Jane Doe and the Key of All Souls

by Jeremy Lachlan

  ‘Go, go, go,’ she shouts into my ear.

  I crack the reins. Scab steps up the pace. The road’s dead straight, cutting across an upward-sloping plateau, leading to a thin cleft between two craggy peaks. The Mulu Pass. The road to Asmadin.

  The wind whips our hair, flaps our tunics. Violet wraps her arms around me, and even though she’s mad at me, even though we’re fleeing for our lives, my guts get all giddy.

  ‘Hey, I’m really sorry I went and talked to Elsa,’ I shout.

  ‘This is hardly the time,’ Violet shouts back.

  ‘I know I promised I wouldn’t go anywhere without you –’

  ‘Jane –’

  ‘– but I saw her up on her balcony, and I just got so mad! I had to go see her! And it worked! She told me all about Roth!’

  ‘Would you please shut up and concentrate!’

  ‘Relax,’ I tell her, ‘we’re home free!’

  ‘I think they’d disagree.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them. Behind us!’

  I lean a little to the side, risk a glance back. Aki’s close behind, squatting awkwardly atop his horse with Hickory fish-out-of-water-flopping over his shoulder, hurling abuse. Elsa’s further back, riding Rex, hauling the wagon of supplies and skolling from another bottle of booze. It’d be a comforting sight, really, if it weren’t for the dozen bareback Boboki riders galloping from the stable gate behind her. Yaku’s leading the charge, black cloak flailing.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ I scream. ‘Don’t these jerks ever give up?’

  ‘Focus, Jane! As soon as we’re through the Pass, you’re gonna have to bring it down!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The Pass,’ Violet shouts. ‘You need to block it! Stop the Boboki from following!’

  ‘No way,’ I shout. ‘I can’t!’ I’m not ready. My hand still hurts. I can’t feel the furious tide. ‘You know I can’t turn the quakes on and off like that!’

  ‘Find a way! Make it work!’

  The peaks loom above us, crested with morning light. The Mulu Pass looks like an angry snarl in the rock. And now we’re there, darting into the cool shadow, the towering walls a wicked blur. Ahead, a patch of light. A rocky clearing.

  Find a way. Make it work.

  I close my eyes, clench my injured hand, grit my teeth against the pain and picture that Manor hallway again, the river creatures coming to get us, the broth of white water. What did I do? I grabbed Violet’s knife and thought about the Hollows, Atlas, Eric Junior. Everyone who made my life hell back on Bluehaven. Mainly, I thought about Roth. I stoked the fire, became the rock, felt every crack and tremor. But then I lost control. The power got away from me. Just like it did in my nightmare.

  ‘Do it, Jane!’ We’ve cleared the Pass. Just as I feared, Violet reaches around, pulls on the reins and slips off Scab’s rump before we’ve even stopped. She beckons me to do the same. ‘The cliffs. Bring them down, as soon as Elsa’s clear.’

  Aki bolts into the clearing and waves an elongated arm at us, urging us to keep riding, oblivious as Hickory hits him repeatedly with a ‘Let. Me. Go!’

  ‘Get back on the horse, Violet,’ I plead. ‘We have to get out of here.’

  ‘No.’ She’s glaring up at me now. ‘You can do this, Jane. You have to try.’

  ‘I told you, I can’t!’

  ‘You’re not scared enough, is that it?’ She points at Elsa and Rex rattling through the Pass with the wagon, and the stampede of Boboki gaining behind them. ‘The Boboki won’t stop until they kill us all!’

  My nightmare. The gaping void. All those gateways opening. Those Otherworlds consumed by the Cradle Sea. ‘Look around,’ I say. ‘We’re surrounded by rock. I’ll kill us all!’

  ‘You won’t,’ Violet says. ‘Just reach out and let go. It’s the only way!’

  Elsa thunders into the clearing, jerks Rex to a halt, leaps onto the wagon and starts scattering her sack of ‘essentials’ around the barrels of oil. Bottles of booze. Boxes of ammo. A dozen sticks of dynamite.

  ‘No,’ I say to Violet. ‘It isn’t.’

  ‘A little help, please?’ Elsa shouts at us.

  Violet beholds this mobile bomb-to-be, and gasps. ‘I stand corrected …’

  I leap off Scab and we dash over to help. Elsa tosses me a machete, and I slash at the wagon straps, untethering Rex. Violet grabs a rifle stashed under his saddle, checks that it’s loaded. Elsa pockets a fresh bottle of booze and jumps down.

