by Joe Ducie
“They’re not from your cemetery, if that helps,” I said. “You’ve been world-breached. That shield encasing the city is more than just a barrier—it’s a doorway, a path, through the Void. Whoever put it in place, and there’s only a handful of suspects there, linked it to a dead world.”
Winter scratched his chin and nodded. “That answers a few questions we had, yes. I see.” His gaze flicked to Annie. “Annie,” he said. “Detective Annie Brie of the Western Australia Police. I’d ask what you’re doing here, but glimmers of your reputation precede you. Your work with Declan Hale, for one. Repelling the invasion of the Everlasting Scion. And that shot on the forest outskirts was nothing short of miraculous.”
I tensed, then reminded myself of the guest rights, that for all that mattered Winter and I were on the same side. Still, he was remarkably, and swiftly, well informed.
Annie smiled and it was beautiful. She elbowed me in the ribs. “Well, sir, I have to be sharp to keep this one out of trouble. Can you tell us more about what happened to your city?”
Winter nodded. “Just under two days ago the cancerous shield you see around the Lexicon fell, cutting off the city. All lines of communication were severed. I was off-world at the time, but returned to lead the counterattack.”
“How many enemies do you estimate?” I asked.
“Between nine hundred and nine hundred fifty visible targets lurking outside of the shield.”
“How many people in the city?” Annie asked.
Winter heaved a heavy sigh. “Some thousand. Mostly children, teenagers. We’ve only just commenced our summer term. Plenty of people and soldiers in there who know how to look after themselves, of course, but we have no real idea what’s going on. We can’t penetrate the shield at all. Our drones have some visual, but the image grows hazier the closer you get to the city. It is… maddening.” He clenched and unclenched his fists. “How did Lady Waterwood contact you?”
“You won’t like it,” I said. He held my eyes. “Necromancy.”
Lord Winter inhaled sharply and cursed in a very unlordly way. “She would never. Edicts as old as the Lexicon itself forbid such dark magic.”
“It was used to good purpose,” I said. “With me here, you’ve a chance of saving the city.”
Winter scowled and cut his hand down through the air. “Please. The Shadowless Arbiter, the genocidal librarian—the boy who destroyed the Reach, who split the sky above Voraskel and Avalon, who used the Roseblade to slaughter countless innocents. The most infamous Knight Infernal to ever blight the Story Thread. You’ll do more harm than good.”
I took another sip of coffee. “Hey now. A man could take that all personal.”
Lord Winter stood and paced his office. He took a moment, hands clasped behind his back, before turning to face me. “That was… unseemly,” he conceded. “I hope no offence was taken.”
Not an apology. I shrugged.
“Did Lady Waterwood report on conditions in the city?”
I frowned. “Actually, no. She was… almost happy. Perhaps an effect of the necromancy, but the corpse she used kept grinning like an idiot at me.”
Pensiveness stole across Annie’s face. “Slightly mocking, I thought. Arrogant.”
“Has it occurred to either of you,” Winter said carefully, “that perhaps Lady Waterwood was not the person to summon you here. That, perhaps, you’ve been brought here by someone—or something—with less than good intentions.”
“It’s occurring a bit now,” I said. But you would have ended up here eventually, Declan, sooner rather than later.
Winter grunted. “You said the pool of suspects for the shield would be small?”
I ran a finger along my eyebrow, skirting the edge of the patch over my dead eye. “Can you not guess?”
“All too well,” he muttered. “I’d still have you say it.”
I looked to Annie.
“One of the Everlasting,” she said. “An Elder God.”
“Or so they like to think.” I scoffed and crushed my empty coffee cup. “They bleed, they can die.” Emily Grace, Fair Astoria, laughed softly in the back of my mind. “They’re more human than they care to admit, sometimes.”
“The Everlasting…” Lord Winter shook his head, face pale, despaired. “Thousands of years without a whisper from them, just scatterings of old rhymes, half lost myths, and now ever since you recovered the Lost City of Atlantis, Arbiter Hale, and the Roseblade, we seem to have to contend with the Everlasting every year.”
