by Alan Baxter
‘Very few people did. That was the point. And I don’t believe you don’t know where he is.’
Alex shrugged, not trusting himself to say anything else.
‘Why was he after you?’ Darvill asked.
‘He wanted something I had, I think.’ There was nothing Alex could say to ease Darvill’s mind on the matter and the man was clearly planning to exact revenge. ‘I think we have more pressing concerns right now,’ he said.
Darvill’s gaze drilled into Alex for several seconds before he hissed in frustration, turned to look up at the city wall again. ‘What is this place?’
‘I don’t know.’
Darvill turned back. ‘Don’t think this is over. You will tell me what happened to my father.’
Alex raised both hands, palms up. ‘I wish I could, I …’
‘Bullshit!’ Darvill spat. ‘Don’t play games with me. But this!’ He swept one hand around. ‘All this is very wrong. Where the hell have you led me?’
Alex breathed a sigh of relief. He would have to address the subject of Hood again some time, but at least he had a chance to think, time to figure Darvill out a bit. There was always the possibility he would be able to tell the truth, but if Darvill really loved his father, wanted to avenge the man, then Alex could have a very sticky situation on his hands. He wondered if Darvill knew the extent of Hood’s evil. Was Darvill himself as bad? He needed to know more. He turned to Silhouette. ‘You were worried that portal might lead to Faerie.’
She shook her head. ‘This isn’t Faerie.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Well, I’ve never been, but I’m part Fey. I know what they feel like, I know what Fey magic feels like. This place feels different. There’s Fey magic here, for sure, but it feels like some distant echo of Kin magic. Only it feels …’
‘Dead,’ Jarrod rumbled.
‘Dead?’ Alex asked.
The big man gestured out to the emptiness beyond the land. ‘What’s there? Nothing. This place is removed from anything.’ He lifted his nose, his features morphed briefly into something more doglike than human and he sniffed. Silhouette copied him, her features fleetingly her familiar feline visage.
‘It all smells wrong,’ Silhouette said. ‘I’ve never smelled anything so empty before.’
‘But some odours come from the city,’ Jarrod said. ‘Kin and human. There’s life and activity in there.’
Alex looked along the walls, stretching away to both sides. ‘So how do we get in?’
‘Do we even want to?’ Darvill asked. ‘Seriously, you and these two Kin? What the fuck is going here? What about him, what’s his story?’ He flicked a finger at Rowan.
‘He’s nothing,’ Alex said. ‘You know about Kin?’
‘I know about a lot of things. I’m my father’s son. And are you sure he’s nothing?’ Darvill’s forehead creased in a frown.
Rowan trembled beside Jarrod, his lips shivering as if he whispered something rapidly under his breath. Jarrod took a step away. The small seer shook more violently, a high keening escaped his lips. His eyes rolled back, the whites bright. He convulsed violently and something seemed to separate from him. Alex looked closely, tried to read the seer’s shades, and saw two distinct entities. There was Rowan, tiny, terrified, useless, and someone else. Or some thing else. It detached itself and gained some amorphous shape, a shadow with soft substance, and sped away. The seer collapsed, unconscious.
Silhouette and Jarrod took off after the shadow at a sprint, morphing into panther and wolf as they ran. Their clothes melted to become fur, limbs reshaped, stretching out beneath them as they bounded away. Alex stared after them for a second, knew he would have no chance of staying close. The chase was theirs. He crouched beside Rowan. Darvill came to squat across from him.
Over the seer’s prostrate form Alex said, ‘I know we have a lot to talk about, you and I. But for now, let’s concentrate on what’s happening here, yeah?’
Darvill nodded. ‘Seems we have little choice, for now at least. You’d better be able to get me out of here, Caine.’
Alex laughed, genuinely amused. ‘You didn’t have to follow me in, you know. Seriously, did you just dive through some mad arcane portal not having a clue what it was?’
Darvill’s face remained hard for a moment before melting into a self-deprecating smile. ‘I tend to be somewhat … impetuous at times. It generally serves me well.’
‘You’re determined, I’ll give you that.’
‘Yeah. I am.’