  ‘Clear?’

  I cut the final strap and slap Rex on the rump. He whinnies and trots over to Scab. ‘Clear!’

  Pebbles clatter down from the cliffs and bounce around our feet. The whole mountain’s trembling, but not because of me. Yaku and the Boboki have entered the Pass. They’ll be on us any second.

  ‘Aki!’ I point at the wagon, run on the spot and mime a shoulder-barge. ‘Ram it!’

  He dumps Hickory on the road – ‘Ouch! You lanky son of a’ – storms across the clearing and slams into the wagon so hard it careens back down the Pass.

  ‘Take cover!’ Elsa shouts, diving clear.

  Aki scoops me up and leaps beside her.

  Only Violet stands her ground, chewing on her tongue in concentration, raising the rifle. Slowly, carefully, she takes aim and fires.

  I can’t actually see the blast, but I can hear it all right. I can picture the wagon exploding in a great ball of fire, the Pass collapsing, Yaku and the Boboki wheeling their horses around to escape the billowing cloud of debris.

  Violet dives clear just in time, avoiding a shower of stones, grinning because she got to blow something up at last. Maybe she’s still mad at me, but right now I don’t care. I’m just glad there’s more than one way to bring down a mountain.

  ‘Everyone okay?’ Elsa asks.

  ‘Peachy,’ I say, as Aki sets me down.

  Violet rolls onto her back and sighs, utterly content.

  ‘Okay, so that was pretty amazing,’ Hickory says, still back down the road where Aki dumped him. ‘I’ll give you that.’ The cloud of dust from the explosion envelops him. ‘But I still hate you all,’ he coughs, and with that, projectile vomits and passes out once more.

  THE ROAD TO ASMADIN

  We’ve been on the move for hours, winding our way along sharp ridges, skirting deep ravines, heading deeper into the Kahega Range to put as much distance between us and the Boboki as we can. Apparently, there’s another road to Asmadin a few hours north of the Mulu Pass. ‘They won’t stop,’ Elsa said, ‘neither can we,’ so we’ve pushed on through the hot morning air, shielded from the full force of the suns by the surrounding cliffs, keeping a steady pace. Slow and steady wins the race. We can’t tire out the horses.

  If they die, we die.

  We’re leading them on foot now, dwarfed by pointed spires and sheer rock walls. Deep fissures scar the sides of the road. Precariously balanced boulders loom over our heads. If it weren’t for the wide strip of pale, mid-morning sky snaking between the clifftops, I’d swear we’d wandered back into the Manor and started down a corridor dotted with hazards and traps.

  Hell, it almost feels like home.

  Elsa doesn’t want to talk about Yaku’s betrayal. I asked how she was doing before we set off. Told her I’m here for her. She told me to shut up and ride. It stung, but I can’t blame her. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. Yaku’s had plenty of chances to kill me. That night out on the flats, when Elsa had her nightmare. In our room at Orin-kin, before he took me and Violet to the death pit. While I was in the bloody death pit. Why didn’t he? Too many witnesses? Because he wanted to capture me alive and kicking? Parade me in front of the rest of the Boboki first? The thought makes my skin crawl.

  Elsa’s up front now, leading Rex. Violet’s been chatting to her for ages. The joy she felt from blowing up the wagon didn’t last long. She’s still annoyed I split last night. More than a little disappointed I refused to cause a quake on command. I apologised again. Tried to tell her everything
Elsa told me in the watchtower, too, but Violet cut me off. Said she wanted to hear it from the woman herself, marched right on up to her and hasn’t looked back once. I hate it. Can’t help feeling there’s a crack in the road between us, one that’s getting wider by the second. I wish things could go back to the way they were, before Orin-kin, before Arakaan. Before we had any idea I was the third goddamn key.

  On the other hand, Scab’s back to his slow, useless, directionally challenged self, so at least some things are back to normal. ‘Anyone wanna swap horses?’ I ask when he headbutts a wall.

  Unsurprisingly, nobody says a word, except Aki.

  Click-clack-click, he goes, which I choose to interpret as ‘What a bunch of jerks.’

  ‘I know, right?’ I reply. ‘So rude.’

  Aki hopped off the silver horse to lighten its load soon after we left the Pass, and plopped Hickory in the saddle so he could sleep, slumped forward, drooling into the horse’s mane. I thanked Aki for his help, told him the life debt’s been repaid, waved goodbye and all. But he stayed with us, leading Hickory’s horse on foot, keeping an eye out for danger all the while.

