by Sean Platt
Morph extended a hand. Clint moved to shake it, but as he did, Morph’s hand became a fish. Clint grasped the fish and recoiled. Behind him, Boricio laughed.
“I am, though,” Morph said.
Oliver gestured around the group. “Anyway. You probably know about us from my great uncle. We represent the Conspiracist Faction.”
“Your great uncle?”
“Sly Stone,” said Oliver. “We heard from one of our water reader scholars that you rode with him, and that you learned the truth about what he was.”
Clint glanced up at Oliver. Now that Clint looked him over anew, he realized that he could see much of Sly in the man, starting with his mop of red hair. Sly’s giant head of orange had been so distracting it was hard to look past, but now that Clint thought about it, he could see that Oliver did indeed resemble the man he’d ridden with all those years ago. Oliver had Sly’s pale, freckled skin and narrow, upturned nose. He had Sly’s lips, which always looked at least mildly amused, or possibly mischievous.
“You’re in the Stone family line,” said Clint, a realization dawning. “So that means you’re a…”
“A savant, yes,” said Oliver. “Or ‘yar,’ if you prefer. The things in my head are… downright scary.” He tapped his skull and gave Clint an ominous, knowing look. “Anyway, introductions! Morph you know. This one’s Boricio,” he said, pointing to the dark-haired man who talked in rhymes. “We’re all glad that we’re on Boricio’s side because he used to be a torturer. Although according to his Realm designation, he was a ‘decorator.’ Officially, there is nothing as base as a ‘torturer’ in The Realm.”
Next, he set his hand on the shoulder of the scraggly-haired man with the voice full of gravel. “This is Dylan Brooce. Dylan is a scent manufacturer. You can thank him for all those pleasant smells you smelled on the way here.”
“I alzozing,” said Brooce. Clint interpreted his mumble as “I also sing,” but with a voice like he had, Clint couldn’t imagine the man carrying a tune for more than a foot.
“That’s Churchill,” said Oliver, indicating the silver thinking machine. “Machines with enough years of service can be granted sentience in The Realm, and that happened with Churchill. Once he was able to think for himself, he left his position as a butler and met Dylan one day in a cafe. They got to talking, since Dylan’s music is deep and Churchill fancies himself a deep-thinker. He’s not, though. He’s actually a cretin.”
“Usually, machines don’t reach the necessary level of service and are scrapped before they can choose sentience,” Churchill offered. Then he added, “Coincidentally” with a look that swore there was more to the story.
Lastly, Oliver set his hand on the shoulder of the remaining party member — the man who still hadn’t spoken or removed his mask. Looking into the black visor on the sleek helmet, Clint felt as if he might be looking at anything, and wondered what kind of eyes were staring back at him.
“This,” said Oliver, “is Z. Z is part of the family, but you won’t get much conversation from this one. Good with a scimitar, though.”
Z nodded politely, then tapped the alloy tube at his waist. All of the paladins carried light swords, but the scimitars were notoriously tricky to wield and were nearly useless in untrained hands.
“The Conspiracists have been fighting to crumble The Realm for centuries…” Oliver began.
“Great job you’re doing with that,” Clint interrupted, “seeing as you’ve only had centuries.”
“Hey,” Morph snapped, “stow your snide remarks. This is a cause that I risk my life for every single day. We took out the head of the Royal Guard over a year ago, and I’ve been taking his shape and filling his role since then. Nobody’s had any reason to come up here and check me against these two,” he said, gesturing at Garrett and Gareth, “but if they did, I’d be put on the Wheel of Fortune in a second. How do you think we opened the door for you when we sensed the Orb? And who do you think got you in to see the king and queen?”
Clint blinked. He didn’t think that anyone had gotten him in to see the king and queen. He figured he’d simply walked right in.
“Everyone knew you were returning,” said the owl on the left — the one Clint had mentally named Garrett. “It’s been prophesied forever. And it’s also been prophesied that banditos will break the crystal castle into small gems and sell the kingdom off piece by piece.”
“That’s a lie,” said Gareth.
“Okay, it is,” said Garrett.
