by Jack
Desperate to return to the subject he had come to pursue, Ros indicated the man’kin and said, ‘Is your friend here always so reticent?’
‘Mawson? He hasn’t spoken in a hundred years. If he ever does, the roof will probably fall in.’
She burst into another coughing fit, and Ros took the opportunity to leave her presence. The man’kin’s advice had taken on a new significance in the context of its usual silence, and he wanted to avoid another sales pitch. The trinket he kept, though. It was harmless. Apart from the clothes he wore, it was also his sole material possession.
* * * *
Night had fallen. Ros had almost lost count of how many he had been in the city now. Eight, he decided. He wouldn’t spend this one chasing phantoms. He would take the man’kin at its word and pursue the mystery to its conclusion.
* * * *
Even from the outside, Magda Van Haasteren’s stall reeked of smoke and the murkier applications of power. The Change was neither good nor bad; like air, though, it could be befouled. He hesitated before knocking on the door, irrationally convinced that nothing good would come of it. His senses were muddled. Adi could have been standing right next to him and he wouldn’t have known.
To its conclusion, he reminded himself, knocking firmly upon the portal.
‘Finally made up your mind, did you?’ came the croaky voice from within. ‘Come in before you change it again, and shut the door fast behind you.’
Ros kept his first impressions from showing as best he could. The place was crowded, dirty, and worn, and the seer herself fared little better in his assessment. But for the aura of potency swirling around her like a cape — thick and dark, as reptilian as a snake — he would have walked out in an instant.
‘You’re chasing someone,’ she said, heavy-lidded eyes sweeping down and then up his frame. ‘What’s the matter? Has your face frightened her away?’
That same face betrayed him while he considered how best to answer. Blushing furiously, except for the white of his scars, he could only think of the wild-bearded man mocking him in the doss-house. It was true that there was nothing to be done about his appearance. He could only try to put his fears behind him and trust that Adi would see beyond the mask, to what lay beneath.
‘Neither of us is going to win any beauty pageants,’ he said, not about to have that fear reinforced by a creature like this.
‘Indeed we’re not.’ She waved imperiously. ‘You’re crooking my neck, making me look up at you. Sit, sit, and tell me about your elusive girlfriend.’
‘What do you need to know?’
‘How much can you tell me?’ Her eyes slitted fractionally. ‘No, really — how much?’
Ros gave the matter the attention it deserved. How much did he know about Adi any more? It had been five years since he had last seen her. And even then, had he known her well? They had been kids, really, in exceptional straits. It had been easy to let the stories dictate how the rest of their lives were supposed to go. Should he be so surprised that their poorly-laid plans had gone awry?
‘I thought so,’ the seer said as the silence dragged on. ‘Yet there was something about her, something that transcends knowledge, requiring no words or explanations. Wasn’t there?’
‘Yes,’ he said, the answer tugged out of him almost against his will. ‘I thought — I thought it would be easy. All we had to do was grow up and become — become whoever we needed to be. And then we could be together. Why hasn’t it worked like that? I know it was wrong to think she’d drop everything for me, but I’ve come back for her as I promised, and now she —’
He stopped, unable to speak past the lump that had grown in his throat.
‘Perhaps she’s testing you,’ the seer said. The candle that burned on the table at her side filled the deep lines of her face with shadow. ‘Not just you, but the legacy of your first meeting. Has the spark you originally felt survived the passage of time? Sometimes it may not, and they fare badly who try to draw on a power that isn’t there. You know that much; you’ve felt the Void at your feet; you know what awaits us all, in the end. The death of love is no different, and the fear of it drives people to strange exploits.
‘You feel that you must prove yourself,’ she went on, ‘yet in that very attempt you trap yourself anew. Why is the burden of proof solely upon you? It’s like being an apprentice with a master who never speaks. You can only guess at the lesson and bear the punishment when you get it wrong. And what about her? Is she not also required to do as you do, to demonstrate her faithfulness and determination as well?’
‘Yes,’ he said, springing to his feet and circling the tiny room. ‘I’m not just tested — I’m trapped!’
‘And what are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m doing it, aren’t I?’
‘Don’t round on me, boy. If I solve this puzzle for you, doesn’t that make me more worthy of your girlfriend’s hand than you?’
‘Well, damn it, what?’
The seer smiled. ‘Tell me what it’s worth to know.’
He sagged, emptying of anger as suddenly as a water-bladder stabbed with a knife.
‘I have nothing of value to give you,’ he said in the candle’s flickering light.
‘That’s not true,’ the seer told him. ‘Not true at all, Roslin of Geheb.’
He stared at her, wondering how long she had known. The whole time, perhaps. ‘What do you want?’
