“This was the nursery.”
The White Wolf flinched as I straightened and glared at him. “I’d figured that much out for myself, thank you.”
I could feel Blade bristling within me. “He fed here. He fed on children.”
“No wonder they moved,” I said into the silence. “The children’s nightmares would be growing worse, night after night. Children’s dreams are powerful things. They gave our visitor a chance to get a handle on this world, as well as allowing him to build a tremendous power reserve from their fear. But he’s not here now.”
The White Wolf looked at me sidelong. “This isn’t his lair. This was simply the best place for him to lay his trap.”
“So where is he, then?” I turned in an angry circle. “He has too heavy a presence here to track through all of this. And you said he wasn’t subtle.”
The White Wolf’s icy eyes narrowed. “I said he wasn’t refined. He’s not a native of this place. He’s not at home here. That doesn’t mean that he is without a plan. Or that he can’t lay a trap, for that matter.”
I nodded. “And the trail led you up.” I turned, and felt the White Wolf at my back like a chill breath of arctic air. I paused, lowering my head. “Would you contest your service, then?”
His momentary silence held a strong undercurrent of calculation. “No. But I would warn you. He may be out of place, but this one is strong. Terribly strong.”
“Strong enough to take me, you think?”
A low whuff of air curled over my shoulder. “You’ve surprised me before.”
I laughed. “You’re actually concerned.”
“Just trying to bring you to see reason.” He sounded affronted. “Most of the Legion lies dormant. Perhaps you should awaken them.”
“And risk the distraction of my roused host, with no prey at hand to give them? I think not.”
He said nothing else as he followed me down the stairs, but I could feel his disapproval like a gathering storm at my back. Good. If he were angry enough, perhaps he’d take his frustrations out on the opposition.
The stairs creaked underfoot, the oppressive echoes of childhood nightmares fading as we descended. I kept my ethereal senses extended, analyzing the framework of power that ran through the square of the building like a decaying vine threading through a sagging lattice. But this spirit had a crafty touch. Brooding shadows pulled me in several directions at once. In every apartment I felt sure a trap would be waiting, carefully prepared and lovingly fed on the fears of sleeping innocents.
I knew better than to play that game.
I descended to the ground floor and searched through the apartments, looking for a weak spot in the fabric of decay that draped the building. The White Wolf stalked cautiously at my side; Blade stood ready at the edges of the stillness-in-motion that I had long ago fashioned into the stronghold of my spirit. I deliberately stayed away from the active traces of my enemy that ran through the shadows of that place like blood thickening in the veins of a corpse. I sought the places between shadows until I found what I needed in the kitchen of a corner apartment.
The curtains had been drawn back from the windows, though the light faded before it touched the clean hardwood floor. Shadows clustered there less thickly than I had seen in the rest of the building, and the taint that lingered there held its position grimly and with effort. Every utensil in the kitchen stood neatly racked. The broad expanse of white stone countertops gleamed with diligent daily scrubbing. That kitchen had all the hallmarks of a finely tuned machine running smoothly under a firmly assured hand. I wondered if it was the Old Woman’s kitchen.
I glanced at the White Wolf. “Perfect.”
His eyes sparkled impishly. “My faith in you is restored, oh master.”
“If you ever lose the sarcasm, I may just expire of shock.”
“And what will you use as bait for your trap?”
I reached to a round glass container racked among many on one polished counter top, poured out a handful of the fine grains within, and carefully sprinkled the salt into a neat white circle on the smooth surface of the floor. “You said that he had little finesse, remember? So I will deal with him head on. I will not bait him to this place, but rather I will hale him here to answer me.”
“Bold.” The White Wolf sat back on his haunches. “Could be dangerous. What if he’s too strong for you?”
“If he’s too strong for me here, away from all of his prepared places, then subtlety will do me little good in the end,” I said mildly. “Don’t you agree?”
He muttered a snarl under his breath, but did not answer.
