by Judith Field
Natasha crouched beside me. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.” It was a cube, but with a protruding octagon.
“What are you doing?” a man’s voice demanded.
The warden! I jumped up, my heart thudding in my chest. The bright ends of his wooden staff illuminated the snow with a yellow tinge. His barely suppressed power was palpable in the stillness.
“N-nothing,” I said. “We were just getting some air.”
He advanced a step and I could see the fury on his face. “I am not stupid. Put down the lock cover.”
“The what?”
“The lock cover in your hand.” He waved the staff in my direction.“Put it down now.”
“Yes, I—”
“No,” Natasha said with cold conviction. “Put your staff down.”
She held the gun in both hands as if she had been doing it all her life. The warden laughed and swung his staff. She stepped back and fired.
The staff swirled in a blur of yellow light.
The warden stood unscathed. “You will come with me.”
She fired again and again, backing away from him. The staff swirled, tracing a cocoon of light around the warden as he advanced on her. Useless, spent bullets bounced off it and fell to the ground.
He forced her up against a shrub, away from me. Her gun clicked empty.
“Enough of these games,” he said. He raised the staff high above his head and prepared to bring it down.
I stepped forward and swung the brick. It cracked against the back of his head and he fell to the snow with a muffled crump.
“We have to get out of here,” I said. “They must have heard the shots.”
She puffed her cheeks in the fading glow of the staff but didn’t move. “We can’t. We have to find out what is going on or Ivanov will kill you.”
“We don’t have time. We have to go, now!”
She looked at the brick. “He called it a lock cover. A lock protecting what? And where is the key?”
Bile rose in my throat and my missing hand throbbed in agony. We had no time for this.
She reached under the warden and pulled the staff out. “This is an artefact of power. Maybe… where did you get the cover?”
She bent down and ran her hand over another brick. The staff lit up an octagonal hole in it. The sound of slapping sandals came from around a corner.
“They are coming,” I hissed.
“Wait.” She examined the end of the staff. Up close, I could see the end was octagonal.
Natasha pushed the staff into the hole in the brick; they both lit up like a Ladysday tree.
“You were right,” I said.
The air between two shrubs flickered as loud voices rounded the corner. I glanced back to see the abbess, tendrils of fire flowing around her raised hand.
“Come on!” Natasha grabbed my collar and pulled me through the shimmering air.
I stuck out a foot to maintain my balance but fell, further than I should have, onto a flagstone floor in a dark passageway.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Natasha said. “We’re under the monastery, maybe.”
I looked back to see a stone wall, an octagonal hole at its centre. Our way out, if we dared take it. Ahead, the narrow passage stretched away, the warden’s staff lighting the stones in the wall and the lintels above.
“Hurry,” Natasha said. “They will be after us any moment now.”
She set off at a trot with the staff and empty gun. I followed with my brick. One edge was blood-stained; I hoped the warden was still alive.
We left the portal far behind. The walls were uniform, with no indication that we were getting any closer to our goal. Whatever that was.
“Where do you think this leads to?” I asked as I walked beside her.
“I have no idea. Have you ever heard of passages underneath a monastery, and magical portals?”
“Never.”
“Me either. Supposedly, the church set up the monasteries at the sites where the Host fell after their battle with the Demorin. They always said the church’s magic came from the Host, that they seeped into the earth and the monks harnessed what remained of their essence.”
“And you doubt this now?”
She stopped and stared at me. “If the Scribes are the Host, where did they come from? Somebody has been lying to us. Perhaps the Host never died but returned to the Hidden Realms. Perhaps the monasteries do not honour where they fell, but hide portals to where they came from.”
My head spun, from what she was saying as much as the constant pain in my wrist. “Yes, but the Host… the icons… they look so different.”
“Who wants to believe a monster saved them? Somebody decided six hundred years ago to depict them as human. Look!”
She held the staff aloft. It now glowed so brightly I could not look directly at it.
“We’re getting closer,” I said.
“But to what?”
We continued walking. I was surprised nobody had caught up to us yet. Surely there was some other key they could use other than our staff.
“Interesting,” Natasha said. The corridor ended and steps led down. The staff was almost aflame with light.
“I need your gun,” I said.
“Why?”
“I can hardly use the staff, can I, with one hand?”
She frowned and took the gun from inside her coat. She reloaded before handing it to me.
“I hope you know how to use it,” she said.
She led us down the stone steps. The air warmed, so much that I opened my coat. We descended dozens of steps and nothing changed, except for the growing unease in my stomach.
I glanced behind frequently. Were they trapped outside, trying desperately to gain entry? Were they waiting patiently until hunger and thirst drove us out? Or perhaps they were leaving us to whatever lurked here.
Soon, a glow appeared in the depths. We squeezed side by side, gun and staff pointing down. The passage opened into a wide chamber with a rugged, stony roof. A path ran around the perimeter and in the centre, a pit dropped steeply away. We walked to the edge and peered over.
Eight doorways lined the base of the pit—about ten feet deep—each empty and black. There was no obvious way down.
