Crossworld of Xai

by Steven Savage

  Even if he’d called her his girlfriend.

  “I … we just don’t have time this week, and with Clairice, well, I’m feeling like I’m only your apprentice, Huan.”

  “You’re not.” HuanJen walked over to her and touched her cheek tenderly. “Oh, Jade, you’re not. I know this is a lot for you …”

  “Am I being selfish?” Jade felt the words fight to emerge from her throat. Her mouth felt tense, her skin uncomfortable.

  “I don’t know. I’m probably not very good at this. Jade, please, trust me, go with me. When it is done, we will do something special. For us. Clairice-free.”

  “You said ‘trust me.’ You know I can’t say no to that.” Jade crossed her arms defensively. “I … OK, its a big week supernaturally-wise. Huan, it’s not … look I just want to be with you, do you understand?”

  “I’m never away.” The cleric touched the Vulpine’s chest. “You know that.”

  “Huan, is it really time for getting mystical and symbolic? You’re off the clock.”

  “It’s part of the job, Jade.” HuanJen couldn’t help but smile. “Trust me.”

  “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  The Fang-Shih gave his companion an oddly pained look, then nodded, and left.

  Jade wondered why she didn’t feel guilty.

  Jade slipped the Lakkom into its holster and looked in the mirror on the doors of her bedroom closet.

  Her best green dress and boots. Hair neatly coifed in a jet-black cascade. The silver-and-jade earrings Garnet had got her for her birthday. A dark coat for the chillier weather. The Lakkom, as always, at the ready, beneath the coat and in its harness, the strange black-and-emerald staff still visible as her personal badge of supernatural ass-kickingness.

  She was ready to meet the dead, and didn’t feel that alive herself.

  HuanJen had slipped into her room last night, as usual, and hadn’t said much. He’d spent the day in the field, coming home only for lunch. He’d seemed himself, but she wondered. She had, when it came down to it, sort of pushed him away.

  She figured he’d deserved it. It wasn’t as if she was any good at this relationship thing either. If he was going to play boyfriend and say they were going to do something special, he damn well better have meant it.

  Of course, she still felt … not guilty, but in the wrong. This was a hell of a lot more complex than Colony, where caring was optional in a relationship. HuanJen did care, even if he did strange things.

  Well, she was going to the Ossuary, because HuanJen suggested it, she was his apprentice and he probably knew what he was doing. Besides, she really wanted to be with him in a way that made her feel pathetic, and it was at least something vaguely intimate.

  “Ready?”

  HuanJen appeared in the doorway of her room, dressed in his full clerical regalia, perhaps the most formally dressed she’d ever seen him. He wore a yellow robe adorned with gold-threaded circular symbols, a strange, flat-topped cap with a yin-yang symbol on it, and what looked like for all the world a sword and some kind of staff strapped to his pack. Huan was not a fancy dresser, and the overall effect was like seeing a potato with peacock feathers.

  “Yeah.” Jade nodded. “You look nice.”

  “Outfit is based on L�� Dong-bin, sword, wisk, and … ” HuanJen fidgeted. “…well, anyway. Lets go.”

  HuanJen escorted Jade out of her room, meeting Clairice in the living room, and taking them downstairs. A bus arrived a few minutes later. Guild Esoteric did a brisk business in members and non-members visiting the Ossuary and the other parts of the Valley of the Crypts. It had been easy for HuanJen to arrange a pickup.

  Other things were not so easy for him, and never had been.

  He sat next to Jade, looking uncomfortable as the bus moved into the countryside. Eventually he found the courage to take her hand in his. Part of him wanted to explain his actions but there was nothing to explain. She was his apprentice, this was important, the continuity of life always was. Besides he really didn’t know what else to do.

  At times, he felt he should do more, but that was the problem. He hadn’t really done anything around her, he hadn’t tried to force things or force the relationship. Some things, the important things, couldn’t be forced, even when he wanted to force them.

  “Jade?”

  “Yes?” The Vulpine looked up from the book she had been reading. Her eyes seized his thoughts.

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Jade gave him a strange but loving look, a bit caring, a bit confused, and a small amount sympathetic. Finally she gave him a peck on the cheek, then glanced at Clairice behind them.