I set the White Wolf to guard. Then I relaxed in front of my circle of salt, ready to begin my summoning.
Words and gestures are for the crowd, really. Sorcery is a matter of will, aided at times by symbolism. My summoning was less than flashy. To an outside observer, it would probably have looked as if I’d gone to sleep on my feet.
Through half-open eyes, I saw the shadows in the room grow and twist, as if cast by bare, gnarled trees bowing before a great storm. The darkness grew heavier, and with it came a wind—a roaring gale that tore doors from cupboards and scattered the contents across the room. The unnatural fury smashed containers sitting quietly on shelves, and flung fragments of glass about the room like a malevolent whirlwind. Through all this rage, no fragment touched me, and not one grain of salt was disordered.
I leaned forward and spoke quietly to the circle. “It does you no good, as you see. I am protected.”
The wind died, and two carious, yellow eyes opened in the empty air in the middle of the salt circle. “Who are you, who would dare summon me?”
I grinned, bowed mockingly. “You might think of me as a sort of spiritual thug, a kind of ghostly gun for hire. I am a sorcerer. My name is Zethus. And you are?”
The eyes flickered, as if lit from behind by a candle flame. I had to crane my neck to look up at them. “Fear itself.”
He spoke in the voice of the whirlwind. The building shuddered to hear him speak. I reached into my pocket, drew out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out, and lit it casually with a flame I called to dance from the tip of my left thumb. I puffed out the flame, leaned back into the empty air, pulled my legs up, and floated there, supported by the White Wolf’s power over the air. “I doubt that,” I said. “Sorry. I’m all out of fear today. Would you like some tobacco?”
Golden eyes glared down at me through the rising wisps of smoke. “Foolish mortal …”
I took a drag and let the smoke curl out of my nostrils. “You’re right. Probably not.”
Some cultures say that tobacco protects by some innate power in its essence, as if the addiction in it were a live thing to be commanded. In my opinion, tobacco is an aid in these dealings more as a part of the ritual than anything else. If a practitioner can casually light a cigarette and take an insolent puff or two, it expresses a level of confidence that can be nothing but off-putting to the foe. So much of sorcery is confidence. Besides, tobacco often helps cover the smell of an opponent, and this can be no small thing in many cases.
The golden eyes closed, and when they opened, a ragged form misted into view behind them, growing visibly more solid with each passing instant. Jagged lines crisscrossed the angular body the spirit had taken, painted in raw flesh. The lips of countless wounds gaped as he shifted his weight. Muscles and ligaments and tendons could be seen writhing through the fissures like snakes when he moved. Dark drops of blood spattered the floor like rain and streaked his body in black ribbons.
I glanced at the circle of floor ringed by gleaming white salt and watched the blood begin to pool. “The whole Jigsaw Man routine’s been done, you know. You should relax. Think of this as an interview.”
The golden eyes blinked. “What?”
“An interview.” I took another considering drag on the cigarette, then leaned forward in a friendly way. “Look. I’ve been sent to bring you out of here. And while I do that, I’m evaluating you. I
want to see if you have what it takes to join my Legion. I want to see what you’re made of.” My gaze flicked back to the cascading blood. “Besides discarded body parts, I mean.”
He reared back and brought both fists crashing forward. His hands stopped above the salt as if they’d run into an invisible wall. Blood sprayed out around them, outlining the curve of the salt circle and running down to join the blood lapping at the edge of the salt without actually touching it. “Insolent sorcerer! I am of the Wild Hunt, Blood and Bone! Though I have gone far from my haunts, still I will have the respect due me!”
He slammed his fists into the barrier again. This time the building shook with the impact. I glanced down to see a dark spot creep into the white curve of the salt.
I straightened my legs to stand once more on solid ground. “No more time to play,” I said curtly. “You’re too dangerous to add to the Legion. I’d like to introduce you to someone. Several someones, actually. The Captains of my Legion. They’re here for … well … you.”
