I became aware of a faint, thin whine at the limits of my hearing, like a distant wasp’s nest or a power saw running far away. Right at the center of the mesh, a bright speck glowed, sickly green by contrast to the warm red light of the wires. I stepped closer, mesmerized. The glowing speck expanded until it was the size of a penny, then a quarter, and then the size of my fist.
The wires surrounding the horrible green light shifted as if something were trying to fit between their close weave. Something hard and black and pointed poked out of the circle of green light, shifting the wires further. Another tip of the invader’s wickedly sharp forelimbs emerged right next to the first. They wiggled around for a few seconds, and then they separated, slowly, dragging the wires apart and leaving a gap in the middle. The gap grew as the green light did, until I could see the invader’s horrible face through the hole.
I realized what it was doing at the same moment it said, “Not what you expected, yes?”
I turned and fled.
In fifteen seconds I was in the office and flinging open the door that led to the back hall and the stairs leading to the upstairs apartment. I hesitated at the exit. There were almost certainly invaders outside. But they couldn’t drain my magic, and all I had to do was run to my car. I could get away and be safe.
I reached for the doorknob, and stopped with my hand inches from it. If I left, the invaders would destroy Abernathy’s, and whatever catastrophe happened when there were no more guardians would occur. I shook my head violently to dispel those thoughts and gripped the knob tightly enough to hurt my skin. If I stayed, the invaders would kill me, and they’d still destroy Abernathy’s. My death wouldn’t make a difference.
It would need a custodian to be useful. The thought flickered across my mind. I’d said it in regards to the Well needing a custodian, but now I wondered—didn’t it make a difference to the Neutrality that it had a custodian? I was the oracle’s hands, after all, and it communicated through me. And I couldn’t abandon it even if it meant my death. My end.
I released the knob and ran for the stacks. If I could get inside the oracle, maybe together we could fight the invader and whatever slavering hordes it brought with it.
The whining drone was louder now, and it had an edge to it that made my skin crawl. I slipped through the aisle and headed deeper into the stacks, hoping I wasn’t too late. Then the oracle’s presence rose up around me, reassuring me. I staggered to a halt in the heart of the oracle and inhaled deeply, trying to calm my racing heart. “What do we do?” I asked.
The guardians fall. Seal the cracks. I will end. Helena will end.
It was mostly what I’d expected, but it still sent fear coursing through me. I wasn’t prepared to die even after almost five months of warnings. “How do we seal the cracks? What will that do?”
A wave of intense frustration swept over me, so intense I didn’t at first realize it was not my own emotion. “There’s something I’m not getting,” I said. “I’m sorry I don’t understand.”
The frustration retreated a little. Speak, the oracle said. You and I are one.
“You want me to become you?” I would do anything to save us both.
The oracle’s attention pressed down on me, but this time I felt its curiosity, like a dog sniffing a scent trail. It reminded me of the times I’d meditated to connect with the oracle. “All right, let’s try it,” I said. I closed my eyes and rested my left hand on the nearest bookshelf. The grainy wood pressed against my new skin. I let myself open to feeling it completely, relaxing even as I gave the sensation my full attention. A breeze brushed my cheeks, bringing with it the scent of fresh cherries, and I inhaled it and let it sink into my lungs and spread throughout my body.
An image came into focus behind my eyelids. It was of a plastic sieve, an ordinary purple plastic sieve. Water flowed through it, a steady stream pouring from an unseen source that turned into rainfall as the water found the many holes perforating the sieve. I watched, confused as to what the oracle meant.
The water stopped flowing. The sieve shivered, and some of its holes disappeared as if they’d been filled in with melted wax. The water flowed again, and this time the “rainfall” was heavier, the remaining holes wider somehow. Again the water dried away, and more holes vanished. Three more times the image repeated itself until the sieve had one hole the size of my fist, and the water flowed through that hole unimpeded.
Seal the cracks, the oracle said. The guardians fall. Many, few, one. Power flows stronger as the guardians fall.
My whole world rearranged itself so fast I felt I might fall down. My connection to the oracle shivered. “Seal the cracks,” I said. “Not us. Them. They destroy the guardians, and that seals the cracks until—”
“You didn’t understand that before?” a horrible voice said. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
I couldn’t see the invader through the bookcases and had no idea how I was able to hear it. I’d only rarely caught glimpses of the ordinary world while I was inside the oracle. “If you’re stooping to taunting me, you’re more pathetic than I thought,” I shot back, certain it could hear me.
“True. We’re both above pettiness.” I heard it moving around in the narrow aisles. “Isn’t this the time when, if I were human, I’d reveal all the details of my master plan?”
“I don’t care about your plan. You can’t drain my magic, and that means when I’m the oracle, you can’t destroy it either.” It was the only thing that made sense.
“You are smarter than you seem. It’s true we can’t destroy this node the way we did the others.” It laughed, sending waves of horror rippling down my spine. “Fortunately for us, we don’t want to destroy the oracle. That really would ruin our plan.”
