by Joe Ducie
I stared at the ancient letters, six short lines, and shook my head. “No, not a word. Some of it looks vaguely familiar, maybe old Infernal, but I don’t know if even the language historians at the Academy have a translation for—”
My voice caught in my throat, and I had to swallow my words as the glyphs blurred. The letters changed and became a calligraphic form of English. I was able to read what was scribed into the brass plate.
Here rests Myth, the Creation Knife,
Forged in Atlantia for the Nine to slay,
Forged to light the Shadowless way.
Paths unbroken, unsung, unfound
Await the Immortal King to be crowned.
“Declan, are you okay?” Annie asked. She grabbed my wrist to stop me from falling. “You looked like you zoned out for a minute there.”
I blinked, and my eyes stung as if I’d been staring at the sun. “Hmm? Oh, yes. Sorry, I can read it...”
“What does it say?”
I recited the inscription aloud and wiped the sweat from my brow. “Broken quill, I think this was meant for me.”
“How so?”
“It has a ring of prophecy about it, don’t you think? Shadowless, that one’s obvious. But Immortal King? They’ve only been calling me that for a few months, ever since I died...”
My thoughts trailed away into knotted paths of confusion. I thought of the Historian of Future Prospect, a young girl of just sixteen, who acted as sort of a seer for the Knights Infernal. The Historian was a title, granted to one girl born every generation with the gift of foresight. She could See every possible future, branching out from each possible moment. Most Historians didn’t live much past their twenties. Most went as mad as a sack of cats.
Annie was talking, but I wasn’t listening. I fell out of my thoughts and met her eyes. “Sorry? What?”
“You died?” she said. “What do you mean you died?”
I offered her a kind smile, untucked my shirt, and lifted the tail to reveal the mess of tight, ropy scar tissue that crossed my gut and ran up to my ribs. “Long story short, about three months back I was stabbed in Atlantis, fighting over something called the Infernal Clock. Emily—do you remember Emily? Nice pregnant woman from Paddy’s? Queen of the Renegades? Emily kicked me off a tower a mile above the city and, as I fell, I hit a reality storm, which cast me back in time and space about a week. I bled out on the floor of my shop.”
“But you’re alive,” she said, her face ashen. “God, please tell me you’re not a ghost or a zombie or some such—”
I took her hand and pressed it against my chest. “Can you feel that? That’s my heart beating, same as yours. I was brought back to life with a crystal petal from the Infernal Clock. Sort of like a ‘Get out of Death Free’ Card.”
Annie shuddered and pulled her hand away. “I guess I’ll take your word for that.”
“Chin up, sweet thing. We’re here. We’ve made it. If that little bugger Charlie can be believed, this knife will get us to Ascension City. Then the real fun will start.”
“Right.” Annie looked at me sideways. “You really traveled through time?”
“Sure did. Learned a valuable lesson, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t go fuckin’ around with time.”
About as valuable a lesson as any I’ve ever had the misfortune to have stabbed into me. I trailed my fingers over the plaque and spent a minute committing the lines to memory, reciting them over and over again under my breath. Once I was sure I had it, I moved my hand over the hilt of the knife and hovered just an inch above the large diamond.
The hilt started to glow with gentle, silver light—luminescent, like a pool of Will—before I’d even touched the damn thing. Annie gasped, and I hesitated, fearing booby traps or latent, hexed enchantment. In my experience, mystical objects of uncertain power ended up either killing me or unleashing travesties upon the Story Thread. Still, what other choice did I have?
I grasped the hilt.
Nothing exploded. A pleasant change in my line of work. Given my track record of mystical objects shrouded in chaos, I’d expected the seas to boil and the sky to fall.
The knife slipped from the rock as if I were running the blade through warm butter. About eight inches of shining, clear crystal formed the blade, and locked inside that crystal were about a dozen blood-red rose petals.
My hand shook. The Roseblade... Long ago, nearly ten years now, when I first discovered Atlantis on my Great Quest after graduating from the Academy, I’d seen a blade not unlike this, locked before the Infernal Clock. The Roseblade—capable of channelling enough Will to level mountains and boil oceans. The petals in that sword had been white.