  I’m glad he stayed, too. It’s kinda nice having someone new to chat to. Sure, he can’t understand what the hell I’m saying, but I don’t let that stop me. I tell Aki about my dad, the Hollows’ basement and our life on Bluehaven. I tell him how Winifred Robin smacked me in the head with her shotgun. How Atlas tried to sacrifice me on the Sacred Stairs. I tell him about the secret Manor gateway below the Museum of Otherworldly Antiquities, and how Hickory found me in the snow. I give him a blow-by-blow account of everything we’ve been through, and he listens to it all, towering beside me like a grey, smelly beanstalk, rattling his throat now and then, blinking his black, beady eyes.

  I wonder how old he is, why he fled Roth’s army, how he got his scars. Does he have a home? Will he go there once he figures the debt’s been repaid? Does he have a family?

  ‘Tell you what, Aki,’ I say, ‘I could murder a coconut. You ever tried a coconut before? They got coconuts in Arakaan?’ He blinks at me again. ‘No? Well –’

  A sniff behind us. A throaty goober-hock. The sound of spittle striking stone.

  ‘Do you ever stop talking?’ Hickory’s awake, heavy-eyed and stooped, swaying in his saddle. The effects of the healers’ oils have worn off at last. ‘Serious question.’

  ‘We’re bonding,’ I say.

  ‘Bond quieter. My head’s killing me.’ He squints around at the cliffs. ‘So we’re on our way to this canyon city, huh? To get the second key.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘And I’m still here. I told you to leave me behind.’

  I shrug. ‘And I told you we need your help.’

  Hickory tugs at his loincloth. ‘You could’ve packed me some proper clothes, at least. Feel like I’m wearing a nappy.’

  ‘We didn’t have time to pack,’ I say, and turn my attention back to Violet and Elsa. I feel like marching up there, butting into their conversation. Hi there, lovely morning. DON’T YOU KNOW IT’S RUDE TO IGNORE PEOPLE? ‘By the way, I talked to Elsa last night.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Hickory says.

  I tug on Scab’s reins. Amazingly enough, he obeys. Stops walking till Hickory’s horse is plodding by our side. Aki watches us carefully. ‘She didn’t mean to throw you in the pit. I mean … okay, she did, but only because she thought you were still working for Roth. There’s this law here, see –’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  ‘– but I straightened it all out. They won’t hurt you again. We can trust her.’

  ‘There you go again. We.’ Hickory nods at Elsa. ‘She doesn’t know where it is, does she? The Cradle. The Manor shifted it.’

  I sigh. No point in lying. ‘We know the path ends right near some kind of spike pit, but I’m guessing they’re as common as the creepy, self-lighting Manor candles. As for where the path to the Cradle starts, or how we’re supposed to find it? We don’t have a clue.’

  ‘Huh,’ Hickory says. ‘How unfortunate.’

  ‘Did you ever see any spike pits inside the Manor?’

  Hickory nods. ‘Like you said, they’re everywhere.’

  ‘But did you see any that looked suspicious?’

  ‘They’re spike pits, Jane. Suspicious is kinda their thing.’

  ‘But did you see –’

  ‘One with a signpost saying Cradle of All Worlds that-a-way above it? No.’ He points down at me. ‘No more questions. I told you last night –’

  ‘You’re done. I remember.’ I slap his hand away. ‘But I still don’t buy it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’re you.’

  Hickory snickers at this. Brushes it off with a shake of his head.

  We round a bend, and pass under an impossibly huge spine and broken rib cage wedged between the upper reaches of the cliffs. The skeleton of some Arakaanian beast. The bones look like they’ve turned to stone. Violet and Elsa glance back at us. I figure they’re about to ask me to join them, but they turn back to the road without so much as a blink.

  ‘What’s your plan, then?’ Hickory asks me at last, staring up at the skeleton. ‘Sneak into Roth’s gateway, somehow bypass his troops without being seen, and start wandering through the Manor from spike pit to spike pit till you find the right one?’

  ‘Something like that,’ I say. ‘We’re still working out the details.’

  ‘He’s gonna catch you.’

  ‘Roth has no idea we’re out here – no idea we’ll be sneaking in through the back door. Hell, maybe he sent his troops deep into the Manor to find us. The dune sea gateway could be unguarded, the corridors and chambers beyond it deserted. We don’t know. Even if the gateway is guarded, we still have to try. The Manor binds the Otherworlds together –’

  ‘Oh, here we go.’

