The Blurred Lands

by Ian W. Sainsbury

  Ash took a step closer. John turned further to prevent her having a clear line of sight towards Gai. She spoke to his back.

  "I can be generous, John. I can be merciful. Do not judge me by the stories they tell about me. You can take the noone to the woods. Then you will come back to me."

  John headed for the stairs, slowly this time. Ash followed him, then waited at the top of the staircase. He turned at the bottom.

  "And if I don't come back?"

  She smiled again. It was not the smile the smile of anticipation, or of satisfaction. This was a smile of triumph.

  When it became clear she wasn't going to answer, John crossed the room, unlatched the door, and stepped out into the back garden. Gai weighed almost nothing, so he was able to keep his pace brisk as he walked through the moonlit trees, the night deathly calm around him.

  The clearing looked like a painting. Nothing moved. John laid Gai's body on top of the fallen log. The noone's eyes were open, but he saw nothing, staring up at John with no spark of recognition. John remembered the curse that had, eventually, unravelled his mother's mind. If Gai's injuries didn't kill him, he might still be lost.

  John sat down and leaned against the trunk, half-closing his eyes. He opened them in the Between.

  Forty-One

  The comforts of John's sanctum were wasted on him this time. He leapt out of the chair and ran to the library. Logically, John knew that running made no difference. If time didn't exist here, sprinting around his floating house was useless. He still ran.

  Inside the vast stone room, he picked up the candle and made himself stop for a moment. He needed to focus on Gai, on his injuries, on how he could help his friend. The terrible physical injuries were bad enough, but he was more worried by the absent stare he had seen on the noone's face. John's lack of knowledge was painfully apparent to him. He didn't know where to look for help. Worse, he didn't understand what, exactly, he was looking for.

  He remembered what Gai had told him about sanctums. Each one was unique, constructed from the consciousness of the magician using it, containing all the wisdom, knowledge, and power of the overlapping realms, a limitless repository. But this did not mean everyone who could access the Between could find all that was hidden there. Far from it. John could only hope he would be able to find what he needed without Gai's help.

  John pictured his friend, thinking of the horrific injuries to his arm and leg. He walked through the maze of bookshelves, allowing himself to be led by instinct, listening for a call like the one he had heard for the holding spell.

  For what seemed like an hour, he turned left and right between the arcane volumes, sensing hints of what they might contain in the same way that he might smell a neighbour's dinner and guess at the ingredients. His thoughts were in turmoil as he searched, going over and over the failed attempt to defeat Ash.

  Eventually, even the urgency of his task and the horror of the events that had sent him there lost their hold over his mind, the constant repetition of the same thoughts draining them first of emotion, then of meaning. His mind became tranquil, and as calm returned, he was able to summon his need for a healing spell. A dialogue opened between John and the library, a silent conversation.

  He heard a book call to him. It was faint, but it was there. He followed it, the path taking him back to the outer walls of the cathedral of books. The shelf he needed, when he halted in front of it, was almost, but not quite, beyond his reach. He stood on tiptoe and let his fingers trail through the liquid books. Looking up to where the shelves vanished into darkness, skyscrapers of learning, he wondered if anyone, however long-lived, could ever hope to absorb even the tiniest fraction of the knowledge contained in this room.

  He found the solid book. This time he didn't flinch when, as his fingertips brushed against the gold lettering on the spine, the words flowed into his hand and arm. The process was quicker than before. A simpler spell, perhaps.

  Back in the study, words poured out of his flesh into the book. It took only a few attempts to master it, his voice rising and falling with the symbols on the page. It was too easy. He doubted a spell he could master so quickly would be powerful enough to reverse the damage done by Ash. He could only hope it would be enough to prevent Gai's death.

  The spell now memorised, he prepared to leave.

  What made him look out into the slow-motion blizzard outside, John couldn't have said. Perhaps it was an unexpected movement. Something out there didn't belong, something wasn't moving in line with the hypnotic snowfall.