Rowan groaned, writhed slightly beneath them. ‘Wassappen …?’
Alex pulled him up to a sitting position. ‘You okay? Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
Rowan’s eyes flickered open. ‘It’s gone.’
‘What is?’
‘Something else was in here!’ He tapped a forefinger against his head. ‘It kinda talked to me, whispered things, guided my shudders.’
‘You didn’t think this was important enough to fucking tell me?’ Alex roared.
Rowan flinched. ‘What would you have done? We needed to follow it. The danger’s not past yet!’
‘You’re talking more clearly now than I’ve ever heard,’ Alex said.
‘I feel clearer than I have in weeks.’ Rowan’s eyes widened again, realisation flooding his features.
Darvill stood with a noise of disgust. ‘Shit, Caine, why were you following this idiot?’
‘It’s a long story.’
Silhouette and Jarrod walked back towards them, wearing their human forms again, their expressions downcast. ‘Lost it,’ Sil said.
‘But it was a ridesprite,’ Jarrod added.
Alex knew bad news when he heard it. ‘You’re sure?’
They both nodded. ‘No question,’ Sil said. ‘It stank of Fey. It was a ridesprite.’
‘Which is?’ Darvill asked.
‘A Fey spirit. A kind of conscious Fey entity that doesn’t have a physical body of its own any more. It uses other bodies to get around, animals mostly. They can’t ride Kin or Fey, but humans are easy for them.’ Sil frowned as she thought. ‘It’s very weak, especially in the human realm, but it can cajole and influence. This one masked itself in there brilliantly. We actually looked for it, but couldn’t see it. Like I said before, anything Fey is fucking evil. We shouldn’t be here.’
‘The Kin are part Fey,’ Alex reminded her, knowing he really didn’t need to.
She nodded. ‘And we’re monsters and we eat people.’
He had no answer to that. It was the truth and he worked a little more every day towards getting used to the idea.
‘It was influencing my visions,’ Rowan said, his voice desolate. ‘I had to listen to it. I thought I could control it if I had to.’
‘But all along it was controlling you, you fool.’ Alex took a deep breath, tried to rally his thoughts. As the leader, it fell to him to take control. ‘What’s happened is done. We’ve been drawn here for a reason, using me. We need to think about what happens now. Whatever that thing wanted with Rowan, it seems to be finished with him. It’s gone, run off to wherever. So it clearly only wanted to ride Rowan this far. Can we assume it’s done with us?’
Jarrod paced back and forth, his chin in one hand. ‘Alex, you said they were using you, you were holding your chest when the portal opened.’
Realisation hit Alex like a truck. He turned to Rowan. ‘You guys, Armour, you knew about me from what happened a few weeks ago, right? London, Rome, Iceland?’
Rowan nodded.
‘That thing in you knew about me too. That portal only opened because I arrived with this.’ Alex tapped his chest. ‘They needed me to be there to open that portal. Whatever was in you, Rowan, forced you to convince Armour they needed to recruit me for this job to get me to that place.’
Silhouette spat, her cat nature taking precedence for a moment. ‘Fucking Fey! They played all of us.’
Claude Darvill stepped forward. ‘Excuse me. Who are they?’
�
��What?’
‘Well, someone opened that portal, right? The people who needed you to be there? I thought you opened it, but it doesn’t sound that way.’
Alex realised they were forgetting an important part of the puzzle. ‘The three who opened the portal and were sucked in first. The magic was already under way.’
‘Yes,’ Silhouette said. ‘But they weren’t Fey. We’d have known if they were, we’d have felt it, Jarrod and I. Especially on a thin day. The magic was strong because of the day, but the people doing it, they were human.’
‘And when I arrived, it completed whatever they were doing. They used the power of the Darak, my power, to finish opening the portal.’
‘We need to know why,’ Jarrod said. ‘It seems likely the Fey were playing them too. But why? So many questions. Why do they want to be here? Where is here anyway?’
‘And more importantly,’ Darvill said, sounding exasperated, ‘where are these three you keep on about? You went through that portal and I followed you. You’re saying they went first. If you lot are here and I’m here, where the fuck are they?’
