hopefully undermining everything he'd said to Lady Marshendale. Though in truth she'd already started to doubt him from the fact that she'd thrown him in the city dungeon. But this, he hoped, would be the final nail in the coffin of his testimony.
That was important. Manx didn't care if she hung his father. In fact he thought he might like to watch. His mother he wasn't so sure of, even though she'd abandoned him as a child. And he certainly didn't want his brothers and sisters hung as traitors. He didn't know them, but they were still family. And Lady Marshendale would have cheerfully hung them all. She was known for her executions. And for smiling at those she hung. Pretty on the outside, ugly inside so they said.
Then as he finally reached the gate, he heard the sounds of fighting behind him. Obviously the prisoners had been caught escaping. And soon there were whistles blowing, men shouting and rifles firing. Manx cursed quietly.
That hadn't been his plan. He'd wanted Wa
lken to escape. Not to start a prison break. But he knew there was nothing he could do about it. Maybe the man would still escape. Maybe he'd get caught, and tell the Lady everything he knew, which was thankfully precious little. Or maybe he'd die in the attempted escape. Whichever happened Manx couldn't help him.
“Hurry up!” Whitey called impatiently to him. “I'm hungry. And it's cold. You need to feed me and get the fire burning!”
He wanted to say something to her. About the way she'd failed in her duty and let him tumble down stairs and bang into desks. But he knew he couldn't. The guards might hear him. So he kept going. Leaving the parade ground and walking out to the street, guided by the calls of his cat, and hoping that not too many people would be hurt. This plan of his hadn't gone at all as he'd intended. And now he had to feed the damned cat!
Chapter Six
Four hundred years! Sorsha sat on the bench with the paper in front of her and tried to take that in. But she just couldn't. Because it just wasn't possible. Four hundred years could not have passed without her knowing about it. Not even in whatever strange dimensional prison they'd locked her up in.
And yet it had. In the blink of an eye. This bizarre city with its steam powered wagons and great ships of the sky that floated overhead, was Winstone. She knew this city. Or she had known it, four hundred years ago. But now she didn't know it. After having walked its streets for a week and a bit, she realised she didn't know it at all.
Of course a lot of the time while she'd been exploring this city she had been ill. Mostly struggling to find places to rest and the essentials of life. She'd stolen laundry off lines, eaten food out of bins and slept in alleys and abandoned buildings. She wasn't proud of what she'd had to do to survive. And it hadn't given her much of a chance to look around. But now that she was stronger, she could. And she didn't understand this city or what it had become.
For a start it was ten times the size it had been. Or more. It was filled with strange people who spoke with a funny accent. And it was covered with soot from all the great steam machines that burnt their coal night and day and ran the factories. And more of those iron steam machines drove along the streets, threatening to run anyone down who was foolish enough not to get out of their way.
That was bad enough. But what it had gained in these mechanical monstrosities, it had lost in magic. Where were the roofs that sparkled with elemental wonder? The gardens that bloomed thanks to a little fertilisation with with the essence of the arcane? Why did she have to walk everywhere or ride one of these monstrous metal contraptions? Why couldn't she just hop on board a glider and be floated serenely around the city?
This wasn't the Winstone she knew.
Meanwhile the paper was telling her a lot about the rest of the realm of Redmond. One that now had a King Willhelm on the throne – a man who nobody seemed to have much of an opinion about. He was neither liked nor loathed. But then it seemed that the King was more of a figurehead and less of a ruler in this world. He was certainly no absolute monarch as she was used to. In fact mostly he just gave Royal assent to bills put forward by the Court.
How could that have happened? And what had happened to King Julian? Time had happened of course. She understood that. But his lineage should have endured. And his nature. He would never have surrendered the throne to anyone. He would sooner have slaughtered every noble who wanted it as a traitor.
But it seemed this new king just sat in the palace in Windhaven and let the Court run things. And they did that through a series of committees and circles and advisory boards, which was why the paper was filled with news about meetings, agendas, bills being proposed and members arriving on the various committees, and had almost nothing about the King himself. This was a truly strange realm. And yet it was Redmond.