The knife, Myth, is a weapon of celestial illusion!
“That’s actually kind of pretty,” Annie said. “For a knife. Christ, Declan, you look like you’re going to be sick!”
I thought I might be, at that. Swallowing hard, I ran a finger down the flat of the blade, along the cool crystal. More of that faint light shone from within, giving the petals a silver lining. I pricked my finger on the razor-sharp point, drawing a tiny bead of blood.
“Well...” I cleared my throat. “Bugger me sideways.”
Chapter Thirteen
The Nowhere Bar
“Is it valuable?” Annie asked, entranced by the radiant petals.
“Priceless,” I said, and if ever there was an understatement... “Let’s see if we can get it to work. I’m actually more confident that little bugger Charlie was telling the truth, now that I know what this is.”
“How d’you mean?”
I tapped the blade. “This knife is a weapon of celestial illusion, Annie. An ancient weapon from the time before Atlantis fractured and was lost. The crystal and the petals are a store of immense power, capable of absolutely anything. I don’t doubt we can cut through worlds with this blade.”
Annie stuck her tongue between her teeth and squinted at the knife. “I’ve read a book about a knife like this, you know. A children’s book when I was in high school. I’m sure of it.” She gestured vaguely with her hand. “The Subtle Knife, by Phillip Pullman. That’s the one. The kid in the story had a knife that could cut windows between worlds. Created, like… a portal in the air. I imagine not unlike what we used in McSorley’s basement.”
I nodded along. “Yeah, I know the story. It’s one of the banned books, along with Tolkien’s tales, sealed by the Knights.” A scary thought came to me then, and the knife in my hand seemed to get a whole lot heavier. “I wonder... no.”
“What?”
“Well...” I licked my lips and gazed at my surroundings, at the distant walls of the temple and the thriving, beautiful garden enclosing the pyramid. I thought about how insubstantial this world felt and how I’d likened moving along the beach and through the forest as a dream. “I wonder if we’ve somehow crossed into the Dream Worlds. Into the realms and beads of the Story Thread locked away by the Knights.”
“Is that possible?”
I chuckled nervously. “Before just now, I wouldn’t have thought so, no. But here we are. I don’t know what else this world could be.”
“So is that the Subtle Knife then, do you think?” Annie frowned. “In the book, I don’t think it looked like that.”
“I don’t know. How did they use it in the book?”
Annie shrugged and folded her arms under her breasts. “I don’t remember specifics, but they sort of felt around in the air with the tip of the knife and cut when it stuck. I think the kid in the story could feel when he’d found some other world, like a sixth sense.”
With no better idea, and praying I didn’t need to use my barred Will, I felt around in the air, waving the knife back and forth like an orchestra conductor waves a baton. The petals in the blade shone, and the hilt thrummed in my grasp, but no portals between worlds sprang into existence.
“That’s promising,” I said and stopped to admire the knife. The hilt stopped shaking, a
nd the petals dimmed.
“Did you feel anything?”
“Hmm.” I tried again, moving the knife more slowly this time and feeling my way through the empty space. The petals shone again, and the knife jarred on nothing, striking a dull chime as if I’d scraped the blade against steel. Slower now, like a surgeon with a scalpel, I guided the tip of the blade and felt it slip into something invisible, like a key fitting into a lock.
The knife caught on the air and, with little force from me, slid down as though it were a zipper and revealed another world. Curtains were drawn open, and the air split as if reality was only a thin, frayed canvas and I were tearing it in half like I might a piece of paper. The portal was about seven feet high, from my shoes to a foot above my head, and wide enough for one at a time to step through. A swirl of bitingly cold snow blew from the new world and into ours atop the pyramid. All I could see through the portal was a blizzard of snow and ice.
“Won’t last two minutes there,” I said. “Do you think I can close—”
No sooner had the thought entered my mind than the portal zipped closed, the two folds of reality I’d split fused back together as if an invisible line of solder had been run along the seam.