“Where do they all lead?” I wondered.
“It has to be the Hidden Realms.”
“Or the other monasteries…”
A clacking noise reverberated down the passageway and my heart froze. I looked at the gun, trembling in my one hand, and wondered if there was any point. The noise grew louder, and more, something tried to worm its way into my mind. The Scribe!
The noise stopped, somewhere high on the steps.
“Why isn’t it coming down?” I said.
Natasha stood at the lip of the pit. Her face twitched, her expression caught somewhere between fear and anger.
Even in my mind, I could feel the rage in its words. We were trapped; there was no point in lying.
“I am here to find out what you are.”
I pointed the gun towards the steps but the Scribe didn’t come down.
“I’m sorry,” Natasha said.
I turned just as she slashed the staff down. It cracked against my wrist and the gun clattered to the ground.
“Natasha, what?” I tucked my hand under my arm. It stung, but not as much as my other wrist. She swung again and I backed away around the pit.
I didn’t. Natasha advanced, swinging the staff in wide, yellow arcs, and I shuffled backwards, keeping out of reach. Her face was contorted in anger but her eyes radiated fear.
“What have you done to her?” I shouted.
It tried to worm into my mind again. A sharp pain flared in my phantom hand and I pushed its co
nsciousness away.
I had no idea what it was talking about. Natasha charged. I turned and fled, running around the rim of the pit. I went as fast as I dared, which was enough to keep ahead of her.
The Scribe still tried in vain to get at my thoughts. But its efforts told me something—it left a residue of its own thoughts; a frisson of anger, of frustration, as if it feared failure. I could stop it!
I completed a circuit; I stooped on the run and picked up the gun, always staying ahead of Natasha. We could keep going until one of us collapsed.
“Come and get me,” I shouted at the steps. “Or are you a coward?”
The clacking noise came down the steps. Damn. I shouldn’t have goaded it. With two of them around the pit, I couldn’t just keep running away.
I halted opposite the steps and extended my arm, pointing the gun back at Natasha. “Halt!” I shouted.
She paused and looked at me. I had no idea who I was looking at: my Natasha or the Scribe’s puppet. Did she see me? Was she even alive anymore?
“Stop,” I said. “Please, for the love of the Lady. We can fight this thing together.”
“I can’t.”
She swung. I arched my back and the staff just missed my nose. I couldn’t shoot her.
The Scribe skittered down the steps. It balanced precariously on two legs, like a newborn foal, talons clacking on stone. Its four arms swayed as it fought for balance. The terrified human face had worked its way up to its head, where the compound eyes now bulged through.
Bile rose in my throat and I fought it down. “You are not one of the Host, are you?” I asked. “You’re not Exetl.”
“You are the Demorin, then.”
It laughed as it lumbered around the edge towards me. Not the tingle of a laugh in my mind, but a full throated guffaw from the human face with the alien eyes.
Natasha advanced on me and I kept ahead, my gun pointing at the Scribe, but getting ever closer to it.
I had an image of one of them, Natasha’s face creeping up its belly.
No! I pulled the trigger. The creature jerked out of the way and the bullet bit into the rock behind.
I glanced at Natasha’s eyes, looking for anything that I recognised.
She swung the staff in a wide arc. I stepped inside her reach and pushed with my forearm. Off-balance, she fell backwards into the pit with a scream.
The Scribe rushed at me. I took aim at its chest and fired. It stumbled as the bullet struck. I fired again and it fell at my feet, talons reaching for my ankle. I stepped back and shot its face; its human, not-human face. Black blood spurted from its eyes and it lay still, before dissolving into a mound of black dust.
I went down on one knee and brought my dinner up in a torrent of disgust.
“Nik.” Natasha’s voice brought me back to my senses. I crawled to the edge and peered over. She was okay, thank the Lady, the staff held up towards me.
“I need to get out of here,” she said. Behind her, the doorways pulsed with colour. Swirling ribbons of red and yellow pushed outwards, as if something were stretching the fabric of our world, trying to get through.
“Are you…”
“Yes, it’s me. I’m free of that thing. Please, get me out. Quickly!”
I stretched down and grabbed the end of the staff but it was no good. With only one hand extended below, I didn’t have enough purchase to pull her up.
“Hurry, Nik!”
“I’m trying.” Sweat loosened my grip but I did not have the strength to pull her up anyway.
Shouts came from the top of the steps. I tried to pull Natasha up again and the staff slipped through my hand. I reached for the gun just as two figures appeared on the rim.
“No, don’t!” the abbess shouted. “We are free of its control now.”
They walked towards me, the warden holding the back of his head. My shoulders tensed.
“Thank you,” he said with a smile, “for knocking some sense into me.”
I relaxed. “Thank you for the hint about the lock cover.”
“I’m afraid that was the only resistance I could muster while it had me in its power.”
“Here, help me get Natasha up,” I said.
He uncoiled the rope belt from around his waist and tied a loop in it.
