by Jenn Stark
“Exactly. Anyway, Simon didn’t know where the data was going at first, but once he did, he realized just how complicit he was. So instead of just creating a secret room where people collected gold or something stupid like that, he created the actual game within a game, more out of desperation than anything. In that new section, he introduced gods and goddesses, plus the multinational governmental agencies out to get Connecteds, even the Council—and you, of course. And he staged battles and created war rooms where players could discuss strategy.”
“But why?”
She rolled her eyes. “For you, obviously.”
“Me? I don’t even play video games.”
“Which became a major pain in the ass, I’m not going to lie. He only wanted a few Connecteds to test the game very briefly, thinking you’d catch wind of it and come look for yourself. Once you did, he could shovel all the information he needed you to know in one place, without whoever he’s afraid of, finding out. But you paid no attention.”
“I was busy!”
“Meanwhile, he kind of forgot about the beta testers, just kept adding more information, but they kept playing the game. And they told their friends. Who told their friends. And eventually, he realized that they were the ones going through the war strategy, they were the ones fighting the mock battles. So even though he didn’t mean for it to happen…he was helping to get them ready for whatever they’re about to face.”
They’re. She kept referring to Connecteds as if she wasn’t one of them. Interesting. “So why is he chasing me around now?”
“Because the natural game strategy kept pointing to the same outcome: where Sara Wilde goes, so goes the war. To have their best chance at success, all the Connecteds in Arcania had to do was find and follow Sara Wilde. So, using predictive logic, he had to figure out where you would most likely go. When that destination didn’t match up to where he needed you to be…” She shrugged. “He cheated.”
“Aunt Ginny and her bombs.”
Hale grimaced. “That didn’t exactly go as planned. The bomb wasn’t supposed to be live.”
“I got that part—it was still pretty freaking irresponsible of him.”
“Well, you know. Fool.”
“Yeah.” I breathed out a long breath, glanced around. “So this place… It’s not true Enlightenment, I’m thinking. Not the way we’ve built that up to be. It’s one of those oubliettes.”
Hale was familiar with the term, of course. “Simon didn’t know for sure, but he suspected so. He desperately wanted to find it, though. Places like this have existed since the dawn of time he said, like the Arcanum Library, even Hell, though that one got out of the bag and never could quite be stuffed back in. They’re sort of back exits for those who know where to find them, where Connecteds or maybe even non-Connecteds can go to rest, recuperate, get stronger. No one knows you’re in there unless they saw you go in, and no one can get to you until you let them. There used to be hundreds spread out all over the world—it’s what allowed things like time travel to be speculated, or fairies, or Rumpelstiltskin. But every time the Magician found one, he’d destroy it.”
I frowned, but she was only speaking the truth. “You happen to know why?”
“Why does the Magician do anything?” she retorted, as if she actually knew the man, which made me wonder again where she was getting her information.
I didn’t have long to wait. “I’ve been through the entire game—I know everything Simon’s put in it. There’s a whole sublevel of Arcania dedicated to the Magician, and sheesh, his life is sad. He’s so lonely, it makes me almost understand why he tries to stomp out every bit of rogue magic in the world. If he can’t control it, he can’t keep terrible things from happening, only they’re going to happen anyway, you know?’
I did know, as it happened, but Hale’s words brought up another, more pressing issue for me. “Um, is there a sublevel, or whatever, in there about me?”
“Oh, dude. You’re a mess.” She held up her hand, pointed. “But not as much as this guy.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
I squinted to where Hayley was pointing, expecting to see the Buddha. I mean, we were in Nepal, after all. But the person I actually saw made me draw up short.
Definitely not the Buddha.
“Do you…recognize him?” I asked Hayley, eyeing her with concern. She was peering at the man with grim determination, but not the kind of abject fear or maybe healthy dose of loathing I would have expected from someone witnessing their abductor.