“Try again,” Annie said firmly. “Maybe try thinking about where you want to go. Like, picture Ascension City in your mind, or something.”
That sounded like a mighty fine idea. I thought about Ascension City, the sprawling districts, the towering skyscrapers, and the clear crystal bridges built across the sky, connecting the intertwined buildings. I thought about Aaron’s shop, Cedar Sky, and his vast array of otherworldly spices, and the knife, Myth, snagged on another invisible point in the air. The knife slid through buttered reality and revealed a world of lush, green grass, a field surrounded by gently sloping mountains. The warm scent of spring and something sweet drifted through the portal.
Annie looked impressed. “Is that anywhere you recognize?”
“No, that’s not Ascension City, I’m afraid.”
“Try again?”
I held the portal open with my mind, somehow, and avoided thoughts of closing the tear. “It’s better than here,” I said. “Away from whatever-that-kid-really-is waiting for us if we head back.”
Annie’s eyes widened. “Oh, Charlie! We can’t leave him. He’s just a—”
“The runes set out in front of this temple, in that circle of gold, were some pretty potent wards and enchantments. I could only follow a smattering of them, but what I saw was enough to turn demons to smoke and even deter Voidlings. So do you really want to deal with something that only gets a headache when he strolls too close?”
Annie looked back toward the temple walls. “He’s just a boy.”
“No, he’s not. I’m asking you to trust me on this.”
Annie bit her lip but, after a long moment, nodded sharply. “Okay...”
“Thank you.”
With little fanfare, we stepped one at a time out of this world and into another.
Soft grass soaked with dew and a blue, cloudless sky greeted us on the other side. I stared back through the portal at the top of the pyramid and the brass plate on the pedestal. With a thought I wished it closed, and the portal vanished. We’d escaped whatever that place truly was and now stood on a world that felt solid and real.
“Back on track, Jack,” I muttered.
“Oh, I think I can tell the difference,” Annie said. “This place feels...”
“Stronger? Solid? Better than a dream?”
Annie nodded and brushed the grass with her fingertips. “That last place kind of felt like falling, didn’t it? As if the whole place could just vanish at any moment. Now we’ve got the ground back under our feet.”
“Nicely put.”
I admired our new surroundings. To the east, distant peaks stabbed at the sky, and to the west, the field dropped away toward a sparse forest of pine trees. A herd of some sort of fuzzy deer creatures grazed around the trees. The north vista held a whole bunch of nothing except what looked like a manmade wall that ran over hills and dipped behind a ridge. To the south, I saw something even more encouraging—fields of cultivated crops. The wind blew over the crops, carrying that scent of something sweet.
With no better place for it, I slipped Myth under my sword belt and let the blade rest flat against the leg of my pants. I’d have to be careful until I could find a sheath for the ancient knife. Given its power and what it could do, I’d be mad to let it out of my sight. Someone—or something—a long time ago had known I’d have need of it, which opened a whole barrel of questions I couldn’t answer.
Old powers that stank of prophecy swirled around my head. I’d never been a firm believer in fate or destiny. Most soldiers weren’t—not when any moment on the battlefield could be your last. I’d seen enough men and women cut down long before their time to affirm my belief in the guiding hand of absurd chaos over that of fate or fickle providence. Still... that inscription had been tailored for me, and weapons of celestial illusion were millennia old, which had to put the inscription around the same age, didn’t it?
“Where do we go from here, Declan?”
I emerged from the incomplete jigsaw puzzle rattling around in my head and tapped my chin thoughtfully. “We could keep trying the knife, but let’s have a look around first. Until we know more about how Myth works, we’re just searching for a needle in a universe of haystacks. This is definitely Forget, so we might be connected to a world that has access to Ascension City or even the Atlas Lexicon—although I don’t know if we should try that again anytime soon.”
“How can you tell this is Forget? It looks like Europe to me.”
I gestured vaguely at the crops a quarter mile away. “Unless I miss my guess, that’s a field of honeyberries. They don’t grow on Earth.”
