Best Laid Plans

by D. P. Prior

  An old man with a white beard and sparkling eyes sat cross-legged beneath a tree. He wore a simple brown habit pulled in at the waist by a dark leather belt. His feet were shod in plain sandals and a begging bowl rested in his lap.

  As the wanderer approached, the old man’s form shimmered and transformed, the years falling away. His now naked body grew toned and muscular, his eyes sharp and as blue as the sky. A dazzling luminosity shone forth from his flesh causing the wanderer to shade his eyes until they adjusted to the brightness.

  ‘Welcome, Frater.’ The man smiled. ‘I was called Jarmin, and I see no reason to dispense with that name.’

  ‘Jarmin?’

  ‘Jarmin the Anchorite. I dwelt in the city of Gladelvi.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘And now,’ Jarmin chuckled a little at some secret joke, ‘I just dwell.’

  ‘What is this place?’

  ‘This is the waiting room for the End of All Things; the forecourt of the Garden of Eternity.’

  ‘And I am?’

  ‘You were called Deacon Shader, Frater.’ Jarmin’s smile was radiant, full of compassion. ‘And if you like you shall remain Deacon Shader.’

  ‘It is a name as good as any. May I sit here a while.’

  ‘But of course,’ beamed Jarmin. ‘You may sit for all eternity if you wish.’

  As he settled himself beneath the tree, Shader became aware of his own nakedness and the perfect form and function of his body, which also glowed, although not with the intensity of Jarmin’s.

  ‘I am dead then?’

  ‘Slain by a knife in the back and a demon.’

  Shader frowned as thoughts began to form and disappear, like dolphins arcing their way through choppy seas. There was a captain, a lad with a sextant, a big black cook. The smell of grilled cheese wafted into recollection and was gone. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘I don’t recall the manner of my own passing, although Tajen tells me it was horrific.’

  ‘Tajen?’

  ‘The Luminary. You will meet him soon enough.’

  ‘Am I in Araboth?’

  Jarmin knitted his brows before he answered. ‘You are, as are all who are redeemed, but you are not yet as well.’

  Shader shook his head. It seemed as though a cloud had settled over his memories, smothered his thoughts.

  ‘What you call Araboth lies at the end of time. By its nature we are all already there and yet, for those still connected to the temporal world, this presents a rather difficult paradox. When you die your next recollection is of the end of time, and yet to those who mourn you time continues on its journey through the aeons. You cannot be both out of time and a decaying memory to those who still inhabit it.’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so you are here—and there. At the end of time you will pass there, but the end of time is no time and so you are there already; and not.’

  ‘And Ain?’

  ‘Ah, there is the current dilemma. We are told that in death we shall see Him face to face, but, wondrously harmonious as things are here, faith is not yet redundant. Tajen is the best one to talk to about such things. He calls this place the garden of Ain, which is but one step closer to our eternal home. Perhaps we could visit Tajen together. I know he will be intrigued by your presence here.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Besides myself, you are the only person in countless generations to reach Araboth. Apparently all is not as it should be in the temporal realm.’

  ‘What is wrong?’

  ‘Tajen believes that Ain has been separated from the Earth.’

  ‘How can that be? Surely for Ain to be Ain He must be all powerful.’

  ‘Whatever the truth of the matter, Ain’s Spirit no longer infuses all life on Earth and has not done so for a very long time. There is a shadow across the Void that connects us to the Supernal Realm. It is something of a mystery, even here. And to think, the Luminaries believed they had earned their rewards and would never again walk in the darkness! Which of course they don’t, at the end of time, but do here.’

  With an impish grin Jarmin leapt to his feet, clapped Shader on the back and took him, in the blink of an eye, to see the Luminary.

  GODS OF THE DREAMERS

  Mamba carried Sammy down the last of the rough stone steps that wound deep into the earth below the Homestead. Shapes waited for them in the shadows of an enormous cavern, black outlines beneath a gigantic natural arch: one squat and dwarfish; one tall and hulking; the third a sprawl of legs sticking from a massive bloated body.

  The snake-man reached over his head and grasped Sammy under the arms, heaving him to the floor with an exaggerated grunt. Sammy would have laughed normally, if he’d not been so scared. He’d felt the strength in those hands; knew Mamba found him as light as a feather; could crush him as easily as snapping a twig. He seemed friendly enough, but what if that all changed now they were down here? The boys back home always acted differently once they got with their friends.