“But the first part was true,” said Gareth. “The part about you, Marshal Gulliver. We’ve been waiting for you for a very long time.”
“Well, not just us,” said Garrett. “Other prophets, too.”
“And also some who weren’t prophets, like Dave the Ruiner.”
As much as an owl could scowl, Garrett did. He said, “Dave the Ruiner waits for no one. I spoke to the other prophets. They told Dave the prophecies and Dave said, ‘Yeah, we’re all going to die.’ He’s an utter ruiner of all prophecies.”
“ ‘We’re all going to die’ is a prophecy,” said Gareth.
“True,” said Garrett. Whatever had passed for a scowl vanished. Clint got the impression that Garrett hadn’t so much forgiven this Ruiner person for his cynicism as forgotten he’d said anything about him in the first place.
“The minute these two owls arrived, they started telling us about an exiled marshal who would return and bring with him the Triangulum’s power to seal the breach between worlds,” said Morph. “The Realm knows how bad the fracturing has become, and they know that they’re making it worse. Most people in the Sands think the leaking started after the Great Cataclysm and that only The Realm has managed to hold onto its magic, but they don’t know that The Realm actually caused the Cataclysm in the first place. But The Realm’s rulers know the truth. Even the citizens of The Realm know the truth, but they have mostly chosen to forget. One day, all of the worlds will sunder, but it doesn’t matter to the people here. They’ve grown too used to their magic.”
“Every day,” Oliver added, “this kingdom faces a choice. It can keep going as it always has and widen the fissures, or it can surrender its magic vehicles and cookers and age-defying creams and its pleasant potions and stand a chance. The entire Realm has heard the apocalypse prophecy for years, from dozens of oracles. They know the timeframe. They know that if nothing changes, the apocalypse will happen during this generation. But as each new day dawns, they can’t bring themselves to put down the magic they’ve become dependent on and let it return to the source. Every day, they decide that one more day won’t make a difference.”
“That’s senseless,” said Clint.
Oliver shrugged. “Most people here live in what is essentially a permanent bubble of glee. They do it to themselves, willfully becoming addicted to a euporite — a scented ointment called PermaBliss that you dab behind your ears like a woman with scent. It’s both an amnesiatic and a dillusional. People know they’re choosing to forget, but after a while, it ceases to matter to them. They become unable to stare at reality. There are few PermaBliss addicts in the prisons of the Keep, and there are few non-addicts who remain in their old blissful lives. It’s not hard to see the terrible truth when the bliss releases you, and because of that, those who remain off PermaBliss usually end up joining us.”
“How many of you are there?” Clint asked.
“Not enough. Dave the Ruiner, who the birds mentioned, is our leader. Dave is immune to PermaBliss, and managed to live amongst the populous as a normal citizen for long enough to put down roots. But there is another group of people in The Realm who are clear-headed but who don’t join us, of course. Those people see things for true but want them to remain as they are. People like the Ministry.”
“Barrel of babbling baboons,” Boricio said. He’d pulled out his knife and was spinning it in his hands, staring at it as if it were dinner.
“I don’t see where I come in,” said Clint.
“Oh, that’s ea
sy,” said Garrett the owl.
“Quite easy,” Gareth agreed.
“You see,” said Garrett, “You’re the Chosen One.”
Clint looked at the two owls, shocked. He wasn’t a chosen anything. He was a gunslinger. He carried iron. He dealt death. And even then, he’d left his weapons in the Sands, his woman in the ground, and his unicorn partner behind. He stood in front of the owls and the six Conspiricists as an old man who should have died decades earlier, useless.
“It’s true,” said Gareth.
“But I don’t have my guns. The Realm exiled me. I’ve no way to fight, and no power. What exactly am I supposed to do?”
“You beddastart swimmin’, or you’re gonna sink lika stone,” mumbled Dylan Brooce through a mouthful of gravel.
“Yes,” said Garrett. “Do that.”
Gareth looked at his partner, then swiveled his head to face forward. “Period,” he added.