  Unsure if he had seen anything at all, or only imagined it, John stood at the edge of the room, staring out into the whiteness beyond, the scene lit by the whirling galaxies above. Out there among the ceaseless descent of feathery snowflakes, a figure—up to its knees in snow—struggled and fell as it tried to make progress. Picking itself up, it managed four jerky steps forward before falling again.

  As John stared, the distance between him and the stranger became irrelevant, and he saw as clearly as if they were yards apart.

  It was Gai, blindly trudging through the drifts, falling, getting slowly to his feet, then, after a few more steps, falling again, over and over.

  John put his hand on the invisible window, feeling the same kind of resistance he had felt when he and Gai had seen the creatures from the Charleston Hotel in Leigh Woods. Like rubber, the invisible barrier pushed back at his palm. He moved right, then left, pushing as he went, looking for an opening. If there was an invisible window, couldn't there be an invisible door?

  As he watched, Gai fell again. This time, he was slower getting to his feet, and his next fall came after a single step. He didn't get up.

  "Gai! Gai!" John's voice bounced back as if the invisible window were a solid wall. "Shit!"

  The locked doors in the corridor.

  John ran from the room. The first door on his left was locked, but he knew it was the right one. If this place were built from his subconscious, then his subconscious was telling him this was the exit. He rattled the handle in frustration, then took a run up and crashed into it shoulder first. The door stayed closed.

  He stared at the solid wood. If this sanctum was truly his, he must be able to leave it. At the moment the thought occurred to him, a muted click came from the door, and it swung open.

  Not quite understanding what had changed, John didn't stop to worry about it. Wooden steps led down a narrow staircase to a heavy, black door at the bottom. Hurrying down, John pulled at the handle. The door opened, and he looked out at the snowy landscape he'd seen from his study.

  No wind howled as the snow fell. John expected to feel his face become numb at the change in temperature, but it didn't happen. He looked down at his slippered feet and his pyjamas then stepped over the threshold.

  The expected pain of icy snow on bare flesh didn't come. John looked down again. Slippers, pyjamas, a few inches of exposed skin. He lifted one leg and placed his hand on the arch of his foot. It was dry and warm. The snow came up to the middle of his shin as he continued walking, and it took some effort to trudge through it, but he remained dry, unaffected by the snow.

  He looked back at his sanctum. The staircase was lit, as was his study, apparently floating in mid-air.

  He headed for the spot where he had seen Gai.

  The noone was face down, unmoving.

  "Gai! Gai! Wake up!"

  John shook him by the shoulders. His friend's eyes were open, and he was breathing, but he was unresponsive.

  "Shit. What am I supposed to..." John's voice trailed off as he looked around him. The constantly falling snow made it hard to see anything further than a dozen yards away, but, squinting into the whiteness, he could make out dark blocky shapes in the distance. Whether they were buildings or mountains, he couldn't tell. There were no lights, and no other sign of life apart from him and the stricken noone in the snow.

  John placed his hand on Gai's forehead and sang the spell he had learned. Immediately, he knew it was wrong. It was
like trying to treat kidney failure with antiseptic cream. No, more like trying to give a human medicine designed for an octopus. The part of Gai lost in the Between was untreatable by any spell of healing. John needed to get him back to his body in the Blurred Lands.

  Kneeling next to his friend and hugging him to his chest, John half-closed his eyes and pictured the tree just beyond the garden of Sally Cottage, preparing himself to move quickly when he returned.

  Nothing happened. However vividly John imagined the starlit woods, he stayed right where he was, up to his knees in snow.

  He lifted Gai and put him over his left shoulder in a fireman's lift, then turned and trudged back to his sanctum.

  The door was open, just as he'd left it. The first time he tried to cross the threshold, there was a palpable sense of resistance from the house. The way Gai had described it, John's sanctum was an expression of his soul, as individual as a fingerprint. A sanctum was never shared. John didn't even know if such a thing were possible. He stood in the snow in front of the door, and understood that the sanctum was warning him. For a man who didn't believe in fate, John knew, beyond a doubt, that what he was about to do would forge a permanent link between him and Gai.