“Me? No. I mean, other than the stuff I encountered in the game. He looks kind of different, though, in real life. I sure as heck wasn’t expecting him to be smiling like that.”
“Smiling…” I frowned and glanced back to the man sitting in the lotus position on the steps of a building that seemed to emerge out of the mountain itself. The stairs were broad semicircles, and there were seven of them, which tickled a memory I couldn’t quite recall. Our wannabe Buddha was perched on the third stair, and he looked like he’d been there awhile.
But Hale was right. Even from this distance, I could tell the man was smiling. And smiling in a way that I didn’t think this particular guy could even manage. He was practically beaming, With the sort of beatific serenity that made it seem like flowers should be sprouting out of his lightly cupped hands as they rested on his knees, while blue birds chirped on his shoulders.
Only…this guy was the Emperor. Viktor Dal in full lotus position. So there shouldn’t be birds chirping so much as buzzards circling.
What was going on here?
He gazed down as we approached. “Welcome!” he announced. “You are the first to come, and I know that you will not be the last. I look forward to the day of enlightenment that is dawning even as we stand draped in darkness. Come and learn all that you may.”
“We’re not staying,” I informed him, unnerved by his peaceful demeanor. “You took something from the Arcanum Library. I’m here to get it back.”
“The scroll, yes. At last it begins.” If anything, the Emperor’s smile got even broader. He nodded with the delight of a guru whose newest acolyte had reached Nirvana on the first try. “I honestly didn’t think it would take this long. I can barely recall…” He paused, looking away, and the slightest frown marred his forehead before he shook it off and returned his attention to us. “But you are here. I came willingly and filled with joy, to hold the truth in my hands and know that the future would be bathed in golden light.”
“Okay, that’s enough, Viktor.” I shielded my gaze with one hand and felt for the gun tucked into the waist of my hiking pants with the other. “Knock it off. I saw you two weeks ago, and you were as big an asshat then as you ever were. Where’s the scroll?”
“The scroll is merely a tool. Enlightenment is within each of us, in the end,” Viktor said, still exuding joy and benevolence. “You can no more take it from me now, my child, than you can take my very breath.”
“So we’re going to do this the hard way.” I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong here. Something that niggled at me, that I should understand but didn’t. It was like Viktor Dal, the Emperor of the Arcana Council, was in front of me, yet this guy was nowhere near the Viktor I knew so well, who’d been my nemesis back in Memphis, Tennessee, when I’d been just a kid myself. The man who’d taken Hayley Adams and her friends in a foolish attempt to gain power he was not entitled to. Only then he couldn’t bring them back. I grimaced. It’d taken me ten long years to right the wrong he’d done back then, and clearly, I hadn’t done a very good job of it if Hayley was still here now.
“Let’s start with the easy stuff,” I tried again. “How long have you been here?”
The beaming Viktor spread his hands. “So much time has passed, I cannot say,” he explained. “When you are in a world of such surpassing beauty, a minute is an hour, and an hour is a second, you see?”
“That’s beautiful. But let’s get more specific,” I said. “What was going on
in the world when you came in? Who was trending? What was in the news?”
That was the problem, I realized suddenly. Viktor looked not just weirdly happy, but weirdly younger than the man I’d seen recently. As if his time in Shambhala had secured him a face-lift.
“Ah!” He broke his cupped-hand pose and clapped his hands together, appearing truly delighted by the question. “When I came into this world, I had just witnessed the ascension of Simon to the position of Fool. It was a time of great upheaval in the Council, and—”
“Wait, what?” I barked the question so sharply that Viktor blinked at me, and even Hayley eased back. “You mean to tell me you’ve been stuck in here more than thirty years? That’s impossible.”
Happy Viktor spread his hands wide. “Everything is possible in Shambhala, my child.”
“Stop calling me that!” I snapped. “My name is Sara. Which you should know, because you blew up my house trying to get to me, and almost definitely killed my mother, though I can’t prove it. And don’t even get me started on what you did to her.” I jerked a thumb toward Hale.
