by Tony Pi
But had D’Afide followed that path? Possibly. I had to deduce which shape he had taken based on the changes I knew he had implemented. But could I confirm whether his organs had been reversed?
The heart was normally located more towards the left side of a person’s body, though there was variation among people. I pressed my ear to his chest and listened first on the left, then the right. His heartbeat seemed stronger on the right. I would have to trust my intuition that he had taken the same step as I had, in this regard. But to be sure, I examined the wolf-man imprint he had left in the silk that we both still held and explored the pattern of his organs. Indeed, he was mirror-reversed on the inside.
“He followed the word heart to the second seal fear,” I said to Luca.
Luca turned the pages for me, until he found the word fear in the middle of another Three Hares seal. I began change number two, drawing more Lightning from the amber, and the protean seal forced my organs into their reversed configuration in a flash of pain as of a terrible fall from a height.
Luca was uneasy. “Usually I can tell how you’ve changed. Now I see nothing.”
“The risks are still very real.” I examined the three other words of this new seal. Intention was the shade of an eggplant’s skin; invention was the blue of the midday Mediterranean sea; and lastly, revolution was the red of a dying ember.
Intention had been my choice, so long ago when I experimented with the Codex. It was a change I was familiar with, where my skin became so finely attuned to touch that I could discern subtle textures and changes with my sensitive fingertips. I had explored the other two paths and had the fortune to reverse the transformations before I could slide into further trouble. Invention had given me extra fingers, while revolution led to total insensitivity to any kind of pain. One might believe it was a fortunate transformation rather than one that was harmful, but such a condition could make you not notice a bruise, wound, or burn. Not being able to react to pain meant that you might ignore signals that could prevent you from getting into a terrible accident. I supposed I could test if he could react to pain, but I thought better of that. I did not need this wolfman raging from injury, when my neck was so close to his teeth.
“Intention it is, then.”
Luca helped me find the next seal that corresponded: prayer. I took on the touch-sensitivity power, whose only indication of change to me was a whiteness in my field of vision that flashed then faded away like a cloak of snow. I was now three seals deep into the Codex.
The other words in the third seal were: fire, the color of old moss; hail, the color of black pearl; banishment, the shade of a golden coin.
“This was as far as I was willing to trust my judgment,” I told Luca. “I ventured four seals deep along this path, and by misfortune I tried the seal linked to the word hail. It was a disaster. Whatever it was, it caused my left hand to act of its own accord. I had no control over it, and it almost turned deadly as it tried to gouge out my left eye with two fingers. I reversed that process through the seal just in time, before it could blind me, but it was a close call.”
“Both his eyes are intact,” Luca said. “Not that path, then?”
“I can’t be sure. The phantom hand might have tried a different action with D’Afide.”
Luca watched D’Afide carefully. “Then he wouldn’t have let you take his hand. And, watching him as I have, I must say that he seems to have control of both his arms. He must have taken a different path.”
Luca had the right of it. “Then he has followed the path of fire or the path of banishment, but which? I never explored beyond that previous seal.” I would have to take my chances, it seemed. “Fire, then!”
Luca began at the beginning of the Codex, letting me examine the words in the midst of the protean seals until I found the right shade that matched with the color of the word fire.
We found it in the word marrow near the end of the book. I summoned my courage and tapped into the amber in my hand again.
I took a deep breath. “Get ready for whatever comes.”
Luca grabbed my shoulder. “Talk to me through it. Maybe I don’t understand the shapeshifting magic as well as you, but I might see something that you don’t. We’re a team.”
I nodded.
My eyes followed the hares in their endless chase around the circle, their paws woven into the triskelion briar painted painstakingly in vermilion behind them. I felt a new change overtake me, a vertigo that turned the world upside-down. I couldn’t even hold my head upright, and I fell headlong into D’Afide beside me. Luca uttered a cry and tried to help me, but I had already startled D’Afide, who pushed me away. I jolted into the table, and the candle fell and rolled towards the pages of the book. I tried to stop it, reaching out to grab it before the flames could touch the dry pages, but my field of vision spun and I hit my hand against the bottom of the table instead. Only Luca was able to swat the candle away in the nick of time.