Jarrod pointed towards the city wall. ‘Is that a person?’
A tiny figure in the distance trudged slowly across the thin strip of barren, dark ground, away from the wall.
‘Your eyes are better than ours,’ Alex said to Silhouette. ‘Can you see who it is?’
Silhouette shook her head. ‘No one I recognise. It’s a woman, heavily pregnant.’
‘Let’s go.’ Alex took off at a run. His company fell in behind, Silhouette and Jarrod easily keeping pace with Alex. Claude trailed not far behind, but Rowan dropped back by the second, eventually slowing to a walk with a look of disgust.
As they drew near, the woman stopped, turned to see them. She shied away, hands raised. ‘Who are ye?’
Alex held up his hands placatingly. ‘Can we talk to you?’
‘Ye’ll not stop me!’
‘We don’t mean you any harm,’ Alex called out. ‘We won’t stop you, your business is your own. But please, can you answer a question or two for us?’
The woman was pale, young-looking, dishevelled and underfed. Her hair hung long and lank, dark and greasy. She wore a rough-spun dress, a single simple garment in some grubby canvas-like material. She looked up and down the group as they approached, her face creasing in confusion at their bright winter coats, jeans and boots.
Alex looked over her shades and read familiar patterns. This woman was human, but different somehow. Reduced, weakened, beyond her obvious physical frailty. He glanced sidelong at Silhouette who gave him a slight nod. She saw it too.
‘Who are ye?’ the woman said again, almost to herself.
‘Friends,’ Alex said.
The woman snorted. ‘I doubt that.’
‘Where did you come from?’ Alex asked, trying to keep his voice soft.
The woman gestured over her shoulder, back the way she had come, towards a gap in the smooth black city wall. ‘Where else?’
‘What is this place?’ Alex asked her.
She tipped her head to one side, as though the question made no sense at all. ‘What?’
‘Where are we?’
‘’Tis Obsidian.’
Alex frowned. ‘This place is called Obsidian?’
Fear flashed across the woman’s face. ‘Everything is Obsidian. What do ye mean, this place? There is no place else. Ascension is a lie.’ She turned to walk away.
‘Excuse me, sorry,’ Alex said. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Out.’
‘Out?’
‘We all go out eventually, is what Tully said. I never believed him afore now, but this is no place for another life.’ She rested one hand on her swollen belly, turned away. ‘No more.’
Alex watched her walk away from them, towards the black nothingness beyond the ragged edge of earth. His stomach sank. ‘Wait!’
She ignored him, quickened her pace. Alex took a couple of steps towards her, wondering what to say, what to do. He reached for her, surely she didn’t mean to … And she stepped off the edge. It took a moment’s pressure, like she walked against a high wind, and pale blue light rippled all around her as she pushed through the invisible barrier that seemed to encompass the entire place. As she passed beyond the edge, she didn’t fall but drifted for a few seconds, rapidly fading. She became ghostlike and vanished, blinking out as if she had never been.
‘What the fuck?’ Claude whispered.
Rowan caught up, his eyes wide. ‘Did she just commit suicide?’
Alex swallowed hard, fighting against guilt that he hadn’t held her back. ‘Yes, I think so. I should have stopped her.’
Silhouette put a hand on his shoulder. ‘What could you have done? Her mind was made up.’
‘She was pregnant.’
‘And it sounds like that was what finally decided her.’
Alex moved towards the edge. He put a hand out, palm forward. The invisible barrier revealed itself in blue-white ripples as he touched it, ice cold. He used all his vision, to see any other shades, but there was nothing else to see. The barrier itself was powerful magic, layer upon layer of protective wards. Magesign rippled. He pushed further, felt as though his hand were pressing into soft dough. The cold increased and a sensation of utter desolation swept over him, complete hopelessness, despair. He pulled his hand away, staggered backwards.
Silhouette caught him, grabbed his hand. ‘Are you okay?’
His hand felt as though it had frozen, the skin white as fresh paper. He pointed at the black. ‘That feels … that feels like … I don’t have the words.’ He flexed his fingers as blood reluctantly returned to them.