“Me?” Hale asked, her words filled with alarm. “What’d he do to me?”
“Want to tell her, Vik?” I asked, shifting my gaze from Hale to Viktor and back again. “How ten years ago, give or take, you…”
I cut myself off abruptly. It wasn’t only Hale’s look of confusion that stuffed the words back into my mouth, although that alone should have done it. No. It was the look of abject curiosity from Viktor Dal, the man leaning forward over his crossed legs as he sat blissfully on a stairway leading up a sacred mountaintop. Only this Viktor didn’t look quite right…and I’d met someone like that before, someone who looked almost like someone else, but who wasn’t that person. Not fully.
My words petered to a stop, and I moved toward Viktor as if drawn by a string, the enormity of what I was about to ask weighing me down.
“Are you Viktor Dal, the Emperor?” I asked quietly.
For a moment, I didn’t think the man would respond. His face was unlined, his blond hair lifting in the breeze, his smile easy. Then at last, he drew in a deep breath.
“I understand what it is you are asking, and why you’re asking, because I have been in this place long enough to see the truth that is, as well as the truth that was.”
I rolled my eyes, but before I could respond, he continued. “I am Viktor, and Viktor is me. We are two shards of the same soul, you could say. I performed the ultimate sacrifice to split my spirit, to come here and protect the scroll of enlightenment against such time as the coming of the seven suns and the end of the world.” His smile remained absurdly serene. “That time is drawing near, as evidenced by your arrival. Evidenced, too, by the attempts of the many to breach the doorway to Shambhala. But no one has succeeded before you. And when the time is right, I shall leave this place of joy and light and reenter the world of man, reuniting with the soul I left behind.”
“So you’re not a separate person. You’re, like, Viktor’s better half.”
He smiled. “I am a shard of his light, burning apart from him now.”
“And he did this to you, or you both did this on purpose. He knew what he was doing when he, ah, made you into a shard?”
Again, Happy Viktor’s face creased into a patient, almost penitent smile. “I thought I did, yes. When I received the scroll of enlightenment from my finder, ripped free of its case, I realized I’d been given an artifact of great power. My excitement knew no bounds, but I forced myself to wait. To wait and to wait until there was a suitable time for my discovery. Sadly, even though I thought I’d done everything correctly, I made a miscalculation. I attempted to unravel the scroll without following the proper path. There was an explosion. In that explosion, I knew both life and death, both man and creator. I slipped away from myself, quite unexpectedly, and entered this place. I did not plan that separation, nor do I believe the self I left behind at first realized it had even happened. But when he did, he left me in this place, to guard the scroll. The self I left behind, because he was the Emperor, survived and even thrived without me. But he is me, and I am him. And one day, we will return to the other and be whole.”
“And you, uh, want to be whole?” I asked.
Happy Viktor didn’t hesitate. “We were one. We will be one again.”
“Okey dokey,” I muttered. Happy Viktor had clearly spent way too long on that staircase. I looked at Hale. “Do you know where this scroll is, specifically?”
“I don’t know anything about a scroll,” she said. “Simon certainly didn’t mention it. He told me to shadow the real gamers and see what it is they saw, and to break into Shambhala and to report back what I found there. He seemed particularly nervous about this part of the game, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”
I turned back to Viktor. “You said your last memory before unraveling the scroll was of Simon ascending to the Council. What happened before that? Where had he come from? I’ve never really gotten a straight answer on that.”
Happy Viktor smiled and extended his hands again to rest on his crossed legs. “There was an explosion when I unraveled the scroll, and souls parted as they needs must be parted, but mine was not the only soul that now walks the cleaved path. It is the right and true path, however. If you wish to know enlightenment, you must walk not only with the light, but with the darkness.”
The movement was so fast, so furtive, that I almost didn’t see it, even with Hale turning abruptly and shouting my name.