  “I know. I …” Jade trailed off and squeezed his hand. The mystic nodded at her.

  The bus traveled on, towards the places of the dead.

  The Valley of the Crypts had earned its name, even if it was not entirely an accurate one. For ages early visitors to Xai had been buried there, and over time it had become the territory of the loose alliance of mystics, holy men, and alchemists that had become Guild Esoteric. It housed the Lyceum, storehouse of Guild secrets. It supposedly housed Portal Tzaddi, the only portal not under Travelers’ Guild control.

  And it housed the Ossuary.

  Guild Esoteric sill buried its dead in the Valley; some in the Catacombs that ran deep beneath the earth, but many members and some outside the guild left their remains to the Ossuary. The fate of the dead there unsettled some, but it certainly ensured a memorable burial.

  The bus stopped, jarring Jade’s mind into focus. They were there. She’d been to the Valley of Crypts before, at least to the Lyceum. The deeper secrets, the stranger areas, she figured, would enter her realm of experience in time.

  Such as now.

  “Lets go.” HuanJen smiled at Jade, took her hand, and escorted her off of the bus and into the cool autumn afternoon air. Exotic smells of native Xaian plants played in her nose, amplified by a strange, electric feel to the air.

  HuanJen placed a hand on her shoulder. “Welcome to the Ossuary.”

  Jade looked up at the Ossuary’s entrance, a huge, brooding arch of dark stone set into the valley’s side, right off of the main road. The stone was weathered, undetailed, almost crude. There was only one detail, one piece of art beneath the foreboding arch.

  It was a statue of a man made of bone, not as humans were, but a gigantic statue made of skulls, tibias, vertebrae and more. In his right hand the osseous figure held a kind of curved sword, in the other, a feather quill. Eye-pits made of ribs stared into the sky.

  “Mortru, Xaian god of the Dead,” HuanJen said reverently, “Collector of souls, maintainer of the cycle-end. When he is not busy, he sits on a hill and writes poetry about the lives of those who have come to an end. No one reads it, so he gives it to humans. You can hear the sound on the wind on quiet nights, lonely Mortru and the poetry of those gone.”

  “Passed into words,” Jade muttered. It was a term she had heard some people on Xai use for the dead.

  “Yes. Of course some also think of him as Azrael, or … well, enough theology. Shall we go?” HuanJen asked far more pleasantly than any man standing beneath a statue made of human bones had a right to be.

  “Sure.” Jade answered. Clairice merely nodded, eyes wide, reverent.

  The Magician-Priest led his companions under Mortru’s composite form and into the depths of the Ossuary. One passed into a tunnel of angular walls, almost triangular, descending a few yards into the fluorescent-lit depths until you reached the first chamber, and the bones

  They stood out and seized your vision. Decorations made of skulls, ribs made into symbols, the walls of the entrance chamber were covered in the artfully arranged remains of the deceased. Well-hidden lights illuminated the chamber just enough for you to truly appreciate the grisly work that had gone into it.

  “You see similar structures in Europe on Nexial Earths,” HuanJen said conversationally. It took a few moments for Jade to realize he was talking to her.
She moved closer to him instinctively, trying to get out of the way of the others entering the Ossuary.

  “Yeah.” Jade looked around. Some of the bones were white, others yellowed with age despite the care of the Ossuary-keepers. Most were sealed in a clear resin, leading Jade to realize that some bones had aged despite such preparations.

  She wasn’t exactly comfortable with the dead. Colony got rid of bodies quite quickly, usually by cremation. You just didn’t leave humans with fur and tails lying around on most Earths. People got strange ideas and took even stranger actions.

  “Let us go.” HuanJen strode forward again, Clairice next to him. Jade caught up quickly.

  “I usually take my leave for about a half-hour to say my respects.” HuanJen was irritatingly calm as he led her and the silent nurse deeper into the complex. “Clairice?”

  Clairice nodded. “I’ll go. Thanks Huan. I’m glad to come again.”

  Jade watched her walk off. HuanJen backed against a skull-decorated wall and put an arm around her. His embrace was warm, contrasting wrenchingly with the eerie aura of the Ossuary.