“Sometimes twice a year,” I said. “It’d make a damn good series of urban fantasy books one day, all these hijinks. Maybe I’ll write them.”
Lord Winter moved behind his desk and scrawled a few words on a notebook. He spared a look at me, paused, and then signed his name with a flourish on the paper. “Official request for aid from the Knights Infernal,” he said. “Whether you spoke to Lady Waterwood or not, you are now officially here, Arbiter Hale. I formally request, by the old accords, your services in dealing with the matter to the north.”
I cracked my knuckles and grinned. “Cheer up, mate. This could be fun.”
“I do not see how this can end without greater loss of life.”
My grin faded. “Yeah, that’s usually cover charge at the door for these parties.” I shook my head. “Anyway, let’s hear it then. What’s your plan?”
Lord Winter cast aside his pen and crossed his arms. “We’re launching our major assault in three hours, just before sunset. If you know the lore, you’ll know deadlings are at the weakest during the twilight hour. The corruption holding them together more susceptible to attack.”
I nodded. “Zombie Fighting 101, chief. I would like to assist.”
Lord Winter considered, then his façade broke and he gave a nervous laugh. “I have no idea what to do with you, Arbiter Hale. Or where to place you on the battlefield.”
I threw him a lifeline. “Front and centre. I wanna take a shot at that shield. If I can get through, and I have a sneaking suspicion I can, then I’ll have this nonsense sorted by dawn. And call me Declan, Winter. My friends call me Declan.”
I said that idly, but there was a weight behind my words, an implication. I was here, officially, as a requested representative of the Knights Infernal. To offer my friendship alongside that messed with the accords—in the best way, in my favour. Lord Winter, who would not have risen to the title of Lord of the Atlas Lexicon, in the Seat of Neverwhere, without being at least marginally intelligent, would understand the ramifications.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. “You… bastard.”
I grinned.
Annie looked lost, then masked it. She was my wild card, and knew it.
“Very well,” Winter said. “If you want to charge headfirst into an army of deadlings, who am I to stop you?”
“Could you stop me?” I said quietly. Then winked.
Lord Winter found a wry grin. “You might be surprised by what we’re capable of here.”
“I hope so.”
That felt like the end of the meeting. Annie and I stood and shook hands with Lord Winter.
“The camp is at your disposal. Food, sleep for a few hours, whatever you need from the armoury. I intend to wipe that undead mess from my pretty mountain valley before nightfall. I trust we’re on the same page there.”
We said goodbye and stepped out of the command tent, back into the late afternoon sunlight. I was a little hungry, thinking about it. It was long since dinner time back in Perth. Annie and I walked over to the mess tent, following the scent of roasting meat, exotic spices, and all things delicious.
We helped ourselves to the buffet and I pointedly ignored the stares, the looks—some careful, some fearful, most assessing—I got from the other soldiers and support staff. Word had spread, it seemed, that the Shadowless Arbiter was in town. Annie and I found a quiet table on the edge of the mess, overlooking the mountains and the forest to the east.
“Three hours to kill,” Annie said
. “I’m going to need some more ammunition.”
“They’ll have all sorts of cool stuff here, Brie.” I took a bite of roast beef dolloped in mashed spuds and gravy. “We’ll be like kids in a candy store.”
“Apart from the demons, this is a nice part of the world.” Annie held another cup of coffee warmly between her hands, gazing out at the picturesque landscape.
“They’re not actually demons,” I began, then saw her look and waved my words away. “Want to hear more of my time in Atlantis with Tal while we wait? Two hours should get us through most of the next bit.”
Annie blinked. “Oh, I’d almost forgotten. The dark and brooding choice you have to make, the lost love Tal, all the drama that is your life.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were poking fun.”
Annie stuck her tongue out at me. “Tell your story, Declan. Tell it well.”