CHAPTER THREE:
MEMORIES AND PERMABLISS
Clint’s shoulders were draped in epaulettes with hanging, yellow, yarn-like fringe. His uniform was blue, bedecked with medals that weren’t even gold or silver, but pastel — pinks, light oranges, powder blues, and lime greens. One of the medals his uniform had earned, Clint noticed with revulsion, was for “politeness.” Another was for “good cheer.” A third was for “perfect attendance.”
A beard was back on his face, too — this one fake. Oliver explained that The Realm was so completely filled with bliss and white magic that any spell used in an underhanded way (say, to magick up a beard so that Clint could conduct criminal activities) would cling to its user like stink. Everything unpleasant or borderline here, he said, was magnified when magic was involved. A spell used to steal a single dollar would, to the PermaBliss addicts on the street, feel like a massacre.
Five of the paladin Conspiracists were again wearing helmets, including the mysterious and silent Z, who had yet to remove his. Morph was now a different man — shorter, pudgier, and with a complexion that was uncomfortably rosy — and was wearing a uniform identical to Clint’s. Both Clint and Morph wore name tags. Morph’s said “Captain Wallace” and was bedazzled with fake jewels.
Clint fussed in his uniform, and hadn’t stopped complaining.
“It would be logical, in the privacy of the Keep, for five guards in helmets and a torturer to take you from your cell,” Oliver explained, “but if we’re going out into the streets, seven helmeted guards will look odd if there aren’t a least two officers leading them. When guards go out alone, citizens get nervous because they seem like an undirected forceful presence. But if they’re with officers, the citizens relax because they figure the guards and officers could be on any number of errands. Like shiny, happy people holding hands.”
“So while we’re out, try to look delighted,” Morph added, practicing a too-wide smile in the mirror’s reflection.
“Wallace is the Royal Guard captain that Morph spends most of his time impersonating, so that’s who he is now,” said Oliver. “Luckily, you look a lot like Wallace’s second, John Prince, so that’s who you get to be — and fingers crossed that we don’t run into the real Prince. The rest of us are too recognizable and look nothing like the other captains, so we’re going to be faceless guards, and that’ll fit just fine with protocol. And by the way, this will go most smoothly if you can act giddy. Pretend you’re surrounded by singing children skipping rope at all times. Or holding kittens.”
Clint — who didn’t normally like children or kittens and who became sore after smiling — grunted. He stood behind Morph, glaring into the mirror at the ridiculous uniform with its dumb yellow epaulettes. He looked like he was going to do a song and dance. Which, quite horribly, he realized he was indeed about to do.
Before they’d left the chamber in the sky, the owls had told Clint something the Conspiracists already knew — that Clint’s arrival was foretold to herald the beginning of the end. The way that end would unfold, however, was open to interpretation. One of the reasons the royals had allowed Clint to enter The Realm was because their interpretation said that Clint would return in order to defeat the Darkness, which constantly threatened The Realm and its abundance of white magic. Clint, who never understood even half of what Edward told him about magic and its rules, found that idea turkey stupid. Was The Realm really so blind as to believe that Darkness could simply be pushed aside so they could keep using magic cookers and magic construction and watching all the flicker talkies they wanted every day? But the answer seemed to be yar — or “yes,” in parlance of The Realm. Dylan Brooce said you should never overestimate a person’s ability to accept lies that spoke of what he wanted most to believe, then started singing a drawling song that lamented the changes in the world. Clint had to admit that despite his odd voice, Dylan’s song was quite good.
The Conspiracists, on the other hand, interpreted “the beginning of the end” to refer to the fall of The Realm and a violent re-equalization of unbalanced magic — a reconciliation with Darkness not as a friend or a foe, but as a necessary equal. They saw a collapse of power structures and the shocking return to reality for millions of blissed-out addicts. They saw harsh lessons in survival for those who’d forgotten how to live without magic. And, of course, they saw the final fracturing of all worlds — and the end of days — if the balance wasn’t achieved in time.