He steadied me, while glancing towards the corner of the room where D’Afide had scrambled to and now huddled in. “What’s wrong, Flea?”
“My balance.” I was also sick to my stomach. “This is a bad path, but not the one he took. Quickly, the page, so I can reverse it.” I couldn’t even right myself to see it. Another trap, one that would have prevented a user who followed the rabbit down this particular hole from seeing the right page to stop it. Clever Antlion!
But Luca being here was a godsend. It proved once again that I could always use a helping hand, and not just to carry my bag of tricks for me. He brought the candle and page closer so that I could see the rabbits, and instead of following the forward path of the hares, I, seeing what they were chasing in front of them, followed the opposite direction. What the hares were being chased by, reversing change.
“I owe you my life once again,” I told Luca as the world steadied. “I guess he went down the road to banishment.” I looked over at D’Afide. “We’d better calm him again. Bring the book and light.”
“Wait,” Luca said. “There’s one thing that puzzles me. If there are safe pathways through the labyrinth in the book, shouldn’t there be a key to it? Otherwise, you’re just stumbling through, like you and D’Afide have been. We’re missing something.”
“Clues besides the color of the words, that hint at the proper path?”
Luca mulled the puzzle. “If I were Antlion, I’d have written this book to teach others the same skills in the event of my death, so there must be a key—or Ariadne’s thread, if you will—that leads to the ultimate truth.”
“Antlion could have hidden the key elsewhere,” I argued.
“That might be,” Luca admitted. “But so far there’s been a proper path. Think of normal mazes. There are always physical clues that you could use to help you, as you taught me. The tread of feet across the ground might have worn away the surface of the proper path. Or always taking a right-hand turn to navigate the labyrinth. The book’s different, but maybe Antlion’s hidden something else on in the maze of pages. A necessary transformation that lets the reader identify the dangerous paths?”
“Keep thinking, Luca, because you’re on a better path than I am. Bring the book.” I went to D’Afide in the corner and reassured him, wrapping the silk between us once more to re-establish my contact with him.
“What if the mirror-writing is part of the clue?” Luca flipped back to the first page. “Suppose the mirror-image words also hint that you should look at the image in the mirror as you change shapes?”
“Brilliant, Luca!” Antlion indeed had the cleverness to weave such a complex shape-shifting spell into the protean seals. Luca’s sharp mind would serve him well in the future. If we succeeded in returning the Codex to Antlion, perhaps I should intensify his training. Whatever Spain was scheming, I would need men like Luca to help me thwart their plot.
There was further knocking on the door and words spoken through the turn. It was muffled, but they were trying to get our attention.
Luca rea
ched into the bag of tricks that he was carrying for me and pulled out a glass mirror. We had just come from Venice, city of glass, after all.
I held it up to the paper and candlelight and studied the image. The word sea in the middle of the Three Hares taunted me. The sea was a mirror for the sun, and water a natural mirror for us all. “Ready.”
I did the same rabbit-chase transformation using the mirrored protean seal in the reflection.
At first, I didn’t think there had been a change, or at least one that I noticed right away. But then I looked again at the mirror-writing words on the actual page, and my tongue flared with strange, sudden flavors.
The word sea tasted of salt as I stared at it. It was an extraordinary sensation, somewhat like the color auras that emanated from the words, but instead of a visual cue it was a lick of tastes. When my eyes saw the word music, the taste changed to burnt onion. Snake, the taste of dried cherries. Heart, the taste of meat pie. I told Luca this. “Savory, perhaps? Turn to the next seal along the heart path.”
I checked the words intention, invention, and revolution in the next seal. Intention tasted of salted pork, invention of saffron, and revolution of kale. “That’s it! The path of salt.” The taste of blood.