He raged on as I spoke their names, but as they came, a silence grew around the circle. “Blade.”
At my right hand rose a tall, hooded form, face a dim blur beneath the hood of his cloak. He held a sword upright in his hands, and the blade burned with white fire.
“Shadow.”
A hulking silhouette of absolute darkness slouched into place at my left hand.
“Bright Angel.”
Across from Blade at the far edge of the circle of salt, two brilliant semicircles of light opened into an angel’s wings. The face could not be seen through the flames of the wings, but a burning sword as red as blood swung loosely from the angel’s right hand.
“Bane.”
Across from Shadow, a gaunt, manlike shape as pale and hungry as bare bone stepped out of the gloom, silver eyes dimly lit from within, thin lips drawn back to expose jagged teeth.
I watched the four edge in around the silent figure of my prey. “And for his part in the hunt, I give an equal share of the kill to the White Wolf,” I said, snuffing the cigarette between thumb and forefinger with a quick twisting motion and closing the ritual.
I could hear the Wolf’s claws clicking on the tiled floor behind me as I reached out with my foot and with one swipe broke the circle where the blood had eaten away at the line of salt.
I turned away, a great wind buffeting me from behind. A roaring as of many voices rose to shatter the silence. Then, abruptly, all became still. I turned and surveyed the wreckage of the kitchen, the glass and the scattered salt, as the sun broke through the windows. Of the blood that had filled the circle, not one drop remained.
I met a subdued Vincent outside. He transferred the fee to my account without any questions. He did not doubt that the spirit had gone. I knew without looking back at the building that the pall had lifted, that the stone façade of the brownstone no longer wore the face of death, and that the water ran clean over the stones of the building.
I checked the account, validated the transfer, transferred a small portion back to the sending account, and showed Vincent the transaction. “For the kitchen and the hall. You’ll know when you see them.”
He nodded wordlessly. I shook Vincent’s hand one last time, and to his credit he did not shy from my grip. He had lived in CrossTown long enough to know what it meant to be a sorcerer. That’s why he had called me, after all.
I tipped my hat and left that place behind me. Within, I could taste the contentment of my Captains and the White Wolf. Even so, a taint of rot and copper hung at the back of my throat. We needed to take the time to relax a while and digest our most recent conquest. First things first, however; I had a personal piece of business that would not wait, not even on digestion.
CHAPTER II
ALL ROADS may lead to Rome, but they pass through Cross-Town first.
Roads and streets run like veins and arteries through the beating heart of CrossTown. Each runs through all manner of distant and not-so-distant possibilities.
There’s a theory in modern physics that posits a universe for every decision we make. Each time we choose, right or left, vanilla or chocolate, high or low, we split into separate universes. A vanilla me here, a chocolate me there, a rocky road with pistachio me somewhere else, and some poor lactose intolerant me further down the line. The dominant me is my subjective reality. In CrossTown, the probable mes collapse into the dominant wave, but all those wandering Ways continually wash other alternate lives, lives meant to be lived in CrossTown, up on its jagged shores.
The names of Roads are choices; the turning and branching of Roads are choices; Roads are physical manifestations of their builders’ decisions. Think of Roads like Loxis Falangos and Agiou Nikolaou in my home town of Thebes, flowing together to become Epameinonda. In one possibility, Loxis Falangos dominates, and Epameinonda doesn’t exist. In another, Loxis Falangos takes the lead. In a third, Loxis Falangos flows into Epameinonda, and Agiou Nikolaou never carried any merry wanderers on its narrow back.