“I don’t see a farmhouse or anything...”
“No, me neither.” I shrugged and ran a hand back through my hair. “Still, might be something on the other side of those hills. Fancy another walk?”
“Lead the way.”
We set off across the grassy field toward the crop. The sun was caressing the western horizon, and if this were True Earth I’d put the time at somewhere around three or four o’clock in the afternoon, but who knew how long the days were here? Wherever here was. As we drew closer to the crop, I saw that the snares of tangled plants were bursting with honeyberries. An irrigation system, plastic pipes, hung suspended above the plants drizzling a mist of water droplets. Another good sign. I plucked a few berries and offered them to Annie. While not a scratch on those impossibly large mangoes, they were soft and tasty—like grapes with a caramel center.
“I’m kind of struggling with the fact of all this,” Annie said, as we strolled along the perimeter of the honeyberry crop, toward the base of a large hill dotted with pine trees. “Just a day ago I thought Western Australia was big, and now we’re leaping across whole worlds with a mythical dagger. Feels as if we’re in a storybook ourselves, you know?”
“A lot to get your head round, isn’t it? I grew up with all of this, Annie. Well, not all of it. But the whole ‘other worlds’ thing and traveling between them, and it still makes me stop and think sometimes. I think you were right, back at the Lexicon, when you said it seems too easy. Sometimes, more so in the last few years, I’ve thought we’d all be better off if the ways between the worlds were closed. I mean, there are enough problems on True Earth to solve without a multiverse of abominations piled on top.”
“I’m a little afraid—if I’m being honest,” she said, wringing her hands. “Afraid that I’m not cut out for this. Last night, Emissary could have snapped my neck as easily as blinking. I mean, how do you fight that?”
“If all else fails, you go down swinging, but you’ll be fine.”
“How do you know that?”
I gently squeezed her elbow, under her leather jacket, and a smile tugged at my lips. “You were trained by Sam Grey, and although I didn’t know him that well�
��or at all, really—I’ve known his type. I watched him calmly and competently pump six solid shots into Emissary’s chest. Moreover, you put down that shooter at the university. For our business, Annie, you’re cut from the right cloth.”
Not always a good thing, I thought but kept it to myself.
“Going to be tough getting back to a normal life after all this,” she said. “Any tips—”
As we rounded the bend in the crop, something large and solid tackled me hard and slammed me into the ground. The air burst from my lungs in one big rush, but my training, however rusty, kicked in, and despite the size of the man who had tackled me, I squeezed a pressure point in his neck and used his weight to roll him off me.
He grunted.
“Declan!” Annie shouted.
I leaped to my feet, waistcoat ruffled and disarrayed, drawing deep breaths, and managed to unsheathe about twelve inches of my sword before someone pressed twin revolver barrels into my face—and giggled.
“Don’t even think about it, buddy,” said a voice from the past, as familiar as the sun, the moon, or a childhood stream and the pleasant memory of a dream. “Unless you want the last thing that goes through your mind to be a bullet.”
Oh... wow. Given that I knew the face behind the voice, those were the sweetest words I’d heard in years.
Chapter Fourteen
Meadow Gate
“Still as sweet as lilies in May, Tia,” I said, certain I recognized the voice and the woman attached to it.
The petite woman, wearing blue overalls above a white blouse and pointing twin, iron-barreled revolvers at my face, laughed. “Declan? Declan Hale? Broken quill, with the amount of people that want you dead, and all those bounties on your big head, I’d have bet good gems on never seeing you again! Ha!”
I gently pushed the barrel of one of her revolvers aside and got a good look at her. “Tia Moreau. Now, I know you’re dead and buried. I went to your memorial service, yours and the rest.” At five feet and a dime, Tia only just came up to my shoulder. Her face held a few lines I didn’t remember above a lightly freckled button nose and under emerald-green eyes, and her long, raven-black hair was tied back in a ponytail. An old scar, something else I didn’t remember, crossed the space between her eyes, down the bridge of her nose, and into her cheek.