The Realm, Oliver had told him, had water readers like those Clint had known out in the Sands, but Realm readings (made on large, sophisticated water pools) were considered so accurate that the scholars who made them were more or less seeing events unfold live. They’d been watching Clint since his exile, but could only see him during periods of low magic interference. Thanks to Edward’s and the Triangulum Enchantem’s presence, those blind spots were blessedly wide early on, but the scholars knew the basics: where Clint had been, where he’d traveled, many of the enemies he’d fought, and most of the quests he’d undertaken. Especially vivid to the water readers were the last thirty or forty years, since those were the decades in which Clint had mostly eschewed magic. When he and Edward had ridden together in those years (slowly becoming figures of legend in Realm and Sands alike), Clint had allowed Edward to use shields, umbrellas, and healing spells far less often than the unicorn wanted. So Realm readers knew much of those years, after Mai had died and Clint had begun to spend his days trying to join her.
The scholars watched and waited, knowing that Clint would one day return. Morph, who could become whoever he wanted, infiltrated the readers and made friends among the more disenchanted of them, following Clint’s legend as it unfolded, watching with eyes of a skeptic. He took his information to Dave the Ruiner, who interpreted what he heard as a cynic true. And so when Clint arrived, the underground was prepared. They’d anticipated The Realm’s moves and had decided, in advance, how they would counter them.
As the group rode the liftbox down from the owls’ chamber (and then as the Conspiracists dressed Clint in his fussy blue uniform) Clint began to see even more flashes of memory that had been hidden from him. Things he’d forgotten — or been made to forget — all those years ago.
He seemed to remember a marshal partner he’d had while riding behind the wall — a fellow by the name of Bellows. Clint nar remembered his first name, but did remember that Bellows had turned traitor. Clint recalled that part clearly, including the language Clint had used to describe Bellows’s traitorous actions. Bellows had been a traitor in Clint’s mind, not a member of the underground. Bellows had said something against The Realm (or possibly done something?) and had been caught at it. Clint had been young, newly starred, and brimming with duty and honor. He remembered being aghast at his partner’s dissident actions. He remembered turning his back, condemning Bellows along with the rest.
At first, Clint couldn’t remember what had happened to Bellows, but then further flashes of memory began to arrive. Bellows had been sent to the Wheel of Fortune. Clint had gone to watch. Given that Bellows was a traitor
, his punishment seemed fair and just. Clint had wanted to see his partner pay for his crime, which at the time had seemed heinous. Most of the Wheel encounter was still missing from the gunslinger’s mind, but Clint remembered Bellows begging, pleading with the gunslinger to end his torture by using his guns. But Clint had been young, and Bellows had been a traitor. So Clint had done his duty, and hence had done nothing.
Then Clint remembered the way in which the shoe had moved to the other foot. He remembered a group, like a jury, judging him. He saw the king and queen — and a man who his mind called “Senator” — at the head of the jury as they sent him out in exile. It had been the same king and queen, barely any younger. Did time move more quickly in the Sands? Or did the people here age slowly due to the abundant magic in the air?
As the Conspiracists pasted Clint’s fake beard onto his face, the gunslinger’s mind continued to send him disjointed images that, as of yet, had no meaning:
A man and a woman, above him, smiling, handing him a set of toy guns. Toy seven-shooters, of course.
Vast playgrounds filled with magic rides, including a sort of trolley that touched the clouds, then plummeted back toward the ground.
Bliss. Endless sprawls of bliss. Too much bliss. And a girl. A woman. Her hair was the sort of blonde that edged on yellow.
A man in uniform, associated in some inexplicable way with marbles.
Clint tried to force the flashes of thought and learn more, but whatever was blocking his memories apparently didn’t work that way. He wanted to see Edward. He tried to imagine the unicorn walking on the street’s yellow bricks, to see him entering the green crystal foyer of Castle Spires. He would have been permitted inside, right? He was Edward the Brave, wasn’t he? Clint tried to see what Edward’s title might mean, too, and wished he’d pushed the issue with the unicorn in the near-century he’d had with him. But he had no truly coherent Realm memories of Edward other than a single flickering image that might just be a distorted recollection of his encounter with Kold sixty years earlier: Edward with one leg forward, bowing.