The Call of Distant Shores

by David Niall Wilson

  Jonathan turned, stepping carefully across the slime-coated stone. He made his way to the tower slowly. Before he entered, he glanced up the wall of the tower. The cracks in the stones shifted momentarily, rippling round and round the tower, sliding like endless serpents feeding on themselves.

  The windows were too low to the stairs. He'd not noticed it before, but suddenly his mind put the pieces of the puzzle into place. The windows were too close to the stairs that were too-close together and too shallow for humans to climb. He felt what it would be to gaze out through those windows, rippling up the stairs. He felt the draw of the light. The tower rippled, then grew still. Still as stone.

  "No moon tonight," Angus observed quietly.

  Jonathan nodded. "Might have to crank her up another notch, just to be sure."

  The door closed behind them, and the sun set slowly behind the line of trees beyond the lake. The lake grew silent, and then, slicing through the fog lifting from the water's surface and the thick, cloying gloaming, the light sliced out. Watching.

  Death, and His Brother, Sleep

  Lady Claudia stood by the bedside and watched her husband sleep. She held a wine glass; another like it stood on the table beside his bed. After a quick glance around to be certain the two of them were alone, she leaned close and let her scented curls brush his face as she placed her own glass on the night stand, and traded it for his. She felt his breath, hot on the skin of her throat, and she hesitated. His eyelids fluttered. He drew in a quick gasp, jerked his head very slightly to one side, and then grew still. His chest rose and fell regularly.

  She kissed the tips of her gloved fingers and brushed them over his eyelids, then turned and left the room quickly, the goblet cradled to her breast. The room was dark. Only a single candle flickered in a glass chimney on the dresser, and it was mostly burned away. When Lady Claudia's shadow had passed from sight, and the candle flame had ceased its momentary dance in salute of her passing, the room settled to a deep shadowed gold. Tapestries hung heavy on the walls and beaded curtains filled the doorway. The bed was canopied, its drapes thick and lush. All sound was deadened, and only Patrick's steady breathing, stirred the motionless air.

  Claudia stopped and stood very still in the center of the next chamber. Her heart hammered in her chest. A soft voice whispered to her from the shadows.

  "If you press any harder on that glass, Lady, you will certainly crush it." The voice floated from the shadows. Claudia did not turn.

  She stood in a sitting room centered by an ornate fireplace. To either side of this were curtained alcoves. There was a fainting couch along one wall, and several comfortable upholstered chairs gathered in a semi-circle before the hearth. There was no fire. It was summer, and there would not be need of heat for several months, but Claudia felt a sudden chill.

  Lucas stepped from the shadowed alcove to the right of the fireplace and bowed low. She acknowledged this with a slight inclination of her chin. She did not turn to face him, and though she eased the pressure she was applying to the glass between her palms, her legs shook and threatened not to support her. When she did not speak, he stepped forward boldly and took the goblet from her hands.

  "The dosage was as we discussed?" he asked.

  She nodded curtly and held her silence.

  Lucas stood very close, regarding her in silence, and she trembled anew. She wanted to order him away, but could not, and he knew it. Not now. He studied her as he might have a fine painting. To distract him, she spoke at last.

  "He sleeps peacefully," she said.

  "He dreams," Lucas added, turning away. "Soon the dreams will no longer be his own. He will be quite mad, you know? It may pass, but…"

  There was a crystal decanter on a low table in one corner, and he crossed to it. Unstopping the decanter, he tipped a bit of the amber liquid into the goblet and swirled it slowly, coating the inside of the glass and watching as the blood-red droplets of wine that remained within trickled into the brandy leaving slender trails like veins on the goblet's side.

  Lucas took the glass chimney from one of the room's several candles and set it aside quickly. She knew it must have burned his fingers, but he showed no sign of pain. Deliberately, he held the goblet over the flame until the brandy caught fire in a liquid wash of blue flame. She watched, mesmerized, as he swirled the burning liquid and turned toward her. His face was lit with the odd glow of that flame, and his eyes glittered cat-like, just for an instant, before he turned and dashed the goblet into the fireplace. The glass shattered into glittering, burning shards and the logs, stacked in place and awaiting the first fire of winter, flared up once in the splash of brandy, then died away leaving nothing but white, wisping smoke.

  Claudia's hand had come up, fingers pressed to her lips in shock at his sudden motion and the bright, shattering sound. He was at her side in a moment, his hand supporting her elbow. She shook him off and backed away.

  "There is no one to hear, Lady," he said. "Perhaps the shattering glass will awake Morpheus, and the dreams will be sweet."

  "What have we done?" she asked, backing away another step. She crossed herself and turned from him, staring at the door leading out into the hall. "My God, what have we done?"

  He ignored her question, turned away, and slipped through the beaded curtain into the bedchamber beyond without another word. Moments later, Claudia left the outer chamber and made her way down the upper hall to the great stairway. She stood at the balcony looking out into the shadowed, late-night emptiness below her, and a single tear wound its way from the corner of her eye forward and down, crossing her cheek to salt her lip. She rested her hand, just for a moment, on the soft swell of her belly. She was not showing yet, but soon. She bit her lip and held it to keep from screaming.