  ‘So this is the ant-child?’ the squat figure croaked.

  Sammy winced at the firm grip of Huntsman’s hands on his shoulders.

  ‘He is called Samuel,’ the Dreamer said as the three shapes shifted from the shadows into the greenish glow coming from the walls of the cave.

  Sammy swallowed and looked to Mamba for reassurance. The snakeman’s mouth opened, baring his fangs. He may have been trying to smile. ‘Sssammy, this is Thindamura.’

  A hunched man only a little taller than Sammy flicked out an even longer tongue than Mamba’s. Bulbous eyes rolled atop his toad-like head. ‘Thisss isss Baru,’ Mamba indicated the hulking muscular man who had the elongated snout and mottled amber eyes of a crocodile.

  Baru opened his jaws and nodded, all the while watching Sammy hungrily. Sammy pushed back against Huntsman, but the Dreamer patted him softly on the shoulder. The jaws snapped together, rows of dagger-like teeth protruding like a warning.

  ‘And thisss isss Murgah Muggui.’

  The mass with the many legs lurched forward and dragged itself into view. The body was grey and smooth, the head studded with glinting red eyes above clacking mandibles. The legs—there were eight of them— were twisted forward like a crab’s.

  ‘Welcome, Samuel,’ Murgah Muggui said in a soft, high voice that reminded Sammy of his mother’s. ‘Sahul has spoken through your suffering and you are blessed to have heard her. You are the first of your kind to have done so. Why have you brought him here, Kadji?’

  Huntsman approached the great spider and planted a kiss on its head. ‘Ants told him mawgs were beneath Sarum. He is favoured by Sahul. I will teach him.’

  Huntsman seated himself beneath the body of Murgah Muggui, who wrapped her front legs around him and brushed the top of his head with her mandibles.

  ‘So you thought to test him in the dark?’ she said. ‘No pale-skin has come here and lived.’

  Sammy followed Huntsman’s gaze to the ceiling high above where thick webs clung to the skeletal remains of humans. He pressed up close against Mamba.

  ‘He wasss ssstrong in the dark,’ Mamba said. ‘He did not sssuccumb to madnesss.’

  Baru loomed closer to Sammy and glared at him, his jaws clacking as he spoke. ‘And Eingana? Does she call him too?’

  ‘He has not felt her power,’ Huntsman said. ‘But his movements are touched by her. He is known to music man and to Deacon Shader.’

  ‘He wanted to marry my sister,’ Sammy blurted out, ‘but she’s gonna be a priestess.’

  Thindamura hopped behind Sammy and began to circle him, his tongue whipping out to snare a fly.

  Huntsman closed his eyes and settled back in the spider’s embrace. Murgah Muggui’s eyes burned into Sammy.

  ‘Your sister is a Nousian?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ Sammy grunted whilst watching the toad-headed Thindamura stalking him.

  ‘And you still want to train him, Huntsman?’

  ‘I must,’ Huntsman said blearily. ‘I owe it
to his sister. She sent Shader away at my bidding.’

  Mamba folded his bulging arms across his chest. ‘Yoursss or the philosssopher’sss?’

  Sammy frowned, trying to work out what they were saying. Huntsman knew Rhiannon? He’d told her to send Shader away? So he was the one who’d made her unhappy. ‘What’s a philosopher?’ he asked.

  Huntsman opened his eyes, but ignored Sammy’s question. ‘Aristodeus’s plan fails. All this sacrifice is for nothing. Eingana’s power has been misused and Sektis Gandaw has noticed.’

  ‘We too have sensed his eyes,’ Murgah Muggui said. ‘Everything is happening as it did before.’

  Thindamura leapt to a rock and perched there. ‘But this time we have Shader,’ he croaked.

  ‘Plucked from his true time,’ Baru said. ‘But how will it change the outcome? Aristodeus said—’

  ‘It is not for him to say.’ Murgah Muggui’s legs unfurled from Huntsman and she reared up. ‘Nothing like this has been tried before. In its way, what he’s done is as unnatural as what Sektis Gandaw plans to do.’