  “I’ll go in a bit myself. Take time, walk around, and remember those past. Its worth it. It is important.”

  “Yeah.” Jade looked around. She felt like someone was watching her, or something was waiting to go wrong. “What are you going to do?”

  “Walk. Remember. I’ve done this since Green showed it to me. I do it now.”

  “Sure. Can I …”

  “No. I need my time. As do you.”

  The Vulpine couldn’t find herself able to argue. HuanJen usually had time for others. He was distant, strange, not his usual distance. He was more separated from her in time now.

  “I’ll see you in a half hour in the main chamber.” He kissed her quickly, and vanished into the distance.

  Jade was alone.

  In a cross between a cemetery and an artistic creation.

  Thanks to her boyfriend.

  “This is not your typical boy-meets-girl relationship.” She said weakly.

  After a moments composure, she walked into the Ossuary, not sure what to do, not sure what was going on, but quite determined to do something.

  Clairice stood alone in the corner of a bone-encrusted room, crying, talking under her breath between sobs.

  “Sorry,” a voice sounded behind her. She turned to find HuanJen.

  “It’s OK.” Clairice dabbed at her eyes. “You usually …”

  “I sent Jade off in that direction. I shall go.”

  “Thanks. She going to be OK?”

  “We’ll find out, won’t we?” The Magician-Priest replied calmly. “I expect she will be. This is important.”

  “Yeah.” The nurse sighed. “Huan, I never could figure you out, you know.”

  “I know.” A pause. “She’s different, Clairice.”

  The nurse shook her head. “Yeah. Yeah, she is. Kinda has it all, doesn’t she?”

  “Perhaps.” HuanJen smiled a mysterious little smile. “She’ll get over it though, I hope.”

  The cleric walked into the depths of the Ossuary, leaving Clairice behind. She let out a bitter laugh, and dabbed away her tears.

  Jade walked among the distributed bodies of dead.

  The Ossuary still felt strange to her even though the initial shock of being in the bone-laden building had passed. Yes, she’d known of them on her Earth; she’d spent most of her life in Europe where many stood. Visiting one, visiting one this large had never been on the agenda for her life.

  She was sure HuanJen meant well, but what he had actually meant would have been nice to know. Actually, considering the last week, she wasn’t sure what was going on anywhere in her life.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” Jade nearly tripped over someone lacking in the height department.

  A small child looked up at her. Not native born to judge by his clothes, and there were no beads in his red hair. He munched on a small candy skull.

  “Sorry. Hello.” Jade said nervously. “How are you?”

  “Fine.” The boy kept chewing while talking. “Why’re you here?”

  “Good question,” the Vulpine snarled politely.

  Jade walked on, seeking privacy. She passed through an arch decorated with leg bones, past symbols made out of ribs and vertebrae. People passed by her, a diverse spectrum of Xaian humanity among the eerie decor. Finally she decided to simply ask someone where she could find a place to be alone, and found a dark-dressed man sat in a niche, staring at the bone-encrusted walls. His dusky face was painted with a white skull.

  “Hi.” Jade nodded. “I’m …”

  “Drink?” The man proffered a bottle of something golden-clear. “Rum. Keep your privates warm tonight.”

  “Thanks. I …” Jade hesitated, then took the bottle. It was actually pretty good rum, probably from the south. She handed it back to the man, who nodded, and returned to staring at the bones.

  “Know any place where its quiet?” Jade asked.

  “Keep going.” The man didn’t bother to look at her, but his tone of voice was friendly. “That’s why I’m here. Keep going.”

  “Thanks.” The Vulpine tried to say more.

  “Anytime, Miss. Any time.”

  Jade continued her wanderings. She was in an older area, or at least one where not enough people had died to repair everything. Some bones were broken or discolored, contrasting with ones that appeared to have been recently …

  Put to use.

  There. That was a good term.

  Jade felt her feet slowly being to ache from the days activity, the stress, and the walking, and she quickly found a seat in a corner that, of course, was made of bones, this time suspended in a kind of acrylic for strength. A skull stared up at Jade, indicative of some Ossuary-keepers sense of humor.