“I already know you want to destroy us. I don’t know why it took you so long to decide we were never going to give in.”
“We hoped you would see sense, for all our sakes. There’s just so much waste this way. But it was always going to turn out this way.”
“What are you talking about?”
It laughed again. “Not going to monologue, remember? Besides, you’ll be dead when it happens, so it’s not like it will matter.”
It was trying to unnerve me, trick me into making a mistake. The trouble was, I had no idea what it intended, so anything I might do could be a mistake.
Except one thing.
I centered myself in the heart of the oracle and let out a deep breath, relaxing my shoulders so my arms drooped at my sides and my hands hung loosely. The oracle’s attention instantly increased, becoming so painful I had to bite back a whimper. I’d only ever done this twice before, and never so deliberately. The pressure built until I felt swollen with power, like a balloon about to pop. I realized I’d fallen to my knees, and I ground my teeth and closed my eyes as a keening wail escaped my lips, just before I exploded.
The pressure vanished, and I felt as light as mist. I opened my eyes to a golden glow that drifted around me. I floated higher until I could see over the tallest bookcases, did a slow roll out of sheer pleasure of being free from a physical body, and took a deep breath only to remember I didn’t have lungs.
The invader was a black blotch between the shelves at the edge of my space. It didn’t seem aware of me. Beyond that, dozens, maybe hundreds of smaller invaders pressed in through the man-sized hole the intelligent invader had made in the wards. They filled the space outside the stacks, crawling over the counter and the stool. Some of them had knocked the antique cash register to the ground, which would have made me angry if I’d still been in my human body and capable of such a visceral emotion.
Let’s see what we can do, I thought. Memories of an earlier time surfaced, of glowing golden letters making thick chains. I retreated deeper into my meditative state and let my awareness extend throughout the oracle’s space, all the way to the walls and through every bookcase. The spines began glowing with a soft light that grew as the letters printed or impressed on their spines turn
ed gold. They danced and flowed into the air, spinning gently and forming chains of letters spelling words in a language I couldn’t read. Probably no one could.
The chains twined together, became thicker, and their light filled the room until it seemed to lie at the heart of the sun, but cool and comfortable instead of scorching hot. The invader looked up, finally aware of my presence. “We’re not helpless,” I said, and directed the chains to wrap around the creature’s hideous body.
It didn’t resist. “You’re fighting back. I knew you were strong. How sad.”
I tightened the chains and the invader gasped. “You’re even more pathetic than I thought if you’re going to pull that whole patronizing evil villain thing.”
It tilted its head. “Not at all,” it said. “You’ve given me far more than I hoped.”
Confused, I responded by making the chains constrict the thing further. And it laughed. Somewhat breathlessly, which surprised me because I didn’t know its kind breathed, but a laugh of such deep amusement that even in this state, I felt angry.
A tug on the chains brought me back to myself. It wasn’t a tug from the invader trying to free itself; the pull came from above. I looked up. The ceiling looked melted, like a pat of butter dropped into a hot pan, and globs of thick paint mixed with plaster dripped and fell to the floor. They sizzled when they touched the letter-chains. Then, with a groan, a chunk of ceiling about ten feet across sagged and fell. I threw up arms I didn’t have to protect my face, but it passed through my immaterial body to splatter across three bookcases and the linoleum.
Where the ceiling had been was—nothing. Not the timbers of the roof or even the evening sky, and not the darkness of the space between ceiling and roof. Just a blank emptiness that sucked at me like a riptide. Things moved within it, impossibly, things that might have been a million miles away or at arm’s length. It tugged at the chains, making them twitch. I asserted control over them, and the twitching stopped, but the pull still dragged at me.
“It will take you, in the end,” the invader said. It stood just below me and had shaken off the chains somehow. I brought more to encircle it, but it waved a clawed forelimb and they retreated despite all my urging. The pull grew stronger until I had to focus all my attention on not being dragged into the void.
“What is it?” I demanded, hating how my voice shook.
“Our reality,” the thing said. “Preparing to drain the magic from yours.”
The image of water pouring through a single hole in a sieve came to mind again. “You can’t do that,” I said stupidly. Chains flew upward, and I pulled them back with terrible effort.
It roared with laughter. “So foolish,” it said. “Obviously we can. The fewer nodes, the greater the conduit. And it’s fitting that Abernathy’s and its custodian should be the site of our victory. You’ve thwarted us so many times.”
I lashed out with my chains as if they were whips, cracking them across the creature’s hard exoskeleton. It flinched, but didn’t move. “You can’t drain this place even with whatever that thing is,” I said, “and I will fight you to the end.”
“Of course you will.” The invader looked up at me, its beady eyes gleaming with malevolence. “And it will not matter. But it doesn’t have to be this way.”
I whipped it again, this time catching one of its eyes with the tip of a chain and making it pop like a blood blister. “I suppose you’re going to offer me a deal. Forget it.”