  ‘It’sss the lesser of two evilsss,’ Mamba said. ‘Tinkering with time or sssubmitting to the unravelling of the universsse. What choice does he have?’

  The great spider’s eight red eyes turned back to Sammy, making him feel like a piece of meat at the market. ‘We must offer the boy to the Archon.’

  Mamba gripped Sammy’s shoulders and held him tight.

  ‘But I have taken him for Sahul,’ Huntsman said. ‘I will teach him about Eingana. This Archon is nothing to us. He is a white-man’s god.’

  ‘He is Eingana’s brother, Huntsman,’ Murgah Muggui said. ‘He aided her birthing of the Cynocephalus and made possible the Dreaming. He is the law opposing the deceptions of the Demiurgos. There is too much at stake, old friend. If Aristodeus is failing for the second time, we must appeal to a higher power.’

  A spray of webbing shot from the body of the spider and smothered Sammy’s face. He tried to raise his arm, but Mamba held him firm. The web smelled of something sweet and sickly. His head grew suddenly heavy and dizziness overcame him. He felt himself falling, supported only by Mamba’s arms, and as he drifted into blackness he heard Murgah Muggui’s voice like a distant echo. ‘If Sammy has a part in all this, the Archon will know. The boy must go to him.’

  TAJEN

  ‘Don’t be deceived, Deacon Shader. This is not Araboth.’ Tajen was a stocky man with a ruddy face. His wiry black hair had been cropped unevenly short, and his dark brown eyes brooded beneath thick brows. He was dressed in a grubby tunic of beige linen and sandals so caked in dried mud that they appeared fossilised. The other six Luminaries gathered around Shader were naked, clearly at ease with their finely proportioned physiques. They each exuded a soft glow in varying shades of white, rose, and gold.

  A tall man, bronzed and bearded, clapped Shader on the shoulder. ‘Do not heed Tajen, Frater. He has ever been the pessimist.’

  Shader studied him for a moment, noting the tears in his flesh, holes that seemed to suppurate bright light. He knew that this must be Milo, who had been flayed alive in the forests of Verusia by his own prior, the notorious Otto Blightey.

  Jarmin, now clothed in a brown habit, his body bent and wizened, sat stiffly in the shade of a silver monolith.

  One of the Luminaries, a beautiful youth with a golden radiance, shook his head and smiled benevolently. ‘You still resist the truth, Frater Jarmin.’

  ‘I rather suspect, Frater Narcus, that the truth is not dissimilar to a mirror in this land of limbo,’ Jarmin said.

  ‘Tajen, Tajen,’ Milo said, raising his hands in mock dismay. ‘How quickly you have sullied the soul of our new brother. Where is your trust? How can we best help you?’

  There was genuine concern in the big man’s words and no hint of any concession that Tajen might be right. Indeed, Shader could see nothing but absolute, unquestioning harmony in all those assembled, with the exception of Tajen and Jarmin. Perhaps they were simply not ready yet. Maybe Araboth had its layers, different degrees of peace and luminosity, just as some of the Paters had speculated.

  Milo turned his attention back to Shader. ‘Besides Frater Jarmin, you are the first to enter Araboth for centuries.’

  ‘No one else has come here? Then why us?’ Shader asked.

  Milo spread his hands and let out a great sigh. ‘Humans never learn. They cannot easily let go their inner darkness. They are closed to Ain’s gift of life. The longer human society endures the more evil it seems to become. Jarmin and you are rare exceptions of holiness.’

  ‘Poppycock!’ Jarmin growled from beneath his rock.

  Milo merely smiled benignly.

  ‘But my father…’ The memory of Jarl bobbed to the surface of Shader’s mind, an island in an empty sea. ‘Was he rejected because he had no faith? What about all the priests? The Ipsissimi? Why are they not—?’

  ‘Will you walk with me, Deacon Shader?’ Tajen asked, his brow furrowed with concern.

  Shader eyed him for a moment and then nodded. Something felt very wrong. If this was Araboth, why did he feel an old familiar knotting in his stomach? Whatever brief harmony he had first felt was already being dashed apart by waves of discord. It made no sense. What was he doing here when far better people had not made it?

  ‘Be wary of the tempter,’ Milo said as the two set off. ‘Frater Tajen has fallen at the final hurdle, I think. If he does not drag you down, then perhaps you can help us bring him back to Ain.’