  Then she turned, started down the stairway, and did not look back.

  Lucas wasted no time, though it would be hours before Patrick awakened. After a quick check to be certain there were no adverse effects from the drug, he brought a wooden case in from the outer chamber and placed it on the ornate marble surface of the bureau. The lid opened on hinges to reveal an incredibly intricate music box. He wound it carefully and then released the catch, watching as the glittering gears and tumblers rolled into motion. The song was ethereal, harmonies blending and shifting in hypnotically woven patterns. It had been designed to help a lady sleep, but abandoned when that sleep turned out to be filled with odd visions and dreams.

  He poured two pinches of greenish powder from a vial into a small bowl and mixed it with several drops of water. When he was satisfied, he lifted the chimney from the single candle and carefully poured the mixture into the well of wax surrounding the wick, just beneath the flame, letting it blend in until it was impossible to make out even a faint green stain on the candle's surface. By the time it had burned away, there would be no trace except the slight, lingering odor of poppy and a hint of sandalwood.

  He worked more quickly now that the drugged incense had begun to permeate the still air of the room. He could survive being caught in Patrick's chambers – he was a close confidante and could claim to have only been helping his friend to bed after too much wine. The incense and the music box would be more difficult to explain.

  He lifted the corner of the bedspread and peered quickly at the floor beneath. Nothing had been disturbed. The lines of the pentacle were clearly visible, two points protruding slightly from beneath the edge of the bed. There were two concentric circles within the confines of the star, but he could not make them out from where he stood – not in the dim light with the smoke thickening about him.

  Lucas pulled a worn leather journal from his pocket and flipped quickly through the pages. There were glyphs and scrawled formulas, short paragraphs, snippets of verse, and, near the rear of the book, the words he sought. It had taken him a year of painstaking research to translate them, and even now, sweat streaked his face and ran beneath his collar as he stared at them and wondered. One mispronounced syllable was all it would take.
One verb conjugated improperly, or a name sounded with the wrong inflection, and the result would be skewed. If that happened, he had no idea what the outcome might be. As it was he was depending on the half-mad scrawling of a man two hundred years dead. Claudia thought he was protecting her, but Lucas knew the truth. What he sought was power, and these words could bring it to him across worlds, and across the ages.

  Leaning in, his lips so close they nearly brushed Patrick's ear lobe, he read softly.

  Thanatos turned, his head cocked inquisitively, as the music box melody bled through the shadows. He heard the shuffling steps approach and the words, spoken from far away, echoed through his hall.

  Antonius stared through the darkness. He did not speak, and if he was aware of his surroundings, he gave no indication. Something had caught his attention, and that had not happened for a century or more. His eyes would not focus, and the dry, creaking rasp of skin on skin that accompanied the opening of his jaws echoed hollowly from the damp stone walls. In the distance, the sound of the river's passing whispered with the voices of others, no more than a name here, or a soft cry there. He had looked into that river once, watched the faces roll over and over one another, limbs fading into torsos fading into waves. He had leaned down to touch a woman's face and found the surface of the water reflecting his own features, his own hand, reaching to drag him down.

  So close. He had pulled back, turned away, and found the caverns. He remembered the voice of the river, but until his eyes opened and his jaws slowly parted, he remembered nothing else. It had faded to gray, to the color of stone, carved from his mind by the passing of time and the dead, stagnant air. Now another voice whispered in his ear. He did not know the voice, and he did not know the name it called him by, but he understood the words, and his long silence broke with a dusty wisp as he breathed the words out once more. They spun from his lips as silver threads that hung in the air, spiraling toward the river.

  Thanatos watched as the threads wove into patterns above the waves. He reached out a hand to snare them between his fingers, a strange cat's cradle of dead sound, the skeletons of words so spider-silk thin they clung to his flesh. He turned, drawing them behind him and brought them to his lips with a flourish. He breathed, and the dead air hanging above the Styx became animated, rolling the threads into seedpods that blew downstream and slipped through the gauzy curtains of time and worlds…

  The brick wall of the alley was chilled and damp. A cold, relentless wind worked its way into the cracks and crevasses, drawing whirlwinds of debris from the grit and gravel on the ground to invade the deserted stairwells and shadowed back door exits. Patrick shivered, huddled up in the corner formed by the metal wall of a dumpster and the bricks at his back. He stared into the street beyond the alley in terror.

  He did not know he huddled against a dumpster, though the scent of garbage hung cloying and rotten in the cold air – but he felt the metal. The word dumpster would have rung empty and meaningless in his ear. He did not know what the dim glow of streetlights meant – though they gave him light. He did not know what the roar of automobiles on the street portended, but he drew away from it and hid his face.

  He was wrapped in rags that stank of sweat and a thousand odors his senses were not equipped to process. The brick at his back and the metal at his side were foreign, and dragons passed the entrance to this roofless cave with hungry growls and bleats. The rich tapestries of his chamber were gone, and the walls of his keep had evaporated into a world of nightmare and dark magic.