  He stepped inside and climbed the stairs. The resistance diminished with each step. By the time John reached the corridor, the house had accepted the transgression. John looked at Gai's face as he laid him on the carpet in front of the fire. The noone was still unresponsive. He would remember nothing of this visit, John was sure. If he lived.

  John clasped the noone's right hand in his and pictured Leigh Woods again.

  This time, the attempt was successful.

  The snow was gone, and John was surrounded by trees. He gagged at the stench coming off Gai's scorched arm. The noone wasn't moving.

  John sang. The spell was two notes that continued autonomously once John had sung them. The sound echoed as if reflected from the walls of a small room. The spell was connected to Gai's breathing, the notes repeating each time he drew a breath, becoming softer as he inhaled. The noone started murmuring as the spell took hold. His right arm was ruined. If there was magic capable of reversing such damage, the sanctum's library had kept it from John.

  John searched the trees on the perimeter of the clearing until he found it: a large oak tree whose sprawling roots had created natural hiding places; some small enough for a squirrel's winter hoard, others large enough for a child to hide in. One of these larger natural holes was further concealed by an ivy curtain across its entrance. John carefully ripped away the leaves on one side, opening the ivy like the flap of a tent before laying his friend inside.

  Gai spoke as he was replacing the ivy. His voice was faint, and John could hear the pain in it.

  "You have to use the cage, John."

  John stooped back inside, placing his hand gently on the noone's uninjured arm. "You need to rest."

  Gai grabbed his sleeve to stop him leaving. It took him a few seconds to summon the strength to speak again. "The cage. Send her back when she came from."

  That was as much as the injured noone could manage. His head fell back, and his breathing deepened.

  "Sleep well, Gai," said John as he replaced the ivy.

  John remembered the look of triumph on Ash's face when he had threatened not to return. He tried walking in every direction away from the clearing, and every time, he arrived at the front gate of Sally Cottage.

  In the distance, he heard Pan's voice as she called to her creatures. She sounded thrilled, exultant, ready to celebrate.

  As well she might, thought John when the black gate rose in front of him once again. He was tired, and he felt much older than his fifty-one years.

  Gai couldn't help him any more. No one could help him. He closed his eyes and thought of Sarah. Then he opened the gate and walked up the path to the cottage to confront the god Ashtoreth.

  Forty-Two

  John looked around the living room. Everything was as it always was, down to the sagging sofa, the dead phone, the paint pot he hadn't opened after the bedroom had rejected the first coat he gave it, shedding it like a snake's skin.

  At the bottom of the staircase, he put one hand on the bannister, then turned and went back to the kitchen. In the cutlery drawer, he removed the sharpest knife he could find. Blunter than he would have liked, but it was all he had.

  As his fingers closed around the wooden handle, the kitchen faded and vanished, replaced by the familiar shuttered window, the fleshy pink walls and the iron-framed bed.

  Ash stood by the bedroom window, opening the shutters. The damage from earlier had gone - the glass was unbroken, and the carpet was free of any telltale glittering shards. The moon was waning now, but the stars were bright.

  Ash turned to look at him. She was wearing a dark-green gown with flowing sleeves. The gown fell to her ankles, and its demure neckline was high, revealing not even a hint of cleavage. It was a dress that might have been worn by a mediaeval virgin, determined to preserve her chastity by covering up all sources of temptation. On Ash, it looked like the first layer of a professional stripper. The material clung to parts of her body in a way that drew the eye. She took a single step towards John, and even that sinuous movement, the material whispering as her thighs brushed together, suggested the dress would be easy to pull up to her waist, and she would be more than happy to do just that.

  Her frank, challenging, predatory gaze fell on the knife in John's hand.