The abbess took me aside. “Thank you, Nikolay. I’m sorry I made your pain worse, but I knew it would help you fend the creature off.”
She took my stump and held her palm to the bandaged end. Her hand glowed red and the pain eased. It had been so long since I had been without it that it felt somehow… wrong.
“Is it really true, that there was never a Host?”
She nodded. “Only now do we know the truth, the lies we’ve been told. The other seven are coming.” She indicated the pit. “They are stronger, now that they have fed off our fear. Soon, they will appear human and then they will be powerful enough to bring more of their kind through. You must run. We will hold them here, and if the Lady wills it—if she is still with us—we may trap them.”
Natasha crawled out of the pit, one hand in the warden’s. She offered him the staff but he shook his head. “You will need it to get out.”
I put the gun in my pocket and took her hand.
“Go now,” the abbess said, “before it is too late.” A howling came from the pit and something bulged through a doorway.
The abbess and warden held hands and exchanged a knowing glance, before they jumped into the pit.
I ran up the steps, pulling Natasha behind me. Uncanny screams of rage washed around the chamber and red light flickered across the walls. The floor started to shake as we reached the passageway. I fell to my knees but Natasha dragged me up and we kept going.
We continued to stumble, falling from one side of the passage to the other. A brick fell from the roof and we dodged past. A shower of dust fell. I shut my eyes and felt my way along the wall.
“Stop!” Natasha dragged me back. Rocks dropped where we would have been, blocking our escape.
“Now where?” she said.
I turned back to the chamber. A ball of red flame filled the passage and rushed towards us. I pulled her closer.
Time slowed. The roiling flame came to a stop mere feet away from us. Natasha was frozen in time, staring open-mouthed at the flame.
“Nikolay.” The female voice was soft and kind, and seemed to come from all around.
“There is another portal,” it continued. “Where do you want to go?”
My heart thudded wildly. It could only be... “Laryssa? Lady?”
“You can be free, Nikolay. Where does your heart want to be?”
I looked at Natasha, strands of raven hair twisted across her face, and I had my answer.
¤
I opened my eyes to blue sky and a gull wheeling overhead. Natasha smiled down at me. I lifted my head from her lap. We were on the upper deck of a steamer, a port receding in the distance.
“Are you real?” I asked.
She laughed, a sound I thought I would never hear again. “Oh, Nik. We’re bound for London,” she said. “I spoke with the captain and paid for our passage. We will be far from Ivanov soon.”
“And the Scribes?”
She looked back at the port. “I can remember it inside my mind, controlling me. I was powerless to stop it. I hope the abbess and the warden trapped them as they came through the portal.”
“There is also the Lady.” I looked down at my left arm, hoping—no, praying—that she had restored my hand. She hadn’t.
“When we get to London,” Natasha said, “what will we do?”
“There are other exiles, I suppose. We can find them.”
“And
Interregnum, will we start it again?”
I looked down at her feet. The warden’s staff lay there, just a plain pole of ash so far from the monastery.
“No,” I said. “We have a much more important story to tell now.”
She took my hand and squeezed as the last speck of land slipped over the horizon.
John J. Brady writes science fiction and fanasy stories in the far north-west corner of Ireland. When not working as a psychiatrist, he wrestles with three overactive sons, plays sport and sometimes casts concrete gnomes. He can be contacted on Twitter @JohnJBrady33 and regularly hangs out at wws.sffchronicles.co.uk as alchemist.
FULL FATHOM FIVE
By Judith Field
THE DECEMBER SKY was an inverted bowl of unreleased snow. Joe crunched across the frost-covered sand towards the rocks where the eels swam. Fishing, all alone. Just how he liked it. Better than having to stand listening to Mike mouthing off about his latest ‘get rich quick’ scheme, while their lines drifted further apart down the beach. Mister Big, with his twopenny-ha’penny fishing rod.
Getting rich would be nice. But he’d settle for getting by. Retirement, no more work, it should have been great. Now his time was his own. But, he thought, they stick a pension book in your hand, and it’s counting the pennies for the rest of your days. You’ve still got to find the same money for the bills, though. And if you can’t keep up with the rent, it’s goodbye home.
Faded, flaking groynes stretched to the sea, along the empty shore. He looked up into the white sky. Weighed down by his rucksack, his shoulders complained with each jarring footfall. Joe turned his face away from the wind and tied his scarf tighter. Ice cream papers and supermarket bags whipped round his ankles. Idle sods on the council should clean this lot up.
“You there! Can you help me? The tide’s gone out and I must get off this beach!” A woman’s voice, in the tones of an actress from a 1950s British black-and-white film. Cracking through the freezing air behind him.
An old woman strained to peer over a groyne, her shriveled face a sun-deprived white. Seashells hung from her drooping earlobes. Joe had heard that ears never stop growing. His own should reach his shoulders, the age he felt these days. The woman’s few wisps of hair were white, streaked with apple green. Colour-blind hairdresser, Joe thought, remembering his wife Hazel’s fuss when she got the wrong shade of blue.