  It seemed only a moment in time since he'd shared a smile and wine with Claudia. He had stood in his sitting chamber, staring into her dark eyes, but he could not remember what they had spoken of. He recalled her hand on his arm, guiding him toward his chambers. He breathed the memory of the scent of her hair, and felt the brush of her breast through her silk dress when his heavy, clumsy feet failed to move in compliance with his jumbled mind's command and he stumbled. He had steadied himself against one post of his bed as her fingers unwound the wineglass from his own.

  She had brushed his hair back from his face and whispered to him. His lips had been sticky, as though gummed with some paste, and though she stood close enough to reflect his features on her eyes, he hadn't been able to focus on her face – or her words.

  And the words continued. He heard them beneath the roar of the dragons and the whistle of the wind. Every time he thought he could make sense of his thoughts, or the images surrounding him, the words wound in and out of his mind like a tailor's needle and thread, sound dragging through each hole and drawing the pain tighter, stitching his brain into a wad of tension so taut it thrummed and blotted sanity.

  It was not Claudia's voice, but it was familiar as this place was not. The words were monotonous, a chant, or atonal song, perhaps verse. Patrick fought to concentrate and bring them into focus. He blinked slowly, but images assaulting him did not waver. Above the softly repetitive voice, others rose, loud, jarring, and very close. He curled into a tighter ball, drew the unfamiliar rags close, and willed himself one with the shadow of the wall. The voices, accompanied by heavy footsteps, drew nearer, but he understood none of the words.

  Lucas spoke into Patrick's ear, his lips so close his breath reflected to his cheek. He watched Patrick's eyes. The text Lucas had studied for so long gave indicators he must watch for, but the scented candle smoke itched at his senses, winding its opiate-drenched scent up through his nostrils. He needed to close his eyes and catch his breath, but it wasn't possible. There could be no break once the words had begun, no moment of silent, however brief. And he found that he had no choice. His lips moved, and the words flowed, but somewhere near the middle of the text they had ceased to be his own.

  He had a sudden dark image of his face, drawn back in a rictus of pain and denial, fighting to control renegade lips that repeated the dirge-like litanies helplessly. The process was designed to bring madness to the man on the bed, not to himself. That is what Antonius had written so long ago, and that is what Lucas had believed. Now, since the words had taken on a life of their own, he mulled over possibilities and latched onto an oblique translation.

  "Once begun, the chant cannot be stopped." Lucas had assumed this to mean he must continue speaking, no matter what distracted him. Now he wondered. The difference in translation was very subtle, but its impact was not. The chant could not be stopped. He prayed fervently that no other would enter the room – not even Claudia – to see him thus. Patrick's eyelids fluttered, and, detached from the moment, Lucas realized it was the first indicator. The dreams had begun.

  Morpheus watched in silence as seeds of sound blossomed, and he smiled. He reached out and plucked them, one by one, pinching them between thumb and forefinger and closing his eyes at the delicious pop as each released its contents into the ether, blending one with another until the sound vibrated with potential – a viol string instant. Morpheus plucked the string. The music was clear and bright, a song not heard in millennia, and he hummed the tune.

  Sid opened his eyes and stared. The walls beside and behind him were of stone, not brick. He glanced to his right, but there was no scent of garbage in the air, and he knew he would not see the dumpster. The mouth of the alley was not the mouth of the alley at all – but at least it was there. He ran his tongue over his lips. Something dry and dead crackled, and very faintly – the memory of the concept of a memory – he tasted dust.

  Hunger no longer gnawed at his stomach, and his hand did not shake, though it was difficult to move. He had never been so cold, but it did not matter. Nothing mattered and the taste of dust did not linger. Sid walked toward the mouth of the alley that was no longer an alley, listening for honking horns and loud, brash voices. He heard whispers in their place, soft and sibilant, never completing a phrase and rolling into one long run-on sentence in his mind. The sound was like the surf at the beach, or the hiss of rain in a thunderstorm. White noise, he thought, remembering the concept but unable to apply it against the gray, colo
rless backdrop of stone.

  At the end of the alley he stepped out onto a broad shore. The sand that lined the water's edge was fine, and very white. A gray mist floated above the water, and there was light enough to see, but Sid couldn't tell from what. There were no streetlights, and there was no color. He could not remember why it mattered. His memories were there, but fading, drifting further and further back, and he had to concentrate to draw them forward, to move and to think.

  With nothing else to do, he wandered slowly toward the riverbank.

  Hypnos heard a single note, clear and bright, and smiled at his son's artistry. He stared out through utter darkness into a world of slumber. He turned slowly, found the one he sought and his smile widened into a laugh. He snapped his fingers sharply and sat back to watch the ripple of that sound wash through into another world.

  Antonius' eyes flashed open. He heard his own words through Lucas' lips, pressed very close to his ears. He did not know Lucas. He did not know the bed, or the chamber in which he lay. He smelled the sweet smoke of the poppy and he felt the vibration of the words. He felt – and that was more than all the years since his death had granted him.

  Lucas did not notice the motion of Patrick's eyelids, but continued to speak in a flawless stream. The ancient words poured from his lips in a voice no longer his own. He had dropped to his knees beside the bed, and his head slumped toward the mattress. He lacked the strength to rise and the sense to care.