Her smile widened. ‘I’m trying to ask you the same question.’
‘I want Adi,’ he said. ‘That’s all. I have no family, friends or future without her. That’s the truth of it, so —’
‘So the choice is easy. Go through the curtain. You’ll find the answer you seek on the other side.’
He glanced at the dirty wall-hanging with disquiet. The squat armoured figure, picked out in tatty thread, stared back at him with eyes as cold as a man’kin’s. A woman’s gasping sobs came from beyond the cubicle’s thin walls. The air was thick with grief, and power, and warning, too. No ordinary doorway lay beyond the curtain. Yet where else did he have to go? The trail ended here.
Ros stood straighter and found a clarity of thought that had eluded him earlier. Whatever awaited him, he would face it head-on. Golems and witches hadn’t bested him in the past, and neither had dragons and machines from the dawn of history. He might lack money or prospects, but what need had he of them? Maser Pukje had taught him to be strong and sure on his own. If this was a test of more than his faith in Adi, he would pass that as well.
Filling his chest with smoky air and ignoring the old woman’s potent stare, he stepped forward, through the curtain, into darkness.
* * * *
THE THRALL
Adi’s outstretched hands found a brick wall ahead of her. She stopped walking and felt to either side. The wall was curved, and would form a circle roughly four yards across if it met itself behind her. There was no light at all, and therefore no quick way to check. The air was entirely too close and warm. Claustrophobia struck her like a fist to the gut, and she turned to find way back to the door through which she had come.
The sound of an indrawn breath brought her up short. She wasn’t alone.
‘Who’s there?’
The sounds of the city vanished the moment Ros walked through the curtain, leaving him wondering if he had been struck deaf. At the sound of a woman’s tremulous inquiry, he knew that was not so. He also recognised her voice.
‘Adi?’
‘What’s going on? Where am I?’
‘Hold on.’ He reached out with his senses and found the wall. Grateful for something concrete to deal with, he chose one brick at random, pressed the palm of his hand against it, and flexed his will.
Adi blinked as pinkish light flared into life. It brightened and whitened as the man who had cast it removed his hand from the source.
‘You!’ she gasped, recognising his scarred face immediately. It was the man she’d collided with the night the charm had been broken.
He was the last person she had expected to see. Magda Van Haasteren had promised her understanding. What did he have to do with anything?
Ros was no less surprised. The woman spoke with Adi’s voice but looked like the stranger he’d seen in the courtyard by the doss-house. So much for finding answers.
‘How is this possible?’
‘You tell me,’ she said through tight lips. ‘You got me into this.’
‘Me? No,’ he protested. ‘It wasn’t either of us. It was —’
Ros looked behind him, and for the first time they realised that the door they had come through was invisible. Worse than that, as a quick patting down and thumping of the wall soon revealed, the door was no longer there at all.
‘A Way,’ he said, remembering everything he had learned about such space-bending passages from Master Pukje. ‘The curtain must have hidden it. And now it’s closed.’
‘We’re trapped?’
‘We certainly appear to be.’
Adi looked up, then down. They were caught in a chimney or well that vanished into shadow at either extremity. A heavy metal grill was all that kept them from falling.
Heights and tight spaces, she thought grimly to herself. What next? Crabblers? Ghosts?
She caught her fellow prisoner staring at her oddly. He turned quickly away.
‘I think,’ Ros said, suppressing the impulse to bring his hand up to his face, ‘I think I can get us out of here. A Way leaves a dimple behind, even when it’s closed. It’s like a flaw in glass, and if I can find it —’
‘You’re babbling. What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing. Just hold on for a moment —’
‘No, you wait.’ She clutched his arm and pulled him around. ‘How do you know my name? What kind of trick is this?’
‘Trick? If anyone’s tricking anyone, it’s you.’
‘Oh, please. You can’t possibly expect me to fall for that one.’
He wrenched himself from her grip and backed away. For a moment they just glared angrily at each other. Then his face softened.
‘Take off your veil,’ he said.
‘No.’
‘I already know your name, so what difference does it make?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘I want to see your face.’
‘Get back to finding that door,’ she said, ‘or by the time I’m finished with you you’ll have no face at all.’
He winced at that, but this time didn’t turn away.
‘Adi, look at me properly. I’m not hiding anything from you. You can see my face perfectly well. The scars are new, but the rest is all me. Just me. Don’t you recognise anything?’
He moved around the well so the light caught his features better. She edged away, unable to tear her gaze from them.
‘I’m Ros.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re Adi.’
‘Yes.’
With numb fingers, she pulled the veil aside.