  “Look,” Jade addressed the bony countenance, “I need a rest, so enjoy the cheap thrill, but remember the one guy whose face I’d consider sitting on is still alive. At least as long as I let him live.”

  With that, Jade reclined on the osseous chair and tried to relax. It wasn’t easy. Her legs were rested, but her mind wouldn’t settle. She really ought to do something. Something well, clerical, something appropriate.

  It was the Week of the Dead, after all.

  “Hey, mom,” The vulpine began uncomfortably, “look, its sort of tradition here to remember the dead, and since I’m surrounded by a few centuries of them, I’m gonna go along with the tradition.”

  Silence.

  “Look, I’m doing OK. Really good. I’m on Xai. I met a real nice guy, HuanJen. Gene-normal human, member of Guild Esoteric. I’m his apprentice too. Go figure, huh? In a few years, I’m going to be a magician-priestess of the ‘Order of Sanctum.’ I like it, mom. I like it a lot. I do something real now. I really … I think I’m really falling in love with HuanJen. I think he feels the same way, even things a bit goofy as of late. So look … you’re little girl is happy. I guess if you’re listening, you should know. Thanks for everything you did. It worked out.”

  It didn’t make Jade feel exactly mystical or even better. It just felt appropriate. Natural. It fit for some reason.

  One more.

  “Verdure? Jade here. I hope you heard. Yeah, big changes. He’s not a thing like Albion or Cerulean or the other guys. And I get to do a lot of great stuff. I still keep things in order, but … hell I help people. Its like when we talked about just leaving, maybe hooking up with someone else. Xai’s all for real. So, I’m OK.”

  Jade leaned back in the chair, trying to forget it had once been someone or someones. The strange contours of the seat didn’t help banish the thoughts. Wondering if someone’s back was digging into your own was distracting.

  “Yeah. I’m OK.”

  You couldn’t hear much in the Ossuary. It was probably a mix of the design and the construction materials. The bone-encrusted place appeared to be laid out at random, but Jade, long accustomed to the strange mazes of Colony, detected patterns to the suppo
sed chaos. There was a system here, a sense of something.

  Unfortunately, there was also a whole lot of dead people and she was feeling distinctly uncomfortable, if a bit more focused. System be damned, she’d said her peace and it was time to go and get back to her life, such as it was.

  HuanJen walked through the Ossuary, his yellow robes streaming behind him. He made no sound, moving like an idea across a mind. His eyes seemed closed, his mouth twitched occasionally as if a word was escaping.

  No one noticed him. He had to step aside from other devotees as he drifted through the bony corridors of the past.

  Jade’s heart was beating faster as she made her way back towards the entrance. It was getting warmer, she swore. The place was getting to her, she could feel the adrenaline in her veins, the fear. Everyone here was dead, what was there to be afraid of?

  Hell, she had plenty to be afraid of outside of hear. A tough job with supernatural shit and alchemy. A loving sort-of-boyfriend in a relationship complicated by every damn thing. Metrisian traffic, and …

  Something streaked by her a few yards away. Jade turned. She thought she’d seen something, something black with red eyes sneaking by her.

  This was getting creepy.

  “Oh, screw it.”

  Getting creepy nothing. It was creepy. It was a gigantic building decorated in dead people. You couldn’t get much creepier than that without massive effort.

  She wanted HuanJen there. Maybe to yell at him a bit, but mainly because he was good at weird shit. Nothing upset him much except, perhaps, upsetting her. Besides, he could handle things like this … place, this feeling.

  Skulls and tibias and ribs and patellas and pelvises were everywhere. She was in a room that was very old. The air was dry, crackling with voices long gone.

  “Fuck …” she felt like a shadow made of light was passing over her back, like something was overtaking her.

  Bones everywhere. Dead bones. A living archive of the passed-away arced around her in architectural lightning-streaks of morbid creativity. The hand of man and the hand of nature one-in-one, inseparable

  Skulls stared down at her with empty sockets. Jade felt herself falling away, felt herself small beyond small. Aeons of the dead surrounded her, a chain of bones stretching backwards in time. All who had gone before, shamans and sorcerers, ministers and magicians, devotees and the devout, built up around her. A reminder, a monument, something else.