Think that’s unique? Name a town. Take Longfellow and Hawthorne in Saint Louis, Missouri, which flow together, meld, then reappear as separate streets. In one possibility, Hawthorne is the single remaining street. In another, Longfellow takes the name of the blended road. The other Road, the Road not chosen, wanders off through possibility. In Eugene, Oregon, Tenth Street vanishes into a hill, then reappears on the other side. Broadway murders Ninth and has hidden its body and killed its name. In Frankfurt, as with many old cities, Roads change names as they run merrily along, belying their age by twisting and turning like young byways through narrow spaces, desperate to keep their figures trim, caught in a race for eternal youth, spinning off alternate possibilities like dream factories. Every city, every town, as it grows organically, has or develops such Roads.
Everywhere, every place and every time where man or something like him has lived, Roads run into one another, branch, disappear here and reappear over there as if they were quantum tunneling. They run, meet, part, cross again, and form a bewildering Mandelbrot set of linked probabilities.
Beware the Road outside your front door, for it is both old friend and passing stranger.
All those choices, all hooked together, comprise a vast sea of possibility. A knowledgeable traveler can ride the currents in that sea to unimagined destinations. And an innocent, all unknowing, can trip over an errant probability wave and find himself or herself or itself somewhere quite far from home, quite far from ordinary. Even in the distant places, away from Cross-Town, it’s surprisingly easy for a traveler to take a wrong step and vanish from his known, small world into a strange place in a larger world. Sometimes those travelers wind up in CrossTown, to stay or to pass through to some other destination waiting in the wings.
CrossTown is the crossroads of probability.
I took a WanderWay from OldTown through CrossTown’s Psychedelic Quarter, knowing I had crossed over into the mainstream districts when the outlines of the Way stopped wavering and the sky eased back to hues less painfully bright and no longer maliciously shifting. The markers remained, of course, the violet globes of an anchored Way promising security and stability. High priced real estate lined the Way, towering into the sky. The stiffer the prices and the more crowded the land, the more we tend to build up or down, no matter what our place or time of origin.
People pressed around me, mostly core human stock but mixed through with everything from Faerie Breeds to a gaping pair of Yushrub Bushmen. I shook my head slightly at their conservative trims and swaying progress. They were so obviously yokels that I’d be surprised if they made it past the block without losing most of their hard-earned berries, or picking up a blight from some local hard case. My step never faltered, of course. In CrossTown the rule of survival never changes: it’s every sophont for him/her/it/themselves.
That’s the major reason I make my home on the outskirts of CrossTown, rather than somewhere in the direction of its stony heart. That, and the lease is cheap. The question of l
iving somewhere other than CrossTown has never been a serious consideration. The advantages of the Ways are too tempting, if you have the will and skill to grapple with them and bend the Ways to your own purposes.
I brought my mind back to the business at hand. I glanced down the endless street at the usual snarl of traffic, sighed, and searched for an open byway—something small, something unmarked and unanchored, a Road less traveled. A few more feet, and I saw what I needed: a small straight path opening between two brownstones, stinking of musky decay and stale urine, fading off into a settling gloom. A tall figure in a full cloak that almost concealed curving arm spurs, wearing a wide-brimmed slouch hat pulled down over his features, stepped into the alleyway ahead of me and faded into transparency after three steps. An impatient traveler like myself.
I followed him onto the unanchored Way, but when I extended my senses the Road thrummed to the deep Gothic hum of NightTown. A WanderWay has restlessness at its heart, a blind questing desire to roam. A WayShaper can guide that desire. The traveler before me had left the Way linked to Night-Town, so I called up a different rhythm from the Way, a mix of tunes and times faster and livelier than NightTown’s patient song of the endless hunt.
The smells in the place I was looking to find would have a harder edge than NightTown’s, less earthy, with the sharp taint of chemicals and old pollution biting at the back of the throat with each breath. The sound in that place never quite died. When all else faded away the subsonic hum of power snaking through conduits would set a man’s teeth on edge and make him long even for the sharp staccato of gunfire just to drown out the inhuman pulse of the place. Vendors could be found there, selling every kind of ware, so long as all the impersonal power of technology lay at the heart of the goods.
CrossTown Page 2