REMINISCENCE THE SECOND
(Back in Atlantis, may it do ya fine)
The Vale Celestia
The Vale Celestia School for Gifted Youngsters was off-world, which was the way of things back home at the Infernal Academy in Ascension City, as well. A pocket world had been written into existence, kept secret and safe and tailored to the needs of the Atlantean Willful. If they were doing this business right, only a handful of access points to the world would have been created and known. Hiding worlds away like this was like hiding a needle in a stack of needles the size of a planet… that shifted and changed dimensions. Rather effective.
Still need to figure out why they stick ‘Vale’ in front of everything important.
The Vale Atlantia in the city of Atlantis held a portal chamber, much like the interdimensional train station (also called the Atlas Lexicon, just to keep things confusing) of my time, only smaller, which led to a few dozen such pocket worlds. The bustling floor of the spire was packed with people, Willful and otherwise, flipping between worlds like the pages of a book. Grand archways of archaic brown stone, small doorways of dark glass, and simple tunnels disappeared into the walls of the portal chamber. Glimpses of other worlds, from snowy landscapes to busy cities, to wide open fields littered with wildflowers and oceans of tranquil blue water, filled the portals.
The largest of these portals, in the very heart of the room, framed by twin curved pillars of white stone, led to the Atlantean academy—to the Vale Celestia. Or so my minders told me, as we were escorted through the VIP lines. A familiar tingle rushed down my spine as we crossed the threshold, stepping from smooth marble floors to a stone pathway, and left True Earth behind. My Knightly senses tingling again, sensing the change in worlds.
We stood in a field above a wide valley full of buildings, some nestled against the slopes of mountains that stretched toward the sky, a half ring of distant peaks running in a horseshoe around the valley. The marble stone path wound down toward the various buildings, some of which looked as old as time itself while others as shiny and new as most of Atlantis. The valley was strewn with small forests and rivers, and a warm, crystal blue light bathed the entire world.
We went from daylight, morning, to night in a matter of footsteps.
I took one look at the sky and figured out why they’d given this place a name as pretentious and ethereal as Celestia.
The heavens here were, in a word, beautiful. I use that word an awful lot, often with vague romantic ideals, but here, in this place, it was the truth.
I’d seen some sights in my life, walked a few paths unknown, unseen, and unfound. Wonders enough to marvel the mind, abuse the senses, and horrors all too imaginable. I have flown starships through the fiery crucibles of distant stars, I’ve wandered in worlds where the oceans are made of diamonds, and the mountains ruby fire. Worlds of pure thought, written into existence by the Willful. Madmen and geniuses alike.
I’ve seen some shit, you could say.
But the sky above the Vale Celestia was something else again.
The source of the blue light bathing the world was a band of what I assumed were asteroids of pure gemstone, or ice, caught in interstellar cloud. The asteroids, some large enough to be rightfully called planetoids, haloed the Vale Celestia, diluting the black of the night and obscuring the starry arms of the galaxy. Twin moons hung in the sky, close and large, one just above the other. The larger one seemed near enough to reach out and touch. I could see the shadows in the craters, darker lunar soil in deep canyons, and veins of manmade light that I guessed was a small city on its surface.
The sky reminded me of the Voidflood that had forced the Renegades to abandon Voraskel and destroyed Avalon. Dark days in the Tome Wars, when I was rising to prominence and just before my fall from grace. Those two worlds had collided, two points of reality that should never had touched had slammed into one another. The result had been, in a word, apocalyptic. A victory, the Knights had called it, at the time. Destabilising the entire Renegade regime and eventually forcing their surrender after I’d bargained for the Degradation in the ruins of Atlantis. Everything came back to that city, one way or another, and now I’m actually here. I’d visited Voraskel a handful of weeks ago, to watch Emily die and retrieve the Roseblade from the Tomb of the Sleeping Goddess. From Emily’s tomb. The world of Voraskel was crumbling, home now to nothing but Forgetful spawn and prone to the Void leaking through the immense cracks. Voraskel would be consumed before the decade’s end.
Tal wasn’t watching the sky. She was watching me. I felt her gaze, met her eyes, to see the glowing belt of gemstones reflected in those deep, green pools.
“For a moment,” she said and smiled. “Just for a moment. You wanted to stay.” She kissed me on the cheek. I considered turning to try and catch her lips but thought better of it. “Love at first sight, this place.”