We hurried back to the third seal in the series where we had the word banishment. It tasted of pickles. “Confirmed. The true path is the salt road.”
We looked for the word that corresponded to banishment, which was the shade of the polished golden coin. I found the next protean seal: wolf in the center and the three words cost, keel, and church. Cost was the color of coal and the taste of mead. Keel was the shade of ripe peach-skin and the flavor of raw herring. Church glowed with the green of a new leaf but reminded me of a salty chicken broth.
The next one should be church, but had D’Afide followed that? Or was this where he had strayed? I was working blind from here, but since he had gone down one of the wrong paths, I’d have to rule out the other two branches. But maybe I was close enough with this transformation to lure him back? But if I was too far away, and he tried to undo the transformation by reading my body pattern from the silk, missing a vital step might kill him. I told Luca of my worries.
“If you follow the path of cost and find it’s the start of the wolf-shape, you could start going blind right away,” said Luca. “That probably happened to D’Afide, or else he’d have tried reversing the procedure. Do you want to risk it?”
I wondered. How had Antlion discovered these shapes himself? Had he pioneered every shape, even the more dangerous ones? My guess was, he used a pawn or theorized them, but I supposed he had attempted it himself. Wouldn’t he have had a safeguard in place? Especially if he risked losing his eyesight, he would want to be able to undo the change. But without sight, could he activate the Protean Seal in reverse? It had left D’Afide a freak, deaf, and blind. If I were Antlion, how would I build in a hidden escape from that?
Then, I realized I had the answer all along.
My sense of touch.
The second protean seal had given me extraordinary touch, so even if I couldn’t see, I might be able to feel the indentations on the page, perhaps trace the pattern. It would be a slow process, taking long to visualize what I felt under my fingertips and reconstruct the image in my mind, but at least it was an escape.
“I think I know how to reverse the wolf-shape even if I’m blind, Luca, so I might as well try.”
“You’re the greatest fool of all time, Master, and I say that with all due respect.”
“That’s no lie, my friend.” We found the word corresponding to cost: witch, tasting of field mushrooms. Not salty, which meant the seal was a dangerous one and could be the wolf-shape. With trepidation, I activated the change, feeling something click within me—just as the door to our cell opened.
The Prior had the key, of course. He stood in the doorway with a gaggle of monks behind him, wide-eyed and surprised as he saw us. I wondered what he thought of two strangers, a book, and a man-wolf creature in the corner of the cell.
But the change I had activated was already working its magic on me. My vision was dimming, though it hadn’t yet affected my hearing. I felt hair sprouting from all parts of my body, coarse and dense black. A pain also wracked my body as I began to grow from the Lightning infusing my flesh, and my newfound bulk ripped the clothes that I was wearing. There were cries of panic from the doorway, and Luca shouting to them to calm but with no success. I squeezed D’Afide’s hand through the silk, so he could sense that I too had taken the wolf-curse upon me. I had made a mistake; I should have risked pulling him back in the state of my last transformation.
“What you see, Prior, isn’t sorcery!” Luca shouted. “Please, these are good men seeking penance here.” He was trying his best to stave off panic. If they fled and spread the rumor of this monstrosity, this terror, then we would be doomed as the local folk hunted us. Anything could happen to the Codex, to D’Afide, to Luca who was trying to shield us. He couldn’t stumble through the dark countryside with two deaf-and-blind wolfmen with us in tow.
“Leave us, Luca,” I shouted. “Save yourself and return the Codex to Antlion at any cost!”
“You need me, and the book,” Luca said. I heard him slam the door shut and drop jangling keys on the table. “I had to threaten the Prior with my stiletto to get my point across, as it were.”
“I don’t know how much time we have. D’Afide, you might not be able to hear me, but follow my changes. Luca, the amber for D’Afide.” I reached out to touch the page that Luca held out for me. Thankfully my fingertips hadn’t sprouted hair, so I began tracing the pattern backwards. As I started feeling the Lightning change me, I forced it through the silk so that D’Afide would feel it too.