“Sara—” she began, but by then I was already moving, already flicking my third eye open. My vision was so much sharper in this place, much as it had been in the grotto with the Magician in my dream, much as it had been when I’d walked through Hell. But even with my enhanced speed and vision, I wasn’t expecting what rushed toward me out of the bushes.
It was Simon. But Simon like I had never seen him before.
Where the Fool of the Council had been lit up with almost an ethereal joy, goofy, fun-loving, intelligent, and nimble, this creature was something far more feral. Not evil so much as angry—deeply angry and afraid.
“You dare!” he hissed, and his hands were outstretched, his fingers curved like claws. “You dare come here and take away my only path of escape?”
I saw what he was carrying on his back then, strapped like an ancient weapon to his body, and almost laughed. It was a long, slender carrying case, and inside it, I knew without a doubt, would be the missing scroll of enlightenment. Of course Simon had found the thing, had taken it from Viktor. Of course he’d known that it was his key to get out, and he’d held on to that key for all these years with both of his hands and probably a foot.
But why was he here in the first place? Was this some piece of Simon, a shard that had gotten broken off by mistake?
Or, worse—on purpose?
As Feral Simon raced toward me, however, I didn’t hesitate. He fixed me with his superblue eyes, the eyes of—of an addict, I found myself thinking—and I matched him color for color with my hands outstretched, a ball of blue-white flame erupting between my palms.
“Holy shit,” Hale gasped, but her voice seemed to be coming from very far away. I could only see Simon, Simon turning with horror as I reached out and spun him around with a blast of fire, Simon jerking with visceral pain as I wrenched the long tube away from him. I kept the fire hose going, however, and didn’t stop the gusher until it pushed the Fool off the nearest cliff. Simon howled in impotent fury as he went over the side, but I dismissed that harrowing sound from my mind as well as I could. Simon was the Fool, in this world or any other. Walking into thin air was something he could do with an ability that surpassed all others.
And maybe in the land of enlightenment, he could come out on the other side with his clothes on.
As the Fool’s screams faded, I refocused on Happy Viktor, who sat staring at the space where Simon had gone over the edge of the cliff.
“He begged me for years to let him carry the scroll,” he
murmured. “Was it years? Or mere moments. I don’t know. It took him all that time to realize that I was not the owner of such magic. I was merely the carrier—I did not own the scroll. It was his to have as much as mine. One day, he crept up all seven levels to the tower and found it where it had lain since we first came to this land. He stripped it away like a thief in the night and has held it close to him ever since. Waiting, always waiting. I tried to tell him to embrace the now, but all he could see is what he had lost.”
If anything, this little speech made me feel worse. Simon hadn’t even tried to put up a fight as he’d gone over the cliff; he’d merely fallen. And howled in misery a long, long time.
“Well, I’ve got it now, and I’m leaving. I’m not taking either of you two with me either.” I didn’t miss the fact that Hale had sidled up more closely to me, her eyes so big, I was surprised they didn’t pop right out of her face. I tried to imagine myself at seventeen being confronted with all this crazy at once, but as I thought of myself at that age, all I could remember was the fire I’d faced the day my whole world had ended.
The incredible fire, my house exploding, and me turning back for just a moment and seeing an enormous dragon-shaped god rearing out at me.
I hadn’t known what it was then—and not for years afterward. In fact, after the explosion, I could remember virtually nothing until I showed up at that highway rest area outside Memphis. And had met a kind old woman in an RV who had scooped me away.
But who had she scooped away, really? Me? Or simply what was left of me?
High above us, Happy Viktor didn’t move—his pose, his smile, his gaze remained the same. “Tell my other self that I am ready to leave when the time of the seven suns is upon us,” he said, “and the end of the world is nigh. When the world of man is ready for true enlightenment, I will speak the words upon the scroll and will send the current world into oblivion, all of it cleansed with fire and blood. Then the enlightened will walk free again, into the soothing sunlight, to take up the right way once more.”