He physically sagged with relief. Behind the Clan Markings, it was definitely her. Tired and paler than he’d ever seen her before, but her all the same. Adi the girl had become Adi the woman, and he hadn’t known her — just as she hadn’t known him. The familiarity they had felt in their minds had betrayed their senses, leading them badly astray.
‘But if you’re you,’ she said, ‘then who ...?’
She recoiled with a hand over her mouth, remembering the flaccid form she’d left wrapped in her sheet at the hostel.
‘What is it?’
He reached for her, but she wasn’t ready to be touched yet.
With shaking voice she explained about the comatose version of him she’d struggled with the last day and a half. He responded with a short account of his own trials.
‘Someone’s been toying with us,’ she said, revulsion becoming anger, and fast. ‘I’ll have that someone’s hide when you get us free of here. And you —’ She poked him hard in the upper arm, right where his nerve was. ‘You really thought I’d put you through a dance like that? How could you?’
Ros could find no good answer to her question. He returned to the task of finding the Way in the hope that it would cover his confusion. ‘I’d been looking for so long. I was getting frustrated.’
‘Well, that makes two of us. It’s crazy to think we were so close and never knew.’
‘Maddening. And it did drive me a little mad. I was helped, remember? We must have been, both of us. I can’t believe you mistook that imposter for me.’
Her features darkened. He hadn’t seen Adi blush for five years. It was distracting him from the task at hand.
‘Well,’ she said, glancing away, then back again. ‘I guess this is what Magda Van Haasteren meant by sending us here.’
‘I guess so.’
She touched his shoulder and was amazed at the muscle she felt there. ‘It really is you.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I guess I’ll get used to having you around again.’
‘I hope so.’
Her fingers moved up to his cheek. ‘Will you tell me what happened to you?’
The Way was entirely forgotten now. ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ he said, cupping her hand in his and stepping closer.
* * * *
It happened so fast there was nothing either could do. To Ros it seemed as though a ring of blue flame blossomed beneath their feet and rushed upwards past them with the speed of a dragon at full stretch. To Adi’s eyes, it was a fiery dust devil, spinning with furious energy, that was born at the invisible bottom of the chimney and whipped up around them, tangling their hair and clothes as it swept up to the heights above.
That it was difficult, afterwards, to place their impressions in accord, was the least of their problems.
The force of the thing’s passage blew them to opposite sides of the well-like space. Ros’s ears blocked, as they had some times when Master Pukje ascended with unexpected swiftness. Adi felt a rush of vertigo, and relied on the wall at her back to keep her balance. Above them, the apparition writhed and spun, growing smaller with distance until it vanished entirely. The silence it left in its wake was almost supernatural in its intensity.
For a second, neither spoke. Something had changed, something difficult to define but impossible to deny. It was clear that the flame or dust devil hadn’t been a random happenstance. There had been purpose behind it.
The clanking of metal broke the silence. The grille beneath them jerked downward an inch. Adi gasped and clutched the wall even more tightly than before. Ros looked around with wide eyes. What new trial was this?
A second racket came, as of rusty gears turning. The grille dropped again, then froze at a canted angle. It was clear now that it was turning, rotating — and that if it continued the two of them would be tipped to their deaths in the depths of the well.
A third time it turned, further than before. Adi dropped to her knees and put her fingers through the rusted metal slats. Could she hold on as it went? What exactly would that achieve? Better to fall quickly, perhaps, than to remain suspended in terror until the strength in her arms gave out.
Despair rose up in her. It was impossible to conceive that just moments ago she had been happy.
Hadn’t she?
Ros loomed over her, scarred and strange. He who had seemed so familiar now looked alien and wild. His hair stood out about his head. The air prickled, making her feel as though another apparition was about to burst around them.
Instead it was the world itself that tore. She screamed as the grille seemed to lurch beneath her and she was suddenly weightless, falling.
* * * *
With an explosion of brick dust and mortar, the Way opened in a place far from Magda Van Haasteren’s stinking hole. Out of it burst Ros first, then Adi, tugged by his arm on her wrist. Filthy, shocked, and grateful to be alive, they staggered away from the gaping rent in the wall behind them. The boom of their arrival echoed and re-echoed through the halls of the city, and
this portentous announcement did not go unnoticed.
Ros blinked his eyes clear and took in his surroundings. It was dark, but not so dark they couldn’t see. They appeared to have emerged into one of the city’s industrial quarters, near a tannery by the smell of it. Numerous vehicles rumbled along a major thoroughfare not one block away.
He craned his head back to inspect the rising cloud of dust silhouetted against the living lights in the ceiling. The Way had closed the moment they’d passed through it, but the after-effects were still spreading.