“Come. This way,” Trey said. “You are expected for the feast.”
“Hey,” I said and took Tal’s hand. “Feast. Cool. Will there be rum, my good man?”
“It’s technically not even ten in the morning,” Tal said. “No drink for you.”
“You know that saying ‘It’s five o’clock somewhere’.” I gestured to the new world, swept my hand across the Vale Celestia as we began the slow, winding descent toward the main streets and thoroughfares in the valley below. “Yeah. This is what it means. Plus how many time zones do you think we crossed travelling back in time ten thousand years? We’re not on any sort of normal time, Tal.”
She bristled. “You want a drink, then have a drink.”
I nodded. “I do. But… I probably won’t.”
“Probably?”
“Well, if there’s dark rum we’re doomed.”
Tal let go of my hand. “Please take this entirely as it sounds, Declan, but at a certain point your need for a drink turns from charming to desperate. Pathetic, even. You crossed that point some time ago.”
And you used to be a lot more fun, I thought but didn’t—could never—say. Not only was it mean and unfair, but six years of rape, torture, and murder at the hands of Oblivion was enough to destroy the heart and hopes of any soul. Tal had, for all that mattered, clung to the essence of who she was—the girl I had known and loved.
And that was incredible.
I would have buckled long ago.
I hated myself for thinking she used to be more fun. We’d all been through hell and back, more than once, some of us even had a platinum membership card. One more trip and I got a free spicy kebab. Yes, sir, right this way. Welcome back, Mr. Hale. We’ve prepared your usual seat at the bar. Shall I open a bottle of the ’89 or the ’72 Regret Pomerol? But Tal… Tal had given herself to Oblivion willingly, sacrificed herself so the entire Story Thread could be brought to peace.
A peace that, given the events of that night, atop of the ruins of what I now knew was called the Vale Atlantia, had only lasted six years. The Everlasting were free—by my hand, although it had been manipulated well. For that reason alone I couldn’t stay in this world and grow old with Tal. I had work to do.
&nbs
p; But perhaps a few weeks or even months wouldn’t hurt.
I won’t bore you with the details—we feasted well, that night, though it felt like mid-morning for me and Tal. Decadent plates in a banquet hall fit to burst with students, teachers, and the rich and powerful. All come to see the two time travellers, who had arrived bloodied and beaten, bearing portends and prophecies of doom. I felt like something of a jester, a novelty, but resisted the drink, and instead gorged myself on pork belly and plum sauce, and a few honeyed apples.
I shook many hands, met many professors, craftsman, engineers, guards, the sort of folk that kept a university—particularly one that trained people to harness the power of creation—spinning along. Another reason these sorts of places were built in pocket worlds alongside main cities was because if the students lost control, the damage was contained.
I learnt that the amazing, interstellar sky here was permanent—we were moored in space, not orbiting a star. A nifty piece of Will enchantment. The sky was eternal night, and I liked that. It removed the element of time, made it easier to forget my responsibilities back home.
Of most importance that night, I met a cute, pixie-faced woman named Fix. She was lithe, bubbly, standing at just five feet and change. One of the vice chancellors introduced her as my caretaker here at the Vale Celestia. Fix’s hair was cut short, bounced over her ears, and changed colour depending on the light, but favoured lilac. Her eyes with bright, sparkling purple, and her smile was contagious.
“I think we’re going to be great friends,” she said, and pulled me onto the dance floor for a bit of a shuffle. “We’ve had many applications for your course, Arbiter Hale.”
“Declan, please,” I said, finding her face fascinating. “Just Declan.”
“What’s the future like, Just Declan?”
“There’s a lot less dancing.”
“Oh no.” She laughed. “If you’ve time later, we can go over the applications together.”
I nodded, and a few hours later found myself in a tiny little office of one of the central buildings surrounding the Vale Celestia. It was a quaint little space, quite academic, full of books, and a desk, and no weapon racks. To be honest, having an office made me uncomfortable. But Fix made the experience more than pleasant.