  "How tiresomely predictable," she said, lifting the dress a little so she could sit on the edge of the bed. Once seated, she pulled it up a little more and crossed her legs. The extra couple of exposed inches of skin revealed by that movement were as alluring, if not more so, than her usual nakedness.

  She smiled. "I would have thought your little noone might have told you about protective charms by now. He's shown you the Between, after all. You don't think you could hurt me with a knife, do you?"

  John shook his head. "Self-obsessed to the last, Ash," he said, lifting the blade. He had watched Sarah die. As hard as it had been to witness, as devastating as it had been to know she had gone, it had not been painful. Sarah hadn't fought the inevitable. He had never believed in life after death, but now a desperate hope that he was mistaken took hold of him.

  "It's not for you," he said to Ash, then, before she could move or he could have second thoughts, he drew the blade across his own throat with all his strength.

  The pain was instant, but not as bad as he had expected. He let the knife drop to the carpet and sank to his knees. The blood loss would soon lead to unconsciousness.

  He hadn't thought in much detail about the immediate aftermath of cutting his throat, but he'd seen enough films to expect a lot of blood, spurting across the room. It didn't happen. He brought his hands up to his throat, wincing in anticipation of ragged sliced flesh and warm liquid.

  Ash giggled. "I wasn't talking about my protective charms," she said. "I was talking about yours."

  The skin of his throat was sore to the touch but unbroken. His head dropped in despair. He and Gai together hadn't been powerful enough, and he couldn't even end his own life to stop her. She spoke as he put his head in his hands.

  "The charms that protect you are the work of an Adept, John. Your mother. Ironically, they drew me to you when you turned up a mile and a half away all those years ago. So close! I had to see what manner of creature you were. When I found out you were male, I knew I could use you. Are you not ashamed on her behalf? The first male Adept, and she didn't know it. That's the problem with assumptions. No one thought a man could ever use magic. She protected you with her charms, but I was the one who saw your potential."

  He heard her stand up and move closer.

  "I will make you a promise, John. When I'm free, when I am once again worshipped by your kind, when I have revenged myself on Da Luan and those that put me here, I will not go after your family. Your mother is dead. As long as no one steps forward to continue the line, I will
leave them be."

  John raised his head. Ash was opening a drawer of the dresser, removing something small. She held it cupped in her hand. Kneeling in front of him, she showed him what she was carrying. A round grey stone, shot through with darker stripes, nestled in her palm. The sort of stone a child would pick up while walking on a beach.

  "Doesn't look like much, does it?" Ash reached for his hand. He didn't resist. His mind was numb. "Magic resides in three places, John. In a realm, which is where we can find it and draw upon it, in a magician, and in an item, stored there for a specific purpose."

  She dropped the stone into John's hand. He had expected it to be warm. It was as cold as if it had just come out of the fridge. He had expected it to be light. It was as heavy as a bag full of silver coins. He had expected it, after her little speech, to communicate something of the magic within. It did not, or—if it did—he didn't know how to listen to it.

  "It's the time cage," said Ash. John turned it over and over in his hand, but there was nothing to see. "Don't expect it to glow with blinding light, John. It took three Adepts to create it. It would take three to destroy it."

  John looked at her then. She was calm, her smile flirtatious. There was no outward sign of anger. It was as if she had forgotten the attack of earlier that evening.

  "Three adepts?" he repeated. "But..."

  "Yes," she said. "There are only two of us. Your noone is competent, but he's no Adept. You are ignorant, unformed, untaught, but your mother was an Adept, and you are her heir. Or you would be if you were female. I am more powerful than any Adept. I had hoped that our combined power might be enough to break the cage. But I had it all wrong. I need not destroy it at all."

  Again expecting anger, but hearing none, John looked wonderingly at Ash. She continued speaking as if she were talking to herself. "I don't know how long I've been in the time cage. Ten thousand years might have passed in your realm, but that has little relevance in here. I came to Earth as a god, but now I have been forgotten."