“You’re barely holding on. Would you like to know what awaits you in our reality? Humans can’t survive in it—no air, for one—and its miasma will strip the flesh from your bones as you suffocate to death. That’s if my idiot cousins don’t get to you first. They may not be able to drain you, but they can destroy you trying. Is that how you want to end?”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. The pull had grown agonizingly sharp, and I was afraid if I spoke, I’d lose my grip on this reality.
“But, as I said, it doesn’t have to be this way.” The invader shook its head, sending a spatter of black blood across the nearest row of books. “I told you once you would have one last chance, when all hope was gone. Give us access to the oracle, and we’ll withdraw. We’ll control the idiots so they only take criminals and useless people—you proposed that, didn’t you?”
“I did not!” I shrieked, and the pull redoubled until I was stretched taut like a drumskin. I screamed in agony.
The invader chuckled. “Think how many lives you could save, protecting this reality. Be sensible. One Neutrality balanced against the lives of an entire world. Your choice, custodian. Choose now.”
I felt the entire store tugging at me as it strained to be sucked into the void. The creatures within it were drawing closer. I can’t, I thought at the oracle. It has to be lying.
The oracle, which had been silent until now, said, I will end. Helena will end.
But it will be pointless! The invaders will destroy everything!
Its voice thundered through me: Make an end.
I released everything I was holding and let myself and all those golden chains be dragged into the void.
28
A flash of light blinded me momentarily, and I tried to blink and found whatever I was using to see with didn’t work that way. The blindness passed as rapidly as it had come, and I was in darkness as complete as the light had been, darkness that smelled of mold and dead things. I strained to see anything, even horrible invaders, but I might as well have been blind again. The chains had either disappeared or were invisible. I suspected the latter, because I still felt them tug on my immaterial body. Everything was perfectly silent. That all should have terrified me, but I felt only the ghost of fear, trembling through my core.
We are one. This place is not. See and know.
I can’t see, I thought, but even as I did I made myself relax into the meditative state I’d practiced all those times. Once again, webs of light uncurled before me, like undulating jellyfish radiant with red and purple and blue light. Then they faded, and I cried out and tried to make them stay. My cry was silent, and I couldn’t even feel a vibration in my throat—the throat I didn’t have.
See, the oracle said. There was no light, nothing to illuminate my surroundings, but impossibly the blackness lightened, became dull brown like dried mud. The dreary, bland color sharpened until it appeared to be brown hills I was floating high above. Immediately, my perspective changed, and they were a bumpy brown wall—changed again, and I was looking up at a ceiling that hung pendulous above me. I twisted and made a slow roll, with the unseen chains dragging behind me. The brown bumpy surface extended in all directions, like being inside a sphere with hills for walls. I couldn’t tell how far away they were; they might have been a mile distant or a million miles. I rolled again and confirmed that I was surrounded.
I sniffed, and smelled peanut butter atop the stink of decay, the same thing I’d smelled during the realignment. At the time, I’d known it was a phantom smell, and now I wondered how much of what I was seeing was real and how much a product of my brain’s effort to make sense of the truly alien. As I thought that, the brown hills wavered and vanished, replaced by shiny black spikes in random patterns. Which of these is real? I asked the oracle.
I do not know real here. They come.
I rolled again, looking for the portal we’d entered by, and found nothing. This can’t be right, I said. It said I would die here.
Not human. Not oracle. I am myself.
I knew, when it started talking like that, it saw us as a unified being even though I still could distinguish between us. So what happens now? We wait to be killed? I hadn’t seen any other creatures in this bizarre landscape.
Lose the battle. Win the war.
I think we’ve done that. Lost the battle, anyway.
I am myself. Fight.
The tugs on my body grew stronger. I envisioned the golden chains, but nothing happened. I willed them into existence harder and felt, again, nothing.
; In the distance, something moved, black against black, like an insect skittering across the wall. Another, and another, until tiny creatures were swarming over the black spikes, making them appear to wave at me like seaweed fronds. I again felt a twinge of fear and was grateful I couldn’t panic in this state. They’re coming for us, I said. Can they hurt us?
I will end. Helena will end. I am myself.
It turned out I was perfectly capable of feeling frustration. You have to tell me what to do, I insisted. The swarm was growing larger, the specks becoming thumb-sized dots. The black spikes became charcoal gray blocks stacked irregularly atop each other. I don’t want to die.
A tremor went through me. Pressure grew as if, impossibly, the oracle intended me to possess it more fully. I cried out silently. You can’t! There’s no room!
I
AM
MYSELF
My thoughts shook me to my core. And just like that, I knew what it meant.
I can’t do it, I said.
The oracle said nothing, but I quivered with tension as it waited for me to accept the inevitable. We were not one. And could not be one so long as I clung to my own identity. My life.
I looked around again at the alien landscape, at the oncoming flood of invaders bent on destroying us. There was no point in doing what it wanted. I would die, and then we would die, and the world would follow soon after. No one would know what had happened to the oracle and its custodian because there would be no one left to care.
The Book of Destiny Page 31