  Shader and Tajen walked in silence for an age. The sun never once shifted its position in the sky, which was alive with the majestic movement of brightly coloured birds and butterflies. Tajen kept his eyes on the ground; his presence was dull and leaden in comparison with the tranquil beauty that surrounded them.

  ‘Would you stay here for all eternity?’ Tajen finally asked, seating himself on a verdant hillock.

  Shader sighed and lowered himself to the ground, running his hands through the grass and savouring its sweet scent. ‘It’s certainly peaceful.’

  Tajen watched him closely until Shader felt compelled to speak again. ‘If not for you, and Jarmin,’ he said carefully, ‘my contentment would be complete.’

  Tajen did not look offended. He nodded thoughtfully before dropping his gaze and idly drawing in the earth with his finger. ‘Have you no thought for those you so recently left behind?’

  Lightning ripped through Shader’s mind, dispersing the fog. He gasped for air as if he were waking from being buried alive. He had completely forgotten Rhiannon, Maldark, the priests, and the White Order knights. Were they still trapped in the crypt beneath the templum? What if the Dweller had—?

  ‘Ah, good!’ Tajen clapped his hands and, for a moment, actually looked lively. ‘You feel some guilt.’

  ‘That’s a good thing?’

  ‘Milo and the others believe we need no longer be concerned with the world. The only thing that matters to them is eternal peace.’

  ‘Perhaps they are right,’ Shader said.

  ‘If Ain is concerned for Creation,’ Tajen said, ‘for human life on Earth, then should not we be?’

  It wasn’t just Shader’s memories that had returned. The jagged edge of his cynicism reasserted itself like a rusty blade. ‘How do we know that is what Ain is like?’

  ‘Nous! That is how we know! That is why we are Nousians, is it not?’ Tajen seemed more exasperated than angry. He had evidently had this conversation many times before. ‘These fools,’ Tajen spoke more softly, his arm sweeping out to indicate the Luminaries who were no longer visible, ‘are witless ecstatics, little better than the smokers of opium. If sensual pleasure could be prolonged for eternity, they would take their rest and call it Araboth.’

  ‘But how do you know that isn’t what Araboth is?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Tajen sighed, ‘but I feel strongly the lack of concern for others, for the millions of humans still struggling, for the heaving and groaning of Creation. Ain cares; I
have to believe that. I care, and I am not prepared to rest on my laurels until every last atom of Creation has been brought into Ain’s loving embrace.’

  Shader stared at his fingers clenching around a tuft of grass. He pulled out a fistful of rose-scented sod and held it before his face. Heaviness settled throughout his new form, his heavenly body. He felt suddenly weary, like he’d returned to the fight after he’d thought the battle won.

  ‘Here we are in such harmony,’ he said, letting the soil crumble between his fingers. ‘Our bodies are perfect. We can move anywhere at will, and in an instant. We cannot die. Perhaps if we can cultivate this concern for others that you mention we will have good cause to feel content.’ He didn’t believe a word of it. The illusion had already passed like the innocence of childhood.

  ‘Union with Ain should make us more real, Deacon Shader. There is no depth of reality here. I once thought as the others do, but then I began to have the nagging feeling that something was missing. What I have said to you is as much as I am able to grasp. I feel disconnected from life here, marginalized from existence. If we remain here then we may lie outside the world’s salvation. Your arrival, and Jarmin’s, has only made matters seem more urgent. Where are the others going after death? Why did you come here? What does this mean for the rest of us?’

  ‘Then what must we do?’

  ‘I wish I knew!’ Tajen cried with a mixture of frustration and despair. ‘But there is something about you and Jarmin that reminds me of what we have lost. You must think, Deacon Shader, try to remember the circumstances of your life, and, more importantly, your death. Therein lies the way out of this limbo, I suspect.’

  IN THE SERVICE OF THE ARCHON

  Sammy stood upon an impossibly tall pillar amidst a whirlwind of shifting colours and deafening roars. He teetered dangerously and should have fallen, but his body remained taut, his feet rooted to the summit as if they grew from it. He chanced a look downwards, but could see only a yawning hole of blackness, a clinging mist covering its mouth like a cobweb.