‘Yeah, well maybe don’t do that again, eh?’
‘That poor woman!’
Silhouette turned him away from the emptiness, stood between him and the city. ‘We need to concentrate on our own safety.’ She pointed at the black behind him. ‘That certainly isn’t an option. The only way is to go inside. We can assume the others went in. We have to follow if we’re to learn anything.’
‘Are they so far ahead of us?’ Jarrod asked. ‘Where are they?’
Alex raised an eyebrow, confused. ‘Claude, how far behind us were you?’
‘What?’
‘You said you saw us go into the portal and dived in behind us?’
Claude nodded. ‘Right behind you. Literally a couple of seconds after.’
Alex rubbed a hand over his cropped hair. ‘Yet we were here several minutes before you fell through. We spent a good minute debating the situation before we followed those three. If Claude came in right behind us but didn’t appear until several minutes after us, it would seem that time stretches on the journey.’
‘So they could easily have a fair head start on us,’ Silhouette mused.
Alex pulled off the heavy winter anorak he had only recently bought, revealing his T-shirt and olive-green combat jacket underneath. He stuffed gloves and hat into the pockets of the new jacket and looked at the others. ‘You’re all too hot as well, right? The temperature here is pretty neutral. We don’t need these.’
‘Will it stay like this?’ Silhouette wondered.
‘We can’t know, but I get the feeling not much changes around here.’
The others nodded agreement, removed their heavy winter clothing.
‘What do we do with it?’ Rowan asked.
Alex shrugged. ‘Get rid of it.’ He gathered up all the clothes and piled them on the edge of the world they now inhabited. He shoved with one booted foot, pushed the pile of clothing through the glimmering barrier. It floated out into nothingness and faded away. ‘I figure we need to travel as light as possible, and our normal clothes are conspicuous enough compared to the way that woman was dressed. You saw how she looked at us. And I’d rather not leave any evidence behind if we can help it.’
‘Her voice, her accent,’ Claude said. ‘It sounded old.’
‘Yeah,’ Silhouette agreed. ‘Like old-fashioned
. But it was an accent like nothing else I’ve ever heard.’
‘She was speaking English,’ Alex said. ‘That must account for something.’
Claude shook his head, his lip curled in a sneer. ‘It only raises more questions.’
Alex nodded. ‘Let’s go then. See if we can catch up to the three who started this. If they got us in here, let’s hope they can get us out.’
As they approached the gap in the solid obsidian wall, Alex’s trepidation increased. They had travelled to somewhere completely alien, utterly isolated. The woman’s words haunted him, There is no place else.
The gap was more than two metres wide, a smooth-sided passage between buildings through the glass-like rock. They emerged into a street, wide, sheer and black, glistening in the blue-white eldritch light from the dome-like sky high above. Tall buildings marched away along either side, other thoroughfares crossed at random intervals. The structures had doorways and windows carved into their walls, but no doors or glass filled the holes. The structures appeared to have grown directly from the ground, a vast city stretching away from them, all a single gleaming piece of obsidian. The road was a mix of black rock and dirt.
Scattered people walked the streets, loitered in doorways, leaned out of windows, all pale, thin, fragile. They wore a variety of styles, but all old and worn, like those of the woman who had stepped off the edge of the world. They seemed weighed down by poverty, the whole place devoid of brightness or primary colours. Dozens of children of all ages filled the streets. Just about every woman Alex could see, even some no more than mid-teens at most, were heavy with some stage of pregnancy. Chickens scurried around, occasional market stalls dotted on the roadsides.
Alex let his vision open, studied the auras around him. Every person shared the same fragile human ancestry as the woman outside. All not quite like anyone Alex had seen before. And slowly, one by one, they all turned to look at Alex and his friends with open wonder.
Black glass walls reflected dancing candlelight as wisps of incense curled through the gloom. Great dark vaulted ceilings, curving up past carved gargoyles and grotesques, rang with the footsteps of a healthy, tanned man in a long red cassock as he strode towards the vestry. Ornate canvases and tapestries hung from the walls, breaking the solidity of the obsidian architecture. Red cushions interrupted the pews like puddles of blood.