  ‘They’d fall into chaos without it.’

  ‘So your dear ol’ dad says.’ Hickory arches an eyebrow. ‘Wait, are you still calling him that?’ I glare at him. He shrugs. ‘Just checking, given recent revelations. Point is, your dad, Elsa, Bluehaven folk, they’re all blind to the truth.’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘Open your eyes, Jane. It’s a lie. A bedtime story told by people to justify the Manor’s existence and their own thirst for adventure. The Manor doesn’t bind anything. You know what I reckon’ll happen if it’s destroyed? Nothing. The worlds’ll keep on spinning, just like they always have. Difference is, nobody’ll have to worry about Otherworldly armies anymore.’

  ‘We’re not having this conversation, Hickory.’

  ‘Really? Sure sounds like we are.’

  ‘Keep your voice down.’ I glance at Elsa and Violet. ‘Look, even if you are right – which you’re not – the Manor’s still important. There’s this library on Bluehaven, filled with thousands of books written by people who’ve journeyed to the Otherworlds. All those stories, all those adventures … the townsfolk must’ve saved billions of lives over the years.’

  ‘So let heroes rise in the Otherworlds. Let ’em take care of their own backyards.’

  ‘And if you’re wrong?’ Again, I see all those Otherworlds decimated by the Cradle Sea. The townsfolk of Bluehaven screaming and dying. ‘If the Manor really does bind them all?’

  ‘Then chaos’ll reign, the worlds’ll spin out of control, and life as we know it will cease to exist. But I’m not wrong. And if you’d seen half the things I’ve seen in there, you’d agree. The Manor isn’t some hallowed space. It shouldn’t be worshipped or saved. It’s hell, and it should’ve been destroyed a long time ago.’ Hickory shrugs. ‘But, like I said, it’s over. Roth’s never gonna let that happen now. We’ve lost.’

  ‘We haven’t lost. We’re still here. We’re still fighting.’

  ‘And you always will be, Jane, as long as the Manor’s around.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, there’ll always be a Roth. Someone who wants to conquer and kill. You defeat
him, someone else is gonna make a move on the Cradle. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, and they’ll always come for you. The Manor’s never gonna let you go. Never gonna let you walk away. You should tap out now, while you can.’

  ‘And what? Crawl under a rock somewhere? Hide forever? I’ve lived in the shadows my whole life, Hickory. I can’t go back to that. I won’t. If someone else comes for me, I guess … well, I’ll just have to fight them, too.’

  Hickory sighs. ‘You’re a fool.’

  ‘Rather be a fool than a coward.’

  He snickers again. ‘I’m many things, Doe. Cowardly ain’t one of ’em.’

  ‘Really?’ I say. ‘Tell me, then, oh brave one, who’s Farrow?’ The name works like a charm. Hickory clenches his jaw. Grips his reins white-knuckle tight. ‘She was your girlfriend back on Bluehaven, right? The Manor took you away from her.’

  ‘Don’t you ever say that name again.’

  ‘Which name? Farrow?’

  ‘I mean it, Doe.’

  ‘You were singing about her in the forest. That’s the real reason you hate the Manor so much. Why you wanted to tear it down. You don’t care about the Otherworlds. You just wanted revenge. Well, I’m sorry you lost her, but if she was still alive, she’d be ashamed.’ I poke Hickory’s leg. ‘Actually, if she was here, I bet Farrow would –’

  Hickory lashes out to grab me, but Aki snatches his arm, quick as a toad’s tongue.

  ‘– slap you,’ I finish. We all stop walking. Aki tightens his grip and snarls, nearly yanks Hickory out of his saddle. I stand my ground, lean in a little closer. ‘Guess you’re not so brave after all, huh? Poor old Hickory, scared of a simple name.’

  ‘Oi,’ Elsa calls out. ‘All good back there?’

  They’ve stopped walking, too. Violet’s got her Boboki blade at the ready.

  ‘We’re fine,’ I reply. ‘Couldn’t be better.’

  I nod at Aki. He lets go. Hickory sits up in his saddle, rubbing his arm. There’s no snappy comeback, no death-glare. He looks genuinely hurt, but not from his wrist. This is a different kind of wound. Deep. Old. Invisible. But he isn’t the only one with battle scars.