The only thing about this city that was familiar to her, was the preachers. They were everywhere, in every street, begging for alms, and telling everyone about the wonders of whichever god they followed. That she knew. She even knew many of the claims they cried. They hadn't changed that much in four centuries.
Meanwhile there was another question that plagued her. Where were all the spell-casters? Mostly that question troubled her because she knew the answer.
The answer of course, was that they were trapped in that strange dimensionless prison she'd escaped from. She had no proof of course. But it was the only possible explanation. A city of this size should have had thousands of spell-casters calling it home. Maybe tens of thousands. There should have been magic stores on every street. More spell-casters offering their services everywhere. There should have been enchanted objects in every store window. And most of all there should have been people with antlers, horns, tails and third eyes wandering the streets. Instead there was nothing. Everyone she saw was mundane.
Stranger still, there was no record of magic. She'd read the papers after the battle with her beasts, and discovered that everyone was shocked by the event. But not just by the battle. By the fact that there was actually magic in the world. There was this lady from the Silver Order, who'd smote her beasts with a silver sword – Lady Marshendale. And then there were the beasts themselves. But as far as what was written in the papers themselves, that was the first time there had ever been magic in the world.
It went beyond that. She'd visited the Winstone Public Library – her third eye carefully concealed under a hat – and tried to find works on the last four hundred years of history. It was tricky. The language had changed somewhat. Especially the written tongue which now had some very strange spellings. And she couldn't risk asking anyone for help – it might have revealed something of who she was. Then too she was frightfully weak. But she'd done it. She almost wished she hadn't.
None of the books had said anything about magic. And all the traditional works, the journals of the great spell-casters of the various families, were missing. Magic had somehow been written right out of history. And with it so too had the practitioners.
The spell-casters, from the druids and the shamans to the walkers like her with their third eyes, were simply missing. Wiped from history. Forgotten. Locked away she assumed in that prison. The records of them and all the things they'd done had been deleted from the history books. And somehow everything had been forgotten.
There were no people with antlers in the streets. None with pointed ears. None with horns or tails either. Not a trace of magic had been left behind.
How was any of that possible?
In the end though, the how didn't matter. What did matter was that she was alone. Forced to live in a strange city full of people who would panic and run screaming if they saw her third eye. She had to keep it covered with a hat, something that was far from pleasant. And meanwhile, where was her family? Her friends? Were they still in the dimensional prison? Or were they gone? Left four hundred years in the past? Was she truly alone? Sorsha didn't want to dwell on that.
She had to get them out. If they were in the prison. She had to free them all. Which was why, after learning the truth, she'd come here and sat down on this park bench, with a stupid damned hat on her head. It was here, in this park, somewhere, that she knew the prison was located.
But it wasn't easy to find, even for her. Nor the estate in which it was situated. But even if she didn't know exactly where it all was, she knew it was somewhere in front of her.
There was magic all around. Powerful magic, that blocked the sight of the prison and the estate from her somehow. Dimensional magic too. Something that shrank space so that big things could hide in small spaces. It would have been better if she could have taken off her hat and studied the region with her third eye, but that would have created a problem – at least during the day. It would have been better still if she could just remember the place she'd escaped from, but for some reason everything from that night was a blur. Had she been drugged, she wondered? But the largest problem facing her was that her magic still wasn't as it should be.
It was stronger and cleaner than it had been. It would gro
w more so in time she thought, though really she would have wanted to see a healer and gain a potion of clarity. But there were no healers in this new world either. No people with six long fingers. She'd looked very carefully as she'd wandered the city streets.
So for the moment her magical sight was nowhere near as strong and clear as it should be. And what it showed her was worse. She could see the magic, but it was mixed up. Distorted. She should be able to see all the different dimensions laid out in an orderly manner in front of her. Each realm running parallel to the next. She should see the way they intersected and bordered one another. But instead, everything in front of her was twisted, fragmented and turned around as though it was an image in one of those funny kaleidoscopes. She could see bits of the dimensional rifts and borders, but they all ran in strange directions that didn't make sense. And they bordered one another in places that they shouldn't.