I felt the extra hair shed away onto the floor, and my vision cleared. Before me, D’Afide also shed his hair, and his eyes became alert. He was becoming a normal man again.
“D’Afide, can you see me?” I asked.
“Flea?” D’Afide wept. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for keeping this book safe. But next time, don’t read something I told you not to?” I tossed him a new frock.
D’Afide put it on. “I only allowed myself one page every five years to quell my curiosity. I thought it would be little enough to be safe.”
“We’re not out of danger yet,” Luca said. He threw the Proteus Codex into his bag of tricks. “Mobs? Panicked monks?”
“They’re looking for wolf-men, Luca.”
Luca frowned. “You’re both shedding fiercely. I’d rather you not be caught.”
“Then we can climb out of here with D’Afide.”
“What about Antlion?” D’Afide asked. “Isn’t he still after me?”
“I’ll speak to him when I give him back the Proteus Codex. As for you, my friend—I think your time here has come to an end. I’m sending you to England, under my protection. The Queen may find your culinary skills quite delectable.”
“A full, royal kitchen?” His eyes glimmered with anticipation. “Aye, that’d be good for the gullet.”
Copyright © 2017 Tony Pi
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Originally from Taiwan, Dr. Tony Pi earned his Ph.D. in Linguistics at McGill University and now lives in Toronto, Canada. His story “No Sweeter Art”, from BCS #155, was a finalist for the 2015 Aurora Awards and its BCS podcast a finalist for the 2015 Parsec Awards, and the BCS podcast of its sequel, “The Sweetest Skill” in BCS #197, was a finalist for the 2016 Parsec Awards. Visit www.tonypi.com for a list of his other works.
Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies
REQUIEM FOR THE UNCHAINED
by Cae Hawksmoor
Exactly one year and one day after my wife falls overboard and goes to the unchained, I receive a letter from the man who killed her.
Requiem is moored at mast in the Boneyard when the postgirl throws the envelope up onto his deck. She calls up: “Letter for you, ma’am!” and I stir in my cha
ir on the fo’c’s’le, swearing at the dawn light and knocking over last night’s whisky. The bottle rasps back and forth on the unevenness of the deck, finding its space in the world again, and I bend down for the letter.
I recognize Émile’s insignia right away, watermarked into the fine paper. When I open it, a new lantern mantle wisps from the envelope down onto the deck, as fine as fresh cobweb. I scan the words, but none of it really sinks in. The inarticulate twist at the bottom of my belly only gets worse. It isn’t like I ever expected that cold-hearted bastard to send condolences, but this is inhuman even for him.
Of course Émile would wait until the precise moment that Requiem and I are almost grounded with the weight of unpaid bills before sending me another job. I don’t think he does this sort of thing on purpose. He doesn’t have enough blood in him to care about anything other than the spiteful aristocratic face that stares back out of his gilded mirror every morning. No, the devil touched that one while he was still in the womb. Or touched his family going back seven generations. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he will turn up precisely when you don’t want him to, invite himself inside, and proceed to wreck whatever’s left your life. That’s what did it for Christie, and it is what’ll kill me if I’m not careful.
He’s written ‘I hear that you may need this’ at the bottom in his own sickeningly perfect handwriting. And the worst thing about it is that he’s right. I do need his damned charity if I’m ever going to get Requiem off the ground again.
It takes me the whole rest of the morning to figure out that I have no other choice. The Boneyard is at its best in those first few hours of thin sunlight, before the ghostmurk starts blowing in off of the sea and they light the ugly green soulfire lanterns along the promenade to drive it back. It is dead quiet then. Early enough that most of the junk-pickers are at work, sifting through the latest wrecks dragged out here to die. The washed-up live-aboards who insist, a little too angrily, that you still call them ‘captain’ are all sleeping off their hangovers in the bellies of their punctured and grounded little airships, shifting restively through half-remembered dreams of flying. Which is all just as well because I don’t want their company. Not never and certainly not now.